Back to the Future: A Review of Plato’s Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology by Patrick (William) Ophuls

Every once in a while you read a book and think, “Gosh, that’s the book that I would like to have written”. Well, you’re saved the trouble. Of course, this signals that you agree with the author. As I read this book, these thoughts came to my mind. 

My second thought after digesting this book (and one by Ophuls that I read immediately before this one), was “Who is this guy and how did I miss him?” I haven’t found out a lot about him*, but from his website and other sources I've learned that he served in the U.S. Foreign Service and has a doctorate in political science from Yale in the early 1970s. He’s not an academic (except for a brief, early stint). He’s written several books, three in the last few years about politics. His earlier books were among the first to deal with the issue of the politics of scarcity that we face. I believe that he’s way out in front of the pack on this, even ahead of younger colleagues like Thomas Homer-Dixon (who provides a complimentary blurb for the book on Amazon). 

So what’s so great about this book? You could start with one word in the title. “Plato”: the fountain of Western philosophy, the incarnation of wisdom, and the enemy of the “open society” (Popper). Writing over two millennia ago, Plato, like all great thinkers, is rooted in his time and culture, and his thought is complex and given to varying interpretations. His most influential work (at least for politics), The Republic, is so full of ideas and seeming contradictions that one isn’t quite sure how to respond to it. And this is where Ophuls moves us to a new way of thinking about Plato and his thought. Plato, he argues, along with Rousseau, Jefferson, and Thoreau, understand the importance of community. Smaller communities, in the sense of smaller, more agrarian societies, are what the future holds for us. Ophuls summarizes his project: 

This book completes the task I set myself many years ago—to find a humane and effective political response to the challenge of ecological scarcity. The challenge arises from an ensemble of interlocking biological, geological, and physical limits that now threatens the welfare and possibly the existence of industrial civilization.

Ophuls, Patrick (2011-08-19). Plato's Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology. The MIT Press. Kindle Edition.

Why does Ophuls believe that industrial civilization will undergo significant changes? Ophuls appropriately and successfully incorporates other disciplines into his thinking (as any thinker wanting to breakthrough must). Ophuls bases his diagnoses on the ecological limits of industrial civilization that are rooted in the law of entropy. Any system needs an influx of energy to ward off entropy, and our industrial civilization, based on fossil fuels, faces physical limits on the supply of those fuels and limits on the amount of waste that we can dump into the biosphere. Ophuls concludes that this just can’t continue. Ophuls states: “To be blunt, modern political economy is contradicted root and branch by ecology”. Ophuls, Patrick (2011-08-19). Plato's Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology (p. 42). The MIT Press. Kindle Edition.

Ophuls addresses the physics, biology, and ecology that supports the statement just quoted. Science has outgrown the simple mechanical models that began with Descartes and Newton and that helped foster a liberal society and the Industrial Revolution. But much of social science and political thinking hasn’t caught up and appreciated the new science (with some significant exceptions). (He also discusses the value of Plato’s thought viz. new perspectives in natural science and psychology.) 

Ophuls realizes that the changes we face will not come easily. He turns to Carl Jung as foremost among those who can help us understand ourselves and the depths of our minds that reflect the “2,ooo,ooo year-old man inside us”. He draws upon the natural law tradition (now out of favor but still alive) to provide an ecological view of individuals and society. He identifies a break in political thinking beginning with Hobbes that gives intellectual birth to our liberal, modern society: 

To make a long story short, all modern polity is rooted in Hobbes’s rejection of the classical conception of the polity—namely, that the state has a duty to make men and women virtuous in accordance with some communal ideal. Instead, said Hobbes, let individuals follow their own ideals and pursue their own ends with the state acting simply as a referee to prevent injury or harm to others. Hence, the function of the state is purely instrumental: it keeps the peace and relegates morality to the private sphere.

Ophuls, Patrick (2011-08-19). Plato's Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology (p. 16). The MIT Press. Kindle Edition.

 Leo Strauss (according to Dennis Dalton) places “the break” in Machiavelli’s The Prince. In my own study of the tradition of political thought, I've long noted a difference that begins with Machiavelli and Hobbes: a shift of emphasis from justice and a just society to a focus on liberty and individuality. But wherever we locate the break in history, it occurred, and we need to move to a new understanding of our society and our individuality. Ophuls isn’t programmatic about how we can realize a just, ecological society and still retain the benefits that liberty has bestowed upon us, but this is—at least for now—perhaps an impossible task that will only coalesce over time. He does, however, offer a suggestion of where we might find prototypes for this new order, and this is where Plato, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Thoreau come into play. 

Ophuls believes that communities along the lines of the Greek city-states, Rousseau’s vision of community (decidedly not that embodied in revolutionary France), and Jefferson’s agrarian ideal provide us the best prototypes of future polities. It is at this point that I have the most hesitation with Ophuls’s argument. Each thinker, Plato, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Thoreau, has a shadow side to his project, perhaps in part because of misinterpretation by later commentators and readers, but nonetheless real. Each has a utopian aspect to his thought, each celebrates the agrarian over the city, and each tradition has never been realized in an existing polity. Take Jefferson as the one whom we might think of as the obvious counter-example to my point. As Ophuls notes, Jefferson was the least programmatic of these thinkers and the one with the most practical political experience. But while Jefferson drafted the Declaration, he missed the hard-fought political battles involved in forming a working government embodied in the Constitution and argued by The Federalist. As president, Jefferson’s ideal of a small, agrarian republic went by the wayside. We talked Jefferson; we lived Hamilton.  And under the historical circumstances, Hamilton had greater foresight and more considered structures of thought and government. So while these traditions are valuable and should be mined, we have to retain and incorporate the liberal tradition and civilization—the life of the cities. For instance, someone like Lewis Mumford, the great American humanist and commentator on cities, provides some useful perspectives that might help us bridge these traditions. All of this is an ongoing project, so final answers aren’t in the offing, and it will be hard. 

With the list of Plato, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Thoreau, you might think Ophuls just this side of a libertarian, agrarian radical. But consider this: 

To mention Burke is to see that ecology, because it is grounded in evolution, has fundamentally conservative political implications. A long process of trial and error has weeded out the bad innovations, leaving behind what has stood the test of time. The result may not be perfect, but it is probably the best that can be accomplished with the materials at hand. Evolution or ecology should not be used to justify wealth and privilege or inherited evils, but it does imply a Burkean stance toward change. There is a kind of wisdom contained in the system—biological or social—that we would be wise to study and understand before we launch “reforms” based on our “progressive” ideas.

Ophuls, Patrick (2011-08-19). Plato's Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology (p. 41). The MIT Press. Kindle Edition.

With each review of an outstanding book, I have to stop with a sense that I haven’t done justice to it, and that’s certainly true here. If I could recommend one book as a blueprint for political and social thought for the future, this is my choice. Ophuls had me when I reviewed—as I often do—the bibliographic essay and notes before reading his text. He’s learned from many of the same pioneers that I have, and many others that are new to me. Going in, I want a sense of where the author comes from, and here I learned that we’ve explored much of the same intellectual territory. But my enthusiasm comes from more than a shared history of reading. Patrick (William) Ophuls has put together a call to understanding and action worth reading and contemplating, and one that we ignore only at our peril. 

Next, I will wrestle with his book Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail, about how civilizations go to hell in a handbasket, now and always. 

William a/k/a Patrick Ophuls

* Hold the press! His real name is Patrick Ophuls, but he used the pen name William Ophuls.  While searching Amazon under both names, I came across this from a blurb for a book (Buddha Takes No Prisoners)(2012) Ophuls wrote that includes a forward by Jack Kornfield: 

Patrick Ophuls graduated in 1955 from Princeton University with a degree in Near Eastern area studies and obtained a PhD from Yale in political science in 1973. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1959, was a political analyst on the Afghanistan desk at the State Department, and was also posted to American embassies in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and Tokyo, Japan, as a personal aide to two ambassadors. Leaving the Foreign Service in 1967, he became a professor of political science at Northwestern University. Patrick Ophuls has practiced insight meditation intensively for over 30 years. He began sitting with the Thai teacher Dhiravamsa in 1974, graduating from his teacher training program in 1977 and going on to assist him during several retreats in 1978. He began studying with Insight Meditation Society founders Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg in the late seventies, an association that continues to this day.

 The plot thickens! 

Three Cheers for Big History, David Christian, and Bill Gates

Nerd fest. Love it.

The NYT published its education issue of the Magazine that included an article entitled “So Bill Gates Has This Idea for a History Class . . .” written by Andrew Ross Sorkin about Bill Gates and his promotion of “Big History”. The article details the Big History project that grew from the inquisitive mind of David Christian, an academic who started his teaching career as a Russian history specialist in Australia. Christian decided to widen the scope of history, and he developed a course that runs from the Big Bang to the present (and that even peers over the edge into the future). Bill Gates, like me, came across the Teaching Company course and really liked it. (Bill watched on his treadmill. I listened in my car.) Gates was taken with the concept and now actively promotes it. It’s heartening (in a small, silly sort of way) that the world’s richest nerd shares my enthusiasm. 

The article describes the genesis of the project, beginning with David Christian’s personal history, his initial course development, his “discovery” by the Teaching Company, and their release of the course in 2008. Gates (a fellow Teaching Company aficionado) not only became enthusiastic about the course, but he put his money where his mouth (and brain) is and began to promote it through his Foundation. Now the course is taught in more and more schools. 

Some of the article includes comments from those who carp about Gates and his involvement in education. Such comments are petty. He puts ideas to the test and backs up his enthusiasm with money, testing, and refinement. Business leaders who promote educational reform (even real change) aren’t going to lead us to the educational mountaintop, but they can help. Gates seems exemplary in this regard. At least he’s not out trying to buy elections for right-wing causes. Besides, he’s a rather likeable nerd, and he channels his nerdiness to good use. I’ll never share his income bracket, but I do share his enthusiasm for this and other topics. (He posts lists of books that he’s read that’s a treasure of serious, non-fiction reading.)

The other gripe in the article came from Stanford history professor Sam Wineburg, who complained that the course left out too much history (of the archives and texts variety) to focus on natural science. This misses the point of the course, which is—contrary to the organization of colleges and universities—truly multi-disciplinary. This should not be a turf war. We can view history through a telescope looking back into vast areas of time, space, or topic, or we can view it through a microscope, focusing on moment-to-moment events documented by texts in archives. Each has its place and irreplaceable value. No single perspective, large or small, distant or recent, can supplant all of the others. 

The best aspect of this article, however, is that it gives us pause to think about history and to asses its nature and value. What is history? History is the master discipline, the source of knowledge. Every thing has a history: the universe, you and me, civilizations, disciplines (math, science, literature, etc.). Every thing changes over time (although sometimes too slowly for us to appreciate). All knowledge is from the past. This idea isn’t my creation, but a gift that I received from John Lukacs. Lukacs calls on C.S. Lewis to help explicate the insight: 

The past in our minds is memory. Human beings cannot create, or even imagine, anything that is entirely new. (The Greek work for "truth, aletheia, also means "not forgetting")"There is not a vestige of real creativity de novo in us," C.S. Lewis once wrote. No one can even imagine an entirely new color; or an entirely new animal; or even a third sex. At best (or worst) one can imagine a new combination of already existing—that is, known to us—colors, or monsters, or sexes.

Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 52.

Lukacs goes on: 

In sum, the history of anything amounts to that thing itself. History is not a social science but an unavoidable form of thought. That "we live forward but we can only think backward" is true not only of the present (which is always a fleeting illusion) but of our entire view of the future: for even when we think of the future we do this by remembering. But history cannot tell us anything about the future with certainly. Intelligent research, together with a stab of psychological understanding, may enable us to reconstruct something from the past; still, it cannot help us predict the future. There are many reasons for this unpredictability (for believing Christians let me say that Providence is one); but another (God-ordained) element is that no two human beings have ever been the same. History is real; but it cannot be made to "work", because of its unpredictability. 

Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 53-54

Strictly speaking, I would define history as the study of the recorded past (again following Lukacs). That has meant mostly documents, but it now includes a variety of other media as well. For more remote times, we get glimpses of life from the world of signs, symbols, and non-perishable tools. But in a larger sense, the “Big History” sense, we can understand history as the story of change. Thus, we move beyond (but do not discard) the story of politics, war, individuals (biography), social relations, or economics, among the more traditional subjects of history. We now encompass the natural world as well. The cutting edge of physics investigates the changing universe, while biology was revolutionized by its incorporation of history, which we label “evolution”. This appreciation of change is relatively new to the Western mind. It has a genesis going back to Heraclitus, but ideas about static Being and an unchanging God dominated for the greater part of Western history. With the likes of Hegel, Whitehead, and Eastern thinking (Daoist and Buddhist), we now enjoy a conceptual orientation that better appreciates the fundamental perspective of change and process. 

The other point to consider about the value of the Big History project comes from its value for bridging the two cultures. Since everything has a history, including every body of knowledge (as a field of study and in the “real world”), each subject can be taught through its history. I first received this idea from the late Neil Postman. (Sorry, I don’t have my library here to provide you the title in which he makes this point.) But as usual, John Lukacs has a pertinent quote, and from none other than the greatest American philosopher, William James: 

William James wrote: "You can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, mechanics, are humanities when taught by reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to whom these sciences owe their being. Not taught thus, literature means grammar, art a catalog, history as list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and measures" 

At the End of an Age, 53, quoting James, Memories and Studies (1911), 312-313.

So I say “three cheers!” for Bill Gates, David Christian, and Big History.

Braley for Senate Endorsement . . . . And a Dream Speech

First, I'm voting for Bruce Braley for the Senate. Easy.

 I first came to know of Braley through the Iowa Association for Justice, and I received the impression of someone who was impressively knowledgeable and diligent. I was delighted when he chose to run for Congress, and he was the person I thought of when Senator Harkin announced his retirement. He’s hard working, bright, and has the right instincts on the issues. 

Of his opponent, I think little useful can be said. She gained notoriety sufficient to win the primary by riding a motorcycle, shooting a gun, and castrating pigs. Otherwise, she seems to follow the Tea Party line, which is long on complaint and short on ideas. Repeal Obamacare, guns for all, tax cuts: line up the usual suspects. I do, however, want to make one thing clear. The fact that she’s from Red Oak does not prejudice me against her. I have some great friends from Red Oak. And after all, it’s not as if she’s from Clarinda. 

I’ve read the “issues” sections of each candidate’s website and find the usual nostrums and platitudes. I prefer Braley’s, but it’s like choosing one’s favorite pabulum when what you really want is steak. I’ve followed politics since the second grade (when I “endorsed” Richard Nixon for president over JFK). I’ve watched The West Wing reruns, I’ve practiced law, and I’ve read Max Weber and Reinhold Niebuhr. I understand that in politics one has to make choices and compromises that you’d rather not have to make. Reality—other powers—impose hard choices on us. Good politics mixes realism with idealism. Good politicians must know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. When I looked at Braley’s website, I didn’t see anything about reasonable limits on guns, global climate change, foreign policy realism, or political corruption (although his emails about Citizens United to do show concern about this later topic). I knew that I shouldn't expect to see such things.

But setting aside the concerns of reality for a moment, here’s a speech that I dream that Bruce Braley—or any candidate—might give. A speech that takes the gloves off and addresses what ought to be our most pressing concerns:

The Dream Speech

Imagine Bruce Braley, in the midst of his campaign, chooses to give a speech to a large audience, a full bank of microphones as a shield before him, TV lights illuminating him, and a large, live audience eager to hear him speak. The audience is mixed; Iowans from all walks of life. What they have in common is a belief that the choice of a U.S. Senator is a crucial choice, and they want to hear what he has to say. The campaign is in full swing, and sound bites of stump speeches have littered the airwaves, along with the canned commercials showing each candidate with family and farm fences in the background. And the next minute we see advertisements that show how vile and alien are the beliefs of the opponent. The ads exhibit the usual mind-numbing drivel that consultants tell campaigns they must peddle in mass quantities to trigger the appropriate Pavlovian reactions among the docile voting public. 

This audience on this occasions expects a typical stump speech, but they secretly hope for something more. It’s a major event. Maybe today will be different. Braley steps to the microphone. He speaks: 

Fellow Iowans, 

Thank you for sharing this time with me. I've been campaigning for this U.S. Senate seat since Senator Tom Harkin announced that he would not run for re-election. During this time and in my time as a Congressman, I've staked out positions on all sorts of issues. I've voted for and against all kinds of legislation. I've made statements and issued position papers, written letters to constituents, and answered questions on about every conceivable issue a member of Congress can expect to receive—and some you'd never think that we'd get.

If you voters have paid any attention to this race, you have some sense of what I'm about. You know that I'm a Democrat. That means that I believe that government can be an effective tool to improve our lives. Government programs can be—but aren't always—effective in improving our lives. Being a Democrat means that we believe that we all should benefit from government and that we all should contribute to a degree that is as fair as we can hope it to be in this imperfect world. Being a Democrat means that government should act pragmatically, creating a government that's sometimes smaller and sometimes bigger. We reject the blanket proposition that smaller government is always better government and that less taxes are always better for everyone. Our gauge isn’t the size of government. We judge government by its effectiveness in delivering the services that benefit our citizens and that work to keep us safe. We Democrats are guided by a sense of fairness and the public good. Debates about where to draw the lines of government began with the Founding of the Republic and will continue. The devil is in the details.

But today I want to address the larger picture, beyond the usual laundry list of how particular programs that I support will benefit children, or teachers or veterans, or the elderly, or women, or farmers, or a seemingly endless list of other groups to which most of you probably belong. Today, I want to address those issues that go beyond our common, more limited characterizations of our concerns and ourselves. I want to talk about those issues that should concern us all. The wider focus gets shunted aside in our incessant marketing of positions to groups defined by how government affects their bottom line. But because you care about whom you will support for the U.S. Senate will make a difference for our future, I want to address some of the fundamentals that we usually try to hide from. Let me therefore share these ideas with you:

Buying and Selling Influence. Our political system is badly corrupted. The corrupting agent is money, lots and lots of money. Our current political system has legalized bribery. Anyone running for office today at the federal level most worship at the feet of the big campaign contributors. I appreciate the $5, the $25 or $100 that you send, but's its small change for what it costs to run a campaign today. The real money comes from interest groups, shady super-pacs, and extremely wealthy individuals. The bigger the contribution, the more the moneyed interests will influence legislation. This isn't an insider's secret knowledge, it's human nature, it's Econ 101. He that pays the piper calls the tune. You students of history recognize that this problem isn't new, but it's gotten worse. It's out of control. We have to do something about it because Big Money is warping the outcome of our political process.

To take concrete steps to counter this pernicious infection, I'm endorsing the programs of two groups aimed at restoring our political process to end the most egregious effects of Big Money in politics. I am endorsing the programs of Root Strikers and Represent Us. I pledge to change our system of political financing so that the corruption of Big Money will no longer call the tune and fundamentally distort the democratic process.

The Senate Filibuster. Another alarming warp in our political institutions involves the U.S. Senate, the body to which I seek election. Minority rule now controls that chamber. I’m speaking about the filibuster. For those you my age or older, you probably first learned about the filibuster by reading about it in the daily paper or in history class, about how Senators from the Old South used it as a weapon to fight civil rights legislation. Those tactics failed and the American Dream moved forward despite that its use. But in the last twenty years or more, and especially during the term of President Obama, the filibuster has changed from a rarely used device to stall legislation into a common tool to impose minority rule on the Senate and the nation. It requires the Senate to pass legislation or confirm judges by a super-majority. To block Senate action requires only 41 members oppose a vote—just a vote! This isn't about debate. It's about obstruction of the will of the majority. The issue of the filibuster goes far beyond free debate and Senate tradition. It creates a regime of minority rule. I support and relish free and vigorous debate in the Senate, but I don't believe that a minority—even if I'm a member of that minority—should hold the power to veto the will of the majority and counter the intention of the Constitution. I will strive to end this practice.

Guns. Let's be honest: when it came to the Second Amendment to the Constitution that includes the provision about the "right to bear arms", the Founders blew it. I’m not sure what they intended. Scholars aren't sure. Those who claim certainty have the least basis for their beliefs. We would be better off throwing it out and starting over, drafting something new that we can understand and that addresses the realities of the 21st century.

Does this mean banning all guns? Don't be ridiculous. Limiting all gun ownership and possession is neither proper nor practical. However, we do need to make sure that we create reasonable restrictions on weapons that serve the needs of the community for safe schools, homes, and workplaces. We have to make sure that gun ownership and possession balances responsibilities with rights. We must stop sanctifying guns and recognize them as having legitimate uses, such as for hunting, sports, and law enforcement and having criminal uses. Whether we’re talking about handguns, semi-automatic assault rifles, mortars, grenades, or weapons of mass destruction, we have to take reasonable, practical steps to regulate weapons to protect ourselves. We need to stop worshiping guns and treat them as the weapons that they are and the useful tools that they can be. We should no longer worship the Moloch created and promoted by the NRA. Our idolatry requires us to sacrifice too many children, teachers, colleagues, friends, and family. We must act sensibly now.

Climate Change. Not so long ago, I thought that global climate changed caused by our current energy system would be the most significant issue we would leave to our children. I was wrong. The problem isn’t waiting for the future. Try as we have to ignore or dismiss the threat, it won’t go away. We cannot act as if it’s a child’s nighttime monster that will retreat if only we hide under the covers. This monster that we—the modern industrial world—has created, like Frankenstein's monster, must now be brought to heel by us, its creators, before it wrecks too much havoc on this earth we inhabit. We cannot easily change the economic and energy systems that have made us the most privileged and prosperous human generation to have ever inhabited this earth. But we cannot continue to foist the dregs of our economic miracle onto the future that our children and grandchildren will inherit. In fact, the future has arrived, and we must reduce the amount of carbon and other greenhouse gasses that we are dumping into the atmosphere. This is a scientific, engineering, economic, and—most of all—political problem that we must address before it's too late. We must adopt a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade regime (or combination of the two). We must develop conservation measures and alternative energy sources. We have to do these things before we are compelled to spend vast sums on projects that will prove difficult and perhaps unsuccessful. This goal transcends the particular interests of farmers, drivers, oil and power companies, and ordinary citizens. We must develop an effective response before the problem rends our social fabric. Change will hurt some more than others and so we must seek to spread the burdens equitably and to promote new opportunities for those subject to change.

In sum, we either cure ourselves now with some hard choices or suffer the remedies that Mother Nature will impose upon us in her fury at our desecration of her gift to us. 

We must stop fighting foolish wars. In my lifetime, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have all taken away from America more than we could have ever gained. In the way of young lives, lost limbs, shattered minds, and billions of dollars that could have been spent more wisely, we as a nation have paid a heavy toll. We have the most powerful, most awesome, and most well-armed, trained, and disciplined armed forces in world history. But our leaders’ failures of wisdom in choosing when to deploy those armed forces in the national interest of the United States have harmed our nation. We must understand the limits of military power even as we have cultivated this most mighty military. Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have offered these lessons, but we haven't been smart students. The cost of our pride and foolishness will only increase. We must actively resist the lure of the Situation Room where the adrenaline rush of life and death decisions, enhanced by the reach and potency of technology, creates a temptation for any president to deploy force when so much power lies in his or her hands. We need to think strategically and realistically about how can protect our national interests, with the use of force as only a last, most carefully weighed, option. We must be wary of delegating to a president from any party the authority to wage war without the approval of Congress and the approval of a fully and truthfully informed American public.

In conjunction with limiting the war-making power and predilection of our government, we must also curtail the mentality that justifies infringing upon and degrading our civil liberties. Make no mistake here: belief in a strong, effective government does not entail the endorsement of an omniscient government that spies without constraint on its citizens and subverts due process of law. These problems arise from the militarization of our government in the face of fear of foreign enemies, both nations and trans-national terrorists. We have to act decisively in a changing environment, but we have to recognize that crossing some lines take us down a path that we should never want to travel.

I will stop here. This is not a list of all of the pressing issues that we face, issues about jobs, sustainable economic growth, the size and role of government, public finance, and issues of legal rights. Nor have I addressed the growing economic inequality that divides our nation and that fundamentally distorts the social and economic mix that marked the height of our national success in the post-World War II era. But you’ve been a patient audience, and I will not tax your patience more fully. We cannot—and should not attempt—to create a Perfect Union. We can only strive to create a More Perfect Union. Our task is never complete. Human fallibility, our limited understanding of ourselves and the world around us, and the distorted lens of self-knowledge that we all have, make perfection impossible. But we must act. Political decisions are about choosing our future. It's messy and irrational; often comic, sometimes tragic, but it molds our future as a nation, as a community, as a planet. We can choose to strive to think and act rationally with a sense of love for this precious fleeting life that we are given, or we can descend back into the myriad hells of war, pestilence, and famine that have marked most of human history. I offer these proposals to you as my ideas for a better future for all of us.

Postscript: I read a couple of brief press accounts of the race. What a bunch of garbage. Wake up, Iowans!