Blog entry

Complacent Conservatism

Terrance Heath — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:38:13 -0400

I'm sure this has been covered by everyone and his brother, but I couldn't help being amused by this study suggesting that conservatives are happier than liberals. But before any conservatives start gloating, there's another thing to consider.

Being happy is a cinch, if you can rationalize not caring much about injustice and inequality.

Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found. Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.

The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."

To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance. In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.

If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.

It makes sense. If you can rationalize inequities as right and just, then no matter how bad things are for someone else, you can rest assured that things are just as they ought to be. So, naturally you're not bothered by economic injustice. You're not bothered by discrimination either.

In other words, going back to a previous post, you don't have to acknowledge your privilege.

No one likes to be reminded of their privilege — whether it’s white privilege, heterosexual privilege, male privilege, or class privilege — because acknowledging that privilege commutes responsibility for that privilege, and the day-by-day, moment-to-moment decision to perpetuate that privilege or know — while knowing the consequences it imposes on others.

Whether we asked for our privilege or not — acknowledging it, if we don’t want to be responsible for perpetuating it and the injustice it perpetuates, means changing how we are in the world, day-by-day and moment-to-moment.

That is difficult and never-ending work, to be honest. It’s easier not to acknowledge it. It’s even easier to pretend it doesn’t exist. In fact, the first essential rule of perpetuating privilege is to pretend it doesn’t exist. That becomes difficult when the voices of those who can confirm the existence of that privilege, because they (a) do not possess it and (b) live with the consequence of its existence every day, become unavoidable.

And, the truth is that even though almost all of us enjoy one or more of the privileges above (especially if you consider class or economic privilege on a global scale), we also live with the consequences of not having one or more of the privileges above. The lack of one privilege can mask the existence of the other. (i.e. “What do mean I’m privileged? I’m barely making ends meet, just got laid off, and don’t have health insurance because my spouse and I aren’t married and he/she can’t carry me on hers, etc.”) That privilege doesn’t go away, but it becomes something taken for granted, as natural as breathing out and breathing in, so that we don’t take it as privilege anymore.

If you can rationalize your privilege, and rationalize related inequities on the flip-side, then you don't have to change how you are in the world; because all is right with the world, no matter how bad it is for somebody else.

In fact, your privilege — whether it stems from your race, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, etc. — doesn't even exit. The whole world is suddenly a meritocracy. What you have, you deserve, basically because you have it. And the "have-nots"? Well, if they deserved it, they'd have it.

Essentially, the have-nots deserve whatever they get. It's an aspect of conservatism that we saw play out during Katrina. We've heard it paraphrased by the likes of George Will and Bill O'Reilly, as well as Neal Boortz. Still I haven't heard anybody put it any better than George Lakoff.

Worldly success is an indicator of sufficient moral strength; lack of success suggests lack of sufficient discipline. Dependency is immoral. The undisciplined will be weak and poor, and deservedly so.
… The role of government is to: * Promote unimpeded competitive economic activity so that both the disciplined moral people and the undisciplined immoral ones are able to receive what they each deserve, based on their own choices; … The Economy and Business: Promoting unimpeded economic activity means favoring those who control wealth and power, who are seen as the “best people,” over those who are unsuccessful, who are seen as morally weak. Corporations are more heavily favored than non-corporate businesses, because big businesses (like wealthy people) have gotten big precisely through working hard and being disciplined.

Norman Vincent Peale, as I recall, came close.

Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia “one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read”.

Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peale in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis’s view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis’s earth.

The best I could do to paraphrase it was this.

The better off are so because they are better people. Thus if the poor were better people they would be better off. Therefore, there are very few good people who are poor, and probably even fewer well-off people who are bad. What we saw in the post-Katrina suffering was simply bad things happening to bad people. Most, if not all, of the good people had the means to get themselves out of the hurricane’s path and did so.

Though I did manage to take it a little further.

Mix it all up together, stick it in an oven until it’s half-baked, and you end up with an ideology that people will eat up with both hands if they have any economic strength, or hope to have any because they are sure of their moral virtue and know they will be justly rewarded (even if it means buying another lottery ticket or two), because it at once elevates and absolves them. It elevates them above others who have less (or whom they deem less moral), and absolves them of helping the great many of the poor because the poor are right were they deserve to be. Heaven has mandated it so.

I didn’t say it made sense or that it holds together, just that an awful lot of people happily swallow it whole. Once they do it’s easy to see things as portrayed above and accept it as not just reality but as the way things ought to be.

If you accept all that, then depending on charities to deliver services to the poor isn’t “punishing the good guy.” The good guy has all he needs to take care of himself and his, and if he decides to reinvest his tax cut rather than donate it to charity, that’s his business. Besides, who are we to question the righteous?

And it doesn’t matter that charities will not be able to deliver the same level services to the same amount of people as the government, because the whole idea is that there will be fewer services, and there should be fewer services. The government may be able to help more people, but the problem is that it will inevitably help people who shouldn’t be helped. So less help is better, even some of the folks who may deserve it don’t get it. After all, if they were better people they wouldn’t’ need services in the first place.

Convince yourself of that, and you spend the last few hours before your winter break cutting heating assistance to poor families, and feel good about yourself. (You might even hum "Winter Wonderland" as you cast your vote.)

President Bush says that his 2006 budget "is a budget that sets priorities." Examining those priorities is a moral and religious concern. Just as we have "environmental impact studies," it’s time for a "poverty impact statement", which would ask the fundamental question of how policy proposals affect low-income people. Such a moral audit might reveal unacceptable priorities for many of us, including in the religious community where the president finds much of his political base. In a recent letter to the president, nearly 80 prominent evangelical leaders warned: “We know there will be powerful pressures, from some places, as you and the Congress work to reduce deficit spending, to cut even effective programs for poor people. We pray that you will not allow this to happen.”

But it is happening. In this budget, the cost of deficit reduction is mostly borne by those least able to bear the burden—the lowest-income families in America, rather than by those most able to afford it—the wealthiest Americans who benefit from the largest tax cuts. The budget projects a record $427 billion deficit, along with a promise to make tax cuts permanent. Does that make fiscal or moral sense?

Religious leaders have spoken clearly in past years about the perils of a domestic policy based primarily on tax cuts for the rich, deep program cuts for low-income people, and an expectation of faith-based charity to make up the huge gap. This budget runs directly counter to that religious wisdom. Billions of dollars are cut from programs that most directly impact America’s poorest families—in education, nutrition, child care, health care, affordable housing, job training, heating and cooling assistance, and in community and rural development. At the same time, mere millions of dollars are added as increases to a number of faith-based programs focusing on marriage, fatherhood, and abstinence. On the street, that would be called “chump change.” The warning that faith-based initiatives should provide a partnership with effective government anti-poverty programs—and not a substitute—has not been heeded. And the added tax cuts for the rich merely compound the moral and biblical offense.

You can even successfully sell that idea to the disadvantaged themselves, as purveyors of the prosperity gospel have shown. And you can grow quite wealthy doing it, even if your followers don't.

The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor's living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Florida, area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn't come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn't strong enough.

"I wanted to believe God wanted to do something great with me like he was doing with them," she said. "I'm angry and bitter about it. Right now, I don't watch anyone on TV hardly."

All three of the groups Fleenor supported are among six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists' lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.

The probe by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has brought new scrutiny to the underlying belief that brings in millions of dollars and fills churches from Atlanta to Los Angeles -- the "Gospel of Prosperity," or the notion that God wants to bless the faithful with earthly riches.

On the other hand, someone more liberal or progressive, and lacking such simple (not to mention self-serving) rationalizations for the inequities the witness might be more inclined to question — to ask why they exist and why they persist — and keep questioning until they reach a more challenging (and perhaps less self-serving, depending on their relative degree of privilege) answer, rather than simply accepting that they exist and that they persist because they ought to.

Essentially, progressives see injustice and ask "Why?". Conservatives, on the other hand, see in justice and ask "Why not?"

If you ask why, without settling for simplistic answers, you might conclude that inequity an injustice do not exist in a vacuum and do not persist according to some law of nature, but because they serve as the basis for the privileges of some, and thus the privileged perpetuate them in order to preserve their privileges. You might be inclined to believe, then, that inequities and injustices are not "inevitable" or "natural" and you might also be inclined to do something about them.

You might join something like the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and spend what h have been your vacation registering people to vote who had been systematically denied the right to vote for generations. You might give your life doing it.

Or , if you have a simple explanation handy, you might just leave things be, since everything is a it should be already. Of course, you might also wonder why other people don't see it the same way you do — especially the have-nots. You might wonder why they make such a fuss over it, and you might wish they would stop. You would definitely start to worry when the don't stop.

I think, then, that the study might have confused happiness with something that can look a lot like it, but isn't: complacency.

a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.

Then again, maybe there's a simpler explanation.

Blast from the Past: That Sinking Feeling

Rick Perlstein — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:43:58 -0400

Longtime fans of this blog who recall my epic 67-part series on sinkholes and their relation to conservative failure may wonder why I haven't yet weighed in on the 600-foot gargantua that has been opening up in Daisetta, Texas. The reason is that my interest was in sinkholes that opened up as a result of public infrastructure, specifically the nation's underground wastewater pipes which, I never tired of pointed out, are rated a D-minus by the American Society of Civil Engineers, not ones that are the result of private infrastructure, as appears to be the case with this one caused by Sunoco crude oil pipelines.

But I can't resist this one comment. The AP article cites a geologist in claiming, "Sinkholes are rare."

I used to have a GoogleNews alert for sinkholes, and after getting ten emails a day, and figuring I'd already quite made my point, I quit. But—did I mentioned this?—because of the conservative principle of tax-starvation that has earned our underground wastewater infrastructure a grade of D-minus by the American Society of Civil Engineers—let us make no mistake: sinkholes are in no way rare.

F'rinstance consider this story, which appeared an hour ago:

PEARL CITY, Hawaii -- An 8-inch main broke on Hoomoana Street and it created a hole big enough to swallow a car. No one drove into it.

Residents said they heard running water at about 4 a.m. and called police. Officers kept watch until a Board of Water Supply crew arrived.

The sinkhole buckled the asphalt and literally lifted part of the street.
The main break left 18 homes without water for a short time.

These are Our Debating Partners

Rick Perlstein — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:25:35 -0400

I'll be writing more in weeks to come on the conservative response to my book. Briefly, I'm fascinated by how many conservatives have been defending Watergate and arguing that America was lucky to escape the Sixties with no worse than Watergate—that Richard Nixon, in other words, wasn't that much of an authoritarian anyway as these things go, so what's all the fuss about?

But here's a new one on me: a conservative blogger from Canada who uses the occasion of my book to flippantly suggest (lighten up!) that the "hard hat riot" of May 8, 1970—Happy Hard Hat Riot Day, everybody!—was kind of nifty, or at least nothing worse than what the left was typically responsible for. And here is the NIXONLAND excerpt by which she affects to support her "argument."

‘These hippies are getting what they deserve,' said John Halloran, one of the construction workers, while the mêlée was still going on. As he talked a coworker standing with him yelled, ‘Damn straight,' and punched a young man in a business suit who said he disagreed."

The mob moved on to nearby Pace University, setting fire to a banner reading VIETNAM, LAOS, CAMBODIA, KENT. The glass doors to the building were chained shut from the inside against attack. Hard hats crashed through them and chased down unkempt students, joined by conservative students angry at strikers interfering with their education. Some longhairs were beaten with lead pipes wrapped in American flags. Trinity Church became a makeshift field hospital (the mob ripped down the Red Cross banner). The New York Times ran a picture the next day of a construction worker and a man in a tie charging down a cobblestone street to beat someone with an American flag. Pete Hamill, who had only the previous year offered his solidarity to "The Revolt of the White Lower Middle Class," now withdrew his endorsement in horror: "The police collaborated with the construction workers in the same way that Southern sheriffs used to collaborate with the rednecks when the rednecks were beating up freedom riders."

Police made only six arrests. Perhaps they agreed with the construction worker who told The Wall Street Journal, "I'm doing this because my brother got wounded in Vietnam, and I think this will help our boys over there by pulling this country together."

Is It Even Possible To Reduce Gas Prices This Year?

Bill Scher — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:52:17 -0400

Both parties in the Senate have just introduced legislation in response to high gas prices. The Republican announcement states its bill with "Reduce Gas Prices And Decrease Dependence On Foreign Oil," while the Democrats say theirs "addresses the root causes of high gas prices."

Neither directly promises to reduce gas prices immediately. Because neither would.

Granted, both bills would temporarily suspend putting oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the rest of the year to increase commercial supply, which Democrats say could lower gas prices between 2 to 5 cents a gallon. A typical two-car household uses about 1200 gallons of gas. So for a six-month period, that's upwards of $30. Marginal short-term help, and probably negated by continued price increases.

Beyond that, the Republican bill is just a continuation of the conservative obsession to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Would that reduce crude oil prices? About 50 cents a barrel 17 years from now. Meanwhile, crude oil prices have risen more than $80 on President Bush's watch. So the answer is yes, but that and two bits will get you ... a slightly cheaper barrel of oil 17 years from now.

And Republicans repeat their call to suspend environmental standards for oil refineries, claiming that would produce a greater supply of gas. But oil companies can build refineries now. They choose not to, not because of environmental standards, but because it's not profitable for them to increase supply.

Regarding the Democratic bill, it would be more precise to say it addresses the root cases of high energy prices. It would jumpstart long-term investment in renewable energy, creating clean and affordable energy alternatives so eventually, we will no longer be at the mercy of gas price spikes.

The bill would repeal tax breaks to Big Oil, and impose a windfall profits tax on "companies that fail to invest in increased capacity and renewable energy sources" and invest the proceeds in renewable energy and "consumer price protection."

That's a critical step towards a clean energy future. But diverting that money to consumers is more likely to help mitigate further short-term price increases than to lower gas prices from where they are now.

The Democratic bill also has provisions to combat possible price gouging by oil companies, market speculation by futures traders (CQ reports that "some experts say [speculation] may account for 10 to 30 percent of the price of oil), and price collusion by the OPEC cartel.

There's been some healthy debate among progressives whether those steps would be effective in lowering oil prices, in part because they are arguably not the "root causes" of the current price spike.

Dan Weiss of the Center for American Progress told the Washington Post that ""With analysts predicting $150-per-barrel oil by fall, efforts to rein in price gougers, speculators and OPEC couldn't come at a better time." The Sierra Club also says the bill would "protect consumers."

But David Roberts of Grist, while strongly supportive of the investment in renewable energy, scoffs at the other planks.

He calls the impact of speculation on prices "a blip," price gouging a "conspiracy" and going after OPEC pointless because they're already producing as much as they can. (Regarding gouging, note that one study did find evidence of gouging, but when market prices are heading down, and oil companies drag their feet on lowering retail prices accordingly.)

Both Roberts and the blog Energy Smart lament that Democratic messaging doesn't emphasize the fundamental root causes -- increasing global demand, decreasing global supply, weakening US dollar, and a failed foreign policy that has contributed to destabilized oil-producing regions -- to downplay expectation that oil prices can be cheap again and help rally support for investment in renewables.

Fair point and good advice for the long-term. But Americans are suffering in the short-term and do need relief.

The current price for a gallon of gas is 82 cents more than the average price in 2007. For a typical household, that difference amounts to $1000 more spent a gas for the year.

That's real financial strain in the short-term, but the root causes for higher prices are deep ones not easily affected by short-term measures.

But the reality is that Congress has already done something to deal with the gas price spike.

As I noted when the economic stimulus package was being debated, the tax rebate checks in the mail, which range from $300 to $1200, will largely be swallowed up by higher gas costs. It is effectively a gas price rebate.

Which would be fine, if higher gas prices were our sole economic problem. Sadly, our economic problems run deeper than that.

Clipping the Eagle's Wings

Rick Perlstein — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:33:38 -0400

Kathy G weighs in at Crooked Timber with just about the definitive post on this obscene business of Washington University in St. Louis conferring an honorary degree on Phyllis Schlafly. Two more things worth saying, however.

First, I want to respond to commenter Milton Appling below. He points out what he claims should be a mitigating factor: that no one should be surprised that Wash U. is wrapped up in this nonsense, given that they host a right-wing business school named for conservative benefactor John Olin: "That should be all that you need to know about Wash U regarding giving the Eagle an honorary degree." Another friend, a St. Louis native, likewise writes in to point out the institution's historic conservative, citing the way they dissolved their sociology department in the 1980s as a way to shake loose all the suspect lefties lodged within.

In fact, the Olin business is all you need to know why it's so important to press forward with the movement to shame Wash U. on their egregious lapse of intellectual standards.

One of the first principles of politics is to choose battlefields to fight on that unite your side and divide the opponents. The fact that Wash University's administration and benefactor class is lousy with the sort of conservatives who love Milton Friedman-style business schools is all the more reason to point up the absurdity of Washington University association with Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly believes a secretive cast of bankers—the "Bildergergers"—are conspiring to impose One World Government on the United States. She believed it in the 1960s, when she said the Bilderbergers were fronting for the International Communist Conspiracy, and she believes it now (or, at least, she believed it in 1997 when I interviewed her; I have it on tape) that that International Communist Conspiracy is fifteen years gone. Schlafly believes—or claimed to believe—that if the Equal Rights Amendment passed, boys bathrooms and girls bathrooms, would be outlawed, and that little girls would be forced to see little boys' wee-wees each and every day; and thatwomen would not be able to refuse their husbands if their husbands demanded they went out to work—would be slaves of their husbands. And yes, these things are crazy. And Phyllis Schlafly believes them, because Phyllis Schlafly—for all her brilliance, organizational accumen, and ability to gain get granted respect among the councils of the respected and powerful—is crazy.

If the city of St. Louis learns, if the greater Washington University community learns, if America learns, if the world learns just how crazy she is, thanks to the efforts of this movement, the respectable business conservatives of Washington University's Oilin School will want nothing to do with her. She will be, as she should be, an albatross around their respectable conservative necks.

The Age of Reagan cannot survive the successful wedging of its business constituency, which craves nothing so much as respectability, and its lunatic constituency, who appear the more unrespectable the closer they're held to the light. And so, progressives, hold Phyllis Schlafly to the light. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Here's the other point, and it's a depressing, disconcerting one: in l'affair Schlafly we have already lost. If this campaign succeeds, there will still be not inconsiderable collateral damage to the progressive movement: conservatives will once more be able to claim themselves free speech martyrs, "silenced" by political correctness. It reminds me—yes, I truly am the hammer to which everything in the world of politics is a nail—of a story involving, yes, Richard Nixon.

Early in 1966 Richard Nixon was offered an honorary degree from the University of Rochester. His political friends in New York—who understood themselves to be re-grooming the disgraced two-time loser's image as a responsible statesman, with an eye toward his 1968 presidential run—were ecstatic: occasions like his robe-bedecked commencement speech in Rochester were what would kill the poisoning image of the slashing, low-brow "old Nixon" at long last.

Only problem: the previous year a (then-Marxist) history professor at Rutgers said that he would "welcome" a Communist victory in Vietnam; the Republican gubernatorial candidate made it his marquee issue for the fall; and Nixon came to the state to campaign for him, braying thus:

I do not raise the question of Professor Genovese's right to be for segregation or integration, for free love or celibacy, for Communism or anarchy--in peacetime. But the United States is at war. [ed.: Anarchistic multiracial orgies, in wartime, no less!... If anyone had welcomed a Nazi victory during World War II there would have been no question about what to do. Leadership requires that the governor step in and put the security of the nation above the security of the individual.

The Rochester faculty, enraged that an enemy of academic freedom could be honored at their free academy, got up a petition to bar him from speaking. Nixon wrote a long and legalistic letter to the New York Times arguing that he as actually arguing for the preservation of academic freedom "by defending the system of government which guarantees freedom of speech to individuals." The swells at Nixon's Wall Street law firm, Len Garment wrote in his memoirs, were annoyed that he just didn't fold his cards and admit the mistake. The boss was nonplused. He told Garment to stop listening to the "damned press." Nixon understood that in fact he held all the cards in this game. In the Gallup Poll, among presidential contenders, he was the leading Republican by 13 points. Sticking it to the liberal intellectual elites didn't hurt him. It helped.

He spoke at Rochester in June in defiance of a successful faculty petition not to offer him an honorary degree, lying that "since leaving the office of Vice President it has been my policy not to accept honorary degrees." He both got across his right-wing message ("If we are to defend academic freedom from encroachment we must also defend it from its own excesses") are cloaked himself in the martyr's mantle of moral superiority.

Phyllis will, too. Even if she doesn't speak.

We have to stop these invitations before they start. Venal conservatives lobby for them. They harass liberal institutions to get them, by baiting boards of trustees that they will be excoriated for ideological "intolerance" for not extending them. Then—win win—they watch the fun that ensues.

No reason, for all that, not to fight this fight anyway. We can get ahead of the game, and force them to play it on our battlefield for once. Tie Phyllis Schlafly to Washington University, whether she speaks there or not. Make it poisonous for "respectable" conservatives to have anything to do with lunatic, lying conspiracy mongering constituency they need in order to succeed politically. Unite progressives. Split conservatives. Wash, rinse, repeat. We shall overcome.

Conservatism Collapses in the Emergency Room

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:13:48 -0400

A column I've just posted on Firedog Lake takes Sen. John McCain and the Bush administration to task for failing to address one of the most critical failings of our health care system: our overstressed urban hospitals.

It was one of the elephants in the room when McCain rolled out his health care plan last week, which emphasized a wacky free-market fundamentalism as the solution to our health insurance crisis. This week, the House Government Affairs and Oversight Committee exposed the elephant during a two-day series of hearings on what might happen in seven key cities if there were a disaster comparable to the 1994 train bombing in Madrid, Spain.

The results of the survey show that none of the hospitals surveyed in the seven cities had sufficient emergency care capacity to respond to an attack generating the number of casualties that occurred in Madrid. The Level I trauma centers surveyed had no room in their emergency rooms to treat a sudden influx of victims. They had virtually no free intensive care unit beds within their hospital complex. And they did not have enough regular inpatient beds to handle the less severely injured victims. The shortage of capacity was particularly acute in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

What this means is that hospital emergency rooms often aren't equipped to properly handle the day-to-day needs of their communities, much less the burdens of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. And while the hearing did not explore this in detail, this problem is compounded in communities where a large percentage of the patients are low-income and uninsured.

The committee released the report to highlight the damage that could be caused by Bush administration changes in Medicaid reimbursements, a significant share of hospital income. These hospitals are already pinched by reimbursement rates from both government and private insurers that do not fully compensate them for the cost of care, as well as by the millions of uninsured and underinsured patients that use the hospital facilities as a primary care facility because they do not have a doctor.

This is a complicated problem, but it is one that has been made worse, not better, under the conservative regime of the past seven years. We need progressive health care experts to add to the debate the best ideas for fixing our health care infrastructure as well as guaranteeing access to that system to everyone.

The Course From Here

Terrance Heath — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:51:56 -0400

Short of yodeling, I've been doing my best Switzerland impersonation during the primaries. When it came my turn to vote in the primaries I voted my hopes, knowing I'd support whomever we got in the Democratic nominee. (Let's face it. My values would never let me vote for a John McCain.)

Well, it's pretty clear now what we're going to get in a Democratic nominee, and I agree it's time to move on. This has been a passionate race so far. One that has enlivened the progressive base, and the "maybe-kinda-sorta progressive" base, and the "we-just-want-to-win" base. Now that it's rounding the bend (though only on the last lap of the qualifying round, mind you), there are bound to be people who are as disappointed as they were passionate about their candidate. I understand and respect that, and I'd say the same no matter who was all-but-the-nominee right now.

That said, it's time to remember why so many of us were so passionate about one candidate or the other: We all want to see this country change course from the disastrous path we've been dragged along for the past seven-plus years. We all know that we can't afford even four more years of the same. Not our for country, not for our communities, and not for our families.

We know that it matters who's appointing Supreme Court Justices, and we know how much we could lose depending on who sits on that bench (and lots of other federally-appointed bench spots). We know that we can't afford to foot the bill for four more years of conservative failure. Not our country, not our communities, and not our families.

We know that we don't want our children, or our neighbors' children, or our brothers' and sisters' children, and their children to have to pick up that tab. We know that they deserve to grow up in a world that's reasonably safe, where they have a fair shot at "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"; where they have a fair shot at a future. They deserve to inherit a country and a future founded on hope, not fear.

We know that we can't afford four more years of disregard for the reality that we share this world with a lot of other people and that it matters how we are in the world. It matters because our choices, and choices and policies of our elected officials can hold potentially disastrous consequences for the planet itself, for our country, for our communities, and for our families; because what we inflict on the world, we inflict on our country, our communities, and our families.

That's why we've cared so much about this race, no matter which candidate we've supported until now.

I remember when Bush was re-elected in 2004, many people swore they'd move to Canada. Most didn't. My guess is that some of those who stayed believe most of what I've written above, and because of that they fought and worked to bring us to this point, where we have a real chance of changing course. Instead of being herded down one path by our fears, we are on the verge of being able to walk down a path towards our hopes.

But first we have take the wheel, and steer this country off the course plotted by fear.

Then, and only then, can we truly change course.

Maybe I'm a little naïve — maybe a dash of naiveté is a necessary ingredient of hope — but I think most of us know all of the above, and want to change our course because of what it means for our country, our communities, our families, and — really — the world.

Crash the Eagle

Rick Perlstein — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:57:38 -0400

I find this stunning: a great American institution of higher learning, Washington University in St. Louis, is giving Phyllis Schlafly an honorary degree.

Others will make the make the argument that this is obscene because of Schlafly historic engagement with insane conspiracy theories, and this will be a perfectly reasonable argument. (When I interviewed Schlafly for my Goldwater book, she mentioned something offhand about the Bilderbergers. I didn't know what that meant. She explained that it was a retreat where the elites got together and decided how to rule the world. I'm not kidding. She said this. I have it on tape. Proud of yourself, Washington University?)

Others will make the argument that this is obscene because Schlafly has spent the last several decades working full-time—working overtime, in fact—fighting other women's rights to work full time. And this will be a perfectly reasonable argument, too.

Others will make the argument that this is obscene because Schlafly is a right-wing extremist. This is not such a reasonable argument; I can think of several right-wing extremists who, on the strength of their intellectual accomplishments, deserve honorary degrees.

No, my argument that this is obscene is that, except in the case of fiction authors, great American institutions of higher learning should not bestow honorary degrees on people who habitually make things up. One of the most famous was that, if the Equal Rights Amendment was passed, "men's restrooms" and "women's restrooms" would be outlawed, and men and women would all have to go to the bathroom together. There others; there still are—she probably hasn't gone a day without lying in her entire adult life. (Her latest lie is that Barack Obama is propounding a global tax.)

Here's a passage on the Phyllis Schlafly Report in NIXONLAND:

"This Amendment will absolutely and positively make women subject to the draft," he subscribers learned. It would license a man to "demand that his wife go to work to help pay for family expenses.... The women's liberals are radicals who are waging total assault on the family, on marriage, and on children."

Washington University, I'd only ask you this: is there any intellectual standard below which you'd not be willing to fall?

Want to organize against this bastardization of the degrees of the hardworking students of Wash U? Click here.

After the Primaries, A United Progressive America

Bill Scher — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:21:41 -0400

The Democratic presidential campaign began with remarkable unity from the candidates regarding what needs to be done to revitalize the economy and restore America's moral authority—and their populist themes even spilled over into the Republican primary.

That does not simply speak to the candidates' position papers and records. It reflects a broad mandate from the public for fundamental progressive change, breaking from the failed conservatism of the Bush Era.

After all the histrionic punditfying throughout the campaign, after all the trivial media distractions over surrogates who blurt out mean things, after all the phony guilt-by-association attacks, the public unity around a progressive vision remains: an economy that works for everyone, health care for all, a clean energy future, affordable education and the end of the Iraq occupation.

The minor dispute over health insurance mandates did not change that most voters want their government to guarantee quality affordable health plan choices for everyone—not trash employer benefits and force workers to bow down to insurance companies and pay thousands more for health care.

The minor dispute over the gas tax did not change that most voters want bold investment in renewable energy and energy-efficiency—not more misguided foreign occupations in oil-soaked countries that destabilize the globe and keep us at the mercy of price spikes.

The back-and-forth over trade only has reinforced that the public wants an end to unfair trade deals and a new economic strategy for the global economy of the 21st century that lifts up workers and protects the planet—not a continuation of rules rigged for multinational corporations.

The Democratic primary race produced no division within the party over the big issues, and no rift with self-described moderate independent voters who want the same things. The unity over substance extends beyond party lines. That means the Democratic nominee, widely presumed to be Sen. Barack Obama at this point, does not need to overhaul his message and platform to appeal to swing voters in the general election.

The Republican primary race, on the other hand, was wracked with internal division, still not fully resolved, as the party grapples with how to deal with seven years of complete conservative failure in Washington. On the issues, the conservative base of the party is completely out of sync with swing voters. Sen. John McCain has no choice but to revamp his campaign strategy to be competitive in the fall.

But McCain's initial attempts to bridge that wide gulf—clumsily offering red meat for conservatives and populist rhetoric for independents at the same time—have produced policies and statements that risk being seen by voters as not just out-of-touch, but disturbingly detached from reality. Not just a Bush third term, but a Bush third term on crack.

The public is united on issues. The mandate for progressive change is being built. Conservative dead-enders are increasingly marginalized. Pity the poor candidate who can't deal with that reality.

Outright Barbarism vs. The Civil Society

Sara Robinson — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:35:14 -0400

I live in a nice place.

I mean that literally. It took some getting used to. After 20 years in Silicon Valley, where people put a premium on being direct and to the point, have no time to waste on small talk or personal sharing, and will call a stupid idea stupid to your face, moving to Canada required a whole lot of gearing back on that brusque American aggressive-in-your-face thing. The humbling fact was: We had to learn to mind our manners.

Much of the adjustment work that first year involved re-learning the art of Being Nice. We had to get used to meetings that started with 10 or 15 minutes of personal chit-chat. We had to train ourselves to stop interrupting people, and to be more careful to say "please" and "thank you." We had to discover (sometimes, the hard way) that losing your temper with Canadians means that you will invariably lose the conflict. The more terse and irritated you get, the more determinedly calm and polite Canadians become, until you're standing there looking like a raving idiot and they're still firmly in control (though they're very sorry you're having such a bad day).

We also learned the unofficial Canadian motto, which is "I'm sorry." Canadians will say "I'm sorry" even if you were the one who bumped into them. (Americans, on the other hand, won't say it at all: apologizing is admitting fault, which is an invitation to lawsuits.) We used to respond to this by pleading with them out of our own misguided sense of Niceness: "No. Please. Don't be sorry. It was MY fault." But after a while, we gave up, went with the flow, and started apologizing for everything, too. It was really...well, nice, once we got used to it.

The whole world makes fun of Canadians' resolute civility -- but once I'd read a little Canadian history, I realized that this Being Nice thing isn't just a cute cultural quirk. In fact, up here, it's is a deadly serious matter of national survival. Canada's 13 provinces and territories are, effectively, three separate nations—each with its own culture, language, religion, and history. On top of that, the country is the world's largest importer of new immigrants, a large fraction of whom are from cultures very different from Canada's aboriginal and European bedrock. The federal constitution that binds all this together is very weak (it's not unlike the U.S.'s original Articles of Confederation), and the overwhelming bulk of government power is still tightly concentrated in the hands of the provincial premiers (that's Canadian for "state governors"). Secession is eminently possible, as the Quebecois so often like to remind us.

In the face of all that, there's the constant possibility—which does not exist in the U.S.—that one cranky politician having one bad day could stand up and say one idiot thing that would cause one faction or another to decamp en masse, thus precipitating the instant demise of Canada-as-we-know-it. The threat is real. It could happen. And the only thing that keeps it from happening is that resolute collective determination to stay calm, keep the peace, and Be Nice.

Civility is, in a very real sense, the glue that holds this big, diverse nation together. Name-calling, othering, and losing one's temper is, quite simply, un-Canadian and unpatriotic. Failure to be civil in public is the fastest way (perhaps the only way) to get Canadians genuinely peeved at you. In the land where "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is supplanted by "peace, order, and good government" as the organizing values, there is simply no excuse at all for that kind of behavior, ever.

Our essential reliance on civil discourse—and the big trouble that awaits us when we try to function without it—is the same idea that Jeffrey Feldman explores, far more pointedly, in his new book, Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy. Feldman, whose indispensable Frameshop blog has done a lot of the heavy lifting in deconstructing the way the American right uses and abuses language, briskly and thoughtfully deconstructs seven specific ways 30 years of us-versus-them rhetoric has polarized the country, forced us into unnecessary conflicts against each other and everyone else, and virtually destroyed our ability to govern ourselves.

Dave Neiwert, who coined the term "eliminationist rhetoric" to describe the language Americans have so often used to justify violence against each other, has carefully outlined the process by which ugly talk can easily devolve into horrific action. Call it holocaust, lynching, or apartheid -- whatever the atrocity, it always begins with language that privileges us, dehumanizes them, and somehow justifies their removal from our midst. Feldman's book breaks out another side to this conversation, by showing that the right wing has scored some very specific and tangible (and otherwise politically untenable) benefits by the simple act of grinding our discourse down the point where it's now mostly conduced in the coarsest of us-versus-them terms.

For each of the seven topics Feldman calls out, there's one conservative spokesperson who's led the rhetorical race to the bottom -- and one specific long-term conservative political agenda item that got served as a result. In his first example, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre sells a "vision of the world where violent assaults on individuals are inevitable, all laws and institutions are powerless to stop them, and the only guarantee for survival is for citizens to be prepared to fire a gun at the oncoming danger." Feldman argues that America can only adopt this worldview at the cost of its own democratic ideals, by fostering a "command-obedience" relationship between the governors and the governed—one that places the use of force outside the rule of law and beyond the control of the people's government. In the presence of arms, people are silenced, and the creative give-and-take required for good problem-solving suffers. Those who hold the guns prevail. This way, he warns, lies tyranny.

Then there's Pat Buchanan, leading the charge against immigration, which he insists is a calculated, well-planned "Reconquista" which has enlisted millions of triumphant Mexicans to invade America and exact their terrible revenge for the defeat of Santa Anna 160 years ago. Our only defense against the barbarian horde is to kill or be killed. Feldman notes that this kind of overheated eliminationist framing has been a boon to corporate conservatives, because it's made it impossible to have a nuanced (or even coherent) conversation that acknowledges NAFTA's grotesque destruction of the economy and the environment on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border.

"Immigration has become a political issue because of trade, not because of race or 'civilization,'" notes Feldman. "At its most primary, political level, America's immigration problem is a product of what David Sirota has aptly named the 'hostile takeover' of key economic policies in our government by vast corporations in control of unimaginable wealth."

But as long as we're talking about anchor babies and bilingual culture, we won't be talking about that. And that's just fine with those who are making a killing of their own on the status quo.

Ann Coulter's success is largely built on her ability to take any issue and instantly use it to justify violence against the right wing's favorite targets. Feldman traces the way this dubious gift has defined the trajectory of her career, culminating in her insistence that liberals need to be eliminated because they're traitors who are ready to hand the country over to al-Qaida. That's always the bottom line with Ann—and that quickness to write off anyone capable of a creative or nuanced thought creates a climate that stifles our ability to solve problems together, which is the essence of democratic government. It also effectively discourages people from participating in politics at all, lest they become targets of people who've learned their moves from Ann. "Coulter's rhetoric," writes Feldman, "poisons the soil in which civic identity takes root."

Feldman goes on to unmask Bill O'Reilly's bluster as a smokescreen that makes it impossible to talk seriously about national security and the things that really threaten us; John Gibson's "War on Christmas" as an assault on our ability to teach diversity in schools; and James Dobson's weird ideas about child discipline and family authority as a noxious cognitive pattern that influences the way we approach larger issues of community, authoritarianism, citizen discipline, and even foreign policy (inasmuch as some policymakers tend to view smaller countries exercising their sovereignty as wayward children in need of correction).

In the final chapters, his dissection of Dinesh D'Souza's rhetoric ties it all up with a bow. According to Feldman, every issue D'Souza touches down to the inevitable conclusion that liberals are to blame—a broad and breathtaking act of scapegoating that makes it impossible for us to get a collective handle on the true chain of responsibility that resulted in everything from 9/11 to the disastrous war that followed.

Taken as a whole, Feldman argues persuasively that the right wing's use of violent language and imagery over the past 30 years has gravely, deeply—perhaps even mortally—wounded the American body politic. As social theorists from John Dewey to Miss Manners have pointed out—and as my Canadian neighbors seem to understand as the central fact of their civic existence—civility is the necessary ingredient that allows democracies to function. Without it, there is no common good, no mutual respect, no reason to have faith in our ability to govern together wisely and well. When these basic agreements fail, so does our ability to self-govern. Reading this book from my peaceable perch on a mountainside in western Canada, the destruction of America's civic order, as Feldman describes it, looks utter and complete.

Somehow, we need to find our way back to each other. And, as simple as it sounds, it may start with a determined resolution that we are going to be civil to each other. Always. Even to your obnoxious Dittohead neighbor. Even to your annoying fundamentalist sister-in-law. Even to that jerk with the faded W'04 bumper sticker who stole your parking space. Even to the whinging concern troll in the comments thread. Catharsis feels like a birthright in our I-want-it-now society; but it's a luxury that progressives can no longer afford. Every time we give into it, the culture splits a little wider, and our odds of ever healing again it grow a bit more remote. It's time for progressives to step up and show the rest of the country how grownups behave. We've got an example to set, and a hundred million people to educate.

It's a lot to ask of "please" and "thank you." But the stakes are too high to ignore.

If we want democracy, we need to be able to see our fellow citizens as human beings, possessed of their own inherent worth and dignity.

If we want justice, we need to grant them the same rights and respect we feel entitled to—even when they're strenuously disagreeing with us, or when their interests and ours line up on opposite poles.

If we want security, we must first learn to be safe with each other, and trust ourselves as guardians of our collective well-being.

If we want to rebuild the country, we need to remember that we are all heirs to the same vast trust of social, political, and physical capital built up by previous generations; that our livelihood and liberties depend entirely on how well we can manage to sustain that common legacy; and that we share a duty to ensure our children's future by passing all of that on to them, not only intact but richer yet.

The only disagreements we should have are over the best means to achieve all this. The goals themselves should be beyond question. Feldman gives us a useful primer on how the right wing has carefully and deliberately separated us from both our founding goals and the means to achieve them. It's up to us to put put it all back together, and that starts with Being Nice.

A final note. The idea that Being Nice is a sign of weakness is, as noted above, inherent in the conservative narrative Feldman describes. Anger merchants like Coulter and O'Reilly have sold an entire generation of Americans on the idea that the mere desire to gather facts, contemplate them calmly, and discuss them rationally with people who might have other points of view makes one a traitor to the nation—weak, ineffectual, and dangerously liberal.

The horrifying result of this is a political climate in which many Americans believe that those who can throw the biggest tantrum deserve to get their way. (Which is not democracy, or anything like it. It's rule by bullies.) If you want to know why American politics sounds like a sandbox fight in the kindergarten playground, there's one good answer. Look at it this way, and it becomes clear that the Obama/Hillary partisan pissing matches of the past many weeks are, once again, playing right into conservative hands. Never mind the fact that when those two fight, McCain wins. Look beyond that to the more distressing fact, which is that too many Democrats have finally become every bit as ugly as the GOP has always been. They've gotten to us. We've finally become what we most despise.

For the record: Being Nice, done well, has a ferocious strength all its own, as anyone who's watched a CBC news interviewer or dealt with a Canadian school headmaster can tell you. Over the past four years, I've seen fastidious politeness and heartbreaking compassion used in the hands of master practitioners, and marveled at the power of sheer civility to defeat hotheads, deflect crazy ideas, and send shit-stirrers right out the door. It's a skill we need to relearn, and soon. Fortunately, we have 32 million neighbors and authors like Jeffrey Feldman to show us the way.