Blogs: Digby

Rand To The Rescue

Digby — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:06:20 -0400

Paul Krugman points to an article that should send chills down the backs of good progressives everywhere:

Ayn Rand's novels of headstrong entrepreneurs' battles against convention enjoy a devoted following in business circles. While academia has failed to embrace Rand, calling her philosophy simplistic, schools have agreed to teach her works in exchange for a donation.

The charitable arm of BB&T Corp., a banking company, pledged $1 million to the University of North Carolina Charlotte in 2005 and obtained an agreement that Rand's novel ``Atlas Shrugged'' would become required reading for students. Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, say they also took grants and agreed to teach Rand.

I have written about the pernicious effect of Rand before, and noted that the Ayn Rand Institute provides nearly half a million free copies to American high schools to indoctrinate teen-agers into romantic selfishness (thus validating their natural adolescent tendencies as being acceptable adult behavior.) But this is truly beyond the pale.

Corporations, which have very good reasons to train young people into an ethos that extols the alleged virtues of heroic captains of industry and their lonely fight to retain freedom in the face of left wing collectivism, should not be buying academic curriculum of any kind. The very idea of academic freedom is that the academics decide what to teach, not the government or the community or especially some company who wants to promulgate a puerile political philosophy designed to make people believe that selfishness is a virtue. That it's in the form of a very bad romance novel makes it even worse. (To those romance novel aficionados out there, please note that I said "bad" romance novel. It's not a slam at the whole genre.)

The Ayn Rand Institute, ever creative, has come up with a new marketing scheme to promote the book. Sensing a change in the zeitgeist, and seeking to take advantage of what they perceive as this opening in academe, they are pushing the anti-religious side of objectivism.

Yaron Brook, the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, a nonprofit organization in Irvine, California, that promotes objectivism, said some professors are re-evaluating Rand.

``We're definitely seeing more of an interest in the academic world,'' Brook said. He said he senses a softening of opposition from academics and sees more conferences and articles about Rand.

``Ayn Rand has a kind of absolutist ethics,'' Brook said. ``She believes in right or wrong, good and evil, but based on secular principles, not religious principles, and I think there's an appeal for that now.''

Very, very clever. As for its moral dimension, objectivism simply holds that it's moral to be completely selfish and rapacious. Indeed, it is immoral not to be. That would seem to be something of a difficult sell in an age of greedy sub-prime mortgage brokers and billionaire hedge fund operators, but you have to give them credit for perseverance in the face of abject philosophical failure. It's hard to believe that any academic worth his or her salt would take this line of argument seriously, but apparently the lure of big money is enough to make them consider it:

Allison's BB&T, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in March pledged $2 million to establish the first U.S. chair in the study of objectivism, at the University of Texas at Austin.

That school and 27 others have accepted an aggregate $30 million from the bank's foundation in the last decade.

``These gifts are really about the study of capitalism from a moral perspective and all we want is to make Rand part of the dialogue,'' said Bob Denham, a spokesman for BB&T, the parent of Branch Banking & Trust Co.

The BB&T Charitable Foundation made a five-year, $1 million commitment to the University of North Carolina Charlotte in January 2005 after a dinner meeting between Allison and Claude Lilly, then dean of UNC Charlotte's business school.

The grant agreement described ``Atlas Shrugged'' as ``required reading'' in a course about the fundamentals of capitalism.

This is the real agenda. It's not about literature or about philosophy. The point of this is to indoctrinate young business majors into the Rand philosophy, which is a perverted and radical form of capitalism that bears no relationship to the way the world really works. (In fact, it's real agenda may be to indoctrinate young people into believing that overpaid executives actually deserve to make hundreds of times the average worker's pay while driving the company into the ground.)

This book has gotten a powerful hold on enough young minds that I think it has made a difference in our politics over the last generation or so. The question is what to do about it? I suspect that we will get nowhere with protests. But no self-respecting university wants to be accused of propagandizing its students purely because some big corporation with an agenda gave them some money, right? What if there were a concerted effort to pressure these universities to offer a competing view?

If so, what book should progressives push to counteract the Randian propaganda?

Making The World Safe For Jack Bauer

Digby — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 07:37:31 -0500

I urge everyone to listen to the president's radio address this week-end if you get the chance. (Not that any of you would normally miss it, I'm sure. What could be more riveting?) But it does promise to be a good one this time. He's going to tell us all why he needs to veto the ban on torture.

Here's Dana Perino at the White House press briefing, letting it slip earlier this week:

Q Does the President realize he's going to further tarnish our image for humanity if he vetoes a ban on torture?

MS. PERINO: That's not what he's suggesting, Helen. You're talking about the Senate -- the intelligence authorization bill?

Q Isn't he supposed to veto the ban this week, or so?

MS. PERINO: Helen -- well, he is going to veto a bill, but it's not the bill in which you describe. The bill that he is going to veto is the intelligence authorization bill. We've had a statement of administration position that has been out for a long time. There are many different reasons he's going to veto it. One of the main ones is that it would apply the Army Field Manual, which is very good guidance for young soldiers who are out on the field who might capture somebody out on the battlefield, but it is not something that should apply to a terrorist interrogation program that is run by the CIA.

Q Why? It's torture, isn't it?

MS. PERINO: It isn't -- no, we are not torturing, and that is not what the bill says.

Q Well, it would ban --

MS. PERINO: Torture is already illegal.

Q -- he is vetoing a ban on torture, isn't he?

MS. PERINO: Torture is already illegal in this country, and the President has already signed a bill reiterating that fact. The simple point of this bill is that the Army Field Manual -- the President does not believe, nor does the intelligence community -- I'd point you to General Hayden and others who say that it should not --

Q The military certainly believes in it.

MS. PERINO: It is appropriate for the military to have the Army Field Manual as its guidelines. But we do not believe that it should apply to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Q Why? Are they human beings? Are we humane people?

MS. PERINO: We are humane people. We have a terrorist interrogation
program that helps make sure that we keep this country safe. We do not torture.
But what I will tell you is that you will hear more about this this weekend. The
President's radio address will be on this issue.

That reporter was, of course, Helen Thomas, who has been dealing with White house pissants for longer than most of us have been alive.

Perino does a perfect Bush do-si-doh, but when you read what she says, it's this: the Army Field Manual is too restrictive for the CIA because it does not allow torture. But the CIA doesn't torture, so any questions about why the president is vetoing the bill requiring the CIA to follow the Army Field Manual's ban on torture are off base. I'll be looking forward to hearing the president explain this, because it's always entertaining to hear him speak in tongues.

The fact is that the Bush administration has pretty much legitimized torture already. History sadly shows that this country has often done some terrible things along this line, but it's only during the Bush years that the government has explicitly legalized it. They did so by way of justice department memos and executive orders, but under the unitary executive theory, the president don't need no stinkin' legislature anyway. It's somewhat interesting that he is going to veto this bill rather than sign it as he usually does and then offer a signing statement saying he has no intention of following the law he just signed. Apparently he wants to make a very public show of this, even using his radio address to defend it.

That might be surprising except that openly defending torture is becoming all the rage in right wing circles. Just this week Justice Scalia made comments similar to his earlier ones on the subject, in which he said:

Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited under the Constitution? Because smacking someone in the face would violate the 8th amendment in a prison context. You can’t go around smacking people about.

Is it obvious that what can’t be done for punishment can’t be done to exact information that is crucial to this society? It’s not at all an easy question, to tell you the truth.

The BBC interviewer, however, objected to Scalia’s use of the so-called “ticking time bomb” scenario to justify government torture. “It’s a bizarre scenario,” he said. “Because the fact is, it’s very unlikely you’re going to have the one person who can give you that information. So if you use that as an excuse to commit torture, perhaps that’s a dangerous thing.” Scalia responded:

Seems to me you have to say, as unlikely as that is, it would be absurd to say that you can’t stick something under the fingernails, smack them in the face. It would be absurd to say that.

That is the legal thinking among the brightest conservative minds in the country. Apparently, it's "absurd" to say you can't stick something under someone's fingernails. And if that's the case, why shouldn't you be able to cut off their fingers? Hook electrodes to their genitals. Hang them by their wrists from the ceiling until their shoulder pop out of the socket. Once you open the door to using depraved violence on people in your custody, it's all just a matter of degree.

But when you listen to Scalia say those words (you can hear the audio at the link) it's inescapable that he's entertained by it. And that may be because of the right wing's very unhealthy obsession with the television show 24 of which he is a very big fan.

"Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.
"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.

"So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes."

"I don't care about holding people. I really don't," Judge Scalia said.

Even if a real terrorist who suffered mistreatment is released because of complaints of abuse, Judge Scalia said, the interruption to the terrorist's plot would have ensured "in Los Angeles everyone is safe." During a break from the panel, Judge Scalia specifically mentioned the segment in Season 2 when Jack Bauer finally figures out how to break the die-hard terrorist intent on nuking L.A. The real genius, the judge said, is that this is primarily done with mental leverage. "There's a great scene where he told a guy that he was going to have his family killed," Judge Scalia said. "They had it on closed circuit television - and it was all staged. ... They really didn't kill the family."

This is a man who judges death penalty cases.

The popularity of the show has been cited as proof that the American people approve of torture, since the show fetishizes it. The Heritage Foundation even held a 24seminar hosted by Rush Limbaugh and featuring the cast and government luminaries like the Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, who spoke glowingly of the show:

SECRETARY CHERTOFF: ...In reflecting a little bit about the popularity of the show "24 -- and it is popular, and there are a number of senior political and military officials around the country who are fans, and I won't identify them, because they may not want me to do that (laughter) I was trying to analyze why it's caught such public attention. Obviously, it's a very well-made and very well-acted show, and very exciting. And the premise of a 24-hour period is a novel and, I think, very intriguing premise. But I thought that there was one element of the shows that at least I found very thought-provoking, and I suspect, from talking to people, others do as well...

I think when people watch the show, it provokes a lot of thinking about what would you do if you were faced with this set of unpalatable alternatives, and what do you do when you make a choice and it turns out to be a mistake because there was something you didn't know. I think that, the lesson there, I think is an important one we need to take to heart. It's very easy in hindsight to go back after a decision and inspect it and examine why the decision should have been taken in the other direction. But when you are in the middle of the event, as the characters in "24" are, with very imperfect information and with very little time to make a decision, and with the consequences very high on a wrong decision, you have to be willing to make a decision recognizing that there is a risk of mistake.

It's all just like 24 you see, except without the craft service table and the make-up trailer. Chertoff is basically saying that sometimes we might get a little bit overzealous, if you know what I mean, but that's just because we don't have all the information we need. It's hard to make good decisions under stress and well, you know, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few legs. 24 teaches American kids about that and the government is grateful.

So, on Saturday, the President of the United States is going to veto a bill that would keep our hero Jack Bauer from waterboarding some mentally unstable nobody who sends the Americans on wild goose chases all over the world just to get them to stop torturing him. That's what protecting the nation is all about.

The Transformation Project

Digby — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:15:19 -0500

We are hearing a lot these days about political "transformation" in politics. Aside from a desire for a change in policy, the public also indicates that they desire a change in the way our politics are conducted. But as much as everyone likes the idea of an end to partisan squabbling, it's not entirely clear yet how this transformation will take place, or what the character of the transformation will actually be. So naturally, the political establishment, anxious to have it on terms they can control, will increasingly be taking the lead in defining it for us.

The Washington Post recently ran an editorial ostensibly about Senator Barack Obama, but which actually seemed less about him than about what they believe parameters of "transformation" should be:

When the Illinois Democrat talks about bringing together red and blue America, does he mean that he will persuade the red (Republican) part to come around to blue (Democratic) policies -- or does he mean that he will forge a new, centrist answer that will bridge the red-blue divide? Is he a liberal at heart who tacks occasionally to the center or more of a centrist capable of suppressing leftist instincts when political circumstances demand?

[...]

As New York Times columnist David Brooks has pointed out, Mr. Obama was not part of the bipartisan Gang of 14 that tried to avert a showdown on judicial filibusters; he was not among the 68 senators voting for a bipartisan agreement on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; he dissented from the part of the bipartisan immigration deal that displeased unions. His campaign platform is orthodox liberal Democratic fare. So is Mr. Obama a standard liberal clad in the soothing language of inclusiveness?

Apparently, being a "standard liberal" is automatically exclusionary, so any question as to whether the Democratic agenda might be transformative by persuasion is not on The Washington Post editorial board's menu. They obviously believe that bipartisanship is the only way to bridge the red-blue divide, and judging from the examples they cited, when they say bipartisanship, they mean capitulation to the conservatives.

As I have written before, it's telling that establishment calls for bipartisanship during the reign of George W. Bush and the Republican majority were nil. It is only now, with the possibility of a liberal majority and Democratic president, that cooperation and inclusiveness are held forth as the only way to "get things done." I will have to be pardoned for being a little bit skeptical of the sincerity of that position. It's quite obvious that they are most concerned with keeping the status quo, which for many years now has been a conservative status quo. Recent history shows that when Republicans are in power, regardless of how close — or even legitimate — their victory, they are there because they have received "political capital" from the people to "spend" on the conservative agenda for which they received a "mandate." When Democrats are in power, it's important that they reach across the aisle and be "centrist" and "inclusive" or risk being seen as "orthodox" and "leftist."

But regardless of the establishment's predictable resistance to change, the progressive movement does need to define what "transformative" means beyond ending partisan squabbling. Clearly, if that is a goal unto itself the bipartisan concern trolls will hijack the agenda.

I was, therefore, delighted to read this piece in The Nation, by Democratic New York state senator Eric Schneiderman, discussing this very topic in terms I think we should all consider:

Check off the boxes, copy the paragraph from two years ago, mail it in. As an election year approaches, I again face the piles of questionnaires that progressive organizations use to evaluate public officials. Environmentalists, feminists, campaign finance reformers, housing advocates and labor unions have all come to rely on these lists of our positions--often on issues that never even come up for a vote. It should come as no surprise that, for the most part, all we get out of this cumbersome process is a long line of "checklist liberals" who answer correctly but do little to advance the progressive causes that underlie the questionnaires.

I respectfully suggest that if we want to move beyond short- term efforts to slow down the bone-crushing machinery of the contemporary conservative movement and begin to build a meaningful movement of our own, we need to expand the job descriptions of our elected officials. To do this, we must consider the two distinct aspects of our work: transactional politics and transformational politics.

Transactional politics is pretty straightforward. What's the best deal I can get on a gun-control or immigration-reform bill during this year's legislative session? What do I have to do to elect a good progressive ally in November? Transactional politics requires us to be pragmatic about current realities and the state of public opinion. It's all about getting the best result possible given the circumstances here and now.

Transformational politics is the work we do today to ensure that the deal we can get on gun control or immigration reform in a year—or five years, or 20 years—will be better than the deal we can get today. Transformational politics requires us to challenge the way people think about issues, opening their minds to better possibilities. It requires us to root out the assumptions about politics or economics or human nature that prevent us from embracing policies that will make our lives better. Transformational politics has been a critical element of American political life since Lincoln was advocating his "oft expressed belief that a leader should endeavor to transform, yet heed, public opinion."

Schneiderman goes on to detail how the conservative movement successfully transformed the political playing field over a very long period, overturning assumptions and working the long view through a concerted, systematic effort to educate and persuade the public that the Republican Party stood for their values and their interests. They worked relentlessly not just to elect Republicans or enact certain policies, but to change the terms on which our national political debate was held.

He suggests that the progressive reliance on these transactional "checklists" of right votes or correct policy stands doesn't properly measure a politicians' commitment to the larger progressive project. I would add that these checklists may actually obscure the real effects of their rhetoric and voting record: You can't help but be reminded of Senator Joe Lieberman's stellar liberal scorecard on the issue of choice, which failed to take into account his eager willingness to confirm conservative judges who would overturn Roe vs. Wade and his blithe rhetorical dismissal of women's right to avoid pregnancy after being raped. There's no way to measure that sort of damage on a NARAL scorecard.

Schneiderman acknowledges that politicians have always been rewarded for this transactional style of politics, and so, as humans (and politicians) are wont to do, they pursued that style of politics. It's up to the public, and specifically activists, to demand transformational rhetoric and a commitment to long term progressive policy goals of our representatives:

[H]ere's a proposal to inspire a transformational focus by our candidates. On every issue, with every group of activists, politicians who claim to be doing transformational work should be required to prove it. All politicians who seek your support should produce articles, videos, transcripts--anything that demonstrates that they are challenging the conservative assumptions that frame virtually all discussions of public policy among America's elected officials. How do we talk about abortion? As a duel between "prochoice" and "prolife" extremists--or as an issue of basic human freedom for women denied the power to control their own bodies? What do we say about health insurance? That it requires a delicate balance between the free market and socialism--or that it is an essential investment in our most important national resource and a basic right, without which our commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is meaningless.

[...]

The point of the transformational/transactional paradigm is not for everyone to be singing the same ode to change all the time, but for every would-be progressive official to pursue transformational themes as a central part of our conversation with our constituents and colleagues. We will never overcome decades of brilliant conservative propaganda on the economy until our representatives begin to reflect the basic ideas of Bernstein, Baker, Paul Krugman and Robert Reich in our stump speeches to political clubs and our talks at senior centers.

Finally, this is not a proposal to abandon the day-to-day struggles of transactional politics, which are still a central part of our work. Nor is it a proposal for self-immolation. Progressive candidates in tough races or in swing districts may not always be able to lead in transformational politics (although many conservative warriors displayed such self-sacrifice in the course of their movement's march to conquest). But most Democratic officials are in very safe districts, and they should be pressured to pursue transformational as well as transactional work.

We are in the midst of an exciting presidential campaign. After experiencing a devastating eight years of disillusionment with Republican rule, the public is tuned in and listening with fresh ears to what progressive politicians have to say. But a successful election will just be the beginning. The 40-year campaign to persuade Americans that their best interests are served by serving the wealthy has been thoroughly internalized and will take a lot of work to unravel. Progressives still have a lot of work to do to insure that the terms of the debate will be firmly on the side of average Americans instead of the moneyed interests, that civil liberties are fundamental American values and that we take our moral and ethical responsibilities as a wealthy, first world nation seriously. The only way to do that is to truly transform the way people think about their government and their elected leadership.

Cramped transactional politics should not be used as a definition of progressivism. While they are a necessary part of the system, they cannot fuel a transformation of our politics. Our job as activists is to pressure and prod our elected representatives to advance the progressive project and reward them when they do it. Winning office should be the beginning, not the end. Transformation is not just a goal, it's a process.

Ressentimental Journey Part Deux

Digby — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 06:16:52 -0500

In my previous post, I discussed the fact that a "cold civil war" between two distinct American tribes has been going on since the founding of the Republic. It waxes and wanes and takes on different character, but it is always simmering, beneath the surface.

The ressentiment that fuels the conservative tribe is taking one of its forays into internecine purges, something that both tribes engage in from time to time, but which conservatives have turned into one of their purifying rituals. Stubborn insistence on conformity of thought and complete capitulation of the other side is one of its tenets, and always has been. Indeed, its one of their prime motivating impulses.

Nobody has ever captured this destructive mindset better than Abraham Lincoln, speaking to the Southern states in great frustration at the Cooper Union in 1860, when the cold war was on the verge of bursting into flame.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events...

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action?

But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me — my money — was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another...Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated — we must place ourselves avowedly with them.

Sound familiar?

Just as it was when the resentment tribe called itself the confederacy, today's conservatives are not content with anything less than conversion. To that end they will happily obstruct any initiative that gives them less than total victory. They filibuster even when it doesn't make sense, just to keep their record untainted with compromise. They insist, as they recently did with immigration reform, for instance, that nothing less than total capitulation to their position will do. It is not enough that politicians or civic leaders agree to build their wall while providing a path to citizenship. They must agree that undocumented workers will be forced out of the country and join them in making it a national crusade. And this must be done thoroughly — done in acts as well as words.

Silence will not be tolerated — liberals must place themselves avowedly with them.

Ressentimental Journey

Digby — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:34:05 -0500

As I'm sure you all know, Rick Perlstein, esteemed fellow here at CAF, wrote a very interesting piece for the Washington Post the other day making the important observations that no matter how much people want to believe that the battles of the 1960s are over—they aren't:

The fact is, the '60s are still with us, and will remain so for the imaginable future. We are all like Zhou Enlai, who, asked what he thought about the French Revolution, answered, "It is too early to tell." When and how will the cultural and political battle lines the baby boomers bequeathed us dissolve? It is, well and truly, still too early to tell. We can't yet "overcome" the '60s because we still don't even know what the '60s were -- not even close.

Born myself in 1969 to pre-baby boomer parents, I'm a historian of America's divisions who spent the age of George W. Bush reading more newspapers written when Johnson and Richard Nixon were president than current ones. And I recently had a fascinating experience scouring archives for photos of the 1960s to illustrate the book I've just finished based on that research. It was frustrating -- and telling.

The pictures people take and save, as opposed to the ones they never take or the ones they discard, say a lot about how they understand their own times. And in our archives as much as in our mind's eye, we still record the '60s in hazy cliches -- in the stereotype of the idealistic youngster who came through the counterculture and protest movements, then settled down to comfortable bourgeois domesticity.

What's missing? The other side in that civil war. The right-wing populist rage of 1968 third-party presidential candidate George Wallace, who, referring to an idealistic protester who had lain down in front of Johnson's limousine, promised that if he were elected, "the first time they lie down in front of my limousine, it'll be the last one they'll ever lay down in front of because their day is over!" That kind of quip helped him rise to as much as 20 percent in the polls.

It's easy to find hundreds of pictures of the national student strike that followed Nixon's announcement of the invasion of Cambodia in the spring of 1970. Plenty of pictures of the riots at Kent State that ended with four students shot dead by National Guardsmen. None I could find, however, of the counter-demonstrations by Kent, Ohio, townies -- and even Kent State parents. Flashing four fingers and chanting "The score is four/And next time more," they argued that the kids had it coming.

As you can see, Rick argues that this was civil war and I don't think he's overstating it. In fact, I would actually take it further. I've often argued that the culture war is a battle in our long "cold" civil war, meaning that while our politics has not often devolved into violence in recent years (with some rather notable exceptions like Oklahoma City) the war has continued, flaring up at certain times but always on at least a low simmer ... for centuries.

It's true that those who say that the 1960s presented a very specific, unique challenge to the aristocrats who reacted with new tools and coordination against what they saw as a serious political and cultural threat. But nonetheless I still see this as a continuation of the battle that has raged in our country since its inception, a battle between the two warring American tribes. Those two tribes originally broke down on geographical lines, North vs. South, but have since evolved into something much more complex, beyond just class or region or race, although it has elements of all three. Underlying all the "issues" of any given era is the notion of moral righteousness and inferiority, ressentiment, that stemmed from the original sin of slavery and created two American "tribes" which operate reflexively under certain recurring impulses.

We saw it played out in stark traditional regional terms during the last election.

I think support for Bush is about not wanting to be led by East-coast pretensions. It is about not wanting to be led by people who are forever trying to force their twisted sense of morality onto us, which is a non-morality. That is constantly done, and there is real resentment. Support for Bush is about resentment in the so-called 'red states' — a confusing term to Guardian readers, I agree — which here means, literally, middle America.
— Tom Wolfe

This certainly seemed to be true, at least in some very important respects. But, that resentment wasn't created by Michael Moore or Pat Robertson. This goes back to the beginning.

It's important to remember that one of the main rationales for the civil war was that the southerners believed the north was trying to impose their "values" upon them and they deeply resented it. From the earliest days of the republic this was a problem. A different culture grew up around slavery in the south as did the tension surrounding the issue. The mere act of rejecting it was cause for insult and the south withdrew into a cultural identity based largely upon its difference from the north. Indeed, this was one of the defining rationales for slavery — the exceptionalism of the southern culture.

The North did condescend. Many believed that slavery was a barbaric and primitive institution and that those who condoned it were, therefore, primitive and barbaric. They did not keep their opinions to themselves. From the start this tension created a huge amount of resentment among Southerners. And the resentment didn't come from political powerlessness or disenfranchisement. During the first 70 years of the country, the South dominated the national government. It didn't help.

From a speech given at the centennial of the civil war by historian Stephen Z. Starr :

...it is tragic to think that for two generations, the mental energies of the South were devoted to elaborating justifications of slavery - perhaps to appease its own feelings of guilt - to the exclusion of every other form of cultural activity.

[...]

The second basic issue between the sections lay in the area of politics; necessarily so, for it was in the political arena that the problems between the sections were fought out until the South decided that political solutions, reached by a process of give and take, were no longer adequate to protect its "honor and self-respect.”

Bear in mind that middle and upper class Southerners were politicians by birthright. Active participation in politics was, in the South, a way of life. One would expect, therefore, to find a much greater degree of political skill and acumen there than in the North. What one finds there instead is demagogy, bombast, irresponsibility, incompetence, a childish refusal to come to grips with realities, and a habitual substitution of slogans, symbols and bogeymen for facts. These are strong statements, but hardly strong enough to fit the situation.

The South had an almost unbroken control of the Federal Government from 1789 until secession. The presidents were either Southerners., or Northerners like Pierce and Buchanan, who were mere puppets in the hands of Southern senators and cabinet members. For seventy years, the Supreme Court had a majority of Southern justices. With the aid of its Northern allies and the three-fifths rule, the South controlled one or both houses of Congress. The fifteen Slave States, with a white population of not quite eight million, had 30 senators, 90 representatives, and 120 electoral votes, whereas the State of New York, with a population of four million had two senators, 33 representatives, and 35 electoral votes. Even the election of 1860 left the South in control of both houses of Congress, and until at least 1863, Lincoln and the Republicans would have been powerless to pass legislation hostile to the South, and through its control of the Senate, the South could have blocked the confirmation of every Lincoln appointee whom it considered unfriendly. In spite of this, and notwithstanding Lincoln's repeated assurances that he would not, directly or indirectly, interfere with slavery where it already existed, the South chose to secede.

Starr goes on to show that this irrational behavior was not due to the South failing to get most of the the legislation it wanted, because it did. But it became an emotional issue in which it was important to "crack the whip over the heads of the Northern men" and they began to make enemies of their allies in the territories. As Starr says, "this tale of political ineptitude, the habitual misreading of the minds of opponents, the misjudging of the practical possibilities of a given situation, the purposeless striving for effect, the substitution of arrogance and threats for rational discussion, could be expanded many fold."

Granting the existence of cultural differences between the North and South, can we assume that they would necessarily lead to a Civil War? Obviously not. Such differences lead to animosity and war only if one side develops a national inferiority complex, begins to blame all its shortcomings on the other side, enforces a rigid conformity on its own people, and tries to make up for its own sins of omission and commission by name-calling, by nursing an exaggerated pride and sensitiveness, and by cultivating a reckless aggressiveness as a substitute for reason. And this was the refuge of the South. For ten years before secession, Northerners were commonly referred to as “mongrels and hirelings." The North was described as "a conglomeration of greasy mechanics filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moonstruck theorists ... hardly fit for association with a southern gentleman's body servant." And, most fatal delusion of all, Southerners began to credit themselves with fighting ability equal to that of nine, five, or more conservatively, three Northerners. Once a nation or a section begins to speak and think in such terms, reason has gone out the window and emotion has taken over. This is precisely what happened in the South, and this is why the Cotton States seceded before Lincoln was even inaugurated and before his administration had committed, or had a chance to commit, any act of aggression against them. Such behavior is fundamentally irrational, and cannot be explained in rational terms.

The South today has more than 40 percent who vote with the blue states in national elections. They are white progressive modern people who share the Southern cultural identity but have avoided the 200-year-old baggage that makes it impossible to identify with people not of their own tribe — and African Americans who were excluded except as scapegoats and second-class citizens. The 2004 electoral map was nearly a perfect replica of the map of 1860. The country had finally righted itself back to its original tribal boundaries.

But this phenomenon can't simply be explained today as North vs. South or the liberal elite vs "heartland values" or whatever it's called this week. This is a battle between two American tribes, defined by human themes of resentment, morality, wealth, class, power, race and family. It is not specific to any particular issue or even any region anymore (even if its political boundaries might fit more or less within the original lines) and history suggests that it's unlikely there will ever be a final reconciliation through politics. Even a bloody civil war couldn't settle our differences. It's hard to believe that something as pedestrian as electoral politics could do it.

The fight is always with us. But it's through these political slugfests that the country progresses, which it always does, in fits and starts, over time. In fact, the battle is one of America's defining characteristics. It's as much as part of who we are as anything.

Part one of a series. Read Part Two.

Bipartisanship Misdirection

Digby — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:38:37 -0500

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the urgent need to stop the "partisan bickering" in Washington, with elder statesmen gathering in groups to demand bipartisan cabinets and pundits wringing their hankies about government not "getting anything done."

Glenn Greenwald wrote about the actual record of bipartisanship earlier this week and set forth a long list of recent legislative initiatives in which the Republicans voted as a bloc and Democrats crossed the aisle to pass legislation. It's quite impressive. He concludes:

On virtually every major controversial issue -- particularly, though not only, ones involving national security and terrorism -- the Republicans (including their vaunted mythical moderates and mavericks) vote in almost complete lockstep in favor of the President, the Democratic caucus splits, and the Republicans then get their way on every issue thanks to "bipartisan" support. That's what "bipartisanship" in Washington means...Other than formally disbanding as a party -- or granting a permanent proxy of their collective vote to Mitch McConnell -- how could Congressional Democrats possibly be more accommodating than they already are?

When the Republicans won in 2004, conservative movement leader Grover Norquist made a famous statement:

"Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such."

I could be wrong, but I don't recall any outcry about a lack of comity or civility in Washington over comments like that. People chuckled knowingly and explained "elections have consequences." Only now that Republicans are in the minority and may suffer an epic loss at the polls next fall do we see nearly hysterical op-eds imploring politicians to compromise for the good of the nation.

For seven years, when Democrats were in the minority, there was nary a peep from the "punditocracy" about bipartisanship, despite strict party line votes specifically designed so that Democrats would not cross over (on the theory that the Republican base preferred legislation that featured no compromises with the enemy). Yet since the Democrats won the Congress in 2006, there has been a nonstop keening from the political establishment about how the Congress needs to stop the partisan bickering — even as it is still only the Republicans who vote as a bloc on bill after bill and filibuster at twice the rate of any congressional minority in U.S. history. These critics never name names. And lately, they've been demanding that a Democratic president must be willing to name Republicans to his or her cabinet, implying that Republicans are the ones who've been shut out of the process and must be included for the sake of bipartisan comity.

It's possible that the pundits and elder statesmen simply accept that Republicans can't be asked to compromise. After all, everyone knows that conservatism is defined by its philosophy of principles and integrity (except for all the corruption and hypocrisy, of course.). Therefore, in order that a Democratic majority "gets things done," progressives must be sensitive to that special need, even to the extent that they not complain about obstructionism or pass legislation that the president might veto. That causes unpleasant discord and dissension which can only be cured by Democrats agreeing to share power with the minority and compromise on their agenda.

This new obsession about bipartisanship, which blames both parties equally for the sins of one, comes at the moment of progressive ascension. That is not an accident. Conservatism is still considered the default philosophy of "real Americans" in the political establishment. The blame for any Republican electoral losses are placed at the feet of George W. Bush, not conservatism itself, and this hand wringing about the need for bipartisanship is a way for the protectors of the status quo to keep progressivism in check after a decade of failed conservative governance.

The fact is that conservatives understand how to advance their agenda, whether in the majority or in the minority, always blaming progressives or liberalism for what has gone wrong. The political and media establishments help them do it with "heads I win, tails you lose" calls for bipartisanship the minute the Republicans become a minority. That's why progressives need to make their arguments about conservatism explicitly so that they can begin to expose this game for what it is and make people understand that conservatism, not a lack of "comity" or "bipartisan cooperation" is at fault for the mess this country is in today. If they don't, if history is any guide, a new Democratic president will be under tremendous pressure to not only govern in bipartisan fashion but, perhaps more importantly, put the past behind him or her in order to "bind the nation's wounds" with a call for unity and cooperation which will naturally exclude "looking backward."

And in 20 years we will likely see some of Dick Cheney's young protégés come to power in a new conservative administration determined restore the glorious conservative order that was cut so tragically short. by George W. Bush's mismanagement of the conservative dream.

Creative Conservatism

Digby — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:19:19 -0500

Dave Roberts of Grist takes a look at Newt Gingrich's innovative new environmental proposals which, unsurprisingly, looks like another fantastic opportunity for rich people to bleed the taxpayers:

[W]hat Gingrich recommends is, in Sean's phrasing, pro-business, not pro-market. He wants to ladle out public money to favored corporations while shielding them from any regulations....This is what passes for conservative in today's party of economic royalists, but it is not conservative in the original sense.

It leaves Gingrich with very little to offer beyond media-friendly rhetoric. Look at the answer he offers Sierra Magazine (in a roundtable well worth reading) on what the next president and Congress should do first:

Americans are concerned about global climate change, but they want legislation that does not expand the size and severity of federal control of business enterprise. American businesses want to be part of the solution, and they have good ideas that are being implemented. Our business community is already ahead of the American government, so government must become a facilitator of innovation. The federal government could enact creative legislation that keeps businesses on task as we work to develop clean and sustainable alternatives to petroleum. Americans will elect candidates who support real changes in energy policy and market-based innovations that will lead the world to import clean American technology.

Rhetorical fluff aside, it seems that "facilitator of innovation" is the key concept here, and in Gingrich's mind, that translates to "dispensers of subsidies and tax breaks."

That would be in keeping with everything we saw the conservatives do for the last few years. From "faith-based" programs to Blackwater and everything in between, conservative businesses collected a very nice tithe from the American taxpayer for the past few years.

It's a testament to the pragmatism and creativity of the right that when they find themselves on the losing side of an issue they always find a way to use it anyway to deregulate business and funnel tax dollars to their contributors — and keep up the fiction that they believe in small government. Clearly, Gingrich sees the new Green Conservatism as another opportunity to use tax dollars to benefit their wealthy contributors without the inconvenience of regulations and oversight. (Plus, he's always thought of himself as something of a "futurist," so this issue this is tailor made for him.)

The truth is that "small government" was always hype. After all, the modern conservative movement was built on the idea of the need to build and maintain a large and very expensive police and military state to combat the commie boogeyman. The GWOT has brought that back with a vengeance.

Here's the small government philosopher king Gingrich in 2005:

We ought to say to [state university] campuses, it’s over…We should say to state legislatures, why are you making us pay for this? Boards of regents are artificial constructs of state law. Tenure is an artificial social construct. Tenure did not exist before the twentieth century, and we had free speech before then. You could introduce a bill that says, proof that you’re anti-American is grounds for dismissal.

Big government, conservative style. The amount of money being spent on Homeland Security and skimmed through war profiteering alone is enough to make a Roman Emperor jealous. Indeed, they've appropriated so much money they can't figure out how to spend it. It was reported not long ago that even small Alaskan fishing villages were being absurdly outfitted with surveillance tools intended for anti-terrorist activity:

So eyebrows were raised in January when the first surveillance cameras went up on Main Street. Each camera is a shiny white metallic box with two lenses like eyes. The camera's shape and design resemble a robot's head.

Workers on motorized lifts installed seven cameras in a 360-degree cluster on top of City Hall. They put up groups of six atop two light poles at the loading dock, and more at the fire hall and boat harbor.

By mid-February, more than 60 cameras watched over the town, and the Dillingham Police Department plans to install 20 more — all purchased through a $202,000 Homeland Security grant meant primarily to defend against a terrorist attack.

True, this was undoubtedly part of the Alaska congressional delegation's amazing ability to lard on the pork, but it illustrates the fact that there has been a huge amount of money specifically designated for very intrusive police agencies, and much of it is not being adequately monitored. If little Dillingham, Alaska, has 60 surveillance cameras, it's hard to imagine what kind of surveillance the Big Brother conservatives approved for the big police agencies in major cities.

This is a big, modern country with a large government sector and it always will be. The difference between the two competing American political philosophies is how government should be run and for what purpose. Modern conservatives believe in using government as a patronage machine to expand police and military power while dispensing tax money to (and protecting the interests of) big business and the wealthy. Modern progressives believe in using openness and transparency to protect civil rights and civil liberties, expand security and provide necessary services the markets can't adequately provide to average citizens.

So since it's clear that both conservatives and progressives agree on the fundamental question of the size of government, the only real question for citizens today is what they want their big government to do.

A Gathering Of "Reasonable Conservatives"

Digby — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:37:12 -0500

I was looking at the schedule for this year's Take Back America Conference and was reminded that the annual conservative conference is scheduled for next month. I love reading about CPAC, where the conservatives get together and get so excited they think nobody can hear what they are saying. Last year featured Newt Gingrich sharing his deepest insights:

How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane.

And then there was this infamous statement by the notorious CPAC prom queen, Ann Coulter:

“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”

And that's just a sampling of the official appearances by their stars. Down in the bowels of the convention you find examples of honor, decency and family values like a bumper sticker that says "Happiness is Hillary's face on a milk carton."

But there are some uplifting, philosophical speeches from thoughtful conservatives like Senator Jim DeMint, who once told the New Yorker:

“I think we’ve got a major crisis in democracy… We assume that voters will restrain the growth of government because it becomes burdensome to them personally. But today fewer and fewer people pay taxes, and more and more are dependent on government, so the politician who promises the most from government is likely to win. Every day, the Republican Party is losing constituents, because every day more people can vote themselves more benefits without paying for it. The tax code will destroy democracy, by putting us in a position where most voters don’t pay for government.

The thing I like about DeMint is that he's one of those Big Idea men of the conservative movement who loves to talk philosophy. At last year's CPAC, where the activists treated former impeachment manager Bob Barr like he was a leper for his stand against the Bush administration's assault on the Bill of Rights, DeMint gave a stirring talk about the true meaning of the conservatism:

We believe in individualism, capitalism and volunteerism because these are the things that have made America great. These are also the prisms through which we must evaluate all of our policy decisions. Do our policies encourage, or discourage these ideals?

Our government is not the source of our greatness. Our mission as conservatives is to fight for these things that have proven to make life better for Americans. Liberal solutions are theoretical. They sound good, but they have never worked! Conservative values work, but they don’t sound as good … until we translate them into a compelling vision that inspires and gives people hope...

I long for a nation of independent people who scorn any dependence on government because they are owners of homes, savings and retirement plans, health policies, businesses … and possessors of the skills to live productive, self-sufficient lives. I can see an America where development and prosperity are the best allies of conservation and the environment. I want an America that shows compassion to those in need without trapping them in programs that rob them of their dignity and independence. And I believe in an America where the federal government protects its people with armies and justice, but keeps its tentacles out of the lives of individuals, businesses and our free society.

If only all those freeloading Luckie Duckies would stop voting themselves benefits without paying for it all this could be ours!

And I think we know who those Luckie Duckies are, don't we?

You can call them liberals, call them collectivists, or call them socialists; but don’t call them stupid. They have consistently counterfeited our words and hijacked our institutions because they understand that at its core, our nation is one of conservative values. But while they make exceptional efforts to hide their true selves publicly, we are seeing their agenda unfold. Our public schools and universities have substituted group identity and “victimology” for individual responsibility and character. For decades the education establishment and the media have tried to create an anti-capitalist, anti-God bias among the public. And, stymied by the will of the people, the radical left continues to use our judicial system as a liberal legislation factory...

Milton Friedman, in his Introduction to F.A. Hayek’s book Road to Serfdom, explained the communication challenge of conservatives. Friedman understood that liberals have the luxury of appealing to emotion alone to win an argument, while conservatives who argue for individualism must rely on a subtle and sophisticated rational argument. The former is an easy sell, while the latter requires thought.

Who could argue with that? Meanwhile elsewhere at CPAC

TANCREDO: I want you to put people to the test: Do they believe that we are risking something very, very important in this country by this—by the creation of this linguistic and cultural Tower of Babel? And I believe most of them will run away from the question.

Ask them if they agree with me that we should be doing everything possible to confront the Bank of America—or as I say, "Banco de Las Americas." (Applause.) Because of their willingness to aid and abet—which is exactly what they are doing...I'm in Congress, and I feel frustrated by not being able to do a darn thing about it. But I guarantee you, whoever becomes the president of the United States better do something about it, or we have lost this country

It's certainly a good thing they don't appeal to emotion like the liberals. Sadly, they have to rely on reason:

INHOFE: The issue is not: Is the globe warming? We know we're going through a warming period; that's fine— although, the other day, it was kind of interesting: They had to call off the global warming hearing in the House because of an ice storm. (Laughter and Applause)

But the extremists—they want to say the issue is: Is it manmade gases, anthropogenic gases, methane, CO2, that's causing it? And that's what we're addressing, and that's what we need to understand.

Now, the extremists—the extremists—they don't want to drill for oil. They don't want fossil fuels. They don't want coal generation. They don't want nuclear power. Right now, they don't even want wind anymore because it's killing the birds. (Laughter)

I'm pretty sure that's what Milton Friedman was talking about.

CPAC runs February 7th through 9th. Feel the magic.

Nobody's Right If Everybody's Wrong

Digby — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:10:04 -0500

Matt Stoller reports that he's hearing tons of stuff on the radio in Iowa about the alleged thirst for bipartisanship among the voters (which I also wrote about the other day in a post called "Bipartisan Zombies.") I hear it too, from a lot of non-political junkies, who are persuaded that the government is broken because of all the partisan bickering. It's a difficult conversation to have because they're half right. The government is broken, but it's not because of some sort of partisan war in which each side refuses to budge. The government is broken because one party has adopted a take-no-prisoners scorched earth philosophy and the political establishment continues to hold the victims equally responsible for the carnage.

When I wrote that earlier post, I shamefully failed to mention a great article by Paul Glastris from a few years back in the Washington Monthly. It should be read by those who are unimpressed by us intemperate liberal bloggers screeching about the convenient exhumation of the bipartisan zombie now that it appears Democrats may be the new majority:

There's something similar about the way the national press has been describing the polarization of our political culture over the last few years. It is a cliché to observe that the parties have drawn further apart, the center no longer holds, and partisans on both sides have withdrawn further into mutual loathing and ever more-homogenous and antagonistic groupings. Where the analysis goes wrong is in its assumption, either explicit or implicit, that both parties bear equal responsibility for this state of affairs. While partisanship may now be deeply entrenched among their voters and their elites, the truth is that the growing polarization of American politics results primarily from the growing radicalism of the Republican Party.

This is the sort of reality that most journalists know perfectly well to be true but cannot bring themselves to say, though this increased polarization drives them crazy. Almost without exception, mainstream reporters in Washington see moderation and bipartisanship as inherently virtuous. (Indeed, reverence for these qualities is essentially the defining belief of the Washington establishment.) Read almost any account of bills becoming law, and you'll notice the reporter's obvious affection for centrists who work both sides of the aisle. Yet they are unable to honestly explain to readers what's causing the decline of bipartisanship, thanks to another form of press bias: The desire not to seem biased. As practiced by the modern press, "objective" journalism requires avoiding the appearance of favoring one party over the other--even when the facts merit such a treatment. That's why, when news stories discuss polarization, they bend over backward to avoid laying the "blame" on the political right.

So do the Village elders, Nunn and Cohen, who have awakened from a very long nap and decided that it's time to end the polarization --- just as the mainstream Democrats are poised to win a mandate. Here's an article by William Cohen and Sam Nunn from yesterday's Boston Globe:

Central to the wave of unease and negativity surging throughout the country is the realization that the values and virtues that made America a source of strength, stability, and inspiration throughout the world are now in disrepair.

Our falling dollar and soaring budget and trade deficits reflect the overindulgence of our appetites and neglect of prudent fiscal planning, discipline, and savings. Extended military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed extraordinary stress upon the brave men and women of our all-volunteer force (Guard and Reserve), putting pressure on the Pentagon to lower physical, mental, and moral standards and to raise the age limits for new recruits. As a result of pursuing ill-conceived or mismanaged policies, we have unsettled our allies and emboldened our adversaries.

The failures of bridges in Minneapolis and levees in New Orleans are harsh metaphors for the reckless disregard for the need to invest in the critical infrastructure that protects our citizens and propels our economy.

The absence of sound fiscal, tax, and energy policies has eroded our international competitiveness and subjected us to regional instabilities and to the pricing policies of oil cartels and authoritarian leaders who are eager to flex their new muscle. Our leadership in science and technology is challenged by powers in Asia and Europe as we debate the validity of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Stirring words and all true. Imagine if they'd been written while the Republicans were perpetrating all those crimes instead of when they are on the verge of being repudiated by the American people? Who knows? It might have even made a difference.

What they are giving is essentially the Democratic critique of the Republican agenda, is it not? Yet instead of backing the Democrats, these gurus of irrelevancy are agitating for bipartisanship, something virtually designed to create policies somewhere between the status quo they decry and further right wing travesty. Why?

It may just be that these political elders are just timorous men who were too afraid to speak up until after the Republican thugs were so weakened that they couldn't harm them. There are many such people in politics. But I don't think that's the real agenda here. As I wrote before, I think this is actually just the standard establishment response to the prospect of real progressive governance. They will happily back a neocon fascist Republican (or a properly pedigreed manchild) before they'll allow Democrats to make government serve the average American.

As Swopa wrote the other day about the rumored Bloomberg campaign, which closely tracks the Cohen/Nunn "unity" effort:

Whatever anyone associated with this would-be Bloomberg boomlet might say about their effort, it's hard to overlook that it coincides -- as did the Perot candidacy in 1992 -- with an apparent collapse in GOP popularity. By giving disenchanted Republican and independent voters someone else to vote for besides a Democrat, Perot helped hold Clinton below 50% of the popular vote... which GOP politicians then used as an excuse for intensified partisanship and a no-holds-barred effort to block the Dems from passing health care and other legislation.

Of course, when the GOP took over Congress in 1994 (and again after the Dubya usurpation, as Digby notes), these sensitive lovers of comity and collaboration held their tongues. But the prospect of another Democrat in the White House, paired with control of the Congress -- now that's a crisis. One that calls for not just the standard round of op-eds and talking-head TV appearances, but a massively well-financed third-party candidacy using a billionaire's wealth as an artificial substitute for popular support.

[...]

The sole reason for his candidacy will be to hold the Democratic nominee below 50% of the vote again (or as close to it as possible), thereby enabling further GOP intransigence -- and deepening the country's political paralysis, rather than ending it.

I'm sure a lot of people really are saying they just want the fighting in Washington to stop. It's tiresome. I wish it would go away too. But they want health care and out of Iraq and a good economy and a decent future for their kids more. And because the conservatives are determined to thwart that, progressives have an obligation to fight for those things, even if it requires a lot of irritating and unpleasant squabbling and ignoring the establishment elders.

* And for those of you who are too young to remember Sam Nunn in all his glory, here's a reminder of his finest hour in the Clinton administration: sandbagging him nine days after the inaugural (and a year long campaign during which he said nothing) on gays in the military.

Cagey Conservatives

Digby — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 09:40:10 -0500

As we turn the page to year 2008 and begin to focus on the elections in earnest, it's probably a good idea to ponder what we've learned of the conservative movement's electoral tactics over the past few cycles. Here's a story on the latest voting rights case to come before the Supreme Court(h/t D-Day):

The Supreme Court will open the new year with its most politically divisive case since Bush v. Gore decided the 2000 presidential election, and its decision could force a major reinterpretation of the rules of the 2008 contest.

The case presents what seems to be a straightforward and even unremarkable question: Does a state requirement that voters show a specific kind of photo identification before casting a ballot violate the Constitution?

The answer so far has depended greatly on whether you are a Democratic or Republican politician -- or even, some believe, judge.

"It is exceedingly difficult to maneuver in today's America without a photo ID (try flying, or even entering a tall building such as the courthouse in which we sit, without one)," Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote in deciding that Indiana's strictest-in-the-nation law is not burdensome enough to violate constitutional protections.

His colleague on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, Bill Clinton appointee Terence T. Evans, was equally frank in dissent. "Let's not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic," Evans wrote.

For justices still hearing from the public about their role in the 2000 election -- "It's water over the deck; get over it," Justice Antonin Scalia impatiently told a questioner at a college forum this year -- the partisan implications of the issue are hard to miss.

The case has pitted Democrats against Republicans, conservative legal foundations against liberal ones, civil rights organizations against the Bush administration.

It sounds like the typical partisan judicial jockeying (which, since Bush vs Gore, is sadly no longer shocking) but it's part of something much more significant. Conservative vote suppression efforts go back a long way, but this 2004 study (pdf) on GOP Ballot Security programs from The Center for Voting Rights reports that since the 1980's it's become fully professionalized:

The Republicans’ perceived problems arising from too heavy a reliance on volunteers began to be addressed with a different strategy in the mid-1980s. From Operation Eagle Eye onward, the major Republican ballot security programs had borne the imprimatur of the party high command, overseen by the RNC and implemented at the grassroots by local organizations and commercial political operatives. In the mid-1980s, the situation began to change. GOP ballot-security skulduggery in the city of Newark and environs had led to a consent decree in 1982 presided over by a federal judge in New Jersey, according to which the RNC promised to forego minority vote suppression. In 1985, several months before the RNC was hauled back before the same judge as a result of illegal purging efforts in a 1986 Louisiana senatorial campaign and agreed to submit all future ballot security programs it oversaw to the court for its inspection, a new organization was created—the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA).

A group of lawyers who had worked on the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1984 were behind its founding, and it was designed “to be a sort of Rotary Club for GOP stalwarts,” according to a contemporary article in Legal Times magazine. The RNC helped the association get off the ground with a $5,000 loan, although today the RNC claims no official connection with it. By 1987 the RNLA had active chapters in several states and the District of Columbia, and planned to hold its first annual convention early the following year. A lure for attendees, the planners hoped, would be continuing legal education credits and a possible appearance by Attorney General Edwin Meese III and President Reagan.20

The RNLA turned out to be much more than a Rotary Club for GOP lawyers, however; it became the predominant Republican organization coordinating ballot security. By its own account, in early 2004 it had grown to “a 1,900-member organization of lawyers and law students in all 50 states.” Its officers were experienced lawyers who knew their way around Washington as a result of having served in Republican administrations at the national and state levels and in major K Street firms. Michael Thielen, its current executive director, who earlier worked for the RNC, describes the organization as follows: Since 1985 the RNLA has nurtured and advanced lawyer involvement in public affairs generally and the Republican Party in particular. It is accurately described as a combination of a professional bar association, politically involved law firm and educational institute. . . . With members now in government, party general counsel positions, law firm management and on law school faculties, the RNLA has for many years been the principal national organization through which lawyers serve the Republican Party and its candidates.

If there was any evidence of massive voter fraud, perhaps such a thing could be arguably necessary. But there isn't. In fact, after all the efforts of the Ashcroft and Gonzales Justice Departments --- even the firing of US Attorneys for failing to bring voter fraud cases against Democratic politicians --- they simply couldn't make a case that there is any kind of systemic fraud requiring that the state disenfranchise large numbers of people who might not have photo ID or other documentation. It just isn't happening. The conservatives have institutionalized electoral cheating.

But then we know that. The evidence has been clear for many years that the Republicans believe it is perfectly legitimate to win elections by manipulating the vote. This next election promises to bring more dicey voting requirements and suppression efforts than ever before.

For instance, Blue Tide Rising caught this little item:

Earlier today Kris Kobach, chairman of the Kansas GOP, sent out a self-congratulatory litany of accomplishments. Among them was one particularly eye-catching item:

To date, the Kansas GOP has identified and caged more voters in the last 11 months than the previous two years!

"Caging" is a bogus tactic designed to keep legitimate voters from being able to vote by removing them from the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail. Now they are even legalizing it in the name of preventing non-existent voter fraud:

In Ohio, which swung the 2004 election to Bush, new Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said in a phone interview that an election law passed last year and signed by former Republican Gov. Bob Taft effectively ``institutionalized'' vote caging.

The law requires that the state's 88 county election boards send non-forwardable, pre-election notices to all 7.8 million registered Ohio voters at least 60 days before the election. Undelivered letters are public record, she said, meaning that effectively, ``now the counties are paying for'' the data needed to compile challenge lists.

In addition, Brunner said, the law toughened voter ID requirements and ``took away rights of some voters to be heard about whether or not their registration was valid.''

[...]

A federal court injunction has barred the Republican National Committee for 25 years from engaging in racially targeted vote caging, but it doesn't extend to state parties.

Asked whether they might employ vote caging in 2008, Executive Director Jason Mauk of the Ohio Republican Party and spokeswoman Erin VanSickle of the Florida Republican Party said they couldn't discuss election strategy.

"Election strategy."

It brings the different partisan views toward democracy in stark relief. Certainly, Democrats have likely cheated in elections in the past, but the Republicans have turned it into a fetish. This shouldn't be surprising, when you think about it. While their voter suppression efforts do help them electorally, by holding down the vote of traditional democratic constituencies, on a broader scale it reflects a philosophical antipathy for the modern democratic concept of one person, one vote. They just don't believe in it, which explains why the courts are so obviously divided along partisan lines:

Justice Antonin Scalia cheerfully pointed to it on 1 December 2000 during oral arguments in Bush v Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, the first of the two cases to be heard by the high tribunal. While interrogating Al Gore's attorney, Laurence Tribe, Scalia noted that "in fact, there is no right of suffrage under Article II." Ten days later, in Bush v Gore, the majority opinion drove the point home, emphasizing that "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the electoral college."

The next thing to watch for is increased hysteria about "illegal aliens" voting and strong voter suppression efforts in the southwestern swing states. It's the old stomping ground of the last chief justice William Rehnquist, who made his conservative bones intimidating Mexican American voters, as an Arizona poll watcher for Operation Eagle Eye back in the 1960's. They've been at this for a long, long time. And from the looks of things, the newly conservative judiciary will be upholding their efforts more often than not.

Conservatives have built institutions dedicated to keeping people from voting or making sure their votes don't count, despite ample evidence that their "voter fraud" rationale is illegitimate. They clearly believe that if every eligible voter votes in this country they will lose elections. In light of that, this seems like an idea that progressives should pursue relentlessly until they get it done.