Amending the First Amendment

Earlier this week, Daniel Larison, whose blog Eunomia is on The American Conservative, posted a story entitled “Insulting Small Towns to Save Sarah Palin.” The story is no longer posted—in fact, it came down less than an hour after I first saw it. I don’t know why; I can only imagine that Mr. Larison discovered some factual inaccuracy which he would naturally not have been willing to propagate. In between the time I saw it and the time it was posted, though, I wrote a lengthy response to one throw-away comment he made. The remark was only tangentially related to his main point, and because the original story is gone I cannot reproduce it exactly, but it was a remark to the effect that we can’t hold Sarah Palin wholly responsible for her inability to use the English language properly because schools don’t teach grammar any more. As a high school English teacher, I am, naturally, likely to react strongly to such criticism, but as a high school teacher, I am also in a better position than Mr. Larison is to know both whether teachers try to teach grammar or not and, if they do, why failure, when that is the outcome, results. Here is the posting that was never posted:

Although I am largely appreciative of the thoughtfulness of your entries on this blog, I must take exception to the cheap shot at teachers included in this particular entry. (Yes, I am a high school English teacher myself.)

Unilaterally blaming teachers for the widespread problem of imprecise, incorrect, and even illiterate language use is an easy, but lazy, way to reduce a serious problem that is the result of deeply entrenched cultural change to glib and simplistic terms that, although easy to understand, grossly misrepresent reality.

A few grammar worksheets will not cure the ills of language misuse in this country. The ability to use correct, sophisticated, nuanced speech is not, and never has been, the result of schooling and nothing but schooling. Students who develop rich, sophisticated language do so not because they have the benefit of an hour a day with a competent teacher who actually knows how to diagram a sentence; they develop that ability because they have life-long exposure to rich language in a wide variety of settings.

Skilled language use is the result of thousands of hours of immersion in rich language--thousands of hours of reading and hearing complex ideas expressed in complex terms. The development of a sophisticated vocabulary is the result of extensive exposure to sophisticated vocabulary--vocabulary used carefully, deliberately, and precisely, not vocabulary dished up in a gallimaufry of words only loosely related in meaning to the words that are actually needed.

If a child has a baseline level of language exposure that prepares him or her to take full advantage of skilled instruction, then skilled instruction can help that student progress quickly to levels of excellence in language use that he or she would not otherwise achieve. But a student who comes to school with a background of language exposure at home that is measured in daily minutes in the single digits comes to school unready to understand the language of their teachers. The child who reads nothing (literally) other than what he or she can be coerced to look at by teachers (who often have to resort to standing over students and insisting that the reading be done in class, as they know it will not be done once the student is outside of their circle of influence), comes to school unprepared to understand the sophisticated relationships between subjects and verbs that confront them in high-level reading assignments. The child whose most regular and reliable language exposure is from sitcoms on television comes to school with a significant burden of disadvantage. No teacher, no matter how excellent, can reasonably be expected to supply, in an hour a day or less, the lifetime of language-rich culture that that child has lost.

That this is a tragedy is undeniable. The ability to use language correctly, well, and even beautifully is unquestionably a source of power in any individual's life. In many ways the self is realized through language, because our ability to define ourselves in relationship to others is most readily, profoundly, and intricately expressed in words. Sarah Palin's poor use of language is appalling because it is a direct reflection of her thinking, as all language use is a direct reflection of the user's thinking. Whatever one might think of Governor Palin's politics (and I am emphatically not a fan), the fact is that her poor use of language has isolated her from the good opinion of many people and has done significant damage to her hopes and aspirations. In my perfect world, no one would have a life so starkly limited by such a dramatic inability to express ideas, but rich language results from rich thoughts, and rich thoughts result from rich experience. Schools can only provide rich experience in tiny doses--doses which amount to a minuscule fraction of an entire life--no matter how hard they try and no matter how much they might wish to be able to do more.

To suggest that teachers should be able to make up for parental and cultural failure to promote intellectualism and cultural literacy, to suggest that teachers could do so if only they were themselves a little better versed in the rules of English grammar, is indeed a cheap shot, unworthy of someone who is normally himself much more thoughtful.

I reproduce the would-be posting here, because there is a further point, which was not relevant in a direct response to Larison, but which is relevant in the context of the egregious linguistic behavior of John McCain and, more particularly, his surrogates over the past several weeks.

The clear implication of the tactics employed by the McCain campaign in their attacks on Barack Obama over the past few weeks is that McCain and his staff are fully cognizant of the problem to which Larison was alluding: the deplorable weakness of the average American in terms of understanding the complexities of the English Language. I reason it out this way:
(1) Because McCain needs to attract a very large number of people to his cause, and
(2) because the strategy he has chosen to utilize is the launching of a large number of blatantly distorted or even false accusations against Obama, and
(3) because meek acceptance of those accusations as truth require listeners to simply take at face value whatever is said, ignoring connotation, imprecision, and pure falsehood,
(4) it follows that the McCain people have been counting on the fact that a large enough number of people would lack the facility with language that would enable them to readily identify the linguistic flaws in the arguments that the campaign has been promulgating.
(5) Which means, in turn, that the McCain campaign has deliberately exploited what it believed to be a weakness in understanding of the people they claim to wish to serve.

Indeed, in pursuit of votes, the McCain campaign members—particularly the surrogates—have, in speech after speech and ad after ad, used language to distort and misrepresent the truth. Here are some examples:

Example 1: I wrote in detail in a previous posting about Sarah Palin’s use of the phrase “pallin’ around with terrorists.” Her language there is misleading not only because of the connotations of the verb “to pal around with,” but also because of the plural. If pressed, the McCain campaign will identify William Ayers as the terrorist with whom Obama has a past association, but they cannot name any additional candidates for the title of terrorist. The phrase Palin has settled upon may be catchy, but it is grossly misleading; however, only someone who is alert to the connotation of the verb, attentive to the use of the plural, and patient enough to do the research to find out what exactly the purported terrorist did and when, as well as when Obama had dealings with him and under what circumstances will be able to make an accurate assessment of the truth value of the statement.

Example 2: A radio ad that has been playing in Richmond over the past few weeks ends with the tagline: “Just as you suspected, Barack Obama is wrong for you.” That “just as you suspected” is a particularly egregious violation of what I consider to be a moral obligation to use words honestly; the construction suggests that the listener already had an idea, before hearing the ad, that something was wrong with Obama—Obama PERSONALLY, not his policies or his plans. Since anyone who did NOT have previously existing suspicions would know that, the language is designed to do two things: one, appeal to those people who did already have doubts, and two, to suggest to those who didn’t have doubts that they have missed something important. Since the assumption inherent in the statement is that ALL listeners suspected something was wrong with Obama, those who did not must have missed the point—they are not part of the club. They are the uninformed. This is the language of the bully, and it preys upon those who lack advanced enough skill with language to recognize the ploy for what it is.

Example 3: “Joe the Plumber,” actually Samuel Wurzelbacher, the man whom John McCain raised from the obscurity of the rope line to such a level of stardom that he [Wurzelbacher] has actually hired himself a manager in anticipation of making vast sums of money for public appearances, has been appearing at McCain rallies and on television as one of McCain’s acknowledged surrogates. The ludicrousness of a ploy which presents a completely uninformed citizen as an expert in the economy and foreign affairs aside, since Mr. Wurzelbacher is now formally speaking on behalf of the McCain campaign, his statements, too, are fair game for a truth value assessment. On Monday, October 27, he drew media attention to himself by concurring with a questioner at a rally that a Barack Obama Presidency would mean the “death of Israel.” When pressed, in an interview with Fox News’ Shepard Smith, Wurzelbacher alternately said that he had his own reasons for believing that Obama is an enemy to Israel (“I’ve done my own research…”) and saying that “"I know just enough about foreign policy to probably be dangerous....”

Wurzelbacher’s refusal to provide any concrete justification—even when pushed—for his claim about Israel followed by his disclaimer about his own knowledge and his suggestion that people go out and find their own reasons to agree with him [Joe] constitute a classic evasion of the type frequently used by people who don’t have any facts to support their arguments, but it is a blatant ploy and even the most unsophisticated listeners might be expected to recognize it for what it is except for the fact that the McCain campaign threw its weight behind “Joe,” establishing him as an expert in foreign policy. The official McCain campaign response to “Joe the Plumber’s” pithy foreign policy analysis was this (view the Fox News video): “While he’s clearly his own man, so far Joe has offered some penetrating and clear analysis that cuts to the core of many of the concerns that people have with Barack Obama’s statements….” This tactic is deliberate, and it was designed to countermand what would otherwise have come off as garden variety ignorance and turn it into bona fide credentials. The McCain campaign, in other words, set out to mislead the public into seeing “Joe the Plumber” as a legitimate authority.

Example 4: On Sunday, November 4, in yet another interview with Fox News (whose editors are apparently indifferent to the fact that the last time they gave him a platform he disgraced himself and the news show by trotting out blatantly contrived fiction as fact), Wurzelbacher declared that “…there’s too many questions about Barack Obama and his loyalty to our country.” When challenged by the interview to clarify whether he is actually doubting whether Obama is a good American, Wurzelbacher said this: “Oh, you know, his ideology is completely different than what, you know, democracy stands for so I have some questions.” He didn’t clarify what Obama’s ideology is, he didn’t justify his definition of that ideology, he didn’t explain how that undefined ideology stands in opposition to democracy, and with the phrase “…I have some questions,” he employed a tactic that the McCain surrogates have been relying on heavily: non-specific innuendo. “I have some questions” without specifying the questions suggests that “Joe” is in the know about some “things” about Obama that we don’t know. It suggests that Obama has not been honest, and it conveys a vague threat that if we don’t find these things out in time, we’re all going to be sorry. Wurzelbacher has rapidly taken on the coloration of the environment in which he has come to rest, and he is just as rapidly mastering the art of ominous innuendo.

One of the nuances that we all need to be aware of is that Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher might very well be motivated by the fact of his sudden celebrity. The fact that he has hired a publicity firm suggests that he is not driven to assist Senator McCain out of purely ideological motives, and it suggests that “Joe the Plumber” has reasons that transcend the election to make outrageous statements that keep him in the media spotlight. Only people who are able to really listen to what the plumber has to say and attend to the words he uses, as well as informing themselves of Mr. Wurlzebacher’s other activities in pursuit of what he apparently thinks could be a substantial windfall and then draw the conclusion that “Joe” decides what to say not based in any particular expertise of domestic or foreign affairs or out of any true interest in serving the public good, but rather based on pure self-interest can be expected to discount fame conferred upon him by the McCain campaign and instead hear the deeply ignorant nature of his remarks. McCain’s people are counting on the fact that relatively few people will have the time or dedication or the savvy to put all that together, and they continue to parade “Joe the Plumber” out at their events like the goose that laid the golden egg. They are clearly unconcerned with any standard either of wisdom or veracity.

Final Example: Perhaps the most insidious ploy of the week past is the one Sarah Palin resorted to on Friday, when she suggested, indignantly, in a radio interview, that her first amendment rights have been violated by the press, members of which have nefariously been reporting that she has been engaging in negative campaigning. Here is the text of her remarks (audio here):
"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."
Myriad assumptions embedded in this claim are false, but unless one is a user of language sophisticated enough to identify the assumptions and assess their truth value, and unless one understands the demands of logical argumentation well enough to know that premises must be both true and valid in order for an conclusion to be true, one is very likely to accept the statement on its face and to believe what Palin clearly wants us to believe: that she is the victim of massive effort on the part of the media to silence her in violation of her constitutional rights. Glenn Greenwald at Salon did the analysis better than I could, so I recommend you read his column for a clear explanation of just how far off-base the Governor is in her interpretation of First Amendment Rights.

Given that Sarah Palin has, in fact, completely misrepresented the First Amendment, we have two potential explanations as to cause. One possibility is that Palin herself believes what she claims, in which case she is woefully ignorant not only of the First Amendment but also of the implications of the language which she herself has been employing in her campaigning effort. The only other option is that Palin knows perfectly well that she is offering a gross distortion of both her own tactics and of the First Amendment, in which case, she has chosen deliberately to wield language as a power against those who are not as adept as she is at recognizing the true implications of words. In the first case, she is far too inept to be taken seriously as a candidate for any position of authority and decision-making, and in the latter case, she is too cruel, for any deliberate manipulation of those who know less is just that: cruel. Personally, I think that Palin is more ignorant than manipulative; but I don’t think the same of McCain. I think he knows what the ramifications of his chosen political tactics are. I think he knows that much of what Sarah Palin says reflects both an ignorance of the true state of affairs and a deeply distressing inability to speak English well. I think he knows that most of what “Joe the Plumber” touts suffers from the same two flaws, and I think that McCain has decided that he doesn’t care—that he wants to win more than he wants to treat people with dignity, and so he has shown himself to be willing to wield both Sarah Palin and Sam Wurzelbacher as weapons against people who understand even less than Palin and Wurzelbacher do what the implications of what the McCain surrogates say. And so I think that McCain is abusing the power of his intelligence and his ability, and I know that any person so clearly willing to do that is not a person who can be trusted with the most powerful job in the country.

Larison chose, as the aspect of a widespread ineffectuality with the English language he wished to highlight, the failure, as he perceived it, of the public school system. I think it’s at least equally important to consider one particularly high-cost result of that failure: the use of words as a weapon against those who don’t know enough to see it coming. The constitution guarantees certain rights pertaining to our freedom to say what we want to say; it does not, and cannot, guarantee that all citizens have the language facility necessary for them to be able to take advantage of the right. The constitution cannot protect those who lack the skill; we have to agree, as human beings, to do that for each other.

Obama, Keillor, Kristol, Same-Sex Marriage and Me

A few weeks ago, William Kristol wrote a column for the New York Times in which he urged the McCain campaign to take what he [Kristol] called the “very simple” step of attacking Barack Obama on the issue of what is, according to Kristol, his core problem: excessive liberalism. Here’s the quotation:

The core case against Obama is pretty simple: he’s too liberal. A few months ago
I asked one of McCain’s aides what aspect of Obama’s liberalism they thought
they could most effectively exploit. He looked at me as if I were a simpleton,
and patiently explained that talking about “conservatism” and “liberalism” was
so old-fashioned.

Maybe. But the fact is the only Democrats to win
the presidency in the past 40 years — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — distanced
themselves from liberal orthodoxy. Obama is, by contrast, a garden-variety
liberal.

This is a familiar Republican tactic; Democrats have been painted as “too liberal” for years. Obama provides what appears to be extra grist for the mill because in January, the National Journal, which does a statistical assessment of senators’ voting records and awards a score indicating a ranking, voted Obama “the most liberal senator” for 2007. In 2007, Obama voted in line with the liberal position more often than 95.5% of all senators. While the National Journal article gives an overview of how it arrives at the numbers, it does not give a detailed assessment of what the assessors and statisticians consider to be “liberal”—even in the associated article “Methodology: How the Vote Ratings are Calculated”--or how the liberal-ness or conservative-ness of a given bill is determined; nevertheless, such a ranking system presumes that there are attitudes and values that are inherently “liberal” and that those attitudes are identifiable and so are reflected by a voting record.

The article does give some idea about issues that are considered liberal, for the purposes of making this assessment: the issues mentioned are abortion, taxes, immigration, and national security. I am assuming now, but it seems probable that the liberal positions on these issues would be pro-choice, raising taxes in order to pay for public services, allow for illegal immigrants to remain in the US through some controlled process, and oppose so-called national security measures such as warrantless phone-tapping. It is, furthermore, presumably these sorts of positions to which William Kristol, and others like him, object.

But consider what attitudes are suggested by support of these, and similar, positions. To be in favor of the right of a woman—or couple—to choose an abortion is to be in favor of people having power over their own bodies and of a decision that will dramatically alter the direction, substance, and quality of her own life. To be in favor of raising enough tax money to pay for public services (health care, social security, and so forth), to be, in other words, opposed to the idea that you ensure that the rich get as rich as possible so that their wealth will “trickle down,” is to believe that we have an obligation to each other, that although we live in a country which holds, as a fundamental belief, the idea that the individual matters, we also believe that in order for all individuals to thrive, they will require help from time to time. To support the development of some sort of system by which illegal immigrants who have broken no other law and who are contributing to the economic well-being of the country by participating in the work-force—especially in roles that are typically not wanted by well-educated citizens—is to believe that the American Dream, which inspired an ancestor of virtually every one of us born here, should still be allowed to inspire others. It’s also a belief that a rigid and completely indiscriminate adherence to immigration law smacks of xenophobia, and so it advocates a revision of the laws with an idea of making judgments about immigration based on something else that doesn’t feel so coldly prejudiced. The willingness to take a new look at immigration and find some solution other than expulsion of some enormous number of people is a belief that maybe we should at least try to find a way to extend the American Dream of opportunity to earn one’s own way to as many people as possible.

[N.B. It is not my intention here to enter into a debate about how to solve the immigration problem; this is certainly one of the thorniest problems of our day, and there is no easy answer—possibly no right answer. My only contention is that the liberal take on the issue is the one that includes rather than excludes.]

Finally, to oppose the Machiavellian aspects of national security legislation, such as warrantless wire-tapping, is to believe that people should be treated with dignity and respect, and that the government is intended to serve the people, not dominate them.

That, fundamentally, is what liberalism is about: it is about serving people. It is about believing that all people—not just the ones who look like us or sound like us or go to the same church we do or live in the same neighborhood or wear the same clothes or speak the same language—are valuable. Liberalism begins with the belief that what people need is power over their own lives and their own choices because having individual power is the thing that offers the best chance of living a meaningful and successful life. It is a belief, first and foremost, of freedom over conformity.

The great liberal movement of our day, of course, is the movement for gay rights, including same-sex marriage. On this issue, Obama, whether he is the most liberal senator or not, is not liberal enough for my taste. Joe Biden spelled out the Obama-Biden position during the Vice-Presidential debate, and he made it clear that neither man is in favor of same sex marriage, offering the silly panacea of the civil union in its place, as if denying them marriage does not discriminate against homosexuals. But there are others who have shown themselves willing to pick up crusade in place of Obama and Biden, and they have done some fabulous work in demonstrating how the cause is first and foremost about the necessity of treating people with dignity. It’s about humanity, not narrow-minded morality. Some of the “No on 8” ads are particularly touching. The one embedded at the end of this posting demonstrates the traditionalism of the Same-Sex marriage movement—these are people who would rather uphold traditional family values and live together as a legally recognized family, rather than as an informal, unofficial arrangement. I also recommend this one, from Itzhak Perlman, who speaks out in support of his daughter, and this one, from a group of clergy from a variety of religious denominations, and this one, featuring young people. This series is particularly nice—completely rational rebuttal to the wild, fearful charges that the supports are making. All of these people care about fairness; all of these people care about letting other people have the power of choice in their own lives. All of these people are liberal.

Contrast that with the kind of conservatism we have been treated to in recent weeks as a result of Sarah Palin having been “unleashed” and sent out to stir up the vaunted Republican base into a frenzy of support for the McCain-Palin ticket.

Kristol has yet, so far as I have been able to find, to denounce the McCain campaign strategy of sending Palin out to stir up hate speech. In recent weeks, where he has written about her, at least that I could find, were words that seemed to approve of the plan she announced in an interview with him to raise questions about “who Obama really is,” a question she has since turned into a deeply disturbing intimation that the Barack Obama we have seen over the past few years is actually a nefarious mask, hiding an enemy of the state. In the same interview, Palin announced her belief that the campaign should stop being nice, and engage in the kind of negative campaign that McCain once vowed to avoid. Kristol’s approval was clear:

I asked at the end of our conversation whether Palin, fresh off her own debate,
had any advice for McCain. “I’m going to tell him the same thing he told me. I
talked to him just a few minutes before I walked out there on stage. And he just
said: ‘Have fun. Be yourself, and have fun.’ And Senator McCain can do the
same.” She paused, and I was about to thank her for the interview, but she had
one more thing to say. “Only maybe I’d add just a couple more words, and that
would be: ‘Take the gloves off.’ ”

And maybe I’d add, Hockey Mom knows best.

I deduce, then, that Kristol approved, at least in principle, of the McCain-Palin effort as an appropriate conservative effort to defeat the “too liberal” Obama. Perhaps having now seen the actual form the effort has taken, Kristol, too, disapproves, but if so, I would like to see him say so as publicly as he approved the effort in advance. Until he does so, we have to assume, based on his previous work, that his view of acceptable values allows for the kind of hate-speech attack that McCain and Palin have unleashed this week.

What does that suggest about the ideal of conservativism?

Conservatism, as depicted in the McCain-Palin-Kristol model suggests that some people are good and some people are bad. The bad people are bad not because they have done something heinous, but rather because they think something that the “good” people don’t like. This model suggests that there is one way to be an American and one way to be patriotic. It suggests that there is one right religion, one right sexuality, one right education, and comes dangerously close to suggesting that there is one right race. This version of conservatism offers us a club into which some people have entrée—mostly rich, white, male, Christians. They’ll take the support of others, too, but going back some years now, this brand of conservatism has been remarkably unwilling to actually respect those members of the club who don’t quite fit the acceptable model. The “base,” to which the Republican party has been pandering more and more obviously appear to be narrow-minded, anti-intellectual, fundamentalist and intrusive. That base is not interested in allowing other people to live their lives in accordance with different interests and values; it appears, instead, to be dedicated to the cause of suppressing anything “other.” This kind of conservatism is not, in actual fact, conservative in any traditional understanding of the politics of the right; it is, rather, radical, and it has hijacked the agenda for years, culminating in what has become, so far as I am concerned, the ugliest, most despicable presidential campaign of my lifetime: the Palinized hate-talk express.

Clearly, I am not liberal enough to think that McCain and Palin ought to be allowed to choose to spew venom and spread lies as part of their campaign effort. That delineation is a good example of what always constitutes the hard part for liberal-minded people: justifying a decision about where to draw the line between what we will tolerate and what we won’t. One of the classic paradoxes of philosophy is the problem of relativism: if tolerance and the wish to allow others to choose their own morality is the basis for one’s moral position, then how does one justify turning around and showing intolerance to any behavior. In other words, how can we claim to retain the label “tolerant” if we are intolerant to any behavior—drug use, polygamy, even murder? But to accept everything that people can dream up would, indeed, be “too liberal,” because to tolerate everything would be to tolerate anarchy and to tolerate every abuse of human rights imaginable. So of course we do, at some point draw the line at which we become intolerant, and we try to do it around the notion of infringing on the rights of others.

Oddly enough, that is the point at which liberalism meets what I used to think of as traditional conservative values. One of the staunchest Republican values when I was growing up was the desire to keep government OUT of personal lives. Throughout this campaign season, most of the reading I have been doing is from disaffected conservatives—people who consider themselves to be staunch Republicans, but who are angry and disappointed about what the party has become in the grip of the base—Andrew Sullivan, Daniel Larison, even Arianna Huffington (though she has developed the most rabidly liberal perspective of those three). Sullivan wrote a book about conservative values, and he frequently highlights how far the modern party is from those values. Here’s one quotation that represents his view:

The Republican Party that I knew, that I grew up in, a moderate party, a
party that believed in fiscal discipline, a party that believed in small
government, a party that had genuine conservative values. This is not a
conservative leadership. This is radical leadership. I called them neo-Jacobins.
They are radical. They're not conservative. They've stolen my party and I would
like my party back.

Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief aide.

Despite all that, despite the fact that traditional conservative values are not all that far removed from liberal values, “liberal” is still considered a dirty word. Even the Democrats seem to have bought the radical fundamentalist position, and are too often willing to treat the word “liberal” as a pejorative. The same National Journal article includes this intriguing observation:

Contacted on January 30 to respond to Obama's scores in NJ's vote ratings, his campaign said that the liberal ranking belies the public support he has been receiving. "As Senator Obama travels across the country, and as we've seen in the early contests, he's the one candidate who's shown the ability to appeal to Republicans and the ability to appeal to independents," said campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

This seems to me a sad comment coming straight from the heart of the Democratic Party. We are all too inclined to be embarrassed about being liberal, and we all too often join Ms. Psaki in an attempt to scurry away from the term before it brands us for life. It seems to me as well that one of the reasons that the Democrats have such a difficult time competing with and beating Republicans for public office is that we allow ourselves to be embarrassed about what we believe, rather than staunchly promoting it.

Some people, most fortunately, have found a way to stand up for liberalism in particularly eloquent ways. In Homegrown Democrat, Garrison Keillor has this to say: "I am a liberal, and liberalism is the politics of kindness. Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, freedom of belief, art and poetry, city life, the very things that make America worth dying for.” (20)

That’s what it means to be liberal.

Barack Obama put it this way in Richmond, Virginia, on October 23rd:

(Note: the link above is to the following transcript made by a fan and corrected by me; the video of the speech is embedded at the top of this posting)

At a defining moment like this, we don't have the luxury of relying on the same political games, the same political tactics that we've become so accustomed to, this slash-and-burn politics that divides us one from another. And the reason Mark Warner and Tim Kaine do well is because they're all about solving problems. They're not about trying to make other people look bad. With the challenges and crises we face right now we can't afford to divide this country. By race. By class. By region. By who we are or what policies we support. Let me tell you something, because I know you're been hearing a lot of stuff lately. There are no real parts of the country and fake parts of the country. There are no pro-America parts of the country and anti-America parts of the country. We all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from. Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight, city-dwellers, farm-dwellers. It doesn't matter. We're all together. There are patriots who supported this war in Iraq. There are patriots who opposed it. There are patriots who believe in Democratic policies and those who believe in Republican policies. The men and women from Virginia and all across this country who serve on our battlefields, some are Democrats, some are Republicans, some are Independents. But they fought together and bled together. Some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America. They haven't served a blue America. They've served the United States of America. Nobody should forget that.

So we've always been at our best when we've had leadership that call on us to look past our differences to come together as a nation. Leadership that rallies us to a common purpose. To a higher purpose. I'm running for President because that's the country we need to be right now. This country and the dream it represents are being tested in ways we haven't seen in nearly a century. Future generations will judge us by how we responded to this test. Will they say this was a time when America lost its way, when it lost its nerve? When we allowed the same divisions, the same petty differences, to plunge this country into a dark and painful recession? Or will they say this was another one of those moments when America rose up? When we overcame? When webattled back from adversity. When we recognized the common stake we have in each other. This is one of those moments.

Richmond, I realize many of you are cynical. Many of you are fed up with politics. I understand you're disappointed, even angry with your leaders, and you've got every right to be. But despite all this, I ask of you what's been asked of Americans throughout our history: I ask you to believe. Believe in yourselves, believe in each other, believe in the future we can build together. See, together, we can't fail. Not now. Together, we can't fail. Not when we have a crisis to solve. Not when we have an economy to save. Not when there are so many Americans without jobs, losing their homes, can't afford to see a doctor, can't send their kids to college, or pay their
bills. Not when there's a there's a generation that's counting on us to give
them the same opportunities somebody gave us.

You know, everybody in this auditorium, at some point, somebody stood up for you. You know, some of you had parents or grandparents who they couldn't go to college but they fought so you could go to college. You had parents or grandparents, they couldn't start their own business, but they struggled so you could start your own business. They might not have been able to vote, but they marched and fought so you could vote. Maybe you can run for the United States Senate. Maybe you can run for the Presidency of the United States of America.

That's what this election is about. That's what we're fighting for, and in 13 days, if you fight for me, if you work with me, if you make phone calls with me, if you organize with me, I promise you we'll win Virginia. We'll win this election and you and I together will change the country and change the world. Thank you everybody. God bless you.

If that's what it means to be the most liberal senator in Congress, then we should hope that all the rest strive to be more like him.

Works Cited

Keillor, Garrison. Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America. Viking: New York, 2003.

Kristol, William. "How McCain Wins." New York Times 23 Sept 2008 12 Oct 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/opinion/29kristol.html.

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One Woman Against the Sarah Palin Maelstrom

Asked, this week, to contribute my two cents worth to an effort entitled "Women Against Sarah Palin," I found myself oddly reluctant to do so, though among the people I know (male or female), I am certainly among the most appalled by the circus that has erupted following the announcement of Ms. Palin as John McCain's choice for VP. After a few days' mulling, I decided that I don't like the implications of proclaiming myself "against Sarah Palin." Although it is true that I disagree absolutely with every Sarah Palin ideal, value, principle, or policy of which I have so far learned, I suspect that to be against Sarah Palin might be to play right into the hands of those who conceived the political gambit of choosing her for the McCain ticket.

I do, however, agree whole-heartedly with those who solicited my input that if some part of the McCain strategy was the hope that choosing a woman would draw the votes of women who wanted to see Hillary Clinton as the Obama running mate, then it’s time for those women to speak up and disabuse Senator McCain and his cohorts of the notion.

I am appalled by the nomination of Sarah Palin.

I am appalled for all the ordinary reasons that other liberal thinkers are appalled:

*I am against the idea that books can and should be removed from library shelves because some people don’t like them.

*I am against the idea that abortion is wrong in every circumstance, including rape and incest.

*I am against the idea that creationism should be taught in the science classroom alongside evolution.

*I am against the idea that young people should not be educated about the dangers of profligate sexual activity.

*I am against the idea that gay marriage should be banned.

*I am against the idea that mankind is not contributing to global warming.

*I am against the idea that offshore drilling or drilling in the country’s National Wildlife Refuges will constitute a long-term solution to the world’s energy problem and that, therefore, the environmental cost is worth the gain in oil.

*I am against the idea that the war in Iraq is an act of God’s will, a justified and holy action against those who attacked the United States on 9/11.

*I am against the idea that we can, and therefore should, win the war in Iraq.

*I am against the idea that spending federal money on a project other than the “Bridge to Nowhere” demonstrates standing up to Congress on the issue of earmarks.

*I am against the idea that religion is an appropriate guiding force for governmental policy.

*I am against the idea that being the titular head of the Alaska National Guard gives one experience in military or foreign policy, particularly when the number of orders one has issued to the National Guard to date is zero.

*I am against the idea that the fact that Alaska is near Russia qualifies one as having foreign policy experience.

*I am against the idea that aerial hunting is an activity that ought to be funded by the state—or is an activity that ought to be undertaken at all.

*I am against the idea that Polar Bears should not be classified as endangered because it is more important to keep developing oil sources.

If the choice of Ms. Palin was aimed at people like me, who preferred Senator Clinton to Senator Obama as a potential presidential candidate, then let me go on record as saying that I am not converted. I do not think that all women are Hillary Clinton, or that any woman is equally qualified to serve in the highest office of government as any other, just because she IS a woman, or that views on issues of personal freedom, environment, or national security are less relevant than gender in choosing a national executive. I do not, in short, think that any woman will do, any more than I think any man will do. For the record: I am one woman whom it will be impossible for Sarah Palin to charm into supporting John McCain.

That said, I am further compelled to say that Ms. Palin’s attitudes themselves, though disturbing in the fact that alone and together they offer a vision of the world that seems short-sighted and contrary to the kind of vision of personal freedom that a vigorous implementation of the spirit of the Constitution would allow us to achieve, as well as representing a world view that, institutionalized, would effect a move away from progress in basic human rights, seem to me to be less disturbing in and of themselves than the larger implications of the fact that McCain chose Palin at all, or of the profoundly disturbing tenor of the political discourse resulting from that choice.

I don’t really think that the primary motivation in selecting Sarah Palin as a running mate was the hope of luring disaffected Hillary fans to the McCain effort. That was my immediate reaction when I first heard of the choice, but that was before I knew anything at all about Governor Palin. Having had a few weeks to learn, I am now convinced that anyone who thought that Governor Palin could win over even one Hillary voter would have to be seriously deluded. I think now that the motivation for choosing Sarah Palin was a great deal less obvious and a great deal more subversive. What Sarah Palin brings to the McCain campaign is not the power to lure Hillary Clinton voters, but rather the power to derail serious political discourse and to drag the whole campaign down to the level of mud-slinging frenzy.

Sarah Palin functions as a lightning rod precisely because of her extremist, contradictory, even arguably hypocritical statements. She angers liberal thinkers so deeply that the temptation to attend to her is very nearly irresistible. I recognize the powerful pull of the completely outrageous; I recognize the overwhelming desire to respond to the fear that this woman and her policies could actually end up running this country. I admit it: I’ve read more newspaper articles and listened to more news stories about Sarah Palin than I did about any of the other candidates before this. And I think this is precisely what the McCain campaign was counting on. The more we are outraged by Sarah Palin, the more time and energy and inches of newsprint we expend on showing how outrageous she is, the safer McCain is from scrutiny. Every day that goes by on which we don’t put McCain onstage answering questions front and center is another day that people don’t see how old he looks, don't consider whether he is physically up to at least four years of a gruelling job, don’t attend to how mean-spirited his ads and speeches have become, don’t attend to how much his platform has morphed from what it once was. Every day that we expend on Palin is another day that McCain doesn't have to sell himself as worthy and capable of doing the job for which Palin is NOT in line.

While people from all areas of the political spectrum busy themselves in screaming fights over whether the press is being “too mean” to Sarah Palin or whether anyone would have asked “that question” to a male candidate, or how unfair it is for anyone to drag the Palin children into the political fray, or whether the democratic candidate is too “elitist,” the real issues are off the table. Every time Barack Obama and his campaign succumb to the invitation to engage on the issue of Sarah Palin herself, they open themselves to character attacks, and they sacrifice another opportunity to debate their own issues on their own terms. Sarah Palin is a star, and we have all turned ourselves into the fawning paparazzi that trails around stardom. In a 2005 episode of The West Wing entitled “Freedonia,” Donna Moss drew fire to the John Hoynes campaign by allowing herself to be suckered into arguing with a man in a chicken suit. Far from backfiring, I think that the Sarah Palin pick has accomplished exactly what it was intended to accomplish. These days, thanks to the injection of Sarah Palin into the political mix, we are all become Donna Moss, humiliating ourselves by arguing with a chicken. A hated war, an economy on a potentially catastrophic downswing, impending environmental disaster: all are forgotten or, at the very least, demoted to irrelevancies when it comes to choosing a President.

I am against the degradation of the political process into squabbling over hurt feelings. Even more than that, I am against the deeper insult to women—and to voters in general—implied by this McCain decision. The selection of a woman because she can be counted on to lead a tremendous national charge into the trivial and the irrelevant is the exact opposite of taking a woman seriously as a political force. Not so very long ago, Hillary Clinton was pilloried in the press for crying in public because crying was too womanly, and in the tenor of that day, any woman who expected to be allowed to act like a woman was considered far too weak to run a country. Now the song has changed completely, and anyone who asks the current woman to answer a tough question is accused of anti-feminist motives. Even Charles Gibson, the only person to date who has been able to deal with Governor Palin solely in the impersonal context of political issues, was immediately accused of being unfair for pursuing answers to hard questions. While the expectation that Mrs. Clinton should act like a man might be less than comforting as a sign of the real acceptance of a woman in a national leadership position, the incessant insistence that Mrs. Palin, because she is a woman, should not be expected to have to demonstrate the same knowledge, strength of character, or courage as a male candidate would have to demonstrate is less palatable still. If my read of the McCain strategy is right, Governor Palin is not offered to us as a serious political force, but rather as a creature on display—the sideshow at the circus. The selection of Sarah Palin thus constitutes no audacious storming of the male bastion of American politics; rather it demonstrates a deep contempt for women as equal participants in affairs of state.

This contempt appears to me to extend beyond Governor Palin to the electorate. The whole Palin strategy depends on the expectation that voters will allow themselves to be lured away from the substantive by a few crumbs of novelty, surprise, and the excitement of outrageous extremism. So far, many of us have played our assigned roles uncomplainingly, and this is what I find the most distressing aspect of the whole brouhaha. I want to think that the largest segment of the American population consists of people who will choose reason over emotion when it comes to making important, long-term decisions, care about real issues that make the difference between whether people live or die more than they care about whether a candidate’s five weekly girls’-night-out friends would vote for her, and cannot be fooled into voting yet again for someone blatantly being promoted as a small-town buddy we would love to have a beer with.

My greatest sorrow arising out of the Sarah Palin maelstrom is seeing the American public tied up in knots over what doesn’t matter, because such a vision makes a mockery of my desire for a wise, educated, and caring electorate committed to the greater good. The thing I am most against in the whole sorry mess is the possibility that people will forget that the two most recent elections, each based on the very policies McCain and Palin are now preaching, led to eight disastrous years which we cannot afford to repeat, that they will once again succumb to the allure of runaway pandering to weaknesses, fears, knee-jerk reactions, and short-term desires, and that they will once again elect someone who holds in contempt the needs of the people they are sworn to serve. I may be against Sarah Palin’s views, the degradation of the female as a political force, and the McCain campaign’s apparent confidence in its ability to manipulate an easily-manipulated public, but I am most of all against the general public’s living down to McCain’s expectation.

I cannot say that the choice of Governor Palin for VP has made me less likely to vote for Senator McCain, for there was no possibility that I would have voted for Senator McCain to begin with; what I can say is that the choice of Governor Palin frightens me. It suggests to me that Senator McCain is not as straightforward and honest as I had thought he was. It suggests to me that Senator McCain is less, not more, of a maverick than I had thought he was. It suggests to me that Senator McCain is far more like George W. Bush than I had thought he was, and that he is, therefore, much more dangerous as a potential president than I had thought he was, because the choice of Sarah Palin reflects an attitude toward political decision-making that raises the spectre of another Machiavellian administration which believes in winning at all costs, and so glories in manipulating public opinion. I may not like the implications of being said to be “against Sarah Palin,” but I am profoundly against the implementation of another administration which expends its time and energy and our national resources on amassing power to itself, rather than on generating real solutions to real problems.


Internet Sources (all accessed 9/13/08):
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