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Drawing the Wrong Conclusions

Curt Smith and Micah Clark have been quoted extensively in the wake of Tuesday’s primary, celebrating the social conservatives–especially “defenders of marriage”–who won their races. According to Micah, this proves that Indiana voters are “pro-life and pro-traditional marriage.” (Translation: anti-woman, anti-gay.)

Micah Clark began his post-primary newsletter with that message.

Yesterday’s primary election was as close to an across the board sweep as you will ever see in politics.   Republican voters finally got their chance in a few state legislative districts to express their anger over the failure of the GOP dominated statehouse to pass a marriage protection amendment.  If only there had been more conservative challengers in legislative races where establishment Republicans had voted for the unraveling of marriage.

In addition, incumbents targeted for their defense of social conservatism won as well.   You may recall when Rep. Bob Morris stood alone under immense criticism for pointing out that the Girl Scouts of America’s national organization had grown closer and closer to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.    The establishment loathes conservatives whom they cannot control and Bob is one of those.  In spite of a misguided high-profile pro-life endorsement of his pro-homosexual marriage opponent, Bob won the primary re-election yesterday.

Actually, as I recall, Morris made the bizarre claim that the Girl Scouts promoted abortion and turned girls lesbian….but I digress.

The newsletter went on (and on) in that celebratory vein. Micah went so far as to suggest that Eric Turner’s recent ethics problems were the result of leaks by “pro-homosexual” lawmakers. (Because Jesus would have been A-OK with his behind the scenes arm-twisting to protect his own pocketbook….)

So, are Micah and Curt right? Do the primary results vindicate their views? This is Indiana, after all.

Unfortunately for that conservative thesis, it ignores two very inconvenient facts: turnout was unusually low, even for a primary; and the social conservatives who won were Republicans running against other very conservative Republicans.

Reported statewide turnout for both parties was around 10% (in Marion County, it was a pathetic 7.9%) and a number of races on both sides were uncontested. Furthermore, primary voters in both parties are notoriously more ideological–the right wing of the GOP and the left wing of the Democratic party are the reliable primary base.

What the results do unequivocally tell us is that the Republican party is moving farther and farther to the right. Clearly, supporters of candidates running against the Very Most Rabid Righteous did not come out to vote on Tuesday. The primary left Indiana’s GOP ever more firmly in the hands of its radical fringe.

Today’s GOP is the party of Richard Mourdock, Curt Smith and Micah Clark.  The party of Richard Lugar and Bill Hudnut is long gone.

The question is: will Indiana Democrats (or Libertarians) mount respectable challenges to these candidates in November? Will voters have a reason to come to the polls, and an actual choice when they get there?

If that happens–if there is decent turnout and reasonable opposition–and the Christianist Caucus prevails in November, Curt and Micah will have a legitimate victory to celebrate.

Tuesday’s results, however, just reminded me of the old Bob Newhart line: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

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It’s All Their Fault….

David Barton (the fake historian who says there’s no such thing as Separation of Church and State in the Constitution ) thinks it was a mistake to give women the vote. Because, you know, the husband’s vote is really the vote of the “family.”

“So family government precedes civil government and you watch that as colonists came to America, they voted by families. And you have to remember back then, husband and wife, I mean the two were considered one. That is the biblical precept… That is a family, that is voting. And so the head of the family is traditionally considered to be the husband and even biblically still continues to be so.”

I guess unmarried women are just out of luck, since he’s made it clear that he attributes many of the nation’s problems to the fact that humans with vaginas were given the right to vote.

Then there’s William G. (Jerry) Boykin–remember him? He was the Army General who explained his unit’s victory in a battle in Iraq by saying “My God was bigger than their God.” He now works for the Family Research Council, and he’s still doing his paleolithic version of “God work.” He recently explained that Jews are responsible for all the problems in the world. (We’ve been really busy–there aren’t all that many of us, you know. No wonder I’m tired.)

Then there’s “I ranch on taxpayers’ property” Cliven Bundy. He and the Tea Party blame most problems on the feds. (And, of course, “The Negro.”)

Closer to home, Micah Clark and his merry band of culture warriors are positive that it’s  “the gays” fault that society isn’t moving in their preferred direction. Homosexuals are destroying the traditional family, what with their “gay agenda” and all.

I wish I had a dollar for every blogger, pundit and troll who blames academic “elitists” for the nation’s ills. (My favorite headline, from something called “The Clothesline”: Can America Survive the Arrogant Elitist Imbeciles of Academia?)

And everyone from Rush Limbaugh to your crazy Uncle Ed just knows it’s those scary black folks and their President that have taken a country that was perfect in every way and turned it into some wimpy, pseudo-European shadow of its former greatness.

I wonder what would happen if we all stopped pointing our fingers at “the other” and tried to work together to make this country what it should be–that place of Truth, Justice and the American Way that existed only in Superman comics and the rosy memories of people who weren’t paying attention.

What if we actually tried to live up to our ideals?

What if we took e pluribus unum seriously?

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Religious Privilege

Yesterday’s decision by the Supreme Court in Town of Greece was predictable, given this particular Court’s history. That doesn’t make it any less unfortunate. The Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld the town’s practice of opening town council meetings with a (very Christian) prayer.

It is ironic that all five Justices in the majority are Catholic; it wasn’t all that long ago (at least in legal time) that Catholic children attending the country’s public schools were required to participate in decidedly Protestant bible readings. The Protestant majority saw no reason to accommodate Catholics (or Jews or Freethinkers or anyone else), and the Catholics found that exercise of majoritarian privilege so offensive to their beliefs that large numbers of them left the public system. That was the genesis of the parochial schools with which we are familiar.

How soon they forget….

Don Knebel has an excellent post about Town of Greece over at the Center for Civic Literacy’s website. As he notes,

Under the Court’s decision, that practice [inviting only Christian pastors to deliver the prayer] can continue so long as there are no non-Christian congregations in the town.  And, if say a Hindu temple comes to Greece, the town will still have no obligation to include prayers acceptable to Buddhists, Muslims, Jews and all the other traditions that its residents may follow.  There is something unsettling about that.  Meetings of the town council should not be places for the dominant religion to trumpet that dominance.  As Justice Kagan noted:  “[T]he [challenged] prayers betray no understanding that the American community is today, as it long has been, a rich mosaic of religious faiths.”

Does this decision threaten religious liberty? Not much. It’s just another “f**k you, you don’t count” to people who don’t genuflect to the gods of the majority. Just another reminder that the pious hypocrites demanding that government privilege their beliefs–by allowing them to deny contraception coverage to their employees, for example–are totally unwilling to respect the equally sincere beliefs of others.

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Chutzpah, Modern Edition

Chutzpah is a yiddish word meaning gall or nerve–but to the nth degree. Remember this oldie? “Question: what’s an example of chutzpah? Answer: a man kills his mother and father, then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.”

The Kansas legislature has updated the concept.

After Kansas courts ordered the state legislature to provide more funding for K-12 education, the legislature passed and sent to the governor a bill (HB 2338) that provides as follows:

1)      It allocates $2 million additional funding for the Kansas judiciary for the upcoming fiscal year;

2)     It increases various court fees;

3)      It strips the Kansas Supreme Court of the power to control local court budgets, personnel systems, and manage other administrative costs;

4)      It strips the Kansas Supreme Court of its existing power to designate local Chief Judges;

5)      And–ta da!– the icing on the chutzpah cake: it provides that if the Court strikes down any of these provisions as unconstitutional, the entire bill fails (including and most especially the extra funding).

File under “we’ll show you!”

The Chief Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court has pointed out that this bill is a direct assault on judicial independence–a major element of our constitutional system.

How much would you like to bet that the lawmakers who passed this measure carry small copies of the Constitution in their pockets, wear flag pins, and piously proclaim their devotion to “original intent”?

Assaulting separation of powers, the very basis of our constitutional architecture, while proclaiming your devotion to the nation’s charter–that’s chutzpah!

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Connecting the Dots

It’s time to say goodby and good riddance to the month of April–the “cruelest” month, presumably because federal taxes are due. And let’s face it, no one likes taxes.

And every year,  the avalanche of anti-tax articles is predictable as April showers.

Over at The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn makes an important point: people resent paying taxes when they don’t see what that money is buying. I’ve made that same argument in the local context, and it is actually easier to see what our local money buys: police and fire protection, garbage collection, parks, schools and the like. Those local public goods are more visible than the goods our federal taxes purchase.

That payroll tax taken out of everybody’s check? It’s buying you Medicare and Social Security, which means a more secure retirement free of crippling medical bills. Your federal income tax? Its effects are a lot more diffuse. But chances are pretty good that you’ve already used some infrastructure today—whether it was a road or railway you took to work, or maybe the information technology connections you’re using to read this article. Federal, state, and local taxes helped pay for that. Is your water and air clean? Are you safe from threats, domestic and foreign? Then you’re getting something valuable from the Environment Protection Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Defense. Your tax dollars paid for those, too.

Sometimes, of course, your tax dollars pay for supports and services you won’t use. And you might resent that. But even taxes that pay for someone else’s benefits can benefit you. Why does the U.S. not have the massive underclass that characterizes many third-world countries—or the incipient danger of violent upheaval that accompanies it? The safety net your taxes purchased, tattered as it is, buys a degree of social harmony, too.

We can legitimately argue about lawmakers’ priorities. We can–and should–monitor government at all levels to insure that its operations are businesslike and efficient. We can debate whether government should do some things at all.

But while we are griping and doing everything we can to reduce our bills, we should take note of Cohn’s admonition, and remember that our tax dollars buy a lot of things that most of us agree–however grudgingly– make our lives safer and better. Things we would miss.

In the private sector, we acknowledge the truth of the old adage: you get what you pay for. Somehow, we ignore that homely truth when it comes to taxes.

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