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O tempora. O mores.

Monday, August 18, 2008


For the thirty five years since Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in this country, basically every Democrat to run for high office has gotten clobbered on the issue when it comes to religious voters. During that time, the Republicans have used it as the ultimate wedge issue to keep the “Christian Conservative” part of their base from even looking at the Democrats. It’s worked really, really well for them.

Like a long line of Democrats before him, Barack Obama got creamed with it the other night. When he was asked about it at Saddleback, he gave the sort of slippery, equivocating answer I would have expected from John Kerry; compare to John McCain’s “I believe that life begins at the moment of conception.”


The worst part is, there’s absolutely no need for the Democrats to lose pro-life voters on this issue anymore, and I say that as a voter whose position on abortion is about as “extreme pro-life” as you can get. (I don’t believe in any exceptions other than to save the life of the mother.)

If the Republicans really wanted to put an end to abortion in America, they would have made at least a couple of credible attempts to end over the past three and a half decades. In recent years, the Republicans have given up on even the appearance of actually fighting for the right-to-life in America; when George Bush had the opportunity to appoint the chief justice of the supreme court, he chose a man who considers Roe v. Wade “settled law.” They’ve learned that they can score free points by saying “life begins at the moment of conception,” and that they won’t be held accountable for actually following through on that idea. In reality, they don’t want to follow through, because they know that a majority of Americans support “a woman’s right to choose,” and the backlash would overwhelm them if they actually kept their promises to those of us who are pro-life.

Democrats need to learn how to talk to religious voters. When Rick Warren asked “at what point does a baby get human rights in your view,” Obama should have said “Rick, let’s be honest with each other. You and I are probably never going to agree on that question, and in a way it doesn’t even matter what I think. Most Americans believe in a woman’s right to chose an abortion, and even if a president had the opportunity to appoint nine justices to the supreme court and used that chance to pack it with pro-life jurists who overturned Roe, the pro-choice lobby would be mobilized by the event and laws would be passed in the states to protect that right. My opponent will tell you that he is pro-life, and will give you the answers you want to hear on this issue, but ask yourself this: what concrete steps has his party taken to stop abortion over these thirty five years. All they’re really giving you is lip service. If you really want to see fewer abortions in America, join with me in creating a nation where the unmarried, impoverished women most likely to terminate a pregnancy can actually support a baby financially, and can get decent health care and day care for a baby.”

I’m a pro-life voter. I believe that abortion is legalized murder of a child by its mother. But I’m not blind or stupid. I know that voting for a Republican president in the hopes that he’ll nominate just one more pro-life justice to the supreme court isn’t going to magically change the fact that abortion is legal in America. Another four years like the past eight, however, may destroy the republic, and a politician’s lip service to my beliefs isn’t enough to justify that. I just wish the Democrats understood that well enough to be honest with me.

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That Was Close

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

And this, kids, is why great powers shouldn’t cozy up to each others’ buffer states. The tiny nation of Georgia, after bending so far towards the west and the United States of America that it attempted to join NATO, is getting (quite frankly) clobbered. In a way it’s like the Prague Spring all over again.

If you’re not familiar with the situation, here is the gist of it: South Ossetia is a breakaway Georgian province with an unrecognized government supported by the Russians. Up until all this got started Russia kept a “peacekeeping battalian” there. The Georgians, allegedly with the White House’s approval, invaded South Ossetia to get it back. The Russians have responded with overwhelming force.

The worst part is that this outcome should have been obvious to all parties involved. Did anybody really think that tiny Georgia could get away with attacking an area occupied by Russian troops? Shame on all three parties. Shame on George Bush for letting the Georgians believe that the US had their back. Shame on Vladimir Putin for the disproportionate response that’s killing so many civilians. And most of all, shame on Mikheil Saakashvili for pulling such a stunt and thinking it would work.

Let’s consider the likely results of this foolish affair.. The Georgians, of course, get the worst of it. They are bearing the true horror of war. The Russians are likely to get a few decades of terrorism out of the deal. America makes out well, with a mere moral defeat as we take another blow to our reputation as the home and champion of freedom in the world.

But wow, it could have been worse. Georgia almost got to join NATO. In that case, the US would have been obliged to defend the tiny nation. That would have put nuclear superpowers the United States and Russia toe-to-toe in a manner hearkening back to another era, and that’s something sane people should want to avoid.

Update

Apparently the “Prague Spring” comparison wasn’t quite fair of me. It would seem that the South Ossetians held a couple of referendums a while back where they voted to secede from Georgia and form their own nation. While I’m not a huge believer in the concept of “self-determination,” it would appear that we have actually entered some parallel universe where the Russians are the ones standing up for those high-minded ideals that Woodrow Wilson put forth back in the day, and the United States is the one standing firmly against a democratically arrived-at decision. Yikes!

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Dictator Perpetuus

Monday, August 11, 2008

There is nothing new about the need for our leaders to suspend civil liberties in a time of national emergency. The democratic process is a slow and messy one, and there are certain situations, such as wars and epidemics, which must be met with national solidarity and which will not wait for niceties such as probable cause, freedom of speech, or the general right to Oppose The Powers That Be. It may not be a nice fact, but it’s a fact.

For the most part, democracies have always had a way of allocating such power in emergencies. The Romans had the dictatorship: the senate could appoint a dictator for six months who ruled with absolute impunity, and against whose decisions there was absolutely no recourse. My wife’s country, Canada, had the draconian “War Measures Act,” now replaced by the somewhat less extreme “Emergencies Act.” Article 16 of the French Republic ’s constitution allows for its president to declare an emergency and suspend a wide variety of civil liberties. (I know, nobody likes to hear about the cheese-eating surrender weasels, but France is our sister republic.)

Here in the United States, there is no explicit constitutional authority for the president (or anyone else for that matter) to assume the mantle of dictator in a time of national emergency. When war breaks out our presidents, as a matter of necessity, have just gone ahead an arrogated the needed powers to themselves. Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus is often cited as precedent, but in a way it was small fry when you consider that immediately before the war broke out he went so far as to march the army into the legislatures of states which were on the fence regarding secession and compel them to vote to remain in the union.

Nor is invoking these fearsome governmental powers in response to terrorist acts all that out of the ordinary for democracies. Even level-headed Canada, a country my wife proudly describes as “your good neighbor, you know, the one who mows his lawn and takes care of his fence,” has had to resort to extreme measures and the suspension of civil liberties in the face of terrorism at some point. During the “October Crisis” of 1970 a terrorist group called the FLQ kidnapped and brutally murdered government officials, stole several tons of dynamite, bombed the Montreal stock exchange, and threatened to blow up a great deal more. Pierre Trudeau, the prime minister at the time, sent in the army. Mass arrests, mostly without charge, followed. (In the sort of overly-practical move that Americans’ sense of justice would never allow the Canadians later let the terrorists read some crazy manifesto on TV and gave them a free ride to Cuba on a military plane just to get the whole unpleasant business over with.)

There is a basic problem at work here. While terrorists are essentially no more than politically-motivated criminals, and their acts are not really “acts of war” in the sense of being executed by well disciplined and organized armies which are answerable to some government somewhere, ordinary police tactics just aren’t sufficient for rooting them out. Conspiracy is hard to prove. When you worry about such niceties as search warrants, probable cause, and habeas corpus, you’re probably not going to be able to apprehend a terrorist cell. What’s more, terrorists can paralyze a society (if only for short periods) far more than ordinary crimes. Sometimes emergency powers have to be invoked in order to stop them. It’s an unpleasant truth.

However, all these forms of emergency power are temporary, and have some sort of check upon them. Roman dictators were appointed for just six months. The French president can only invoke emergency powers for twelve days before he has to go to the legislature and say “mother may I?” The Canadians don’t have a specific time limit on their emergency powers, but (no-doubt ironically to American ears) the Queen is intended to be their check against tyranny; if things got far enough out of hand she or her governor-general could step in and remove the prime minister. (It’s never happened in Canada, but in 1975 it did occur in Australia, another of Queen Elizabeth’s realms.) There is always some sort of check or time limit on the power to trample the rights of the private person in the name of the public emergency. Even though the law is changed in favor of the state, the law still prevails.

There in is the real problem with the Bush administration’s trampling of civil liberties. If during the weeks or months after the 9/11 attacks it had been necessary to make mass arrests, eavesdrop on all Americans’ phone and internet traffic, and do it all on slim-to-no evidence, that could have been justifiable. However we are seven years in, and the President still claims these extraordinary powers. The fact that Guantanamo Bay was a stated attempt to create a law-free zone is telling; it would seem that the president does not want the law to be temporarily changed to favor the needs of the state, he wants to be outside and above the law. Ironic that the conservative buzz when he was fighting the decision of the popular vote in the supreme court was “there’s a rule of law issue here.”

One should note that in ancient Rome, there was only a single man who served as dictator for more than a year or two at the very most, and he brought the Roman Republic to an end.

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The Fate of Democracy

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

In America we have a tendency to equate patriotism with drinking our own nationalistic kool-ade and the belief that the United States of America is a somehow divinely ordained as special and righteous among nations. However, we’re not. Just like other governments, democratic republics rise and fall. Ours is no different, and like the Romans before us our republic appears to be on that road which leads to dictatorship and empire. As an American and a patriot, this saddens me deeply. To illustrate my point, examine the Optimates and the Populares. They were the two political parties in late republican Rome’s senate, just before Caesar’s coup made Rome into a dictatorship. The Optimates stood for traditional Roman values and the continuing power of those who were already rich and powerful. The Populares were the party of “the people” and ostensibly advocated for the interests of the common people. As the Roman Republic declined, however, the members of these both parties increasingly stood for nothing more than their own personal advancement. Like the Populares before them, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans may not have as solid a foundation as one might think. Like Rome before it, the American Republic itself is neither invincible nor ordained as eternal, but rather is something that must be defended by patriots in every generation.

As I said in my last post, I am not a Democrat. There are many important issues from gun control to the sanctity of human life to freedom of religion where I have deep, serious philosophical differences with what the Democrats stand for as a party. Furthermore, up until recently I’ve seen very little from the Democratic Party to convince me that its leadership really has the interests of either the nation or the marginalized people they so often purport to represent at heart. I haven’t (until recently) seen anything that they’re anything different from the ancient Populares.

The thing that has seemed to me most ominous for our democracy is not the malfeasance of highly placed Republicans, nor the institutional cowardice of the Democrats. It is the fact that the American people, for the most part, just haven’t seemed to care for quite some time. If you have ever read much of Thomas Jefferson’s thoughts on our form of government you know that he thought one of the most important foundations of our democracy was the “yeoman farmer” who took an almost proprietary interest in our government. The loss of that interest coupled with our national tendency towards hero worship (we are the country that brought the world movie gods and rock stars) could easily make America fertile ground for dictatorship.

However, as I said in my open letter, this is a special moment in history, and things now happening within the democratic party give me hope that our nation’s long slide towards tyranny can be stopped, a hope that I didn’t have even a year ago. Like FDR before him, Barack Obama is running a campaign that uses new technology to take his message directly to the electorate, and involves them directly by means of things like “Platform Meetings” he’s promoting to get ordinary voters involved in writing the Democratic Party’s platform. (I’ve talked about the Obama-FDR parallels in the past, so I won’t get into them very deeply here.) I see in the former community organizer from Chicago the potential to reignite that proprietary interest of citizens in their government in another generation. If that happens, the Democrats may become the sort of creative force which hasn’t been present in American politics since FDR’s Democratic Party of the New Deal era gave hope back to the working man, or Lincoln’s Republicans made the third installment payment on the words “all men are created equal.” If that came to pass, I could put aside my philosophical differences with the Democratic Party just for the privilege of being a part of such a movement, at such a moment.

However, there is also the distinct possibility that it won’t happen that way. Barack Obama very well could emerge as the object of a noisy personality cult which would by necessity push us ever closer to tyranny no matter how progressive its programme. Only time will tell.

But here’s hoping.

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An Open Letter to the Democratic Party

Saturday, July 19, 2008

I am not a member of the Democratic Party. However, I hope that Democrats will consider a few points now, as they prepare for the upcoming elections.

There is much more in the balance here than four years of the presidency. Ultimately, what’s at stake may be the republic itself. While this is not to say that the Democratic Party hasn’t had its moments, the Republican Party has basically dominated American politics over the past 27 years. They have done this by building the proverbial “big tent” of disparate interest groups who can work together. The Republican party has in turn been dominated by a small group of ideologues whose vision for America is frightening. It is one where the government can spy on or imprison citizens on the most flimsy premise, the elderly and poor (including the former middle class) are left to suffer in the bitter economic wind of an “ownership society,” and America is embroiled in senseless and inexplicable wars around the globe.

The Democrats haven’t been able to create such a “big tent” coalition for decades. However, this is a special moment in history. The Republicans have had eight unopposed years to implement many of their most favored ideas here in the really-real world, and now that those policies are starting to bear fruit it is becoming apparent just how bad and awful they really are. Thus, the Democratic Party has an opportunity to capture the hearts and minds of millions of voters who have been firmly Republican for decades, and thus redefine American politics.

The mere fact that this opportunity exists, however, is no guarantee that a broader coalition will be built. Barack Obama is a much stronger candidate than John McCain in a variety of ways, and while I could be wrong I believe that once the presidential debates have taken place he will win over enough Americans to assure a victory in the presidential election. However, just as Bill Clinton’s presidency turned out to be a brief interlude from the steady “conservative” drum-beat we’ve been listening to since Ronald Reagan, there is a danger that an Obama victory this fall could be a mere aberration based more on the personality of one man, rather than a sea change in our politics. To prevent this from happening and to make the building of a new “big tent” possible, I believe there are three very important things which must happen within the Democratic Party.

First, it is time for Democrats to get your act together on security issues. Following the Republican lead isn’t a strategy for anything except failure, but it’s what the Democrats have been doing for quite some time. In a paradoxical attempt to look tough, Democratic politicians have acquiesced to everything the Republican Party has held forth in the name of “The War on Terror” and “Homeland Security,” from Iraq to domestic spying. It hasn’t made them look tough. It’s made them look spineless. (Perhaps some of them are.)

Democrats have led our nation through far more dangerous times than these. Republicans often cite Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler at Munich as the reason for their “strategy” of never, ever speaking to countries we don’t like, but it was Democrats, FDR and Harry Truman, who led America through the war to defeat Hitler and fascism. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, enough nuclear weapons were aimed at our country to destroy the world as we know it. If JFK had followed the simplistic, “never, ever give an inch” sort of advice the Republicans now offer, then at that critical moment those missiles would have flown and we probably wouldn’t be having this dialog. I look at the way these men led America through real threats to our nation’s existence and I know that the party’s present cowardice on issues of national security does not stem from weakness in the character of liberal ideals, as so many radio demagogues on the right would have us all believe.

This year security will probably be trumped by the economy, but it’s an issue that’s not going away. It is high time for the Democrats to stop running from security issues and offer their own strategy, one that recognizes the complexity of the issues at hand and proposes real solutions and approaches to the threats that face America. I believe that this task is an urgent one; I doubt the republic can survive many more years of the present approach, not because I believe that a great power such as the United States is in danger of being overwhelmed by a rag-tag band of insurgents and terrorists thousands of miles away, but because I believe that if we do not change our current national course we run the risks of both the loss of our liberties and of provoking a wider war in the middle east.

Secondly, the Democratic Party must make a concerted effort to reach out to rural voters. The American political system is weighted towards rural states, both in the electoral college and in the senate. For decades these voters have been heavily Republican, largely because they have felt, right or wrong, that the Democrats are attacking their right to bear arms and their religious liberties. However, for the first time in a very long time many of these same voters are coming to realize that the Republicans are not acting in their best interests. These voters love their country and have a disproportionate number of sons and daughters in the military, and many of them are coming to see just how foolish a waste of those young lives the war in Iraq has been. Furthermore, towns where there is only one big employer and rural areas where residents must drive long distances for the necessities of life are feeling the effects of the Republican war on the middle class in a way that is, I think, hard to imagine for those who live in our nation’s cities.

Finally, there is a problem with the organizational culture of the Democratic Party, and so long as it is not addressed the Republicans will continue to dominate our nation’s politics. The fact is, the Republicans are more tolerant of dissent within their ranks. I’m sure many of you are shocked at that idea, but there are a number of institutional examples of this tolerance of dissent within the Republican party. Rudy Giuliani, for example, has risen to national prominence despite being pro-choice, and taking relatively liberal positions on other issues such as gay rights, gun control, and illegal immigration. As another example, the “Log Cabin Republicans” are a significant group within in the Republican party which supports gay and lesbian rights.

Furthermore, as someone who has had significant contact and conversation with activist members of both major parties I can say from personal experience that Republicans, as a group, are more willing to tolerate dissenting opinions within their ranks. It should be said that I’m talking about ordinary party activists as opposed to the vast Republican Party noise and spin machine. Furthermore there are certainly ideologues who would rather shout down those who differ with them, but they tend to keep to themselves in cliquey pockets of fundamentalist “Christian Conservatives.” However, while I’ve always been able to have civil, mutually enjoyable conversations about politics with people I know who are Republicans about issues I disagree with them on, even such contentious topics as (for example) the war or universal health care, I have yet to meet a Democratic activist who is equally willing to have such civil conversations about issues we disagree on. Instead, the reactions I’ve gotten to the attempt to start such conversations have ranged from the dismissive (I’ve been told that I shouldn’t have an opinion on abortion, for example, because I’m a man) to outright name calling. I am not saying that the Democratic Party has to give up its liberal ideas or philosophy, or that it has to change any of its positions on the issues, merely that there needs to be room in the Democratic Party for those who disagree with its platform on some issues. A group that is willing to openly talk about both disagreements and things in common will always be more attractive to somebody on the fence than a group of people who calls him or her “indecent” over one difference of opinion, and the Democrats will never attract people away from the Republican Party without making them feel welcome.

I sincerely hope that the Democratic party overcomes these problems. In the short term, I wonder if it can survive should Barack Obama fail to win the upcoming election. In the long term, I don’t think the republic can survive if John McCain wins.

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