Politics

By Edward

UPDATE[2]: I’ve been convinced that Cole is calling DeLay an "Ayatollah" with the intent to be offensive in a way that violates the spirit, if not the letter, of our posting rules against such things. I remain convinced that Professor Cole’s overarching point is one folks should note (and that what DeLay is orchestrating is dangerous), however, but I do now agree he’s gone further in his rhetoric than is helpful or accurate. (Thanks to Jes for the editing.)
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Juan Cole draws an eye-opening parallel between what President Bush and Congress are trying to do in the Schiavo case and the Islamic law provision known as "hisba" or "bringing to account." This provision allows third-party persons to bring matters involving another’s private matters to the courts and legislature.

As Al-Ahram weekly notes, "Hisba signifies a case filed by an individual on behalf of society when the plaintiff feels that great harm has been done to religion." Hisba is a medieval idea that had all [but] lapsed when the fundamentalists brought it back in the 1970s and 1980s. (emphasis mine)

The political value of this provision as used by Muslim fundamentalists is it provides the sort of circus atmosphere they can manipulate to divert attention away from their own corruption. The political danger of it here in the US is that it provides a detour around the Constitution by which fundamentalists (and their lapdogs) can enact laws based on their religious beliefs:

But the most frightening thing about the entire affair is that public figures like congressmen inserted themselves into the case in order to uphold religious strictures. The lawyer arguing against the husband let the cat out of the bag, as reported by the NYT: ‘ The lawyer, David Gibbs, also said Ms. Schiavo’s religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and water. "We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to disobey her church and even jeopardize her eternal soul," Mr. Gibbs said. ‘

In other words, the United States Congress acted in part on behalf of the Roman Catholic church. Both of these public bodies interfered in the private affairs of the Schiavos….

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by hilzoy

Yesterday our own Charles Bird linked to this comment by Paul Cella:

“The principle behind the idea of the Open Society is this: all questions are open questions — even the question of whether the open society should endure. On its own logic, the Open Society cannot silence any opinion, no matter how heinous. It cannot say to the Islamist: “your opinions are not welcome here.” It cannot say to the Communist: “we will not protect your freedom to advocate the overthrow of our society.” It cannot say to the Nazi: “you will keep silent about your views or face various legal disabilities.”

The moment that the Open Society decides that certain opinions are unacceptable, and thus worthy of social, political and legal sanctions against them, it ceases to be an Open Society. It has closed certain questions and renounced its creed.

The basic problem with the Open Society is that it will allow a polity to simply talk itself into civil war. The examples we have are not pretty: Spain before her Civil War and Weimar Germany.

Fortunately, the United States never has been, is not, and (please God) will never become an Open Society. We have always been willing to proscribe certain opinions, to place a high enough price on holding certain views that most people simply give them up; we have, in short, always been willing to offer to subversives the choice that Athens gave to Socrates: silence, exile, or death.

That George Soros is trying to overturn this American tradition does not speak well of him. “

Charles described this comment as an “astute observation”. I respectfully disagree, and I want to explain why.

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So I leave the country for a week and when I come back it seems the entire place has gone into total panic mode, and draconian measures are being proposed everywhere to regulate sex. What the hell happened while I was gone? Did aliens come down and broadcast an anti-libertarian mind-control hyperwave? Everyone: take a deep breath…and release…deep breath…and release.

The New York Times is at the head of this stampede, and clearly someone over there needs a Valium. Read these headlines:

• H.I.V. Strain Adds Urgency to Changes in City AIDS Program
• Gays Debate Radical Steps to Curb Unsafe Sex
• Rare Strain of H.I.V. Raises Fear of a Resurgence in AIDS Cases

I count at least 10 stories in the past four days on this item in the Times. Yes, the public needs to know, but as Andrew Sullivan points out:

Previous scare stories were at least always based on actual peer-reviewed studies of groups of people – not one or two cases presented at press conferences. Some epidemiological context: in San Francisco, the epicenter of the epidemic, AIDS deaths last year were 182, compared to a peak of 1,633 in 1992; AIDS cases were 245, compared to a peak of 2,327 in 1992. Both numbers were far lower than in 2003. Of course, this reflects what has happened in the epidemic, not what will or may happen. But HIV infection rates have also remained stable. We should not be complacent. But we shouldn’t panic either.

But panicking it seems we are.

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From the Washington Post:

“Following through on a promise he has made repeatedly since his victory in November, President Bush yesterday renominated 12 candidates for federal appeals court seats whose confirmations were blocked by Senate Democrats during his first term.

The renomination of the judicial candidates promises to once again ignite an intense partisan battle with Senate Democrats. They have vowed to thwart Bush’s nominees, whom they consider too conservative. (…)

Among the most controversial nominees are Terrence W. Boyle, a federal district judge in North Carolina and nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, whom Democrats have criticized for his stances in civil rights cases; Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Richman Owen, a nominee for the 5th Circuit, whose jurisprudence in abortion, civil rights and environmental cases has been criticized; California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, nominated to a seat on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, who Democrats say has referred to the New Deal as a “socialist revolution”; and William J. Haynes II, who served as Pentagon general counsel when controversial detainee policies were set that allowed enemy combatants to be held indefinitely without charges and access to counsel. He was again nominated for the 4th Circuit.”

I’d like to explain why I think that two of these nominees should be rejected. (I don’t know enough about the others to say.)

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After writing my piece on Ward Churchill both here and at Redstate.org, one of the commenters here issued the commonly used "look over there" response, asking why I wasn’t "outraged" about Thomas E. Woods, Jr., mistakenly assuming that "outrage" was what caused me to write on the faux-Indian America-hating Marxist professor in the first place. I would’ve passed on looking more into Woods since I’d never before heard of the guy. Then the commenter went and said this: "But I’ll bet the entire contents of my 401k that you won’t spend a single minute writing lengthy posts investigating and condemning Wood." Well, now that there’s money on the table and, curious about whether this person will honor the bet, my interest is piqued, so here goes.

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Former Special Assistant to the president and Deputy Director of Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative David Kuo today blasted Congress and his former boss for not living up to the President’s compassionate conservative promises to make a real difference in the lives of poor and desperate Americans by funding faith-based charities. Kuo has some strong, bitter words for all concerned:

[Democrats:] The moment the president announced the faith-based effort, Democratic opposition was frenzied. Hackneyed church-state scare rhetoric made the rounds; this was "radical" and "dangerous" and merely an "attempt to fund Bob Jones University." One Democratic African-American congressman came to the White House to back the president but was threatened by influential liberal groups that they would withhold funding if he didn’t denounce the President. The next day he was forced to retract his statement. All of this came despite the fact that former Vice President Al Gore had endorsed virtually identical faith-based measures during the 2000 campaign. […]

[Republicans:] Congressional Republicans matched Democratic hostility with snoring indifference. Sen. Rick Santorum spent endless hours alone lobbying Senate Leadership to give some floor time, any floor time to get a bill to help charities and the poor – even after 9/11 when charities were going out of business because of a decline in giving. He was stiff-armed by his own party.

At the end of the day, both parties played to stereotype — Republicans were indifferent to the poor and the Democrats were allergic to faith.

[And the White House:] Capitol Hill gridlock could have been smashed by minimal West Wing effort. No administration since LBJ’s has had a more successful legislative track record than this one. From tax cuts to Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants. It never really wanted the "poor people stuff."

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I’ve been following the news of Ward Churchill with the same fascination as I would driving by a six-car pile-up: Gawking at the bashed up mess, irritated at the traffic jam and flashing lights, and hoping that no one got seriously hurt. The real issue isn’t what Churchill has said and done and written over the years. There are plenty of extremist wingdings out there who’ve said and written and done things that are even more extreme and even more crackpottish. The real issue is why a major state university saw fit not just to hire him, but to later give him tenure and a department chair.

PirateBallerina.com has been a virtual one-stop shop for all things Churchill, covering a whole range of links on him (strangely enough, there was no mention of his starring role in the early 1970s TV classic Chutch!). There’s even a newstrove on him. Given Churchill’s history as a faux-Indian America-hating Marxist who has espoused a long reign of dubious and radical output, several questions come to mind:

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I’m heading off to Spain in a few hours, but I’m heading out with a raging thorn in my side. See y’all next week.

Who are we? Americans, I mean. Who in the hell are we exactly? Where do we come from? What binds us together? What do we stand for? What, essentially, defines our collective souls?

I, for one, submit that since 9/11 we’ve become a self-centered nation of ever-growing intolerance, willful ignorance, and cowardice. But it wasn’t always like that. Once we were a brave nation, a nation of immigrants with so much pride in having built our shining city on the hill we placed a statue in our harbor welcoming the poor and oppressed peoples of the world to join us*, to find new hope and a better life. Now, instead we offer those seeking asylum here humiliation, abuse, and isolation. Are we truly so afraid we’ve been reduced to this?

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom is releasing a carefully constructed bipartisan report today. It sharply criticizes the shameful way we’re now treating asylum seekers in the US. The administration, of course, doesn’t want to hear it.

Manny Van Pelt, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within Homeland Security that oversees the detention of asylum seekers, defended the system.

"We have a robust inspections program that conducts audits of our detention facilities nationwide, and our detention facilities are accredited and subjected to regular inspection by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees," he said in an interview. "They are clean and they are safe environments. Even better, the detention system protects the public."

Mr. Van Pelt, with what little respect I can muster, may I suggest you are wholly incompetent and unfit to represent this nation. Here’s a sample of what Van Pelt feels is worthy of such praise:

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One of President Bush’s many lowlights in his first term was his signing the 10-year $190 billion farm bill, helping cement his reputation as a big government preservative.  So it’s welcome news that the second term president is promoting a cut in the growth of agricultural subsidies.  It’s about time we see some more fiscal restraint.  Since most of the subsidies have been "concentrated among the larger firms", the farm bill was essentially just another brand of corporate welfare which distorted the functioning of the free market.  If the Heritage Foundation and the Environmental Working Group are bedfellows on this, then it can’t be a bad thing.

Update:  The 2006 budget was released.  First, some historical perspective.  In 2004, non-military discretionary spending increased 4.85%, the slowest rate of increase since 1998, and a welcome relief from the profligate spending of 2002 and 2003.  The 2005 budget shows a 4.97% decrease from the 2004 outlay, but the CBO estimates the 2005 outlay to be a 5.69% increase.  In the latest rendition:

In the budget for 2006, discretionary spending — meaning other than entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare — would rise just 2.1 percent, lower than the expected rate of inflation. Within that category, extra money would go to defense and homeland security, leaving most other discretionary programs frozen or falling.

There have been some, shall we say, interesting, remarks in the comments section, ranging from extreme skepticism to "I don’t believe it".  But the budget sets a marker for which Bush will be measured.  The actual budget will of course fall short of the proposal in terms of restraint, but the measure of success and of spending discipline will be how close Bush can ultimately get.

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