Words and Deeds

Posted on January 13, 2011 by David S. Meyer

The spotlight on the grief and mourning following Jared Loughner’s attack in Arizona creates an opportunity for people who want attention.    What they do with the opportunity depends upon who they are and what they want.  And the subsequent reactions to speeches and statements are every bit as important as the speeches, statements, and actions themselves.

Fred Phelps and his Westboro Church announced their plans to protest at nine year old Christina Taylor Green’s funeral, bringing their message of God’s contempt for America because of our moral failings, particularly tolerance of homosexuality.  This is already a well-practiced routine for the tiny Westboro group.  (We’ve talked about them before, far more than I expected when I started this blog.) Arizona quickly passed a law creating a 300 foot buffer zone around such funerals, and Arizonans quickly began organizing to provide a human buffer surrounding the mourners and keeping the Phelps family out of view.  Westboro decided to forgo the demonstration in exchange for radio air time for the church’s views.  Mike Gallagher, a conservative radio host, announced that he would give the Phelps family time in order to keep them away from the mourners, calling his decision a “no-brainer.”  This is how blackmail works.

Sarah Palin released a video of nearly eight minutes, commenting on the tragedy. It was an odd speech, which seemed to focus more on the tragedy of Sarah Palin’s vilification by media and pundits than the shooting in Tucson.  It was also an odd speech in that Palin emphasized that words, at least her words, don’t provoke actions.  She then condemned media comments on her language, even as her staff noted to reporters an increase in threats against Sarah Palin–presumably a response to the media’s criticism.   This is, she asserted, “blood libel,” a phrase which provoked a new round of criticism all by itself.

So how do words matter?  Few people are likely to change their minds, one way or another, about homosexuality or Sarah Palin in response to any round of comments.  But rhetoric can make an issue seem more urgent, more promising or threatening, and encourage others to enter the fray–talking, marching, contributing, or more.

Shifting the spotlight from the shooting to herself hasn’t seemed to work very well for Sarah Palin, whose comments have engendered far more criticism than support.   (Samples here, here, and here.)  So far, her supporters include only some of those who usually support her: conservative bloggers, radio and television personalities, and people who generally fill a larger share of the comment sections in news stories than they have this time.  Notably missing are mainstream Republican politicians who, perhaps, see something noxious that might be contagious.

Palin’s video probably didn’t put off people who were already committed to her; it probably did intensify her opposition.  Perhaps most significantly, it seems to have given conservatives with misgivings about allowing the former governor to represent the right in public debates reason to step back for a moment.

(In the wake of the shooting and the comments, a “string of Republican” leaders have resigned their party positions, citing hostile criticism and threats from tea partiers.)

Pundits and political entertainers in the media win by polarizing, playing to their base.  Successful politicians need to do some of this, keeping the true believers engaged, but they also need to reach out to others beyond their core constituencies.

Ronald Reagan gave his conservative base plenty, both in terms of policy and rhetoric, but he would tack back from time to time, projecting optimism and geniality.  Candidate Barack Obama found something to admire in Reagan, much to the discomfort of liberal supporters, who say he should be doing more to identify political enemies and rally the faithful.

But not now, and not in Arizona.  President Obama filled his Tucson speech with details of the six lives lost,  offering politics that were notably vague and aspirational, and winning some accolades from conservatives who don’t often praise this president.  As example, National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote:

…President Obama turned in a magnificent performance. This was a non-accusatory, genuinely civil, case for civility, in stark contrast to what we’ve read and heard over the last few days. He subtly rebuked the Left’s finger-pointing, and rose above the rancor of both sides, exactly as a president should. Tonight, he re-captured some of the tone of his famous 2004 convention speech. Well done.

There’s absolutely no reason to think Lowry’s fundamental take on Obama’s politics and policies has changed but, at least for the moment, the intensity of his opposition softened.

Words matter.

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After Stuff Happens

Posted on January 11, 2011 by David S. Meyer

The politics of Jared Loughner’s attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in a Tucson supermarket are just starting.  It’s not the event itself that matters so much as the positioning after the fact.  Political figures try not to waste crises.

Advocates used the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957 as an excuse to increase funding for higher education in America, and provide scholarship aid to students.  (Full disclosure: The National Defense Student Loan helped me get a college education.)  It fundamentally altered the educational landscape in the United States, increasing math and science education in general, and access to higher education dramatically.

The high school shootings at Columbine provoked explanations of the tragedy ranged wildly, variously emphasizing the lack of prayer in the schools, the scourge of homosexuality, the availability of guns, and the nihilism of heavy metal music and video games.  To my knowledge, significant policy reform of any kind did not follow.

President George W. Bush used the horrific attack on the World Trade Center, nearly a decade ago, to legitimate enhanced security measures at American airports and the invasion of Iraq.  It might have been used to improve health care in American emergency rooms or support foreign language instruction in the United States as well.  It wasn’t.

The devastation that Hurricane Katrina brought to New Orleans could have been used to legitimate public investment in infrastructure.  It wasn’t.

An addled young man’s plan to assassinate a sitting member of Congress is an extraordinarily unusual event, not something predictable or traceable to a simple cause.  But when public attention fixes on such an event, activists, advocates, and politicians try to make sense of it, filling the space around the event with their interpretation of the world.

Condemnation of the attack has been universal, of course, but what follows that initial statement of grief varies a lot.  Many commentators (including me) have pointed to the vitriolic rhetoric of Tea Party activists, pointing particularly to Sarah Palin’s Facebook map noting districts ripe for Republican gains with gunsites.   (Palin has since, rather disingenuously, explained that the markings were really surveyor’s symbols.)

I can’t believe that Sarah Palin wanted to inspire supporters to take up arms when she called upon them to reload.  Nor do I think that Giffords’s Tea Party opponent in the last election, Jesse Kelly, wanted his supporters to open fire in the streets when he held a fundraiser at a shooting range.  They used colorful language associated with campaigns and social movements, expecting that their audiences would understand their theatricality and hyperbole.  And almost all of them did.

Sarah Palin has since used the shooting to emphasize her commitment to peace;  Glenn Beck shared a private exchange of emails with the former Alaska governor, in which both expressed their distaste for violence.  Palin wrote:

I hate violence…I hate war. Our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying anyone as inciting terror and violence.

I expect that Palin and others, without disavowing or apologizing for previous comments, will be more guarded about the metaphors they use–at least for a while.

In deploring the violence, some partisans have been unable to resist reminding audiences of their grievances with Rep. Giffords and the Democrats more generally.  On Talk of the Nation, Randy Graf, the Republican nominee for Giffords’s seat in 2008, reviewed how appalled he–and others–were at the health care reform bill she supported.

Reviewing the scattered public evidence of Loughner’s life, a few creative critics have tried to find partisan politics, pointing to the presence of Ayn Rand or The Communist Manifesto, or Mein Kampf, on his list of favorite books.   Tea Party Nation’s Judson Phillips sees a threat against the right:

The left is coming and will hit us hard on this. We need to push back harder with the simple truth. The shooter was a liberal lunatic. Emphasis on both words.

But finding any kind of coherent ideology in Jared Loughner’s troubled life is a fool’s errand.

Making politics out of the event, however, is quite another matter.

Thus far, generic calls for civility continue, often followed by specific criticisms of political opponents as threats of various sorts.

Just now, we’re also starting to see some attention to the environment in Arizona where it’s much easier to get guns legally than in most of the rest of the United States, and where the state’s ongoing budget crisis has resulted in radical cuts to community mental health services.

There are, mercifully, very few people like Jared Loughner.  But they live in the same rhetorical environment as the rest of us, finding similar access to firearms or medical care.  The odd event gives advocates the chance to remind us about what our world is–and could be.

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Updates on Domestic Terror

Posted on January 8, 2011 by David S. Meyer

I was surprised to see how quickly a conservative

Judson Phillips speaks

activist slipped from condemning the violent attack in Tucson to chastising unnamed members of the left.

The New York Times reports the statement of Judson Phillips, Tea Party Nation’s founder:

(Note: Tea Party Nation is a marginal for-profit group, but Phillips gets disproportionate attention from mainstream media.   See that he feels compelled to label Giffords a “liberal” before explaining that her politics are unimportant.  He then takes aim at “the hard left” which will use the event to victimize the Tea Party.)

Arizona Congressman Gabrielle Giffords was shot and killed along with several others in Arizona. Giffords was conducting a “Congress on your corner” event when the shooting occurred. Six others were killed as well.

The shooter has been taken into custody and let’s hope he gets the death penalty he richly deserves.

Congressman Giffords was a liberal, but that does not matter now. No one should be the victim of violence because of their political beliefs and certainly a member of Congress should not be shot and killed on a street corner.

Take a moment to say a prayer for her and her family, as well as the others who were so tragically murdered this afternoon.

At a time like this, it is terrible that we do have to think about politics, but no matter what the shooter’s motivations where, the left is going to blame this on the Tea Party Movement. Already on liberal websites, the far left is trying to accuse the Tea Party of being involved.

While we need to take a moment to extend our sympathies to the families of those who died, we cannot allow the hard left to do what it tried to do in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing.

Does Tea Party Nation promote a vigorous and honest dialogue?  This is the fundraising call from their home page:

Tea Party Nation is hard at work to defeat liberals and their socialist agenda! We need your help in this fight!

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Gabrielle Giffords and Domestic Terror

Posted on January 8, 2011 by David S. Meyer

It won’t take long for reporters to find out enough about Jared Loughner to offer portrayals of a severely disturbed young man.  Reports at this moment detail Loughner attending a district event at a supermarket organized by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was just re-elected to Congress.  Loughner rushed Giffords, shot her in the head with a pistol, then continued firing, killing or injuring 17 others, including Federal Judge John Roll, and Giffords’s staffers.

There are never more than a few Americans who will take up arms against elected officials, when they can vote, campaign, blog, and spew vitriol far more easily and with far less risk.  But social movements, as we’ve discussed, always have crazies around the periphery of the crowds they draw, and activists and political leaders need to take some responsibility for the tone and content of their rhetoric.

When organizers try to mobilize people–to vote, attend a rally, contribute money, go to a meeting–they tend to overemphasize the importance of the moment, the gravity of a threat and the promise of change.  Antinuclear activists talk about the fate of the earth, while anti-abortion crusaders can easily start talking about murderers with medical licenses.  Most people who participate in these events understand the element of theater at work here, even if they take offense at it.  But such words carry far further than speakers may anticipate.

And if the operation of a death factory or the march toward communism is nearby, it’s a little easier to understand how someone at the edge of the crowd might start to see a rally or an electoral campaign as a fairly tepid response.

Gabrielle Giffords is a moderate Democrat who has represented a swing district in Arizona since 2006, when she won an election to replace a moderate (and openly gay) Republican, Jim Kolbe.  She described herself as a supporter of gun rights, but was not vigorous enough to overcome the animus of gun rights groups like the NRA.  She supported comprehensive immigration reform (not just enforcement) and health care reform, and some of those who disagreed with her labeled her positions as threats to the existential survival of the United States.

Movements have to deal with the fallout from the lunatics they inspire.  In 1983, Norman Mayer drove a van he said was filled with explosives to the Washington Monument, demanding a national dialogue on the nuclear threat.  Repeatedly, opponents of legal abortion have had to find ways to distance themselves from those they somehow inspire to bomb clinics or murder doctors.

Rep. Giffords had been threatened with violence before: an armed man was arrested at one of her rallies in 2009, and her district office was vandalized during the health care debate, her glass front door shattered.  (She was one of several Democrats who faced threats and vandalism during the debate; Eric Cantor, now Majority Leader in the House, criticized them for making too much of a fuss about it.)

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin marked Giffords’s district as a prime target for Republican gains, marking it with crosshairs on her own electoral map (on the left).  Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle suggested that activists might have to consider “second amendment remedies” to the threat represented by President Obama.  And it gets worse: scan the comments on any news website and you’ll see warnings about communism, the Muslim president born in Kenya, and various threats represented by immigrants and their advocates.

In the immediate wake of this shooting, politicians on the left and right have been quick to stand with Rep. Giffords and her family, condemning violence.

Somewhere down the line, however, someone with some kind of Tea Party claim will qualify that condemnation, noting the frustration felt by opponents of health care or immigration reform.  The test will be how Tea Party and Republican leaders deal with these putative allies.

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The Constitution and Reading Aloud

Posted on January 6, 2011 by David S. Meyer

My first grader is starting to get bored of reading aloud in class.  Like most members of Congress, she can read faster than she can listen, and having to slow down as every reader stumbles through the words gets tiresome.  But, in minimal deference to promises to Tea Party groups, the members of the House are devoting a little time to the text.

Of course, members of Congress must have been exposed to the Constitution some time in law school or college or middle-school civics.   Still, going back again to the words can’t be a bad thing.  As a veteran teacher of American government 101, I’m all for it.

Tea Party activists hauled out images of the Constitution to represent an imagined past in which political life is better.  Opening the little document, however, and actually reading the words, is the best way to understand why our political life is the way it is.

[Note: The first chapter of The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America, explains how the US Constitution sets the terrain for protest politics.]

Like most texts (e.g., a prayer, a pledge) imbued with mystical importance, the actual words (of the Constitution, not my book) are less inspiring than the object as an imagined whole. [ “Read it and Weep,” Dahlia Lithwick writes, in a fascinating piece at Slate.]

The Republican leadership has, wisely, decided to read the amended version of the document, omitting the 3/5ths compromise and the mandate to return escaped slaves (obviously, not divinely inspired parts of the original).

Members of Congress jockeyed to get better pieces of the text.  The leadership reserved the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery, for civil rights hero, Rep. John Lewis (Democrat, Georgia), prompting bipartisan applause.  I’d like to think this reflects not only consensual disapproval of slavery 150 years later, but also appreciation for Lewis’s efforts, as activist and legislator, to force the federal government to deliver on the promises of citizenship for all Americans.

During the electoral campaign, Tea Partiers demanded that the Federal government respect the Constitution by avoiding action on anything not specifically mentioned in the Constitution.  They will, no doubt, feel affirmed when they don’t hear mention of health insurance in the Constitution.  Like railroads, abortion, television, nuclear power, and the internet, it escaped the framers’ attention.

The Republicans have promised to legislate only on issues where the Congress has some Constitutional authority.  In real life, this provides virtually no limits.  Back in the days when I taught American government, I would give groups of students a list of potential issues and a copy of Constitution, asking them to find authority.  Even without legal training or familiarity with Justice Marshall’s pronouncements in McCullough v. Maryland or the history of jurisprudence on the commerce clause, they were able to find their way, quickly, to the “necessary and proper” clause of Article I, Section VIII, and the Supremacy clause in Article VI, which afforded the government flexibility to respond to new issues the framers knew they couldn’t imagine.  (Listen to Charles Fried, Solicitor General under Ronald Reagan, rail against the ignorance of those who hope to find protection from health care in the text of the Constitution.)

So, the text of the Constitution doesn’t actually forbid many things Republicans don’t want.  More striking is that many Republican legislators haven’t been warned off from policies that actually violate the plain language of the Constitution.  Even as members read the sacred words on the floor of the House, Rep. Steve King, the incoming chair of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, promised to introduce a bill revoking “birthright citizenship.”

You’ll recall from today’s reading that the 14th amendment to the Constitution states:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Our Constitution, of course, is amendable, but this is a tough road.  Representative King explained that he opted for a statutory approach because it was easier.

So much for Constitutional constraint.

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Who’s Serving the Tea?

Posted on January 5, 2011 by David S. Meyer

The Tea Party hit institutional politics early, and now activists have to grapple with the realities of politics indoors.

This is, of course, a common story for social movements in America.  Activists mobilize for broad, often-ill-defined, goals, and then have to deal with allies working with real policies, numbers, and political constraints.  It’s particularly difficult for the Tea Party, which became a catch-all label that included virtually all opposition to President Obama’s administration, based around a tenuous coalition between populist conservatives at the grassroots and big business interests.

Of course, mainstream media is filled with stories about how Tea Partiers assess their current situation.

The New York Times‘s Kate Zernike interviewed notable Tea Party leaders, and found them disappointed by the lame duck session.   Mark Meckler, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, a grassroots-oriented clearinghouse, was angry at Republicans as well as Democrats for legislating, rather than going home and letting the new Congress work:

We sent them a message that we expect them to go home and come back newly constituted and do something different.  For them to legislate when they’ve collectively lost their mandate just shows the arrogance of the ruling elite. I can’t imagine being repudiated in the way they were and then coming back and saying “Now that we’ve been repudiated, let’s go pass some legislation.”  I’m surprised by how blatant it was.

The Tea Party Patriots announce their priorities for the new Congress:

defund Obamacare

cut spending

tax reform

entitlement reform

devolve power to state & local governments

greater transparency & accountability

Whether Meckler and other TP Patriots can mobilize the grassroots again on these issues remains an open question.  All of these issues sound more attractive in general terms than they end up playing out in grassroots politics.  Entitlement reform, for example, means cutting Social Security and Medicare, which doesn’t poll nearly as well.  Devolving authority to local governments?  It’s exactly what new California governor Jerry Brown is promising to get the state government off the hook in funding public schools.

Perhaps more significantly, the Tea Party Patriots presents as a collection of more than 2,500 local groups.  Before the election, the Washington Post found that fewer than 1/3 were actually in existence in any way.

Zernike also interview Judson Phillips, leader of a group with far less visible support at the grassroots, Tea Party Nation.  Phillips responded that the Senate’s ratification of the new START Treaty, an agreement that reduced US and Russian strategic nuclear arms, showed that “the GOP had caved.”  This is not an issue with traction at the grassroots.

The Washington Post published a fascinating profile on Gena Bell, a new Cincinnati-area tea party activist who has taken a job as the chief of staff for a member of the Hamilton County (Ohio) Board of Commissioners.  (Thanks to Amy Hubbard for the reference.)

Bell’s commitment and organizational skills had led to her being recruited by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a conservative group funded by the Koch Brothers.  Treated to a conference at a resort in Cancun, Bell was frustrated that AFP wanted to channel her efforts–or at least her image–to fight against regulation to prevent climate change.   Obviously, this is a salient issue for the Koch brothers, whose business interests include oil refineries, but Bell herself believes in clean energy and environmental efficiency.

So Gena Bell has taken the passion of the Tea Party to try to make government work effectively and efficiently–at the grassroots, and, as Amy Gardner reports, to put her ideas to the test.

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Contested Conservatism

Posted on January 4, 2011 by David S. Meyer

As the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives and try to flex new muscle in the Senate–and in politics more generally–the conflicts within modern conservatism will become more visible.

The label “conservative” has always included contradictory positions, and pragmatic politicians have to work hard to paper over differences. Contemporary conservatives divide over their optimism about radical change and their reverence for markets.   Edmund Burke (to the right, of course), defined conservatism as a kind of pragmatism: suspicion of grand schemes of any kind–and ideology more generally, tempered respect for tradition, and caution about change.  Burkean conservatives bargain, stall, and compromise. Some of them remain in American politics.

More visible these days are more ambitious conservatives, like Rush Limbaugh (on the left).  Unlike Burke, Limbaugh is not an elected official or a philosopher, but a prolific and engaging talker who makes a living as an entertainer.  Contemporary activist conservatives vigorously reject the compromises inherent in normal politics, and press for bold action in line with what they see as moral imperatives: enhancing human freedom by limiting government at home, and revolutionary activism to promote democracy and capitalism abroad.   Massive tax and service cuts, abolition of longstanding programs, and global wars for ideological goals are violent departures from classic conservative positions.

And conservatives differ about whose authority to put in the driver’s seat.  Although Tea Partiers like to point to the Constitution, they also extol the will of the people.  (The founders, however, as any veteran of American government 101 knows, were deeply distrustful of the people.)  Libertarians trust the market; populist conservatives often trust a church, somewhat shared values, or the race much more.

The rump end of the last year’s lame duck Congress pointed out these conflicts pretty clearly.  Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a classic market-conservative move.  We want our armed forces to be able to recruit soldiers and sailors from the broadest possible population, and think primarily about how well they do their jobs (shoot guns, translate conversations, drive trucks, etc.  As conservative icon, Sen. Barry Goldwater put it: shoot straight rather than be straight.).  Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation limits the talent pool by an arbitrary criterion not associated with the job.  Newly elected Pennsylvania Republican, Sen. Pat Toomey, a market-oriented conservative by any measure, expressed this view pretty clearly:

As I’ve said previously, my highest priority is to have the policy that best enables our armed services to do their job…Our civilian and professional military leadership have now spoken and said we should repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. I would support a free-standing measure to do so.

A classic conservative would also easily support the Dream Act, which would (rather pragmatically) normalize and regulate the legal status of hundreds of thousands of young people in college and military service.  Again, employers should have access to the widest talent pool possible.  (Freedom Works, one of the most powerful Tea Party organizations, urged activists to avoid the immigration issue, and supports a guest worker program).   And there’s little economic sense in denying legal, visible, and taxed employment to a group of people who, for the most part, have no options outside the United States.

But the Republican caucus in Congress couldn’t embrace these conservative positions, because it was constrained by other conservatives who saw open acknowledgment of homosexuals in the military as a moral slight and establishing a path toward citizenship for people who broke the law (albeit, unwillingly and as children) as dangerous and immoral pandering.  (For some, race and ethnic diversity are also threatening.)

It’s relatively easy for conservatives of all sorts to unify in opposition to Obama initiatives.  For many different reasons, they can agree to try to stop change.  Taking initiative, however, is another matter, and Republicans now have to discover what sorts of conservatives they are:

Abroad, they can be ambitious democratic ideologues who use the military aggressively to promote their morality–at great cost, or tempered practitioners of realpolitik, who make deals with unfamiliar or unpleasant people to promote American “interests.”

At home, they can be sharp-eyed deficit hawks who scrutinize spending and promote spending cuts and tax hikes as necessary–or ideologically oriented tax cutters who trust the ensuing chaos will promote some sort of desirable outcome.

Whichever vision of conservatism triumphs, we can count on conservative discontents to mobilize in opposition.

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Painted Grassroots

Posted on December 22, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Reading the sports section of the Sunday New York Times, I was surprised to find a full-page ad attacking the Humane Society of the United States and its president, Wayne Pacelle.

The ad reported that HSUS was soft on quarterback/dog fighter Michael Vick, who has served a prison sentence and renounced the latter identity.   Sponsored by HumaneWatch.org,  the ad urged supporters of the Humane Society to withdraw their donations and support local shelters instead.

I often hear criticism of the Humane Society from Animal Rights activists, who say that HSUS focuses its efforts on moderate policies that have little effect on animals’ lives.  But where would more radical animal rights activists get the money for a full-page ad?  They didn’t.

HumaneWatch is out to discredit HSUS in any way, but it’s certainly not sympathetic to the animal rights cause.  Rather, it’s a project of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a group that describes its sponsorship as:

restaurants, food companies and thousands of individual consumers. From farm to fork, from urban to rural, our friends and supporters include businesses, their employees, and their customers.

Looking at the websites and reading the rhetoric, we can see an effort to look like grassroots activism, but this is clearly an example of well-heeled interests cloaking their efforts to make them look like something different.  They represent the interests of their business funders, rather explicitly, and resist government regulation of any kind.  As they explain:

A growing cabal of activists has meddled in Americans’ lives in recent years. They include self-anointed “food police,” health campaigners, trial lawyers, personal-finance do-gooders, animal-rights misanthropes, and meddling bureaucrats.

Their common denominator? They all claim to know “what’s best for you.” In reality, they’re eroding our basic freedoms—the freedom to buy what we want, eat what we want, drink what we want, and raise our children as we see fit. When they push ordinary Americans around, we’re here to push back.

So what’s the right description?  A chef (or chief?) in sheep’s clothing?

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Defeats and Victories

Posted on December 21, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Movements don’t disappear after a legislative verdict.  Victories and defeats change calculations about what’s possible and how to go about getting it, but they virtually never–at least in the United States–provide a decisive resolution to the sorts of issues that animate movements.

This weekend’s Senate session handed a major victory to the groups working to repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in the American military.  The same Senate dealt advocates of the DREAM Act a staggering defeat.  The weekend drama was heightened by the sure knowledge that the Congress that will take office in January will be less sympathetic to either cause.

[The Senate drama included the first sighting of the new bullet-proof Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), the only Republican to vote for the DREAM and for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Having defeated a strong Tea Party challenge in winning reelection, she’s brought herself the space to be the sensible patronage-oriented Republican she’s always wanted to be.  She can work to bring federal dollars back to Alaska and vote for policies she deems practical.)

Both movements have spent many years working to get to these historic votes, and neither will disappear any time soon.  The GLBT movement now faces a different field, as do champions of immigration reform.

Gay and lesbian activists have been working to provide for open service in the military since, at least, the 1980s.  Bill Clinton touted the crazy Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, early in his administration, as a response to the movement, and as a step forward; after all, the military was enjoined from investigating the sexual orientation of soldiers, sailors, and marines.  More than 14,000 discharges later, no one was happy with the policy.  More importantly, both multi-issue gay rights organizations, and specialist groups like Servicemembers Legal Defense Network had been working the issue–and others–winning judicial victories and pushing massive changes in public opinion.

When the policy finally disappears, activists will shift their targets.  I’m sure a few people will savor the victory and go home.  Most, however, saw open service as part of a larger social and political agenda.   Some, no doubt, will work to protect military personnel who come out or seek to rejoin the military.  (They should be aided in this quest by the leadership of the services!)  Others will shift their attention to other key issues for gays and lesbians.  The battles across the country for same sex marriage will surely take a lot of their efforts.  Over time, the military policy will give activists seeking social and political equality a stronger foundation for their claims.

The DREAM Act was also a narrow slice of a broader policy agenda which includes comprehensive immigration reform.  DREAMers saw this small step as the most politically viable path toward larger policy reforms and, perhaps more importantly, a practical and humane approach to a slice of the undocumented immigrant population.

This path shut down, activists can’t really go home.  (The students and servicemembers affected really are home.)  Instead, they will shift their attention to other venues, and play defense against the growing nativist movement.  Much of this, like the gay marriage debates, will be at the state level.  Activists will challenge harsh anti-immigrant policies like that adopted by Arizona.  They will also work for more modest accommodations in the states, including access to state university systems or driving licenses, which will make undocumented lives marginally more livable–and building support for larger reforms.

It’s important to remember that the DREAMers’ defeat was a victory for an anti-immigration movement now poised to push harder for policies that will make life more difficult for workers, students, and families in the United States without documentation.

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Still a Dream?

Posted on December 17, 2010 by David S. Meyer

When we listen to the young people who have come forward about their undocumented legal status, we hear them express unvarnished optimism about the passage of the DREAM Act.  (Listen, for example, to the testimony on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, this week.) After all, the House passed the Act a few days ago, and Senate leaders continue to press for a vote.  More significantly, it’s the best hope for these people to make some kind of decent life for themselves.  Their evaluations aren’t based on counting votes in the Senate so much as hoping for a way forward for themselves–and for the country.  As a college senior who came to the US from Korea at age 9 said:

And I know it will pass next week because it is the only immigration legislation right now that has some kind of chance to actually fix our broken immigration system. And it will happen.

Virtually all the political pundits actually counting votes suggest otherwise.  And, unlike Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal, the DREAMers can’t count on the courts to intervene on their behalf.  The next Congress is likely to be far less sympathetic to the DREAM.

Activists virtually always have undue optimism about their prospects for influence.  It’s the kind of suspension of disbelief that helps the successful salesman pitching after hearing no a few times, and it’s virtually necessary to help change the world.

I suspect, however, that the fallout will be much greater here.  The activists don’t have homes in Korea or Pakistan or Mexico to go to. Rather, they will find ways to continue, as best they can, to find ways to support themselves and continue the political struggle (now more than a decade old) to find a way to create real opportunities for themselves.  All will depend upon how the rest of America responds to the efforts to keep the DREAM alive.

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