No, I’m not writing about the present state of the Irish economy. I’m also not writing about that wonderful soupy mixture I yearned for as a kid when Mom cooked fish on Friday. Today’s post treats several topics: the hijacking of the Republican Party by the Tea Party extremists; the Mideast peace talks; Labor Day; and bedbugs. Hence, it’s a stew.
Mr. Obama’s speech last night struck me as serious and cautious. He exhibited caution with respect to Iraq and caution with respect to the economy. Moreover, not by what he said so much as what he didn’t say, I received the distinct impression that he now realizes there is only so much a president can do and that sometimes you just have to let events play out.
Iraq is a sore point, to be sure. Mr. David Brooks in yesterday’s N.Y. Times declared nation building there a success. He considered the economic and political fronts, just as Mr. Obama did. Others are not so positive, including Mr. Obama. While Iraq this year might end up with the fastest growing economy in the world, growing from zero is a lot different than growing from an already high level. ABC News even thinks it’s significant that people can now go out in Baghdad and eat ice cream. I don’t know if that’s economic or political, but it is sophistic.
Our social and political rhetoric these days is more of a mindless rant with mostly zero content—emotional, irrational, angry, and bitter. Perhaps those tweets on Twitter, those writings on the Facebook Wall, and the forums provided by the internet for any blogger with a chip on his shoulder have made it too easy. We succumb to the notion that we are free to express our opinions, and do we ever!
A delicate subject, this religious freedom thing. I suspect this post and others expressing similar sentiments will generate a lot of debate. Why is building an Islamic center in New York City at ground zero a problem? And, if it is, what do we do about it? A perusal of the press and the news this weekend and this morning shows that what was once a local debate has become a world-wide one. Let me review the facts and provide a fresh perspective.
To end the week, it is appropriate to follow-up on some of my recent posts.
First, with respect to California’s Prop 8, the judge has opened the door to gay marriage, starting August 18. He is giving time to the Prop 8 defenders to gather together arguments on how to deny rights to a group of people. Given his carefully constructed decision, they will need all the time they can get.
It’s hard to argue for giving rights to one class of citizens and not to others. Yet it seems we, as a society, always have this debate, probably because there’s always a new crop of fundamentalist bigots out there that want to impose their way of life on everyone else. The Pilgrims and Puritans brought this kind of bigotry with them to America. We celebrate it each Thanksgiving. I suppose they would be happy that the tradition continues.
I’ll focus on only those agencies that deal with intelligence—not my intelligence or yours, as taxpayers, but intel: snippets of data that allow us to stomp on the “bad guys.” You can focus on any other part of the government, of course, and ask the same question. Here I’m just referring to the usual alphabet soup of acronyms: DHS, DEA, CIA, FBI, etc. In some sense, they are the most important ones when analyzing losses to our personal freedoms. They are inextricably involved with the future of our democracy. They also provide good examples of waste in government, especially if you add the cost of the military’s bureaucracy. And they are the most important to me as a writer.
Readers of this blog know that I’ve been a strong defender of minority rights and the duty of the courts to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. I’ve also pushed the idea that we, as a nation, should not be allowed to vote on individual rights. Proposition 8, the ballot measure that passed in California in 2008 with 52% of the vote, prompted that bastion of conservatism, Mr. Bill O’Reilly, to say that that’s what would happen in Massachusetts if the people were allowed to vote on the issue.
Mr. O’Reilly and many others missed and are still missing the point: by a mere 2% California voters pushed through a law that tramples on the rights of a minority. Conservatives who use the Constitution to beat liberals over the head seem to have forgotten that part called the Bill of Rights. Mr. O’Reilly, and many like him, are letting emotions trump rational principles. You cannot allow a vote on minority rights—the majority will tyrannize almost every chance it gets. It’s human nature, and especially the nature of Mr. O’Reilly and friends, to push the fundamentalist tribal doctrine that everybody should think like them. The Founding Fathers were smart enough to protect American society against this.
Ever since the Nixon-Eisenhower White House wedding in 1968 I have wondered about America’s need for royalty and royal weddings. While old George showed his sanity and humility by not allowing the rest of the colonials to make him king (I’m speaking of our first President, not the inept British king the colonials defeated), it seems that many of my compatriots feel short-changed. Many of them go after the gossip, intrigues, and photos by the paparazzi like ants at a pastry makers’ picnic, all in their haste to find a truly American substitute. And when the Lohans and the Pitts just don’t do it, there’s always a White House wedding.
The release of the Afghan Papers this weekend—notably in the N.Y. Times today—brings to the fore once again the perpetual conflict between national security and personal morality. We don’t like to talk about this gray area even though most of us probably have opinions about particular cases, but I will try to touch upon some of the issues and hope for the best.
The case of Shirley Sherwood is another example of emotions running amok on the internet. This wonderful digital media allows us to get information very fast but often, through incomplete reporting and/or users not getting the complete story, that same information stimulates a knee-jerk reaction that diminishes our humanity and foments embarrassing spins on a story.
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