Citizens for a Totalitarian State?

Okay, I’m officially worried.

I’m currently in Fairfax, Virginia, on the (really beautiful) campus of George Mason University; I’m here as one of the 71 judges of the national “We the People” finals. For those who don’t know anything about “We the People,” it is probably the single most effective civics curriculum being used in the U.S. Unfortunately, its use is entirely voluntary–teachers can choose to adopt it for junior and senior government classes, but it is entirely up to them.

Students in WTP classes study the history and philosophy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. When they c0mplete the semester, most know a great deal more about the nation’s founding documents than most adults. The conclusion of the course–which was an outgrowth of Warren Burger’s Bicentennial Commission–is a competition modeled upon congressional hearings. Each class is divided into six teams, each assigned to one of the six units in the textbook. The teams are grilled by three-judge “panels” to ascertain their mastery of the subject-matter, first in competitions held in each congressional district, and then at the state level. The state winner goes to the national finals.

I am a member of one of those three-judge panels, and my team’s assignment was Unit 5–the Bill of Rights. Our assignment was focused upon the First Amendment, and our questions were intended to determine what the students knew about the philosophy and jurisprudence of Free Speech. We saw 14 teams yesterday, and we will see another 14 today.

The good news is that all of the students on all of the teams displayed impressive knowledge of the origins and jurisprudence of free speech. They could quote the Founders, they could recite the case law, identify the jurists, and report the reasoning of each case.

The bad news is that students on most of the teams we reviewed accepted the logic of those cases without question. If the Court said that suppression of expression was acceptable in a particular situation, then it was. The case of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, for example, held that high school newspapers can be censored by school administrators. The decision has been heavily criticized in the 25 years since it was handed down, and in some states, legislatively overruled. And yet many of the students, when asked, dutifully parroted the holding and defended its logic by arguing that students “need to be protected from ‘inappropriate’ information.” They similarly had no problem with the decision in Buckley v. Valeo that money equals speech, and expressed no qualms that Citizens United might result in giving some speakers the ability to drown out the speech of those with fewer dollars to spend.

When questioned about efforts to restrict speech during wartime, several students defended the right of government to impose censorship “for public safety.” And in at least two cases, they seemed willing to give in to the “heckler’s veto”–to agree that government could suppress public speeches if those speeches had potential to create public disturbances.

Students were generally unwilling to disagree with or criticize past Court decisions, even those that have subsequently been narrowed or abandoned. If I had to characterize their approach, I would call it docile or submissive. If there’s a law, these kids will obey it, no matter how unreasonable it may be. We didn’t see many  who are likely to protest, or engage in civil disobedience, and even in this era of anti-government sentiment, we saw a troubling number who seemed willing to believe that government always knows best.

I hasten to say that there were many exceptions, and that we only saw half of the competing teams. Three or four of those teams (including one from Indiana) were outstanding–thoughtful, analytic and articulate. And I understand that we’ll see some of the stronger teams today. But most of the competitors are here because they won a state-level contest, and I can’t help wondering about the prevalence among them of a meek and unquestioning acceptance of authority.

They’re teenagers, for heaven’s sake! If they aren’t going to question authority now, how docile will they be when they have children and a mortgage?

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Letting It Out

Every once in a while, I glance at “Let It Out,” the Star feature that showcases reader remarks. Yesterday, I was stunned to read the following:

“It appears our President is more willing to risk the lives of people flying than to cut entitlements. A sad and dangerous state of affairs.”

In two brief sentences, the writer displayed two of the traits most responsible for today’s toxic and retrograde political environment: ignorance and lack of empathy. Ignorance, because the flight delays resulting from the sequester—while inconvenient—pose no risk to safety; because the terms of the sequester (a result of Republican intransigence) gave the president no discretion to determine what budgets would be affected; and because the power to “cut entitlements” rests with Congress, not the president.

It’s one thing to be uninformed or willfully ignorant of basic facts. What struck me most forcefully about the remarks, however, was their mean-spiritedness, their absolute lack of awareness or empathy for the recipients of what the author dismisses as “entitlements.”

Despite the disproportionate attention paid to them, flight delays are merely an annoyance—albeit an annoyance to the more privileged among us. Other consequences of the sequester have included delay or termination of cancer treatments for people on Medicaid, and cutbacks to Head Start, to nutrition programs serving pregnant women and children, and to Meals on Wheels, to name just a few. That these cutbacks are causing real pain to less fortunate, less politically-empowered people evidently hasn’t occurred to the commenter–or doesn’t matter.

Too bad those who contribute to “Let it Out” don’t have to sign their names. We’d know who to avoid.

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Why I’m Losing Faith in the Human Race

The Guardian recently reported on a speech in which a senior Iranian cleric blamed “women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously” for earthquakes.

If that sort of crazy were a feature only of theocratic or third-world countries, we might chuckle and ignore it. Unfortunately, however, the amount of lunacy right here at home suggests a wider problem.

A few examples:

A conspiracy theorist named Larry Klaymon insists that the fertilizer factory explosion in West, Texas, was an act of Islamic terrorism, and that the government under Obama (“the Other”) is engaged in a wide-ranging cover-up.

Speaking of Obama, in the wake of his re-election, Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel explained that that the election result was a “communist takeover” of the United States, and that the IRS will start throwing pastors in jail, invading churches and shooting parishioners.

Then there was the Republican candidate for the Arkansas legislature who wrote a book about the proper biblical approach to child-rearing. And I quote:

“The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellioius children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:
…

This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children. They must follow the proper procedure in order to have the death penalty executed against their children.”

Well, yes, I think procedural safeguards before killing one’s children as God decreed are probably appropriate…

Just this month, in the year 2013, the Missouri legislature voted to ban a sustainability program because sustainability is part of the nefarious plot that is Agenda 21!

The Missouri House of Representatives on Monday passed a ban on the United Nations sustainability plan Agenda 21 after a spirited discussion of space aliens and how Walmart could avoid zoning laws to build more stores.

The Republican-controlled House voted 110-40 to ban local governments from adopting the Agenda 21, a broad outline of planning goals and sustainability targets. Agenda 21 was passed by the U.N. in 1992, but has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate and does not contain the force of law in the U.S.

…

Agenda 21 opponents argue the U.N. document would seize private property and force people to live in walkable communities with a potential end to golf and scuba diving.

Your elected representatives at work, protecting your nine-iron….

I assume psychiatrists have theories to explain what seems to be a vastly increased prevalence of paranoia, hysteria and irrationality. Or perhaps there has always been a significant percentage of lunatics in our population, and the Internet has simply brought them to our attention–although I don’t recall a time when we have had so many elected officials who either inhabit an alternate reality or keep going off their meds.

How do you talk to someone who thinks short skirts cause earthquakes? How do you get lawmakers who actually believe that President Obama is a covert Muslim Communist and the Anti-Christ to focus on solving the nation’s problems? How do you get people who think Adam and Eve saddled up dinosaurs to understand climate change? How do you get lawmakers who think women’s bodies can “shut down” rapist sperm to respect women’s right to equality and autonomy?

More important: how do we get the sane folks who have thrown up their hands and withdrawn from the political process to wake up and reclaim the country?

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What Would I Do Without Texas?

As I have noted several times, I owe Texas a debt of gratitude. Whenever I am searching for an example of bad public policy to use in class, the Lone Star State comes through for me.

I thought about Texas’ reliability during a research presentation by one of the teams of students in my graduate Law and Public Affairs class. They had chosen Cap and Trade as the policy proposal they were analyzing, and they began the presentation with a brief history of environmental regulation in the U.S. The student delivering that portion of the presentation noted that federal rules were a response to a couple of the downsides of our federalist system: not only is there often a lack of uniformity, but there are some unfortunate consequences to the fact that states compete with each other to lure businesses and jobs. Before the establishment of the EPA, lack of environmental regulations was one of the “advantages” states offered relocation prospects–“come to our state, and you won’t be bothered by pesky rules keeping you from discharging your toxins in that nearby river.”

Even today, some states allow more pollution than others. According to the student researchers, Indiana is the 7th most polluted state in the country.

Texas, of course, is the worst.

Indeed, Texas Governor Rick Perry has been widely quoted touting his philosophy of economic development, which boils down to:  states wanting to entice business can succeed by reducing or eliminating regulations.

So what if a few fertilizer plants blow up and level some neighborhoods?  So what if polluted air exacerbates asthma and other medical conditions, sickening citizens and driving up medical costs?  So what if the companies most likely to be attracted by an absence of regulation are those looking to evade reasonable standards for safety and environmental compliance?

Diminished health and safety is a small price to pay for job creation bragging rights. Just ask Rick Perry.

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Media Malpractice

Who can Americans trust to report news accurately? Yesterday, I blogged about a recent survey that showed increasing skepticism about Fox News. Barely a half-hour after I posted, my husband mentioned that he’d been listening to a newscast on the radio in which the reporter interviewed lawmakers who are calling for the use of military tribunals for the Boston bombing suspects. According to my husband, the newscaster then reported–as fact–that such tribunals have proved to be more effective than the regular criminal courts. “I didn’t know that,” he said.

He didn’t know it, because that superior effectiveness is not even remotely a “fact.”

The facts are these: after 9-11, the Bush administration initiated prosecutions of 828 people on terrorism charges in civilian courts. Last year, according to a report from the Center on Law and Security, NYU School of Law, trials were still pending against 235 of them. That leaves 593 resolved cases. Of that number, 523 were convicted, for a conviction rate of 88%.

In addition, the Bush administration pursued 20 cases in military tribunals. So far, there have been exactly three convictions. The highest-profile was the case involving Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver. Hamdan was convicted, but he was sentenced  by a military jury to a mere five and half years–and the tribunal judge, a US Navy captain, gave him credit for time served, which was five years. So Hamdan served only six months after conviction.

Furthermore, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld–the case that grew out of this particular trial–the Supreme Court held that the Military Tribunals as constituted at the time violated both the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The propriety of using a Military Tribunal in any given case is, of course, open to debate. What is not debatable is the history of their past performance. It is perfectly legitimate to argue about the pros and cons of using such tribunals; I have my opinion, and others are entitled to theirs. But that debate needs to be grounded in fact, not propaganda.

If we cannot depend upon the media to provide accurate information and to separate opinion from fact– if we have lost what used to be called “the journalism of verification”– we are reduced to exchanging opinions anchored to nothing but our individual biases.

We live in a complicated world. We desperately need a competent and trustworthy media.

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