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The following is an excerpt from What Is Ideology? by Mark Shiffman (Wiseblood Books, July 2023). This excerpt was reprinted with permission from the publisher.

Ideology is compelled to distort reality and so is inherently dishonest and distorting of truth, and it is therefore inherently violent. It also naturally tends toward totalitarianism. But even if it does not attain totalitarian state authority, it has an insidious tendency to possess and transform the human being from the inside out. This is the tendency of ideology to destroy, with one’s own cooperation, the humanity or free personhood of those who adhere to it or are seduced by its view of the world, and to some extent even those intimidated into being collaborators. It is the tendency of ideological politics to turn human beings into instruments, not only through compulsion and intimidation, but through their own choice to behave and think according to its dictates.

The ideology substitutes its interpretive framework for the mind’s submission to a reality of complex particulars, competing goods, and a sometimes elusive order requiring humble interpreting. The discipline accepted and self-imposed by the adherent helps to continually force the mind into the narrow channel of the ideology’s logic. The intensity of the zealot comes from belief in the totality of the ideological vision, from enchantment by its hubristic assurance in its own capacity to draw the blueprint and marshal the power to create the world over in its image, from feeling like an empowered participant in its supplanting of God the Creator. This tendency inherent to ideological movements, regardless of how much coercive state power they have attained, is dramatically portrayed in one of the greatest of American novels, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

Ellison’s anti-ideological novel was published in 1952, one year after Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism. With the ideologies of Nazism and Fascism (what we might call ideologies of the right) fresh in the minds of those who fought against and defeated them, Ellison did not seem to see the need to respond to them. His narrator finds himself instead coming under the spell and domination of ideologies of the left, which is to say progressive ideologies. The first is the paternalistic philanthropic vision of wealthy white East Coast liberals who are trying to support the uplift of the suitably motivated black Americans into the industrial-commercial economic system making its comeback after the Great Depression. Booker T. Washington promoted this agenda, while W. E. B. DuBois criticized it as a bartering of one’s social, political, and intellectual dignity for an uncertain chance at economic dignity.

After literally being ground up by the machinery in a factory, Ellison’s narrator, disillusioned with this vision of black economic striving, is recruited by an organization whose principles are recognizably Marxist to speak on behalf of its ideology and to organize its Harlem branch. . . .

The language of the Brotherhood carries verbal echoes of the liberal commercial progressivism it is attempting to overcome, but the words are given a more dehumanizing turn. A rich white philanthropist early in the book talks about the young narrator as a cog in the machine of his great project of organizing human life (according to the standards of advanced civilization). The Brotherhood brings him to the point of taking pride in being a cog in the machine that organizes human energies in the service of their physics-like science of history. The ideology of the Brotherhood explicitly maintains that individuals do not count in comparison to the historical process: they only serve to prepare the way for the humanity of the future, and so are politically meaningless in themselves. As the protagonist learns much too late, in both liberal and communist versions of progressive ideology the historical experiences of black Americans, with their particular cultural ideals and personal aspirations and indignities, do not matter except to the extent that they serve or can be made to serve the larger ideological agenda. Ideology renders their reality invisible.

Describing the height of his entrancement with the Brotherhood’s vision, Ellison’s narrator provides a succinct portrait of his ideological consciousness:

The world was strange if you stopped to think about it; still it was a world that could be controlled by science, and the Brotherhood had both science and history under control. Thus for one lone stretch of time I lived with the intensity displayed by those chronic numbers players who see clues to their fortune in the most minute and insignificant phenomena. . . . I was dominated by the all-embracing idea of Brotherhood. The organization had given the world a new shape, and me a vital role. We recognized no loose ends, everything could be controlled by our science. Life was all pattern and discipline; and the beauty of discipline is when it works. And it was working very well.

The contradiction between the depersonalization imposed by the Brotherhood and the richness and depth of human dignity and suffering comes to a head after the narrator witnesses the police shooting of a black comrade. The ideology claims all right to interpret the meaning of the life and death of this unique person—a person with whom the narrator seemed to be developing his first real friendship, until the organization, by compelling the narrator to act under the domination of the ideology and the discipline of the party, makes him complicit in this friend’s disappointment, frustration, and death.

As he conducts the funeral in Harlem, the narrator’s personal response finds expression only through resonance with the response of the black community, drawing upon its history of suffering and its Christian musical tradition. He suddenly finds himself chafing against the Brotherhood’s insistence on judging the feelings of the black multitude only in terms of whether they can or cannot be put to political use in the present moment. Before the funeral, the narrator had believed that “nothing lay outside the scheme of our ideology.” When the mourners find a unified voice for their grief in an old black spiritual about slavery and liberation, he recognizes that the song is able to say something to him “for which the theory of Brotherhood had given me no name.”

White progressive ideology cannot recognize the black American inflection of the human condition for what it is but can only force it into its own narrative. In Ellison’s view, however, this complex relationship of a historical experience and musical tradition to the mysteries of reality fares no better under the eye of black ideological thinkers. In his 1964 review of the book Blues People by LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), Ellison expresses reservations about the author’s imposition of a social theory framework upon the blues tradition, combined with the “straining for a note of militancy” and the “dissonance of accusation” introduced by his political agenda. Ellison remarks:

Jones attempts to impose an ideology upon this cultural complexity . . . But his version of the blues lacks a sense of the excitement and surprise of men living in the world. … It is unfortunate that Jones thought it necessary to ignore the aesthetic nature of the blues in order to make his ideological point, for he might have come much closer had he considered the blues not as politics but as art.

The blues as art, according to Ellison, “speak to us simultaneously of the tragic and comic aspects of the human condition and they express a profound sense of life shared by many Negro Americans precisely because their lives have combined these modes.” They (like the Sorrow Songs drawn upon at the funeral in Invisible Man) are “part of a total way of life, and a major expression of an attitude toward life.”

Ellison suggests that a book like Blues People would be more illuminating if it were to develop this tragicomic sense of life as a counterpoise to the dominant American sensibility of optimism:

Perhaps more than any other people, Americans have . . .  fled the past and trained ourselves to suppress, if not forget, troublesome details of the national memory, and a great part of our optimism, like our progress, has been bought at the cost of ignoring the processes through which we’ve arrived at any given moment in our national existence.

Such inveterate forgetful optimism may itself offer fertile ground for ideological simplifications of reality, both economistic and nationalistic. For any adequate response to such tendencies, “the critical intelligence must perform the difficult task which only it can perform.” Racial identity channeled through ideological simplification only leads to the militant clash of ideologies, with no attentive connection to experienced reality providing a means of adjudication.

As Ellison indicates, ideological thinking, confident in its redemptive agenda and its theoretical reduction of reality, cannot acknowledge tragedy or comedy any more than it can the mystery and wonder of the given world. It cuts off access to these dimensions of shared experience, which would otherwise nourish critical intelligence by opening it onto complexity. As Arendt puts it, the adoption of ideological thought exchanges “the freedom inherent in man’s capacity to think for the strait jacket of logic with which man can force himself almost as violently as he is forced by some outside power. . . .

As Ellison renders more explicit, part of the intoxicating and animating zeal of this self-inflicted violence is the sense of exercising participatory agency in the great forward-moving force of redemptive history.

The attraction of subjecting oneself to ideological thought, then (as is suggested by both Dostoyevsky’s Demons and C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength), is a new form of something very old: the desire to escape the limitations and uncertainties of the human condition of knowledge and action by availing ourselves of a greater-than-human power. As in traditional tales of bargains with spirits and devils, while we think the superior source of knowledge and power is granting us greater freedom to achieve our desires and control our fate, we discover that the implicit terms of the agreement entail bargaining away our very humanity.

Public domain image: cropped and resized

"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Every spring, when we set out to raise the necessary funds to sustain Crisis Magazine throughout the rest of the year, I have an incredible opportunity to reflect on what it is that makes this publication so important. As donations come in (and they are coming in, alright! We are now almost 50% of the way towards our crucial $100,000 goal. Will you join the campaign now if you haven’t already?)…

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On the Ambrosian calendar, today is the very ancient feast of a group of three martyrs called Sisinnius, Martyrius and Alexander. They were originally from Cappadocia in Asia Minor, but in the days of St Ambrose, came to Milan, then the de facto imperial capital. At that time, all of northern Italy belonged to the ecclesiastical province of Milan, and St Vigilius, the bishop of Trent, had asked Gregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Amanda Achtman, who is leading a project called Dying to Meet You, visited Roger Foley in London Ontario. Roger lives with Cerebral Ataxia and says that he has been pressured on several occasions to ask for euthanasia. (Link to the youtube video)


In the video, Foley gives Achtman context from his life concerning his disability. Foley states that as a child he was always uncoordinated and very tired. He was not diagnosed with his condition, so he thought that he could work through it.

Roger said that he is bedridden and has severe pain levels every day. He needs to take medications or he can't even function.

Amanda AchtmanAchtman asked him why he is living in a hospital and not a home. Roger responds:
Unfortunately we live in a country where persons with disabilities aren't allowed to choose who's around them.

You're worked at; not worked with.Foley then gave the example of a care worker who helped him get into the bath tub. He washed himself but when he needed help getting out of the tub, he called but got no answer. So he crawled out of the tub over the slippery floor, without full control of his limbs. As he was crawling down the hallway he hears snoring. He finds the caregiver stretched out on one of his chairs in a deep sleep. When he reported it to the agency, the care-giver confessed to the act but they didn't care.

Achtman asked him if he has been offered euthanasia? Roger replied:
Yeah, multiple times.

A nurse asked him if he had thoughts of self-harm? Foley responded honestly that he has thought about ending his life because of what he is going through. Out of nowhere, the nurse told him that he could apply for an assisted... you know what I mean.Achtman asked him what is the impact on him, as a patient, of having euthanasia suggested? Foley responded:
It's completely traumatized me. Now it's this overlying option, where, in my situation, when I say I'm suicidal, I'm met with, Well, you know, the hospital has a program to help you with that, if you want to end your life.

That didn't exist before MAiD was legalized, but now it's there.Roger says that he is having flash backs from this experience and that this has devalued him and all that he is.

Achtman asks about the accusation that it is only religious people who are trying to prevent euthanasia. Foley responds:
That's the ultimate gas lighting statement. Like, I'm not religious. I respect people who are religious. Saying that its just religious persons who oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide are completely wrong. And these people who usually say it have an ableist mindset and they look at persons with disabilities and see us as just better off dead and a waste of resources.Foley has hope is that one day he will be able to break through the wall of the system and get access to the services he needs.

Foley wants to live at home with workers who want to work with him as a team.

Foley concludes the interview by saying:
I have a passion to live.
I don't want to give up on my life.Previous articles about Roger Foley: 

Ah, we had it then, the a-po-lo-geeee. Frankie The Faggoty Fatso did apologise for the use of that most apposite most, frociaggine, in the seminaries. Reading the press, it seems he has said that there is too much of it. Pray tell us, fat Faggoty Frankie, how much faggotry are you fine with in the […]

At a rally in Jharkhand on the eve of the last voting round, the Indian prime minister attacked some schools that chose Friday as a public holiday instead of Sunday, claiming that after Hindus, Muslims are also 'fighting with Christians". He also vowed that Muslims would never be eligible for benefits meant for Dalits and tribal people.

From RT:

Kiev’s Western backers need to understand that long-range strikes on Russian territory using weaponry they have supplied would represent a conflict escalation and lead to “serious consequences,” Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters at the end of a two-day visit to Uzbekistan, Putin addressed recent Ukrainian demands for NATO to permit the use of its weapons to attack deep inside Russia as well as comments by the US-led bloc’s head, Jens Stoltenberg, appearing to endorse the tactic.

“To be honest, I don’t know what the NATO secretary-general is saying,” Putin told reporters, adding that Stoltenberg “did not suffer from any dementia” when he worked constructively with Russia as the prime minister of Norway (2005-2013).

“This constant escalation can lead to serious consequences. If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the US behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons? Hard to say. Do they want global conflict?”

Putin explained that long-range precision strikes require space reconnaissance assets – which Kiev does not have, but the US does – and that this targeting is already done by “highly qualified specialists” from the West, without Ukrainian participation.

“So, these representatives of NATO countries, especially in Europe, especially in small countries, must be aware of what they are playing with,” the Russian president said, noting that a lot of these countries have “a small territory and a very dense population.”

“What caused this? They did, with their own hands. Well, then, they will reap what they have sown. The same thing can happen if long-range precision weapons are used,” the Russian president added.

https://www.rt.com/russia/598350-putin-serious-consequences-west/

800x600 By Sara Buscher, Attorney, Past Chair, EPC USA 

The Dead Donor Rule requires that a person to have died before organs can be harvested for transplant. 

EPC supports the dead donor rule and we recognize that the Dead Donor Rule will prevent the approval of euthanasia by organ donation. In a recent Tulane University Medical School lecture, Law Professor Thaddeus Pope said violations of the dead donor rule are rampant.

Brain death was created in 1968 as a workaround to the Dead Donor Rule to generate more transplant organs and free up ICU beds. It eventually became legal in the 1980’s through adoption of the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) by countries and the each US state.

The latest effort to legitimize harvesting organs from living people suffered a set back when the Uniform Law Commission chose to stop its effort to revise the UDDA. The revision to the UDDA was designed to give legal cover to all the ways in which organs are being taken from living persons. Professor Pope attributes the shortage of organs to fewer car accident deaths. He also expressed concern that people who support the Dead Donor Rule could demand more accountability and enforcement of existing laws. I would say disability groups could also demand more accountability and enforcement.

Before continuing this report on the lecture, I want our readers to know that some of the people whose organs are being harvested could recover, if given enough time, and doctors cannot predict which ones will recover. People are declared brain dead, on average, in 4 days, but it takes about 2 weeks for a coma to resolve and 3 to12 months after injury to recover consciousness. According to a recent study:

“Predicting who will recover following severe traumatic brain injury, and to what degree, can be challenging. Yet, families are often asked to make decisions about continuing or withdrawing life support, such as mechanical breathing, within just 72 hours of the injury” 

The same study found 40% of those whose life support was not withdrawn recovered at least some independence. According to a federal fact sheet, people who are in a state of permanent unconsciousness (coma) survive 60% to 80% of the time; coming out of the coma within 4 weeks, usually moving to a vegetative state or partial consciousness and slowly continuing to improve. For those whose condition was caused by a physical impact, 60% to 90% will regain consciousness by 1 year after injury.

The Uniform Determination of Death Act says:
An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards.

Professor Pope says there are four ways the Dead Donor Rule and UDDA are being violated. About two-thirds involve brain death and one-third cardiac death.

1. Brain Death. People are being labelled brain dead even though parts of the brain are still functioning and their condition may be reversible. There is “massive variability” in how brain “death” is determined, from state to state, hospital to hospital and doctor to doctor.
2. Donation by Cardiac Death (DCD). Here organs are being taken before there is certainty heart stoppage is irreversible. When life support is stopped, the transplant team waits for the heart to stop before harvesting organs. Research shows the heart could restart on its own within 5 minutes, but some teams are waiting only 2 minutes for the first incision. Organs obtained this way may be slow to start after transplant due to oxygen deprivation before being harvested.
3. Normothermic Regional Profusion (NRP). After the person’s heart stops and does not restart during the waiting period for cardiac death, the person is attached to a heart-lung machine. Before turning it on to circulate oxygenated blood, arteries to the brain are clamped off. Then, organs are harvested. This method minimizes the time transplantable organs are deprived of oxygen.
4. Premortem Interventions. The family of a patient on life support is told the patient has died and what they view as life support is really organ support. The living person is then turned over to the transplant team.

To solve the problem of rampant dead donor rule violations, Professor Pope says the UDDA should be changed. As already stated, a four year effort to do this within the Uniform Law Commission failed in 2023. A few months ago Professor Pope called for a new federal revised UDDA that would override state UDDA statutes. He is now calling for changing public opinion to allow families to agree to organ harvesting for people who are nearly dead. This could also be done by an advance directive. He pointed to a national public opinion survey about death and organ donations.

The national public opinion survey supports organ donation from nearly dead people, but is flawed. Respondents were asked questions about the following vignette.

Jason has been in a very bad car accident. He suffered a severe head injury and is now in the hospital. As a result of the injury, Jason is completely unconscious. He cannot hear or feel anything, cannot remember or think about anything, he is not aware of anything, and his condition is irreversible. Jason will never wake up. He also cannot breathe without mechanical support, but is on a breathing machine that keeps his lungs working. Without the machine, Jason's heart and all other organs would stop within minutes. Although he will never wake up and cannot breathe without the support of the machine, Jason is still biologically alive. Before the injury, Jason wanted to be an organ donor. The organs will function best if they are removed while Jason's heart is still beating and while he is still on the breathing machine. If the organs are removed while Jason is still on the machine, he would die from the removal of organs (in other words, the surgery would cause Jason's biological death).

The vignette says the doctors know Jason will never improve or recover, yet this cannot be predicted as indicated earlier. Other problems with the survey include the respondents were self-selected and tended to be in categories that would be more supportive such as more liberal and less conservative than the general population.

We have a better idea. Let's not get rid of the Dead Donor Rule.

More articles on this topic:

• No to killing for organs (Link).
• Organ donation procedure violates the Dead Donor Rule (Link).
• Proposed changes to the UDDA will cause more litigation (Link). 
• Are people who are declared brain dead always dead? (Link).

Global Witness updated its report on the situation in the Myanmar state, which is rich in rare earths needed in modern technologies. Local armed groups loyal to the military junta and ethnic resistance militias are fighting each other. Both sides rely on mostly unregulated mining to boost revenue, with huge problems for the local environment and population.

Blessed Carlo Acutis is an Italian Catholic teenager known for his love for the Eucharist and extraordinary path to holiness.

He lived from May 3, 1991, to Oct. 12, 2006.

Carlo Acutis is unique because he was familiar with modern-day cultural difficulties and opportunities. His story is considered very relatable, especially among young people.

His short life has had a lasting impact on the Church.

Recently, Pope Francis recognized a miracle attributed to his intercession, making way for him to become a saint!

Here are nine things you may not know about Blessed Carlo Acutis:

Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP

1. Carlo Acutis was born in London but raised in Milan.

2. Although his parents were not especially devout, Carlo developed a love for the Rosary and the Mass from a young age. His witness of faith led to his mother’s conversion.

3. He loved to play sports and video games. He enjoyed things like Pokémon and Super Mario!

4. As a programmer, he built a website promoting Eucharistic miracles.

Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP

5. He was passionate about using media and technology to spread the Gospel.

6. Carlo was diagnosed with Leukemia as a teenager. He offered his suffering to the Lord for the Pope and the Church.

Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP

7. He requested to be buried in Assisi due to his love for Saint Francis of Assisi.

8. Carlo was beatified by Pope Francis on Oct. 10, 2020, and is the first millennial to be beatified.

9. Carlo Acutis will be the first millennial saint! Pope Francis recognized the miracle needed for his canonization.

Here is a prayer for the canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis:

Oh God, Our Father,
thank you for giving us Carlo,
a life example for the young
and a message of love for everyone.

You made him become enamored with
Your Son Jesus, making the Eucharist
his “Highway to Heaven.”

You gave him Mary, as a most loving Mother,
and, with the Rosary, you made him
a poet of her tenderness. Receive his prayer for us.

Above all, gaze upon the poor,
whom he loved and helped.
Grant for me too, by his intercession,
the grace that I need...

(mention your request here)

And make our joy fulfilled,
placing Carlo among the saints
of your Church, so that his smile
may shine again for us in the glory of your name.
​
Amen.

Pater, Ave, Gloria
(“Our Father”, “Hail Mary”, “Glory Be”)

Source

You can find more information on the miracle attributed to his intercession here.

Blessed Carlo Acutis, please pray for us!

For the first time since post-COVID reopening, emissions fell in March by 3 per cent. Stabilised thanks to increased solar and wind power generation, they fell by 8 per cent in the steel industry and 22 per cent in construction. Still, several coal powered plants are in the planning stage.

The neoconservatives are prime examples of what happens when the temptation to empire and hegemony, far from being resisted, is eagerly embraced by conservatives.

In today's general audience in St Peter's Square, the pontiff kicked off a new round of reflections, this time on the action of the Holy Spirit in the history of salvation. 'The Spirit is harmony," Francis explained. He also talked about the "havoc" humanity is visiting upon Creation, as well as how to undertake the "way of contemplation" like Francis of Assisi. The Holy Father spoke about the victims of a landslide in Papua New Guinea. ...

Steyn fields questions on many topics, starting with jury deliberations in the Trump kangaroo court...

The US government’s recent arms sale to Israel is a reminder that arms sales have become a significant part of US foreign policy, as well as a major source of instability around the world.

Mark takes questions from Steyn Club members around the world...

On April 13, Iran launched an unprecedented retaliatory drone and missile attack on Israel, leading the U.S. and its allies to reach once again for their favorite weapon of war—sanctions.

This knee-jerk reaction was as predictable as it was ill-founded, according to the scholarly research. In Nicholas Mulder’s 2022 treatise The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War, he traces the history of sanctions from the blockades in World War I to today’s morass of economic sanctions. Mulder concludes that “the historical record is relatively clear: most economic sanctions have not worked.”

Mulder’s treatise was followed by the book Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests by Agathe Demarais. Drawing on her experience as an economic policy adviser for the diplomatic corps of the French Treasury, Demarais observes that sanctions tend to unite rather than isolate countries that are at odds with the U.S. and its allies, thereby transforming the geopolitical landscape and global economy to the detriment of U.S. influence.

The case of Iran is particularly illustrative of these points. In the recent How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare, authors Vali Nasr, Narges Bajoghli, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez present a detailed study on the long-term impacts of economic sanctions on Iran. Nasr is an Iranian-born distinguished professor of international affairs and Middle East studies, a veteran diplomat, and a member of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He and his collaborators studied the economic data and conducted long-form oral history interviews with 80 residents of Iran. The authors demonstrate that decades of Western sanctions, including the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign of 2018, have neither modified Iran’s international behavior in ways intended by policy makers nor precipitated any semblance of regime change.

Instead, sanctions have inflicted severe hardships on ordinary Iranians. The middle class has shrunk significantly from 45 percent in 2017 to 30 percent in 2020. If that wasn’t bad enough, Nasr and his colleagues estimate that the death toll attributable to the humanitarian catastrophes triggered by sanctions—such as food shortages and the breakdown of critical medical systems—has amounted to “hundreds of thousands.”

By imposing sanctions, the U.S. sought to crush Iran’s economy and make life so difficult for ordinary Iranians that they would rise up and either change the regime’s behavior or overthrow it altogether. However, this strategy relied on the assumption that Iranians would blame their misery on their own government and not those imposing the sanctions. Rather than blaming their government, Iranians have experienced a classic rally-’round-the-flag effect with sanctions inadvertently solidifying support for the regime. By creating animus against the U.S., sanctions have turned Iran’s hurting middle class into either de facto or de jure supporters of Iran’s leaders.

This is reflected in the interviews conducted by Nasr and his colleagues. Hamid, an interviewee and a disaster management specialist in Iran’s civil society sector, said of sanctions: “All they’ve done is make the Revolutionary Guard more powerful. Those of us in civil society are suffocating.”

Reza, a disillusioned university professor, echoed Hamid’s concerns: “If it’s not the nuclear issue, it’s our ballistic missiles. If it’s not our ballistic missiles, it’ll be human rights. If it’s not human rights, [the U.S.] will find another reason [to sanction Iran].”

Furthermore, Nasr and his co-authors contend that sanctions have driven the Iranian government to adopt more defensive and aggressive postures—the very behaviors that spurred the U.S. to impose sanctions on Iran in the first place. This pattern of behavior, where a sanctioned state becomes more militaristic and risk-taking, is well-documented and aligns with what economic theory predicts about actors with “nothing to lose.” This was highlighted by William L. Silber in The Power of Nothing to Lose: The Hail Mary Effect in Politics, War, and Business, in which he elucidates how extreme pressure during times of “war” can lead nations to take bold, often reckless actions.

It’s clear that the sanctions landscape is littered with failure—not just in Iran but also in Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, and, most recently, Russia. Despite their dismal track record, a 2021 Treasury Department report showed that the use of sanctions had surged by a stunning 900 percent since 2000. The persistence in using this tool highlights a disconnect between expected and actual outcomes in U.S. foreign policy strategy.

If the U.S. and its allies had aimed to create a more moderate Iran or change the regime with sanctions, they have failed. What is needed is a more nuanced and effective foreign policy that rests on diplomacy and does not inadvertently strengthen the very behaviors and regimes the U.S. aims to modify.

Reprinted with permission from The Independent Institute.