A Political Eddie Haskell

As I was driving to work yesterday,  NPR was broadcasting a snippet of a speech made the night before by Mitt Romney. That’s when it hit me. I’d been trying for weeks to pin down who it was that Romney reminds me of, and with the patent insincerity of that speech, it finally clicked.

Mitt Romney is the Eddie Haskell of politics.

Eddie Haskell, for those of you too young to remember, was the disgusting little sycophant on “Leave it to Beaver.” The character was so vivid, his very name became synonymous with dishonest sucking up.

In the speech fragment I heard, Romney was feigning outrage over the new regulations promulgated by HHS, requiring all employers who offer health insurance–including religious employers like hospitals and universities–to include coverage for contraception. As I previously blogged, there are legitimate concerns when government issues regulations that are intended to protect or benefit the general public when those rules run afoul of some folk’s religious beliefs. But there was no such nuance in Romney’s attack–not to mention any recognition of the fact that several states have imposed similar regulations for years. Nope, according to Mitt, Obama was purposely attacking religion, and he wouldn’t do that if he were President. No siree!

Let’s just deconstruct that attack.

Romney is a Mormon, and the federal government long ago outlawed polygamy. The effect of that prohibition was to deny Mormons the ability to live by what was at the time considered an essential tenet of their religion, yet Romney has never criticized that restriction–indeed, he has said he agrees with it. The HHS regulation, on the other hand, does not require anyone to use birth control in contravention of their religious beliefs; it merely requires them to make that option available to employees who come from different religious traditions and/or hold different beliefs. The regulation doesn’t apply to churches–just to large religiously-run organizations like hospitals and universities, where employees represent a wide diversity of backgrounds and faith traditions.

There are plenty of laws that have incidental effects on religious practices. For example,laws requiring schoolchildren to be vaccinated pose problems for Christian Scientists. Quakers believe they should not be required to pay taxes that support wars (the courts have not been receptive to that argument). Laws requiring photo IDs for driver’s licenses are a genuine dilemma for fundamentalist Muslim women whose beliefs require them to wear full burkas. (Somehow, I doubt Mitt would get too worked up over that one, since the base he is so shamelessly pandering to tends to be virulently anti-Muslim.)

None of these “attacks on religion” have merited even a passing mention from Mitt Romney.

That’s the problem with channelling Eddie Haskell. The insincerity overwhelms the message.

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Boobs and “Boobies”

Yesterday, I received a news release from the Indiana ACLU announcing the organization’s representation of a middle-school student. As the release recounted the facts of the case,

The minor child, “L.G.,” is a student at Roosevelt Middle School, which is part of the Twin Lakes School Corporation in Monticello, Ind. In early January, school officials instructed the student to turn inside-out a silicone bracelet that contains the message “I© (heart) BOOBIES” as well as the ribbon symbol for breast cancer awareness, and at that time informed the student he could be expelled if he continued to wear the bracelet to school.

The student wore the “I © (heart) BOOBIES” bracelet to assist with breaking down the barriers that make it difficult for young people to talk about breast cancer. The bracelets help support the work of the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund. Carol Baldwin is the mother of the Baldwin brothers, generally known as Hollywood actors and activists. The bracelets are popular among students at Roosevelt Middle School, and have not disrupted the educational environment.

“Decades ago the Supreme Court stressed that students do not shed their First Amendment rights when they enter school buildings,” said Ken Falk, legal director of the ACLU of Indiana, who is representing L.G.

“The bracelet did not disrupt the educational environment, and the speech here, designed to assist in the fight against breast cancer, is not profane, indecent, lewd, vulgar, or offensive to school purposes, and is therefore protected speech under the First Amendment,” added Falk.

I have two reactions to the school’s position–both negative.

First, why do public school officials constantly fixate on aspects of student behavior that are either irrelevant to their education or, as here, offer educational possibilities? Why not use students’ interest in breast cancer as a “hook” for science education and civic engagement? Even if teenage boys are “tittering”–forgive the pun–about “boobies” (there is no indication of such reaction but I had sons and I’m certainly willing to entertain the possibility), the focus on cancer clearly offers multiple opportunities for positive educational experiences.

And second, why don’t public school officials respect the constitutional rights of students? The law in this area is, as Ken Falk notes, pretty clear. How do we expect to raise a generation that understands and respects the constitution when those charged with their education repeatedly model unconstitutional behaviors? Authoritarian schools do not produce democratically-skilled students.

Knowledge of the word “boobies” is not nearly as damaging as being educated by people who think it’s important to pick a fight over its use.

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God and Caesar

In his regular Monday e-letter today, noted theologian Martin Marty tackles the recent uproar over HHS regulations requiring religious institutions—including charities, hospitals and schools–to provide health insurance to their employees that covers some procedures with which their church and members disagree. He notes that this sort of conflict between government rule making and religious dogma is hardly new.

“We could have added any number of others that had to do with the collision of interests pitting “the common good” versus “individual freedom,” especially freedom of religion. Pasteurization of milk, vaccination, and chlorination of water were among them. Beyond the needs of the body but dealing with the body politic have been vast numbers of others: the military draft, Sabbath and Sunday laws, and compulsory flag-salutes were or are among them. Often small religious groups best raise conscience matters. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Scientist, Seventh-Day Adventists, Latter-Day Saints, the Amish. None of the issues could be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, so majorities of voters or legislatures or justices ruled. This means that they used “coercion against conscience,” driving some citizens to inconvenience and prison. There were often accommodations and compromises along the way. Somehow the republic survived.”

 These are uncomfortable issues, because they don’t fall neatly into the American presumption that every argument has a “right side” and a “wrong side.” In these situations, policymakers are faced with a conflict of rights. 

Citizens have the right to believe as they see fit, although the practice of those beliefs has often been curtailed by the courts. You can believe in smoking peyote, for example, but if “laws of general application” forbid drug use, you can’t actually smoke it. (For what it’s worth, I think the Court was wrong in that case, but what if your religion required sacrificing your first-born? Certainly, the government could intervene.) The law requires parents to provide medical treatment to their seriously ill children even when their religion rejects such treatment.  Etc.

The conflict, as Marty points out, is between what we believe to be necessary for the public good and respect for the beliefs of all citizens. The resolution of that conflict requires us to exercise restraint–it is not enough to say “the majority of people want this.” The Bill of Rights is–as I keep telling students–a counter-majoritarian document. In America, the majority does not always rule. We are obliged to respect the beliefs and practices of people with whom we disagree so long as those beliefs and practices do not harm others.

What constitutes harm, as Marty reminds us, has been a matter of debate throughout American history.

In this case, the harm was to the many thousands of employees of religious organizations who don’t share that organization’s beliefs. Should a Protestant nurse working in a Catholic hospital be denied coverage for birth control, when such coverage is required in other places of employment? On the other hand, should the religious employer providing that insurance be forced to enable her use of contraception? What does respect for individual rights and religious liberty require?

I tend to feel the Administration made the right call on this particular issue, but in a country that truly respects religious autonomy, these conflicts between God and Caesar are never inconsequential.

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Good Question

A friend has shared with me a letter written by U.S. Representative Henry Waxman to one Deborah Holt. The crux of the inquiry is in the following paragraphs:

“According to lobbying disclosure documents filed with the U.S. Senate, you were retained by the State of Indiana to lobby regarding the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. I al11 writing to request a briefing in order to better understand the State of Indiana’s interest in Keystone XL.

On January 24, 201 2, in responding to President Obama’s State of the Union address, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels criticized President Obama’s recent decision to deny a permit for the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. I I have subsequently learned that in the fourth quarter of 2011 you received $50,500 in state taxpayer funds as a lobbyist for the State of Indiana, including for lobbying related to Keystone XL. 2 This seems unusual as the State does not have an obvious interest in seeing the Keystone XL project constructed. The proposed route for the Keystone XL pipeline does not pass through the State of Indiana, nor does it come close to the State’s borders; the nearest the:proposed route would approach would be hundreds of miles away in Nebraska and Kansas. Indiana facilities would not have access to the pipeline, nor would it appear that Indiana would particularly benefit from any economic activity associated with the construction of the pipeline. According to reports, TransCanada has contracted to purchase its steel from India – not from u.s.steel producers. The State of indiana thus appears to receive no clear benefit from the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.”

Waxman goes on to quote the Canadian company building the pipeline to the effect that the project will increase oil prices in Indiana and several other states, so consumer concerns were evidently not a motivation for this interesting use of taxpayer dollars.

The amount of money involved is not great, but in a down economy, when Indiana taxpayers are being told we lack money for public education and other public services, when our fiscal shortfall is the reason Governor Daniels has given for laying off government workers, why are we spending scarce public dollars lobbying for a project that will not benefit us, and in which we appear to have no articulable interest?

Inquiring minds want to know.

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The Monster Under the Bed

Parents of small children are familiar with the phenomenon. A few minutes after turning the lights out, a fearful cry comes from the bedroom: there’s a monster under my bed! That is typically followed by a parental “sweep” of the under-bed real estate and assurances that the room is safe for “night-night.”

But what do you do when the terrified child is—physically, at least—an adult?

As American politics has descended into farcical territory, the role played by fear has become increasingly obvious.

To some extent, of course, all of us are disoriented by the pace of social and economic change. But for some subset of our citizens, complexity and ambiguity are the monsters under the bed. As one of my sons observed a few weeks back, when we were scratching our heads over an especially egregious bit of political buffoonery, very scared people desperately crave certainty in a world that has none. They need a bipolar, black and white world in which good and evil, God and the Devil are clearly labeled and easily identified. The enemy is not so much the “Other” (immigrants, gays, African-Americans) as it is the relativism that their acceptance represents.

Which brings me to the folks currently insisting that public transportation and environmental protection are part of a United Nations “agenda” (not to be confused with the “gay agenda”) to destroy American liberty.

According to a story in today’s New York Times, activists with ties to the Tea Party are rallying against local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. As the Times article put it “They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities. They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.”

The designated Monster-Under-the-Bed in this case is a non-binding 1992 UN resolution encouraging resource conservation. Fox News and various activists have identified that resolution (unfortunate titled “Agenda 21”) as an effort to encourage urban living and density in order to strip away property rights. To denizens of this paranoid universe, public transit, bike lanes and smart meters–devices being installed by utility companies to collect information on energy use—are all part of this nefarious plan.

When the less conspiratorial among us hear these stories, our natural inclination is to shrug and laugh, but these protests are having an effect. The Times reports that they were successful in shutting down Maine’s efforts to reduce congestion on Route 1, and deep-sixing Florida’s high-speed rail plan, among others.

There are, of course, genuine issues raised by the movement of more Americans to cities. Urban dwellers are by necessity confronted with trade-offs that rarely confront more rural folks.  We need to make accommodations for the needs of our neighbors, and we need to make policies that serve whole communities—policies that will inevitably irritate some and satisfy others. Those realities do constrain us. I live in a historic district, for example, where I have to obtain approval to paint my house a different color. Does that limit my property rights? Sure.

There is not only nothing wrong with discussing and debating the trade-offs that come with living in modern industrialized societies, it is a conversation that is absolutely critical. But like all such debates, it needs to be conducted by adults and informed by reason and evidence.

The world is scary enough without inventing monsters to fear.

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