Category Archives: Politics

How to Fix Congress

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Congress is under the control of Republicans who are terribly afraid of primary challenges from right-wing nuts. So Congressional Republicans behave as if they are right-wing nuts themselves, even if they aren’t (some of them aren’t).

In a column devoted to reactions to President Obama’s recent economic speech, Alex Pareene responds to the idea that Obama needs “bold, new proposals” in order to get the Republicans to cooperate:

I dunno, the only bold new proposal I can think of that will meaningfully break down Republican resistance would be to massively expand the size of the House and institute nationwide nonpartisan redistricting, and somehow do this before the 2014 elections, and then get rid of the filibuster? That would be pretty bold.

The House doesn’t represent the will of the people, because small states are over-represented (some congressional districts are nearly twice as large as others) and recent gerrymandering results in more Republicans being elected than Democrats, even though Democrats get more votes. (This rightward tilt is made even stronger by the Republicans’ adherence to the so-called “Hastert Rule”: bills don’t get a vote unless they’re supported by a majority of Republicans, i.e. a majority of the majority).

The Senate, of course, was designed to give extra power to small states and the filibuster gives extra power to the minority. It’s a little-known fact that the original rules of both the House and Senate allowed debate to be ended by a majority vote. In 1806, however, Vice President Aaron Burr convinced senators that they didn’t need such a rule; the rule hadn’t been invoked recently so it was just cluttering up the rule book. That change created the possibility of a filibuster, the requirement that a super-majority be required to end debate. The first filibuster occurred 31 years later. Now ordinary business often requires the approval of 60 Senators. So much for majority rule.

Unfortunately, the likelihood that Mr. Parene’s “bold, new ideas” will soon be adopted is approximately zero. It’s true that the Senate might change its rules; that could happen now if some Democratic senators weren’t afraid of the consequences. But it’s highly unlikely that the House will be expanded (although someone is arguing for that to happen: http://www.thirty-thousand.org/). The most we can hope for is that Congressional districts will one day be drawn with little or no political influence — or that whoever carries out the next round of gerrymandering does a better job.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/25/post_pundits_obama_economy_speech_boring_not_grand_bargain_y_enough/

The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

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According to The Great Agnostic, there were two great opponents of religion and proponents of naturalism in American history: Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll. Strangely, hardly anyone today has heard of Ingersoll. (For that matter, few Americans today know that Tom Paine had anything to say about religion.)

Robert Ingersoll was a world-famous lawyer and lecturer who lived from 1833 to 1899. He was considered perhaps the greatest orator of his day. He had an extremely successful career traveling all across the country, lecturing to large, appreciative crowds, among whom were many ordinary, religious Americans. He was a member of the social and political establishment, but his public statements opposing religion insured that he never held political office.

In Susan Jacoby’s words, Ingersoll “explained the true meaning and value of science … in a more understandable fashion than any scientist, even the brilliant popularizer Thomas Henry Huxley … Second, Ingersoll made the connection between repressive religion and everyday burdens and injustices as no one had before him.” 

Among the targets of Ingersoll’s scorn were slavery, capital punishment, the subjugation of women, debtor’s prisons, the mistreatment of animal and Social Darwinism. He believed that “there were no social injustices in which religion did not play a major role” — for example, in the belief that the existence of the poor was God’s will, and the idea that men should exert authority over women. 

Jacoby suggests that Ingersoll’s primary purpose was to remind his countrymen that the United States was founded by men who rejected the idea of theocracy: “the glory of the founding generation was that it did not establish a Christian nation”. Ingersoll rejected all supernatural explanations for human behavior and the world around us, while hoping that science and reason would eventually lead us to a world of peace, justice and prosperity. Quoting him: “Man through his intelligence must protect himself. He gets no help from any other world…. Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more”.

Ingersoll came to be known as the “Great Agnostic”, even though he saw no significant difference between agnosticism and atheism. It isn’t clear why his fame diminished over the years. Although his collected works comprise 12 volumes, perhaps his written words weren’t as powerful as his oratory. Maybe if he had written a good summary of his views, he would be as famous today as Thomas Paine is for writing “The Age of Reason” (which, unfortunately, isn’t very famous at all).

One of the virtues of The Great Agnostic is how it shows that our current cultural battles over religion are hardly new. The 19th century featured the same kinds of conflict, on topics like evolution, birth control and government support for religious education. We haven’t made as much progress as we should have. If there had been someone with Ingersoll’s convictions and abilities speaking out during the 20th century, and now in the 21st, we might be a better country today.

When the Nazis and Their Collaborators Ruled France

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Vichysoisse is a thick soup made of leeks, onions, potatoes, cream and chicken stock, usually served cold. Whether it was invented in France or the United States is a matter of controversy among culinary historians. It is agreed, however, that the soup was named by a French chef who worked at the Ritz Carlton hotel in New York City, in honor of the spa town of Vichy.

Vichy is perhaps more famous as the capital of the French State (its actual name) during the German occupation in World War II. Vichy was chosen as the capital because it was relatively close to Paris, had lots of hotel rooms and also had a modern telephone exchange. Two weeks after surrendering to the Germans, the French parliament met in Vichy and voted to abolish the Third Republic. Marshall Philippe Pétain, the Lion of Verdun, was chosen to lead the new government.

I’ve never been interested in French history and know very little about the Third Republic or the Vichy government. (Although I remember that something called “Vichy water” was mentioned in Casablanca.) However, a recent article in the New York Review of Books by the historian Robert Paxton turned out to be quite interesting.

The article is called “Vichy Lives! — In a Way”. It’s a review of a book about the lasting effects of the Vichy period on modern France. The first especially interesting thing in the article was this description of the final years of the Third Republic, before the German invasion:

The late Third Republic had woefully neglected French infrastructure, along with a host of unresolved political, social, and economic problems. The contraction of the French economy in the 1930s is sometimes attributed to the Third Republic’s weak executive, deadlocked parliament, and ideological divisions. The essential reason … was the economic policy of deflationary budget-cutting with which French leaders confronted the Great Depression until 1936. Even then, when the Popular Front government of Léon Blum proposed to take a different economic tack, it was prevented by divisions within its tenuous majority from embarking seriously upon needed public expenditures. The final decade of the Third Republic was therefore a period of extensive disinvestment. 

Does that sound familiar? Change the dates and a few proper names and it’s a description of present-day America.

The other striking point Professor Paxton makes is that the Vichy government had some significant accomplishments, even though the leaders of the government were definitely right-wingers. For example, they began construction on the freeway that circles Paris, built a major bridge over the Seine, constructed a tide-operated power plant and started the Trans-Sahara railroad. They created a national police force, replaced France’s 90 departments with 17 regions and unified Paris’s mass transit system.

More surprisingly, as a very conservative regime, Vichy instituted old-age pensions, a minimum wage, obligatory doctor visits for students, labor inspectors in factories, universal vaccinations and a program to reduce alcohol consumption. Vichy’s social welfare activities were actually consistent with the actions of other right-wing governments in Europe. It was Otto von Bismarck of Germany who created the first social welfare state, which was emulated by the Austrian Empire. As Paxton explains:

All the modern twentieth-century European dictatorships of the right, both fascist and authoritarian, were welfare states. The current American conservative agenda of a weak state associated with laissez-faire economic and social arrangements would have been anathema to them, as an extreme perversion of a despised individualistic liberalism (in that term’s original sense). They all provided medical care, pensions, affordable housing, and mass transport as a matter of course, in order to maintain productivity, national unity, and social peace.

Of course, these authoritarian right-wing governments, especially the fascists and the Vichy government, combined their positive accomplishments with terrible misdeeds. They also used some of their reforms to exert more control over their citizens.

Still, the contrast between these European politicians and our own bizarre Republican Party is remarkable. It’s possible that no other nation in world history has ever been at the mercy of a gang of radical politicians who want a government that does as little as possible, aside from extending its military and surveillance powers, supporting a conservative religious agenda and insuring rising incomes for the wealthy, while ignoring the needs of the majority.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/apr/25/vichy-lives-in-a-way/

Something About Politics That Can’t Be Said Too Often

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The Guardian is a British newspaper, so I’m not sure if columnist Michael Cohen is an American (not that it matters). American or not, he makes a point that more columnists and commentators should be making about the state of our nation:

What is the single most consequential political development of the past five years?… It is the rapid descent of the Republican party into madness.

Never before in American history have we seen a political party so completely dominated and controlled by its extremist wing; and never before have we seen a political party that brings together the attributes of nihilism, heartlessness, radicalism and naked partisanship quite like the modern GOP. In a two-party system like America’s, the result is unprecedented dysfunction.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/03/republican-party-demise-continues

The rest of the column is a recitation of recent Republican misdeeds. It’s Mr. Cohen’s calling a spade a spade that is refreshing and deserves repeating.

(Note:  According to Wikipedia, the expression “calling a spade a spade” was introduced into English in 1542 and refers to a small shovel: “the Macedonians wer feloes of no fyne witte, they whiche had not the witte to calle a spade by any other name then a spade”.)

Justice Anthony Kennedy, Champion of Equal Rights?

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On PBS’s Religious & Ethics NewsWeekly program this morning, a correspondent referred to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy as a “champion of equal rights” for gay people. He called Justice Kennedy a “champion” because Kennedy has voted with the majority more than once for gay rights, most recently this week when the Supreme Court declared the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” to be unconstitutional on a 5-4 vote.

Although Kennedy taking a liberal position on this issue is an excellent thing, it’s an exaggeration to refer to him as a “champion of equal rights”. After all, the only reason Kennedy stands out among the 5 justices who declared the law unconstitutional is that he tends to vote against equal rights (and common sense) in so many other cases. The other 4 justices are reliable votes for equal rights, so their votes aren’t newsworthy.

This week, for example, Kennedy joined his benighted right-wing brethren in throwing out the part of the Voting Rights Act that required certain states to get Justice Department approval before tinkering with their electoral laws. The immediate result of this Supreme Court decision is that some of those states (ones whose leaders committed treason in order to defend slavery) have already announced plans to make voting more difficult.

Everyone knows that the purpose of these restrictive voting laws so popular in certain states is to suppress turnout among blacks, Hispanics and the poor (who tend to vote Democratic), not to eliminate voter fraud (which has never been shown to exist to any mathematically significant degree at all).

So in a couple of cases this week, Justice Kennedy voted for equal rights. In a case that was at least equally important, he voted to make it more difficult for people to exercise their right as an American citizen to vote — not their right to vote as the holder of one or more specific forms of identification. People all over the world vote by showing up at the polls and getting their hands stamped. They don’t have to “prove” that they live where they live.

For your consideration: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, champion of equal rights in a very limited sense.