Sunday, March 04, 2012

Knotting Knickers

Bob Schieffer on the CBS "news" show voiced his opinion and dismay that Olympia Snowe announced her resignation from the Senate. Here is a transcript of his words:

I've never liked it when old people remind us things were better in their day, but here I go:
When I came to Washington back in 1969, things were a mess - the country was divided over Vietnam, and a wave of violence had taken the lives of two Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr.
Yet, even in those difficult days, the government still functioned, and Congress was a much better place - it still passed significant legislation.
The Senate was a place of giants and a blend of all persuasions - Democrat John Stennis of Mississippi was a conservative; Republican Jake Javits of New York a liberal, Washington's Scoop Jackson was a hardliner on defense and a liberal on social issues.
Democrat Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota was a liberal's liberal, and Republican Barry Goldwater was a hard-core conservative.
They came and they went. But none of them left for the reasons given last week by Olympia Snowe, the moderate Maine Senator who said in so many words she was just tired of fooling with it - that the modern Senate with its "my way or the highway mentality" was no longer the place to accomplish anything.
Snowe is not the first to feel that way lately, just the first to say it aloud.
The Senate will be the worse for her absence, but it will survive. But what does it say about the state of our government and politics when serious people conclude that serving in the United States Senate is no longer worth their time and effort?
That's the part that should worry the rest of us.
Our governance is predicated on the idea legislators bring opposing and competing views with them to do their job. The idea is that the media exposes and publishes information about these opposing and competing ideas and, we the people, having had our public educations, can read, reason and distinguish how best to go forward. We the people then communicate our positions to our legislators and our legislators, based on their feel for the majority opinion weighted to what is best for the common good, vote their conscience. In matters that are not simple choices, black/white, yes/no - but - are instead, nuances of choice, in order to tend to the business of governance - you know, get work done -- compromises had to be made. It was how "significant legislation" was accomplished during "divisive" times was made.

I am, unabashedly, a liberal. I am a Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Occupy liberal. A citizen who strongly believes that government is supposed to work for all citizens. A citizen who understands the necessity of complex issues needing lobbyists who inform, challenge and explain these issues to Congress and citizens, but not to the preference over and against the interest of the common citizen. Precisely because I believe in the best governance and government for all citizens, precisely because I believe in an informed and engaged citizenry to help make decisions, I need an opportunity to hear opposing, contrasting and shades of viewpoints so I can make my own best decisions. 

Face the Nation has been on television almost my entire lifetime. Yet, currently the program does not present opposing viewpoints, nor is it very adept at calling out those who pollute the public discourse with out-and-out falsehoods. When George Bush was president, the show, and all the others like it, had a majority of "conservative" politicians and "leaders" like Grover Norquist. When Mr. Obama took office, I looked forward to a more balanced and even guests or, at least, an opportunity for more liberal views to be aired on these shows. In the past three years, they have not changed their guest lists very much at all, with even Dick Cheney still occasionally a guest. We still are subjected to one view point, over and over and over again. When these programs do present someone with an opposing viewpoint, they tend to have as a guest someone who is only marginally in opposition. There is almost never an honest telling of the facts and issues to mitigate the constant stream of straw man arguments set up by guests on the shows.  The best and maybe the only exceptions I ever find are Rachel Maddow and Laurence O'Donnell. 

Mr. Schieffer could do a great deal about the partisan divide and unwillingness of cooperation stymieing our government's ability to function. He should change his show's format and guests and start encouraging an engaged and informed citizenry by first informing them of the facts and then, having guests with varying opinions and ideas present them. The citizenry will then be above to engage in their own government with clear choices and decisions based on facts and not partisanship and ideology. The public discourse would be raised and, I believe, the quality of our governance would also improve. 

Saturday, March 03, 2012

Anti-My Religion


Anti-choice people are extremely disingenuous and dishonest. They like to claim "life begins at conception" and, therefore, most forms of birth control and abortion are sanctity of life issues, just like murder. The vast majority of these same people however, see nothing wrong with supporting the death penalty, with supporting invading and attacking another sovereign country who has done us no harm, with supporting torture and rendition, with supporting the denial of poor children free lunches, with supporting and denying health care and transplants for people who do not have citizenship or health insurance, and, too many more examples of their hypocrisy to continue to list.
It is amazing to me that anti-choice did not line the streets, chain their children to military equipment in protest against our war in Iraq. After all, many THOUSANDS of women, men and children were killed and many thousands more maimed all based on their sanctity of life beliefs. Nor do they behave that way at executions by the state - even those executions where it is believed that the person being executed is INNOCENT.
Catholics started this shit. Southern white authoritarian evangelical ministers who saw an opportunity to subjugate women joined them. IOW, the people behind this are religious people. They are against it for religious reasons. (I find it highly ironic theCatholic church tells the Jews they have misinterpreted their own laws of Moses! Jews DO believe in choice and believe it is a matter between a woman, her doctor and whomever else she wants counsel from.)
Here is a convenient definition for what I am about to say: by definition heresy can only be committed by someone who considers himself a Christian, but rejects the teachings of the Catholic Church. A person who completely renounces Christianity is not considered a heretic, but an apostate, and a person who renounces the authority of the Church but not its teachings is a schismatic.
I want to paraphrase this part:
When this country was formed, in May 1776, we expressed our inalienable rights (those rights we are born having that cannot be voted on, or they wouldn’t be “rights”), we expressed those rights as foundational to our government and governance, with one of those inalienable rights being freedom of religion. However, when it came to actually forming the government and governance by statutes, we purposefully did not make a law asserting, protecting and enshrining each right we listed, including the right of freedom of religion. In October 1776, though, at a general assembly meeting, the constitutional convention did repeal all English laws we had been governed by up to that point that made it a crime to “maintain any opinions in matters of religion”, the laws forcing church attendance, the laws pertaining to how people must worship, and they also suspended the laws giving salaries to clergy – which was made permanent in October 1779. Because of those repeals of the English enacted religious laws, we were left without any laws dictated to us by or through religion, and were left with only those laws coming out of the common law and those new laws we were in the process of making (and would have nothing to do with establishing or promoting any religion, religious law or theology).
In this country, the United States of America, by law passed in 1705, if a person brought up Christian denied the existence of a God, or of the Trinity, or, if they asserted there was more than one God, or denied the Christian religion as being the one true religion, or denied the Bible was an unquestionable divine authority, that person being found guilty of one of those offenses would, on the first conviction be unemployable - either in government, in the clergy, or in the private sector. A second offense and they were stripped of their right to sue, to inherit, to be given money, to be the guardian of a child, to be an executor or administrator of an estate and three years imprisonment without any possibility of bail. If that man was a father, his children were taken from him and were given out to be raised by more “suitable” (Christian) people.(During this time, church attendance was mandatory; religious “sins” were often punished by being put in the town square in the stocks. Capital punishment was also used in New England in religious law context.)
The legitimate powers of government are only supposed to be against acts that hurt others. It does not “pick your pocket” nor does it “break your leg” if someone else has one or twenty abortions or prenatal tests or uses birth control. It is none of your business and does not pertain to you. Therefore, it is not the business of government to intervene. (As for the argument of abortion being “murder”, that is a religious definition, not a legal one, not a secular test such as whether or not the woman medically needs an abortion.)
This is the what Rick Santorum and others would take us BACK to. This is what we rebelled against. Keep your religion to yourself. Stop trying to force me to your religious view. I don’t particularly like misogynists and you have little chance of converting me to your way of thinking.