Author Archives: G.S. Griffin

Wars Must Be Declared and Led by the World, Not Single Nations Like the U.S.

Posted on by under War

The psychologist Steven Pinker, in Rationality, writes that “none of us, thinking alone, is rational enough to consistently come to sound conclusions: rationality emerges from a community of reasoners who spot each other’s fallacies.” This could be applied to governments contemplating war. Americans increasingly understand that the United States often engages in violence not for noble purposes like protecting innocents, democracy, and freedom, but rather to protect and grow its economic and global power. Other countries have similar histories. In sum this has cost scores of millions of lives. An important step to ending war (and indeed nations) is to lift its declaration and execution from the national to the international level. With war exclusively in the hands of the international community, the wrongful motives of individual States can be mitigated. It is a little-known fact that the U.S. has already agreed to this.

We can pause here for a few caveats. First, war must be the absolute last resort to any crisis, due to its horrific predictable and unpredictable consequences, its unavoidable traps. It often is not the last resort for individual governments — nor will it always be so for the international community, but the collective reasoning and clash of skepticism and enthusiasm from multiple parties may reduce the foolhardy rush to violence so common in human political history. Diplomacy and nonviolent punitive actions can be more fully explored. Second, this idea relates to both reactions to wars of aggression launched by single States and to observed atrocities within them. If one nation invades another, the decision to repulse the invader must be made by a vote of all the nations in the world, with all those in favor committing forces to an international army. Same for if genocide is proven, among other scenarios. Third, none of this prohibits the last legitimate instance of unilateral violence: national defense against an invading power.

The argument is that the era of the United States as the world’s policeman must end — the world can be the world’s policeman. This writer has long voiced opposition to war and to nations, advocating for a united, one-country Earth (and is in good company: as documented in Why America Needs Socialism, Gandhi, Einstein, Orwell, Dr. King, and many other giants of history supported this idea). Talk of just war and how nations must approach it should not be misconstrued as enthusiastic support for these things; rather, as stated, vesting the power to wage war solely in the international community is a move down the long road to global peace and unity (with one day an equilibrium perhaps being reached wherein no actor risks facing the wrath of the rest of the world). It is far preferable to a rogue superpower invading and bombing whoever it pleases.

The United Nations, of course, needs structural changes to make this possible. The small Security Council can authorize use of force, but its five permanent members (the U.S., the U.K., France, China, and Russia) have veto power, meaning a single country can forbid military action. The decision to use violence must pass to the General Assembly, where a majority vote can decide, similar to how resolutions are passed now. A united army already exists, with 70,000-100,000 UN troops currently serving, gathered from national forces all over the globe, commanded by generals from all over the globe. Like those of any individual country, such as the U.S., UN military ventures have seen defeats alongside great successes. UN forces must be strengthened as their role broadens. Finally, UN member countries must actually abide by the treaty they signed to no longer engage in “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” (UN Charter Article 2). This was the entire point of founding the United Nations after World War II. The U.S. signs binding treaties (the U.S. Constitution, in Article 6, makes any treaty we sign with foreign powers the “supreme law of the land”), promising to forsake unilateral action (such as the UN Charter) or torture (such as the UN Convention Against Torture), then ignores them. That is why U.S. actions such as the invasion of Iraq, whether looked at from the viewpoint of U.S. or international law, are accurately labeled illegal. Under a new paradigm, the U.S. and all member States would have to accept that should the General Assembly vote against war, there will be no war — and accept consequences for illegal actions that undermine this vote.

As with a one-nation world, there will be much screaming about this now, but in the future, whether in a hundred years or 1,000, it could easily be taken for granted. The nationalist American mindset says, “If we see evil in the world we’re going in! We won’t get anyone’s permission. We won’t sacrifice our sovereignty or decision-making. America, fuck yeah!” Cooler heads may one day recognize that their own nation can commit evils, from unjust wars to crimes against humanity, making a community of reasoners an important check and balance. If violence is truly right and justified, most of the world will recognize that. New voices may also question why one country should carry (in patriotic theory at least) the brunt of the cost in blood and treasure to make the world safe for democracy and freedom, as is occasionally the case with U.S. military action. Why not have the world collectively bear that burden, if the world is to benefit?

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The 1939 Map That Redlined Kansas City — Do You Want to See It?

Posted on by under Race Relations

In 1933, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation was created as part of the New Deal to help rescue lenders and homeowners from the Great Depression. Homeowners were out of work, facing foreclosure and eviction; banks were receiving no mortgage payments and in crisis. The HOLC offered relief by buying loans, with government funds, from the latter and refinancing them for the former. It also set about creating a map of 200 U.S. cities that lenders could use to make “safe” loans rather than risky ones.

Risky areas, marked in yellow or red, were those of both lower-value homes and darker-skinned residents, the “undesirables” and “subversives” and “lower-grade” people. This entrenched segregation and the racial wealth disparity, with blacks and other minorities having a difficult time getting home loans, ownership being a key to intergenerational wealth. The Federal Housing Administration also used the HOLC map when it backed mortgages to encourage lending (if a resident couldn’t make the payments, the FHA would step in and help — as long as you were the right sort of person in the right part of town; see Racism in Kansas City: A Short History).

Kansas City’s map was completed April 1, 1939. You can see that the areas along Troost (easiest to find by looking at the left edge of the grey Forest Hill Cemetery) are yellow, with red portions east and north of that, where blacks at this time were most heavily concentrated. The yellow shade actually extends, in some places, west of Troost to streets like Rockhill. Each section can be clicked on for a description (D24: “Negro encroachment threatened from north”; D21: “It is occupied by a low grade of low income laborers, chiefly Mexicans, some negroes”). The use of this map by lenders, real estate agents, developers, governments, and more would solidify the Troost wall and Jim Crow repression, and impact Kansas City into the next century.

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Five Ways to Raise MSU’s Profile by 2025

Posted on by under Politics

We have three years. In 2025, Missouri State University will celebrate twenty years since our name change. We’ve bolstered attendance, built and renovated campus-wide, and grown more competitive in sports, resulting in a fast-climbing reputation and wider brand awareness.

Let’s keep it going. Here are five strategies to go from fast-climbing to skyrocketing before the historic celebration.

1) Sponsor “Matt & Abby” on social media. Matt and Abby Howard, MSU grads, have over 3 million followers on TikTok, over 1 million subscribers on YouTube, and nearly 800,000 followers on Instagram. Their fun videos occasionally provide free advertising, as they wear MO State shirts and hoodies, but a sponsorship to increase and focus this (imagine them doing BearWear Fridays) would be beneficial. Their views are now collectively in the billions.

2) Offer Terrell Owens a role at a football game. Legendary NFL receiver Terrell Owens (who has a sizable social media presence of his own) appeared on the MSU sideline during the 2021 season, as his son Terique is a Bears wide receiver. Invite Terrell Owens to join the cheer squad and lead the chants at a game. Or ask him to speak at halftime. Advertise it widely to boost attendance and get the story picked up by the national press.

3) Convince John Goodman to get on social media. Beloved actor and MSU alumnus John Goodman is now involved in university fundraising and related media — that’s huge. (Say, get him a role at a game, too.) The only thing that could make this better is if he would get on socials. Goodman would have millions of followers in a day, and with that comes exposure for MO State. Who knows what it would take to convince him after all these years avoiding it, but someone at this university has his ear…and should try.

4) Keep going after that Mizzou game. Mizzou men’s basketball coach Cuonzo Martin, as the former coach at MSU, is our best bet in the foreseeable future for the first MSU-Mizzou showdown since the Bears’ 1998 victory. In fact, a deal was in the works in summer 2020, but quickly fell apart. Martin’s contract ends in 2024 — if it is not renewed, scheduling a game will become much more difficult. Today MO State plays Mizzou in nearly all sports, even if football is irregular (last in 2017, next in 2033). We should keep fighting for a men’s basketball game. Then, of course, win it.

5) Build and beautify. From the John Goodman Amphitheatre to the renovation of Temple Hall, the campus is growing, dazzling. This should continue, for instance with the proposed facility on the south side of Plaster Stadium. Improving football facilities ups the odds of a future invite to an FBS conference. [2024 Update: MSU has joined CUSA and risen to FBS.] And one cannot forget more trees, possibly the most inexpensive way to radically beautify a university. Filling campus with more greenery, with more new and restored buildings, will position Missouri State as a destination campus for the next 20 years and beyond.

This article first appeared on Yahoo! and the Springfield News-Leader.

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Slowly Abandoning Online Communication and Texting

Posted on by under Politics

I grow increasingly suspicious of speaking to others digitally, at least in written form — comments, DMs, texts. It has in fact been 1.5 years since I last replied to a comment on socials, and in that time have attempted to reduce texting and similar private exchanges. Imagine that, a writer who doesn’t believe in written communication.

The motive for these life changes were largely outlined in Designing a New Social Media Platform:

As everyone has likely noticed, we don’t speak to each other online the way we do in person. We’re generally nastier due to the Online Disinhibition Effect; the normal inhibitions, social cues, and consequences that keep us civil and empathetic in person largely don’t exist. We don’t see each other the same way, because we cannot see each other. Studies show that, compared to verbal communication, we tend to denigrate and dehumanize other people when reading their written disagreements, seeing them as less capable of feeling and reason, which can increase political polarization. We can’t hear tone or see facial expressions, the eyes most important of all, creating fertile ground for both unkindness and misunderstandings. In public discussions, we also tend to put on a show for spectators, perhaps sacrificing kindness for a dunk that will garner likes. So let’s get rid of all that, and force people to talk face-to-face.

Circling back to these points is important because they obviously apply not only to social media but to texting, email, dating apps, and many other features of modern civilization. We all know how easy it is for a light disagreement to somehow turn into something terribly ugly when texting a friend, partner, or family member. It happens so fast we’re bewildered, or angered that things spiraled out of control, that we were so inexplicably unpleasant. It needn’t be this way. Some modes of communication are difficult to curb — if your job involves email, for instance — but it’s helpful to seek balance. You don’t have to forsake a tool completely if you don’t want to, just use it differently, adopt principles. A good rule: at the first hint of disagreement or conflict, stop. (Sometimes we even know it’s coming, and can act preemptively.) Stop texting or emailing about whatever it is. Ask to Facetime or Zoom, or meet in person, or call (at least you can hear them). Look into their eyes, listen to their voice. There are things that are said via text and on socials that would simply never be said in person or using more intimate technologies.

Progress will be different for each person. Some would rather talk than text anyway, and excising the latter from their lives would be simple. Others may actually be able to email less and cover more during meetings. Some enviable souls have detached themselves from social media altogether — which I hope to do at some point, but have found a balance or middle ground for now, since it’s important to me to share my writings, change the way people think, draw attention to political news and actions, and keep track of what local organizations and activists are up to (plus, my job requires social media use).

Changing these behaviors is key to protecting and saving human relationships, and maybe even society itself. First, if there’s an obvious way to avoid firestorms with friends and loved ones, keeping our bonds strong rather than frayed, we should take it. Second, the contribution of social media to political polarization, hatred, and misinformation since 2005 (maybe of the internet since the 1990s) is immeasurable, with tangible impacts on violence and threats to democracy. Society tearing itself apart due at least partially to this new technology sounds less hyperbolic by the day.

And it’s troubling to think that I, with all good intentions, am still contributing to that by posting, online advocacy perhaps having a negative impact on the world alongside an important positive one. What difference does it really make, after all, to share an opinion but not speak to anyone about it? Wouldn’t a social media platform where everyone shared their opinions but did not converse with others, ignored the comments, be just as harmful to society as a platform where we posted opinions and also went to war in the comments section? Perhaps so. The difference may be negligible. But in a year and a half, I have not engaged in any online debate or squabble, avoiding heated emotions toward individuals and bringing about a degree of personal peace (I have instead had political discussions in person, where it’s all more pleasant and productive). If I could advocate for progressivism or secularism while avoiding heightened emotions toward individual pious conservatives, whether friends or random strangers, they could do the same, posting and opining while sidestepping heightened emotions toward me. This doesn’t solve the divisiveness of social media — the awful beliefs and posts from the other side (whichever that is for you) are still there. Plenty of harmful aspects still exist beside the positive ones that keep us on. But perhaps it lowers the temperature a little.

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Free Speech on Campus Under Socialism

Posted on by under Socialism

Socialism seeks to make power social, to enrich the lives of ordinary people with democracy and ownership. Just as the workers should own their workplaces and citizens should have decision-making power over law and policy, universities under socialism would operate a bit differently. The states will not own public universities, nor individuals and investors private ones. Such institutions will be owned and managed by the professors, groundskeepers, and other workers. There is a compelling case for at least some student control as well, especially when it comes to free speech controversies.

Broadening student power in university decision-making more closely resembles a consumer cooperative than a worker cooperative, described above and analyzed elsewhere. A consumer cooperative is owned and controlled by those who use it, patrons, rather than workers. This writer’s vision of socialism, laid bare in articles and books, has always centered the worker, and it is not a fully comfortable thought to allow students, merely passing through a college for two, four, or six years and greatly outnumbering the workers, free reign over policy. There is a disconnect here between workers and majority rule, quite unlike in worker cooperatives (I have always been a bit suspicious of consumer co-ops for this reason). However, it is likely that a system of checks and balances (so important in a socialist direct democracy) could be devised. Giving students more power over their place of higher learning is a positive thing (think of the crucial student movements against college investments in fossil fuels today), as this sacred place is for them, but this would have to be balanced with the power of the faculty and staff, who like any other workers deserve control over their workplace. A system of checks and balances, or specialized areas of authority granted to students, may be a sensible compromise. This to an extent already exists, with college students voting to raise their fees to fund desired facilities, and so on.

One specialized area could be free speech policy. Socialism may be a delightful solution to ideological clashes and crises. I have written on the free speech battles on campuses, such as in Woke Cancel Culture Through the Lens of Reason. There I opined only in the context of modern society (“Here’s what I think we should do while stuck in the capitalist system”). The remarks in full read:

One hardly envies the position college administrators find themselves in, pulled between the idea that a true place of learning should include diverse and dissenting opinions, the desire to punish and prevent hate speech or awful behaviors, the interest in responding to student demands, and the knowledge that the loudest, best organized demands are at times themselves minority opinions, not representative.

Private universities are like private businesses, in that there’s no real argument against them cancelling as they please.

But public universities, owned by the states, have a special responsibility to protect a wide range of opinion, from faculty, students, guest speakers, and more, as I’ve written elsewhere. As much as this writer loves seeing the power of student organizing and protest, and the capitulation to that power by decision-makers at the top, public colleges should take a harder line in many cases to defend views or actions that are deemed offensive, in order to keep these spaces open to ideological diversity and not drive away students who could very much benefit from being in an environment with people of different classes, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, religions, and politics. Similar to the above, that is a sensible general principle. There will of course be circumstances where words and deeds should be crushed, cancellation swift and terrible. Where that line is, again, is a matter of disagreement. But the principle is simply that public colleges should save firings, censorship, cancellation, suspension, and expulsion for more extreme cases than is current practice. The same for other public entities and public workplaces. Such spaces are linked to the government, which actually does bring the First Amendment and other free speech rights into the conversation, and therefore there exists a special onus to allow broader ranges of views.

But under socialism, the conversation changes. Imagine for a moment that college worker-owners gave students the power to determine the fate of free speech controversies, student bodies voting on whether to allow a speaker, fire a professor, kick out a student, and so forth. This doesn’t solve every dilemma and complexity involved in such decisions, but it has a couple benefits. First, you don’t have a small power body making decisions for everyone else, an administration enraging one faction (“They caved to the woke Leftist mob”; “They’re tolerating dangerous bigots”). Second, the decision has majority support from the student body; the power of the extremes, the perhaps non-representative voices, are diminished. Two forms of minority rule are done away with (this is what socialism aims to do, after all), and the decision has more legitimacy, with inherent popular support. More conservative student bases will make different decisions than more liberal ones, but that is comparable to today’s different-leaning administrations in thousands of colleges across the United States.

Unlike in the excerpt above, which refers to the current societal setup, private and public colleges alike will operate like this — these classifications in fact lose their meanings, as both are owned by the workers and become the same kind of entity. A university’s relationship to free speech laws, which aren’t going anywhere in a socialist society, then needs to be determined. Divorced from ownership by states, institutions of higher learning could fall outside free speech laws, like other cooperatives (where private employers and colleges largely fall today). But, to better defend diverse views, worthwhile interactions, and a deeper education, let’s envision a socialist nation that applies First Amendment protections to all universities (whether that preserved onus should be extended to all cooperatives can be debated another time).

When a university fires a professor today for some controversial comment, it might land in legal trouble, sued for violating First Amendment rights and perhaps forced to pay damages. Legal protection of rights is a given in a decent society. Under socialism, can you sue a student body (or former student body, as these things take a while)? Or just those who voted to kick you out? Surely not, as ballots are secret and you cannot punish those who were for you alongside those against you. Instead, would this important check still be directed against the university? This would place worker-owners in a terrible position: how can decision-making over free speech cases be given to the student body if it’s the worker-owners who will face the lawsuits later? One mustn’t punish the innocent and let the guilty walk. These issues may speak to the importance of worker-owners reserving full power, minority power, to decide free speech cases on campus. Yet if punishment in the future moves beyond money, there may be hope yet for the idea of student power. It may not be fair for a university to pay damages because of what a student body ruled, but worker-owners could perhaps stomach a court-ordered public apology on behalf of student voters, mandated reinstatement of a professor or student or speaker, etc.

With free speech battles, someone has to make the final call. Will X be tolerated? As socialism is built, as punishment changes, it may be worth asking: “Why not the students?”

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