In the wake of what he conceeded was “a thumping,” President Bush promised a renewed emphasis on bipartisanship, and a good-faith effort to work across the aisle with the new Democratic majority.
Activists on both sides of that aisle remain skeptical. The former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Harold Koh, now Dean of Yale Law School, spoke at a conference held just a few days after the midterm elections. Asked about the odds of bipartisanship during the remainder of Bush’s presidency, he quoted the psychiatrist who was asked to change a light bulb: “First, the light bulb really has to want to change.”
If Bush’s actions in the week following the election are any indication, change is a distant goal. First, the President sent John Bolton’s nomination to be U.N. Ambassador back to the Senate, where he had to know it would be dead on arrival. Bolton—named by Bush in a recess appointment after it became clear that he could not be confirmed even by a Senate dominated by Republicans—is widely considered an unmitigated disaster at a time when effective American diplomacy is an urgent imperative.
If the Bolton renomination wasn’t “in your face” enough, the President followed up by renominating a group of hard-Right judges who had previously failed to win confirmation for the federal bench.
For sheer chutzpah, however, nothing surpasses Bush’s appointment of Eric Keroack to head up family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services. In his new capacity, according to HHS, he will oversee $283 million dollars in annual family-planning grants “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them, with priority given to low-income persons.”
Dr. Keroack previously worked at a Christian “Crisis Pregnancy” clinic that forbid its employees from referring patients to birth control providers. He has been widely quoted as saying that the distribution of contraceptives “demeans women” and “increases out-of-wedlock pregnancy.” He opposes not just abortion, but also birth control and sex education.
If individuals believe that birth control is immoral, that is their prerogative. Putting an implacable foe of family planning in charge of the United States government’s family planning programs is another matter entirely.
As many abortion opponents have noted, the most effective way to reduce abortion is to reduce unwanted pregnancies. Even if abstinence-based sex education programs were effective—and a multitude of studies suggests otherwise—they are manifestly inappropriate for married couples who want to plan their families. Rigid proponents ofabstinence-based procreation doctrines are equally inappropriate choices to run government family planning offices.
The moral and religious beliefs of Americans are incredibly diverse. The genius of our constitutional system is that by keeping government out of arguments about religious doctrine and observance—by confining government to matters that require communal action—we have largely averted the sectarian disputes that have torn other nations apart. We have made bipartisanship and cooperation possible.
In the wake of what he conceeded was “a thumping,” President Bush promised a renewed emphasis on bipartisanship, and a good-faith effort to work across the aisle with the new Democratic majority.
Activists on both sides of that aisle remain skeptical. The former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Harold Koh, now Dean of Yale Law School, spoke at a conference held just a few days after the midterm elections. Asked about the odds of bipartisanship during the remainder of Bush’s presidency, he quoted the psychiatrist who was asked to change a light bulb: “First, the light bulb really has to want to change.”
If Bush’s actions in the week following the election are any indication, change is a distant goal. First, the President sent John Bolton’s nomination to be U.N. Ambassador back to the Senate, where he had to know it would be dead on arrival. Bolton—named by Bush in a recess appointment after it became clear that he could not be confirmed even by a Senate dominated by Republicans—is widely considered an unmitigated disaster at a time when effective American diplomacy is an urgent imperative.
If the Bolton renomination wasn’t “in your face” enough, the President followed up by renominating a group of hard-Right judges who had previously failed to win confirmation for the federal bench.
For sheer chutzpah, however, nothing surpasses Bush’s appointment of Eric Keroack to head up family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services. In his new capacity, according to HHS, he will oversee $283 million dollars in annual family-planning grants “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them, with priority given to low-income persons.”
Dr. Keroack previously worked at a Christian “Crisis Pregnancy” clinic that forbid its employees from referring patients to birth control providers. He has been widely quoted as saying that the distribution of contraceptives “demeans women” and “increases out-of-wedlock pregnancy.” He opposes not just abortion, but also birth control and sex education.
If individuals believe that birth control is immoral, that is their prerogative. Putting an implacable foe of family planning in charge of the United States government’s family planning programs is another matter entirely.
As many abortion opponents have noted, the most effective way to reduce abortion is to reduce unwanted pregnancies. Even if abstinence-based sex education programs were effective—and a multitude of studies suggests otherwise—they are manifestly inappropriate for married couples who want to plan their families. Rigid proponents ofabstinence-based procreation doctrines are equally inappropriate choices to run government family planning offices.
The moral and religious beliefs of Americans are incredibly diverse. The genius of our constitutional system is that by keeping government out of arguments about religious doctrine and observance—by confining government to matters that require communal action—we have largely averted the sectarian disputes that have torn other nations apart. We have made bipartisanship and cooperation possible.
A friend recently sent me an article that has been floating around the internet for a while—in fact, I’d seen it previously. But for some reason, re-reading it crystallized several themes I’d been mulling over.
The article itself was a reprint from Free Inquiry magazine. Lawrence W. Britt had undertaken to define the term “fascist” by making a comparative study of seven regimes that are widely acknowledged as considered examples of fascism: Nazi Germany, of course, but also Fascist Italy, Generalissimo Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’ Greece, Pinochet’s Chile and Suharto’s Indonesia. From his study, he “distilled” fourteen recognizable patterns, or characteristics, that were common to all seven regimes. Those were:
Continuing expressions of nationalism
Disdain for human rights
Intense propaganda targeting enemies and scapegoats
Militarism
Sexism (including homophobia)
Government control of mass media
Obsession with national security (where any questioning of tactics is considered unpatriotic)
Joinder of religion and government
Powerful corporations protected by law
Labor rights suppressed
Anti-intellectualism
Obsession with crime and punishment, and glorification of police
Rampant cronyism and corruption
Fraudulent elections
Needless to say, America (even under Bush-Cheney) is not a fascist state, nor even close, although in several of these areas over the last few years our movement has been toward, not away from, the elements Britt describes. No, I think the reason this list of danger signals struck me with particular force when I read it this time was because of the timing involved.
Just the week before, the New Jersey Supreme Court had ruled that “denying commited same-sex couples the financial and social benefits given their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate government purpose.” The Republicans responded with what I can only characterize as glee; given their gloomy electoral prospects, the New Jersey decision was a gift, and they immmediately elevated their already shrill attacks on the “homosexual agenda.”
Can we spell “scapegoating”?
This was just one more example of the unrelenting attacks on the gay community that have become almost reflexive on the part of the Republican party. Here in Indiana, in the last, heated days before the midterm elections, we saw vicious ads suggesting that Congressmen who had failed to vote for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage didn’t “share Hoosier values.” In Washington, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, one of the more “colorful” members of the GOP, moved to block Senate consideration of a Bush judicial nominee, because—hold on to something—she actually attended a public ceremony in which two lesbians pledged their commitment to one another. This was evidently so heinous that Brownback was willing to deviate from his oft-repeated insistence that every judicial nominee deserves an up-or-down vote, and put a “hold” on the nomination. There are so many other examples, they are too numerous to catalog.
I can’t help being nostalgic for the Republican Party I used to know. When I ran for Congress as a Republican, in 1980, my positions in support of gay rights created virtually no comment. I was considered a typical, conservative Republican—too conservative for many other Republicans, who voted instead for Andy Jacobs, my Democratic opponent. Today, that Republican Party no longer exists. I miss it—and I don’t recognize the party that has taken its place.
Reading Britt’s article reminded me why I left. Too many of the positions trumpeted by today’s version of the GOP are positions uninformed by the history he recounts, held by folks who don’t understand where such positions can lead.
If we aren’t eternally vigilant, it could happen here.
Every year, I think the campaign ads can’t get any worse—and every year, the inventive souls who churn them out surprise me.
It’s bad enough that every vote is twisted to prove that the person who cast it is a deviant intent upon destroying America, and complex issues are portrayed as choices between good and evil so that they can be shoehorned into 30-second sound bites. Even worse—if that’s possible—is the choice of issues to highlight.
When the New Jersey Supreme Court, consisting of four Republicans and three Democrats, held unanimously that “denying commited same-sex couples the financial and social benefits given their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate government purpose,” the joy and relief was palpable. Republicans were ecstatic. (Gays were generally pleased, too.) Nationally and locally, GOP candidates fell all over themselves proclaiming the centrality of the issue, and the mortal danger posed to the republic should we fail to amend the constitution to ensure that same sex couples will never, ever be able to file joint tax returns.
Presumably, voters will now recognize the triviality of such issues as the fiasco in Iraq, where nearly 3000 young Americans and perhaps 600,000 Iraqis have died. We will ignore the re-emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. We will ignore the fact that we sent our troops into danger without proper equipment and without a viable military strategy or exit plan. (Okay, apparently without any strategy or exit plan.)
Vo
ters will stop worrying about billions of dollars ripped off by Halliburton and other cronies of the Administration who received juicy no-bid contracts, both in Iraq and Louisiana. And we certainly will stop carping about the incompetence of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. That was over a year ago, after all—the New Jersey threat is fresh and new, and voters have short memories.
Surely, voters will understand intuitively that the threat posed by committed gay couples is far greater than the threat posed by refusing to implement the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission, or by the warrantless wiretapping and data mining of American citizens by our own government. How many times has the average citizen really needed the right of habeas corpus? What is worse, after all—letting the President decide who is an enemy combatant, and what constitutes torture, or the prospect that Adam and Steve might actually move into the house next door?
Maybe it will work one more time. Maybe those who are terrified of the social change
represented by acceptance of our gay neighbors will once again elevate the issue of gay marriage over and above all other considerations, and energize the Republican base. But maybe not. A recent Ipsos Public Affairs Survey commissioned by the AP asked likely voters who they trusted most to handle a series of issues. On same-sex marriage, 46% trusted Democrats; 36% trusted Republicans.
As the President says, “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again."
How should Americans talk about really divisive issues? It is hard enough to draw a line between passionate advocacy and discourse that is over the line. The problem becomes infinitely harder when the stakes are higher.
With the benefit of hindsight, we fault the “good Germans” who were temperate after Kristalnacht. But every excess is not Kristalnacht. So how do we decide when a contemporary policy is so dangerous, so wrong, that moral people simply cannot smile nicely, pour tea and politely disagree with it? Ironically, this dilemma is one of the most troubling consequences of engaging routinely in intemperate political language; as I said in a recent column, when every tax increase is met with hysteria about creeping socialism, and every over-reaction by a police officer is evidence of fascism, what language is left for serious threats? It’s the boy who cried wolf syndrome.
I’ll be the first to admit that I lost it when Congress passed the so-called “detainee” act a few weeks ago. When this bill passed, I thought—and I still think—that words like “totalitarian” were factually descriptive, rather than rhetorically excessive. But if it is okay for me to cry “fascist” about this bill, what about the people who believe abortion is genocide, or that progressive taxation is theft? When we use such terminology, we are not communicating with anyone, or changing anyone’s mind.
Let me specify my problems with the detainee bill, and why I see it as a dangerous break with time-honored American legal and policy traditions. I wasn’t the only one, by the way—diplomats and military officials sent statements strongly objecting to this legislation, and warning that it would actually encourage terrorism while making our soldiers less safe. This measure:
·Suspends Habeas Corpus, a protection we’ve enjoyed for 700 years.
·Allows use of illegally-obtained evidence against suspects—in violation of the 4th Amendment.
·Protects torture: first, by giving the President the right to define what torture is and isn’t, and second by shielding those who have tortured during the past several years from prosecution.
·Allows the administration to designate someone as an enemy combatant—and gives the individual so designated absolutely no way to challenge that designation. Think about it: the President can say that you are someone who has “purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” To begin with, that’s a pretty subjective standard. But what’s worse, let’s say you are a citizen, or someone else who shouldn’t even be subject to this law—there is no way for you to appeal, no way to show that you are entitled to a trial, no way to demonstrate that you are the wrong person.
·As Senator Feingold testified, “this legislation would permit an individual to be convicted on the basis of coerced testimony and hearsay, would not allow full judicial review of the conviction, and yet would allow someone convicted under these rules to be put to death.”
·What is truly perverse, once the government actually has enough evidence to charge a detainee with a crime, then and only then do the few due process protections left under the act apply. Before that, they don’t—and prisoners can simply be indefinitely detained. No trial, no hearing, no nothing. The result, as Senator Obama has noted, is that the less evidence the government has, the fewer rights the detainee has. When you realize that out of the 700 people held at Guantanamo, only ten had been charged with any crime as of a couple of months ago, the enormity of that really hits you.
So–how do we talk about this? How do we impress on our fellow citizens the magnitude of what this law does? how do you say “such measures are beneath us, inconsistent with what it means to be an American?”
Just yesterday, a student sent me a partial answer to that question, a link to You Tube with a speech made by Senator Barack Obama during the floor fight in the Senate. Obama was fighting for an amendment to curtail some of the most extreme features of this legislation. He began by acknowledging that the threat posed by terrorism was real, and that it needed to be dealt with. He also said “if we are properly agressive in addressing the threat, it is inevitable that mistakes will be made, that we will occasionally cast too broad a net. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that—so long as we retain the means to correct those mistakes.” He went on to list the troublesome elements in the bill, to offer very specific evidence of the harms done by each, and to suggest with a good deal of precision what corrective language or policy he would propose. And he concluded with a statement that went to the heart of his objections: “We don’t have to imprison innocent people to win the war on terror.”
Obama was polite, but not weak. He respected his opponents without conceding to their arguments. That’s terribly difficult—especially if you tend to be a bit emotional, like me—but I don’t see any feasible alternative. At some point, we all have to trust in the good-will and good sense of other Americans. We have to trust that in the marketplace of ideas, truth will ultimately prevail. That doesn’t mean we should work less diligently or passionately to get American values back; it means we have to offer arguments and evidence that will persuade our fellow citizens, we have to object to the use of dishonest arguments, and we have to safeguard the mechanisms of constitutional government to ensure that all arguments will be heard and all relevant evidence considered.
