Back on February 1, 2010 I wrote a blog entitled, Tea Anyone? I wrote then that “Our country’s newest craziest political weirdos, the Tea Party or Tea Baggers as they like to call themselves, are going main stream. Initially I thought that this fringe group made up mostly of folks driven mad by our county’s election of its first black President, would get some headlines, make a fuss and hopefully wreak havoc on the Republican Party since it was Republicans who first recognized them as “credible.”
Well, look at what has happened.
The signs of a coming change in national leadership were never more evident than in 2006 when the Democratic Party took control of both the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate. The 2008 national elections, the second straight election in which the Republicans suffered a staggering defeat, left the Republican Party drained of many of its loyal supporters, those Republicans who had in the past towed the party line for the most part, even if they disagreed on some individual social issues. What remained was like crud at the bottom of a coffee pot—an angry, hateful base that resented, loathed and to some extent feared President Barack Obama and that fervently believed that the GOP had lost power because it had lost its conservative way. This new Republican base quickly branded itself the Tea Party movement and they committed themselves to ridding the GOP of those responsible for the ascendancy of a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President.
It was the Tea Party movement that convinced Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, a 30 year Republican United States Senator that he could not win the nomination of the Pennsylvania Republican Party and so he subsequently switched to the Democratic Party. It was this same movement that brought to an end, the senatorial career of Robert Bennett, an 18 year Republican Senator from Utah as that State’s GOP refused Senator Bennett the party’s nomination and it was the Tea Partiers who caused Charlie Crist, Florida’s Republican governor and current candidate for the Senate to flee the Republican Party in order to survive to the general election—knowing he could not withstand the onslaught of Mark Rubio, the Tea Party favorite in the Florida Republican primary. The Tea Party movement also got Rand Paul, son of libertarian U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky, who has so infamously stated that he would have probably not voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the nomination of little-known Joe Miller in Alaska, victorious over incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski.
And it was this same Tea Party that earlier this week engineered the utterly improbable victory of Christine O’Donnell, a right wing politician who has equated lust with adultery and claimed that her political opponents are constantly stalking her, into winning Delaware’s Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate. In doing so, she abruptly ended the stellar career of Mike Castle, two-term governor and Delaware’s U.S. Congressman for nine straight terms.
Right up to the closing of the Delaware polls, few felt that the Tea Party crowd could actually pull this one off. The race moved to the top of the Tea party’s list when Senator Murkowski crashed and burned in Alaska and with that unexpected victory, which had cost the Tea Party Express more than $600,000, all energy went into Delaware, where Mike Castle possessed many of the same establishment credentials as Murkowski.
As the Tea Party Express pulled into Delaware, the Republican establishment reacted aggressively at the nerve of the outsiders, albeit it a little too late in the primary campaign. In the end however, it was not just the Delaware Republican establishment that rallied to the defense of both Mike Castle and Michelle Rollins (the Delaware GOP pick for Congress), it was the national Republican establishment as well, particularly the likes of Karl Rove, the so-called genius behind the George W. Bush presidencies.
In the final analysis however, none of that mattered as the Castle and Rollins candidacies were poised for disaster when on the Sunday before the election, polls showed Christine O’Donnell climbing ahead, 47 to 44 percent. Glenn Urquhart was also polling well in the race for the House and we all know what finally happened, Mike Castle and Michelle Rollins won in New Castle County while downstate, they received a political drubbing, costing them both the nomination in their respective races.
Now that the political dust has settled, the national Republican infrastructure will have to make the ultimate decision—whether to support O’Donnell and Urquhart with financial resources. The polling firm that showed O’Donnell ahead just days before the vote has measured her support in the upcoming general election at 29-50 percent. Only 31 percent of Delaware voters think she is qualified to hold office and she is running 26 points behind New Castle County Executive and Democratic Senate nominee Chris Coons.
O’Donnell’s supporters will argue (almost gleefully) that she will catch the country by surprise again in November just as she did in the Republican primary. Sure enough, the worst mistake the Coons campaign could ever make would be to not take O’Donnell seriously or to view her as a candidate without any credibility. As someone who was a distant second to Mike Castle prior to the Republican primary however, no one understands how quickly events can turn against you as Chris Coons does, so that will probably not happen.
More importantly, the sentiment among general election voters seems to match up with how these voters view the Tea Party movement as a whole: visceral enthusiasm, hostility towards almost everyone but themselves and a generally isolationist mentality. Running in last week’s primary that was closed to all voters but Republicans allowed O’Donnell to campaign in a voting universe just barely narrow enough for her to pull off a victory. The November electorate will expand across the whole of the political spectrum, and even though there are a large number of angry voters out there in both parties, it is still difficult to imagine that someone with Christine O’Donnell’s image challenges, which will only get worse as the media continues to shine even more light on her, can pull of a general election victory.
To regain control of the Senate, Republicans will need to win 10 currently held Democratic seats in November. And even if they manage to convince Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman to caucus with them, and then only require nine seats to win the majority, they have been counting Delaware since Mike Castle announced his intention to run for the Senate and we all know now that just ain’t gonna happen. Color me not ready to take anything for granted and willing to work for Chris Coon’s election…….and happy, at least for Delaware!
Friday, September 24, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Today is U.S. Constitution Day. Why Celebrate It?
Before we get started, I need to correct something from last week’s blog. In that blog I mentioned U.S. Congressman John Boehner, mistakenly spelling his last name. I spelled it “Boehm.”
My apologies…….
OK, few people know what today is. That is a shame, because it is the anniversary of a remarkable event in history: the signing of the United States Constitution.
On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, held in the summer heat of Philadelphia for four long months (imagine how long it might have taken had they had air-conditioning) signed the document for which they had labored so hard to produce. During both the drafting of the Constitution and the ensuing debates over its ratification, the struggle to procure the new system of government was not an easy one. In the end however, America came down in support of what has endured as the oldest working constitution in the world today.
Because of that fact, the U.S. Constitution has a long history behind it—it is part of our American tradition and we should be proud of it. We should not respect the Constitution however simply because it is tradition. There are, after all, bad traditions. Rather, as American citizens we have a duty to understand the Constitution as fully as possible—which means understanding the principles upon which it was written.
Today, there are primarily two different understandings of our Constitution. There are those who view the Constitution as a “living document” and that what is good about the Constitution is that it is infinitely malleable, allowing itself to change as circumstances change. This interpretation was described most succinctly by the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan who wrote, “The genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.”
This interpretation has been the constitutional vehicle by which most of the social and welfare programs, as well as affirmative action and other “group rights” have been implemented. The problem with this view is that it means, ultimately, that the Constitution has no meaning. Or, rather, it means whatever we want it to mean. But then, why should anyone be bound by someone else’s understanding of the Constitution, be that someone else a judge, a Congress, or even a President?
In opposition to this idea of an “evolving Constitution” and the subsequent expansion of governmental power, some legal scholars and yes, politicians (who tend not to be very scholarly at all) have advanced the notion for a jurisprudence of “original intent.” This argument postulates that until we consciously change (or abolish) the Constitution through the amendment process, we are bound by the intentions of those who wrote and ratified the Constitution two hundred years ago—we cannot simply make the Constitution anything we darn well please.
Naturally, this position immediately raises the question: What then were the intentions of the framers of the Constitution? Here, most proponents of “original intent” have not a clue. Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, for example, has written that the liberty and rights of individual human beings have no “intrinsic worth.” And, that great bastion of strict Constitutional interpretation, Justice Scalia said in a 1997 speech that under the Constitution, minorities have rights “only because the majority determines that there are certain minority positions that deserve protection,” implying of course that if the majority so chooses, the minorities must forfeit any or all of their protections. This, in my mind at least, asserts no more than might as the measure of right, or as we used to say as kids, “Might makes right.” Whatever can be said of such arguments, in my mind at least, they certainly bear little resemblance to the arguments made by the framers of the U.S. Constitution.
For me, our Constitution was based on the idea of an unchanging human nature. That concept is best captured in the Declaration of Independence and its statement that all human beings possess equal rights by nature. The idea of equal natural rights is not only the grounds for government by consent, but also sets the limit for what the government may rightfully do. If rights precede the formation of government, the primary goal of government is to secure those rights. It cannot grant them, nor can it violate them. To achieve this, government must, in the end, protect all of us, equally, under the law.
Speaking of the Declaration’s statement of human equality, Abraham Lincoln wrote, “The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, fitly spoken which has proved an apple of gold to us. The Union, and the Constitution, is the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple, but to adorn and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple—not the apple for the picture.”
The fact that slavery was offered protection under the Constitution meant that the Constitution, and more generally the American Revolution, was incomplete. It was the principles of the Declaration however, enshrined in the Constitution, which made the elimination of slavery a moral and political necessity. In fact, only by understanding the Constitution in the light of the moral truths expounded in the Declaration of Independence can we distinguish the true principles of the Constitution from its compromises.
The “self-evident” truth of human equality and its corollary principle of individual natural rights is the basis in nature for the reasonableness and goodness of the Constitution. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist, the Constitution serves justice by its “inflexible and uniform adherence to the rights of individuals.” It is this unchanging truth that infuses a political document like the U.S. Constitution with goodness and makes the Constitution deserving of our respect and reverence.
My apologies…….
OK, few people know what today is. That is a shame, because it is the anniversary of a remarkable event in history: the signing of the United States Constitution.
On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, held in the summer heat of Philadelphia for four long months (imagine how long it might have taken had they had air-conditioning) signed the document for which they had labored so hard to produce. During both the drafting of the Constitution and the ensuing debates over its ratification, the struggle to procure the new system of government was not an easy one. In the end however, America came down in support of what has endured as the oldest working constitution in the world today.
Because of that fact, the U.S. Constitution has a long history behind it—it is part of our American tradition and we should be proud of it. We should not respect the Constitution however simply because it is tradition. There are, after all, bad traditions. Rather, as American citizens we have a duty to understand the Constitution as fully as possible—which means understanding the principles upon which it was written.
Today, there are primarily two different understandings of our Constitution. There are those who view the Constitution as a “living document” and that what is good about the Constitution is that it is infinitely malleable, allowing itself to change as circumstances change. This interpretation was described most succinctly by the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan who wrote, “The genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.”
This interpretation has been the constitutional vehicle by which most of the social and welfare programs, as well as affirmative action and other “group rights” have been implemented. The problem with this view is that it means, ultimately, that the Constitution has no meaning. Or, rather, it means whatever we want it to mean. But then, why should anyone be bound by someone else’s understanding of the Constitution, be that someone else a judge, a Congress, or even a President?
In opposition to this idea of an “evolving Constitution” and the subsequent expansion of governmental power, some legal scholars and yes, politicians (who tend not to be very scholarly at all) have advanced the notion for a jurisprudence of “original intent.” This argument postulates that until we consciously change (or abolish) the Constitution through the amendment process, we are bound by the intentions of those who wrote and ratified the Constitution two hundred years ago—we cannot simply make the Constitution anything we darn well please.
Naturally, this position immediately raises the question: What then were the intentions of the framers of the Constitution? Here, most proponents of “original intent” have not a clue. Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, for example, has written that the liberty and rights of individual human beings have no “intrinsic worth.” And, that great bastion of strict Constitutional interpretation, Justice Scalia said in a 1997 speech that under the Constitution, minorities have rights “only because the majority determines that there are certain minority positions that deserve protection,” implying of course that if the majority so chooses, the minorities must forfeit any or all of their protections. This, in my mind at least, asserts no more than might as the measure of right, or as we used to say as kids, “Might makes right.” Whatever can be said of such arguments, in my mind at least, they certainly bear little resemblance to the arguments made by the framers of the U.S. Constitution.
For me, our Constitution was based on the idea of an unchanging human nature. That concept is best captured in the Declaration of Independence and its statement that all human beings possess equal rights by nature. The idea of equal natural rights is not only the grounds for government by consent, but also sets the limit for what the government may rightfully do. If rights precede the formation of government, the primary goal of government is to secure those rights. It cannot grant them, nor can it violate them. To achieve this, government must, in the end, protect all of us, equally, under the law.
Speaking of the Declaration’s statement of human equality, Abraham Lincoln wrote, “The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, fitly spoken which has proved an apple of gold to us. The Union, and the Constitution, is the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple, but to adorn and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple—not the apple for the picture.”
The fact that slavery was offered protection under the Constitution meant that the Constitution, and more generally the American Revolution, was incomplete. It was the principles of the Declaration however, enshrined in the Constitution, which made the elimination of slavery a moral and political necessity. In fact, only by understanding the Constitution in the light of the moral truths expounded in the Declaration of Independence can we distinguish the true principles of the Constitution from its compromises.
The “self-evident” truth of human equality and its corollary principle of individual natural rights is the basis in nature for the reasonableness and goodness of the Constitution. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist, the Constitution serves justice by its “inflexible and uniform adherence to the rights of individuals.” It is this unchanging truth that infuses a political document like the U.S. Constitution with goodness and makes the Constitution deserving of our respect and reverence.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Here We Go Again….It’s the Deficit...No, No….It’s Unemployment
On September 6, 2010 President Obama’s former Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) wrote an editorial published in the New York Times entitled, “One Nation, Two Deficits.” He began his editorial with these words, “The nation faces a nasty dual deficit problem: a painful jobs deficit in the near term and an unsustainable budget deficit over the medium and long term.”
Peter Orszag, as President Obama’s first budget director helped to shape the 2009 American Recovery and Re-Investment Act (ARRA), also known as the stimulus and the health care legislation that finally passed both Houses in early 2010. He also promoted and carried out an effort by the White House to pry away from Congress some of the responsibility for making bad decisions, especially when it comes to the budget. We have all witnessed the tremendous legislative tug-of-war since the first day that President Obama assumed office, between the party of “No” and the party of in the words of Boss Godfrey of Cool Hand Luke fame, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
Peter Orszag spends a considerable amount of time talking about the soon-to-be-expired tax cuts for the wealthy. He argues that “In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether. Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it.”
His arguments however, seem to be based only on political calculations, particularly as regards the difficulty of getting Republicans and Democrats to agree on anything. His plan of extending the Bush tax cuts for an additional two years is attractive to almost everyone who is set to have their taxes increased by the expiration of the cut—a relatively small part of the American population compared to those of us who are struggling every day to make ends meet. Ironically, these tax cuts are set to end automatically, while almost every other action or outcome requires a vote in Congress.
What seems to be missing from Orszag’s editorial however is the raging policy debate which asks the question, “Why isn’t the economy actually recovering, despite the stimulus and near-zero interest rates?" Orszag seemingly assumes a strong traditional recovery will be underway by 2013. If you can’t raise taxes now because of the crimp that puts in American spending and consumption, then on what basis is it logical to think that the recovery will be in full swing in just two years? With all things being equal, I just don’t see our economy being much better by then. I wish it were so, but this economic recovery will simply not just materialize out of thin air.
On April 2, 2010 I wrote a blog, The Reality of Debt, so I won’t re-argue why debt in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but I will state that sadly enough, various political demagogues and Wall Street interests have mounted what appears to be an extremely successful campaign to convince Americans that despite persistent massive unemployment for the foreseeable future, more than 15 million Americans underwater on their home mortgages and two unnecessary wars, what we really should be worried about is America’s national debt.
It has not helped that the majority of the American media has failed to understand the basic economics or the plain math of the issue. President Obama and economic advisors (the ones John Boehm wants the President to fire) forecasts unemployment at 10, 9.2 and 8.2 percent respectively for 2010 through 2012. The rate, in their estimation, does not fall to the 5.2 percent rate it considers full employment until 2018.
The difference between 10 percent unemployment and 5.2 percent is more than seven million people without a paycheck. That also does not count the increase in millions of people involuntarily working part time, or millions who leave the labor force because they simply cannot find any work.
This state of affairs would be unacceptable in any civilized society, but it is even more outrageous in the world’s richest country. It means millions of ruined lives that will persist for decades to come in the form of increased poverty, lower educational levels, mental illness, suicide, crime and a whole host of other societal ills.
So, when we go back to the original questions, “Why has the economy not yet recovered, even with the stimulus and near-zero interest rates?” it is because the stimulus package for one thing, was too small. This fact fits the data: In 2009, taking into account the spending cuts and tax increases of state and local governments, the 700 million dollar plus stimulus was less than one percent of GDP. That is why the stimulus is estimated at only having saved somewhere around two million jobs—and that is while we are as a country down more than eight million jobs since the recession began. Consequently, the bottom line is that we NEED MORE STIMULUS not less. As heretical as it might sound, this is not the time to be worrying about deficits or national debt.
As I wrote in April and in one or two other blogs devoted to this concept of debt, there simply is no short-term challenge with running even large deficits in this economy, as weak as it is. Remember, investors, while they decry the expiration of tax cuts to the wealthy, are simultaneously buying up even long-term U.S. Treasury bonds at almost unbelievable low interest rates. These investors, despite their hand wringing, don’t really believe that our government is risking our national wealth with this level of debt. Right now, interest payments on the debt that Senator Mitch McConnell keeps screaming about is just 1.4 percent of GDP.
One real debt generator however is our military. On an annual basis, we are spending around five percent of our GDP on just the Defense Department budget. Prior to September 11, 2001, the Congressional Budget Office had predicted just 2.4 percent for 2009. The difference is more than twice the long-term shortfall in our Social Security system. It is just possible that we should focus on protecting our airports and seaports from existing terrorists rather than creating new enemies by occupying other countries or burning the books of their faith.
It isn’t the debt that threatens our future. Please, think about it.
Peter Orszag, as President Obama’s first budget director helped to shape the 2009 American Recovery and Re-Investment Act (ARRA), also known as the stimulus and the health care legislation that finally passed both Houses in early 2010. He also promoted and carried out an effort by the White House to pry away from Congress some of the responsibility for making bad decisions, especially when it comes to the budget. We have all witnessed the tremendous legislative tug-of-war since the first day that President Obama assumed office, between the party of “No” and the party of in the words of Boss Godfrey of Cool Hand Luke fame, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
Peter Orszag spends a considerable amount of time talking about the soon-to-be-expired tax cuts for the wealthy. He argues that “In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether. Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it.”
His arguments however, seem to be based only on political calculations, particularly as regards the difficulty of getting Republicans and Democrats to agree on anything. His plan of extending the Bush tax cuts for an additional two years is attractive to almost everyone who is set to have their taxes increased by the expiration of the cut—a relatively small part of the American population compared to those of us who are struggling every day to make ends meet. Ironically, these tax cuts are set to end automatically, while almost every other action or outcome requires a vote in Congress.
What seems to be missing from Orszag’s editorial however is the raging policy debate which asks the question, “Why isn’t the economy actually recovering, despite the stimulus and near-zero interest rates?" Orszag seemingly assumes a strong traditional recovery will be underway by 2013. If you can’t raise taxes now because of the crimp that puts in American spending and consumption, then on what basis is it logical to think that the recovery will be in full swing in just two years? With all things being equal, I just don’t see our economy being much better by then. I wish it were so, but this economic recovery will simply not just materialize out of thin air.
On April 2, 2010 I wrote a blog, The Reality of Debt, so I won’t re-argue why debt in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but I will state that sadly enough, various political demagogues and Wall Street interests have mounted what appears to be an extremely successful campaign to convince Americans that despite persistent massive unemployment for the foreseeable future, more than 15 million Americans underwater on their home mortgages and two unnecessary wars, what we really should be worried about is America’s national debt.
It has not helped that the majority of the American media has failed to understand the basic economics or the plain math of the issue. President Obama and economic advisors (the ones John Boehm wants the President to fire) forecasts unemployment at 10, 9.2 and 8.2 percent respectively for 2010 through 2012. The rate, in their estimation, does not fall to the 5.2 percent rate it considers full employment until 2018.
The difference between 10 percent unemployment and 5.2 percent is more than seven million people without a paycheck. That also does not count the increase in millions of people involuntarily working part time, or millions who leave the labor force because they simply cannot find any work.
This state of affairs would be unacceptable in any civilized society, but it is even more outrageous in the world’s richest country. It means millions of ruined lives that will persist for decades to come in the form of increased poverty, lower educational levels, mental illness, suicide, crime and a whole host of other societal ills.
So, when we go back to the original questions, “Why has the economy not yet recovered, even with the stimulus and near-zero interest rates?” it is because the stimulus package for one thing, was too small. This fact fits the data: In 2009, taking into account the spending cuts and tax increases of state and local governments, the 700 million dollar plus stimulus was less than one percent of GDP. That is why the stimulus is estimated at only having saved somewhere around two million jobs—and that is while we are as a country down more than eight million jobs since the recession began. Consequently, the bottom line is that we NEED MORE STIMULUS not less. As heretical as it might sound, this is not the time to be worrying about deficits or national debt.
As I wrote in April and in one or two other blogs devoted to this concept of debt, there simply is no short-term challenge with running even large deficits in this economy, as weak as it is. Remember, investors, while they decry the expiration of tax cuts to the wealthy, are simultaneously buying up even long-term U.S. Treasury bonds at almost unbelievable low interest rates. These investors, despite their hand wringing, don’t really believe that our government is risking our national wealth with this level of debt. Right now, interest payments on the debt that Senator Mitch McConnell keeps screaming about is just 1.4 percent of GDP.
One real debt generator however is our military. On an annual basis, we are spending around five percent of our GDP on just the Defense Department budget. Prior to September 11, 2001, the Congressional Budget Office had predicted just 2.4 percent for 2009. The difference is more than twice the long-term shortfall in our Social Security system. It is just possible that we should focus on protecting our airports and seaports from existing terrorists rather than creating new enemies by occupying other countries or burning the books of their faith.
It isn’t the debt that threatens our future. Please, think about it.
Friday, September 3, 2010
For Many Americans, Labor Day Means Looking for a Job
Labor Day was created by the American labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It celebrates every year, the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity and security of our country.
The very first Labor Day was celebrated in New York City on Tuesday, September 5, 1882. Two years later, the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday date for then and forever and through the years since, America has given increasing importance to the meaning and spirit of Labor Day.
On February 21, 1887, Oregon became the first state in the Union to pass a law commemorating Labor Day and it was not long before four additional states: Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York created the Labor Day Holiday by legislative enactment. By 1894, 31 additional states had adopted the holiday and on June 28th of that year, the U.S. Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year Labor Day and a legal national holiday.
Labor Day September 6, 2010 is rich with irony. As we head into the Labor Day weekend, just released unemployment data puts the national unemployment rate at 9.6%. Consequently, this year’s Labor Day holiday may be less a celebration of a brief respite from work and more a cruel reminder that, despite glimmers of hope in the U.S. economy, there remains scant opportunity for many to rejoin the workforce any time soon. Very few of us are not touched by someone—a friend, relative or former colleague—who has not lost a job amid this crippling recession.
Against a backdrop of vanishing paychecks and dwindling savings, despair and depression are rampant. Today’s unemployed American is experiencing anxiety, helplessness and depression barely lessened by unemployment benefit extensions and the frustration and sadness actually increases in intensity the longer the period of unemployment goes on. In addition, those of us who are fortunate and blessed enough to still be employed work with the specter of unemployment hanging over us like some kind of sword of Damocles. Simply put, not being able to support yourself by your own labor is not the condition most of us desire and we will put forth considerable effort to be employed. Those unemployed who live outside of this country have understood what it means to be jobless and to have no hope of acquiring work for many decades. Some have gone to great lengths to be employed, sometimes risking life and limb such as illegally crossing the Arizona border from Mexico to enter the United States in search of work.
The American notion of success is often based solely upon the capability of individuals, says Ellie Wegener, Director and founder of the Employment Support Center, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that leads support groups for the unemployed. “It’s the backfire of individualism, which this country is great at,” she says. “Here your success or your failure depends on you, so when people lose their job, they think it’s because they are a failure. They need to regain their self-esteem, or they will never get a job.”
So, going back to that first Labor Day in 1882, it was less a celebration of the dignity of work than a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour day, down from the then prevailing 10 to 12 hours. Compared to then, American workers have come a long way. Now however, it is not so much a celebration of work or of humane working conditions, it is also a time for those of us still employed to feel grateful and for those of us who are not, to continue the labor of finding work.
Job creation has been an historic strength of the American economy. Its capacity to remain so will increasingly frame the upcoming political debate that will ultimately drive the 2010 and 2012 elections. This debate will be ugly because it will mostly be between those who fear budget deficits and those who favor more economic stimulus and between those who see meager wage gains as impending recovery and those who see them as encouraging hiring. On Labor Day 2010, future jobs are the nation’s huge question mark.
The very first Labor Day was celebrated in New York City on Tuesday, September 5, 1882. Two years later, the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday date for then and forever and through the years since, America has given increasing importance to the meaning and spirit of Labor Day.
On February 21, 1887, Oregon became the first state in the Union to pass a law commemorating Labor Day and it was not long before four additional states: Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York created the Labor Day Holiday by legislative enactment. By 1894, 31 additional states had adopted the holiday and on June 28th of that year, the U.S. Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year Labor Day and a legal national holiday.
Labor Day September 6, 2010 is rich with irony. As we head into the Labor Day weekend, just released unemployment data puts the national unemployment rate at 9.6%. Consequently, this year’s Labor Day holiday may be less a celebration of a brief respite from work and more a cruel reminder that, despite glimmers of hope in the U.S. economy, there remains scant opportunity for many to rejoin the workforce any time soon. Very few of us are not touched by someone—a friend, relative or former colleague—who has not lost a job amid this crippling recession.
Against a backdrop of vanishing paychecks and dwindling savings, despair and depression are rampant. Today’s unemployed American is experiencing anxiety, helplessness and depression barely lessened by unemployment benefit extensions and the frustration and sadness actually increases in intensity the longer the period of unemployment goes on. In addition, those of us who are fortunate and blessed enough to still be employed work with the specter of unemployment hanging over us like some kind of sword of Damocles. Simply put, not being able to support yourself by your own labor is not the condition most of us desire and we will put forth considerable effort to be employed. Those unemployed who live outside of this country have understood what it means to be jobless and to have no hope of acquiring work for many decades. Some have gone to great lengths to be employed, sometimes risking life and limb such as illegally crossing the Arizona border from Mexico to enter the United States in search of work.
The American notion of success is often based solely upon the capability of individuals, says Ellie Wegener, Director and founder of the Employment Support Center, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that leads support groups for the unemployed. “It’s the backfire of individualism, which this country is great at,” she says. “Here your success or your failure depends on you, so when people lose their job, they think it’s because they are a failure. They need to regain their self-esteem, or they will never get a job.”
So, going back to that first Labor Day in 1882, it was less a celebration of the dignity of work than a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour day, down from the then prevailing 10 to 12 hours. Compared to then, American workers have come a long way. Now however, it is not so much a celebration of work or of humane working conditions, it is also a time for those of us still employed to feel grateful and for those of us who are not, to continue the labor of finding work.
Job creation has been an historic strength of the American economy. Its capacity to remain so will increasingly frame the upcoming political debate that will ultimately drive the 2010 and 2012 elections. This debate will be ugly because it will mostly be between those who fear budget deficits and those who favor more economic stimulus and between those who see meager wage gains as impending recovery and those who see them as encouraging hiring. On Labor Day 2010, future jobs are the nation’s huge question mark.
Friday, August 27, 2010
There is enough in the U.S. Constitution for Everybody
On August 28, 1963, my parents, my brother and three sisters and me walked several dozen Washington, DC city blocks as participants in the March on Washington. I was 14years old and the oldest.
That day has many memories, many of them embedded in a large poster in my office of Martin Luther King, Jr. waving to the crowd in what I think is the moment immediately after he had just delivered his now famous oratory, “I Have a Dream.” I like to point out to colleagues when they notice the poster (it is kind of hard not to—it is approximately 36” x 48”) that my brother and I are somewhere in the trees in the background where much to the consternation of my mother we had climbed upon our family claiming that particular spot on the mall.
So, this Sunday marks the 47th anniversary of that day. The occasion, however, will be marked by an orator of a decidedly different stripe standing at the foot of the memorial’s steps: Glenn Beck, front man of the populist conservative Tea Party movement.
The event is a rally for Beck and his supporters, dubbed “Restoring Honor,” where the talk show host will present his “100 Year Plan for America” and which will include an address by former Alaska governor and lipstick wearing pit bull, Sarah Palin.
It requires extreme blindness or extreme dishonesty to deny that our politics today is more racially and ethnically polarized than it has been in a long time. Virtually every Fox TV News and right wing, talk-radio broadcast relies on scaring economically anxious white Americans into ignoring the prime cause of their economic insecurity—plundering by Wall Street bankers, and focusing instead on some contrived menace from racial and ethnic minorities: New Black Panthers preventing them from voting, ACORN stealing their elections, black women like Shirley Sherrod treating them unfairly, Eric Holder’s Department of Justice persecuting them, Muslims who want to conquer their country and then celebrate over their Christian corpses while simultaneously building a mosque on hallow ground and don’t forget those invading, marauding Latinos coming to steal their property and kill them while their socialist allies in the U.S. Government led by a Muslim President disarm white victims all over the country.
OK, maybe that is a little over the top—but man do I feel better. I encourage comments to these postings it is just that when folks disagree—and they do disagree—their narrative is so visceral that I decided to try it on for size. Don’t worry, it doesn’t fit me.
Anyway, my real disappointment is with weak-kneed Democratic politicians who have given the field to these rabble rousers. When the desperate Harry Reid isn’t feeding the paranoia by demanding that the Park 51 Community Center move, some other noted Democrat like the Governor of New York is trying to give away state land in an effort to have the Muslims build their community center elsewhere.
From the beginning of this administration, the American right decided to play hardball. Masterfully exploiting ethnic and racial resentments, the most telling example of this strategy was last year’s pronouncement by Glenn Beck on national TV that President Obama is a “racist” who “has a deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”
The Republican Party which had presided over an extreme economic failing had little to offer other than stoking the flames of fear. Of course, the real problem is that much of the anxiety and anger being exploited by the Right are actually very real and justifiable. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, one of the more partisan Democratic pundits around, explained in his column today that he “feels sorry for many of the people who will be at Glenn Beck’s rally” on Sunday. He points out very correctly that the very growth of the Tea Party movement clearly demonstrates that millions of us feel “alienated from their government, distressed about the economy and frightened of the future.” Unfortunately however, instead of honest and productive discourse, we have hucksters who exploit their alienation and see their fear and anger as marketing tools.
As hard as this is for me to say, this is the great failing of the Obama presidency which was proven most recently by the way the White House conducted itself in the immediate aftermath of the release of the Sherrod video. What that sorrowful episode did was make it possible for the growing accusation that it is his administration to blame for the intensifying economic crisis, despite the real historical and undeniable fact that the unraveling began under the Bush administration. It seems as though it was years ago, but it was only October of 2008 when the economic crisis was so severe that candidate John McCain suspended his own campaign for President so that he could attend to the crisis. That is the very same crisis that had its initial explosion during the Bush presidency, and it is an explosion that we have yet to recover from.
It is heartbreaking for me to come to the realization that this country is poised to return to power the very same Republican Party—in an even more warped and primitive form—that almost destroyed us over the last decade. But nothing is more foolish, as I have learned these past two years, than underestimating the danger that come from this potent mix of economic sleight of hand and aggressive fanning of racial and ethnic resentment.
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin want to address the nation from the very same steps that Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on 47 years ago as he delivered his now famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Let them, they have the constitutional right to assemble and to speak freely. But as we listen to them rant and rave, it should only remind us of how much work still needs to be done.
That day has many memories, many of them embedded in a large poster in my office of Martin Luther King, Jr. waving to the crowd in what I think is the moment immediately after he had just delivered his now famous oratory, “I Have a Dream.” I like to point out to colleagues when they notice the poster (it is kind of hard not to—it is approximately 36” x 48”) that my brother and I are somewhere in the trees in the background where much to the consternation of my mother we had climbed upon our family claiming that particular spot on the mall.
So, this Sunday marks the 47th anniversary of that day. The occasion, however, will be marked by an orator of a decidedly different stripe standing at the foot of the memorial’s steps: Glenn Beck, front man of the populist conservative Tea Party movement.
The event is a rally for Beck and his supporters, dubbed “Restoring Honor,” where the talk show host will present his “100 Year Plan for America” and which will include an address by former Alaska governor and lipstick wearing pit bull, Sarah Palin.
It requires extreme blindness or extreme dishonesty to deny that our politics today is more racially and ethnically polarized than it has been in a long time. Virtually every Fox TV News and right wing, talk-radio broadcast relies on scaring economically anxious white Americans into ignoring the prime cause of their economic insecurity—plundering by Wall Street bankers, and focusing instead on some contrived menace from racial and ethnic minorities: New Black Panthers preventing them from voting, ACORN stealing their elections, black women like Shirley Sherrod treating them unfairly, Eric Holder’s Department of Justice persecuting them, Muslims who want to conquer their country and then celebrate over their Christian corpses while simultaneously building a mosque on hallow ground and don’t forget those invading, marauding Latinos coming to steal their property and kill them while their socialist allies in the U.S. Government led by a Muslim President disarm white victims all over the country.
OK, maybe that is a little over the top—but man do I feel better. I encourage comments to these postings it is just that when folks disagree—and they do disagree—their narrative is so visceral that I decided to try it on for size. Don’t worry, it doesn’t fit me.
Anyway, my real disappointment is with weak-kneed Democratic politicians who have given the field to these rabble rousers. When the desperate Harry Reid isn’t feeding the paranoia by demanding that the Park 51 Community Center move, some other noted Democrat like the Governor of New York is trying to give away state land in an effort to have the Muslims build their community center elsewhere.
From the beginning of this administration, the American right decided to play hardball. Masterfully exploiting ethnic and racial resentments, the most telling example of this strategy was last year’s pronouncement by Glenn Beck on national TV that President Obama is a “racist” who “has a deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”
The Republican Party which had presided over an extreme economic failing had little to offer other than stoking the flames of fear. Of course, the real problem is that much of the anxiety and anger being exploited by the Right are actually very real and justifiable. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, one of the more partisan Democratic pundits around, explained in his column today that he “feels sorry for many of the people who will be at Glenn Beck’s rally” on Sunday. He points out very correctly that the very growth of the Tea Party movement clearly demonstrates that millions of us feel “alienated from their government, distressed about the economy and frightened of the future.” Unfortunately however, instead of honest and productive discourse, we have hucksters who exploit their alienation and see their fear and anger as marketing tools.
As hard as this is for me to say, this is the great failing of the Obama presidency which was proven most recently by the way the White House conducted itself in the immediate aftermath of the release of the Sherrod video. What that sorrowful episode did was make it possible for the growing accusation that it is his administration to blame for the intensifying economic crisis, despite the real historical and undeniable fact that the unraveling began under the Bush administration. It seems as though it was years ago, but it was only October of 2008 when the economic crisis was so severe that candidate John McCain suspended his own campaign for President so that he could attend to the crisis. That is the very same crisis that had its initial explosion during the Bush presidency, and it is an explosion that we have yet to recover from.
It is heartbreaking for me to come to the realization that this country is poised to return to power the very same Republican Party—in an even more warped and primitive form—that almost destroyed us over the last decade. But nothing is more foolish, as I have learned these past two years, than underestimating the danger that come from this potent mix of economic sleight of hand and aggressive fanning of racial and ethnic resentment.
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin want to address the nation from the very same steps that Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on 47 years ago as he delivered his now famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Let them, they have the constitutional right to assemble and to speak freely. But as we listen to them rant and rave, it should only remind us of how much work still needs to be done.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
“Ich bin ein Berliner” did not make John F. Kennedy a German......
On the morning of June 4, 2009 my best friend called me and told me that he had never been more proud of being an American than he was at that moment.
That day, in an ancient city, America’s still newly elected President attempted to heal a rift that has endured for decades, if not centuries. Barack Obama stood before a crowd of more than 3,000 in the great hall of Cairo University to deliver a speech that demonstrated not only the eloquence we had all already become accustomed to, but also the sheer ambition of his purpose—nothing less than to begin a process of bridging the divide between Islam and the West.
“No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust,” President Obama began, mindful of the expectations that had preceded that day’s event. Still, as he has proven since then, a major speech can have a major impact on the course of human events.
The President did not unveil a shift in American foreign policy that morning nor did he put forth a new Middle East peace plan. Instead, he relied on the tone and even the vocabulary that he used to create the greatest impact. For the thread that ran though every word was a simple but unheard of strategy, respect for the Arab and Muslim world.
It was present in the President’s use of the traditional Muslim greeting, met with cheering applause: “assalamu alaykum.” There, too, in his quotations from the holy Qur’an—pronouncing the words the way his Cairo audience would pronounce them. “I know civilization’s debt to Islam,” he stated before he declared a record of Muslim achievement that stretched from algebra to poetry.
But President Barack Obama went deeper than flattery regarding the great Islamic past. He showed understanding of what one might call the Arab and Muslim narrative. Consequently, he spoke of past “colonialism”, a word shocking to hear from a U.S. President. He admitted the cold war use of Muslim nations as “proxies” and confessed to U.S. involvement in the toppling of Iran’s elected prime minister in 1953. The President’s repeated references to “dignity” and “justice” and against “humiliation” were words that resonate in Muslim discourse. The foreign relations goals that President Obama may have had in coming to this great hall seemed to be driven by a desire to break through the suspicion and cynicism that have existed for decades and to somehow show not just the Muslim world but the whole world that America is under truly new management. So, he did not defend the invasion of Iraq, he called it a “war of choice.”
Nowhere in his speech that day was the effort to acknowledge the Arab and Muslim narrative more clear than when the President spoke directly to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We know now that there had been a furious debate among President Obama’s aides over whether he should have used the emotionally charged word “occupation” to describe Israel’s hold of the territories it gained in the 1967 war. Taking his lead from the courageous and un-heralded peacemaker the former President Jimmy Carter, our new President used it—and spoke of “Palestine” as opposed to a ‘future Palestinian state.’ More striking was the President’s repeated demand for Israeli settlement expansion to cease.
All of this was a world away from former President George W. Bush who was unable to address Muslims in a tone that was not patronizing or bellicose. If President Bush had said the same words, they would have sounded phony. But President Obama had the credibility of his own life story, such as the Muslims in his father’s family, and the childhood spent in Indonesia. What the forces against Barack Hussein Obama had tried to use against him as a liability was now being boldly deployed by the President himself as an asset. The irony of new polls showing that one out of every five Americans believe that the President is a Muslim is the result of a tired old strategy of the right that failed to derail the 2008 election and will fail to derail the 2012 election.
But make no mistake. This was no exercise in pandering to the Muslim and Arab world. The President passionately defended the Jewish people’s right to a homeland and condemned Muslim anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial as “baseless...ignorant...hateful.” He recognized that Hamas has genuine support among Palestinians but excoriated the group’s methods. “It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus,” he said. “That’s not how moral authority is claimed, that’s how it is surrendered.”
The President boldly invoked the struggles for civil rights in the U.S., against apartheid and slavery, urging Hamas to follow the path of non-violent resistance. From any of his predecessors that would have rung hollow. From the first African-American President, it carried great weight.
President Obama navigated perilous terrain that morning. He urged the Muslim and Arab world to embrace democracy, women’s rights and economic development. And when he called on the Muslim world to respect women’s rights, he stressed his respect for the hijab and his opposition to western cultures “dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear.”
Today, it seems that this sensitive and sophisticated speech has been forgotten and lost in the fog of war in Afghanistan and in the drum beating of certain forces in this county who want us to believe the worst about our President—or at least what they have determined is the worst. So whether Americans will continue to be divided by misinformation and fear, or that we will unite as one, as we have done so many times throughout our history when confronted with evil, is uncertain. In any case, it surely is, as the President himself admitted in an interview shortly after the delivery of the Cairo speech, “more than the work of one day.”
That day, in an ancient city, America’s still newly elected President attempted to heal a rift that has endured for decades, if not centuries. Barack Obama stood before a crowd of more than 3,000 in the great hall of Cairo University to deliver a speech that demonstrated not only the eloquence we had all already become accustomed to, but also the sheer ambition of his purpose—nothing less than to begin a process of bridging the divide between Islam and the West.
“No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust,” President Obama began, mindful of the expectations that had preceded that day’s event. Still, as he has proven since then, a major speech can have a major impact on the course of human events.
The President did not unveil a shift in American foreign policy that morning nor did he put forth a new Middle East peace plan. Instead, he relied on the tone and even the vocabulary that he used to create the greatest impact. For the thread that ran though every word was a simple but unheard of strategy, respect for the Arab and Muslim world.
It was present in the President’s use of the traditional Muslim greeting, met with cheering applause: “assalamu alaykum.” There, too, in his quotations from the holy Qur’an—pronouncing the words the way his Cairo audience would pronounce them. “I know civilization’s debt to Islam,” he stated before he declared a record of Muslim achievement that stretched from algebra to poetry.
But President Barack Obama went deeper than flattery regarding the great Islamic past. He showed understanding of what one might call the Arab and Muslim narrative. Consequently, he spoke of past “colonialism”, a word shocking to hear from a U.S. President. He admitted the cold war use of Muslim nations as “proxies” and confessed to U.S. involvement in the toppling of Iran’s elected prime minister in 1953. The President’s repeated references to “dignity” and “justice” and against “humiliation” were words that resonate in Muslim discourse. The foreign relations goals that President Obama may have had in coming to this great hall seemed to be driven by a desire to break through the suspicion and cynicism that have existed for decades and to somehow show not just the Muslim world but the whole world that America is under truly new management. So, he did not defend the invasion of Iraq, he called it a “war of choice.”
Nowhere in his speech that day was the effort to acknowledge the Arab and Muslim narrative more clear than when the President spoke directly to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We know now that there had been a furious debate among President Obama’s aides over whether he should have used the emotionally charged word “occupation” to describe Israel’s hold of the territories it gained in the 1967 war. Taking his lead from the courageous and un-heralded peacemaker the former President Jimmy Carter, our new President used it—and spoke of “Palestine” as opposed to a ‘future Palestinian state.’ More striking was the President’s repeated demand for Israeli settlement expansion to cease.
All of this was a world away from former President George W. Bush who was unable to address Muslims in a tone that was not patronizing or bellicose. If President Bush had said the same words, they would have sounded phony. But President Obama had the credibility of his own life story, such as the Muslims in his father’s family, and the childhood spent in Indonesia. What the forces against Barack Hussein Obama had tried to use against him as a liability was now being boldly deployed by the President himself as an asset. The irony of new polls showing that one out of every five Americans believe that the President is a Muslim is the result of a tired old strategy of the right that failed to derail the 2008 election and will fail to derail the 2012 election.
But make no mistake. This was no exercise in pandering to the Muslim and Arab world. The President passionately defended the Jewish people’s right to a homeland and condemned Muslim anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial as “baseless...ignorant...hateful.” He recognized that Hamas has genuine support among Palestinians but excoriated the group’s methods. “It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus,” he said. “That’s not how moral authority is claimed, that’s how it is surrendered.”
The President boldly invoked the struggles for civil rights in the U.S., against apartheid and slavery, urging Hamas to follow the path of non-violent resistance. From any of his predecessors that would have rung hollow. From the first African-American President, it carried great weight.
President Obama navigated perilous terrain that morning. He urged the Muslim and Arab world to embrace democracy, women’s rights and economic development. And when he called on the Muslim world to respect women’s rights, he stressed his respect for the hijab and his opposition to western cultures “dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear.”
Today, it seems that this sensitive and sophisticated speech has been forgotten and lost in the fog of war in Afghanistan and in the drum beating of certain forces in this county who want us to believe the worst about our President—or at least what they have determined is the worst. So whether Americans will continue to be divided by misinformation and fear, or that we will unite as one, as we have done so many times throughout our history when confronted with evil, is uncertain. In any case, it surely is, as the President himself admitted in an interview shortly after the delivery of the Cairo speech, “more than the work of one day.”
Sunday, August 15, 2010
They Want to Build What!?
There is a new show on ABC-TV this summer entitled Rookie Blue. It is about a group of young and beautiful actors—I mean police rookies, fresh out of the academy. So far, the episodes have been relatively well written, but the toughest choices the rookies have had to make thus far focus on relationships. Should they date other police officers? Should they date other rookies? Last week one of the female rookies was forced to shoot and kill a horrific child molester, who seemed not content with just molesting young girls, he had to murder them as well. Despite the seeming correctness of her actions, the young rookie was still troubled by having to take a life.
This week, things got even better somewhat regarding the storyline. In this episode, two rookies are forced to decide whether or not to turn in a more senior detective for brutally beating someone who could have exposed him to corrupt activities. As they struggled with what to do—tell the truth or not inform on a fellow police officer—one of the rookies asked the other, “What do you want to do, tell the truth or be popular?” They decided to tell the truth although they both knew that the majority of their fellow officers would despise them for crossing the “blue line.” Well, they told the truth and I suppose we will see how that plays out in future episodes.
A couple of months ago I wrote about the Rules of Engagement (ROE) for American troops fighting in Afghanistan. I said then that it was one of the most difficult things I had ever done. I hate the war and have voiced my opposition to our presence in Afghanistan with more than one or two blog posts. I also respect and appreciate the bravery of our fighting forces and do not want unnecessary harm to come to them. Combat is an absolute. People die and get hurt but when you increase the numbers of soldiers who die and get hurt by stupid and ill informed policy, well that is just criminal. So despite my anti-war fervor, I needed to write on how misguided our present ROE are in Afghanistan and how they are directly linked to the unacceptable levels of death and wounding of our American combat personnel as well as those of our allies.
This week, I am faced with a similar type of decision. Write about something that many of my friends and colleagues will upon reading this post, scratch their heads and be convinced that I have finally lost my mind and have really gone over to the dark side or side-step it and write about something less controversial and emotional. Those of you who know me know what I decided to do.
The American Muslim community wants to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. Of course, this begs the question: Is it right, is it decent, is it morally defensible, for developer Sharif el Garnel of SoHo Properties to build a Muslim worship center called Cordoba House within walking distance of the place where Muslim men, acting from a perverse distortion of their faith, disintegrated thousands of lives—Muslim, Christian, Jewish, atheist and we may presume others?
While the discussion emanating from this question might cause the bastions of conservative talk radio to swoon, their response thus far is not a terribly sophisticated or geopolitically informed argument against building the mosque where the American Muslim community wishes to build it. Conservative bloggers want to make sure that in the minds of nearly every American, Muslim equals only one thing: Terrorist.
I cringed along with the vast majority of Americans when we learned that any Islamic group, moderate or otherwise, would dare to think that it would be appropriate to build a mosque so close to where thousands died at the hands of a rogue band of Muslims.
But the U.S. Constitution does not carry an escape clause. We do not get to rid ourselves of certain national ideals simply because they cause pain or provocation. To the contrary, this is the time when they are most severely tested and, it must be said, so much in need of defending.
The reality is that if we were to be totally honest with ourselves, what should really trouble us is how easy it has been for us to have fallen into this state of hatred toward Islam over the last ten years. Granted, there has been ample provocation by manifold Islamic terrorist acts since September 11, 2001, from the Fort Hood shooter to the shoe bomber and most recently, to the man who left a bomb set to explode in Times Square. But we have also been helped in that fall by a xenophobic strain that is seemingly part of who we all are that at some point or another in history has caused us to regard Americans of African, Japanese, Iranian, Irish and Hispanic descent with the same suspicion and scorn we now reserve for Muslims.
It is paramount in dealing with this issue that no disrespect towards the people who lost loved ones in the tragic events of September 11th happens, but waging a war on the construction of a mosque in Manhattan, even two blocks from Ground Zero is not the way to combat terrorism or more importantly, to combat the hatred that claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people on that day. Sometimes, in our struggle to do the right thing, we are able to express it verbally, but doing it, that can be another thing. Saying we want peace and then waging war. Everyone who knows me knows that I can be guilty of wanting reconciliation but then holding a grudge.
Simply put, we will be unable forever to get past the tragedy of September 11th if we fail to collectively see Muslims as human. Building a mosque at Ground Zero has the capacity to actually change the way America reflects on one of the more tragic destinations of terrorism on the planet. Instead of symbolizing hatred, death and destruction, this area could instead become symbolic of reconciliation and a new beginning for all faiths.
So, the American Muslim community wants to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero? Let them.
This week, things got even better somewhat regarding the storyline. In this episode, two rookies are forced to decide whether or not to turn in a more senior detective for brutally beating someone who could have exposed him to corrupt activities. As they struggled with what to do—tell the truth or not inform on a fellow police officer—one of the rookies asked the other, “What do you want to do, tell the truth or be popular?” They decided to tell the truth although they both knew that the majority of their fellow officers would despise them for crossing the “blue line.” Well, they told the truth and I suppose we will see how that plays out in future episodes.
A couple of months ago I wrote about the Rules of Engagement (ROE) for American troops fighting in Afghanistan. I said then that it was one of the most difficult things I had ever done. I hate the war and have voiced my opposition to our presence in Afghanistan with more than one or two blog posts. I also respect and appreciate the bravery of our fighting forces and do not want unnecessary harm to come to them. Combat is an absolute. People die and get hurt but when you increase the numbers of soldiers who die and get hurt by stupid and ill informed policy, well that is just criminal. So despite my anti-war fervor, I needed to write on how misguided our present ROE are in Afghanistan and how they are directly linked to the unacceptable levels of death and wounding of our American combat personnel as well as those of our allies.
This week, I am faced with a similar type of decision. Write about something that many of my friends and colleagues will upon reading this post, scratch their heads and be convinced that I have finally lost my mind and have really gone over to the dark side or side-step it and write about something less controversial and emotional. Those of you who know me know what I decided to do.
The American Muslim community wants to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. Of course, this begs the question: Is it right, is it decent, is it morally defensible, for developer Sharif el Garnel of SoHo Properties to build a Muslim worship center called Cordoba House within walking distance of the place where Muslim men, acting from a perverse distortion of their faith, disintegrated thousands of lives—Muslim, Christian, Jewish, atheist and we may presume others?
While the discussion emanating from this question might cause the bastions of conservative talk radio to swoon, their response thus far is not a terribly sophisticated or geopolitically informed argument against building the mosque where the American Muslim community wishes to build it. Conservative bloggers want to make sure that in the minds of nearly every American, Muslim equals only one thing: Terrorist.
I cringed along with the vast majority of Americans when we learned that any Islamic group, moderate or otherwise, would dare to think that it would be appropriate to build a mosque so close to where thousands died at the hands of a rogue band of Muslims.
But the U.S. Constitution does not carry an escape clause. We do not get to rid ourselves of certain national ideals simply because they cause pain or provocation. To the contrary, this is the time when they are most severely tested and, it must be said, so much in need of defending.
The reality is that if we were to be totally honest with ourselves, what should really trouble us is how easy it has been for us to have fallen into this state of hatred toward Islam over the last ten years. Granted, there has been ample provocation by manifold Islamic terrorist acts since September 11, 2001, from the Fort Hood shooter to the shoe bomber and most recently, to the man who left a bomb set to explode in Times Square. But we have also been helped in that fall by a xenophobic strain that is seemingly part of who we all are that at some point or another in history has caused us to regard Americans of African, Japanese, Iranian, Irish and Hispanic descent with the same suspicion and scorn we now reserve for Muslims.
It is paramount in dealing with this issue that no disrespect towards the people who lost loved ones in the tragic events of September 11th happens, but waging a war on the construction of a mosque in Manhattan, even two blocks from Ground Zero is not the way to combat terrorism or more importantly, to combat the hatred that claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people on that day. Sometimes, in our struggle to do the right thing, we are able to express it verbally, but doing it, that can be another thing. Saying we want peace and then waging war. Everyone who knows me knows that I can be guilty of wanting reconciliation but then holding a grudge.
Simply put, we will be unable forever to get past the tragedy of September 11th if we fail to collectively see Muslims as human. Building a mosque at Ground Zero has the capacity to actually change the way America reflects on one of the more tragic destinations of terrorism on the planet. Instead of symbolizing hatred, death and destruction, this area could instead become symbolic of reconciliation and a new beginning for all faiths.
So, the American Muslim community wants to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero? Let them.
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