Two guests on NPR’s “Fresh Air” review how modern conservatism puts ideology over practicality, both in foreign relations, and in domestic fiscal management, with disastrous consequences. The first linked interviewee, Peter Scoblic, reviews how Reagan’s ideology-based refusal to compromise & need to demonize the USSR, contrary to the popular myth that Reagan “ended” the Cold War, actually pushed the nations closer to nuclear war. Sometimes, the fact is that diplomacy is the best option, as the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated, as second-term Reagan recognized, and as Bush is being forced to acknowledge. So much for all that tough-talk about not negotiating without preconditions: another Obama foreign policy victory.
If you listen to Libertarian presidential candidate and ex-congressman Bob Barr speak – a course of action that I don’t always recommend, especially for expectant mothers & individuals with compromised immune systems – you’ll hear that he honestly expects to win. However, he’s also managed to erect another barrier to that triumph, by dredging up another opponent in the race for the White House, one who stands diametrically opposed to almost everything he stands for: not Barack Obama, not John McCain, and not Ralph Nader. This new opponent is none other than past-Bob Barr.
After receiving the proper inoculations, take a listen to Bob Barr on NPR’s Talk of the Nation (my latest substitute for the Bryant Park Project, R.I.P.), and pay particular attention to his discussion of gay marriage and marijuana, where Bob Barr, repentant theo-conservative Republican, states that, should a state recognize gay marriage or decriminalize medicinal marijuana, “that ought to be respected by the other states and the federal government.”
Barr states this position as if it’s relatively non-controversial, but in fact, at least where same-sex marriage is concerned, Barr 2008 goes beyond McCain’s stated position – i.e., let states do what they want, but end it there – and seemingly goes against Barr 1996, the man who passed the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DoMA) to ensure that, should a state legalize gay marriage, neither the other states nor the federal government need respect the decision.
Warning: constitutional detour ahead:
The thing about marriage is that it is a right that exists “among” the states: if you’re married or divorced in Florida, you’re married or divorced in New York. Marriage is given nationwide effect by the federal government, through the Constitution’s Full Faith & Credit Clause (FFCC), which ensures that a citizen’s state law status-based rights translate across state boundaries, and entrusts Congress with the duty of determining the “manner” and “effect” by which the rights translate. DoMA takes the discretion the FFCC gives Congress to define the manner & method of translation, and reads it to allow Congress to simply deny full faith & credit to same-sex marriages. This reading goes more than a little against the plain meaning of the FFCC – the FFCC is meant to let Congress decide how to do something, not whether or not to do something – but effectively means that “same-sex marriage” under DoMA is a state-by-state issue, and a location-based relationship without federal meaning. Under Barr 1996′s DoMA, no state need respect another’s same-sex marriages.
End detour.
For Barr to say that the states and the federal government ought to “respect,” then, and not merely “tolerate” other states’ same-sex marriages, means that he’s abandoning the legal hodgepodge DoMA created, a position that represents a significant departure from the mainstream conservative position on gay marriage (oppose & contain). This position even places him at odds with McCain’s gay marriage stance (“states’ rights”), which ignores the federal aspect of marriage and would leave the DoMA marriage regime undisturbed. While I applaud Barr’s tacit leftward turn, I can’t help but think that it’s more about expedience than either a deep-seated belief in the rightness of gay marriage, or a true concern for the incoherence his DoMA created. Oh what a tangled web we weave…
But don’t worry. If you, like me, are baffled by Barr’s sudden coherence & sense-making, just wait for the end of the interview, where he refers to taxes as the government’s theft of your money, “by threat of force.” Not since Steven Colbert described pet ownership (“Animals are crapping in our houses! Did we lose a war?!?”) have I heard something so innocuous described so maliciously. There’s the Barr I remember.
After a relentless week of mocking Barack Obama for suggesting the controversial idea that car maintenance might help cut down on energy waste, and mischaracterizing Obama’s energy policy by implying that it starts and ends with conservation, McCain appears to be winding down. While there’s some personal delight to take in McCain spending precious resources to deride Obama for a position he himself later adopts, it’s somewhat tempered by the fact that McCain has yet to take much of a hit for his brand of dirty politics, even when he backtracks on his lies. Perhaps it’s coming.
Site contributor Matt writes on the importance and frequent overuse of metaphors, especially in election season, and the Huffington Post catches McCain in an embarrassing misstep, in which he mentions that he almost asked his wife to sign up for a beauty pageant… without realizing that this town’s “beauty pageant” is essentially a wet t-shirt contest coupled with other hardcore… things. Of course, we get a little worked up when Obama bumps his wife’s fist with his own, but when McCain puts his (wife’s) foot in his mouth…
