Civilization’s advance

Native American Heritage Day

For a very long time, even into the middle to late 20th Century, many historians defended the displacement of technologically inferior cultures by more advanced societies able to make more productive use of the same resources.

In India, China, and even in the Americas, every known civilization as it developed spread into territory previously utilized by hunters and food gatherers, nomads and semi-nomads, slash-and-burn farmers and others making considerably less productive use of the land than the organized and relatively intensive agriculture characteristic of civilization.

That same argument was made in regard to the displacement of native Americans, Australian aborigines, and others by advancing and progressing white civilizations.

The Conquest of Mexico and of Peru was typically justified by European Christians both religious secularist by reference by reference to the horrors of the religion of these Americans, so drenched in blood.

The transparent, false, and ludicrous racism of the ideas that peaceable and innocent Indians were taught genocide and savagery by Europeans and that the entire New World was rightfully the collective property of the Red Men to which Europeans could gain access only by half a millennium of crime – ideas rehearsed every year by some liberal and lefty pundits as well as Indian activists and others who hate white people in denunciation of Columbus Day, and welcomed with indulgence at some other times, too, as here by Meteor Blades – were brushed aside by all but the most hostile to the dominant society.

None of which is to say that none of what was done involved what we might today call war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The most celebrated such case in the United States reflects the depth of sheer racial hatred generated on both sides by the long-drawn conflicts of white settlers against native red men, the Cherokee Removal.

Such episodes did not seem to earlier generations of euro-whites, either in the settler societies or in Europe, to invalidate the argument in defense of the European settlement and conquest of the New World, Australia, and New Zealand.

None of that had the least tendency to justify imperialist domination of existing civilized societies in the Muslim world for which other arguments were needed and were advanced, or the particular savagery of the European treatment of black Africans from the late 17th Century onward for which none but the most morally obtuse racist argument existed.

If the truth were not so effectively suppressed by PC and the impossible sensitivity of any topic related to race a lot more people of all races and most political persuasions would recognize the validity of the arguments that convinced euro-whites for so long, all of them relying on the superiority of the euro-white civilization of the time and the rightfulness of the spread of that culture.

As for me, this is just one of several political/historical/moral opinions that set me apart from down-the-line liberals as well as down-the-line progressives.

Others include my views on capital punishment, gun rights, abortion, immigration, and protectionism.

Nader vs Dodd?

Nader noncommittal to Conn. Senate run

Why?

Talk about a spoiler role for the spoiler in chief.

When the Constitution demands judges make it up for themselves

Supreme Court Considers Life Sentences For Juveniles -- Politics Daily

Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

They could have written “nor cruel or unusual punishments inflicted” but they didn’t, so I suppose we have to take this to mean punishments that are both cruel and unusual may not be inflicted.

As written, the provision positively requires judges to make a subjective judgment whether a given punishment is, not severe, but cruel.

From the available definitions it appears easily arguable that all punishments are cruel.

And though it may not appear so it is surely equally a subjective matter whether a punishment is unusual.

Just how infrequently used does a punishment have to be to thus qualify?

And in any case it is certainly variable.

It is obvious that punishments once common can become unusual in the course of time and then, all punishments being cruel, such a previously common punishment could become unconstitutional.

Reasonings like the above are perhaps the reason this is not one of those bits of the Constitution anybody seems much interesting in interpreting according to the actual text, either in the lingo of the late 18th Century or in today’s English.

If Wikipedia can be believed, it seems standard views look to the legal history of this proviso to do a bit of mind-reading as to legislative intent and seem to treat is as ruling out severity qualified in a number of different ways.

Since any punishment much more severe than most is apt to be more cruel than most we still have something of a conceptual tie to the actual provision as written.

And even read in this way, according to presumed intent based on the history, a certain subjectivity of judgment is still unavoidable and actually invited by the text.

Hence we have an easy point of access to American law for the long-term trend of softening, or lessening, or making less harsh of punishment.

McChrystal wins?

Obama Faces Pushback From His Own Party on More Troops for Afghanistan -- Politics Daily

He’s going to get exactly what he asked for?

The Birchers were sure Eisenhower and Truman were commies, too

SuperFreak Dubner Embraces ‘Climategate’ Swiftboating: ‘Everybody’s Scared To Be A Skeptic’

Don’t you love a good conspiracy theory?

From Brad Johnson’s post.

The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, Washington Times, and other news outlets are participating in this Swiftboat-style smear campaign, following the lead of actual Swiftboat smearer and former Limbaugh and Inhofe employee Marc Morano — instead of bothering to understand what the scientists were actually talking about in the hacked emails.

However, as climate scientist Richard Somerville explained yesterday, “The ice has no agenda.”

Arctic sea ice is at historically low levels, Australia is on fire, the northern United Kingdom is underwater, the world’s glaciers are disappearing, and half of the United States has been declared an agricultural disaster area.

And it’s the the hottest decade in recorded history.

By asking whether “we have to stop burning fossil fuel tomorrow,” Dubner — a top blogger for the New York Times — gets to the heart of why this bizarre theory of a cabal of all-powerful climatologists is getting support from conservative media and politicians.

The incontrovertible science — based not on manipulated data but on decades of basic research — is that the burning of fossil fuels is drastically reshaping our planet’s climate and acidifying the oceans.

And the only known way to restore conditions to those safe for human civilization is to dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels.

Doing so, however, would affect the incredible profits and power of the oil and coal industries, and of their ideological allies.

Somebody's going to take a hit.

Will it be the massive, organized, super-rich corporations and plutocrats who own the world's fossil fuel biz or will it be the tens of millions of unorganized, politically helpless little guys who will gut stuck with the losses incurred by unimpeded warming?

Gee.

Tough one.

And I notice the tobacco biz is still legal and operating very, very profitably, even long after its lying medical denial ceased and all those lawsuits went against them.

Update on the paranoid style in American politics, 11/27/200 035 hrs EST.

In the days when Richard Hofstadter wrote this, it was generally thought a feature of the right wing, displayed most extremely by the Birchers but also by more mainstream politicians like McCarthy and the rising Buckley-Bozell conservatives.

Nowadays, of course, it’s tea-baggers, hillbilly conservatives, and even a good part of the “respectable” conservative movement that think Obama is not a citizen, is a Muslim, is a terrorist sympathizer (did fear of that perception have anything to do with his decision on Afghan policy?), is a socialist or even a communist, and wants to destroy America as we know and love it.

How these people get themselves worked up about a guy so far to the right of Norman Thomas, and even further to the right of Eugene Debs, is a real mystery.

And who could possibly mistake him for John Reed?

The best example of left wing paranoia is, I think, Oliver Stone’s JFK, an extraordinary film that got some wonderful acting out of its talented cast and presented a positively gripping accusation that LBJ, in collusion with some or all of the chiefs of staff, arranged the assassination primarily because Kennedy so botched the Bay of Pigs and eventually allegedly secretly promised Khrushchev America would never invade Cuba.

Stone’s book plays well on the incredulity with which most Americans – including me – have greeted the official story in the report of the Warren Commission.

On the other hand, I am not familiar with any account of the assassination that I find particularly credible; though I am very apt to think it had more to do with Kennedy’s emerging firmness on race than with his inept, half-hearted Cold Warriorism in the face of the Russians and that it was carried out by creepy right wing extremists, possibly with some help from some officials.

What a country!

Palin fuels presidential rumors: ‘I like’ the sound of ‘President Palin.’

Chicken in a fish place.

Does make you wonder

Couple slips though security to crash state dinner

Here are those 10 conservative points in the proposed Republican 8 out of 10 test

the checklist

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership[.]

Point (9) is interesting.

If you suddenly increase demand for any good or service by about 20% the market's immediate response will be a price hike to restore balance.

If that is not allowed you will see shortages, and those have to be coped with either by the first come first served rule of empty shelves, or by rationing.

And that goes on until supply rises to meet the new level of demand.

Probably the effect will be mitigated by the unused, excess capacity now characterizing the health industry.

Far enough to completely avoid shortages or rationing if reform goes through?

No idea.

The people, yes!

An essential maxim of popular government is that that people is free who rule themselves.

This expression captures the defining historic value of both the democratic and republican traditions of modern times.

But, who are the people?

Throughout the relevant history they are defined by reference to their enemies.

Against the aristocracies and kings they are the Third Estate, the commoners.

Against the clerics and the churches they are the rest of us, the laity.

Against the plutocrats they are the ordinary folk.

Against the government itself they are the public at large.

Against the few they are the many.

Against the strong they are the weak.

Wherever power is locked up in the hands of some minority of the population, out of reach of all the others, the people are those others, the ruled rather than the rulers.

This tradition is different from, but has many points in common with, both liberalism and libertarianism.

For liberals and libertarians, the first (and perhaps only) political value is individual or personal liberty, usually defined in terms of an identifiable package of specific rights, understood in such a way that it is perfectly compatible with “benevolent despotism,” monarchy, or even dictatorship.

Even today, people writing in this tradition, whether under the name of “liberals” or “libertarians,” frankly insist that the form of government does not ultimately matter.

What matters ultimately is whether or not we are well ruled, but not how or by whom.

On the other hand, some partisans of popular sovereignty have historically advocated unlimited government, provoking objections against absolutism or “totalitarian democracy” from liberals.

For these theorists, it is not ultimately a question how we are ruled but by whom.

But too, since at least the early 19th Century, partisans of popular government have championed the right of the people to control economic life from conditions of employment and rights of consumers through regulation and even public ownership of natural resources and the means of production.

Early 20th Century progressives, for example, argued for such government intrusion on and even participation in the economy as necessary for democracy and to disempower plutocracy while at the same time they advocated several other democratic reforms of the federal constitution as well as those of the states.

During the Great Depression in America a number of liberals defected from the established consensus among those of that name to defend the right of government to control economic life in the name individual liberty, both denying that the concept requires unfettered private ownership of natural resources or the means of production or rules out government ownership and insisting it is not compatible with economic subjection and exploitation.

Those liberals in America who continued to reject the right of government, or of the people, to so control the economy and insist on an individual right to unfettered private ownership of resources and the means of production are now known as “libertarians.”

They are joined by conservatives in insisting that this is a defining difference between governments that honor liberty and those that deserve the name, “totalitarian.”

Some of the foregoing may be thought to fit better with recent developments in political thought – in particular with the recent development of republican studies – than with political understandings only a few years old.

I have an paperback “Oxford Concise Dictionary Of Politics” copyrighted in 1996 and then in 2003 that reflects these differences.

If you look up “liberty” you are told to see the entry for “freedom.”

When you do, the definition you find is “absence of interference or impediment” – a perfectly fine definition for liberals that is completely oblivious to the entire republican/democratic tradition.

Similarly, if you look up “republicanism” you discover that a republic is a state without a king.

If you then look up “democracy” you find “Greek, ‘rule by the people.’ Since the people are rarely unanimous, democracy as a descriptive term is synonymous with majority rule.”

There follows a short essay on issues related to democratic or popular government, many of them disparaging to both, that include a remark insisting such names as “the German Democratic Republic” are empty propaganda wholly misdescribing governments with which democracy has nothing to do.

Notably, this essay does not observe that such governments are equally misdescribed as republics.

These shortcomings of this dictionary reflect the dominance of liberalism in American thought, the neglect of the idea of popular sovereignty, and in fact the low esteem in which democracy is generally held.

As does the fact that J. S. Mill’s “On Liberty” is a sacred text of both liberalism and libertarianism while his “Considerations on Representative Government” is sacred to no one.

“I’m going to be stubborn on this.”

Think Progress » ThinkFast: November 24, 2009

Writes the fast thinker,

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has said that under no circumstances will he vote for a health care reform bill that contains any form of a public option.

“I’m going to be stubborn on this,” he said.

When asked if any version of public option will compel him to vote against bringing the bill to a final vote, Lieberman replied, “Correct.”

And that’s what it’s like to be a senator.

Guns, revolution, and freedom

Revolutions of 1848

Priscilla Robertson’s history makes clear that the liberals, republicans, and radicals of 1848 were in complete agreement with the founding generation of American patriots that a free people is an armed people and that standing, professional armies are an instrument of tyranny.

And in agreement, as well, with the vast popular movement of revision that insisted the constitution written up at Philadelphia be immediately amended to explicitly protect some additional rights of the people, and especially their right to be armed and trained.

Of course, at the time, that case was easier to make.

The European rebels all lived under absolute monarchies the principal mission of whose armies was political repression.

Every single one of the revolutions of 1848 failed when the monarchs, having regained their nerve and having allayed the suspicions of their people with insincere concessions and promises, used their standing armies to attack their own countries and their own peoples, laying siege to their own cities right and left, killing and destroying and eventually shooting thousands, just to be safe.

And that happened even though the rebels were everywhere in one degree or another successful in demanding that militias and national guards be set up that would arm and train the people.

The advice of republicans that monarchs could not be trusted and ought to be got rid of from the start had been generally ignored, and even when heeded was heeded too late.

In the event, these popular forces fought bravely and determinedly, and in some cases for quite a while, but ultimately lost to the better trained, led, and armed professional forces.

They would do better, later in the century, in some places.

Update.

That many of the middle classes in France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Italy feared the working classes and that no sooner had the major liberal political demands been met – temporarily – than the bourgeoisie and the proletariat were at loggerheads does not mean, by the way, as Marx so often seemed to hold, that the workers had then and have now no real stake in “bourgeois liberty” or "bourgeois democracy."

This, I think, is simply untrue.

On the other hand, the absolute prioritizing of the elements of political liberty over the welfare interests of the working masses insisted on by liberals in the manner of John Rawls is absurd.

All of us have a stake in the freedom to read, workers included.

But any of us would and should sell all his books, if he had to, for food, shelter, clothing, and necessary medical care.

A good many of the republicans of 1848 understood this very well, and included social legislation in their programs from the start.

Talk about class war

Larson, Rangel, Murtha, Frank Join Obey’s War Tax Bloc

I hope this is a mistake.

Matt Y reports this about the “war tax.”

Dubbed the “Share the Sacrifice Act,” the six-page bill exempts anyone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan since the 2001 terrorist attacks as well as families who have lost an immediate relative in the fighting.

But middle-class households earning between $30,000 and $150,000 would be asked to pay 1% on top of their tax liability today — a more sweeping approach than many Democrats have been willing to embrace.

So the “war tax” would be paid only by the working class?

Are these guys out to punch Joe Sixpack in the face?

The class war in California, again

The Neoliberal Restructuring of California State Government

Richard summarizes.

Didn’t something like this come up a few years back?

Gun Lobby Mobilizes Against Health Reform By Claiming Obama Administration Will Issue ‘No Guns’ Decree

Did some liberal gun grabber come up with an idea like this?

Something about doctor’s asking their patients about gun ownership with the excuse that gun ownership is a health risk factor?

Perhaps an indirect way of finding out who has the guns so that a ban would thereafter be simpler to enforce?

(Isn't that how the Canadians did it? First they required registration and then, once they had your admission you had a gun, they banned them, right?)

Britain has the scariest medical news

Man in 'coma' for 23 years was awake all along

They thought he was in “a persistent vegetative state.”

And he didn’t go raving mad?

Just the kind of thing to freak America’s bishops and the Republicans they serve

Fighting for a peaceful, pain-free death

Ammunition for the culture war and the battle to resist health care reform, both, by tying them together.

They are Negotiating with the Archdiocese?

The Church and the Capital

Politicians in this country are such shocking cowards in the face of the clergy that it is just unbelievable that this is the land of Jefferson and Madison.

It is unbelievable that throughout the 19th Century Europeans looked to us with vast admiration for having got further with freeing society from the clutches of theocracy than any other nation.

These politicians ought to be ashamed to admit these talks are happening, and the Times ought to be ashamed for them and of itself.

We ought all to be ashamed that any money at all goes to RC church agencies or those of any other religion for “faith-based” purposes.

We ought all to be ashamed that the Times is not ashamed this bill would allow churches to refuse to rent property to gay couples for their marriage receptions.

At least the Times is on the right side regarding the other issues raised by this proposed change in DC law.

Even Capone’s Chicago wasn’t like this

At least 30 killed in 'gruesome massacre of civilians' in the Philippines

Wonder about that timing

US Debt A 'Phantom Menace,' Krugman Argues

For a liberal paper, this rag is all too Republican friendly.

Were they deficit hawks when the Republicans were running up huge bills for their stupid neocon wars that they refused to pay for with taxes and insisted on financing with borrowing and hiding with cooked bookkeeping?

Another cost of a bad court

Economic Outrage du Jour

Meteor Blades writes,

Previously, workers could win a claim of age bias if they could prove it was a simply a part of the reason for the decision to fire, demote or not promote them.

In the past in these "mixed motives" cases, it was up to employers to show they had a legitimate reason for their action.

Given that layoffs tend to fall disproportionately on older workers who usually make more money than younger ones, the employer was required to show that that they would have dealt with the situation the same way no matter how old the worker was.

No more thanks to the court.

The damage is likely to be widespread.

Especially during a long recession like the current one, with industries doing major restructuring of their workforces, employees not expecting to retire for a decade or so can find themselves literally on the street with little recourse.

Actually, I beg to differ

Vietnam/Afghanistan

A One-Term President?: The Choice - The New York Review of Books

I think the danger of assassination would grow immensely.

The lunatic right in America has been far more numerous, more influential, and more dangerous than the loony left in American politics since the days of the Palmer raids and the first red scare.

But I think a lot of voters would be thrilled to have a president with the balls to make this choice that no president has yet dared to make.

Enough very possibly to ensure his victory in order to send those bastards in the establishment a fucking message.

And then they can spend the next couple of decades bitching about “the Afghanistan syndrome.”

And, besides, as Wills says, this would leave a heck of a good mark on history, even if it did make him a one-term president.

Of course, who thinks for one second that Obama has balls?

With this guy, it almost doesn’t even matter what he really personally believes.

Update, later that same day.

Many years ago, a friend who had fought in Vietnam told me he and a buddy were riding together in a jeep when it hit a mine.

The mine blew up and his buddy was killed, though he escaped without physical injury.

He asked if that buddy had died for nothing.

He and all the others who died in Vietnam.

“Yes,” I said. “He did.”

But it wasn’t my saying so that made it so.

Instead of resenting my words he should have resented the decisions of those who got us into Vietnam and kept us there, from John Kennedy up to and including Richard Nixon.

Didn't Obama, not long ago, himself shock America by commenting that those who had died in the neocon wars died in vain?

If he was speaking specifically and only about Iraq he needs to broaden his view.

A sign of resistance

Carl Levin: New War Tax For Rich May Be Needed To Fund Afghan War

There is not a lot of chance the Republicans want to pay for their wars this way.

The idea is to run up a deficit for the benefit of the military industrial complex and then pay for it with cuts to social democracy.

Some things never seem to change

Norman Lear: Lyndon Johnson, His National Security Advisor and His Secretary of Defense Say It All

Bill Moyers Plays LBJ Tapes, Draws Similarities With Obama And Afghanistan War

What people with enough money to do this want

Think Progress » New Missouri billboard tells Americans to ‘prepare for war’ against the government.

Think Progress » New Birther Billboard In Colorado Features Picture Of Obama And Asks ‘President Or Jihad?’

I told you they’d race bait this

Sen. Lamar Alexander Calls Medicaid a "Medical Ghetto"

And this is just the beginning.

The biggest mistake they ever made?

Connecticut Compromise

They should have insisted on a unicameral legislature with representation according to population and defied the small states to stay out of the union, if they really thought they would be better off out than in on such conditions.

They would not have stayed out for long.

60 votes is a bullshit excuse

Dem Leadership Negotiating Option Trigger to Get ConservDem Votes. Thanks, Harry!

It only takes 51 if they go the reconciliation route.

And it only takes 51 to change senate rules, anyway.

This. Is. Bullshit.

Be glad we aren’t counting on him to defend workers rights

Is Joe Sestak Too Difficult To Work For - And Why Should Anyone Care?

I am pleased Susie here takes note of Sestak’s hostile attitude toward the good of his employees.

I am please she is concerned.

But I think she omits the best reason for concern.

Why on earth would we expect him to make the defense of working people’s workplace rights a high priority in legislation or in court appointments when this is how he publicly and unapologetically treats his own staff?

To Hell with that.

Even apart from the fact that people who work that hard for anything usually end up thinking they have a right to it and that this is just what makes such bitter conservatives out of so many hard-working small businessmen and “self-made” nouveau riche, workaholics are not only fools but a menace, not only to their own families and themselves but to all of us.

Especially if they are within reach of power over the laws that govern the workplace.

Do you think this guy would have helped in the eight hours struggle?

Balls.

I think he would have been on the other side.

Will he fight for workers’ rights against employers’ demands for a more docile workforce?

Phooey.

He might be making pro-labor noises now to get the job in the senate that he wants but I think he doesn’t mean it and we can’t trust him.

Susie says they’re all workaholics in the congress, though no one has so bad a reputation as Sestak.

Swell.

No wonder they want people to retire later and are content that Americans work more every year for more years than any other people in the modern world.

No wonder they think the French 35 hour week is a joke.

In his Intelligent Woman's Guide, Shaw addressed the claim so often advanced by the exceptionally self-motivated and hard-working to deserve exceptional power and wealth because they worked so hard to get it.

His reply was a question.

"Who asked them?" he said.

[Interestingly, he also flat denied that the exceptionally talented deserved more and better than others, too, amusingly noting that he was here arguing against himself and his right to the exceptional wealth he had earned by his literary career.]

Oh, well.

Plato noted a long time ago that the people who actually want power are a bad lot.

The clegy were never shy about being assholes

Upping the Ante: Catholic Bishop Bans Rep. Patrick Kennedy From Communion

And if you think they wouldn’t do a lot worse if they could, you are much mistaken.

Once upon a time, the then Senator John F. Kennedy had to go to extra trouble to explain to the Protestant clergy of America, and especially the American South, that he would never allow the Pope or his own bishop to tell him what to do as President of the United States.

Nowadays, militant Protestant culture warriors are delighted when their allies, the American bishops, apply the very coercion that, once upon a time, they so much feared.

And the laugh is on us.

Now we have to hope this Kennedy has the sand to act as his famous uncle once promised.

But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured -- perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this.

So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again -- not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me -- but what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote;

where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish;

where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

. . .

I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all and obligated to none, who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner his office may appropriately require of him to fulfill; and whose fulfillment of his Presidential office is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.

. . .

I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition -- to judge me on the basis of 14 years in the Congress, on my declared stands against an Ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools -- which I attended myself.

. . .

For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President.

I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic.

I do not speak for my church on public matters; and the church does not speak for me.

Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected, on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject, I will make my decision in accordance with these views -- in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates.

And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

. . .

If I should lose on the real issues, I shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I'd tried my best and was fairly judged.

But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being President on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people.

But if, on the other hand, I should win this election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the Presidency -- practically identical, I might add, with the oath I have taken for 14 years in the Congress.

For without reservation, I can, "solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution -- so help me God.

An excuse for regime change?

Pakistani Intelligence Sheltering Taliban Leader - Mullah Omar hiding in Karachi

God, that would be such a bad idea.

Considerations on Representative Government

It is interesting that in his 1861 book of that title, Mill opposes absolutist monarchy to popular government and decisively sides with the latter.

It is interesting that in course of his discussion he defends the Italian rebels of 1848.

It is interesting that his criterion of goodness in government is the extent to which it encourages, brings out, and utilizes the moral, active, and intellectual virtues througout the whole community.

It is interesting that his argument against despotism – against a despotism by hypothesis benevolent – is that it crushes these qualities under its demand for passive obedience and diminishes the horizon of every man’s life to his own private affairs.

His argument in favor of what he variously calls “popular government,” “free government,” “representative government,” and even “democracy” is that it teaches, requires, and lives on moral, active, and intellectual virtues of much wider scope, potentially encompassing all aspects of social and human life.

In this way Mill makes a perfectionist argument to enlist on the side of free government the ancient idea, more often called upon to defend authoritarian or autocratic rule, that it is the purpose of law to make men good.

That is not his whole argument.

But it is a good part of it.

He can accept, Mill says, the theoretical need for temporary dictatorships in cases of emergency.

But he insists, all the same, that the idea of a benevolent or good despotism is “a false ideal” and “the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras.”

But after his demolition of this false ideal, Mill defends popular government by citing two additional virtues, the first being that it both allows and even encourages the people to defend their rights and the second that it is more conducive to better distributed prosperity than any other.

And to this day the entire democratic left, and the progressives especially, would agree with just this claim.

As would any sensible man, Mill dwells quite as much on this line of argument as do the modern defenders of popular government like Dahl.

And Mill is absolutely clear that he is talking ideally about universal participation in popular government, including in some measure the actual exercise of office.

I took a look at Mill, yesterday and today, as made newly interesting by Priscilla Robertson’s narrative of the revolutions of 1848.

P.S.

Thinking of this book and his Utilitarianism and On Liberty, one is very tempted to think that whenever Mill wrote a new book after his first he intentionally put out of his mind all thought of the others he had already written.

Glenn Greenwald defends limited government, the separation of powers, and the rule of law against conservative, Republican presidential absolutism.

The Weekly Standard's ACLU smear indicts only itself

Of course, GG quotes Jefferson and Paine, both of whom were loathed by the Federalists for whom the modern conservative movement rightly claims affinity and understandably displays admiration.

The only things any part of the right likes about Jefferson are his nullificationism and his anti-Nationalism.

Those would be the parts the left abandoned with the Progressives over the 1890s and into the 1910s.

The Culture War Continues

Justifying Discrimination in the Name of Religious Freedom is Not a Good Idea

It would be unconstitutional even if they weren’t being such pig-heads about it.

Money from the government to support churches in running social services, I mean.

And they are being pig-heads.

Wuerl, by the way, used to be the RC bishop of Pittsburgh.

The current bishop of Pittsburgh also signed.

And this is what they signed, along with a number of Protestant Christian right notables.

The Manhattan Declaration

The entire history lesson in the first paragraphs – did you catch that reference to infanticide? – is polemically brilliant, outrageous distortion and an infuriating display of hypocrisy.

Note, for example, how far today’s religious establishment and the religious right here take credit for the struggles and accomplishments of secularists, atheists, agnostics, deists, dissenters, Jews, and the religious left of the past.

Too, the mixing of issues and causes in such sentences as the following is quite powerful, as propaganda, though for many of us the disgustingly self-righteous, “Holy Joe” tone of the entire declaration is almost enough to make us vomit.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened;

What was that after the reference to abortion?

An allusion to “death panels”?

It was certainly a reference to assisted suicide and euthanasia, both of which the document later attacks at length.

Their monster sentence continues.

that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies;

Still whining about divorce?

They haven’t budged an inch, have they, since they resisted the sexual revolution in the law beginning in the mid-20th Century tooth and nail, as it happened?

They continue.

that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Now, that’s rich.

Wuerl, conservative Catholic, is standing up for religious liberty?

Well, the Church has a long history of standing up for the freedom of Catholics, to practice Catholicism exactly as the authorities of the Church define it, anyway.

For a very long time it was express Catholic doctrine that the truth, Catholicism, must have every right while error, everybody else’s religion, has no rights at all.

And it was the strategy of the Church to demand religious liberty wherever it was in a minority and deny it to everyone else wherever it was in a majority.

[Open digression]

Oh, a propos, did you see in the news the other day the story that said the Italian government was defending against some sort of challenge from a European Union court concerned to defend disestablishment, or laicite or religious neutrality, or something, the continued placement of crucifixes in every room in every public school in the nation?

In an hilarious explanation that reminded me of Scalia commenting on the Mojave cross, some government flunky explained the crucifix was not a religious symbol but a traditional artifact of Italian national culture.

[Close digression.]

This has never been officially repudiated, so far as I know.

Much less infallibly repudiated.

They go on.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice

Wuerl signed this!

A Catholic archbishop!

and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense.

In this declaration we affirm:

1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life;

2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and;

Are they here claiming a right to impose God’s law on us all?

That would be right in the historic tradition of Catholicism and most forms of Protestantism, too.

Actually, hasn’t every form of Protestantism claimed the right to impose at least parts of God’s law on us all?

They continue with the most shocking hypocrisy.

3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

I, for one, can still smell the heretics burning.

After this introduction the document continues at some length affirming opposition to abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia, and stem-cell research and repeatedly appealing to the authority of God, the faith, and the Bible – and, once in a while, “the light of reason” – to justify the control they would impose on American law and American society.

Their attack includes the following brilliant smear.

Our concern is not confined to our own nation.

Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and "ethnic cleansing," the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS.

We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research.

And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.

They reject what they call “the culture of divorce” and call specifically for an end to “ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage, including the discredited idea of unilateral divorce.”

To gays – and the rest of us – they have this to say.

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct.

. . .

We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it.

. . .

We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage.

Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital.

They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit.

. . .

That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.

Oh?

Did the Protestant signatories not notice this slap in the face for Henry VIII and the Anglican Church he devised so he could get rid of more than one wife in succession for exactly that reason?

Or did they mean to agree in rejecting that basis for divorce?

I don’t recall whether either the Lutheran or the Reformed traditions made allowance for divorce or annulment for infertility, specifically.

The angry attack on revision of the law to permit gay marriage that follows this could have been written by an ex-Pennsylvania senator.

We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights.

They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being "married."

It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it?

On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand.

Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships.

And it would be equally true in all these cases, would it not?

Though I am not arguing for any of these revisions of the marriage laws.

They protest,

Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages,

Well, no, I don’t think so.

It is true that some radicals of various sorts would like to abolish marriage, altogether.

But I am not aware that progressives or liberals, or others among the democratic left, are interested in such “reforms.”

and would they have no effects on other relationships?

No.

The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define to please those who are powerful and influential.

Abstract?

Neutral?

And look at this Catholic Archbishop and these other establishment-beloved clerics declaiming against the “powerful and influential”!

They continue with apparent tautology followed by metaphysical gibberish and baseless assertion,

No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage.

Marriage is an objective reality - a covenantal union of husband and wife - that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good.

And now they list the dire consequences for us all if this view is flauted.

If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow.

First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized.

Bishop Weurl’s religious liberty is jeopardized if his gay neighbors are allowed a civil marriage?

Second, the rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes as "marriages" sexual partnerships that many parents believe are intrinsically non-marital and immoral.

Oh?

And miscegenation?

I suppose we have to agree parents have a right to pump crap into their children’s heads.

The First Amendment seems to guarantee that at least twice.

But when did parents acquire a right not to be contradicted by teachings in the schools?

How far does that extend, I wonder?

How far would Bishop Wuerl allow it bears on the evolution/creationism controversy?

Third, the common good of civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any society vitally depends.

That is, legal acceptance of gay marriage would further undermine the public acceptance of the moral, and perhaps also religious, doctrines supported by the signatories and foster further public acceptance of the contrary liberal views.

That is probably true.

But in a free society in which moral and religious views must compete it can never be a legitimate argument against legal arrangements that they fail to support some among these competing beliefs and lend support to others.

And in a society committed to disestablishment it can never be a valid objection to legal arrangements that they fail to support someone’s religious beliefs.

Sadly, we are today far from having a thriving marriage culture.

But if we are to begin the critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is.

Did that sound like a commitment to a program of cultural and political reaction against disestablishment and separationism and for a restoration of the theocratic control of America’s sex life that was so mercifully undermined by those activist, liberal judges in the second half of the 20th Century?

Yes, it did.

After this, in a concluding section, the document takes up the cause of religious liberty with such disgusting hypocrisy that I could hardly stand to read it.

Again, Bishop Wuerl signed this!

Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience.

Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience.

No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions.

What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.

The Catholic Church has never officially believed this and never officially repudiated the bigoted claim it has a natural and divine right to control the consciences of all, even with the force of the state.

That Wuerl signed this is outrageous hypocrisy.

That he and the others use this to argue for their right to control the consciences of all the rest of us adds astonishing, infuriating effrontery to the mix.

They go on, just after the above, to claim a First Amendment, free-exercise right to discriminate against gays individually or as couples in employment, in adoption, and in other ways; to teach the rightfulness of exclusion of gays and gay couples from legal and social acceptance and equality; and most emphatically to refuse to provide medical services contrary to their religious convictions.

They conclude,

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act;

nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.

We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's.

But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's.

The culture war continues.

The other deadly issue

The Arsonists Who Lit The Economic Match Complain About The Fire Department.

Health care and bailouts for the plutocrats that left the rest of us nowhere will be the issues.

DeFazio is right.

Administration failure will give the Republican Party an issue it can demagogue from the right.

A plea for morality?

Thanks to CIGNA, A Six-Year-Old Girl May Never Hear Again. Each Day's Delay, Another Horror Story.

Susie asks – rhetorically, one hopes – the following.

What more do we have to do to fight back against these horror stories?

What will it take to get these insurance companies to see the inherent immorality of focusing on the bottom line to the exclusion of all else?

Did slave owners free the slaves in response to moral appeals?

Did tobacco growers all over America plow those deadly plants under and go in for truck gardening?

Did the white people of the American South voluntarily dismantle segregation, having become convinced of its immorality?