Liberal Socialism

(cross-posted at Sophistry and Klatsch)

John McCain recently told the Kansas City Star that Barack Obama's voting record in the Senate "is more to the left than the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.” When asked if he thought Obama was a socialist, McCain replied, “I don’t know. All I know is his voting record, and that’s what people usually judge their elected representatives by.” (This is a funny comment from a man who takes credit for bills after voting against them.) The indispensable Rachel Maddow wondered, on her radio show, what the uproar would be if Senator Obama had said that he didn't know whether McCain was a right-wing extremist or a fascist. Well, I speculate that a certain serious scholar would post a few emails on the subject and then point out that, as a socialist, Bernie Sanders is the real fascist anyway.

l'Action historique in print!

Here,

here,

and here!

No wonder the stores are out of tin foil

I've spent the last five days in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where the only campaign signs I've seen have been Ron Paul's. And it's not that I've seen one or two Ron Paul signs; stickers are on many many traffic-light poles at intersections, both in commercial areas and in wealthy residential neighbourhoods.

Am I alone in finding this extremely strange?

Now, I'm sure that this is a result of the tendency among Paul's acolytes to be, shall we say, overly eager, rather than a measure of any significant support for Ron Paul. Still, I have a hard time imagining what Paul's appeal is among residents of politically moderate (and slightly patrician) Montgomery County. Is it just the knee-jerk "get government off our backs" rhetoric that led my high-school history teacher to support Perot?

I don't get it.

Everybody talking bout...

My thoughts about Mike Gravel aren't terribly different from anyone else's, that is, that he's a colourful grump who ran for president to promote a ridiculous national-referenda plan (which he then proceeded to never mention) and whose refreshing directness is somewhat diluted by his ranting about "the bankers," which has overtones of some unsavoury stuff.

Still, I'm grateful to him for standing up to Nixon while representing Alaska in the Senate so that I wouldn't get drafted. His support for gay rights is foreful and unequivocal, without separate-but-equal hemming and hawing (see Dodd, Chris; Kerry, John; Democrat, Any). I like that he speaks French and gave post-debate interviews (back when he was invited to debates) to French and Quebecois journalists en francais.

And then there's this. Truly brilliant, and as a Lennonist, I can't but recommend it. Click here.

Ask Mitt Anything!

Assuming that Mitt Romney's "Ask Mitt Anything" sessions aren't scripted and screened farces, the way the President's town-hall meetings were, someone really should ask him how gay marriage, which is legal in Massachusetts, has threatened heterosexual marriages in the Commonwealth.

Romney, you see, was once (and, in his heart of hearts probably still is) a gay-rights advocate. In 1994, running against Senator Kennedy, he presented himself this way quite forcefully. Sadly, he has chosen to run for president as an opponent of same-sex marriage; this is part of a larger attempt to run against the state that must have somehow forced him to be its governor.

Since Romney has decided against the politically courageous course of using the experience in his state as a teaching moment to disabuse his party of deeply felt but erroneous notions, since he has chosen to follow his party instead of leading it, someone really should ask him to explain the damage gay marriage has wrought on his peaceable New England commonwealth. Romney has described the emotional and logical factors behind his shift on the issue of stem cells; let him do the same with gay rights! Furthermore, Romney--while a terrible politician who would make a mediocre-to-bad presidnet--is a fundamentally rational and facts-oriented (reality-based?) consultant type. That being so, I'd really like to see the charts, the statistics, the numbers. I suspect that they would support 1994-MItt against 2007-Mitt since, as far as I know, MA continues to have one of the lowest divorce rates in the nation and can boast other indicators of the strength of "traditional marriage."

So, if the readers of l'Action historique, either of you, should happen to attend an Ask Mitt Anything event, please ask him how gay marriage has undermined traditional marriage in his state, as he claims, and let me know what he says.

The Difference Between Belgium and Luxembourg

On 4 April 2007 President Bush appointed Sam Fox ambassador to Belgium via a recess appointment. It had become clear--especially after his skewering by John Kerry during his February 2007 hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--that Fox would not be confirmed by the Senate. So Bush waited until the Senate adjourned and availed himself of his constitutional power to bypass the Senate while that body is in recess.

(In so doing, the President violated the spirit but not the letter of the constitution; recess appointments ensure that executive-branch positions can be filled when the Senate is in recess--since it takes quite some time to reach Washington, DC, by horse-drawn carriage--thus ensuring that the business of government is not unduly impeded. In modern times, it has been cynically employed by presidents of both parties to circumvent the Senate's advise and consent powers.)

Democrats, especially John Kerry, were unyielding in their opposition to Fox's appointment because Fox had donated $50,000 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to assist their campaign of lies against Kerry, an honourable volunteer soldier, during the 2004 presidential campaign. The nomination of Fox is an example of the viciousness that is typical of Bush. In effect, he said to Kerry, "not only did we smear you, but now I'm going to shove the guy who funded it down your throat." This is of a piece with many other instances of Bush's vindictiveness, some of which have occurred in the context of the diplomatic corps. (Dave, do you remember the story about the Swedish diplomat that fell victim to Bush's grudge-holding that we read about in Germany? If so, both readers of this blog would be grateful for an update in the comments section.) This one is especially galling, as one of Bush's dirtiest tricks has been to turn John Kerry--who volunteered out of a sense of duty, then came home and took the responsible and courageous step of speaking out against the criminal government that was orchestrating the American atrocity in Vietnam that Kerry experienced first hand--into some kind of coward or enemy of the military. (Remember the band-aids they distributed at the Republican National Convention to mock Kerry's purple hearts? This from the "support the troops" crowd.)

So yes, Bush is dangerous, disgusting, mean-spirited and probably evil, but all of that is too obvious at this point to merit its own blog post (especially given the infrequency of my posts).

Instead, I'd like to discuss the manner in which this appointment has been defended by what Rachel Maddow calls the right-wing scheme machine. Tucker Carlson dismissed opposition to Fox's appointment by saying that having hurt John Kerry's feelings is not sufficient to disqualify a nominee. (Well, ok, but Fox's sins are much greater than having hurt Kerry's feelings; also, having smeared Kerry seems to be Fox's only qualification for an ambassadorship under Bush's patented formula of sleaze-payola. It's not enough to disqualify him, but it is sufficient as his only qualification?!)

Carlson went on to compare Fox to James Hormel, whom President Clinton appointed as ambassador to Luxembourg in 1997. The Republican Senate would not confirm Hormal, and Clinton granted him a recess appointment in 1999. Tucker's point was that Democrats had no problem with recess appointments when Clinton used them, but are hypocritically up in arms when Bush employs the same tactic. Holy False Equivalency, Batman!

I remember the Hormel nomination. In 1998, when Boston University was itself in recess, I wrote to both of my home-state US Senators--both Republicans--to urge them to support Hormel's nomination. Here is an excerpt from the response I received from Senator Arlen Specter:

"Foreign affairs issues have not diminished in importance with the end of the Cold War. The 105th Congress is faced with many important issues: nuclear weapons proliferation, international terrorism, the growth and stabilization of young democracies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the prospect of peace in the Middle East, the size of our foreign aid budget, and human rights concerns. A highly capable diplomatic corps is essential as the United States deals with these important issues."

From Rick Santorum, this:

"Although its history can be traced back over a thousand years, Luxembourg finally gained its national independence in 1815. During the Nineteenth Century [sic], the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Kingdom of the Netherlands formed a cooperative union in which the Netherlands helped to protect Luxembourg borders [sic]. During this period, political independence and autonomy were strengthened, and democratic institutions were developed. In World War II, Luxembourg became the site of the Battle of the Bulge fought in 1944. This titanic battle, along with the civilian casualties during the resistance, resulted in Luxembourg suffering the third highest percentage of human losses in World War II, after the Soviet Union and Poland."

Thanks for the history lessons, guys. Here's one of my own:

Does Tucker Carlson remember why the Republicans refused to confirm James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg? What exactly disqualified him from membership in the "highly capable diplomatic corps" so important to Arlen Specter? Did they have a problem with SPAM? Did Hormel donate $50,000 to a smear campaign against Bob Dole?

No. The Republican Senate opposed James Hormel because he is gay. That's it. He would become the first openly gay American ambassador, and this was so unpalatable to Republicans--including the extreme homophobe Santorum, who believes that gay marriage will send us down a path to legalising bestiality and adultery (which latter, by the way, is already legal in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, etc.)--that they refused to confirm him.

So, when President Clinton gave James Hormel a recess appointment, he made a statement that gay Americans should have opportunity equal to that of all Americans, that he would not abide discrimination based on sexual orientation and that he was willing to defy the Senate when it came to equal rights. Clinton gave Hormel a recess appointment to oppose Republicans' undisguised bigotry (which is all too similar to their sad and largely unatoned-for legacy of racism).

In contrast, Bush's appointment of Fox as ambassador to Belgium was a shot in support of the right to lie, smear, defame and then reap rewards for this shameful behaviour.

Equivalent? Hardly.

Bulletin!

I haven't been making good use of this blog, but it may have found a partial purpose as a forum for my one-man campaign against the slimiest right-wing rag since Bill O'Reilly's loofah: The Philadelphia Bulletin. This is not the paper of record in Philadelphia. Rather, it is a 2004 resurrection of the former evening newspaper that ceased publication in 1982. Last month, while visiting Philadelphia, I noticed that it was distributed free to my grandparents' apartment building. I sent a few poisoned-pen missives to the editor before it occurred to me to share these with readers of this blog. Both of you. Now, battle is joined; the game is afoot. Look for a series of corrections, critiques, rebuttals and rejoinders.

Here, then, is the first in an occassional series of Action historique ventures into media criticism. These guys are unreconstructed; let's reconstruct them.

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I have no idea where Michael Tremoglie got the idea that the"liberal media" is orchestrating a disinformation campaign against the death penalty. Either the New York Times et al haven't been doing a good job or Mr. Tremoglie hasn't been reading very carefully.

Mr. Tremoglie begins by listing convicted murderers who have killed again after being released. This, though, is more anargument about reforming parole and the meaning of life sentences than about the death penalty as such. He then marshalls statistics and studies to support his contention that the death penalty deters would-be murderers. Perhaps. (Elsewhere, Tremoglie refers to a Gallup poll that he read about on Wikipedia, the open-source encyclopedia that anyone can edit and contribute to.) But some murderers are also deterred by the prospect of life in prison. Some are deterred by neither. The fact remains that European countries that have abolished the death penalty, as well as Canada, have drastically lower murder rates than the United States. So, clearly there are better ways to deter homicide than the death penalty. Also, if the death penalty does deter now and then, it does not do so at a level that meaningfully reduces the murder rate in the United States.

The debate about deterrence, though, is a red herring. Most anti-death-penalty advocates point out that it is not a deterrant to refute conservatives' (usually intuitive) insistence that it does, in fact, deter. Non-deterrence is rarely at the core of the anti-death-penalty argument. This argument centres more on human rights, racism, human error,and the limits of state power. If we accept as a first principle that the state does not have the right to take a life, then the argument about deterrence becomes irrelevant. Many other practices--torture, for example--might deter homicide, but we stipulate that the state would violate human rights in torturing prisoners so we do not allow it despite its possible deterrent value. Similarly, the question surrounding the death penalty is if, in carrying out this punishment, the state exceeds its legitimate authority and violates inalienable rights. The debate about deterrence is a distraction.

So does the state overreach in taking the life of convicted murderers? The American constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The specific phrase "cruel and unusual"unambiguously authorizes interpretation according to evolving societal norms and standards. Otherwise, the framers could have listed which punishments are acceptable and which are not. Instead of this, they employed terms whose meanings evolve alongside societal conceptions of morality. Many practices common in the early Republic (or, for that matter, in the Bible) are now considered cruel. At the very least, the death penalty is certainly unusual, in the UnitedStates and in the West in general. (And yes, it is appropriate to consider other countries in interpreting"cruel and unusual"; the Declaration of Independence itself affirms our responsibility to justify ourselves to the community of nations.)

Let us assume, though, that the death penalty is not constitutionally prohibited as cruel and unusual. There remain facts about its application that should lead all Americans to oppose it. The death penalty is disproportionately applied to African-American defendants. After being convicted of an identical crime, a black person is statistically more likely to be sentenced to death than a white person. It is more likely that a defendant--black or white--will be sentenced to death for the murder of a white person than for the murder of an African-American. This is a clear violation of the Fourteenth Ammendment's promise of"equal protection of the laws." The racial wounds caused by centuries of unequal justice in the United States still fester; society has an interest in healing, not exacerbating, them.

We can easily dismiss Tremoglie's assertion that a (slim) majority of Americans supports capital punishment. The Bulletin crowd likes to condemn "activist judges," but the fact remains that issues of human rights are not subject to the tyranny of the majority. Courts, not plebiscites, decide constitutional rights (which we really only need for things to which the majority is opposed). The best example is the desegregation of schools. This was not popular in the areas in which it was enforced, but constitutional rights are determined by the judiciary, not popular will.

Finally, Mr. Tremoglie quotes a study that mentions that innocent people are sometimes put to death. He does not comment on this, but this is at the heart of opposition to capital punishment! According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 123 death-row inmates have been exonerated and released in the past 30 years. Tragically, too often DNA evidence proves a convict's innocence only after the state has taken his or her life. Referring to controversy surrounding abortion and end-of-life decisions, President Bush has urged Americans to "err on the side of life." Erring on the side of life means recognizing human error and fallibility on the parts of judges and juries, whether through latent racism or honest mistakes. It means joining the civilized world that America was once part of in the defense of human rights. It means abolishing the death penalty.