Book Review: With Liberty and Justice for Some

With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, by Glenn Greenwald (2011, Metropolitan Books, New York) reports the news: powerful people have attacked a founding principle of the United States, equality under law. These people, politicians and corporate interests, have reached a point where they dismiss Federal laws and international agreements openly, even boastfully. Greenwald provides in-text sources for the modern-day events and quotes the Founding Fathers or gives Constitutional sources for his background references. However, he does not give footnotes or endnotes should a reader wish to check the references.

Greenwald’s communication strength rests on his passion. He does very well at saying, “This happened, here’s proof it happened, and it’s wrong because it’s against the Constitution and the intentions of the Founding Fathers!” He makes this statement in reference to equality under the law very thoroughly, focusing on events from the President Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon to President Obama’s refusal to investigate or prosecute either Bush Administration torturers or Wall Street’s grand-scale fraudsters.

Greenwald spares neither parties nor personalities; liberals, conservatives, and moderates will each find some discomfort here. He also removes the illusions of those who still see the media as eager to expose wrongdoing. Greenwald concludes with a contrasting chapter on the lot of the less powerful, pointing out that the US prison population is huge and tends to be minorities and poor people. He points out that this growing prison population, largely non-violent drug users, does not correlate to either lower crime rates or reductions in drug use. In this chapter, he gives a good background to suggest why this continues despite its inability to achieve the stated results.

The flaws in Greenwald’s communication derive from his failure to go beyond passion. Except in the last chapter, he gives little background for his characters or their times. For example, why would Nixon do something as desperate as the Watergate break-in when he was leading in the polls and very likely to be re-elected without that? Why do people who make millions of dollars annually seek to make more millions by violating the law?

More importantly, he only cries foul; he does not suggest changes to make or even consequences of the current course. This negates his passion. Moving people to strong feelings without asking them to do something brings them depression and frustration, not understanding and satisfaction.

In short, With Liberty and Justice for Some gives a clear and impassioned picture of the decay of equality under law in the United States, but does little to help one understand why this is happening or what to do about it.

Book Review: Pictures of the Mind

Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are
Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald
FT Press, 2010

Here's a book on brain imaging, and it turns out to have everything to do with communication. After all, communication of any sort originates in a brain (mind) and is directed to other brains (minds). Beyond that, people find it easy to believe they understand their own actions, moral values, and identity. Many people even believe that their memories given a clear and complete picture of their lives. This book addresses all of those questions, and the answers will enlighten readers.

Pictures of the Mind opens with a discussion of the differences among people in different non-responsive states; some are essentially dead, some not. Work on those distinctions should matter a grat deal to anyone whose loved one(s) cannot respond to stimuli. In fact, because accidents or illnesses can put anyone in such a state, this matters for all of us.


Having made a strong beginning with that important topic, Pictures of the Mind goes on to examine a new understanding of how people can change their personalities (emotional responses to life) by effort and why that matters so much, which includes a discussion of something I have learned from experience, that meditation is a more effective treatment than medication for some illnesses.

The chapter on happiness should help cheer readers after the serious topics, and happiness turns out to have a serious side itself because happiness and health go together. This also marks Pictures of the Mind as more than a discussion of illness; health, mental as well as physical, needs study. Then comes  unhappiness; the next fascinating finding is that addicts have important brain responses in common with people who suffer chronic pain; progress in studying one might lead to progress with the other. This chapter adds a great deal more to that finding.

The most interesting part of the entire book for many readers will be the chapter on morality. This addresses whether the "brain" is exactly the same as the "mind" as well as the fact that the brain handles different moral decisions in measurably different ways, with contradictory results. Equally interesting, young brains do not have the same capacities or the same responses as grown-up brains. A fascinating discussion of legal and moral responsibility ensues, considering both people with impairments and "normal" (no measurable defects) citizens. Of course, spirituality, religion, and whether they are separate from the mind become a running thread in this section.

The chapter on memory (including releasing the power of or even removing traumatic experiences) and the concluding chapter on the "self" continue the fascinating quest to understand what it means to be human. The author is considerate enough to include a list of resources at the end of her book, so readers can continue learning about this fascinating subject.

Book Review: Willful Blindness

Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, by Margaret Heffernan; 2011, Walker & Company, New York.

According to the bio on her book jacket, Margaret Heffernan is a former producer for BBC radio and TV and has been CEO of several interactive media companies. She came across the term “willful blindness” in the transcript of the Enron trial, and it so interested her that she eventually wrote this book about it. The term “willful blindness” means “you are responsible if you could have known, and should have known, something that instead you strove not to see (p. 2).” It matters not whether this avoidance was conscious or not. As with so many books, the subtitle makes the point. This becomes a communication topic because none of us can reach an audience that will not listen.

Heffernan goes on to examine in detail ten important causes of willful blindness, with examples ranging from match.com’s use of affinity (like attracts like) to the role of fatigue in the disastrous explosion at BP’s Texas City oil refinery to the factor of being too sure of one’s ideas in the collapse of the world economy.  She makes interesting connections by means of these causes. For example, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, held onto the idea that “free, competitive markets are by far the unrivaled way to organize economies (quoted on p. 59)” long after the derivatives market endangered the economy in ways that he, of all observers, should have seen. He chose to hold onto what he already believed rather than see the facts in front of his face, a trait he shares with much of the world’s population, including some folks who believed that an alien space ship would save them from a world-ending flood back in 1954. Even after their entire prophecy proved false, most of them continued to believe, just as many American politicians continue to believe in “free, competitive markets” today.

Heffernan uses a chapter to examine each of the ten causes of willful blindness, and then gives us hope by including a chapter on people who do not blind themselves and one more chapter on ways to reduce one’s own blindness. Heffernan weaves her stories together very neatly around her themes, never losing track of the need to keep the reader involved. She uses a wide range of history and research to support her ideas, but this book reads far better than an academic paper. (Following up the endnotes is optional.) She gives a good bibliography and index, each of which increases the academic value and believability of Willful Blindness.

If you ever ask, “What was he thinking?” or “How could they not know?” read this book.

Willful Blindness

According to a book of the same name, "willful blindness" is a legal term for ". . . the idea that there is an opportunity for knowledge, and a responsibility to be infomed, but it is shirked." (Willful Blindness, by Margaret Heffernan, copyright 2011; Walker Publishing Company: New York.) I am still reading the book, and learning from it. The first three chapters discuss important reasons people ignore or fail to process important information. Expect a book review when I finish the reading. Unfortunately, that must take a back seat to my college courses, but I will persist.

I hope the importance of this to communication hits readers here immediately. Talking to people who fail to listen even if your subject affects them wastes your time and energy. Finding ways through the barriers stands to improve your communication skills much more than using "might" rather than "may" when some expert deems that appropriate.

Stay tuned for further discussions of this and related subjects.