tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69172765012612818162024-02-06T21:37:42.647-06:00East Texas Liberals RespondAdvocating liberal ideals, values, and policies for East Texas and beyond...et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-72653354055173690562013-06-28T08:26:00.000-05:002013-06-28T13:56:05.547-05:00The Last Acceptable Prejudice?<div>
I suspect that many, in view of the U. S. Supreme Court's ruling on June 26, which struck down the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, will be displeased. It is inevitable that when one side loses a hard fought political/ideological battle, feelings will be hurt, relationships strained, and bitterness rampant. Yet, while I understand the disappointment which always attends such losses, having endured similar emotions over a lifetime of watching closely and caring deeply about our politics, I cannot understand the shock that so many have expressed. Things have been moving this way at a fairly breakneck clip over the past ten years, and there can be little if any doubt that what the ruling portends for this country in the not too distant future, is full marriage equality for all Americans, gay or straight. </div>
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For the shocked and stunned, I pose a simple question: which America did you suppose you lived in? In America, as has been said by non other than Martin Luther King Jr., "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Indeed, and it has ever been thus in this country. Maybe not at first, nor all at once, but its the direction we have taken from the outset, and June 26 resoundingly reconfirms it. <br />
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Yes, it might have escaped our notice in the beginning that the concept of owning other human beings was contrary to all that was decent and moral, but when it became clear, we went to war and paid dearly to bring an end to the heinous institution of slavery. It may have taken us some time to see that withholding voting rights from women was fundamentally unjust and un-American, but in the end we saw it and acted accordingly. The list goes on and on from ending Jim Crow Laws created to bypass the freedoms gained in the Civil War, to enacting anti-trust laws, to protecting child laborers, to demanding full public access for the physically challenged. We have, and hopefully will always move in the direction of fairness and equal treatment for all of our fellow citizens. When the need to do this arises, it will be the letter and spirit of the founding document, the constitution, that will provide the framework for bringing it about.<br />
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Enshrined in the constitution is the simple notion of equal treatment under the law, and the freedom of every American to seek what is moral by his or her own lights. Some of late have disparaged these freedoms when their particular understanding failed to win the day. A recent columnist bemoaned the very essence of America's freedom to plot her own course when she has the unmitigated gall to choose a course not comporting with one of his liking. In an effort to deride our "Self Understanding," the writer lost his way comparing the peaceful, orderly process of American democracy to the mindset and actions of the Boston Marathon Bombers and Philadelphia abortion doctor, Kermit Gossnell. Such comparisons are truly odious since our system of freedoms draws a firm line at breaking the law, as in the case of the individuals he cited. <br />
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I suspect others as well, in despair, will succumb to outrageous and misguided arguments in the days to come. Already the usual suspects are predicting everything from "The End of Western Civilization as We Know It," to a looming confrontation with the "Wrath of God," as many before them did when we chose to emancipate the slave. As they did when we chose to afford equality to women in determining the direction of our country on issues of utmost importance. As they did when we chose to strike down miscegenation laws forbidding intermarriage between the races. As they did when we deemed sodomy laws to be outside the purview of a just society. And finally, as they did when compulsory prayer was ended in public schools. Clearly (since we still seem to be here), the deity is not as intolerant as far too many believers have taken Him to be. Maybe the time has come for them to accept ownership of their oft demonstrated lack of empathy and fairness, and leave off blaming God for it.<br />
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To quote Martin Luther King again; "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'" I would offer that the ruling of the court is, in part, what "living out the true meaning of our creed" looks like. It looks like a nation in which no single community can rule unquestioned forever. It looks like a nation in which the oppressed may make redress to their government and succeed in attaining fair treatment. Indeed when the rulers are unfair or unjust, it is a citizen's sacred right and duty to question, to organize, to demonstrate. In the gay rights cases before the court, that is precisely what has happened, and now the court has ruled. <br />
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I would suggest that freedom has been upheld and expanded in the ruling. Gay Americans are at last free (or soon will be) to claim the numerous marital rights and privileges afforded to their heterosexual countrymen. And those who oppose the ruling remain as free as ever to soldier on, vigorously expressing their dissent, disapproval, and even disgust with same sex marriage. But in America it was decided that those who disapprove may no longer demand that a government of, by, and for ALL Americans discriminate against its law abiding gay citizens. If, contrary to King, you had dreamed that you lived in a country that would continue to sanction your desires for keeping your fellow citizens in a condition of second class status, as of June 26 that dream has ended.</div>
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et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-87682268038384828212013-02-05T16:37:00.000-06:002013-02-05T16:54:02.660-06:00"Hitler Card" Denounced<br />
The webpage, Wikipedia cites an adage of the internet known as Godwin's Law (also called Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) which states, "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches. In other words, as Mike Godwin observed in 1990, given enough time, in <i>any</i> online discussion--regardless of topic or scope--someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis." One corollary following from Godwin's Law is that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whomever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress. The rationale is that when one invokes Hitler, one has left the terra firma of logical debate and now stands on the less than solid ground of emotional manipulation. As on the net, so in print.<br />
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Thus, when a fellow columnist in the Longview News Journal (Feb 2) chose to play the "Hitler Card" while doubling down on his contention that re-electing President Obama reveals a fundamental deficit in public decency and virtue, one would be correct in concluding that the conversation was nearing its end. Of course, the writer attempted to create daylight between himself and his own words, but it was disingenuous at best to attempt to do so after the fact. After all, as the saying goes, one can't "un"ring a bell. Likewise, you cannot easily dismiss the specter of arguably history's most monstrous dictator once you've equated his philosophy with that of your opponents.<br />
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Yet, our writer adamantly plunges on, arriving at "irrefutable" conclusions from a welter of generalizations drawn from disparate aspects of the rough and tumble political world. Though its not clear how he quantifies a so called "deficiency in character and virtue" which can neatly been placed at the feet of the President and those who voted for him, that is what he myopically continues to insist upon doing. Chief among the confused arguments he relies on is the mixed message of decrying partisanship, even as he proceeds in the next breath to present a litany of hackneyed arguments that are largely partisan.<br />
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The issues that continue to be a burr under his saddle appear to be these: The U.S. deficit; the historically significant, growing acceptance of gay marriage; the requirement for religious organizations to recognize employee rights to access to a full range of health care options, including contraception and abortion. And finally, the curious addition of "various would-be scandals" such as the largely forgotten Fast and Furious incident, and the raid on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. The last two would seem to be typical "grey area" non-scandals that are perennial plagues on our foreign policy. The outing of Valery Plame and the use of torture under the Bush administration come to mind, but I don't recall any Hue and Cry from the right over our lost virtue when these were the talk of the nation.<br />
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First, it seems to escape the writer's notice that the deficit existed before this President took office. As to the other issues, it never seems to occur to the columnist that we liberals might take our positions precisely because of our view of morality. Like conservatives, we too vote our ethics and values when we enter the voting booth on polling days. Which brings us to the crux of the matter. It's not the loss of virtue that troubles our writer so much as the idea, enshrined in law, that each of us is free to interpret virtue and morality as he or she sees fit. Though the writer seems to believe that in order to preserve the "eternal verities" he frets about, we should move in lockstep, there is no evidence to suggest that we were ever so monolithic.<br />
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When we as liberals, vote to extend marriage equality to members of the LGBT community, it is precisely the virtue of fairness and equality that we are promoting. When we embrace the revenue enhancing aspects of the budget, we are expressing the virtue of generosity to our fellow citizens who, through no fault of their own, are struggling just to survive. Hurricane Sandy and subsequently the funds needed to help its victims is only one example among many of how life can overwhelm good, responsible people. When we fight for the employees (many of whom are not religious) of Catholic and other religious organizations to have access to contraception and abortion to plan their families, it is the virtue of respect for privacy and self-determination that are foremost in our thinking.<br />
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A rising star of the Republican Party, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, recently admonished the RNC: <br />
“We’ve got to stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults. We had a number of Republicans damage the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments. I’m here to say we’ve had enough of that.” Agreed. To that end, conservatives might begin by learning to see our diversity as a strength rather than a weakness. As to morality, depending on how they are defined, there are between 217 and 30,000 denominations of the Christian church worldwide. If the church itself is incapable of achieving unity in its interpretation and expression of the faith, is it reasonable to expect a government representing over 300 million diverse citizens to be monolithic on moral issues?<br />
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Finally, as conceived by the framers, our constitution does not encumber the government with the task of imposing any moral consensus on its citizenry. That is the job of our religious institutions, which frankly, have been there all along. I fail to see how it is appropriate to blame any administration for the moral and ethical shortcomings that we sometimes see today. The government is a reflection of "we the people," not the other way around. But even if the loss of character and virtue that our writer bemoans is real and can be quantified (I'm not prepared to say that it can), is it really possible to place the blame for this on any particular President? I think not. Nor should we countenance the scapegoating of good, decent Americans who voted their values as well as their highest aspirations for our country on November 6, 2012.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-13544723603615803282013-01-18T22:53:00.003-06:002013-01-19T15:50:43.266-06:00Decency Deficit Debunked!<br />
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"Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error."~Linus Pauling, Double Nobel Laureate for Chemistry and the Peace prize.</div>
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A recent column in the Saturday Forum (January 12) opined, in despair, that the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the results of the 2012 Presidential election was that public decency had now fallen to the charge of a brave, heroic few who predictably are anti Obama conservatives. Upon consideration, I would like to offer a somewhat different (certainly less wrought up) interpretation. It is this: After having engaged in the fairly conventional quadrennial exercise of electing an American president, the candidate who ran the better campaign won the day. Furthermore, our "decency," over which much unnecessary hand-wringing has occurred, remains not only intact, but vibrant.</div>
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While the bitterness that follows hard on the heels of losing a major election is understandable, surely we can muster enough respect for those who simply hold differing political opinions, to resist libeling them with a misguided charge of indecency. I contend that our core values as a people remain viable, because it seems to me what is implied by the civic minded action of taking the time to hear the candidates out, then voting in accordance with one's conscience is inherently patriotic and decent, regardless of the outcome of any given election cycle.</div>
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So to those given to predicting the most dire repercussions because their candidate came up short in the eyes of the electorate, I say, all evidence to the contrary. In our history, both sides of our ongoing debates and political skirmishes have experienced victory at the polls, and miraculously the country endures. The republic lives on, and the sky still depends from the framework of the heavens. </div>
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If decency resides only on one side of the political spectrum, one wonders just what nation voted to re-elect president Obama. If the demographic analyses of his re-election are to be believed, then he won in convincing fashion on a promise to raise taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans, while refusing to raise them on the middle class and the poorest among us. He ran on this and was re-elected. In days of old, we called such a result "The Will Of The People," and it seems to me that those who have trouble accepting the election's results, may indeed have a problem with democracy itself. There is never a guarantee that your side will win. However, your chances improve if you forcefully and elegantly make your case.</div>
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There is an old bromide often heard among our statesmen that runs, "Decent people can disagree." I submit that this is exactly what has happened. But as they face the week of Obama's second Inaugural, conservatives seem to be having a more difficult time than usual accepting the reality about what the election has meant. Clearly, an unprecedented coalition composed of White and African Americans, Latinos, Women, Asian Americans, and young Americans came together to see to it that their voices were heard. It remains to be seen whether conservatives in the rank and file, and more importantly, the leadership, will make heads or tails of what is staring them in the face.</div>
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But claiming a loss of common decency would seem to be a poor choice. I for one, am a liberal who will not stand idly by while having my values and ethics questioned by a party that has its own issues to deal with on that front. Was it decent of GOP candidates to stand silently smiling onstage when at one of their debates an audience member yelled "YES" to the question should a person without insurance be allowed to die? Who is the "Death Panel" now? Was it decent of party leaders to again remain silent when a prominent conservative commentator referred (while on the air) to a young college woman as a "slut" simply for her advocacy of policies he disagreed with?</div>
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Was it decent of congressional candidate Todd Akin to hold forth about "legitimate rape" and proclaim the unscientific notion that a woman's body had the ability to ward off pregnancy if she was assaulted? Was it decent of candidate Richard Mourdock to state that it was "God's Will" if a woman's pregnancy resulted from a rape? Was it decent of Vice Presidential candidate, Paul Ryan to adamantly stick by his bill (co-authored with Akin), allowing no exceptions" for abortions for rape victims, arguing that the "method of conception" was irrelevant? Was it decent of Republicans in several states to attempt the disenfranchisement of thousands of Americans (mainly in democratic leaning districts) through voter suppression tactics thinly disguised as "anti voter fraud" provisions?</div>
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Mitt Romney, the conservative candidate for the presidency, famously slandered 47% of the electorate as being dependent on government and incapable of "taking responsibility for their lives." I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that insulting nearly half of the electorate seems a poor strategy for winning their hearts and minds. Besides that, what he said was wrong on its face. As to the yarn about our "Decency Deficit," it is of a kind with Romney's fateful, wrongheaded statement. And is equally as false.</div>
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Good, decent Americans could (and did) disagree with the philosophy and economic theory of conservatism this time around. These voters, to a larger extent than conservatives are willing to admit, are church goers and others who attend synagogues, mosques, and temples. Most of them are ethical, community minded, family oriented citizens doing their moral and patriotic duty by their own best lights, which is really all that can be asked of any of us. Prominent Republicans Colin Powell and 2012 presidential candidate John Huntsman have come out in recent days and admitted that the GOP and conservatives have a lot of work to do when it comes to being less insulting to the electorate. Until that occurs, voting for the other guys seems the only decent thing to do.</div>
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et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-21003909470261180372012-09-07T10:07:00.001-05:002012-09-07T14:49:01.218-05:002016: Obama's America - A ReviewThe odd thing that strikes the viewer in the opening minutes of Dinesh
D'Souza's 2016 - Obama's America, is a rather lengthy biographical
sketch of none other than Dinesh D'Souza himself. If this seems a strange
way to begin to tell the story of the formative influences on President
Barack Obama, it proves to be a telling detail that explains more about
the film's creator than about his chosen subject. <br />
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At the outset is a montage (complete with sad, wistful music) of
D'Souza's humble beginnings in India. Actors stand in for his family as he
describes their fateful decision to send him to America to find a better
life. A better life, for D'Souza included attending Dartmouth College
on his way to becoming a Reaganite and later, an ultra-conservative
author. He has been a fellow with both AEI, and the Hoover Institute. We
also receive a hasty, thumbnail history of India itself, a land that
has known its share of cultural strife, political corruption, and most
importantly for D'Souza's purposes, the scourge of colonialism.<br />
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Why colonialism? Because that is the unexpected and frankly, novel
line of attack on President Obama that D'Souza is now bringing to the
table. Indeed, so obsessed is he with driving home the image of the President as a deeply enraged anti-colonial crusader, that he blithely
does away with old attacks. In the theater on the night I saw the movie,
I heard a distinct, murmur of disapproval move through the conservative
crowd when the narrator (D'Souza) dismisses out of hand a matter of
received sacrosanct dogma among many to this day: Barack Obama, he
asserts in confident off-handedness, was born in the State of Hawaii.
That's right, the one in the U.S.A. The birther notion in "2016" has
been jettisoned for something more subtle. The concern here is not so
much in where the president was born as in what D'souza believes was
born <i><b>in</b></i> the president.<br />
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The colonialism angle becomes clearer when D'Souza telegraphs his
intent, at the expense of everything (including the truth), to project onto
the President his own lingering doubts, bitterness, and dare we say,
self hatred as a citizen of a once colonized country. Yet whereas he came
by such feelings naturally as a result of living through the aftermath
of Indian history, he intends to make the case that Obama's rage came
through a kind of patriarchal "osmosis" from his avowed socialist
father, Barack Obama Sr. Never mind that the older Obama was only
present in his son's life for a total of thirty days. Cleverly using
over dubbed readings by the President himself from the audio version of
his memoir, Dreams From my Father, D'Souza spins the gossamer threads
that comprise his case that Obama is a sinister Marxist who is the last
person we should send to the White House. <br />
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If the senior Obama gets the leading role in the drama of
transmitting the President's so called rage, D'Souza provides us with a
supporting cast of characters such as his mother Ann Dunham who met the
intelligent, charismatic Obama Sr. at the University of Hawaii in 1960.
D'Souza strains mightily to build a disparate, loosely joined collection
of relatives and family friends that he dubs the president's "Founding
Fathers," into Obama's anti-colonial brain trust. It
bears saying that though Obama writes openly of these acquaintances, he
never used D'Souza's phrase. Rounding out the cast are the President's
grandparents, described by Barack Obama himself as "vaguely liberal,"
Columbia University Professor, Edward Said, with whom the President took
a class, and most sinisterly, Frank Marshall Davis, journalist, avowed
communist, and an acquaintance of the President's grandfather.<br />
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Though it bills itself as a documentary, 2016 really is nothing of
the kind. The documentary form is one of discovery. At their best, these
films evoke a sense of of imminent, unexpected surprise. This movie
has no such feeling because it's conclusions are in place from the
beginning. It takes most of what it has to say from two books by
D'Souza: The Roots of Obama's Rage, and Obama's America: Unmaking the
American Dream. If Obama's alleged dark rage is a foregone conclusion
from the beginning, then the movie cannot lay claim to the mantle of an
objective piece of journalism in search of truth. Rather, it comprises a lengthy infomercial at best, and at worst, a two hour long
attack ad. <br />
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As to the "proofs" of the president's driving desire to
re-distribute geopolitical power to third world and former colonial
interests, political reporter, David Weigel puts all to rest in a review that appears
on SLATE'S website under the title, "Only In His Dreams," referring to
D'Souza, whose theories Weigel describes as "Swiss-cheesed with logic holes." Yet,
though the film does show some facility with the well known movie
devices of slick, shadowy graphics, discordant music in all the right
places (to paint as dark, and sinister a picture as possible), and the
rhetorical tricks of half-truths and innuendos, at its close we only find what we already knew. That President Barack Obama, born in America, was raised partly in
Hawaii and Indonesia. He was reared by a single mother and her parents
whose politics though admittedly liberal, were not especially radical.
His grandparents were conventional Americans who had friendships with a
few liberal and left leaning individuals, yet pursued the American Dream
in the typical way. <br />
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Dinesh D'Souza's movie thus, is a political thriller in search of
its Manchurian Candidate. One suspects that the only one he found was
the one he brought to the project himself. Conjured from his own mind.<br />
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<br />et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-80784244151997966142012-06-24T18:14:00.001-05:002012-06-24T18:14:27.094-05:00Early this spring, in a story certainly long forgotten by now, an
interesting issue was highlighted by MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. It
seems that U.S. Representative Paul Ryan (R) Wisconsin, who heretofore
was unshakeable in the theory of economics on which his draconian budget
plan presumably rested, suddenly was shaking. As long as lily-livered
liberal politicians and economists were his detractors, Ryan remained
supremely aloof and self-assured. But when Catholic priests hammered him
on moral grounds about his budget and its seeming connection with
novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand, all bets were off. <br />
<br />Ryan, House Chairman of the Budget Committee found himself in a
sticky wicket after attempting to run from his adoration of Rand when
questioned about it in the National Review. He dismissed the story as an
“urban legend.” He went on to say: "I reject her philosophy. It’s an
atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts
and it is antithetical to my worldview”. Ryan’s problem is that he is
on record as recently as 2005, warbling effusively about Rand’s
influence on him, going so far as to say: “The reason I got involved in
public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one
person, it would be Ayn Rand” and “Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did
a fantastic job explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of
individualism, and that, to me, is what matters most.”<br />
<br />Perhaps Ryan, a Roman Catholic, wouldn’t be in a fix had he not
engaged in some ham-fisted pandering by linking his brutal budget to his
faith. In doing so he raised the eyebrows and ire of ninety faculty
members and priests at Georgetown University last March, who were
compelled to differ with him in a written statement which said in part:
"Your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher,
Ayn Rand, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ. We would be remiss in
our duties to you and our students if we did not challenge your
continuing misuse of Catholic teaching to defend a budget plan that
decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens
protections for the elderly and sick and gives more tax breaks to the
wealthiest few." <br />
<br />The dustup has special relevance to the ongoing discussion
surrounding politics and religion, some of which we were treated to in
these pages on Saturday, June 23. In my view, the conversation is far from
over. It was the exposure of the Ryan/Rand axis that inspired me to do
something I have long wanted (and dreaded) to do, which was to read
Rand’s magnum opus, ATLAS SHRUGGED. I was motivated in part by a
longstanding reluctance to criticize works that I had not read, seen or
heard for myself. But a more sinister factor may have been the greater
catalyst, namely that Rep. Ryan is on record as boasting that he
“requires” all interns and staffers in his office on Capitol Hill to
read ATLAS SHRUGGED. Such an admission, in my view, should be cause for
everyone to read and seriously consider the implications of this novel.
All 1168 pages.<br />
<br />Now that I've done so, I believe I am on firm ground in agreeing
with the aforementioned priests and faculty who sharply criticized Ryan.
It attests to the importance of perceptions regarding politics and
religion that Ryan is suddenly desperate to create daylight between
himself and the virulently atheist Rand. It attests to his
dim-wittedness that he forgot that we live in an age of ubiquitous audio
and video recorders.<br />
<br />Rand’s writings present a serious problem for religious Americans
who want to champion her ideas as well as a belief in Jesus as
motivators of their political behavior. In her novels and non-fiction
prose she sought, in striking forthrightness, to overthrow millenia-long
religious definitions of altruism and compassion. One can’t have it
both ways. It is quite a stretch on one hand to promote the governmental
indifference to the poor preached by Rand and her devotees, while
professing the compassion and unconditional generosity of Jesus. If, as a
Christian, one finds oneself largely in agreement with Rand, one
should, as the eponymous hero of ATLAS SHRUGGED, John Galt, might
suggest, “check one’s premises.”<br />
<br />It seems to me that if the whole idea of Christian participation in
politics is to reflect the teachings and actions of Jesus through the
political system, then adherence to the stinginess and misanthropy of
Ayn Rand would be out of the question. Jesus gave freely to the poor
without ever seeming overly concerned about abstract notions of
"fostering a good work ethic" or "preventing a sense of dependency"
among those in need. Conversely much of what conservatives obsess about
around these issues seem to arise from a pervasively nasty opinion of
their fellows. That their fellows are inherently lazy. That they are
perpetually on the take. That they’d rather take handouts than work for a
living. <br />
<br />I’m a liberal who has worked hard ever since I joined the labor
force at seventeen as a bag boy at Safeway. Furthermore, most if not all
of the adults that I’ve known have been hard workers, presuming there
was work to be found. Rand's great flaw as a writer, and as a human
being, was a fanatical unwillingness to admit that good, hardworking
people sometimes fall victim to the vagaries of existence. Notions of
pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps, and of being steadfastly
independent, are valid up to a point. Jesus understood that the limit to
such abstractions was the fact of actual hunger and poverty suffered by
real people who were decidedly <i><b>not</b></i> abstract. If Rand ever
knew it, she expunged it from her philosophy. If we assume that Rep.
Ryan, as a follower of Christ, also knows it, how did he ever fall under
the sway of Ayn Rand?et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-33358449082189439822012-01-06T12:09:00.003-06:002012-01-06T12:09:58.317-06:00Not a Christian NationOn the December 31 Longview News Journal's Forum page an editorial appeared under the rather portentous heading: "Is America a Christian Nation?" Such a question in my view displays either a fundamental failure to comprehend basic American civic law, or a fundamental rejection of it. In any case, each can be seen as another unfortunate failure in the education of a people on the core question of who we are.<br />
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At the outset, let me state that no American who is informed can deny the historical importance of religion to our society. Religion has always been, and doubtless will remain a vital and public resource for ethical conduct and spiritual sustenance for our people. Indeed, that seems to have been at least a part of the intent of the framers of the constitution and the Bill of Rights. But these men, who most, if not all were products of a culture pervaded by Christian ideas and religious practices, did not intend to build a theocracy in the New World. Thus, we can proudly say that there is no "Church Of America" to hold in comparison to Britain's publicly established and supported "Church of England."<br />
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Had they so intended, why did they not simply enshrine the intent in law? Instead, they wrote a constitution and Bill of Rights from which the word "God" is glaringly, conspicuously omitted. To those who believe that this was somehow just another stupendous oversight of history, I say on the contrary, the matter was roundly if not furiously debated by the Continental Congress prior to the ratification of our Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787. Those proposing what Kramnick and Moore in their book, "The Godless Constitution," have dubbed "Religious Correctness," lost the day.<br />
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As to the victors in that debate, the authors cited above write, "Yet, so successful were the drafters of the Constitution in defining government in secular terms that one of the most powerful criticisms of the Constitution when ratified and for succeeding decades was that it was indifferent to Christianity and God. It was denounced by many as a godless document, which is precisely what it is."<br />
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But, contrary to what detractors of our founding system of law characterized as being hostile to religion, I contend that the opposite is the case. In their wisdom, I believe the founders demonstrated supreme faith in their religion not only to survive, but to flourish on its own with no need of a "leg-up" from the government. In this way, the two institutions could be free to attend to their own affairs relying appropriately on their respective and unique doctrines and modes of operation. History would seem to have confirmed the wisdom of the insight.<br />
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What makes this country great is that no Christian can be compelled to pray to Brahma. But the obverse also makes us great. No Hindu can lawfully be compelled to pray to Jehovah. The writer was correct in his assertion that much of our law has been shaped indirectly by the Holy Bible. But it is also true that our system of Democracy at least in part was influenced by ancient Greek culture, hardly a hotbed of Christian theology.<br />
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And since our constitution can be seen a living document open to the indirect influence of all the spiritual traditions adhered to by our legislators, other "influences" also can have a place in shaping our polity. All to the good. Members of congress today are Jewish, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and indeed, I suspect, some who profess no religious tradition at all.<br />
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A better question to have begun that editorial might have been, "Is America a Nation in which everyone could (potentially) be Christian?" the answer of course is, yes. But given the nature of human beings to follow their own lights on matters of the soul, it should come as no surprise that we are not all Christians. I'm certain that our founders would not be surprised in the least, because they formed a government large enough in spirit to accommodate us all. <br />
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In short, American must of necessity be a nation of all religions, and of none.<br />
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<br />et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-50769176310349524712011-02-26T06:02:00.000-06:002011-02-26T06:02:59.290-06:00Hypocrisy On ReviewIn his remarks for the forum page of February 19, Rev. Herb Spady found it necessary to make a detour from his comments on the importance of National Black History Month to advocate for continued discrimination against another oppressed group: Gay Americans. He was at pains to insure that no one compared the ongoing struggle for equality in which gays presently find themselves, with that of Black America, going so far as to label such a conceit as "absurd."<br />
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Because I am a Black American who sees the struggles of gays and African Americans as being precisely equivalent, and because just this week, the first administration led by an African American has signaled that it will no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense Of Marriage Act, I believe I am on firm ground to take issue with Mr. Spady's views.<br />
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Spady’s chief argument against confusing the two groups seemed to rest solely on pigmentation. He stated that "The homosexual movement is made up of different races of people who have chosen this idea as a lifestyle. The equality of rights for all citizens should be used and granted in the interest of a race of people and in the discussion of matters pertaining to the race of people." <br />
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This statement was stunning in its incoherence. It not only made the demonstrably untrue claim that oppression can only be imposed on racial groups, it was contradictory on its face, speaking of the "equality of all citizens," while it clearly singled out the hopes and aspirations of one community, namely homosexuals, as being beneath contempt. In light of recent incidents of bullying and gay teen suicide, it was astounding to witness the insensitivity displayed when a member of one oppressed group told another such group that it had no right to dream of basic equality.<br />
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It bears recalling that in the case of Loving vs the State of Virginia (1967), on the right of blacks and whites to inter-marry, the Supreme Court upheld a "Lifestyle Choice" which faced opposition very similar to that faced by gays and lesbians today.<br />
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As an African American, I believe that gays in this country have experienced many of the same indignities that blacks were forced to endure in the past, and could only stand in silent solidarity with the civil rights struggles of Martin Luther King Jr., James L. Farmer Jr., and other heroes of that fractious time in our history. King often framed the struggle in the same language used by the founders of our nation which shone a light on ideas supportive of our common humanity.<br />
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To my mind, that humanity is all that is required to see that institutionalized discrimination against the LGBT community in America must be brought to an end. I have stated in these pages recently that the impulse toward equality is quintessentially American. No counter argument that I’ve seen here has altered that view. President Obama has said that he has "grappled" with this issue for a long time. I for one, am pleased that he appears to be coming around to the American way of seeing things when it comes to gay rights.<br />
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But my faith that gay fellow Americans will one day enjoy the thousand or so rights and benefits that I as a married heterosexual can take for granted, has less to do with a president than with a country. The list of the achievements of similar movements stretches into the distant past, and shows no sign of ever stopping: women voters, African Americans, child laborers, disabled Americans, migrant workers, labor unions, and gay Americans. When we as a people tire of the iron fist of oppression, and utilize the street and the ballot box to express our unwillingness to endure inequality, the country changes for the better. This is exactly what is meant by "creating a more perfect union."<br />
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When commentators like Spady and others who have appeared here speak in the stentorian tones of the prophets of old, it is easy to reach the conclusion that theirs is the only possible interpretation of scripture, morality and ethics as regards the issue of homosexuality.<br />
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Not so. I encourage your readers to begin to listen to, and dialog with those within the emerging "Christian Left." These are people no less devout or ethical than those in the Christian Right, who seem intent on disenfranchising a whole class of law-abiding Americans based on narrowminded, often misguided views of morality. The Christian Left, or liberal Christians, are becoming increasingly vocal in their opposition to the conservatively religious, who, on a range of issues have proven that they are ready and willing to cast the first stone.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-57376863396060898812011-01-17T10:39:00.000-06:002011-01-17T10:39:46.747-06:00DADT - Round TwoWhen, in his January 15 Forum column, Jeff McAlister charged me with "championing the rights of homosexuals to serve openly in the military," he missed the point almost entirely. In essence, it was the right of every <strong><em>American</em></strong> to serve openly that I was championing. Perhaps McAlister has no qualms about oppressing a whole class of his fellow Americans. I, however, do. <br />
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McAlister also stands ready to make the muddled pronouncement that some of us are to be considered "less equal" than others because they fail to reach some supposed moral standard that on closer inspection is revealed to be not moral at all. On the contrary, it is a petty, small-minded view of life not worthy of a people who pride themselves on egalitarianism and fairness. <br />
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It has been the understanding and practice of our country not to withhold the blessings of freedom and equality from any citizen who is a law abiding, ethical, and productive participant in its public life. Furthermore, we have deemed matters of the private lives of our citizenry off limits to all but the parties involved. Although sexual expression is a healthy element of each individual life, it is not the defining characteristic of any life, straight or gay.<br />
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McAlister denigrated the liberal tendency to make a "fetish of equality." I would offer that this is no badge of shame for an American, but one of honor. I would further suggest that what comes closer to a more conventional definition of the word fetish, is an excessive concern or interest in the private sexual lives of others.<br />
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Serving in our military, like much of the life of the country, is a matter of performing a public service to a grateful nation. In this case, our need for defense. People from all walks of life now serve in our military, although that hasn’t always been true. Once, African Americans weren’t allowed to serve. Females also faced similar restrictions. <br />
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Now, over many of the same objections put forth by conservatives, including perceived problems of living in "close quarters" and concerns over "unit cohesion," blacks and women are serving admirably. In fact, so are gay Americans. But whereas straight soldiers may serve openly as heterosexuals, gay servicemen and women have been required to maintain a hidden life throughout their tours of duty. In what world can such inequity be seen as fair, particularly in the face of potential injury or death while exercising ones duty to country? Apparently, in McAlister’s world.<br />
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Fortunately, non other than the United States military and Congress have identified and sought to eliminate inequality from our military, recognizing that the military is (and should be), a reflection of American society at large. Gay Americans contribute in countless positive ways to the life of our country. There is not one objective reason to withhold from them any right enjoyed by the rest of us. Most of us, gay or straight, obey the laws, pay our taxes, and play by the agreed upon rules of public life. On what legitimate basis can anyone justify the oppression of a class of Americans who fit the description above? Only illegitimate ones come to mind, such as the rigid, outdated conceptions of morality advocated by the regressive right.<br />
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Today in the Congress of the United States there are legislators who are religious and non-religious. There are legislators who are straight and gay. We have lawmakers who are Jewish, Buddhist, Christian and Muslim; who are black, Hispanic, male, female, white, and of asian descent. McAlister would continue to balkanize the armed services so as to present a false picture of who we are as a people. It bears asking that if our army doesn't look like the rest of us, then who are they fighting for? <br />
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The overarching theme to McAlister’s objections is that of morality. But who’s morality? Many of us (myself included) are able to lead moral lives without the need to discriminate against others. Also, McAlister's interest in moral standards seems obsessively focused on gays alone. Where is his concern over those in the military who are promiscuous? Where are his scruples regarding cases of military marital infidelity?<br />
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Perhaps true equality resides in allowing each member of the armed services see to his own private sexual affairs to the best of his or her ability, and concern ourselves with the only true measure of a soldier, which is whether or not he/she can carry out the orders of their superiors in the prosecution of war. Our men and women in arms are said to be among the toughest, most efficient and professional fighting forces on the planet. They have said they are able and ready to handle serving alongside their openly gay fellow Americans. <br />
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I believe them...shouldn’t we all?et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-50964933076336601382011-01-04T10:50:00.003-06:002011-01-04T13:44:52.152-06:00DO TELL!?!?Vice President, Joe Biden recently predicted that the repeal of the law known as "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" has essentially made the passage of marriage rights for gay Americans "inevitable." I would add that the most newsworthy aspect of his statement may be the fact that he managed to utter it without an expletive or a gaff. Certainly, for anyone with a modicum of understanding of American history or civics, his was an exercise in stating the obvious. Biden merely made note of the quintessential characteristic of the American heart and mind: Equality. Perhaps those among us who are surprised or appalled at the repeal of DADT, have simply failed to grasp what it means to be an American.<br />
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Much ink was expended in the Longview News Journal a week ago by columnist Jeff McAlister, who hyperventilated about issues of "unit cohesion," and the perils of living in "close quarters" with homosexual servicemen and women. Correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t U. S. military personnel been efficiently going about their duties with their gay comrades in arms for decades? No such deterioration of "unit cohesion" has been reported thus far, and I believe the sexual licentiousness alluded to by Mr. McAlister probably rests squarely with the heterosexual contingent of the armed services, which has never been known as a bulwark of moral rectitude.<br />
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Nor has any slippage in military effectiveness been noted in any of the other armed services around the globe which, once again, are way out ahead of the U. S. on the issue. Britain (which abolished slavery a century before we did), dealt with the issue of allowing gays to serve ten years ago. Last I heard, they have a military that, despite dire prophecies like those made by McAlister, is still functioning admirably. Indeed, according to a New York Times article, when British soldiers took the not insignificant risk of being open about their sexual orientation, it often had the effect of strengthening unit cohesion (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/world/europe/16iht-gays.4.5740115.html).<br />
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Ultimately, this coddling of the homophobic segment of the armed services is insulting to the vaunted toughness and determination that is perennially ascribed to soldiers in general. Gay Americans, as has been noted, are already risking life and limb for their country. Is it really too much to ask that they be allowed to serve without the added burden of anxiety over who might find out about their orientation? Why not pass a provision that homophobes should not be asked about their ignorance and bigotry, and if asked, shouldn’t tell, or else face expulsion from the military?<br />
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Conservative angst over the issues of gay military service or marriage equality might be more convincing if their track record on excluding other segments of society could stand up under scrutiny. The list is as impressive for its length as for the remarkable consistency conservatives have shown for being wrong. Black Americans were once thought to be too stupid or cowardly to be field medics, fly aircraft, or serve in combat. Women were thought incapable of doing many things for which their stellar performance is now taken for granted, including voting, leading corporations, and serving in the military with bravery and distinction. In each case, conservatives wailed and railed about our doomed society. For a doomed society, we look pretty good.<br />
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Candidly, McAlister revealed what I suspect was the driving concern behind his screed: Religion. He did this in the belief that bigotry which has its source in religion was somehow no longer bigotry, or at least was bigotry sanctioned by God. Mr. McAlister is of course free to hold retrograde ideas like that. It is his right as an American. But as there is no religious test for serving in our government, perhaps the time has come to drop such restrictions to serving on the field of battle. The reason for doing so has nothing to do with political correctness, or social experiments, or with the vagaries or passing fancies of culture. It simply has to do with plain American equality. If we are to be true to our creed, equal needs to mean equal. And a theology or god incapable of fairness, risks being outshone by a constitution fashioned by the hands and hearts of mere men.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-66067842696904632122010-10-18T19:02:00.000-05:002010-10-18T19:02:20.980-05:00A Tea Party AmericaAlthough there is some time until the November mid-terms tell us what is in store for the nation politically, and even more time before anything remotely resembling a tea party hegemony emerges, I believe we can extrapolate what a tea party America might look like based on the signs that its candidates have given us thus far. It bears stating what follows here are not merely predictions borne of the fevered imaginings of an over-active liberal mind, but conclusions based on a well documented succession of eye-opening, which is to say flat out bizarre words and actions of tea party candidates and supporters over the past year or so.<br />
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When the tea party burst onto the scene with its seething, angrily disruptive performance during the first days of the healthcare debate, it was a faceless mass of people howling from the fringes of our politics. Now that leaders have stepped forward to claim the mantles of various elected offices, a clear picture is beginning to take shape.<br />
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First up, Nevada tea party candidate, Sharron Angle. At the outset of Angle’s campaign, she remarked "What is a little bit disconcerting and concerning is the inability of sporting goods stores to keep ammunition in stock...That tells me the nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn’t that they are so distrustful of their government? They are afraid they’ll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment ways. And that’s why I look at this as almost an imperative. If we don’t win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?"<br />
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Buried in this gibberish is the patently un-American idea that if the outcomes of elections which are carried out legally and fairly are not to our liking, then its okay to take up arms and begin threatening the body politic with deadly force. Presumably, if this is a fine and dandy way for tea party members and ultra-conservatives to behave, it should be equally condoned if liberals follow suit in the event that any given election cycle leaves their noses out of joint.<br />
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Next is Carl Paladino, seeking the governorship of the state of New York under the aegis of the tea party. Paladino recently upbraided his Democrat opponent as a poor example of parenthood for marching with his gay daughter in a gay pride parade to demonstrate his acceptance of her and indeed of all gay Americans. We can reasonably suspect that we are through the looking glass when we are forced to endure lectures on morality from a man who has been known to routinely send bestial, pornographic, and racist e-mails to his friends, which Paladino has admitted doing.<br />
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Christine O’Donnell certainly stunned the citizens of Maryland by trouncing a well established, long-time Republican politician in that state’s primaries. More stunning have been the revelations that have subsequently emerged regarding her one-time status as a witch, her bogus claims to academic achievement, and her strange involvement in campaigns to "cure" gay people and to abolish masturbation. As a liberal, I don’t think I could write a fictional narrative that could compete with the whacked out, lurid plot points of this woman’s actual life<br />
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Which may pale in comparison to the exploits of Ohio tea party candidate, Rich Iott. In a move that defies everything heretofore known about political optics, this man entered a high profile race even though he has been photographed gamboling through the Ohio countryside in full Nazi storm trooper regalia. He was once (but no longer) a WWII re-enactor who, sad to say, chose to align himself with the losing side of that conflict. One would assume this could only bode ill for his campaign, but in this year of the rise of the tea party, who can say?<br />
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I began this column with the intention of bringing to light all of the strange candidates that the surging tea party has deemed acceptable to lead our country, but neither time nor space will allow me to insert them all. I must leave for another day Rand Paul, who after winning the Kentucky primary opined that restaurant owners should be allowed to discriminate, on the basis of race, who may and may not patronize their places of business. And Ken Buck who, as a Colorado DA five years ago, refused to take an alleged rape victim’s case because her charges might be seen as a case of "buyer’s remorse."<br />
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But I think the point is made. Based on the examples above, the country that tea party candidates would bestow upon us would be a place awash in a fair amount of callousness, hypocrisy, racism, violence and a tenuous grasp on reality. I realize that if a majority of the voting public sees no problem with the above, then the joke could be on me.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-43154796502199419822010-06-16T23:29:00.006-05:002010-06-17T12:25:20.446-05:00Liberal-Land vs Flyover CountryLongview News Journal commentator Michael Schwartz's column in the Saturday June 12 edition was stunning for its hostility and bitterness in spite of his attempts at humor. Schwartz, after presumably much consideration and soul-searching, has come to the conclusion that America should be divided down the middle on purely ideological grounds. In his vision, the country no longer would be "one nation, under God," but should henceforth be balkanized into Liberal and Conservative ghettos which he thinks of respectively (and simplistically) as Liberal-Land and Flyover Country. He advocates a "Divorce" between these parties which he believes have irreconcilable differences.<br />
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One friend upon considering Schwartz's ideas told me she'd rather think of it as an annulment, since she couldn't conceive of consummating a marriage with the vicious know-nothing tea party whack-jobs who are the self-proclaimed leaders of of the conservative movement nowadays. Another friend trenchantly added that Schwartz's historical antecedents had tried his idea before. They lost.<br />
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Schwartz's imprecations and maledictions seem to have their source in Barack Obama's assumption of the office of President in 2008. He acknowledges that liberals and conservatives have "tolerated" each other for 230 years, but in a raging pique of the classic sore loser, is willing to disband us into the "Divided States of America" on the basis of barely half of one presidential term. Whither perspective? Whither respect for the legal, measured transition of power in our country? Clearly they've gone missing from Schwartz's political reality.<br />
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Thus in lieu of political reality, we get political fantasy. Utopias spun by the impressionable minds of those who've grown weary of the work of Democracy. You know, old fashioned ideas such as the debate and compromise that leads to effective governance, bothersome notions like that. Don't care for people of differing opinions and viewpoints? Well then banish them forthwith to those areas of the country perceived as being beneath the standards of your group. That would include all those urban centers of crime, welfare, diversity and, one assumes other horrors like culture, higher learning, and cross-cultural friendship and dialog.<br />
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Don't care for media that strives for straightforward fairness in reporting? Then choose media that unremittingly spews extremist views under the guise of "balance," poisoning the well of civil discourse in the process. Only an extremist like Schwartz would identify the FOX News echo-chamber with integrity, even though well documented studies have shown FOX viewers to be among the most poorly served and misinformed in the nation when it comes to the plain facts of any given story.<br />
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Schwartz strives mightily to claim God in the divorce proceedings, but I am a religious liberal who says, "not so fast buddy." If he means the harsh, punitive, God who dominates the Old Testament, you know the one who was big on smiting folks, taking sides in internecine human conflicts, and was given to ethical lapses that wouldn't pass muster in a high school civics class, well he can have that God. But it seems to me that Jesus was a liberal who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, not an elephant. And he espoused an ethical program of giving to the poor and needy that should make welfare opponents choke on their self righteous bromides regarding work, bootstraps, and self reliance.<br />
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Presumably, in Flyover country, all the political and cultural advances brought to bear by Liberalism in America would have to be weeded out. You can't let that stuff linger because people might once again become inured to such things as a safe food supply, clean air and water, protected wilderness areas, Medicare and Social Security, a forty hour work week, safe working conditions for employees, voting rights for women and blacks, collective bargaining for workers, and access to public spaces for the disabled. You'll want to restore the Gilded Age mentality that led to the Great Depression in the 1930's, and nearly brought about another one in 2007. You'll be glad no doubt to say goodbye to all that wretched diversity that has blighted the American scene with art, jazz, dance, theater, intellect, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Italian and alas, even French cuisine. In Flyover Country, prepare to consume a whole lot of corn.<br />
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Couldn't care less for diversity? Well get ready for a bland, homogenized world in which everyone looks acts and thinks just like you. Seems to me that for centuries people from across the globe have been leaving such places in order to make it to a diverse, friendly place called America. Clearly, Schwartz and those of his ilk no longer have use for such childish dreams.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-24976269760482196672010-04-23T14:36:00.000-05:002010-04-23T14:36:46.006-05:00Tea Party Stealth"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." The following (with apologies to Dickens) is the tale of two demonstrations. I had the opportunity to attend both within the span of a week, and the differences couldn't have been more apparent.<br />
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On Tuesday, April 17, I was present at the Tyler Civic Theatre to show support for their planned performance of "The Laramie Project" which explores the effects on the town of Laramie, Wyoming of the murder of Matthew Sheppard. The play, which the company had chosen and cast for presentation in the upcoming season, had hit a snag in the form of a few complaints by controversy-phobic citizens. In a momentary loss of nerve, the board of the theater considered pulling the play in an effort to head off an unpleasant showdown with area conservatives. They lost sight of the necessity of challenging those who would deny them the right to free speech.<br />
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Of course when they attempted to quietly step back from the brink, area liberals were stirred to action. That's where the demonstration sponsored by TAG (Tyler Area Gays) came in. This was a clear and clarion First Amendment action in which those who showed up to defend free speech did so in the face of potentially overwhelming opposition given the cultural makeup of the region. Pro free speech demonstrators numbered close to two hundred. The opposition only managed a paltry three or four individuals.<br />
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The spirit of the larger group was friendly and positive, but determined. When a counter demonstrator shouted, bible in hand, from his designated side of the street, we drowned him out with the children's hymn, "Jesus Loves Me This I Know," giving great emphasis to the phrase "For The Bible Tells Me So!" After a couple of hours of singing, chanting slogans, and speeches, board members emerged from their closed door conference with the news that the show would go on! It was an important victory for liberal values in East Texas. Tickets go on sale in May.<br />
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Four days later I attended a Tea Party gathering at the Gregg County courthouse in Longview, sponsored by the local chapter of We The People. As an unapologetic, incorrigible liberal, I would have liked nothing more than to report the same kinds of violence-drenched language and antics by Tea Partiers that we've been treated to in the national press of late, but let me say here and now that it just didn't happen. What I saw on Saturday seemed as wholesome a slice of Americana as you could hope to see. Precisely therein lies the story.<br />
<br />
The scenes of the day had all the brooding menace of a Norman Rockwell painting. Unfortunately for the Tea Party (and the GOP), they had all the vitality and passion of one as well. It raises the fascinating question that if the Tea Party is forced to put restraints on its more violent, racist wing, must it also say goodbye to the energy that wing brings to the table? It's a dilemma that we will no doubt see played out over the next couple of political seasons, and the conclusion is not clear. To my mind, Richard Hofstadter's 1963 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" has never been more relevant.<br />
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State Legislative candidate David Simpson and local Republican operative Keith Rothra did a passable "good preacher/bad preacher" routine peppering standard political rhetoric with the religious pandering and dog whistles that East Texas conservatives have come to expect from their politicians. Simpson's speech veered from politics to maudlin visions of a halcyon time when government and taxes weren't needed because "sin did not exist." Rothra roused the crowd with the stentorian intonations of an Old Testament prophet or a fire and brimstone preacher by repeating Sarah Palin's exhortation to "reload" rather than retreat.<br />
<br />
But the man of the hour was Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert, who prefaced his remarks by thanking God for the "favor" of cloud cover to ward off the afternoon sun. What followed was a rambling, disjointed mixture of conservative pablum, red meat, and congressional anecdotes that were clearly not composed by or for deep thinkers. I personally heard Gohmert repeat one such yarn from another speech he gave in Tyler a year ago about how administration hacks had stolen and ruined his idea for a "Tax Holiday" which consequently never saw the light of day. The crowd, on cue, groaned sympathetically. Gohmert's best pronouncement of the day was his fervent wish that the Tea Party movement would one day absorb the Republican Party, and I couldn't have agreed more.<br />
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As he really warmed to his crowd and threatened to carry it late into the afternoon on the wings of his oratory, the clouds burst forth with a considerable downpour which sent the fair-weather Tea Partiers and the rest of us scurrying to our cars. Apparently, God had had his fill.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-31388087092755183852010-03-31T13:22:00.000-05:002010-03-31T13:22:38.980-05:00VindicationIn a follow-up to my last post, it was gratifying to read in this morning's Longview News Journal an AP story noting that the brouhaha on the right over the so called "Climategate" controversy has been revealed to be largely unfounded. Why the paper chose to bury such a significant story on page 4A is anyone's guess, but I hope many noticed it nonetheless. The thrust of the piece is that the science backing up the twin claims that global warming is happening and that it is caused in large degree by human activity now stands vindicated. Doubtless this in no way will dampen the passions of the eco-belligerent, who have demonstrated a strong aversion to matters of science and fact. Nor will it staunch the flow of conspiracy drenched agitprop coming from the regressive right. But the reality based world in which the rest of us exist can move ahead with policies that at least have a chance of averting disaster.<div><br />
</div><div>That's the Wednesday, March 31 edition....Just sayin'.</div><div><br />
</div><div>d.</div>et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-83135222247117519502010-03-02T22:39:00.003-06:002010-03-03T09:05:21.884-06:00Eco-Sanity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://grcimagenet.grc.nasa.gov/GRCDigitalImages/1995/1995_02395L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://grcimagenet.grc.nasa.gov/GRCDigitalImages/1995/1995_02395L.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
"Root, stem, limb, leaf,<br />
the glow and hue of flower and fruit-<br />
one rain extends to them<br />
and all are able to become fresh and glossy."~The Lotus Sutra<br />
<br />
While the motivations of advocates for eco-friendly policies and practices seem fairly straightforward - being "friendly" toward earth's often fragile ecologies - those of their opponents appear murky at best. What, we might reasonably ask, could be the harm in looking after this, our only planet, our only home? Increasingly, it is difficult to come to anything but the unfortunate conclusion that the goal most highly prized among the "eco-belligerent" or the "eco-indifferent" is the immense pleasure derived from obstructing those with the unmitigated temerity to care for the planet which sustains our life.<br />
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The conflict between the aforementioned camps stretches back at least to the 1970's when it centered on high profile issues such as the detrimental effects of pesticides like DDT. Lately the issue serving as a lightening rod for liberals and conservatives is global warming, or under it's more technical name, anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The bone of contention between the opponents being the extent to which human activity may be leading the planet down the road to ruin. In other words, emphasis is placed on the predictability (or lack thereof) of an imminent ecological catastrophe.<br />
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I'll resist adding my voice to the armies of scientists, politicos, and hangers on parroting the talking points of their respective sides. For me, obssessing on the future is too speculative to be of practical help, and throws little useful light on our situation. More relevant is the track record of our species on this planet which is documented and thus is not in doubt. I am more concerned with what might be called anthropogenic trashing (AGT), which has caused, and is causing degradation, illness and ecological strain on our still beautiful planet. In this light, microcosm is macrocosm. Past is prologue. Greenhouse gases and garbage may be different in magnitude, but not in kind. Trashing the air arises from the same mentality as littering the streets.<br />
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One facile argument on the right regarding human activity and ecological degradation is the idea that we haven't been around long enough to do any serious damage. Such obtuseness dangerously underestimates the human capacity for exponential population growth and its predictable strain on resources. Such a notion ignores the many ecological disasters already on record which have threatened or destroyed natural habitats like coastal wetlands, and even claimed human lives. To listen to the minions of the eco-unfriendly these days is to witness a variant of mass selective memory. Its as though history has been expunged from their minds.<br />
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But in the reality based community, we know that the Great Pacific Trash Gyre exists. One estimate puts the size of this floating trash island caused by vortex-like currents in the ocean at around that of the United States. With a ratio of plastic to plankton of 48 to 1 this buoyant dump site is quite a testament to the proliferation of waste carelessly discarded by humans the world over. Do the eco-belligerent consider this to be a good thing for the oceans?<br />
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Another ecological nightmare seemingly forgotten by know nothing commentators on all things environmental is the October 2000 Coal Sludge Spill in which some 300 billion gallons of arsenic laced coal slurry deluged a significant portion of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. In classic right wing form, the lone official who attempted to investigate the incident was silenced. The Massey Energy Company whose breached reservoir was responsible for the spill, received a slap on the wrist by the Bush administration. Much of the slurry still lines the streams that feed the Ohio River.<br />
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Nor do the eco-indifferent recall the spectacular disasters of the distant and recent past which must be laid squarely at the feet of our species: The Libby Montana Asbestos contamination, Union Carbide's 1984 Bhopal India gas disaster (20,000 dead), Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Love Canal, Picher Oklahoma's lead contamination incident, The Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill. In light of our well documented tendency to foul our lands and waterways, can anyone seriously doubt our capacity for visiting environmental armaggedon upon the atmosphere?<br />
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In the end this is not about dire predictions of the future of global warming, but remaining cognizant of humankind's environmentally dubious past and present. The question becomes is it possible to care too much for the tiny raft of the earth set adrift in the vast infinitude of the cosmos. A helpful hint in answering the question: It has nothing whatsoever to do with politics, and everything to do with survival.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-42129272424972990302009-12-15T11:03:00.003-06:002009-12-15T11:18:05.680-06:00This Is About Who We AreIn the contentious ongoing debate over health care in America, conservatives have made much of the evils of a so-called "government takeover" of the health care system. I wonder if anyone ever stops to think about what this really means. The conflict is often framed facilely as one between benevolent, feedom-loving, flag-waving corporations and the much dreaded GOVERNMENT. Predictably from the right, all of the tired, tried and true hot button terms and catch phrases are tapped for maximum effect in the cynical manipulation of conservative emotions: Collectivism, Statism, Socialism, Communism etc, ad nauseam, ad infinitum...<br />
<br />
But such constructions prove odd to the point of absurdity in light of one of our dearest held ideals and beliefs: that ours is a government of, by, and for the people. If we are the government, yet are profoundly distrustful of it, then it follows that ultimately it is our very selves upon whom we look with such suspicion. In psychological parlance this affliction might be labelled an oddly paranoid crisis of identity. Certainly a mark of low self-esteem. Writ large across an entire culture (or at least half of one) it is giving rise to some pretty bizarre behavior.<br />
<br />
In August we watched in jaw dropping astonishment a political process exhibiting signs of what could only be described as derangement. We were treated to the antics of birthers, deathers, tea-baggers and just plain haters high-jacking what should have been a productive (if lively) discussion on the complex issues of health care concerning us all. <br />
<br />
But no conversation could heard over the shouting of mobs (town hollerers) intent not on fostering discussion, but rather on silencing it. The tactic has had mixed reviews, for while it certainly halted the reasoned, measured discussion Americans deserved, it also exposed an ugly vein of racially tinged hostility running through what passes for the GOP these days. Precisely the kind of hostility that has been known to cause independents to run screaming away from any party perceived to be so consumed.<br />
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Oddly, the syndrome noted by Thomas Frank in his prescient 2004 book "What's The Matter With Kansas," seems if anything to be more profoundly in evidence today. The central insight of the book was that the conservative leadership in America had found a way to compel their constituents to vote with machine-like consistency against their own economic, and social interests. This was accomplished by hammering on the most emotionally charged issues in any given political cycle thus raising conservative animus against liberals to such a fever pitch, that they would ignore even the most blatant of self-harming policy agendas put forth by their leaders. It worked then and scarily, it's working again.<br />
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In much the same way that Calvinism in the past issued draconian rules against anything bearing the faintest whiff of pleasure, extreme conservatism has come out against health care reform. Calvinists were driven by the mere chance that somewhere, somehow, someone out there might be having fun. And if they weren't allowed to have fun, no one else should be allowed. Today's conservatives similarly rail against the possibility that somewhere, somehow, someone out there might receive needed assistance from the government. It is a notion predicated on an peculiarly hypocritical denial of reality. Such denial wants to believe that "If I can control my life and destiny, everyone else can as well!" In truth, we control little if anything in this life. Without a moments notice events can overtake us, leaving us diminished, harmed, even destroyed. Conservatives like to suppose that it is weakness to admit this. Grownups accept it, make accommodation, and move forward.<br />
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We all tacitly trust government to handle threats to our security and safety. Who do we call upon to put out a blaze that threatens to destroy our home in a fire? Don't we depend on the police to protect us when real threats are perceived against our communities and homes? We create institutions like these and put them in place because we recognize that sometimes, events can overwhelm even the well prepared among us. Guess what folks, essentially that's socialist. And do we want the decisions of Fire and Police Departments to be subject to the corporate concerns of cost analysis and annual profits? Would you consider yourself and your family as safe?<br />
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Frankly regarding health care in America, our fateful wrong turn occurred when we allowed business and the profit motive anywhere near the profound and uniquely human issues of health, life and death. Because with health and disease, as with the above issues of crime and disaster, events can overtake us to devastating effect. If so much is provided to protect person and property by Fire, Police Departments and disaster relief, how much more important is protecting the health of the very bodies inhabiting the homes that we defend?<br />
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The right is great at the art of branding. They have given us the "Death Tax," "The Patriot Act," and now in a political sneer that would make Lee Atwater grin ear to ear, we have "Obamacare." I'd like to try my hand at the art by suggesting a new name for the health care system now in place in America that allows upwards of 4000 citizens to die annually simply for the lack of affordable health insurance. I dub such a system "Corporocare."<br />
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For the record, liberals will admit that a total governmental takeover of health care in America is socialist when conservatives can admit that a health care system completely beholden to the bottom line of remote corporate share holders is fascist. Returning to the subject of those failed discussions we endured in August, the time has come for reasonable people to find accommodations that, while allowing room for corporations to exist, will always refuse to cede human life and dignity in doing so. We need health care for all, we need it now.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-20346429568656505822009-09-29T14:43:00.003-05:002009-10-06T14:03:20.263-05:00Hate Speech Redux"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is that he did not go to the New York Times Building."~Ann Coulter <br />
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The overwhelming response received from LNJ letter writers (and one forum columnist) regarding my column of Sept 12 titled "Taking Our Country Back From the Hatemongers," was impressive for the sheer variety of concerns that were aired. Let me say that I appreciate the time and effort expended by these citizens to join a conversation that we've clearly needed to have. That said, while I applaud these commentators for their passionate embrace of the right of free speech, none of the counter-arguments offered has managed to move me one iota from my original thesis: that hate-speech is decimating public discourse and civility in America. Inadvertently, the responses of these writers, which were pretty much all over the lot, have made my point for me. The question remains will we allow it to continue, or move decisively to end it?<br />
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Since my column had a relatively tight and simple focus, it begs the question - what were these people responding to? - I suspect the generalized, toxic mental environment that hate speech gives rise to and nourishes. One respondent asked whether my intention was to "extinguish free speech." Nothing could be further from the truth. Another intimated that I somehow desired the "eradication of conservative Christians," but no such phrase appeared in my piece. Finally, a forum columnist sought to divert attention from Glenn Beck's hatemongering in a clumsy stab at smearing President Obama as a racist using the threadbare tactic of guilt by association. Why this writer became fixated on race perhaps he could best explain, but race per se was never my focus. Hate speech was. Despite the well meant (if uniformly off-base) efforts of the respondents, it still is.<br />
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David Neiwert's book THE ELIMINATIONISTS deserves further mention in the context of this discussion. Only those who haven't read it could characterize it, as did one writer, as "polemical." In it, is a good working definition of hate-speech, or as he calls it, eliminationist speech. Two main features set it apart from the normal, lively back and forth of oppositional political language. First, it is <i>focused on an enemy within, </i>constituted by entire blocs of the citizenry. Secondly, it advocates the excision and extermination of those blocs by violent or civil means. In other words, the purveyors of hate speech are not content merely to oppose those with whom they differ. They mean to eliminate them.<br />
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In July of 2008, Jim David Adkisson entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church and gunned down two elderly congregants. Officials told reporters the next day that Adkisson had been motivated by his hatred of the liberal movement. A search of the attacker's home in Powell, TN yielded guns, ammunition, and books by leading conservative pundits Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly. Also found was a "manifesto" written by Adkisson which was, according to Neiwert, a "distillation of these works."<br />
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Abortion provider Dr. George Tiller after being mentioned on FOX's "The O'Reilly Factor" on 28 occasions with such nicknames as "Dr. Tiller, the Baby Killer," was gunned down as he attended church in Wichita, Kansas in May 2009. When confronted about his coverage, O'Reilly, Pontius Pilate-like, washed his hands of the matter. Recently, at the Family Research Council's annual Values Voters Forum, O'Reilly was awarded the forum's first ever "Courage" award. The trial of alleged shooter Scott Roeder, begins in January.<br />
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This summer, in Phoenix at a speech that Barack Obama gave on health care, a man identified as Chris Broughton showed up outside the venue toting an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun. The day before he'd heard his pastor, Steven L. Anderson, deliver a sermon titled, "Why I Hate Barack Obama," in which he explained why congregants should pray fervently for the President to "die and go to hell." I'm still waiting for the "inevitable" public outcry from those conservatives who still rail against Barack Obama's erstwhile minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.<br />
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As a liberal, I often peruse the comments expressed by Maddow, Franken, Olbermann, Dowd, Rich, Letterman, Rall, Maher, Pelosi, The Daily Kos, and The Huffington Post. Strange though it may seem, such content has not once caused me to desire or advocate doing physical harm to my conservative fellow Americans. It was a fair criticism of my previous column that it was sparse on examples of left-wing eliminationist rhetoric, but it is equally fair to note that recent incidents like those mentioned above known to emanate from the liberal community have been very rare. If my detractors can produce such examples, I'd be happy to consider them. Until then, I continue (as does Neiwert) to view hate speech, and more importantly, the violence it increasingly incites, as a predominantly right-wing phenomenon. <br />
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In light of all this, one would expect moderate conservatives (assuming any are left) to quickly move to decry the hate-speech occurring daily within their ranks in order to avoid the stigma it justly carries, taking responsibility and action where appropriate. Unfortunately, what we've seen from politicians, national pundits, and alas, the respondents to my column has been, for the most part, obfuscation, deflection and finger-pointing.<br />
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That's disappointing, because the situation we face is becoming dangerous and ever more deeply embedded in our civic discourse. The local response to date has been to reject the search for solutions in favor of partisan inertia and misplaced bravado. Ultimately, this is to settle for being a part of the problem.<br />
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d.<br />
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Below are links to the column and letters in response to my August 23 blog post:"Civility Strikes Back!"<br />
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<a href="http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/26/09262009_forum_coulter.html">http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/26/09262009_forum_coulter.html</a><br />
<a href="http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/24/09242009_letters.html">http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/24/09242009_letters.html</a><br />
<a href="http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/20/09202009_letters.html">http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/20/09202009_letters.html</a><br />
<a href="http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/22/09222009_letters.html">http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/22/09222009_letters.html</a><br />
<a href="http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/23/09232009_letters.html">http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/23/09232009_letters.html</a><br />
<a href="http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/30/09302009_letters.html">http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/09/30/09302009_letters.html</a>et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-82257075641584062602009-09-20T20:36:00.003-05:002009-09-21T01:45:47.583-05:00A Little Push Back For The Locals<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It's difficult to believe that in the space of a 300 word letter to the editor that someone could get so much so wrong, but I guess Trudy Taylor is some kind of linguistics savant for having pulled it off. Taylor's letter (Longview News Journal, Sept. 20) was in response to my own LNJ column of September 12, titled "Taking Our Country Back From the Hatemongers." It first appeared on this blog on Sept 6 under the title "Civility Strikes Back." I will take a crack at answering Taylor's concerns because, as the blog's title suggests, Liberals can <b><i>and should, </i><span style="font-weight: normal;">when called for, </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">respond.</span></b></span></span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: italic;">Italics are Trudy</span><br />
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</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>Anderson's list was incomplete</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b></b></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">May I remind Durren Anderson that President Barack Obama himself would have to be included in his remonstration of hate-speech users and listeners since the president has gone along, in order to get along, with race mongers like Jeremiah Wright</span>.</i></span></span></b></span><br />
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</span></span></b></span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Really? The only person Taylor could manage to come up with in completing my list of hatemongers was President Barack Obama? Now even a cursory glance at my piece will show the average reader that it was inspired by those who use the outsized megaphones of TV and talk radio to spew an unrelenting stream of vile, hate drenched demagoguery into the ears (and minds and hearts) of people too dull or desensitized to realize its harmful effects. And it was willful obtuseness to deflect attention from these purveyors of hatred by dragging out the fusty old ghost of Jeremiah Wright. The matter of Wright was laid to rest in the campaign. Obama broke ties with his erstwhile minister and apparently America was satisfied. After all, America <b>did</b> elect him President. Its foolish, and transparently vicious to equate the likes of Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk with Obama.</span></span><br />
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</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>Glenn Beck is a buffoonish political entertainer who has recently found his niche taking shots, sometimes very accurate ones, at an administration which has apparently declared open season on itself with its unwillingness or inability to shepherd its own minions.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">In the spirit of seeking common ground with those who differ from me on political issues, let me say that I agree with Taylor's assertion that Beck is a Buffoon. Beyond that bit of detente however, I have to disagree.As stated in my column, and in David Neiwert's book which I referred to, it's a mistake to let people like Beck and Limbaugh off the hook with the "entertainer" dodge. I guess what liberals and conservatives consider entertainment just doesn't jibe. Beck referred to the country's first African American President as a "Racist," and said that Obama "had a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." This doubtless would have come as quite a shocking surprise to Obama's white mother and grandparents! Nor can I find anything "entertaining" about it, especially in light of this country's anguished history of political assassination and home-grown terror. But hey, conservatives apparently get their jollies in different ways than we liberals do.</span><br />
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</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>May I also remind Durren that eight years of hysterical name-calling and nastiness was standard operating procedure on his part while President George W. Bush was in office; the bulk of which was due to erroneous frustration at a perceived stolen election. The likes of which did real damage to the office of the presidency, leaving our current occupant even more vulnerable to slights and misjudgments from opponents.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This Orwellian double-speak is the strangest comment of all. And frankly, it cuts me to the quick to have my writings over the last eight years reduced to mere "hysterical name-calling." I prefer to think of it as eight years of deploying some of the most exquisite sarcasm, ridicule, and satire that LNJ readers have seen. All of it "reality-based" and richly deserved. Bush was elected under a cloud that included such stark images as the Brooks Brothers Riot in Florida that intimidated vote counters into stopping their work, and a conservatively stacked Supreme Court that ratified those rioters. This is all well documented in Vincent Bugliosi's book, THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICA. Look it up. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bush did lie us into a war with a sovereign nation that never attacked us. He did lie about the depth and the full extent of illegal wire tapping of American citizens. He did lie about the horrors of detainee torture carried out in the name of the american people. These lies and others are laid out magnificently in David Corn's exhaustively researched, "THE LIES OF GEORGE W. BUSH". So I would differ with the statement that mere "name-calling" has damaged the presidency. Rather, it was the remarkable lack of ethics, morality, and respect for the rule of law which characterized the Bush administration that did the damage. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Nice try though, Trudy.</span></span><br />
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</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">d.</span></span><br />
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</span></span>et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-46699601038098707972009-09-06T07:51:00.007-05:002009-09-08T10:35:57.295-05:00A Corner On Decency?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcsVG9Nb0V8d_MJUpaQJ9ue7SgD0RP0KDS_8ZoxpmL18LnmVH1GKj5mzJhSMQA6uReyJmKLBrSy3HejgCW1MqMY3WgNFDCH_l5p9w8ntzv-OmRgw8gZBawv_T4XXcYakv-TedVlLQNOfs/s1600-h/president_obama_48.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378174116918910610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 132px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcsVG9Nb0V8d_MJUpaQJ9ue7SgD0RP0KDS_8ZoxpmL18LnmVH1GKj5mzJhSMQA6uReyJmKLBrSy3HejgCW1MqMY3WgNFDCH_l5p9w8ntzv-OmRgw8gZBawv_T4XXcYakv-TedVlLQNOfs/s200/president_obama_48.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />The latest manifestation of right-wing craziness has hit the airwaves. It seems that "President Obama is after our children!" In a fit of conservative paranoia in a season that has seen more than its share of the same, right wingers, stoked on a tad too much FOX news, are preparing to yank their kids in droves from school on Tuesday to prevent their hearing a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/">special address </a>to the nation's youth by the President. Spoon-fed on fear by conservative talking heads such as Michele Malkin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh et al., parents nationwide are moving to head Obama's speech off at the pass. The speech, purported by conservative pundits to contain mind-altering messages about the wonders of socialism, has caused dozens of East Texas Schools to announce that they would not be showing the speech to their students. I can recall no finer civics lesson on censorship in the annals of American education. The lone standout unfazed by the hysteria gripping the region is the Longview Independent School District. Hats off to that oasis of rationality in East Texas.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_8VNZFzW54Gopw47AbwNpNUlERD9IJKM2wArRyEaoLaAJXE41Nz7gXWGgzpkkM1a0TIMd2R3IqcoGvsbXc6aJ0_Gay95bFRogaWRt3CCQbwm0DokwGQepC_uBVpDpxGc-aJzxpNLckkk/s1600-h/reagan.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378179716740076546" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 168px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 200px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_8VNZFzW54Gopw47AbwNpNUlERD9IJKM2wArRyEaoLaAJXE41Nz7gXWGgzpkkM1a0TIMd2R3IqcoGvsbXc6aJ0_Gay95bFRogaWRt3CCQbwm0DokwGQepC_uBVpDpxGc-aJzxpNLckkk/s200/reagan.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Funny, I don't recall liberal parents yelling "Katie bar the door!" when Ronald Reagan gave a similar address to school children during his administration. Perhaps that's because liberals are just not as susceptible to the wild speculations, not to mention manipulations that irresponsible "journalists" and news "entertainers" traffic in these days. Beyond that, liberal and progressive parents seem to have a clearer understanding of the importance of a presidential address to the nation's youth, regardless of the politics of any given executive in any given year. It's the President, people! What is to become of us when we don't trust the individual elected by way of a thorough, legitimate democratic process to lead our country? I see this as the logical conclusion of a longstanding propaganda campaign that has reached its critical mass of "catastrophic success." After all, it was Reagan who famously opined that "Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem." Strange words from a man who invested so much to become the head of "government."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQl01Xj5oIgCLUV1-RPPe6aiSeh4QVC1lFVrlTTZshOvtHdizioHiarGJ6yIIWTjizdbygnH-PNfdmTKgY1W_BBGHcGEZlBx_W7qKCBooQBIR1yJCWPNUZIRgVOUhpSuoOdn5PIMGBGaY/s1600-h/bush.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378183356843573698" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 172px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 200px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQl01Xj5oIgCLUV1-RPPe6aiSeh4QVC1lFVrlTTZshOvtHdizioHiarGJ6yIIWTjizdbygnH-PNfdmTKgY1W_BBGHcGEZlBx_W7qKCBooQBIR1yJCWPNUZIRgVOUhpSuoOdn5PIMGBGaY/s200/bush.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />George Herbert Walker Bush also spoke to the kiddies when he held the tiller of our ship of state. Again, liberal parents didn't grab up their young'uns and head for the hills. Did liberals agree with the policy agenda of G. H. W. Bush? No, we didn't. Did we ascribe wisdom and clarity to his philosophy of governance? Not a chance. But neither did we attribute to him powers of persuasion so acute that he could, in the course of one speech, brainwash our little ones. Indoctrination is a long, drawn out, tedious affair carried out over years through a program that encompasses every level of society. One speech cannot possibly accomplish what these pitiful conservative parents hold in their fevered imaginations. That is giving President Obama way too much credit. One begins to think that in their minds, Obama has crossed over into some mythic realm of existence wherein all are rendered powerless to withstand his flights of oratory and his natural charisma and charm. Lighten up folks, he's just a guy like the rest of us. Seriously folks, it'll be alright. The children are OK. Really they are.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrI2d25MeloCy9R61g7em9XErs6d3bXNYuZgBCKKT2OxspXbostrvhZJderIXrBVf8IxZqkWMgmTc9xnBxA4zPYIUp4O7BHiKzuWUd6iMReqBlfVal80wlwmSuuxG_VNTSTXKSrg9TbT0/s1600-h/26-08-07_15a.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378204365051968210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 124px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 200px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrI2d25MeloCy9R61g7em9XErs6d3bXNYuZgBCKKT2OxspXbostrvhZJderIXrBVf8IxZqkWMgmTc9xnBxA4zPYIUp4O7BHiKzuWUd6iMReqBlfVal80wlwmSuuxG_VNTSTXKSrg9TbT0/s200/26-08-07_15a.jpg" border="0" /></a>Finally, there's W. On that fateful day in September 2001, he was reading to school children when the planes hit the buildings in New York and Washington. Even though this same president would leave office when the nation's financial future was teetering over the abyss, when we were engaged in wars on two fronts, and all other economic indicators were flashing red, I still can say that the little ones to whom he read "My Pet Goat," received a rare historical treasure. If I disagreed with the father's policies, I abhorred the son's. That's to be expected in the adult world of politics. Yet few of us, including I suspect, President Obama, are capable of allowing politics to compel us to meddle with the innocence of a child. I have no trouble imputing integrity on this question to Republicans just as I do to Democrats. We have come to a sad and sorry pass when it becomes impossible to see our political opponents as decent human beings, or as being incapable of restraining themselves from tampering with the minds of other people's children. We forget at our peril that those on the opposite side of the aisle are not <strong><em>only</em></strong> our political opponents: they are Americans, too.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-62645865653494732832009-08-23T18:39:00.002-05:002009-09-09T14:20:48.451-05:00Civility Strikes Back!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkG1AqJLqeiyewSI__QcCkhbYVqUVvBW62ZmYt4AD0drufHqlKubMzpzoWhK9wje8tBTwwADPRmDOa7VJyqg0JMoSeByR_MSLxI2DGwzW3-5LxsoleDsebTUEWrRSV5LfmDVpV3HTAUQw/s1600-h/Download+08-01-2009+004.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373298282486105042" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkG1AqJLqeiyewSI__QcCkhbYVqUVvBW62ZmYt4AD0drufHqlKubMzpzoWhK9wje8tBTwwADPRmDOa7VJyqg0JMoSeByR_MSLxI2DGwzW3-5LxsoleDsebTUEWrRSV5LfmDVpV3HTAUQw/s320/Download+08-01-2009+004.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="COLOR: rgb(13,0,208)">“This President has, I think, exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture. I don’t know what it is [...] I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem. He has a…This guy is, I believe, a racist."~ Fox television host, Glenn Beck</span><br /><br />Sometimes things happen in the world of American politics that give me hope. In response to the irresponsible, and incendiary comments above, spoken on the air by Glenn Beck during a segment of the FOX & FRIENDS news program, advertisers are pulling commercials and the millions they represent from Beck's show. Some of the companies pulling the ads carry a lot of clout in American business: Wal-Mart, Geico, Proctor & Gamble, and Radio Shack are just a few of more than 20 such businesses, and the list continues to grow.<br /><br />ColorOfChange.org is spearheading the effort to put these and other businesses on notice for providing financial backing for the purveyors of corrosive and inflammatory language. The results have been surprising to say the least in a time when the public has become inured to hyperbolic commentaries which have slowly become the norm in our discourse. I am proud to say that I am a signatory to the petitions that ColorOfChange.org has forwarded to the business community. And the effort has paid off in another way, Beck has been asked by News Corp, the Rupert Murdoch owned company that runs FOX, to "take a week off." Like I said, sometimes there is cause for hope.<br /><br />While this story may represent a refreshing example that civility is not yet dead in our public discourse, it would be premature to think that on its own it can bring us out of the dark place at which we've arrived. It has taken us a decade or more to get here, and it will take a lot of hard and sustained work to get back to civility and mutual respect. The way ahead won't really become clear to us if we fail to understand the steps that have brought us to this sorry pass.<br /><br />Those wanting to retrace the steps that have placed our public conversation in peril will be doing themselves a favor if they read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eliminationists-Hate-Radicalized-American-Right/dp/0981576982/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251067235&sr=1-1">"The Eliminationists," by David Neiwert. </a>The book's subtitle indicates that it is both a cautionary tale, and a rallying cry for restoring the respect and decency that has gone missing from our political discourse: "How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right." In the reading, it proves to be an accurate, chilling rendering of recent developments in culture and politics that have led inexorably to the situation we find ourselves in, one in which hate speech no longer exists on the fringes of public life, but has taken up residence comfortably in the mainstream.<br /><br />Neiwert provides a quietly irrefutable gathering of evidence drawn from news reports, scholarly works, and interviews which make the case that extremist language has for years been drawn from the darkest, hate-filled corners of society, repackaged for mass consumption, and released into the mainstream. The effects can hardly be denied. Frankly, the fallout resulting from Beck's stupid irresponsibility has been stunning not because it was well deserved, but because it happened at all. That is how desensitized we have become to rhetoric and demagoguery that in times past would have been worthy of the strongest condemnation.<br /><br />Neiwert's book is important in that it identifies a poisonous element in our public discourse that has not only been allowed to flourish by all of us, but has actually been encouraged by some really bad actors in the fields of media (Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Coulter), culture (Robertson, Falwell, Dobson), and from those in positions of political leadership (Lott, Tancredo, Palin). Once the source has been identified, it becomes the duty of every citizen, be they Republican or Democrat, to stamp out this infection wherever it rears its head in public life. Our very ability to preserve democracy depends on good citizens standing up for civility. That is precisely what ColorofChange.org has done.<br /><br />It needs to be the beginning, not the end of the fight to restore the public square that hatemongers have stolen from us.<br /><br />Update: Since this post was first published, the number of businesses that have pulled their ads down from Beck's show has grown to at least 50.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-31886585084045255312009-08-03T22:00:00.002-05:002009-08-06T13:28:03.274-05:00The Difference Between Liz and Dad? Lipstick<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR1-vartcj_Kl1MMMV0hwxHR7TTNX0RV7UCGOZsfSXDQyociNYuvrRul4vrnXl2mbCSr4hruWZuDrxT0Xg3cJQNyvUVoB1uUgFWeKK-RljcHK9gceC78VCAP5XKv21adtF5usJXCAbjAU/s1600-h/Obama+in+Berlin+2008.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365932693143852018" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 234px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR1-vartcj_Kl1MMMV0hwxHR7TTNX0RV7UCGOZsfSXDQyociNYuvrRul4vrnXl2mbCSr4hruWZuDrxT0Xg3cJQNyvUVoB1uUgFWeKK-RljcHK9gceC78VCAP5XKv21adtF5usJXCAbjAU/s320/Obama+in+Berlin+2008.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>"America needs a commander-in-chief, not a global community organizer."~<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Liz Cheney from a speech delivered in Atlanta, Georgia</span><br /></div><br /><div></div>The French have a term that describes monstrous children; l'enfant terrible. But in the case of Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice President, one gets the feeling that in Dick Cheney's eyes, the more monstrous the child, the better. Indeed, the comment above and others uttered by the younger Cheney in defense of torture, sketchy wire taps, and the glories of Guantanamo, surely must warm the cockles of dad's heart. Or whatever Cheney has that passes for one.<br /><br /><div></div>Liz Cheney's fallacies are easy enough to dispatch. Left unsaid in her outrageous statement is the fact that if America has a President, then by definition she has a Commander-In-Chief. Someone please inform Liz that his name is Barack H. Obama. What Cheney is really signaling is her own preference regarding the style in which the office is handled.<br /><div></div><br /><div>Problem is, we've seen that style and its less than desirable results for the past eight years. The consensus among most intelligence agencies in the aftermath is that these policies have left us <em>less</em> safe. It stands to reason that if the American President is frequently the source of angry protests throughout the world, and in fact is often burned in effigy at such demonstrations, it does not bode well for our security. Conversely, when Germans waved hundreds of American flags when Barack Obama spoke in Berlin in 2008, I felt safer.</div><br /><div></div>This apparently doesn't penetrate Cheney's one-dimensional (and aggressive) worldview. Thus, in interviews and panel discussions she continues to channel dear old dad by advocating the American President if you will, as a sort of "Global Community Destroyer." This was clearly one image of our country and its leader that the world, and more importantly the American voter recently rejected. But Cheney will not be deterred by the mere facts of an election.<br /><br /><div></div>She is fond of trumpeting the canard that the Bush administration "kept the country safe for eight years," conveniently omitting 2001, the year that they didn't. Remember, 3000 innocent Americans died on their watch. By that measure alone, Obama's doing a better job. And don't even get me started on the Bush/Cheney non-response to Hurricane Katrina.<br /><br />Yet instead of feeling humbled or shamed by these failures, both Cheney's continue making the rounds demanding a respect that is hardly deserved, all the while impugning the patriotism of citizens and leaders who are doing a better job than did they in the field of foreign policy and diplomacy. So how does one wrap this up as politely and as succinctly as possible? <div></div><br />Liz Cheney is full of crap....Yeah, I think that works for me.<br /><div></div><br /><br />d. <div></div>et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-12891407837843234752009-08-01T19:44:00.027-05:002009-08-02T17:24:24.689-05:00Home Is Where The Heart Is<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpoFcF8kjLzr_N-FzDmb3VymOXxTrVyv-_6MQZw4JmjbDCC-1ZFuDDwa-dQkM48WmVZPjxi2ShqSLTzuYd-SiwakL9WO_PQvTwwoQtzg7sqgkEJPuKy2ezaSdN1ppGVl1gx-j8VxdnyR4/s1600-h/Elder+Lake+first+visit+9.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpoFcF8kjLzr_N-FzDmb3VymOXxTrVyv-_6MQZw4JmjbDCC-1ZFuDDwa-dQkM48WmVZPjxi2ShqSLTzuYd-SiwakL9WO_PQvTwwoQtzg7sqgkEJPuKy2ezaSdN1ppGVl1gx-j8VxdnyR4/s200/Elder+Lake+first+visit+9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365213681600839842" border="0" /></a>When my young family lived in the Dallas area during the early to mid-80's, I could only go three to four months at a time without feeling an urge, almost a positive obsession to see, of all things, pine trees! I spent half of my youth growing up amid the concrete, glass and steel of the metro-plex and the other half here among the rolling green hills and forests of East Texas. Perhaps because I was surrounded by these verdant woods when I was born, this is the place that I identify with most. It's home.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuKuVYGnQxRl0nicn2ixp-gDfYOLIiyb9nmfnpmrQyElXmk5qLLny0ByKsbfjtfJIQrM_Lr4aoPvQs4BUeJ2Nitg3hqKNYsRPW2hBsL2zxD647dEcV0QHbxku217p46ePOJ06UN7r-0NQ/s1600-h/Download+08-01-2009+003.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 157px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuKuVYGnQxRl0nicn2ixp-gDfYOLIiyb9nmfnpmrQyElXmk5qLLny0ByKsbfjtfJIQrM_Lr4aoPvQs4BUeJ2Nitg3hqKNYsRPW2hBsL2zxD647dEcV0QHbxku217p46ePOJ06UN7r-0NQ/s320/Download+08-01-2009+003.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365201251810307874" border="0" /></a>But home is not always the most welcoming of places if in your politics, your religion, and I suppose just in your overall view of reality itself, you tend toward the liberal outlook. In that sense, I would have to say that I don't fit the profile of a home grown East Texan. That said, I am absolutely committed to claiming my place at the table here at home.<br /><br />Somewhere along the way I escaped the insular mind-set so typical of East Texas, but I didn't escape, nor would I wish to escape, the natural beauty of this place. So "loving it or leaving it" is simply not an option here. No, I am absolutely inclined to stay and claim my rightful place as a native son, and raise my voice loud and clear and speak my piece. Furthermore, I would suggest that other liberal East Texans stand up and do the same. After all, what good is American free speech if Americans are too timid to use it.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSKSEfc5J4Fl34bbiubwTQ-ja0OT4KUW731aZfyIQZe2_h56B01eZpxtK4qNd8mxxVScn3SWIp2W7OvPnG5K1I1ytVj71HtszQYz3Hhl5uZXkMs6vj477GmgXA1txNztSjh04axSNrzQc/s1600-h/Download+08-01-2009+010.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 249px; height: 183px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSKSEfc5J4Fl34bbiubwTQ-ja0OT4KUW731aZfyIQZe2_h56B01eZpxtK4qNd8mxxVScn3SWIp2W7OvPnG5K1I1ytVj71HtszQYz3Hhl5uZXkMs6vj477GmgXA1txNztSjh04axSNrzQc/s320/Download+08-01-2009+010.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365204643338299506" border="0" /></a>Here in East Texas its common upon entering restaurants, book stores, doctor's waiting rooms, and coffee houses to find ubiquitous televisions tuned to FOX news. There is an unspoken assumption here that the public is OK with news that is so slanted to the right as to no longer deserve the title of "news." I have on occasion raised objections with businesses just to let them know that the "assumption" at least from my point of view was off base. I wonder how it might level the playing field of our public spaces if other liberals quietly, yet firmly spoke up.<br /><br />Believe it or not, I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 (I'm not proud of it, but there it is). At the time I was a fundamentalist Christian and I wholeheartedly bought into the idea making the rounds in those days that "Good Christians" voted Republican. Time has changed my view considerably. Now, after being a practicing Buddhist for some 24 years, I would find it quite difficult (if not impossible) to vote that way again.<br /><br />But liberals who happen to be Christians obviously can<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhdz6ETe26g-Tj-YPpD_zhLbVB0EE6y5KD1n_Yy6oHESOpZjLq6-fhSRYucv5adOCkELn3EYZg_D63ZOSg7p8wigkcQPZbWiQ-iRAx6kxmwjzmHvPT-ukOelgPUSdlCxlrHM-APUwULdE/s1600-h/Download+08-01-2009+016.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 210px; height: 139px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhdz6ETe26g-Tj-YPpD_zhLbVB0EE6y5KD1n_Yy6oHESOpZjLq6-fhSRYucv5adOCkELn3EYZg_D63ZOSg7p8wigkcQPZbWiQ-iRAx6kxmwjzmHvPT-ukOelgPUSdlCxlrHM-APUwULdE/s320/Download+08-01-2009+016.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365196909723138882" border="0" /></a> (and do) vote Democratic. Let's face it, the GOP did quite a number on religious people for a number of years by co-opting the Christian message in order to win elections. But ownership of the "Values Vote" has come into serious question in the wake of a rash of high-profile sex scandals of late, and the light being admitted into the room seems to be waking religious Democrats to the truth that they have (and have always had) values aplenty. I don't think we'll be falling for that one again, and that's good for liberals. It's good for America. As <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Rode-Donkey-Republicans-Corner/dp/B001QCXE4A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249186247&sr=1-1">Linda Seger</a> writes in her 2006 book "Jesus Rode A Donkey," no one has a corner on Christ.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhllzrzTLmLBbEPFGb13Ap93enW5F3lW4OZL_VerGJJ4VOmDcIb8Dk8jCJ7s4Sd5HrAAlTewWr39YAOC0gw_k4vxxZdvcdk2IRnoEptaInDbX10co8w9k-TEEGv9rnZxNaM0RGoQpY43Yk/s1600-h/Download+08-01-2009+008.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 272px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhllzrzTLmLBbEPFGb13Ap93enW5F3lW4OZL_VerGJJ4VOmDcIb8Dk8jCJ7s4Sd5HrAAlTewWr39YAOC0gw_k4vxxZdvcdk2IRnoEptaInDbX10co8w9k-TEEGv9rnZxNaM0RGoQpY43Yk/s320/Download+08-01-2009+008.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365194445912025618" border="0" /></a>We live in a place caught in a moment of transition between the rural values of a fading past, and the new exigencies of a fast paced global environment. The landscape features farmlands, antiquated water towers and derricks, as well as microwave towers and satellite dishes affixed to thousands of rooftops. We attend our various houses of worship on Sundays and spend our evenings surfing the web. Liberals have a stake in making our home welcoming and comfortable for everyone regardless of their particular set of values, opinions, and loyalties.<br /><br />Sure, East Texas will always bear the marks of the conservative values and families who settled and developed the land, but liberals have been here all along and have worked and contributed mightily as well. We should never accept second class status in our own home. Conservatives may outnumber us, but we liberals are free to speak our minds and to stand firmly on principle when it's called for. Know that, and live accordingly.<br /><br />d.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-65653393423679950912009-07-25T07:33:00.035-05:002009-08-03T11:21:27.814-05:00Barack Obama, Social Democrat?<span class="articleText" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-STYLE: italic">"I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement – the prescription drug plan without a source of funding. And so I think it’s important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can’t say the same."~Barack Obama</span><br /><br />Consider this: If Brian Coulter in his Longview News Journal July 25 column was correct in insistencing that President Barack H. Obama is a socialist, then in November 2008, the American people elevated a socialist to the highest office in the land. If you find such an odd scenario to be highly unlikely, I'm with you. If you believe, as does Coulter and others on the increasingly hysterical right, that Obama achieved the presidency by hiding his "socialism" under a cloak of deception and guile, then you come perilously close to being relegated to the conspiracy obsessed fringe that has variously labeled the President a "Stealth Muslim," a "Manchurian Candidate," or an "alien born," illegitimate usurper ensconced in the Oval Office. Let us know how that works out for you.<br /><br />The socialist tag is not new, in fact its "sell by" date has long since passed. That train has left the station. Yet Coulter et al. cling to the fallacy with a desperation that defies all evidence to the contrary. The smear emerged with a vengeance during the 2008 campaign, along with other rather transparent attempts at "Swift-Boating" then candidate Obama. Their spectacular failure, aided in no small part by the ineptitude and down right silliness of the McCain/Palin ticket, was given resounding emphasis in the margin of the President's victory.<br /><br />Also dragged out to make the rounds in Coulter's column are the fusty old campaign ghosts of William Ayers (another socialist out of the woodwork?) and ACORN. Again, if these failed PR stunts didn't seriously damage Obama back then, what could motivate their use now? Apparently it's the same type of fixation that drives those coteries of conspiracy which disbelieve that we landed men on the moon, that the government has been completely forthcoming about Area 51, or that Elvis has indeed "left the building."<br /><br />It bears asking, how could John McCain, a respected long time Senator and war hero, lose the presidency (and our country) to a socialist? The answer is, he didn't. He lost to an American Democrat, no more socialist than Franklin D. Roosevelt, who enacted one of the most lasting, effective governmental programs in our history; Social Security. At the time of his administration, Roosevelt also endured specious accusations of fomenting a socialist dismantling of capitalism and the nation. Yet amazingly, here we are decades later, functioning as a capitalist society. To the extent we are locked, as Coulter writes, in an abysmal cycle of governmental growth, unemployment, and precipitously increasing debt, is it really feasible that in less than one year, Obama has caused all the chaos? Not very likely.<br /><br />The non-existent governance of the previous administration still bears the lion's share of responsibility for our present plight. Recall that the bailout of the financial institutions was an idea that sprang Athena-like from the head of George W. Bush. And by the way, if Obama is so anti-capitalist, why did he endorse a plan spawned by the unquestionably capitalist Bush administration? Bush was so fixated on war and terrorism that he neglected to govern. The mess Obama inherited has been the driving force behind the more controversial (and necessary) of his policies, not a blind commitment to socialist ideology as Coulter persistently and wrongly claims.<br /><br />I take exception to one comment from Coulter's column which really gets us to the crux of the matter: "That Obama could cherry pick attractive collectivist elements of the socialist platform and enact them never occurs to Anderson..." Wrong. In fact, that idea is not difficult to attribute to Obama at all. If an idea is attractive to Obama, I suspect it is so because he believes that it will ultimately help, not hurt the country. And the President has proven his openness to all solutions, and shown a remarkable penchant for synthesizing seemingly disparate ideas into fresh approaches. Like Bush, Coulter seems averse to "nuance." His deficiency in knowledge about the diversity of thought on the left is revealing, as is his projection onto the left of the same monolithic lockstep that characterizes the right.<br /><br />If you <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">must</span> have a label for Obama's economic philosophy, it could more precisely be called, Social Democracy, which is a specific anti-socialist movement born out of the left's response to the ascendancy of Capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries. In a Summer 2009 essay in <a href="http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1332">DISSENT magazine</a>, Columbia University associate Professor, Sheri Berman provides the proper placement of Obama's economic philosophy in historical terms. She writes that the success and resilience of Capitalism long after its emergence caused the left to split into three distinct camps. The first (and the first to fall in the face of Capitalism's success) was Leninism, which advocated the use of force to advance its economic/social model. Other leftists, uncomfortable with such violence, chose to keep to a democratic path.<br /><br />It was a further schism in this second faction that would lead to the economic model that comes closest to Obama's ideas: Social Democracy. Unlike the other two factions of the left, represented by classic Marxism/Leninism and Democratic Socialists, the Social Democratic division believed in a compromise between the best of Capitalism and Socialism, and sought to reform the former rather than eagerly awaiting or even hastening its demise. The "Unheralded" battle between these factions of the left, Berman writes, is the great untold political story of the 20th Century.<br /><br />Social Democracy, far from attempting to dismantle Capitalism, actually seeks both to strengthen and reform it. This has been in Berman's words, a process of "encouraging [economic] growth while at the same time protecting citizens from capitalism's negative consequences." In fact, the model has proved to be successful in Denmark and Sweden, and Berman believes American leftists should strive to emulate it.<br /><br />Of course Coulter will concede none of this because it wouldn't advance and preserve his prejudices to do so. His all encompassing obsession seems to be the libeling and maligning of the executive. Meanwhile President Obama, and I might add we as Americans, have serious problems to face down and conquer. We must leave naysayers like Coulter to do what they do best, which is to complain rather than offer realistic solutions.<br /><br />d.<br /><br />Read Coulter's column in its entirety at: http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/07/25/07252009_forum_coulter.htmlet_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-22573656753642986332009-07-10T13:27:00.020-05:002009-07-11T19:13:43.429-05:00Of Handbooks and Humanity<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihKi15QesgpiHORG7wAiO0UpVieSK3YWLj6EhfgXusi9gMOmpbRC2LV4G5JSYvM6WASQpcwyoZAuj3KezpMbWlJlS8oZ2LoFHZGbp8zH6zMpl_ImwkPGo-L2X-Yp8D7YbU_YHa5Ne2bVU/s1600-h/Conservative+Journal.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihKi15QesgpiHORG7wAiO0UpVieSK3YWLj6EhfgXusi9gMOmpbRC2LV4G5JSYvM6WASQpcwyoZAuj3KezpMbWlJlS8oZ2LoFHZGbp8zH6zMpl_ImwkPGo-L2X-Yp8D7YbU_YHa5Ne2bVU/s320/Conservative+Journal.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357223790961189938" border="0" /></a>It's official, conservative's now have a handbook. As a liberal, purchasing "The Conservative's Handbook," by Phil Valentine wasn't too much of a stretch. I figured what better way to get a handle on where these folks were really coming from. While I haven't read all of Valentine's book (and to be honest, I may never read it all), The portions I have read have proved eye-opening. As a foot soldier in the "Kulturkampf" that exists between liberal's and conservatives in America, I think I may purchase many similar books in the future. What better way to ferret out the many weaknesses inherent in the conservative program, and to find common ground, assuming it still exists between the camps.<br /><br />Conservative's who wish to become equally educated about the ideology of the left may have their work cut out for them. Even I struggle to recall ever seeing a compendium of liberal thought that exists under the title say, of "The Liberal's Handbook." I haven't found one yet, but I do own a copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-Were-Liberals-Political-Post-Bush/dp/B001C2HYHM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247251904&sr=1-1">Eric Alterman's</a> 2008 book, "Why We're Liberals," which bills itself as a political handbook for a "Post-Bush America."<br /><br />Then there is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wake-Up-Youre-Liberal-America/dp/1932360220/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247252368&sr=1-1">Ted Rall's</a> entertaining "Wake Up...You're Liberal!" which purports to show independents and even many Republicans just how unwittingly liberal they actually are. Neat trick, I'd say.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2ARcQMS6isvcwT0NgBbPsOmG0RwYSt9I0ipecu7kH2jirwNdaLXWOX-RCTSEhTLjn2aMgDDdSUuR3wH7fR1L_kv9Ossqk3kD2WXFDmhZS6txaKvAC4CNex2V1syBWwwjDCDEYDuVoijo/s1600-h/fdr.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 293px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2ARcQMS6isvcwT0NgBbPsOmG0RwYSt9I0ipecu7kH2jirwNdaLXWOX-RCTSEhTLjn2aMgDDdSUuR3wH7fR1L_kv9Ossqk3kD2WXFDmhZS6txaKvAC4CNex2V1syBWwwjDCDEYDuVoijo/s320/fdr.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357224450195340914" border="0" /></a>There are more such tomes weighing down my shelves here at the homestead, but I'll only mention one in passing since it probably hasn't seen a lot of publicity due most likely to it's admittedly wonkish presentation and the general anti-intellectualism that prevails in our time. The book is "The Second Bill Of Rights," by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465083331/ref=s9_simz_gw_s0_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1F31YQMPA2M9Q1FGRRRM&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846">Cass R. Sunstein</a> and it offers a compelling argument in support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's rarely discussed, though brilliant State of the Union address of January 1944.<br /><br />I suppose my point here is that while conservatives have had the commendable foresight to compile their ideological touchstones in an accessible volume and in clear, simple terms, liberals have to search far and wide to piece together the core beliefs that drive their movement. George Lakoff has done much to crystallize these ideas through such books as "Don't Think of an Elephant," "Moral Politics," and "The Political Brain," but more needs to be done.<br /><br />While we await our one volume compilation of all things liberal, maybe we should be about the business of identifying and codifying them for ourselves. Conviction however, need never wait upon finding the right book. Our liberal values are inscribed in our hearts and minds already. Just look to the basic morality, fairness and compassion that characterizes humanity at its best. Surely our values as liberals are enshrined there at least in rudimentary form. Not insignificant is the fact that the word humane has as its root "human."<br /><br />d.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-74669952120157650092009-06-29T12:37:00.005-05:002009-07-13T07:58:09.021-05:00Straw Men Wanted, Apply WithinThat Brian Coulter believed (at least ostensibly) that his straw man arguments in the Saturday June 27 edition of the Longview News Journal would prove effective with readers was patently insulting. That he may be right in his assessment of (many) of those readers is...well, just sad. But the straw man gambit is one of the oldest tricks in the rhetorical book: charge someone with a specious, fabricated offense, rail against it as though it were real, then claim a Pyrrhic victory and pretend that you've just done something significant. However, reality waits in the wings to dismantle just such fancies as these.<br /><br />In a column appearing under the heading "Obama Is His Father's Son," the writer opens with a lengthy and unsourced quote which he apparently viewed to be "scandalously socialist." The quote, we come to find was spoken not by President Barack Obama, but by his father, Barack Obama Sr. The quote, which Coulter identifies as the theoretical musings of a Harvard-educated economist and "avowed Marxist socialist," seems rather mild in the reading, a fact which does little to quiet the paranoid jeremiads of the extreme right. His point of course, is that these socialist ideas were handed down from father to son.<br /><br />First of all, it's comical to state a benign fact with overly ominous fanfare. Whose son <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">could</span></span></span></span></span></span></span> Obama be if not his own father's? Secondly, anyone acquainted with even the barest outlines of the President's story knows that the Obamas were divorced when the President was still a very young boy, and that his father was known to have visited his son only once in 1971 very briefly. I find it hard to believe in the few short weeks that Obama Sr. spent with his son, that he possessed either the will or the wherewithal to transmit to his young son's mind, the entirety of his socialist, economic philosophy. Nor does it seem possible, as Coulter seems to suggest, that said philosophy lay deep, dormant and patient in the convoluted strands of the President's DNA.<br /><br />But such a tenuous connection is apparently no impediment to the unquestioning mandarins of laissez-faire capitalism who easily blow it out of all proportion into a complete embrace by Obama of the main tenets of socialism. Again, pesky facts say otherwise.<br /><br />If Obama is a socialist, it's news to <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/14-4">Billy Wharton</a>, editor of "The Socialist" magazine, appearing on Common Dreams on March 14, 2009: "Obama's No Socialist. I Should Know." In his piece, Wharton states succinctly, "The funny thing is, of course, that socialists know that Barack Obama is not one of us. Not only is he not a socialist, he may in fact not even be a liberal. Socialists understand him as a hedge-fund Democrat -- one of a generation of neoliberal politicians firmly committed to free-market policies."<br /><br />Wharton goes on to demonstrate through issues of national banking policy, health care, and the prosecution of wars just how far Obama is from his notion of a socialist leader. So how has he morphed into a harbinger of socialism in the minds of neoconservative wing-nuts, Libertarians, Randians, and some of the other unhinged members of the ultra-right? Its hard to say exactly, but the fact that few of these people are knowledgeable about what socialism actually is, clearly plays a large part.<br /><br />Journalist/author Richard Wolff concurs: On Common Dreams, he gives a detailed list with descriptions of the main types of recognized<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2008/10/23-0"> socialism</a>, concluding that "Obama has endorsed precisely none of these major definitions of socialism: not Marx's -- focused on the social organization of the surpluses in production, not the Soviet or Chinese models of state ownership of most industries, and not the European notion/model of significant state intervention (e.g. state production of gas, oil, transport; state subsidization of education and national health care; subsidized housing, and so on).<br /><br />In an irony certainly lost on the writer, Obama is every bit (and quite possibly more) the capitalist that Coulter is himself. The socialist tag seems to have emerged from the strangely desperate final days of John McCain's failed campaign for the presidency. In classic conservative fashion, the socialist smear has gained traction simply through the myopic, zombie-like force which phrases sometimes gain through mere repetition. It matters little that Obama is as committed a capitalist as the next guy.<br /><br />Which may explain why Obama is so frequently attacked and savaged on the World Socialist Website. The strong denunciations of Obama found there might prove to be an eye-opener for Coulter should he ever risk taking an unblinkered look and listen beyond the insular world of his beloved conservative echo-chamber. The loss of dearly held illusions is difficult but necessary. Everyone should attempt it at least once in a while. This would deny the writer his phony platform from which to kick around the President. It would also beg the question, if he's not attacking Obama for being a socialist, why is he attacking him?<br /><br />The President is no leftist, which shouldn't be surprising since he never claimed to be one. None other than <span style="font-weight: bold;">[</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">the conservative scholar and writer</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">]</span>, Kevin Baker has recently confirmed this in a piece written for Harper's magazine, July 2009. In it he criticizes the President not for being too radical, but for not being radical enough to suit the times. Stunningly, as Coulter and others of his ilk castigate the President for being much too radically egalitarian in his policies, Baker, <span style="font-weight: bold;">[</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">the great eminence grise of the Republican Party</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">]</span>, indicts the President with the charge of "timid incrementalism." He writes, "The question is not what can be done but <span style="font-style: italic;">what must be done."</span><br /><br />Finally, John R. MacArthur gives the lie to the "crypto-socialist" charge that Coulter et al. are selling. Writing in <a href="http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_rick18_03-18-09_1SDM2BF_v26.3e689c2.html">The Providence Journal</a>, he calls the claim absurd. Obama, in his estimation is no raving left-leaning liberal. Like Baker, he sees the President as a creature of the center of American politics, ultimately unwilling to challenge the accepted ecomonic wisdom laid out by conventional "experts." Thus, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Robert Rubin and others who played significant roles in the policies (or lack thereof) which led to the economic collapse, take center stage in creating the policies needed to get us out of the ditch. Socialists? I don't think so.<br /><br />The harsh truth that Coulter just cannot seem to face is that if Obama is, as he believes, a socialist (he's not), then the election proves that the American electorate desired a bit more socialism in their lives. If he changes tack and raises the specter of the President as a kind of "stealth socialist," he runs a serious risk of being consigned to the conspiracy fringe that quaked and quivered unnecessarily over Obama's imaginary "stealth Muslim" status.<br /><br />Which brings us at last to the real antecedents of Obama's predilection for egalitarianism and compassion. To explain it, readers need look no further than the main thrust of the progressive values of both the left and right, with perhaps a bit of religion thrown into the mix. Obama has <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">never</span></span> signed up to be a member of the American Socialist Party, but he has been a practicing committed Christian for many years. Perhaps what we see reflected in his policy agenda (conventional as it is) are the values he gains merely from being a Democrat and a moral man.<br /><br />Granted, it may not be nearly as sexy and conspiratorial as the craziness offered up by Coulter, but chances are it's the truth.<br /><br />Coulter's column in its entirety is at the site below<br /><br /><a href="http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/06/27/06272009_forum_coulter.html">http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/06/27/06272009_forum_coulter.html</a><br /><br />d.<br /><br />Update: An earlier version of this post had identified Kevin Baker as "None other than the conservative scholar and writer" and "the great eminence grise of the Republican party," but I was confusing him with another writer, Kevin Phillips. Baker is a novelist and "a contributing editor to Harper’s magazine as well as a columnist with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Heritage_%28magazine%29" title="American Heritage (magazine)">American Heritage</a> magazine, and a regular contributor to <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times" title="The New York Times">The New York Times</a></i> and <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Book_Review" title="The New York Times Book Review">The New York Times Book Review</a></i>." from wikipedia.org My apologies to the readers of this blog.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917276501261281816.post-57187367215731245352009-06-19T17:48:00.001-05:002009-07-04T21:09:34.999-05:00Lost In The WildernessIn our wildest imaginings following the 2000 election and during the subsequent 8 years, could anyone have predicted the massively horrible, yet oddly entertaining death spiral of today's GOP? As we gawk in amazement at the bizarre ongoing Republican sojourn in the wilderness, certain questions spring readily to mind. Where is the famed noise machine by which republicans maintained a reign of terror which kept the democratic leadership cowering and/or running for cover for years? Whither the swaggering, cowboy ethic that proved so impenetrable to reality, logic, and the exigencies of politics at the dawn of the new century? I guess liberal prescience found vindication when the misery factor (war, hurricanes, torture, phone taps, economic Armageddon...) finally overwhelmed the smoke and mirrors of Karl Rove's message machine, bringing an awakening that has proved to be very rude indeed.<br /><br />As Barack Obama and his coalition of democrats, independents, liberals, and a few disaffected republicans attempt to clean up the foul mess left in George W. Bush's wake, it can be said that none have done more to bring about this sea change than rigid, shortsighted conservatives themselves. With such unbridled power at their disposal, could anyone have doubted the inevitability of the GOP landing us in dire straits? Regarding Bush, the past, as they say, is prologue, and he had pretty much failed at every endeavor he'd undertaken before becoming president. It's amazing how the abject fear attending the thought of another four years under a criminally inept executive can focus the mind of the electorate. If the GOP is experiencing a spot of bother as they seek their erstwhile mojo, perhaps it's merely a function of truth's well known bias against blatant phoniness.<br /><br />The mandarins of the right are on to something, one feels, when they wring their hands and mutter and mewl about their failure to take seriously the implications of demography. The young shifted in droves to the democrats in the last election, and the reason is that Obama fired the political imaginations and hopes of an entire generation in 2007. In the heady aftermath of electoral victory, they seem sufficiently engaged to remain a force to be reckoned with for decades. Name almost any demographic group, and Obama bested the republicans with said group in 2008: women, Hispanics, African Americans, college educated and working class whites. Indeed, the only group staying home for the GOP are Southern social conservatives, the same group that Richard Nixon advised that the party "nurture" in his so-called "Southern Strategy." Now republicans must sleep in the shrunken bed they have made. It is good to keep the base happy, but everyone knows that you can't win national elections with the base alone. The GOP's dilemma lies in the fact that if they moderate their crazy rhetoric at this stage in order to reach out to independents, they run the risk of losing the base. They have been hoisted on their own petard.<br /><br />Going forward, I see one danger. Our system is one that relies on a healthy if occasionally contentious conversation between the party in power, and the loyal opposition. Because conservatives have painted themselves into a very bad corner, the administration may get the idea that it can do what it pleases. Regardless of who is at the controls, that's not a good scenario. Liberals have watched in dismay as the administration has made decisions which run counter to our values. Obama seems to have made purely political calculations on questions of torture which leave out a vigorous pursuit of accountability. He has sought to suppress photographs which would give a clearer picture of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" engaged in by our intelligence agencies. He can do these things in large part because of the ineptitude that has stricken the loyal opposition. Democracy requires grown ups on both sides of the aisle to keep everyone honest. While I can admit to the guilty pleasure of watching the GOP stumble in the dark attempting to find political true north, at some point it is in everyone's best interest that they right their veering course.<br /><br />I just don't see it happening in the foreseeable future.<br /><br /><br />d.et_libs_respondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10319888093645390980noreply@blogger.com0