zenpundit.com

Former Governor, former Presidential candidate and former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Howard Dean unveiled the Democratic Party’s trial balloon for the election of 2012. Normally, I bold all the text in an excerpt but I will do so from this POLITICO post only selectively:

….Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Dean, who’s also a former Democratic national chairman and hero of liberals, asserted Fox News failed to vet video footage of a speech misleadingly excerpted to make it appear that Sherrod was boasting of using her post as an Agriculture Department official to discriminate against a white farmer.

“I don’t think Newt Gingrich is a racist, and I don’t think you’re a racist,” Dean told Fox News host Chris Wallace, “but Fox News did something that was absolutely racist. They took a – they had an obligation to find out what was really in the clip. They had been pushing a theme of black racism with this phony Black Panther crap and this business and this Sotomayor and all this other stuff.”

When Wallace interrupted Dean to point out that Fox did not air the excerpted Sherrod footage until after the Obama administration had fired her based on it , Dean shot back “It was about to go on Glenn Beck, which is what the administration was afraid of.”

And Dean mildly rebuked the Obama administration, as well, saying, “We’ve got to stop being afraid of Glenn Beck (a Fox News host) and the racist fringe of the Republican Party. But Fox News was not blameless during this. You played it up.”

Dean dismissed Wallace’s point about timing, asserting “you didn’t do your job,” and charging that Fox News has helped the Republican Party foster racism by focusing on allegations of reverse racism.

“The tea party called out their racist fringe and I think the Republican Party’s got to stop appealing to its racist fringe. And Fox News is what did that. You put that on,” Dean said. “Continuing to cater to this theme of minority racism and stressing comments like this – some of which are taken out of context – does not help the country knit itself

In just this brief section where Dean is quoted, he used the word “racism” or a variant seven times and is paraphrased saying it twice more. Most likely, the transcript of the show will tally more uses of “racist” than just seven to nine in a few minutes of air time. Now either Howard Dean, a wealthy man born into a elite family, a graduate of St. Georges prep and Yale University, a physician and very successful governor, has only a rudimentary vocabulary or Dean was doing a crude imitation of George Lakoff’s  verbal “framing” and testing the Democratic Party’s none-too-subtle campaign theme:”All Republicans are racists”.

The underlying issue here is not about Shirley Sherrod or even racism, but of political power.

It seems likely at this point in time that the Democratic Party is headed for a reprise of their 1994 electoral disaster, despite the Republican Party being incompetent and bankrupt of both leadership and ideas ( in fact, given the demonstrated ineptitude of Micheal Steele as the GOP spokesman, the bast tactical stance for Republicans might be to just shut-up and only speak from unimpeachable ground that 60 % + of the public agrees with).  The war is not going well and the economy is worse, while taxes and spending are going up. That all of this is not the fault of Democrats is irrelevant because enough of it is and having all the power, the voters see them as accountable.. Having decided to govern from the left of center – maybe not Netroots Left, but left of moderate Democrats and Independents, under the aegis of Pelosi and Reid – the Democrats have irrevocably branded themselves for this election cycle and probably the next.

Not having any appealing points for undecided voters and independents leaves the Democrats the option of the hardball attack with the objective of mitigating the damage. How does trying to build an association between the word “racism” and “Republican” do that as it obviously fires up the Republicans to come out and vote by angering them?

Partisan liberals (note: I am not saying all liberals or all Democrats, just the zealous partisans) tend to believe that the only viable explanation for people not accepting their political agenda and exercise of power is a) Stupidity, or b) Evil motivations – among which, racism is the most evil of all.  In other words, there is no “legitimate” basis of democratic disagreement with them, only error and malice. Which is why many partisan liberals today, like the ranters exposed on Journolist, often come across to non-liberals as humorless authoritarians in a way that past liberals like Hubert Humphrey, William Brennan or Barbara Jordan never did. This campaign theme, while partisan liberals enjoy attacking Republicans immensely, isn’t for them either. They already are sure votes and maxed out political donors.

No, the target audience for Dean’s framing are the younger, basically apolitical, white voters who came out and voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and whom polls suggest won’t do so again. A second group are socially liberal, Democratic-leaning, independent swing voters. A coordinated drumbeat of prominent Democrats relentlessly attacking opponents as “racists” is designed to keep the first group at home on election day so that they do not vote Republican and to motivate the second group to come out and vote against them. In swing districts and states this might keep a few seats in Democratic hands that might otherwise go to the GOP and it could permanently tarnish or destroy some Republican politicians and turn them into damaged goods.

This is not a stupid tactic. It might not matter, if public sentiment is as angrily anti-incumbent and anti-Democrat as some polls suggest but such a framing campaign is based upon reasonable evidence that negative memes work, that charges of racism are an effective form of slander in American society, that Republicans are highly unlikely to mount an effective counterattack and that a majority of voters are only dimly aware of the factual details of political life. The prospect of losing power makes it a worthwhile gamble for Democrats – especially if figures whom voters cannot punish, like Howard Dean, lead the charge ( it also helps that a certain percentage of members of Congress of both parties harbor some degree of racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, religious bigotry, misogyny or other unseemly prejudices more obscure and tend to do and say things that give evidence of such beliefs. Public life is a target rich environment for take-down efforts).

Could Republicans respond effectively? Of course. There’s all sorts of ways to go for the jugular here, but they probably will not. Newt Gingrich, for example, could have demolished Dean on live television but he chose not to do so because Newt himself plays the “framing” game far better than does Dean and explaining to the uninformed what Dean was doing diminishes Gingrich’s own future rhetorical effectiveness with said uninformed public. Most other Republican leaders lack Gingrich’s intellectual firepower and debating skills and would either try to ignore the charge of racism (a loser move) or fall into protesting their lack of racism so as to better make themselves the object of ridicule as well as abuse.

The poor Republican Party, so close to power and so far from strategy.

Frequent commenter T. Greer had an outstanding post on historical analogies and cognition at Scholar’s Stage:

Musing – ‘Cognitive Consequences of Historical Metaphors’

You can summarize the history of the Second World War in two paragraphs. Squeezing the causes, campaigns, and countries of the war into these paragraphs would be a gross simplification, but it is possible. This does not hold true for the Thirty Years War. It is one conflict that simply cannot be related in a paragraph. The number of actors involved, the myriad of motivations and goals of each, and the shifting alliances and intrigues between them all are simply too complex to be stripped down to a single page.* Piecing together the events of the Thirty Years War inevitably takes up much more time and effort than single page summaries allow.

….The implications of this are worth contemplation.

The great majority of policy makers are familiar with the Second World War. If asked to, I am sure that most folks in Washington concerned with foreign affairs and security policy could provide an accurate sketch of the countries and campaigns involved. Indeed, we conceptualize current challenges from the standpoint of World War II; allusions to it are the lifeblood of both popular and academic discourse on foreign affairs. Pearl Harbor, Munich, Stalingrad, Normandy, Yalta, and Hiroshima are gifts that keep on giving – they serve as an able metaphorical foundation for any point a pundit or analyst wishes to make.

Most of these metaphors are misguided

Agreed. Read the rest here.

Actually, we have two cherished analogies: hawks look at a situation and see Munich, but doves see the same conflict and exclaim”Vietnam!”. Neither does much for recognizing unique circumstances or complexities. These analogies are political totems signifying group affinity; or are rhetorical weapons to bludgeon the opposition in debate.

Metaphors and analogies are extremely powerful cognitive tools. But like all forms of power, they can be used for good or ill, well or poorly. Those that capture the essence of previously unrecognized similarities are the basis for generating novel insights from which innovations are derived and problems are solved. Poorly constructed but attractive analogies or metaphors capitivate our attention and transmit misinformation that is efficiently remembered and stubbornly retained, at times in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Charles Cameron, my regular guest blogger, is the former Senior Analyst with The Arlington Institute and Principal Researcher with the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University. He specializes in forensic theology, with a deep interest in millennial, eschatological and apocalyptic religious sects of all stripes.  Here is part II. of a three part series by Charles, entitled “CONFLICT OF COMMANDS”.

PREFACE: 

I would like to state quite categorically that I am not in the business of making “moral equivalences” here. I have culled these quotes from a wide variety of sources – from friend and foe alike, moderate and extremist, local and far-flung. The fact that I juxtapose a variety of quotations in which the issue of divided lines of command comes up in no way means that I equate the principled opposition to state brutality of one quotation with the wilder reaches of conspiracist rhetoric in another. Part I has further details and provides my context. Please note too that as an appendix, I have attached two quotes that only indirectly address the issue of conflict of commands – a white supremacist quote, immediately followed by a principled quote about militia movement members “disgust at the genocidal fantasies in white supremacist discourse” – because I believe it is important to be aware just how far the rhetoric of hatred can go, and just how firmly it can be rebutted.        – Charles Cameron

Conflict of Commands II: Quotations

by Charles Cameron

Principle IV, Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nüremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, 1950.

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

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No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other…

Jesus Christ, in the Gospel according to Matthew, 6.24

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Archbishop Romero to the Salvadoran military, March 24, 1980:

No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God. Now it is time that you recover your consciences and that you first obey your conscience rather than an order to sin.

Carolyn Forche, “Oscar Romero” in Susan Bergman, ed., Martyrs.

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And we call on every soldier working in the crusader armies and puppet governments to repent to Allah and follow the example of the heroic Mujahid brother Nidal Hassan, to stand up and to kill all the crusaders by all means available to him supporting the religion of Allah and to make the word of Allah most supreme on earth.

Operation by the Mujahid brother Omar Al-Farooq the Nigerian, AQAP statement, 26 December 2009

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Oath-Keepers’ Declaration of Orders We Will NOT Obey:

Recognizing that we each swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and affirming that we are guardians of the Republic, of the principles in our Declaration of Independence, and of the rights of our people, we affirm and declare the following:

1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.

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US Special Forces have conducted multiple raids into Pakistani territory, local daily The Nation reported today in a front-page article that was basically just quoting an earlier Guardian story. 

One previous US raid that occurred in 2008 was already known about. And when it happened, there was serious concern as to whether such actions by the Americans might lead to the breakdown of the Pakistani army. One respected London-based Pakistan academic said if American troops kept crossing into Pakistani territory he could envisage a situation where Pakistani commanders would lose control over soldiers who would want to fight the incursions.

Londonstani, blogging on CNAS’ Abu Muqawama

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SINCE its meeting on 28th Shvat 5765, the Sanhedrin has deliberated the initiative of the Prime Minister of Israel, the decisions of the government, and legislation enacted by the Knesset regarding the plan known as “The Disengagement,” henceforth referred to in this document as “the uprooting.”

This plan involves the uprooting of Jewish communities in the Gaza strip and northern Samaria, the forced expulsion of Jews from their homes, and the willful transfer of these lands to a foreign power. Following an intensive study which took place regarding the halachic (authentic Jewish law) questions that arise from the government’s decision, the Sanhedrin hereby brings its conclusions and decisions to the public’s attention. [ … ]

7. Any Jew – including a soldier or policeman – who supports the uprooting, whether directly or indirectly, whether by voting in its favor, or by giving council, or by supplying vehicles or materials, and obviously, anyone who actively participates in the uprooting… by so doing, transgresses a large number of Torah commandments.

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Members of all branches of the United States Military will soon be facing a most critical decision. A report emerged that Obama is using the deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan to cover for the movement of some 200,000 troops, presently on duty in countries other than Iraq and Afghanistan, to USNORTHCOM to prepare for the “expected outbreak of Civil War within the United States before the end of winter.”

LewRockwell.com

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Rabbis and teachers from Hesder yeshivas, which offer Torah studies alongside military service, released a letter to students in which they reiterated their assertion that soldiers must refuse orders if they are commanded to evacuate settlements, arguing that Torah law is above the Israel Defense Forces. … “Unfortunately, the IDF has been used for purposes unrelated to Israel’s defense and directly opposed to God’s wishes for quite some time,” the rabbis wrote in the letter. “This situation faces IDF soldiers with a contradiction between Jewish commandments and commanders’ orders.”

Chaim Levinson, “Hesder yeshiva rabbis: Torah law is above IDF”, Ha’aretz, Deecember 18, 2009.

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AL-JAZEERA: How can you agree with what Nidal did as he betrayed his American nation?”

AL-AWLAKI : More important than that is that he did not betray his religion. Working in the American Army to kill Muslim is a betrayal to Islam. American today is Yesterday’s pharaoh; it is an enemy to Islam. A Muslim is not allowed to work in the American Army unless he intends to walk the steps of our Brother Nidal. Loyalty in Islam is to Allah, His messenger and the believers, and not to a handful of soil they call “nation.” The American Muslim’s loyalty is to the Muslim Nation and not to America, and brother Nidal is a proof on that through [executing] his blessed operation, so may Allah reward him with the best of the rewards for that.

Al-Jazeera Interview with Anwar al-Awlaki regarding Maj. Hasan, December 23, 2009

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You must understand that the desire of the nation isn’t meaningful for someone who believes in the creator.

Rabbi Ariel Bareli, quoted in Christian Science Monitor

(more…)

Charles Cameron, my regular guest blogger, is the former Senior Analyst with The Arlington Institute and Principal Researcher with the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University. He specializes in forensic theology, with a deep interest in millennial, eschatological and apocalyptic religious sects of all stripes.  Here Charles begins a three part series entitled “CONFLICT OF COMMANDS”.

Conflict of Commands I: Intro

by Charles Cameron

What happens when people in the military find themselves torn between the requirements of two chains of command?

I came to this question because two of the topics I have recently addressed here — that of Major Hasan and the Fort Hood shootings, and that of Major Luckert and his monograph on the risk of millennial beliefs driving US foreign policy — have this much in common: that in both cases the issue of obedience to military orders when they are perceived to be in conflict with divine commands came up.

Having stumbled on this correspondence between two otherwise fairly remote incidents, I began to notice similar elements cropping up elsewhere.

Aha, a pattern worth pursuing! I thought.

I have phrased my inquiry in terms of “two chains of command” without specifying that one of them is military and one divine, though that will be the general rule, because there are also instances where the potentially supervening command comes from international law or individual conscience .

I have decided to approach this issue in a three-post series.  This post introduces the issue, the second post consists of a series of quotes that illustrate it, the third post zeroes in on the issue as it affects Muslims in the US armed forces, and contains a link to a significant MEMRI post on the subject, and the full text of a US Department of State document, both of them dating from shortly after 9-11 — and as far as I can tell, not referenced previously in our post-Fort Hood thinking.

My overall purpose in this sequence of three posts is to show that the dilemma of a double chain-of-command is a prominent feature of a variety of different contemporary situations, some of them religious in nature, some revolving around other moral or legal concerns. 

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The second post in the series deserves some commentary, but I wanted to restrict it to the body of the quotes themselves rather than attempting to comment on individual quotes.

I have culled them from a wide variety of sources — friend and foe alike, moderate and extremist, local and far-flung.  I have included sources from Iran, Israel, El Salvador, Pakistan, Burma, and within the United States from an Aryan Nations “archbishop” (in an appendix, see below) to the sitting President — and in some cases I have included quotes from opposite ends of a given political spectrum.  On the whole, I have tried to avoid any explicit patterning and just skip around from one nation, part of the globe or religion to another, although in the case of three different “takes ” on Maj. Stuckert’s monograph, I  have kept the three together for easier comprehension. I do not claim to have been exhaustive, and make no claims of sympathy or disapproval for the individual views expressed.

Indeed, my hope is that as we move through the different examples, many if not most of my readers will find themselves in sympathy with first one side then the other in terms of the need to obey military orders in general, and the need to disobey them in certain situations. 

I imagine, for instance, that the majority of my readers will in general disapprove of inserting a divine obligation between a soldier and his or her plain duty of obedience to orders from a superior officer — but that in the case of the current Iranian government ordering members of its military to attack crowds of protesters, our sympathies are liable to be on the other side of the equation.  In this way, the diversity of the instances may facilitate a deeper understanding of the nuances of the question.

I would also like to state quite categorically that I am not in the business of making “moral equivalences” here. The fact that I juxtapose a variety of quotations in which the issue of divided lines of command comes up in no way means that I equate the principled opposition to state brutality of one quotation with the wilder reaches of conspiracist rhetoric in another.

The final quote in the body of the second post is of particular interest, since it alludes to the theory of Preference Falsification — the only theoretical model for making predictive analysis of this type of conflict that I have seen.

Please note that as an appendix, I have attached two quotes that only indirectly address the issue of conflict of commands — a white nationalist quote, immediately followed by a principled quote about militia movement members “disgust at the genocidal fantasies in white supremacist discourse” — because I believe it is important to be aware just how far the rhetoric of hatred can go, and just how firmly it can be rebutted. 

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The double trouble of Sgt. Hasan Akbar and his influence on Major Nidal Hasan is worth exploring in a little more depth, because Sgt Akbar, who tossed grenades into a tent in Kuwait killing two officers, seems to have been something of a research project for Major Hasan, who apparently asked about Sgt Akbar in an intercepted email to Sheikh al-Awlaki in Yemen:

One e-mail in particular is getting attention from investigators now.

In that e-mail – which the Washington FBI office didn’t see – Hasan mentioned the case of Sgt. Hasan Akbar. He is the Muslim soldier who threw grenades at fellow troops in Kuwait at the beginning of the Iraq war. The attack killed two soldiers and wounded 14 others.

In the e-mail to the imam, Hasan asked whether Akbar would have been considered a shaheed – or hero – for his actions. Given what happened later at Fort Hood, investigators say this e-mail now appears suggestive. But at the time it was not conclusive. Investigators in San Diego weren’t alarmed by the query because it appeared to be consistent with research Hasan was doing at Walter Reed. The Akbar case was thought to be at the center of his research.

For an Army psychiatrist counseling soldiers returning from, or about to enter, combat in Iraq and Afghanistan — and perhaps with a heavier than average caseload of Muslims, with whom he would share a common language — researching jurisprudential aspects of the Sgt Akbar case would be natural.

As Juan Zarate, Bush’s deputy National Security Advisor quoted in the article cited above pointed out:

It is very difficult in the moment I think for analysts and agents and his cohorts and coworkers to piece this together and see they had a ticking time bomb on their hands.

In fact, as we’ll see in the third post in this series, Major Hasan needn’t have troubled the Sheikh in Yemen for an opinion.  The State Department had posted a note on this very topic in October 2001.

But he did contact the Sheikh, and the Sheikh presumably eulogized Akbar’s action, as he was later to eulogize that of Maj. Hasan.

And as I suggested recently in a comment on David Ronfeldt’s fine blog, we can see with the 20/20 hindsight that Juan Zarate also mentioned, that whatever was true regarding the double chain of command that Sgt Akbar was under, which Maj. Hasan was on the face of it legitimately studying, might also hold true for Maj. Hasan himself — for whom the issue was both a research topic and a personal dilemma.

So the FBI gives a pass to the research topic — and the personal dilemma gives rise to the tragic shootings at Ft. Hood.

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One final point:

The problem of conflict of commands has its origin in religion, so it makes sense to take quick note of the theological basics.

The shema or daily faith statement of the Jewish people states “the Lord our God, the Lord is one”, while the first Commandment in the Jewish scripture, the Torah, declares “You shall have no other gods before Me”.  The central tenet of Islam, similarly, is tawhid, the unicity of God as expressed in the first part of the profession of faith or shahada, “There is no God but God” — while to treat any person or other part of creation with the respect due to that God is shirk, the unforgivable sin.

From a secular perspective, these may seem high-flown philosophical and devotional matters, but for the believer they may also have “real-world” consequences, in a way that is prefigured in Christ’s observation, recorded in Matthew 6.24, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other…”

But here we are entering the terrain of Part II of this essay: the collection of quotes.

My bibliomaniacal co-blogger at Chicago Boyz, Lexington Green, just created a new internet meme, with a post entitled Ten Books I Want To Read Again:

I have too little time to read, let alone re-read. But there are certain books that had an impact on me, that I think about from time to time, and that I have an urge to re-read. I suppose that re-reading, or at least wanting to re-read is a sign that a book is part of a person’s quantum library. I have more, but I will pick ten:

• Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine
• Eric Rucker Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros
• Robert A Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
• Homer, The Iliad
• George Orwell, 1984
• Quentin Reynolds, They Fought for the Sky: The Dramatic Story of the First War in the Air
• Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions
• Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
• Evelyn Waugh, The Sword of Honor Trilogy

• H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

A few years ago I re-read Starship Troopers, which had a huge impact on me when I was 11 years old. It was just about as good as I remembered it. I also re-read 1984 about five years ago. I first read 1984 when I was ten years old. I read it a couple of times afterwards. It is absolutely foundational to my thinking. In the ensuing years, I have read almost everything else by Orwell. I found that 1984 was much better than I remembered it being – So much so that I will certainly to go back to it one more time.

A Quantum Library are those books that you read repreatedly because each time you find insights that you had missed or misunderstood previously. While many classics fall into that category, it can be any book with enough pull that you spent the time to read it again. Highbrow literature is not required.

Here are my ten, no particular order:

1. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.

Gibbon, along with Clausewitz and Ranke contributed mightily to the development of the historical profession, with Gibbon as a great inspirationfor many others and a daunting intellectual in his time ( Benjamin Franklin unsuccessfully sought a dinner invitation with Gibbon, while a lobbyist for colonial interests in London). I last read The Decline and Fall as an undergraduate.

2. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright.

Tom Barnett brought up Wright recently, which reminded me how much I liked Wright’s influential explanation of cultural evolution as a force in the Darwinian ratchet in Nonzero.

3. Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray.

Probably the most vilified yet least read by critics book of the last thirty years.

The authors staked out an extreme hereditarian position in regard to the “g” factor of IQ, which they took great delight in juxtaposing in one chapter and one appendix section with aggregate mean demographic statistics in such a way as to rub academic PC sensibilities raw. This politically calculated gesture let them ride to the bestseller’s lists on a wave of outrage, a good part of which was self-discreditingly ignorant of psychometric testing, genetics, economics and social science methodology, which drowned out the more perceptive critics. now that the furor is long past, it would be interesting to re-read The Bell Curve in light of subsequent scientific discoveries about neurolearning and intelligence.

4. The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom.

Read it when it first came out and was carrying it into a philo gen ed class which caused my professor, a pompous ass who disliked me for some conservative opinion I once had the temerity to voice, to pause and announce “Well…at least you are reading a serious critic”. He was reading it as well.

5. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

Bulgakov was the anti-Soviet novelist who happened to also be Stalin’s favorite playwright ( Bulgakov was the author of The White Turbans, which Stalin delighted in repeatedly watching – a quirk of fate which saved Bulgakov’s life and freedom). An unhappy man of great imaginative powers, Bulgakov’s great novel had something like a quarter of a million or half a million words excised by Soviet censors. I’m curious if more accurate editions have been issued.

6. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson.

One of the best single volume histories of the Civil War. A “gateway” book to other Civil War histories.

7. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

For anyone who was ever Holden Caulfield – or who had to teach him.

8. The Great Terror: A Reassessment by Robert Conquest.

This is a hybrid pick because I read The Great Terror and also Conquest’s Reassessment. Conquest is always worth reading, an old school man of letters of whom we will see no more of his like.

9. The Best and the Brightest by David Haberstam.

The seminal, anti-Vietnam War book by a lionized Establishment figure ( lionized now, not during the war), the title of which became a term of cultural literacy. Appropriate because the current administration seems to be too cocksure that they too are best and brghtest.

10. The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevskii.

Dostoyevskii’s psychological portrait of faddish radicalism, earnest nihilism, and incipient terrorism in a provincicial backwater in Tsarist Russia, is another classic that fits the spirit of our times. The Possessed is less ponderous and more satirical than Crime and Punishment and more cohesive than The Idiot.

What are your ten ?