[politics] July 4th
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such disolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Tags: Politics
Posted: 6:32 am Sun July 04 2010 | Comments(2) |
[politics] Incivility and false equivalency
One of the things that continually pops up in political discourse is false equivalency. “[X] was bad, but both sides do it.” The media does it, presumably in an attempt to present balanced stories. Extremists on both the Right and the (American mainstream version of) the Left do it, to justify their own rhetoric and behaviors. Centrists and independents do it as an expression of frustration, or a justification for not getting involved.
You see this especially in the problem of incivility and destructive rhetoric.
But the equivalency here is false. Remember the outrage in the media over a Bush-Hitler video in the MoveOn contest some years ago? Republicans in Congress grandstanded against one anonymous contributor somewhere out of thousands. We were told this poisoned the process, this was typical of the left. Yet during the Obama administration, leading Republican political figures have routinely compared Obama to Hitler and his policies to Nazism, without a hint of protest from the media or the public.
This ties back to Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC memo of 1994, and conservative pollster Frank Luntz’s ongoing updates of keywords for Republican use. Likewise the widespread use of eliminationist rhetoric in the Right wing commentariat and the edgier fringes of conservative political establishment.
There simply is no Democratic equivalent of the GOPAC memo or Luntz’s word lists. There is no Left wing commentariat with even a fraction of the audience and market share of Limbaugh, Beck, et alia, and such as they are, Maddow and so on, they do not engage in eliminationist rhetoric directed at the Right.
To say that “both sides do it” with respect to political incivility and calls for violence, intimidation and other forms of rhetorical attack is both untrue and ignores the specific, well-documented facts on the ground. One of the many reasons I’m a committed liberal-progressive is that I find the rhetorical tactics of the Right distressing and often disgusting. Even if they have something to say I might want to hear, it’s so often cloaked in a combination of aggressiveness and dismissiveness that closes my mind.
If you think I’m wrong, show me. Show me how conservatives have stood up and challenged the use of Nazi rhetoric to refer to Obama to the same degree they challenged the MoveOn video. Show me where the Democratic equivalent of the GOPAC memo is, and who uses it. Show me liberal talk show hosts with Limbaugh’s ratings, Beck’s attitude, who use eliminationist rhetoric to delegitimize the right.
Because so far as I can tell, the current poisonous climate of political discourse has been deliberate fostered by the Republican Party and their media proxies since at least 1994 in an attempt to energize their political base and polarize the sought-after undecided center. I don’t see good faith, or meaningful rhetoric about policy, politics and process. I see highly organized nastiness directed at a large segment of American society, an attempt to separate “Real America” from the rest of us. Yes, there’s always some leftie nut saying outrageous things, but those people don’t host major talk shows or hold national elective office, unlike the lengthy list of conservatives who say outrageous things.
Where am I wrong?
Tags: Politics
Posted: 6:03 am Thu June 17 2010 | Comments(15) |
[politics] Wondering about my reactions to Sarah Palin
I’ve been trying to figure out why Sarah Palin annoys me so much. (This at least partially in response to a fair amount of polite prodding from .)
It’s not her politics per se, though I don’t agree with much of what she appears to stand for. If it were her politics, I would find virtually every Republican pol equally annoying, and clearly I don’t. Well, okay, let’s be honest: I do find virtually every Republican pol annoying, but not in the same special way Palin annoys me. Being mad about politics is like shouting at the neighborhood kids to get off your lawn — it’s a club sport once you reach a certain point in life. The usual “I voted against it in Congress and came home to take credit for it anyway” hypocrisy is life in the political minority in our system. Et cetera.
It’s not the history of unresolved corruption and abuse of power issues in Alaska that got largely buried once she hit the national stage because, well, that’s par for the course on both sides of the aisle. Look at the current Democratic efforts to undermine the House Ethics Committee in order to head off various investigations. And no, I don’t mean that all politicians are corrupt, or even most/many of them. Just that the temptations are strong and the rules are complex and even otherwise good people will see gray areas. Otherwise not-so-good people will exploit those gray areas mercilessly. There’s all kinds in office, just like everywhere else in life.
What I’ve finally come down on is that like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, when Sarah Palin is off-script and speaking from the hip, she doesn’t make any sense. Reagan never did make sense if you listened to his words rather than his tone and delivery. Bush didn’t even have tone and delivery, all he had was the family name and the GOP in lockstep behind him under Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment.
Contrast with, say, George H.W. Bush, with whom I have political disagreements just as vast, but at least he seemed to know what he was doing, understand both history and current events, and despite his occasionally fractured diction, have a grasp of what he stood for and the ability to articulate it. Or Newt Gingrich, whom I suspect of being ferociously intelligent, albeit by my lights misguided to a point bordering on evil. (Ie, the GOPAC memos, etc.)
I am sure there are babbling Democrats, but I haven’t seen them in any real danger of holding high office lately. All three of the 2008 Democratic front runners — Clinton, Edwards, Obama — were almost frighteningly sharp people. And like Jon Stewart, I want a president who’s smarter than me. Just like I want a cancer surgeon with steadier hands than me, and an airline pilot with better reflexes than me, and so on.
So is my reaction to Palin class-based? I don’t think so, because I had the same reaction to Reagan, and there was nothing populist or blue collar about him (or Bush 43), despite occasional rhetoric to the contrary. A similar bit of self-analysis applies to wondering whether my reaction to Palin is gender-based.
Or am I exposing a linguistic prejudice regarding speech register and articulation? Maybe, because what I’m essentially reacting to is an inability to communicate ideas clearly. On the other hand, isn’t one of the key components of leadership precisely that ability?
Or am I seeing linguistic expression as a proxy for intelligence, and reacting along those lines? Which would be an ugly prejudice if true, though again, I do think it is quite defensible to prefer a sharp mind in the White House.
More to think about. But she does spark the same annoyed contempt in me Reagan and Bush 43 always did, and for that matter, Dan Quayle. Hmm. More to consider.
Tags: Personal, Politics
Posted: 5:56 am Wed June 16 2010 | Comments(9) |
[politics] Why I focus on certain kinds of hypocrisy
As I’ve observed many times before, we are all hypocrites. I don’t think it’s psychologically possible to be completely consistent. The tension between mythos and logos in the human psyche pretty much puts paid to that. It’s certainly possible to be morally and intellectually rigorous, and intensely self-correcting, but most of us (definitely including me) are too busy leading our lives to keep that up on a full time basis, either. Insofar as I can tell, one of the whole points of pursuing religion, or some other form of ethical and philosophical system, is to provide a framework in which such consistency can be pursued without having to continually reason from first principles.
And for the most part, I don’t care, so long as you (and I) are not harming anyone. Have fun believing six impossible things before breakfast. I do it all the time. Revel in your self-contradictory nature. I do that all the time, too.
But when you move into the realm of politics, specifically legislation, and you bring your religion or your ethical framework with you and begin governing from that stance, you’d better damned well be consistent. My ethical framework tells me that other people’s private sexual, reproductive and social behavior is none of my damn business, except insofar as they might choose to include or inform me for their own reasons. If I were in politics or government, I’d stay the hell away from putting government in the bedroom. That’s one of the core reasons I’m a liberal-progressive: I firmly believe government doesn’t belong interfering in private life absent a compelling public interest (mandatory education, for example) or preventing harm (domestic violence, for example).
Contrast this with core conservative principles that attempt to control private sexual behavior, personal medical and reproductive choices, and ethical behavior. Legislating morality is a non-starter in any free society, but conservatives love nothing more than the idea of inserting government into the private lives of people they disapprove of. It’s in black-and-white in virtually every Republican party platform out there.
So when we see a story like the resignation of Indiana GOP Rep. Mark Souder in a sex scandal, I call it out. Like I (and so many others) called out Republican Senator Larry Craig, who promised to make the lives of gays a living hell while cruising for men in public restrooms. Or Republican Senator David “Diaper Baby” Vitter for his use of prostitutes while running and serving as a family values champion.
These are not the quiet, private hypocrisies of you, me and everyone else in America. These are the public hypocrisies of the people legislating sexual behavior and private lives of everyone else in America, and they’re doing it on a “punishment for thee but not for me” basis.
That’s why I don’t care when Democrats, or entertainers, or sports figures, are caught out in such scandals. Unlike conservative politicians, those people are not trying to use the force of law to constrain my freedoms and the freedoms of those I love.
It’s not the hypocrisy of doing one thing and saying another that incenses me. That’s just human nature. It’s the hypocrisy of doing one thing while criminalizing and persecuting others for doing the same damned thing that incenses me.
To my mind, that’s reflective of the ultimate flaw in conservatism. My worldview as a liberal-progressive encompasses most of the conservative worldview. Against abortion? Don’t have one. Creeped out by homosexuality? Don’t hang out in gay bars. Almost everything conservatives want, I’m happy for them to have. Even (grudgingly) guns, if people keep them safely. But conservatism, by its very nature, is incapable of granting me the same courtesy. Their worldview, as defined in their party platforms and public rhetoric, explicitly seeks to limit and criminalize mine.
I could never choose a narrowing of opportunity, freedom and the future for myself or anyone else. Souder, Craig, Vitter and the entire conservative movement base their entire political lives on exactly that narrowing. And they betray themselves with the hypocrisy of sex.
Tags: guns, Politics, sex
Posted: 5:52 am Wed May 19 2010 | Comments(2) |
[politics] Dear Arizona
Dear Arizona,
I am a proud immigrant to these American shores. My nth grandfather Lake arrived in North America in the mid-seventeenth century via Guilford, Connecticut from England. He did not have papers, he did not have a visa, and he certainly was looking for work. My family wandered across colonial and national borders, moved to the territories and to the Republic of Texas, and eventually back to the United States in the fullness of time. Always without papers, or a visa, always looking for work. Every single Arizonan who is not a tribal member is just as much an immigrant as I am. Even the tribes are, along their different path of history.
So the next time you ask someone for their papers, my dear Arizona, fall down on your knees and thank your petty little shriveled soul that no one was doing that to you when you were new, hungry and poor.
No love,
Jay Lake, proud immigrant American
Tags:
Posted: 5:58 am Wed April 28 2010 | Comments(11) |
[politics|culture] Opinions and those inconvenient facts
Among other political and cultural hobby horses of mine, I rattle on a lot about evolution denial in education. Likewise the gross historical revisionism of the Texas Textbook Commission. There’s a reason for that, beyond my dedication to intellectual honesty and my aversion to hypocrisy.
Opinions, even those that come in the form of sincerely-held, passionate beliefs, do not substitute for facts. Especially inconvenient facts that contradict those opinions.
Yet when we teach kids in school that the objective evidence of the natural world can be disregarded for a subjective religious belief, we are teaching them exactly that. We are fundamentally undermining critical thinking and replacing it with magical thinking.
Magical thinking is something you see all time in adults. I don’t know a single writer who doesn’t indulge in it as part of preparing their writing mind. (Myself included.) Anyone who has a lucky hat, or cannot write without their tea in a special mug, or any other ritual, is doing this. But most of us understand that. I’m feeding the mythos part of my mind when I say I can only write on the Mac laptop, not the Dell. There’s no objective reason I can’t do it the other way around.
But I know I’m doing this. I don’t confuse my own rituals and magical thinking with the objective reality of the world around me.
One of my big quarrels with the contemporary conservative movement, both in its media form (FOX, etc.) and in its political form (GOP, Tea Party) is the pervasiveness of magical thinking they indulge in, and their overwhelming tendency to confuse opinions with facts. Yes, that’s human nature, and we all do it, but movement conservatism has institutionalized this as policy.
Note this item from a recent New York Times/CBS poll of the Tea Party:
Regardless of your overall opinion, do you think the views of the people in the tea party movement generally reflect the views of most Americans? 84% of the self-identified teabaggers said yes. Only 25% of the general public agreed.
These people honestly believe their view is a majority view. They’re not interested in facts. These people also honestly believe that Obama is a Muslim and was not born in the this country.
And outside of the fringe, you see the same magical thinking. Every time the Republican leadership gets into the media and talks about America being a center-right nation, they’re wrong on the face of both the polling and the electoral results. It’s a narrative they believe in, and need to be true to back their political stance, but it simply isn’t true. Any more than their narrative that a majority of Americans want to repeal HCR is true. Similarly, back in the 2000 election, when the Clinton economy was going strong, Bush advocated tax cuts to stimulate further growth. When the economy began to collapse in the face of an oncoming Republican victory, Bush advocated tax cuts to combat economic contraction. That’s like saying you use the gas pedal in your car both to speed up and slow down.
All this confusing opinions with facts? A lot of it comes down to how you’re educated and socialized in the first place. The conservative attack on education, which in its current form has been in play since at least the Reagan years, is about nothing more or less than raising citizens who don’t know how to question their own position, who will uncritically accept passionate statements as truth, and who, like evolution denialists, eagerly embrace their own opinions as facts, unswayed by the reality of the world around them.
Censoring reality is profoundly unAmerican and unpatriotic, and it’s a core conservative value, starting in the grade schools and going right on to the memory hole of FOX News, the GOP and the Tea Party. Reality is unforgiving, those opinions still aren’t facts; but politics is infinitely malleable, as the activists and leaders of this movement well know.
Tags: Culture, Politics, Process, Writing
Posted: 4:46 am Fri April 16 2010 | Comments(12) |
[politics] The myth of the Golden Age
So much of conservatism and libertarianism thought seems to rely on the myth of the Golden Age. This is the basis of William F. Buckley’s famous declaration to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop” — the idea that things were better than they are, and that change is dangerous. It’s a fundamentally emotional proposition, that strikes me as driven more by fear than any sense of opportunity or growth.
In this morning’s link salad I included a wonderfully idiotic bit of Golden Age myth making, courtesy of The Edge of the American West. Which reminds me of a woman I worked with years ago, back in the mid-1990s.
She was about 30 at the time, divorced, living with her boyfriend who worked shifts in emergency services. She was an art director at the ad agency where I ran IT and production. She lived in a conservative exurb of Austin, attended an Evangelical megachurch on Sundays, and came in every Monday grumbling about how liberals were ruining America, about the Clintons and their crimes, and whatever else her preacher had railed about the day before from the pulpit. Her constant theme was how much better things were in the 1950s when the streets were safe, everybody had jobs, and America was powerful and secure.
I finally got fed up with this and asked her how much she knew about the 1950s. Did she know anything about the African-American experience in those days? What about other non-whites? The unemployed? When I pointed out that in the 1950s she wouldn’t have had the job she did because it would have been given to a man who needed to feed his family, and that she wouldn’t have been allowed in the door of her church as a divorced woman living in sin with another man, she got upset with me and said that wasn’t what she meant.
She wanted the good parts of the myth of the Golden Age without having to acknowledge or accept the prices people paid for them. I’ll bet good money this woman today is a Sarah Palin fan and a Tea Party member, because that’s the depth of thinking I see from conservative America even now. Not all conservatives everywhere, but from those in political power and those with media voices.
I atill think about her sometimes, because how the heck do I, as a liberal-progressive, even get her to see where her own thinking goes awry? She’s like those Christians who demand literal subservience to Biblical truth, except for the inconvenient parts. There’s no logic or coherent philosophy, only wishful thinking wrapped in justification.
Some of it is education and worldliness. One reason academia and journalism are so stereotypically liberal is people in those disciplines generally have to look at the world critically and think about the facts on the ground; at least if they’re going about it properly. It’s difficult to maintain my friend’s level of denial and wishful thinking while engaging in intellectual honesty. Contemporary conservatism is a lot more about denial and wishful thinking than it is about intellectual honesty — look at the issues that drive votes: evolution denial; gun fantasies; fears of gays; climate change denial; magical thinking on taxes.
The myth of the Golden Age is as old as history. Children were always more respectful, the language always more well spoken, and times always better in the previous generation. But confusing the myth of the Golden Age with the reality of life is misplaced at best.
How to address that? Surely not through my rantings. But I’m not sure how to be more thoughtful in the right ways.
Tags: Personal, Politics
Posted: 5:52 am Wed April 14 2010 | Comments(3) |
[politics] The fine art of denial in political discourse, part 1
This will come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following me for more than, oh, about eight or ten hours, but a lot of politics gets talked on my blog. And my Twitter feed. And my Facebook. I’m a strong liberal-progressive, Leftist by American standards, barely past the Center by European standards. In other words, I’m not a Socialist, or anything much like one, except in the highly inaccurate, perjorative sense that Republicans use “Socialist” as a scare word indicating anyone to the left of Richard Nixon. I like my nice capitalist paycheck and my nice capitalist house and so forth. My net worth would suggest I’m not a very successful capitalist, but by and large the system works for me.
I’m also not a Democrat, except technically. I registered Democrat in the 2008 election cycle because Oregon doesn’t have open primaries, and I wanted to vote for Obama. This was before his vote (as Senator) for the Telecommunications Immunity Act, after which I ceased donating money or offering my political support to him. I probably would have gone with Hillary Clinton otherwise, or just sat out the primaries completely. So yes, I’m still registered, but for most purposes, I don’t see a lot of distinction between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
For most purposes. A few differences, however, count for a great deal. In the most basic sense, the Republican Party has become single-threaded, while the Democratic Party still moves in a number of directions simultaneously.
Prior to Ronald Reagan, both parties had conservative and liberal wings, with a variety of viewpoints and perspectives. I’m (barely) old enough to remember Richard Nixon in a political sense, and Rockefeller Republicans. Nixon proposed the Environmental Protection Agency and signed it into law. Can you imagine any modern Republican doing such a thing? As a purely practical matter, the Republicans today have become a very narrow party, dedicated to eliminating abortion, promoting Evangelical Christianity, protecting gun ownership, and lowering taxes. This is is the distilled essence of Sarah Palin, who is the closest thing the GOP has to standard-bearer of late.
The Democrats, by contrast, span the gamut of views on reproductive rights, religion, firearms, fiscal policy and host of other issues. It’s a bigger tent. Which is why you see Democrats so often forming a circular firing squad at crucial moments, with their justly famed prowess at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They can’t agree on anything most days, while the GOP has religiously observed Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment by marginalizing almost everyone within their own party who doesn’t toe the line.
As it happens, I disagree with all the Republican signature issues, as well as their stance on immigration, national security, foreign wars, unrestrained spending, regulation, the role of government in society, and a number of other things. Mind you, GOP rhetoric, on spending, for example, can be quite reasonable. But from 2000-2006 the Republican Party controlled all three branches of government, and the United States ran up the largest deficits in history. Reagan’s record was quite similar. Conservative actions do not even begin to match rhetoric.
I disagree with the Democrats on a number of their positions as well, viewing them as largely the lesser of the evils, especially in their corporatist tendencies and their comatose quiescence on national security abuses. But our system is so heavily weighted against third parties I don’t see much point in going Green, for example, even if I wanted to. Besides, I’m not aware of a third party that matches my desires for strong progressive social policy, limited defense spending, an internationalist foreign policy, very strong gun control, strong environmental protections, and so forth. So my votes are generally Democratic, and by default my views wind up aligning with them more than anyone else.
All of which is to say, those are my views of the political parties. As individuals, the people I know in my life range from radical anarchists to neo-Hooverite paleoconservatives. To a woman and man, they are decent, thoughtful people, even though I disagree with many of them. I don’t talk politics with most, have blazing rows with a few, and friendly tussles with quite a few more. That’s how I learn, and adapt my views — by advancing them, defending them, and listening to people’s responses.
Am I guilty of confirmation bias in the evidence I seek? Doubtless, though rarely deliberately so. Do I ignore what I don’t agree with? More often than I’d like. Do I change my views on political topics? Yes, from time to time, though generally it’s a case of moderation rather than reversal. (For example, specifically due to an extended series of discussions on my blog a few years ago, I’ve backed off from my historical hardline opposition to home schooling. Likewise, I am more moderate on my views of gun control than I used to be.)
But there’s a pair of tendencies I run into from time to time in political discussions that frustrate me immensely. And they seem to have grown much stronger of late as political and social passions have been inflamed nationally by the poor economy and healthcare reform. One is False Equivalency, which I see both from angry people who identify as centrists, and conservatives squirming away from the excesses of their party and their fellow travelers. The other is a more specifically conservative trope, which is a version the No True Scotsman argument.
And frankly, they’re both pissing me off. More to come in a day or two…
Tags: Politics
Posted: 4:22 am Mon March 29 2010 | Comments(1) |
[politics] What I believe
I believe in freedom of religion. That means you cannot be discriminated against for your religious beliefs. That also means no one else can be discriminated against for your religious beliefs. Freedom from religion is an essential component of freedom of religion, otherwise every minor or unpopular congregation in this country would be at deep risk from the passions of the majority.
I believe in freedom of speech. You and I have every right to be wrong, but freedom of speech doesn’t mean we get to make up our own facts, and it doesn’t protect us from being called on hypocrisy, bullshit and lies.
I believe in freedom of the press. But with freedom comes responsibility, and the press has lost its way in terms of balancing coverage of issues, recalling or reporting any political history past last week, and serving the public interest. The shift from news to infotainment has taken us back to the nineteenth century yellow press, and done much to poison the public discourse.
I believe in the right of peaceable assembly. This does not include bringing firearms to peaceful demonstrations, spitting on Congressmen, or blockading city streets.
I believe in the right of redress to the government for grievances. Being arrested for questioning your beating by a law enforcement officer is not part of this process.
I believe that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. That’s why we have a National Guard and Reserve forces.
I believe in the right of the people to keep and bear Arms. On firing ranges and in gun safes, not on public streets. Because I believe my right not to be shot trumps your right to open carry, for example. And the statistics on gun deaths are never on the side of freely available weapons.
I believe in my protection from the quartering of troops. I do not believe that NATO or the UN or the Federal Government is planning to station troops in my home, no matter what the Republican party claims. Regardless of one’s psychological disturbances, this fails the common sense test. There are over 100 million households in the United States, and no one has that many troops.
I believe in protection from unreasonable search and seizure. This means I oppose USA-PATRIOT and all its dependent laws and regulations, including the Telecom Immunity Act that Obama supported. Our system of warrants and judicial oversight worked quite well before we tore it apart in the name of the War on Terror.
I believe in the right of due process, and protection from double jeopardy. Again, this means I oppose USA-PATRIOT and all its dependent laws and regulations. The prisons at Guantanamo Bay and Baghram Air Force Base are stain on American honor as deep as the Japanese internments.
I believe in protection from self-incrimination, but I also believe in taking full responsibility for one’s deeds.
I believe that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. I do not believe that public use includes turning the private property over to a developer in the interests of expanding the tax base.
I believe in criminal trial by jury and the rights of the accused. Just because someone is suspect of a crime, or arrested for it, does not mean they are guilty. Again, the prisons at Guantanamo Bay and Baghram Air Force Base are stain on American honor as deep as the Japanese internments, and a blot on our judicial system. I also believe in fully-informed juries, not subject to manipulation by either prosecution or defense.
I believe in the right to civil trial by jury, again, without manipulation by either party to the suit. I also believe that the right of civil redress should not be dependent on the deepness of the parties’ pockets, as this means the rich and powerful can never be fully called to account
I believe that we should be protected from cruel and unusual punishment. Again, this means I oppose USA-PATRIOT and all its dependent laws and regulations. The prisons at Guantanamo Bay and Baghram Air Force Base are abuses upon our perceived enemies that will come back to haunt captured Americans, possibly for generations.
I believe that rights not enumerated in the Constitution still apply to us, regardless of the currents of popular culture, or our national fears and our private prejudices. This includes a right to privacy, a right to healthcare, a right to freedom of sexual expression, and right to freedom from bullying at all levels of society, a right to be free from violence. It also includes a right to be wrong, dead wrong; but also a right not to suffer from the errors of others.
What do you believe?
Tags: guns, heathcare, Politics, sex
Posted: 9:06 am Sat March 27 2010 | Comments(8) |
[politics] Being crazy isn’t looking stupid, it’s the native condition of the GOP
There’s a new poll coming out today which appears to back up what the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll said a few weeks ago. As you may recall, at the time GOP leaders and pundits reacted angrily, saying the poll was meant to make them look stupid.
The lede on the Harris poll is “Majority of Republicans: Obama is a Muslim”.
Confidential to GOP in America: When you tell your followers that the president is a Muslim, a Socialist, and that he pals around with terrorists, you look stupid. When they believe you, your followers look stupid. When the real world notices this stupidity, you look stupid.
No one made you look stupid but yourselves.
Brighten up, Republicans. Your media strategy has been a success. People believe all those lies you’ve been feeding them for years. A significant portion of this country is convinced we have a Muslim Socialist Nazi fascist terrorist traitor in the White House. And many of them carry guns, for bonus fun! Never mind what any of those words actually mean, or how internally contradictory they are. Never mind what the actual facts on the ground are. Your message has succeeded wildly.
It’s not looking stupid. It’s sowing what you reap. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to live in this country.
Crazy isn’t looking like such a great electoral strategy these days, is it?
Maybe you should try, you know, facts. Ideas. Governance instead of politics. Reality instead of rhetoric. But that passion that Beck and Limbaugh inspire is a powerful drug, isn’t it? Hard to kick the buzz, hard to lose that “king of the world” feeling when the mob is shouting your name as their savior.
This is what Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes set out to do almost forty years ago. Demonize the opposition, activate the base, and turn the media. Hope you like our country now, conservative America.
You broke it, but we all have to buy it.
Tags: Politics
Posted: 4:56 am Wed March 24 2010 | Comments(4) |
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