Month: December 2004

Oh Holy Night, Batman

I’m going into the heart of the beast and visiting my fiesty, 82 year old, extremely conservative father for Christmas. He’s been ill, so we haven’t gotten into the election results until now. He’s feeling better. Woah, Nellie.

Since the family consists of Jews, Christians, atheists and sundry wierdos, our holidays are pretty much all about food. But, without knowing it, we’ve been celebrating Festivus for years — particularly the sacred “airing of grievances.” Wish me luck.

I’ll be back after Christmas and we’ll party like it’s 1899. In the meantime, go over to The American Street and vote for the Peranoski Prize. Fun for the whole blog family. (And while you’re there, drop a couple of bucks in the tip jar. Kevin Hayden, the hardest working man in Blogovia, could use a little help with the bandwidth.)

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Joyful Kwaanza, Glad Solstice and, most importantly, may everyone have a Jubilant After-Christmas-Sale Day— the most religious American holiday of them all.

Back To The Future

I haven’t written much about the UCC ad controversy because, as an atheist, it seems a bit presumptuous to weigh in on issues such as this except to say that I think that freedom of speech demands that all voices should be allowed on the public airwaves.

That article, however, makes me a little bit sad and I can’t help but feel that all this is leading to the kind of intra religious fighting we haven’t seen for decades in this country. For quite a while everyone had been getting along pretty well, religiously speaking.

My grandfather was what was known as an anti-papist. (He didn’t think much of Jews either.) A good portion of his life was defined by his religious identity as an Episcopalian and freemason who hated Catholics. He was born in 1886, so it wasn’t all that unusual. During his lifetime, which ended in 1972, it became less and less acceptable to hold the views he held until, at the end, he was an anachronism. I always thought that was a good thing and in a perverse way to hear him rail against the Pope in the 1960’s always reinforced in me a strong belief in social progress. His old fashioned ideas had been completely discredited by mainstream society during his own lifetime.

Now we are seeing the re-emergence of intra Christian rivalry (along with hostility to non-Judeo Christian religions in general) and the infighting has begun again. The lines are breaking down now between fundamentalism and liberalism, but really it’s the same old shit.

And it illustrates the real reason why the founders insisted on separation of church and state. It wasn’t in service of secularism; it was in service of religion. When one sect gains the power of the state, the others have no choice but to fight for their rights. This UCC controversy is, I fear, the beginning of another episode of religious war between the Christians. Two steps forward one step back.

But I have to say that I have no idea why, in the midst of this religious rivalry, nobody gives a shit about this:

Rather than the traditional egg hunt, this group, calling itself the American Clergy Leadership Conference, sponsored a nationwide “Tear Down The Cross” day for Easter, 2003. Last week, leaders in this radical cause presided over a Washington prayer breakfast featuring messages of thanks from the presidents. Former Senator Bob Dole came in person.

[…]

Moon was keynote speaker last week, declaring in remarks reprinted by the Times that “God’s heart is under confinement.” In some ways it was a repeat performance of the Senate coronation ceremony, which the New York Times editorial page compared to an act of the mad emperor Caligula.

You may remember that Senator John Warner and other Congressmen unloaded on Moon’s entourage for “deceiving” them into sponsoring a ceremony where America “surrendered to [Moon] in the king’s role,” according to an internal church memo. “America is saying to Father, ‘please become my king,” claimed Moon minister Chung Kwak. The versatile Kwak is currently wearing a second hat as head of the UPI news agency, added to Moon’s collection of media properties in 2000.

Strangely enough, last week the hosts of the “surrender” ceremony weren’t blasted but blessed by two presidents of the United States. The same faces were there: George Stallings, Jr., the flamboyant ex-archbishop who bellowed at the March dinner for America to open up its heart to Moon; Michael Jenkins and Chang Shik Yang, hosts of past “Tear Down The Cross” rituals; and former Democratic D.C. representative Walter Fauntroy, who shares the Moonies’ opposition to gay civil unions (Moon calls gays “dung-eating dogs”; Fauntroy calls same-sex marriage “an abomination”). Congressman Davis did not attend.

Like the Senate party, this conference climaxed with a new Crown of Peace awarded to Moon by his own organization, though in this case they held off on the royal treatment until the following evening. The award was reported by UPI.

According to a report in the Washington Times as well as video found on the Moon-affiliated Web site FamilyFed.org, the elder Bush made a taped appearance before the ACLC’s 3,000-strong crowd, which he thanked for their work. “I thought about parachuting into the building,” he joked about wishing he could make it. And he paid lip service to Moon’s unwieldy religious jargon, using phrases like “peace centered on God,” a goal that he called “right on target.”

His son, George W. Bush, wrote a warm letter of support presented at the event by a state senator, in which the president and his wife Laura sent his best wishes to the sponsors — and thanked them for rallying his “armies of compassion.

Picture if you will, Bill and Hill and Al and Tipper doing this.

Why doesn’t anybody confront the wingnut political and religious gasbags with this crap? How could Bush or Falwell or O’Reilly or any of the other self-appointed guardians of Christianity defend this wierd nonsense?

Gosh, it almost make you think that the Republican and Christian Right leadership are actually simple whores for money.

Who Us?

As I was navel gazing about how to win elections, I came across this article (via the Left Coaster) that reminded me of the pitfalls of losing sight of our commitment to civil liberties in the quest for votes and crossover appeal.

In the past week, new revelations of vast abuses of U.S. prisoners being held in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay have appeared in the news. Yet, many of the same people who condemn these atrocities are quite willing to see government officials engage in the same behavior toward Americans. While abuse, torture, and outright lying and criminal behavior by participants in the “justice system” are common, the public gives a collective yawn and juries continue to swallow the lies that prosecutors feed to them. Although the accessible examples of such behavior are legion and have been well-documented elsewhere, I will give some of my own.

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano in a recent article gave a couple of terrifying but all-too-typical stories of torture and abuse of people in this country. The first involved the accusation (almost surely false) of massive child molestation against two owners of a Florida daycare center in 1984. The chief accuser was then-Dade County State’s Attorney Janet Reno (yes, that Janet Reno) who was in the middle of a tough re-election campaign and was determined to get a guilty verdict.

Reno was able to have then-18-year-old Ileana Furster, Frank Furster’s wife, held without bond. Furthermore, the young woman was placed nude in a solitary confinement cell, being in full view of male and female guards. In 1998, Ileana described some of her treatment:

They would give me cold showers. Two people would hold me, run me under cold water, then throw me back in the cell naked with nothing, just a bare floor. And I used to be cold, real cold. I would have my periods and they would wash me and throw me back into the cell.

(Note: This action came at a time when prosecutors around the country were engaging in child molestation witch hunts against day care owners, the original accusations stemming from the encouragement in the 1974 Child Abuse Prevention Act, better known as the Mondale Act. It provided federal money to states that prosecuted alleged child abuse, and prosecutors were all-too-happy to jump into the mix. Many of the accusations were outlandishly false, but prosecutors and their media stooges managed to keep the enterprise going until the accusations collapsed under the scrutiny of a particularly egregious set of charges mounted in Wenatchee, Washington, a decade ago. However, even today, some people are serving life terms for “child molestation” crimes they almost certainly did not commit. Frank Furster is one of them.)

Finally, Reno began to visit Ms. Furster on a regular basis and browbeat her with accusations and promises of a life sentence unless she cooperated (that is, told the jury what Reno wanted her to say). Further visits from psychiatrists who allegedly specialized in “recovering memories” – which has turned out to be another form of government quackery – finally got their intended results. Ileana haltingly accused her husband in court (she has since recanted) and Frank Furster was found guilty.

This isn’t hyperbole. Here’s the transcript from the Frontline documentary about the child abuse witch hunts of the 1980’s.

It wasn’t right wingers who perpetuated these miscarriages of justice — it was misguided liberals who thought they were protecting kids and ambitious liberal politicians who needed to appear to be tough on crime, acting out of a belief that the accused child molesters were so evil that it excused any kind of conduct. Neither party can claim a perfect record in this regard.

The only thing that can protect our country from losing its soul (if it isn’t already lost) is a sincere and unbending commitment to civil liberties and the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights. Once you start tweaking at the edges the whole house of cards falls in. As we look at how far we are willing to compromise, appease, reframe and redirect, it’s awfully important that we keep that in mind. Otherwise, we’re just as phony as the other side.

Update: In a related article, William Pfaff posits that the torture in Iraq and Gitmo was really more “Shock and Awe”:

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Bush administration is not torturing prisoners because it is useful but because of its symbolism. It originally was intended to be a form of what later, in the attack on Iraq, came to be called “shock and awe.” It was meant as intimidation. We will do these terrible things to demonstrate that nothing will stop us from conquering our enemies. We are indifferent to world opinion. We will stop at nothing.

I seem to recall quite a few liberal voices thinking this was quite a good idea. Take our good friend, the thoughtful and measured Tom Friedman:

No, the axis-of-evil idea isn’t thought through – but that’s what I like about it. It says to these countries and their terrorist pals: “We know what you’re cooking in your bathtubs. We don’t know exactly what we’re going to do about it, but if you think we are going to just sit back and take another dose from you, you’re wrong. Meet Don Rumsfeld – he’s even crazier than you are.”

There is a lot about the Bush team’s foreign policy I don’t like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right. It is the only way we’re going to get our turkey back.

Even intellectuals have lizard brains and know how to use them.

Mmmmm. Wine

Dr. Vino will be raffling off a case of very nice wine to someone who has completed his 2004 wine quiz correctly.

(Hint: Google)

Let My People Go

ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government. It is evident that the U.S. Constitution has been abandoned under our current federal system, and the efforts of Christian activism to restore our Godly republic have proven futile over the past three decades. The time has come for Christians to withdraw our consent from the current federal government and re-introduce the Christian principles once so predominant in America to a sovereign State like South Carolina.

THE PROBLEM

Christians have actively tried to return the United States to their moral foundations for more than 30 years. We now have a “Christian” president, a “Christian” attorney general, and a Republican Congress and Supreme Court. Yet consider this:

* Abortion continues against the wishes of many States

* Sodomite marriage is now legal in Massachusetts (and coming soon to a neighborhood near you)

* Children who pray in public schools are subject to prosecution 1

* Our schools continue to teach the discredited theory of Darwinian evolution

* The Bible is still not welcome in schools except under unconstitutional FEDERAL guidelines

* The 10 Commandments remain banned from public display

* Sodomy is now legal AND celebrated as “diversity” rather than condemned as perversion

* Preaching Christianity will soon be outlawed as “hate speech” 1 2

Attempts at reform have proven futile. Future elections will not stop the above atrocities, but rather will exacerbate them and lead us down an even more deadly path.

THE SOLUTION

So what can be done? ChristianExodus.org offers the opportunity to try a strategy not yet employed by Bible-believing Christians. Rather than spend resources in continued efforts to redirect the entire nation, we will redeem States one at a time. Millions of Christian conservatives are geographically spread out and diluted at the national level. Therefore, we must concentrate our numbers in a geographical region with a sovereign government we can control through the electoral process.

ChristianExodus.org is orchestrating the move of thousands of Christians to reacquire our Constitutional rights and, if necessary to attain these rights, dissolve our State’s bond with the union. Click on our Plan of Action page to find out how we can experience God-honoring governance once again.

If you are tired of government-endorsed sin, then stand up and be counted!

(Do you suppose we ought to tell them about Lindsay?)

Thanks to BCforum for the link

Reframing Respect For Life

…in all its complexities.

Via Avedon Carol, I found this post by Max Blumenthal about the new It-Democrats, Democrats For Life. This article is fascinating, too.

I do give them credit for being impressively morally consistent. They are for the abolition of abortion rights, right to die legislation, the death penalty and stem cell research. (And they are members in good standing of the Democratic party, so the tent must not be so damned small after all.)

I must point out, however, that I am against the death penalty and also pro-choice, pro stem cell research and pro right to die. And that view is also perfectly consistent and moral because I simply don’t believe that a tribunal or a judge or, least of all, a politician, is capable of making these complicated moral decisions about life and death. If I had my way, I’m sure that some guilty people who deserve to die would live to be 90 (imprisoned, I trust) because of this stand. And I assume that some women would have abortions for selfish and shallow reasons. But until human perfection can be achieved, which is never, these extremely complicated moral issues cannot be dealt with through law without often being immoral themselves. It is not capable of sorting out the morality involved when a desperate 36 year old woman with three kids finds herself pregnant after her drunken ex-husband begged for forgiveness for his philandering and she gave in. You can’t say that the death penalty is consistent when the legal system cannot account for lawyers and judges who just aren’t very good or witnessess who truly believe they saw something they didn’t see. It doesn’t make sense to say that nobody should be allowed the right to die when you look at an old man who is dying in terrible pain and just wants to be set free.

I’m reminded of a very thought provoking article by William Saletan, in which he frames the argument exactly as I see it:

[S]ome conservative evangelicals and progressive Catholics are proposing to broaden the debate[on capital punishment]. While we’re rethinking capital punishment, they say, we ought to rethink another kind of killing as well: abortion. But their analogy is upside-down. The reason we’re rethinking the death penalty today is the same reason we liberalized abortion laws 30 years ago: We’re learning that the state is too clumsy to handle it.

To abortion opponents, the essential principle in both cases is life. “If people on the so-called liberal spectrum of American politics are against capital punishment, then they certainly should be against the taking of innocent life of the unborn,” Robertson argued on “Meet the Press” last month. Writing in The New York Times Magazine two weeks later, Andrew Sullivan challenged anti-abortion conservatives and anti-execution liberals to embrace the Catholic “seamless garment” doctrine, which holds that, on both subjects, “life is life is life. From conception to natural death, our first duty is to defend it.”

But there’s another, less obvious connection between the two issues. The administration of capital punishment, like the regulation of abortion, depends upon agents of the state–legislators, judges, pardon boards, governors–to translate morality into law. And, in both cases, much is lost in the translation. Nearly everyone agrees that abortion is morally troubling and that murderers should be punished. Most people concede that some abortions ought to be forbidden and some murderers ought to die. But it’s quite another matter to sort out exactly when. What about the 16-year-old girl knocked up by her abusive boyfriend? What about the career criminal scheduled for lethal injection because a fellow inmate pinned a murder rap on him in exchange for time off? People who support the death penalty in principle are getting cold feet about its application because they are coming to doubt that the government makes these decisions wisely. That kind of doubt is not a reason to support tougher abortion laws. It’s a reason to oppose them.

[…]

This kind of piecemeal uncertainty, not moral revelation, is what’s driving today’s reevaluation of the death penalty. Robertson, Ryan, and Will still support capital punishment in principle. What they question is the government’s competence to decide fairly or accurately who should receive it. Texas’s execution of Karla Faye Tucker–who, according to Robertson, was “out of her mind” when she committed murder and was later “born again” in prison–shook Robertson’s faith that the state could be trusted to distinguish killers who deserve death from killers who don’t. Meanwhile, the post-conviction exonerations of numerous death-row inmates prompted Will to counsel “skepticism” about the death penalty, on the theory that “it’s a government program and will be messed up.”

[…]

Will a similar anxiety about the state’s sloppy management of life and death affect the abortion debate? It already has. Four decades ago, when abortion was prohibited, stories of illegal abortions and the wretched circumstances that drove many women to seek them began to penetrate public consciousness. Americans disliked abortion in principle, but the more they heard about the moral complexity of these cases, the more uncomfortable they became with the procedure’s criminalization. They began to suspect not that abortion was defensible in general but that the laws against it failed to recognize circumstances in which it might be justified. Many states created or broadened loopholes to permit the procedure. By 1973, when the Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade, the country’s abortion laws were already unraveling.

The question of abortion, like that of execution, can be put in practical terms: How confident are you of the state’s ability to comprehend and resolve the morality of each individual case? If you have misgivings about both the death penalty and broad restrictions on abortion, are you inconsistent in your respect for life? Or are you consistent in your respect for life’s complexity? At its core, this perspective isn’t about saving lives or fighting for women’s freedom. It’s about the limits of our ability to apply rigid principles. It’s about humility.

This is the lesson Casey taught about capital punishment. The more he examined death-penalty cases, the more he second-guessed the system. Judges and legislators, he realized, lacked the dexterity to apply shared values to such diverse circumstances. The assembly line’s flaws generated telltale errors: the moral kind that shattered Robertson’s confidence in the clemency process, and the factual kind that convinced Ryan to halt executions in Illinois. In various ways, they are all raising the same question: whether decisions about capital punishment are too complicated to make on an assembly line. Maybe, just maybe, they should ask the same question about abortion.

The answer is yes.

So, the Democrats want to reframe the social issues. Here’s one way to think about it. I know it doesn’t involve any fun Sistah Soljah shaming or sexy self flagellation so perhaps it won’t be as satisfying for the media. And the religious right is assured of the morality of its position in all things, so I’m afraid they won’t be rushing into our big tent with this sort of argument. But there might just be a few voters out here in the western part of the country who agree that the blunt instrument of politics isn’t a very good tool for regulating the most delicate matters of life and death with which even the philosophers and theologians struggle for clarity.

Instead of trying to convince people that we are moral because we share their discomfort about our deeply held principles, perhaps we should instead just hold to our deeply held principles and explain why they are moral in terms they can understand. I think that’s what reframing is all about, actually.

Dazzling ‘Em With Bullshit In His Native Tongue

Martian

QUESTION: You’ve made Social Security reform the top of your domestic agenda for a second term. You’ve been talking extensively about the benefits of private accounts. But by most estimations, private accounts may leave something for young workers at the end, but wouldn’t do much to solve the overall financial problem with Social Security.

And I’m just wondering, as you’re promoting these private accounts, why aren’t you talking about some of the tough measures that may have to be taken to preserve the solvency of Social Security, such as increasing the retirement age, cutting benefits or means testing for Social Security?

BUSH: I appreciate that question.

First of all, let me put the Social Security issue in proper perspective. It is a very important issue. But it’s not the only issue — very important issue we’ll be dealing with.

I expect the Congress to bring forth meaningful tort reform. I want the legal system reformed in such a way that we’re competitive in the world.

I’ll be talking about the budget, of course. There’s a lot of concern in the financial markets about our deficit, short-term and long-term deficits. The long-term deficit, of course, is caused by some of the entitlement programs — the unfunded liabilities inherent in our entitlement programs.

I will continue to push on an education agenda. There is no doubt in my mind that the No Child Left Behind Act is meaningful, real reform that is having real results. And I look forward to strengthening No Child Left Behind.

Immigration reform is a very important agenda item as we move forward.

But Social Security, as well, is a big item. And I campaigned on it, as you’re painfully aware, since you had to suffer through many of my speeches. I didn’t duck the issue like others have done in the past. I said, “This is a vital issue and we need to work together to solve it.”

Now, the temptation is going to be, by well-meaning people such as yourself and others here, as we run up to the issue, to get me to negotiate with myself in public. To say, you know, “What’s this mean, Mr. President? What’s that mean?”

I’m not going to do that. I don’t get to write the law.

I’ll propose a solution at the appropriate time.

But the law will be written in the halls of Congress. And I will negotiate with them, with the members of Congress. And they will want me to start playing my hand. “Will you accept this? Will you not accept that? Why don’t you do this hard thing? Why don’t you do that?”

I fully recognize this is going to be a decision that requires difficult choices. Inherent in your question is do I recognize that? You bet I do. Otherwise it would have been done.

And so, I just want to try to condition you. I’m not doing a very good job, because the other day in the Oval, when the press pool came in, I was asked about this — the — a series of questions — a question on Social Security with these different aspects to it. And I said, “I’m not going to negotiate with myself. And I will negotiate at the appropriate time with the law writers.”

And so, thank you for trying.

The principles I laid out in the course of the campaign, and the principles we laid out at the recent economic summit are still the principles I believe in. And that is: nothing will change for those near or on Social Security, payroll tax — I believe you’re the one who asked me about the payroll taxes, if I’m not mistaken — will not go up.

The — and I know there’s a big definition about what that means.

Well, again, I will repeat, don’t bother to ask me.

Oh, you can ask me, I can’t tell you what to ask. It’s not the holiday spirit.

(LAUGHTER)

It is all part of trying to get me to set the parameters, you know, apart from the Congress, which is not a good way to get substantive reform done.

As to personal accounts, it is a judgment essential to make the system viable in the out-years to allow younger workers to earn an interest rate more significant than that which is being earned with their own money now inside the Social Security trust.

But the first step in this process is for members of Congress to realize we have a problem. And so for a while, I think it’s important for me to continue to work with members of both parties to explain the problem. Because if people don’t think there’s a problem, we can, you know, talk about this issue until we’re blue in the face and nothing will get done.

And there is a problem. There is a problem because now it requires three workers per retiree to keep Social Security promises. In 2040 it will require two workers per employee to meet the promises. And when the system was set up and designed I think it was like 15 or more workers per employee.

That is a problem. The system goes into the red.

In other words, there’s more money going out than coming in in 2018. There is an unfunded liability of $11 trillion.

And I understand how this works. You know, many times legislative bodies will not react unless the crisis is apparent, crisis is upon them. I believe the crisis is. And so, for a period of time, we’re going to have to explain to members of Congress the crisis is here.

It’s a lot less painful to act now than if we wait.

QUESTION: Mr. President, on that point, there is already a lot of opposition to the idea of personal accounts, some of it fairly entrenched among the Democrats. I wonder what your strategy is to try to convince them to your view.

And specifically, they say that personal accounts would destroy Social Security. You argue they would help save the system. Can you explain how?

BUSH: If Saddam Hussein refuses to disarm, we will form a coalition of the willing and we will disarm Saddam Hussein. Next question?

Bipartisanship

Some Republicans have suggested leaving the minimum tax in place because those hardest hit tend to be in states that did not support Bush, including Massachusetts, California, and New York. ‘‘It is a tax of people living in ‘blue’ states,’’ said Grover Norquist, the conservative activist who heads Americans for Tax Reform.

He said the tax was originally conceived by liberal Democrats as a way of imposing higher taxes mostly on wealthier Republicans, and he suggested that it be used as a bargaining chip by the White House when Bush tries to enact his tax agenda. The minimum tax should be repealed only when Democrats ‘‘say they are sorry and offer to give us something in return,’’ Norquist said.

I see that Norquist is a man of his word. If you recall, he was recently quoted as saying: “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.”

Apparently, Grover is a believer in the James Dobson school of animal training.

The Poorman spells out the proper response to Comrade Norquist’s tactic:

Any complaints about Mr. Nordquist’s remarks should be sent to his blue state secretaries: Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), Gov. George Pataki (R-NY), and Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger (R-CA). Here are some folks you can CC on that:

Sen. Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI)

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN)

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL)

Sen. Greg Judd (R-NH)

Sen. Rick “Man-On-Dog” Santorum (R-PA)

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR)

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME)

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA)

Sen. John Sununu (R-NH)

Muckraking 2004

This liberal media has gone completely out of control. First they make bleeding heart Bush MOTY, and now I find out that they named those hippies over at Power Line Blog of the Year:

The story of how three amateur journalists working in a homegrown online medium challenged a network news legend and won has many, many game-changing angles to it. One of the strangest and most radical is that the key information in “The 61st Minute” came from Power Line’s readers, not its ostensible writers. The Power Liners are quick, even eager, to point this out. “What this story shows more than anything is the power of the medium,” Hinderaker says. “The world is full of smart people who have information about every imaginable topic, and until the Internet came along, there wasn’t any practical way to put it together.”

Now there is.

Congratulations to Powerline. I guess it doesn’t really matter that none of their shocking allegations about the availability of proportional-spaced fonts in the 70’s turned out to actually be, you know, true. What matters is that they helped spur a media feeding frenzy that turned up completely unrelated evidence showing that certain documents that were not material to the truth were given to CBS by an uncredible person. By today’s journalistic standards that’s right up there with Woodward and Bernstein.

(Sadly, like most innovators, the blogfather of modern rightwing cyberfrenzies, Drudge, was overlooked again. He must be fit to be tied.)

Via The Daou Report

A Bold Proposition

Atrios continues to argue with some in our party that we Democrats should not turn abortion into a scarlet letter. He is so wrong. We need to get serious about winning by dolefully expressing regret and guilt for believing what we believe or we will be wandering in the lonely 49% wilderness forever. And, nowhere is it more important to show contrition and self-hatred than on the issue of abortion. It is, after all, icky.

But simply framing abortion as a shameful “right that ends in sorrow” rather than a “difficult decision that brings relief”, is a fools game. And while the Democratic “orthodoxy” on abortion inherently allows for people who are personally opposed to abortion, like John Kerry, to run for national office as long as he doesn’t advocate outlawing abortion entirely for others, everyone agrees that the Republicans are much less “orthodox” because they allow some politicians from liberal states run as pro-choicers to get elected even if they could never in a million years win the nomination of the Republican party for president. (I know that’s a little bit strange, but it’s one of those quirks in our system, kind of like the electoral college.) Therefore, to win it is logical that we must not only shed our orthodoxy and take the pro-life cause as our own, we must take it even further than the Republicans.

Here’s my proposition:

Let’s not be cowards and merely advocate for a culture of disgrace and dishonor for women who have abortions. I agree that it’s important that they should be publicly humiliated and forced to admit that they have done something very, very bad. That’s always healthy and people will respect us more if we do that. But,the other side will rightly retort that just because you feel guilty for something doesn’t excuse it, right? So, let’s get out ahead of an issue for once. Let’s be really bold and call for total abolition and follow up with tough criminal penalities for any woman who has one.

This is where the GOP orthodoxy is weak. The pro-life position is that abortion is murder. But many pro-lifers also believe in exceptions for rape and incest. That makes no sense. If it is murder to abort a child in the womb because it is fully human and endowed with all the same rights as any other person, then it can’t be right to make an exception and kill it simply because of the way it was conceived. Would we think it was ok to kill a one year old if we found out that it was the product of rape or incest? Of course not.

This position implies that the circumstances of conception or the lifelong emotional consequences for the woman bearing an unwanted child can be taken into consideration. Why shouldn’t she simply take her rapist or her father’s child to term and simply give it up for adoption? The fetus has inalienable rights. The woman should deal with that just the same as she should deal with giving up her fourth child for adoption because she can’t afford another mouth to feed and her birth control failed. It’s tough, but she’ll just have to get over it.

And really, if abortion is murder, shouldn’t the woman be criminally liable for murdering her own child? Why is it that pro-life advocates never insist on that and instead place the entire burden on the doctor? Would we accept that a woman who hired someone to murder her 6 month old was not criminally liable for that act? Of course not.

They say it’s murder, but they have “exceptions.” They want to make it a crime but don’t want to make the perpetrator of that crime responsible. These people are practicing … moral relativism.

If I didn’t know better, I might think that Republicans secretly believe that ending an unwanted pregnancy is different from murder after all; that it isn’t an absolute choice between right and wrong. Indeed, they seem to think that it is complicated by circumstances and morally nuanced. Certainly, the fact that they refuse to call women who have abortions “murderers” indicates that they think pregnant women are in a unique position in human experience making judgment by absolute legal standards difficult for society to accept.

And that is our opening, folks. Just as the foreign policy wonks think that we should outflank the neocons on foreign policy by fighting the GWOT with the ferver of a Christian crusader, I think we should simultaneously make a play for the fundamentalists who truly do believe that the woman is a murderer if she has an abortion. The stoning and burning crowd is ripe for the picking if we are only bold enough to do what is necessary to prove that we are sincere. Rove and pals won’t be expecting it.

Then the media will call us the big tent party and we can run against the Republicans for being pro-choice, unpatriotic and soft on crime! Cool, huh?

Seriously, folks, if we can adopt this, the global crusade for democracy and the creationism curriculum into our platform I think we might just be able to finally get that crucial 2% that we need to win. And then we’ll be able to get something done for the progressive cause — like paying off our crippling debt with a combination of brutal spending cuts in social programs and tax increases on the middle class. (And there’s always end it don’t mend it on affirmative action and privatization of SS if we still need to triangulate.)