"Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America." William Jefferson Clinton, First Inaugural Speech, January 20, 1993
Alito has, until this point, flown under the radar.
That means not that he does not pose a threat, that he has not wrought havoc upon our liberties, but only that we have not been paying enough attention.
For instance, we were lax when he upheld the strip search of a 10-year-old girl, when he expressed opinions in favor of machine guns for all, when he ruled for the defendant in 14 of 18 employment discrimination cases. He couches his decisions in unremarkable, "un-explosive" language. And yet the language conceals a remarkably, virulently, violently conservative view that would, in the words of his colleagues, "immunize the employer from Title VII" when consciously racially biased (Bray vs. Marriott, 1997).
That we were not entirely cognizant of his work, of Alito's rulings, is not surprising. As this judge demonstrated his extreme judicial philosophy in ruling after ruling, our attentions were diverted to more pressing matters. But bit by bit, he eroded basic freedoms and civil liberties where possible in each perch he held.
Imagine what amplified voice and powers he would enjoy on the Supreme Court.
Dissented in 1991 in a 3rd Circuit decision striking down a Pennsylvania law's requirement that women tell their husbands before having an abortion.
Wrote a 1997 ruling that Jersey City officials did not violate the Constitution with a holiday display that included religious as well as secular symbols.
"Alito drew conflict-of-interest accusations after he upheld a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit against the Vanguard Group. Alito had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested with the mutual fund company at the time. He denied doing anything improper but recused himself from further involvement in the case."
"A majority opinion in Fatin v. INS, 12 F.3d 1233 (3d Cir. 1993), holding that an Iranian woman seeking asylum could establish that she had a well founded fear of persecution in Iran if she could show that compliance with that country's "gender specific laws and repressive social norms," such as the requirement that women wear a veil in public, would be deeply abhorrent to her. Judge Alito also held that she could establish eligibility for asylum by showing that she would be persecuted because of gender, belief in feminism, or membership in a feminist group."
"A majority opinion in Shore Regional High School Board of Education v. P.S., 381 F.3d 194 (3d Cir. 2004), holding that a school district did not provide a high school student with a free and appropriate public education, as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, when it failed to protect the student from bullying by fellow students who taunted the student based on his lack of athleticism and his perceived sexual orientation."
"Perhaps Alito's most memorable dissent came in 1996 in Sheridan v. Dupont, a sex discrimination suit that forced the 3rd Circuit to tackle fundamental questions about the plaintiff's burden of proof. The issue in Sheridan was whether a plaintiff in a sex discrimination case can survive summary judgment simply by casting doubt on the employer's proffer of legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for the adverse employment decision…Alito, the lone dissenter, argued that his colleagues were going too far by allowing plaintiffs to get their case to a jury whenever they managed to cast any doubt on the employer's version."
Is a woman who's lived a life outside of libraries and litigation more or less dangerous that a man who's never really lived the law but only studied, read, and handed it down? Then again, idolatry of President Bush can scarcely be topped for danger. Not even his most fervent supporters venture to call GWB the most brilliant man they've ever met.
New York Times joins Scalia and Santorum in a quest to hinder Progressives. This Times Select business is obscene. It's preventing liberal voices from reaching the populace--okay, mind you, the NYT-reading populace--right as conservatives' spending on media coverage has peaked, the culmination of 40 years of exorbitant spending on getting the message out and keeping the bright young ones in, writing those messages. The Republicans have just built a megalithic con-palace with full apartments for over 100 interns. They get swank, cash, and housing. The last thing we need is the silencing of M. Dowd in the name of N. Times profits.
Why are conservatives spitting fire over Harriet Miers?
Loyalty to Bush over party. Not the most qualified candidate by party or judicial standards. No judicial record--no proof of Conservatism.
Initially, not only did H. Miers inspire Republican infighting, her absent record and donatation patterns suggested there was room to hope that she might be less conservative than feared on issues such as Roe vs. Wade.
Miers' lack of a record does leave room to doubt her status as "the fifth vote against Roe vs. Wade". And some assert that even if the court overturns Roe vs. Wade, the resultant hell-raising, earth-shattering hullabaloo could ultimately help women's rights, abortion rights, and liberalism generally.
That's why the Republicans don't (or shouldn't) actually want Roe overturned. Although they may be ideologically vocal, see shrill, about combating Roe, Republicans know better than to fight too hard to have Roe vs. Wade overturned. The smart ones do, anyway.
Benjamin Wittes of The Atlantic was among the first to point out that overturning Roe would be the best thing that could happen for the Democrats.
Laura Vanderkam of USA Today claims that women would not notice a substantial difference in abortion access, meanwhile the Democratic Party would benefit from an influx of outraged, galvanized Liberals and the defection of many moderate Republicans.
Shades of war, thinking of how life and death are subject to partisan politics.
And while we US citizens are absorbed once more in our domestic abortion rights battle, far too few can claim cognizance of the policy that granted ample warning of intentions, the Global Gag Rule? Sure, Bush fights his War on Terror overseas--but he's also engaged in a War on Women. He's fought abortion in China and Kenya to gain inroads to banning it in Chicago.
The Vancouver Sun was less than flattering in its coverage of new Under-Secretary for Public Diplomacy, Karen Hughes'visit to the Islamic world. Her headline read, "Arab women set Texan straight: U.S. doesn't understand that women are happy in Saudi Arabia, Bush confidante hears".
Hughes' confirmation and first official trip as Under-Secretary were much-touted by the GOP and, dare I speculate, deliberately diversionary in the wake of Katrina. (Accordingly, the resources allocated her were more appropriate to a congressional delegation.) But they can't rely on Hughes to redeem the party. Hughes took a beating in the international media precipitated by her clumsy attempt to broach the issue of women's rights in the Muslim world.
Maybe folks were too busy with Katrina and corruption to prep Hughes?
Someone could have let the Under-Secretary in on the realities of--and internal debates over--women's rights within Islam, hinted that it might not be appropriate to get carried away suggesting the imposition of Western values and Western norms.
Hughes made a mistake in focusing on issues like driving. There better be a supremely appropriate context or frame--thinking hard and coming up empty--to inform women whose way of life and religion are being threatened by your nation, whose families may be endangered, starving, and sick as the result of the Iraq War, that they should care about driving. Her carefully chosen audiences were unreceptive to her diplomatic overtures, Link [told] her she has no credibility as long as U.S. troops occupy Iraq."
Women's rights have long been neglected by the US in foreign relations. As tempted as I am to uncork the champagne over because a high-ranking government official has integrated gender equality into her foreign policy priorities, my enthusiasm has dimmed in the face of her clear cultural ignorance and unfamiliarity with US foreign relations. She'll make no progress, find no friends, should she continue blundering into a highly-charged issue--especially when many Muslim feminists echo Fatma Nevin Vargun, quoted in Newsday as saying, "War makes the rights of women completely erased, and poverty comes after war - and women pay the price."
From Newsday, New York:
"This war is really, really bringing your positive efforts to the level of zero," said Turkish activist Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal at the session with Hughes at a museum in Ankara.
From "Turning a Deaf Ear" in The Daily News, New York:
"They want to stop terrorism but they are helping it to spread," said an American University student to the Christian Science Monitor after Hughes' talk in Cairo.
When interviewed, audience members asserted their anti-war sentiments and concerns about the US as a super-power, their emotions and attitudes ranging from disapproval to hatred in delivering this message.
US image is so severely compromised that Hughes must "engage" in repairs before she can hope to promulgate her agenda. But even in a more welcoming environment, pre- or post-war, Hughes' cultural misconceptions would have hurt her chances for an ovation.
Hughes has an uphill battle in improving the US image in the Middle East. She won't win the battle by lecturing on her "Listening Tour". If she truly wants to improve relations, she has to understand them first--and understand the obstacle presented by continued US presence to opening any dialogue, much less conducting a successful diplomatic mission. Flack and diplomacy differ at crucial junctures; compare the need to push a message about an opponent, or to push a version of the truth, as Communications Director and the imperative to communicate, persuading rather than pushing acceptance of policy and perspective as a diplomat. From her first grave faux-pas in attempting to push drivers' licenses on Saudi women to her seeming disregard for Middle Eastern perspectives on US presence in the Middle East, her trip failed.
Don't answer "Absolutely nothing." And don't give that same tired, disorganized list we've been throwing out for years.
Sure, we're for education, health-care, equality, choice, civil liberties, low taxes, welfare, the environment and every other Progressive cause. And that's well and good. But we're failing to pitch them in the context of the greater Progressive frame.
What's the fall-out from this failure?
Ask your average North Carolinian what liberals are about and they'll tell you. They'll tell you that we want to violate marriage, steal their guns, and abort their babies.
Throw a parade and we're there. But don't ask us, by no means can you ask us, why we show up at both the gay pride parade and the summit on global warming.
Progressives offer a list of views, what James Carville rightly refers to as a litany. We're like a preacher delivering the same old sermon to a sparse, sleeping congregation.
We can't weave together a narrative. Not for the life of the party. And that's what's at stake: the life of the party.
How shall we repair our rhetoric?
Let's look to history. What Progressive messages have resonated, have survived? How have past Progressives framed liberal ideals in ways that won widespread popular support?
"A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits."
Woodrow Wilson
Have a sense of humor. Don't always play nice.
"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand."
Woodrow Wilson
Okay, so Wilson crashed and burned toward the end because he got carried away. But his initial rhetoric found an audience. We can probably reap a few lessons about how to ennoble and galvanize the American people.
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
John F. Kennedy
Compassionate yet strong. A Liberal with teeth.
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
John F. Kennedy, Inaugural address, January 20, 1961
"Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation."
John F. Kennedy
Kennedy's presidency was unremarkable. But his election was not--it was phenomenal. Not in small part due to the tragedy of his assassination, John F. Kennedy has been deified, elevated to a pedestal in the pantheon of American mythology. Neither the morbid appeal of his demise nor his good looks fully account for his status. How did Kennedy become the JFK of legend, a figure the entire country grieved? How did Camelot, his court of young elite intellectuals, summon popular support and capture the imagination of a nation?
"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children."
Jimmy Carter
Anti-war without being weak, evoking the imagery of slaughtered sons and daughters. Carter did not win re-election, but he had to be elected to be defeated as an incumbent.
"I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day before I came here to ask her what the most important issue was, she said she thought nuclear weaponry."
Jimmy Carter, 1980 Debate with Reagan
In Carter's gaffes, we may unearth vital lessons. Americans insist upon confidence in their leaders, would rather be "Strong and wrong than weak and right" as President Bill Clinton asserted. The people want to be lead, not asked. And they don't want Amy Carter, aged 12, asked.
"By lifting the weakest, poorest among us, we lift the rest of us as well."
Bill Clinton
Clinton insisted upon a common link, a unified stake in welfare and in social reform programs. He did not suggest or plead for the acceptance of this link but asserted it in ennobling and empowering rhetoric.
"For too long we've been told about "us" and "them." Each and every election we see a new slate of arguments and ads telling us that "they" are the problem, not "us." But there can be no "them" in America. There's only us."
Bill Clinton
A virtuoso in the rhetoric of unity, Clinton simultaneously establishes the Progressive ideal of community and strikes back at divisive Republican tactics.
Review failed campaigns. Scrutinize successful ones. Lobby fellow Progressives for a return to the big picture, to larger concepts of community and freedom.
I was probably the youngest attendee at the America's Purpose conference entitled "Terrorism, Security, and America's Purpose" on September 6. Certainly, I was one of a handful--I mean less than 10, more like 5--attendees under 35. A few minutes into the first panel, I noticed another minority I belonged to: women. Perhaps I've simply become accustomed to this imbalance, expaining why I didn't find it notable right-away. That's a frightening thought.
Here and there a woman sat alone within the sea of men. Almost uniformly masculine and disquietingly still, these women observed their XY tablemates with either wary reserve or outright hostility. A few broke the mold, joining into the conversation with the abandon of a tomboy climbing a tree with her male friends. I applauded them.
Unfortunately, I was not at a table of men. Rather, I was at one of two female tables, bulwarks against the overwhelming masculinity of the room. But I was out of the frying pan and into the fire. These isles of femininity revealed the behavior of women toward one another to be downright predatory. Teeth and manicured claws at the ready, these women began conversations that evoked a pair of wild animals circling one another, searching for a weakness in the other to exploit.
I could boil down every comment made by the women at my table to two intentions:
1. Flaunt your pedigree. Begin sentences, regardless of topic, with a reference to your Ivy League education. One woman began a sentence about war protests with "When I was getting my PhD at Co-lum-bia." The point of the sentence was not that she protested but that she protested while obtaining a degree from Co-lum-bia.
2. Force the other to admit ignorance on a topic, no matter how obscure. Maintain the pretense that everyone who's anyone knows what she's just professed she doesn't know anything about. The Co-lum-bian said to me, "Oh, you've not read Allison's 'Conceptual Models'?" Luckily, I had. So I countered with Roskin. Away we went, circling and waiting for the other to stumble.
But once the panels began, I forgot about my vicious tablemates.
Representative Jane Harman of California, a Democrat, surprised me with the strength of her comments. Expecting another bland set of platitudes about America's greatness and our ideological superiority, liberally sprinkled with jabs at Bush, I was blown away by her rhetoric. While her later written remarks faded into bullet-pointed truisms, her initial words were willingly confrontational--something we don't see often enough from contemporary Democrats.
"Come on, people," she urged, before analogizing the effect of Hurricane Katerina to that of a WMD. She's right. Transportation, communication, healthcare, food, water, even order, have been subsumed by this tragedy. It was an event for which we had five days of warning. If you consider that the Gulf Coast is hardly unfamiliar with hurricanes, we've had years of warning that New Orleans and its neighbors were vulnerable.
While we know that terrorists will likely focus on big cities like New York and Washington, we have no specific geographic region in which to focus our preparations for a potential WMD threat. It is unlikely that we would have any warning of the disaster to come. Harman pointed out that terrorists likely tuned in to discover how unprepared and how vulnerable to the consequences of a major destructive event the US really is.
One of her strongest points, one echoed throughout the day by speakers from George Soros to General Wesley Clark to author Tom Clancy, was that we must fight terrorism with non-military forces. Harman centered her argument in a single, highly-effective fact: the Pentagon believes that the most effective action the US has taken against terrorism since 9/11 was to engage in tsunami relief efforts. She, like George Soros, developed her argument to attack the concept of a "war" on terror. For the struggle against terrorism to be couched in the rhetoric of military aggression encourages the continuation of a self-defeating strategy, the use of hard power.
We must, as Reiss said, switch to soft power. For the most part, the rest of the world admires or at least tunes in to our culture--they see our movies, hear our music, appreciate our science, and consume our products. Build upon this foundation for a relationship. In this vein, use the internet. Another Harman fact: there were 10 terrorist sites at the time of 9/11; today, there are more than 4,000. We must stem the tide of recruitment.
Fund grass-roots groups with the linguistic and cultural basis to be effective, aid the moderates to frustrate the extremists, and find other ways to deny extremists the enemy they must have in order to recruit more terrorists to their cause.
Rita Hauser, a wonderful inclusion, made a strong argument for an end to a unilateralist framework for the "War on Terror". It is not just the United States that has suffered terrorist attacks--Spain, anyone?--and it is not just the United States that knows the scourge of AIDS and the violence of natural disasters. Hardly. But after Hurricane Katerina, did President Bush call upon the United Nations for advice? The United Nations has dealt with natural disasters world-wide, has experts and resources that could have been of significant use. Hauser qualifies that no US president would have asked for UN assistance. But the larger point is that the US believes that it does not need the skill or assistance of others--not only during natural disasters, but during other times of crisis, even when the ramifications are global and not regional. It's a terrifying combination of xenophobia and nationalism that we're witnessing these days. It's not new, but it's evolving--the xenophobia perpetuated and enhanced by newly popular concepts such as Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations theory.
Hauser concluded with a striking quotation that amounted to the assertion that "International law and policy is predicated on a respect for the opinion of mankind." We have lost our respect for mankind--or else narrowed the definition considerably.
Now is not the time to look away and say "Not my administration" or "Not my fault." Progressives must effectively and cohesively promote a strong alternative to this course of unilateralism. If we had done so in 2004, John Kerry would be president.
From the way we behave at our tables, the way we treat our Progressive tablemates--despite shared political views, they behaved like opponents rather than allies--to our political manuevers, we must learn to be cohesive, to unify.
"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality…And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." - Barbara Bush, September 5
Is any situation in which the bodies of your loved ones are left to rot on streets and bridges 'working very well'?
President Bush 41 was not familiar with a grocery market scanner; Mrs. Bush is not familiar with The Golden Rule. (She does, however, have more than a passing acquaintance with gold.) Treat others as you'd like to be treated--not just other rich folk or other white folk. Treat everyone as you would like to be treated.
She and President Bush 43 patted Michael Brown on the back, said "You're doing a good job, Brownie." The Bush dynasty seems to exhibit a dangerous disinclination to indulge in reality.
Where are our Progressive voices? Publicize the truth like Nancy Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the House minority leader, recounted her 7 September meeting with the President at a press conference on the same day.
"When I said to the president that he should fire Michael Brown, he said, 'Why would I do that?' I said, 'Because of all that went wrong, with all that didn't go right last week.'" And he said, 'What didn't go right?'"
The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal among others promptly misrepresented her remarks. On CNN today, she not only willingly repeated her criticisms but defended them to CNN's (critical) correspondant.
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) called for an independent investigation into the disaster mismanagement, responding to the Bush administration's proposed self-investigation on CNN by stating that "I don't think the government should be investigating itself…I don't think either the president or the Congress can conduct the kind of objective, independent investigation that we need."
We need more strong Progressives. Women and men like these. Where have they been following the Iraq debacle? Congress spends over 1 billion dollars a day on the military. Over 2,000 Americans killed so far. That's not even saying anything about how many Iraqis have died, how many foreign nationals have died in the wars and conflicts the Bush administration has started since 2001.
Progressives can win the White House in 2008, can contend for Congress in 2006. And they must. A Progressive president is small consolation in the face of an increasingly conservative Congress.
Condaleezza Rice was confirmed in the narrowest vote for any Secretary of State since 1825 despite doubts raised not only regarding her misleading statements about the Iraq War but her ability to bring opposing opinions to the President, a critical function of the Secretary of State. John Roberts will be our next Chief Justice because the Democrats lack the legislative firepower to keep him off the bench.
We blew 2000, 2002, and 2004. Progressive candidates should never have lost these elections. The negative consequences could have prevented it with cohesion and discipline.So, let me again say, if we lose in 2008 it will be our fault. The resultant policies, ours as well.
Our ally is truth. Make the consequences of current Conservative policies and actions known. Publicize the realities of the situation as Pelosi did. Brown's towering incompetance should have spoken for itself and led him to resign. But it didn't. Enter Pelosi. Enter Clinton. Enter Progressives to insist upon truth, to avert deflection and diversion and redirect attention to Katrina.
Imagine this:
You see a bully beating another child. His best friend, a much better match for the bully, sits by the beatee's side and holds his hand, mouthing platitudes.
Bullies are bullies. As long as he has the upper-hand, he's not going to listen. So your anger toward the bully is useless. But this friend, this friend deserves your frustration. He could be doing something about the bully yet watches the situation without taking action to rectify the wrong being done.
Conservatives are the bully. As Progressives, we can do little to change Conservative policy. We are the best friend of the beatee, of the people and thus must change how we respond to the bully. We have to fight back. How? Use our fists, okay. But moreover, we've got to convince the beatee to use his, to stand up for himself. All we have to do to win him to our side is point out the obvious: He's getting beaten up. Together we can put a stop to it, gang up on the bully.
Now is not the time for platitudes or politeness. It's the time for action, for conviction. Step up. Be a Pelosi.
Last year at Harvard, a group of women launched a campaign that attracted national attention, including coverage by The Economist, Salon.com, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Sun-Times, and numerous web sites (1). Against the tenure ratio? No. Against the three-quarters salary earning, women to men? Nope. Diversity? Nein. Gender discrimination in class? No. Abortion? Uh uh. Gay rights? Not even close. Birth control access? Please.
They were crusading against an 9'6" snow penis that one of the men's sports teams created in a courtyard.
Yes, a snow penis.
How could progressives concerned about women's rights ignore a tenure ratio of 7:1 men to women on Harvard's faculty but protest about a snow sculpture?
Sure, I suppose the giant penis in the middle of Harvard Yard is anti-feminist but it's indicative of greater issues, of a male dominated framework--that is, if you should choose to interpret the snow sculpture as something other than a wintery manifestation of men's perennial delight with their genitals. There is, not 100 feet from where the object in question was erected, excuse the phrase, a stone monolith of the same theme but with hieroglyphs. Should you harbor a penchant for attacking sculptures around campus, focus on the stone and not the snow. The stone won't melt in a few days.
These students took up a cause that the general public can't relate to in politics. Talk about a woman's right to choose, the need for women to mobilize and vote, or talk about equal pay! After all, a snow penis seems a particularly trivial issue to the women nationwide who make 76 cents to a man's dollar (2). Issues like hiring practices and salary are more substantial and more politcally palatable than snow sculptures, no matter how distasteful.
We have to stick with the practical problems. By launching protests against issues the public cannot relate to, problems that do not affect the general populace, we're losing allies and alienating potential supporters.
I have no problem being radical, being provocative, upsetting people, or challenging tradition--but I have a problem doing these things because of a snow sculpture when I know that, according to WHO, meeting the demand for family planning could save over 100,000 women's lives worldwide next year (3).
Gender equality is important, integral to the progressive ideal. But the issues that matter and find a greater audience and support for our efforts, like reproductive rights and equality in the workplace, are being lost in the fray. Channel the same determination and energy that got Harvard's snow penis in The Economist into a campaign to repeal the Global Gag Rule or for fair salary initiatives and who knows what we could do?
1. McCormack, Noah. "Let it Stand." March 2003. Link />
2. Joyce, Amy. "D.C. Tops Nation In Women's Pay, Equity With Men." November 2004. Link />
3. SDNP. "World Population Day, 2004." July 2004. http://www.sdnpbd.org
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