"Tyranny" is the vogue word for political and judicial outcomes that certain politicians and pundits oppose. We need to take a deep breath.
1. The pedigree of "tyranny".
"Sic semper tyrannis." ("So always to tyrants.") John Wilkes Booth shouted this as he leaped from the balcony in Ford's Theater after murdering probably the greatest man to occupy the office of the presidency.
"Tyrant" is a dangerous word. It can lodge in a fanatical mind and manifest itself in an explosion. In the recesses of our minds, we know what tyrants deserve and how to deal with them. From Caesar to Hitler, tyrants have been removed by blood and violence. But the fanatic cannot distinguish between the real tyrant and the tyrant of the imagination.
I don't know that Timothy McVeigh specifically spoke of "tyranny". But his thoughts walked in that way before he murdered 168 people, including 19 children, in Oklahoma City. A psychiatrist visited McVeigh on death row and described him as a decent person who had allowed rage to build up inside him to the point that he had lashed out in one terrible, violent act. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1321244.stm
I question the "decent person" part of that, but certainly the part about rage building up rings true.
This is the immediate risk of talk of "tyranny".
2. The purpose of "tyranny".
I doubt that the persons who have in our time re-inserted "tyranny" into political vocabulary intend to incite violence, however much that might be the risk. Instead, I believe they intend to whip up white-hot fervor to drive their base to the polls, to gain political power. But the fact that the polling places of America are the solution to this "tyranny" strongly suggests that it is no tyranny at all.
"Tyranny" strongly connotes illegitimacy. That's why it is used -- to delegitimize a political outcome or judicial decision. So, passing healthcare legislation -- so that sick people don't die just because they are poor, so that the unisnured don't get free treatment that drives up insurance costs for the insured -- this is "tyranny". A judge striking down Proposition 8 -- the California proposition that outlawed gay marriage -- that is "tyranny". That is, these are not just outcomes that one can disagree with or even strongly oppose. They, being "tyranny", are entirely illegitimate.
3. The operation of democracy is not "tyranny".
But these are not tyranny. These are our political and judicial systems operating as intended. Obama won the presidency and Democrats won Congress. That permitted enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This happened after eight years of perceived Republican mis-rule. And elections have consequences. So healthcare reform became law. Also financial reform. And repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. It is the political process doing what it was designed to do.
The Proposition 8 decision is the progeny of Marbury v Madison. Marbury is the two-hundred-year-old Supreme Court decision that declared that federal courts have authority to declare laws unconstitutional. Agree or disagree with Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Walker's authority to make this ruling is rock solid. Judge Walker was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. Now, the Supreme Court will have the last word.
At any time in the last two-hundred years, Marbury v Madison could have been repealed by amending the Constitution. But that hasn't happened, because most people think it is appropriately the law of the land. Which means that, right or wrong, Judge Walker was just doing his job, calling Constitutional balls and strikes.
And all of these political and judicial outcomes have a political solution. After passage of health-care reform, Republicans took back the House of Representatives. In the next election, they might take back the presidency and the Senate. If this is tyranny, it is a peculiar kind of tyranny.
4. The dictionary definition of "tyranny".
The politicians and pundits who have laid claim to "tyranny" are like Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass. Humpty Dumpty defined words as he pleased: "When I use a word, . . . it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less." "The question is which is to be master – that's all." Lest we be Humpty Dumpty, here is the dictionary definition of "tyranny". (Skip this if definitions bore you.)
"[T]yranny ... n. ... 1. A government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power. 2. The office, authority, or jurisdiction of an absolute ruler. 3. Absolute power, especially when exercised unjustly or cruelly. 4a. Use of absolute power.... b. A tyrannical act. 5. Extreme harshness or severity; rigor." (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition.)
Or: "2. Cruel or oppressive government or rule." (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 6th Edition.)
Russia under Putin has enacted a law that allows the state to impose fines on protesters that are equal to the yearly income of the ordinary Russian. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has rigorously undermined the economic independence of his opponents. These are tyranny. These fit the definitions. When politicians and pundits equate American political outcomes to these genuine examples of tyranny, they are like the princess who was unable to sleep on high-piled matresses, because of a pea underneath the matresses.
5. "Tyranny" claims are selective.
Claims of tyranny are selective. In Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court struck down the law that prohibited unlimited corporate spending to influence political campaigns. Americans overwhelmingly supported the stricken law. Sixty-five percent of Americans strongly supported it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021701151.html
There were no cries of "tyranny" after Citizens United.
Nor were there cries of "tyranny" after America turned on the Iraq war, but still had to pay taxes to support it. Dick Cheney's one-word response to a question about America's opposition to the Iraq war was "So?"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SypeZjeOrY4
These seem no less "tyrannical" than passing healthcare reform and Wall Street reform, or striking down Proposition 8.
6. "Tyranny" claims are toxic to democracy.
Democracy has a doubtful future if citizens come to believe that any political outcome that they disapprove is evidence of tyranny. People who say that say, in effect, that their political sensibilities are entitled to prevail not only when they win elections, but also when they lose elections. This is a fundamental refusal to acknowledge the democratic process and the importance of electoral outcomes. This attitude is fundamentally un-democratic.
I do not take for granted that democracy in America will survive. History shows times in our history of democracy at risk. President Wilson prosecuted and imprisoned labor leader Eugene V Debs for speaking against the draft during World War I. Huey Long ran Louisiana like a dictator; Franklin D Roosevelt feared that America would lose patience with the New Deal and turn to Long, who would rule America like he ruled Louisiana. Whether that would have happened is unknowable, because Long was assassinated.
Widespread belief in the "tyranny" of the outcomes of ordinary democratic and judicial processes produces fissures in our political bedrock. These fissures risk to crumble this bedrock in case of great crisis, collapsing the house that the Constitution built.
7. The solution: take a deep breath.
The solution is to stop. Just stop. But not only to stop, but to go the opposite direction. Nelson Mandela united a fractured South Africa by his extraordinary decency to the White minority.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22friedman.html?_r=1&ref=thomaslfriedman
We can use a little Nelson Mandela in American politics. And any American politician who acts in that way deserves our strong support and admiration.
Because we have heard it said from when we were toddlers: "United we stand, divided we fall." And, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." We don't have to agree on all issues. We won't. No vibrant democracy has perfect consensus. But we can agree that it is illegitimate to delegitimize. We can agree that the political processes and judicial processes working the way they were meant to work is not "tyranny".
8. Democracy eats itself.
But let me carve out an exception to what I have said. Government is legitimate because it operates with the consent of the governed. When democratic processes are used to undermined that core principle of democracy, democracy undermines democracy.
In the name of eliminating a problem that largely does not exist -- voter fraud -- states are deliberately shrinking the voter pool. In the name of democracy, this bludgeoning of democracy must stop.
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Capsizing
1. Ships that can’t be righted.
A large capsized ship can’t be righted.
As a wave pushes a ship over, it’s crew might hold their breath in mute terror, waiting to see if the ship reaches the point of no return, the point when all is lost. Sometimes the ship returns to upright to take on the next wave. Sometimes it doesn’t.
I say this because the right wing in America risks to capsize the country. It risks this for political gain. The odd thing is that they seem to think that when they capsize the country, only the Democrats will get wet.
2. Capsizing the economy.
So with the debt ceiling.
The dollar is the world’s premier currency. It has rivals in the yen (Japan), the yuan (China), and the euro (Europe). China, particularly, agitates for countries to "balance" their foreign reserve holdings with other currencies aside from the dollar. China hopes to start a trend that ends the dollar’s supremacy.
China has allies in America. They aren’t moles in banks who cut secret, treasonous deals for their own enrichment. They are the Republicans in Congress.
Congressional Republicans are holding the debt ceiling hostage to their own uncompromising position on debt. They use the vote to raise the debt ceiling as leverage to get their way -- and get their way 100% -- on the budget.
The debt ceiling is the legal amount of indebtedness that America can have. If we reach our statutory debt limit, we cannot borrow more. Then, we cannot pay our debts. We’ll default on something: our sovereign debt (what creditor countries lend to us); soldiers’ salaries; social security checks. The damage from this will ripple through the economy.
Ripple might not be the right word. Tsunami might be more correct.
The Economist is a socially-liberal but fiscally-conservative magazine ("newspaper" in British English). They champion debt reduction. They have criticized Obama for not doing enough about debt. Even this week they said, "Mr. Obama had been deplorably insouciant about he medium-term picture, repeatedly failing in his budgets and his state-of-the-union speeches to offer any path to a sustainable deficit."
But here’s what The Economist says in an article in this week’s magazine called "Shame on them."
The Obama administration proposed an 83%-17% ratio of cuts to increases. They basically said Yes to the Congressional Republicans’ own proposal. But The Republicans wouldn’t take Yes for an answer. They walked out of discussions.
The New York Times speculated that the Republicans might want to exploit, for political gain, the economic turmoil that will come after a debt-ceiling default. That might be. They might stick to that plan, unless they can get something better. If they follow that plan, then they are making all of us – all of us who aren’t rich – unfortunate pawns in their grand strategy to rise to the top.
3. Capsizing political debate.
The Russian-roulette game over our economy isn’t the only way that the right wing gladly risks disaster.
Political debate is in recent years sullied. But Republican leaders and Republican media reached a new low by whipping up fervor against "death panels" in the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare" to its detractors).
Nobody can point to death panels in that bill, because they aren’t there. The closest thing to that was a part of the law (taken out) that paid doctors to do what they have been doing for free: advising patients about end-of-life choices.
Most people don’t want to be irretrievably comatose and on a feeding tube or a heart-lung machine. Advanced directives that come from these doctor-patient discussions keep a patient’s children or spouse from being burdened with the guilt or expense of making that decision without a clear statement of the patient’s preference.
Accusing the Democrats of legislating "death panels" to "pull the plug on grandma" so poisoned political conversation in this country that I don’t know that it ever can recover. It went far toward capsizing political debate.
4. Capsizing the legitimacy of the Republic.
And Republican media and Republican politicians take aim at the Republic itself. Republican governor of Texas Rick Perry talks about seceding from the Republic. Here’s a guy who literally would fight to keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance; "indivisible"– not so much.
This attitude has trickled down. On Facebook, I have seen a post that compares democracy to two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
It’s funny in its way, but it’s more frightening than funny. After all, democracy is fair, and fair is the opposite of wolflike-ness. It’s the ultimate way that a government can have legitimacy. Democracy reflects the will of the people – or at least most of the people. That’s right and just. It’s more right and just than any other form of government.
And there are safeguards against the so-called tyranny of the majority. Under the Constitution, majority rule is subject to checks and balances. The Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional – as might happen to the Health Care Reform Act, which will one day come before the Supreme Court. And before a bill can become law, it has to pass in the House of Representatives (where congressmen are elected by districts that have roughly equal population to each other – this give more power to large states); and the Senate (where each state gets two Senators – this gives more relative power to citizens of smaller states). Then, usually, the President has to sign a bill into law (but Congress can override his veto).
This is the most perfect (but not perfect) form of government. Other forms are less fair.
And we have a vigorous press in which all opinions can be expressed, And, compared to most of the world, we have little official corruption.
But the right wing is revving its chain saw at the base of the living American tree – disputing the fairness of our democracy – because they aren’t happy with political outcomes. When they do that, the right wing risks much to our Republic. Because when people dispute our Republic’s legitimacy, when they urinate on our Constitution, they weaken the Republic. But the right wing seems willing to risk this capsize.
5. Capsizing justice and political restraint.
As much as the right challenges the legitimacy of government under Obama, the real scandals of governance have taken place under Republicans.
In the Bush administration, U.S. Attorneys asserted that they were fired for partisan reasons. David Iglesias, for example, refused to politicize prosecutions. He said under oath that Republican politicians directed him to target Democratic officeholders because they were Democratic officeholders. When he refused, he was fired. The U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General backs his assertion.
An official from the Bush administration asserted her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself in the investigation of the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal. After getting immunity, she admitted to feloniously using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs. She also testified that many Bush-administration officials had lied under oath about the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal.
The Wisconsin Republican governor and the Wisconsin Republican legislature passed a law to weaken public-employee unions. Now, there is in Wisconsin no counterweight to corporate money. Other Republican states are following.
Under Bush, America was Ukraine. And under Republican governors, Ukraine continues among us.
6. Capsizing freedom of speech.
A former ambassador investigated the charges that Iraq had sought uranium yellow-cake from Niger. He published an editorial in the New York Times that accused the Bush White House of knowingly lying to the American people. In fact, the Bush White House did not know of his report; the report didn’t travel up from the CIA, which had sent him on his fact-finding mission.
But that’s not the point. The point is that high Bush-administration officials swiftly retaliated against the former ambassador by disclosing to several reporters that his wife was a CIA employee –Valerie Plame. Right-wing columnist Robert Novak outed her. In fact, Valerie Plame was a covert operative who specialized in nuclear proliferation. America became less safe after she could no longer do her job.
7. Speak up!
Some of my right-wing friends are adamant that Muslims must renounce the terrorists who share some form of their own religion. Where are my right-wing friends when their political brethren threaten our welfare and disparage our Constitution?
Unless you hate Obama more than you love America, speak up.
________________________________
Selected sources.
A conservative columnist for the New York Times says that Republicans should shake hands with Obama and declare victory on the budget. He says they’re nuts not to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opinion/05brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
A neutral referee discusses so-called "death panels" in the Health Care Reform Act. It’s hogwash:
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/palin-vs-obama-death-panels/
Governor Perry wants to lower Old Glory in Texas forever:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/04/17/0417gop.html
U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General report on the firing of U.S. Attorneys. It says Rove and others wouldn’t cooperate with investigators about the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias:
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0809a/final.pdf
See, especially, p. 186-187; 190
U.S. Department of Justice official Monica Goodling invokes the Fifth Amendment in Congressional hearings.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600935.html
Monica Goodling admits using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052300728.html
The outing of Valerie Plame (Book):
James B. Stewart, Tangled Webs (The Penguin Press 2011)
A large capsized ship can’t be righted.
As a wave pushes a ship over, it’s crew might hold their breath in mute terror, waiting to see if the ship reaches the point of no return, the point when all is lost. Sometimes the ship returns to upright to take on the next wave. Sometimes it doesn’t.
I say this because the right wing in America risks to capsize the country. It risks this for political gain. The odd thing is that they seem to think that when they capsize the country, only the Democrats will get wet.
2. Capsizing the economy.
So with the debt ceiling.
The dollar is the world’s premier currency. It has rivals in the yen (Japan), the yuan (China), and the euro (Europe). China, particularly, agitates for countries to "balance" their foreign reserve holdings with other currencies aside from the dollar. China hopes to start a trend that ends the dollar’s supremacy.
China has allies in America. They aren’t moles in banks who cut secret, treasonous deals for their own enrichment. They are the Republicans in Congress.
Congressional Republicans are holding the debt ceiling hostage to their own uncompromising position on debt. They use the vote to raise the debt ceiling as leverage to get their way -- and get their way 100% -- on the budget.
The debt ceiling is the legal amount of indebtedness that America can have. If we reach our statutory debt limit, we cannot borrow more. Then, we cannot pay our debts. We’ll default on something: our sovereign debt (what creditor countries lend to us); soldiers’ salaries; social security checks. The damage from this will ripple through the economy.
Ripple might not be the right word. Tsunami might be more correct.
The Economist is a socially-liberal but fiscally-conservative magazine ("newspaper" in British English). They champion debt reduction. They have criticized Obama for not doing enough about debt. Even this week they said, "Mr. Obama had been deplorably insouciant about he medium-term picture, repeatedly failing in his budgets and his state-of-the-union speeches to offer any path to a sustainable deficit."
But here’s what The Economist says in an article in this week’s magazine called "Shame on them."
This newspaper has a strong dislike of big government; we have long argued that the main way to right America’s finances is through spending cuts. But you cannot get there without any tax rises. In Britain, for instance, the coalition government aims to tame its deficit with a 3:1 ratio of cuts to hikes. America’s tax rate is at its lowest level for decades: even Ronald Reagan raised taxes when he needed to do so.Here’s more from The Economist:
And the closer you look, the more unprincipled the Republicans look. Earlier this year House Republicans produced a report noting that an 85%-15% split between spending cuts and tax rises was the average for successful fiscal consolidations, according to historical evidence. The White House is offering an 83%-17% split (hardly a huge distance) and a promise that none of the revenue increase will come from higher marginal rates, only from eliminating loopholes. If the Republicans were real tax reformers, they would seize this offer.The Economist expects serious damage to the economy when America defaults on its debt.
The Obama administration proposed an 83%-17% ratio of cuts to increases. They basically said Yes to the Congressional Republicans’ own proposal. But The Republicans wouldn’t take Yes for an answer. They walked out of discussions.
The New York Times speculated that the Republicans might want to exploit, for political gain, the economic turmoil that will come after a debt-ceiling default. That might be. They might stick to that plan, unless they can get something better. If they follow that plan, then they are making all of us – all of us who aren’t rich – unfortunate pawns in their grand strategy to rise to the top.
3. Capsizing political debate.
The Russian-roulette game over our economy isn’t the only way that the right wing gladly risks disaster.
Political debate is in recent years sullied. But Republican leaders and Republican media reached a new low by whipping up fervor against "death panels" in the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare" to its detractors).
Nobody can point to death panels in that bill, because they aren’t there. The closest thing to that was a part of the law (taken out) that paid doctors to do what they have been doing for free: advising patients about end-of-life choices.
Most people don’t want to be irretrievably comatose and on a feeding tube or a heart-lung machine. Advanced directives that come from these doctor-patient discussions keep a patient’s children or spouse from being burdened with the guilt or expense of making that decision without a clear statement of the patient’s preference.
Accusing the Democrats of legislating "death panels" to "pull the plug on grandma" so poisoned political conversation in this country that I don’t know that it ever can recover. It went far toward capsizing political debate.
4. Capsizing the legitimacy of the Republic.
And Republican media and Republican politicians take aim at the Republic itself. Republican governor of Texas Rick Perry talks about seceding from the Republic. Here’s a guy who literally would fight to keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance; "indivisible"– not so much.
This attitude has trickled down. On Facebook, I have seen a post that compares democracy to two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
It’s funny in its way, but it’s more frightening than funny. After all, democracy is fair, and fair is the opposite of wolflike-ness. It’s the ultimate way that a government can have legitimacy. Democracy reflects the will of the people – or at least most of the people. That’s right and just. It’s more right and just than any other form of government.
And there are safeguards against the so-called tyranny of the majority. Under the Constitution, majority rule is subject to checks and balances. The Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional – as might happen to the Health Care Reform Act, which will one day come before the Supreme Court. And before a bill can become law, it has to pass in the House of Representatives (where congressmen are elected by districts that have roughly equal population to each other – this give more power to large states); and the Senate (where each state gets two Senators – this gives more relative power to citizens of smaller states). Then, usually, the President has to sign a bill into law (but Congress can override his veto).
This is the most perfect (but not perfect) form of government. Other forms are less fair.
And we have a vigorous press in which all opinions can be expressed, And, compared to most of the world, we have little official corruption.
But the right wing is revving its chain saw at the base of the living American tree – disputing the fairness of our democracy – because they aren’t happy with political outcomes. When they do that, the right wing risks much to our Republic. Because when people dispute our Republic’s legitimacy, when they urinate on our Constitution, they weaken the Republic. But the right wing seems willing to risk this capsize.
5. Capsizing justice and political restraint.
As much as the right challenges the legitimacy of government under Obama, the real scandals of governance have taken place under Republicans.
In the Bush administration, U.S. Attorneys asserted that they were fired for partisan reasons. David Iglesias, for example, refused to politicize prosecutions. He said under oath that Republican politicians directed him to target Democratic officeholders because they were Democratic officeholders. When he refused, he was fired. The U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General backs his assertion.
An official from the Bush administration asserted her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself in the investigation of the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal. After getting immunity, she admitted to feloniously using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs. She also testified that many Bush-administration officials had lied under oath about the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal.
The Wisconsin Republican governor and the Wisconsin Republican legislature passed a law to weaken public-employee unions. Now, there is in Wisconsin no counterweight to corporate money. Other Republican states are following.
Under Bush, America was Ukraine. And under Republican governors, Ukraine continues among us.
6. Capsizing freedom of speech.
A former ambassador investigated the charges that Iraq had sought uranium yellow-cake from Niger. He published an editorial in the New York Times that accused the Bush White House of knowingly lying to the American people. In fact, the Bush White House did not know of his report; the report didn’t travel up from the CIA, which had sent him on his fact-finding mission.
But that’s not the point. The point is that high Bush-administration officials swiftly retaliated against the former ambassador by disclosing to several reporters that his wife was a CIA employee –Valerie Plame. Right-wing columnist Robert Novak outed her. In fact, Valerie Plame was a covert operative who specialized in nuclear proliferation. America became less safe after she could no longer do her job.
7. Speak up!
Some of my right-wing friends are adamant that Muslims must renounce the terrorists who share some form of their own religion. Where are my right-wing friends when their political brethren threaten our welfare and disparage our Constitution?
Unless you hate Obama more than you love America, speak up.
________________________________
Selected sources.
A conservative columnist for the New York Times says that Republicans should shake hands with Obama and declare victory on the budget. He says they’re nuts not to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opinion/05brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
A neutral referee discusses so-called "death panels" in the Health Care Reform Act. It’s hogwash:
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/palin-vs-obama-death-panels/
Governor Perry wants to lower Old Glory in Texas forever:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/04/17/0417gop.html
U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General report on the firing of U.S. Attorneys. It says Rove and others wouldn’t cooperate with investigators about the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias:
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0809a/final.pdf
See, especially, p. 186-187; 190
U.S. Department of Justice official Monica Goodling invokes the Fifth Amendment in Congressional hearings.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600935.html
Monica Goodling admits using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052300728.html
The outing of Valerie Plame (Book):
James B. Stewart, Tangled Webs (The Penguin Press 2011)
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Not Enemies but Friends
1. Introduction: perspective.
A Holocaust survivor explains why he rejected God:
This paragraph makes my blood freeze and my mouth gape. Such cruelty is unfathomable.
Of all the reactions this description evokes from me, the one I will write about is this: it puts our American era, troubled as it is, into perspective. In particular, the suffering of this unnamed woman, this tormented victim, rebukes a troubling political habit of our time (though one not unique to our time): namely, to harshly judge those on the far side of the political spectrum from us. There is a left/right divide; we are less willing to reach across its span as time goes by. We are becoming a nation of shouters. But harrowing manifestations of real evil like this forbid our overreaction to mere political disagreements.
I don’t say this to be trite. I say this because political disagreements grow into monsters of the mind -- in too many minds, at least. And this harms democracy in America.
2. The infernal politics of division.
Some politicians and media (large and small) so focus Americans on our intramural divisions that we lose sight of our common ground and even of our mutual humanity. This explains today’s highly divisive tactics. Here are some of the tactics that political dividers employ.
a. Wedge issues.
Political dividers resort to wedge issues. The term explains itself.
A premier example of a wedge issue is the demonization of Muslim-Americans. Muslims are only a means to an end in this scheme; though it afflicts them, its objective lies elsewhere. The scheme is in part a high-stakes dare to democratic politicians to stand up for Muslims – and either they gamble their political fortunes for this good purpose (too few do this), or they cave in and look craven. The scheme behind the demonization of Muslims is also to ignite ignorance, fear, and hatred to multiply political followers – in a word, demagoguery. And it succeeds like a lit match put to tinder.
Political dividers accuse the proposed Manhattan mosque's backers, and American Muslims generally, of seeking to impose sharia as the law of the land. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/lee-smith-sharia/ (Sharia is the code of law based upon the Qur'an.) This is an utterly implausible objective, because it has no remote chance of success. Despite its implausibility, it provokes popular outrage.
Political dividers conflate moderate American Muslims with the murders of 9/11.
They assert, in defiance of fact, that the moderate Muslims behind the proposed Manhattan mosque plan it as a triumphal monument to the 9/11 attack.
http://boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/05/25/nyc_community_board_oks_ground_zero_mosque_plans/ They portray these moderate Muslims as cartoonish villains sinisterly conniving to torment America in its midst.
They accuse the Muslims among us of plotting world hegemony. http://michellemalkin.com/2007/03/08/gingrichs-baggage-gotten-on-my-knees/ In fact, our Muslims neighbors mostly share more modest goals with the rest of us: to live in peace, to win such prosperity as we can, to raise and protect our families, and to worship the god of our forbears.
Making Muslims a wedge issue serves the politics of division.
Not only Muslims but any minority might be placed as a bet in the political game of wedge issues. Hispanic infants have become fabled “anchor babies” – not conceived for the usual reasons of love or family or slipshod birth control. According to this political urban legend, these babies are products of calculation, conduits when they achieve adulthood for their parents’ citizenship. This fable floats in an evidentiary vacuum. It inflames a certain kind of White voter.
And, of course, the joining in marriage of two persons of the same gender continues to sunder the nation.
b. Provocative language.
Political dividers deploy provocative language.
“Liberal” no longer evokes sufficient loathing. Now, they use “socialist”, evoking the Soviet Union’s Vladimir Lenin and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Minimal familiarity with these tyrants illuminates these tyrants’ tactics, which go far beyond what any American politician could inflict upon an American public accustomed to freedom, due process, and electoral power. Anyone who knows of these tyrants cannot rationally equate them with any American political leader. But political dividers exploit an un-critical audience with their incendiary language.
“Tyranny” is a vogue word. In its current usage, it purports to describe the actions of the party in power, which exercises its prerogative after a majority of Americans democratically put them in the White House and in the majority in Congress. This definition of “tyranny” defies any dictionary. But it provokes loathing. It implies illegitimacy. It stokes a sense of grievance. So political dividers use it.
c. Lies.
Political dividers lie.
It is hard to argue against making health care universal, so that sick people don’t die because they are poor. So opponents of health-care reform invented “death panels”, because “death panels” sounds vile. Death panels were imagined, not legislated. The fabled “death panels” provision of the health-care-reform bill merely paid Medicare doctors when they performed an ordinary, otherwise-unpaid responsibility. That was to help seniors make advance end-of-life decisions, so not to burden their family with those decisions if they themselves became incapacitated. http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/palin-vs-obama-death-panels/
d. Shouting down democracy.
The oracles of division disrupt democratic processes. Democracy can’t happen if its voices cannot be heard. So democracy suffered at open forums on health-care reform when speakers were shouted down. In miniature, the same thing happens when TV pundits loudly talk over each other to keep each other from expressing a point. This tactic divides us by ensuring that robust, open debate cannot anneal division. It insinuates that some opinions should not be heard.
3. De-legitimization.
One objective of these tactics is to de-legitimize the opposition.
People disagree. That is part of democracy. Though there is large consensus in our democracy – think about all the basic things we generally agree on – debates roll, and sometimes they rage. To say someone is wrong does no harm to democracy; debate nourishes democracy.
But de-legitimization repudiates nourishing democratic disagreement by repudiating those who disagree. It demonizes opponents. It divides and destroys.
De-legitimization lies beneath claims that the President is Kenyan by birth – even though his Honolulu-newspaper birth announcements can be examined by any blogger, citizen, news organization, or random rabble-rouser.
De-legitimization lies beneath claims of dreaded socialism.
De-legitimization lies beneath claims of tyranny.
Disagreement is an American tradition, as American as the Lincoln-Douglas debates. De-legitimization is the opposite of Lincoln-Douglas. It is House Committee on Un-American Activities territory – a territory to which political dividers would exile mainstream leaders, media, and innocent fellow-citizens.
4. A grassroots solution.
We must not tolerate these toxic practices in ourselves or in our own leaders. And we must take grassroots measures to moderate these practices.
a. Engaging.
We must engage our brother-and-sister Americans in non-judgmental civic discourse. We can do this in common areas of condominiums, over coffee in kitchens, in break areas at work, on social networks like Facebook, or in any other forum.
We must defy the temptation to mix only with the like-minded. That habit is reassuring, and it soothes the spirit, but ultimately it inhibits the grassroots free-flow of information and ideas. And that free-flow is oxygen to democracy.
When we participate in civic discourse, we necessarily imply that we are willing to be persuaded as well as to persuade.
And civic discourse serves a purpose beyond persuasion per se. Civil, respectful engagement interrupts the demagogues' claim that decency reposes in only one side. To civilly, respectfully engage undercuts demagogues and dividers.
b. De-legitimizing the de-legitimizers.
We must de-legitimize the de-legitimizers. We can do so in various ways.
I mentioned interrupting the claims of demagogues by practicing civil civic discourse. When we are reasonable and decent, we prove that we are not what the de-legitimizers say we are.
We also can de-legitimize the de-legitimizers by respectfully but firmly rejecting incendiary labels, for ourselves and for our leaders.
And we de-legitimize the de-ligitimizers by speaking the truth in the face of falsehoods. As Justice Louis Brandeis said: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
c. Being informed.
We must be informed. Effective civic debate requires knowledge. We must be more than opinion.
This takes effort. Being an informed citizen requires more than listening to pundits opinionate. I don’t mean to hector. But sustained effort can convert a chore into a hobby. After a time, the pursuit of political knowledge begins to match the pleasure with which many of us hoard sports knowledge.
To stay informed, I like the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/. I subscribe to magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Economist, Rolling Stone, and Foreign Affairs. Some of these are surprisingly cheap.
There are also non-partisan fact-checking websites that scrutinize political claims and counter-claims. For example, http://www.factcheck.org/ is published by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Also, http://www.politifact.com/ is published by the St. Petersburg Times. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009.
d. Minding the higher objective.
We must keep in mind our higher objective. When we debate, of course we want to persuade. But in divisive times, the higher object must be to cultivate goodwill among people we disagree with. Goodwill among adversaries fortifies democracy, and the importance of a robust democracy dwarfs the importance of success on any particular issue or issues
A conservative friend of mine once boasted that, in Supreme Court case conferences among his fellow justices, conservative justice Antonin Scalia wins every argument. The rejoinder is the question: but did he persuade? The two are not the same. Scalia might undermine his powers of persuasion by his highly readable but highly scathing dissents. Contrast Scalia with epochal chief justices like John Marshall and Earl Warren. Their greatness lay in their ability among politically-divergent colleagues to produce unanimous opinions on controversial issues.
Goodwill is our goal; but goodwill and persuasion go together.
5. Conclusion.
No President presided over a more divided time than Abraham Lincoln. Nor did any President speak greater words of reconciliation than he did. These words are from Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, delivered when hatred and opposition rent the nation:
We should also, of course, remember Abraham Lincoln’s resoluteness. Speaking reconciliation, he also waged war. Personal decency therefore does not imply weakness or tepid opinions.
We can have it both ways. We can dedicate ourselves to our principles, pursuing them relentlessly, modifying them only for good reason. But we can pursue our principles with decency, we can pursue our principles with civility, we can pursue our principles without breaking bonds of affection with our adversaries of good will. We can reforge broken bonds.
A Holocaust survivor explains why he rejected God:
God had allowed SS troops to snatch a baby from his mother and then use it as a football. When it was a torn lump of flesh they tossed it to their dogs. The mother was forced to watch. Then they ripped off her blouse and made her use it to clean the blood off their boots.http://www.economist.com/node/16886073?story_id=16886073
This paragraph makes my blood freeze and my mouth gape. Such cruelty is unfathomable.
Of all the reactions this description evokes from me, the one I will write about is this: it puts our American era, troubled as it is, into perspective. In particular, the suffering of this unnamed woman, this tormented victim, rebukes a troubling political habit of our time (though one not unique to our time): namely, to harshly judge those on the far side of the political spectrum from us. There is a left/right divide; we are less willing to reach across its span as time goes by. We are becoming a nation of shouters. But harrowing manifestations of real evil like this forbid our overreaction to mere political disagreements.
I don’t say this to be trite. I say this because political disagreements grow into monsters of the mind -- in too many minds, at least. And this harms democracy in America.
2. The infernal politics of division.
Some politicians and media (large and small) so focus Americans on our intramural divisions that we lose sight of our common ground and even of our mutual humanity. This explains today’s highly divisive tactics. Here are some of the tactics that political dividers employ.
a. Wedge issues.
Political dividers resort to wedge issues. The term explains itself.
A premier example of a wedge issue is the demonization of Muslim-Americans. Muslims are only a means to an end in this scheme; though it afflicts them, its objective lies elsewhere. The scheme is in part a high-stakes dare to democratic politicians to stand up for Muslims – and either they gamble their political fortunes for this good purpose (too few do this), or they cave in and look craven. The scheme behind the demonization of Muslims is also to ignite ignorance, fear, and hatred to multiply political followers – in a word, demagoguery. And it succeeds like a lit match put to tinder.
Political dividers accuse the proposed Manhattan mosque's backers, and American Muslims generally, of seeking to impose sharia as the law of the land. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/lee-smith-sharia/ (Sharia is the code of law based upon the Qur'an.) This is an utterly implausible objective, because it has no remote chance of success. Despite its implausibility, it provokes popular outrage.
Political dividers conflate moderate American Muslims with the murders of 9/11.
They assert, in defiance of fact, that the moderate Muslims behind the proposed Manhattan mosque plan it as a triumphal monument to the 9/11 attack.
http://boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/05/25/nyc_community_board_oks_ground_zero_mosque_plans/ They portray these moderate Muslims as cartoonish villains sinisterly conniving to torment America in its midst.
They accuse the Muslims among us of plotting world hegemony. http://michellemalkin.com/2007/03/08/gingrichs-baggage-gotten-on-my-knees/ In fact, our Muslims neighbors mostly share more modest goals with the rest of us: to live in peace, to win such prosperity as we can, to raise and protect our families, and to worship the god of our forbears.
Making Muslims a wedge issue serves the politics of division.
Not only Muslims but any minority might be placed as a bet in the political game of wedge issues. Hispanic infants have become fabled “anchor babies” – not conceived for the usual reasons of love or family or slipshod birth control. According to this political urban legend, these babies are products of calculation, conduits when they achieve adulthood for their parents’ citizenship. This fable floats in an evidentiary vacuum. It inflames a certain kind of White voter.
And, of course, the joining in marriage of two persons of the same gender continues to sunder the nation.
b. Provocative language.
Political dividers deploy provocative language.
“Liberal” no longer evokes sufficient loathing. Now, they use “socialist”, evoking the Soviet Union’s Vladimir Lenin and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Minimal familiarity with these tyrants illuminates these tyrants’ tactics, which go far beyond what any American politician could inflict upon an American public accustomed to freedom, due process, and electoral power. Anyone who knows of these tyrants cannot rationally equate them with any American political leader. But political dividers exploit an un-critical audience with their incendiary language.
“Tyranny” is a vogue word. In its current usage, it purports to describe the actions of the party in power, which exercises its prerogative after a majority of Americans democratically put them in the White House and in the majority in Congress. This definition of “tyranny” defies any dictionary. But it provokes loathing. It implies illegitimacy. It stokes a sense of grievance. So political dividers use it.
c. Lies.
Political dividers lie.
It is hard to argue against making health care universal, so that sick people don’t die because they are poor. So opponents of health-care reform invented “death panels”, because “death panels” sounds vile. Death panels were imagined, not legislated. The fabled “death panels” provision of the health-care-reform bill merely paid Medicare doctors when they performed an ordinary, otherwise-unpaid responsibility. That was to help seniors make advance end-of-life decisions, so not to burden their family with those decisions if they themselves became incapacitated. http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/palin-vs-obama-death-panels/
d. Shouting down democracy.
The oracles of division disrupt democratic processes. Democracy can’t happen if its voices cannot be heard. So democracy suffered at open forums on health-care reform when speakers were shouted down. In miniature, the same thing happens when TV pundits loudly talk over each other to keep each other from expressing a point. This tactic divides us by ensuring that robust, open debate cannot anneal division. It insinuates that some opinions should not be heard.
3. De-legitimization.
One objective of these tactics is to de-legitimize the opposition.
People disagree. That is part of democracy. Though there is large consensus in our democracy – think about all the basic things we generally agree on – debates roll, and sometimes they rage. To say someone is wrong does no harm to democracy; debate nourishes democracy.
But de-legitimization repudiates nourishing democratic disagreement by repudiating those who disagree. It demonizes opponents. It divides and destroys.
De-legitimization lies beneath claims that the President is Kenyan by birth – even though his Honolulu-newspaper birth announcements can be examined by any blogger, citizen, news organization, or random rabble-rouser.
De-legitimization lies beneath claims of dreaded socialism.
De-legitimization lies beneath claims of tyranny.
Disagreement is an American tradition, as American as the Lincoln-Douglas debates. De-legitimization is the opposite of Lincoln-Douglas. It is House Committee on Un-American Activities territory – a territory to which political dividers would exile mainstream leaders, media, and innocent fellow-citizens.
4. A grassroots solution.
We must not tolerate these toxic practices in ourselves or in our own leaders. And we must take grassroots measures to moderate these practices.
a. Engaging.
We must engage our brother-and-sister Americans in non-judgmental civic discourse. We can do this in common areas of condominiums, over coffee in kitchens, in break areas at work, on social networks like Facebook, or in any other forum.
We must defy the temptation to mix only with the like-minded. That habit is reassuring, and it soothes the spirit, but ultimately it inhibits the grassroots free-flow of information and ideas. And that free-flow is oxygen to democracy.
When we participate in civic discourse, we necessarily imply that we are willing to be persuaded as well as to persuade.
And civic discourse serves a purpose beyond persuasion per se. Civil, respectful engagement interrupts the demagogues' claim that decency reposes in only one side. To civilly, respectfully engage undercuts demagogues and dividers.
b. De-legitimizing the de-legitimizers.
We must de-legitimize the de-legitimizers. We can do so in various ways.
I mentioned interrupting the claims of demagogues by practicing civil civic discourse. When we are reasonable and decent, we prove that we are not what the de-legitimizers say we are.
We also can de-legitimize the de-legitimizers by respectfully but firmly rejecting incendiary labels, for ourselves and for our leaders.
And we de-legitimize the de-ligitimizers by speaking the truth in the face of falsehoods. As Justice Louis Brandeis said: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
c. Being informed.
We must be informed. Effective civic debate requires knowledge. We must be more than opinion.
This takes effort. Being an informed citizen requires more than listening to pundits opinionate. I don’t mean to hector. But sustained effort can convert a chore into a hobby. After a time, the pursuit of political knowledge begins to match the pleasure with which many of us hoard sports knowledge.
To stay informed, I like the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/. I subscribe to magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Economist, Rolling Stone, and Foreign Affairs. Some of these are surprisingly cheap.
There are also non-partisan fact-checking websites that scrutinize political claims and counter-claims. For example, http://www.factcheck.org/ is published by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Also, http://www.politifact.com/ is published by the St. Petersburg Times. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009.
d. Minding the higher objective.
We must keep in mind our higher objective. When we debate, of course we want to persuade. But in divisive times, the higher object must be to cultivate goodwill among people we disagree with. Goodwill among adversaries fortifies democracy, and the importance of a robust democracy dwarfs the importance of success on any particular issue or issues
A conservative friend of mine once boasted that, in Supreme Court case conferences among his fellow justices, conservative justice Antonin Scalia wins every argument. The rejoinder is the question: but did he persuade? The two are not the same. Scalia might undermine his powers of persuasion by his highly readable but highly scathing dissents. Contrast Scalia with epochal chief justices like John Marshall and Earl Warren. Their greatness lay in their ability among politically-divergent colleagues to produce unanimous opinions on controversial issues.
Goodwill is our goal; but goodwill and persuasion go together.
5. Conclusion.
No President presided over a more divided time than Abraham Lincoln. Nor did any President speak greater words of reconciliation than he did. These words are from Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, delivered when hatred and opposition rent the nation:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stre[t]ching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.This must be our maxim.
We should also, of course, remember Abraham Lincoln’s resoluteness. Speaking reconciliation, he also waged war. Personal decency therefore does not imply weakness or tepid opinions.
We can have it both ways. We can dedicate ourselves to our principles, pursuing them relentlessly, modifying them only for good reason. But we can pursue our principles with decency, we can pursue our principles with civility, we can pursue our principles without breaking bonds of affection with our adversaries of good will. We can reforge broken bonds.
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