Category Politics

I agree with Scalia—I know, it surprised me, too!

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Doe v. Reed was the last case the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments on before the end of the term: should your signature on a ballot petition be allowed to be kept secret.  In her report on the oral arguments legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick noted that Justice Antonin Scalia appeared to believe it should not be when he argued

…you can’t run a democracy this way, with everybody being afraid of having his political positions known.

I agree, and this week the court ruled 8-to-1 against the plaintiffs; Justice Clarence Thomas was the man Choire Sicha identifies as the only person “brave enough to protect bigots from angry gays.”

I was thinking that it seemed cowardly for people concerned enough about the all-but-marriage law in Washington to sign the petition to overturn it but then seek to hide their involvement.  If people want to take the job of writing laws into their own hands, well, OK…we do have elected representatives to do that for us, so initiative or referendum already smells a little like “sore loser at work,” but OK.

But then, having undertaken that effort, to then say that you shouldn’t be publicly identified as having supported the effort—to keep from being harassed because of your beliefs—just seems cowardly.

You want to participate?  Great!  Just remember, don’t bring a pocketknife to a gunfight, and if you want to win the pot, you’ve got to show your hand when it’s called.

Yes, some people will say bad things about you…offer mean opinions of your cognitive skills…sling epithets.  Get over it.  Hiding from confrontation, or even discussion, about differing opinions just reinforces the poisonous political atmosphere.

But consider, it apparently is a First Amendment protection to have your political participation kept anonymous in some instances, like a secret ballot.  The Supremes left open the opportunity for the plaintiffs in Doe to get what they want from a lower court.

Here’s what’s more concerning: in a report on the growing fear of intimidation for voicing unpopular positions, Lithwick discusses the possible application of this idea to political participation in the form of financial contributions to campaigns.  Yep: hiding from public view the identities of people who give campaign money to our representatives.  Imagine that, on top of the Citizens United v. FEC decision that has given corporations the same right to donate money as is already enjoyed by actual real human people.

So, are you OK with letting companies make unlimited campaign contributions, in secret?  I’m waiting for my buddy Scalia to jump on that one.

I wish I’d written this

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

“Religious liberty—the freedom to worship as one chooses, or not to worship—is a central element of the American creed.”  And from there “Newsweek” editor Jon Meacham’s column in this week’s issue lays out the argument—straight down the middle—that the separation of church and state is there for the benefit of both:

The civil and legal cases against religious coercion are well known: human freedom extends to one’s conscience, and by abolishing religious tests for office or mandated observances, Americans have successfully created a climate—a free market, if you will—in which religion can take its stand in the culture and in the country without particular help or harm from the government.

There is a religious case against state involvement with matters of faith, too. Long before Thomas Jefferson, Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, called for a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world," believing, with the Psalmist, that human beings were not to put their trust in princes. The principalities and powers of a fallen world represented and still represent a corrupting threat to religion: too many rulers have used faith to justify and excuse all manner of evil.

Meacham lines up George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on the side of the angels in making the case against calling the United States a Christian nation, but a nation where all are free to believe (or not) as they choose.  I know this irks many who see it their duty to evangelize or who misunderstand our history, but that makes it no less true.

Yes, many of the Founders were believing, observant Christians. But to think of them as apostles in knee breeches or as passionate evangelicals is a profound misreading of the past. In many ways their most wondrous legacy was creating the foundations of a culture of religious diversity in which the secular and the religious could live in harmony

As Americans we each have the right to practice a faith of our choosing; why isn’t that good enough?

Sgt. Schultz would have been proud

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

It was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who said (that I first heard) that while a person is entitled to their own opinion, they are not entitled to their own facts.  The annoying trait among so many people lately–to accept as fact only that information which supports their beliefs, and to reflexively deny the…the factualness of what does not–is nicely addressed in today’s piece by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

[I] can remember a time when facts settled arguments. This is back before everything became a partisan shouting match, back before it was permissible to ignore or deride as “biased” anything that didn’t support your worldview.

If you and I had an argument and I produced facts from an authoritative source to back me up, you couldn’t just blow that off. You might try to undermine my facts, might counter with facts of your own, but you couldn’t just pretend my facts had no weight or meaning.

But that’s the intellectual state of the union these days, as evidenced by all the people who still don’t believe the president was born in Hawaii or that the planet is warming.

(snip)

To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper’s online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe.

I submit that any people thus handicapped sow the seeds of their own decline; they respond to the world as they wish it were rather [than] to the world as it is.

Do you know what you call a person who does see the world as it is, and doesn’t like what he or she sees, and despite having the responsibility and the power to do something about it, doesn’t?  Yep: a member of the United States Congress.   Paul Krugman accuses Republicans, but they’re not alone on this.

At this point, then, Republicans insist that the deficit must be eliminated, but they’re not willing either to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs. And they’re not willing to participate in serious bipartisan discussions, either, because that might force them to explain their plan — and there isn’t any plan, except to regain power.

Know-nothings, and do-nothings.  What worries me the most is the growing number of people in this country who have one foot in each camp.