Sarah Palin

Radicalizing on the Right: Collective Bargaining, as an Antitrust Violation?

Elections have consequences, we say. But exactly what consequences? To listen to the right’s increasingly radical agenda, from repealing birthright citizenship to dictating spending cuts based exclusively on hot-button social issues, you’d think no Democrat had ever won elected office, or none ever would again. Can a “historic” midterm election wipe away a decidedly more historic presidential election, even as it becomes increasingly clear that Republicans have failed to win the public’s trust, and that Democrats will retain the White House in 2012?

The Wall Street Journal thinks so, as they take aim unions, not specifically, but generally, characterizing them as a restraint on trade tantamount to a monopoly. This conclusion, while not without some superficial appeal, Congress expressly rejected in the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, a gloss on the earlier Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, not as a concession to the power of the unions — which, remember, had almost no power, after 1890! — but as a recognition of the real goal of the Sherman Act. Antitrust law clearly concerns itself not with the general problem of aggregate action, but aggregate action as it impacts customers and capitalist theory by undermining the proper functioning of the free market. Union activity does not come within that prohibition or that theory, rightly understood.

But let’s step back and appreciate the, for lack of a better word, balls on Murdoch’s Journal (mixed, as always, with hilarious hackery). They’re not hitting back at Wisconsin unions, or the Wisconsin problem, or public employee unions, or even unions generally (I revise my above commentary). They’re striking at the core of collective bargaining theory. Absent the Clayton Act’s exemption, collective bargaining — boycotts, picketing, strikes — becomes illegal. Modern conservatism would consign us again to the abyss of pre-1900 “free markets,” robber barons, Hessian strikebreakers, filled milk, all in the name of some warped conception of liberty. And this continues unless we stop it in 2012.

Grim omens aside, enjoy this Simpsons clip of Burns-brand strikebreakers (hulu).

Why Creationism Matters

As of this writing, only one of the Republican frontrunners for the presidential nomination – Mitt Romney — is not a creationist. Granted, the 2012 Republican field is currently limited to just the usual suspects (2008 also-rans like Mike Huckabee), Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin, but still, something to consider.

Against this background, HotAir attempts to argue, by necessity we assume, that a decent understanding of science is not necessary for high office. But the article misses the point (especially when comparing the Bible’s historical authority to its scientific authority… wow.). It’s not that religion and science can’t co-exist (they can). Or that we should care about how our candidates moderate that conflict which exists between the two disciplines. But we should care that they try, and those creationists that populate the Republican field are not that thoughtful type. Rather, they’re the type to reject not just abiogenesis-leading-to-evolution as an explanation for the origins of life, but even the idea of a watchmaker God, who sets up the world’s processes, including natural selection, and then lets the processes run as designed. This idea, theistic evolution, is vastly different from intelligent design, and a harmless way to acknowledge the agency of a god, while engaging fully in, and crediting, the scientific process. This, the front-runners won’t do.

The point isn’t that Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich, etc., etc., selected poorly among available theories, or that their personal beliefs should matter. It’s that arguing for the teaching of creationism can be explained by only two things: a complete misunderstanding of the scientific method, and its importance to the modern world, or shameless pandering. Both render them unfit for national office.

Two Vignettes on Abortion: Minimizing Dredd Scott, Moral Doubt, and Moderation

With apologies for delayed posting…

It should come as no surprise that I’m not a particular fan of Rick Santorum (R-Nothing), one of the first and worst offenders of the nastiest era of the latest culture wars. Here’s Santorum’s latest spin on abortion:

The question is, and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — “is that [a fetus] human life a person under the Constitution?”

And Barack Obama says no. Well, if that human life is not a person, then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say “now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.”

The reference is to Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), the Supreme Court decision that, in no small part, ignited the Civil War by not just returning a runaway slave to his master, but speaking of the slave, Mr. Scott, as a chattel, rather than an independent human being. The operative conclusion — that Mr. Scott was “a being[] of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that [he] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect” [no citation] — compelled the dismissal of Mr. Scott’s suit, because, simply put, property cannot sue.

Reading it today, the decision should still feel like a punch in the gut. The Court not only ended a man’s independent life, but did so in the most offensive, painful, and consequential way possible. This is the great wrong that Santorum compares to abortion.

We can note the superficial similarity. Scott denied agency, autonomy, and humanity to a person; similarly, Roe denies humanity to a specific organism. But here the similarities end. To posit that a fetus sits in the same seat as Dred Scott is to imbue the fetus with the individual will, and hope of better life, that made Scott’s case so painful. It’s also to assume one’s conclusion. If a fetus could cry out and say, “free me!”, or possess the consciousness to hold that desire, none would deny it its life and its freedom. But you can’t assume free will and cognition of what is, in some cases, a bundle of cells. Santorum’s comparison is inflammatory, sure, but that’s nothing new. It’s also legally wrong, and elides the more complex and necessary question: when can the state express an interest in future life?

Speaking of complexity, an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal attempts a criticism of Palin’s feminist critics, by ignoring the same. James Taranto:

To the extent that “feminism” remains controversial, it is because of the position it takes on abortion: not just that a woman should have the “right to choose,” but that this is a matter over which reasonable people cannot disagree–that to favor any limitations on the right to abortion, or even to acknowledge that abortion is morally problematic, is to deny the basic dignity of women.

To a woman who has internalized this point of view, Sarah Palin’s opposition to abortion rights is a personal affront, and a deep one. It doesn’t help that Palin lives by her beliefs. To the contrary, it intensifies the offense.

Emphasis mine. It’s very easy to criticize feminists as absolutists, but that doesn’t change the fact that the majority, the voices that matter as opposed to Catherine MacKinnon, are not. No-one imagines abortion is devoid of moral dimensions, and no-one (of importance) insists on unfettered abortion rights, especially because, to secure unfettered abortion rights, one would have to overturn Roe, but in the opposite direction. On the other hand, Sarah Palin is precisely that absolutist, but in the opposite direction. Her stated views on abortion are that it is net-immoral, and ought to be illegal. In all cases. All of them.

This is a minimization of the complex moral questions that real people ask of themselves before even considering an abortion, and the very reason that the abortion issue is deadlocked in this country. In fact, avowed feminists — like President Obama, with his exhortation that the two sides find common ground on minimizing the need for abortions — are the only parties attempting a compromise. Why?

Thesis for the Week

From the President’s address:

The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives – to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud. It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations.

Leadership, as distinguished from playground antics. This is all that I’ve been saying, and it’s not surprising that the President did a better job of it. We shouldn’t need an excuse to build a productive dialogue, but as unity often comes from tragedy, we should take this one, if we can.

Update: comparable to Jed Bartlet’s speech from the season 4 premiere of The West Wing. 10.3 metric Bartlets?

More than any time in recent history America’s destiny is not of our own choosing. We did not seek nor did we provoke an assault on our freedoms and our way of life. We did not expect nor did we invite a confrontation with evil. Yet the true measure of a people’s strength is how they rise to master that moment when it does arrive. Forty-four people were killed a couple hours ago at Kennison State University; three swimmers from the men’s team were killed and two others are in critical condition when after having heard the explosion from their practice facility they ran into the fire to help get people out… ran into the fire. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight. They’re our students and our teachers and our parents and our friends. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we’re reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars.

The GOP’s Greatest Hits, 2008-2010

Representative Dingell (D-Mich.) reads:

Remember, these aren’t people on the street, bored campaign workers, or “lone wolves.” They’re elected representatives or candidates, in each case, acting with the imprimatur of the authority of the conservative movement.

The Roots of Republican Extremism

Conservative spokespersons nationwide, including Sarah Palin, continue to miss the point of the larger, and now necessary debate on today’s powderkeg political environment. And that is simply this, as written a few days ago (with some modification):

In a world where a congresswoman, a federal judge, and a nine year old can wake up one morning, and only one of them survive the day, a rhetoric built on dehumanizing and threatening political opponents is unacceptable, and now is a perfect time to say so.

The half-term governor asks us when if ever political debate was more temperate. Such questions are irrelevant, because as Americans, we are not limited by our past. If our past were equally extreme, it would still be necessary to outgrow it. But there is no unbroken succession of tolerated incivility from Preston Brooks to Sharron Angle. For a reminder of when things changed, take the account of David Brock, who remembers it before, and after, in Act II of this episode of This American Life.

Brock hits on two late-twentieth century game-changers. Newt Gingrich in 1988:

The left at its core understands in a way Grant understood after Shiloh that this is a civil war, that only one side will prevail, and that the other side will be relegated to history. This war has to be fought with the scale and duration and savagery that is only true of civil wars.

And Rich Bond tothe 1992 Republican Convention in Houston:

We are America. Those other people are not.

And now Sarah Palin. Equating attacks on her extremism with “blood libel.”

If we’ve become accustomed to a political discourse where some of us are Americans, and the others are not; where politics must be conducted with a “total war” mentality that would make Napoleon blush; and where despite an actual assassination attempt, we write off assassination threats as nothing more than a major party’s attempt to energize the base; then we have a problem, and if it exists in our past, it also exists in our present, and needn’t in our future.

I acknowledge that moderate Republicans will have trouble with this debate. After all, the fault is not theirs, and one may fairly bristle at the implication of guilt by association, even where it is expressly disclaimed. But the solution to that fear — and the path of true leadership — is prompt action. And delay is complicity.

Moderation on All Sides

The Huffington Post made the right decision today, pulling a front-page story titled, “If Palin Lived In Pakistan, Could She Face a Drone Strike?” (Note the deletion here.)

Good. Will we see similar restraint from the right? Signs point to no.

Assigning Blame: Footsoldiers and Generals of Extremism

It’s like clockwork. Every time some tragedy occurs, the finger-pointing begins. But this time, there’s a chance for real change, and we should take it, and avoid distractions along the way.

Following Saturday’s shooting in Arizona, the debate has settled (as it should) not on assigning blame for the actual shooting, but on the political climate that makes this tragedy not an unexpected disaster, but something for which many of us have been, well, holding our breath.

The blame for that climate unequivocally lies on one side of the political spectrum. The right. Not all of you guys. No, certainly not, and I mean that earnestly. But visible elements of the conservative movement have cultivated, and shown no real interest in restraining or atoning for, a very real and growing extremist movement, one that’s in constant danger of co-opting, or at least subsuming, the mainstream conservative message. Yesterday, we noted a few of the more egregious examples (e.g., Bachmann’s “Second Amendment remedies”), but Glenn Beck’s conversation with Sarah Palin, described yesterday, makes the point:

Sarah, as you know, peace is always the answer. I know you are feeling the same heat, if not much more on this. I want you to know you have my support. But please look into protection for your family. An attempt on you could bring the republic down.

This dramatizing of politics, suffusing each moment with some millennial importance, matched with concomitant warnings of and exhortations to violence, is dangerous. At the least, it is irresponsible. And now is precisely the time to say so.

There’s no real answer to this account. At least, in its frenzied, over-reactive defense, the right has made none, choosing to deflect blame by making a story out of whatever tacky thing Markos Moulitsas says, and assembling every out of line tweet, blog post, and campaign sign by every Democratic-leaning operative since 2000 (this task, as always, dutifully discharged by Michelle Malkin [no link]) to give the illusion that incivility is equally balanced.

But none of this meets our central thesis. Neither a Code Pink protester (nor your run-of-the-mill tea partier, for that matter) is the equivalent of a sitting congresswoman, a former vice presidential candidate, and the first-through-third most listened to talk radio hosts in the nation. Grassroots extremism is one thing, and no-one can be called to task for it. Coordinated top-down demagoguery, built to derail the national discourse and supplant it with conspiracy theories, distortions, hysteria, and threats, is quite another. Who can look at a “BUSH = HITLER” sign, then at Sarah Palin claiming Barack Obama will kill her baby, and expect them to have equal effects on public discourse? This is a farce.

We need to have a serious discussion about political morality in this country. If this tragedy provides the opening, then at least something good will have come from it. But by actively hindering a necessary, cathartic discourse, Republicans and conservatives alike will do nothing but ensure that the next time tragedy strikes, they may not be as easily able to avoid direct blame. At the least, they’ll forfeit whatever seriousness and moral authority the movement ever had.

A Farewell to Arms: End Violent Political Rhetoric Now

Update: Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan agree with the thesis of this post, that it’s time for politicos like Palin and Bachmann to apologize for their complicity in creating a hateful climate.

After Saturday’s attempted assassination of a Democratic congresswoman — and the tragic loss of six other lives — we learned, fairly quickly, that Sarah Palin had “targeted” the shooter’s intended victim, Gabriel Gifford, by putting a crosshair over her district in a midterm mailer. The retrospectively tacky decision sent Republicans and conservatives into a frenzy of spin control, with surrogates emphasizing that the Republican use of gun-related words is so frequent as to be innocuous; that madness knows no ideology; and that guns aren’t dangerous, even though one was just used to kill six people.

All of the above is surely true. Well, at least the first two points are. And neither Sarah Palin nor Glenn Beck nor the tea party, nor anyone in particular save the shooter, can be blamed directly or indirectly for this hateful act. But the fact remains that it’s so easy to reflexively blame political violence on the right because, regardless of any causation analysis of this incident, we all know that influential members of the party opposite have, over the past two years, worked hard to build a climate of extremism and violence, and that, if someone finally took it all to heart, well, we wouldn’t be too surprised.

Let’s recap the past two years. Michele Bachmann  regularly implied a need for armed revolt, to refresh the tree of liberty with the “blood of patriots.” Sharron Angle touted the need for “Second Amendment remedies” to Obama administration policies. Rick Perry regularly threatened to secede (although with characteristic grace, Fox News noted that he “probably won’t”). A less recognizable pundit hoped that liberals “feel threatened” by him; another warned that “if ballots don’t work, bullets will”; and still another threatened, on behalf of his military listeners, an armed coup. Sometimes it’s even more explicit. In 2009, conservatives wore assault rifles to an anti-Obama rally. Hell, Gifford’s opponent in this last race led his supporters in firing their assault rifles into the air, as a “symbolic” attack on her candidacy. And always, and at every turn, Glenn Beck equated the President, or liberal Democrats, with tyrants, evoked images of civil war, implied the need for their “removal,” and let you come to your own conclusion about what that means. Analysis that was all intoned with a terrifying sense of urgency.

In a world where a congresswoman, a federal judge, and a nine year old can wake up one morning, and only one of them survive the day, this is unacceptable, and now is a perfect time to say so. Liberal pundits are wrong to blame the right for this murder. But for the life of me, I can’t imagine why conservative pundits won’t stand against their visible, violent, and mainstreamed fringe.

Nuclear Realism*: The Red Herring of “Missile Shields”

Before I’m called to account by someone else with political training, I mean realism, as in, life lived in a reality-based world, not realism, the school of foreign policy. There.

Now. If you’ve read Sarah Palin’s position on the New START treaty, such as it is, you’re probably wondering, huh? The half-term governor manages to obscure her argument so well, that one wonders whether her utter disconnect from the facts of the treaty owes more to mendacity, or simple incompetence. As it turns out, first the latter, then the former.

Current Republican opposition to New START stems from a position first articulated, in its most cogent form, by John Yoo, the architect of America’s abusive detention policies, who famously justified torture by misquoting a passage from Medicare law; and John Bolton, the diplomat who views diplomacy as something approximating an inconvenience. Why we should trust such persons to resolve matters of state is beyond me, but here we are. In an op-ed in last month’s New York Times, the two Johns build their case against the treaty by emphasizing the danger of ineffectual precatory language, and blasting President Obama’s attempt to mitigate the nonexistent danger through, well, nonexistent precatory language.

Stated more clearly, the conservative case against New START points to language in the preamble acknowledging a simple reality, that deterrence depends upon both missiles, and missile shields:

New Start also reflects the Obama administration’s lack of seriousness about national missile defense. Its preamble accepts an unspecified “interrelationship” between nuclear weapons and defensive systems. Politically, even if not in treaty language, the Russians get what they want: no significant United States efforts on missile defense.

Of course, it is the “black letter law” of national defense policy that missile defense shields undermine nuclear policy, by upsetting the current paradigm of mutual deterrence. Bolton & Yoo correctly indicate that acknowledging this relationship could be construed as a concession to Russia, whose leadership hopes that America will remember this point, and abstain from building a missile shield accordingly. But it is a pointless concession. Preambulatory language places America under no legal obligation to do or not do anything. You might as well argue that legislative “findings” about the “sanctity of life” somehow ban the death penalty. This is not how laws or treaties work, and the Johns know it. God help us if they don’t.

But more to the point, if the treaty did prevent construction of a missile shield… so what? Nota bene to the Republican base, but “missile shields” don’t work, and there is no “missile shield” to “reinstate.” America has never had an active, functional, effective missile defense program. The technology actually does not exist. One might as well “reinstate” Starfleet. It’d be nice if we had a missile defense program, but it would also be nice if we had a fleet of faster-than-light starships. As it stands, the two are equally plausible.

Even modest missile defense schema have proven spectacular, and recent, failures, whose existence proves only that, despite the program’s hitherto quixotic nature, the President actually has no intent of abandoning missile defense plans, as the Johns assume without evidence. In fact, Obama’s focus on boost-phase interception has taken missile defense the closest to reality that it has ever been, with no end in sight. Should this fear keep you up at night, rest assured: contrary to the suggestions of a war criminal and an ideologue, this President will not abandon America’s commitment to ineffective, ludicrously expensive missile defense technology, and has not pledged to do so.

Missile treaties are serious matters that may be met with serious criticism. A treaty that took America’s probable second-strike capability below 300 megatons — the tonnage required to, under conservative estimates, wipe Russia’s population from the planet after a first-strike — would seriously compromise our deterrent capability. No-one has alleged that New START would so cripple our defense, because they cannot. This is the irreducible bottom line of nuclear missile reduction. All other figures are beside the point. The failure of conservative politicians to engage on this simple issue tells you all you need to know about New START. Ignore distractions; pass the damn treaty.