Some Gave All Most Gave None

Wars call for broadly shared sacrifice. During WWII sixteen million Americans served in the armed forces; at maximum troop strength, about eight million served at once. More importantly, everyone on the home front sacrificed as well. That's what a country a war looks like even if that war isn't being fought on home soil. Civilians rationed goods because the military came first while they risked their lives defending everyone else. No one's life was unaffected by the war.

Our wars got smaller after WWII, but the Korean and Vietnam wars still had the draft so families from a broad cross section of America were asked to put their loved ones in harm's way. This is no longer the case. We haven't had a military draft since 1973, but we've sent troops to fight in conflicts large and small in the '80's, 90's, 00's and now 10's. We're increasingly asking a small few to bear what should be borne by the many. I don't want to muddy this discussion with a fiscal policy debate, but bellowing "We're a country at war!" and "Lower my taxes!" in the same breath would have been unthinkable anywhere in the world at any time in history except the United States in the 21st Century. The simultaneous belief that we're at war but shouldn't be inconvenienced by taxes, a draft or anything else betrays a troubling mindset I'll discuss in a moment, but first I want to talk about the heroic men and women who have served our country.

Whether through the old Billy Ray Cyrus song or some other source, you've probably heard the saying, "All gave some; some gave all" in reference to our war veterans. These words remind us that we owe these heroes more than we could ever repay. They have earned our support and our eternal gratitude. However, the quote only refers to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and those who paid a different price but served just as honorably. If we expand the circle to describe our entire "country at war" right now we should say, "Some gave all; most gave none."

Our military personnel put their lives on the line every day without question or hesitation. That's the code of the warrior and they view their incredible selflessness as nothing more that doing their duty. Even those who sustain severe, debilitating injuries often want to go back to their units and continue the fight! Let me repeat, we owe a debt to these heroes that is far too large to ever repay. Since the troops think only of duty and honor without regard to their own safety, we must be unwavering in our commitment to only place them in the mortal danger when absolutely necessary. To do otherwise is to hold this supreme sacrifice cheap, which would be an abomination that defies words.

While we would never deliberately treat our fighting men and women so recklessly, there's a danger to citizens clamoring for war while they have no skin in the game. People love to imperiously say, "off with their heads!" any time someone in the world displeases them, and unless those urges are tempered by the horrific reality of war, it's far too easy to violate our sacred covenant with the military by effectively regarding these precious young lives as cannon fodder.

Last month the nation closely watched the saga of Lindsay Lohan but few noticed that we also lost 65 troops in Afghanistan, which is our worst monthly loss to date. More than half of the fallen will never see a 25th birthday. We've now been in Afghanistan for nearly nine years and it's time to reevaluate the mission and what we can expect to gain in exchange for this loss of life. Supporting our troops means advocating for them because they'll never say no to risking their lives for their country. We owe them our real support, not just the token effort of slapping a $5 ribbon-shaped magnet on a $30,000 SUV.

From "I Have a Dream" to "I Have a Delusion"

What a difference 47 years can make. On this date in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his immortal "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That address helped inspire a nation to finally take on the difficult task of abolishing a deeply ingrained system of oppression and injustice. As such, it was a transformative event in the annals of American history. Today, 47 years later, right wing broadcaster Glenn Beck is holding a rally on the same site. I want to discuss some of the similarities and some of the differences between Martin Luther King and Glenn Beck.

First, with respect to the similarities, both men always seemed to make a lot of angry white people angrier, King because he threatened the unjust white stranglehold on power and Beck because deliberately provoking white fear and anger is how he makes his living. While his broadcasts may also happen to contain other elements, his principal objective is to fan the flames of wild-eyed paranoia. Removing this from Glenn Beck's show is like taking the guitar away from Jimi Hendrix.

Another similarity is that Dr. King, as a visionary, could see things that didn't yet exist such as a far more just society. One of Glenn Beck's most prominent characteristics is his unusual tendency to see things that don't exist such as secret FEMA concentration camps or how empathy leads to genocide. The former example was so wacky that Beck ultimately had to go on the air and admit these camps didn't exist. You know something is nuts if it's too far out there for Glenn Beck! That's like being too fast to be a sprinter or too beautiful to be a model -- it's hard to even fathom the concept.

With respect to differences, Dr. King always took the high road and spoke from and to the better side of human nature no matter what horrific examples of man's inhumanity to man he encountered. Martin Luther King encouraged his followers to reject bitter emotions and embrace the nobler Christian ideals of charity and compassion as they struggled to make the world a better place. Glenn Beck does the exact opposite, doing everything in his power to bring out the worst in people. Although this clip is just a piece of comedy, Lewis Black's "Glenn Back Has Nazi Tourette's" illustrates how Glenn Beck can liken anything, no matter how innocuous, to Nazism. He uses Nazi Germany because this is the most hideous nightmare the masses can easily picture. By constantly comparing whatever he dislikes to the most terrifying evil he can conjure up, he achieves his goal of injecting the maximum amount of fear and hatred into the hearts and minds of his audience.

All of this said, I watched most of today's event online and I found it pretty inoffensive. Those who said this would be apolitical proved to be right and those of us who said in effect, "yeah, right!" were wrong. I didn't see him, Sarah Palin, or anyone else say anything too obnoxious. Even if they did once or twice and I missed it, that's perfectly acceptable playing to the crowd. Seeing the rally play out as it did was like expecting a Rolling Stones concert to be full of their hits from the last 45 years, only to see them perform nothing but two hours of polkas. For those of you who missed the event altogether, here's the Reader's Digest version: Our soldiers are heroes and God is great. Except that people have differing views on religious matters, this was about as controversial as asserting that Siberia gets nippy in the winter. I expected to see something resembling the Glenn Beck Show and instead I saw an Amway rally or Come to Jesus Revival Meeting.

I hope this saner, more decent Glenn Beck is a sign of things to come.

The Danger Facing the United States of Oz

I feel as though I'm living in the Land of Oz. I see hate merchants without hearts using their "fear and smear" campaign to manipulate people who lack the brains to understand they're being duped, and an opposition refusing to openly condemn these wicked charlatans and exalt our better angels because they don't have the courage. Haters and cowards and dopes, oh my! Haters and cowards and dopes, oh my! We all bear some responsibility for this state of affairs. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me every time you open your mouth, and there's something pathologically wrong with both of us. This trend doesn't require anywhere near 100% participation to do tremendous damage, so the fact that some rise above this doesn't relieve the problem.

The general public bears the most blame, but that doesn't absolve anyone else. The least blameworthy are the "leaders" who should take principled stands but choose to be cautious instead. Yes, they should have integrity and the courage of their convictions, but if we enlist them to fight the good fight, only to crucify them for telling us the unpopular truth, we can hardly fault them for saluting us with one finger. As far as the purveyors of fear and hatred go, yes, they're despicable but we're supporting them. Rush Limbaugh is a wretched persona whose every broadcast is like an upper decker in America's toilet, but we've made him the biggest thing on radio since Fr. Coughlin broadcast his anti-Semitic screeds in the 1930's. We've always had an abundant supply of people who spew ignorance and hatred. Our demand for these shrill voices is what fluctuates, and at the moment we can't get enough. In the infancy of Obama's presidency, RNC chairman Michael Steele learned the peril of speaking the truth about Rush Limbaugh. He conceded that what Rush did was incendiary and ugly. The ensuing firestorm forced Steele to crawl on his hands and knees to kiss Rush's ring. Again, we want people to martyr themselves by speaking the truth, but we should recognize that self-preservation is a hard-wired instinct.

There are real costs to what's happening. We're unable to forge the cooperation we need to address the crises ravaging our lives. I understand that Democrats are in power and Republicans as an opposition party have different ideas. Opposition is healthy, but they're not acting as opponents; they're acting as enemies. Political opponents see things differently and offer different prescriptions to cure our ills. Political enemies are solely interested in their rivals' demise. Right now Republicans seek to destroy this administration. If President Obama says A, Republicans swear that B is the only answer. Had he said B, they would swear that A is the only answer. Lawmakers have a duty to put aside their differences and work for the public good. Deliberately prolonging the suffering of the American people is unconscionable and unforgivable.

The rampant spread of anti-Islamic bigotry is also a potentially catastrophic problem. While difficult to quantify and measure, there's a cost to poisoning our national soul. A recent Pew Research poll showed that 25% of Americans (42% of Republicans) believe local communities should be able to forbid the construction of mosques. Only 47% of Republicans believe that Muslims should have the same right to worship as other faiths! Among the majority of Republicans who would deny 1st Amendment rights to Muslims, I bet most of them scream about Obama not honoring a narrow interpretation of the Constitution. I also bet they don't see their hypocrisy. I'm troubled that as President Obama is increasingly portrayed as the bogeyman, he's also increasingly believed to be Muslim. Among Republicans, 31% say he's a Muslim and only 27% correctly identify him as a Christian.

More importantly, we have military personnel risking their lives in Islamic lands trying to stop terrorism. This is not conventional warfare where we exert force until they say Uncle. Hearts and minds are the central front in this campaign. If we continue to convey the message that Islam itself is our enemy, then we will have done to ourselves what our enemy is incapable of doing -- we will have made our failure an iron-clad guarantee. We're not there yet, but we're taking dangerously idiotic steps in that direction. Effectively telling the Islamic world that the sleazy strip club near "Ground zero" doesn't defile this sacred ground but their house of worship does is a slap in the face that should deeply offend them.

It's not too late for cooler heads to prevail and pull us back from the brink. Let's return to a United States that isn't dominated by hatred and division. That country is my home and, "There's no place like home. There's no place like home..."

America Isn't Easy; It's Not Supposed to Be

Despite the problems causing widespread suffering and anxiety across the country, our national conversation is once again being dominated by nonsense. Apart from diverting our focus from more pressing matters, I'm troubled because such issues only get so much attention because they appeal to our baser instincts and worst selves. In this case, the dust-up concerns what some are calling the "Ground Zero Mosque" or "Mosque at Ground Zero." The proposed Islamic cultural center to which they refer will include, among other things, space for Islamic prayer, which is why it's being called a mosque. However, it's not at "Ground zero." I'm not nitpicking; the implication that a mosque was being built on or at this site is no accident. It was calculated to provoke our inner demons of rage and hatred in a way that correctly identifying it as an Islamic cultural center blocks away from "Ground zero" couldn't do.

While some of the rhetoric against this project reflects ignorance or bigotry, most of the opponents are reasonable people of goodwill. They simply believe that the owners of the building have a right to build their center there but shouldn't exercise that right because the proximity to the former World Trade Center offends people's sensibilities. I'm sympathetic to their position, but I can't support it. I'm reminded of a great speech from the movie, The American President, in which fictional president Andrew Shepherd celebrates the magnificent complexity of the U.S. with these words: "America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours."

The point is that people are very often offended because others have rights; that's precisely why we have rights in the first place! We wouldn't bother to enshrine a right unless we had a legitimate fear that at some point we would try to deny someone the privileges protected by that right. This is the very reason we venerate the vision of our country's founders. They wisely foresaw the pitfalls we would encounter, and they designed a system to save us from ourselves. Just as a good parent childproofs a home with a toddler, our founding fathers rabble-proofed our emerging democracy. They understood two critical things: 1) Our passions would become inflamed and 2) inflamed passions are the mortal enemies of reason and justice. Rights are designed to safeguard our society by protecting the entitlements of the unpopular against an angry mob. Whenever we've abandoned fundamental American principles because we were scared or angry and it felt good to dispense with our core values and give in to our demons, we later looked back with shame and regret. Our visionary leaders sought to insulate us from this type of folly.

While an open celebration of Islam anywhere near "Ground zero" may feel inappropriate, unless we're prepared to blame all Muslims for the horrific acts of 0.000001% of the Islamic population, the objection doesn't hold up. They're not building the Osama bin-Laden Jihad Center and Playground (film of the terrorist training camps suggests they love monkey bars). We weren't attacked by Islam, but by a few despicable and hopelessly misguided fanatics who don't speak for over a billion people. Thus, the claims that it's like putting a swastika by the Holocaust Museum or a symbol of Japan by Pearl Harbor miss the point. The closest analogy I can come up with (also flawed) is that it's like putting a Lutheran church a few blocks from the Holocaust Museum.

Insisting that Park 51 (the actual name for the "Ground Zero Mosque") be moved sounds like saying in 1960 North Carolina, "Hey, I ain't saying them people can't eat lunch, I just think they should do it somewhere else. Race mixing our lunch counters not only goes against the Bible but it offends local sensibilities." It also reminds me of the gay rights struggle because it seems to imply that being a closeted Muslim is OK but publicly displaying your pride is offensive. Islam is not synonymous with anti-American terrorism just as Christianity doesn't equal vicious hatred of America just because the Westboro Baptists celebrate dead American soldiers with signs saying "Thank God for IEDs" and "Thank God for dead soldiers."

We're better than this and we can either figure that out now or look back in shame later.

The Obtuse Angle

To paraphrase something I read before George W. Bush's reelection, Harry Reid is toast but for a toaster. The Senate Majority Leader faces a litany of problems that should render him almost unelectable. He has low approval and high disapproval ratings with a large percentage of strong disapproval. If we also consider the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the nation, Nevada's economic woes and buyer's remorse over electing President Obama (he won the state with 55% of the vote but his current approval rating in Nevada is lower than the national average), and the fact that among Nevada's likely voters, self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals by a margin of nearly two to one, Senator Reid is in serious trouble.

Republicans were given a wide margin of error in their effort to flip this important seat. Any credible candidate would automatically become a prohibitive favorite to win simply by virtue of Reid's challenges. I'm pretty sure Nevada Republicans could have successfully run Wayne Newton. However, to a rousing chorus of "Danke Schoen" from Democrats everywhere, they chose one of the few Nevadans who could actually lose to Senator Reid. To use a baseball analogy, Republicans only had to hold onto their 10 run lead in the bottom of the 9th inning. Then they went to the bullpen for the righty, Sharron Angle.

If Reid manages to hold his seat, Republicans will learn a painful lesson about overindulging the lunatic fringe of the Tea Party, or as I call this subgroup, the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. I suppose at some point we'll get used to Sharron Angle, but for the moment her antics are still jaw-dropping. Indeed, part of me suspects that after the election we'll see a movie in the vein of Borat, at which point we'll learn that she was only toying with us. While this is unlikely, it still seems more plausible than a major party candidate for the U.S. Senate who is this bad.

I remember a sitcom episode in the 70's, in which a Ted Baxter style character (possibly Ted Baxter) was running for office and his handlers, whenever told that the candidate would be asked questions, responded with stammering trepidation, "H...hard questions?" We all laughed, but that fictional character is essentially the real Sharron Angle. I'm not exaggerating when I say that she holds "press conferences" and runs for daylight before anyone can ask a single question.

There is good reason for Sharron Angle to evade the press. Her strategy is clear: She will only speak directly to the far right and count on everyone else to vote against Harry Reid while knowing nothing about her. That would explain why she threatened to sue Senator Reid for publishing what she trumpeted on her own website as the reason to vote for her in the primary. Of course as soon as she won the primary, she wanted to erase all evidence of her positions in an effort to mislead either primary voters or general election voters by trying to sell different views to each electorate.

Among the jaw-dropping antics referred to above, she went on Fox News, an outlet very sympathetic to a right-wing candidate, but still shocked the host by proclaiming that the media should only ask the questions she wants to answer. As the stunned broadcaster sat there asking himself if she could really be that naive, she smirked and took the opportunity to twice squeeze in free plugs for her website and beg for $25 donations. This reminded me of people who would call into serious radio and television shows just so they could blurt out, "Howard Stern" and hang up. Like these puerile Stern fans, Sharron Angle is an intellectual toddler who is no more qualified to serve in the Senate than she is to play nose tackle for the Redskins.

Her outrageous positions, for instance, women are wrong to work instead of staying home to raise children, gay adoption should be illegal, teen rape victims should be forced to carry the resulting pregnancies to term, Democrats are idolaters who literally worship government as their god, etc. make good headlines but would make abysmal law. Not only does she have no new ideas, she doesn't have any that weren't already frayed around the edges 40 years ago. She brings absolutely nothing of value to the table and we can't afford to waste a Senate seat on her.