Archive for May 18, 2008

Contra Human Events (#2)

Update: I’ve since had the opportunity to read some of the comments to the Human Events article.  Look in the early 800s, and you’ll see such gems as people equating the legalization of  gay marriage with “tyranny” and equivalent to loss of free speech & free exercise rights.

Really?

Have we forgotten what tyranny is?  Can we no longer even imagine what it’s like to be a minority?  Have we come to imagine that the Constitution institutionalizes white male fundamentalist Christianity, such that every deviation there from is a constitutional injury?  Really?

This little discovery is reason #34,058 of 135,593,235 that Constitutional Law should be a required high school course.

Contra Human Events (#1)

To paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than “Human Events,” a website which gains its conservative street cred by mixing ads depicting lusty women wearing conservative-themed t-shirts (“buy more guns!”) with hate-filled xenophobic action group banners (see right). Get the message? According to “Human Events,” all immigrants are disease bags. And it’s downhill from there, folks.

Anyways, they recently posted an article critiquing the California Supreme Court’s decision to mandate gay marriage. The problem? The article is all vitriol – “they’re going to destroy America!” – no substance. An excerpt:

It’s time to hold accountable those lawmakers who have opened the door for this court ruling by trying to appease homosexual rights activists with laws that allow civil unions. You cannot have peace at any price with those who seek to conquer and vanquish our values.

The problem with anti-gay rights rhetoric is that there’s no reason behind the arguments, other than “majority values,” for gay men and women to not receive equal rights. Try an experiment. In the above quote, substitute “desegregation” for “homosexual rights,” and “black-white equality” with “civil unions.” The point is, you can justify anything by appealing to “our values” and “tradition.” But that’s not enough in a democracy. The majority may not mindlessly oppress the minority. That’s why we have a constitution. “We want blacks segregated, look, we have a majority,” was not enough, and nor is it enough now to oppress gay men and women without cause.

If anyone out there has a reason that gay marriage is so dangerous, let’s hear it, and cut out the doom-and-gloom culture war rhetoric. Cut the slippery slope crap, too, while you’re at it. No-one’s going to force you to marry your toaster, and if you can’t see the difference between gay marriage and polygamy, maybe you shouldn’t be writing in the first place.

Oops

People on the left, like myself, often argue that fundamentalist religion is at its base irrational. After all, it’s pretty hard to read things like this and this without cracking a smile.

What’s odd, though is that conservative web-pundits have started to turn the tables, arguing that certain liberal beliefs are “like a religion.” Inter alia, they think that evolution (which they call “evolutionism”) is a religion. So is anti-Americanism, apparently. Oddly enough, I didn’t realize that either of these was a “liberal value.” I guess I didn’t get the memo. Moving on, though:

This tactic is hilarious in that it “proves too much.” The conservative pundits hope that, by equating certain liberal tenets with religion, they’ll prove how irrational those “beliefs” are. Of course, to make that syllogism work, the conservative pundits have to concede that religion is, by nature, irrational: “I may be irrational, but so are you!” It’s the rhetorical equivalent of “it takes one to know one,” and smacks of polemic (and hilarity) rather than real debate.

Also, if the conservative pundits are impliedly arguing that religion implies irrationality, they’re going farther than most of us on the left are willing to go.

Democracy in America: Conservatives and the Death of Meaningful Patriotism

We live in a society where it’s more patriotic to wear a flag-shaped lapel pin than it is to question why soldiers are being sent to die in a poorly-planned war. Under the Bush administration, patriotism came to mean unflinchingly following one’s leaders, and committing oneself to a narrow, fundamentalist Christian view of America’s future. To suggest another path – or question the administration’s adherence to constitutional values – became treasonous. In short, patriotism became shallow and meaningless, symbolized by the huge importance attached to jacket trinkets. How did this happen? I blame the co-opting and redefinition of American conservatism, and the loss of our nation’s progressive bearings in the process. To recover from this tragic loss of meaningful patriotism, we need a president who articulates a vision of America that restores a commitment to progress, rather than one who instead wants to return America to an imaginary idyllic past.

All this is to say, “Go left, my son, and grow up with the country.”

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