The practical effect of the Supreme Court’s reversal of the Second Circuit is that secret policemen may read the e-mail messages exchanged between U.S. citizens and foreign nationals if they can persuade the U.S. Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence to request a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). How difficult is that? Given that the FISC conducts its business in secret, we don’t know much about its decision-making. However, we do know that in 2011 it granted 1,674 of the 1,676 requests for authority to conduct secret electronic surveillance. The other two requests were withdrawn rather than denied. In effect, all that protects U.S. citizens from having intelligence agents read any e-mails they might exchange with foreigners is a court that holds its proceedings in secret and never says ‘no.’

That a court dominated by conservatives would sacrifice freedom to security is unsurprising, but who wrote the majority decision in Clapper and how he delivered the bad news merits scrutiny. The author is one of former President George W. Bush’s appointees: Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. Here is what Alito said during his January 10, 2006 U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Confirmation Hearing when asked whether the victims of government spying should have their day in court:

“Certainly. If someone has been the subject of illegal law enforcement activities, they should have a day in court. And that’s what the courts are for, to protect the rights of individuals against the government or anyone else who violates their rights. And they have to be absolutely independent and treat everybody equally.”

Yet a day in court is exactly what Alito is denying with the Clapper decision. Without standing, bringing an action for a permanent injunction against being spied upon is blocked.

What is Alito’s reasoning? Because U.S. citizens who believe their electronic communications are being monitored have no knowledge of the Government’s targeting practices, what they fear is “necessarily conjectural.” That is not enough to give them standing in court. In footnote 4 he instructs that it is, “not the Government’s burden to disprove standing by revealing details of its surveillance priorities,” and then follows with a bit of terrorist baiting:

“Moreover, this type of hypothetical disclosure proceeding would allow a terrorist (or his attorney) to determine whether he is currently under U.S. surveillance simply by filing a lawsuit challenging the Government’s surveillance program.”

Not only does Alito tell the subjects of secret government surveillance that they cannot have their day in court because the surveillance they complain about is being conducted secretly – that the burden is on them to produce evidence that is in the possession of the secret police – but then tags them as possible terrorists.

To identify other examples of absurdity as nauseating one has to turn to fiction: the exchange between Captain Yossarian and Doc Daneeka about the rule that is also the title of Joseph Heller’s novel Catch 22. Under that regulation, U.S. Army Air Corps bomber crewmen exposed to escalating risks of death because of the professional rivalries among their senior officers could not be medically grounded for insanity unless they so requested. However, all such requests would be automatically denied because they constituted evidence of sanity.

Under the Clapper decision, targets of secret surveillance are denied legal standing to challenge their secret surveillance because they cannot show that they are being surveilled. They cannot show that because their surveillance is being conducted secretly. That is absurdity so patent, so obvious, that the failure to recognize it could be taken as evidence of insanity.

In a 6800 word speech delivered at the University of Virginia on February 20th, Kerry devoted all of 316 words to global warming in a brief tangent from the main themes of promoting trade and the State Department budget. Just as in President Obama’s latest Inaugural Address and State of the Union Address, the phrase ‘global warming’ was missing altogether. The word ‘climate’ was used only twice, and in neither instance as part of the phrase ‘climate change.’ In clear contrast, Kerry used the word ‘investment’ 16 times, the word ‘job’ 14 times, the word ‘budget’ 13 times, the words ‘market’ and ‘trade’ 8 times each.

It gets worse. In the two paragraphs ostensibly about global warming, the issue was addressed in terms of opportunities for American businesses rather than as an unfolding crisis necessitating international cooperation to limit carbon emissions. He’s a sample: “When we work with others, large and small, to develop and deploy the clean technologies that will power a new world – and they’re there waiting for us, $6 trillion market, huge amount of jobs – when we do that, we know we’re helping to create the new markets and new opportunities for America’s second-to-none innovators and entrepreneurs so that we can succeed in the next great revolution in the marketplace.” While there is nothing wrong with making a reasonable profit by providing something that people need, Kerry’s speech seems to suggest that the U.S. State Department is uninterested in global warming unless it turns a fast buck.

For a strikingly different take on the nature of this public policy problem one need only the August 31, 2009 op-ed column by a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts named John Kerry. There is the focus is national security: “Climate change injects a major new source of chaos, tension, and human insecurity into an already volatile world. It threatens to bring more famine and drought, worse pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity, and human displacement on a staggering scale.” After noting the then upcoming Climate Conference in Copenhagen, he concluded with a strong warning: “This time we have to connect the dots before we face catastrophe.” Note the irony. As U.S. Senator, John Kerry looked to international diplomacy to prevent further harm. As the Secretary of State, John Kerry looks to international commerce to benefit from the harm.

That global warming is no more a priority in the second term than it was in the first was made abundantly clear when Obama snubbed 40,000 environmental activists who rallied at the National Mall on the 17th and 18th to fly down to Florida to play golf with lobbyists from Big Oil. Rather than effective action on the difficult public policy of our time, we can only expect ever weaker and more evasive language.

First, Obama didn’t use the phrase ‘global warming’ to identify the issue, but instead chose the more innocuous sounding ‘climate change.’ For a president who has tended cave on issues when faced with strong opposition that is not a good sign.

Second, there is disturbing squishiness in other language that Obama used. He did not clearly endorse the anthropogenic causes of global warming with the phrase ‘the overwhelming judgment of science’ in the State of Union Address. Did he mean the consensus among climate scientists that global warming was occurring or the consensus among climate scientists that it was caused by human activity?

Third, global warming is obviously secondary to the issues of unemployment, inequality, guns, and perhaps immigration in the two speeches. While Obama used the phrase ‘climate change’ only 4 times in the two speeches, he used the word ‘job’ 34 times, the word ‘market’ 8 times, the phrase ‘middle class’ 6 times, the word ‘gun’ 11 times and the words ‘immigrant’ or ‘immigration’ 6 times.

Fourth, the discussion of global warming is wrapped somewhat differently in the two speeches. Treated as a matter of religious stewardship in the Inaugural Address, it becomes a component of energy policy and economic opportunity in the State of the Union Address. Anxiety about stormy weather figures in the presentations of global warming in both speeches – much of the American public now believes that the two phenomena are related – but that big difference between the evocations of God and Mammon suggests that Obama is uncertain of the way forward.

Fifth, there is the lack of specificity about how government should respond. Although the president endorsed the “market based solution” of John McCain and Joe Lieberman as something for the Congress to enact in the State of the Union Address, he merely threatened to direct his Cabinet “to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.” As promises go, that is especially unimpressive. Why must he and the American people wait for Congress to fail to act before he does? After four years in office and little attention to the issue, why another delay? If Obama was more serious about global warming, he would have offered a timetable for action with specific goals and measures to be taken to achieve them by his administration.

More, much more, than what we have heard in these two speeches about global warming is needed.

Hickman: I want to ask about one case in particular: Mark Daniel Lyttle. The facts in the suit case read like a Kafkaesque nightmare. Despite being a U.S. citizen born in North Carolina, despite having mental and emotional problems, and speaking no Spanish, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deports him to Mexico. He is shoved across the border in a prison jumpsuit with three dollars in his pocket and then spends the next three months either homeless or jailed in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. How and why did the ACLU take up his cause?

Azadeh Shahshahani, National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project Director with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation of Georgia and President of the National Lawyers Guild.

Shahshahani: We learned about the case through media coverage. The facts were particularly shocking. We are not a direct service provider. Generally we get involved in impact litigation, the kind of case that has effects beyond the immediate case. So, often you will see us challenging unconstitutional legislation, for example our challenge to BH 87, Georgia’s 2011 anti-immigrant law. We want our litigation to result in policy change. Mark Lyttle’s case was emblematic of the lack of due process that plagues the immigration detention and deportation system.

Hickman: What was the outcome of Mark Lyttle’s case?
Shahshahani: He received a monetary settlement. But beyond that, we hope this case sheds some light on this country’s abusive detention and deportation system and helps illustrate the need to move towards a more just and humane immigration system.

Hickman: What explains abuse as heinous as that experienced by Mark Lyttle? Is this what happens when a bureaucracy cannot recognize, admit or correct mistakes?
Shahshahani: I think one issue is the racial profiling inherent in the system. It is a really scary thought for people of color to be caught in the system; the burden is on them to prove their citizenship. The other problem is the lack of access to counsel, to legal representation. Whereas in the criminal justice system in most cases you are entitled to an attorney if you are indigent, in the immigration system there is no right to a court appointed attorney. If you are indigent, you are left to your own devices. There are a small number of organizations that provide legal representation to indigent immigrants in custody but they have very limited resources and can take only a limited number of cases. As an immigrant, you often have to navigate the system by yourself. Immigration laws are very complicated, which adds to the difficulties.

Hickman: Are there other cases comparable to that of Mark Lyttle?
Shahshahani: Yes. There was a case handled by the ACLU of Southern California a few years ago with similar facts. The ACLU of Southern California and the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project are also currently litigating Franco-Gonzalez v. Holder, a class action in California on behalf of hundreds of detained individuals with mental disabilities who face similar problems to those Mark encountered.
I should mention that one problem is the lack of adequate safeguards to ensure that U.S. citizens are not deported. Also there is a lack of enforceable standards for the treatment of people in detention. There are guidelines but they can’t be enforced in court.

Hickman: No standards for treatment in custody?
Shahshahani: It is important for people to realize the numbers of deaths of people in detention centers; many of them could have been easily prevented. Since 2003, at least 24 people have died in immigration detention facilities operated by CCA alone. Incredibly, there have been three deaths in detention here in Georgia in recent years. Two of the deaths were at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin and one was at the North Georgia Detention Center in Gainesville. For example, a 39 year old man from Mexico named Roberto Medina Martinez died in detention at Stewart in March 2009. We brought a challenge on behalf of his widow, asserting that his death was the result of government negligence.

Hickman: What was the negligence?
Shahshahani: The physician at the facility failed to review the medical intake examination. An investigation after the fact showed that she had failed to do that in thousands of cases. Stewart is the largest immigration detention center in the U.S., with more than 1,750 men detained there on a daily basis. What was also concerning was that the facility was without a physician from April 2009, a month after the death of Mr. Martinez, to the summer of 2012. Not even one doctor on staff.

Hickman: Social scientists know that mortality in custody tends to be higher than in…
Shahshahani: Definitely irresponsible of government given the population of Stewart. There needs to be more than one doctor there at any one time.

Hickman: Have news sources missed anything else about this story?
Shahshahani: Yes. Lack of adequate food, hygiene and medical care, and also the isolation of these remote facilities. In 2009, we set out to document the conditions at the Georgia detention centers on a systematic basis. We interviewed 68 immigrants in detention, as well as their attorneys and family members. Our report, Prisoners of Profit: Immigrants and Detention in Georgia, was meant to shine a light on the conditions in Georgia specifically.
We found particularly troubling a work program operated by the Corrections Corporation of America at Stewart and North Georgia paying only one to three dollars a day for work that the corporation would have had to hire regularly paid employees for. So the corporation is making a lot of money. The cruelty of the situation is that the immigrants really need the money in order to supplement their diet, because the food served at the facility is inadequate. They also need to buy phone cards, often at exorbitant prices, to remain in contact with their family members and attorneys.
Corrections Corporation of America claims that the program is voluntary but we spoke with immigrants who stated that it was mandatory. When they went on a work stoppage, they were threatened with being put into ‘the hole,’ into the solitary confinement unit. When we toured the facility as human rights observers, the company refused to allow us to see the solitary confinement unit. It raises a red flag for us immediately.

Hickman: What do you think about public reaction to these problems?
Shahshahani: A lot of individuals are not aware of the scale of the problem. We now have more than 400,000 people in detention annually. On a daily basis it is more than 30,000. We need to start treating detention as the last resort, not constantly throw immigrants in jail-like conditions – including individuals who have been here for years, may have only committed minor violations, and may have U.S. citizens and relatives as spouses or children.
Forty-nine percent of those detained in the U.S. are in private prisons. The Corrections Corporation of America is the largest owner and operator of private prisons in America and its role in passage of Arizona’s anti-immigrant SB 70 is documented.

Hickman: So are we seeing an example of moral hazard?
Shahshahani: Yes. You know Arizona’s law was the model for Georgia’s law. The motive is to get as many people in detention as possible to increase corporate profits.

What could be the least bit diverting about the dreary business talk show that conservatives turn to when they begin to weary of the inanities on Fox News? The answer is contradiction obvious to everyone, it would seem, but the show’s hosts and guest.

This minor miracle of amusement was the product of a predictably grumpy exchange about Congress, taxes, spending and deficits, during which Congress was assessed as dysfunctional because partisanship was preventing it from achieving consensus. Guest Judd Greg, who today is a Goldman Sachs International Advisor, a position to which he ascended after was first serving as a U.S. Senator and Governor from New Hampshire, explained it in terms of safe party districts in the U.S. House and nervous U.S. Senators running scared of partisan voters in their states.

At that point, junior host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked, “So is democracy at work?”

Greg responded by admitting that, “I’m concerned that our democracy is starting not to work.”

Senior host Joe Kernan then charged in to the defense with the following: “But look around at the rest of the world…They got six different parties that form these ridiculous coalitions between the far left and far (the next word is suppressed after the initial ‘r’ sound)…and they get nothing done. They’re out in eight months.”

With that cue, Greg added, “Under no circumstances do you want to us to go to a multiparty system. The way our system works, the way it reaches consensus, is that the first step is the party system, where you got two parties, and they are very broad umbrellas and they start to reach to consensus, and that works its way up until you get candidates from those parties, and then those candidates either get elected or don’t, and the public gets consensus.”

There is no contradiction in Kernan’s criticism of “the rest of the world,” by which he probably meant Europe, for being governed by short-lived coalitions of parties from opposite sides of the left-right ideological spectrum. He is just factually incorrect. What he got right was that, with a handful of exceptions like the United States, Jamaica and Barbados, most liberal democracies on the planet and most European countries have multiparty systems and coalition governments. What Kernan got wrong is that coalition governments are usually formed by parties that are ideologically adjacent and coalition governments are often stable. If stability is what is wanted, then Germany and not the United States should be the model. Note that there have been fewer German Chancellors than American Presidents since the end of the Second World War. Moreover, if the success of government is to be judged by other reasonable measures such as the size of the deficit compared to GDP, GINI index, unemployment rate, personal freedom, and incarceration rate, then countries with multiparty systems ruled by coalition governments such as Australia, Germany, the Norway and Switzerland shine by comparison with the United States with its two party system and one party government.

At this point the ‘Goldman Sachs International Advisor’ surely realized that the senior host was out of his depth. Rather than offer any correction, Greg proceeded to argue that the American two party system is better because it leads to consensus. Here is the problem. Greg had just gotten through explaining how partisanship wasn’t leading to consensus in Congress, but instead to dysfunction. You cannot have it both ways.

This leads back to the smartest comment that was made during the exchange, Sorkin’s question: “So is democracy at work?” Eventually we will summon the courage to examine the relationship between our political institutions and the performance of government. Will it happen in 2013? If CNBC’s Squawk Box can be entertaining, even intentionally, then maybe.

Electoral College map showing the results of the 2012 U.S. presidential election. President Barack Obama (D-IL) won the popular vote in 26 states and the District of Columbia (denoted in blue) to capture 332 electoral votes. Former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) won the popular vote in 24 states (denoted in red) to capture 206 electoral votes. (Note: Nebraska and Maine split their EVs by congressional district.) Wikipedia.org

In the Pennsylvania State Senate, Republican Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi is pushing to allocate the state’s electoral college votes quasi-proportionally rather than under the current and traditional winner-take-all rule. If enacted, the 2016 GOP presidential nominee would receive some of those electoral college votes even after losing the popular vote. That sounds fair until the details are examined.

If his idea looks anything like the unsuccessful electoral reform bill that he introduced in 2011, the resulting allocation wouldn’t be all that proportional. Rather than solve the ‘wasted votes’ problem that now occurs at the state level under a winner-take-all rule, it would recreate it at the Congressional district level. Voters who cast their votes for the losing presidential nominee in the Congressional districts would still find their preferences ignored.

Pileggi also wants to include a provision for two supplementary electoral college votes awarded to the candidate winning the statewide popular vote. That would make for less proportionality and add complexity to a set of rules that most voters already struggle to understand.

Finally, and this is the kicker, Pileggi’s counterparts in non-battleground states are not rushing forward with similar proposals. Keeping the winner-take-all rule to waste the votes of those who would cast their vote for the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016 is fine and dandy with Republican state lawmakers in states like Georgia and Texas. As with partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts, the objective here is to maximize the effect of votes for candidates of the favored party and minimize the effect of votes for candidates of the opposing party.

So is a state by state patchwork of quasi-proportional and winner-take-all rules constitutional?

Cartogram representation of the Electoral College vote for the 2012 election, with each square representing one electoral vote. Wikipedia.org

Under Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, state legislatures possess the authority to establish procedures for translating popular votes cast in their state into electoral college votes. Like much in that document, this provision was a more or less reasonable late 18th century political compromise, the sort of temporary measure that subsequent amendments should have but did not correct. Today it threatens to undermine democratic self-government.

The constitutional argument against this patently undemocratic and anti-Democratic scheme is that it would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Voters moving between states with winner-take-all and quasi-proportional rules would either lose or gain effective voting power in U.S. presidential elections arbitrarily.

The likely rejoinder to the equal protection argument is that a measure of unequal voting power among citizens of different states is built into the electoral college, because the small population states have disproportionally more Electors than the large population states owing to the constitutionally mandated malapportionment of the U.S. Senate. Creating a patchwork of winner-take-all and quasi-proportional rules, so the counterargument goes, thus further perfects the arbitrariness bequeathed to us by the Framers. Now there is an argument that only a reactionary could love!

If we needed another additional reason to get on with the task of junking the electoral college, that reminder of the original sin of unequal legislative representation wedged inextricably in the U.S. Constitution should be sufficient.

Other countries with presidential systems elect their presidents by popular vote. With every vote given equal weight in the election outcome, the resulting presidential campaigns would tend to focus on national issues rather than on only those issues popular in a subset of locales.

Given our history of spoiler candidacies and their likelihood in the future, the two-round runoff offers the best alternative. Under that system, voters select from among multiple candidates in a first round. If no candidate wins a majority of those votes, the two candidates with the most votes then compete in a run-off election. This system would permit voters to vote sincerely in the first round and delay any strategic voting (a.k.a. choosing between the lesser of two evils) for the run-off election. One positive consequence of that is that minor party presidential candidates and their policy ideas are more likely to get a hearing from the electorate. Another is that the candidates who must run in a runoff are typically forced to build broader coalitions by making appeals beyond their own party loyalists.

What we should expect is not the sort of thoroughgoing electoral reform that would make the national government more responsive and accountable to citizens, but instead electoral tinkering for partisan advantage. While Americans like to think of themselves as a young nation, the United States is actually the oldest liberal democratic regime on the planet. If we acted like the citizens of a younger nation then we could admit that some of our most important institutions are worn out. Whether we can muster the will to replace them before a crisis forces us to do so is a measure of how much spirit is left.

New York Times

Consider a May 20, 2009 article, “Arms Sent by U.S. May Be Ending Up in Taliban Hands,” in which Chivers details the evidence that ammunition given by the U.S. military to the Afghan military ended up in the hands of the enemy. Who are the enemy? Although he labels their equipment as “Taliban,” the combatants themselves are identified as “insurgents” 13 times. Indeed, “insurgents” is the first word in the piece. Then in an October 27, 2011 article, “Mao’s Rocket’s and the Eastern Afghan Border War, Part II,” Chivers identifies Sunni Islamists attacking American bases in Afghanistan with rockets as “guerrillas” 5 times, as “insurgents” 3 times, and as “jihadists” twice.

Compare those labels with the way Sunni Islamists are identified in the recent news stories Chivers has written about Syria. An August 20, 2012 article, “Life With Syria’s Rebels in an Cold and Cunning War,” describes operations by Sunni Islamists that includes an attack with a truck bomb. Who are they? He identifies them as “fighters” twice and once each as “men,” “armed men,” and “armed rebels.” An August 29, 2012 article, “Many Hands Patch Together Rebel Arsenal,” appearing above the fold, describes them as “rebels” 7 times and as “fighters” 3 times. He does not describe them as “insurgents” and most definitely not as “jihadists.” The closest that Chivers dares approach drawing the forbidden parallel is in writing that their weapons “resemble those seen in the insurgencies fought against Western forces by Iraqis, or against Israelis by Palestinians.” Apparently it is the responsibility of the reader to recall that said Iraqis and Palestinians were also Sunni Islamists.

Let’s recap. Sunni Islamists using improvised weapons and munitions to attack the government of Afghanistan are “insurgents,” “guerrillas” or “jihadists,” while the Sunni Islamists using improvised weapons and munitions to attack the government of Syria are “rebels” or “fighters.” Mind you Chivers is hardly alone in consistently assigning labels with different connotations to the same violent fanatics in one ongoing war than in another. Reporters for NPR, Fox News and everything in between appear to be obeying that same labeling norm, although few seem quite as fixated on things that go boom.

Although it is tempting to condemn reporters for using patently loaded language, it is important to remember that they work for U.S. news organizations busy competing with one another to produce news that is patriotic, at least in the dumbed down sense of that sentiment: support for U.S. foreign policy when it on the warpath. We could condemn U.S. news organizations for abandoning journalistic neutrality but we would benefit more by asking how it is that we arrived at this rather schizophrenic moment in U.S. foreign policy? How is it that we find ourselves defending the government of Afghanistan from Sunni Islamists but supporting them against the government of Syria?

Part of the answer is that geopolitics makes for strange bedfellows. Saudi Arabia and the other Arab monarchies are financing the Sunni Islamist movements across the region. Overthrowing the Baathist or secular Arab nationalist government of Syria, which draws much of its support from the country’s Shi’a, Druze and Christian minorities, would deprive Iran of an important ally in the region. Of course that leaves unanswered the question of why the U.S. treats Saudi Arabia as an ally and Iran as an enemy.

Another part of the answer is that the U.S. did not win the War in Iraq. If that sounds startling, recall that after the George W. Bush declared victory in Iraq prematurely, the U.S. military occupation dissolved into a ugly counter-insurgency that only ended with the U.S. cooptation of the Sunni Islamists in the western provinces of Iraq. In effect, we ended up having to pay them to stop attacking our troops. One of the dangers in such a strategy is that cooptation is a two way street. Patrons coopt clients but clients also coopt patrons. Today the U.S. finds itself doing the bidding of Sunni Islamists in Syria who bear an uncanny resemblance to the Sunni Islamists in Iraq who killed and wounded thousands of U.S. soldiers. We may have sacrificed something other than the lives of our soldiers in that war. Something important about America has been lost when we wage one optional war after another in a region that is no longer essential to our national security.

When the location is Afghanistan¹, Pakistan², Iraq³ or Nigeria⁴ the answer to the question is ‘insurgent.’ Although it carries less opprobrium than being labeled a “terrorist,” it is still clearly a designation for one of bad guys.

When the location is Palestine⁵, Yemen⁶, Somalia⁷ or Mali⁸, however, the answer is ‘militant.’ Here is a word freighted with disapproval yet less threatening for an American news audience than ‘insurgent.’ Although an individual might be identified as a ‘militant animal rights activist’ in news story, or in a cheesy television police drama, identification as an ‘animal rights insurgent’ is unknown. (At least that is true for now. Who knows what kind of threat inflation will occur for in the future.)

Only when the location is Syria⁹ is a violent Sunni Islamist routinely described as a “rebel.” That deserves recognition because a rebel can be one of the good guys. Indeed, for those exposed to the Star Wars films, the rebels might even have to be the good guys.

Not only are armed Sunni Islamists in Syria rarely referred to as ‘insurgents’ or ‘militants,’ but the Syrian government’s description of its enemies as ‘terrorists’ is consistently challenged in American news coverage.¹⁰ Indeed, the tables are turned by describing Damascus not as a government but as a ‘regime.’ Resurrected from the grimmest days of the Cold War, that word cues audiences to respond with suspicion and hostility. Think ‘the regime in Hanoi’ during the War in Vietnam.

This is worse than hack journalism. This is propaganda so obvious it might have been generated in Oceania’s Ministry of Truth. Americans are being instructed to view violent Sunni Islamists very negatively in some countries, less negatively in other countries, and positively in Syria. That they are committing the same heinous acts and for the same ideological reasons is ignored. We have always been allied with Eurasia and have always been at war with Eurasia.

Overthrowing the government of Syria is the foreign policy goal of the Obama administration, and perhaps even more so of the Clinton State Department. American news sources from across the political spectrum are daily sacrificing their journalistic independence to serve that goal. What makes that even more tragic is that it is being exploited by Republicans like John McCain to move beyond the administration’s (barely) covert support for the sort of people we called our enemies not long ago in Afghanistan and Iraq to full scale United States military intervention. Americans are once again being hustled into another wildly expensive and absurdly counterproductive war in the Middle East.

Despite the diversity of news media and diversity of news source ownership in the United States, competition has not resulted in higher quality news coverage of events in the Middle East. We have lost our way and no amount of aerial bombardment will help us find our way back home.

In all probability, Krauthammer and his fellow neo-conservatives are genuinely offended by that change in physical location. Rather than a popular symbol of fortitude in adversity, the neo-conservatives venerate Churchill as a model political leader. That’s precisely what ought to offend the rest of us.

The unhappy truth is that the actual historical Winston Churchill was a monster. Decisions that he made during the Second World War rank among the most brutal in that extraordinarily brutal conflict.

Consider the decision to allow millions Bengalis to perish in a famine that was not only preventable but made inevitable by Churchill’s government. In a panic after the loss of British colonies in Malaysia, Singapore and Burma to the Japanese, and fearing the loss of India, his government ordered the removal of Bengal’s staple rice supplies and then later refused to allow the U.S. or Canada to ship wheat to the feed the starving Bengalis. If the Japanese were going to seize the Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire, so the thinking appears to have been, then let them first occupy a starving province. The result of that horrific calculation was the Great Bengal Famine of 1943, in which at least 3.5 million died needlessly.

Or consider the decision to conduct air strikes against German cities. Rather than attempt to target military and industrial targets in Germany like the U.S. Seventh Air Force, Churchill’s government ordered the Royal Air Force to target population centers with incendiary bombing raids. The result was the needless deaths of between 600,000 and 900,000 German non-combatants. We know that the darling of the neo-conservatives considered doing worse, because there is a nasty wartime memo in which he orders the mass production of anthrax bombs.

Or consider the decision to divert the British Army from the primary task of defeating the German Army in the Balkans for weeks to help Greek royalists defeat Greek communists in a struggle for control of that country. How many perished in the concentration camps because their liberation was delayed while Churchill was busy fighting over the postwar geopolitical spoils?

Or consider the decision to use British troops to reestablish French colonial rule in Indochina the end of the Second World War. Ever the imperialist, Churchill intended that not only would Britain hold onto its colonies but so too would still enfeebled France. The butcher’s bill, after the decades of warfare and the defeats of both France and the United States, was the death of 2.5 million Vietnamese and Laotians.

There is more to the list of charges against Churchill but a body count in the millions ought to be sufficient to justify the removal of his bust from the Oval Office.

So what is that neo-conservatives find so attractive about a foreign leader responsible for so much needless death and suffering? Part of the answer is that the majority of the victims were not white. Like the object of veneration, the neo-conservatives tend to be rather more partial to the welfare and freedom of some peoples than to others. Another part of the answer is that they are unwilling to venerate the American leader who gave us victory in the Second World War. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a liberal.

Perhaps most important for the neo-conservatives is that Churchill got away with his crimes. Not only did he escape a war crimes trial by being on the winning side but he spun a narrative successfully casting himself not as a villain but as a hero. Unshackled by the sort of conventional morality that requires sacrificing near term political advantage because of concern for long term negative consequences, Churchill represents the sort of thinking that resulted in our decades long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and now threatens to drag us into a similar nightmare in Syria. That Churchill’s wartime foreign policy focused on events in the Middle East and largely ignored threats in East Asia would also make him a model for contemporary American neo-conservatives. What the neo-conservatives fail to grasp is that their cigar smoking aristocratic icon is best understood not as a model to be emulated but as a warning against the sort of irresponsible leadership that sometimes afflicts great powers.

Hickman: The protagonist in your Bel Dame Apocrypha series, Nyx or Nyxnissa so Dasheem, is constantly travelling, working and fighting, taking physical risks. I gather that you have lived something of an adventurous life and taken more than your share of risks. Fiction writers often dismiss or discount any autobiographical inspiration for their work. Still, is the character Nyx so convincing because you know her so well?

Hurley: Certainly every character a writer creates is a mashup of particular aspects of themselves. That said, it can bedangerous to assume that writers are too much like their characters. Nyx is a product of her time and place, and she’s had to become someone rather terrifying in order to do what she does so well.

When I create people, I often draw on the feelings of things as opposed to the exact experience. So, I know what it’s like to have to cut myself away from people in order to stop feeling things so intensely, and I know what it’s like to be called a monster because of that. I know what it’s like to live in a foreign country, and get forced into trusting people I know I really should not be trusting. I know how to shoot and clean guns, certainly, but I’ve never chopped off anybody’s head and I didn’t grow up in a birthing compound.

What inspired Nyx more than anything else was my interest in creating a female Conan that was just as – if not more – compelling as Conan himself. I wanted a woman who could actually be ruthless, self-interested, and cold when she needed to be, and who didn’t spend a lot of time angsting about it. I tend to think that women characters get the short end when it comes to being a badass in fiction. It’s expected that they have to be selfless and nurturing, even if they carry a gun, because otherwise they’re just too “unlikeable.” In fact, I often think that people don’t really think through what becoming a cold-blooded weapon will actually do to a person. We assume you’ll just be the same old person once you pick up a gun and start killing. But people who have done that – and continue to do that – will tell you otherwise. The training changes you, and the killing changes you. To do it in such close quarters, repeatedly, the way Nyx does, takes a very particular kind of person.

Hickman: How did you go about writing that ‘weaponization’ of personality?

Hurley: I did a great deal of research into how soldiers are trained, and read personal accounts of men and women who went to war, particularly accounts from people who killed others up close. It’s estimated that about 1-2% of any fighting force is a “natural” killer – they are borderline sociopaths. Everyone else must be trained to fire and fight and kill. It’s not inherently in our nature. We must train for it. And it changes us.

In Nyx’s case, she does have a morality, but it’s not one that we’d recognize. She uses that morality to guide her actions. If she has to kill four people to save four hundred, she will do it without another thought, and it won’t keep her up at night.

Hickman: Although the cultural context in which Nyx operates is Islamic, the planet Umayma was settled by Muslim refugees a thousand years ago, in some respects she seems very American. Cultural anthropologist Lewis Hyde described the cowboy and the private eye as characters who possess the “perfect freedom of strangers” and who “act out the drama of survival” in a society without attachments? Is that also Nyx?

In the West, we very much glamorize the “lone gun” type of character. You see that in 80’s apocalypse movies like Mad Max, and Escape from LA/NY type movies. You see it in westerns, and even some SF like Bladerunner. We subscribe to this notion that the most interesting and powerful characters are actually people who have no attachments to anyone, who don’t rely on anyone. As someone raised in this culture, I can’t help but love this idea, too. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that it covers up the reality that so many of us actually need one another desperately in order to survive.

So though Nyx is very much modeled on a lone gun, my goal from the outset was to also make it clear that her continued survival was actually a very complex thing. Though she may not explicitly rely on them, as the series progresses, it becomes clear that the reason she’s still alive is because of the connections she’s made and the people who care whether she lives or dies – even if she doesn’t care much for them in turn.

To some extent, one of Nyx’s biggest struggles in the books is her denial of attachments to people who want to get close to her. In her business, friends and lovers die. I’ve had some people argue that Nyx’s biggest adversary is actually herself.

Hickman: The planet Arrakis in Frank Herbert’s Dune series – it is impossible not to draw the parallel – seems inspired by a reading of the history of the French and Spanish fin de siècle conquest of Morocco and Algeria. Have events in the Middle East inspired your portrayal of the society on Umayma?

Hurley: Folks with an interest in Middle East history have actually spotted the parallels between the Nasheen/Chenja war and the Iran/Iraq war in which the U.S. was supplying arms to both sides. I know someone who was actually flying arms into both countries back then, and officials in both countries simply signed for the weapons like it was no big deal.

I was also very much interested in the Iranian revolution in `79 and how it so totally changed the politics of the country. That said, much of the scenery, and the bloody-mindedness of my protagonists, is actually drawn from Abrahamic religious texts and stories of ancient Babylon and Assyria. The Old Testament stuff is really, really violent, and it’s in line with how things were done. You read about piles of chopped-off hands and penises back in Assyria, and how they’d cut open people during the siege of Babylon looking for jewels and gold the people had swallowed, and your brain can hardly comprehend the carnage.

Hickman: What about material from outside the Middle East?

Hurley: I also drew a lot on more current human rights abuses, particularly in South Africa and Rwanda. There’s nothing I could make up that would be as horrible as the things we’ve already done to each other.

Hickman: How do you feel about Herbert’s novel Dune? I ask because the first two novels in your series, God’s War and Infidel, present the perfect anti-Dune. Matriarchy instead of patriarchy. War motivated by theological disputes rather than dynastic competition. No cheap pieties about the environment or anti-imperialism.

Hurley: Many people have compared the worldbuilding to Dune. But some of the character interactions and my initial interest in creating this type of settings with diametrically opposed protagonists actually came from reading Jennifer Roberson’s Sword Dancer series, which is about a low class southern mercenary and a high class northern woman seeking revenge for her family, and how they butt heads over things like class, gender, and other cultural assumptions.

I was also very interested in reacting to Dune by creating a world that wasn’t just a “desert world.” Though much of the first book in this series takes place in a wasteland, it’s clear that there are actual distinct environments here besides “desert.”

Hickman: People who are more familiar with arid lands understand that. Have you been influenced by other science fiction and fantasy writers?

Hurley: If you read widely, you can’t help but be inspired or influenced by other writers. I remember reading China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station and realizing the bar had been raised for worldbuilding. I’m also a big fan of Jeff VanderMeer, Gene Wolfe, Michael Moorcock, KJ Bishop, Angela Carter and even Zelazny. Joanna Russ was also a huge influence; I’ve always admired the anger and passion in her writing, which is something I think we need to see more of these days. For settings, though, you really can’t beat Mary Renault, who does these amazing retellings of Greek myths that make you feel like you’re in ancient Greece. Tim Akers also does really fascinating things with religion and worldbuilding that I love, and Genevieve Valentine is a master of creepiness. I’ve also recently discovered Lauren Beukes, who is a really bad ass writer.

Hickman: Confession: I’m not an entomophobe, insects and spiders are interesting, but the ubiquitous bugs in God’s War and Infidel are wonderfully disturbing. Did you deploy the bugs to mess with your audience?

Hurley: I lived in South Africa for a year and a half, and it gave me a whole new perspective on bugs. Bugs were just sort of… a part of life over there. Granted, I also lived in a very cheap flat owned by some rather corrupt owners who didn’t spray for bugs enough. So I shared a very small space with a nest of cockroach nymphs and dozens of flying adults, as well as geckos, beetles, spiders, moths, and all manner of nasties.

Waking up with a cockroach on my pillow, staring right at me, was one of my more memorable nights. I started wondering if there was anything useful we could do with all these bugs… and that led me to ponder what a magic system would look like if it employed bugs instead of, say, elements or some misty “world power” or “force” or something. What if these bugs were genetically tailored to respond to specific people who could direct their actions?

Before I lived in South Africa, bugs really didn’t bother me that much. And before I started writing about all this violence, I liked really bloody steaks. But I admit that after eight years of writing and reading about bugs and blood, I’m not as comfortable with either anymore…

There’s also a little-known book by Frank Herbert called The Green Brain that tells the story of this colony that’s being overrun by sentient insects that’s really cool, and certainly inspired some of my interest in playing with what else I could do with bugs.

Short answer, then: no, the bugs weren’t in there to turn anybody off. It just looked like something nobody had explicitly done before. And I do love to play with stuff that nobody’s done before.

Hickman: The third volume in the series, Rapture, will be published in November. Can you tell us anything about what happens in the novel?

Hurley: Rapture is the book where the gloves come off, really. The centuries-long holy war is ending, and the boys are coming home from the front. There’s a surplus of angry boys looking for a voice in politics, now, and things aren’t looking good for a non-bloody ending to that confrontation. Nyx decides to take up a contract to bring back a man she’s already killed, because doing so could help quell the impending riots. We meet a lot of new people in this book, and learn a lot more about what lies beyond the northern borders of Nasheen. A lot of people die. The First Families also get more face time here, and if you’re interested in learning more about who Nyx truly is, where this world came from, and where it’s going, this is the book to pick up.

Hickman: Looking forward to reading the third volume! There is a lot more material to draw from the Middle East. Is there any chance the series will be longer than three volumes?

Hurley: It’s funny you ask that, because I was just discussing this with my UK editor last week. I do have quite a bit of interest in doing another series of three books set in this world after I finish my next stand alone book, but it really just depends on how well these first three do. There’s this whole interstellar war thing that I… well, I’ll save that for another time. If fans are passionate about me writing more about Umayma, I’d be happy to do it. Alas, everything depends on sales numbers. So if you love the books, I encourage you to recommend them widely. If my editors see enough interest, they’ll ask for more.

While McCain’s foreign policy recommendations about the Syrian tragedy can be dismissed as nonsense, the rhetoric that he deploys merits attention because it is the narrative that the permanent war party is using to hustle Americans into yet another war in the Middle East. The secret to successful warmongering lies just as much in what you DON’T talk about as what you do talk about. Here are the rules for this narrative:

First, don’t talk about geopolitics. That the United States military must police the entire Middle East sounds absurd when you say it in public and it threatens to alert people that Iran is next on your hit list. Instead, talk about humanitarian concern. Highlight any story in which children are victims of atrocity. McCain says he is haunted by stories of children being tortured that he heard in a Syrian refugee camp. Remember that the stories don’t have to be true to be effective. German soldiers never tossed Belgian babies in the air with their bayonets in the First World War and Iraqi soldiers never threw Kuwaiti premature babies out of their incubators in the Gulf War. All that matters is that the stories are so shocking that they shut down critical thinking.

Second, other than the suffering of refugees and atrocities, don’t talk about human rights. Although the secular Arab nationalist government of Bashar al-Assad is authoritarian, women and members of religious minorities – including more than two million Christians – have long enjoyed greater civil rights and personal liberty in Syria than their counterparts in Saudi Arabia and the other oil rich Arab monarchies hat are underwriting the Islamist insurgency.

Third don’t mention Saudi Arabia and the other monarchies by name. McCain demonstrated this rule in his speech by referring to Russia by name nine times, to Turkey five times, to Iraq, Lebanon and Libya three times each, and to Iran twice. He even dares to mention Israel, if only once. However, McCain only refers to Saudi Arabia and the other monarchies with the euphemism “our partners in the Gulf.” Such circumspection might reflect a conservative urge to grovel before enormous wealth but it also probably has something to do with the last time the U.S. and Saudi Arabia teamed up to sponsor an Islamist insurgency: How the Reagan administration gave birth to al-Qaeda is still a taboo topic among Republicans.

Fourth, don’t talk about the Islamist character of the insurgency. Instead, describe it as the ‘opposition’ and pretend that its membership consists of liberal democrats. The Syrian government describes the rebels it is fighting as “terrorists.” That is also the term that the U.S. military uses to describe their counterparts in Afghanistan. McCain, however, rebrands the Syrian insurgents as members of “armed opposition groups.”

Fifth, ignore the legitimacy of the Syrian government. Instead, treat it and the insurgents as equals. McCain does this by complaining that the war in Syria is asymmetrical. “Clearly,” he says, “this is not a fair fight.” To understand the silliness of that comment, try to imagine him saying that about the war between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

Sixth, avoid drawing parallels. Express horror at the use of helicopter gunships by the Syrian Army but save your praise for the use of attack drone aircraft by the United States Air Force and C.I.A. for a different speech on foreign policy.

Finally, don’t talk about what might happen if the ‘Syrian opposition’ wins. The insurgents are unlikely to look kindly on Syria’s religious minorities which supported the government of Bashar al-Assad. Perhaps McCain’s professions of humanitarian concern could be taken a little more seriously if they were accompanied by the offer to resettle the approximately two million Syrian Christians who might be ethnically cleansed to the United States. Perhaps to Arizona!

The war narrative described by those rules need not necessarily prevail. Public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans oppose military intervention in Syria. What recent history has taught us is that we will pay for each new war with the deaths and broken bodies of their sons and daughters in uniform, with either more taxes or more national debt, with diminished public services and with increasing economic inequality. Many of us have also realized that another high tech military intervention solves nothing in a region that appears condemned to interminable conflict by geography, geology and religion. The last time it was Libya. Before that it was Iraq. Before that Afghanistan. Were any of those wars worth the price paid? Here is what really haunts McCain and the rest of the warmongers: If we say ‘no’ to war with Syria this time, then we also say ‘no’ to the next war that they are planning against Iran.

* Steven Greenhouse. “Lawmakers Oppose an Invasion of Haiti Now.” The New York Times. July 10,, 1994.

Anthony Grooms

Hickman: Your 2001 novel Bombingham compels readers or at least compelled me to think about not only a specific time period but also about attachment, good and bad, to a specific place. The central character Walter Burke seems in important ways unable to escape from his experience of growing up in Birmingham, Alabama. Is that something universal or perhaps Southern that we should take away from the novel, that are linked to places not of our choosing?

Grooms: Thanks for reading Bombingham. I appreciate it. I don’t take readers for granted.

I never intended for Bombingham to be a novel about place in the sense that many critics of Southern US literature describe it. I am not an essentialist about place. Having said so, I recognize that the place of our growing up—and by place, I mean not only the geography, but the social experience—becomes a foundational part of our psyches. It makes us the adults we are. Whether our childhood terroir, so to speak, is good or bad, it is what we reckon with all of our lives. A poor, rural education, for example, can be overcome—but overcoming it is a characterizing quality of one’s personality. But many people can not overcome such a deprivation in spite of their innate intelligences. What burns me up is that these situations, like Jim Crow, are for the most part manufactured and most often by those who govern us.

Just as I am still coming to terms the Jim Crow in rural Virginia that restricted my ambitions, Walter Burke must come to terms with Jim Crow in Birmingham, Alabama. But having to do so isn’t all negative. A secure footing in your place of origin steadies you as you step out into the broader world. It helps you to see yourself in the panorama of humanity. This is what I am exploring in the research I am presently doing about black American immigrants to Sweden.

Hickman: I do want to ask about your current research but first let me ask how you explain the power of place for us. What led you to recognize it?

Grooms: People are not just bodies, though the physical self is important. We are also, in a sense, a collection of experiences—some we initiate, many are foisted upon us. These experiences, even seemingly insignificant ones, mold the way we respond in life. The power of place, I think, is two fold. On one hand it shapes world view, on the other hand, it creates a moral foundation. This foundation in many cases is what we toil to reconstruct, as we wrestle with the inevitable ironies and misconceptions that are created by the childhood terroir as we step out and explore places beyond that of our childhood. At least, this is how I feel about myself.

Often I have had a sharp recognition of how much I am shaped by place. Most recently, perhaps, when I lived in Ghana and expected that as long as I didn’t speak I would blend in with the hoi polloi, since most Ghanaians are my color. Wrong! I must have given off a thousand subtle signals that I was an obruni, which means “an outsider”—or even more undermining to my assumed identity—it often means “a white man.” Even the heavy way I walked as compared to the average Ghanaian betrayed me as an outsider. When I met other Westerners—white Europeans and Australians—I felt much more at home than with my fellow blacks, in spite of having developed close relations with many. The point being, I come from a Western place, not an African place.

But my very first recognition of what you call the power of place came early on in my childhood. Children, black children—and likely white children too—were keenly aware of white spaces and black spaces, especially those of us who came of age in the Jim Crow years. The experience of the limited school integration program called Freedom of Choice, in which my parents enrolled me, impressed upon me how social expectations shape behavior.

Hickman: How old were you then?

Grooms: I was twelve.

Hickman: There is a tense exchange between Walter Burke’s father and a white police officer on page 264 of Bombingham, the police officer says, “This is my country, not yours.” That same sentiment of territorial hegemony has been expressed by countless nationalists, many of them occupying positions in the apparatus of repression, all over the planet. What inspired you to include that passage?

Grooms: Inspiration is a curious concept for the artist,. I love what Edward Weston the photographer had to say: “Peace and an hour’s time—given these, one creates. Emotional heights are easily attained; peace and time are not.” My friend Raymond Andrews, the Georgia born novelist, used to say that inspiration always came at midnight—in a bar. I can’t say what inspired the passage. I recall that the scene was hard to draft because I wanted to characterize the police man, not stereotype him. Somewhere in the many drafts, he said that line. I was probably thinking about the way black American soldiers were treated until recently, but especially during the World Wars. One of my great uncles was killed by Nazis in North Africa; two others served in WWII, as did my father-in-law. And yet, I grew up with little public recognition of this fact in history books or popular culture. Jim Crow didn’t allow it. In order to maintain the Jim Crow system any semblance of equal citizenship had to be squashed. Whites and blacks alike had to believe that blacks were Americans only by the largesse of whites. Having helped to build our country, we were often told to “Go back to Africa.” The idea still persists. In any case, I wanted some reflection on the idea that even moderate whites harbor an exaggerated sense of privilege on the issue of nationalism. How can they help it? The concept has been inculcated. And people of color are affected as much as whites. Imagine, if you will, what is meant by “an all American look.” Imagine what outrage would occur if Uncle Sam was replaced with a character who looked more like Uncle Ben! This inculcation is a result of the experience of a place—the place being the USA.

Hickman: I understand that your current project also involves place, or rather being displaced. Could you tell readers more about it?

Grooms: Yes—but place and displacement, of course, are integrated concepts. Even a person who doesn’t move can be displaced, since the world has a tendency to move around us. We deal with it all the time, whether we call it “urbanization,” “gentrification,” or “globalization.

What I am exploring now, though, has to do with immigration. I am looking into how black Americans of the sixties coming from the Jim Crow South, adjust to a life of exile in all white, socialist Sweden. It is not well known that there was a sizable expatriate American community in Sweden in the 1960s and 70s. They were mostly draft dodgers and deserters. A good number of these folks, mostly young men, were black American. Particularly, I have been looking into the experience of Terry Whitmore who was one of deserters who had actually fought battles in Vietnam. He came from Memphis and lived 40 years in Stockholm. Though for most of his life he was a bus driver, Terry was also the subject of antiwar films and the author of a memoir, Memphis, Nam, Sweden. It was through his memoir that I managed to get in touch with him. Another is Sherman Adams who was born in Atlanta. Adams was a sparring partner for Floyd Patterson and later, in spite of having some girth, an artist’s model. He is mostly known as a leftist journalist and political activist across Scandinavia. His memoir, Mitt Amerika (My America) is a moving account of life under Jim Crow. Still, 30 years after its publication it is popular in many Swedish circles.

Hickman: Sherman Adams seems to have lived in the romantic tradition of the intellectual revolutionary. Is that fair?

Grooms: It depends on what you mean by “romantic.” I wouldn’t romanticize it. He was dirt poor all of his life and he died in a jail of diabetic shock after having been accused of being a drunk. All of the stories I’ve heard about him from those who knew him and from newspaper reports and from what I have read of his writings—my reading in Swedish is still developing—suggest that he was a strongly committed activist, perhaps a bit reckless—but unapologetic. He greeted US Ambassador to Sweden, Dr. Jerome H. Holland, also a black American, with a sign that read “White House Nigger.” He got into trouble for that. But, a few weeks later, I was told, he was throwing bricks at the American Embassy. Even so, he seemed to have been a convivial man who had lots of friends.

Hickman: A tragic death is part of the romantic revolutionary tradition. To what extent would you say that Adams or any of the other exiles in Sweden sacrificed themselves for their politics?

Grooms: Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Yes. Romanticizing the death is a part of the tradition—King, Che, William Wallace of “Braveheart” fame—but then there is the real act of dying! There were no violins, I can assure you. But as someone to be rendered in myth and legend, Adams is certainly an appealing figure. His life story has great literary elements of struggle, passion, and tragedy. In some circles in Sweden he is viewed this way. The person who first told me about him presented him in this light. Part of the benefit of doing research, though, is to cut through the veneration.

I am exploring the toll of exile on these folks. It is important to note that Adams was in a voluntary exile whereas Whitmore and the other deserters, until the 1977 Carter amnesty, faced prison if they returned. Probably, Adams had a better situation in Sweden than he would have had in the US. Though poor, he was allowed to speak his mind and he was somewhat of a darling of the political left. In the US he would have likely been an unknown, just another one of many poor, black men. Still, exile takes an emotional toll on a person in that he is separated from family. It also disrupts the life that might have been in the homeland. Assuming he survived the Vietnam War, Whitmore would have gone to college in the US, but he became a bus driver in Sweden. Exile also requires an adjustment to a new language and culture and it is not always smooth. In fact, Sweden only gave the American deserters “humanitarian” asylum, not “political” asylum. In effect, they were refugees without subsidy from the Swedish government. Many lived in very poor conditions and were taken advantage of by Swedish landlords. What I know about these men from readings and interviews with them is that they were, in fact, very committed against the war, and that they did not take separating themselves from family and country lightly. The gravity of this separation, I think, explains why most of them returned when given amnesty.

Hickman: So what will become of this research on the American exiles?

Grooms: I have several projects in mind. A friend and I have talked about translating Adams for an American audience. But my principal project is that I am writing an historical novel about a young black man adjusting to exile in Sweden. I hope to have it finished soon.

Hickman: Looking forward to reading that!

Although the appeals court ruled in favor of the employees in this case – but for the union, their rights would have been sacrificed on the altar of administrative ambition – it is easy to imagine a victory by the government. Writing for the majority on court, Judge Judith Rogers explained that the random drug testing failed the reasonableness requirement because the government had failed to assert an immediate threat or any evidence of a specific problem necessitating “suspicion-less” search. Here is where the Fourth Amendment draws the boundary between what is reasonable and unreasonable, at least in this case.

Judges typically explain how their decisions are consistent with the great fabric of the law and Rogers obliges with a survey of case law on random drug testing. Whose privacy interests outweigh those of society and the state in enforcing drug prohibition according to the courts? Candidates for elective office and those Federal prosecutors not specifically responsible for the enforcement of narcotics laws. Whose privacy interests carry less weight? Railroad engineers, customs agents with firearms, hazardous materials inspectors, U.S. Army drug counselors, economists at the Office of Management and Budget and public school students engaged in competitive extracurricular activities. In effect, the government may require the kids in the debate club but not candidates for Congress to pee in a cup. Rarely has the law looked less like F.W. Maitland’s “seamless web” and more like a ridiculous patchwork.

However that is not what concerns Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who launches his dissent by invoking the power of public opinion in the form of periodic, seemingly regular moral panics about drugs. Although Americans have traditionally expected judges to protect the liberty of individuals from the passions of the mob, this judge is a member of the Federalist Society and therefore has more important values to protect. The Federalist Society is a neoconservative judicial lobby representing sets of powerful institutions – Big Business, Big Religion, and the Executive Branch when there is a Republican in the White House – that its members conceive as crucial for limiting the destructive effects of American individualism. For their purposes, public opinion is only a problem when it dares to challenge those institutions.

Not surprisingly then, the rest of Kavanaugh’s dissent is a policy argument for approving another layer of surveillance. He is concerned that “the employees are one of the few possible conduits for drugs to enter” the Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers and discounts the failure of the government to offer any evidence of a drug use problem by these employees. Detecting employee drug use is difficult. “So a low detection rate withoutdrug testing certainly does not itself mean that there is little drug use among the employees.” Perhaps he is correct and most of the employees in question are secret stoners. Perhaps they conspire together to conceal their illicit drug consumption. If that is true, then the entire government workforce might be honeycombed with networks of drug users! How does Kavanaugh’s official paranoia differ from what Philip K. Dick warned about in his 1977 dystopian novel A Scanner Darkly?

The obvious problem with such reasoning is that it offers no identifiable stopping point in the march toward universal random drug testing, or any other form of surveillance. What remains of the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure is thus likely to crumble away whenever the technology of surveillance improves and government officials are tempted to assert additional control over government employees or anyone else within reach. Police states largely manufacture the threats they use to justify denials of liberty.

Hickman: News coverage in the U.S. of the recent French and Greek elections framed both as rejections of economic austerity but immigration was also important as an issue. The parties of the far right performed well. So is this intense anti-immigrant sentiment actually a Europe wide political phenomenon or is it something constructed for news audiences?
Downs: This month’s elections in France and Greece were, first and foremost, about budgetary discipline and austerity measures prompted by Europe’s currency and debt crises. They followed a rather frenzied 15 months of political instability that saw incumbents tossed or resign from office in Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Italy, and Spain. Belt-tightening reforms are massively unpopular, with general strikes and street violence accompanying voter volatility at the polls. Anxious and unhappy electorates are vulnerable to populist appeals, and some entrepreneurial party leaders have indeed exploited voter fears—including those about foreigners—for electoral gain. This is not a media concoction, and it is not limited to France and Greece. Nor is it particularly new. Instead, it is a phenomenon that has appeared in different guises and to varying degrees across the continent for decades.

Hickman: So why does it seem new in the news coverage?
Downs: Understand that the May 6 election in Greece saw Antonis Samaras’ center-right New Democracy party come in first (although dropping 14% from its previous vote share), but it doesn’t have a clear path to power. Coalition bargaining is underway. Most observers note that the surprise showing in this election was by Golden Dawn, a nationalist far-right party that entered parliament for the first time ever with 21 of the assembly’s 300 seats. Opponents accuse Golden Dawn of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and attacks on foreigners. The issue of immigration is especially salient because the majority of illegal immigrants entering the European Union do so through Greece. Golden Dawn’s trademark salute and modified swastika logo draw criticism for being Nazi-like (although the party denies any connection). In isolation, a party garnering a modest 7% of the national vote may not appear especially menacing, but in a multiparty system such as Greece’s (where no single party won more than 19% of the popular vote) even the smallest legislative groups have influence.

In the French presidential election, voters punished incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy in a rather clear and damning appraisal of his leadership on the economy. Sarkozky attempted to woo voters from across France’s various rightwing camps, including the National Front. He failed, and Socialist candidate François Hollande rode a wave of anti-incumbent protest to victory. The National Front, one of Europe’s longest surviving far-right anti-immigrant parties, captured an unprecedented 17.9% of the first round vote, which may alarm observers as you rightly point out. However, the Front’s presidential candidate (Marine Le Pen) didn’t actually make it into the second-round runoff as her father (Jean-Marie)succeed in doing a decade ago. For perspective we need to note that the party’s “strongest ever” first round showing this year is only 3.5% better than its performance almost a quarter century ago in the 1988 election. We shouldn’t, therefore, overly dramatize the fortunes of France’s far right this year, as they actually don’t represent too great of a departure from what we’ve been observing for some time.

This isn’t just about France and Greece. Parties stigmatized as rejectionist and anti-immigrant can be found throughout Europe. They defy easy classification, so we should be wary of too quickly and too simply labeling them. Terms such as “neo-fascist,” “neo-Nazi,” “extremist,” and “radical” are too frequently bandied about and are all too often misapplied. What we do know is that parties capitalizing on voter opposition to immigration have scored recent successes in Switzerland (Swiss People’s Party), the Netherlands (Party for Freedom), Finland (True Finns Party), Hungary (Movement for a Better Hungary) and beyond. Even in countries where the electoral systems make it difficult for small parties to win legislative seats, we still find niche parties competing (for example, the British National Party in the United Kingdom and the German People’s Union in Germany).

Hickman: Then where should we be looking for an explanation?
Downs: Public opinion surveys routinely show that Europeans rank immigration among their top five most pressing concerns. There is also evidence that voters often see the issue of immigration intertwined with trends in unemployment, crime, cultural degradation, and terrorism. We also know that voters supporting pariah parties in Europe often do so not because they themselves are racist and xenophobic but because such parties appear as vehicles to express a range of “anti-“ sentiments (anti-incumbent, anti-EU, anti-bureaucracy, anti-tax). Appeals to identity, sovereignty, and tradition resonate with these voters. When parties on the outer edges of European democracies can mix anti-immigrant rhetoric with other forms of populist rejection, they produce a potent electoral cocktail. Our media haven’t constructed these phenomena, but media filters do excessively simplify and sensationalize them. Europe isn’t descending into some new form of its old darkness; instead, it is struggling with how best to tolerate (or combat) the intolerance that exists in all open societies.

Hickman: If it is Europe wide, then is it also something common to all of the wealthy liberal democracies?
Downs: This is absolutely the appropriate follow-up question. I think we would be dead wrong to conclude that European countries have a monopoly on popular angst over immigration. Again, this isn’t “New Europe” simply going back to being “Old Europe” at the first sign of economic malaise. Instead, we can observe similar debates here at home in the US, in Canada, and in Australia, New Zealand and other liberal democracies. One of the terms we often hear in these countries is “welfare chauvinism”—where years of affluence and economic expansion facilitated generous forms of social security, only to have taxpayers turn against groups receiving those benefits now that budgets have contracted. There’s ample evidence of such backlash across all democratic systems.

I think it’s important here to distinguish between anti-immigrant sentiments and anti-immigration preferences. They’re both present across democratic systems, but they can mean quite different things and shouldn’t always be used interchangeably. The former really refers to a rejection of groups of people for who they are, how they look, and whom they worship. Such rejection can imply racism and an inherent belief in the superiority of one group over another. The latter, however, refers to opposition to immigration policy and need not necessarily constitute an illiberal rejection of others. Reasonable people can disagree about whether to increase the numbers of immigrants admitted to a country or the criteria for doing so. In democracies where legitimate debate over immigration policy is suppressed and those who oppose greater openness are demonized, there is a tendency for radicalization.

Hickman: Why are we observing simultaneously intense anti-austerity messages and intense anti-immigration messages now? Does the Left have a monopoly on anti-austerity sentiment and the Right on anti-immigration sentiment?
Downs: People are uncertain and angry. Whether in reaction to “change” or “integration,” citizens fear the loss of security. If Europeans are told they must endure lower wages, higher prices, and fewer benefits in order to save their common currency, then it would be surprising to witness anything other than public outcry. Austerity means that economies are shrinking, and competition for increasingly scarce resources reinforces group identities, reawakens stereotypes, and increases the appeal of those offering easy solutions. If the size of the economic pie is shrinking, and there are more (and different looking) people sitting around the table wanting to share your diminished slice of that pie, then the sentiments likely to ensue are predictable.

We should not see any side of the ideological spectrum, Left or Right, as laying exclusive claim to angst. Actually, if you look at public opinion surveys and national election studies, you’ll find that far-right parties are drawing some support from disaffected leftists. Likewise, rightists often join leftists in opposing austerity packages, albeit for different reasons (i.e., rightists are worried about threats to sovereignty, reduced national greatness, and increased governmental intrusion in the market).

Hickman: Am I wrong in thinking that all this echoes the sort of general economic and social crisis that Europe experienced in the 1930s? Should that be read as ominous or have I watched too much History Channel?
Downs: If I must confess, I watch that channel, too…and there is nothing necessarily wrong with embracing the vigilance that derives from historical understanding. That being said, wouldn’t you think we’d bridle at European observers invoking the American Civil War every time racism or intolerance rears its head here in the South? And wouldn’t we roll our eyes (or worse) if Le Monde, The Times, or Der Spiegel interpreted recent debate rhetoric by Republican presidential hopefuls in South Carolina and Florida as echoes of earlier eras?

Hickman: Well I suspect that some Americans might be nodding in agreement rather than rolling their eyes at the kinds of parallels you suggest, but I take your point. Not every contemporary event reprises something from the past. How should we understand what is happening now?
Downs: Protracted economic downturn heaps pressure on incumbent governments and too often turns people against groups at society’s margins. That’s happening now. But this isn’t Europe of the interwar period. The continent’s financial woes don’t rival those of last century’s Great Depression, and we don’t have a country at Europe’s heart (e.g., Germany) suffering under the weight of humiliating international sanctions as was the case from 1919-33. The safe money today is on Europe’s now mature democratic political cultures and institutions to withstand the kind of periodic challenges that might have more easily destabilized it in the past.

To be sure, there are some real concerns and we have already witnessed some tragic events…most notably the killing spree last July in Norway by a man bent on driving the perceived evils of multiculturalism from his country. Yet, unlike Europe of the 1930s, there is little worry that democracies will fall victim to overthrow or internal deconstruction by domestic foes plotting radical change. Instead, established democracies could find themselves witnessing a gradual erosion of core values and group protections if mainstream parties are tempted into outbidding the extremes on issues such as immigration in order to stay in office. That would be, to use your word, ominous enough.

Hickman: With the exception of the French, Europeans have rather limited modern historical experience of dealing with large number of immigrants who do not share some ethnic affinity. Has the debate about immigration changed conceptions of national identity? Are Europeans getting worse rather than better at dealing with immigration?
Downs: Here I might just quibble with you a bit on the question’s premise. True, the French have a long tradition of allowing non-Europeans into the country and in many cases granting them citizenship. However, they’re clearly not alone. West Germany pioneered guest worker programs in the 1950s-70s, bringing in large numbers of presumably temporary laborers (primarily Turks). Although not on the same scale, the Dutch, Belgians and Swiss made similar arrangements. I think here also of Britain, which has seen substantial increases in its foreign born population (originating primarily from former colonies in such places as India, Pakistan, the Caribbean, and Kenya). Germany and others also absorbed large numbers of asylum seekers from the east during the early 1990s, including those fleeing conflict in the Balkans. What’s really changed in Europe is the ease with which persons admitted to one EU country can now access life in any of the other EU member states. The elimination of internal border controls means a very open intra-European immigration system; however, worries that non-European immigrants will move at will throughout the continent have given policymakers incentives to heighten the walls around Europe.

The persistence of immigration as a troubling issue for Europeans means that they have yet to achieve any kind of policy consensus or to reconcile their various competing identities with the expectations of a multicultural society. Are they getting worse at dealing with immigration? Certainly not, if the point of comparison is Europe’s not too distant history. The present struggle is, paradoxically, a product of the progress Europeans have made during the last 60+ years…having advanced to become net receivers of immigrants, European countries now wrestle with the practical consequences of a new openness.

Hickman: I should ask the same question about Americans. Are we getting worse rather than better at dealing with immigration?
Downs: There’s a great political cartoon that I saw some months back that perhaps captures our own dilemma. The cartoon shows the feet and base of the Statue of Liberty inscribed with the famous words of Emma Lazarus: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” Below that plaque, the cartoonist has added a modern update, “Note: Some restrictions may apply.”

Are we getting worse in this country at dealing with immigration? That’s a tough one. On the one hand, we owe our origins and the richness of our diverse culture to immigration. It is a core element of our character and national story, and it is one that we routinely celebrate. I see its living legacy every day in Atlanta. We’d be wrong, though, to characterize the “land of immigrants” storyline in romanticized simplicity and lament the loss of a bygone era when peoples from across the globe landed on our shores and pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. Sadly, intolerance and exclusion are also part of our national narrative. Nativist movements have appeared throughout our own history, variously targeting immigrant groups for opposition. So, it is a bit illusory to talk of the halcyon days of immigration in this country.

What generates so much debate for Americans today is not immigration per se, but illegal immigration. The scale of such illegal immigration (estimated to be between 7 and 20 million persons) makes it a huge political and policy challenge. Because of our federal structure, we can see state-level efforts to deal with illegal immigration; to illustrate, we can recall the recent passage of controversial laws here in Georgia as well as in Arizona and Utah. Such localized solutions are less frequently observed in Europe.

Some would argue that Americans outperform Europeans on immigration because “at least we don’t have anti-immigrant parties here.” Perhaps, however, I can leave you with something of a “what if” counterfactual… If the United States were to reform its electoral system and adopt some variant of proportional representation (as is commonly found in Europe), would we not soon see the emergence and electoral success of one or more anti-immigrant parties? Our two-party majoritarian system tends to subsume and dilute such sentiments within large parties that gravitate around the ideological center. Replace that system with one that grants seats in proportion to votes won, and American politics might quickly begin to resemble what we see in Europe. We’re likely not inherently more welcoming or more tolerant than our European counterparts; politically, our system simply inhibits the success of organized intolerance.

Watching the news of recent events in Europe, we should be careful not to dismiss what we see. Even though our respective political systems produce different dynamics, we share common policy challenges. The opportunity for some mutual transatlantic learning is great.

The particular character assassination technique executed by Denton is indirect guilt by association. Denton devotes a chapter to linking Long to archconservative Catholic “radio priest” Father Coughlin and the latter to Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. She writes that Long and Coughlin were “ideologues” whose movements “revealed an American-bred anti-Semitism and an anti-European isolationism that would have enduring national and global consequences.” (p. 60) The problem is that while Denton has a case to make against Father Coughlin, she has none against Long.

That Long railed against plutocracy is indisputable. His homespun denunciations of corporate abuse and economic equality resonated powerfully across the American heartland and caused shivers of fear among the wealthy. That Long exploited anti-Semitism or any other form of bigotry to win votes is utterly false. Almost alone among Southern populist politicians of his era, he eschewed race baiting. He worked to extend public education to both races in Louisiana and in 1934 he drove Hiram Evans, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, out of the state permanently.

Denton’s decision to smear Long with the charge of anti-Semitism becomes even odder because she credits as “a valuable source on Huey Long” (p. 222) Alan Brinkley’s 1983 history Voices of Protest.** Yet if you read Brinkley’s work with even a modicum of care you discover that he makes no such claim.

You can see the same indirect guilt by association character assassination in Jonah Goldberg’s 2008 book Liberal Fascism.*** (Yes, that is actually the book’s title.) The author of this exercise in ideological incoherence does not accuse Long of being an anti-Semite, as such. Instead, he describes one of Adolph Hitler’s early heroes, anti-Semitic Austrian politician Dr. Karl Lueger, as a “Viennese Huey Long of sorts.” (p. 65). Elsewhere in the book Goldberg summons up the courage to attack Long as “the archetypal American fascist.” (143). The author also accuses presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklyn Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy of being fascists. Presumably they deviated somewhat from the archetype he attempts to conjure.

Why would Sally Denton and Jonah Goldberg both feel the necessity to re-assassinate Huey P. Long by associating him with anti-Semitism? Denton may have been unable to escape from the cartoon version of American history in which Southern populist politicians and working class whites are invariably racist and reactionary. Leftists in America might be white ethnic immigrants or African American but certainly never white, native born and working class. Confronted with the problem that the actual historical Long contradicts that dualism, Denton responds by replacing him with a hateful stereotype. However that does not account for Goldberg. Another possibility is that both Denton and Goldberg recognize the potential for the reemergence of genuine Left populism in the American heartland and have calculated that few accusations would be more damaging to one of its heroes than anti-Semitism. Smearing the Kingfish as a religious bigot could be preemptive mudslinging at a figure who might in the future be recast as populist hero. Huey P. Long was a Southern original and deserves better.

Sources
* Sally Denton. 2012. The Plots Against the President: FDR, A Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
** Alan Brinkley. 1983. Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin & the Great Depression. New York: Vintage Books.
***Jonah Goldberg. 2008. Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. New York: Random House.