Extended Phenotype

Open Letter to Democrats Who Threaten a Boycott Vote in November

Fellow Democrats:

I'm increasingly disturbed by reports (or perhaps merely polls) that some Democrats will "boycott" the general election, or even vote for John McCain, if their preferred candidate doesn't win the Democratic nomination.

After nearly 8 long years of the Bush White House, scandals and wars and torture, after the twisting of the meaning of "executive power" and constitutional rights, after the trashing of America's image to its allies and the world....after all of that, are you seriously ready to vote for "a third Bush term with a different face" simply because your favored candidate ends up not getting the nomination?

If you can really look at the last 8 years, and still decide to throw your vote away or vote for McCain in order to protest not getting your favorite nominee, then shame on you.

As I've said previously, both here and to many friends, I'm supporting Barack Obama. Perhaps not surprising, given my demographics. But as I've also said, I will happily vote for either Hillary or Barack in the general election. We're in the middle of a particularly protracted and hard-fought primary battle. And the reason why it's hard-fought and protracted is that -- surprisingly -- the Democrats actually fielded two viable candidates this time!

We need to recall that the number of viable candidates for President we typically field is somewhere between ZERO and one. If we're damned lucky it's been one per election. In my whole lifetime, it's often it's been closer to zero.

So two strong candidates is an embarrassment of riches, and we ought to stop the incendiary language and threats of boycotts. First of all, there's another six long months for all of us Democrats, regardless of who we support now, to really get to know John McCain and our chosen nominee, whomever it turns out to be. And are you really going to say, right now, that you're willing to irretrievably throw your vote to McCain, before you know what we're all going to find out once the general election campaign begins in earnest?

Frankly I don't buy it. I think you'll reconsider once the difficulty of this primary season fades into the "swift-boating" and right-wing media blitz to come. I think you'll come home to the party and support our chosen candidate, whomever it turns out to be. And yes, I know it's difficult to read my references to "whomever" it turns out to be and not think that I'm simply gloating over Obama's perceived chances of victory. But I really mean it -- whomever our nominee is, has my support, and my vote.

And if some of you choose to make good on your threat and abandon our nominee -- then I ask of you one simple thing. Look back at the last 8 years, in detail. Look at the run-up to Iraq, at Abu Ghraib, at Guantanamo Bay, at the torture memos, the attitude to constitutional rights, the Supreme Court nominees, at Valerie Plame and the politicization of intelligence, at the secret energy committee we still don't know much about....look at the last 8 years as a whole, and know for certain that if you make good on your threat then you're voting for more of the same, and that when it gets even worse because of all the precedents set by the Bush Administration, that you have only yourself to blame.

But I don't think you'll throw your vote away. I think that no matter what happens in the primaries, Democrats on both sides of the nomination fight cannot, and will not, look at the last 8 years and decide to -- in effect -- vote for more of the same.

That's why I think it's going to work out, why the party will remain unified, and why we'll all rally around whichever candidate soon emerges as the nominee. I hope I'm right.

Why I'm Caucusing for Obama

I've been mostly silent here on the subject of politics for awhile. There are any number of reasons for this, mostly practical -- time, and other priorities. But at least part of my reticence comes from a feeling, in retrospect, like I've been holding my breath in anticipation. Not necessarily over the Democrats' chances this year; I think they're good (but definitely not a lock, now that McCain is the defacto nominee).

I've been holding my breath, I think, hoping that the "practicalities of winning" don't overwhelm this election far too early. Ever since a mostly-unknown Barack Obama stood up in Boston at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and delivered the most stunning political speech of my lifetime (I'm too young for JFK), there's been the possibility of idealism this time around.

Politics, at least in my adulthood, has been a grim, pragmatic affair, split by dry-as-dust tinkering in the boiler room of the Great Society welfare state for Democrats, and rigid adherence to a set of litmus tests among Republicans aimed at enforcing ideological purity on tax cuts, guns, and abortion. Politics has been thoroughly computerized, mapped, analyzed like baseball box scores and run by experts on polling, advertising, demographics, and mass fundraising. In other words, it's a gigantic commercial ecosystem, and both sides increasingly treat it that way.

Obama has seemed, since his declaration became all but inevitable last year, like our generation's best hope for short-circuiting the wiring of the increasingly robotic Body Politic, and perhaps -- even if in small ways -- re-envisioning the rules of the game. Perhaps even re-imagining them in ways which cross-cut, and thus defuse, the power of our current definitions of "red" and "blue."

Naturally, Obama's relative youth has laid him open, on both sides of the aisle, to those who wonder about his toughness, his experience, his ability to win. Once the primary campaigning got seriously underway, moreover, it has seemed like Obama hasn't lived up to his 2004 performance. Early debates showed him quiet, almost deferential, and he left us underwhelmed. Polls showed Clinton with an early and massive lead, and one had to wonder, as recently as the holidays, whether it truly was the case that Obama needed more time and experience before running. A series of fairly lackluster press events and appearances have done little to change that impression.

I have to admit that despite never wanting anyone else as nominee, I have fallen prey to all of these species of doubt and skepticism, and probably a few others.

No longer. I don't know whether Obama will make it and become our nominee, but I think it's very possible. Nothing magical has happened, except for one thing: he's made it thus far, all the way through Super Tuesday, and his momentum does seem to be building.

But the uphill climb is seeming more and more like a social movement, and less like a political campaign. Obama's message of change is largely in the eye of the beholder, but it resonates precisely because much of the voter base today has only experienced the type of politics I described above. We want something more. We're all slightly cynical about the ability of politics and government to change anything for the better; some of us are much more than slightly cynical. In part, our generation's growing flirtation with libertarian economics and even politics stems from this disillusionment with government.

Some of that disillusionment is quite proper; we are the inheritors of a New Deal and Great Society that turned out to have noble goals but often methods that were flawed, either in the short or long terms. We are also the inheritors of the social world created when the Supreme Court short-circuited a slowly developing social consensus, as they did with Roe v. Wade, and handed a minority of the nation a rallying cry that would drive judicial nomination and set much of the political landscape for a generation.

That landscape now seems frozen and unalterable. Acquiescence in, and intimate knowledge of, this landscape, is now the mark of a "serious" politician or staffer. An entire industry of political staffers, pollsters, lobbyists, advisors, and of course politicians have a vested interest in that landscape, since knowledge of it is crucial to their employability or electability.

Obama may or may not be serious about changing that landscape, and even if he is successful in beating the odds and securing the nomination, as well as winning the general election, he may only succeed in making small alterations. But the chance -- just the chance -- that we may see something other than the politics of "culture war," or the politics of "triangulation" -- both manifestations of a politics of cynicism -- during our lifetime, makes it well worth supporting his campaign.

We deserve something more from our collective efforts at self-government, and although we might not get it during the next President's term, a social movement starts somewhere, somehow. Social changes always start out as small, seemingly fragile things, laughed at by the "grownups" who know "how the world works" and label anything but the status quo as "impractical" or simply sheer nonsense. In retrospect, of course, social changes always seem inevitable, when observed through the lens of history, growing seemingly logically out of preceding conditions given our knowledge of the outcome.

In the hazy middle, when those who laughed or ignored it in its early stages are caught short, and forced by the size of the crowds or vote counts to wonder whether a movement or change should be taken seriously, is the crucial moment. The moment when growth could feed on itself, or fizzle out. A moment when a little extra support and encouragement could make all the difference to whether a social movement succeeds in changing the way we think, and act.

That's why I'm supporting Barack Obama, with a vote on my primary ballot, at the caucuses tomorrow, with donations, and hopefully on November's ballot. And it's why I hope you will as well.

Carl Sagan and the "High-Water Mark"

San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world....There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

Today is the eleventh anniversary of Carl Sagan's passing, and like last year many people are writing today to commemorate Sagan and contribute to the second annual Carl Sagan Blog-a-Thon. This is the first of several from me, and one that I've been thinking about for awhile.

Not too long ago a friend asked why I still was enamored of the old Cosmos episodes, and periodically went back to watch them. I had to think about it a great deal, because ultimately my friend was right: they're outdated, and even in their depiction of history are occasionally inaccurate. I keep coming back to an answer, however, which makes me think about Hunter S. Thompson and the quote above.

At least for me, Carl Sagan and his work with Cosmos and planetary exploration represent the "high-water mark" for American scientific culture. Cosmos is redolent with the sense of knowing that we lived in a time when science and democracy and rationalism were winning out over superstition and fear. As Thompson says, not in any military sense, but simply that a particular sensibility would ultimately prevail.

It has not. Not long after Sagan completed the Cosmos series, the Moral Majority (and its descendants, the modern Religious Right) became a major force in American politics, and so-called "postmodernism" became a major force in American scholarship. Today, less than 30 years later, the prestige of science and rationalism are at their lowest in my lifetime. Watching Cosmos, and reading Sagan's writings are the equivalent, in my view, of seeing the "high water mark" -- the place where the wave of mid-20th century secular rationalism finally broke and rolled back.

This isn't entirely a bad thing. A bit of skepticism is always a good thing. Feyerabend and Arthur Fine bring to the philosophy of science a needed skepticism about the uniqueness of "scientific method" and most of us now view science as a socially conditioned process. But still one whose essential feature is self-correction across the efforts of many. We may have no solid ground to claim that anything we learn is really true, in any ultimate sense, but Popperian falsification still seems to work: we can know when we're wrong.

But the skepticism of the postmodern critique of "scientism" has crept into policy-making and politics. The shameless manipulation of science and expert testimony under recent (and especially the current) Administration is shocking, and it's not clear how to reverse this trend. A whole generation of Americans is growing up without much significant training in math and science, which are increasingly viewed as specialities which it's OK for most people to skip because they're "not interested in that sort of thing."

The elevation of personal choice as the sole arbiter of value is a difficult topic in a capitalist democracy (see Michael Sandel on this topic, among other political philosophers), but one thing is clear: we face choices as a country that virtually require us to understand the issues. And it is far from clear that the electorate does understand the evidence on global warming, or peak oil, or biodiversity, or genetic research, to name just a few topics.

So to some extent, I continue to remember Sagan and watch Cosmos as a reminder of what we need to regain, of what we've lost in the past 30 years.

Multiple Patriotisms: Is it Possible For Americans To Unify Behind One Leader?

As we get into the fall season, in addition to the normal rhythms of autumn -- back to school, back from vacation, buckling down for the winter -- we pass another anniversary of the attacks on 9/11, and get to witness the spectacle of Congress "getting back to work" and the 2008 Presidential race kicking into high gear. 

Frankly, Americans on both sides of the aisle have reasons to dread the latter two events.  With respect to the politically motivated among Americans (however large that population truly is), neither side will actually get anything they want, and much noise and ink will be deployed in trying to convince us otherwise.  One side will not see the US signal a willing end to the Iraq War and an admission that the policy was a mistake, whether deliberate or not -- because as is apparent, this is what the "anti-war left" wants.  And the other side will not see a country that "sees the light" and finally agrees unanimously that everything in the last six years is more than justified by the gravity of the threat we face -- again, as everybody in the country knows, this is what the "conservative" and traditionalists in this country want.  I leave aside the less salient but still significant aspects of political opposition in this country because, honestly, these are the big issues of the day.  As with Vietnam, the nation today is split over different models of what "patriotism" requires of citizens in our current situation.

Sen. Clinton's "Baby Bonds" and a Stakeholder Society

While not yet a firm policy proposal, Sen. Hillary Clinton endorsed the notion of giving every child born in America a $5000 "baby bond" account which would accrue until they went to college, thus helping pay for the education necessary to raise a competitive, educated citizenry.

The bashing has already begun by the RNC, who called it an irresponsible idea, requiring "devastating tax hikes on hard-working families" and would "grow the size of government at a massive rate."

Leaving aside comments about precisely which party has been "growing the size of government" and creating skyrocketing unfunded fiscal liabilities for our country (hint: read the GAO's GAAP accounting estimates for the federal deficit, rather than the White House's, if you want to know what the country's finances under the Bush administration really look like), let's talk about the merits of the proposal.

The idea is a variant on Anne Alstott and Bruce Ackerman's proposal in The Stakeholder Society, which argued that our efforts at remedying the effects of income inequality should come on the front end, with children, rather than on the back end, with adults and assistance programs. There are many good reasons for "front-ending" such assistance, including arguments that conservatives and libertarians should be attracted to.

Arguably, adults should be responsible for their actions and life choices, and except for dire circumstances, government and tax dollars should not be spent to remedy poor personal choices. Even Hayek and Friedman argue for assistance in extremity, so I would expect conservatives and libertarians to follow this line of reasoning fairly closely.

Equally, we can all agree that children, prior to achieving independence and some age of majority, are not responsible for their own socio-economic status nor the life choices made by their parents and remoter ancestors. Hence, if we are to ensure that all citizens have equal opportunity (not equal outcomes!), equalizing the starting line status and success probabilities of children is the appropriate way to do it.

This is precisely what Alstott and Ackerman argue in the Stakeholder Society, and point out that $80,000 per child born in the United States would accomplish precisely this -- allowing all children the ability to go to any school, commensurate with their intelligence, ambition, and abilities, or to pursue the opening of a small business or training in a trade or specialty.

The $80,000 figure has a fair amount of analysis behind it, and clearly it's much higher than the $5000 described by Senator Clinton. Perhaps one is more than we can afford, but the smaller figure is also less help than we need to give: $5000 compounded for 18 years at today's money market rates ain't a college education by any standard, even in-state tuition at a state university.

But it's an idea that's on the right track. Both those who believe both in fighting the effects of income inequality on life chances, and those that believe we need to hold adults responsible for their choices but help children; in other words both principled liberals and principled libertarian conservatives, ought to come together and discuss Clinton's proposal, and the Alstott-Ackerman research that underlies it, in good faith, and without the duplicitous rhetoric that the RNC pays its spokespeople to shovel out.

Congress Needs to Consider Retroactive Immunity for Telecom Companies...For A Price

I'm still pondering McConnell's interview, discussed in the previous post, and it strikes me that he said something which opens a potential level for the Congress to use as an investigatory tool.

McConnell's top priority for Congress on revising FISA legislation is gaining retroactive immunity for the telecom companies who have assisted the NSA with the illegal wiretapping program over the last five years:

Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies. So my position was we have to provide liability protection to these private sector entities. So that was part of the request. . . .

The issue that we did not address, which has to be addressed is the liability protection for the private sector now is proscriptive, meaning going forward. We've got a retroactive problem. When I went through and briefed the various senators and congressmen, the issue was alright, look, we don't want to work that right now, it's too hard because we want to find out about some issues of the past. So what I recommended to the administration is, 'Let's take that off the table for now and take it up when Congress reconvenes in September.' . . . No, the retroactive liability protection has got to be addressed.

Glenn Greenwald is right, I think this is the first time a top official has pretty much admitted the complicity of telecom companies in the illegal wiretapping program. And that gives the Congress a possible plan, an investigatory path into the lawlessness of this Administration, and beyond, into Executive overreach in general (as previously discussed.)

When Congress returns, it should re-convene hearings on the FISA legislation, especially since that "six month" clause forces them to re-authorize or re-examine. In the process, they should indeed address retroactive immunity for the telecom companies.

The price for retroactive immunity must be full, public, and complete cooperation by the telecom companies. Not disclosing technical detail; any hearings that require sensitive information as part of testimony will naturally follow the usual rules for classified briefings and testimony. But policy decisions and directives from the Administration and especially the White House must be fully and publicly disclosed. On the record, under oath.

No oath, no testimony, no immunity. And no CEO, after their respective boards of directors get done with them. Regardless of political affiliation, political donations, or ties of friendship, no telecom company CEO and its board will pass up the deal. Major shareholders, mutual funds, and the holders of corporate debt won't let them.

And we'll get the testimony and hearings we need in order to shape FISA law in accordance with both constitutional principles AND the exigencies of our current situation.

And we'll see what happens once it's all out, on the record. Everyone, even a President with the track record of this one, is innocent until proven guilty. But let's just say the data isn't trending in the right direction for Mr. Bush. Or will the Republicans decide this is their "Barry Goldwater visits the Oval Office" moment?

McConnell: Americans Will Die Because We Discussed Wiretapping....?

In recent comments to the El Paso Times, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell has apparently claimed that even discussing the legality of our wiretapping and electronic surveillance program will result in the deaths of Americans:

    Q: Even if it’s perception, how do you deal with that? You have to do public relations, I assume.

    A: Well, one of the things you do is you talk to reporters. And you give them the facts the best you can. Now part of this is a classified world. The fact we’re doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they’re using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said, a significant portion of what we do, this is not just threats against the United States, this is war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Q. So you’re saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?

    A. That’s what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently, but for whatever reason, you know, it’s a democratic process and sunshine’s a good thing. We need to have the debate.

This is a pretty bizarre twist on the whole wiretapping discussion, and really has to call into question McConnell's own claims of being "apolitical."   Americans will die as a direct result of having Congressional debate on the subject?  Seriously?

Apparently, McConnell's "reasoning" (and we'll use that term loosely for the duration) is that debate in Congress informs our enemies about our tactics and capabilities.  Of course, there's a point to secrecy about detailed capabilities and tactics, and Congress and the Executive Branch have in place practices for closed hearings and briefings, and for handling law-making concerning classified activities.  These practices appear to work, as far as any of us can really tell. 

But at a high level -- the level we'd read about in the news -- I'd be shocked to hear that anyone doesn't know that the NSA routinely monitors electronic communications internationally, and has done so for decades, across many generations of technologies.  After all, the NSA is an outgrowth of WWII signals intelligence groups. 

Or we might assume that folks overseas, including perhaps the bad guys, had read James Bamford's history of the NSA, "Body of Secrets:  Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency," (a good book by the way), or his previous book, The Puzzle Palace.  Or you could extrapolate from fiction and entertainment and watch the Will Smith/Gene Hackman action thriller Enemy of the State.   Or literally dozens, if not hundreds, of other sources. 

Really.  Seriously.  McConnell clearly knows, as the former director of the NSA itself, and a player in D.C., that (1) the bad guys know we tap phones, monitor email and other electronic transactions, and gather a variety of other non-human-source intelligence, and (2) Congressional debate will be on the legality and processes involved in authorizing such activities, not the details of the technology for acquisition and processing.

So nice try, Mr. McConnell, on the "I'm apolitical, just doing my job" bit.  I'm not buying it.  Your comments are, at best, a misstatement.  At worst, they're deliberately inflammatory hogwash of the kind we keep seeing from this Executive Branch, which will say anything to avoid having oversight, rules, or statutory limits to its authority.

 

Taking Impeachment Seriously

Over the last year, I've gone from not wanting the Democrats to waste political capital on impeachment proceedings to feeling that the effort is critical to the health of our democracy.  I think I'm ready to articulate why, and more importantly, outline the issues for which I still believe that the normal electoral process is the more appropriate cure.  This "sea change" in my thinking on the issue corresponds roughly to a change from thinking tactically about the 2006 election to thinking more broadly about the health of our democratic progress, although that tactical thinking was simply wrong from a constitutional standpoint -- no matter what the stakes in that election.  I'll also recommend John Nichol's excellent small book, The Genius of Impeachment:  The Founder's Cure for Royalism.  I started writing this before I read Nichols, and in fact I bought his book precisely because it's got great references to early English custom and American history that I hope to use in arguing my case, but I strongly recommend his treatment, which is obviously better documented, more detailed, and often much better written than my comments below.   

In short, I've become convinced that impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Cheney are not just the appropriate remedy for the massive executive overreach we've seen in the last eight years, but an essential corrective for ensuring that future administrations -- Democrat or Republican -- do not simply continue where Mr. Bush leaves off.  Given massive expansions of executive power during the 20th century, and especially from Nixon onward (including the Democratic Clinton Administration), we have ample evidence that normal electoral process is insufficient as a corrective to executive overreach.  Stronger medicine is required.  And fortunately, strong medicine is precisely what the Founders gave us, in the form of impeachment.

Invertebrate Democrats and "Warrantless Wiretapping"

As the details of precisely what the "Protect America Act of 2007" contains start to be analyzed, it's pretty clear that Congress ought to be ashamed of itself.  Moving beyond the Newspeak name of the bill itself, it's pretty clear that this law violates the Fourth Amendment. 

Marty Lederman, writing at Balkinization, analyzes the key ambiguities in the Senate version of the bill:

The key provision of S.1927 is new section 105A of FISA (see page 2), which categorically excludes from FISA's requirements any and all "surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States."

For surveillance to come within this exemption, there is no requirement that it be conducted outside the U.S.;no requirement that the person at whom it is "directed" be an agent of a foreign power or in any way connected to terrorism or other wrongdoing; and no requirement that the surveillance does not also encompass communications of U.S. persons. Indeed, if read literally, it would exclude from FISA any surveillance that is in some sense "directed" both at persons overseas and at persons in the U.S.

There are many aspects of electronic surveillance which present serious constitutional "grey" areas, and as a society we haven't even begun to discuss these issues seriously.  But one issue is not grey, and I highlighted it in bold in Lederman's analysis.  The Fourth Amendment requires that people (by which we can read "citizen" or "legal resident" although it's not clear whether the Founders wished that distinction to be made) be immune from search (which now includes electronic search or surveillance) without a due process requirement that demonstrates the "reasonableness" of the search, which hundreds of years of Anglo-American legal tradition, American constitutional law, Congressional and state statute, and Federal case law says means probable cause, judicial consideration and issuance of warrants. 

Congress, in its second most spineless act in quite awhile (the Military Commissions Act and restriction of habeas corpus was worse), has ratified the Administration's previous warrantless wrongdoings and gutted the Fourth Amendment in a wide variety of situations.  So why did a Congress cut the Judicial Branch out of the loop and give the Executive Branch the power not only to legally conduct surveillance on U.S. citizens, but also to be the arbiter of when it was acceptable to conduct such surveillance?

My guess is that Congress has shown yet again that the "potential attack on American soil" trump card works every time:  no rational discussion of threats and potential courses of action is possible when the opposing side can shout you down with the simple mention of 9/11.  The major challenge we face in American politics today is getting beyond sloganeering so we can have a rational national discussion about how we are conducting the defense of the Republic against criminal and military threats we face.  Congress will not do this by itself:  right now the 16 Democrats in the Senate (and others in the House) that voted for this unconstitutional bill likely did so because they're afraid for their re-election prospects if they don't vote to give the President every power he asks for, should something happen.

J.K. Rowling and a Morality Tale for Modernity

Having just finished the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series, I want to record some thoughts about the "shape" the series has taken, and how Rowling's work fits into, and comments upon, the modern condition. I'll try to do so without "spoilers," since I know many folks haven't read book 7 yet or at least haven't finished it.

It seems clear to me that Rowling's series will have an enduring place in both the fantasy and children's canons, in much the same way that Tolkien does, and for many of the same reasons. Naysayers aside, Rowling has created a deeply imagined world, and although she may not have actually written a grammar for Parseltongue or endless volumes of back history notes, the world itself is rich enough to interest children and adults alike as long as the genre itself remains part of our shared cultural heritage.

Her legacy as more than fantasy, more than children's literature, however, depends entirely upon the relevance of her themes to the concerns adults face in our society -- as with so much literature. And I need to add that I discuss Rowling along these lines only because she herself appears to have invited such comparisons by writing a series rich in historical parallels; by writing a morality tale steeped in modern life.

As I finished Rowling's final book in the series, I was reminded immediately of Richard Rorty's commentary upon Orwell's historical legacy:

Orwell's best novels will be widely read only as long as we describe the politics of the twentieth century as Orwell did. How long that will be will depend on the contingencies of our political future: on what sort of people will be looking back on ours, on how events in the next century will reflect back on ours, on how people will describe the Bolshevik Revolution, the Cold War.....Someday this description of our century may come to seem blinkered or shortsighted....Our descendants will read him as we read Swift -- with admiration for a man who served human liberty, but with little inclination to adopt his classification of political tendencies or his vocabulary of moral and political deliberation....In the forty years since Orwell wrote, as far as I can see, nobody has come up with a better way of setting out the political alternatives which confront us. Taking his earlier warnings against the greedy and stupid conservatives together with his warnings against the Communist oligarchs, his description of our political situation -- of the dangers and options at hand -- remains as useful as any we possess. (Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, pp. 169-170).

One need not have read the seventh and final book to understand the shape of Rowling's allegory (but naturally, the force of it becomes much clearer as one sees the details of Voldemort's return and rise to power). I do claim, though, that Rowling has done a superb job in describing a particular phenomenon: the ordinariness and mundanity of tyranny's origins.

The Lord of the Rings may inspire us, and we may see in it the quintessential struggle between good and evil, but very little of Tolkien's morality tale is of much use to us today. We simply do not describe modern life the way Tolkien did, and thus in Rorty's words we read him as we read Swift. Rowling's tale, on the other hand, was crafted precisely to describe us. The Wizarding world is palpably our own, with an overlay of magic -- but even the magic is law-like and "ordinary" (i.e., wizards must work for basic necessities, and cannot simply conjure food or shelter).

Most importantly, over the course of the series, but especially from book 4 onwards, we are treated to a compressed history of 20th century absolutisms. Dark power has reigned in the past, but was conquered by an alliance of the good. Years later, people are tired of grand struggles and appear more than ready to dismiss all the signs of evil's return. Vested interests combine with those who simply wish to protect their skins (e.g., the Malfoys), or are in denial (e.g., early Dolores Umbridge?) to wield the power of media, the state, and peer pressure to deny that anything is amiss. Those who preach vigilence against the return of evil are dismissed as fools or worse. Only a few are truly committed -- either to evil or to fighting its return. And because most are simply seeking "the quiet life," the actual battles, when fought, are the province of a tiny minority who fight on behalf of their different visions of society.

I'm not claiming that Rowling literally replays the history of the 20th century for us in the Harry Potter books. She doesn't. But, at least to me, there are elements (especially in the final book, which I won't spoil) which recall the Nuremburg Laws, Hitler's rise to power, and to look for wider parallels, the search for "purity," whether racial or national. Nor are the triumphs of the left ignored: Hermione's long-standing crusade on behalf of house-elves (even more critical in the last book) mirrors the 20th century civil rights movements and its cultural offspring, with the message that democracy and freedom depend upon equality and inclusiveness. The latter point will sound like a bit of a stretch, until Book Seven.

Clearly it's possible to read the Harry Potter series without hearing serious echoes of Kristallnacht. But for an adult, with basic familiarity with 20th century history, it seems difficult to read the series and ignore its essential point: our vulnerability comes from complacency and comfort, but so does our security, because only our relative abundance and our freedom of speech allows us to expand our moral universe to include those traditionally excluded: the Muggle-born, house-elves, goblins, and giants, and in our world, those of different colors, beliefs, and cultures.

Rowling has written the morality tale for modernity, and indeed likely for our "post-modern" century as well, because "evil" in our world tends to come in the same form as hers: the belief that purity -- of one sort or another -- is the cure for our dissatisfaction, and that diversity, hybridity, and difference are weakness. As long as we continue to describe our struggles and dangers in the same way, as long as those who seek to destroy liberal democracy (in the broadest sense of the term) do so in the name of a hypothetical, "pure" state of religion, culture, or race, we will still have much to learn from J.K. Rowling.