ANTITUSSIVE

When was the last time a conservative talk show changed a mind? by P. J. O'Rourke The Atlantic Monthly | July/August 2004 ..... ast year, on a long car trip, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh shout. I usually agree with Rush Limbaugh; therefore I usually don't listen to him. I listen to NPR: "World to end—poor and minorities hardest hit." I like to argue with the radio. Of course, if I had kept listening to Limbaugh, whose OxyContin addiction was about to be revealed, I could have argued with him about drugs. I don't think drugs are bad. I used to be a hippie. I think drugs are fun. Now I'm a conservative. I think fun is bad. I would agree all the more with Limbaugh if, after he returned from rehab, he'd shouted (as most Americans ought to), "I'm sorry I had fun! I promise not to have any more!" Anyway, I couldn't get NPR on the car radio, so I was listening to Rush Limbaugh shout about Wesley Clark, who had just entered the Democratic presidential-primary race. Was Clark a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton?! Was Clark a DNC-sponsored Howard Dean spoiler?! "He's somebody's sock puppet!" Limbaugh bellowed. I agreed; but a thought began to form. Limbaugh wasn't shouting at Clark, who I doubt tunes in to AM talk radio the way I tune in to NPR. And "Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop!" was not a call calculated to lure Democratic voters to the Bush camp. Rush Limbaugh was shouting at me. Me. I am a little to the right of ... Why is the Attila comparison used? Fifth-century Hunnish depredations on the Roman Empire were the work of an overpowerful executive pursuing a policy of economic redistribution in an atmosphere of permissive social mores. I am a little to the right of Rush Limbaugh. I'm so conservative that I approve of San Francisco City Hall marriages, adoption by same-sex couples, and New Hampshire's recently ordained Episcopal bishop. Gays want to get married, have children, and go to church. Next they'll be advocating school vouchers, boycotting HBO, and voting Republican. I suppose I should be arguing with my fellow right-wingers about that, and drugs, and many other things. But I won't be. Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, has gone out of fashion with conservatives. The formats of their radio and television programs allow for little measured debate, and to the extent that evidence is marshaled to support conservative ideas, the tone is less trial of Socrates than Johnnie Cochran summation to the O.J. jury. Except the jury—with a clever marketing strategy—has been rigged. I wonder, when was the last time a conservative talk show changed a mind? This is an argument I have with my father-in-law, an avid fan of such programs. Although again, I don't actually argue, because I usually agree with my father-in-law. Also, he's a retired FBI agent, and at seventy-eight is still a licensed private investigator with a concealed-weapon permit. But I say to him, "What do you get out of these shows? You already agree with everything they say." "They bring up some good points," he says. "That you're going to use on whom? Do some of your retired-FBI-agent golf buddies feel shocked by the absence of WMDs in Iraq and want to give Saddam Hussein a mulligan and let him take his tee shot over?" And he looks at me with an FBI-agent look, and I shut up. But the number and popularity of conservative talk shows have grown apace since the Reagan Administration. The effect, as best I can measure it, is nil. In 1988 George Bush won the presidency with 53.4 percent of the popular vote. In 2000 Bush's arguably more conservative son won the presidency with a Supreme Court ruling. A generation ago there wasn't much conservatism on the airwaves. For the most part it was lonely Bill Buckley moderating Firing Line. But from 1964 to 1980 we went from Barry Goldwater's defeat with 38.5 percent of the popular vote to Ronald Reagan's victory with 50.8 percent of the popular vote. Perhaps there was something efficacious in Buckley's—if he'll pardon the word—moderation. I tried watching The O'Reilly Factor. I tried watching Hannity shout about Colmes. I tried listening to conservative talk radio. But my frustration at concurrence would build, mounting from exasperation with like-mindedness to a fury of accord, and I'd hit the OFF button. I resorted to books. You can slam a book shut in irritation and then go back to the irritant without having to plumb the mysteries of TiVo. My selection method was unscientific. Ann Coulter, on the cover of Treason, has the look of a soon-to-be-ex wife who has just finished shouting. And Bill O'Reilly is wearing a loud shirt on the cover of Who's Looking Out for You? Coulter begins her book thus: Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love America, too. No they don't. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. Now, there's a certain truth in what she says. But it's what's called a "poetic truth." And it's the kind of poetic truth best conveyed late in the evening after six or eight drinks while pounding the bar. I wasn't in a bar. I was in my office. It was the middle of the day. And I was getting a headache. Who's Looking Out for You? is not as loud as Treason. But there's something of the halftime harangue at the team just in the use of the second-person pronoun. The answer to O'Reilly's title question could be condensed in the following manner: "Nobody, that's who. The fat cats aren't. The bigwigs aren't. The politicos aren't. Nobody's looking out for you except me, and I can't be everywhere. You've got to look out for yourself. How do you do that? You look out for your friends and family. That's how. And they look out for you. And that's the truth, Bud." We've all backed away from this fellow while vigorously nodding our heads in agreement. Often the fellow we were backing away from was our own dad. O'Reilly casts his net wide in search of a nodding, agreeing audience. He embraces people driving poky economy cars ("not imposing gas mileage standards hurts every single American except those making and driving SUVs") and people with romantic memories of the liberalism of yore ("the gold standard for public service was the tenure of Robert Kennedy as attorney general"). He positions himself as a populist worried about illegal aliens' getting across the border and taking our jobs. (I'm worried about illegal aliens' not getting across the border and leaving us with jobs, such as mowing the lawn and painting the house.) And O'Reilly reaches out to the young by prefacing each chapter with lyrics from pop music groups that are, as far as I know, very up-to-date, such as Spandau Ballet. But the person that O'Reilly's shouting at is still, basically, me: "If President Hillary becomes a reality, the United States will be a polarized, thief-ridden nanny state ..." oes the left have this problem? Do some liberals feel as if they're guarding the net while their teammates make a furious rush at their own goal? NPR seems more whiny than hectoring, except at fundraising time. There's supposed to be a lot of liberal advocacy on TV. I looked for things that debased freedom, promoted license, ridiculed responsibility, and denigrated man and God—but that was all of TV. How do you tell the liberal parts from the car ads? Once more I resorted to books. To answer my question I didn't even have to open Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. But having done so, I found these chapter headings: "Ann Coulter: Nutcase," "You Know Who I Don't Like? Ann Coulter," and "Bill O'Reilly: Lying Splotchy Bully." Michael Moore's previous book was Stupid White Men, titled in a spirit of gentle persuasion unmatched since Martin Luther, that original Antinomian, wrote Against the Murderous and Thieving Hordes of Peasants. Moore's new book, Dude, Where's My Country?, contains ten chapters of fulminations convincing the convinced. However, Moore does include one chapter on how to argue with a conservative. As if. Approached by someone like Michael Moore, a conservative would drop a quarter in Moore's Starbucks cup and hurriedly walk away. Also, Moore makes this suggestion: "Tell him how dependable conservatives are. When you need something fixed, you call your redneck brother-in-law, don't you?" Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, seems to have gone out of fashion with everyone. I'm reduced to arguing with the radio. The distaste for political argument certainly hasn't made politics friendlier—or quieter, given the amount of shouting being done by people who think one thing at people who think the same thing. But I believe I know why this shouting is popular. Today's Americans are working harder than ever, trying to balance increasing personal, family, and career demands. We just don't have time to make ourselves obnoxious. We need professional help.

this story was taken from www.inq7.net URL: http://www.inq7.net/opi/2004/jun/16/text/opi_mltan-1-p.htm Posted:11:41 PM (Manila Time) | Jun. 15, 2004 By Michael L. Tan ONE morning Californians wake up to find a third of their population has suddenly disappeared. Speculation is rife on what might have happened: was it biological warfare, or a UFO abduction en masse? Eventually, officials declare a state of emergency. The problem is that the disappeared are all Mexican. The state's activities grind to a halt. Don't worry though, all that is part of a film, "A Day Without Mexicans (Un Dia Sin Mexicanos)," which is making waves now in California. I'm going to have to confess that because of the terribly tight work schedules I'm having here in the States, I haven't been able to see the film. I'm resigned to having to wait a few more months to catch the film on DVD, but Kathy, a Gringa [American] friend, gave me enough of a description, and a rave review, to give me an idea for today's column. Let's imagine then, not just California, but the entire world, waking up one day to discover Filipinos have disappeared. I'm talking here about the six or seven million Filipinos currently working overseas in countries with names that run the entire alphabet, from Angola to Zimbabwe. Let's not worry first about why or how the Filipinos disappeared; in fact, it becomes academic whether it's a day or a week. Just imagine a world without Filipinos. Think of the homes that are dependent on Filipino housekeepers, nannies, caregivers. The homes would be chaotic as kids cry out for their nannies. Hong Kong and Singaporean and Taiwanese yuppie couples are now forced to stay home and realizing, goodness, there's so much of housework that has to be handled and how demanding their kids can be and hey, what's this strange language they're babbling in? It's not just the children that are affected. The problems are even more serious with the elderly in homes and nursing institutions, because Filipino caregivers have provided so much of the critical services they need. When temporary contractual workers are brought in from among non-Filipinos, the elderly complain. They want their Filipino caregivers back because they have that special touch, that extra patience and willingness to stay an hour more when needed. Hospitals, too, are adversely affected because so many of the disappeared Filipinos were physicians, nurses and other health professionals. All appointments for rehabilitation services, from children with speech problems to stroke survivors, are indefinitely postponed because of disappeared speech pathologists, occupational and physical therapists. Eventually, the hospital administrators announce they won't take in any more patients unless the conditions are serious. Patients are told to follow their doctors' written orders and, if they have questions, to seek advice on several Internet medical sites. But within two days, the hospitals are swamped with new complaints. The websites aren't working because of missing Filipino web designers and website managers. Service establishments throughout the world -- restaurants, supermarkets, hotels -- all close down because of their missing key staff involved in management and maintenance. In Asia, hotels complain about the missing bands and singers. In the United States, many commercial establishments have to close shop, not just because of the missing Filipino sales staff but because their suppliers have all been sending in notices about delays in shipments. Yup, the shipping industry has gone into a crisis because of missing Filipino seafarers. The shipping firms begin to look into the emergency recruitment of non-Filipino seafarers but then declare another crisis: They're running out of supplies of oil for their ships because the Middle Eastern countries have come to a standstill without their Filipino workers, including quite a few working for the oil industry. Frantic presidents and prime ministers call on the United Nations to convene a special session of the Security Council but Kofi Annan says he can't do that because the UN system itself is on the edge, with so many of their secretarial and clerical staff, as well as translators, having disappeared from their main headquarters in New York and Geneva, as well as their regional offices throughout the world. Quite a number of UN services, especially refugee camps, are also in danger of closing down because of missing Filipino health professionals and teachers. Annan also explains that he can't convene UN meetings because the airports in New York, Washington and other major US cities have been shut down. The reason? The disappeared Filipinos included quite a few airport security personnel who used to check passengers and their baggage. Annan calls on the World Bank and international private foundations for assistance but they're crippled, too, because their Filipino consultants and staff are nowhere to be seen. Funds can't be remitted and projects can't run without the technical assistance provided for by Filipinos. An exasperated Annan calls on religious leaders to pray, and pray hard. But when he phones the Pope, he is told the Catholic Church, too, is in crisis because the disappeared include the many Filipino priests and nuns in Rome who help run day-to-day activities, as well as missionaries in the frontlines of remote posts, often the only ones providing basic social services. As they converse, Annan and the Pope agree on one thing: the world has become a quieter place since the Filipinos disappeared. It isn't just the silencing of work and office equipment formerly handled by Filipinos; no, it seems there's much less laughter now that the Filipinos aren't around, both the laughter of the Filipinos and those they served. I know, I know, I'm exaggerating the contributions of Filipinos to the world but I'm doing what the producers of "A Day Without Mexicans" had in mind: using a bit of hyperbole to shake people up. As their blurb for the film goes: "How do you make the invisible, visible? Make them invisible." As I wrote this column, I did realize I was doing this not so much for the Hong Kong Chinese and Taiwanese and Singaporeans and Americans who don't appreciate us enough, than for us, who as Filipinos, are pretty good at putting ourselves down, at making ourselves invisible. (My "pinoykasi" e-mail box isn't working but I'd appreciate hearing from readers who feel I might have missed out on other vital services provided by overseas Filipinos. Write me at tinybubut-fiesta5261@mailblocks.com. I will keep that mailbox only till June 30.) ©2004 www.inq7.net all rights reserved

COMMENTARY: By Romel M. Oribe / MindaNews / 15 June May 2004 M15oribe TAGO, Surigao del Sur -- The recent elections, from where I sat, could only be viewed as a money contest, a price war. But before you sue me, let me explain. Since money is now believed by politicians to be the single most effective way of winning votes, it has become synonymous with election itself. In Surigao del Sur we call election money as tili-tili or rain shower, but that would have to change because on May 11 it proved to be much more than just a trickle. In fact, it made people pay their electric bills that fell due a day after elections thus making the electric cooperative, I guess, achieve its highest collection rate in three years. It also must have answered the cell card needs of my nephew because he didn't ask me for pasa load for over a week. A habitual itinerant, he stayed home on election eve not wanting to miss the candidates who did a "house-to-house" distribution of bills crisp enough to shave one's moustache with, stapled to a piece of paper that had their names computer printed in bold font. It is of interest that the traditional vote buying method has been supplanted by a scheme that has voters beating politicians at their own game. Time was when politicians buttonholed the electorate either by having them write contra senyas on their ballots or sign papers upon receipt of tili-tili. Now voters will have none of these, and instead they tacitly declare that if a deal has to be struck, it has to be on their own terms, for after all, there are other politicians out there who are too willing to accommodate their whims. The voter hacked this through a homemade sample ballot that he hustled and peddled to candidates who were willing to pay for their inclusion, making no bones about his "first-paid, first-voted" policy and his awarding the final slots to the highest bidder. In a run-up to E-day, the voter never stopped negotiating because even if he had filled-up his slate there were ballot-raiding candidates who offered to buy out and have their stickers superimposed on the names of the unwitting casualties. The cyclic element of this gambit had the voter entering the booth with a sample ballot that had more layers than a cabbage. Blame this on "planting rice," a euphemism for indiscriminate vote buying where politicians, like farmers, cast monetary seeds unbothered whether they grow or not. Banking on voters' conscience, this strategy, while affording a bumper crop for the electorate, is what leads politicians to experience fiscal El Nino afterwards. A friend whose father ran for councilor said he "planted rice" worth 10,000 heads but reaped only 4,800. Whew, that's 52% mortality rate! At 20 pesos per, that's like throwing 104,000 pesos to the wind. Some candidates distributed a mishmash of the following; rice, noodles, coffee, milk, sugar, candies, toothbrush, lighter, bath soaps and detergents. Another friend told me that it took her almost a month to pack and over three days to have her goodies delivered to the voters' homes. With half of a loser's smile on her face she added that cash would have been easier, cheaper and more discreet. Surprisingly some voters may have been pricked by their conscience after accepting tili-tili from all sides because there were ballots that contained 15 names on a supposedly 8-man council. Either that or they were just scrupulously fair. It could also be that they simply wanted to fry politicians twice over through spoiled ballots. Ahhh but I love those voters who added humor to their ballots by making them read like a grocery list. To illustrate using fictitious names, imagine you're inside a packed classroom where votes are being canvassed. The teacher opens a ballot and goes, "Mayor: Manuel Montero, P300; Vice Mayor: Rose Disca, P150; Sangguniang Bayan: Medrano, 30; Orag, Mr. Clean; Subibi, Maggie Noodle Soup; Estrada, 20; Caser, Bear Brand; Acevedo, 25; Ugay, Sky Flakes; Luna, NFA rice." By the time the teacher is done, you're teary-eyed and like me you don't know whether from too much laughing or from the biting reality of how the right of suffrage has gone the way of the most obscene. My province reportedly showed at least 50% decline in the number of candidates in 2004 over 2001. This could be an indication that running a campaign in Surigao del Sur spells financial bloodbath, thus slowly easing out political gladiators from an arena whose rules are defined solely by the color of money. After the full commodification of the ballot in the May 11 polls, there's no second guessing what the political landscape will be from here on. But at this early somebody has told me that if this declining trend continues, we might be paying people to run in 2010. Tsk, tsk, tsk that means I can't laugh out loud like I did the day after elections when my favorite sari-sari store gave me a change that included an orange bill still stapled to the name of the candidate who swore he won by the sheer strength of his vocal chord and sex appeal. (MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Romel M. Oribe of Tago, Surigao del Sur is thirtysomething. He was a fellow at the 8th Iligan National Writers Workshop. You may e-mail the author at romeloribe@yahoo.com)

By William M Esposo, inq7.net If there is one thing that keeps a person from success, that one thing would be the failure to see the big picture. It is not lack of talent, nor lack of resources nor lack of drive but rather, it is this ailment of perception called tunnel vision that stymies a person from comprehending the entire spectrum of any given situation. In management courses, we keep discussing the importance of seeing the big picture. The big picture, simply put, is the comprehensive appreciation of a situation - be it a problem or an opportunity - as it applies to personal, industrial, social or political realities. To see the big picture is to comprehend all the vital ramifications, significance and implications of a situation. It is only by having a total sense of a situation on hand can one be able to act with strategic effectiveness. But the big picture it seems is too elusive for Filipinos. Or is it because they simply choose to conveniently coast along with the current in a fatalistic sort of way? The lesser educated amongst us, unfortunately, would even have more difficulty relating to events in our history, much less respond to calls of action that are intended precisely to uplift their sorry condition. I have written at length on this subject in a previous column titled "Why we can't get to our future." Not knowing the roots of one's problem prevents the crafting of an appropriate solution. Majority of our people, who are engulfed in poverty, keeps looking forward to every presidential election for salvation. But a cursory review of our past presidents shows that, except for a handful - Quezon, Magsaysay, and Cory Aquino - the rest were seen as disappointments by most Filipinos. And all three of them, Quezon, Magsaysay, Aquino are remembered with fondness not because they've really improved the people's economic conditions but because of other reasons such as: 1. Quezon for steering us into independence, 2. Magsaysay for saving democracy and gaining the empathy of the common man, and 3. Aquino for dismantling the Marcos dictatorship and the restoration of democracy. But no Philippine president has really emancipated the Filipinos from economic bondage. Look at the history of people here living below the poverty line and you'll see a consistent increase up to the present when it has never been this desperate. Why? Because when we voted, we never understood the real reasons why in our country there is always that situation of the few who have too much and the many who have too little. We, as a nation, never understood the system of exploitation that passed on from our colonizers to our oligarchy. Save for a few who understand the exploitation syndrome, most of our people do not have an idea as to who are the privileged few who are benefiting from the exploitation. Many in fact do not even know how they are being systematically exploited. If the majority of Filipinos who are poor knew how the exploitation operates, how the oligarchs control the levers of economic and political power through their proxies in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government - then a real people's party would have evolved by now and with the majority vote that they represent, they can take over the powers of the state. Our democracy remains a sham because Filipinos do not know what they have to institute through their voting power in order to effect the structural changes that they need in order to rise above their present conditions. The political selection process has degenerated to a hunt for crowd favorites. It is so much akin to a talent variety show where the one who gets the loudest applause wins. Never mind if the choice cannot measure up to the demands and expectations for competent public administration and moral conduct of the highest officials of the land. We must remember that the crowd chose to free Barrabas over Jesus Christ - so much for crowd favorites. We are on a continued downward spiral simply because we keep electing the wrong leaders. We look for plumbers when what we need are carpenters. Note how our people keep choosing presidents from the ranks of congress and the senate when we may be better off choosing presidents from exemplary local government officials (like governors and big city mayors) and department secretaries. Congressmen and senators are experienced legislators but the job of a president is executive in nature - like that of department secretaries, governors and big city mayors. Note how in the United States they keep electing mostly governors for president. Since 1976, 24 of the 28 years of the past five US presidents were those of former governors and these are the terms of Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and G. W. Bush. Our Southeast Asian neighbors Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia went on an economic tailspin during the 1997 Asian currency crisis and all three of them, but not our country, have bounced back. They saw the big picture and they coped accordingly. But we took the opposite path. Instead of using elections to select better leaders - the ones we really need - we chose to be led by fumbling quacks. The examples of Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo prove my point. Their combined six-year term left the Philippine peso in its worst ever exchange rate. Their six-year term placed the Philippines in its worst ranking in the roster of the perceived most corrupt countries in the world. Their six-year term recorded the highest ever budget deficit and indebtedness. It took Ferdinand Marcos all of 20 years to log 28 billion pesos in foreign debt. By the time Joseph Estrada was ejected from Malacanang, our foreign debt was already two trillion pesos. Now after three years with Macapagal-Arroyo, it has ballooned to over 4.0 trillion pesos. And what do we have to show for it? I can only recall the many new houses of the Estrada women and the fabled hoard of Jose Pidal. Comparing fiscal management track records, Quezon City Mayor Sonny Belmonte has more right to be president than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. When Belmonte assumed the job of Quezon City mayor in 2001, the city was bankrupt. But after the three years under Belmonte, Quezon City now enjoys the biggest budget surplus among all local government units. While under the last three years of Macapagal-Arroyo, the country now faces its worst budget deficit. More unfortunate is that our middle class and the so-called elite (outside of the oligarchy), having enjoyed the privilege of higher education, are so ensconced in the comfort of exclusive environments that it is rather difficult or even inconvenient for them to reach out and try to understand the situation underlying their own country's worsening poverty. Our oligarchs are short-sighted and pathetically petty. This includes many of the big businessmen who like to posture that their interests reflect the economic well being of the nation. Yet through the years, they became richer while Mang Pandoy became poorer - to the point that the economic stagnation has now also affected their personal interests. Owing to their education and their voice in society, we would have expected the middle class, traditionally the intellectual elite of most societies, to lead the way in the proper selection of public officials during elections. But we didn't see that last May. Instead, what we saw was a middle class that gravitated to the same "winnability" and "lesser evil" mindset. Instead of going for who can serve us best, they gravitated to the one who can damage us less. When the big businessmen encounter trouble in their companies, they will spare no cost and effort to acquire the most capable executives to reverse their predicament. So why is it that they cannot apply the same principle of survival urgency when they select the right crisis manager for our sinking country? Neither the country nor the future of the next generation is of primary concern to many of them. It matters not to them that by compromising their better judgment they are in fact condemning the country deeper into hell. They see only their business interests and do not see the connection between having qualified leadership and long-term national viability. They see only short-term personal relief for their woes, even if this means savoring their last few moments in a luxury suite in the doomed Titanic. Rather short sighted and stupid really considering that the dreaded imminent scenario is so much in the offing and an event like this will spare no one. In the French Revolution, good and bad aristocrats shared the same fate - they all got a very close shave in the guillotine. You may email William M. Esposo at: wmesposo@hotmail.com

By Jeffrey J. Roden
BusinessWorld 06.14.2004

Thank you, Jasmine, for offering a fresh face in foreign policy. Yes, Jasmine, foreign policy.

There is a lesson from your success in "American Idol" that runs deep in the archipelago of problems besetting the Filipino nation. It exposed a black hole. This black hole is what scholars ordinarily call a research gap.

Any keen follower of the show "American Idol" would realize the immense potential of a Filipino diaspora acting in concert. It has shown that overseas Filipinos moving with one purpose can influence events and advance a cause. Sure enough, it wasn't just this young lady's guts that brought her to the final stages of the contest. The millions of votes from a very supportive overseas Filipino community in the United States buoyed her through. The result, until recently: the mighty American nation had a Filipina for an idol -- a paradigmatic black hole that begs to be explained.

The claim of state patent on foreign policy, and hence over the conduct of diplomacy, is a neo-realist credo invalidated by the Cold War's end. The collapse of the old balance-of-power system revised a bipolar world mono-dominated by states. This, along with erstwhile dormant developments such as access to technology, satellite communications, modern transportation, and the internationalization of capital, penned a new script called Globalization.

Our foreign policy, however, has failed to grasp the shifting sands of globalization. We still think of confronting this strange alien force head-on when we should grapple it from within. We lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of diplomacy: foreign policy should always be forward-looking in ensuring national security and outward-looking in its search for creative openings. The state, we are reminded, is not an end but a means -- and certainly not the only one -- of pursuing our international priorities. As a result, we have a foreign policy, which knows its limits but hardly its goals.

Some consequences of globalization such as porous borders, unprecedented human mobility, global capitalism, and cultural interpenetration have made contact between private citizens miles apart possible (such as Filipinos e-mailing their relatives to vote for Jasmine).

In the Philippines, the large-scale exodus of Filipinos, now known as the Filipino diaspora, has been the most sweeping sociological phenomenon during the last 30 years. There are already eight million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) out of a total 84 million population. In effect, this exodus has shipped one-tenth of our society abroad.

Sadly, however, the country has not gone far in honoring OFWs beyond mash accolades as "modern-day heroes." Many as they are, they have yet to translate their numbers into diplomatic, political, economic, cultural and social fulcra.

Any nation unable to employ the ingenious energy of its hardworking people will only have to watch as foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) reap the fruits of market liberalization, and stare helplessly as its most potent resource -- its own people -- march to distant places. For as MNCs scan the developing world for cheap labor, workers from Third World countries are being impelled to seek jobs elsewhere.

And since the Filipino people could no longer wait for a development policy that would arm them in facing globalization, they had to achieve their aims by looking elsewhere, like Hawaii and the "American Idol". Such boldness and daring to go to far-away lands will hopefully infuse youth and vigor to their outmoded foreign policy. For youth is not properly definable by age, but by a spirit of daring, creating.

In recent years, OFWs have finally been banding as seen in the growth of their organizations. Likewise, various activities such as the recently concluded 2nd Overseas Filipinos Trade Show manifest the kind of dynamism emerging from their ranks. Filipinos have, in a manner of speaking, trooped to the frontlines of diplomacy and taken the cudgels for foreign policy.

Notwithstanding these developments, however, there is still a pressing need for an overarts their importance in nation-building and foreign affairs. What we urgently need is a change of weltanschauung - - a paradigm shift. We must learn to look at them not as clients but as partners, as prospective entrepreneurs rather than mere consumers.

The present framework views OFWs as objects, rather than exponents, of our foreign policy agenda. The prevailing weltanschauung is spelled out in the Annual Philippine Foreign Policy Overview for the Diplomatic Corps, thus, "extending consular assistance to our nationals remains a central function of the department..."

The operative word, "assistance", suggests the passive mind-set that pervades our foreign policy apparatus. For though help is important, it alone is not enough.

When one-tenth of a country's population is situated overseas, they do not just need assistance. They need a cohesive rallying pivot around which they can converge. Moreover, they need vision, impetus, and direction. From a policy standpoint thus, the existing paradigm is essentially and fundamentally inadequate.

While we maintain that protection of our OFWs is a basic concern, we must realize that they themselves, if organized and mobilized, can become the country's foreign policy exponents. As such, they should be our paramount overseas priority, as well as our greatest asset in articulating Philippine interests abroad.

"But we're already doing that," any foreign policy zealot would riposte.

Not enough. It is not enough to pass laws on Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) and Citizenship Re-acquisition or Retention. It does not suffice that we create legal assistance teams, dole-out Gulf War reparations, and establish reintegration programs.

These staple accomplishments, along with bilateral agreements here and there, are not disparate fragments but rather incoherent responses to emerging patterns of interaction between overseas Filipinos and the domestic Philippine population political theoreticians call complex interdependence.

Indeed, Jasmine is just a symbolic dot in the spatial tide of complex interdependence. There are other such cases like the successful California Public Employees' Retirement Retirement System (CalPERS) campaign waged by our ambassador to the US with lobbying from overseas Filipinos, the increasing number of family network-assisted migration, the growth of offshore OFW cooperatives and organizations. But Jasmine stands out because we're fond of showbiz. Of course, the most glaring proof is the $8.1 billion in OFW remittances last year (and steadily rising), excluding money coursed thru informal channels.

The Philippines, therefore, must now conceptualize a foreign policy framework, which flows from the strategic importance and crucial role of OFWs. We must be able to elaborate the mechanisms through which they can become stakeholders of foreign policy by introducing diaspora governance. We must weave network linkages by forming "diplomacy communities" that would galvanize them into action in terms of capital mobilization, tourism development, investments promotion, technology transfer, cooperative development through a "global bayanihan" culture, and opening export markets thru the concept of "suki" trading, among others. In other words, we must empower OFWs.

We must, in fine, find a way for a graduated, multilevel application of diaspora governance in foreign policy as a form of soft power diplomacy. For while developed nations have their MNCs, we have an eight million-strong "diaspora army" waiting for the general order of mobilization from their commander-in-chief, calling them for active duty to serve the Motherland in designated "diplomacy communities." If we do this, then, and only then, will we step forward from diplomatic cocktails to diplomacy creativity.

Unfortunately, our foreign policy elites will no longer hear of Jasmine Trias as she already bowed out of the contest (Fantasia Barrino was proclaimed the "American Idol"). And they may have just lost a chance to fathom the arcane implications of the Filipino diaspora. Nevertheless, thank you, Jasmine, for teaching us foreign policy -- with an attitude.

****

This is a layman precis of an unpublished scholarly work, titled: "Diaspora Governance and Foreign Policy", by the same author. The author studied Political Science in UP-Diliman and observes foreign policy. Readers may send comments via e-mail.

Conrado de Quiros (PDI, http://www.inq7.net/opi/2004/mar/11/opi_csdequiros-1.htm)

I SAW my favorite economist and bishop, Sixto Roxas and Julio Labayen, last week at Club Filipino. They are part of a group that's looking at solutions to the problems of this country beyond the elections. They are not particularly gripped by the elections. None of the candidates, they say, is addressing the country's real problems. Not even Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo whose vaunted doctorate in economics is either little in evidence or gets in the way of development. Roxas should know, he served her father in the early 1960s as economic adviser.

Roxas has a model for a community-based development, rigorously conceived and prescribing the steps to accomplish it. It is the only kind of development there is, he says. The other kind, the entrepreneur-based one which subsumes everything to the reckoning of the individual capitalist, is not development--except for the companies that profit immensely from it often at the equally immense expense of the community--it is despoliation. You know there's something wrong, he says, when the GNP is deemed to increase each time a community gets devastated by a storm or an earthquake because of the sudden frenetic activity in the area, characterized by the flow of goods and emergency employment. A loss in real life becomes a gain on paper.

Enough of this business of luring foreign investments and restoring (foreign) investor confidence, Roxas would say after the presentation. No country in history has yet developed through foreign investments, not anywhere, not in the past, not in the present. All the developed countries today have developed from native ingenuity and boldness, not from the kindness of strangers. Foreign investments do not blaze trails, they go only to places that have already been blazed, that show a track record for success. Foreign investments merely supplement, like vitamins, they do not sustain, like food.

But the crucial difference in Roxas' model, as Bishop Labayen pointed out in his reaction, is not just that it redefines development from the perspective of the community rather than the investors, it redefines development as the handiwork of people rather than of capital. It sees the people as the makers of development. It transforms them from mere labor, to be hired as needed, to entrepreneurs, to create as is their birthright. It makes entrepreneurship a collective rather than an individual initiative, one that benefits the community in general in wellbeing rather than the investor in particular in profit. It transforms people from targets, beneficiaries and objects of development to subjects, initiators and authors of development. Targets of development do not develop, authors of development do.

It's a good reminder of the real fundamentals, the ones that are never found in the mythical "fundamentals" that business likes to bandy about when talking about progress. The real fundamentals are that countries do not develop from the benevolence or enlightened greed of others but from pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. The real fundamentals are that individual investors do not create development, a community does. The real fundamentals are that a country's greatest wealth does not lie in its land, or capital, or natural resources, it lies in its people.

Though the last is often quoted (truly the devil himself may quote Scripture to suit his purposes), it is seldom, if ever, practiced. It is more honored in the breach than in the fulfillment. Certainly, the elections overlook it completely: the battle cry among the candidates is restoring investor confidence, not restoring the people's confidence. Yet this country's fundamental problem, as shown dramatically by Elmer Jacinto, is the opposite. There and then you see why people are leaving this country the way they do. Why stay in a country that doesn't believe in you, that doesn't appreciate you, that doesn't even see you? Targets of development do not stay in their country, authors of development do.

The elections merely reflect our overriding obsession with foreign investments, export enclaves and globalization as the source of our salvation. I've always been amazed each time I hear English prescribed as the national language, or at least as the medium of instruction in schools, because that is presumably the only way we can communicate with tourists, multinational executives, and potential employers abroad. It distorts the whole concept of language altogether. A language is not something a people need to communicate with others, it is something they need to communicate with themselves. It is what government needs to communicate to its constituents, it is what the citizens need to communicate to their leaders. There and then, too, you see why this country is unable to unite. We are preoccupied with learning how to talk to others, we do not care to learn how to talk to ourselves.

The wisdom of a community-based and people-centered development is not unproven. That was what allowed the activists and revolutionaries of the 1960s and 1970s to organize the grass roots and unleash their creative energies. The so-called liberated areas were far from being no-man's land that Marcos' troopers could not enter, these were areas where the masses produced and created and governed themselves. Until their leaders stopped being revolutionary and started claiming, like religious clergy, they alone could infallibly interpret the people's will, punishing disbelievers with physical excommunication in the "killing fields." Which sapped the creativity , initiative and entrepreneurship of the governed.

The beginning and the end of development is one thing only: the people. You can't get any more fundamental than that.

By Calixto V. Chikiamco (as published today in his Manila Times column Political Economy)

I think it was Gen. (ret) Jose Almonte, former national security chief during the presidency of former President Fidel Ramos, who said that the Philippines had the most irresponsible elite in Asia.

Indeed, “Jo-al” has not been the first and only one who has made this observation. American political scientist Paul Hutchcroft calls the Philippine elite as “booty capitalists” who prey on the weak state for its rent-extraction.

The sorry history of the Philippines since independence is a reflection of the record of our irresponsible political and economic elite. Compared to its neighbors, the Philippines is still mired in a “development bog” and unable to reduce its widespread poverty. The Philippines has earned the moniker of “sick man of Asia”—thanks to its irresponsible elite.

And it’s not the Marcos dictatorship alone that’s to blame. Nearly 20 years after Marcos fell, the elite cannot show substantial progress: the country’s institutions are weak, if not weaker; the foreign debt is ballooning and the country is falling into another debt trap; unemployment and poverty rates remain high; and the country is still racked with rebellion with one of the world’s longest-running communist insurgencies.

Why is the Philippine elite so irresponsible?

Well, compared to its Asian neighbors, the Philippine elite never felt really threatened by communism. South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia at one time or another faced “life and death” crisis fostered by the communist threat.

South Korea, which started out more backward than the industrialized North Korea, had no choice. Its military essentially told the business elite to behave, or else all of them would be overrun by the North Korean communists.

Fleeing the communists, the Kuomintang-led Chinese government settled in Taiwan. As outsiders to the island, the Kuomintang-led government could institute land reform and the ever-present threat of a Communist invasion forced its elite to become responsible.

Singapore was a tiny island with few resources and which faced a communist insurgency. Lee Kwan Yew and Singapore’s political elite battled back by building a strong bureaucracy and adopting many socialist elements (state ownership of key enterprises, socialized housing, etc.) while embracing foreign investments and free markets.

The same story was replicated in other countries like Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Their respective elites rose to the occasion and led their respective countries to wipe out poverty, strengthen public institutions and develop economically.

On the other hand, the Philippine elite became an anomaly and seemed to follow the Latin American model, unable and unwilling to lift the country out of its quagmire. Rather than acting as leaders, the Philippine elite, true to the rules of booty capitalism, acts more like pirates, preying on the state and the people.

One reason for this is that the Philippine elite felt secure under the protective umbrella of the United States. With the US bases, the Philippine elite could always count on the US military, or so it thought, to rescue it from the communist marauders.

The Laurel-Langley Agreement, which allowed US citizens to operate businesses in the Philippines as a foreign monopoly under high tariff walls, further cemented the symbiotic relationship between the US business elite and the local rent-seeking elite. The US and the Philippines became joined at the hip in weakening the state and promoting “booty capitalism.”

The need for the US to maintain its vital bases here during the Cold War made it also imperative that the Philippine elite be kept divided and unable to assert itself.

Why is it that years after the removal of the US bases and the end of the Cold War, the Philippine elite has retained its irresponsible ways? In fact, the Philippines seems to be replaying its history, with 2004 substituting for 1969. Like in 1969, right after the presidential election, the country is sitting on the edge of civil war, its public institutions are politicized, and its treasury nearly bankrupt.

One reason is what economists call the “economics of increasing returns.” Once a country is on a given path, positive feedback and increasing returns keep a country on the same path. If it’s necessary, for example, for an oligarch to bribe justices, it would be also necessary for the other oligarchs to engage in the same practice to compete, and a sort of an arms race to corrupt institutions develops.

As Hutchcroft puts it, “There has been little incentive for oligarchs themselves to press for a more predictable political order, because their major preoccupation is the need to gain or maintain favorable proximity to the political machinery. Even those oligarchs temporarily on the outs with of the regime exert far more effort in trying to get back into favor than in demanding profound structural change.”

Another reason why our elite is so irresponsible is that many of them shifted to regulated, service industries—banking, telecommunications, power, shipping, airline, etc.—in reaction to globalization. Thus, there was great incentive to the further weakening of the state and for “regulatory capture.”

The archipelagic nature of the country further insulates its elite and makes it oblivious of external threats. The communist threat from the North and competition with its old arch-rival, Japan, tempers the possible misbehavior and abuses of the South Korean elite. As for India, competition and rivalry with its neighbor Pakistan represents a motive force to develop the country.

No such rivalry or threat moderates the Philippine elite’s behavior.

Is there any hope then for the Philippines? Will the Philippine elite ever shape up?

I will attempt to answer this in a future column.

by Manuel Buencamino (as published in Today several days ago)

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about Beauty, I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. - R. Buckminster Fuller

The government’s problem is how to make Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s victory credible. The solution has been far from beautiful. Credit for the ugliness can be shared equally between GMA’s people and her sympathizers.

SWS conducted an exit poll to inform the public at the earliest possible time who would be the country’s next president. However, in the course of conducting the exit poll, SWS discovered and, to its credit, revealed that at least 900,000 voters were disenfranchised. As a result, the public began to wonder whether those voters were intentionally disenfranchised by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to benefit GMA.

The National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) was accused of trending for GMA and was called upon by its allies to “open its books.” Instead, Guillermo Luz called the suggestion “stoopid.” People know that Luz adores GMA, so his response did not help Namfrel or GMA.

The Comelec gagged ABC TV’s unofficial tally. The Justice Department followed suit by reminding media of a law prohibiting the publication of false information. Both organizations inadvertently planted doubts about their motives and led the public to wonder why a competing count was suppressed.

Shortly after gagging ABC TV, an un-gagged Comelec chairman leaked to the press that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo won the presidency. Protests about the leak’s impropriety notwithstanding, a Comelec official immediately came to the Comelec chairman’s defense and said, “ What is there to leak? That is an open secret. In other words, Chair Abalos has not committed any offense." In other words, the Comelec wants the public to believe that it is in no danger of receiving false information from them because, as everyone knows, the Comelec is honest and impartial. (The reader may be excused for gagging on this one.)

Meanwhile, Speaker Jose de Venecia and Senate President Frank Drilon devised a procedure to quick-canvass the votes. The opposition accused both men of “railroading” the process. In response to the opposition and to avoid being accused of being overly eager to proclaim GMA, the duo proposed a compromise. It was agreed that a 48-hour period for debate would be allowed before the train leaves the station for good.

While debate on the canvass procedure was going on, Today reported that Malacanang announced the release of Congressional pork barrel “as soon as the President is proclaimed winner.” Presidential spokesman Bunye moved quickly to dispel any suspicions about the timing of the announcement by saying, “We are not involved in any form of horse-trading in the midst of the transitory standoff in the legislature.” One sincerely hopes so because 35 million pesos for each of the 225 congressmen means paying seven billion eight hundred seventy five million pesos for a horse.

From the dark side, the intelligence arms of the military and the police raised the communist bogey once again and warned that any sort of planned civic action protesting the election results would be considered “destabilizing.” The military and the police are probably not aware or don’t care that the Edsa alternative enshrined in the Constitution is for all Filipinos. Most likely, they think Edsa is reserved for the goody-goody society.

The goody-goodies have been silent lately. Their silence, especially over the disenfranchisement of about a million voters, is not unusual, because the goody-goodies are notorious for their selective application of fair-play rules.

The problem for the opposition is how to look good in defeat. They are wrong to believe they can salvage their loser image by discrediting GMA’s narrow victory. They should know that we know that they knew all along what it took to win a presidential election, yet they failed to win, anyway. Thus, the solution for saving what’s left of the opposition’s face is not to tarnish GMA’s looming victory. That solution is as ugly as the attempts to varnish her victory.

(Buencamino does political affairs analysis for the NGO Action for Economic Reforms.)

From a website attacking the subject (I've lost the url):

"In the spiritually challenging decades between the two world wars, psychiatry and psychology flourished. It was an era when fear and pessimism had enshrouded the globe ­ an era when poison could masquerade as promise. John Dewey, an adherent of psychologist Wilhelm Wundt ­ and the man who would later pollute America’s education system with Wundt’s theories ­ designed the 1933 Humanist Manifesto. Dewey believed that what man had always done was precisely what should no longer be done. Signed by more than 34 community leaders and dignitaries in 1933, his manifesto denigrates religions and their ability to help solve people’s problems. Couched in a deceptively mellifluous style, this declaration emphatically denies man’s spiritual nature and aspirations with the arrogance of contemptuous authority.

"The Manifesto called for a one world “religion” which was not to be chained to “old beliefs” but to be influenced by scientific and economic change. “There is great danger of a final, and we believe fatal, identification of the word religion with doctrines and methods which have lost their significance and which are powerless to solve the problem of human living in the Twentieth Century.” Rather, religion should be a “human activity” in the direction of a “... candid and explicit humanism.”

"A list of fifteen precepts was drafted. These included:

 Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.

 Holding an organic view of life, humanists find that the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.

 Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.

 Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method.

 The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.

 We assume that humanism will take the path of social and mental hygiene and discourage sentimental and unreal hopes and wishful thinking.

"In 1973 ­ in the face of nuclear threats to mankind ­ the Humanist Manifesto II was published, delivering an even more savage blow to the sanctity and validity of religion.

“'... [H]umanists still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith. “Traditional moral codes... fail to meet the pressing needs of today and tomorrow....” “Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful.... [T]he total personality is a function of the biological organism transacting in a social and cultural context. There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body.'”

"The year 1980 saw A Secular Humanist Declaration continue the attack, declaring that people can lead meaningful and wholesome lives without the need of religious commandments or the clergy."

X-P's comment:

Among other prominent signatories to the original Humanist Manifesto aside from Dewey were Voltaire (literature), B. F. Skinner (psychology), and Isaac Asimov (science). Among the latest signatory is the widely known UK-based novelist Salman Rushdie.

Essentially what secular humanists are saying is that (1) our own hope to happiness and salvation lies in us and (2) we should abolish the traditional dualistic concepts (mind and body, body-and-soul, good-and-evil) So if we are our own hope at achieving personal happiness, satisfaction or salvation, the implication is that There Is No Creator, There Is No God. And if the universe is a monistic universe, i.e., one that is made of just one single element, the implication is that You Have No Soul. This belief has insidiously crept into the entire academic system. Before long, it could mean The Devil Does Not Exist as well. The latest incarnation of this belief system is found in the New Age movement.

Visit: http://secularhumanism.org