Grandstanding and the Death of Osama bin Laden

After almost a decade searching for the man that most Americans mistakenly consider to be the “mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks” (it was actually Khalid Sheik Mohammed, or KSM as he’s known), he’s finally been found and killed.  Let the “spin cycle” begin! :>)

Everyone on both sides of the aisle are trying to take credit for the intelligence that brought us to that walled compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan and the two bullets in bin Laden’s head and trying to lay blame for why it’s taken so terribly long to find him.  And a good deal of this conversation is filled with misinformation and the hopes that our memories are clouded enough to believe what’s being said.  And there are plenty of “media sources” that love to continue that obfuscation.  Let’s get down to some of what’s being said and see how it plays with “The Truth”…

First off, President Barack Obama, in his speech announcing the death of bin Laden, certainly did a lot of chest-thumping and patted himself on the back repeatedly.  Of course, if I were a Democratic President and had accomplished something my Republican predecessor hadn’t been able to in 7 years, I’d probably be high-fiving myself too.  However, as a lot of my friends on the Right liked to point out, there were an awful lot of “I did this….” and “I did that…” in the speech, with not so many “We”.  And I’ll have to acknowledge that my Right leaning friends were correct. 

That said, as we now know, President Obama was very definitely “hands on” in this operation, including watching the mission live at the White House as it went down.  We know that he gave Leon Panetta, the Director of the CIA, explicit directions at the beginning of his Presidency to make the capture/killing of bin Laden the top priority in the “war on terror”.  We can see the results of how this President handles foreign policy in the cooperation of the intelligence communities around the world and the leads that this generated (with the possible exception of the Pakistani ISI, which could be an entire post in and of itself….<g>).

He does indeed deserve kudos for the direction he put in place and the results that’s netted, though he could have toned the “I…I….I….” down a little.

As to the Republican side of the aisle, there’s been a tremendous amount of praise being lavished upon former President George W. Bush and it’s certainly clear just how partisan that praise is.

But to be completely fair, let me first say that it is indeed reasonable to say that the teams that the Bush Administration put together within the Intelligence community and their consistent work at fleshing out leads to the whereabouts of the leaders of Al Qaeda was a significant factor in building a base of contacts and better understanding the loose web of organization that Al Qaeda is.  They certainly deserve praise for that foundation.  That said, many on the Right have gone past the point at which the facts bear them out.

Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga), ranking Republican member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tried to use the moment to justify the Bush Administration’s use of “harsh interrogation techniques”, i.e. the use of waterboarding and other methods of torture, as if these techniques resulted in actionable intelligence that led to the killing of bin Laden.  From what we know and what has been said by other members of the same Senate Intelligence Committee, there is no evidence to reach this conclusion.  There are details in an AP story that makes it clear the initial “lead” to the courier who’s house bin Laden was found in came months after waterboarding of detainees was stopped.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin posted on her Facebook page praise for the victory for the victims of 9/11 and made comments in a fundraising speech in Colorado on Monday night that never once mentioned the name of President Obama.  In fact, in Colorado, she went so far as to praise President Bush by name: “Yesterday was a testament to the military’s dedication in relentlessly hunting down an enemy through many years of war,” ….“And we thank our president. ... We thank President Bush for having made the right calls to set up this victory.”

Let’s take a look at that:  does former President George W. Bush actually deserve praise for the killing of bin Laden?  Did anything he do actually help find him?

I think, if you will put on your thinking cap and remember what actually happened after 9/11, you’ll have to agree with me that President Bush did a number of things that actually contributed to bin Laden being on the loose for so long, and that he changed direction and made finding him less of a priority.

Let’s start with a few months after 9/11 and the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.  In December of 2001, our military had the Taliban on the run and it was believed (and was later corroborated) that Osama bin Laden was holding up in the mountainous region above Tora Bora.  CIA Paramilitary Officers, under the command of Gary Berntsen, had bin Laden located and asked United States Central Command to provide additional troops to get him.  They were not listened to.  Instead, Central Command relied upon Afghan tribesmen they had paid to carry out the mission.  Whether they were aligned with the Taliban, paid to let him go, or simply looked the other way, they let bin Laden escape.  This was a failure on the part of the Bush Administration to follow-through with what should have been a primary focus of the mission.

Then, instead of focusing all of the might of the US Military on bin Laden and the Taliban, the Bush Administration lost sight of the target and moved to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.  As we’re all aware now, there was truly no “actionable intelligence” that connected Saddam Hussein or his Iraqi regime with the 9/11 plot. 

Once again, we see a Bush Administration failure to stay focused on the “war on terror” and those that had hit America hardest.  In fact, the focus on capturing bin Laden was so greatly lost that by March 13, 2002, George W. Bush said “I truly am not that concerned about him.”  In fact, Bush stopped mentioning bin Laden’s name for the next few years, and didn’t start to mention him again until the beginning of his 2004 re-election campaign.  I'll leave it to your imagination as to the timing on that.... :>)

While I do think that those of us that are political beasts and caught up in partisan politics always want to frame events by who wins and who loses, there’s been enough grandstanding over bin Laden’s death that it’s time to take a step back and just be happy that he’s gone.  There’s lots more scary people out there, so we’re clearly not out of the woods yet, but at least there’s one less terrorist in our world.  And maybe, just maybe, the survivors of 9/11 can feel just the smallest bit of relief that some small measure of justice has been served.

Tsunami in Wisconsin?

Sorry for the horribly crass use of the devastation and loss of life in Japan (and my wife and I watched the footage of the tsunami in Sendai live on Thursday night and had to stop at a certain point, as we couldn't take the loss of life any longer...), but I thought I'd try to get your attention on the issue of the broader implication of what just occurred in Wisconsin...

How does the common person stand up to the huge multi-national corporations that seem to be the status quo of international business in our world today?  How much money does the average person in the U. S. have to send to the various organizations that might stand up to their corporate bosses and lobby for their own interests?  I think the answer is that the average person cannot possibly stand up to the power of the unlimited corporate dollars that can be spent to influence either an election or to lobby for their interests, particularly in light of the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case.  So who can the average person expect to stand up for their rights?

My father, who was born in 1910 and died in 1988, was a carpenter, what's known as a "formwork" carpenter.  That is, he built the wooden frames that concrete is poured in to for construction of large structures, everything from warehouses to freeways.  They built the framework, the concrete gets poured, they rip the framework off and toss it.  He was born in a very small rural town in Oklahoma and became an orphan at 10, after his mother and father died within 6 months of each other.  He and his older sister and younger brother were tossed from extended family member's households to households, 'til they finally landed with their Uncle Jim in Washington State.  It was a very tough life, but he worked hard, he learned his trade, and with the help of his union, he was able to rise into the middle class of America.  There were years where we barely clung to the lowest rung of the "middle class", but it would have been so much worse for us if he didn't have a union that established a fair wage for his labor, and safer working conditions.  When there was an accident on a job site, and he fell 30 feet, he was fortunate enough to have insurance and worker's comp, thanks to union efforts.  If it hadn't been for his hard work, and the union that stood up for him in collective bargaining with contractors and CalTrans, I am quite confident that our lives would have been substantially worse.

When I was born, one in four workers was in a union.  Now, it's down to one in eight, and just recently, public sector employees became the majority of union members.  And while it might be disputable that there is a connection between the two, economic inequity has seen one of the most dramatic rises in the modern era.  In 1980, the top 10 percent of American families earned a third of the nation's income.  Now, it's almost 50%.  The top one percent is getting 20%, twice what they did in 1980, and the top one-thousandth of Americans have seen even more dramatic increases in income.  In a little over that period of time, union membership went from 15 million to a little over 13 million, even though the workforce has almost doubled.  It was union membership, in many ways, that allowed the prosperity of the post-WWII years to be shared by the burgeoning middle class.

And now?  I hear so many people looking angrily at the public sector unions in Wisconsin and elsewhere with what strikes me as being jealousy.  What makes them think they're so special?  Why do they deserve decent pension programs or fair wages?  We've fallen so far in this country that these things are no longer a norm:  they are the exception to the rule.  Sure, we're in a very tough place economically, and looking at public sector wages and benefits to try to find some savings doesn't seem unreasonable at all.  And I would further acknowledge that unions are by no means blameless for the situation we find ourselves in now.

So what's the answer?  Well, Gov. Scott Walker has certainly made it clear that the new law he signed has NOTHING to do with trimming the budget, as the union already agreed to those cuts long before he went after their collective bargaining rights.  And I DO consider it a "right".  What is it that he has in mind?  I think it's quite clear:  to tear down the unions and destroy their power base.

In 2008, of the top 5 non-political party contributors to political campaigns, 2 of them were unions.  In 2010, after the Citizens United ruling, only 1 union remained in the top 5, and it was number 5.  Isn't it clear what's being done here?  There is an attempt here, a naked attempt, to permanently change the nature of our more-or-less-two-party-system by ripping the heart and guts out of the unions, who are the single largest contributor to Democratic Party causes.  And who are the top 4 of the top 5 contributors?  Pro-Republican business groups and PACs.  Without the unions, the Democratic Party will be outspent by the billions by corporate interests.  Clearly.

The unions are maxed out at this point:  they simply don't have the resources to put more money into political causes.  And the corporate interests on the Republican side?  With record profits, they have plenty of money.

Does this seem like a good idea?  Selling the American political dream to the highest bidder?  Permanently unbalancing the two-party system?  Doesn't seem like a good idea, and it certainly doesn't seem very "American" to me....

On The Ebb and Flow of Constitutional Interpretation

I find it fascinating, from a historical perspective, how the Constitution of the United States has been interpreted within the confines of American political discourse over the centuries. 

From “strict Constitutionalism” to the concept of a “living document”, there are many ways to interpret the sometimes arcane language of this document (certainly “arcane” within the terms of 21^st century American English), and I am confident that there is enough historical precedent for reasonable men and women to allow for these interpretations of it’s language.  I hope in this extended post to document a number of those trends, acknowledge their validity within the discipline of constitutional law, and give some background for my own personal interpretation of the Constitution and it’s place within our political conversation.

That said, I should first acknowledge that I am not a lawyer nor do I have any particular background in constitutional law.  Quite frankly, in that regard, I am much like many of those on the Right that have taken to pithy Facebook posts concerning it’s Amendments and participate in Constitution study groups: they have no more specialized skill at interpreting the Constitution than I do!  That said, I’ve done my share of reading over the years and I hope to bring a bit of historical perspective to the many ways in which that document has been interpreted, starting from the founders and moving forward to today’s movement that seeks to “Return to the values of the Constitution”, and the ebb and flow of that movement over the last 200 or so years.

Perfect?

To say that the Constitution was a “negotiated document”, with the framers having many differing opinions and making many compromises, is an understatement.  Virtually every member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was rarely shy about writing to friends, family, and constituents back in their respective States, and letting them know what they perceived as the folly or wrong-headedness of their opponents’ views.  However, I find Benjamin Franklin’s comments of September 17^th, 1787 to be particularly enlightening:

“Mr. President, I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them.  For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better Information, or fuller Consideration, to change Opinions even on important Subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise”

Franklin hoped:

“…that every member of the Convention who may still have Objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own Infallibility, and to make manifest our Unanimity, put his name to this Instrument.”

In his own very unique and self-deprecating manner, Franklin says quite clearly that he may just change his mind, given new circumstances and new information.

Many elements of the language of the Constitution are not easy to understand, and this is not just from our perspective hundreds of years later.  From the beginning, many in the Anti-Federalist movement felt that the document was so difficult to understand that it “amounted to a conspiracy against the understanding of a plain man” and was “willfully incomprehensible.”  One Anti-Federalist wrote “The constitution of a wise and free people, ought to be as evident to simple reason, as the letters of our alphabet”.  Patrick Henry argued, “A constitution ought to be, like a beacon, held up to the public eye, so as to be understood by every man.”  Further, he thought that the Constitution as drafted was “of such an intricate and complicated nature, that no man on this earth can know its real operation.”  These Anti-Federalists’ complaints, and many more issues, caused the ratification to become a real challenge:  Rhode Island rejected it in a popular referendum;  and in state ratification conventions it narrowly passed (89 to 79 in Virginia, 187 to 168 in Massachusetts, 30 to 27 in New York, etc.).

And the complaints didn’t end after ratification.  The widely held view of the Jeffersonian Republicans, expressed by one of it’s members, was that “The Federal Constitution by a fair construction is a good one prinsapaly, but I have no dout but that the Convention who made it intended to destroy our free governments by it, or they neaver would have spent 4 Months in making such an inexpliset thing.”

What am I trying to get across with the above bit of early American history?  The simple point is that the Constitution did not fall from the Heavens, directly from the Hand of God (regardless of what Warren Harding said about “divine inspiration”…<g>):  it was a grimy back-and-forth political process to arrive at an imperfect document that many held their nose and voted for anyway, acknowledging their fallibility and finding common ground.  Should we treat that document as dead, codified, and never to be amended or changed?  27 Amendments later, with the first 10 passing in relatively short order in 1791, I think it’s fairly clear that the document wasn’t perfect when signed.

The Changes Required

While from the very beginning, there were arguments concerning the clarity of the Constitution’s language, there were changes in America that occurred as this young nation matured that could, in all probably, not have been foreseen by the framers.

As Justice Stephen Breyer said “ “If you go back to the end of the 18th century and you examine what the founders thought…they didn’t think of the Internet, they didn’t think of television, and they didn’t think of the radio or automobiles”.  Here in our 21^st century perspective, it’s easy to see what subjects the framers could not possibly have known the courts would have to rule on:  banks, women, free markets, privacy, wiretapping, and more.  After all, they were framing rules for a small collection of mostly rural states, not a modern superpower. 

Putting aside the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution, i.e. The Bill of Rights, let’s look at other changes that may or may not have been unforeseen, but were required.  What is striking about this document, in many ways, is what was NOT said or established as law.

One item I find of personal interest, given that I am an agnostic, is that in the roughly forty four hundred words, “God” is not mentioned once.  Benjamin Rush once complained to Samuel Adams that “Perhaps an acknowledgement might be made of his goodness or of his providence in the proposed amendments.”

The word “white” wasn’t in the Constitution, yet Senator Stephen Douglas was still quite confident that the federal government was “made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever.”  In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled, in regards to black men, “They are not included, and were not intended to be included.”  In comments after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Senator James Eastland remarked, “There is nothing in the Constitution that gives the Congress, the President, or the Supreme Court the right to declare that white and colored children must attend the same public schools.”

Can this “inexpliset thing” be interpreted in more than one way?  I’m quite confident that reasonable and rational men and women can disagree on precisely what it says, and there may well be truth in both of their opposing opinions. And it becomes clear why each side of this debate can claim that the other has “no real knowledge of the Constitution”.  It’s this dichotomy of “strict constitutionalism” and a “living document” that has swung, like a pendulum, back and forth for hundreds of years.  Justice Felix Frankfurter, nominated to the court in 1938, said that it “is most significantly not a document but a stream of history”.  Justice Frankfurter could certainly be called a “non-originalist”, yet he was the staunchest supporter of State’s rights and one of the most outspoken advocates of judicial restraint in the Court’s history.  While it’s easy to look at this in “black and white” terms, the reality is quite a bit more complex…

What is at the heart of these opposing interpretations and what is their genesis?

Two Schools

There are 5 elements involved in interpreting the Constitution:

1.  The actual text and structure of the Constitution.

2.  The “intention” of those that framed or proposed the section of concern.

3.  Prior judicial precedent.

4.  The consequences of alternative interpretations:  social, political, or economic.

5.  “Natural law”.

There is general agreement that the first three elements are appropriate for the interpretation of the Constitution, though there are clearly differences in terms of the priority given to each of them, particularly when they lead in opposing directions.  There is a good deal of disagreement as to how much the consequences of a particular ruling should be taken into consideration when making the ruling.  And natural law, i.e. “God’s Law”, is rarely discussed in Constitutional circles today.

Those that put highest precedence on the text of the Constitution and the original intent of the framers are generally called “Originalists”;  and those that put greater weight upon precedent and consequences are known in constitutional law circles as “Non-Originalists” (very clever name, eh?), though that’s hardly how they’re described in the popular vernacular.

The term “Living Constitution” is actually a rather negative term coined by conservatives in the very early 20^th century, and indicative of how ludicrous they felt the concept was.  One might point to Woodrow Wilson and his comments in 1913 as one of those in the “Progressive Movement” that felt the “Originalist” interpretation of the Constitution did not suit the “modern era”:

All the progressives ask or desire is permission --- in an era when ‘development,’ ‘evolution,’ is the scientific word --- to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle;  all they ask is a recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing.”

This concept of the nation as “a living thing” requiring governance that changed with the challenges at hand, seems a not unreasonable idea.  However, it was challenged quite vociferously by organizations such as the Sons of the American Revolution, the National Security League, and the National Association for Constitutional Government.  If fact, in the early 1920’s, James Montgomery Beck, known as “Mr. Constitution” for the number of originalist books he published, declared at that time that “the Constitution is in graver danger today than at any other time in the history of America.”  Personally, I believe that the originalists have felt that every era has been of the gravest danger to the Constitution, or at the very least, to their understanding and interpretation of it.

This chasm deepened during the New Deal, and in fact informs most of the discussion to this day.  Thurman Arnold, who eventually became F. D. R.’s Assistant Attorney General, wrote in 1935 “Hopeful people today wave the flag.  Timid people wave the Constitution….the only bulwark against change.”

In 1986 and before, Edwin Meese, Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General made many a speech, vociferously defending originalism, and in fact Reagan nominated Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court, widely considered to be the strongest originalist voice on the court, that very year.

And last year, Meese and members of The Heritage Foundation, “The National Review”, and the Federalist Society met to sign what they were calling “The Mount Vernon Statement”.  This document was a call to arms for conservatives to return the nation to “founding principles”, as they were “under sustained attack” in “our culture, our universities and our politics.”  They said that “The self-evident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist.  The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.”  While that makes for excellent news copy, and is clearly fodder for conservative blogs, is that truly what the “non-originalists” think?  The originalists presume that there’s one and only one way to interpret the Constitution:  the specific wording of the document and the “intentions” of the framers as evinced by letters and other supporting documents.  Is that truly the only way the Constitution can be interpreted?  But possibly even more important is the question, under this originalist point of view, as to what is “unconstitutional”.  Is a law or doctrine “unconstitutional” because it violates what was specifically expressed in the wording of the Constitution itself, which can of course be the subject of discussion, given the vague wording of some of the Articles;  or is that law or doctrine “unconstitutional” because it is simply not mentioned in the Constitution?  I believe this is the crux of the argument.

Jamal Greene, Professor of Law at Columbia University, writing about the rulings of Justice Antonin Scalia, said that “If democratic legitimacy is the measure of a sound constitutional interpretive practice, then Justice Scalia needs to give an account of why and how rote obedience to the commitments of voters two centuries distant and wildly different in racial, ethnic, sexual, and cultural composition can be justified on democratic grounds.” 

Does it seem unreasonable to believe that no written constitution can anticipate all the means by which a future government might oppress the people?  Is it reasonable to assume that judges may need to add to the body of laws to ultimately respect the nature of the freedoms that the framers originally outlined, even though those laws, or the potential loss of freedoms that new circumstances might engender that are what those laws grow out of, could not possibly have been thought of by the framers?  Are we indeed a “living nation” that is changing and growing?

Frankly, as you read the Constitution, the language is not only antiquated, but at many points is vague, and frequently ambiguous.  It seems possible to me that judicial precedent can be found to support either side.  And in those circumstances, is it unreasonable to consider which will offer the greatest good for the public?

I personally think that it is far too easy for originalists to lose sight of the forest for the trees.  Quite frankly, it seems to me that the focus ought to be on the higher purpose, the true spirit of the protection of liberties that was at the core of the Constitution.

And Now?

Those that are members of, or find themselves sympathizing with, the various “Tea Party” organizations have put respect for the Constitution at the heart of their beliefs.  Some might even say they have taken to “worshipping” the Constitution as a “perfect document”, not unlike fundamentalist evangelical Christians see the Bible as the “literal Word of God”, Council of Nicaea be damned.  This interesting similarity is something worth pursuing at greater length in another post, but for now, I’ll just say that I find the “Constitution study groups” quite like “Bible study” groups among those on the “Religious Right” in contemporary American politics.  In fact, the market for constitutional study guides has exploded in the last few years:  “The Constitution Made Easy”, “U.S. Constitution for Dummies”, “The Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution”, “The Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence”, and more.  These “guides” all attempt to put the arcane language of the late 18^th century American colonies into contemporary vernacular, but many of them do so with not inconsequential political “spin”.  The Constitution these “Tea Party” ralliers are learning, in many cases, bears scant resemblance to the forty four hundred words of the original document.  Again, that’s another post all together…. :>)

What I believe we see happening in our politics today, is a conflict, in many ways, between the Baby Boom generation and their elders, and the nature of the changing United States.  What many of those in their later years see as “traditional American values” are being superceded by the new values of our young, and by the changing demographic of our society.  In many ways, I find the “Tea Party” and it’s adherence to the “intent” of the framers of the Constitution, indeed their studying that document as if it were the “word of God”, to be a reaction to these changing times and their difficulty with adapting and adjusting to those changes.  As Sarah Palin said in a riff on the Obama campaign’s motto of “Change You Can Believe In”:  “We’ll keep clinging to our Constitution, our guns, and our religion, and you can keep the change.”  While that comment is meant as hyperbole, it is, to my mind, very telling of the core of this movement.

By no means do I mean to dismiss those that fly the flag and thump the Constitution, nor do I minimize the significance of their opinions, but I think it has become far too easy for many to call anything they don’t like “unconstitutional”, without having a solid understanding that takes into consideration the almost 230 years of it’s interpretation.  As long as those on the Right consider any scholar at one of the U.S.’s pre-eminent universities or any journalist that attempts to be as objective as possible and respects the traditional values of fact checking and information vetting to be part of the “liberal elite”, and summarily dismisses their well-considered positions, we will not be able to have an insightful discussion about the interpretation of the Constitution, or any other subject that can’t be summed up in simple two sentence soundbites.  The term “intellectual” simply shouldn’t be used as a political slur, particularly given the depth of study that our Constitution requires.

It’s time to look a bit deeper into the issues of our time and rely a bit less on placard-sized thoughts…

Calmer thoughts...

This is a post to a friend of mine that I thought worth sharing, where he called me out for some of the initial comments by the media about the associations that Jared Lee Loughner may have had. Some of those associations now seem slim.




If you'd read posts on FB from the right side of the spectrum over this last year or so, and heard the astonishing amount of violent language being used, then you might begin to understand where my initial reactions come from. "The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim". The insistence upon referring to the President as "Barack Hussein Obama" or "BHO" in order to play up the "otherness" of his name. The insistence that he's a closet Muslim. The straight faced belief that he wasn't born in Hawaii, but Kenya, and that many government agencies are part of the 'fraud". The images with a noose around his neck. The calling out for the "removal" of all "libtards". The yelling and screaming. And I'm just talking about posts from some of my FB "Friends"! :>( Honestly, I was completely shocked. I never imagined that people were SO angry and vicious. While I could understand why people were so angry with George W. Bush, I don't ever remember my liberal friends wanting to kill him, burning him in effigy. They called him an "idiot", and I must admit that there were times I said the same thing too. When you read some of the "Bushisms" and the sentences that absolutely butchered the English language, it's understandable to think he's stupid (Though I would acknowledge that he's not stupid at all: he's just not a very good extemporaneous public speaker). In all likelihood, he lied to the American people (maybe even lied to himself), and took us into 2 wars that have devastated our economy and spilled the blood of thousands of young men and women. There are even those whose anger at him is due to his losing the general election, but winning by "one vote in the Supreme Court". I might even lean in that direction, but even given all of that, I don't recall ANY of the violent conversation on the part of my liberal friends that I hear with my "conservative Friends". It's not even close. And that is just my personal FB experience that simply "piles on" to the Tea Party placards, the shouting down of Democratic Reps. at town hall meetings, the threats, crosshairs, the "Second Amendment remedies", and all that. My reaction was visceral, emotional, and not particularly reasoned or cooly thought out. I am indeed a man who gets passionate about certain things and I was overwhelmed by the emotions of seeing Rep. Giffords shot, who herself stood on the steps of the Capitol for an interview after she was "targeted" by Sarah Palin's notorious website and said that people need to think about what they're saying and take responsibility for their actions. And then this. While exactly what Loughner thought is only now starting to get pieced together and early information is either sussing out or not, I will absolutely stand by my statements that the tone of the American political discourse needs to ratchet down a notch or two. That seems only reasonable.

On the vitriol in our political discourse....

This is the text of a post that I made to a very dear friend of mine whose political beliefs are quite a bit further to the right than mine. The gist of the text I was responding to was his comment that it's easy for the "lefties" to blame everyone on the right when a violent event occurs, such as the Arizona shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the death of her staffer (and far too many others....). I thought it was worth posting on my blog: I think we're all in agreement, though we really don't have enough detail yet, that Jared Lee Loughner is mentally unstable. Mentally unstable people don't have that critical faculty in their minds that stops their wilder thoughts from becoming acted upon. That's true. In this case, very sad but true. That said, these people, and Loughner in particular, don't exist in a vacuum. There _is_ vitriol and bitter anger in our political discourse, and there has been more these last few years than I can remember in a long time (even going back to what was the birth of my political awareness: protest over the war in Vietnam. Yes, I'm that old....<g>). This vitriol, and the violent imagery and words that many use, is clear to anyone that will open their eyes and look. Sure, those in the tea party movements are not necessarily wackos, but you see so many of the fringe elements that _are_ attending these events (the galleries of truly frightening placards and violent graphics by those fringe elements at Tea Party protests are available all over the web. I'll point you to a few if you like....). What separates THOSE people from Loughner? They have the ability to understand the difference between their words and the actions that they choose NOT to take. That's because they're mentally stable enough not to act on the words they write on posters. Loughner was not. Does that give those on the far fringe a free pass to ignore how their words affect others? We live in a country founded, more or less <g>, on free speech, so they have the right to say what they want. However, in the course of reasonable and responsible political discourse, we have to take responsibility for our words, particularly those in the middle of the political conversation, such as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck (remember the shooter they stopped recently _before_ he killed anyone? His mother said that he listened to Beck constantly and vocalized his desire to "kill the bastards" that Beck was focused on...). We are free to use our words, even when they're vitriolic, but we MUST take responsibility for them. Do you not think that any of the following had even the least little part in creating the environment where Loughner would kill? Windows were smashed at Representative Giffords' district office last March just a few hours after the House vote on health care reform. At one of the infamous town hall events in August 2009, a man attending the event accidentally dropped a handgun on the floor that he had been hiding under his arm. Sarah Palin's infamous "target list" displayed Democratic districts, including Rep. Giffords', in crosshairs, as if viewed through a gunsight. And Palin's tweet: "Don't retreat, RELOAD!". In addition, violent imagery was prominently featured during the last election. For instance, a rally for Rep. Giffords' Republican opponent, Jesse Kelly, at a gun range, was promoted with the following notice: "Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly." And you probably saw my post on the words of Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik yesterday. The quote I saw originally didn't include the first two sentences. I think this is important to keep in mind: "especially susceptible to vitriol". "There's reason to believe that this individual may have a mental issue. And I think people who are unbalanced are especially susceptible to vitriol... When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous." We'll all know more about this later, and hopefully we'll get more details about how this occurred (and if there is indeed a second person involved). Until then, there will be plenty of blame to hand around (I've already seen postings of how President Obama's rhetoric needs to be held accountable. A bit of a stretch, but there is something to be said for the need to change the ENTIRE nature of our political dialog).


People, let's keep this conversation reasonable and responsible. For the sake of other 9 year olds that are "interested in politics". Please.

A coming together of progressive and Tea Party minds....

Sure, it's an article on Huffington Post from an acknowledged "progressive".  I don't know much about the author's background or the organization he works for, other than a few cursory Google searches and a short bit of reading.  That said, I think he has some very interesting points about where progressives and Tea Party activists can find common ground.

Get over the fact that he uses the terminology of "progressives" or "liberals":  he's made it VERY clear where he is in the political spectrum.   Just read it for what it is:  one man's thoughts and suggestions.  It's certainly worth a few moments to read.  Here's the link:

Richard Eskow, "An Open Letter To Tea Party Activists:  Let's Defend Social Security Together"

My definition of "Far Right Wing" extremism

Jim posed the question of what I consider to be extremist views on the Far Right side of the political spectrum, and that got me to thinking (thanks for the question, Jim!).  I wouldn't call this an exhaustive explanation, but I think I can give a few points that outline my own admittedly VERY subjective views on what is extreme.  These are in no particular order, though I think the first clearly defines the person as an extremist:

1.  Belief in the myriad conspiracy theories floating around the Right Wing blogosphere.  Here a few examples, by no means all of the craziness out there:

The "birther" conspiracy.  Whether it's the insistence that the perfectly legal short form birth certificate issued by the State of Hawaii is a fake, to trumped up documents of a Kenyan birth, it's quite clear that believing that Barack Obama isn't an American born native citizen is not a mainstream belief.  And the idea that numerous Hawaiian State agencies, Illinois State agencies, and Federal Elections Committee working groups ALL colluded to put one over on the American people strains the patience of those in the center or left.

The DREAM Act is President Obama's way to "steal the election in 2012".  What this conspiracy theory seems to ignore is that once upon a time, when there were actually moderate voices within the Republican caucus, immigration reform was a bipartisan attempt at fixing a broken systems.  If fact, before Sen. John McCain was challenged by a Tea Party favorite and tacked completely to the right, he was actually one of the loudest voices on the Republican side of the aisle for immigration reform.  And that reform generally included some sort of way to integrate illegal immigrants that were already here into the process, whether you call it "amnesty" or not.

The Muslim community is trying to create Sharia law in the U. S.  Forget the fact that there aren't enough Muslims in the U. S. to be able to move any legislation forward (and only one Muslim in Congress).  This one just seems to ignore the reality of our democratic process...

2.  Belief that the Constitution is an infallible document to be frozen in time and revered as such, not unlike considering the Bible the "literal Word of God".  If you're going to a Constitution study group, much in the same way that you're going to a Bible study, you fall on the extreme side of this equation.  Most of us in the center believe that our founders did their best to compromise their very different opinions and views, and created a negotiated document that even they very quickly realized needed to be amended.  Hence the First Amendment, a fairly significant addition, considered to be one of the hallmarks of American democracy.  Once again, the point is that we live in a world that is evolving and one that is not simple black and white.  What would the founders have thought about regulating the Internet, laws for automobiles, and other 20th and 21st century technologies?  Tough to know.  Maybe considering it a living document might make more sense?

3.  Agreeing with most everything that Glenn Beck says.  I know this will get me in trouble with all you on the far right, but Beck is not equivalent to Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly or most of the other commentators on Fox News (nor is he the mirror-image equivalent of Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews).  While Hannity and O'Reilly are profoundly to the right, Beck is a throwback to the radical extremist views of the 1950's and 1960's, to the days of the formation of The John Birch Society and the roots of the Cold War mentality of that era.  He positions himself as less of a commentator and more as an "educator", but he uses as his sources older texts that have been widely shown to be fallacious and discredited within the circles of serious scholarship.  W. Cleon Skousen and Robert Welch, Sen. McCarthy and the Communist conspiracy, "The 5,000 Yearl Leap" and 'The Naked Communist".  Fortunately, during that era, you had intelligent voices of true conservatism that modified the conspiracy theorists, people like William F. Buckley Jr. and the National Review.  Buckley was concerned that the extremism of the far right at that time would lead to Fascism, and he was at the forefront of the conservative movement that brought Ronald Reagan to power.  Who is that moderate voice now?  Moderate voices were voted out in 2010.  I would highly recommend that anyone interested in the historical background of Glenn Beck's politics read an excellent New Yorker magazine article titled "Confounding Fathers:  The Tea Party's Cold War Roots".

4.  And that leads to this: identifying with the Tea Party and the drumming out of the moderate voices within the conservative movement.  While I don't want to paint them with too broad a brush, as the tea parties do not appear to be a coordinated group with a definitive political philosophy and agenda, there's one thing that seems to be occurring with their rise within the 2010 election cycle:  less and less variation within the thought processes of the Republican Party, and the near death of the "moderate Republican" within the halls of Congress and the Senate.  For those of us in the center, this is a truly disturbing trend.

Again, I'll stress that these are a few of my admittedly very subjective views of extremism on the Right.  Maybe we should discuss extremism on the Left at some point too, huh?  :>)