With Profound Apolologies to William Blake

Tiger! Tiger! less than bright
Hitting hydrants in the night
He who breaks his marriage pledge
Will lose a window to a wedge

Wielded by an angry spouse
Whose lawyers claim she'll get your house
And alimony steep in price
Because you wouldn't heed advice

That men get taken to the cleaners
When they're thinking with their wieners
There's no clue in all the twaddle
Who cheats on a Swedish model?!

Sponsors may soon step aside
As your betrayal of your bride
Seems less to be a one time slip
Than nothing but the iceberg's tip

On the course you've earned your laurels
But in life you have the morals
Of a pig or a hyena
Lucky Elin's not Lorena

Tiger! Tiger! less than bright
Hitting hydrants in the night
He who breaks his marriage pledge
Will lose a window to a wedge

You Say Nazi I Say Not So

Can we please, for the love of God, stop equating the Obama administration with Hitler's reign of terror?! As far as I can tell, the reasoning underlying the linkage between Obama and Hitler is this: Nazis called themselves national socialists and in the minds of some Americans, any increased government presence in something other than national defense makes us a socialist nation and Obama its socialist leader. I can only presume that to them any socialist regime is indistinguishable from any other, so the U.S. under Obama would be the same as Germany under Hitler. I'm not sure where to even begin setting the record straight. The entire exercise is reminiscent of debating the fine points of implausibility regarding Gilligan's Island, but I suppose I have to begin somewhere.

First, I've heard voices from the far right asserting that more government involvement in health care would make us the same as Hitler's Germany. Barney Frank famously heard the same thing at a town hall meeting. I have to ask, is that really the lesson you took away from history? Hitler wanted to offer health care to all citizens, Jew and gentile alike? Really?! For one thing, Germany had universal health care going back to Bismarck, before Hitler was even born (in Austria), so I'm having difficulty understanding how it's peculiar to Hitler and Obama. Also, Israel has universal health care. Are you prepared to tell Israelis who still bear the tattoos of Nazi atrocities that their country is identical to the one they fled for their lives after seeing their family members slaughtered? I know of no 20th Century historian whose mind turns immediately to health insurance when reflecting upon Nazi Germany. By the way, Singapore, a purer example of market capitalism than the U.S. also has universal health care.

Now let's compare the feared Nazism of the Obama administration with the halcyon days of Ward and June Cleaver and the Eisenhower presidency. The top marginal tax rate under Eisenhower never dipped below 91%. Also, when we think about domestic policy initiatives in those eight years, we likely think of the interstate highway system, which was inspired by the advantages that the autobahn system gave the Nazis. During the Eisenhower years we had legally enforced segregation, and blacks, who were not part of our country's master race, would be thrown in jail if they tried to escape the ghetto of their second-class citizenship by using a public toilet or occupying a seat on the bus. Now let's be clear, Eisenhower's presidency bears no resemblance to Nazi rule, but that's equally true of Obama's. When the private sector failed and we were facing a collapse that most people can't even imagine, Obama, like Bush before him, stepped into the breach to rescue the country from catastrophe. His decision not to fiddle while Rome, Georgia burned should not be confused with a plan to enslave all Americans under his megalomaniacal whip.

This is not new; the same charges of socialism, destroying America and so forth were leveled against FDR. Notwithstanding the Chicken Little ranting, the sky was not falling. We ultimately thrived as never before and our dime now bears FDR's image. I will concede that on the continuum between pure capitalism and pure socialism, greater government involvement moves us along that line away from pure capitalism, but we need to retain a sense of proportion. The government stepping in to shore up a failed private institution rather than allowing another devastating blow to an already battered economy does not equal or even foreshadow a complete disappearance of private property and freedom. We'll always have a mix of public and private in this country, and that's a good thing. Complete government control of our lives would be an Orwellian nightmare, but a society without any safety net whatsoever would be a Dickensian nightmare. I don't want to live under totalitarian oppression any more that you want to live in a country where people who can't afford medical care are left to die in the streets. There's plenty of room for disagreement on the proper role of government, but let's keep our heads, tone down the rhetoric and work together to solve our common problems.

Monday Morning Quarterbacks

Today I want to discuss Monday morning quarterbacking and a couple of recent stories concerning the Bush administration's handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. First, in a report being released today, literally on a Monday morning, although news outlets reported the findings over the weekend, a Senate committee has determined that the U.S. could have and should have captured or killed Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora in December 2001. I'm no fan of the Bush administration, particularly with respect to its war machine brain trust, but I like this current exercise in coulda, woulda, shoulda even less. I am particularly troubled that the report was called for by Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and perhaps not coincidentally, Bush's presidential rival in 2004. In my very first blog entry I called for grown ups to step up and lead, but apparently that call has gone unheeded. To say the least, expending these resources just to formally say, "Nyah, nyah, I told you so!" is unbecoming of an elder statesman.

People will criticize Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al for Tora Bora just as countless Southerners are still upset over Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. Occasionally, military leaders make strategic errors, football coaches make questionable calls and world class poker players badly misplay hands. So what? We study history to gain wisdom and insight from its lessons, not to use hindsight to second guess every decision. We should also keep in the forefront of our minds the peril that attends counterfactual history, once you change anything, you have, at least potentially, changed everything. There is no way to know all the consequences that accompany the road not taken.

The other recent story concerns the Iraq War. While there are no new revelations, the ongoing Chilcot inquiry, which is intended to be an exhaustive study of Great Britain's involvement in the Iraq War, has once again put the run-up to that war under the microscope. The news concerns statements being made by senior British officials such as Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the U.N. at the time and envoy to Iraq after the invasion. Greenstock testified that the U.S was "hell bent on the use of force" regardless of what anyone else in the world community thought. While other nations and the U.N. itself wanted to give weapons inspectors more time to find evidence that war was justified, the Bush administration saw that as a waste of time and a distraction. The U.N. Security Council was not going to authorize this war based on existing evidence despite the considerable power the U.S. has in this body. President Bush was determined to invade anyway and he managed to convince Great Britain and others to join the U.S. effort.

Unlike the Tora Bora story, this is fair game for harsh criticism because the point of contention is not merely a strategic call but rather an overarching philosophy and a blatant disregard of an inviolable principle. The legitimacy of warfare is predicated on its necessity. War is a tool that must only be used when all other means at our disposal have been deemed ineffective in stopping prohibited activities that carry dire consequences. Justification for war can be likened to a criminal trial where we won't severely punish the accused unless we are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that such punishment is warranted. The Iraq War, on the other hand, can be likened to The Ox-Bow Incident, with George W. Bush playing the role of Major Tetley. If you didn't read The Ox-Bow Incident, read it; you'll thank me later.

Bishop Tobin's Fatwa Against Patrick Kennedy

Yesterday marked the 46th anniversary of the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy, the first and so far only Roman Catholic president of the United States. Today President Kennedy's nephew, Congressman Patrick Kennedy (son of the late Senator Edward Kennedy) is embroiled in an ugly battle with the Bishop of Providence who has pronounced Rep. Kennedy ineligible to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion because of his politics. There are a number of ironic elements to this story that I'll discuss in no particular order. First, this is happening as we remember President Kennedy and how he made the American public abandon the fear that a Catholic president would be loyal to the Catholic hierarchy instead of the Constitution. Secondly, the controversy involves JFK's blood relative, and finally, this is happening in Rhode Island, which was founded by Roger Williams as a haven for religious tolerance. Roger Williams is, if you will, the patron saint of church state separation. He was a preacher who only settled what is now Rhode Island because he was forced to flee Massachusetts for daring to differ with the Puritans. He was among the first to call for a wall of separation between church and state.

I was raised and educated in the Catholic faith and I am well versed in its teachings and terminology. I know, for instance, that the Immaculate Conception does not refer to a virgin bearing a child, but rather to Mary being born without original sin. The former is a widely held erroneous belief that I call the immaculate misconception. I also know that Transubstantiation is the process through which bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus. I would like to make my own contribution to the Catholic lexicon by coining "Translineation", which means to cross the line. This is the process by which bishops transform the already consecrated Body and Blood of our Lord into a weapon with which to bully Catholic politicians who choose not to impose their personal beliefs on a pluralistic society.

While I no longer practice Catholicism, I'm saddened to see this happening. I once heard the writer Anna Quindlen say that being Catholic is the reason she's liberal. Some may find that surprising or even contradictory, but I instantly knew exactly what she meant. My childhood coincided with things like urban rioting, the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. I marched for peace and justice from the time I was in kindergarten at Our Lady of Mercy, and I participated in urban renewal from the time I was old enough to wield a paintbrush. In every instance, my participation began on a bus leaving the church parking lot, full of clergy and laity alike singing "We Shall Overcome" and believing that being Catholic meant to be like Jesus and make the world a better place through love and service to one another. The Church had its problems as any large institution will, but it emphasized the charity and compassion of Jesus rather than the sanctimonious self-righteousness of the Pharisees whose holier that thou ways Jesus despised. I wonder what Jesus would think of the Church now.

The War on Common Sense

Just as the cure for a catastrophic flood is not a devastating drought, the proper correction of an old misguided policy that tilts way too far to one side is not the creation of a new misguided policy that tilts way too far to the other side. While I expect no disagreement on this, I do expect to see it widely ignored as we fashion remedies that don't solve problems so much as replace them with equal and opposite problems. I'm reminded of the woman who wanted to be a dancer but her mother forced her to be a singer instead. She vowed to correct this injustice by forcing her own daughter to be a dancer. With Black Friday only days away, 'tis the season to once again hear about the "War on Christmas." I don't believe there is a war on Christmas; I believe there's a war on common sense and Christmas is merely one battleground in that conflict. I see the two impassioned sides in this debate as unwitting allies, each attacking common sense from an opposite flank.

First, Christmas is doing just fine, thanks for asking. The seasonal music broadcast by radio stations and countless public venues isn't dominated by Hanukkah carols, and children at the mall are not lining up for a picture on Kwanzaa Calvin's lap. If all shoppers were greeted with Happy Hanukkah instead of Merry Christmas I could better understand the outrage, but inclusive pleasantries such as Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings and other long traditional tidings shouldn't be so upsetting. For those who are that concerned about honoring the birth of Jesus, reaching out to all who celebrate a holiday should not be seen as affront, but rather an opportunity to be good Christians and share your toys. Forgive those who trespass against you by using this season to spread peace on earth, good will toward men instead of another opportunity to reaffirm your dominance.

That said, let's be clear about something. A majority celebrating its culture does not constitute a jackboot to the throat of a minority. While the mighty must not oppress and abuse the weak, that doesn't mean the more powerful must placate the less powerful by bowing to their every whim. In this country and elsewhere, Christmas has transcended its origin as a religious holiday, and I see no reason why it can't be celebrated as such without fear of offending anyone. Adorning a school or town square with a Christmas tree or image of Santa Claus is no more an imposition of religion than "God bless you" after a sneeze. This is a far cry from the days of forcing public schoolchildren to recite New Testament passages. While it was right to correct that injustice, we have now grossly overshot the mark.

We should be building bridges to resolve our differences, not erecting walls to create new ones. As we are facing trying and uncertain times, I can't fathom a reason to manufacture a new source of outrage over something so innocuous. Thus, the very existence of this conflict is a crippling assault on common sense. This problem will vanish if we can agree on two simple points. First, those who prefer to say Merry Christmas are not proselytizing or harming anyone of any background in any way. Secondly, the huge institution of Christmas is not facing an existential threat because some people are more comfortable saluting the various seasonal holidays as one, particularly when addressing strangers. The correct response to all well wishes, whether in the form of Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or anything else is always "thank you" followed by well wishes of your own.

All the World's a Nail

In the words of Abraham Maslow, "To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail." Likewise, to a country with an unnatural love for anything that goes bang, boom or zap and an addiction to conflict resolution through violent means, every problem we encounter looks like something to be resolved through bloodshed. Our insatiable appetite for violence manifests itself on the personal level in our disturbing rates of homicide and other violent crime, and on the institutional level in our complete inability to avoid warfare for more than a few years at a time if we're lucky. We seek to vanquish all opposition rather than working to settle our differences.

Curiously, or perhaps not, as a nation we are at once intensely religious, overwhelmingly Christian and extremely bellicose. Combining these attributes would tend to suggest that we desperately seek to honor and please the Prince of Peace with a mounting body count of God's precious children. While this seems absurd, if we look a bit deeper we may find a plausible explanation. Religion concerns itself with human decency, charity and compassion. It has been a powerful catalyst in getting people to give generously of themselves and help one another throughout the world. However, religious fundamentalism is all too often aligned with brutality and ruthlessness. As we are much more inclined toward fundamentalism than other post-industrial nations, this may shed some light on the paradox of claiming to be such a Christian nation while so often doing the opposite of what Jesus stood for and taught us.

Firing missiles, dropping bombs, and deploying combat troops is not the answer to every problem. When the Cold War ended, we were told that the days of excessive military spending would be gone and we would enjoy the new found prosperity of the "peace dividend." Needless to say, we squandered this windfall as the ne'er-do-well idiot son would blow through an inherited fortune because we simply can't resist armed conflict whenever something in the world displeases us. We are now debating whether or not to send more troops into Afghanistan and whether we should expand the war into Pakistan. Let me state clearly that the U.S. armed forces have been a tremendous source for good in the world, and when the job calls military intervention there is simply none better. The question at hand is whether or not military force is the right tool for the job. Yes, terrorists must be stopped by whatever means are at our disposal, but the war on terror simply can't be prosecuted in the same way as all prior wars. Our enemy wears no uniform and defends no flag. As the war of ideas is a central front in this campaign, hearts and minds are of paramount importance. Guns, bombs and so forth can kill flesh and blood beings and destroy brick and mortar structures, but they lack the ability to destroy or incapacitate ideas. There is a time to use a driver and a time to use a pitching wedge. Confusing the two will lead to a most unsatisfactory result.

A Culture of Violence Kills People

As Mama said in the great Steve Earle song, "The pistol is the devil's right hand." Of course, I'm not sure what that makes the fully automatic assault rifle with armor piercing bullets. A number of recent stories have once again brought gun violence to the fore, but we remain as always a nation divided when it comes to solving the problem. The two sides of the debate flew in their usual formation with gun control advocates relating guns to gun related crime, and gun rights supporters arguing that tough gun laws will only increase criminals' advantage by taking guns from honest citizens but not from criminals. The divide between these two camps will doubtlessly persist as far into the future as we can project, but I think the entire issue begs the larger question of why here? Why doesn't blood flow in the streets of other wealthy, democratic countries the way it does in ours?

The NRA argument that guns don't kill people; people kill people is partly true and partly misleading. Yes, if you're determined to kill Hamlet's father and ascend the Danish throne, you may very well opt for ear poison rather than a gun to commit your murder most foul. Luckily, there is no NEPA to lobby politicians, so we're spared endless claims of, "When ear poison is outlawed only outlaws will have ear poison." Knives, blunt objects and other implements are certainly used by both premeditated and spontaneous murderers, but the prevalence of guns and our proclivity to use them in anger account for a great many homicides that wouldn't occur without our lust for firepower. Even if we accept the NRA argument, this still doesn't address the issue of why our murder rate dwarfs that of all similarly situated countries. Are Americans such savage, bloodthirsty barbarians that our rampages can't be deterred by the legitimate rule of law? I find it difficult to accept the premise that we are a country incapable of civilization and we need more vigilantes to stop the irredeemably lawless horde that is our society.

The biggest problem is our cultural mindset. We celebrate violent solutions to our problems and we tend to see ourselves as ten feet tall and bulletproof. We labor under the delusion of grandeur that we can shoot our way out of any jam like the star of a B western movie. When some of the recent shooting rampages were discussed, I heard numerous people suggest that if only the victims or some bystanders were carrying guns, the problem would have been averted because the good people would have shot and killed the bad people. That's our culture in a nutshell, clearly defined good guys and bad guys and the answer to violence is always more violence. Here's the problem, a lot of killings are committed by those we presumed to be good guys because we were unaware of their impending refusal to live one more day as a discarded worker or scorned lover without exacting their bloody vengeance. I also have to question the wisdom of arming everyone so that if, God forbid, someone does start shooting, we'll solve the problem by hastily assembling a circular firing squad of untrained, adrenaline-riddled reactionaries. Hey, what could possibly go wrong?

The Hypocrisy of Joe Six-Pack vs. Joe Dime Bag

Few things, if any, will erode your moral authority more than hypocrisy. You simply can't be taken seriously if you fiercely condemn some people for using intoxicating drugs while simultaneously glorifying others who use, sell or promote them. Yet, through the false dichotomy of "alcohol and drugs" that's precisely what we're doing. Saying alcohol and drugs is like saying cocaine and drugs or linebackers and football players. It just doesn't make sense. How is the guy who smokes pot such a social pariah that we need to lock him up, while Joe Six-pack, whose drug is alcohol, is celebrated as a virtuous, salt of the earth American. Bear in mind that you can't claim marijuana is bad because it's illegal. Since we make something illegal on the premise that it's bad, an argument that something is bad because it's illegal and illegal because it's bad would be circular and fallacious. This begs the question, why is pot illegal and alcohol legal?

Let's examine which is the greater scourge by comparing the dangers and problems associated with the preferred drugs of Joe Six-Pack and Joe Dime Bag. After indulging, which of these two is more likely to knock his wife from one end of the trailer (or mansion) to the other? Which is much, much more likely to fall prey to a crippling addiction and all that goes with it? If you said Sarah Palin's beloved Joe Six-Pack to both of these, give yourself 10 points. Numerous destructive social ills are inextricably tied to alcohol consumption, while Joe Dime Bag is unlikely to do anything more harmful than eating a teeming bowl of Cocoa Puffs followed by a lengthy contemplation on how the brown milk in the bottom of the bowl represents the combined essence of the milk and the puffs. Well that certainly doesn't tell me why we banned marijuana rather than alcohol! Okay, the analysis of the pot smoker was done somewhat tongue in cheek, and all mood altering drugs, marijuana included, carry certain perils that extend well beyond eating cereal. Nevertheless, in all seriousness, violent anti-social behavior is undeniably more closely tied to alcohol than marijuana, and alcohol is also far more addictive.

Every society has a drug of choice, and in the United States, that drug is alcohol. We tried to prohibit it by Constitutional Amendment, but we learned that even with all the social pathologies that attend legalized drinking, that prescription was worse than the disease. I'm embarrassed that we can't see the parallel and apply the lesson of our ill-fated prohibition to the disastrous war on drugs. We don't have to legalize more dangerous drugs, but marijuana should immediately be treated like alcohol. It's clearly less harmful than booze, not more harmful. Sell it in what amount to liquor stores, replacing criminal profits with legitimate jobs and tax revenue, while saving billions of dollars in criminal justice expenditures. Whatever negative consequences might accompany legalization, like the repeal of prohibition, the pluses should vastly outweigh the minuses.

The Land of the Free?

This is an extension of my last post, which dealt with zero-tolerance policies. I want to look at other mandates that strip decision making powers from designated decision makers. I'm most concerned about mandatory minimum sentences, particularly with respect to drug offenders. We should have stood up and taken notice when Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the country's drug czar at the time, called our ever increasing prison population, "America's internal gulag." The United States has roughly 2.4 million people in prison or jail. China is next with about 1.5 million people incarcerated, but they have more than four times our population. We are by far the most imprisoned society on the face of the earth both in terms of raw numbers and percentage of citizens locked up. When you consider this, along with the fact that our prison population explosion, which began with the Nixon era crackdown on drugs but really took off with the Reagan era hysteria over drugs, which resembled a small child's fear of the bogeyman, we should all feel uneasy when we call ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Why would we mandate what judges must do, before all the facts are revealed and circumstances considered? We're not removing these jurists for acting improperly, but we're saying that they can't be trusted to do a proper job. That sounds like giving an electrician a contract to rewire a building while declaring that he or she can't be trusted to work on electrical systems. Are empathy and compassion really such pernicious demons that they must be exorcised by preemptive strike, and a judge cannot be allowed to use judgment? This is what happens when a society takes its orders from reactionaries who dismissively say, "Off with their heads!" as long they don't have to actually see, let alone be, the one who swings the axe, not to mention those being so harshly punished or their devastated loved ones. We're tough as nails as long everything is sanitized and we can easily ignore the impact of what we've wrought.

Harsh mandatory sentencing is fraught with problems and unintended consequences. Due to sharply increased prison expenditures, many cash strapped states have been forced to make offsetting reductions to education spending. We can also safely say that the massive cost of warehousing non-violent drug offenders has not yielded a satisfactory return. We have not seen the reduction in crime we expected from imprisoning so many for so long. One perverse unintended consequence is that low-level drug offenders are now often sentenced far more harshly than those who truly plague our society because, unlike more dangerous criminals, they typically have nothing to offer prosecutors who now have the discretion instead of judges. Also, since flooding our prisons is a relatively new phenomenon, we don't yet know the impact of eventually releasing such a multitude of people hardened by prison and forever stigmatized as criminals.

I'm sympathetic to those who have the extremely difficult and thankless job of constructing and implementing our system of justice, but we should have seen this coming. Since budget crises across the country are causing states to release prisoners earlier than they had planned, the time to correct the injustice may be here. While the issue of prison expense is center stage, we are presented with a golden opportunity to revisit some wrongheaded policies. Reform proposals will be met with reflexive cries of "soft on crime", but they can be neutralized with fiscal reality. Would-be reformers can explain to people who are terrified that someone might smoke a joint instead of drinking a beer that we'll be happy to lock that person up, but we'll need you to pony up more taxes to do so.

Zero Wisdom + Zero Courage = Zero-Tolerance

In the United States we treasure individualism, so much so that many in our society see anything that even remotely smacks of collectivism as something dark and evil. We honor liberty and courage as supreme blessings and virtues, quite literally singing their praises as the climactic finish of our national anthem. Yet, for reasons passing understanding, we seem to have fallen in love with mandates that tie our hands and leave us at the mercy of predetermination even in cases where it seems preposterous. These mandates stand in diametric opposition to both freedom and courage, as they leave no opportunity for discretion no matter how obviously it's called for, and they insulate those who are paid to be decision makers from actually having to take a stand, make the call and accept the consequences. We find this occurring throughout our society anywhere we see the words zero-tolerance.

The worst culprit by far is our education system. Our school systems lead the league by a wide margin when it comes to mindless implementation of zero-tolerance polices resulting in outcomes that would make any reasonable person cringe. In one recent story, common sense was somehow allowed to eventually sneak through the schoolhouse door and six year old Zachary Christie, originally sentenced to spend 45 days in "alternative school" for troublemakers, subsequently received a reduced punishment for eating lunch with his favorite camping tool, which had a fork, spoon and knife. Perhaps even more troubling, this same school district had already been forced to confront the folly of mandatory draconian punishment for what an innocent child (or a person with a scintilla of common sense) would never see as introducing danger. Last year a 5th grade girl was to be expelled because she brought in a birthday cake along with a serrated knife to cut it. She later got a reprieve and the state then passed a law allowing school districts to (gasp) exercise some judgment on punishments, but the law only covered cases involving expulsion. The school district obviously learned nothing from the prior year's disgrace, and the equally cowardly legislature essentially said that common sense should be viewed in the same light as a tourniquet or poison pill -- something to be used only in the direst of emergencies!

Speaking of relatively harmless serrated knives and idiotic school punishments, a few years ago Lindsay Brown, a Florida high school senior and National Merit Scholar was, among other things, forbidden to attend her own graduation after a kitchen knife (the kind parents place at the right of a child's dinner plate - not a weapon) was found on the passenger side floorboard of her car. Leaving aside the fact that this object is less dangerous as a weapon than a pencil, her explanation that she had no idea it was there was entirely plausible. She had been in the process of moving and the knife very likely fell out of one of her boxes. Nevertheless, school administrators were strictly forbidden to exhibit any evidence whatsoever of brain function. She was also arrested and spent nine hours in jail. The charges were later dropped.

The last example I will cite is that of Jonathan Prevette, a six year old boy who kissed a girl on the cheek after she asked him to. He was suspended and forced to miss an ice cream social at school because he was, under the school's witless policy, guilty of sexual harassment. I wish I could tell you that there weren't many, many more instances of zero-tolerance foolishness, but I can't. If school policymakers are unable or unwilling to make the difficult discretionary calls, balancing the competing interests of school safety and equitable treatment of students, then I wouldn't let them near a school unless it was to perform a task involving a mop, a broom or a bucket of sawdust to throw over puke.

What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding

In the unlikely event that reading my blog is the first thing you're doing after emerging from a lengthy coma, let me say welcome back and tell you that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday. This award, surprising even to its recipient, was met with very mixed reactions, which is perfectly understandable and completely appropriate under the circumstance. It was also met with grossly inappropriate though utterly predictable rage and scorn from the legion of people who have been afflicted with a particularly virulent strain of white hot hatred for President Obama and all that he represents. The fair and arguably correct criticism of the award is that President Obama has not yet done anything worthy of the prize. With respect to the haters, had President Obama discovered a way for cars to run on household garbage and emit no pollution, simultaneously solving our landfill problem and our dependence on foreign oil, they would only scream about how he just ruined America by costing us jobs in both the sanitation and petroleum industries.

While those who believe that the Peace Prize should have been given to someone more deserving have a persuasive argument, I can also see some merit in the committee's decision and give it the benefit of the doubt. America's shift from a country with a foreign policy endorsed by the, "Nuke 'em 'til they glow then shoot 'em in the dark" set to a country that wants a leader who favors diplomacy, respect and understanding is an enormous boon to world peace. The United States' only peer in terms of military spending and might is the rest of the word combined. This brings us to "American exceptionalism." President Obama's foes, primarily the haters but also some reasonable thinkers who simply disagree with him, rail against his failure to preach American exceptionalism, and they bristle when he dares to suggest that we lack godlike infallibility. They want the president to be the equivalent of the unfit parent who swears that his or her child is never wrong and every conflict must therefore be someone else's fault. Ironically, Obama's Nobel Prize can be defended from either side of the American exceptionalism discussion. Simply because a U.S president can do more to alter the course of world peace than any other leader (American exceptionalism), President Obama's inauguration was a monumental event, particularly given his appetite for diplomacy and nuclear disarmament. At the same time, exceptional or not, he refuses to make jingoistic arrogance the centerpiece of his foreign policy, which is also a giant leap towards global peace.

If a research biologist uncovered an extremely promising cure for cancer, leaving the medical community giddy with excitement and landing the discovery on the cover of every news magazine, that scientist would be a slam dunk for the Nobel Prize in Medicine even before a single human patient had been cured. Yes, the discovery is itself an achievement and I'm not arguing that it's perfectly analogous to President Obama's Peace Prize, but it would still be an award based its promise of a yet unrealized benefit. Moreover, there is precedent for the Peace Prize to be awarded based on hope for the future as opposed to a completed accomplishment. Finally, the political right can't simultaneously argue that President Obama has ruined America by doing this, that and the other in his foreign policy and that he has not yet done anything. It seems to me that either he's done something or he's done nothing. If these critics are to avoid being dismissed out of hand, they must be consistent and not let their hatred contradict itself.

Lead, Follow or Get out of the Way

The post's title is probably my favorite Thomas Paine quote. It enjoyed new life and widely came into the public consciousness as a commercial tagline when Lee Iacocca was running Chrysler. It's certainly much more elegant than its modern counterpart, which because of its crudeness I won't repeat here, but suffice it to say that it rhymes with "knit or get off the cot." Paine's words should be a bare minimum standard for any elected official, and failure to adhere to them should automatically disqualify him or her for re-election. If this standard were applied, the sad and shameful truth is that a lot of familiar faces on Capitol Hill would disappear.

Let's get a couple of things straight. First, simply obstructing the problem solving efforts of others while offering little or nothing in the way of your own solutions is not to be celebrated as dissent or the sort of checks and balances the Constitution envisioned. The Monty Python crew understood this when they pointed out the following distinction, "Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes." If you're only capable of offering the equivalent of contradiction and not a compelling argument, then we neither need nor want your input and we'll let those with something of value to add carry the day. Far too many in both chambers of Congress, especially the Senate, are failing to do the job for which they're accepting a paycheck. In many cases, if they practiced law the way they practice lawmaking they would be disbarred.

Secondly, the world is an imperfect place and, thus, simply finding fault with someone else's plan means nothing. With respect to health care reform, for instance, every proposal has its own set of problems and doing nothing at all would eventually be catastrophic. You add absolutely nothing to the dialogue if you only point out costs or other shortcomings without demonstrating that your idea, loss for loss, is better overall.

Finally, this should apply not only to lawmakers but also to the general marketplace of ideas. My patience with those who offer nothing but negativity has been exhausted. I could eventually bankrupt someone who took the following bet, turn on Rush Limbaugh at a random point during his show. If he's saying anything positive about right wing politics or anything else, I owe you $20; if he's simply spewing venom, you owe me $1. I recently posted a piece about our demons and better angels. Rush's world is composed almost exclusively of demons. He is to anger and hatred what Richard Simmons is to exercise for the corpulent elderly - no one works harder to promote it. I'm also out of patience with Obama haters. Predictably, the people beaming with schadenfreude when Obama failed to secure the Olympics for Chicago claimed last week that he didn't have the international star power people thought he had. Today those same people are fuming that he was awarded the Nobel peace prize solely because he has international star power! They don't care that they're vulnerable to the form shattering question, were you lying then or are you lying now? All that matters is that they get to hate, mock and scorn.

Fatal Abstraction

The parade of man's inhumanity to man continues. A recent victim was a 16 year old student from Chicago, beaten to death by a mob of other teens using lumber, fists and feet. Ironically, this chilling event provides fodder to both sides of the gun control debate. It supports the NRA claim that guns don't kill people; people kill people, but it also validates the gun control position that people tend to fight with whatever weapons are at their disposal and it's therefore exceedingly unwise to maximize the convenience and ease of killing rather than bruising one another. We'll call it a draw and I'll move on to what I really want to talk about. I want to look at why we seem to have so much animosity toward one another. Although the horrifying rate of cold-blooded murder on the meanest streets of our inner cities is lower in the tonier zip codes, it still feels like half of this country despises the other half, and the level of ill will we're harboring must be dialed down for this to be a healthy civilization.

That said, I can't help but wonder how much we actually dislike one another. Yes, the level of disdain that has permeated our discourse is inexcusable, but the silver lining in this mess may be that we hate much more in the abstract and much less in actual human interaction. We fire off much more vitriolic salvos at abstractions of things we don't like than we do at their concrete counterparts. Across the globe throughout history we've seen instances where large groups of people truly hated one another and every day was a bloodbath waiting to happen. Mercifully, this is not our current circumstance. Please don't get me wrong; our sorry state of affairs where civility has been bludgeoned to death has some serious consequences and we need to reverse this course, but there is a critical difference between extremely bad manners and extremely bad blood. I wouldn't want a broken index finger, but as problems go, it can hardly be compared to a broken spine.

The prescription lies in seeing the humanity in ourselves and others. Whether liberal or conservative, black or white, Muslim or Jew, gay or straight, we need to see the value and dignity in all human life. This is not holding hands and singing Kumbaya; this is self-evident common sense we would immediately see if we could get our collective head out of the orifice in which it never belonged in the first place. When we become an angry mob we lose touch with our own humanity and conscience. That's how otherwise civilized people commit savagery like the example cited at the top of this post. When we fail to see the humanity in others we are not only capable of unspeakable atrocities, but we also tend to be cruel in ways we sometimes don't even realize. We humiliate and demean others by, among other things, denying their full rights of citizenship and treating them as less than full-fledged human beings.

It's not hard to rise above this and take the high road; anyone can do it. Look at the example of Dick Cheney. Why would this poster boy for neo-conservatism support gay marriage? Because 40 year old Mary Cheney is not a nameless, faceless lesbian but his beloved daughter and mother of his grandson and mother-to-be of a second baby due next month. She is a woman committed to the love of her life and she has hopes and dreams like any other man's daughter. He wants her to have the same opportunity for happiness and fulfillment that any father would want for his children. For the former V.P. the issue will always have a human face. Sadly, until we can learn this simple lesson, senseless bloodshed will continue because the victims were not perceived as human beings, but as abstractions that fell prey to someone's inner demons.

Will the Real John McCain Please Step Up

After the tragic loss of Ted Kennedy, we are in dire need of a statesman to step up and help shape the country's future. No one seems eager to fill this vacuum of real leadership in Congress, but I can envision the possibility of John McCain donning the Lion's mantle. Those who know me may be surprised that I would identify him as a candidate but hear me out. Let's look at some of the reasons why this makes sense and some obstacles that could prevent it. We need someone who, regardless of personal ideology, can work with people across the political spectrum to get things done. We need someone with the steely courage to stand up for what's right even in the face of savage attacks, and we need an honest broker who can not only speak truth to power, but also speak truth to ignorance, which can actually be harder than confronting power.

Apart from these general characteristics of a statesman, there are other factors that pertain to our current circumstances that could make McCain the right choice. For one thing, the Democrats are very well represented at the moment and perhaps a Republican who is willing to work across the aisle despite personally being fairly conservative could help end the opposition for opposition's sake that has created the public's nearly universal contempt for Congress. Even more importantly, only a strong and at least fairly conservative Republican can wrest control of that party from Rush Limbaugh and his ilk who currently hold sway. May God have mercy on us all if those vipers continue to wield such power.

McCain's credentials for heroism in service of his country are bulletproof. I can't fathom the courage it took to remain in North Vietnamese captivity rather that accepting early release under circumstances he believed to be inappropriate. Likewise, he has a history of working on a bi-partisan basis to pass important legislation, and his national reputation was built in large measure by "straight talk" or speaking the truth regardless of possible political fallout. Also, many believe that Ted Kennedy dedicated his life to becoming one of the country's greatest senators only after his bid to become president was unsuccessful. This parallel may also be cause for optimism. Finally, McCain has publicly condemned "agents of intolerance" from the religious right, and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have shown very public disdain for him because his brand of conservatism is not that of the vicious, fire-breathing hate merchant.

While all of this is encouraging, there are some serious problems that must be corrected before his ascent is possible. The John McCain of late is not the man celebrated above. I fully understand the reality of national politics, but to be the one who can contribute so much to a country crying out for courageous leadership, Senator McCain must repudiate some of the things he has recently embraced. Anyone who is to be taken seriously as a straight talker on controversial public issues must issue nothing less than an unequivocal, full-throated denunciation of his former running mate's reckless idiocy on health care, just as he did with Congressman Wilson's outburst. Unfortunately, Senator McCain has not only failed to distance himself from former Governor Palin's nonsense, he has thrown his integrity under the "Straight Talk Express" by basically defending it. Unless and until he is willing to go back to condemning agents of intolerance and other offensive elements of his party's base and give the American people a welcome dose of candor, he will simply be one voice from the minority party rather than the man who can take his place in history among our greatest senators. Will the real John McCain please stand up and allow the possibility that the great statesman we so desperately need can step up.

Calling All Angels

This post is named after a Jane Siberry song that was used in the movie Pay it Forward to provide foreground music for the film's powerful ending scene. However, I'm really using the word angels to refer to our "better angels" as Lincoln did in his first inaugural address, about five weeks before Fort Sumter was fired upon. These were the closing words of that speech, "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory...will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

The battle between our demons and our better angels is one that is constantly being waged within each of us on a personal level, and by our society on a broader level. Over the long haul our better angels tend to prevail, at least on a societal level, but how much misery we inflict upon ourselves and one another in the interim depends on how much we indulge our demons. I'm saddened by the way we have given in to our worst selves lately. There was a lesson in The Karate Kid that, while given in reference to martial arts, can just as easily be applied to politics or how we shape our society. Mr. Miyagi's said, "Karate here" (pointing to his head); "karate here" (pointing to his heart); "karate never here" (pointing to the pit of his stomach). Sadly, we are going in the opposite direction with intellectual rigor, compassion and empathy too often being unseated by anger and bile as the locus of our public discourse.

What ever happened to the benefit of the doubt? Right now, if a statement can be taken two ways, one of them benign and one not, we not only assume the worst, but we take it and run with it, attaching a series of things that will follow as a logical consequence, then scream at the top of our lungs, we're all doomed, doomed I say, doomed!! Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are literally making their living at the moment by swearing that an Obama administration means nothing less than literally the complete and utter annihilation of everything America has ever been. While most of us, even thoughtful conservatives who disagree with the president, can laugh off the absurd hyperbole, the number of people who have come unglued by the endless ranting of doomsayers is probably in the millions. Fox News Channel should change its motto from "Fair and Balanced" to "Keeping Angry White People Angry Since 1996." Of course, Fox News has branched out and they now keep angry white people angry and scared.

I'll leave you with an illustration of my point. We grew up venerating Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Now imagine Obama saying the same thing. Talk radio hosts and listeners would be in a blind rage, and in some cases literally crying, over this indisputable proof that Obama's true agenda is to dismantle the America our forefathers fought and died for. Here's one possible example of the blathering, "See, this is what I've been warning you about ladies and gentleman! This radical communist is showing his true colors. This guy wants to throw out 230 years of the rugged individualism that made this country the greatest the world has ever known. Comrade Obama doesn't want you to keep the fruits of your labor that you so richly deserve from your blood, sweat and tears! He wants you to ask yourselves what you can do to contribute to his statist agenda. I swear to you ladies and gentleman if we don't stand up and stop this radical now, the American dream will be dead and the country we love will no longer exist." Kennedy's words would be the same whether spoken by him in 1961 or by Obama 2009, but the meaning we would give them depends on whether we accept the translation of our demons or our better angels. The choice is ours.

Enemies Foreign and Domestic

Between the big political stories and the eighth anniversary of the barbaric 9/11 attacks, which were nothing less than an assault on civilization itself, this has been quite a week. There's actually a common thread running through all of it if you consider the words, "Yes, we've seen it before but never like this." We had experienced acts of war, terrorist attacks, and even a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center before September 11, 2001, but nothing like what we witnessed on that horrible day. Similarly, the political stories had certain historical parallels, but as a matter of degree, they were unprecedented. People were so profoundly affected by the events of eight years ago that my words can add nothing to the dialogue, but I would like to discuss the other stories.

Presidents often address schoolchildren, and though it's properly seen as an honor and privilege to have the president speak to you, it's frequently accompanied by partisan complaints. When Republican presidents do it Democrats cry political campaigning masquerading as service to our youth, and when Democratic presidents do it Republicans cry foul in the same way. But once again, yes, we've seen it before but not like this. Some people across the country were furious, making wild, often patently false, accusations and some school districts refused to show the address even though the full text of the thoroughly inoffensive speech was given in advance. Some critics were enraged because the department of education prepared a lesson plan at all, and some were apoplectic because an earlier version of that plan included an exercise where students write a letter outlining how they can help the president achieve his education goals.

Not only is that letter writing exercise exactly what George H.W. Bush suggested when he addressed students, but it's a perfectly valid lesson extending exercise that promotes critical thinking and active learning. The lesson plan was prepared by some of the country's top teachers and their big mistake was in not hate-proofing it. This is understandable; Americans are by nature optimistic, but teachers are especially so. They simply don't understand the cesspool of darkness in which the hearts and souls of some of these critics reside. Sadly, they have now learned the hard way and America is a little bit uglier for it. Speaking of which, the other big story was Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) openly shouting "You lie!" at the president from the House floor. We have seen partisan rumbling and undercurrents at similar events but once again, yes, we've seen it before but never like this. Even worse, talk radio was upset that he apologized for what every lawmaker of any stripe would call a breach for which an apology would be required.

It's easy to understand the enemy from without that cravenly attacked us eight years ago, but we desperately need to address the ever increasing corrosion from within. As Walt Kelly said via his Pogo comic strip, "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us."

You Can't Fix Stupid...or Can You?

As football coaches are fond of saying, "You can't fix stupid." Until very recently I have labored under the presumption that these words are true. I'm only now beginning to question the wisdom of this maxim, and only because I think the very notion of stupidity may need to be examined more closely. Obviously, there is an important difference between ignorance and stupidity, but there may also be a critical distinction between different types of stupidity.

Ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge. Being unaware of something doesn't necessarily indict someone's intellect. I'm not smarter than Stephen Hawking because I know my Aunt Barbara's phone number and Dr. Hawking doesn't. Let's say you can't identify the color puce because it's a shade so esoteric that crayola never even included it in the giant box with the built-in sharpener. (You know you exist on the fringe when you're excluded while Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber get seats at the table). Seeing something puce identified as such will forever eliminate your ignorance. On the other hand, let's say you refuse to accept the idea that limes are green, even though you concede that they're the same color as grass and that grass is green. In that case, we have stupidity rather than ignorance because you have all the required facts but you lack the ability to process them.

Thus, conventional wisdom would argue that ignorance can be very easily erased while stupidity is an intractable problem. I want to challenge this to an extent by suggesting that there are two types of stupidity, one which conforms to this reasoning and one which doesn't. I'll call them Type A and Type B. Someone with Type A stupidity was born that way and pretty much all you can do is put a paper hat on him and wish him well. He's as incapable of sophisticated thought as I am of bench pressing 300 lbs. Type B stupidity is another matter altogether. This phenomenon occurs when fear, rage, hatred or any combination thereof hijacks and paralyzes a well-functioning brain, rendering it as feckless as that of a low-grade moron. This has been occurring lately with disturbing frequency.

Take the example of Sean Hannity and Frank Luntz shortly after President Obama's address to Congress. They talked about how the president called insurance executives bad people (about 4:05 remaining in the video clip for those checking the link) because he said, referring to a series of current problems with insurance, "Insurance executives don't do this because they're bad people; they do it because it's profitable." No one with an IQ above 75 would draw that conclusion from those words unless he or she was stricken with acute Type B stupidity. Unless we can retreat from the brink, this will become more commonplace as people, particularly from the right wing grow increasingly unhinged.

Here's the good news, we'll eventually regain our bearings and settle back into being a country that's not the embarrassment I'm watching on my television night after night. My entire point is that this temporary or Type B stupidity is easily curable. The moment one decides not to give into the madness, the demons are automatically exorcised and the mind regains it's full ability to function. You can fix (some forms of) stupid.

The Uncivil War

For those of you who find it odd that flammable and inflammable mean the same thing, here's another linguistic irony: Two of the worst instances of our country being torn apart at the seams are The Civil War of the mid 19th Century and what I call the "The Uncivil War" of the early 21st Century. I've lived through the "War on Poverty", "The War on Drugs", "The War on Terror", and now it appears, "The War on Civility" or The Uncivil War. Throughout our history, we've criticized our leaders and institutions, often harshly, but what we've witnessed recently is beyond the pale. Yes, in protests or while venting in private rants, many of us are guilty of saying some remarkably intemperate things. God knows I'm guilty of more than my share. It is, however, very different to have those who posture as responsible spokespeople acting in such a conspicuously irresponsible manner.

I need to clarify that the loss of civility I'm bemoaning doesn't merely relate to politeness or the tone of political discourse, but rather to substance. We have lost the restraint that marks a civilized society. Our disagreements have become back alley brawls where absolutely nothing is off-limits. We've shamelessly lost our sense of decency. You may recall that the beginning of the end of McCarthyism came when someone finally stood up and openly chastised Senator McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, Sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" We desperately need a similar moment now. We need leaders with the courage and integrity to stand up and say, "Stop it!"

We are poisoning the well of our democracy with dishonest and scurrilous attacks and we need to stop it immediately. A recent poll showed that only 42% of Republicans were satisfied that President Obama was born in the United States. This is not the tin foil hat wearing lunatic fringe; this also includes mainstream Americans who have been so conditioned by a relentless stream of fear, hatred and lies from right wing media and even some prominent Republicans to automatically swallow any negative claim about this president. The latest tempest in the latest teapot is the flap over the president's address to schoolchildren. The chairman of the Florida Republican Party condemned it as socialist indoctrination even though there wasn't a shred of evidence to support his fraudulent claim.

There is an old saying: Fool me once, shame on you (for being dishonest); fool me twice, shame on me (for being a chump). Well, shame on both of you, and knock it off. We have serious problems to solve, and we need all hands on deck. We simply can't afford the luxury of indulging reckless fantasies that serve to splinter our society at a time when we desperately need cooperation. We're better than this and we will certainly rise above it one day. The only open question is how much more of this disgrace we'll have to endure before we grow up and say, "Enough!"

A Modest Proposal

Earlier this week, Vermont struck a blow for equality and basic decency when it legalized same-sex marriage. Coincidentally, I have been meaning to post something on this subject after reading a piece on PollingReport.com. Presuming that none of you shares my dorkish love of statistical analyses, I'll summarize the article for you by saying that all indicators suggest that majority acceptance of same-sex marriage is very likely in the near future. Although Vermont is a very progressive state, this case is still notable because the marriage law came from the legislature and not a court decision insisting that people's rights must not be abridged. The Polling Report analysis put support for same-sex marriage at slightly above 40%, but based on the research I've done, many polls show that roughly 1/3 of the public favors gay marriage, 1/3 wants no legal recognition for same-sex couples, and 1/3 wants civil unions or something along those lines. It is this third group I want to discuss as the potential key to ending the battle once and for all.

In the near term, those staunchly opposed to any accommodation at all for these couples are unlikely to change. Even more so, those who believe in equal rights for all are extremely unlikely to change. Yes, we may lose the occasional stray, sometimes based on a claim of "finding Jesus". Of course if someone would deny a fellow human being this basic shot at happiness for that reason, then Jesus must have been found while hiding in that person's colon, but I digress. Getting back to the civil union people, or as I like to call them, those who slept through social studies while the rest of us learned about the folly of the "separate but equal" doctrine found in Plessy v. Ferguson, I think a modest proposal just might bring about the critical mass needed to move us forward. This group understands that loving, committed gay couples deserve the same rights, privileges and immunities granted to traditional married couples, but they think the term "marriage" should be exclusively conferred upon couples consisting of one man and one woman. Let's discuss my proposal.

If it's really just the noun "marriage" or the verb "marry" providing the bone of contention, we can bridge the gap and bring everyone a little closer together with simple wordplay punning on the dual meaning of the word gay. I propose that gay couples forbidden to "marry" can now "merry" one another. If you don't like them merrying, can they "Mary"? Before you say no, think of the ancillary benefits. Even homophobes should love this considering the countless hours of fun they have referring to gay men by female names. For instance, "Hey, did you hear about Tom and Stephen? (now in a mocking falsetto) They're getting Maryed" If you listen closely, you can almost hear the Beavis and Butt-head laughter that would follow, before being drowned out by the din of the monster truck rally they're attending.

For those who don't see the point of this exercise, I can explain it. A significant portion of the population, enough to block fair treatment for same-sex couples, is doing so because they think the word marriage should be very narrowly defined but society should not withhold basic rights from couples who don't qualify for their definition of marriage. If we say that those who can't "marry" can "merry" or "Mary" then we bring into sharp focus and put a very fine point on the claim that they have chosen to stake out and defend a distinction without a difference, while the cruelty of demanding second class status for these loving unions is very real. People would then be forced to face the reality that either this is a silly fight over semantics, or perhaps these people don't really believe that gay couples deserve the same rights despite lip service to the contrary. Forcing these people to confront that head-on is probably a very important step in the right direction.

Don't Despair; Churchill Was Right

Winston Churchill once quipped, "The United States invariably does the right thing after having exhausted every other alternative." Left-handed compliment or not, I actually find comfort in those words. We're sometimes late to take our rightful place among the forward thinking, advanced nations of the world, but I believe we'll always get there. In the final analysis, that's what matters most. Let's look at this in the context of capital punishment and our health care system.

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that we could no longer execute the mentally retarded. Then in 2005, in Roper v. Simmons the Court ruled that we couldn't execute those who committed their crimes as juveniles. These are welcome examples of better late than never, but the stumbling path we took to get there certainly supports Churchill's assertion. From the 1980s forward, capital punishment of juvenile offenders separated the U.S. from literally every other country on earth we would consider civilized with respect to human rights. Indeed, except for China and a couple of African counties with dreadful human rights records, it left us with no peers whatsoever except for those we tend to scorn as savage backwaters of Islamic fundamentalism. The message here is that even when things look bleak, we will eventually come around.

With respect to the health care controversy that remains front and center, we currently have a problem that will eventually become a catastrophe if we do nothing but snipe at one another rather than fixing it. This is perhaps the one and only point of universal agreement among all reasonable, well-informed parties no matter where they stand on the proposed reforms. If the current proposals are wrong, then introduce something else and let's debate it. No side has a monopoly on wisdom. It would be a shame to squander this opportunity, particularly if we do so for no better reason than one side's desire to drill a hole on the left side of our collective boat, while they stand on the right side and high-five each, ignoring the seeping water as they celebrate their Pyrrhic victory. There is, however, good news. History has shown us that Churchill was right; even if we can't figure out what to do now, we will eventually find the solution before it's too late. When we do, we will have cast off the distinction of being the only modern, industrialized country that didn't adequately insure all of its citizens, just as we are no longer the only such country to carry out executions that are widely considered barbaric.

One Nation Indivisible

A recent Facebook poll asked if the words "under God" should be omitted from the Pledge of Allegiance. While I really wish they were never put there in the first place, since we've had the Pledge in its current form for more than 50 years, it's probably too late to excise those words now. The firestorm and widespread lunacy that would follow this comparatively trivial action would make the cost of doing so prohibitive. If you think the right wing is in high dudgeon now, you ain't seen nothing yet!

The original Pledge, written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a socialist and Baptist pastor read as follows: "I Pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible, with liberty and Justice for all." In the 1920s, over Bellamy's objections, the Pledge was changed to include the words United States of America. Finally, after a six-year campaign coinciding with the Korean War and the constant fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, the phrase "under God" was inserted in 1954. Lobbyists argued convincingly that patriotic speeches made by godless communists sounded too much like our Pledge as it then stood.

First of all, I'm still not sure exactly what "under God" means. Yes, I get that it's a vague reference somehow tying our country to God, unlike them godless commies, but what does the phrase really mean? Under God's command and control? God's law? God's watchful eye? Does it mean under God physically, because as we all know God sits on a throne, which in turn sits on a cloud? Since we never aspired to be a theocracy and I doubt we want a monument to the stunning lack of imagination that compels us to believe God has furniture, I'm not sure what legitimate purpose is served by adding the phrase.

More importantly, this alteration of the Pledge troubles me for a few reasons. First, the colossal irony of quite literally splitting up "one Nation indivisible" in order to inject something as divisive as religion would be hilarious if it weren't disturbing. We had already seen Supreme Court cases in which forcing children to recite the Pledge and/or salute the flag ran afoul of some devout American Christians' religious beliefs. That alone, if common sense and casual observation weren't enough, should have taught us that pushing one religious tradition on a pluralistic society is antithetical to the cause of indivisibility. Secondly, I don't like this change to the Pledge against the backdrop of the Cold War. The looming specter of war being married to the belief that God is on my side against the infidel chills me to the bone. I don't like the "Jesus loves me but He can't stand you" crowd viewing their weapons of mass destruction as the right arm of the Lord for the same reason that I don't like suicide bombers.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

A few hours ago, Senator Ted Kennedy lost his battle with brain cancer. The "Lion of the Senate", despite being a child of wealth, power and privilege, was one of the best friends that the poor, the powerless and the underprivileged would ever know. He was a tireless and singularly effective advocate in the Senate for those who sought nothing more from their country than the justice for all that it purports to offer.

The study in contradictions that is Senator Edward Moore Kennedy extends well beyond being powerful yet devoting his career to fighting for the little guy. He was one of the last unreconstructed liberals in the Senate, yet no one was more effective at reaching across the aisle and cooperating with conservative Republicans to get things done. Also, despite whatever shortcomings he may have had in his personal behavior, he was revered by other Senators of every political stripe for being a man of his word. If he made a deal, he stuck to it. While that may sound unremarkable, it's a sad truth that unflagging integrity like that is all too rare in or out of Congress (but especially in).

For his work on health care, civil rights, education, and his efforts to improve the lives of people with disabilities, those earning minimum wage, and the disenfranchised who asked for nothing more than to be treated fairly, America owes Senator Kennedy an enormous debt of gratitude.

Rest in peace, Senator -- and thank you.

Demagogues, Death Panels and Dunces

The now infamous warning that a government health care system would be "downright evil" largely because of its "death panel", was given to us by Sarah Palin, the former Governor and current dear God, would you please just go away already! of Alaska. This should take its rightful place in the Fear-Mongering Hall of Shame beside the image Joe McCarthy holding a piece of paper he claimed to be a list of 205 known communists working in the State Department. Unfortunately, in times such as these, when anxiety is running rampant, ridiculous claims gain traction. Forget the people who are born gullible and will die gullible, when there is widespread insecurity, even more discerning people are susceptible to being terrified of whatever bogeyman du jour is being injected into the conversation. There will always be a lunatic fringe making wild accusations, but in better times, we laugh them off and broadly agree that when we need serious thinkers to weigh in on complicated issues, such people are up way past their bedtime and should be sent upstairs while the grownups figure things out.

There is nothing wrong with honest disagreement, in fact, while discord may feel uncomfortable at times, we are much better off because we have people vehemently pushing conflicting ideas, allowing society to ultimately sort out their respective merits. Demagoguery, however, is another matter altogether. We should give no quarter to people who know the truth but feign ignorance in order to exploit the feeble-minded and people whose ability to think clearly has been hampered by fear. The demagogues have come out in force concerning a provision that allows health insurance to pay for physician counseling regarding end of life decisions. Politicians who look people in the eye and suggest this is designed for the wholesale slaughter of the elderly and sick are stupid if they don't know better, dishonest if they do. So, which is it?

In 2003 the Senate passed legislation that, among other things, provides for paying physicians for counseling with respect to end of life decisions. The bill received 54 votes, 42 of them Republican. Among those voting Yea was Senator Grassley of Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, who recently made headlines for more or less fueling the public's wholly unfounded fear of a provision that's roughly the same as the one he voted for a few years ago. He's not stupid; he's just counting on you to be stupid.

Now let's look at Sarah Palin's 2008 proclamation of Healthcare Decisions Day, designed to encourage doctors and others to inform people and increase the number of citizens with advance directives regarding end of life decisions. Of course, to be fair, I have read Palin's infamous Facebook rant, and the basis for her accusation may not be the controversial end of life counseling provision. She may very well have just made the whole thing up in her head. She simply declared that the government would refuse to pay for care, and that less productive people would be dragged before the death panel for a thumbs up or thumbs down. It may be unfair to accuse her of deliberately misleading people. She may simply lack the intellect required for meaningful understanding of a complicated issue. There is certainly more than ample evidence that she is entitled to the benefit of the doubt on that score.

Game On

There was a West Wing rerun on Bravo this morning that in some ways fits current events. In that episode, entitled "Game On", fictional President Bartlett was preparing for, then participating in, a debate with his Republican challenger. A great deal of time and energy was devoted to picking out the right tie and trying to find 10-word sound bites for complicated issues. The idea was to cultivate broad superficial support and offend as few as possible. Senior staff, however, feared that this "Uncle Fluffy" approach would be a mistake. To his staff's delight, the president went after his opponent hammer and tong, and ultimately showed why he was the better candidate. President Bartlett pointed out that instances of absolute right and absolute wrong are rare and almost always include body counts. There are few un-nuanced moments in leading a country that's way too big for 10-word answers. We later learn that polls showed no matter what he did, President Bartlett would be seen as arrogant. With nothing to lose, he was free to be himself without fear or consequence.

That should be a lesson for both President Obama and his opponents. If Republicans choose to favor misinformation and demagoguery over acting in good faith, then the president will have no incentive to participate in the charade that the other side of the aisle, as a whole, is interested in serving the interest of the American people on this issue, as they will have chosen instead to deliberately mislead and frighten an already unsettled populace for their own Machiavellian gain. Those who tacitly endorse the lies in the hope of reaping some benefit are every bit as guilty as those who spread them. Still, the most important word above is "if". Unless the president can be certain that all hope of reasonable cooperation is lost, something as big as health care reform shouldn't be done on a purely partisan basis.

For what it's worth, I still can't believe what I'm seeing. I feel as though I'm watching the chess club kid with the taped up glasses and the pocket protector adorning his 30 inch chest somehow managing to bully the biggest guy on the football team. Democrats hold the White House and significant margins in both the House and Senate, yet, perhaps out of force of habit, they are cowering in the corner begging not to be stuffed in a locker. However, should they elect to fight back and fight to win, they can make the Republicans painfully regret the day they thought the "death panel" gambit was a good idea. It entails some risk, but again, not if there is nothing to lose.

The Game Is Easy from the Cheap Seats.

I can't seem to get off the topic of the health care debate, perhaps because it's brought larger issues to the fore. I'm bothered by those who have become whipped into a frenzy, admonishing elected officials to read the Constitution, as though it contained a bright-line prohibition against health care reform. These people are apparently operating on the premise that the federal government is forbidden to do anything not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. This must also mean that spending taxpayer money on microphones for the House and Senate chambers, or on coffee for cabinet meetings is unconstitutional since the Constitution is silent on both electronic sound reinforcement and hot beverage service.

As I have said in earlier posts, people may very well have a legitimate beef with what's being proposed, and those who are capable of understanding complex issues should by all means bring their objections to light. However, 220 years of history and common sense suggest that the Constitution contains certain broad principles and not just an exhaustive list of precisely what the government can do. This makes our democracy great, but also challenging. Since it's also true that broad language is not a blank check for unlimited federal power, we have to exercise judgment, and a quick glance at the inside of the box top won't always reveal the clear and indisputable answer. Sadly, this is lost on some people just as the difference between periwinkle and teal is lost on Stevie Wonder.

Pop quiz: Which state did Thomas Jefferson represent at the Constitutional Convention? For those of you who said Virginia, thanks for playing our game; we have some lovely gifts for you backstage. It's a trick question. Jefferson wasn't there; he was in France. That hasn't stopped people from quoting him as a framer of the Constitution, and worse, the definitive word on exactly what the framers meant. Jefferson was an ardent supporter of strong states and a weak central government, while others, such as Alexander Hamilton, were believers in a strong federal government. Jefferson was brilliant, but very much a partisan regarding the power of the central government and his strong opinions are certainly not the final word on contentious issues ultimately resolved by compromise.

Apart from being endlessly quoted by those who are against the proposed health care reform, Jefferson is relevant to this discussion for a couple of reasons. First, there was a protester in New Hampshire outside President Obama's town hall meeting. He had a gun strapped to his leg and a sign saying it was time to water the tree of liberty. This is a reference to Jefferson's quote that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." That is a chilling image when you consider how feverishly the right wing media have worked to terrify the simple minded and inflame the passions of the already angry and frustrated. I see this as the most monumentally irresponsible smear campaign since the Red Scare of McCarthyism.

While I understand how easy it is to foment irrational thought and behavior during trying and uncertain times, I'm still perplexed by some things I've seen. For instance, most or all of us have seen footage of the man warning Senator Specter that God is "Gonna judge you and the rest of your damn cronies up on the Hill -- and then you will get your just desserts." I don't know what Arlen Specter has done in his life, but I know that if my immortal soul were imperiled, it wouldn't be because I wanted all citizens of the richest country on earth to have appropriate access to health care. My search for the New Testament passage in which Jesus commands us to be greedy and selfish or face eternal damnation has thus far been in vain.

Getting back to Jefferson, when he was President and actually had to govern, he was faced with a quandary. To make a long story short, there were great concerns about Napoleon controlling the Port of New Orleans. Jefferson wanted that land or at least a guaranteed right to freely navigate the Mississippi. He wound up buying land from France for $15 million, doubling the size of the country at the time. The Louisiana Purchase gave us what is essentially the middle third of the current United States. Here's Jefferson's problem: He knew it was a no-brainer since he was prepared to go as high as $10 million for a relatively tiny piece of land, and for only $5 million more he could make the deal of the century. However, he had always railed against the central government overstepping its expressly granted authority, and here was the mother of all examples in the young country's history.

This provides us with the object lesson that the game is easy from the cheap seats. Waxing philosophical is easy; governing a democracy is hard. Jefferson swallowed his pride and made the deal. Now I'm neither advocating doing something wrong because there is a potential payoff, nor suggesting that inviolable principles should be sacrificed on the altar of expediency, but sometimes when tough choices have to be made, careful inspection reveals shades of gray that appear as only black and white to casual observers.

Emotion over Reason

When the betting line opened this morning, Emotion was a 16 1/2 point favorite over Reason. That merely reflects the way we human beings are wired. In the book Freakinomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, the authors cite Peter Sandman, who makes his living essentially getting people who are freaking out to calm down or getting people who are calm to freak out, depending on who is signing his check. Mr. Sandman (bring me a dream - I know, too easy but I couldn't help myself) deals in risk communication, and his formula is that risk = hazard (i.e. real danger) + outrage. When hazard is high and outrage is low, people underreact; when hazard is low and outrage is high, people overreact. Thus, the guy who tips the scales at 395 and whose blood pressure rivals that of a giraffe has little fear of the heart attack that is very likely in his future, but he is terrified of the dirty bomb Osama bin Laden might unleash on his remote trailer park, killing all 419 residents.

Please understand, I am absolutely, positively NOT suggesting that one side of the health care debate is based on reason while the other is based on mushy headed emotion. Both sides have compelling, well-reasoned arguments, and both sides also appeal to emotion as well as logic. However, the momentum shift in the debate seems to be based more on emotion, rage, anger, and particularly fear than on cogency. I think that's unfortunate -- predictable, but unfortunate nonetheless. Proponents of the plan have been put back on their heels playing defense, forced to counter fear and misinformation with what they claim to be the facts. Even leaving the essential and understandable element of mistrust out of the equation, in a case such as this, even if the proponents' claims were somehow provable, I fear that facts still might not have a fighting chance against misinformation heavily laden with emotion.

My father, a devout Catholic who was very much in the sanctity of life camp, chose hospice care for his final days. I was there. Though his body was weak, he held court in his bedroom all weekend as everyone came by to visit. We were laughing, enjoying one another and valuing the time we still had together. Tuesday morning he peacefully slipped away. No "death panel" had him make that decision. A health plan that allows coverage for physician counseling with respect to end of life options is no more forced genocide of the elderly than the status quo where insurance companies pay for vasectomies and tubal ligation is forced sterilization of everyone who doesn't conform to some ideal. The government already insures millions of elderly Americans, and there is no evidence whatsoever of any designs to kick Aunt Myrtle's plug out of the wall, but that is the power of emotion over reason.

The biggest winner so far in this whole sordid affair is the insurance industry. Through the miracle of "my enemy's enemy is my friend", insurance companies have pulled off a major coup. Privately, their executives must be enjoying a belly laugh as they watch the raucous applause from the same people when speakers alternately rail against the government getting involved because they just spend, spend, spend without any concern for how much debt they run up, and because they are so miserly that to save money, they will deny care to the less productive. The insurers should drop to their knees and thank God these people somehow can't see that those two things are mutually exclusive and the latter is pretty far-fetched. Checking sports, Emotion 51 Reason 9. If the insurance companies can somehow manage to be perceived as money-be-damned altruists who just want to help people, maybe the government can steal a page from their playbook. Perhaps Press Secretary Robert Gibbs should be replaced by a tiny lizard who sounds eerily like David Beckham.

Never Send a Boy to Do a Man's Job

Now, as much as ever, we need grownups to step up and lead us through some challenging times. I remain optimistic as I watch the health care reform debacle play out, but I really find some things puzzling. Why is a segment of the media celebrating rage supplanting intelligent discourse on complex issues? Although I have no idea how many times I've lost my temper, I know precisely how many times I've been proud of it. It's the same number of times I've beaten Tiger Woods at golf or been elevated to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Why would anyone dole out badges of honor to adults for stamping their feet and throwing their toys?

There is plenty of room for legitimate dissent and even anger, but someone blowing a gasket at a forum designed for an open exchange of ideas is certainly not something in and of itself to applaud. Someone who is legitimately outraged for a variety of valid reasons is in a very different position from someone who is furious because he or she swallowed a preposterous claim by a fear-mongering demagogue. With respect to the latter, none of us is totally invulnerable to being duped, but there is still a difference between falling prey to a well disguised computer virus and giving your bank account information to that "African prince" who will share his fortune with you. To anyone who is really that easy a mark, all I can say is that a fool of that magnitude and his money were lucky to get together in the first place.

We are the richest country in the world, yet our health care system has very serious problems. Moreover, we spend more on health care both in terms of raw dollars and share of GDP than many countries with better care. In short, we're paying for a new Bentley but driving a blue Yugo with one orange door. Ultimately, we would be well served by fixing health care problems, but there is a fair and reasonable argument that what is being proposed could be the wrong plan and/or done at the wrong time. That's a serious debate for serious people and all voices are welcome and encouraged.

Which brings me back to the need for grownups. The first and last quatrains of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If" seem apropos.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowances for their doubting too

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it
And--which is more--you'll be a Man my son!