Friday,
March 12 2004
3/11: My heart aches for Spain today. Not only because
she has been such a staunch and courageous ally of ours in recent
times but because I have a soft spot for her personally; her language,
her culture, but most of all her people. I'm at a loss to write
something new or interesting about the horror that took place
in Madrid yesterday, so instead I'll tell a story.
I've been
to Spain a few times, but the most memorable trip occurred during
the first Gulf War. I was senior in college at the time, and my
roommate was filling out his application to business school when
he encountered a question asking him to describe the places he
had traveled and the cultures that had influenced him the most.
Since he
had never been outside the U.S. before, this was a bit of a stumper.
With the crystal-clear logic of a twenty one year-old college
student, my roommate decided that instead of making something
up or telling what he felt was the embarrassing truth, he would
just take a quick trip abroad. And I, being the twenty-one year
old version of me, decided to go along.
I can't remember
why we picked Spain and not some place closer and safer like Canada
or Mexico. Circumstance and chance, I guess. I also can't recall
exactly where our trip fell on the Gulf
War timeline, except that it was early 1991 and the war was
in full bloom.
People warned
us not to go. My parents were....let's just say they were less
than enthusiastic. Even though Spain was a coalition member and
a long way from Iraq, the Spanish public was deeply divided over
the war. A classmate who was born and raised in Madrid phoned
home and returned with the rather ominous advice that we not wear
any clothing with English lettering.
Just days
before we were set to leave, I remember having a very serious
conversation with James trying to answer two questions. First,
was the trip a smart thing to do? The answer was "probably
not", but that particular answer hadn't deterred us in the
past and it wasn't going to stop us this time. The second question
was whether the trip was worth whatever risk might be involved.
We decided it was.
I won't bore
you with the details, but to this day I recall with true fondness
the way we were treated by the Spaniards. As discreet as we tried
to be, everywhere we went it was obvious we were Americans and
every conversation we had invariably ended up on the topic of
war.
It was true
that many Spaniards disagreed with Desert Storm. To our surprise,
however, a good number of people we met not only supported the
war but expressed to us something more.
Sitting here
now trying to recall what I felt then is impossible, but I can
only describe what I remember as a sincere admiration and respect
for America.
Now it's
my turn to express a deep admiration and respect for the Spanish,
in addition to my condolences, for what they have sacrificed and
suffered, irrespective of who was responsible for yesterday's
act of gross inhumanity. - T. Bevan 1:35 pm | Link
| Email
Thursday,
March 11 2004
NBC DOESN'T LIKE ITS NEW POLL: Have you ever read an
article by a news organization more dismissive of its own polling
results than this
one?
Results
at odds with other recent polls
The NBC/Journal poll found Bush and Kerry in a dead heat eight
months before the general election. Bush was favored by 47 percent
of respondents, while 45 percent backed Kerry, a difference
that was within the poll’s reported margin of sampling
error of 3.1 percentage points.
It
was difficult to gauge the importance of the result, which was
notably at odds with those of other polls in the past week,
which have found Kerry with a statistically significant lead
in a head-to-head matchup. Kerry led Bush by 9 points
in the latest Washington Post/ABC News survey and by 8 points
in the latest USA Today/CNN poll.
Astonishing.
Reader Gary M. emailed us with a very astute point:
Of
course, MSNBC could just have easily cited the recent NPR poll
which had the exact same result as the NBC/WSJ poll
Yes, they
could have. MSNBC also chose to title the piece "Public’s
faith in economy plummets" rather than a more straightforward
take on the horse race number.
Gary M. finishes
with a personal observation worth repeating:
I have
been involved in politics since the Reagan/Ford campaign in
1976, and I have never seen the media as biased as it has been
over the last few months. It will be truly amazing if Bush wins
this election.
Amazing,
indeed .
A
"RATIONAL" PLACE: Air America Radio, the new
liberal talk radio network launching at the end of this month,
is billing itself as....well, as a new NPR:
"We'll
bring a new series of fresh voices to America's ear . . . in
plenty of time to be a rational place for those looking for
information about the election," said CEO Mark Walsh.
Really? Then
how come the star host of the budding network, Al Franken, proudly
promises that:
"We're
going to put it to Bush.We're not ceding this territory anymore.
The right wing has captured radio, and we're going to go after
them hard."
Does that
sound like a "rational place" to go for information?
We shouldn't kid ourselves: AAR is going to be a self-congratulatory,
Bush-hating orgy 24/7.
The big
dilemma for AAR is this: what happens after November 2? The network
is founded in large part on the hatred that exists on the hard
left for George W. Bush and members of his administration. If
AAR does manage to help achieve liberals' singular goal of defeating
Bush in November, it's doomed. Ironically, the best chance AAR
has at succeeding as a legitimate business venture is a Bush reelection.
Even then,
however, the prospects of success for AAR are slim. I just don't
think there is a whole lot of staying power to the idea of listening
to a couple of comedians run through the same list of condescending
Republican stereotypes day after day after day.
I think we'll
look back on this whole thing in a year or two and remember AAR
not as a legitimate effort to start a profitable radio business
but as one of the biggest, most elaborate liberal soft-money expenditures
of the 2004 Presidential campaign.
GET
YOUR TALKING POINTS HERE: I'm not usually in the habit
of trying to write lines for the president, but I thought of something
I'd love to hear him say on the stump:
"Over
the last 20 years, John Kerry has changed his mind about every
issue except one: slashing the U.S. defense budget."
Obviously,
it's a variation on the one the President has been using but it
makes an even more effective sound byte by combining and contrasting
Kerry's two biggest flaws. - T. Bevan 11:48 am | Link
| Email
Wednesday,
March 10 2004
THE
9/11 CHANGE: Despite Matt
Yglesias' best efforts to spin away John Kerry's numerous
flip-flops - which I think fails miserably, by the way - it was
a sentence from his
blog post touting the TAP article that struck me most:
"For
the sake of clarity, I should note that I wouldn't want to claim
that Kerry has never changed his mind about anything. He clearly
went from opposing the death penalty to favoring it after 9-11.
If you already accept the hegemonic media narrative that Kerry
is an expediency-at-all-costs kind of guy, this will appear
to be yet another politically motivated flip. If you don't accept
it, it looks like a perfectly understandable decision to get
tougher on terror in the wake of a massive attack. It
seems to me that most people changed their mind about a few
terrorism-related things between 9-10-01 and 9-12-01 and the
really distressing thing would be if it didn't impact you at
all." (emphasis added)
I think it's
great that September 11 made John Kerry change his mind about
wanting to string up Osama bin Laden & crew. The problem is
that Kerry
hasn't changed his mind about what we need to do to catch the
bastards.
And as of
one of the 82%
of Americans who see terrorism as our country's greatest and most
immediate threat, the single biggest reason I would never
pull the lever for Kerry is that 9/11 didn't change him enough.
- T. Bevan 1:15 pm | Link
| Email
IS KERRY JACQUE CHIRAC'S MAN?: Does Senator Kerry
just make things up because he thinks they'll sound good to a
particular audience? I wonder after his comment
this weekend in Florida:
"I've
met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly,
but boy, they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this,
you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like
that.'"
Huh? Who's
he talking about and what foreign leaders has he met with? Tony
Blankley tackles Kerry's extraordinary claim in his column
today:
Sen.
Kerry has been on public view almost every day since he started
running for president last year. I don't recall seeing him on
European, Middle East or other foreign travel during that period.
Nor do I recall seeing or reading about foreign heads of state
meeting with Mr. Kerry when they visited Washington during the
last many months. In the absence of any public evidence that
he has met with several foreign leaders recently, the burden
of proof should be on Mr. Kerry to prove that he didn't just
make up this little story.
While the
issue of whether Kerry just made this story up because he thought
it sounded cool is relevant, the more important storyline is why
Kerry even thinks this is a positive and what it says about his
view of the world. Blankley is right when he says:
But
Sen. Kerry obviously believes the times are changing. He believes
that there may be millions of Americans who will be impressed
by the fact that hand kissing, back-stabbing, atheistic, sophisticated
Euro-leaders prefer John Kerry to George Bush.
Whether
or not he actually met with any of these leaders, I would suspect
that he is right that they would much prefer to do business
with a notional President Kerry. Doubtlessly, Soviet leader
Leonid Brezhnev enjoyed dealing with President Carter more than
with President Reagan.
Weak
American presidents who feel the need to apologize for America
protecting its interests in the world are invariably favored
by both our enemies and our competitive friends. The French
couldn't stand our last cowboy president, Ronald Reagan.
I am
sure that M. Chirac will be glad to continue to kiss Mr. Kerry's
hand, as long as Mr. Kerry will kiss a lower, dorsal part of
M. Chirac's anatomy. But I rather doubt John Kerry will get
elected president by American voters while in that posture.
Well said.
DEFINING
THE ELITE MEDIA: Bill O'Reilly had a very good "talking
points memo" to begin his show Monday night dealing with
the charge of just who
is the "elite" media. Here are some excerpts:
The
New York Times is ground zero for the elite media and you would
think executives at that paper would understand how detached
from American reality it has become. But they do not.
Generally
speaking, the elite media believe that the majority in this
country -- white Christian Americans -- are prone to oppressing
the minority. The elites rightfully point to the civil rights
struggle as an example of how the majority can hurt a minority
until the forces of reason stepped in.
It
goes without saying that the elite media will almost always
favor political candidates that espouse high taxes for the evil
rich; higher spending on the poor -- even if the programs are
wasteful and ineffective -- and more restrictions on corporations,
which the elites believe are oppressors as well.
If
you go up against the elite media it will not be pretty. You
will be branded a bigot, racist, anti-Semite, [a] homophobe.
You will be called a fundamentalist, or an ultra-conservative.
Elites don't debate. They attack and marginalize.
Now
the landscape has changed. And while our competitors at NBC
and CNN still can't figure out how Fox News has become so powerful,
it’s very simple: We are not the elite media. For example, we
don't feel the 66 percent of Americans who are against gay marriage
are fools and bigots. And we don't think that our opinion has
more validity than your opinion, no matter what it is -- we
give voice to all points of view, including the elite one.
O'Reilly
hits the nail directly on the head. The unprecedented success
of FOX News has dramatically altered the landscape in regards
to how the news is delivered in America. The elite networks no
longer operate in a vacuum, free to spin and cover stories in
any way they wish. Those days are over.
America has
finally been given a choice when it comes to where it gets its
information on the TV and the wild success of FOX shows just how
much the country wasn't liking the dog food being served up everywhere
else.
I have no
studies to prove this, but I firmly believe that had FOX News
not existed in 2000, George Bush would never have won that election.
Contrary to what many liberals think it is not because FOX was
an extended arm of the Bush campaign or part of the vast right
wing conspiracy, but rather the fact that the other networks and
papers no longer had a monopoly on the flow of information to
the American people. That made - and continues to make - a HUGE
difference, and it is one of the reasons liberals are scurrying
around trying to start a radio network and a cable news channel.
But most
are in denial about the entire FOX phenomena, which is why a "liberal"
news channel has little chance of success without government funding.
The problem is the "elite" don't realize just how out
of touch they are with the average American. In their world 10
years ago, CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS covered the news fairly and objectively,
with no spin or bias. There are still intelligent people today
who would stand by that statement. They are in denial.
Have the
executives at CNN or NBC really asked themselves the hard question
of why FOX News Channel throttles them in ALL of primetime? There
is no question that the other networks have moved closer to the
center these last couple of years because of the success of FOX,
but for the most part they're still out in left field.
The problem
is the culture that pervades these organizations on all levels
trickles down and oozes out the final product no matter how hard
they try to be objective. Having a 74 yr. old Bob Novak and a
bow-tied Tucker Carlson as your "tokens" isn't going
to get it done.
O'Reilly
tells them point blank the secret of FOX's success; "We are
not the elite media. For example, we don't feel the 66 percent
of Americans who are against gay marriage are fools and bigots."
Until the
culture of these news organizations changes, FOX will continue
to dominate. -J. McIntyre 7:09am | Link
| Email
UPDATE: John
Ellis has a related post, and he does a good job of explaining
why the press simply can't bring itself to be objective, especially
when it comes to covering the Presidential campaign:
First
of all, understand that Democratic campaign operatives and members
of the press see themselves as flip sides of a coin. They share
the same values, they're ideologically in tune, they socialize
together, they both advance the greater good, each in his or
her own way. Occasionally, reporters act badly and go off on
unproductive tangents. Democrats are always amazed by this and
teach seminars at places like the Kennedy School to remind the
media of their higher obligations.
In
the main however, the two work hand in glove. Your average New
York Times reporter sees a Democratic operative as his or her
ally in the world. That same reporter knows a handful of "good
Republicans," but assumes confidently that all others are
hopeless reactionaries.
Objectivity
in the press is and has always been an illusion. It's just that
now the public is finally getting a peek behind the curtain, and
many don't like what they see. - T. Bevan 7:44 am
Tuesday,
March 9 2004
THE CRISIS OF BLACK LEADERSHIP: I'm going to
make a prediction: less than a year from today an African-American
male will stand up in the well of the U.S. Senate and give a speech
for the first time since Edward
Brooke. That man's name is Barack
Obama and he's currently the odds
on favorite to win the Democratic primary in Illinois one
week from today.
Of course,
Illinois also sent Carol
Moseley-Braun to the U.S Senate in1992, making her the only
other African-American (and first African-American woman) to serve
in that body since Brooke left in 1979. But she was, to put it
nicely, a terrible Senator.
Obama, however,
is the real deal. Lest anyone think this is a personal endorsement
of Obama, it's not. I'll most likely support the eventual GOP
nominee, Jack Ryan, who I think is right on most of the issues.
But Obama
will be the Democrat in what is now an overwhelmingly Democratic
state, and it's looking less and less like the GOP nominee is
going to get any help from President Bush here in November - unless
something drastic happens like OBL is caught three weeks before
election day. Even then there won't be any guarantees.
So I won't
be too surprised if Obama wins. But I won't be too disappointed,
either. Here's why: I'm extremely concerned that there is a crisis
of black leadership in this country.
Obama is
a serious guy; exceedingly smart, very articulate, and well versed
on the issues. And from what I've seen so far Obama speaks in
thoughtful, measured tones about race.
Contrast
this with the behavior we've seen from the Congressional
Black Caucus of late. Contrast it with the vile racial rhetoric
that we constantly get from Julian
Bond at the NAACP.
Or contrast
it with Jesse
Jackson. Even though Jackson has fought admirably against
discrimination on behalf of the African-American community over
the years, he's done it not by trying to heal racial wounds in
America but by trying to keep them pried wide open, by inciting
fear and hatred, by invoking ghastly and ghostly images of a time
that nearly every American today denounces and abhors. The result
of his efforts: an America still intensely divided by race and
millions upon millions of dollars for Jackson, his family, and
his friends.
America needs
more serious African-American leaders. Every time I hear Maxine
Waters holding forth on C-SPAN I cringe and think "there
have to be hundreds, if not thousands of African-Americans in
CA-35
that would be better, more responsible leaders than this woman."
To be fair,
though, that's the nature of the House of Representatives. The
narrow, often homogeneous districts produce a mix of good and
bad elected officials on both sides of the aisle, many of whom
couldn't or wouldn't make the cut in a statewide election.
It's the
reason wackos like Jim
Traficant can get elected (and reelected) to OH-17 but could
never, ever be elected to the Senate. Maxine Waters can be as
outrageous and unserious as she wants precisely because she appeals
to such a narrow constituency.
The problem,
however, is that given the national media attention Waters and
the other members of the CBC get, they are the face and the force
of the African-American community nationwide.
Which is
why I think Obama's election would be a very good thing. The crisis
of African-American leadership at the national level is even more
dire.
Al Sharpton
is an engaging, entertaining guy (especially in comparison to
the rest of the Dem candidates for President this year), but he's
a hustler with a rap sheet, not a legitimate leader.
Can you name
another African-American Democrat who would qualify as a serious
national leader? I can't. That bothers and perplexes me.
Harold
Ford, Jr. comes to mind as a bright, able member of the Democratic
party, but he's probably a few years away (at least) from developing
the sort of influence now held by Conyers, Rangel, et. al. Former
Mayor of Dallas Ron
Kirk came close to grabbing the leadership mantle in 2002
but failed. Time will tell if he will get another chance.
There are
tons of exceedingly qualified, very talented African-Americans
who could be assuming leadership roles within the party (both
elected and unelected), but where the heck are they?
Part of the
problem, I think, and one of the things that concerns me most
about the current state of African-American leadership in America
is the way black Democrats ruthlessly enforce liberal orthodoxy
and demonize fellow African-Americans when they dare take an opposing
view to almost any issue.
Against affirmative
action? Uncle Tom. In favor of welfare reform? House slave. In
favor of educational choice? Not really black. Don't favor repealing
the middle class tax cut? Token.
The stuff
is repugnant, but it never stops. Clarence Thomas pulled himself
up from dirt to become a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States of America. Disagree with the man about policy if you like,
but that's an act of individual achievement that should be held
with the highest esteem within the African-American community.
At least you'd think so.
Same with
Colin Powell and Condi Rice. These are people of the highest personal
and professional caliber serving our country, and they're being
harangued and slandered day in and day out by the likes of Corrine
Brown and Alcee
Hastings.
Anyway, I
guess it makes sense that if I'm someone like
this and I'm not willing to toe the CBC line on every issue
I'd say, "why bother."
Barack Obama
is quite a liberal. And there is no saying that he won't fall
under the spell and pressure of members of the CBC and resort
to the tactics used by some of their members. That would be a
shame.
From what
I've seen, I don't get the sense he's that type of guy, and I
have hope that he can raise the level of political discourse in
the country to the benefit of all Americans if and when he enters
the U.S. Senate.
Then again,
I'm a little biased. I'd rather have one Condi Rice on my side
than a thousand Maxine Waterses'.
STATE-BY-STATE:
We continue to add new polls to our Bush
v. Kerry State-by-State page. Take these polls with a grain
of salt, given that it's still 8 months out and some use small
sample sizes of registered, as opposed to likely, voters.
Here's another
item of note. In the NPR
survey released yesterday there is the following mention of
how Bush and Kerry are faring around the country:
"More
pointedly, President Bush's margin comes from states he carried
by more than five percent in 2000 (58% Bush, 35% Kerry), while
being only roughly within the margin of error in states he carried
narrowly in 2000 (50% Bush, 46% Kerry). President Bush is behind
in states Gore carried narrowly (42% Bush, 49% Kerry) and losing
by double-digits in states Gore carried by more than five percent
(39% Bush, 51% Kerry)."
In other
words, the country is no longer red and blue like it was in 2000.
Now it's maroon and navy. - T. Bevan 10:37 am | Link
| Email
UPDATE: More from Gallup:
"A
comparison of support for the two candidates by the results
of the 2000 election show that among likely voters, Bush is
barely ahead in the states he won four years ago by more than
five percentage points (which Gallup calls "red" states).
He leads Kerry by just 50% to 47%. In the "blue" states,
which former Vice President Al Gore won by margins of more than
five percentage points, Kerry leads Bush by a substantial margin,
55% to 42%. In "purple" states -- where the margin
of victory for either candidate in 2000 was five percentage
points or less -- Kerry also leads by a substantial margin,
55% to 39%."
THE RISE OF HITLER: We received several emails
questioning the accuracy of my comment this morning in response
to Zbigniew
Brzezinski's article in the NY Times. I wrote that
"people forget that Adolf Hitler was democratically elected
Chancellor of Germany in 1933."
In a technical
sense, the criticism is valid. Hitler was never elected
Chancellor of Germany. However, the Nazis were the largest party
in the German Reichstag in every election after 1930 and Hitler
did assume the Chancellorship in an entirely legal manner, as
this quote from a "A
History of the Modern World" demonstrates:
In the
election of 1930 the Nazis won 107 seats in the Reichstag; in
1928 they had won only 12; their popular vote went up from 800,000
to 6.5 million. By July 1932 the Nazis more than doubled their
popular vote, won 230 seats, and were now by far the largest
single party....On January 30, 1933, by entirely legal means,
Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the German Republic.
Technically,
Tony Blair was not elected Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom, though I don't think anyone would argue that Tony Blair
didn't assume the office of Prime Minister in an entirely legal
and democratic manner. My point is that Adolf Hitler became Chancellor
of Germany in 1933 following the legal and democratic process
of the Weimar Republic.
Arguing the
semantics of the word elected (which I'll concede is technically
wrong) misses the point that Hitler came to power as a result
of free elections where his party won more votes than anybody
else.
After his
appointment as Chancellor, however, the Nazis did move very quickly
to eliminate any democratic opposition. Again from "A
History of the Modern World":
In the
spring of 1933 Hitler called for another election. A week before
election day the Reichstag building caught fire. The Nazis,
without any real evidence, blamed it on the Communists. They
raised up a terrific Red scare, suspended freedom of speech
and press, and set loose the Brownshirts to bully the voters,
Even so, in the election, the Nazis won only 44% of the vote;
with their Nationalists allies, they had 52%. Hitler, trumpeted
a national emergency, was voted dictatorial powers by a pliant
Reichstag from which the Communist deputies had been excluded.
The Nazi Revolution now began.
Now back
to Brzezinski's
point from today's NY Times:
Democracy,
impatiently imposed, can lead to unintended consequences. If
the Palestinians were able to choose a leader in truly free
elections, might they not opt for the head of Hamas? If free
elections were soon held in Saudi Arabia, would Crown Prince
Abdullah, a reformer, prevail over Osama bin Laden or another
militant Islamic leader? If not genuinely accepted and reinforced
by traditions of constitutionalism, democracy can degenerate
into plebiscites that only add legitimacy to extremism and authoritarianism.
Brzezinski's
argument is one that should be taken very seriously.
Haiti is
a perfect recent example of this problem. And
while we are setting out to do the right thing in Iraq, we should
not be foolish enough to think that democratically elected governments
may not end up being a threat to the United States or the rest
of the world.
This is not
meant to be a prediction of failure in Iraq or a criticism of
the Bush Administration's strategy, but rather a reminder that
"democracy" shouldn't be viewed as a cure all for all
the world's problem areas. While it may not be politically correct
to say out loud, democracy isn't always the best short-term solution
for many countries. J. McIntyre 12:01am | Link
| Email
Monday,
March 8 2004
CAN YOU SAY 'HOMERUN'?: I meant to post on this earlier
but forgot. On Meet the Press yesterday Tim Russert went for the
partisan brush-back
on Rudy Giuliani, confronting him with Congressman
Tom Cole's ridiculous comments from earlier in the week. Rudy
hit it out of the park:
TIM
RUSSERT: I mean, a vote for John Kerry is not a vote for Osama
bin Laden?
RUDY
GIULIANI: A vote for John Kerry is not a vote for Osama
bin Laden. It's a vote for the most liberal member of the United
States Senate. That would be a better way for them
to put it. If you want to vote for the most liberal
member of the United States Senate, the most liberal voting
record, somebody who's going to raise your taxes, vote for John
Kerry. An appeal like that actually has the opposite
effect. It probably turns more votes against us than it does
for us. (emphasis added).
Somehow I
don't think that was the response Russert had in mind. - T. Bevan
3:30 pm
MARRIED TO GAY MARRIAGE: These three paragraphs from
today's Houston
Chronicle provide the best summation of the issue of gay marriage
I've seen:
"I'm
not married to the word `marriage,' " said Mitchell Katine,
a Houston lawyer who represented the two men who successfully
challenged Texas' sodomy law. "I think it would be appropriate
for government to be involved in civil unions for everybody
-- as long as everybody gets the same thing. Call it whatever
you want, but give everyone the same 1,049 legal rights and
benefits (of marriage), regardless of whom they love."
"We're
going for the whole enchilada," said Michael Adams,
a lawyer with New York-based Lambda Legal, the gay rights group
that took the Houston case to the Supreme Court. "Until
we have full marriage and equal rights, we will not be satisfied."
But
he and other gay rights advocates said civil unions, like those
currently granted in Vermont, are a major step forward for gay
and lesbian couples. Marriage is better, they say, because
it is portable and recognized in other states. But within a
state, a civil union brings with it all the public benefits
afforded married heterosexual couples. (emphasis added)
This is a
good illustration of the tolerance vs. tradition balance I wrote
about a few weeks back. A majority of Americans - indeed perhaps
even a plurality of Republicans - are willing to support the idea
of civil unions (or whatever else you'd like to call it) as long
as the definition and institution of marriage is protected as
a union between a man and a woman. Is this more or less a wink-and-a-nod
compromise based largely on semantics? Of course.
Gay activists,
however, aren't much in the mood for compromise. Thus we've seen
an equal and opposite reaction from social conservatives on the
issue, moving ahead with the FMA which they feel is the only way
to defend the institution of marriage.
But as John
mentioned in this space last week, there is a contradiction
in the position of gay marriage advocates I've yet to hear an
explanation for. If marriage is indeed a "fundamental civil
right" on par with the civil rights struggles of the 1960's,
how can one possibly suggest that it be left to the states?
Andrew
Sullivan, for example, says on one hand that denying same-sex
couples the right to wed is unequivocal bigotry and discrimination,
yet on the other hand he wants to allow the states the right to
make their own laws.
From a logical
standpoint as well as a moral one, how can Sullivan argue that
it's perfectly acceptable for a number of states (at this point
I think about 38 have laws banning gay marriage) to have legally
sanctioned and in some cases "enshrined" in their state
constitutions such blatant bigotry and discrimination? Isn't this
the same flawed logic that allowed racial bigotry to flourish
in state laws passed in the South in the first half of the 20th
century, a practice that finally resulted in the federal government
stepping in and putting a halt to it with the Civil Rights Act
of 1964?
It seems
to me that if you truly believe gay marriage is an inalienable
right and any attempt to prevent two gays from marrying is bigotry
then you must be in favor, to use the words of Michael Adams,
of "the whole enchilada:" a federal law in favor of
gay marriage. Anything less is intellectually inconsistent.
If you don't
think gay marriage is a fundamental right that must be guaranteed
by the federal government (a la the Civil Rights Act) then there
is not only room for a valid use of the states' rights argument
but also room for compromise in the form of civil unions.
One more
thing. I don't think it's been discussed nearly enough that to
accept that gay marriage is a fundamental right you must also
accept the underlying premise that homosexuality is genetic and
beyond a person's control - like the color of one's skin.
But the
search for a "gay gene" hasn't produced any definitive
results, and even if you concede that some people are genetically
predisposed to being gay, "predisposition" doesn't reach
the threshold to merit an "inalienable" right in our
society.
People are
genetically predisposed to being all sorts of things: fat, thin,
athletic, musically inclined, etc, but predisposition doesn't
mean that 1) a person is destined to become any of these things
or 2) that they should be afforded special rights or treatment
even if that predisposition blooms into a central personality
trait.
The problem
is that a good number of Americans still don't believe homosexuality
is genetic, not because they are bigots but because it is impossible
for heterosexuals to wrap their heads around the idea being sexually
attracted to someone of the same sex. And absent any scientific
proof, large numbers of people continue to see homosexuality as
a "lifestyle" choice, and our government places restrictions
and makes compromises every single day on the "lifestyle"
choices of people in America - and it isn't labeled bigotry.
PB&J
VS. FRENCH CHOCOLATE: Steven
Thomma says the coming election is a choice between two candidates
with stark policy differences - as well as a few personal ones:
Bush,
57, is a plainspoken, backslapping, peanut-butter-and-jelly
loving Texan who enjoys watching baseball but prefers the solitude
of running for his exercise...
Kerry,
60, is sometimes aloof and long-winded, patrician, a French
chocolate-eating New Englander who unwinds with the team sport
of ice hockey. A Yale University graduate like Bush, Kerry served
in combat in Vietnam while Bush served at home in the Texas
Air National Guard.
New election
2004 slogan: You are what you eat! Strange, though, I always thought
Kerry was a cheesesteak
man. - T. Bevan 10:19 am | Link
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