“Getting Back to Basics: A Year of Protests” December 2011
Rooting for Newt December 2011
WAMC Audio for Rooting for Newt
WAMC Dec. 15
Dr. Steven A. Leibo is the Sage College’s Professor of International History & Politics
“Rooting for Newt”
O.K. I probably should not say this but frankly I am hoping Newt Gingrich wins the Republican nomination. Sure, I am probably prejudiced. But after all, it has been a generation since a fellow professional historian actually ran for our nation’s highest office
Yes, not since they days of the former Professor George McGovern made his bid for the White House back in 1972 have we had a real former college professor, a real historian compete for presidency. And, Dr. Gingrich is not just another historian but one whose sympathies are much like my own, quite willing to use his historical skills not only to understand the past but to speculate on the future; something many more orthodox historians are very uncomfortable with.
And perhaps in an even more heretical bent Gingrich, like this historian is quite willing to fictionalize the past literally writing historical novels in order to help people understand history better something some historians see as the professional equivalent of prostitution. No, frankly, if there is one candidate for the presidency this professional historian would love to have a beer with it would be Dr. Gingrich.
But, that’s just my personal take on the man, but more broadly I am delighted that he appears positioned to take the lead in the up coming republican primaries. Yes, I am enthusiastically hoping he pushes aside Governor Romney and takes center stage for this fall’s presidential battle. Not that I ever thought Romney would really win the nomination.
No, the way this commentator has long seen it, the chances of the increasingly ideological driven ultra rightist republican party twice nominating someone they don’t fundamentally like always seemed highly unlikely. And, it is of course the take no prisoners, swallow no compromises ideologically driven sort that are currently dominating the nominating process on the conservative side. And, they just love all the verbal blood-letting Gingrich is so good at dishing out against the democrats.
Oh, sure there were other alternatives to good old Mit but realistically who among all of the alternatives, from Michelle Bachman, to Rick Perry, and Herman Cain, were educationally equipped enough to either actually govern at a national level or engage in the dialogue about America’s future that we so vitally need.
Sure some democrats might have loved having one of them nominated knowing full well they would be easier to beat then the more centrist Romney but their nominating victory and ultimate defeat would probably have left us exactly where were we are right now, With a democratic president with lots of good intentions, but one incapable of overcoming the resistance of his congressional opponents.
No, what this extraordinarily divided if not almost paralyzed American system really needs Is a good old knock down drag out battle over America’s future, an intellectual battle of ideas and aspirations on whether we really think we can continue as a democracy with a smaller and smaller number of us owning all the marbles.
A battle over whether we really want to be a society where one’s financial status determines whether we have access to health care or not. An argument over whether we can continue as a society where we see globalization draining away all the advantages Americans once had in the global economy without fundamentally rethinking just how we play the game.
No, we have absolutely to have a dialogue over whether we want to be a society that remains largely impotent in dealing with the most critical issue of our time – or any time for that matter – our having accidently disrupted the heat balance of the entire planet, bringing on the horrific bouts of, what do they call it “extreme” weather we have come to expect these days.
No, the way this commentator sees it. For once this country needs a real intellectual battle and the way I see it only our two former professors: the former constitutional law Professor Barack Obama and the former environmental history Professor Newt Gingrich: two doctors, one of law the other of history are capable of vocalizing the ideas we as a nation need to work our way through.
Egypt’s Revolutionary Momentum December 2011
WAMC Audio for Egypt’s Revolutionary Momentum
WAMC Dec. 1, 2011
Dr. Steven A Leibo is the Sage Colleges’ Professor of International History & Politics
“On Egypt’s On Going Revolution”
One of the most curious aspects of watching international news these days has been monitoring coverage Egypt, which of course has certainly been an emotional roller coaster for those hoping to see a freer Egypt emerge out of the drama of the larger Arab Spring.
And of course of late we have seen a lot of discouragement given that less than a year after seeing Egypt’s long time dictator Hosni Mubarak driven from power those calling for democracy are back again in the now internationally famous Tahrir Square as yet another Egyptian general refuses to stand down. Yes, refused to step down even as enthusiasm about the election process that began just this week leads some to nervously speculate on the likely victory of the Islamic parties. Anxiously acting as if an Iranian style theocracy were likely to emerge under the leadership of Egypt’s home grown Muslim Brotherhood.
But from the perspective of this long time student of international developments it seems like there was way too much enthusiasm last January and far too much discouragement now. In fact, there are plenty of reasons to be especially optimistic these days. In some ways more optimistic than a year ago because despite all the drama of those exciting days last January when those that hoped for a democratic future for Egypt quite prematurely proclaimed a revolution that had not yet happened.
After all, this time last year too many were enthusiastically celebrating the collapse of Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year dictatorship Without noticing it was only the top of the pyramid of a sixty year dictatorship dominated by the Egyptian Army. Indeed, far too many naïvely saw the Egyptian army as siding with those interested in a more democratic Egypt rather than committed to remaining the ultimate arbiters of the establishment.
An establishment that begun with Nasser, passed on to Sadat and then finally Mubarak, a largely military regime that dominated the economy and ultimately the politics regardless of which former military officer ran it. A military establishment that was only too willing to jettison Mubarak it’s most recent and frequently out of touch leader. And then skillfully assumed the leadership of a revolutionary movement that never quite understood that the Army itself was the true establishment so many had hoped to overthrow.
And given that confusion it is not surprising that so many have been so disappointed of late, returning physically or emotionally to Tahrir square. But while this commentator was not nearly as impressed as some last January. I was in many ways pleased with the partial nature of the victory. For the history of true revolutionary collapse is not a good one. For more often than not they spawn new regimes even more repressive than those they replace, for complete revolutionary collapses tend to bring to the fore leadership styles and intellectual skills that do not complement democracies needs; needs for negotiation and compromise.
Rather it is the loudest and often the most physically violent who often succeed with the Bourbon kings replaced by the likes of Robespierre, the Tsar by the Russian Communists and Cuba’s Batista by Castro. And of course Iran’s shah by the Ayatollahs.
No real transitions from dictatorships, when they have been successful, have tended to emerge when older regimes did not quite fall from power but progressively and slowly lost power to newly invigorated opposition groups, even as a more influential civil society grew over time. Situations where though the tug of war and confrontation and negotiation certainly exists but when neither side sees the battle as a completely zero sum game; A potential loss — an existential threat to existence itself.
Rather it has been the slower failures of dictatorships that has often allowed much more successful democracies to emerge In a smoother and demonstrably more successful flow from dictatorship to democracy as we have seen from Taiwan to South Korea and Indonesia. A path that from the perspective of this commentator Egypt still has an especially good chance of staying on.
Obama’s Tar Sands Decision November 20, 2011
WAMC Audio for Obama’s Tar Sands Decision
WAMC Nov. 17, 2011
“Obama Takes a Stand, Sort of”
Let me first say, I was delighted that President Obama decided send the Canadian Tar Sands pipeline decision back for review. I mean we hardly need to be spending new money on the infrastructure for more fossil fuels when the international scientific community and all those victims of extreme weather around the world; victims of extreme hurricanes and flooding and coming to understand the reality of the Climate Crisis. Yes, victims of horrific drought and fires from Russia to Thailand, from Texas to Vermont have come to appreciate the mortal danger we are putting ourselves in with every additional pound of planet warming greenhouse gases we pump into the atmosphere.
Which is exactly what the Canadian Tar Sand Project represented, but what I can not understand is how the Mr. Obama went about it. Frankly, I had long been wondering just how the President would deal with the challenge. After all he had found himself with a good chunk of his supporters doing everything they could to stop the pipeline. More than a thousand traveling to DC to get themselves arrested. Folks who had drawn the line in the sand ironically around the tar sands decision knowing that symbolically it represented an infrastructure commitment in the wrong direction. People who recognized that this decision was not scaling back our addiction to climate destabilizing fossil fuels but expanding it. People who understood that that just saying no to the pipe line was one of the few really critical decisions the president could make without involving the ever more scientifically illiterate republicans.
And failing that test could have lost Mr. Obama the support of a good chunk of his base. But what I do not understand is how the President can stall the pipeline without finally taking up — as he has promised in his campaign – the cause of confronting the climate crisis. I mean we have spent years decrying our dependence on the oil of the Middle East all the while watching our sons and daughters dying in wars in the Gulf, that, if they had not been directly caused by our addition to oil would nevertheless not have been fought if not for that addiction.
All this happening even as almost every president since Nixon has talked of developing for ourselves more energy independence. And here was a source, coming from good old friendly Canada. More oil, albeit dirtier oil but still oil usable in our cars without redoing our entire transportation system. Yes, If not energy independence, at least more energy independence from oil dictators from Venezuela to the Persian Gulf. And the only real argument against the project was the extraordinary challenge of the climate crisis, and he certainly could have done so. After all in these days when hurricanes rip up Vermont and Alaska, when tornadoes tear down parts of Massachusetts, when over a thousand homes burn to the ground in drought plagued Bastrop, Texas, far more Americans are ready to listen to climate reality. But the president didn’t take on the threat
No, he merely pushed the Tar Sands decision past the next election. Leaving himself vulnerable to those who see the president turning his back on more energy independence and jobs; a temptation that only a full court and honest explanation from the oval office could possibly trump, because even energy independence and jobs can’t trump the survival of our society as we know it.
Because this is after all not a battle between jobs and the environment but between the new jobs conversion to green energy will bring and the very real loss of the homes, jobs, and communities we already have. And if you’re not sure about that, just ask those folks in upstate New York and Vermont who are still fighting back from effects Irene and Lee. Or those Texans in Bastrop whose homes have been reduced to mere piles of ash neatly lined about along the streets they once called home.
No, it should be clear President Obama may have made the right tactical decision but as a strategy to move us forward or for that matter to help him get reelected it was sorely lacking.
Talking Science With An Audience of Humanists October 2011
Remembering Horatio Alger October 20, 2011
Audio for WAMC Remembering Horatio Alger
WAMC OCT 20 2011
Dr. Steven A. Leibo is the Sage Colleges Professor of international history & politics
“Remembering Horatio Alger”
His name was Horatio Alger, but not many remember him today. Still it strikes this commentator that he has been one of the most influential figures in the entire “Occupy Wall Street” movement because long ago, in the late 1800s Alger, hit upon a literary formula that guaranteed his success for years. A once famous series of novels he wrote about impoverished nineteen- century boys that through diligence and commitment attained middle class security and respectability.
And though Alger was active relatively late in the American experience his success stemmed no doubt from having so well tapped into the essence of the American social contract, a mindset that has had little truck with grand schemes of revolutionary social change.
A community that regularly rejected talk of class warfare focusing instead on a basic pride in an American system that was said to allow every individual through their own efforts to rise from even the lowest levels of society a people not much inclined to step into the streets as the Nazis once wrote, When they felt small into the waiting arms of the larger community, where they felt big.
Rather ours was a community that has idealized the determined individual honored the maverick, occasionally building entire political campaigns around the idea as in 2008. Yes, we have embraced the single motivated individual who makes his own destiny for some each our own Howard Roark.
The American way of success if you will, as personified in literature from Horatio Alger’s work to Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead. A nation that saw progress not in changing society but in making it as easy as possible for those who committed themselves to getting an education to advance or for the inspired drop outs, folks who rejected formal training and just took the leap, individuals from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs.
Not forgetting all those who just keep looking for the newest get rich quick scheme, an attitude perhaps most amusingly embraced by the once famous Joe the Plumber who obtained fleeting fame by aggressively challenging presidential candidate Barack Obama for proposing taxes on higher incomes good old Joe simply assumed he would eventually be successful enough to have to pay.
A society that has long accepted enormous gaps in wealth on the theory that all of us had a chance to break into the ranks of the successful, a reality this commentator personally experienced while rising from an impoverished childhood on welfare to a reasonably successful life as a middle class professor and public radio commentator.
A contract our political parties too bought into with the republicans claiming everyone could pull themselves up by their bootstraps as long as government stays out of the way while the democratic occasionally reminded us that not everyone has any boot straps to pull up — thus justifying a bit of governmental help.
A system that prevailed at least through the early internet boom but that has been breaking down ever so dramatically since the new century emerged as the k-12 educational system long critical to our personal aspirations has increasingly failed.
And of course, college, once the great hope of so many for generations has become increasingly unobtainable without one taking on levels of financial burden akin to the debt slavery of another era. While Wall Street’s 2008 recklessness destroyed even more of our faith even as those who created the mess got off largely scot free protected by their political body guards, deaf to the growing frustrations that the long open doors of American opportunity seem to be closing behind an increasingly permanent aristocracy of American wealth.
While for the rest of us sustained for so long on the image and occasional reality of the Horatio Alger’s stories see the possibility of real success flowing beyond our reach making the occupy wall street movement, that has now spread across the nation as an understandable a movement as one could possibly imagine. Inspired by an aroused American public, angry that the essence of the American social contract been broken
Winning the Cold War While Losing the Peace Oct. 2011
Dr. Steven A. Leibo is the Sage Colleges’ Professor of International History & Politics
I must say I am not surprised the American people are frustrated with their government. What goes for public discourse these days is absolutely embarrassing. I mean, let’s be realistic here. What’s out there at the moment? Republicans who seem more concerned about defeating the president than improving the economy, all the while maintaining an obsession with the idea that if we just remove more regulations, regulations to protect the environment or stop the sort financial brinksmanship that brought on 2008’s financial meltdown the economy will somehow spring back magically.
While the Democrats struggle to protect the middle class from the ravages of a weak economy like buggy whip makers of an earlier era or the executives of Polaroid and Kodak, companies of more recent vintage that failed to recognize the emergence of a new century.
Such a choice! Republican obsessed with their efforts to protect the rich at all costs. Yes, ideologues, willing to ignore even their hero Ronald Reagan’s insistence that the rich pay their fair share while Obama offers one program after another, each worthwhile on its own but promoted by a leader who seems neither able to push past Republican resistance nor articulate a policy larger than band aid tactics to save what we seem to be losing rather than a strategic vision of how America can really move forward.
No, I am not surprised that so many Americans are disappointed in these challenging days when Americans appear convinced that while we have lost momentum — somehow China holds the key to the future. An attitude, ironically not all that different from say twenty years ago when in an earlier funk, we convinced ourselves that only Japan was “Number One.”
And while such historical perspective and can offer some insight it too fails to deal with the real issue. That we are not going to move forward until we look at where we have been and face squarely the simply reality that we won the Cold War but blew the victory. Until we fully appreciate that we basically failed the challenge of the Post Cold War World. Yes, the challenge of successfully integrating ourselves into the new globalized world economy that emerged with the collapse of the command economies and the emergence of the internet.
Sure America did wonderfully in that old pre-globalization cold war era of world economic competition. After all we all know that while our capitalist model might be lousy at addressing social equality and social justice it is crackerjack good at producing wealth and even more so when compared to the dysfunctional economic systems that strangled nations from Moscow to New Delhi and Beijing.
But that world of easy competition fell away with our Cold War victory. And our former weak sisters, gained the strength that we had so long enjoyed. Thus, releasing among their people capitalistic energies unimaginable only a few years earlier. But, complemented by the advantages gained when governments offer encouragement and incentives to fill in for capitalism’s weaknesses. Like the need to provide immediate profits a burden governments do not carry. Creating for themselves a series of international best practices regimes from New Delhi to Shanghai, while we sat on our buts forgetting that our long time economic advantages had come not from some natural order but economic and technological innovations that we’d largely released to the world.
And that whatever successes we might have had in the past were as nothing until we figured out how to be successful in this new globalized world largely of own making And until either the angry last century republicans and their tea party friends or our visionless democrats recognize the larger nature of our challenge,
until they take upon themselves a challenge truly worthy of a new century Like challenge of converting to greener cleaner energy sources none of us, not this generation, not those just moving into the job market we will never again have the opportunities that only a few years ago seemed our birthright
“On Being Pro-Active: Humanity’s Guilt for Climate Change” September 2011
Audio for “On Being Pro-Active: Humanity’s Guilt for Climate Change
WAMC for 9 22
Dr. Steven A. Leibo is the Sage Colleges Professor of International History & Politics
There is something, I have never understood about the entire climate crisis debate. Sure, the science itself was initially a major challenge. I was, after all I trained mostly in the social sciences. Frankly it took years to get comfortable not just learning about the changes in our global atmosphere brought about by the enormous amount of fossil fuel gases we are spewing into the air but being able to teach about it in the context of a world often deliberately mislead about the topic.
And I was not terribly surprised that the fossil fuel industry has spent so much money and energy trying to confuse people about the issue. I mean folks like them did the exact same thing over issues from cigarettes and cancer to the weakening of the ozone layer. So one can certainly understand why people would spend enormous sums to protect future fossil fuel profits. And, while changing light bulbs and buying hybrid cars is terribly important. We all know that only governments have the power to create regulatory environments that can discourage fossil fuels and while building up the green energy infrastructure needed to stave off the worst of climate change.
So it is not surprising that those who prefer ideology to reality, those who think that government can never play a positive role in the economy would jump on the it’s not happening bandwagon. And, the fact that so many remain in denial seems understandable as well. We are, after all a species better at dealing with challenges that seem more immediate like a hungry lion we might spot in our peripheral vision than long term crises like a changing climate. Because as so many of us understand in so many of its discrete aspects the climate crisis seems —– if you can’t connect the dots, the dots from Irene to those Texas fires —- Not all that different from the usual run of calamities we muck our way.
But, what I don’t understand is all this enthusiasm for the idea that while the planet maybe warming we are not causing the problem, the idea that somehow, despite all the contrary scientific evidence it’s supposedly all caused by the sun.
Or again, contrary to all the contrary scientific evidence, that it’s all cause by volcanoes. I mean frankly, I am delighted that we are causing the problem. Delighted that we, not the sun, not volcanoes, are at the heart of the increasingly weird weather we are experiencing as we so obviously evolve toward a climate mix so different from the one within which created human civilization.
I mean since, local folks seem destined for more tropical storms Albany to Vermont, more crop lands turning into deserts in the Southwest and more of Texas simply burning down. If we are destined to see more tropical diseases flowing north and health problems like asthma dramatically enhanced, I for one am awfully glad we are causing. Glad because, well, I am a rather pro-active guy.
And, I am not sure what I would do if our changing weather patterns really were being caused by the sun. I mean, let’s get real here. If we were dealing with runaway global warming caused by the sun what could we do? Just keep retreating from the rising waters, use all our energy to become survivalists as civilization as we know it winds down?
I mean I rather like the idea that we are the cause because that way we at least have the option to fight back, to change our ways. Which is why I am particularly excited about this weekend’s Moving Planet global event organized by our good neighbors in Vermont. Yes, an effort that will see people taking to bikes across the planet to show that we don’t have to be so dependent on fossil fuels for transportation. Yes a series of very impressive efforts from Huston, Texas to Kinshasa in the Congo. From Ho Chi Minh City to Bangalore, India, from North Adams to Utica. From New Haven to Hartford. All ready this Saturday to take our fate into our own bicycle grip tightened hands
“The Canadian Tar Sands Pipeline” September 2011
Audio for The Canadian Tar Sands Pipeline
I have a friend named Doug — fairly ordinary guy who graduated from high school back in 1965. Then went on to college, studied engineering, worked as a petroleum engineer after college, got married, had kids and now a couple of grand kids. Frankly, he’s at an age when most people spend their time trying to sign up for Medicare but just last month he did something a bit unusual. He flew across the entire United States, got off a plane, went to the White House and got himself arrested. Yes, arrested for the first time in his entire life. This former exon-mobile petroleum engineer standing there in the hot sun in front of the White House, in a nice white shirt, that complemented his very white hair and smiled as a federal officer arrested him—clapped his arms behind him as the cuffs were put on.
Oh, I know you probably don’t know Doug. He is not from around here. You might know Carol Tansey, a retired local teacher, who took up her place in line to be arrested just as my friend Doug was returning home. And they were not alone either. In fact over a 1200 people have been arrested during these very weeks when Hurricane Irene, you know that nasty bit of weather made nastier still, scientists tell us, by a changing climate that made it easier for Irene to travel north carrying menacing levels of rain few of us here in the north east have ever experienced.
Yes, my friends Doug and Carol got themselves arrested fighting to forestall a dramatically changing climate – arrested because they understand as so few of our so called leaders do that America vitally needs a new green energy future – one that offers jobs now and future that won’t lock us into chasing after diminishing sources of last century fossil fuels like petroleum or drag us into foreign wars or terrorism of the sort Iraq and Nine Eleven so obviously represent. And yet, if you can believe it, we have an administration that somehow thinks it might be a good idea to build a pipe line across America. Yes, a pipeline from Canada to Texas to carry the especially climate altering dirty Canadian tar sand oil that is enormously expensive to harvest even as it puts a large chunk of America at risk of more damaging oil spills that could destroy the fresh water supplies of millions.
Ok, I understand completely why we might want to slowly phase out those already developed dirty fossil fuel sources but to start in 2011 yet, another major fossil infrastructure project. Are you kidding! Which is why over the last month regular folks and celebrities, scientists and engineers allowed themselves to be arrested in one of the biggest examples of civil disobedience America has seen in recent memory. Demanding that the Keystone Canadian tar sands oil pipeline not be built, a decision that President Obama can stop all by himself, no need to depend on all those other politicians who can’t connect the energy dots from Iraq to Nine Eleven, from Irene to the fires in Texas.
Which is why my friends Doug and Carol put themselves in a position to get arrested. But you don’t have to feel the pinch of handcuffs to contribute. Just tune in next Wednesday when on the internet, the 24 Hours of Climate Reality begins at eight p.m. As folks from around the world will witness how the startling early arrival of some of the most dramatic aspects of the fossil fuel driven climate crisis are already hitting their communities, from the devastating floods in our own region to our friends in Texas who are finding drought parched regions just going up in smoke. And a great many will be watching, not just on the computers around the world But from local viewing parties From Russell Sage College’s Buchman Pavilion in Troy that will stay open the entire twenty four hours to Ballek’s Garden Center in Connecticut– From Suny Albany to the Montlair, New Jersey’s Fire Department
24 Hours of Climate Reality
“On The Ground in Egypt” January 2012
Audio for “On The Ground In Egypt”
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