There was a time when I was going to write a post entitled "I'm not disappointed in Obama." In that post, I would've said, essentially, "I told you so." During the summer and fall of 2008 when he ran for election and during the time of his transition, the winter of 2008-2009, I wrote several posts warning against what I saw as the near deification of Obama or what I saw as the impulsive, potentially dangerous devotion to a mere human. (If interested, you can see the posts click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) In the post I was going to write, I was going to say that many of my predictions turned true.
Now, saying "I told you so" is poor form, so I won't say it now, even though I have succumbed to the vanity of citing my own posts on the matter. But if you read the posts, you'll notice that my "predictions" were general and grounded, in large measure, in cynicism. And it is probably the case that general predictions grounded, in large measure, in cynicism usually turn true, so my own predictions were not particularly prescient or noteworthy.
The original impetus for writing the post about why "I'm not disappointed in Obama" was an attitude I had witnessed as early as spring 2010 at a labor history conference. A large majority of the attendees were specialists in American labor history. They may not have been intimately familiar with the minute intricacies of presidential politics or the tricks and turns of different presidential administrations (some were more "social" or "cultural" historians), yet they knew, or should have known that any president faces constraints on his actions, that "liberal" or "leftist"-friendly presidents make compromises and come up short. (In such a crowd, you can find no shortage of people who condemn President Franklin D. Roosevelt for curbing the power of unions through legislation that to the uninitiated empowered unions dramatically. They have a point, but my point is that it's a well-trodden road.) Yet they were not only disappointed, but surprised, that this happened in Obama's case. The occasion for their surprise....I don't remember exactly. It had something to do with the health care law and some sort of compromise or pending compromise on the "cadillac plans" enjoyed by certain unions. I don't even remember what the compromise was or even if it was actually made. But the point is, they were indeed surprised.
The tragedy (from their point of view) of American history is that the "system" has failed to live up to its leftist potential when things could have gone otherwise, when, for example, we could've had a vibrant union movement if only THE STATE hadn't intervened on the side of THE CAPITALISTS during that one strike that, for example, THE UNION threatened the lives of THE SCABS. (Another way of putting this is that the state used its police powers to prevent some people from killing others because the others in question had a different view on whether they owed allegiance to a union or a "working class." Yet another way of putting this is that the notion of competing allegiances is more complicated than the narrative of "well, wi' any luck, the li'l guy might get some'ing out o' it this time exceptin' that Mister Pierpont Morgan has his way.")
Along the same lines you might hear from them, Oh, if only [name the president, governor, or mayor] hadn't sent in THE TROOPS, we'd have single-payer health care and syndicalism, with nary a whiff of oppression! Some of them have a counter-narrative that runs thusly: Some quasi-mythic but historically actual person, usually a governor, who was "the first person in the history of the world ever" to send in troops to protect the strikers might have helped usher in social democracy if only the people had risen up to it and voted for their economic interests. When it comes to governors being "the only" one to send in soldiers to support strikers, I have seen this claim made of Colorado Gov. Waite Davis and Illinois Gov. John Altgeld.
However, if it's too much to ask American historians to note what has been the dominant trend of American history that the historians in question have often repeated, or at least to note the institutional incentives and constraints on political actors, well maybe it's not too much for me to be more sympathetic to their frustration. After all, I wanted a "robust public option" and yet settle, perhaps to a point of unreasonableness, for the gamble that is the ACA. Things did not turn out the way I would've liked them.
But still....in the "I'm not disappointed in Obama" post I was going to write, I would have said that we got what we could've expected from someone who seems (and in my opinion, seemed as early as 2004) to excel primarily in being good looking, giving platitudinous speeches, and benefiting from luck not of his own making.
But, but, but....I am disappointed in Obama. And again, it's not all bad. Some things he had little control over, and he indeed did the best he could. The ACA is one of those, in my view. And on some issues, like gay marriage, he eventually did the right thing. And on others, like repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, he pursued the policy change in the most respectable matter possible. I'll also suggest that whatever the wisdom or cynicism or idealism behind his postponement authorizing the Canada/US pipeline, it was in at least some ways a gutsy move. It became one basis among many of Romney's criticisms of Obama's energy policy.
But on some issues over which he had a lot more control he chose poorly when he didn't have to. One example is his apparent ramping up of prosecutions against medical marijuana distributors when the states in which they are located permit them. My problem is not only that I object to the policy, but also, I agree with Will Truman at the League, who pointed out something I hadn't really thought of but that rings true nevertheless, namely, Obama gave little guidance about his enforcement priorities ahead of time. He promised he would defer to state laws, and then he reneged on that promise without fair warning. Even if the president had given such warning, I admit I would disagree with his policy, albeit on less firm ground.
Another issue, which I have already discussed, is what I consider to be the unnecessary and still ongoing "we killed bin Laden" fest. Yes, I get that "he is a man of political courage" and his approval rating may have dipped a few points for an entire two weeks if the attack he ordered had turned out fruitless. But killing is killing and sometimes it's necessary, but it's always regrettable. As I've said before, first, do not strut.
And then the war came. Or rather, "the war continued." It's winding down, except for where it's not (*cough*, Libya, *cough*), and I'll give kudos for Obama's refusal to commit himself to an attack on Iran, his refusal so far to implicate American forces in Syria, and what appears to my not-very-informed-foreign-policy-perspective to be his deft refusal to antagonize Russia needlessly. (I'm out of my element here, but that's my sense.)
To be clear about my concerns, it's not so much that I find the drone attacks troubling, although I do, but not really because they're drones (I don't really see a moral distinction between collateral damage caused by drones over that caused by warplanes, unless one mechanism is more likely to incur more such damage than another). It's not even so much that the president has what is effectively a "kill list." (That does bother me, but I also think its more a continuation of practices that go back to covert-operations-with-plausible-deniability that stretch as far back to instances like overthrow of Mossadegh in the 1950s or the debacle that resulted, probably unintentionally, in the assassination of Diem in 1963.) Nor is it even the prospect that the al-Awlaki (sp.?) was a U.S. citizen (I think due process ought due to non-citizens if it's to be due at all and while there's an extra disturbing factor when we're talking about a citizen, any problem I have has to go back to the original debate over targeted killing to begin with.)
What it is about, for me at least, is his escalation of the powers of the presidency. In 2008, I did not expect Obama to abrogate Bush's arrogations of power. In fact, in one of the posts I cite above, I said s much. And he has disavowed the "enhanced interrogation techniques," such disavowal being, I suppose, a good start. But he also signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act. [click here to read James Hanley's explanation of the law and his criticisms against it, almost all of which I agree with.]
I'm not sure Obama necessarily promised anything much different. But I am disappointed.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
A Pierre Corneille Book Review: Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear (1998)*
I am dissatisfied with this book, but I'm not sure if that's because it's actually a bad book or because it isn't the book I wish de Becker had written. The edition I read (3d, and there have been more recent ones) certainly doesn't live up to the promise that I read as implicit in its subtitle--"survival signals that protect us from violence"--the promise being that, well, the author will give the reader useful tips on recognizing when "real" danger exists and how to handle those situations, while being free to recognize non-dangerous situations as non-dangerous.
As one of my professors once said, "a title is not a contract," and it is probably fair to say that neither are the blurbs written on the cover of the paperback version I read, which I can't cite because I've failed to take notes and I've returned it to the library. But some of the chapters come so tantalizingly close to making it seem that de Becker is going to give useful tips and offer us a new way to look at promoting our own safety that I think I might be forgiven for thinking the book was going to be something it in fact was not.
De Becker offers examples, from victims or near victims of predatory crimes, of cues they implicitly noticed before they were attacked had they acted on these cues, they either wouldn't have suffered the attack or would have escaped earlier. He relates for instance a scary, but he says true, story of a woman who, on her way home from work, is met at the entrance to her apartment building by a stranger. This stranger uses many of what de Becker calls the classic techniques used by predators who stalk women: the predator, for example, refuses to take no for an answer when he offers unsolicited "assistance" to help her carry groceries. We then read that the woman, after being assaulted, picks up on other cues, and uses the resulting fear--the "gift of fear"--to save her life.
He has other stories. One fellow upon getting an uneasy feeling in a convenience store, decides to leave and later finds out that store owner was shot just minutes later. De Becker in another example notes how he advised one young person to be wary of a man on an airplane who was engaging in similar tactics that the predator in the opening story used. In short, de Becker has some quite informative discussions of stalkers and domestic abuse, along with helpful information that restraining orders usually do not work as they're supposed to.
All well and good, but he doesn't give the reader much to do with it. If a stranger engages another with the predatory tactics and the putative victim recognizes the tactics, de Becker is often silent on what are some of the strategies the mark can engage in. In the first example I mentioned above, we see what the woman eventually did to extricate herself from the situation after the assault before what most likely would have been her murder, but we don't see what she might have done even earlier, say, when she was at the door to her apartment building and the man wouldn't take no for an answer when he intrusively offered to "help" her carry groceries.
De Becker does, I admit, give some explicit "how to" advice that is or can be helpful. He points out, as I said above, that temporary restraining orders work in situations of domestic abuse more rarely than one might expect. I assume that this admonition is true, or at least he offers what seems to be convincing evidence. He reminds his readers, particularly women readers, not to be afraid of hurting a well-intentioned man's feelings when he offers unsolicited "help." As de Becker says quite rightly, it's better to hurt someone's feelings than to put oneself in danger. He also makes occasional suggestions--albeit in passing--that I endorse heartily. I found myself nodding in agreement when he warns of the dangers of wearing headphones while we walk in public.
But de Becker doesn't follow through. Temporary restraining orders might not work and might even make things worse, but there is very little practical advice about what a victim of domestic abuse is to do. He says "go to a battered woman's shelter" and he says that there should be more such shelters. Okay, but what about in communities where such shelters are not equipped to meet the demand? He would probably say the woman should move. But where? and how to manage it when the abuser comes after her?
All we really get is a "real life" example of a woman whose roommate was in an abusive relationship. The woman had seen de Becker do whatever it is he did on an episode of Oprah, and the woman who had the roommate extricated herself from the situation and moved back with her family. That worked for her. But her friend in the abusive relationship did not have a supportive family willing to take her in, and when a tragedy almost happened, her family blamed her and her friend who tried to warn about the relationship. So at best the solution to the problem seems to be recognize the abuser early on and put a stop to the relationship before it gets that far. Good advice. But if it does indeed "get that far," the solution seems to be, don't have the problem in the first place, or be only the roommate of the victim and not the victim herself.
Or you can hire a private security firm. Gavin de Becker has one in mind. It's called Gavin de Becker, Inc. In fact, not a majority but a hefty chunk of the book serves as an advertisement for the great things Gavin de Becker, Inc., does. We don't learn a lot about what specific tactics we should use to escape a stalker or protect ourselves, but we learn how his business worked with police to protect some famous Hollywood celebrities and to capture one particularly wiley and violen perpetrator. We also don't learn a lot (or anything) about pricing. How much does it cost to get advice from Gavin de Becker, Inc.? Is there a sliding scale? How much does it slide?
Some of the advice Gavin de Becker, Inc., gives its clients:
Maybe the idol needs smashing. De Becker cites recent (to the 3d edition) examples from local news outlets of near hysterical fear (actually, he relates these examples right after saying that he "never" watches local news and hasn't for some years). He reassures us that we have already learned most of what we need to intuit real danger in preference to unreal danger (actually, he does this while making at least a little bit of hay about his unique experiences of having been a child who grew up observing domestic abuse...we all have our own reserves of fear-intuition, but hey, he's lived through it, so you should buy this book). He teaches us that dogs don't necessarily intuit danger when we can't, but they merely respond to our own fear-intuition signalling (and he then declines to answer what to me is an obvious rejoinder, "if we have trouble recognizing our own signalling, maybe it'd be a good idea to have a pet who helps us in that arena").
My review probably seems more caustic than it ought. The first few chapters were so intriguing and seemed to promise so much, that I almost hopped along to my nearest internet book provider and ordered my own copy to keep for my own reference.
Moreover, I've skimmed through a few of the reviews on "Goodreads" and most of them, which almost all seem to be written by women, are glowing. It doesn't take intensive training feminist theory to realize that men have a lot of the power in this world, and that men victimize women in much greater proportions than the other way around, and that one practice that empowers men to do so is the systematic (or at least very frequent) denial of women's concerns. It's the same practice that says, "oh, don't listen to her, she's probably hysterical," or, "if only she'd understand he's had a hard day, then maybe he'll stop hitting her." It would be foolish--and sexist--of me to denigrate de Becker's contribution to empowering women to trust their own senses and their own intelligence even when other people in their lives undermine their legitimate concerns.
And I probably have to admit that trusting our own intuition and intelligence involves taking responsibility for them. Maybe, contra my criticism about de Becker's paucity of advice for what a person in an abusive relationship might actually do, someone in that situation has so few good options the real answer is "do whatever it takes to protect yourself," not as a call to vigilantism, but as a call to realizing that at the end of the day, it's not the state will protect us. It's our own common sense.
Still, I wanted more of the one thing and less of the other. I wanted more advice and less of the "let's respect our intuitions" pep rally and less of the advertisement for the services of private security firms that only a certain percentage of us can likely afford.
In short, read it but don't buy it.
*This is part of a new feature I will, occasionally, do on this blog, called "Pierre Corneille's Book (or Movie, or Song, or Play, aut cetera) Review
As one of my professors once said, "a title is not a contract," and it is probably fair to say that neither are the blurbs written on the cover of the paperback version I read, which I can't cite because I've failed to take notes and I've returned it to the library. But some of the chapters come so tantalizingly close to making it seem that de Becker is going to give useful tips and offer us a new way to look at promoting our own safety that I think I might be forgiven for thinking the book was going to be something it in fact was not.
De Becker offers examples, from victims or near victims of predatory crimes, of cues they implicitly noticed before they were attacked had they acted on these cues, they either wouldn't have suffered the attack or would have escaped earlier. He relates for instance a scary, but he says true, story of a woman who, on her way home from work, is met at the entrance to her apartment building by a stranger. This stranger uses many of what de Becker calls the classic techniques used by predators who stalk women: the predator, for example, refuses to take no for an answer when he offers unsolicited "assistance" to help her carry groceries. We then read that the woman, after being assaulted, picks up on other cues, and uses the resulting fear--the "gift of fear"--to save her life.
He has other stories. One fellow upon getting an uneasy feeling in a convenience store, decides to leave and later finds out that store owner was shot just minutes later. De Becker in another example notes how he advised one young person to be wary of a man on an airplane who was engaging in similar tactics that the predator in the opening story used. In short, de Becker has some quite informative discussions of stalkers and domestic abuse, along with helpful information that restraining orders usually do not work as they're supposed to.
All well and good, but he doesn't give the reader much to do with it. If a stranger engages another with the predatory tactics and the putative victim recognizes the tactics, de Becker is often silent on what are some of the strategies the mark can engage in. In the first example I mentioned above, we see what the woman eventually did to extricate herself from the situation after the assault before what most likely would have been her murder, but we don't see what she might have done even earlier, say, when she was at the door to her apartment building and the man wouldn't take no for an answer when he intrusively offered to "help" her carry groceries.
De Becker does, I admit, give some explicit "how to" advice that is or can be helpful. He points out, as I said above, that temporary restraining orders work in situations of domestic abuse more rarely than one might expect. I assume that this admonition is true, or at least he offers what seems to be convincing evidence. He reminds his readers, particularly women readers, not to be afraid of hurting a well-intentioned man's feelings when he offers unsolicited "help." As de Becker says quite rightly, it's better to hurt someone's feelings than to put oneself in danger. He also makes occasional suggestions--albeit in passing--that I endorse heartily. I found myself nodding in agreement when he warns of the dangers of wearing headphones while we walk in public.
But de Becker doesn't follow through. Temporary restraining orders might not work and might even make things worse, but there is very little practical advice about what a victim of domestic abuse is to do. He says "go to a battered woman's shelter" and he says that there should be more such shelters. Okay, but what about in communities where such shelters are not equipped to meet the demand? He would probably say the woman should move. But where? and how to manage it when the abuser comes after her?
All we really get is a "real life" example of a woman whose roommate was in an abusive relationship. The woman had seen de Becker do whatever it is he did on an episode of Oprah, and the woman who had the roommate extricated herself from the situation and moved back with her family. That worked for her. But her friend in the abusive relationship did not have a supportive family willing to take her in, and when a tragedy almost happened, her family blamed her and her friend who tried to warn about the relationship. So at best the solution to the problem seems to be recognize the abuser early on and put a stop to the relationship before it gets that far. Good advice. But if it does indeed "get that far," the solution seems to be, don't have the problem in the first place, or be only the roommate of the victim and not the victim herself.
Or you can hire a private security firm. Gavin de Becker has one in mind. It's called Gavin de Becker, Inc. In fact, not a majority but a hefty chunk of the book serves as an advertisement for the great things Gavin de Becker, Inc., does. We don't learn a lot about what specific tactics we should use to escape a stalker or protect ourselves, but we learn how his business worked with police to protect some famous Hollywood celebrities and to capture one particularly wiley and violen perpetrator. We also don't learn a lot (or anything) about pricing. How much does it cost to get advice from Gavin de Becker, Inc.? Is there a sliding scale? How much does it slide?
Some of the advice Gavin de Becker, Inc., gives its clients:
- Ignore threats, except when you shouldn't, and you'll know the difference when a private security company tells you the difference.
- Wait until the crime happens, and then you can talk with the private security company to second guess your decisions and what you should have noticed before the crime happened.
- Unsure whether your child might become violent? Well gosh darn it, be a loving parent, and (the reader might assume) decline to have children who have any influences whatsoever outside of their family or who have absolutely no will of their own and who are complete tabulae rasae, or who have no mental disturbances that might in some situations manifest themselves violently.
- Trust you intuition, except, again,when you shouldn't. De Becker has two examples of women who were fearful when they returned home or got off work. Fortunately, we find that their fears are unfounded. De Becker's psychoanalysis demonstrates that one woman's intuitive fear wasn't really fear of her (what happens to be high-crime) neighborhood but a manifestation of her desire to live in another city. The other woman, we are glad to learn, suffers from an inferiority complex and has nothing to worry about as she walks alone in a darkly-lit parking lot after work.
Maybe the idol needs smashing. De Becker cites recent (to the 3d edition) examples from local news outlets of near hysterical fear (actually, he relates these examples right after saying that he "never" watches local news and hasn't for some years). He reassures us that we have already learned most of what we need to intuit real danger in preference to unreal danger (actually, he does this while making at least a little bit of hay about his unique experiences of having been a child who grew up observing domestic abuse...we all have our own reserves of fear-intuition, but hey, he's lived through it, so you should buy this book). He teaches us that dogs don't necessarily intuit danger when we can't, but they merely respond to our own fear-intuition signalling (and he then declines to answer what to me is an obvious rejoinder, "if we have trouble recognizing our own signalling, maybe it'd be a good idea to have a pet who helps us in that arena").
My review probably seems more caustic than it ought. The first few chapters were so intriguing and seemed to promise so much, that I almost hopped along to my nearest internet book provider and ordered my own copy to keep for my own reference.
Moreover, I've skimmed through a few of the reviews on "Goodreads" and most of them, which almost all seem to be written by women, are glowing. It doesn't take intensive training feminist theory to realize that men have a lot of the power in this world, and that men victimize women in much greater proportions than the other way around, and that one practice that empowers men to do so is the systematic (or at least very frequent) denial of women's concerns. It's the same practice that says, "oh, don't listen to her, she's probably hysterical," or, "if only she'd understand he's had a hard day, then maybe he'll stop hitting her." It would be foolish--and sexist--of me to denigrate de Becker's contribution to empowering women to trust their own senses and their own intelligence even when other people in their lives undermine their legitimate concerns.
And I probably have to admit that trusting our own intuition and intelligence involves taking responsibility for them. Maybe, contra my criticism about de Becker's paucity of advice for what a person in an abusive relationship might actually do, someone in that situation has so few good options the real answer is "do whatever it takes to protect yourself," not as a call to vigilantism, but as a call to realizing that at the end of the day, it's not the state will protect us. It's our own common sense.
Still, I wanted more of the one thing and less of the other. I wanted more advice and less of the "let's respect our intuitions" pep rally and less of the advertisement for the services of private security firms that only a certain percentage of us can likely afford.
In short, read it but don't buy it.
*This is part of a new feature I will, occasionally, do on this blog, called "Pierre Corneille's Book (or Movie, or Song, or Play, aut cetera) Review
Saturday, July 28, 2012
What Same Sex Marriage is "About"
I've gotten to reading the blog "American Conservative," in part because I like Noah Millman's work--he has a blog there--and in part because I'd like to understand the point of view of a group of people I don't identify with.
One recent subject that I've seen discussed there is the boycott against Chick-fil-a. Some supporters of same sex marriage [ssm] have called the boycott because the companydonates money to campaigns that ssm and because the company's president about two weeks ago made clear his personal view that marriage should be between one man and one woman. (Actually, I believe he said he supported the "Biblical definition of marriage," which, as pro-ssm advocate Russell Saunders notes, could mean the company's president is"going to be out there stumping for polygamy and forced matrimony to one's deceased husband's brother any day now." [internal links removed])
Before I go further, I'll make a necessary disclosure. I support ssm and I patronize Chick-fil-a. I'm uncomfortable with my practice. For one thing, I have a very close relative who has been with her partner for more than 30 years and who lives in a state that as of 6 months ago did not even have a civil union law. That state might have one now or very soon, but it certainly doesn't have ssm. A civil union law or, especially, a ssm law would give my relative and her partner more legal security and, potentially, certain benefits they otherwise can't have now. More security would also be in the offing for them if the Defense of Marriage Act be overturned or rule. I assume the Chick-fil-a president's substantial donations go to preventing the enactment of ssm laws and civil union laws and to preventing the overturn or repeal of DOMA, two developments that would substantially help this couple. I'll not defend my decision to patronize Chick-fil-a, but I felt I ought to disclose it.
Now, back to the "American Conservative." At least two blog posts written by Rod Dreher and one article written by another contributor on that site deal with the boycott. They evince a bitterness about the boycott that I find....new to my sensibilities and more robust than I'm used to seeing when it's a question of people deciding to spend or not to spend money at a certain business.
In part this bitterness is part of an objection they register to certain public officials, like Chicago's own Alderman Joe Moreno, who apparently has threatened to invoke his "aldermannic privilege" to prevent Chick-fil-a from opening a restaurant in his ward. Other politicians, elsewhere, have apparently intimated that they would refuse a license to this restaurant because of its opposition to ssm. I join these conservatives in objecting to what seems to me and to at least one legal scholar, as well as Russell Saunders in the post I cited above and another one he wrote a bit later, a clear violation of freedom of speech. (I'm also concerned about the notion of "aldermannic privilege," but that's a subject for another day.)
But these articles go beyond the freedom of speech argument and declaim against the "morality" or the ethics of the boycott itself. Rod Dreher in an article that criticizes Newsweek for what seems to me like unconscionable journalistic overreach (assuming the facts as he presents them are true), suggests that what he sees as media bias in this instance is
Again, Mr. Dreher's post is about an instance of what appears to be media bias and not about the act of boycotting itself (Newsweek apparently solicited information that it expressly hoped would damage Chick-fil-a's reputation, therefore, according to Dreher, expressing an unconscionable bias). But this statement also suggests certain assumptions behind the opposition to the boycott that suggest to me a certain hysteria and, ultimately, a misunderstanding about what ssm is actually "about."
He portrays the issue at the center of the boycott as one on which "good people can disagree." In this reckoning, ssm is just one of many policy considerations, maybe on par with whether we should increase the corporate income tax or make it easier to claim the Earned Income Credit. Different people of different political and moral persuasions arrive at different conclusions based on their notions of the good and on the expected outcomes of a given policy. In this view, ssm is not about right and wrong, it's about, well, whether to confer certain benefits to certain agreements by certain couples.
Dreher in another post advances another claim about "tolerance." He writes about the decision by Bill Gates of Microsoft and by Jeff Bezos of Amazon to donate millions of dollars to help defend Washington state's gay marriage law against a referendum challenge. Nevertheless, he will decline to boycott those two businesses, even though he disagrees with their decision:
His point in both these posts is that a boycott is only called for--is only ethical--when the stakes are much higher. Preferably, for him according to the second post, the stakes should amount to "matters literally of life and death." He might indeed make allowances for other standards. In fact, in that second post, he asks readers for their view on where to "draw the line on giving your trade to someone over a political issue[.]" I should note here that he is not claiming boycotts are illegal or ought to be illegal. He is not denying the right of people to boycott, but the morality of boycotts. He says as much explicitly in one of his own comments to his second post: "Nobody denies that the right exists. The discussion is about when the exercise of that right is morally justified." But the point I take from both his posts is that it is probably inappropriate, uncalled for, or at least uncharitable to conduct a boycott on matters that decent people can disagree on, including cultural issues like "tolerance."
Another article by a different author appears to make the same point as an aside. The article I refer to is "Bullying Chick-fil-a" by W. James Antle III. The gist of his article is the attack on what are probably the unconstitutional measures to deny a license to Chick-fil-a in Chicago.
I will point out that his article is a bit unclear about what exactly is happening in Chicago. He notes now-mayor-but-former-Democratic-whip-cum-Obama-Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emmanuel's alleged hypocrisy on the issue when he successfully engineered a Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 in part by running anti-ssm Democrats in socially conservative districts. He also notes a statement, made on Fox news no less, that Emmanuel “did not say that he would block or play any role in the company opening a new restaurant here. If they meet all the usual requirements, then they can open their restaurant, but their values aren’t reflective of our city.” Still, he concludes with the standard disclaimer that ssm supporters "have every right not to patronize a business that gives money to their political opponents, as well as to voice their disagreement with Chick-fil-A’s president," and he adds that they shouldn't tolerate "thuggish threats" from people like Emmanuel.
Of course and as I've said above, I agree that refusing licenses to Chick-fil-a because of its views on ssm is unconstitutional and even morally wrong. (I say "morally wrong" because what if I want to open a business someday and the alderman doesn't like the way I vote? Could he use the same rationale to deny me a license?) And while I find the article a little vitriolic and suspiciously unwilling to account for the claim by Emmanuel's representative that the mayor won't actually wield the licensing power against the company, I agree with his main point.
But the article comes with a teaser right below the title. This teaser is the first thing I saw when I noticed the link to the article on the "American Conservative" and has almost nothing to do with what the article actually discusses. The teaser reads
Now in these three pieces--the two Dreher blog posts and the teaser to Antle's article--I have inferred two assumptions behind opposition to ssm, assuming these pieces are representative. One is that the debate over ssm is just a policy debate, on par with other policy debates. It's important and different people have different views, but we're all part of the same team and we all take off our hats when they play the "Star Spangled Banner" at baseball games. So the boycott is really just a "kumbaya...interrupted." The other assumption is the notion that it's all about "tolerance" and although tolerance is important, let's not get carried away.
I respectfully--and I do mean "respectfully"--submit that these two assumptions are wrong.
To construe the ssm debate as "about" a simple disagreement among decent gentlemen and ladies obfuscates some of the very real, very immediate, and very material interests that ssm advocates are advancing. I won't go so far as to say that it is impossible for someone to be decent and reasonable who declines to support ssm. If supporters of traditional marriage* are honest with themselves and with me about what they want society to be like and about what they envision government's authority to be in extending that role, I will disagree but see where they are coming from. Or, if a given supporter of traditional marriage perhaps hasn't thought through his or her position fully and perhaps may have contradictory views about what society should look like about about the role of the state therefor, well, I should realize I am capable of holding apparently contradictory views about such matters, too. After all, I support the health insurance mandate even though I find its constitutionality and even its wisdom very questionable.
But it's not so simple as a mere policy disagreement. For the supporters of traditional marriage, the debate over ssm is one part in a larger debate about what we mean by "the family" and about the state's proper role in shaping or endorsing or facilitating that notion of the family. For them, the debate might also be about endorsement of gay relationships in general. If society and polity permit ssm, then they lend their imprimatur of approval to such relationships. Finally, inasmuch as traditional marriage is coincidental with straight marriages being ensconced into a privileged position vis-a-vis other types of relationships, ssm might even represent a challenge to, or even the dismantling of, "traditional marriage" in that sense. (Kyle Cupp at the League has made this point, but I'm having trouble finding the citation.) My point in all this is that for traditional marriage supporters, opposing ssm is part of a principled, but symbolic abstract debate over how we define things.
I'll add that that part of the debate is not unimportant for being "abstract" and "symbolic." We must deal in abstractions to make sense of the world, and I'll not claim symbols are devoid of any practical consequences, nor will I claim we need make an idol of the "practical" over the "symbolic." I'll also admit people who support ssm do so in part for the similar reasons supporters of traditional marriage invoke when they oppose it: state recognition of ssm confers a degree of legitimacy and acceptance for gay relationships that has heretofore been denied them. It's symbolic in that sense.
But support for ssm also invokes more immediate and material stakes. Being allowed to marry means being allowed to enter into an agreement that confers certain rights, privileges, and prerogatives under the law. Under non-ssm and non-civil union regimes, most of these rights, privileges, and prerogatives can be attained only by hiring a lawyer or hoping for free assistance from a gay friendly legal aid charity. Even with with the legal documents in place, there is less of a guarantee that certain prerogatives--such as power of attorney--will be honored by the courts if challenged. Or if they are a honored, it's possible they will be honored too late. Who wants to incur the legal expense and uncertainty of a trial after one is denied a visit to one's spouse at a hospital bed in that spouse's last hours in this world? Even with civil unions and ssm, these relationships are sometimes in question and their portability is not settled, especially with DOMA being the law of the land. But even if DOMA is repealed or invalidated by the Supreme Court, I believe it's still an open question, constitutionally speaking, whether states are allowed to refuse to recognize marriages from other states.
So, it is a policy disagreement, and it's possible for people to disagree in good faith and remain good drinking buddies at the end of the day. But it's not merely a policy debate where the stakes are whether you get an A or a B in a high school speech class. The stakes are asymmetrical. Insisting on the "but decent people can disagree" formulation denies and to some extent delegitimizes the urgency some feel when, for example, they advocate a boycott against Chick-fil-a.
And now for tolerance and ssm:
"Tolerance" is not really what the three "American Conservative" pieces I discuss claim it to be, and ssm is not really about "tolerance" anyway. One might think, reading these pieces, that tolerance means "accepting everything as within the pale for the sake of accepting things as within the pale." There are usually restraints on the notion of what "tolerance" is, somethings beyond the pale that one must not tolerate. I think most people, even or especially Mr. Dreher and Antle (or whoever wrote the teaser to his article), will refuse to accept as being beyond the pale. Invoking "tolerance" seems to be a way of forbidding all but academic disagreement.
By that standard, upon hearing that Chick-fil-a's president gives money to combat ssm, a ssm supporter ought to say to himself or herself, "It's too bad he disagrees with me, and I wish he didn't. I think I'll order the spicy chicken combo with lemonade." (For the record and per my disclaimer above, this is pretty much what I do.) Disagreement is sanitized into a debate merely about accepting people for who they are in a way that ignores some of the very material interests at stake, which I mention above.
And in the end, ssm is not only "about" tolerance. At least for ssm supporters, it's about one notion of equality under the law. Certain relationships between two adults are recognized as a matter of course, and certain relationships are forbidden or at least recognized inconsistently (by state) or incompletely (e.g., Illinois's civil union law) simply because in the former, the adults are opposite sex couples and in the latter, the adults are same sex couples.
To insist on this formulation is to beg the question. Part of what is up for debate is whether state non-recognition of ssm is indeed a denial of equality under the law. And admittedly I have a lot of trouble seeing how it's not such a denial, leading me to agree almost completely with James Hanley that there is "no good argument against same sex marriage." (My principal disagreement is that there's no good argument only if you accept certain assumptions about the powers of government, assumptions, I will add, that most people in the US, conservative, liberal, and libertarian, usually claim to accept.)
Don't get me wrong. Tolerance is pretty cool. The fact that these "American Conservative" pieces have recourse to tolerance means they're accepting tolerance in principle. And the three pieces have something of a point in that a lot of liberals look down on conservative Christians when they should take to heart that different people have different needs and histories. It's hard to stomach, for example, the sneering and, in my opinion, classist comments I hear from fellow grad students in history when the conversation turns to how "stupid" conservative Christians are; one would think from these comments that they are a separate and inferior race of people.
But we're past the days when "tolerance" was all we could hope for. We're past the days when the most loving thing non-gays were comfortable saying in public was "hate the sin, love the sinner." We're past the days when Bowers v. Hardwick was good law, when a state could enact an amendment to ban equal rights laws based on sexual orientation, and when a major network station could produce a documentary that represents homosexuality as a pathology or perversion. I desperately hope we're also past the days when lynching a man or woman because they are gay is something that is gainsaid or defended on the grounds of "gay panic."
One doesn't need to vilify one's opponents to note real and serious disagreements. But it is also true that we can't make all policy disagreements simple matters of courtesy. Nothing gets done if we do. In practice I don't honor the boycott against Chick-fil-a and in theory I have qualms about it in terms of its wisdom, its effectiveness, and its tendency to turn off potential allies. But the impetus for this boycott is not reducible to a malicious desire to destroy people who merely see things differently. It gains much of its urgency from the very immediate and very material stakes that are an inherent part of the campaign for ssm. To say it's just about "tolerance" misses the point.
*I use this term because, per Rod Dreher's usage, that seems to be how opponents of ssm prefer to think of themselves. I do this in the spirit of collegiality and decency and not because I buy into what I see are the value-laden, even question-begging, assumptions behind that phrasing.
One recent subject that I've seen discussed there is the boycott against Chick-fil-a. Some supporters of same sex marriage [ssm] have called the boycott because the companydonates money to campaigns that ssm and because the company's president about two weeks ago made clear his personal view that marriage should be between one man and one woman. (Actually, I believe he said he supported the "Biblical definition of marriage," which, as pro-ssm advocate Russell Saunders notes, could mean the company's president is"going to be out there stumping for polygamy and forced matrimony to one's deceased husband's brother any day now." [internal links removed])
Before I go further, I'll make a necessary disclosure. I support ssm and I patronize Chick-fil-a. I'm uncomfortable with my practice. For one thing, I have a very close relative who has been with her partner for more than 30 years and who lives in a state that as of 6 months ago did not even have a civil union law. That state might have one now or very soon, but it certainly doesn't have ssm. A civil union law or, especially, a ssm law would give my relative and her partner more legal security and, potentially, certain benefits they otherwise can't have now. More security would also be in the offing for them if the Defense of Marriage Act be overturned or rule. I assume the Chick-fil-a president's substantial donations go to preventing the enactment of ssm laws and civil union laws and to preventing the overturn or repeal of DOMA, two developments that would substantially help this couple. I'll not defend my decision to patronize Chick-fil-a, but I felt I ought to disclose it.
Now, back to the "American Conservative." At least two blog posts written by Rod Dreher and one article written by another contributor on that site deal with the boycott. They evince a bitterness about the boycott that I find....new to my sensibilities and more robust than I'm used to seeing when it's a question of people deciding to spend or not to spend money at a certain business.
In part this bitterness is part of an objection they register to certain public officials, like Chicago's own Alderman Joe Moreno, who apparently has threatened to invoke his "aldermannic privilege" to prevent Chick-fil-a from opening a restaurant in his ward. Other politicians, elsewhere, have apparently intimated that they would refuse a license to this restaurant because of its opposition to ssm. I join these conservatives in objecting to what seems to me and to at least one legal scholar, as well as Russell Saunders in the post I cited above and another one he wrote a bit later, a clear violation of freedom of speech. (I'm also concerned about the notion of "aldermannic privilege," but that's a subject for another day.)
But these articles go beyond the freedom of speech argument and declaim against the "morality" or the ethics of the boycott itself. Rod Dreher in an article that criticizes Newsweek for what seems to me like unconscionable journalistic overreach (assuming the facts as he presents them are true), suggests that what he sees as media bias in this instance is
this kind of thing is why many Christians and other social conservatives fear what’s coming. It is not enough for many on your side to achieve your goals of legal equality. You seek to destroy anybody who dissents, including ruining them professionally. And you have the mainstream media on your side.
I will continue to patronize businesses whose owners support gay rights, as long as the products and/0r the service is high quality. Why? Because I can live in a society in which good people can disagree on things, and still get along, and trade with each other. I have eaten at Chick-Fil-A exactly once in the past three years. It’s not my thing. The food is fine, but I don’t eat a lot of fried chicken. But now, seeing what they’re enduring, with this media-driven hysteria, and knowing that more of this sort of thing is coming for businesses run by people like them — which is to say, people like me — I’m thinking, “Eat mor chikin!”
Again, Mr. Dreher's post is about an instance of what appears to be media bias and not about the act of boycotting itself (Newsweek apparently solicited information that it expressly hoped would damage Chick-fil-a's reputation, therefore, according to Dreher, expressing an unconscionable bias). But this statement also suggests certain assumptions behind the opposition to the boycott that suggest to me a certain hysteria and, ultimately, a misunderstanding about what ssm is actually "about."
He portrays the issue at the center of the boycott as one on which "good people can disagree." In this reckoning, ssm is just one of many policy considerations, maybe on par with whether we should increase the corporate income tax or make it easier to claim the Earned Income Credit. Different people of different political and moral persuasions arrive at different conclusions based on their notions of the good and on the expected outcomes of a given policy. In this view, ssm is not about right and wrong, it's about, well, whether to confer certain benefits to certain agreements by certain couples.
Dreher in another post advances another claim about "tolerance." He writes about the decision by Bill Gates of Microsoft and by Jeff Bezos of Amazon to donate millions of dollars to help defend Washington state's gay marriage law against a referendum challenge. Nevertheless, he will decline to boycott those two businesses, even though he disagrees with their decision:
Why? Because I like their products and services. That, and I am a tolerant person, and I believe that same-sex marriage is an issue on which people can disagree without removing themselves from the company of decent people. Second, I know that my own ability to participate in social and economic life depends on commercial tolerance from others — a tolerance I can’t expect to have if I don’t extend.The issue here is "tolerance," and framing the issue that way suggests two conclusions that I don't think Dreher makes explicitly but that I suspect he would agree with. The first is that "tolerance" is about accepting people for who they are and for the positions they advance in good faith. The second is that ssm is about "tolerance" in this sense of the word.
His point in both these posts is that a boycott is only called for--is only ethical--when the stakes are much higher. Preferably, for him according to the second post, the stakes should amount to "matters literally of life and death." He might indeed make allowances for other standards. In fact, in that second post, he asks readers for their view on where to "draw the line on giving your trade to someone over a political issue[.]" I should note here that he is not claiming boycotts are illegal or ought to be illegal. He is not denying the right of people to boycott, but the morality of boycotts. He says as much explicitly in one of his own comments to his second post: "Nobody denies that the right exists. The discussion is about when the exercise of that right is morally justified." But the point I take from both his posts is that it is probably inappropriate, uncalled for, or at least uncharitable to conduct a boycott on matters that decent people can disagree on, including cultural issues like "tolerance."
Another article by a different author appears to make the same point as an aside. The article I refer to is "Bullying Chick-fil-a" by W. James Antle III. The gist of his article is the attack on what are probably the unconstitutional measures to deny a license to Chick-fil-a in Chicago.
I will point out that his article is a bit unclear about what exactly is happening in Chicago. He notes now-mayor-but-former-Democratic-whip-cum-Obama-Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emmanuel's alleged hypocrisy on the issue when he successfully engineered a Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 in part by running anti-ssm Democrats in socially conservative districts. He also notes a statement, made on Fox news no less, that Emmanuel “did not say that he would block or play any role in the company opening a new restaurant here. If they meet all the usual requirements, then they can open their restaurant, but their values aren’t reflective of our city.” Still, he concludes with the standard disclaimer that ssm supporters "have every right not to patronize a business that gives money to their political opponents, as well as to voice their disagreement with Chick-fil-A’s president," and he adds that they shouldn't tolerate "thuggish threats" from people like Emmanuel.
Of course and as I've said above, I agree that refusing licenses to Chick-fil-a because of its views on ssm is unconstitutional and even morally wrong. (I say "morally wrong" because what if I want to open a business someday and the alderman doesn't like the way I vote? Could he use the same rationale to deny me a license?) And while I find the article a little vitriolic and suspiciously unwilling to account for the claim by Emmanuel's representative that the mayor won't actually wield the licensing power against the company, I agree with his main point.
But the article comes with a teaser right below the title. This teaser is the first thing I saw when I noticed the link to the article on the "American Conservative" and has almost nothing to do with what the article actually discusses. The teaser reads
If gay marriage is about tolerance, political intimidation of the restaurant undermines the case.I want to be clear that I'm not sure whether to attribute this teaser to Antle. I understand that in some publications, authors don't have a lot of control over the exact title that gets assigned to their articles, and they might not have control over the article teasers. So I don't know for sure whose statement about tolerance this teaser comes from. But at any rate, I think we can extract the same two assumptions about "tolerance" and ssm that I infer from Dreher's blog post. "Tolerance" is the acceptance of differences. For example, differences in whether to support ssm. SSM is principally about "tolerance," or accepting gay people.
Now in these three pieces--the two Dreher blog posts and the teaser to Antle's article--I have inferred two assumptions behind opposition to ssm, assuming these pieces are representative. One is that the debate over ssm is just a policy debate, on par with other policy debates. It's important and different people have different views, but we're all part of the same team and we all take off our hats when they play the "Star Spangled Banner" at baseball games. So the boycott is really just a "kumbaya...interrupted." The other assumption is the notion that it's all about "tolerance" and although tolerance is important, let's not get carried away.
I respectfully--and I do mean "respectfully"--submit that these two assumptions are wrong.
To construe the ssm debate as "about" a simple disagreement among decent gentlemen and ladies obfuscates some of the very real, very immediate, and very material interests that ssm advocates are advancing. I won't go so far as to say that it is impossible for someone to be decent and reasonable who declines to support ssm. If supporters of traditional marriage* are honest with themselves and with me about what they want society to be like and about what they envision government's authority to be in extending that role, I will disagree but see where they are coming from. Or, if a given supporter of traditional marriage perhaps hasn't thought through his or her position fully and perhaps may have contradictory views about what society should look like about about the role of the state therefor, well, I should realize I am capable of holding apparently contradictory views about such matters, too. After all, I support the health insurance mandate even though I find its constitutionality and even its wisdom very questionable.
But it's not so simple as a mere policy disagreement. For the supporters of traditional marriage, the debate over ssm is one part in a larger debate about what we mean by "the family" and about the state's proper role in shaping or endorsing or facilitating that notion of the family. For them, the debate might also be about endorsement of gay relationships in general. If society and polity permit ssm, then they lend their imprimatur of approval to such relationships. Finally, inasmuch as traditional marriage is coincidental with straight marriages being ensconced into a privileged position vis-a-vis other types of relationships, ssm might even represent a challenge to, or even the dismantling of, "traditional marriage" in that sense. (Kyle Cupp at the League has made this point, but I'm having trouble finding the citation.) My point in all this is that for traditional marriage supporters, opposing ssm is part of a principled, but symbolic abstract debate over how we define things.
I'll add that that part of the debate is not unimportant for being "abstract" and "symbolic." We must deal in abstractions to make sense of the world, and I'll not claim symbols are devoid of any practical consequences, nor will I claim we need make an idol of the "practical" over the "symbolic." I'll also admit people who support ssm do so in part for the similar reasons supporters of traditional marriage invoke when they oppose it: state recognition of ssm confers a degree of legitimacy and acceptance for gay relationships that has heretofore been denied them. It's symbolic in that sense.
But support for ssm also invokes more immediate and material stakes. Being allowed to marry means being allowed to enter into an agreement that confers certain rights, privileges, and prerogatives under the law. Under non-ssm and non-civil union regimes, most of these rights, privileges, and prerogatives can be attained only by hiring a lawyer or hoping for free assistance from a gay friendly legal aid charity. Even with with the legal documents in place, there is less of a guarantee that certain prerogatives--such as power of attorney--will be honored by the courts if challenged. Or if they are a honored, it's possible they will be honored too late. Who wants to incur the legal expense and uncertainty of a trial after one is denied a visit to one's spouse at a hospital bed in that spouse's last hours in this world? Even with civil unions and ssm, these relationships are sometimes in question and their portability is not settled, especially with DOMA being the law of the land. But even if DOMA is repealed or invalidated by the Supreme Court, I believe it's still an open question, constitutionally speaking, whether states are allowed to refuse to recognize marriages from other states.
So, it is a policy disagreement, and it's possible for people to disagree in good faith and remain good drinking buddies at the end of the day. But it's not merely a policy debate where the stakes are whether you get an A or a B in a high school speech class. The stakes are asymmetrical. Insisting on the "but decent people can disagree" formulation denies and to some extent delegitimizes the urgency some feel when, for example, they advocate a boycott against Chick-fil-a.
And now for tolerance and ssm:
"Tolerance" is not really what the three "American Conservative" pieces I discuss claim it to be, and ssm is not really about "tolerance" anyway. One might think, reading these pieces, that tolerance means "accepting everything as within the pale for the sake of accepting things as within the pale." There are usually restraints on the notion of what "tolerance" is, somethings beyond the pale that one must not tolerate. I think most people, even or especially Mr. Dreher and Antle (or whoever wrote the teaser to his article), will refuse to accept as being beyond the pale. Invoking "tolerance" seems to be a way of forbidding all but academic disagreement.
By that standard, upon hearing that Chick-fil-a's president gives money to combat ssm, a ssm supporter ought to say to himself or herself, "It's too bad he disagrees with me, and I wish he didn't. I think I'll order the spicy chicken combo with lemonade." (For the record and per my disclaimer above, this is pretty much what I do.) Disagreement is sanitized into a debate merely about accepting people for who they are in a way that ignores some of the very material interests at stake, which I mention above.
And in the end, ssm is not only "about" tolerance. At least for ssm supporters, it's about one notion of equality under the law. Certain relationships between two adults are recognized as a matter of course, and certain relationships are forbidden or at least recognized inconsistently (by state) or incompletely (e.g., Illinois's civil union law) simply because in the former, the adults are opposite sex couples and in the latter, the adults are same sex couples.
To insist on this formulation is to beg the question. Part of what is up for debate is whether state non-recognition of ssm is indeed a denial of equality under the law. And admittedly I have a lot of trouble seeing how it's not such a denial, leading me to agree almost completely with James Hanley that there is "no good argument against same sex marriage." (My principal disagreement is that there's no good argument only if you accept certain assumptions about the powers of government, assumptions, I will add, that most people in the US, conservative, liberal, and libertarian, usually claim to accept.)
Don't get me wrong. Tolerance is pretty cool. The fact that these "American Conservative" pieces have recourse to tolerance means they're accepting tolerance in principle. And the three pieces have something of a point in that a lot of liberals look down on conservative Christians when they should take to heart that different people have different needs and histories. It's hard to stomach, for example, the sneering and, in my opinion, classist comments I hear from fellow grad students in history when the conversation turns to how "stupid" conservative Christians are; one would think from these comments that they are a separate and inferior race of people.
But we're past the days when "tolerance" was all we could hope for. We're past the days when the most loving thing non-gays were comfortable saying in public was "hate the sin, love the sinner." We're past the days when Bowers v. Hardwick was good law, when a state could enact an amendment to ban equal rights laws based on sexual orientation, and when a major network station could produce a documentary that represents homosexuality as a pathology or perversion. I desperately hope we're also past the days when lynching a man or woman because they are gay is something that is gainsaid or defended on the grounds of "gay panic."
One doesn't need to vilify one's opponents to note real and serious disagreements. But it is also true that we can't make all policy disagreements simple matters of courtesy. Nothing gets done if we do. In practice I don't honor the boycott against Chick-fil-a and in theory I have qualms about it in terms of its wisdom, its effectiveness, and its tendency to turn off potential allies. But the impetus for this boycott is not reducible to a malicious desire to destroy people who merely see things differently. It gains much of its urgency from the very immediate and very material stakes that are an inherent part of the campaign for ssm. To say it's just about "tolerance" misses the point.
*I use this term because, per Rod Dreher's usage, that seems to be how opponents of ssm prefer to think of themselves. I do this in the spirit of collegiality and decency and not because I buy into what I see are the value-laden, even question-begging, assumptions behind that phrasing.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
If it had been otherwise....
I have made no secret of the fact that I approve of Obama's health insurance reform (the ACA), nor that I am happy with the outcome of the case. But as I've repeated in what was probably already a cliche by the time I was born, the devil is indeed in the details.
Now, I look at the many efforts by the writers of the Volokh Conspiracy to consider the meaning of the decision. Almost all of them certainly dislike the result and are either surprised or upset at the ruling. The possible exception is Orin Kerr, who if I'm not mistaken opposes the law on policy grounds, but believed that it was constitutional under existing precedent, even insofar was the mandate be considered a regulation of interstate commerce and not as a tax.
It is possible to adopt a perspective of Schadenfreude. They "lost," and contributors there are struggling to find silver linings or to analyze the policy implications. Sometimes, they venture into arguments that I find unpalatable. See, for example, David Kopel's argument that Congress ought to overturn the "unconstitutional" mandate. Now, I fully admit that a law can be unconstitutional even if the Supreme Court refuses to condemn it as such, and it is fully within the prerogative of the legislative branch to change the law for any reason, including its perceived unconstitutionality. What I find unpalatable, however, is his invocation of the example of Andrew Jackson, who illegally pulled money from the Bank of the U.S. in order to "destroy" it and (not merely coincidentally, although Kopel doesn't mention this part, pay off his cronies at state-level "pet banks").
Anyone who champions the rule of law and the rule of the constitution ought to be disturbed at Jackson's easy flouting of the law, even an unconstitutional one. I admit that some unconstitutional laws might indeed deserve to be flouted or disobeyed by the president, but it is hard to argue that one that was so complex and, in some ways, such a close call as the Bank of the U.S. issue, qualifies. Would Kopel similarly champion a decision by Truman not to return the Youngstown Steel Mills, or a decision by Obama to say "fish it, I'm sending in my U.N. helicopters to imprison people indefinitely if they choose not to purchase a qualifying insurance plan"?
One might also wonder if Kopel would approve of a president who, say, agrees to use the U.S. military to violate America's treaty obligations to Cherokee Indians, even after the Supreme Court tells him not to? An person unsympathetic to Kopel's argument might be tempted to say, "John Roberts made his decision, now let Sebelius enforce it."
But most of the posts at the Volokh Conspiracy are not like that. Most of the posts reflect the intellectual curiosity and intellectual honesty that make the site such a joy to read. I'd much rather read their after-the-fact diagnoses of what happened than the gloating at "paralegals, knives, and i.o.u.'s," one post of which says simply, and I quote verbatim: "Gosh, I haven’t seen conservatives this mad at the Supreme Court since Brown v. Board of Education." Apparently, the moral gravity of the ACA is exactly comparable to a state law forcing schools to deny persons of color the same advantages enjoyed by whites.
I'm glad that's cleared up. Now I don't have to feel any trepidation that the law in its implementation might be a bad policy, or that the expansion of the federal government's prerogative might lead to a precedent I shall later find unsavory.
On the other hand, one might point out that Roberts's decision, while not based on the same reasoning or same part of the constitution, is part of the same trajectory that assures us the feds can imprison a terminally ill person for growing his own marijuana that he believes he needs as a pain reliever, even if he doesn't have mens rea intent to sell it or distribute it.
A question I have is what would the esteemed liberals at that site be writing if Roberts, as Mark Thompson at the League put it, had a bad hair day? I suspect that we would not see informed comparisons to, say, the court's invalidation of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1935. (I say "informed," because in retrospect, the temporary emergency measure that was the NIRA was, if you look into the nuts and bolts, an awful (in the bad sense) policy. And I say "awful (in the bad sense)" to mean, pretty much the exact opposite of what loominaries at that site would support. Of course, at least one of them is a historian, and he probably knows better.)
Another question I have is what would I have written? Under my "posts" tabs here at my blog, I already have a rough draft of a post excoriating Obama for not relying on the tax argument. I wrote that draft in full anticipation that the Court would strike down the law on commerce clause grounds. At the time of writing that draft, I bemoaned his and his solicitor general's apparent refusal to rely on the tax argument (I hadn't realized they kept it in reserve as a "just in case" argument...now that I've read the decision, I know better). I was going to criticize Obama for not, as he claimed in 2010, "stak[ing] his presidency on it." If he was willing to "stake his presidency" on the ACA, my reasoning went, he would have 'fessed up that it was a tax, and he had signed into law a new tax that in effect raises taxes among some people who earn less than his campaign-promised $250,000.
What else might I have written? I don't know, but I might have had some bitter, Kopel-esque moments. I would have railed against what I imagine would have been the widespread self-congratulation among some of the libertarians who opposed the law and whose arguments I found so distressingly convincing. In the lead-up to the case, I certainly wasn't adverse to engaging in ad hominem attacks against those same scholars. I imagine I would very likely have indulged my own self pity.
As a famous leader once said a while back, if something really bad happens, and it takes something even worse to remedy it, and if that remedy hurts people who in some way were responsible for that really bad thing, then it's probably overall a good thing. But we ought to also express a little bit of empathy and even love toward those who saw things differently, even if they were in the wrong, because we might not have been clearly in the right, either. I insist that as hopeful as I am about the decision, the issues at stake with the ACA are not as fundamental and astounding as what that person was referring to, and the side of the right as we're given to see it is not that clear.
But it's still good advice.
Now, I look at the many efforts by the writers of the Volokh Conspiracy to consider the meaning of the decision. Almost all of them certainly dislike the result and are either surprised or upset at the ruling. The possible exception is Orin Kerr, who if I'm not mistaken opposes the law on policy grounds, but believed that it was constitutional under existing precedent, even insofar was the mandate be considered a regulation of interstate commerce and not as a tax.
It is possible to adopt a perspective of Schadenfreude. They "lost," and contributors there are struggling to find silver linings or to analyze the policy implications. Sometimes, they venture into arguments that I find unpalatable. See, for example, David Kopel's argument that Congress ought to overturn the "unconstitutional" mandate. Now, I fully admit that a law can be unconstitutional even if the Supreme Court refuses to condemn it as such, and it is fully within the prerogative of the legislative branch to change the law for any reason, including its perceived unconstitutionality. What I find unpalatable, however, is his invocation of the example of Andrew Jackson, who illegally pulled money from the Bank of the U.S. in order to "destroy" it and (not merely coincidentally, although Kopel doesn't mention this part, pay off his cronies at state-level "pet banks").
Anyone who champions the rule of law and the rule of the constitution ought to be disturbed at Jackson's easy flouting of the law, even an unconstitutional one. I admit that some unconstitutional laws might indeed deserve to be flouted or disobeyed by the president, but it is hard to argue that one that was so complex and, in some ways, such a close call as the Bank of the U.S. issue, qualifies. Would Kopel similarly champion a decision by Truman not to return the Youngstown Steel Mills, or a decision by Obama to say "fish it, I'm sending in my U.N. helicopters to imprison people indefinitely if they choose not to purchase a qualifying insurance plan"?
One might also wonder if Kopel would approve of a president who, say, agrees to use the U.S. military to violate America's treaty obligations to Cherokee Indians, even after the Supreme Court tells him not to? An person unsympathetic to Kopel's argument might be tempted to say, "John Roberts made his decision, now let Sebelius enforce it."
But most of the posts at the Volokh Conspiracy are not like that. Most of the posts reflect the intellectual curiosity and intellectual honesty that make the site such a joy to read. I'd much rather read their after-the-fact diagnoses of what happened than the gloating at "paralegals, knives, and i.o.u.'s," one post of which says simply, and I quote verbatim: "Gosh, I haven’t seen conservatives this mad at the Supreme Court since Brown v. Board of Education." Apparently, the moral gravity of the ACA is exactly comparable to a state law forcing schools to deny persons of color the same advantages enjoyed by whites.
I'm glad that's cleared up. Now I don't have to feel any trepidation that the law in its implementation might be a bad policy, or that the expansion of the federal government's prerogative might lead to a precedent I shall later find unsavory.
On the other hand, one might point out that Roberts's decision, while not based on the same reasoning or same part of the constitution, is part of the same trajectory that assures us the feds can imprison a terminally ill person for growing his own marijuana that he believes he needs as a pain reliever, even if he doesn't have mens rea intent to sell it or distribute it.
A question I have is what would the esteemed liberals at that site be writing if Roberts, as Mark Thompson at the League put it, had a bad hair day? I suspect that we would not see informed comparisons to, say, the court's invalidation of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1935. (I say "informed," because in retrospect, the temporary emergency measure that was the NIRA was, if you look into the nuts and bolts, an awful (in the bad sense) policy. And I say "awful (in the bad sense)" to mean, pretty much the exact opposite of what loominaries at that site would support. Of course, at least one of them is a historian, and he probably knows better.)
Another question I have is what would I have written? Under my "posts" tabs here at my blog, I already have a rough draft of a post excoriating Obama for not relying on the tax argument. I wrote that draft in full anticipation that the Court would strike down the law on commerce clause grounds. At the time of writing that draft, I bemoaned his and his solicitor general's apparent refusal to rely on the tax argument (I hadn't realized they kept it in reserve as a "just in case" argument...now that I've read the decision, I know better). I was going to criticize Obama for not, as he claimed in 2010, "stak[ing] his presidency on it." If he was willing to "stake his presidency" on the ACA, my reasoning went, he would have 'fessed up that it was a tax, and he had signed into law a new tax that in effect raises taxes among some people who earn less than his campaign-promised $250,000.
What else might I have written? I don't know, but I might have had some bitter, Kopel-esque moments. I would have railed against what I imagine would have been the widespread self-congratulation among some of the libertarians who opposed the law and whose arguments I found so distressingly convincing. In the lead-up to the case, I certainly wasn't adverse to engaging in ad hominem attacks against those same scholars. I imagine I would very likely have indulged my own self pity.
As a famous leader once said a while back, if something really bad happens, and it takes something even worse to remedy it, and if that remedy hurts people who in some way were responsible for that really bad thing, then it's probably overall a good thing. But we ought to also express a little bit of empathy and even love toward those who saw things differently, even if they were in the wrong, because we might not have been clearly in the right, either. I insist that as hopeful as I am about the decision, the issues at stake with the ACA are not as fundamental and astounding as what that person was referring to, and the side of the right as we're given to see it is not that clear.
But it's still good advice.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Supreme Court says Romneycare is constitutional
It appears that almost all of the ACA is being upheld by the Court. I'm surprised, to say the least, and I'm still not sure I agree with the decision, which I haven't read yet and probably will not understand when I shall have read it. I find it hard to agree that the individual mandate is accurately described as a tax, even though I find the idea that it is a tax probably the most palatable of the possible arguments that might uphold the mandate.
However, as someone who supports the ACA, I am, of course, happy. But I must temper my happiness with a few points:
Let's hope it works out.
However, as someone who supports the ACA, I am, of course, happy. But I must temper my happiness with a few points:
- The law is still a gamble. The devil is in the details of how the act is implemented.
- For all we know, there may be unseen and unforeseen loopholes in the price controls that, I understand, are written into the bill.
- The act is not safe. It can be overturned and might be overturned.
- The act will come with real costs, and those costs won't be born only by the mythical 1%. I hope that the costs are not so much that they will overburden those least able to pay or that they will result in a huge increase in costs or shortage of doctors.
Let's hope it works out.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Why I harp so much on libertarianism
If anyone reads this blog regularly, they know I write a lot about libertarianism, and in most of those posts, I usually hasten to say that I am not a libertarian and explain why. Why, then, do I write so much about it, spending precious time that I could devote to writing my dissertation? I can think of at least two reasons.
First, I have a certain vision of how I'd like the world to be, a certain vision of what laws I'd like to see passed and of how people should treat each other and of how the state should influence how people treat each other. This vision is not particularly coherent, nor is it all that unusual. For example, I support gay marriage, I support universal health care provision, I support a robust social welfare system, I support an alert, but cautious role for the US in international relations (i.e., I don't like military intervention but am not fully convinced its always wrong), I support some forms of what I understand to be affirmative action, I support in principle a tax system in which the more affluent pay a greater share of their income, I support the end or sharp curtailment of the "war" on drugs, I'm coming around to supporting an open-borders immigration policy, and I support robust government coordination of the free market system (I'm purposefully avoiding the term "centralized planning" because that's not what I support).
But to be realized much (not all) of my vision would demand a certain intervention by the state, or something similar to a state. And libertarianism provides the best critique of this vision. And if I want to justify this vision, I find that overcoming, or at least addressing, this critique is essential. In other words libertarianism, with its emphasis on individual "liberty" (variously and, in my opinion, often poorly defined), is a check on the authoritarian implications of my vision.
On some issues (the "war" on drugs, gay marriage), my vision is more or less compatible from the get-go with the received libertarian position (acknowledging that there is no one "received libertarian position"). On other issues--immigration policy, for example--I have been drawn more or less to the libertarian position, even if I strongly object to some of the arguments that are advanced in favor of that position. (I really do think an "open-borders" policy is the most humane, and I support such a policy on the basis of what is humane, but I reject the frequent and sloganeering trope of "people just don't want to do the jobs immigrants do," which to my mind is mostly a way of rejecting out of hand many good-faith (if ultimately faulty) objections to open immigration.)
On still other issues, libertarian critiques have informed the way and degree to which I support certain policies. In principle, I have no problem with compelling the more affluent to pay a higher income tax rate. In practice, I realize one has to worry about the effects of a robust system of progressive taxation. It's partly an issue of how much revenue is actually increased and how a tax structure may create or dismantle incentives to invest in the economy. It's also partly an issue of fairness. To the libertarian critique that income inequality is not necessarily so unfair that it demands government intervention, I am compelled to claim that the more affluent simply owe something to society in which they have benefited so much, which is a good assertion as far as it goes, but only if one already accepts the existence of an abstraction called "society" to which one can owe obligations.
Second, I'm already a strong believer in "individual liberty," even if I don't know what exactly I mean by "individual liberty" and even if I probably means something different from what libertarians mean by it. Therefore my "vision" is largely congruent with what libertarians claim to want, even if I get to very different conclusions. It is for that reason, for example, that I support measures for universal health care provision: I believe that having a dependable and affordable access to health care helps make people "freer" because the cost of health care is thereby one less thing to worry about. In practice, there are plenty of caveats and qualifications. To wit a few: most libertarians would like everybody to have access to affordable health care, too, even if they would have a different way of ensuring that access; there will always be a cost to any system of health care that can't simply be legislated away; the particular health care reform I support now (the ACA), may very well make things worse if it's implemented poorly and is not improved upon (assuming, of course, that the Supreme Court doesn't strike it down), and the shaky constitutional grounds on which it's predicated might very well serve as a bad precedent.
In other words, in some ways I am already a libertarian and in other ways, libertarianism offers the best critique and best check against my own policy preferences. It is, in this sense, a sort of ideological conscience that reminds me I may not have yet found the true and only heaven.
First, I have a certain vision of how I'd like the world to be, a certain vision of what laws I'd like to see passed and of how people should treat each other and of how the state should influence how people treat each other. This vision is not particularly coherent, nor is it all that unusual. For example, I support gay marriage, I support universal health care provision, I support a robust social welfare system, I support an alert, but cautious role for the US in international relations (i.e., I don't like military intervention but am not fully convinced its always wrong), I support some forms of what I understand to be affirmative action, I support in principle a tax system in which the more affluent pay a greater share of their income, I support the end or sharp curtailment of the "war" on drugs, I'm coming around to supporting an open-borders immigration policy, and I support robust government coordination of the free market system (I'm purposefully avoiding the term "centralized planning" because that's not what I support).
But to be realized much (not all) of my vision would demand a certain intervention by the state, or something similar to a state. And libertarianism provides the best critique of this vision. And if I want to justify this vision, I find that overcoming, or at least addressing, this critique is essential. In other words libertarianism, with its emphasis on individual "liberty" (variously and, in my opinion, often poorly defined), is a check on the authoritarian implications of my vision.
On some issues (the "war" on drugs, gay marriage), my vision is more or less compatible from the get-go with the received libertarian position (acknowledging that there is no one "received libertarian position"). On other issues--immigration policy, for example--I have been drawn more or less to the libertarian position, even if I strongly object to some of the arguments that are advanced in favor of that position. (I really do think an "open-borders" policy is the most humane, and I support such a policy on the basis of what is humane, but I reject the frequent and sloganeering trope of "people just don't want to do the jobs immigrants do," which to my mind is mostly a way of rejecting out of hand many good-faith (if ultimately faulty) objections to open immigration.)
On still other issues, libertarian critiques have informed the way and degree to which I support certain policies. In principle, I have no problem with compelling the more affluent to pay a higher income tax rate. In practice, I realize one has to worry about the effects of a robust system of progressive taxation. It's partly an issue of how much revenue is actually increased and how a tax structure may create or dismantle incentives to invest in the economy. It's also partly an issue of fairness. To the libertarian critique that income inequality is not necessarily so unfair that it demands government intervention, I am compelled to claim that the more affluent simply owe something to society in which they have benefited so much, which is a good assertion as far as it goes, but only if one already accepts the existence of an abstraction called "society" to which one can owe obligations.
Second, I'm already a strong believer in "individual liberty," even if I don't know what exactly I mean by "individual liberty" and even if I probably means something different from what libertarians mean by it. Therefore my "vision" is largely congruent with what libertarians claim to want, even if I get to very different conclusions. It is for that reason, for example, that I support measures for universal health care provision: I believe that having a dependable and affordable access to health care helps make people "freer" because the cost of health care is thereby one less thing to worry about. In practice, there are plenty of caveats and qualifications. To wit a few: most libertarians would like everybody to have access to affordable health care, too, even if they would have a different way of ensuring that access; there will always be a cost to any system of health care that can't simply be legislated away; the particular health care reform I support now (the ACA), may very well make things worse if it's implemented poorly and is not improved upon (assuming, of course, that the Supreme Court doesn't strike it down), and the shaky constitutional grounds on which it's predicated might very well serve as a bad precedent.
In other words, in some ways I am already a libertarian and in other ways, libertarianism offers the best critique and best check against my own policy preferences. It is, in this sense, a sort of ideological conscience that reminds me I may not have yet found the true and only heaven.
Monday, May 7, 2012
First, do no not strut
In one of the less believable episodes of the "West Wing," a candidate for Secretary of Education is pretty much disqualified because she had been a publicity hound in her former post as a board of education director in some district. In the name of "separation of church and state," she as director apparently had several teenagers arrested for forming a prayer group on school grounds. Not only did she have them arrested, she made sure news cameras were on the scene to photograph her coming in to bust a prayer group.
Now, it's entirely believable that a school board director would forbid a prayer group at a public school because that's one plausible way of interpreting the injunction against the state recognizing or endorsing religion (assuming we leave aside that no school director, to my knowledge, actually forbids prayer itself). It's much less believable that a school board director would have such students arrested. It's even less believable to imagine that the director would be so proud of the accomplishment as to ensure the widest possible publicity. Most school directors who I am aware of, if they didn't find some sort of compromise to permit the prayer group, would state that banning them was something required by the constitution and would probably add the words "it is regrettable that I have to take this step...." As the chief of staff on the show, Leo McGeary tells the candidate, "these laws need to be enforced and it's good that they're enforced. But we do not strut ever..."
Leo sums up my feelings pretty well about the disgusting internet commercial the Obama administration has put online about his decision to order the killing of Osama bin-Laden. A version of it is here, if you want to see it. The gist of it is that Obama is a man of courage who made the tough call to kill somebody. As Bill Clinton says in the video, if the Navy SEALsin the mission had been killed or captured, it would have been really bad for Obama. The commercial also takes something presumptive Republican candidate Mitt Romney supposedly said in 2007 or so that implied the US was spending too much effort trying to capture bin-Laden. The commercial implies from this statement that Romney is weak and wouldn't have made the "courageous decision" to order the killing of someone.
Some criticism has been leveled at this commercial for Clinton's statement that if something had happened to the SEALs, things would have been bad for Obama without really pointing out that it would have been worse for the SEALs. One might in fact make the same criticism of Obama's recent state of the union address, where he discusses how "we"--he and his administration and the military--worked together to kill the terrorist.
That criticism is just. I won't focus on it other than to say that the stakes for Obama were much lesser than those for the SEALs. At worst, his ratings would have gone down in the polls, been seen as ineffective or even reckless (Clinton in fact hints at this, albeit unwittingly, when he suggests that Obama made the decision on imperfect intelligence about the compound in which Osama bin-Laden was hiding). I suspect that even this outcome would not have been bad for Obama: for all we know Obama and his predecessor ordered similar attacks in Afghanistan that failed and came up fruitless, and the resulting casualties attributed to some military operation. Obviously, a similar operation in Pakistan borders was perhaps more (politically) gutsy. But a failure, I hazard, would have been written off, if reported at all, as an "attempt to protect the Pakistani people from a suspected terrorist compound."
But I want to focus instead on the commercial's unabashed celebration--its rejoicing--of killing someone. The same man whose image looking out into the future in a message of hope is now the man who has taken the brave action and with the military is making us safer in our war against Eurasia or Eastasia I forget which. They are both essentially the same image, one benevolent and one triumphant, our hero-in-chief to whom we owe loyalty. Or maybe we owe loyalty to the state, or maybe he is the state, I'm not sure it matters. His opponent--assuming he actually made the statement attributed to him and assuming the statement isn't taken out of context--wasn't speaking about the proper allocation of limited resources, but is weak because he would not have ordered the killing.
Democrats, or at least the leadership of the party, respond to criticisms about the ad with what is essentially a tu quoque: the Republicans would do it, too, and they have done it. Apparently, if one person does something, it's bad. If two or more do it, it's less bad. If at least one of the two is from an opposing political party, it's good.
It's not only tu quoque's, however. Look at Senator Dick Durbin's statement on the ad [click here, his statement is at around the 10 minute mark]: "Do you know how many elections Democrats have been on the defensive when it comes to national security?....whether we're tough enough to keep America safe?" It seems to me the Democrats are still on the defensive: if you have to respond to criticisms with "we've been on the defensive" for too long, then you're still on the defensive.
The era of the polite Democrats is over: they can now give tit-for-tat what the Republicans give: no more a victim of FOX news and Karl Rove: they can start wars and order killings like the best of them. Not that they didn't do so before, but never mind.
A few months ago--I don't have the link--Jason Kuznicki at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen criticized Obama's use of militaristic language in the state of the union. He said that the language was "the very essence of fascism." I thought that was laying it on a bit thick. That's what I thought then.
Look, Obama had limited options. If I were president, I might very well have ordered the killing or regretted not doing so. That's what presidents do. It was the best to be done in a series of bad things that had to be done to address a chain of events caused by the person who had to be killed. I get it.
But I would hope that I could keep enough of my humanity to say that it's regrettable that it has come to this, to say that given the circumstances, there was nothing else to do but take this human life.
Now, it's entirely believable that a school board director would forbid a prayer group at a public school because that's one plausible way of interpreting the injunction against the state recognizing or endorsing religion (assuming we leave aside that no school director, to my knowledge, actually forbids prayer itself). It's much less believable that a school board director would have such students arrested. It's even less believable to imagine that the director would be so proud of the accomplishment as to ensure the widest possible publicity. Most school directors who I am aware of, if they didn't find some sort of compromise to permit the prayer group, would state that banning them was something required by the constitution and would probably add the words "it is regrettable that I have to take this step...." As the chief of staff on the show, Leo McGeary tells the candidate, "these laws need to be enforced and it's good that they're enforced. But we do not strut ever..."
Leo sums up my feelings pretty well about the disgusting internet commercial the Obama administration has put online about his decision to order the killing of Osama bin-Laden. A version of it is here, if you want to see it. The gist of it is that Obama is a man of courage who made the tough call to kill somebody. As Bill Clinton says in the video, if the Navy SEALsin the mission had been killed or captured, it would have been really bad for Obama. The commercial also takes something presumptive Republican candidate Mitt Romney supposedly said in 2007 or so that implied the US was spending too much effort trying to capture bin-Laden. The commercial implies from this statement that Romney is weak and wouldn't have made the "courageous decision" to order the killing of someone.
Some criticism has been leveled at this commercial for Clinton's statement that if something had happened to the SEALs, things would have been bad for Obama without really pointing out that it would have been worse for the SEALs. One might in fact make the same criticism of Obama's recent state of the union address, where he discusses how "we"--he and his administration and the military--worked together to kill the terrorist.
That criticism is just. I won't focus on it other than to say that the stakes for Obama were much lesser than those for the SEALs. At worst, his ratings would have gone down in the polls, been seen as ineffective or even reckless (Clinton in fact hints at this, albeit unwittingly, when he suggests that Obama made the decision on imperfect intelligence about the compound in which Osama bin-Laden was hiding). I suspect that even this outcome would not have been bad for Obama: for all we know Obama and his predecessor ordered similar attacks in Afghanistan that failed and came up fruitless, and the resulting casualties attributed to some military operation. Obviously, a similar operation in Pakistan borders was perhaps more (politically) gutsy. But a failure, I hazard, would have been written off, if reported at all, as an "attempt to protect the Pakistani people from a suspected terrorist compound."
But I want to focus instead on the commercial's unabashed celebration--its rejoicing--of killing someone. The same man whose image looking out into the future in a message of hope is now the man who has taken the brave action and with the military is making us safer in our war against Eurasia or Eastasia I forget which. They are both essentially the same image, one benevolent and one triumphant, our hero-in-chief to whom we owe loyalty. Or maybe we owe loyalty to the state, or maybe he is the state, I'm not sure it matters. His opponent--assuming he actually made the statement attributed to him and assuming the statement isn't taken out of context--wasn't speaking about the proper allocation of limited resources, but is weak because he would not have ordered the killing.
Democrats, or at least the leadership of the party, respond to criticisms about the ad with what is essentially a tu quoque: the Republicans would do it, too, and they have done it. Apparently, if one person does something, it's bad. If two or more do it, it's less bad. If at least one of the two is from an opposing political party, it's good.
It's not only tu quoque's, however. Look at Senator Dick Durbin's statement on the ad [click here, his statement is at around the 10 minute mark]: "Do you know how many elections Democrats have been on the defensive when it comes to national security?....whether we're tough enough to keep America safe?" It seems to me the Democrats are still on the defensive: if you have to respond to criticisms with "we've been on the defensive" for too long, then you're still on the defensive.
The era of the polite Democrats is over: they can now give tit-for-tat what the Republicans give: no more a victim of FOX news and Karl Rove: they can start wars and order killings like the best of them. Not that they didn't do so before, but never mind.
A few months ago--I don't have the link--Jason Kuznicki at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen criticized Obama's use of militaristic language in the state of the union. He said that the language was "the very essence of fascism." I thought that was laying it on a bit thick. That's what I thought then.
Look, Obama had limited options. If I were president, I might very well have ordered the killing or regretted not doing so. That's what presidents do. It was the best to be done in a series of bad things that had to be done to address a chain of events caused by the person who had to be killed. I get it.
But I would hope that I could keep enough of my humanity to say that it's regrettable that it has come to this, to say that given the circumstances, there was nothing else to do but take this human life.
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