Homeland Security Watch

In their posts this week, Chris Bellavita and Mark Chubb have dealt with homeland security in its broadest context.  Readership soared.

What is this homeland of which we speak?  Is it a specific place and people bounded by time and space or is it a  realm of political, economic, cultural, and spiritual creativity… America always becoming?

What is the security of which we speak?  Is it a matter of strategy, intelligence, tactics,  command and control or is true security more a matter of self-awareness, neighbors caring for neighbors, and good character?

My Wednesday and Thursday schedules have been totally upended by the approach of Earl.  My homeland security colleagues are intent on doing all they can to protect specific places and people.

Over drinks last night an old friend from the counter-terrorism side of our enterprise vented his worst worries.  He hoped the venting would help him feel better.  It didn’t.  Even under the soothing attention of good scotch and a sympathetic listener the worries remained too plausible and well beyond  certain prevention.

While considered the yin and yang of homeland security, those trying to mitigate the harm of a hurricane and those trying to prevent a terrorist attack often share a common concern.  They worry that if they cannot maintain sufficient control, all hell will break loose.   They worry a really hard hit will unravel the last seemingly frail strands of a shared  national narrative. 

These committed professionals – of every ideological hue – consider the political, economic, religious, and other divisions of our homeland and they worry America is about to implode.  The real enemy — or at least fundamental vulnerability– is Pogo’s “us”,  an us that seems increasingly fractured and at each other’s throats. 

I share the worry.  I see evidence in the morning paper, cable news and on comments to this blog.  I am sure the same evidence encourages our terrorist adversaries.

Tonight, though, my wife and I will be one of five couples meeting at the house of friends.  Around the table will be a conservative Republican elected official and a liberal health care professional (married to each other), a rightist Navy veteran and a leftist school teacher, a traditionalist farmer, a couple of highly skilled but non-credentialed technologists (one very political, the other barely at all), a libertarian lawyer, an independent receptionist, and however you choose to describe me.

We have been parents together.  We have attended church together. We have wildly different political and cultural perspectives.  Yet we love and enjoy each other in part because of the diversity we encounter in one another.

Last Saturday after the rallies on the national mall I heard (but can’t find the report) of a group from the Beck rally encountering a group from the Sharpton rally. They began shouting “USA! USA! USA!”, to which the Sharpton rally participants responded, “USA! USA! USA!”.   The two groups parted with thumbs up and laughs.

One of my favorite strategists, John Boyd, argues that our Orientation determines what we Observe and, therefore, how we Decide and Act. We should worry less and watch more, especially more carefully.   In my direct experience with a wide range of Americans I almost always find thoughtful and generous people.  If I begin by listening, they will also listen, and we each come away understanding more and appreciating one another. (As I re-read I am embarrassed by how trite this seems…  yet it is radically counter-cultural as well.)

The evidence I see suggests that television cameras (and many blogs) attract a statistical over-abundance of egotistical, dismissive, and cynical folks who need to vent their worries, but would do better to pour a scotch and find a sympathetic listener.  (Physician heal thyself.) 

The hurricane is real.  Many of the terrorist threats are real.  The anger and division of our nation is real. Our shared love of country and for each other is also real.   In each case, we can listen carefully, work with others to do what we can today, and together agree to do more tomorrow.

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” (John Lennon)

For further consideration:

The Idea of Fraternity in America by Wilson Carey McWilliams

John Boyd and OODA from Fast Company

A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit

I paid little attention to the rally on the National Mall over the weekend besides noting that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin had managed to invoke the ire of those who consider the selected date and venue sacred. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington and “I Have a Dream” speech at the same venue marked a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement and as such altered the arc of our nation’s history. I doubt Beck and Palin’s performance will affect much of anything despite the large number of angry, white, middle-aged and older people who turned out for a picnic in the park.

Among the few snippets of the speeches I caught, one remark from Beck stood out. At one point or another he is quoted as having said, “Faith is in short supply.” This statement presumably underscored his message that the nation needs to turn back to God, or at least the one Beck and Palin profess to worship.

Admittedly, my lack of rapt attention to Beck and Palin in this instance may lead me to taking this remark out of context, but I cannot help but question the premise itself. How can faith be in short supply?

The same neo-conservatives who support Beck profess almost limitless confidence in individuals and markets to make decisions without direction or assistance from government. As such, it seems absurd to me that they should confuse faith with a commodity like say pork bellies or petroleum. If  faith is actually in short supply, might that not suggest that individuals have inadequate need of it?

Under conditions of scarcity when demand remains robust prices rise. Has the price of faith gone up? If so, why have those with faith to spare refused to offer their surplus to others? Or is this what we were supposed to see in the weekend’s activities?

Beck and Palin seem to be suggesting something more sinister than the usual fluctuations of supply and demand are at work. They would have us believe that the market for faith has been altered or impeded by government intervention. According to this narrative, the Obama administration has placed restrictions on our national reserves of faith, leaving it unavailable to the market at any price. Efforts to expand access to health care, stem economic collapse, protect consumers from Wall Street and banking industry abuses, and work to curtail the proliferation of nuclear weapons, they want us to believe, are the work of an authoritarian regime operating contrary to the Constitution of the United States and the will of free people.

Speaking of faith as if it were a commodity suggests that one group’s faith in our current leadership can only come at the expense of others who disagree with it and those adherents who support its programs. This makes anyone who follows Obama a heretic or worse yet a demon to be cast out of our midst.

Such rhetoric strikes me as childish and foolish, if not dangerous. Most of us understand faith as belief without need of evidence. To others it carries with it the additional connotation of loyalty to a certain set of beliefs, membership of a tribe or clan. Cultural norms and practices assert the need for faith in certain matters and provide opportunities for people to exhibit their shared understanding of or belief in concepts or ideals beyond rational understanding or confirmation. Despite  external reinforcement of such beliefs in this way, though, we are consistently reminded that faith is something we create and possess as individuals, not something created or destroyed by others much less something traded like baseball cards or marbles.

Despite Beck’s pronouncement, I see evidence that faith is in anything but short supply, especially among Beck and Palin’s own followers. People are all too willing to believe in things these days that simply beggar credulity — particularly as they relate to the President himself.

The sorts of rumors and innuendo circulating around the President’s own faith — lingering suggestions that he is a closeted or crypto-Muslim — suggest people are willing to buy into stereotypes and prejudices that justify their entrenched opposition to the his administration’s programs. Shared belief in such premises requires no evidence and readily dismisses statements to the contrary and any evidence that might arise.

This gives Beck and his followers permission to cast the President and his followers as evil. For me, this would be bad enough on its own, but it gives me added pause because it also gives them permission to anoint themselves as our nation’s prophets or saviors. Those who believe in them and their message will be saved, all others will suffer damnation to the eternal fires of hell.

I have little faith in hell. But I do believe in evil.

Beck and Palin may have stepped back from the precipice this weekend and softened their rhetoric rather than fan the flames of fury at the government as they have done at other times and in other venues. The crowd never seemed to approach fever pitch much less reach a rapturous frenzy. Beck’s call to faith seemed tempered much as Dr. King’s was to appeal in an effort to find favor with the broadest possible audience. Here’s hoping the faith he has in mind and the actions of his followers remains centered on the principles of peace, prudence and love of neighbor that informed the most memorable of the addresses delivered at Mr. Lincoln’s feet.

Last night’s oval office address by President Obama contained few surprises. As expected, he walked a fine line that restated his opposition to the war in Iraq and his support for our troops and their mission abroad. He spoke glowingly of the grit and determination of our men and women in uniform and challenged us to display those same qualities as we confront the economic challenges we face at home.

Although President Obama stopped short of either drawing a direct connection between the decisions and actions that led to the war in Iraq and those that led to the economic meltdown or blaming any one individual or party for these failures, he did make one observation that speaks to where his administration intends to invest its energy over the coming months:

Unfortunately, over the last decade, we’ve not done what’s necessary to shore up the foundations of our own prosperity.  We spent a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas.  This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits.  For too long, we have put off tough decisions on everything from our manufacturing base to our energy policy to education reform.  As a result, too many middle-class families find themselves working harder for less, while our nation’s long-term competitiveness is put at risk.

President Obama has maintained from the outset of his administration that any distinction between national security and homeland security represents a false dichotomy. The policies required to promote our security at home and abroad are the very same ones that promote our equity and prosperity.

He notes that this agenda will require cooperation. It is not something he can accomplish alone.

Like those who brought us to this day and presented the Iraqi people with the opportunity to shape their own destiny, especially those who paid the ultimate price, the President asked us to sacrifice our petty personal interests and political agendas to find common ground. He challenged us to commit ourselves to a shared sense of purpose, one that reengages the spirit of creativity, integrity and productivity needed to shape a better future for ourselves, our children and their children.

If, as the President suggests, our expenditures on the war in Iraq shortchanged investments in our prosperity at home, we mustn’t make the same mistake again. Refusing to put aside our differences and work in earnest to rediscover the essence of community and democracy at home shortchanges the men and women who answered the call to service in Iraq and sacrificed so much for our sake and the future of the Iraqi republic.

We owe it to those who served, those still serving and those who will serve in the future to invest not just in education and innovation, but also in conversation and cooperation. Our best chance of making a better future requires tough choices today, and the toughest may well be making a commitment to leaving our differences in the past.