Faith In Taxes

I am happy to be a part of this blog and therefore need to apologize for the lack of posts over the last few months. With my family, I have been living abroad for the past 10 months in Copenhagen as part of a Fulbright. I taught and wrote at the Center for the Study of the Americas at the Copenhagen Business School and lived in the very delightful commune or district of Frederiksberg. And like many other Americans who get a taste of Scandinavian life, I was impressed by the quality of life most people in Denmark enjoy. The universal health care, public transportation, excellent pre-school care, and incredibly well-maintained bicycle lanes were simply made available to us for free. Of course, those services come with a price for the Danes in a tax rate that hovers between 50-60%. Well-nigh outrageous by American standards, or so friends and family exclaimed. And yet, I think I could learn to like taxes.

I had the rather strange experience of participating in a film made by a well-known Danish director for the national tax agency. It seemed that the agency was going through a period of re-organization and the morale of employees was a bit low as many had to shift positions and take on new tasks. The Danish government thought a film about the great good the tax agency does might boost spirits by showing the rather significant role taxes play in giving meaning to being Danish.

We might chuckle at this, ah-ha that was what Soren Kierkegaard had in mind! Man's search for meaning is found in his tax bill.

Well, in a way, the Danes do seem to embrace a somewhat existential approach to taxes: paying them is a leap of faith but this faith is not blind; like Americans, Danes complain about their taxes as well. But they do so in a way Kierkegaard might have appreciated. Their faith in the taxes does not translate into an absolute faith in the government--they don't leave the world up to their elected (and non-elected) officials. Danes constantly critique the results of the tax system but don't doubt that it needs to exist more or less at the present level of taxation. In this way, they profess a faith in taxes that provides the kind of civil religious unity that Americans get from their faith in abstraction notions of freedom and liberty. Maybe they are Hamiltonian in this way--creating a nation through the burden of taxation.

I went to Copenhagen to work on a book about civil religion and war in post-1945 America. I gave quite a few talks about the general role religion plays in American life and politics, especially in regard to framing and understanding the nation's role international affairs. What I came back with, though, was a new appreciation for faith in things that seem decidedly mundane. While my colleagues, students, and audiences rarely professed faith in an organized religion or an otherworldly God or even in great national myths (Danes joke that they are a country made by great military defeats), they often spoke profoundly about the stuff that binds generations of Danish folk together.

Danes have faith in taxes because their taxes support the welfare state--an entity that has a dual nature similar to the role served by the U.S. Constitution and the creed it embodies. While the Danish welfare system has not existed as long or with the kind of abstract power of the American Constitution, it has provided a surprisingly vibrant way for Danes to understand, debate and assess the dimensions of the common good. Quite unfortunately, the welfare state has also become something to guard, especially against what the Danish Right call the 'new immigrants.'

Nevertheless, as I get deeper into the field of public theology and civil religion, I am intrigued by what might be gained by comparing two types of existential faiths that on the suface appear to be very different. To that end, I recommend a group of Danish scholars who have begun a transatlantic project on beliefs and offer some preliminary notes and questions about this matter: Peter Andersen, Peter Gundelach, and Peter Luchau, "Religion in Europe and the United States: Assumptions, survey evidence, and some suggestions," Nordic Journal of Religion and Society (2008) 21 (1): 61-74.

As Americans enter into what will surely be a hot debate over universal health care, it might be of some benefit to consider how Danes (and others) have developed a faith in something as mundane as a tax system without losing their soul to the state it created.

Faith In Taxes

I am happy to be a part of this blog and therefore need to apologize for the lack of posts over the last few months. With my family, I have been living abroad for the past 10 months in Copenhagen as part of a Fulbright. I taught and wrote at the Center for the Study of the Americas at the Copenhagen Business School and lived in the very delightful commune or district of Frederiksberg. And like many other Americans who get a taste of Scandinavian life, I was impressed by the quality of life most people in Denmark enjoy. The universal health care, public transportation, excellent pre-school care, and incredibly well-maintained bicycle lanes were simply made available to us for free. Of course, those services come with a price for the Danes in a tax rate that hovers between 50-60%. Well-nigh outrageous by American standards, or so friends and family exclaimed. And yet, I think I could learn to like taxes.

I had the rather strange experience of participating in a film made by a well-known Danish director for the national tax agency. It seemed that the agency was going through a period of re-organization and the morale of employees was a bit low as many had to shift positions and take on new tasks. The Danish government thought a film about the great good the tax agency does might boost spirits by showing the rather significant role taxes play in giving meaning to being Danish.

We might chuckle at this, ah-ha that was what Soren Kierkegaard had in mind! Man's search for meaning is found in his tax bill.

Well, in a way, the Danes do seem to embrace a somewhat existential approach to taxes: paying them is a leap of faith but this faith is not blind; like Americans, Danes complain about their taxes as well. But they do so in a way Kierkegaard might have appreciated. Their faith in the taxes does not translate into an absolute faith in the government--they don't leave the world up to their elected (and non-elected) officials. Danes constantly critique the results of the tax system but don't doubt that it needs to exist more or less at the present level of taxation. In this way, they profess a faith in taxes that provides the kind of civil religious unity that Americans get from their faith in abstraction notions of freedom and liberty. Maybe they are Hamiltonian in this way--creating a nation through the burden of taxation.

I went to Copenhagen to work on a book about civil religion and war in post-1945 America. I gave quite a few talks about the general role religion plays in American life and politics, especially in regard to framing and understanding the nation's role international affairs. What I came back with, though, was a new appreciation for faith in things that seem decidedly mundane. While my colleagues, students, and audiences rarely professed faith in an organized religion or an otherworldly God or even in great national myths (Danes joke that they are a country made by great military defeats), they often spoke profoundly about the stuff that binds generations of Danish folk together.

Danes have faith in taxes because their taxes support the welfare state--an entity that has a dual nature similar to the role served by the U.S. Constitution and the creed it embodies. While the Danish welfare system has not existed as long or with the kind of abstract power of the American Constitution, it has provided a surprisingly vibrant way for Danes to understand, debate and assess the dimensions of the common good. Quite unfortunately, the welfare state has also become something to guard, especially against what the Danish Right call the 'new immigrants.'

Nevertheless, as I get deeper into the field of public theology and civil religion, I am intrigued by what might be gained by comparing two types of existential faiths that on the suface appear to be very different. To that end, I recommend a group of Danish scholars who have begun a transatlantic project on beliefs and offer some preliminary notes and questions about this matter: Peter Andersen, Peter Gundelach, and Peter Luchau, "Religion in Europe and the United States: Assumptions, survey evidence, and some suggestions," Nordic Journal of Religion and Society (2008) 21 (1): 61-74.

As Americans enter into what will surely be a hot debate over universal health care, it might be of some benefit to consider how Danes (and others) have developed a faith in something as mundane as a tax system without losing their soul to the state it created.

Ne Me Quitte Pas

Sad news from Obsidian Wings: hilzoy, one of the most insightful bloggers on the internets is retiring from blogging. I'll honor hilzoy's pseudonymity, but it's been compromised frequently and often enough that her identity is readily discoverable. She's interesting to this blog in part because, like a number of other important bloggers, she's an academic. More specifically, she's a moral philosopher and bioethicist (she's entirely open about this fact). Although her blogging has been more in the way of political than academic blogging (she's also blogged at Washington Monthly), her academic interests and training clearly affect the way she views politics and the world around her and add to the richness of her perspective. Although hilzoy is brilliant, what perhaps makes her blogging most unusual has been its measured tone. Blogging tends toward the shrill and the snarky (not that there's anything wrong with that in general). Political blogs, in particular, have a not entirely undeserved reputation as places where people go to read what they already think. ObiWi, on the other hand, has been one of the few places in the political blogosphere where both left and right wing bloggers posted. Though the blog has, over the years, moved more definitively to the left, its commentariat continues to include serious participants on the right. hilzoy has been a crucial part of maintaining a tone and attitude that has made that possible. She'll be deeply missed.

Her retirement from blogging, however, raises interesting questions about this still-young medium. There is still a kind of expectation that blogs will just go on and on and on. And there's no standard way for bloggers to hang up their spurs. Plenty of bloggers have retired, but retirement is always somewhat awkward. Although blogging actually takes a lot of time and effort, it's in the nature of the medium that it often feels like a kind of effortless transcription of a person's thoughts. Surely the retiring blogger will keep thinking? Why not continue to share the thoughts? As a result, retirements often seem to need some special occasion (in hilzoy's case, she's about to go on vacation in Rwanda) or dramatic stagemanaging (as in Michael Bérubé's--temporary it turned out--retirement). I wonder if, over time, a kind of average lifespan for blogs will emerge....and if it does, how long it will be.

And I wonder, too, how U.S. intellectual historians of the future will deal with this medium. So much public intellectual life is now taking place in blogs. And they are, by and large, automatically archived for the future. They'll be an incredibly rich primary source for us...assuming that there's any sensible way to sift through the incredible mountain of information they represent! If we ever figure out how to do this, I have no doubt that hilzoy's work will be studied and discussed.

Ne Me Quitte Pas

Sad news from Obsidian Wings: hilzoy, one of the most insightful bloggers on the internets is retiring from blogging. I'll honor hilzoy's pseudonymity, but it's been compromised frequently and often enough that her identity is readily discoverable. She's interesting to this blog in part because, like a number of other important bloggers, she's an academic. More specifically, she's a moral philosopher and bioethicist (she's entirely open about this fact). Although her blogging has been more in the way of political than academic blogging (she's also blogged at Washington Monthly), her academic interests and training clearly affect the way she views politics and the world around her and add to the richness of her perspective. Although hilzoy is brilliant, what perhaps makes her blogging most unusual has been its measured tone. Blogging tends toward the shrill and the snarky (not that there's anything wrong with that in general). Political blogs, in particular, have a not entirely undeserved reputation as places where people go to read what they already think. ObiWi, on the other hand, has been one of the few places in the political blogosphere where both left and right wing bloggers posted. Though the blog has, over the years, moved more definitively to the left, its commentariat continues to include serious participants on the right. hilzoy has been a crucial part of maintaining a tone and attitude that has made that possible. She'll be deeply missed.

Her retirement from blogging, however, raises interesting questions about this still-young medium. There is still a kind of expectation that blogs will just go on and on and on. And there's no standard way for bloggers to hang up their spurs. Plenty of bloggers have retired, but retirement is always somewhat awkward. Although blogging actually takes a lot of time and effort, it's in the nature of the medium that it often feels like a kind of effortless transcription of a person's thoughts. Surely the retiring blogger will keep thinking? Why not continue to share the thoughts? As a result, retirements often seem to need some special occasion (in hilzoy's case, she's about to go on vacation in Rwanda) or dramatic stagemanaging (as in Michael Bérubé's--temporary it turned out--retirement). I wonder if, over time, a kind of average lifespan for blogs will emerge....and if it does, how long it will be.

And I wonder, too, how U.S. intellectual historians of the future will deal with this medium. So much public intellectual life is now taking place in blogs. And they are, by and large, automatically archived for the future. They'll be an incredibly rich primary source for us...assuming that there's any sensible way to sift through the incredible mountain of information they represent! If we ever figure out how to do this, I have no doubt that hilzoy's work will be studied and discussed.

Robert Strange McNamara: RIP

[Updated: 1 pm, 7/8/09]

I just learned that the former U.S. Secretary of Defense and past president of the Ford Motor Company, Robert McNamara, died this morning. May he rest in peace---though I may be one of only a few, historians or otherwise, who wills his soul any good fortune.

I gained some acquaintance with McNamara's biography and place in history not through the press or any personal memories of Vietnam, but through the tough documentary Fog of War. The film's subtitle---"Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara"---goes some way toward explaining my less-than-disgusted view of McNamara's place in U.S. history.

I began to abstractly understand Baby Boomer animus toward McNamara through the film. That generation faulted McNamara as the common link between the failed Vietnam policies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Errol Morris knew this, of course, and did not shy away from related probing questions. But I gained a concrete understanding, however, of that animosity when I defended Fog of War (extreme bottom of link) from a critical review in the Journal of American History (Vol. 92, no. 3, Dec. 2005). [Warning: You must be a History Cooperative/JAH subscriber to view these links in full.]

One of the problems with the review, in my opinion, was its criticism of Morris for supposedly glossing over McNamara's faults. The reviewer's intense response to my criticism of the review can be seen at the bottom of the link with my work. Despite the "dialogue," I contend still that the review forwarded a decidedly wrong interpretation of the film in relation both McNamara's actions and his person.

But I recall this not to relive old scholarly arguments. I bring my reflections to USIH because I see Fog of War as a first draft, visual biography of McNamara's intellectual development. Morris' work is an intellectual biography masquerading as film.

How? Any film that uses history and biography to put forth lessons covering empathy, ethics, rationality, metaphysical questions, perception versus reality, self-criticism, and human nature surely falls within the realm of intellectual history. In a classroom setting these lessons provide the history instructor with the opportunity to raise a number of philosophical questions in the context of a concrete chronological period in U.S. history (i.e. the Cold War). The possibilities for student engagement are extraordinary. Indeed, were I some kind of dictator of history teaching, or a czar of U.S. history instruction, I would require Fog of War for every post-Civil War U.S. survey course offered in higher education.

While these lessons provided a vehicle for intellectualizing McNamara, Vietnam, World War II, and the Cold War, Morris also does a fantastic job of humanizing McNamara. The documentary reveals a McNamara in tears, choked up with regret over losses and his failings. Those regrets cover his personal life, political dealings, and missed opportunities in a life that included participation, remote and direct, in the fog of various wars.

I think the reason for the historical dissonance on McNamara has to do with the young and old versions of the man. As a younger and middle-aged man, McNamara was prideful, overly confident, and intellectually capable. As an old man he began to turn his critical faculty on himself. Morris' film conveys both halves of McNamara's life, and the older man elicits your sympathy.

Some parts of the NYT obituary convey this tension. Here are two brief excerpts from that extraordinarily long and thorough retrospective:

- In 1995, [McNamara] took a stand against his own conduct of the war, confessing in a memoir [In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam] that it was “wrong, terribly wrong.” In return, he faced a firestorm of scorn. ...
- By then he wore the expression of a haunted man. He could be seen in the streets of Washington — stooped, his shirttail flapping in the wind — walking to and from his office a few blocks from the White House, wearing frayed running shoes and a thousand-yard stare.

"Haunted." This is an apt descriptor in relation to McNamara. I certainly found the Morris documentary haunting. It is my hope that McNamara's legacy as a civil servant haunts us as a nation. Perhaps his lessons will find the ears of those decision-makers who matter. A look at his biography should, I hope, instill caution. And insofar as caution is part and parcel with conservatism, then I hope all political leaders obtain to some of old man McNamara's conservatism and hard-earned humility. - TL

Additional links with annotations:

1. Here is Errol Morris confirming my observations above. John Prados and David Ignatius confirm Morris' assessment.
2. But Morris' account of McNamara's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis might be defective. In an extended HNN piece, Sheldon M. Stern blasts McNamara's remembrance of his role as hawkish adviser to JFK during the events of 1963.

Robert Strange McNamara: RIP

[Updated: 1 pm, 7/8/09]

I just learned that the former U.S. Secretary of Defense and past president of the Ford Motor Company, Robert McNamara, died this morning. May he rest in peace---though I may be one of only a few, historians or otherwise, who wills his soul any good fortune.

I gained some acquaintance with McNamara's biography and place in history not through the press or any personal memories of Vietnam, but through the tough documentary Fog of War. The film's subtitle---"Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara"---goes some way toward explaining my less-than-disgusted view of McNamara's place in U.S. history.

I began to abstractly understand Baby Boomer animus toward McNamara through the film. That generation faulted McNamara as the common link between the failed Vietnam policies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Errol Morris knew this, of course, and did not shy away from related probing questions. But I gained a concrete understanding, however, of that animosity when I defended Fog of War (extreme bottom of link) from a critical review in the Journal of American History (Vol. 92, no. 3, Dec. 2005). [Warning: You must be a History Cooperative/JAH subscriber to view these links in full.]

One of the problems with the review, in my opinion, was its criticism of Morris for supposedly glossing over McNamara's faults. The reviewer's intense response to my criticism of the review can be seen at the bottom of the link with my work. Despite the "dialogue," I contend still that the review forwarded a decidedly wrong interpretation of the film in relation both McNamara's actions and his person.

But I recall this not to relive old scholarly arguments. I bring my reflections to USIH because I see Fog of War as a first draft, visual biography of McNamara's intellectual development. Morris' work is an intellectual biography masquerading as film.

How? Any film that uses history and biography to put forth lessons covering empathy, ethics, rationality, metaphysical questions, perception versus reality, self-criticism, and human nature surely falls within the realm of intellectual history. In a classroom setting these lessons provide the history instructor with the opportunity to raise a number of philosophical questions in the context of a concrete chronological period in U.S. history (i.e. the Cold War). The possibilities for student engagement are extraordinary. Indeed, were I some kind of dictator of history teaching, or a czar of U.S. history instruction, I would require Fog of War for every post-Civil War U.S. survey course offered in higher education.

While these lessons provided a vehicle for intellectualizing McNamara, Vietnam, World War II, and the Cold War, Morris also does a fantastic job of humanizing McNamara. The documentary reveals a McNamara in tears, choked up with regret over losses and his failings. Those regrets cover his personal life, political dealings, and missed opportunities in a life that included participation, remote and direct, in the fog of various wars.

I think the reason for the historical dissonance on McNamara has to do with the young and old versions of the man. As a younger and middle-aged man, McNamara was prideful, overly confident, and intellectually capable. As an old man he began to turn his critical faculty on himself. Morris' film conveys both halves of McNamara's life, and the older man elicits your sympathy.

Some parts of the NYT obituary convey this tension. Here are two brief excerpts from that extraordinarily long and thorough retrospective:

- In 1995, [McNamara] took a stand against his own conduct of the war, confessing in a memoir [In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam] that it was “wrong, terribly wrong.” In return, he faced a firestorm of scorn. ...
- By then he wore the expression of a haunted man. He could be seen in the streets of Washington — stooped, his shirttail flapping in the wind — walking to and from his office a few blocks from the White House, wearing frayed running shoes and a thousand-yard stare.

"Haunted." This is an apt descriptor in relation to McNamara. I certainly found the Morris documentary haunting. It is my hope that McNamara's legacy as a civil servant haunts us as a nation. Perhaps his lessons will find the ears of those decision-makers who matter. A look at his biography should, I hope, instill caution. And insofar as caution is part and parcel with conservatism, then I hope all political leaders obtain to some of old man McNamara's conservatism and hard-earned humility. - TL

Additional links with annotations:

1. Here is Errol Morris confirming my observations above. John Prados and David Ignatius confirm Morris' assessment.
2. But Morris' account of McNamara's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis might be defective. In an extended HNN piece, Sheldon M. Stern blasts McNamara's remembrance of his role as hawkish adviser to JFK during the events of 1963.

Crosspost: A Two-For-One Review On The Attractions Of Eugenics

After teaching a semester of the history of medicine in the U.S., I keep my ear to the ground for news in that field that intersects with intellectual history (including the history of ideas). With that, this H-Law review---which I received courtesy of H-SCI-MED-TECH, will be of interest to those who think, occasionally or otherwise, about eugenics, legal history, and aspects of social control.

Lynne Curry ably recounts the new work of two scholars, Paul A. Lombardo and Victoria F. Nourse, and shapes their topics into a commentary on the relevance of eugenics history to current legal and social debates about our genetic inheritance. The title of Curry's review, "Intellectual Seduction: The Promise and Perils of Eugenics," draws from a line in Nourse's book. I doubt the history of the emotional attachment to eugenics is a focus, but appreciate the nod to that aspect of the history of ideas.

One could write a powerful history of fear in the United States as it relates to loss, both individual and social, of status, power, beauty, the other, random violence, degradation by disease, etc. One might also link that fear to both conservative and liberal impulses.

It's amazing how even succinct reviews of books will open your mind to new areas of thought.