Man of the Century

Paul Ryan is the man of the century. Unfortunately, that century is the 14th.

Per Daily Kos:

Ryan basically wants to divide the poor up into two groups: the deserving poor (elderly and disabled people), who will get special protections from his plans; and the undeserving poor, who will be his guinea pigs. This group would have to sign contracts promising to meet specific goals and would lose aid if they didn’t meet the goals, and they’d be trying to hit their goals with lots of personal supervision from the government or a private company with a government contract.

The notion that some poor people are “deserving” and others are not can be traced all the way back to the English Poor Laws, which (among other things) prohibited people from giving “alms to the sturdy beggar.” 

Supporters of social welfare programs and the critics of those programs are still arguing about policies dating to 1349, when England enacted the Statute of Laborers, prohibiting alms, or charity, for those who had the ability to work–that is, to “sturdy beggars.” (Never mind whether work was available to them.)

The distinction between the “worthy” and “unworthy” poor was substantially grounded in the Calvinist belief that poverty is evidence of divine disapproval, while virtue is signaled by material success. That belief has morphed somewhat (the undeserving poor now lack “middle class values” rather than divine approval), but it continues to influence American law and culture.

In the early 1900s, this moral opprobrium directed at the poor found an ally in psuedo-science, and poverty issues were caught up in the national debate between Social Darwinists like William Graham Summer and their critics. In language reminiscent of those earlier admonitions against rewarding “sturdy beggars,” Sumner wrote:

“But the weak who constantly arouse the pity of humanitarians and philanthropists are the shiftless, the imprudent, the negligent, the impractical, and the inefficient, or they are the idle, the intemperate, the extravagant and the vicious. Now the troubles of these persons are constantly forced upon public attention, as if they and their interests deserved especial consideration, and a great portion of all organized and unorganized effort for the common welfare consists in attempts to relieve these classes of people….

If I believed in reincarnation, I’d seriously entertain the possibility that Sumner has returned as Paul Ryan….
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Someone Needs to Explain Free Speech to Micah Clark

Recently, a State Trooper was sued for proselytizing a woman he’d stopped for speeding. The Indianapolis Star has the story.

Not surprisingly, our homegrown theocrats saw nothing wrong with this.

Micah Clark, executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana, said that although the traffic stop might not have been the best time to quiz someone about faith, he questioned whether a police officer should lose his right to free speech because he is wearing a badge.

“I have people pass out religious material all the time. Mormons come to my door all the time, and it doesn’t offend me,” Clark said. “(This case) might not be the most persuasive time to talk to someone about their faith, but I don’t think that a police officer is prohibited from doing something like that.”

Let’s try this slowly, so that even folks like Micah can understand: when people are acting in their individual capacities, they have free speech (and free exercise) rights. When they are acting on behalf of government–when they are what lawyers call “state actors”–the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits them from using their governmental authority to impose their religious beliefs on others.

That’s why a sectarian prayer from the Speaker’s Podium at the Statehouse violates the Establishment Clause, but a group of legislators voluntarily praying in the back of the chamber or on a street corner is protected by both the Free Exercise and Free Speech clauses of that same Amendment.

When you are acting as a private citizen, you can pray or proselytize to your heart’s content.

When you are acting as a representative of the government of all the people, you can’t.

It isn’t rocket science.

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Love and Marriage…Even in Indiana

Talk about a surprise! Yesterday, the Supreme Court refused to hear any of the appeals of lower court same-sex marriage rulings. There were seven of them, and in all seven,  both sides had urged the Court to grant review — a rare occurrence and, as a Scotusblog post noted, one that almost never fails to assure review.

So–what are the consequences of the Court’s decision not to decide? Per Scotusblog again:

First, as a direct result of Monday’s action, same-sex marriages can occur when existing lower-court rulings against state bans go into effect in Virginia in the Fourth Circuit, Indiana and Wisconsin in the Seventh Circuit, and Oklahoma and Utah in the Tenth Circuit.

Second, such marriages can occur when the court of appeals rulings are implemented in federal district courts in three more states in the Fourth Circuit (North and South Carolina and West Virginia) and in three more states in the Tenth Circuit (Colorado, Kansas, and Wyoming).  The other states in the three circuits where bans have been struck down had already permitted same-sex marriage, under new laws or court rulings (Illinois, Maryland, and New Mexico, which have been counted among the nineteen states in that category).

Third, four other circuits — the Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Eleventh — are currently considering the constitutionality of same-sex marriages.  Of those, the Ninth Circuit — which had earlier struck down California’s famous “Proposition 8″ ban and uses a very rigorous test of laws against gay equality — is considered most likely to strike down state bans.  If that happens, it would add five more states to the marriages-allowed column (Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada), which would bring the national total to thirty-five.

With thirty or more states recognizing same-sex marriages, the odds of the Court weighing in at some future time to uphold bans–to reverse the “facts on the ground”–is somewhere between nil and never.  We may never know what led to yesterday’s decision to abstain, but it was one of those times when not deciding is deciding.

Perhaps the conservatives on the Court preferred slowing the inevitable to issuing an opinion that would almost certainly have been pro-equality.

Even Micah Clark, Indiana’s pre-eminent culture warrior, conceded the inevitable; the Star quoted him as saying that  “socially conservative” advocacy groups will now focus their efforts on legislation intended to “protect churches, nonprofit groups, and businesses that deny services to gay couples on religious grounds.”

Since churches and most religious nonprofits are already “protected” by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment–something social conservatives seem to have trouble grasping–I assume Clark and his ilk will mostly try to “protect” merchants who want to discriminate against LGBT folks. That didn’t work for white southerners whose “religious beliefs” precluded offering services to black people, and it isn’t likely to work here, either.

Yesterday, love and real family values won a big one.

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Words Fail

I’ve been following the protests in Colorado over efforts to make that state’s AP History course “more patriotic.” A part of the backstory has just emerged, and it is absolutely appalling.

One of the members of Colorado’s state Board of Education arguing for “more patriotism” in the curriculum cited the “fact” that the United States voluntarily ended slavery proved “American execptionalism” and argued that this perspective should be taught to students.

Here is her Facebook post complaining that the AP U.S. History curriculum downplays America’s “noble history.”

As an example, I note our slavery history. Yes, we practiced slavery. But we also ended it voluntarily, at great sacrifice, while the practice continues in many countries still today! Shouldn’t our students be provided that viewpoint? This is part of the argument that America is exceptional. Does our APUSH Framework support or denigrate that position?

And this–this!–from a woman who sits on the Colorado Board of Education.

Words fail.

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Their True Colors

If a couple of Facebook friends hadn’t posted about it, I’d have missed it.

“It” was the bigoted rant posted to Facebook by Charlotte Lucas, co-owner of Lucas Oil, whose family name adorns the largest structure in downtown Indianapolis. WRTV’s Rafael Sanchez was apparently the only journalist to report on Lucas’ post. According to WRTV:

“I’m sick and tired of minorities running our country!” Lucas wrote in the post. “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think that atheists (minority), muslims [sic] (minority) nor any other minority group has the right to tell the majority of the people in the United States what they can and cannot do here. Is everyone so scared that they can’t fight back for what is right or wrong with his country?”

How charming.

It’s interesting to note that no other local media outlet saw fit to report on this unseemly rant by a privileged member of this community. (The Star spent its column inches on important things like “Ten things to do in Indy this weekend.”)

Perhaps the local media didn’t consider the whining of yet another self-absorbed white Christian “victim” newsworthy.

These self-pitying tantrums have never been rare, and since Obama’s election, their frequency has escalated. I’ve heard similar sentiments (albeit not quite so blatant) from otherwise nice, well-to-do people who claim to support “diversity,” who donate to all the “right” causes, and who would never fire-bomb a mosque or burn a cross on someone’s lawn.

There is a lot of resentment below those polished and privileged surfaces. You can almost hear the indignation: how dare those “minorities” lay claim to equal treatment? Don’t “they” know their place? For goodness sake, I have a Jewish lawyer and I give money to the Urban League–what more do they want?

People like Charlotte Lucas and Donald Sterling and Daniel Snyder and so many others don’t hear themselves–at least, they don’t hear themselves as the rest of us hear them–because they live in enclaves populated by the similarly-situated–people who are like-minded and perpetually aggrieved. In their world, they are the victims.

In ours, not so much.

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