The Culture Wars Resume

Just when everybody thought this election would be about the economy it has become a resumption of the Culture Wars.

Democrats have seized upon the issue of birth control as an “Attack on Women” and it may be of greater concern to women than to men, but men too are effected by any attempt to restrict birth control. Whether in the married state or absent matrimony, men are very much concerned about impregnating a woman, whether she is a wife, or a girl friend. In the married state additional unwanted children place just as much of an economic burden on the husband as on the wife and if single, what man wants to be responsible for an offspring which was neither intended nor desired.

To be sure a female is more immediately effected, since it is her body that carries the fetus, but to pretend that only women are effected is to blind oneself to reality.

But what has suddenly brought this to the fore. The media has made it appear that the ruling by the Obama Administration requiring all insurance policies to cover birth control is strictly about insurance coverage, and Republicans want it to appear as though it were a battle over freedom of religion. But it is neither! 


The issue was brought to the fore when Komen decided to defund Planned Parenthood. But that simply brought it above the radar. As I pointed out in my post "Contraception, Abortion and Komen," it was as early as last year that the “House GOP voted to zero out the entire $317,000,000 Title X family planning budget and in New Jersey, Planned Parenthood was completely defunded to the tune of  $7.4 million. More recently on March 5, 2012, Newsweek reported that Texas was defunding Planned Parenthood. (The New York Times reported the same thing two days later.)

In none of these cases was there even a pretense that religion was an issue. And besides since when can religion override public policy. Would Rick Santorum or even Mitt Romney take issue with the Supreme Court when it ruled as long ago as 1878 in Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. (8 Otto.) 145 that members of the Mormon religion could not claim exemption on religious grounds from the prohibition against polygamy, holding that “the Free Exercise Clause … protect(s) religious beliefs, not religious practices that run counter to neutrally enforced … laws.”

Would anyone argue that a physician, who is a Christian Scientist, can withhold medical care because it is against his religion, and for obvious reasons the argument that a pharmacist can refuse to dispense birth control pills on religious grounds has also been soundly rejected.

But the fundamentalists in the Republican Party (and I prefer to call them Fundamentalists rather then Evangelicals, because there are many Evangelicals who do not have Fundamentalist beliefs—Jimmy Carter it should be remembered is a born again Christian) want to impose their believes on the rest of us, and work toward a Christian theocracy.

They are now so dominant in the Republican Party that the Party in the Senate voted almost unanimously (Olympia Snow dissented) for the Blunt amendment, which according to the Washington Post “would have allowed not only religious groups but any employer with moral objections to opt out of the coverage requirement. And it would have allowed such employers to do so in the case of not only contraception but any health service required by the 2010 health-care law.”

Romney when asked about his position and worried about his general election chances first offered:

“I'm not for the bill, but look, the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife, I'm not going there.”

But when attacked by Santorum quickly fell in line with a spokesperson explaining:

“Regarding the Blunt bill, the way the question was asked was confusing. Governor Romney supports the Blunt Bill because he believes in a conscience exemption in health care for religious institutions and people of faith...”

And when Rush Limbaugh attacked a Georgetown University student who supported a requirement for health insurance to cover birth control, calling her a “slut” who “wants to be paid to have sex… (and that) she was “having so much sex, it’s amazing she can still walk”; and (that) she was “having sex so frequently that she can’t afford all the birth-control pills that she needs.” Romney was so outraged that he said: 

“It's not the language I would have used." 

The Republican House speaker through a spokesperson expressed his outrage with 

“The use of those words was inappropriate.” 

George Will, the outspoken Republican intellectual, commented:

“Boehner comes out and says Rush’s language was inappropriate. Using the salad fork for your entrée, that’s inappropriate. Not this stuff…and it was depressing because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”

But just possibly the Republican dilemma can be summarized by a letter that appeared in my local Newspaper, the Fort Lee Suburbanite:

An issue has been created where none existed. This takes the spotlight off of the economy, price of gas and unemployment. Birth control has never been illegal or unavailable. That is why this is a "non-issue." The powers that be are trying to blur the lines between abortion (infanticide) and birth control.

Because this is a contentious topic, women are being fed like sheep by the "wise" wolves. They do this under the guise of "women's rights." Birth control is a private matter. If your religion forbids it… it is between you, your conscience and God ... not you and the President of the United States or Congress. We follow our consciences everyday to do good and evil.

Why is that "cafeteria Catholics" do not make an issue of the other teachings of the Church? Yet birth control sends them into frenzy. We break the Commandments everyday. When the clerk at the supermarket charges you for red cabbage (at 29¢ a pound) instead of radicchio (at $4.99 a pound) do you tell her she made a mistake? No? That is stealing. Are you honest when filing your taxes? No? Mute point! We are all sinners. Look deeply and you will find this to be true, whether you gossip and ruin someone's reputation or tell a lie - look at those who govern. Too bad the Pinocchio factor doesn't work or small noses would be quite scarce in Washington D.C.

Let us all stop this chest thumping and get on with the issues that are important to the future of the United States.

To which I responded with the following Letter to the Editor:

Facts can be inconvenient! 

                     
Once again, as so many times in the past, I find myself writing in response to a Letter to the Editor, that treats facts as just an inconvenience. Get Back to Important Issues, which appeared in your March 2 edition, does that in spades. 

                     
The writer asserts, “Birth control has never been illegal or unavailable.” If that were true the Supreme Court would not have had to strike down a Connecticut law, in Griswold v. Connecticut, that did exactly that. As to availability, that has been, and continues to be a problem for disadvantaged women to this day. That is why Planned Parenthood is so important. Planned Parenthood spends a $1 billion a year providing services to poor and middle class women throughout the US, many of whom are married, but cannot afford the expense of additional children, or have other gynecological needs. 

                  
But what we are witnessing is a concerted war on contraception through defunding. Last year, the House GOP voted to zero out the entire $317,000,000 Title X family planning budget. Fortunately the Democratic Senate refused to go along. New Jersey under the leadership of our Governor, Chris Christie, defunded Planned Parenthood completely to the tune of  $7.4 million. Our President, conscious of the crucial need to provide gynecological services to all women, has made such services available by providing that they be covered in all health insurance policies. 

                     
It is definitely not a non-issue. 

                        

But the letter writer goes further and describes abortion as infanticide. If it were infanticide it would be murder and it would make one third of all women in the US, who have had at least one abortion in their lives, into murderers. That was never the law even before the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which empowered women to have control over their own bodies. 

                        

What is at stake is the right of people in general, and women in particular, to be free of the dictates of their government, and not to have the religious views of others imposed upon them. This is the essence of liberty, and the separation of church and state. It is the essence of our Bill of Rights. 

                        

It is definitely not a non-issue.

Comments are welcome and will be distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The Deficit Reduction Committee I and II (Discussion)

I posted and distributed my commentary "The Deficit Reduction Committee" on November 28, 2011 and "The Deficit Reduction Committee II" on December 4, 2011. I received comments on both and would like to take this opportunity to share them with you. On the first of the two posts:

Ernest Hauser of the Bronx, NY responded to the following observation, which I made:

So we have ended up with $1.2 trillion cuts going into effect beginning in 2013. $600 billion of that will be in defense spending which is in addition to a cut of $450 billion previously agreed to. Not the worst of all possible outcomes, and in 2013 the Bush tax cuts will expire. No Congressional action is needed. Beginning in 2013 the deficit will be reduced over the following ten years by 6.1 trillion. The hammer of using the deficit to justify attacks on needed spending will be gone. Not bad negotiating by our President.

with:

I don't think for one minute that the Republicans having bet and lost will let things go; they are already planning to cut the defense dept budget out of the deal. The generals are planning to cut the medical benefits for dependents and retirees rather then losing one planned multi-billion $ carrier or another new plane.

To which I replied:

They can plan all they want, but executing is another matter.

As far taking defense cuts out of the deal, the President has already said he will veto it if they get through both Houses of Congress, with a 60 vote threshold in the Senate. As for the generals they don't run the defense establishment. The President as Commander in Chief does.

As for medical benefits for military retirees, see the observations of Albert Nekimken below.

Republicans have boxed themselves into a corner and have been outwitted by Obama.

Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia added this observation:

Bravo on a well-written and well-conceived comment. 

 I would add the reminder that Robert Gates also told congress before he departed that the uncontrolled growth of health care (and pension?) costs for the military was unsustainable and must be reformed. (Which without having seen Hauser’s comment appears to be a rejoinder to it)

On the point of what the correct size and scope of the U.S. military establishment ought to be there is clearly a large gap between the views of Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans believe fervently that the U.S. (apparently due to its Christian, moral superiority and exceptional mission in the world) must retain the ability to dominate the world everywhere by force of arms, while Democrats believe that the U.S. is, and should be, only one of many major players in world events. Further, Democrats see attempts by Americans to assure military domination as counter-productive. By coincidence, the primary beneficiaries of the Republican view are defense contractors

And, as we know, one of the largest contributors to the general federal deficit is Medicare and Medicaid. All evidence accumulated to date corroborates that the problem is a lack of control on the "spending" side of the system and the primary causes are an open checkbook to vendors of medical supplies and services, excluding doctors who have already been squeezed hard by prior reforms. To my mind, this forces us to reconsider either a single-payer federal health care system for all citizens, civilian, military and members of congress, or a system of private health insurance that is highly regulated by the federal government as are utilities with limits on profit margin and controls on prices as well as coverage. As an aside, the "individual mandate" idea was ill-conceived from the beginning. National healthcare needs a dedicated source of revenue such as general tax receipts or a national sales tax on all goods and services.

Regarding your criticism of the media for not doing their job, I disagree insofar as we do want news reporters to maintain a line between factual journalism and comment, or other editorial analysis. Your real criticism seems not that the facts are not being made available, but that the analysts have been prostituted into eviscerating their own logical conclusions.

 Overall, I think your views of the consequences of the failure of the supercommittee are accurate.

I did not respond to the observations on Health Care, but I disagree, and will address this subject at a later time, when the subject is Reform of our Health Care System.

On the second of my two posts Robert Malchman responded to my analysis of a Krauthammer column with:

 Does anyone who doesn't believe in Fox News-eque fairy tales, lies and manipulations take Charles Krautkopf -- excuse me, Krauthammer -- seriously? Debunking Krauthammer is like debunking Santa Claus, if instead of a merry, gift-giving elf, Santa were a bitter, miserly troll. I can see taking on politicians who at least have some influence, even nutjobs like Herman Cain because his 9-9-9 plan needed a response like the 4.5-4.5-4.5 one you provided. But using your skills on someone like Klownhammer is like using a flamethrower on a strawman.

To which I issued the following challenge:

Who do you think would be a worthy columnist for a critical analysis of their views? If you would like, nominate someone, and if you are so inclined, I would be happy to have you suggest a particular column for dissection. Would George Will be better? Ann Coulter? Bill Kristol? You name it!

Malchman retorted:

Will and Kristol are at least serious people. Coulter is a self-promoter who believes in nothing but her own self-aggrandizement; her goal is simply to shock and to draw attention to herself, so the best thing one can do is to ignore her. (Did you know she was two years ahead of me in law school? I only knew her by sight, but she did not have the reputation for being insane yet, only a Federalist Society-style conservative; that's what leads me to believe her public persona is an act.)

           

To which I repeated my challenge by saying:

 I await your nomination. Hopefully, a specific column, but if that is asking too much, your choice of a columnist and I will look for a column. There is no rush. Give it some thought and find a column that would be a challenge.

No specific nomination came, but I am considering a column by Ross Douthat entitled: “An Argument Against Redistribution," which has more meat to it, for rebuttal.

In the meantime your comments and observations are welcome and will be distributed with attribution, unless you request to remain anonymous.


With the holidays fast approaching I will take a sabbatical until after the New Year has rung in. Until then חנוכה שמח, Joyeux Noël and Feliz Año Nuevo or Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Texas & Identity Politics

On March 19, 2010, The New York Times published an article entitled: “In Texas Curriculum Fight, Identity Politics Leans Right,” a reproduction of which was sent to me by Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia. I sent it back with my comments interjected in bold text. I set forth below the article with my interjections, but urge you to read the full article first.

  Frankly, my reaction to the article was that it was a presentation cheering for the Right, thinly disguised as neutral, and my comments reflect that. However, in preparing this for posting on my blog I belatedly decided to find out more about the author, Sam Tanenhaus. It turns out that he is “the editor of The New York Times Book Review and the paper's ‘Week in Review’ section.” I refer you to Newsweek here for more on the author, who it appears recently wrote “a new, short book, entitled “The Death of Conservatism." In any case I reproduce the article below with my interjections and would welcome the readers reactions.

------

The social studies curriculum recently approved by the Texas Board of Education, which will put a conservative stamp on textbooks, was received less as a pedagogical document than as the latest provocation in America’s seemingly endless culture wars.

“Why Is Texas Afraid of Thomas Jefferson?” the History News Network asked, referring to the board’s recommendation that Jefferson, who coined the expression “separation of church and state,” be struck from the list of world thinkers who inspired 18th- and 19th-century revolutions.

Other critics were more direct: “Dear Texas: Please shut up. Sincerely, History,” was the headline of an online column for The San Francisco Chronicle.

This reaction wasn’t altogether surprising. The board’s wrangling over the curriculum had been a spectacle for months, not least because its disputes mirrored those taking place across the nation. In mid-September, citizens showed up with firearms at tumultuous town hall meetings on health care reform, and the Tea Party movement emerged as the vehicle of conservative insurgents. While this appears to be a national phenomenon, I believe it is primarily inspired by what is generally referred to as "rednecks" and is driven by such unreconstructed Southerners.

The majority on the Texas board, who are also conservatives, seemed to be filtering these protests into their deliberations — in the proposal, for instance, that students be instructed in “the individual right to keep and bear arms; and an individual’s protection of private property from government takings.”

Liberals — on the Texas board and beyond — detected an attempt to force-feed children conservative dogma, whether it was the putative religiosity of the nation’s founders, the historic contribution of the Moral Majority and Rush Limbaugh, or the elevation of John Wayne into the pantheon of patriotic heroes.

In reality, this controversy is the latest version of a debate that reaches back many decades and is perhaps essential in a heterogeneous democracy whose identity has long been in flux.

More than many decades and is most definitely not essential. I think it finds its roots in the pre-civil war South and reflects the views of the unreconstructed South, or as this group is sometimes referred to "rednecks". It was certainly empowered in the 60s as a result of the Civil Rights era, which embittered these groups and promoted them to hate the federal government, which was destroying their beloved feudal society - their essentially continuing slave society of sharecroppers.

It was very evident a while ago when the controversy over honoring pre-civil war symbols erupted. I find it outrageous that this would be permitted. They claim it is part of their heritage and indeed it is. To me it is like the heritage of the Nazis in Germany. Can anybody envision Germany allowing honoring the Nazis because it is part of their heritage?

In the 18th century, the American writer Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, himself an immigrant from France, catalogued the continent’s bewildering mix of “English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans and Swedes.” He wondered, “What then is the American, this new man?”

He concluded that in America, “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.”

This of course is the mythical melting pot which Moynihan & Glazer debunked in their book "Beyond the Melting Pot" published in 1963 and again debunked by the Washington Post in a series of articles in 1998.

That idea was later fortified by Alexis de Tocqueville’s concept of American exceptionalism, which suggested that the country was exempt from the bitter conflicts — class, religion, imperial ambition — that had convulsed Europe. This was wishful thinking and a misreading. De Tocqueville died on the eve of the Civil War. To be sure the US was for most of its existence less class stratified than Europe but in recent years the US has moved to a more class society with income being re-distributed upward, while Europe has moved in the opposite direction.

Long afterward, amid America’s own convulsions in the 1960s and ’70s, the concept of a single “race of men” looked outmoded. Didn’t race mean “white race”? And didn’t “men” exclude women? American exceptionalism might really be a form of cultural insularity. Of course this is true!!!

So, universities and colleges devised new programs that prompted objections as fierce as those now being made to the Texas curriculum. These objections were a movement to preserve the status quo and the Texas case is a movement to achieve the status quo-ante.

In 1968, when Harvard students demanded a black studies program, “Faculty hawks warned of the fall of Harvard, and even civilization, as they knew it,” as Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller note in “Making Harvard Modern.”

Soon an ever widening range of subjects, from gay studies to feminist legal theory and anthropology, were added, in keeping with the dictates of identity politics. Some of this thinking eventually filtered to grade schools, with children now celebrating Kwanzaa and composing essays, year after year, on the “I Have a Dream” speech.

Many of the changes were liberating, but some were narrowing and erroneous — for instance the theories espoused by Leonard Jeffries Jr., who, as head of City College’s black studies department in the 1980s, lectured on the differences between African “sun people” and European “ice people.” It is unfortunate but every movement will breed its own excesses, and even reverse racism, as was the case with Jeffries.

Meanwhile, conservatives like William Bennett and Lynne Cheney defended syllabuses limited to the Western classics, and the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned that attacks on the “Eurocentric curriculum,” as some called it, were giving rise to “the notion that history and literature should be taught not as disciplines but as therapies whose function is to raise minority self-esteem.” With all due respect to Schlesinger it was time to recognize that there was history and culture in other parts of the world besides the West. Of course in some respects the balance went too far in the other direction, but that is inevitable in any new movement.

In fact, Mr. Schlesinger maintained, these new courses of study might actually disserve minority students. “If a Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan wanted to use the schools to disable and handicap black Americans, he could hardly come up with anything more effective than the ‘Afrocentric’ curriculum,” Mr. Schlesinger wrote. I don't understand the logic!

Though its authors say the Texas curriculum reinforces American traditions, It does - the unreconstructed South!! it may instead reflect the conservative variant of identity politics, and this could invite a similar backlash.

To be fair, some of the board’s recommendations aren’t controversial. Most scholars of the cold war, left and right, think that the Venona documents — communications that record the activities of Americans who secretly spied for the Soviet Union — illuminate the anti-Communist investigations of the McCarthy period. This is a very disturbing comment!! The Venoma documents have been used primarily to defend and justify the outrages of McCarthy and the House UN-AMERICAN committee, which not only ruined countless American lives, but did untold damage to American security. See "The Best and the Brightest" pp. 115-120 of 1992 edition.  And historians of the conservative movement will agree that Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly are worth learning about, as are the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association. That depends on the grade and how it is taught. If they are held up as role models it is right wing propaganda. If they are denounced, it is liberal propaganda. If they are discussed as a phenomenon, it may be all right, but it is very difficult to do this in an unbiased way, and not likely too succeed.

Even the Texas curriculum’s most disputed item — its assertion that the Founders envisioned America as a divinely inspired Christian nation — is not as radical as it sounds. I don't know whether it is radical, but it is not accurate. Most of the founders did not consider themselves Christians. They thought of themselves as deists and rejected revealed truths. In the Declaration of Independence, the reference is to "Nature's God.” That is definitely not a Christian God, and the Constitution makes no reference to God.

In 1964, in a series of lectures on America’s founding documents, starting with the Mayflower Compact, the political scientist Willmoore Kendall theorized that “the nascent society that interprets itself in the Compact is in some sense a religious, more specifically a Christian, society, which calls God in as witness to its act of founding.” If you go back to 1620, the date of the Compact, that is undoubtedly true. The early settlers were mostly devout Christians and very intolerant of deviation. They wanted religious liberty for themselves but not for others. But by the late 18th century the thinking in vogue was the enlightenment, and that inspired the founding fathers.

Mr. Kendall teased out the implications through close readings of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. But his analysis stressed the “symbolic” aspects of those texts, and his nuanced discussion drew on counterarguments by other scholars. I don't understand what this means.

In contrast, the Texas board’s description of America as a “Judeo-Christian” nation treats ideas and events that have been under continual reinterpretation and revision for decades as literal and settled truth. I don't understand what this means.

It is telling, too, that it is secondary-school children — not, as in the past, college students — whose minds are being fought over today on such a scale. This suggests that after so many years of increasingly bitter polarization, Americans stand on the brink of a collective identity crisis and no longer share a set of common ideas about the true character of the country and the true meaning of democracy. No longer? We haven't since the founding of the Republic. That is why the Civil War was fought and it wasn't just about secession. In fact secession showed the deep division. As did all that followed and the progressive eras of Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Johnson did not put things to rest.

In “The American Political Tradition,” published in 1948, the historian Richard Hofstadter suggested that the fad for popular history at the time was evidence of “national nostalgia” — an effort not to understand the past, but rather to evade the present. “This quest for the American past is carried on in a spirit of sentimental appreciation rather than of critical analysis,” he surmised. This I can agree with.

As it happens, a good deal of contemporary popular history is more critical than in Mr. Hofstadter’s day. But it is presented through an ever-narrowing aperture.

The late Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States,” depicts the United States as an epic of oppression in which the privileged abuse the downtrodden. Conversely, “A Patriot’s History of the United States,” by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, describes the New Deal as a calamity that wreaked havoc on the American economy. Both views are exaggerations, but to me the first is closer to the truth than the second.

The two books seem to have captured the spirit of the moment; both are on The New York Times best-seller list. Both are also, in effect, counternarratives. They seek not to revise but to displace more familiar histories and are utterly different in tone from older popular histories like the Daniel Boorstin trilogy “The Americans,” and William Manchester’s two-volume work, “The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America.” Yes, it shows that extremes are ascendant, but they have been ascendant over and over again throughout history. On the Right stands the whole Republican Party with Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Palin and the Tea-Partiers - on the left we have had the large following of Naom Chomsky. Clearly, the extreme Right is larger and more powerful than the extreme left.

For all their dissimilarities, Mr. Boorstin and Mr. Manchester convey the impression that America, despite its diversity, is a nation whose citizens share the same essential values, at once democratic and aspirational. But to read these newer books is to inhabit two utterly different Americas that have almost nothing to say to each other. Both are conceived in a spirit of protest, and this explains their appeal at a time when protest seems the most dynamic force in politics. Just as in the 50's with McCarthy & the Dixiecrats, and the 60’s, which upset the status quo, the clash becomes inevitable.

Half a century ago, in his essay, “The Search for Southern Identity,” the historian C. Vann Woodward explored a parallel phenomenon, the confusion that overtook the South after the Supreme Court had invalidated segregation and the region become more urban and industrial, losing its distinctive agrarian flavor. This is where the unrest is the greatest and where the Republican party draws its greatest strength. It is interesting to note that Gingrich said: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. True, but were they wrong to do it? Besides it doesn't follow- they are very different issues. But the country is changing as the right wing columnist George Will recognized, saying, "Almost half of House and Senate Republicans are from those 13 states, a higher proportion than ever before. Ronald Brownstein of National Journal notes that it was in 1992 that GOP fortunes in the South and the rest of the nation began to diverge. Since then, those 13 states have provided from 59 to 69 percent of all Republican electoral votes. Obama beat McCain by 14 points in the other 37 states, the third-largest margin ever, after LBJ's and FDR's victories in 1964 and 1936, respectively. McCain actually got more Southern votes than Bush did—but Obama got 2.3 million more votes than Kerry did in states McCain carried."

Republican problems outside the South are compounded by and related to the increasing proportion of minorities in the electorate.

What Southerners should do, Mr. Woodward urged, is subordinate their regional attachment to the country’s “national myths,” for instance the American “success story” that had inspired so many others, like the European immigrants who had “sought and found identity in them.”

Southerners might do this, too, if they gave up “the romantic dreams of the South’s past.” Yes, indeed!!

Today it is not regional or ethnic identity, but ideological commitment that threatens to submerge larger “national myths.” But one thing remains unchanged from 50 or 60 years ago. As Americans struggle to see where they are going, they continue to gaze fondly at the past — and to see in it what they like. Yes, but fortunately, not all!!

The Vanishing Middle in America

I am increasingly disturbed by what I perceive as the vanishing middle in America. Of course, many will differ as to what constitutes the middle. The media, that institution so vital to our Democracy, increasingly caters to popular opinion, and too often fails in its responsibility to inform. Too often they seek to reinforce what might be called “the conventional wisdom” without questioning its validity or even its basis in fact.

Thus the conventional wisdom on the “middle” might be those many, who proudly claim to be independents, affiliate with no party and claim they vote on the merits of individual candidates, but when we examine their philosophical orientation we find they have none, and that too often they vote on the basis of the candidates charisma, charm, or whether they once met him and found him a “fellow well met”. It was this kind of thinking that brought many voters into the camp of George W. Bush because as was said at the time of his first election, by Chris Mathews of MSNBC among others, that he was a person one would feel more comfortable drinking beer with. Is this a sound criterion for choosing our President?

As can be seen from the positions of the political parties in the Congress they are now so far apart that the filibuster has become a matter of Republican Party policy and compromise has become a dirty word. The “conventional wisdom” is that the filibuster has always been used and that it protects the rights of the minority. But like so many concepts falling into the category of conventional wisdom it is a myth. To be sure the filibuster was at one time used by devoted segregationists and defenders of the right of states to in effect legalize lynching, but it was never used by any political party as a tool of party policy. Thus in 1957 Senator Strom Thurmond, at that time a segregationist Southern Democrat (later the candidate for President on the Dixiecrat slate and finally a Republican) conducted a one man filibuster, talking against a 1957 civil rights bill for 24 hours and 18 minutes.

But while that was dramatic it was also unusual, and Thurmond was unsuccessful. It was so unusual that there was only an average of one filibuster per Congress during the 1950s. But when the Republicans lost control of the Senate in the 110th Congress of 2007-2008, and even though they still had a Republican President who could veto legislation, they used a record 112 filibusters, and so far in this Congress they have already used this tactic over 40 times and we still have eight months to go.

See also this article in US News & World Report.

Republican voters are so unforgiving of compromise that George H.W. Bush was defeated for agreeing to a compromise with Democrats in order to reduce a looming budget deficit which called for both spending cuts and tax increases, thus violating the party’s commitment to never increasing taxes.

Thus with no middle ground between the parties those who claim to straddle between two irreconcilable philosophies can only be compared to a person with one foot on land and the other in a boat well away from the shore and moving further away. They can only drown. They may swing elections, but they will never bring about a positive legislative agenda for they lack a political philosophy.

There is a great misunderstanding about how much things have changed. I keep hearing about how President Lyndon Johnson was able to get Medicare passed with 68 votes, but bills that have the votes to pass attract more votes than they would otherwise get. That is still true today as can be seen from the passage of the jobs bill where only five Republican Senators voted to end the filibuster but eleven voted for the bill on final passage, the idea being to stop the bill if possible, but record a positive vote for a popular bill if it is going to pass anyway.

The fact is that Johnson only had 55 votes for Medicare that he could count on or to quote from a letter written at the time “Thus if all our supporters are present and voting we would win by a vote of 55 to 45.”

At that time it would have taken 67 votes to stop a filibuster, but the Republican Party never contemplated using that unsavory device. How times have changed!

And how has the media and this so called middle greeted this outrage. They have accepted Republican claims that it is the intent of the founders that it should take 60 votes to pass anything, or even to confirm a Presidential appointment, and that attempts to circumvent such obstructionism, whether by reconciliation, or any other means is in some way unsavory.

And some are even trying to pass of the Tea Partiers as a grass roots movement. Thus Dick Armey, a former Republican majority leader, who more than anyone else founded and is leading the movement tries to pass them off as, “These are folks who don't care about politics and don't like politics and don't like politicians. They're skeptical and cynical about all of them…” but ignores that these are the same people, or at least the political heirs to the John Birch Society or as one article described them, they are “white, male, older, less educated, Southern and religious…”.

But even now the movement is already the subject of a power struggle between Armey, who resists its nativists impulses as led by Tom Tancredo, or in Armey’s words, “… bungling the issue in a way that would alienate much of the electorate, by failing to keep a lid on such anti-immigrant crusaders as Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado congressman.” And Armey has good reason to be concerned about this for as George Will, one of the so-called intellectual spokesmen of the Right has pointed out, “Demography often is political destiny, and 47 percent of children under 5 are minorities. Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing minority.”

So where do we find the true middle?

It may or may not surprise the reader to hear that I put a claim on that designation. For if the middle is to be found somewhere between FOX and MSNBC, I fit that description. But in order not to burden the reader with too much verbiage in one post, I will defer an exposition on this claim for a few days. In the meantime I hope the readers will take the time to read at least some of my source material.

Right Wing Voices Speak

One of the things I strongly believe in is keeping apprised of what the radical Right is saying and evaluating whether they are making sense, are telling the truth, etc.

In this connection I recently read a column by Charles Krauthammer writing in the Washington Post of March 20 where he treats the flap over the AIG bonuses as the distraction that it was. As most will appreciate, I do not often agree with Mr. Krauthammer, but in some respects he expresses the same disdain for this relatively unimportant event that I did in my column of March 19 entitled “Economic Dilemmas," though he expresses no concern about what I view as a systemic problem. Nevertheless, I found it sufficiently interesting to want to share the portions of the column that reflect my own views.

“A $14 trillion economy hangs by a thread composed of (a) a comically cynical, pitchfork-wielding Congress, … (c) $165 million.

“That's $165 million in bonus money handed out to AIG debt manipulators who may be the only ones who know how to defuse the bomb they themselves built. Now, in the scheme of things, $165 million is a rounding error. It amounts to less than 1/18,500 of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. It's less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the bailout money given to AIG alone. For this we are going to poison the well for any further financial rescues, face the prospect of letting AIG go under (which would make the Lehman Brothers collapse look trivial) and risk a run on the entire world financial system?

“And there is such a thing as law. The way to break a contract legally is Chapter 11. Short of that, a contract is a contract. The AIG bonuses were agreed to before the government takeover and are perfectly legal. Is the rule now that when public anger is kindled, Congress will summarily cancel contracts?

“Even worse are the clever schemes being cooked up in Congress to retrieve the money by means of some retroactive confiscatory tax. The common law is pretty clear about the impermissibility of ex post facto legislation and bills of attainder. They also happen to be specifically prohibited by the Constitution. We're going to overturn that for $165 million?

“Geithner has been particularly maladroit in handling this issue. But the reason he didn't give the bonuses much attention is because he's got far better things to do -- namely, work out a rescue plan for a dysfunctional credit system that is holding back any chance of recovery.

“It is time for the president to state the obvious: This recession is not caused by excessive executive compensation in government-controlled companies. The economy has been sinking because of a lack of credit, stemming from a general lack of confidence, stemming from the lack of a plan to detoxify the major lending institutions, mainly the banks, which, to paraphrase Willie Sutton, is where the money used to be.

“That bill, we now discover, contains, among other depth charges, a Teamster-supported provision inserted by Sen. Byron Dorgan that terminates a Bush-era demonstration project to allow some Mexican trucks onto American highways, as required under NAFTA.

“If you thought the AIG hysteria was a display of populist cynicism directed at a relative triviality, consider this: There are more than 6.5 million trucks in the United States. The program Congress terminated allowed 97 Mexican trucks to roam among them. Ninety-seven! Shutting them out not only undermines NAFTA. It caused Mexico to retaliate with tariffs on 90 goods affecting $2.4 billion in U.S. trade coming out of 40 states.

“The very last thing we need now is American protectionism. It is guaranteed to start a world trade war. A deeply wounded world economy needs two things to recover: (1) vigorous U.S. government action to loosen credit by detoxifying the zombie banks and insolvent insurers, and (2) avoidance of a trade war.

“Free trade is the one area where the world indisputably turns to Washington for leadership. What does it see? Grandstanding, parochialism, petty payoffs to truckers and a rush to mindless populism. Over what? Over 97 Mexican trucks -- and bonus money that comes to what the Yankees are paying for CC Sabathia's left arm.”

On the other hand I found another column by that other spokesperson of the Right, George Will, writing in the Washington Post of March 24, 2009, which I thought was so unfair and so misleading that I want to quote it in order to respond to it. For that purpose I will set forth each paragraph of Will’s piece and immediately following set forth my rebuttel in italics:
Will writes:

“With the braying of 328 yahoos -- members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate the legal earnings of a small, unpopular group -- still reverberating, the Obama administration yesterday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.”

Aside from the rather indecorous language, of “braying of 328 yahoos” this is clearly intended as an attack on Democrats, but neglects to mention that Republicans voted for it in numbers which fell only two votes short of a majority. Compare that to their unanimous vote against the stimulus bill, which was actually likely to jump-start the economy. Similarly, the $325 billion, which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets, was spent by the Bush Administration.

"TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and, last week, some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab automobile company is on its own: "The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories."

Semi purchased is a strange term. If Mr. Will means to say that a relatively small amount of money has been used to keep the American Auto industry afloat, while an evaluation is made as whether they can sustain themselves in the long run, he should say so, and what Sweden or any other country does to meet its own exigencies is rather besides the point.

“Another embarrassing auditor of American misgovernment is China, whose premier has rightly noted the unsustainable trajectory of America's high-consumption, low-savings economy. He has also decorously but clearly expressed sensible fears that his country's $1 trillion-plus of dollar-denominated assets might be devalued by America choosing, as banana republics have done, to use inflation for partial repudiation of improvidently incurred debts.”

The admiration that is suddenly being heaped on communist China is amazing. China is playing a little game of one-upmanship, knowing full well that inflation is not a threat in the US now or for the foreseeable future. Rather there is a liquidity crisis and the Fed, which is independent of the Administration, is pumping money into the economy to offset what has become a shortage of money. In the meantime China is continuing to invest in American dollars.

“From Mexico, America is receiving needed instruction about fundamental rights and the rule of law. A leading Democrat trying to abolish the right of workers to secret ballots in unionization elections is California's Rep. George Miller who, with 15 other Democrats, in 2001 admonished Mexico: "The secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose." Last year, Mexico's highest court unanimously affirmed for Mexicans the right that Democrats want to strip from Americans.”

A forced parallel between the Mexican anti-union stance, and an American bill intended to make it easier to unionize. While I personally have doubts about the wisdom of this bill, it provides for a union only if a majority of workers choose to join a union. The purpose of the bill is to keep workers from being intimidated into voting against a union.

“Congress, with the approval of a president who has waxed censorious about his predecessor's imperious unilateralism in dealing with other nations, has shredded the North American Free Trade Agreement. Congress used the omnibus spending bill to abolish a program that was created as part of a protracted U.S. stall regarding compliance with its obligation to allow Mexican long-haul trucks on U.S. roads. The program, testing the safety of Mexican trucking, became an embarrassment because it found Mexican trucking at least as safe as U.S. trucking. Mexico has resorted to protectionism -- tariffs on many U.S. goods -- in retaliation for Democrats' protection of the Teamsters union.”

As I have indicated that is an unfortunate instance of Congress caving in to union protectionist sentiment but to claim that it was done with the approval of the President is stretching the truth to say the least.

“NAFTA, like all treaties, is the "supreme law of the land." So says the Constitution. It is, however, a cobweb constraint on a Congress that, ignoring the document's unambiguous stipulations that the House shall be composed of members chosen "by the people of the several states," is voting to pretend that the District of Columbia is a state. Hence it supposedly can have a Democratic member of the House and, down the descending road, two Democratic senators. Congress rationalizes this anti-constitutional willfulness by citing the Constitution's language that each house shall be the judge of the "qualifications" of its members and that Congress can "exercise exclusive legislation" over the District. What, then, prevents Congress from giving House and Senate seats to Yellowstone National Park, over which Congress exercises exclusive legislation? Only Congress's capacity for embarrassment. So, not much.”

Mr. Will conveniently forgets to mention that this bill also gives an extra vote to Utah, which if it is entitled to another seat in the House aught to be done by apportionment, but apparently, since this would be a Republican seat Will fails to criticize it. Personally, it seems to me that Congress is going about this the wrong way. Under Art. 4, Sect. 3, Par. 1. of the Constitution, new States may be admitted by the Congress into the Union. This it would seem would not encounter constitutional obstacles, and would give the District exactly what Will fears, i.e. 2 Senators and a Representative in the House. Sounds good to me!

“The Federal Reserve, by long practice rather than law, has been insulated from politics in performing its fundamental function of preserving the currency as a store of value -- preventing inflation. Now, however, by undertaking hitherto uncontemplated functions, it has become an appendage of the executive branch. The coming costs, in political manipulation of the money supply, of this forfeiture of independence could be steep. Jefferson warned that "great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities." But Democrats, who trace their party's pedigree to Jefferson, are contemplating using "reconciliation" -- a legislative maneuver abused by both parties to severely truncate debate and limit the minority's right to resist -- to impose vast and controversial changes on the 17 percent of the economy that is health care. When the Congressional Budget Office announced that the president's budget underestimates by $2.3 trillion the likely deficits over the next decade, his budget director, Peter Orszag, said: All long-range budget forecasts are notoriously unreliable -- so rely on ours. This is but a partial list of recent lawlessness, situational constitutionalism and institutional derangement. Such political malfeasance is pertinent to the financial meltdown as the administration, desperately seeking confidence, tries to stabilize the economy by vastly enlarging government's role in it.”

What an incredible catchall filled with nonsense. The Fed is independent of the Administration not by practice but by law. The Chairman is appointed by the President for a fixed term and the present Chairman Bernanke, was appointed by George W. Bush. To the extent that the Fed is cooperating with the Treasury, it is because they feel that this is what is required by the present emergency.

As for the rest Mr. Will is outraged that his Republican friends may not be able to filibuster and obstruct all action to right the economy. They want the President to fail, and they will do whatever they can to make that happen and the American people be damned.

Has Mr. Will and his Republican cohorts already forgotten their cry before Democrats got the majority, “We want an up or down vote” and their threat to use the "nuclear option" to abolish the filibuster when it suited them. I would urge Democrats to keep the "nuclear option" in reserve. What is good for the goose is good for the gander and the times are too serious to allow a minority to block all legislative action that they don't like. Majority rule is fundamental to the functioning of a Democracy!!.
As for the budget being out of balance, something I didn’t hear about from Mr. Will or any Republicans during eight years of Republican misrule and ever increasing deficits, without investments in our future, I will address that in a future separate commentary.