The gun industry got its sound bite yesterday when a student, reflecting on the trauma of the mass killing, explained “that’s why I carry a Glock.”
That being, of course, why the shooter came to campus with an assault rifle.
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Just a Merchant of Death, on Average
Just before the shooting in Roseburg yesterday, I was at Kaiser getting my flu shot. A man walked out of the examination rooms wearing a black t-shirt that proclaimed, “If guns kill people, then so do pencils.”
I guess the point is that a pencil is used to design a gun. It would seem reasonable, then, that God is the cause of all of our trouble with gun violence, for originating this reality in the first place. We have no responsibility for anything, do we? Not even for keeping weapons out of the hands of the people most likely to misuse them.
There are those that face the threat of gun violence every day. They are generally the disadvantaged: families walking through mean streets, the criminal militias known as gangs that seek power through violence, and the police that try to keep them apart. What the last group tells us about the second is that stemming the flow of weapons to criminals is impossible because we do not ensure traceability from the factory to the crime scene. If that information was maintained, they could identify and punish the merchants that purchase for illegal resale to known felons.
There are solutions to this problem. One would be to require that every gun be fired before leaving the factory, and the bullet registered with a federal ballistics database. Another solution is microstamping. A microstamp is an engraving on the firing pin that puts an identifier on every bullet when it is fired. The inventor of the technology has surrendered his patent to public use.
In California, Attorney General Kamela Harris has moved to require microstamping on all guns sold in the state. This came to my attention when I interrupted a young man at work bitching about how purveyors of excellent products would be forced out of the state due to this unfair requirement. This was indeed the threat made by the leading producer of semi-automatic handguns.
So I did a little digging, and found this: the average time between sale of a semi-automatic handgun and recovery at a crime scene is less than four years. Assuming that legitimate gun owners hold their weapons for life, this means that the vast majority of these weapons are sold to criminals.
It seems pretty obvious that the reason the manufacturer wished to pull out of the state is because microstamping would cut off this trade, and therefore eviscerate their profits.
The police, on the other hand, favor microstamping.
Who are we protecting, with our claims of Second Amendment privilege? The criminal militias that terrorize the inner city? Those that produce and sell guns into those communities?
It is certainly not our families or public servants.
Please Help Me Understand
After reading the summary of the today’s mass shooting in Roseburg, Ore., I made the mistake of opening the comments. The posts were dominated by Second Amendment prattle – you know, “prying my gun out of my cold, dead hands.”
Not a word of sympathy.
Not an offer of support.
Does a heart beat in your chests?
Or is it that it beats too hard, that you face anxiety every day, and the only way to cauterize your fear is to go out to the gun range and shred a silhouette with automatic weapons fire?
I guess it boils down to this, for me: America’s Gun Lobby is a mechanism that we use to prove that we can’t use the threat of violence to protect ourselves from pain. It binds us to wander in fear through the valley of the shadow of death.
Wandering until we turn our faces upwards to the healing light of love.
How often does a gun clutched to a chest serve any purpose other than to prevent us from “baring our arms” to help each other? To clap shoulders in welcome? To offer and receive an embrace?
America Through the Papal Lens
We Americans might be expected, as members of the most powerful nation on Earth, to be used to thinking that every political issue ultimately will be a domestic issue. I expect, upon reading the analysis of the Pope’s message, to be confronted with arguments regarding the merit of his pronouncements regarding the death penalty, immigration, climate change, economic justice and the primacy of statesmanship over armed might. I myself will offer analysis on immigration in a future post.
But is that how we should interpret the lesson on political civics offered to us by Pope Francis in his oration before the Joint Meeting of Congress? For that is indeed what it was: a reminder that politics is an act of service to the people, and that the measure of political success is not the towering monuments of wealth, but the hope and opportunity served to the most desperate of our citizens. Did Francis attempt to resolve the delicate balance between, on one hand, the creation and maintenance of infrastructure that generates opportunity, and, on the other hand, the basic needs that sustain individual initiative? No, he did not, but long experience has shown that a resolution is impossible, and so could not have been his goal.
His goal was far simpler: to remind the United States how important it is as an example to the world. To this end, he raised to our attention four great personalities: Lincoln, MLK Jr, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. He did not dwell on their accomplishments, only offering the briefest analysis of their virtues before plunging into an elaboration of how those virtues relate to the challenges facing the world today.
Many will not see it that way. Many will see his pronouncements on immigration, for example, as meddling in domestic politics. But from his perspective, the problem is a global problem. The displaced refugee does not appear only as an illegal within our borders, but on every inhabited continent. If America cannot sustain the compassion to see them as human beings in need of support, then what nation can?
And so with his civics lesson: our tolerance of aggression in American politics is to authorize tyrannical pronouncements by despots all around the globe. That we tend to use economics to elaborate Clauswitz’s dictum (“War is the continuation of politics by other means”) cannot be expected to register on those without our economic sophistication. Tyrants will use the tools available to them when hostility is sparked by rhetoric, and often their tool of choice will be violence. Our political discourse should be civil, and thus set a better example for the rest of the world.
So I stand in awe of the presentation today. The negative was left implicit. Instead, Pope Francis offered us a paean to American excellence, and exhorted us to heed our better angels when crafting policy.
I do wish that Pope Francis would have extended a practical hand to the politicians that resist collaborative policy making. Early in his speech, he did offer that his goal was to reach not just those present, but all those they represent. The tenderness and humility of this man are a manifestation of divine authority that has changed many hearts over the course of human history. To have indicated some of the many Catholic initiatives intended to address our shared difficulties might have – as did Kennedy’s exhortation to reach the moon – provided an impetus to those that fear the problems are too large, and nothing can be done.
And I know that as an observer of reconciliation in Argentina, Pope Francis must have many profound personal stories to share regarding the political power of love, and the healing that it brings. While his personal example of charity and compassion is profound, those engaged in the cut and thrust of politics may see indulgence in such demonstrations. For those struggling with that resistance, personal testimony of political reconciliation might have been beneficial.
Getting Taken to Cleaner
Volkswagon, the world’s largest automobile manufacturer, issued a software patch for the 11 million vehicles sold with “clean diesel” motors. The patch links to Android and iOS smart phones, enabling the driver to replicate the acceleration profiles used during EPA emissions testing.
In announcing the patch, Volkswagon’s CEO said, “Those already taking directions from their smart phones will be perfectly comfortable with the new feature. Instead of ‘turn left in 200 yards’, the phone will command ‘release the accelerator by two millimeters in five hundredths of a second.'” When asked whether that was a practical solution, the CEO enthused: “That’s the beauty of the engineering! Do you know how hard it was to coordinate the voice announcement to end just in time to allow the driver to take action?”
Facing the prospect of billions of dollars in fines from environmental regulators across the globe, the new VW software prioritizes emissions above collision avoidance. As an explanation, the CEO offered, “Any deviation from the commanded – I mean ‘requested’ – acceleration sequence will cause the exhaust to belch a huge cloud of poisonous particulates. So the driver might as well run over the children in the cross walk.”
In a parallel, ISIS announced the availability of a new freemium game based upon the “Hit-and-Run” scoring system adopted by American teens to vent their frustration with dawdling pedestrians.
Freedom from Government through the Governance of Love
In explaining the necessity of God in Tragic Sense of Life, the Jesuit philosopher Miguel de Unamuno asserts that it arises when every man, naturally desiring to control the world, confronts the inevitability of death. As the latter treads on our heels, even the most powerful are pressed to the conclusion that the only way to live forever is to embrace a God that loves us enough to grant us life.
Atheists are inclined by this logic to conclude that faith is a delusion. Marx certainly saw it that way, declaring that “religion is the opium of the masses.” But the underlying pressure is evidenced in the pronouncements of some technologists, among them the man I described yesterday who saw our digital sensors, networks and software as empowering us to build God. Others are more humble. At the ACM fiftieth anniversary symposium in 1997, Nathan Myhrvold, then chief architect at Microsoft, envisioned (somewhat playfully) a future in which we could escape death by creating digital simulations of our brains. The video skit included Bill Gates rubbing his chin as he thoughtfully considered the reduction in Microsoft’s benefits budget.
But if delusion is pathetic, oftentimes in the powerful avoidance is grotesque. We have Vladimir Putin, assassin of Russian patriots, proclaiming that Jesus will find no fault with him on Judgment Day. Or the effrontery of Donald Trump who, protected by his army of lawyers, knows that so long as he asserts righteousness, no one has the means to contradict his claims of competency and benevolence. Thus he continues to assert – in contradiction of the actual birth certificate – that his lawyers have compelling evidence to reveal regarding President Obama’s citizenship. Both of these men suffer from the same affliction, the tendency of our bodies to respond to successful acts of aggression by manufacturing more and more testosterone, the chemical driver for aggression. This is a positive feedback loop that was broken only by death in the cases of Hitler, Franco, Mao, Stalin, Kim Yung Un and so many other tyrants. In the prelude, millions of people were sacrificed on the altars of their psychological invincibility.
This dynamic is writ small in the lives of many businesses, congregations and families. People addicted to the rush of adrenaline and the power of testosterone manufacture experiences that stimulate their production. This is why it is said “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The desire for power arises from the biological thrill of success, and to continue to receive that thrill, the addict must continue to risk his power in ever greater contests. In the heat of passion, the suffering visited upon others is ignored.
There are three antidotes to this dynamic. The first is popular rebellion. Paradoxically, this is the very force that pushed Putin and Trump to prominence. At a stump speech yesterday, Trump opened the floor to questions, and the first person to the microphone began to rant hatefully about President Obama and an imagined domestic Muslim threat. Trump did not defuse the situation, instead responding “We need to hear this question!” But often rebellion is merely another manifestation of the drive to power. Unless tempered, it rages out of control, as happened in the Jacobian tyranny following the French Revolution.
The second antidote is reason. Reason builds discipline that forces us to reconcile our actions with their consequences, thereby disciplining our aggression with objective evidence of failure. The tension between reason and will is not just moral, however: heightened levels of adrenaline actually degrade the higher thinking centers of the brain. This creates a terribly contradictory dynamic, perhaps manifesting itself in the fact that most academics do their greatest work in their youth. While testosterone serves the reasoning mind in creating the thirst to conquer and claim ideas, as the successful mind expands, so do levels of testosterone and adrenaline, which destroys the power of reason. In that context, the methods used to sustain power are not as brutal as those used by the social tyrant, but have their own unique form of cruelty, and leave lasting scars on the psyche. Isaac Newton, cheated of credit for a scientific insight by his predecessor as head of the Royal Academy of Sciences, had the satisfaction of burning the man’s portrait. Most victims of intellectual tyranny are consigned to obscurity.
It is natural for supporters to gather around the social or intellectual tyrant during his rise to power. Claiming benevolent intention is a great way of rallying support from the oppressed. Unfortunately, this dictum holds: A man will change his beliefs before he will change his behavior. When that behavior is organized around aggression, enemies must be created when there are none left at hand. All tyrants eventually turn on their lieutenants, often using hallucinatory rhetoric to justify their actions.
A peer once offered to me that all the greatest scientists were lovers of humanity. This brings us to the third antidote: love. This arrives upon us through many pathways. It can be through sex and maternity. It can be when an infant first grasps our forefinger. It can be through service to those in want. In those moments a bond is established, a linkage that makes palpable the suffering we visit upon others. That can be rationalized in material terms: tears on a beloved face or cries of shame are evidence of our failure. That breaks the vicious cycle of success and aggression.
But there is another aspect that goes beyond negative feedback. Aggression stimulates the loins and the mind, but barely touches the heart. Exchanging love with someone just feels good. It opens us up to a world of experience that can be touched in no other way. Ultimately, its rewards are far greater because no one that loves themselves objects to being loved. They do not turn on their friends for satisfaction, because their friends offer them satisfaction every day.
Democracy attempts to combat the urge to power by institutionalizing rebellion. In America, the two Presidents that were awarded most authority were George Washington, who gracefully surrendered power after two terms of service following universal acclamation by the Electoral College, and FDR, who literally worked himself to death through four terms in office. Both those men were governed by a sense of duty and love for their country, a commitment affirmed by the popular voice that is expressed in elections. At the end of the 20th century, those that seek the freedom to act always as they please (the ultimate manifestation of power) responded to electoral constraint by attacking our faith in government. Driven by testosterone and thus unable to govern themselves, they have invested huge amounts of money creating personalities such as Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. As visible in the Oklahoma City bombing and the events surrounding the Republican nominating process, the end result has been to stimulate the resort to violence by others.
Thus we have the wisdom of Jesus: “Render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s.” We have the promise of Jeremiah: “For I will write my law on their hearts, and no man will be told ‘Come learn about my God’, because all will know me.” And we have Christ’s summation of the Jewish experience with law (the rule of reason) and governmental control: Love God and your neighbor.
It is through self-regulation that we discover truth and peace[NIV Matt. 7:13-14]:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
But what other government would we choose, except the governance of our hearts? And to what other authority would be choose to submit, other than the authority of compassion in another? Why do we delude ourselves that there is any other way?
Artificers of Intelligence
The chess program on a cell phone can beat all but the best human players in the world. It does this by considering every possible move on the board, looking forward perhaps seven to ten turns. Using the balance of pieces on the board, the algorithm works back to the move most likely to yield an advantage as the game develops.
These algorithms are hugely expensive in energetic terms. The human brain solves the same problem in a far more efficient fashion. A human chess player understands that there are certain combinations of pieces that provide leverage over the opposing forces. As opportunities arise to create those configurations, they focus their attention on those pieces, largely ignoring the rest of the board. That means that the human player considers only a small sub-set of the moves considered by the average chess program.
This advantage is the target of recent research using computerized neural networks. A neural net is inspired by the structure of the human brain itself. Each digital “node” is a type of artificial neuron. The nodes are arranged in ranks. Each node receives input values from the nodes in the prior rank, and generates a signal to be processed by the neurons in the next rank. This models the web of dendrites used by a human neuron to receive stimulus and the axon by which it transmits the signal to the dendrites of other neurons.
In the case of the human neuron, activation of the synapse (the gap separating axon and dendrite) causes it to become more sensitive, particularly when that action is reinforced by positive signals from the rest of the body (increased energy and nutrients). In the computerized neural network, a mathematical formula is used to calculate the strength of the signal produced by a neuron. The effect of the received signals and the strength of the generated signal is controlled by parameters – often simple scaling factors – that can be adjusted, node by node, to tune the behavior of the network.
To train an artificial neural network, we proceed much as we would with a human child. We provide them experiences (a configuration of pieces on a chess board) and give feedback (a type of grade on the test) that evaluates their moves. For human players, that experience often comes from actual matches. To train a computerized neural network, many researchers draw upon the large databases of game play that have been established for study by human players. The encoding of the piece positions is provided to the network as “sensory input” (much as our eyes do when looking at a chess board), and the output is the new configuration. Using an evaluative function to determine the strength of each final position, the training program adjusts the scaling factors until the desired result (“winning the game”) is achieved as “often as possible.”
In the final configuration, the computerized neural network is far more efficient than its brute-force predecessors. But consider what is going on here: the energetic expenditure has merely been front-loaded. It took an enormous amount of energy to create the database used for the training, and to conduct the training itself. Furthermore, the training is not done just once, because a neural network that is too large does not stabilize its output (too much flexibility) and a network that is too small cannot span the possibilities of the game. Finding a successful network design is a process of trial-and-error controlled by human researchers, and until they get the design right, the training must be performed again and again on each iteration of the network.
But note that human chess experts engage in similar strategies. Sitting down at a chess board, the starting position allows an enormous number of possibilities, too many to contemplate. What happens is that the first few moves determine an “opening” that may run to ten or twenty moves performed almost by rote. These openings are studied and committed to memory by master players. They represent the aggregate wisdom of centuries of chess players about how to avoid crashing and burning early in the game. At the end of the game, when the pieces are whittled down, players employ “closings”, techniques for achieving checkmate that can be committed to memory. It is only in the middle of the game, in the actual cut-and-thrust of conflict, that much creative thinking is done.
So which of the “brains” is more intelligent: the computer network or the human brain? When my son was building a chess program in high school, I was impressed by the board and piece designs that he put together. They made playing the game more engaging. I began thinking that a freemium play strategy would be to add animations to the pieces. But what about if the players were able to change the rules themselves? For example, allow the queen to move as a knight for one turn. Or modify the game board itself: select a square and modify it to allow passage only on the diagonal or in one direction. I would assert that a human player would find this to be a real creative stimulus, while the neural network would just collapse in confusion. The training set didn’t include configurations with three knights on the board, or restrictions on moves.
This was the point I made when considering the mental faculties out at http://www.everdeepening.org. Intelligence is not determined by our ability to succeed under systems of fixed rules. Intelligence is the measure of our ability to adapt our behaviors when the rules change. In the case of the human mind, we recruit additional neurons to the problem. This is evident in the brains of blind people, in which the neurons of the visual cortex are repurposed for processing of other sensory input (touch, hearing and smell), allowing the blind to become far more “intelligent” decision makers when outcomes are determined by those qualities of our experience.
This discussion, involving a game without much concrete consequence, appears to be largely academic. But there have been situations in which this limitation of artificial intelligence have been enormously destructive. It turns out that the targeting systems of drones employ neural networks trained against radar and visual observations of friendly and enemy aircraft. Those drones have misidentified friendly aircraft in live-fire incidents, firing their air-to-air missile and destroying the target.
So proclamations by some that we are on the cusp of true artificial intelligence are, in my mind, a little overblown. What we are near is a shift in the power allocated to machines that operate with a fixed set of rules, away from biological mechanisms that adapt their thinking when they encounter unexpected conditions. That balance must be carefully managed, lest we find ourselves without the power to adapt.
Reflection: Yoga Beyond Asana
It’s coming up on the end of my fourth year of practice in the Bikram Yoga school in Agoura Hills. Obviously the primary impact has been physiological. When I was out at the Skeptics Conference in Pasadena in May, a number of people commented that I had excellent posture. As I am painfully aware right now, that process is ongoing – I realized just recently that when standing, my right hip is shifted about an inch to the left. The pain derives from a shortened band of muscles in the right side of my lower back. Every class, I stretch them out, and every evening they crawl back to the length they have had for the last thirty years.
I didn’t realize how great the changes in the rest of my body had been until I met again with Balwan Singh yesterday. Balwan works at Bikram headquarters organizing teacher trainings. He is very Indian, struggling still at times with his English, but humble and joyful to the core. He had taught in Agoura Hills on Saturdays while the studio was establishing itself, often coming by with his lady-love Sharon (who is now expecting). The first words out of his mouth were “You look really good.” Sitting on the floor in the second session, I looked in the mirror and finally saw what people have been talking about. My body has filled in, and it responds gracefully to direction.
Most teachers in the Bikram method hew tightly to the established environmental constraints – primarily to keep the room near 105 degrees and the students in posture. The conditions were established while Bikram was developing his practice in Japan, and as a 6’6″ physically active American, they are really brutal on me. Most of the advanced practitioners in the studio are actually proportioned like the Japanese.
Balwan always catered to my challenges, and yesterday was no exception. I set my mat up in the back in the path of the air through the door. It came open early, and the oxygen that came with the air made it a very different practice. When the owner Rachel, who was set up just to my right, indicated that she wished it closed, Balwan remarked that advanced practitioners created heat internally, and the environmental controls weren’t as important as for beginners.
Rachel is a really beautiful lady, both inside and out, and I’ve been trying to facilitate her union with some angels that have been floating around in my orbit. Balwan got us to focus on breathing from the get-go, and I surrendered the tension in my chest to let the air really fill my lungs. I got into this rhythm with Rachel, each of us just looking into the other to see where the energy was getting stuck. For me, the most surprising impact of that collaboration came during head-to-knee posture. For the first time I really got up into the second stage, balanced on one leg with the other held out parallel to the floor in front of my hip.
When the practice was over, we were offered a lecture by Arvind Chittamulla, organizer of MokshaFest here in LA. As anyone who has studied the Vedic practices knows, there is far more to Yoga than the physical training, or Asanas. The ultimate goal of Yoga is to allow the purifying energy from the divine source to flow into the world through us.
As Arvind explained, here in the West yoga has spread as a physical practice. As I see it, that reflects the forces that Western society organizes to channel our behaviors to the purpose of creating wealth for those that employ us. They are reinforced by media images that impose air-brushed standards of beauty. We lack both consciousness of the psychic costs of internalizing these forces, and methods for purging them. Yoga asanas allows us, to a certain degree, to at least regain control of our physical manifestation.
But there is much more to yoga than that. Meditation is essential to management of our minds, and breath-work grounds us in the world. Asana, meditation and breath-work are connected: if we don’t have control of our mind, the corrupt thoughts that we entertain during asana practice will infect our bodies. For this reason, Arvind sees that the narrow focus of yoga in the West actually hurts many practitioners.
Arvind walked us through the other seven limbs of the tradition. In Indian studios, orientation to the first two, involving morality and life action, are often prerequisites to practice of the asanas. The remaining five manage the inward journey that opens into relationship with the divine.
The lecture was directed towards the teachers in the room, and Arvind’s ultimate goal is to broaden instructor certification to include, at a minimum, meditation and breath work. As a business proposition, he believes that the idle hours at many studios could be filled with sessions that offered students those tools.
I know that I have benefited from the coupling of my physical practice to my spiritual development. As I explained to Arvind, the difficulty of the conditions during a Bikram class forced me to completely surrender my ego – I had to accept that I had a lot of work to do before I could achieve the postures even in their initial expression. Given that surrender, the consistency of the sequence ensures that I am able to enter a meditative frame, letting my muscles do the work until something doesn’t work, and then focusing only on that. I have learned to ignore the other students in the room while still sharing the energy that arises between people committed to a common goal.
So I must wish Arvind success in his efforts, although I think that he might find more acceptance if he packaged them as advanced certifications.
The interaction with Arvind came with some tensions. I was glad to be with Balwan at the end of the evening. He was talking with one of the other attendees, and I circled around behind to put my hand on top of his head and share a hug, wishing him all the deepest joys of fatherhood. He sent me off with a heart-felt “Thank-you, Brian. Thank-you so much.”
Love Doesn’t Do Anything
It undoes things.
It washes away dirt and fear to reveal the world as it hopes to be.
When I was working as a Post-Doc, my friend Laurent Terray discovered Yoshi’s bar down in Oakland. Yoshi’s was an intimate club that drew jazz headliners such as Dizzy Gillespie.
Laurent dragged me down one night to hear a trio play – guitar, keyboard and percussion. I found myself drawn to the back wall where I could see all three pairs of hands at once. The music entered a timeless realm, the air resonated with beauty.
During intermission, I was chatting with Laurent when the guitarist came up and laid his instrument on the chair in front of me. I didn’t know what to make of it. Finally a young man came up and, looking a little scandalized, took the guitar and walked off with it.
I just didn’t understand, then, how much people crave to be looked upon with kindness. It heightens every experience.
Be good to each other. It allows light into the world.
The Syrian Refugee Crisis: Being Smart with our Compassion
Stung by the image of a Turkish rescuer carrying the body of a three-year old Syrian boy, drowned when the boat bearing has family to Europe capsized, Chris Hayes last night denounced US immigration policies that will allow only eight thousand Syrians to immigrate next year.
Hayes drew a stark comparison with Germany, where Chancellor Merkel has promised to accept nearly a million refugees next year. Looking at the relative sizes of our two nations, Hayes suggested a target number of at least 100,000 for immigration to the US. Echoing “Black Lives Matter”, Mr. Hayes went on to insist that every presidential contender should be forced to make a declaration of policy on the issue.
I agree that the plight of the refugees is inexcusable, but would respectfully suggest that Mr. Hayes is looking at the problem too narrowly. The US accepts millions of refugees every year from Latin America. Yes, most of those come into our country illegally, but most come to find work, and many of them will be nationalized.
Latin American refugees are driven to the US by political tyranny and criminality rampant in their native countries. The conditions in Syria are more extreme and intense, but the basic problem is the same: the failure of governments to create security and stability for their people. So if Germany is held up as a paragon of compassion on the international stage, we should ask “How many Latin American refugees does Germany accept each year?” Almost none, it would appear from the foreign population statistics (see figure 3).
Now the high-minded will complain that US regional policy – including support for fascist regimes during the Cold War and the ongoing War on Drugs – makes us culpable at least in part for the instability in Latin America. But no less so is Europe responsible for instability in their back yard. The Tutsi genocide in Rwanda at the hands of the Hutus was not an outgrowth of ancient ethnic hatred. The Hutu-Tutsi divide was created by the French, who handed out identity cards to create an exploitable ethnic divide based upon wealth. Elsewhere in Africa, the colonial occupiers created national boundaries to exacerbate existing ethnic tensions, thereby ensuring that the natives were unlikely to rally against their European overlords. Those ethnic tensions continue do bedevil Africa to this day, and the residue of these policies is also evident in the Middle East.
Finally, we should focus on the wealthy nations of the Middle East themselves. The region is awash in oil money. Where are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Dubai in the relief effort?
I am aware of at least one program that responds to the humanitarian crisis emanating from Syria. The Shia community in the south of Iraq is allocating religious charity to the support of Iraqi Sunnis displaced by ISIS/Daesh.
Given this context, I believe that Mr. Hayes has no moral case that compels us to take the extreme measure of relocating hundreds of thousands of refugees to America. And considering the logistics, it would appear that the most effective way to support the relief effort is to provide financial support to regional efforts. I would hold this as the litmus test for American involvement, but it is from the region that the request should come. When Europe comes forward with a plan for managing the crisis, that is the moment for us to pony up to support the effort. If we are to be outraged, it should be that our allies allowed the problem to fester until it became a disaster.
everdeepening 