Monday, March 26, 2012

Bill Donohue and the Catholic League don't like my advice to Archbishop Chaput

Well, I guess I didn't expect this:


There's a database connection problem at the site, currently, but luckily the Catholic League e-mailed me a press release chastising ... me.
ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT WILL NOT BE SILENCED

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an article that appears today as a post on the Philadelphia magazine blog site by Joel Mathis:

Joel Mathis isn’t Catholic, but that doesn’t stop him from giving some heady advice to Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput: just tend to the problems in the archdiocese and drop your criticisms of the Obama administration. Mathis is angry that Chaput has a new e-book coming out tomorrow, A Heart on Fire: Catholic Witness and the Next America, that addresses recent attacks on religious liberty. Mathis counsels Chaput to “concentrate on fixing the Catholic Church in Philadelphia,” adding that the archbishop’s alleged “anti-Obama crusade” amounts to “a distraction.”

Catholics like to lecture the outspoken archbishop as well. Last September, no sooner had Archbishop Chaput taken over in Philly when Catholic attorney Nicholas Cafardi offered his instructions. Noting that Chaput likes to comment on the big issues of the day, he said, “Chaput would be well-advised to leave politics aside.”

But Archbishop Chaput will have none of it: he will not be silenced. Indeed, he is delightfully insubordinate—nothing will stop him from opining on anything he wants, and nothing will stop him from faithfully serving his archdiocese. That’s precisely why the Catholic League loves him—he’s a man of steely determination and incredible fortitude.
This, of course, being a response to my column today at The Philly Post. I suggested that Chaput's priorities—which seem to come down mostly to "making war" on Obama—probably weren't doing much to fix a diocese afflicted with pedophile scandals and lawsuits, massively declining enrollment in the parochial schools, and declining attendance at mass. That still seems true to me.

I wasn't really trying to silence the archbishop—I doubt, in fact, that I have any ability to do so. That said: "Delightfully insubordinate?" To whom is Chaput actually subordinate and cheeky? Is he sassing the pope? No? Maybe Donohue's comments are a bit outlandish.

Then again, it's Bill Donohue, last seen in the New York Times urging bishops to treat the victims of priest sex abuse as enemies of the Catholic Church. “The church has been too quick to write a check, and I think they’ve realized it would be a lot less expensive in the long run if we fought them one by one,” Mr. Donohue said. That's a Christ-like ethic, no? If I've irritated Bill Donohue, then it's frankly a happy day.

About the Constitution, divinity, and Mennonites

The latest edition of The Ben and Joel Podcast is, well, kind of weird. In it, we interview Larry Arnn about his new book, "The Founders' Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It." Arnn's main point is that the Declaration and the Constitution don't have opposing philosophical foundations—despite what some scholars say—but I got hung up on the "divine and natural part" and you can hear so in the podcast.

The word "God" appears in Arnn's text 64 times. He references the Declaration's appeal to "the laws of nature and of nature's God" 21 times. And so, for me, the book reads much like a theological declaration as much—or more—as it is a work of history or political science. Is there room for a secular-minded person in a "divine" understanding of government? What's wrong with believing the Founders were a group of smart men—but also human and imperfect, people whose work was great but still leaves room for improvement? You can hear Arnn's answers in the podcast.

You can also hear him, jokingly, refer to me as a "defector" from the principles of my alma mater, Tabor College. And, well, guilty as charged. Tabor is a largely conservative, evangelical Christian college. I fit none of those descriptions anymore.

But after we finished recording, as I continued to digest Arnn's work and the podcast, I realized I'd still find his constant invocation of the divine troubling, even if I were not a "defector."

The Mennonites I grew up around had an interesting history. They were pacifists, believing that the example of Jesus precluded them from taking up arms. Because of that theology, the fled as a group from Germany, their original home, to Russia. And then from Russia, in the late 1800s, to Kansas, where I grew up.

The mix of theology and experience—recent enough that churches in my hometown were still worshipping in a Russian-inflected version of German into the 1950s—led many of the Mennonites to be skeptical of nationalism, in particular, but certainly any brand of patriotism that seemed to claim God on its side. As Christians, the felt duty-bound to be respectful of the authority of government--but I'm dubious they'd spend much time reflecting on the "divine" foundations of man-made government. Even when that argument is made, as Arnn does, in the service of limited government.

The problem with invoking "divinity" as the source of a form of government is that it really ends the discussion. You can't argue with God, usually. But there are plenty of arguments to be had, as evidenced by our discussion. Arnn seems like a good and pleasant man; I've no wish to quarrel with him! And he's right that the Founders referenced God quite a bit in their discussions; what that proves is that ... they referenced God quite a bit in their discussions. It doesn't mean the Constitution is marked with divinity.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

John McCain never wants to leave Afghanistan

I feel like most of today’s McCain-Lieberman-Graham op-ed about the need to stay the course in Afghanistan could’ve been written four or five or six years ago. But I really want to focus on this particular paragraph:
At the strategic level, our effort continues to be undermined by the perception that the United States will again abandon Afghanistan. This suspicion makes everything our troops are trying to achieve significantly harder. It creates perverse incentives for the Taliban to keep fighting, for the Pakistani army to hedge its bets by providing support to the Taliban, and for our Afghan allies to make counterproductive decisions based on fears of a post-American future.
But here’s the thing: Eventually the United States will leave Afghanistan. The Afghans will remain, and Pakistan will be next door. Everybody knows this.

Now, I don’t know how long it will be before that exit takes place. It might be next year, 10 years from now, or even another 100 years. But history seems to suggest that America will not occupy another country halfway around the world from its own soil infinitely into the future. At some point we will withdraw.

The wisest thing to do is to figure out the best way to withdraw, a manner that best mitigates the possibility of future attacks on America originating from Afghanistan. To hope that we can guarantee 100 percent safety is futile—but there’s a cost-benefit ratio to these things, and if a cash-strapped America has decided that ratio is out of whack after nearly 11 years, well, that’s not unreasonable.

McCain, in particular, would have more credibility if he’d ever demonstrate that there was a war he didn’t want, or want more of. But he’s always urging more, more, more. I get frustrated with President Obama often, but McCain does his best to remind me that we avoided a much worse president, one with a propensity to over-commit American troops to never-ending action.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Is Obama the 'affirmative action president?'

Though his politics are not mine, I'm friendly with and very much like Steve Hayward, a prolific conservative writer who these days blogs at Power Line. Ben and I had him on our podcast this weekend to discuss his new book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide To Presidents," in which Hayward gives each president from Woodrow Wilson on a letter grade for their constitutional fealty. Democrats, as you might surmise, don't do well.

I let myself sound a bit exasperated at one main point during the discussion. In the book, Hayward says that President Obama can be fairly called the nation's first "affirmative action president." He suggests that Obama had a thin resume, and benefited from the nation's desire to elect a black man to the country's highest office.

Today, at Power Line, Steve affirms that stance by quoting Jim Geraghty at National Review:
It ties to a theory I’ve had for a while, that most apolitical voters desperately want to avoid concluding that the first African-American president of the United States is a failure, on par with a second term for Jimmy Carter. As a result, they will give Obama until the very last minute to demonstrate an ability to get the job done, to demonstrate that he can generate tangible improvements in their lives. But, if around October 2012, people don’t see tangible improvements in their lives, well, the bottom may fall out of his numbers. He’ll still have his loyal base, but the vast majority of independents will decide he just can’t get the job done.
There's an interesting discussion to be had about the role of Obama's race in his political fortune. But labeling him an "affirmative action president" is loaded terminology, suggesting that Obama's accomplishment in being elected is somehow tainted. Steve, I suspect, knows that. Interestingly, it doesn't just insult the president—it also insults the voters, who are presumably so fuzzy-headed with political correctness that they'll ride a sinking ship until it's too late. Obama's approval numbers over the last two years, I think, indicate otherwise.

In any case, the underlying conceit here is that Obama only benefits politically from his race. That's probably not the case: One study suggested the president lost as much as 5 percent of the 2008 vote based purely on his race. Certainly, the desperate attempts by Breitbart-style conservatives to link the president to the most obnoxious sorts of black nationalism—despite no real hint of such leanings in the president's actual governing record—suggest they're aware of the dynamic.

Like lots of black men, Obama had to overcome a racial headwind to achieve what he has, politically. (We have, thankfully, arrived at a point in our nation's history where that headwind was not determinative.) And like lots of black men, there are a few whites who tend to attribute those accomplishments to coddling and bleeding hearts rather than smarts and hard work. But it's a strange idea that a black man can only win politically, and almost never lose, because of his race. We haven't come that far, yet.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Rendell and Iran: Why no mention of his media activities?

Over the last month, former Philadelphia Mayor/Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has mostly been in the news for leading a group of investors trying to buy the Philadelphia Daily News, Inquirer, and Philly.com. Late last week, though, he abruptly dropped out of the group bidding on those news properties.

And then it became public that Rendell was under investigation by the feds for taking speaking fees from an Iranian (alleged) terrorist group.

Since then, we've had several stories in the Inquirer and one today in the Daily News about Rendell's troubles with the feds ... and not one of them mentions that he was just days ago the leader of the group trying to buy those newspapers.

I don't mean to impugn the hard-working reporters at either newspaper, some of whom I'm Twitter-friendly with. But it's an odd omission—particularly in light of the very public in-house battles about those papers' coverage of their own sale. It's perhaps a minor thing, but it doesn't really create confidence in those papers, does it?

CORRECTION: There is a mention at the end of this story. But most of the coverage has omitted such mentions.

When Does Adulthood Begin?

One possible byproduct of the economic challenges today's young adults face may be shifting societal norms about when adulthood begins. When asked what age children should be financially independent from their parents in a 1993 survey, 80% of parents said children should be self-reliant by age 22. In a survey conducted in December 2011, only 67% of parents (with children age 16 or under) say their children have to be financially independent by age 22.

Monday, March 12, 2012

America's future workforce

Daily Number: Hispanics Will Account for an Increasingly Large Share of Labor Force Growth - Pew Research Center: "Between 2010 and 2020, Hispanics are expected to add 7.7 million workers to the labor force. In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites in the labor force is projected to decrease by 1.6 million.

As a result, Hispanics will account for the vast majority -- 74% -- of the 10.5 million workers to be added to the labor force in this ten-year period. Hispanics accounted for a much lower share -- 36% -- of the total labor force increase from 1990 to 2000 and between 2000 and 2010 (54%)."

'via Blog this'

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

More on Rush Limbaugh and crybaby politics

Over at The Philly Post yesterday, I lamented "The Era of Martyrdom Politics" in which we try to advance our cause by being offended by what our rivals have to say about us. I mentioned the whole Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke thing, writing: "Suddenly we weren’t talking about contraceptive policy anymore, but about how a man who made his career two decades ago by coining the term 'feminazi' and crossing numerous other lines is, no kidding, really, a very obnoxious sexist and this time we mean it."

In other words, Rush has always been a jerk—there's nothing new to see here! And I think Gawker probably gets at this point a little better than I did:
So here comes Rush Limbaugh—a media entity who has repeatedly, almost monthly, reveled in a transparent strategy of uttering whatever racist, sexist, homophobic slur comes to mind for the explicit purposes of riling his antagonists—to utter a sexist slur for the explicit purposes of riling his antagonists. And his antagonists got riled! This dynamic is very, very old. (And I have certainly fallen for it). It used to be a somewhat sloppy process. Limbaugh would say things, and maybe some people would notice and write an angry newspaper column. Over the years the calumnies would build up until Al Franken cataloged them in book form.

Limbaugh claims that he does not hate women. But his critics know that he does. So when he lets slip a "slut," it can become valuable evidence in proving your case. ("He claims that he doesn't hate women, but look! He calls them sluts.") The trouble here is that Rush Limbaugh obviously and unambiguously hates women. His utterance of the word slut in the present context adds no new information about Limbaugh or his beliefs. Pre-"slut" and post-"slut" Limbaugh are identical in all respects.
I think that's right. I think Sandra Fluke was right to be very offended by Rush Limbaugh. It's the difference between the generalized bigotry of the term "feminazi" and a specific accusation leveled at a specific person.

But there's still an element of kabuki to the whole cycle of offense and umbrage, and, well, meh. Making a big deal about Rush won't make Georgetown University offer Sandra Fluke health insurance that covers contraceptives—I'm not sure it will even push the needle very far. And that's what the debate is supposed to be about.

Netflix, Amazon, and the 'problem' of streaming movie choice

At The AV Club, Tasha Robinson makes the case for continuing with physical media instead of relying on cloud-based streaming services like Netflix. Some of what she says makes sense, but not this:
And then there’s the fact that DVD/Blu-ray selection is still far greater than streaming selection. For example, check out this comparison list from September 2011, showing that only about a fifth of the movies on the IMDB top 250 are available via Netflix streaming—a percentage that dropped recently with the lapse of the Starz deal. Or consider Netflix’s Alfred Hitchcock library: More than 40 films available on disc, but only six available on Netflix Instant, and only two of those (The Lady Vanishes and The Man Who Knew Too Much) among his classics. Not only is any given film still far more likely to be available in disc form, those discs are still more likely to have options like subtitles, alternative languages, and disc extras.
That's only true if you consider Netflix the end-all, be-all of streaming movies. That's not the case.

Just to use Robinson's example: No, Netflix doesn't offer much in the way of streaming Hitchcock flicks. But Amazon Instant Video actually has a fairly complete roster of Alfred Hitchcock movies available to rent or own in a streaming format, including biggies like "Psycho" and "Rear Window."

If you lock yourself into one service, yes your choices will be limited. But that's not really necessary for most folks. On Friday night, I used Netflix to watch "Brokeback Mountain." On Saturday, I paid $4 to rent "Hugo" from Amazon. No, cloud-based services aren't complete. But if you're willing to take a buffet approach to your movie streaming, they're a lot closer than Robinson's example suggests.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

You can have your low gas prices, or you can have a nuclear Iran

It's not quite so dire as that, probably, but with Republican candidates hitting President Obama so hard on the price of gas, it's worth noting some of the factors that are driving that price up:
The Iran situation has already raised the price of crude oil as much as 20 percent, according to oil experts.

That fear is tempered by optimism — if tensions ease in the Middle East, experts predict that energy prices will fall, with gasoline at the pump potentially dropping 50 cents a gallon or more because supplies are relatively strong in many parts of the country. Some analysts say the world price of oil could fall to $80 a barrel if tensions eased.
So gas prices are at least partly the result of America's tough anti-nuke sanctions against Iran. What else?
Despite a fall in gasoline demand in the United States and Europe, global oil markets are tightening because demand for energy from Asian countries, particularly China and India, is rising at surprisingly strong rates even as output is declining from several important producing countries.
So: Gas prices are rising because of the law and supply and demand. Capitalism is doing its thing!

A cynic would suggest Republicans should be portrayed as soft on Iran and anti-markets to boot, if they continue to demagogue the gasoline issue. I'd hate to be that sort of cynic.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Santorum, Gingrich, Romney are wrong about apologizing in Afghanistan

Over at The Philly Post, today I get after the Republican candidates who are criticizing President Obama for apologizing in Afghanistan for the burning of Korans by American troops there.
The mission of U.S. troops in Afghanistan isn’t to trample upon native sensibilities—it’s to hunt terrorists and help the locals build their country so that it never again serves as the base for an attack on the United States. That involves the (tricky) winning of hearts and minds. Treating the Koran with disrespect—even if it’s an accident—actively works against achieving those goals. Apologizing isn’t just the right thing to do, in this case; it’s an act of strategic military necessity.

So the rush by Mitt, Rick, and Newt to condemn the president for apologizing isn’t just contemptible: It’s dangerous and juvenile. It signals that all three men see the world as a series of cartoon caricatures, that they are bullies who demand respect but believe that giving respect means showing weakness. Maybe Republicans won’t ever apologize for America—but all that proves is that they are very sorry, indeed.
Follow the link to read the whole thing.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

The trailer for 'Battlefield America' makes me want to burn down Hollywood

No, really:



So, a movie about eight-year-olds competing in a dance competition somehow ends up turning those eight-year-olds into physically violent gang members? And their mentors declare the dance competition to be "war?"

Fuck. That. Shit.

Sorry for the language. But really. I know I'm getting old. But I do pine for the old days when the idea of eight-year-olds as gangsters was treated with as a comic idea, not as something to aspire to. Remember "Bugsy Malone?"

Thursday, February 23, 2012

The end of affirmative action

That's what Ben and I talk about in this week's Scripps column, looking at the case that's headed before the Supreme Court. My take:
Should affirmative action go away? Probably not. Will it? Probably.

The Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts seems to have its knives sharpened.

So while liberals should mount a defense of affirmative action in college admissions, they must also prepare for its probable demise.

What comes after? Texas -- where the current case originates -- offers one way forward. The state's public universities offer automatic admission to the top 10 percent of graduating students from every high school in the state.

Because those schools have wildly varying economic and racial compositions, the result is that Lone Star colleges have a fairly diverse student population. That kind of creativity will be needed going forward.

Wait: Why should diversity be a goal? That's easy. America is diverse. Unless you believe that white men possess all the talent and smarts -- and some people really do believe that --it's criminal not to foster the resources and resourcefulness of all our country's citizens.

"Even right-wingers get nervous with racial homogeneity," Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy told the magazine Mother Jones. "If Patrick Buchanan were elected president of the United States, there would have been a person of color in the Cabinet."

For more than 300 years, America's culture and law enforced racial preferences -- whites, of course, were preferred. We still live with the ramifications: A few decades of affirmative action don't make up for the fact that many minority groups weren't allowed to start the 100-yard dash until whites got a 50-yard head start. Critics of affirmative action say they want the law to be colorblind and advancement based on some notion of "merit." That sounds good, but also conveniently preserves the advantages created by 300 years of slavery and Jim Crow.

Those critics appear on the verge of victory, however. But affirmative action is a battleground, not the whole war. So liberals must ask themselves: What's next?
Ben expresses his own desire to end affirmative action in his take, and you'll have to click the link to read it. I'd like to expand on my own take a bit, if I may.

It doesn't surprise me that conservatives don't like affirmative action. I think there are principled non-racist—even anti-racist—reasons for doing so. What bothers me, though, is how little I see my righty friends acknowledge that affirmative action sprung up as a response to an actual problem: That the aforementioned 300 years of slavery and Jim Crow left a lot of folks without sufficient resources—take that word however you like—to achieve and succeed on society's new colorblind terms.

Conservatives like to talk a lot about how "culture matters" and often it sounds like a bit of a dogwhistle to liberal ears, a way of suggesting that bourgeois whites really are superior to pathology-afflicted blacks, but in ways that (maybe) have less to do with genetics than the poor choices that whites as a group and blacks as a group just happened to make. And they also talk quite a bit about the distorting effects that big government can have on culture. Yet you never really hear them put two and two together when it comes to race, and acknowledge again that a longstanding legal-cultural regime enforced both by senators and sheriffs for hundreds of years might've caused damage that still needs repair. Instead—and this is giving my conservative friends the best benefit of the doubt—they seem to have believed that Martin Luther King Jr. came to save everybody, 1968 happened, everything was fair after that, and anybody who can't make it must be to blame for their own problems. This is either stunningly naive or, well, something more pernicious. Among conservatism as a whole, it's probably a bit of both.

My friend (I'll make the presumption) and sometimes vigorous critic William Voegeli has written an entire book about how liberalism doesn't have a limiting principle that makes it possible for conservatives to do welfare-state business. (That would make liberals conservatives, but that's another conversation.) But taking conservatives at their word that all they want to do is maximize liberty and opportunity for all Americans, then this issue is a huge blind spot for them: Simply put, conservatives don't seem to have an animating principle that moves them to address problems of this sort.

Maybe their answer is simply: Study hard and get married. (Or, in the case of the occasional black conservative like Thomas Sowell: Leave us alone, government.) And I'm sure there are smart folks who do see a problem here and have come up with conservative-minded solutions. But conservatism, broadly, seems to treat affirmative action as a government program meant to oppress whites—and not as a well-meaning-but-misguided attempt to offer opportunities to those who otherwise have none. I can see that, theoretically, there might be two problems: That racism made opportunity hard, but that affirmative action compounds the problem. Listening to conservatives, I get the impression that only the latter problem exists. And that, I think, is also a problem.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

In which I talk about sex and try not to sound stupid

At National Review today, a pair of writers argue that contraception is bad for women—and what would be good for women is a return to "natural" family planning. That is: If you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex when you're at you're most fertile.

The authors try to offer a "feminist" reason for doing so:
Authentic sexual equality requires that men understand with their bodies (as women do) the procreative potential of the sexual act. And this is exactly what natural methods of family planning do. By frequenting sex only during infertile times when a child is unwanted, men learn to coordinate their desires for intimacy with the natural rhythms of the female body. Feminist scholar and theologian Angela Franks notes that “[this] is unheard of in a society in which male desire appears to set the guidelines — especially in the ‘hook-up’ culture. Indeed, such a reorientation ofdesire is more revolutionary than any secular feminist project.” Those who practice this approach to family planning report that its use tends to make husbands more sensitive to the sexual and emotional needs of their wives — a sensitivity that many women have long found wanting.
I'm going to admit here that my sexual experience isn't widespread: My bachelor years weren't all that swingin'. So maybe I'm going to sound stupid here. I'll risk it.

But my limited experience tells me that a woman's desire for sex often (but not always) peaks around that time of month that they're most fertile. (Evolutionarily, this makes sense, no?) And my limited experience also suggests to me that desire for sex and enjoyment of sex are somewhat related. If you're not in the mood, you're not in the mood.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying: National Review's writers apparently believe that men can best practice birth control and respect women by having sex during those periods in which women will desire and enjoy it least. "Be attentive to the sexual and emotional needs of your wife, men: And then do the opposite!"

Put aside the questions of whether the rhythm method is all that effective. A big problem here is that National Review's authors essentially remove a woman's sex drive from this equation. No surprise there, I guess. If you believe that a big problem with contraception is that it enables women to act on their own sexual desires (and the authors clearly do) this proposed solution makes a lot of sense.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Contraception and religious liberty

That's what Ben and I talk about this week in the Scripps column. My take:
Religious liberty is a paramount American value; it's even written into our Constitution. A woman's right to make her own health choices doesn't explicitly appear in the document, it's merely a common-sense human right no less deserving of protection and consideration.

So the Obama administration is right to mandate that employers include contraceptive coverage in their employee health insurance programs. And the administration is also right -- if a little late -- to offer an accommodation that ensures access to birth control while permitting religious institutions to adhere to their own teachings.

If only that were the end of the debate.

Unwilling, it seems, to ever take "yes" for an answer from President Barack Obama, Republicans are now pressing ahead with proposals to exempt any employer from having to pay for contraceptive coverage. GOP leaders say this is about "religious freedom" -- but, as other commentators have noted, they're not pushing to exempt, say, employers who are Jehovah's Witnesses from having to pay for blood transfusions.

It's easy to conclude, then, that Republicans are mostly interested in hindering women's access to birth control.

"Obamacare" is one of the administration's great achievements. But as recent developments have shown, it is imperfect and leaves most Americans at the mercy of their employers when it comes to health coverage.

That's not the system that most liberals desired. We wanted to see either a fully government-run "single-payer" health insurance system -- or, failing that, a "public option" government insurance plan to stand alongside private insurance, both to drive down costs and to give individuals a wider range of health choices.

Such a system would've allowed American women to choose (or not to choose) birth control with little hindrance. A woman's health decisions should be between her and her doctor, not her and her church, nor her and her employer. That important concept -- and not religious liberty -- is what faces the greatest threat today.
Ben says: "The argument isn't about a woman's 'access' to contraception. ... No, this is all about who pays and why it matters." But we've decided—in a law that was modeled on legislation that Republicans originally crafted, and which was passed into law by a Republican governor now running for president—that for the most part, employers will pay for employee health insurance. If that's the route we're taking, then it really does become a denial of access if the person with the wallet gets to decide you don't get birth control. Conservatives don't want the government making your health decisions—remember death panels? It's beyond me why they'd grant that power to private employers instead.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Thomas Frank got punk'd

A few years back, Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas?" made a big splash nationally. His basic thesis was this: Republicans won votes by promising to concentrate on issues, like abortion, dear to social conservatives—but once in office focused mostly on an economic agenda of helping big corporations and giving the poor the shaft.

Maybe that was true a decade ago, but now? Republicans won a lot of elections at the state and Congressional elections in 2010 largely because people were so frustrated with the economy and wanted something done. Instead of economic turnarounds, though, we've been given...action on abortion.

That certainly seems to be the case in Pennsylvania, where the Legislature is working on a bill that would compel doctors to show women ultrasounds of their fetuses before performing an abortion. What has the Legislature—or Gov. Tom Corbett—done to advance the economy here? Beats me.

I'm not one to belittle culture war issues. But I can't help think we got bait-and-switched. I remember Tom Corbett talking (somewhat stupdly) jobs during the 2010 campaign, not abortion. And certainly exit polls in 2010 indicated that the economy was a big reason voters were turning to Republicans.

Don't get me wrong: Pennsylvania Republicans have also been hot on the trail of helping big corporations and giving the poor the shaft. Overall, though, it sure seems like we were voting for an economic agenda—and the social agenda snuck in under that cover. Time for Thomas Frank to revise his thesis.

The ACLU: Not just a bunch of liberal hacks

Clive Crook, National Review, Monday:
The ACLU’s stated mission is “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Given its record, however, one would be forgiven for concluding that its copy of our charter is incomplete. Unfortunately, the ACLU appears to base its actions on the text of a tattered and torn document, from which the Second and Tenth Amendments are missing entirely, the Fourth was re-written in 1973, and the words “more or less” are appended to each paragraph along with an explicit invitation to interpret the document as broadly as humanly possible.
Emphasis added.

Randy LoBasso, Philadelphia Weekly, today:
Here’s something you weren’t expecting: The ACLU, along with the law firm of McCausland Keen and Buckman have filed a federal lawsuit today against the City of Philadelphia on behalf of Mark Fiorino, a Lansdale resident who was allegedly harassed by Philly cops for carrying a gun, despite his license to carry. Last time Philadelphia Weekly wrote about Fiorino and his ordeals with Philadelphia Police, he noted he was most offended by the officers’ not understanding their own city and state’s gun laws, which state one can obtain an unconcealed weapon license.

The lawsuit alleges Fiorino’s rights were violated when he was repeatedly detained longer than necessary to make sure he had a license to carry. His weapon was also confiscated and not returned for five months; it’s also alleged the police used excessive force against him.
Hey, the ACLU's interpretation of the Constitution is obviously to the left of National Review's. I think that's a good thing. But the ACLU also goes to work on behalf of gun-loving Second Amendment advocates. I think that's also a good thing, frankly. The ACLU frequently advocates for folks who don't necessarily line up ideologically on the left. I wonder: Would the righty ACLJ stick up for anti-gun activists using their First Amendment rights? I'm skeptical.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Charles Murray and the deepening class divide

Ben and I talk about Charles Murray's new book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010" in this week's Scripps column. We jointly note: "He argues that America is increasingly, dangerously divided between an out-of-touch upper class and a lower class that has abandoned the virtues of industriousness, honesty, marriage and religiosity." My take:
Here's the good news: Somebody influential on the right -- and Murray is beloved by many conservatives -- is acknowledging the growing class divide in America. That is a breakthrough.

The bad news: Murray is big into victim blaming. If life among America's working class has declined during the last 50 years, Murray says it's because its members have abandoned the habits of work and marriage that made the country great. He offers a lot of statistics to prove his point.

But there's a crucial piece missing in Murray's story.

It is most apparent when he describes the "real" Fishtown, a Philadelphia neighborhood several miles from where I live. Murray describes in great detail the rise of single motherhood and jobless men in the neighborhood.

But he never mentions Fishtown's most-defining feature: It was once a center of manufacturing and industry -- particularly the textile industry -- and now it isn't. The factories are gone. Residents can no longer walk out of the neighborhood school and into a decent job that can sustain a family.

That's precisely what happened across the country over the last 50 years: The manufacturing sector withered -- jobs went overseas -- and so did the wages of many Americans. Read The Atlantic's January cover story, "Making It In America," and you'll find many manufacturing jobs that mostly go to Americans with a costly college degree in science or math.

Simple hard work doesn't get you as far as it used to. This matters.

Murray talks about the disintegration of the working class, but not the disintegration of the work. "I focus on what happened, not why," Murray writes. Without the "why" though, he cannot and does not offer plausible solutions.

Instead, Murray urges the elites to preach more about virtue to the working class. Workers don't need a lecture, though. They need real opportunity. That can't be found in Murray's book.
Ben says "America's ruling elite has much to answer for." Mostly, they have to answer about sex. You'll have to go to the link to read his take.

UPDATE: The sex comment was kind of a cheap oversimplication on my part. I apologize to Ben.

David Frum on the contraception fight

If the audience is paying attention, for example, it will notice that Republicans are not proposing to allow employers and plans to refuse to cover blood transfusions if they conscientiously object to them (although there are religious groups that do). Or vaccinations (although there are individuals who conscientiously object to those as well). Or medicines derived from animal experimentation. (Ditto.)

No, Marco Rubio's Religious Freedom Restoration bill provides for one conscientious exemption only: contraception and sterilization.