“You Have to Have Ideas First”

I recently ran across an interesting article in the National Journal,.. recounting an effort (which I applaud) to “rethink” the GOP–to envision a less apocalyptic and less self-destructive party future.

On a Fri­day in late June in the Texas Hill Coun­try, about an hour out­side Aus­tin, some 30 shoe­less, mostly liber­tari­an, mostly mod­er­ate, mostly Re­pub­lic­an guests gathered at the 720-acre, East­ern-in­spired ranch of Whole Foods cofounder and co-CEO John Mackey, for a con­fer­ence on the fu­ture of the GOP….

The con­fer­ence, of­fi­cially called the Con­clave on the Fu­ture of the Right, was sponsored by the In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Evol­u­tion, which, since 2013, has been fo­cused on “de­pol­ar­iz­ing” Amer­ic­an polit­ics.

After years of watching the Grand Old Party pander to a base of social conservatives and move farther and farther to the Right, the libertarians and fiscal conservatives who used to make their home in the GOP, and who have been feeling increasingly alienated from the party, evidently see in the current crisis an impending opportunity to reassert control.

According to the article, the aim of this meet­ing was to en­gage some of them in a con­ver­sa­tion about what their dream party might look like.

The ten­sion between or­der and liberty—and the ques­tion of how to main­tain the un­easy al­li­ance between so­cial con­ser­vat­ives and liber­tari­ans—is hardly new. But the ten­or of the con­ver­sa­tions sug­ges­ted that the at­tendees saw a fu­ture in which they and their val­ues formed the GOP’s base, and so­cial is­sues and their cham­pi­ons were no longer cen­ter stage. Their re­thought, re­newed party would be in­clus­ive and pro­act­ive, and would stand for per­son­al free­dom, smal­ler gov­ern­ment, and en­tre­pren­eur­i­al cap­it­al­ism.

Participants insisted that they weren’t interested in ejecting social conservatives from the party, but that the “politics of fear” have to go.

As Ab­n­er Ma­son, the CEO of Con­se­joSano, an on­line health care com­pany for Span­ish speak­ers, put it, “We’ve got to leave the hate be­hind.”

One of the participants was Rich Tafel, President of the Log Cabin Republicans, who opined that  “Just like the idea of gay mar­riage 20 years ago, the concept of the fu­ture Right “sounds so far-fetched. But I have no doubt that what we’re do­ing is go­ing to ac­tu­ally trans­form it. You have to have ideas first. And you have to stand alone first for a while.”

True–you do have to have ideas first. And I’m rooting for these self-described “thought leaders,” because America desperately needs two rational, adult political parties. But you also have to have a critical mass of people who are willing to leave the fear and hate behind and embrace those ideas.

On that, I’m afraid the jury is still out.

Comments

Reason and Its Rejection

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.

Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself–that is my doctrine.

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

————————-

A friend recently sent me these and several other quotes from Thomas Paine, and I was struck–once again– by how far we Americans have come from the insights of the Enlightenment and the basic, foundational principles and values that motivated so many of this country’s founders.

Last night, there was another debate among people aspiring to occupy the Oval Office, and anyone trying to evaluate their fitness for that position had to be appalled.

When did we lose sight of the essential role of reason in human affairs? When did we allow fear to overcome logic, distrust of “the other” to trump recognition of our common humanity? When did expertise and intellect become suspect, nuance and ambiguity a threat, moderation and intellectual modesty evidence of cowardice?

And the million-dollar question: can Americans recapture reason and sanity? Or is our country going to spectacularly self-destruct?

Comments

Rape, Incest and Ben Carson

Shades of Richard Mourdock and “what God intended”!

Among the many other retrograde positions he has taken, Ben Carson wants the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and criminalize all abortions. As Ed Brayton reported at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, 

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said on Sunday that believes Roe v. Wade should be overturned, and that women should not be allowed to have abortions even in the case of rape or incest.

“The mother should not believe that the baby is her enemy and should not be looking to terminate the baby,” Carson opined to NBC host Chuck Todd. “We’ve allowed purveyors of division to think that baby is their enemy and they have a right to kill it. Can you see how perverted that line of thinking is?”

There are a number of possible responses to this latest evidence of Carson’s worldview: the most rational is to simply shrug. Ben Carson isn’t going to be President of the U.S.–despite his current lead in GOP polls, he isn’t even going to be the Republican nominee, so the fact that he wants to make women carry their rapist’s baby to term–however creepy or nauseating one might find that–is ultimately irrelevant.

On the other hand, Carson is hardly the only Republican who sees “God’s will” in the consequences of a rape. Mourdock and Akin were the most high-profile, but there are plenty of others–almost all of them men– who want to deny women not just the right to abort, but access to birth control as well. (After all, if you give us the right to control our own reproduction, we’re likely to get all uppity and start thinking we’re equal to men.)

I don’t really expect this latest pronouncement to damage Carson’s popularity with the GOP fringe. After all, if stating that racism wasn’t a problem before Obama’s election, that Muslims should not be allowed to be President, that evolution is a “Satanic plot,” that we need to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid, and that university professors should be monitored and censored only operated to endear him to the party base, this latest evidence of bizarre reasoning is unlikely to offend them.

What’s a little misogyny among Republicans?

Comments

That Old-Time Religion…Again. And Again.

Oh, Mike! You’ve stepped in it again...

Gov. Mike Pence said his administration is looking into objections raised by religious conservatives after the Indiana State Department of Health sent letters to parents who haven’t vaccinated their children for a type of cervical cancer.

The letter was sent to about 305,000 parents of Indiana children with no record of having started the three-dose vaccine for human papilloma virus, or HPV. The letter encourages them to have their children vaccinated.

Indiana culture warrior Micah Clark received one of those letters (having evidently decided not to protect his own 14-year-old daughter against HPV) and immediately sounded the alarm–not against the disease, but against the “intrusiveness” of the Department of Health. How dare they advise about children’s health!

The vaccination prevents the most common types of HPV, a sexually transmitted virus that can cause cancer and genital warts. Indiana ranks 40th in the nation for how many girls between the ages of 13 and 16 have been vaccinated, with about 23 percent having received all three doses of the HPV vaccine.

State Department of Health spokeswoman Jennifer O’Malley said the letters were sent starting the week of Sept. 21 to parents of children with no record of having started the HPV series in the state immunization information system, which is called the Children and Hoosier Immunization Registry Program.

When the vaccine was developed, a number of fundamentalist Christians objected that it would lead young girls to become sexually promiscuous. (Don’t ask me–I don’t get it either.) Our pious Governor previously concluded that the vaccine “is a decision that’s best left to parents in consultation with their doctors.”

It’s hard to see how a reminder letter from health professionals usurps that parental prerogative, but Micah Clark sees a War on Christians behind every tree…or postage stamp.

I don’t know about others, but I am very, very tired of fundamentalists trying to impose bad history and narrow theology on the rest of America.

Recently, USA Today carried a story about something called the Congressional Prayer Caucus. Led by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA), the Caucus, which is taxpayer-funded, is part of a  group called the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, coincidentally headquartered in a building owned by Forbes that also houses his campaign office.

The CPC wants “In God We Trust” signs and Ten Commandments monuments in public places, they want prayer to be part of government activities, and they defend gay-bashing chaplains in the military. The CPC criticized President Obama for referring to E Pluribus Unum as the American motto, and advocates removing Establishment Clause cases from the jurisdiction of federal courts.

It isn’t a small group, either. According to David Niose, at one point the CPC had 100 members.

If that isn’t enough to terrify those of us who reside in the 21st Century, take a look at this recent poll, reported by Dailykos. 

Nationwide, more than a third of Republicans say that Islam should be illegal in the United States, according to a new PPP poll provided exclusively to Daily Kos Elections. Nearly half—a 44 percent plurality—say Christianity should be our official religion.

Those are the Republicans who elected Mike Pence, and those are the voters who will cast their ballots to retain him.

The American Taliban.

Comments

We Should All Listen to Bernie Sanders About This

I do not expect Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic nominee, likable as he is.

But Sanders’ candidacy is more important than his prospects, because he has fearlessly identified many of the issues we Americans should be addressing–and many of them are problems that far too few of us are addressing. As a consequence, he has shaken Hillary Clinton out of her typically cautious–some would say calculating–approach, and made her a far better candidate.

In a recent interview with Jimmy Kimmel, of all people, Sanders said this about what he sees as the “job for Democrats:”

“Our job is not just to defeat Republicans, our job is to revitalize American democracy, bring people who have given up on the political system back into the system, and create a government which represents them rather than large campaign donors.”

I have only one quibble with that. The revitalization of American democracy is not just a job for Democrats. It is a goal that rational Republicans, Independents, Libertarians and members of the Green Party (there are some, right?) should share.

You don’t have to agree with every position Bernie Sanders takes, or even most of them, to endorse this one.

Comments