The Panopticon of Celebrity: The Image of the City in the Age of Luxury Condominium Towers

At some point in my theoretical education in architecture school the French philosopher Michel Foucault's ideas were introduced. One of the concepts that I learned was about Michel Foucault's description of the Panopticon. From my brief exposure to Foucault's philosophy, it seemed to have centered significantly around power relationships. All forms of cultural expression were subtle manifestations of power of an elite group of people and ideas over everything else. As an example, the language with which we speak is structured in such a way as to assume particular notions of hierarchy and influence that favored a point of view, particular a patriarchal and rationalist one. Many of today's academics apply Foucault's kernel of ideas in order to give meaning to their deconstructive pursuits. By supposedly revealing the inherent bias in power in all that we communicate and even think, it becomes possible to cast doubt on any knowledge we've inherited. This logic has been a driving force in dismantling the influence of centuries of accumulated wisdom, from the Judeo-Christian tradition all the way past the enlightenment up to post-structuralism.

My opinion is that Foucault's ideas have had a destructive impact, canceling many times over any gains in the freedom to rethink knowledge on a different set of power relationships. His separation of truth from knowledge ironically did not lead him to doubt the integrity of all ideas. In fact, Foucault was an avowed Marxist, and many of those influenced by him have used his ideas to reinstate socialist ideology as the base of power for a new body of knowledge (which accounts for much of what passes as scholarship in the humanities these days.)

One of his more architectural concepts was that of the Panopticon, an opaque tower at the center of a circular array of prison cells from which the prison guard can watch the inmates without being seen. This image of a prison represented the broader realization of a pervasive yet unseen power that governs much of daily life, where one will not transgress because of a fear that we are being secretly watched. It is ironic that Foucault wrote about the Panopticon as a way of defending the rights of the imprisoned and the insane but was personally in favor of a political system (socialist tyranny) that used it with brutal efficiency. I was interested in the idea that power over others could be polar, in which one person or thing could command the attention of all those around it. The Panopticon is not only a means of exercising oppressive power but also one of attracting attention in order to exert influence. In an age where much of what we call "news" consists of reporting the whereabouts of an unaccomplished celebrity, the public at large sometimes is compelled to lend its focus on people who by what they are subtly influence what is important in the world.

The emergence of celebrity is relatively recent, the product of mass media that needed to provide images that captivated and stimulated many people to imagine another imaginary world in vivid detail. Whereas not too long ago, a celebrity would express regret of having their privacy invaded, now we can find ambitious individuals aggressively seek as much attention as possible and willingly expose all aspects of their life simply to become the center of a celebrity-based panopticon. Reality television is nothing more than an attempt by talentless people seeking to wield the power of celebrity for their own personal gain. It seems to be the aspiration of more an more people to be seen or at least to celebrate ourselves publicly, often by showing off their possessions. Conspicuous consumption represents a natural human impulse to attract attention through the ownership of special objects from a wide range of scales, from fashionable clothes, cars, private planes and ultimately private buildings. Flaunting one's personal trophies is nothing new, but the way it can become so unavoidably visible to so many is.

From the earliest of times, buildings have probably been the most effective way to wield a "panoptical" power over others due to the way that they permanently occupy and dominate a landscape. Monarchs often would situate their palaces on visually prominent sites while wealthy and politically influential families built their sprawling family compound in the middle of the town to remind subjects or average citizens who was in control. With the rise of large-scale commerce, especially beginning from the Industrial revolution onwards, wealthy tycoons would build that most visible and most literal of panopticons, the high-rise office tower. In the capitalist city, business enterprises become a king of sorts, employing many people within the community, brokering deals with city leaders and lobbying with national politicians. Despite some popular paranoid perceptions, corporations are not watching individuals from their opaque glass towers. Instead, they sear into the memories of citizens a constructed communal identity of which the corporation is a primary element. How many Detroit residents could imagine their city without their monument to their dominant Automobile companies, the Renaissance center? In my home city, where many of its citizens lament the lack of a traditional communal life, could never imagine itself with the seventy-two story Bank of America tower. The unspoken message given by these gleaming towers is: You fellow citizens should not attempt to push any policy that would harm the interests of our business, since the community as you know it would cease to exist without us being part of your cherished urban landscape.

The past couple of decades have seen a change to this commercially-based panopticon. After the real-estate bust that followed the overbuilding of downtown commercial office buildings throughout many cities in the U.S during the 1980s, many large companies decided it wasn't necessary to locate at the center of a big city in a vertically hierarchical tower. They preferred to build more horizontal corporate campuses on cheap land in the suburbs. Efficiency gains from computers and networks shrank the size of corporate staff dramatically, leaving vacant many floors of space that once was alloted to an extensive administrative bureaucracy once required by large companies. Corporate tenants come and go in these office towers, with most citizens unaware of who occupies them at the moment, just that some sort of business is going in there. Municipal governments value the presence of a major corporation in forging a distinct communal identity for the city, and therefore they continue to offer enticements to companies to move downtown with generous tax rebates.

Such incentives indicate a desperation to stall the shift away from commerce occupying the role as the icon of authority in a cityscape. Beginning in the 1990s and expanding rapidly in our current decade, construction residential towers have become the most prominent urban event taking place in our downtowns. Vacant office buildings are rapidly being converted into residential units, and city skylines are being changed by new towers with smaller floorplates and highly articulated walls punched by private widows and balconies. They avoid monotonous glass curtain facades and lobbies engulfing entire city blocks. Many of these towers are surrounded by more pedestrian low-rise mixed use buildings with ground level retail. These residential highrises almost exclusively house the city's elite, and cater the natural desire to enjoy dramatic views of the surrounding city. The structures also accomplish for those who dwell in them a sense of importance shared with monarchs and wealthy families of long ago: a reminder who is important, who stands above the rest of average society.

And yet there are differences from that earlier time help explain the particular nature of panoptical power in our time. The most obvious is that this power is much more democratically distributed. Instead of one large palace for one family, there are now hundreds of luxury units attached to a tall vertical structure for all to be reminded who's important. Another difference is that today's mini-palaces in the sky are not literal political symbols like their ancient predessors. Whereas political leaders used their grand residence as a projection of their power over others, luxury condo towers serve as monuments to the occupants' apparent success and their association with an elite leisure class. Many among us aspire to become part of that leisure class due to their seemingly boundless sense of freedom and financial security. Yet the lifestyle of leisured elites resembles that of celebrities, who seem to make news simply by attending some leisurely event like movie premiers, awards shows and parties.

Buying property to upgrade one's social status happens frequently at the private level. But the times we live in are quite unique in that climbing for personal prestige is becoming our most significant built legacy. Only a few weeks ago, it was declared that tallest building in the world is now in Dubai. The 160 story tower contains mostly condominium units and an Armani brand hotel. In Chicago, there are plans to build an extremely tall spire on the most prominant waterfront site in the city, containg luxurious condominiums spiralling to the top. Currently the first ninety-plus story building in decades is underway under the Trump brand on the Chicago river, featuring condos and hotel sharing personal concierge services. Flying over Miami recently, speculative condo towers seem to have be growing like weeds, utterly changing the landscape of that city forever. The magazines on the airplanes were full of ads promoting spectacular towers in a place that not too long ago was briefly occupied American troops-Panama.

What particularly made me realize the significance of the rise of the residential tower in cities was when it was announced not too long ago that the first major addition to my home city's skyline would be a forty-two story condominium tower in the Dallas Arts district. The units in the tower are selling for no lower than a million dollars each. A stone's throw away, the most significant downtown development since the 1980s is going up. Called "Victory", it consists of a series of condo-hotels and upscale retail catering specifically to the leisured elite. The project's "cherry on top" could be represented by the private helipad roof sitting atop the tallest unit above the W hotel, belonging to none other than the Victory primary developer himself.

What does this say about the contemporary big city? The rise of corporate commercial towers often conveyed the general economic prosperity of the city, giving it regional and national prestige. A newcomer arriving to a major city would view the skyline on the horizon and say to himself "this is where important business is conducted...this a city on the move!" As condo skyscrapers begin to dominate the skyline of important cities, can one necessarily say the same thing? My first impression upon seeing these new skylines would be that there are a lot of wealthy people who live there that want to enjoy views. They say little of that city's overall economic health, or what life might be like for the majority of people who can't afford to live in these vertical mini-palaces. Gleaming downtown office towers connote opportunities for work and advancement. Glitzy condo towers symbolize the opportunities already taken, a city reserved for those who have already made it. They do not produce marketable commodities and ideas like their commercial counterparts, but merely display the byproduct of those successful producers themselves in a memorable and highly monumental form (the high-rise). One critic of the condo boom in American cities notes that many of those who own units in these towers are not even residents of the city in which they are located. Like the office towers that preceded them, many of the towers are pure speculation, built to no compelling overall civic need.

Imagining how future urban historians will regard the developments at the turn-of-the millennium American city (and a few international centers like Dubai), it seems to me evident that the story will involve the rise of luxurious high-density living anchoring the revival of old downtowns as well as the establishment of new satellite city centers. As the nineeteenth century turned into the twentieth, the story of American cities was their exuberant commercial growth, the development of the high-rise as a response to speculation as well as the creation of a new class of workers--the office worker. New architectural vocabularies (Gothic revival, art deco, Chicago style) responded to the overwhelming drive to build vertically in order to accomodate an army of office workers helping produce the massive quanities of goods and services for the industrial age. Nowadays the need for towers comes from a fast-growing upper class benefitting from the opportunities made possible by the post-industrial information age. Business has opted for low-rise suburban campuses or spec-office parks while the new rich's growing desire to show off becomes one of the only remaining reasons to build higher and higher.

A Right to the Land: Who Has it, and Why

My mom recalled an interesting airport conversation to me recently. Held over in Dallas, she was making small talk with a woman from Oklahoma when she mentioned she was from Louisiana. This naturally led the conversation to discussing Katrina, its aftershock, what should be done to rebuild the city, etc. My mom is of the opinion that it is rather non-sensical to try to recreate New Orleans just as it was, i.e., put people back in harm’s way. After all, the city is still sinking, the levies can hardly be trusted, and the Mississippi River is still washing away valuable sediment it had deposited for centuries during flood season before the Corps of Engineers put in dams. But this opinion was met with a rather harsh rebuttal. The claim from the conversation partner was that those who were displaced had a right to the land, that the 9th ward, for example, should be rebuilt as it was, and those who had moved out should be moved back in.

Undoubtedly these are the two poles that encompass the thinking about rebuilding New Orleans. This has brought up several philosophical questions for me. Who has a right to any land? How did they get such a right? Are there times in which cultural forces trump traditional understandings of private property, land allocation, etc.? My view tends to be that if New Orleans is to be rebuilt, several things need to happen first.
1. The coast needs to be replenished with soil; let the Mississippi naturally flood the region to provide some barrier for future hurricanes. Yes, this will take many decades, but the sooner we start, the better.
2. Get rid of incentives that encourage systemic poverty and reliance on government bailouts. We saw what happens when passive reliance on government meets inept and uncaring government agencies.
3. Be corporate friendly. Louisiana notoriously has an out-migration problem and only 1 Fortune 500 company in the state. Follow the lead of other southern cities and become manufacturing/technologically friendly. There are loads of auto-manufacturers along I-20 and Austin has become a mini-Silicon Valley. New Orleans has decided to rely on its history and sleaziness alone for tourism dollars. It’s time to be forward thinking and let the great historical/cultural background be just that, the background.

So what to do with all the displaced? Don’t they have a right to return home? The argument heard by my mom was as follows: Because most of the folks in the 9th ward were displaced to begin with (brought from Africa as slaves), they deserved to be resettled (at government expense) to the land that was taken from them. There was no property claims as such, as much as cultural pleas. Because cultural ties to the land were all these people had (their music, food and community) they had the right, even a moral foundation for resettling the land.

But who is to say anyone had a right to that land, even if their culture was alive and well there? While no one enjoys being displaced, what exactly in the course of history tells us that any ethnic group has a right to any land? With the rare exception of the Jews (who, according to scripture, were promised land by God, and historically did, in fact, settle the land, through conquest or slow agricultural/social hegemony), I can think of virtually no clan of people who didn’t move, or weren’t threatened with the prospect of moving because of natural/military forces. Even Native Americans, whose suffering was real and well-documented, were overcome, rightly or wrongly, by superior military forces, disease and political deception. But as wrong as this was, we would be remiss if we thought of it as new in the history of human colonization. It’s as old as the land itself. So whereas the Jews seem to have an unusual claim on the Land, especially post-WWII, I can think of no other group that has such protection.

Our only real claim to land then is as individuals, and it is only protected in the historically rare combination of effective rule of law and the protection of private property. I haven’t written an article in many weeks because I have been in the middle of move. My wife and I purchased our first home, and I have to say, cliché as it may be, I’ve never loved America so much. The idea that financial institutions were competing to help me own a piece of the world that basically no one can take from me was surreal. I hope I never take the ability to own private property for granted. (Of course I know that these financial institutions will make a mint off of me, but hey, it’s a tax write-off, and they’re taking an enormous risk giving me a lot of money.)

And ultimately, I think this has instructed me on what to think of re-building New Orleans. Let the market decide if it is worth re-building, not faux moral imperatives that dictate past residents there have the right to resettle there. Businesses and corporations are in better places to discern if New Orleans will be profitable city with a high standard of living because they stand to profit from it. The land shouldn’t be re-settled by past inhabitants just to try to “make things right.” It might make us feel good, but there is not necessarily a moral imperative to do so, and if it is economically infeasible, why make the same mistake twice?

For a wonderfully comprehensive take on the rebuilding of New Orleans, go here.

Helpless Hands: From Arts and Crafts to Blobitechture

Organic Baby Farm's Wacky Hermit follows up on a discussion by Glenn Reynolds about the lack of basic hand-skills among younger adults. Hermit blames the rise of foreign trade, which have made cheap goods so widely available that many skills that substituted the need to buy new replacement have lost their value in saving money. Hermit provides a good example of this change:

Myself, I have the ability to make over a dress, taking it apart down to its component parts and re-making it into a different dress. Back when dresses were not cheap, this was a valuable skill. Not so much anymore, when you can go down to the dollar store and buy spangly knit things off the rack. Who would pay me a couple hundred dollars to make over a dress, when for half that they could have a new one?

I think Hermit has correctly pointed to only a small aspect to a larger historical process of growing mechanization, mass production and urbanization. The growing loss of hand-skills is not entirely new, but rather a development that has been accelerating since the introduction of machinery since the beginning of the Industrial revolution almost two centuries ago. Factories opened allowing many people to leave subsistence farming, a lifestyle that required a tremendous amount of hand skills, for one where knowledge of operating machinery involved mindless repetitive tasks. As the forward march of technological innovation has spawned the current post-industrial era where factory workers have been forced out of a manufacturing dependent livelihood into one of information-dependent service jobs. Cheap goods made available by mass production have given way to days spent typing on keyboards and clicking on mouse buttons managing an amazingly complex yet abstract tool called software. Each major change further away from a life where one had to make much of what one needed has led to succeeding generations defining themselves more as consumers rather than makers of things.

Although Wacky Hermit and Glenn Reynolds refer more to young people's inability to do simple repair and construction, the loss of hand-craftsmanship goes along with this. One of the hardest hit victims of the industrial revolution were those who lived on crafting carefully by hand objects of daily use. Who needed or could afford a craftsman to produce a one-of-a-kind chair or table with fine details when a manufactured alternative was available at much lower price? This problem inspired the Arts and Crafts movement, which emerged during the latter half of the nineteenth century as an effort to reorient creative energies to craft traditions that were rapidly being lost by industrialization. Brits such as C.F. Voysey, Charles Rennie MacIntosh and William Morris and Edwin Lutyens along with some German luminaries followed principles that countered "soul-less" machines by embracing autenticity particular to the way a craftsman directly shapes forms from raw materials. Detailing was crucial to this approach to design, as it allowed individually authenticity to shine, contrasting it with the monotony and lack of attention inherent in mass manufacturing. Many of these designers were critical of the division of labor, preferring a master craftsman to design every single part of a structure, from exteriors, to interior trim, all fixtures and even free-standing furniture (the total work of art-gesamtkunstwerk). In contrast to simply drafting shop drawings and handing it over to a manufacturer or contractor to finish, an Arts and Crafts designer would oversee the entire process and would partake in the execution of every little detail. This was no doubt an exhaustive way to practice but it inarguably produced some of the most original and the highest quality works of any period. Its influence cannot be understated, as even the machine-worshipping Bauhaus school began with arts and crafts curriculum at its founding after the first World War.

Though many of the buildings, textiles, furniture and decorative metal work from the Arts and Crafts movement were popular, it was obviously not very efficient and very unaffordable compared to rapidly improving mass-production processes. It was a fruitfully innovative time for designers, but the sophisticated hand-skills the movement championed were simply uneconomical, so much so that subsequent designers who were imbued in the arts and crafts tradition adapted to the new rules brought about by the machine. Modernist heroes such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius and yes, even Le Corbusier were trained thoroughly in the Arts and Crafts style. For them, the movement offered them a means to reimagine new forms for modern times, detached from the classicism that represented older, and in their minds, irrelevant times. Wright's Prairie style was mostly an evolution of the 19th century craftsman style, Gropius helped design an elegant German style arts and crafts house in Berlin as one the first Bauhaus school projects and a very young Le Corbusier was trying to synthesize an arts-and-crafts/art nouveau architecture for his Swiss hometown. As many in their generation gradually embraced industrial processes, their arts and crafts experience would inform their poetic understanding of detail and their sensitivity to materials and color. These masters' timesless furniture designs are a testament to the careful yet expressionistic tendencies that characterize the arts and crafts movement.

As hand skills in the making of objects have given way to machine precision, new skills in understanding the manufacturing processes are essential to creating any object in high detail. While no longer able to properly handle saws, chisel, or even lay masonry, modern designers have developed an enlarged understanding of a plethora materials technologies that did not exist a century ago. The computer has only intensified the pressure on designers to be containers of information, so much as to devalue that last basic hand skill - drawing. To the surprise of most outside the design professions, it is no longer necesssary to demonstrate technical proficiency in drawing, nor has it ever been since advent of the Modernist curriculum in design schools beginning in the 1940s. The Beaux Arts curriculum which emphasized a mastery in drawing and water color rendering would be replaced by a Bauhaus-inspired attention to concepts , abstraction and the thought process in design. A hand-skill for building quick cardboard models to follow the progression of an idea took precedence, only to be succeeded by 3 dimensional computer models in the last decade. As I've mentioned in a previous post, I predict the ability carefully manipulate an exacto knives, Dremel power tools, acetate sheets and wood will decline and become an outsourced specialty. When thinking about my daily routine at my architecture job, it makes no sense to wield my abilities as a master manual draftsman, a technically flawless renderer or a detailed model maker, when what is truly needed is my expertise in manipulating computer software as well as making problem-solving design decisions. Since it is enough work for people like me to apply my technical and theoretical knowledge to the daily avalanche of client and consultant demands, it makes more economic sense and is a better use of every one's time and talents to outsource hand-skill specialities like rendering and model-making to outside entities, often in places in China and India, where high-quality craftsmanship and technical ability are cheaper.

All these rapid changes in the design professions do not excuse a willful ignorance of some useful hand skills. Drawing skills are a valuable tool in exploring design ideas and concepts and are an accessible way for students to understand how we humans perceive objects in space and light. Model-making skills allow designers to better understand the composition of space, structure, and immediately inform aspects of texture and light. Rendering skills such as charcoal drawing or water color not only force one to contemplate we perceive objects in its context, but engender an ability make abstractions of nature. Although I consider myself competent in all the above skills, I regret that my architectural education could not cultivate them further. It's even more depressing to think that the nature of my job allows no time for me to refine these classic skills, since it's more important to troubleshoot software glitches, write countless emails, and field questions from colleagues. Design, whether by drawing or model-building, requires a single-minded concentration that is the antithesis to the contemporary practice of multi-tasking. Hand skills would be nice, but only after all of the more "important" tasks have been completed.

We can moan the loss of these hand skills endlessly, but we should temper it with the awareness that new skills have emerged that have enhanced designers in unexpected ways. The technological savy of younger workers have allowed them to be more productive and absorb information much sooner. The fact that many recent architecture students have had to learn a large variety of software applications in the span of a few years before starting their first job makes them far more flexible and versatile in the workplace, drafting construction drawings one day, coloring rendered elevations the next, and preparing a walk-through animation the next. Even if older colleagues convincingly demonstrate their command of project management and client/consultant relations, their utter inability to learn sophisticated computer skills beyond writing email reminds me that it is experience, not their hand skills that keeps them in their pivileged position. New skills gained by young professionals open up to new ways at evaluting a problem, as well lead to innovative solutions. The complex geometries of today's "blobitechture" are realizable almost exclusively by the deft manipulation of modeling software that is common with younger architects.

Not all new skills acquired by the young are useful, and some activities that upcoming generations cause a regression in basic skills and knowledge. Some computer games will sharpen physical coordination between the eyes and hands, with a few enriching strategic thinking. Still, most of these computer games are a complete waste of time and prevent some kids from engaging their minds with the world around them. Many in this generation are highly dependent on current technology to maintain a sense of normalcy, making them very vulnerable when such technologies are unavailable. Hand-skills offer a connection to the real world, a world of matter and natural phenomena, a world created for our bodies and minds to relish in. Virtual reality is a mental construct and a product of sort focused isolation. As "hyperreal" as they often can be, it ends as soon as a hard drive is turned off.

Many architects will tell you that drawing by hand or cutting models is actually therapeutic. There is something comforting about the mind instantly directing the hand to express a three dimensional idea. Even the most intuitive computer program cannot compete with this immediacy, since it often functions as barrier between thought and execution. One often feels hostage to a computer's processing speed, its inexplicable bugs, or a program's restrictive parameters that wont let the user move an object in an obvious way. It's impossible for the computer to accurately catalogue the iterations an idea undergoes before it achieves a finished appearance, concealing the give-and-take, the accidents and the patterns that emerge in drawn sketches or sketch models. These basic hand-skills contain concepts in their barrest essence, which is likely why architectural monographs feature them to accompany built projects. They expose to the viewer the designer's train of thought, and also mark paths taken that may be revisited by the designer later on. Like an expository essay, these forms of sketches can make a complex idea comprehensible and can teach us to think from a different point of view. This increases our awareness of the real world around us, something the digital design procsess, in its isolated virtuality could never do.

Everyone’s a Grump: No One’s Happy When No One’s Leading

I was having a conversation with a faculty member of my (former) institution of higher learning, when I recognized a common theme. Knowing that I was a pretty conservative student at a pretty liberal institution, she recalled a story she thought would interest me. She told me that earlier in the semester, a group of conservative students talked to her about how they did not feel welcome. Conservative authors were seldom required reading, the students were always way outnumbered in class, and even the prayers in chapel felt more politically leftist than true to the tradition. A few days later, apparently unrelated, a group of liberal students talked to the same faculty member about how their views were also not welcome. Not enough was being done for GLBTQ students, there wasn’t enough emphasis on “social justice,” and so the complaints went. I suppose I am a bit naïve, but this story left me shaking my head. How could it be that at the same institution, two diametrically opposed ideologies were equally blighted?

This seems to be a pretty accurate metaphor for the rest of America. I keep asking myself how it is we have arrived at what seems to be a strange place in politics: everyone is pretty grumpy these days. Shouldn’t it be that if one side isn’t getting what they want from government (and/or culture), then the other side should be delighted? Yet, no one seems happy these days, and I have to wonder why. Is it because we have more conduits to exchange information, so both “sides” are better informed about their political parties shortcomings? This may explain why Joe Klein’s blog has been raked over the coals by angry leftists lately. Or is it because the absense of universal truth has left the majority of us without a central connector, and the transition has been very hard to make?

As much as anything, there is a fundamental leadership vacuum at most levels in America, which is certainly connected to a general acceptance of relativism. It certainly starts at the top with President Bush. Not only did he begin his presidency as a favorite target of the vitriolic left, he has mysteriously but steadily alienated his own party in proportions hard to imagine. Peggy Noonan said it best here, so I won’t repeat it. Suffice to say, he has shown marginal leadership in only one area, albeit a big one, the War on Terror/Terrorism/Terrorists, or whatever we are calling it these days. And even this successful leadership (over a war that alienated many of the libertarian conservative ranks) has proven to be as stubborn and myopic as aggressive and visionary.

And as a Christian, I am actually starting to question something I never thought I would, which is the detrimental impact Bush’s faith may have had on his presidency. Again, call me naïve, but I once considered Bush’s faith to be an asset to his leadership, but I have come to see it as more of a liability. His faith seems similarly stubborn and myopic, which comes across as more fundamentalist than faithful. And this isn’t to say he should abandon principles, but perhaps humility could have come more into play. I don’t know that he believes a war against Islamic forces is the will of God per se, but his faith has led him to a misguided optimism that Christianity doesn’t necessarily endorse. This is most clearly seen domestically.

His “anything goes” attitude (reflected in his zero-veto policy, and his endorsement of spending, federal education and now amnesty) seem to come from pseudo-optimism about human nature. Yes, Mr. President, human beings are capable of amazing good. And horrendous bad. His job as a conservative leader, which we now know he’s not, was to encourage the good by limiting government, not growing it, and discourage the bad by enforcing laws, not endorsing new ones that encourage illegal behavior, for example. In this regard, he has been a near total failure, and an enormous disappointment.

But all is not lost. If anything, Bush’s shortcomings could help a strong, articulate conservative candidate get into the White House. Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson seem to fit this bill pretty well, though they’re not perfect by any means. And these candidates will need all the help they can get; with 8 years of Bush and a Democrat-controlled Congress, it would be a rare historical event for a Republican to win. Third party, anyone?

Throwing Sego to the Trash Bin: rejecting French socialism for Monsieur Sarko

As a French national, I was allowed the opportunity to cast my vote for President de la Republique. French expatriates and others like myself reported to the Dallas International School, an elegant Gary Cunningham-designed private campus founded by French corporate executives to educate their children (Alcatel telecom and Accor hotels have a big presence here), to cast our ballots. It was quite unlike voting in an American election, where one fills in a scan-tron sheet full of numerous items with a pencil. Rather, voting for the French president consisted of taking two slips of paper, each with one of the candidates' name on it, then going behind a standing booth. The act of voting was completed by throwing away the slip of paper of the candidate you did not want into the waste-paper basket below the booth, and inserting the slip of your chosen candidate into an envelope. Finally I walked over to a table with transparent box containing all of the completed ballots, dropped the envelope through the slit sealed by a special trap door (to probably prevent vote-tampering).

Although it felt awkward to me at first, I now believe that the act of throwing away one of the choices was an appropriately symbolic way of my desire to see France get rid of the old way of doing things in order to begin anew. For anybody who've read my previous postings, I naturally voted for the candidate who promised a much-needed change in direction, Nicolas Sarkozy. I've followed his rise through the French political ranks, and I was impressed by his verbal response to the recent riots in France. Watching him in his debate with his socialist rival Segolene Royal, I was comforted by his cool demeanor, his command of the facts and his embrace of pro-growth economic policies. Beyond this, I appreciate the fact that he did not come from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA) the elite school that has traditionally groomed the French political elite for the last few generations. It produced a constant stream of technocrats and unaccountable leaders unable to re-think the problems plaguing France.

I've waited for a little time to pass before making any judgement on whether Sarkozy was for real. With the appointment of an untraditional foreign minister and his plan to revamp France's mediocre university system, it seems that some form of change is on the way. My wish for my birth country isn't that it becomes more American, but rather that becomes strong and confident. France has all the prerequesites to becoming economically and culturally dynamic, magnanimous and cooperative in its foreign policy. It can also distinguish itself as a Western European country that can remake itself for a new era and challenges, feigning traditional answers to lagging problems and instead trying out new ideas from the ground up. France could show the way in dealing practically about Europe's alienated Muslim population, standing up for the primacy of its culture over the relativist currents that infect mentality of many on the continent.

Most importantly, from the perspective of this Franco-American, I hope for a France that grows out of its debilitating anti-Americanism. More than simply wishing for a greater diplomatic rapprochement between France and the U.S., I'm hoping that daily conversations and news articles among the French will not be consumed by an anti-American point of view. It's allright to maintain an identity of independence from the U.S. with defining it as anything opposite of American identity. Anti-americanism is an ideology in that it takes very narrow assumptions about what Americans are and builds from them a coherent set of ideas that permits a narrow kind of thinking. Like any ideology, it limits one's ability to generate new ways of solving problems, since narrow assumptions are inadequate to think realistically about the causes of problems. Regardless how much we'd like to believe that Americans only want to spread the rapacious forces of market capitalism, secure single-mindedly all of the world's natural resources for itself and infect the globe with decadent pop culture, these kind of assumptions fail spectacularly in understanding our motives and fails even worse in predicting what Americans will do in the future.

Although anti-Americanism can be politically useful in the short term, overall it has always been unhelpful to those who succumb to it. It has never mad anybody wealthier, more productive, more independent nor has it led to any greater level cultivation. Complementing the adversarial foreign policy of the French against American interests during the last few decades has been a denial by many French citizens of real problems that would have been better addressed were they not to reflexively label anything untraditional as American. The common French journalistic practice of calling certain policies "Anglo-Saxon" deliberately narrows the ways the French define themselves, declaring that if it's been done in England or the U.S., it can never be done in France. To not be "Anglo-Saxon" makes "dirigiste" the default "French" policy for everything. Thus, Anti-Americanism and its anti-Anglo-Saxon variant only strengthens the bureaucratic and political elite of France, leaving all other classes of French people no better off. I can't emphasize enough how many times I would listen to my French relatives whine about the same problems that afflict their people, and each and every time would not even give ideas coming from American experience the time of day. The cultural identity of the French has become firmly entrenched in the socio-political tradition of the country, to the point that to be French is to also be a socialist. Somehow it is lost to many that in other times the French could monarchists, democratic totalitarians (French Revolution), Colonial Imperialists, and so on. Why isn't it just as French to be freedom-worshipping individualistic entrepreneurs?

That is my hope from a leader like Monsieur Sarkozy. I'm less interested that he is described as pro-American by some media outlets than that he's transcended the flippant critiques of Americans that have been a pastime of previous French presidents. He has the courage to tell the French people what they are not used to hearing from their leaders. And he is wise enough to realize than the balm of anti-americanism in France is an impediment to reclaiming and redefining what the French can be. If Sarkozy does disagree with the U.S. on certain policies, it is hoped that the merits of his arguments rely on more than opposition for opposition's sake. In terms of international alliances I'm hoping that he'll associate with a better set than Islamist dicatorships, shady African genocidal regimes, and other Third World countries too feeble to break free from France's current neo-colonialist policies. If he makes such changes France will have a firmer standing in opining on affairs affecting the world at large.

Contrary to what many Frenchmen may believe about people like me, we do not wish for France to become another American drone or "poodle". We wish only that it act reasonably on all issues from a position of confidence, not craven fecklessness. A sensible, robust, prosperous and confident France will make the job of maintaining international order that much easier on all nations, especially on the U.S. Maybe I'm expecting too much from Sarko, but the act of throwing away the ballot for Segolene Royal at the booth reminded me that eliminating the accumulation of socialist stasis on my birth country was an available choice for me this time.

Lessons from Mexico: Cities and Social Trust

Not too long ago I made a short trip to the most populated city I have ever visited. Judging from its relatively small airport and its lack of a concentrated cluster of tall towers, it was not evident that I was among the twenty million or so inhabitants living in Mexico City. It was unquestionnably much more dense than my home base of Dallas, with almost every block being no lower than 3 stories in height. The highways, themselves relatively small considering the amount of traffic that rides on them, rarely elevated over the city. They felt more like high-speed urban boulevards, with short ramps, narrow lanes, ground level views of the surrounding buildings.

At first impression, Mexico City feels more like a low-rise European city than anything else, except for a smattering of corporate towers dotting the broad valley landscape. Monumental avenues criss-cross the city, intersecting at roundabouts featuring statues and ornamental fountains. The city's 19th century planners evidently applied Baron Haussman's techniques to lend the city international respectability and cultural prestige (similar to other great Latin American capitals such as Buenos Aires). Such a planning tendency is logical considering the city's Spanish colonial influence, in which city's were founded by a main plaza with a church on one side, a government palace on another, and a grid of streets for residential and small commerce. The city has grown exponentially since its founding days, and despite planning moves to visually unify such a sprawling and fast-changing city, Mexico City is at best a chaotic patchwork different neighborhoods, social classes, and varying qualities of construction.

I say this from the narrow point of view of staying and doing business in the city's wealthier western districts. With its leafy paseos in between busy automobile right of ways, its four to five story buildings framing each avenue as well as its breezy semi-private courtyards tucked away from the street, memories of European cities were triggered in my mind. Upon closer observation , I was reminded why this part of Mexico City was quite unlike the European cities it aspires to, as it gives off the impression that much of it is a disorganized jumble. Since I myself am a fan of the unexpected beauty of such urban jumbles, I was trying to figure out why such a highly regarded area of the city left me unsettled in my appreciation.

My Frenchness affects me at a subliminal level, in particular in the way I perceive order and beauty. I often have to temper my oh-so-French tendencies to create austere monumental volumes and spaces with a more English kind of spontaneity and randomness. Such competing mental influences indeed color my impression of places I visit, which is why I actually think that Mexico City is an intriguing city in spite of its obvious socio-economic flaws. Rome holds a special place in my heart for similar reasons, with a similar randomness tempered by a refined Italian sense of materiality and detail that is not nearly as evident in even the fanciest parts of the Mexican capital. Why is this so? The answer comes from the idea that architecture is a pretty accurate manifestation of the culture that builds it. Inhabitants in this largest of cities aspire clearly in their buildings to express their modernity and their cultural sophistication but are limited by the fractiousness of social class, the lack of enforcement of regulations and an insecure public realm.

The last point was probably the most striking during my visit. I wasn't allowed to trust any taxi company, nor was I able to evade the surveillance of ubiquitous security guards (no more than 50 feet apart). Almost every storefront, particularly of upscale brands, had armed guards standing by to look for shoplifters. In suburban districts where pretty much all the inhabitants are wealthy, subdivisions are gated, with armed guards standing outside to prevent any unwanted infiltrators. To go to a business meeting, I had to submit my I.D. and be checked off a list of expected visitors by a lady behind a bullet-proof window booth outside the office building before being allowed in. On scenic residential streets, rampart walls and opaque gates line the sidewalk. It is impossible to look out to the street at ground level, something we suburban Americans take for granted across our green front lawns. I am aware that historically dense cities contain residential blocks where there are few opening along the outside wall, while views are all oriented to private courtyards. But even in the most admired European cities, the visibility of the street at ground level from inside a residence is taken for granted. One certainly doesn't have the feeling that they're being watched or tracked-down.

Although I love unpredictability and individuality, there has to be some level of regulation. Public sidewalks should not be encroached, commercial graphics and other signage should not appear just anywhere on the outside of a building, and a structure should never be left unfinished even when it is fully occupied. Public safety does indeed have its place, and I was disturbed how the design of exiting systems (dead-end corridors) were routinely ignored, guardrails and handrails non-existent, and ramps on new buildings were treated as an afterthought. I am not trying to be picky, but I find that certain minimal safety precautions are necessary in an area prone to massive earthquakes. Crossing a typical street has been made difficult by the 1 foot-high curbs, which were designed to prevent cars from climbing over to the pedestrian right of way. One has to pretty much hop on and off on curbs because they're so high, which makes it difficult to stroll casually.

Where there is so no public safety there follows little public life. I was amazed how in a city as dense as Mexico City, there were relatively few pedestrians. It seemed that most people would take cabs directly to their destination and back with little interest in strolling beyond. Here, everything is point-to-point. At night the restaurants and clubs were full of people, but outside these pockets activity, there was no one walking on the street. I wouldn't blame them, either, since I would never would want to take my family for a walk along the sidewalks. They're narrow, poorly maintained and uneven by all the private car ramps every few feet. I won't claim that this isn't problem in the U.S., since in many places, it is (my own neighborhood has no sidewalks). But for a city that models itself after the extremely pedestrian-friendly cities of Europe, one should expect more street life from one of the world's most populous metropolitan centers.

These kind shortcomings testify to a broader pattern of a lack of social trust in developing nations. One of the essential ingredients to national prosperity is a high level of social trust, allowing an environment where strangers can interact freely with one another, collaborate on joint ventures, provide capital to entrepreneur's ideas and so on. It is not enough for an elaborate set of laws to be drafted to force strangers to trust each other, it is imperative that respect for another's property and dignity as a human being be deeply ingrained in a society's cultural psychology. Such unwritten but consciously internalized safeguards make it possible for drivers not even to contemplate driving over medians or sidewalks, for street-level windows to be unprotected, for people to wander around the city or a store without uniformed personnel minding your business. What's most important is that social trust makes possible for cities to be more live-able, for life to be a bit easier as we don't have to worry about our own security. Until that level of social stability is achieved, the rich will wall themselves off from the poor, the poor will remain in their ghettos, and the influence of "bourgeois" values of respect, decency, scholarship and ambition to those who need it most will be stifled. This class isolation retards progress on all fronts, not least in the development of mobile and economically dynamic cities .

In the western suburban areas of Mexico City have so many wonderful things going for them but at their core are impediments that prevent them from truly being enjoyable places to live. The new Mexican upper middle class is growing fast, and have been filling up the western slopes of the metropolitan area with brand new apartment towers, exclusive subdivisions, and flashy shopping centers. The views from the hillsides are spectacular, the slopes as steep as those in San Francisco and the colorful warm colors of the cubic facades of houses embellishing the area's natural beauty. The area's suburban-ness precludes any real pedestrian street life, but even there, the street curbs are high, guards are every where, and shopping malls must accommodate chauffeurs (in Mexico City, chauffeurs are much less status symbols than a means to avoid using taxis which cannot be trusted, especially for individuals with high social standing). All the ingredients are there to make the western outskirts of Mexico City a destination to outsiders to visit, but the architectural manifestations of a low public trust make just another area where the new wealthy keep to themselves. Communities here are not defined by an abstract sense of civic consciousness as they are by the consistency of social class.

The lesson for me is that there's so much potential to create enjoyable public spaces in our own country. The social trust in America is very high, and the ease at which we can wander anywhere should not be taken for granted. I very much prefer the architectural taste of the Mexican elite over their American counterparts, as they agressively embrace contemporary design trends and feel no pressure to revive past styles superficially. But all the freedom to design as freely as one would like has little affect over changing the insecurity of daily life of less developed countries. You can design another Paris, but without more fundamental improvements in social trust, the inhabitants would prefer to live in a more mundane city like Dallas.

Being a 2-Year-Old Again: Thoughts on the Dictatorship of Relativism

I have not had the joy of raising children yet, but I understand there is typically some trouble during the child’s second year. As during the teenage years, the child will begin to assert their independence from his parents, and engage a troublesome process that forces the child to struggle with how much he is his own person, and how much he is part of a larger group. Some have called into question this period of the “Terrible Twos,” saying the period varies from child to child in terms of severity and length. But whatever one wants to call these stages of rebellion, they usually have something in common: the child insists on doing things their own way, and placing their worldview over and above others in the group. This can be a wonderfully painful process by which we grow and mature, provided we do not stay in such a phase for very long.

Those who remember these rebellious phases, then, may understand the way in which it is a dictatorship – you really can’t win either way. If you tow the party line, you lose your individuality. But rebelling against authority isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, either. It’s isolating, self-centered, and a generally unhappy experience, even if it is necessary on occasion. These periods of growth are often times of great confusion, because there is no universal truth for the truth-seeking 2-year-old or teenager. By definition, they are going through periods where their growth depends on their distrust of given truth, so they become perfect models for the study of relativism. 2-year-olds don’t know why they’re rebelling, and can’t give any good reasons to oppose their parents. But they do, and they seem miserable while doing it. They are living in the dictatorship of relativism.

Of course it was Pope Benedict XVI who so brilliantly and concisely defined the true damage of relativism; it replaces one dictatorship for another. (For more on his early legacy, I strongly encourage this podcast). The failure of centralized truth claims in Soviet Communism and National Socialism called for a radical de-centralization of truth claims, which both lead to a certain type of prison. If what is True is only true for one person, then that person will soon find themselves in solitary confinement. Perhaps a healthier alternative is to grow into maturity where we are unafraid to latch onto some truth claims, but not all. Isn’t this what the 2-year-old must eventually learn how to do?

Ironically, in a faith where Jesus claims to be the way, the truth, and the life, theological relativism is all the rage on the campus’ of America’s mainline seminaries. Theological relativism/liberalism is the theology of a 2-year-old. And that’s why it stinks. While there are tomes of theological works that have stood the test of time waiting to be devoured by seminarians, the majority of my theological education has revolved around Queer, African-American, Hispanic, Native American, Womanist, Feminist, and Korean theologies. In an effort to pay special attention to the individual theological truths for each person, we’ve neglected to hold to what is True for all people. And now that we’ve gone down this road, how do we possibly turn around without appearing unsympathetic, or even cruel. How can we now say, “You know, I really think each person theologizing for themselves alone is bad.” It’s sort of like saying to you spouse, “I used to love you, but now I’ve changed my mind.”

What I’m trying to get at is that for us to be truly free, we must place our stakes somewhere. Eventually children understand this, from the ages of 4-12, and probably after college. Somewhere along the way, we learn that it’s better to hold fast to our family, and learn how to disagree, rather than cut ourselves off for the sake of our rebellion. To equate all truth as equal is to state there is no truth at all. And to live in a land where there is no truth is to live under the dictatorship of relativism. Bravo to the pope for giving us this phrase; if this is not a prophetic call to change, I don’t know what is.

Will Imus Keep a Conservative From Taking ’08, or Pave the Way for One?

As everyone jumped on board the “Fire Imus” bandwagon last week, I experienced a very familiar feeling: a violent futility that mirrors the catch-22 in which conservatives often find themselves. I wanted to yell out, but realized that doing might help fulfill the stereotype that conservatives are angry loudmouths. I wanted to defend him as others have by comparing his comments to what we regularly hear in hip-hop. But others might see me as fulfilling the “conservatives are racist” stereotype. Whatever my reaction was, I realized I was in a catch-22, where any action that seemed natural would “fulfill” the false stereotypes that leftists have successfully generated about conservatives.

I experience the same thing at my liberal academic institution, and even from time to time in the church, where things are more political than ever. If I say that racism as it is defined by the academy isn’t as bad in America as it is in other places, I’m part of the problem, because I am denying and suppressing the truth of racism. If I argue that we, as a society, have an obligation to help those in need, especially minorities, then I am paternalistic, and my help isn’t wanted. It seems that the only real way to have traction is to take the “low road”, which is what we used to call the “high road”. In our easily-offended culture, the only way to show that you are truly above-the-fray, that you are morally above reproach, is to champion every cause that “helps” the underdog, and pounce without mercy on the perceived racists and bigots of the world.

So conservatives may have a harder time, maybe a much harder time, in the future to defend their ideas. Think welfare reform was hard in the mid-90s? Who would want to touch it these days? Think immigration reform is likely now? If Imus can get fired for what he said, the labels “racist,” “white supremacist,” etc. would surely be in play for those advocating reform, and few politicians have the will to follow through. I would argue that unless there is enormous push-back among voters and consumers, the sensitive nature of political correctness in America Imus exposed will make it much harder for a conservative to now be elected president. After all, who among the politically indecisive would want to ally themselves with Imus by NOT voting for Obama or Clinton? In other words, ideas may be losing their power; now, it’s all about posturing.

Or, there may be an enormous vacuum that a strong conservative can fill. If the frustration over what happened to Imus and the subsequent debate about hip-hop and hypocrisy in the media builds, an outspoken conservative may be able to awaken the sleeping Republicans. Not that I am very confident any significant legislation would emerge, but it may be better than the alternative. Perhaps the backlash over the Imus debacle could actually lead to immigration reform, but only if conservative politicians show political will they have so far been unwilling to exhibit.

In the end, ideas must continue to be of primary importance, not the opinions of others. The strong, silent type so perfectly seen in the likes of Howard Roark is becoming a more and more hated commodity, and far too many are taking the low road of championing causes in speech only. If all it takes to be above reproach is to say the right words, which may or may not be true, our standard for critique has become dangerously low. I propose we ignore most of what people say, and focus on what they do, because talk is cheap, for better or worse. As lofty as the Sermon on the Mount was, it would have meant very little if Jesus had never healed the sick or raised the dead.

It was a Long, Cold Global War on Terror/Terrorists/Terrorism

I have become increasingly confused as to what to call the war, or the series of battles, or the skirmishes in which our military, or intelligence, or coalition forces are engaged in in Iraq, or Iran, or the Middle East, or world, against terror, terrorists, radical Islam, or haters of freedom. Now that I have made it clear what I am confused about, let me express my real confusion: how has a false threat (extreme climate change) overtaken a real threat (terrorist states with nuclear capabilities)?

I am reminded that the first stage of grief is denial. We saw a pretty clear case of denial this week when the House Armed Services Committee banned the phrases “global war on terror,” and “long war.” As the offensive “surge” seems to be working in Iraq, and Iran is starting to show its vulnerabilities by taking hostage, then quickly and oddly releasing 15 British marines and sailors, it seems House Democrats need to deny any of these signs of progress. The best way to do so is to ignore the reality in which we are engaged: a long, global war on terror. It reminds me of the victim in horror movies who repeat lies to themselves over and over for comfort: “He’s gone,” or “It’s going to be okay,” or “It was just a bad dream”, all the while the audience knows a madman with a knife is hiding behind the curtains. So while they are quite literally denying the real war, they are embracing a false one.

It seems inevitable now that Congress will eventually act on the “growing consensus” that extreme climate change is both man-made and reversible. Perhaps the next President will sign us up for the Kyoto Protocol. In the meantime skeptics of global warming, like Michael Crichton, are articulately and patiently voicing doubt. His State of Fear makes several particularly salient points with regards to the faulty science that so assuredly predicts global disaster. But perhaps more importantly, he points out that we have essentially replaced our fear of the Cold War era with our fear concerning environmental destruction. For instance, he points out the massive upswing in words like “crisis,” “catastrophe” and “disaster” in news media since the end of the Cold War, apparently to fill the vacuum of fear. Consider this excerpt:

“There was a major shift in the fall of 1989. Before that time, the media did not make excessive use of terms such as crisis, catastrophe, cat­aclysm, plague, or disaster. The word catastrophe was used five times more often in 1995 than it was in 1985. Its use doubled again by the year 2000. And the stories changed, too. There was a heightened emphasis on fear, worry, danger, uncertainty, panic.”

Crichton claims the rise in these words is directly linked to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the vacuum of fear that was then created. With the Cold War over, what would we wring our hands over?

But according to this insightful article in the Wall Street Journal, our face-off with Iran is eerily similar to the Cold War. So what seems to have happened is this: we lived with fear during the Cold War, even learned to adjust to it. We won the Cold War, but had a vacuum to fill, so we have with a classic fear-mongering scam, global warming. But now that we face a very real threat again in Iran, we are incapable of dealing with it because other, larger threats like environmental degradation have diverted our intention.

Worse, they have relativized our fears: it’s allowed many to say, “What’s worse: One lunatic in the Middle East or the extinction of life on earth?” This false relativization has prevented us from switching gears yet again: the tide seems so firmly focused on the false war of climate change, we can’t focus on the real one, the Long, Cold, Global War on Terror.

Worthy of note as well are the similarities Iran has with Hitler's ideology, mainly in the lack of fear concerning national suicide. In a culture where martyrdom is upheld as a social virtue, we have lost have similar bargaining power that we had with the Soviet Union, who did at least seem interested in national survival. Did our victory in the Cold War convince us we cannot be beat? If we continue to discredit the fear of global warming, will we be able to focus again on Iran, or similar nation states with evil intent?

I reckon I am glad it is Holy Week: at least I have theological answer to all of these questions, if not a political one.

Relievedebtor Echo Syndrome? “Christian” Under Attack Again

This is hardly an echo of anything I wrote, but in November, I posted some thoughts regarding the viability of the word “Christian” in a Postmodern context. Because America largely sees itself as Christian culturally as much as spiritually, the label seems to be losing its vitality, and needed to either be reclaimed or replaced. I suggested “Disciples”, “Followers of Jesus”, even “Apostles”, all of which have limitations of their own. In the end, I’m not sure how much titles matter: “A rose by any other name…”

Anyway, this article made two salient points on the question, this time regarding Evangelicals specifically. Because of fracturing within Christianity and even within Evangelical circles, it is harder, if not impossible, for that term to define a core of beliefs. What is it that unites them? Scriptural inerrancy? The movement of the Spirit? Worship style? Global warming?

Yes, apparently global warming, as a “subset” of stewardship of creation, is a hot-button issue for some Evangelicals. These are environment-friendly conservatives who may agree with Al Gore that caring for the environment is now a “moral” issue. But is there more behind this recent embrace of environmentalism? I have a sneaking suspicion at least two major forces are driving this unlikely union, besides legitimate concern for stewardship of creation. (I personally do not equate stewardship of creation with massive economic regulation.)

First, Evangelicals are tired of being taken for granted by Republicans. As David Kuo points out very well in Tempting Faith, Evangelicals have been seen as guaranteed votes by the Bush administration, and it’s worked well for Bush. Spoken about in the same language that minority groups have been spoken of concerning voting for Democrats, Evangelicals will simply not go down that road. In other words, Evangelicals are too smart to just be pawns in a nasty political game; they want to carve out their own niche. Second, in true Postmodern form, Evangelicals are becoming more liberal at heart, which to my mind is not altogether a bad thing. Major divisions in Evangelical circles around the ordination of women and the accuracy of the Bible have already taken place. I would not be surprised if the homosexuality question isn’t next. Whereas that question has been debated for many years in mainline Protestant circles, Evangelicals to my mind have hardly entertained conversation. That may soon change.

So like the word “Christian”, the word “Evangelical” is quickly losing value. In the words of the author Paul Chesser, “One historical credo for traditional evangelicals is that they stand on the truth, first grounded in the Bible, and secondarily in measurable, incontrovertible evidence. Human-induced global warming doesn’t pass either test...If evangelical is allowed to go the way of Christian, we may need to develop yet another identifier. Conservagelical, anyone?”

The Economist and the Land: Lessons from Milton Friedman

A few months ago I came across a documentary on PBS recounting the life of the economist Milton Friedman, one of my true intellectual heroes. The production was mostly sympathetic about his accomplishments and his personality, and it revealed aspects about his personal life. One thing that intrigued me as I watched the documentary was the footage that showed Mr. Friedman at home. Rather than spending his personal time near the campuses in which he taught, Friedman and his wife chose to spend the spring and summer months in their rural second-homes. Thoughout most of Friedman's career he and his wife would return frequently to their house in Capitaf in Vermont.

What I remember from the images of the family enjoying themselves at their second residence was the architectural distintiveness of the houses. The "Capitaf" in Vermont was a very modest structure, nestled among the trees that comprise much the forest that covers the property. The main living room featured a panoramic view of the valley below made possible by generous expanses of glass, thin framing. Inside was further connected to the outside with deep overhangs offset from the windows, which emphasized the house's overall horizontal proportions, similar to the Prairie Style houses of Frank Lloyd Wright. I remember the house's materials being simple, reflective of its site and probably the regional vernacular. Milton and his wife Rose would return to Capitaf for more than 30 years, which attests to a true love for the land and his resolve to dwell in a structure respectful to the landscape.

When he was made a fellow at the Hoover institute in Stanford, the Friedmans chose a secondary residence in California that possessed the same kind of relationship with its environment that their home in Vermont had. He states in his autobiography:

"Initially we continued to spend spring and summer quarters at Capitaf, our second home in Vermont. However, we soon came to appreciate the inconvenience of maintaining homes a continent apart and began to look in California for a replacement for Capitaf."

110 miles north of San Francisco off the Pacific Coast, the Friedmans came across the Sea Ranch condominiums and decided that place was optimal for their needs as scholars who love the outdoors. When I learned that he and his wife lived in the condominium community for many years, I was impressed that such a landmark building was so loved by one of the world's most admirable thinkers.

First completed in 1965 Sea Ranch condominium complex is considered by many architectural history surveys as one of the first examples of a “post-modern” style. Counter to principles of universality and uniformity that were embodied in the Modernist movement, the design of Sea Ranch was driven by its surrounding context, being sensitive to a place’s natural and historical particularities. The complex was Charles Willard Moore’s first triumph, and helped establish his reputation as a prophet for the post-modern architectural movement. Moore would go on to run a handful of successful architectural practices, earning the reputation as a humble designer and writer who eagerly collaborated equally with his colleagues and who enjoyed a long career as a teacher. Sea Ranch marked his first major phase that was preoccupied in reinserting formal variety, designing simple details and specifying modest materials. This phase was later succeeded by another that meditated on the role of architecture as a language and ironic metaphor, best depicted in his design of the Piazza d'Italia in the late 1970's.

Whereas a typical modernist response would feature flat-roofs, texture-less walls of concrete or stucco, and large planar glazed walls emblematic of the International Style, Charles Moore’s approach consisted of adapting the formal typology of the North California barn (one of which is found on the site), wrapping the walls with weathered wood siding, and orienting each unit to take advantage of natural day-lighting and breezes available on the site. Projecting bay windows frame views of the Pacific Ocean while providing an intimate scale for the occupant. Each unit is unique in plan and elevation, but such heterogeneity is tempered by Moore’s use of a reductive vernacular, the materials, and repetition of shed roofs. The landscaping is limited to keeping the native grasses short enough to prevent brushfires, accomplished by using a herd of grazing sheep, further emphasizing the historical identity of the site. One’s overall impression is of a quiet village firmly rooted in the landscape, as if it had been there for a long time.

What must have attracted Milton and Rose Friedman to Sea Ranch was the calmness and privacy inherent in its design. The gentle terracing of the units along the sloping bluff, it’s the almost parallel relationship between the roof pitch and the incline of the land helps express a quiet humility in its environment. The lack of porches and deep overhangs are opposite conveys a desire for occupants to be left alone. It’s the perfect environment in which to reflect on all kinds of matters important to such a man like Mr. Friedman. He could pursue his research with complete concentration there. He ended up living over two decades at Sea Ranch before living there became too inconvenient in his old age. He wrote:

"In 1979, we purchased a house on the ocean in Sea Ranch, a lovely community 110 miles north of San Francisco. In 1981, we disposed of Capitaf and began to spend about half the year at Sea Ranch at intervals of a week or so, spread throughout the year, rather than in one solid block. It proved a fine locale for scholarly work. The Internet plus an assistant at Hoover more than made up for the absence of a library near at hand."

Sea Ranch was probably one of the best-known examples of what is now called “green architecture”. It didn’t incorporate as many environmentally-friendly materials as what is available today, but its response to the site’s microclimate, its use of local renewable materials for its structure and exterior as well as its application of native vegetation are common “green” strategies.

To my knowledge, Friedman was not the kind of environmentalist in the sense that he would have favored rationing production by government decree. What seems apparent from his time spent at his Capitaf retreat in Vermont and at Sea Ranch, was that he enjoyed nature for its spiritual and emotional power. He seemed to relish in its simplicity and calm, which probably helped ensure his long life and his undiminished sense of humor.

Update: Welcome Marginal Revolution readers! Feel free to explore other postings on the site. With a Franco-American architect and a classical guitar-playing Lutheran pastor as your writers, there's lots of stuff that you might find interesting...

Is Our Lack of Manners a Return to Primitivism?

I was fortunate enough recently to visit Paris, and I was reminded of the importance of manners. Especially in a place where one doesn’t speak the language, it is crucial, if you aim to be a polite guest, to be sensitive to the mores and traditions of the host. Most of this can be accomplished with basic manners. So my wife and I went out of our way to not be the ugly American, to observe Paris for exactly what it is, and respect it as we found it. The Parisians seemed generally happy to accommodate.

First, some comments on the French: they get a bad rap. Of course, I was a tourist in tourist areas, and perhaps it was in their best interest to be polite to me. After all, Americans are used to tipping, and the French don’t seem to find it patronizing anymore. (We found a 10-15% tip was the norm indicated on the menus.) The rumors of rudeness I had heard proved unfounded for me, even as a non-French speaker. Everyone from wait staff to pedestrians was willing to help, and often spoke English without me even asking if they could in the broken French I remembered from high school and college classes. (It was hopelessly obvious I was an American tourist, complete with a large camera on my shoulder. I have no shame.)

Manners, I was reminded, are the oil of societies. As much as children resist them in their more rebellious years, and as much as societies in general revolt against them from time to time, I see the wisdom in highly regarding a polite society. Criticisms of such societies usually run along these lines: to have excessive manners is to mirror the ruling classes, and hence give them tacit authority for ruling. This is why kids rebel against the manners of their parents, and why entire cultures change their mind about manners. (We no longer curtsy, for example, which is probably a good thing.) Postmodernism has taught us to distrust authority, and consequently, it seems we distrust the rituals, however minor they may appear, that are complicit in such trust.

For example, I am not sure we show the kind of deference we used to for veterans, our elders or authorities. If respecting authority is no longer a recognized value, it makes sense that manners could be seen as disposable. Pastors, politicians, and parents are all traditional authoritative figures that are subject to question, perhaps more now than ever. As I contemplate walking in my father’s footsteps to record my grandparents (all four are still living in their mid-80s), I wonder if my children will have any interest in listening to what they have to say?

I should add some context to my Paris trip as well: before I left, I saw a newscast about the way teenagers have descended to, shall we say, “primitive” forms of dancing, rubbing their hips against each other before so much as exchanging names. I also have mourned anew the popularity of rap music, now that I have finally admitted to myself that it is not a fad, and children from affluent, moral homes cherish to the most base music produced. I know this is nothing new, and I recognize I’m a bore with such topics, but I can’t help but think that these overly sexual night club rituals are but two examples our erosion of a polite society. To disregard manners is to disregard authority. To disregard authority is to lose self-governance. To lose self-governance is to begin the path to primitivism.

I thought about this as I toured Versailles. Unlike the usual shred of contempt I hold for the monarchies in such places, I actually found myself defending them. Of course, I’m a republican (little “r” before big “R”), in the true sense of the word, not an advocate for monarchical power. But at least this place had manners, if nothing else. Absurd manners, sure, probably even oppressive manners. But Versailles and its opulence didn’t look so bad when compared to tribalism our society seems destined to romance.

All of these thoughts from a little trip to Paris. Who would have thought I would leave Paris praising them for their manners and chiding America for its lack thereof?

The President and his Land: Lessons from the Architect of the "Western White House" in Crawford

As stories of Al Gore's profligate energy use for his mansion in Nashville have circulated, some bloggers have made mention of the environmentally friendly design of the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. The former Vice President's practice of offsetting his energy consumption with carbon credits brings to light one way which one proposed way of leading a "green" lifestyle. Paying for the right to emit greenhouse gas in exchange for promises to absorb these gases elsewhere seems much easier than having to change one's lifestyle by rationing energy use and integrating natural processes in our daily lives. Carbon trading seems to me more a matter of abstract bean-counting rather than living a life in greater direct harmony with our natural surroundings that defines the ecological lifestyle.

From my perspective, the greatest benefit in employing green design is the opportunity it avails in strengthening the bond a dweller has with the spiritual qualities of the site. There's a bit of a transcendentalist influence to this idea, but I find that those who demonstrate a true appreciation for nature are those who actually own property on which that nature is found. As property, the natural assets within it has a real, not just transcendent value. The fact that Bush's ranch house features "green" design has less to do in conserving marketable resources on his property than with a desire to demonstrate a genuine love for his site.

How do I know this? I was a student of the architect that designed Bush's "Western White House". David Heymann, as talented a professor as he is a designer, shared numerous stories to his students about the experience for working for "the governor" at the time. Bush's ranch house was planned at the beginning of his second term as governor of Texas. Before that commission, Heymann was engaged more as an academic than a practicioner, having designed a handful of small projects in the midwest and Austin. By serendipity and extremely loose connections with the Bush family, he was entrusted by them to realize their permanent retreat in Central Texas.

Heymann was responsible for teaching site design at the school, and pushed students to ask thoughtful questions about the meaning of landscape, context, and a building's relation nature in the technical and spiritual sense. As the ranch was being framed in Crawford, Heymann would show pictures of its construction and providing details on the systems and materials being used. Although he confessed that his politics were on opposite spectrum of the governor's, he revealed that he has never had a better working relationship with a client than George and Laura. The future first lady made sure that the architect's needs were attended to, even calling him to see if he had arrived safely back from his site visit.

Part of why Heymann enjoyed working for the Bushes was their willingness to listen. As a self-described environmentalist, Heymann was determined to intergrate sustainable design into the new ranch. George W. Bush heard his argument in a one-on-one meeting, letting Heymann make his case. From my recollection, the architect presented the contention that if you love the land that you inhabit that the governor surely did (and continues to return to often during his presidency) you will do what is necessary to preserve its essence, and implement a design that does not intrude upon the landscape. The resulting single-story home is rather small from what it could have been at only 4000 square feet, with heating and cooling partially provided by geothermal technology, rainwater is collected and stored for irrigation. It also resulted in a funny story that involved Laura accompanying the architect at a store searching for water-efficient toilet fixtures.

Construction photos revealed a shallow plan oriented along the path of the sun. A deep roof overhang shades the south-facing facade as well functioning as covered porch that runs around the entire perimeter of the house. The width of the house is limited to single room which uses the perimeter porch as an important means of circulation along the house's length. The porch thus serves as a breezeway, a space that mediates the transition between inside and outside. This transition between the sheltered spaces and the surrounding landscape is made more seamless by the maintaining of grade level throughout. The house does not sit on a raised podium, but anchors itself firmly within the lay of the land. A gravel-filled moat surrounding the porch floor collects water runoff while delineating a sensitive threshold between the house and nature. Copious floor-to-ceiling windows provide each room with distinct views, further tying the indoors with the outside. In an effort to tie the house to the surrounding region as a whole, the house is clad in left-over limestone from local quarries, which exhibit a rich variety of colors often eliminated when processed as a clean, cream-colored masonry. The metal roof, while contributing to a higher albedo (refection of light back to the sky), it evokes the use of sheet metal in barn buildings and sheds in Texas.

Heymann notes that there is a current trend which involves the movement of people who are moving out of the cities to rural sites in order to recapture a sense of calm and the replenishing energy from nature. Like the Bush family's Crawford residence, he sees it as imperative that sensitive site design and an architecture that derives some of its energy and materials on site will reveal nature's regenerative power. Although my former teacher, like half of all architects these days, would call himself "green", his rationale in applying green strategies is for me the most compelling. He may believe that a more systematic and universal application of green methods may make a noticeable difference against global warming, but he also understands that there is more emotional and aesthetic case for green design that can persuade all people regardless of their political disposition. I'll admit that he was one of my school's best teachers, commanding strong rhetorical skills often lacking among architects. Having David Heymann critique your studio project was a mixed blessing, in that he would have a lot to say about your project and would not hesitate to point out the weaknesses or your design at length. But contrary to many reviewers who'd rather fumble with pablum, everything he said was well-reasoned and insightful, peppered with humor and an awkward passion. He ended up posing difficult questions about assumptions we students would take for granted which demonstrated a convincing grasp on the latest architectural theories. I wouldn't be surprised if Heymann's personality as a dedicated teacher rubbed off on the then-governor.

Heymann grew to like the future first family, and may have actually attended Bush's first presidential inauguration. Although he shared little with the president politically, he would not refuse the opportunity of getting to know a man that reached out to his architectural creed. The lesson here is that the relationship between a client and an architect is about more than partisan affiliation. It entails fulfilling an emotional need of the client to his land and allowing the architect to achieve a solution respectful to the site's uniqueness.

This goal is close to what I think architecture should be: creating beautiful spaces that function for the client on various levels, both technically and emotionally. It's a far less defined goal than calculating points for LEED certification or specifying a building's carbon footprint, but it is fundamental towards producing timeless design that moves us in inexplicable ways.

The Price of Progress: Are We Still Willing to Pay it?

The other day in class at my very liberal seminary, I committed a cardinal sin: not only did I defend capitalism in the face of Christian theologians citing it as the world’s principle moral evil, I suggested that short-term hardships were often (get ready, here it comes!) “the price of progress.” It went down like this: a member of the class mentioned that NAFTA has “forced” a local plant to shut down and move its jobs to Mexico. I mentioned that this could be considered a good thing for Mexico, to which she responded, “But at the cost of losing indigenous jobs.” I said, “Well, that’s the price of progress.” The collective gasp in the room was surprisingly intense. The teacher struggled to regain control of the classroom, and practically had to save me from the tar-and-feather brigade. What a mistake I had made!

The incident reminded me of two facts: too many in our culture have lost the ability to grapple with complex processes, and too many have lost the willingness to sacrifice. This conversation is the perfect example: in the same breath, a woman who I generally regard as intelligent, bemoaned the ill-effects of NAFTA (a loss of “indigenous jobs”) as well as the fact that her local church didn’t do enough “advocacy” on behalf of the poor. Do you see the contradiction? If you want to “advocate”, support NAFTA! It just gave a lot of good jobs to Mexicans. She wrote off NAFTA based on a soundbyte: “We lost American jobs,” never even attempting to consider the net benefits of free trade. Second, even though she says that she wants to see the lives of the poor improve, she apparently doesn’t think it should cost her or her community anything. Others will have to pay the cost for the lives of the poor to improve: classic NIMBYism (not in my backyard).

Something else has left these sorts of discussions: the ability to be coldly objective. I have written before about the reality that justice is a cold-hearted venture. Similarly, in the world of ideas, to argue a point without emotion has always appeared to me to be an asset. Apparently it’s not. I had to spend a good couple of minutes defending the fact that I, as a pastor, wouldn’t throw parishioners to the curb if they came to the church needing help because they had just lost their job. How I might help someone personally with someone who was unemployed and what I believe objectively about free trade need not intersect; this apparent contradiction was too much for others to take. For me to imply that America and Mexico are both better off in the long run if America stops manufacturing was seen as cruel. While I was stating an objective fact – the loss of jobs is historically the “price of progress” (ask IBM’s typewriter manufacturers) – a roomful of my opponents made personal judgments about my character.

Of course, it’s not just economics. We se it in our foreign policy: we want peace in the Middle East at no cost to anyone (except Israel). We see it in liberal theology: we can’t risk saying to any moral behavior lest it portray us as hypocrites. So what happens, then, when the majority of a country will not sacrifice? Two things come to mind: it must learn to abhor progress, which demands sacrifice. And it also must despise those who promote progress, since they are the harbingers of change. This may explain why leadership in general is a more precarious place to be than before: to lead people towards progress that involves sacrifice disrupts the inertia they have grown to love. So leaders that maintain the status quo (the Clintons come to mind) are heralded while leaders that promote change (Bush) are hated. Until we can accept that there is a price to progress, I will ignore the cries of those who wonder why we never make any.

A final thought: one of the prevailing myths about capitalism is that for one person to get rich, another must get poor. This is not true. Free trade generally ensures that two parties can both be better off by letting the other do what they do best (aka, the comparative advantage). While there is always a price of progress, the beauty of the market is that it minimizes the price, and disperses it fairly.