There are a lot of reasons the filibuster should be abolished, but my preferred ones are a) if the public elects a majority to govern, that majority should be able to govern and b) endless Senate gridlock has effectively broken Congress and undermined the constitutional order.
-Jamelle Bouie
The pro-democracy forces in the US are at least a two-thirds majority. We need to act like one.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty.
-Abraham Lincoln
It’s interesting to look back on things you wrote years ago and see how well they withstand the test of time. Thoughts I shared with the Democratic Town Committee in August 2015:
People who I’m pretty sure like the direction Sanders says he wants to take the country are throwing in early for Clinton. I’m not sure why.
A fellow committee member posted the following to the listserv:
Here is a link to a blog by a friend I trust on political issues… This one about Hillary.
http://weeklysift.com/2015/07/27/the-2016-stump-speeches-hillary-clinton/
Doug is a thoughtful person. I shared my take on his post:
“Practicing good epistemological hygiene requires that one seek out perspectives that challenge one’s own.”
I try to do that. The perspectives that challenge my own and hold up to scrutiny are much more often from my left than from my right.
“It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.”
– Tom Stoppard
I too would prefer a benevolent dictator who imposes liberty and justice to the messiness of majority rule. Problem is, no one aspires to be dictator because they want to impose liberty and justice. And no one who prioritizes liberty and justice has much chance to be dictator.
-Radley Balko
From a review of Carlos Lozada’s book, A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era:
Messing around with the notion of truth is a luxury that comes with affluence. We have spent the past 50 years undermining the basic institutions of society — not just our sense of common purpose and identity, but also normative values like truth and duty and expertise. The politics of consumerism — and grievance — have overwhelmed the politics of unity and responsibility. Among Lozada’s favorite books is the conservative thinker Yuval Levin’s “A Time to Build”: “Popular culture compels us to ask: ‘What do I want?’ Institutions urge a different query, Levin explains: ‘Given my role here, how should I act?’
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John McCain did not plan the Vietnam War. He didn’t lie to the American people about the nature of the conflict, the atrocities it entailed, or the probability of its success. He merely trusted the civilian leadership that did. There is no reason to doubt that McCain believed he was in Vietnam to risk his life – and then, to endure a living hell – in defense of our nation’s highest ideals. His willingness to sacrifice his own well-being to what he believed to be America’s interests deserves our awe-struck admiration. (As an upper middle-class “soyboy” – whose most heroic feat of self-abnegating physical endurance probably involved a full bladder and broken-down A train – I have no doubt that I’d prove myself a lesser man than McCain, were I ever asked to accept years of torture for a cause that I believed in.) As the senator is laid to rest, one can reasonably argue that respect for his family, and legacy, compels us to isolate his act of transcendent patriotism from the indefensible war that produced it.
But there are hazards to such myopia. McCain’s loved ones deserve to take pride in the sacrifices he made at the “Hanoi Hilton.” But we, as a nation, do not. The United States asked John McCain to risk his life – and kill other human beings – for a war built on lies. We asked him to give some of his best years on Earth – and the full use of his arms – to an illegal, unwinnable war of aggression. The story of McCain’s time as a prisoner of war should inspire national shame. It is a story about our government abusing the trust of one its most patriotic citizens. But it’s (almost) never presented as such. Instead, in stump speeches, op-eds, and obituaries, McCain’s service is typically framed as a testament to our nation’s greatness, or an affirmation of its finest values.
This distortion invites broader misconceptions. The selfless sacrifices of American soldiers are supposed to be lamentable costs of war, burdens that can only be redeemed by the justness of the cause that demanded them. And yet, the way we remember McCain’s heroism threatens to invert this principle. In celebrating his discrete act of patriotism – while ignoring the question of what cause it served – we risk treating the selfless sacrifices of American soldiers as ends in themselves…
[What] the “men and women who serve our nation in combat” truly deserve is a country that reveres their lives more than their suffering – and, therefore, that only asks them to endure the latter in wars that are just, winnable, and necessary.
If we wish to honor McCain’s wartime-sacrifice, we must remember it less as an example of the kind of heroism we wish to emulate, than of the kind of tragedy that our nation is duty-bound to avoid repeating.
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Who I’ll be supporting in Tuesday’s Democratic primary:
NB: You don’t need to be a registered Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary. Unenrolled voters can pick up a Dem ballot at the polls.
Why I support Nick, Josh, Quentin, and Bob: Continue reading