IMPULSIVE TITLE CHANGE
Why the title of my blog-- "the Party of Lincoln?" That was an impulse born of Bush's immigration proposal, and reinforced by the State of the Union Address. (I'll put a post on that sometime.) The major reasons I liked Bush before were 1) the foreign affairs revolution, and the liberations of Afghanistan and Iraq; 2) compassion, particularly the increase in support for AIDS in Africa and foreign aid generally, and now the desire to help ex-prisoners. Minor reasons: the education plan seems pretty good, I like his move against policy discrimination against religion, I support his veto of Kyoto. The guest-worker proposal was a HUGE point in his favor. I think the Republicans are the Party of Lincoln-- the party of emancipation-- today more than at any time since 1865. On the other hand, I never liked the tax cut. If the guest-worker proposal dies and the election becomes a referendum on the tax cut I'll start feeling a bit over-enthusiastic re-naming my blog to show support for Bush. We'll see.

THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM:
The World Social Forum is about to take place in Mumbai, India. I glanced at the website expecting to hate it, but so far I have been pleasantly surprised. Some of the points in their Charter of Principles I especially liked. Here's a sample:

1) The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Mankind and between it and the Earth.

2) The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre was an event localised in time and place. From now on, in the certainty proclaimed at Porto Alegre that "Another World Is Possible", it becomes a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives, which cannot be reduced to the events supporting it.

3) The World Social Forum is a world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this process have an international dimension.

4) The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of globalisation commanded by the large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporations' interests, with the complicity of national governments. They are designed to ensure that globalisation in solidarity will prevail as a new stage in world history. This will respect universal human rights, and those of all citizens - men and women - of all nations and the environment and will rest on democratic international systems and institutions at the service of social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples.

10) The World Social Forum is opposed to all totalitarian and reductionist views of economy, development and history and to the use of violence as a means of social control by the State. It upholds respect for Human Rights, the practices of real democracy, participatory democracy, peaceful relations, in equality and solidarity, among people, ethnicities, genders and peoples, and condemns all forms of domination and all subjection of one person by another.

George W. Bush was recently successful in "opposing... [the] totalitarian" regime in Iraq and ending once and for all the "use of violence as a means of social control by the [Iraqi] State.]" It cannot be seriously held that "respect for Human Rights" and "the practices of real democracy" could have been brought to the Iraqi people except by military force. So the World Social Forum will surely hold up George W. Bush as Man of the Year, right? On the contrary, they hate him. So we see the WSF has a long way to go to make their positions consistent, but if you recall that this used to be a vehicle of the "anti-globalization" movement, spokesman for an economic know-nothing-ism that would have starved hundreds of millions if practiced, they have made a lot of progress. Hey, can a neoconservative, theoconservative, Bush-backing Republican join in this "reflective thinking... democratic debate of ideas?" Not just yet, but maybe a few years down the line someone will be buying me a ticket to Bombay.

I would bet that Amartya Sen is high on the list of heroes for people at the World Social Forum. But he is also an intelligent man, and therefore resistant to the tremendous silliness of the anti-globalization movement. This essay begins with a delicious note of skepticism about the global opposition to the war in Iraq, and goes on to make a thoughtful argument whose thrust is, to my mind, reminiscent of one of Bush's best remarks in the State of the Union:

We also hear doubts that democracy is a realistic goal for the greater Middle East, where freedom is rare. Yet it is mistaken, and condescending, to assume that whole cultures and great religions are incompatible with liberty and self-government. I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom. And even when that desire is crushed by tyranny for decades, it will rise again. (Applause.)

Sen's essay can be read, I think, as bridging the gap between the neocons and the left. Or, to put it more tendentiously, as revealing that neoconservative idealism captures what the left should be, if it were intelligent and principled, and exorcised of Marxism, hatred, the rationalization of victim complexes, and the other intellectual and moral distortions that have turned the left into a friend of tyrants.