This Has Gone Too Far….

The news that Senate Republicans plan to filibuster the President’s nomination of (Republican) Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary ought to be the final straw.

Harry Reid clearly allowed himself to be punked, settling for a toothless agreement with Mitch McConnell rather than the genuine reform of the much-abused filibuster that he promised. And we are all paying a high price for his fecklessness.

I understand the legitimate use of that legislative weapon to prevent a majority from running roughshod over the minority. But in its current form, the filibuster is being used by a minority–by partisans whose positions were emphatically rejected by the electorate–to defeat virtually every effort undertaken by a popularly-elected majority. As a result, government has been brought to a standstill. Nothing can be done unless a super-majority vote can be rounded up–and finding sixty votes in a Senate occupied by too many small-minded, mean-spirited partisan hacks is no easy task.

At the very least, those who want to bring government to a halt should have to stand on the Senate floor and actually talk. It should not be enough for the minority members to raise their little pinkies and announce that they are “virtually” filibustering, so please go f#*#k yourself.

The intransigence of these GOP Senators has cost this country dearly during the recent economic meltdown. For every bad idea they’ve blocked, we’ve lost many more opportunities to improve the lives of middle-class Americans, to strengthen our crumbling infrastructure, to create jobs and take measures to protect the environment.

The federal legislative system is designed to work on the principle of majority rule.  A majority of those who have been elected to represent the voters is supposed to determine what laws will be enacted. That doesn’t mean that Senators who oppose legislation cannot express that opposition forcefully in their floor speeches and their votes. It does mean that when the minority party consistently refuses to allow an up-and-down majority vote, that party isn’t just blocking particular measures: it is undermining American government–and it is becoming increasingly clear that destroying the capacity to govern is not an incidental or unintended consequence of these tactics; it is the real reason for them. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Presidential nominees have never been filibustered.  Even John McCain–who has made his contempt for the man who defeated him quite plain– has argued against such an unprecedented move. If the Republicans want to vote against Hagel’s confirmation, fine. That is clearly their prerogative–although, as Dick Lugar has maintained, there should be a rebuttable presumption that the executive is entitled to his choice of those he wants populating his administration. Preventing an up-and-down vote simply because they can–motivated by spite, anti-government fervor and a level of partisanship that dwarfs anything previously seen–is beyond reprehensible. It is beyond irresponsible.

It’s despicable and profoundly unAmerican. And it needs to stop.

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The Kids Are All Right

I routinely apologize to my graduate students for my generation, and the mess we’ve made of the world we’re leaving them. I tell them that it will be up to their generation to clean that mess up, and generally speaking, I find most of them up to the task. Unlike people who wring their hands and bemoan the state of “today’s youth”–a practice that began with Socrates’ Athens, if I’m not mistaken–I find the students who populate my classes to be, on balance, thoughtful, fair-minded, evidence-based and public-spirited. They give me hope that they really will improve our common institutions.

Of course, these are graduate students I’m talking about, and self-selected ones at that. So it was interesting to get an email from my sister, who created and runs the art program at Sycamore School here in Indianapolis, about one of her eighth graders.

In my eighth grade class, my students are to keep a notebook.  Each week, I hand out a quote or comment or question about art, and they must respond.  One week, the question was, “Is there any time when art, no matter how well done, should not be displayed?”

Today as I was grading the notebooks, I came across this answer, which I thought might interest you.  (I could show you notebooks that would blow your mind!)
“No, I think blasphemy and profanity are only ever taken down by less enlightened people.  Enlightenment comes from not having a perfect society.  By not allowing both the good and the bad of living, true intellect is unobtainable..”
John Stuart Mill would be proud of this kid. He has figured out what the nation’s founders knew, but so many of our would-be contemporary censors still can’t seem to grasp–the proper response to bad speech is more and better speech–not suppression. Only when all ideas are available for examination can we ever hope to distinguish between truth and falsity.

The Road to Hell is Paved

Food for thought: In Amsterdam, over 50 percent of all trips are taken by bike; in Los Angeles, that percentage is under 1%.

It’s hard to believe now, but L.A. was an early pioneer in public transportation.  There evidently used to be a 9-mile dedicated bike pathway connecting LA and Pasadena that had electric lights the entire way—in 1897. That pathway became a freeway in 1940. The same thing happened to original bikeways in Hollywood and Santa Monica.

Here’s a data point that should make us all stop and think: the percentage of surface area in Los Angeles dedicated to automobiles (roads, parking, gas stations, etc.) is more than 70 percent, while the percentage devoted to parks and open spaces is 5 percent.

As the article from which I took those figures asked, “Is your city designed for you, or for your car?”

Yesterday, a colleague whose opinion I value commented on a previous post about the need for public transportation by saying that it would never happen–that thanks to a combination of low density and the American love affair with the automobile, we have established a “car culture.” If he is correct, our cities will continue to be designed for, and dominated by, automobiles–and increasingly inhospitable to people and parks.

I’ve been to L.A. several times. There are nice areas, but it fails as a city. It’s not a place I’d want to live–or emulate.

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Giving Christians a Bad Name…Again

I was going to blog about the controversy in Sullivan, Indiana (somewhere south of Terre Haute, as best I can locate that metropolis), where a few teachers,  students and parents at Sullivan High School are upset that gay students are actually allowed to attend the prom. They are so upset that they are planning to hold a separate, “traditional” prom. But this article from The Stranger, an alternative paper in Seattle, says it all so much better than I could.

The good news is that the school’s administration and most of the teachers reject this hurtful bigotry, leaving the “good Christian” parents with no way to make the official Prom off-limits to children who had the nerve to be born differently, so they are scrambling to raise money for their own event. We can only hope they fail, and that their own children are the ones deprived of a treasured high-school ritual they are unwilling to share with gay classmates.

I know I ask this question a lot, but what is wrong with these people?

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The Youth Vote

If demography is destiny, the handwriting is on the wall.

Many years ago, I had an enlightening conversation with friend active in Libertarian politics. He was trying to recruit candidates who would appeal to Republicans who were becoming disenchanted with the culture warriors who had seized control of the GOP. He saw a window of opportunity for the Libertarians–if they could moderate some of their positions just a little, they could take advantage of that window and substantially increase their share of the vote. The problem was, the party’s core–the absolutists–were unwilling to move even a little toward the middle, and keeping their pro-gun, pro-gold-standard, anti-public-schools base was critical to any electoral success. So the window closed.

Today’s GOP finds itself in an analogous position. The party has come to depend upon an aging, angry base that repels not only women, immigrants and minorities, but increasingly, younger Americans.  It’s caught between that same rock and hard place that has kept the Libertarians from achieving mainstream status.

The party’s establishment has now realized the problem, but solving it is going to be another thing entirely.

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