The View From the Sinister Side of Life
June 30th, 2008
Commenter John Spragge, at Obsidian Wings:
Frontier settlers needed guns to protect them from Indians the way people making unauthorized bank withdrawals today need guns to protect themselves from guards, tellers, and police officers.
Heh!
Categories: Weekend Flame Bait | 70 Comments
June 30th, 2008
The right wng is going to go after General Clark very hard because of this:
SCHIEFFER: Can I just interrupt you? I have to say, Barack Obama hasn’t had any of these experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.
CLARK: I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.
The reason that they wil go after Clark on this for two reasons: it is absolutely correct and it destroys the rationale for McCain’s candidacy. Military service on the front lines — while generally admirable — really says very little about whether a person would make a good commander in chief. Being President is about laying out sound policy, planning ahead, being able to decide between many options, choosing advice and advisers well, managing the various bureaucracies, and knowing how to rally the country to a position you think is correct. Some military men learn those traits, some do not. The mere fact of appearing in combat does not mean that a person has learned or been born with all of those skills.
And that simple fact is a huge problem for the McCain campaign. Because McCain has been trying to imply otherwise since the beginning of the campaign. He habitually talks about his time in the service and what he suffered for his country. When he was on the wrong side of the new GI Bill, he explicitly used his service as a means to attack Senator Webb. McCain does this in an attempt to make criticism of his military or foreign policy stances off limits and to hope that the constant drumbeat of his military resume will serve to hide his actual record on foreign policy.
See, recently McCain had a chance to prove that his life and military service had helped him grow and learn and become worthy of the Presidency. McCain failed that test. When it came time to decided whether to get caught up in the sideshow of the neo-cons’ Iraq delusions or to re-concentrate on the real threat to American security he backed the neo-cons. If there is another terrorist attack on this country, as the McCain camp seems to think is both inevitable and good for them, it will be becasue, in part, John McCain helped Bush divert the full attention of the US form Al Qaeda and then created a recruiting and training ground in the middle of the Middle East for them. McCain failed the Presidency test when it came; he doesn’t have any other option but hope his past service can be used to hide that from current voters.
Categories: General | 24 Comments
June 26th, 2008
Since much of the blogosphere is talking about Heller, and I’m more or less indifferent to it, I figured the least I could do is leave an open thread for discussion. Here it is. If you’re interested in the Happy-about-this constituency, Uncle’s all atwitter. As for an Unhappy-about-this constituency, well, none of the (very few) left-leaning blogs I frequent have really had all that much to say about it, so I’d be interested in a recommendation.
Discuss.
UPDATE: Professor Balkin has an interesting take, sure to stir up some shit:
Despite its long and occasionally dreary originalist exegesis, the Heller majority is not really defending the values of 1791. It is enforcing the values of 2008. This is no accident. Indeed, the result in Heller would have been impossible without the success of the conservative movement and the work of the NRA and other social movement actors who, over a period of about 35 years, succeeded in changing Americans’ minds about the meaning of the Second Amendment, and made what were previously off-the-wall arguments about the Constitution socially and politically respectable to political elites. This is living constitutionalism in action.
Like Lawrence v. Texas, Heller is another example of how the Supreme Court exercises judicial review in response to successful social and political mobilizations, regardless of what individual Justices understand themselves to be doing. The only difference is that in Heller, it is conservatives who have successfully changed public opinion, a change that has now become reflected in Supreme Court opinions.
Welcome to the living Constitution, Justice Scalia. We couldn’t have done it without you.
But for a good summation about how I tend to feel about this, we have to look to Sandy Levinson:
If one had any reason to believe that either Scalia or Stevens was a competent historian, then perhaps it would be worth reading the pages they write. But they are not. Both opinions exhibit the worst kind of “law-office history,” in which each side engages in shamelessly (and shamefully) selective readings of the historical record in order to support what one strongly suspects are pre-determined positions. And both Scalia and Stevens treat each other—and, presumably, their colleagues who signed each of the opinions—with basic contempt, unable to accept the proposition, second nature to professional historians, that the historical record is complicated and, indeed, often contradictory. Justice Stevens, for example, writes that anyone who reads the text of the Second Amendment and its history, plus a murky 1939 decision of the Court, will find “a clear answer” to the question of whether the Second Amendment supports a “right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes.” This is simply foolish. Justice Stevens pays no real attention to a plethora of first-rate historical work written over the past decade that challenges this kind of foolish self-confidence, as is true also of Justice Scalia. There is no serious discussion, for example, of Saul Cornell’s fine book A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control, but many other examples could be offered, from various sides of the ideological spectrum.
Both Scalia and Stevens manifest what is worst about Supreme Court rhetoric, which is precisely the tone of sublime confidence when addressing even the most complex of issues. The late Victoria Geng once wrote a marvelous parody of Supreme Court decisions in which, among other things, the Court announced that “nature is more important than nurture.” We wouldn’t take such a declaration seriously. It is not clear why we should take much more seriously the kinds of over-confident declarations as to historical meaning that both Scalia and Stevens indulge in.
What is especially ironic is that the strongest support for Scalia’s position comes from acknowledging that the Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, has been “dynamically” interpreted and has taken on some quite different meanings from those it originally had. Whatever might have been the case in 1787 with regard the linkage of guns to service in militias—and the historical record is far more mixed on this point than either Scalia or Stevens is willing to acknowledge—there can be almost no doubt that by the mid-19th century, an individual right to bear arms was widely accepted as a basic attribute of American citizenship. One of the reasons that the Court in Dred Scott denied that blacks could be citizens was precisely that Chief Justice Taney recognized that citizens could carry guns, and it was basically unthinkable that blacks could do so. Thus, in effect, they could not be citizens. Charles Sumner, who, unlike Taney is quoted by Scalia, strongly endorsed the rights of anti-slavery settlers in Kansas to have guns to protect themselves against their pro-slavery opponents. If one reads only Scalia and Stevens, one would believe that there is no dynamism to the Constitution, which is both stupid as a theory of interpretation and, more to the point, completely misleading as a way of understanding the American constitutional tradition.
Categories: Legal Issues, News & Current Events | 58 Comments
June 25th, 2008
A couple of weeks ago, I went out and saw Iron Man. I loved it. But it occurred to me that I don’t go to the movies, or even watch movies, anywhere near as often as I used to. As a teenager and into my early 20’s, I would see, on average, a movie a week. That’s dropped precipitously, and I’d be surprised if I’ve seen 25 movies in the last 5 years. I also often joke with people that they would be appalled at the list of movies I haven’t seen.
In that spirit, I decided to take a look at the top grossing movies of the last ten years, along with the “Best Picture” nominees over that period, to document just how many movies I haven’t seen. If you’re intrigued, the list is below the fold.
Categories: Bloggin, I do too have a life | 10 Comments
June 20th, 2008
Scientists believe NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander exposed bits of ice while recently digging a trench in the soil of the Martian arctic, the mission’s principal investigator said Thursday.
Trenches excavated by the lander’s robotic arm have turned up white material mixed in with the reddish dirt.Trenches excavated by the lander’s robotic arm have turned up white material mixed in with the reddish dirt.
Crumbs of bright material initially photographed in the trench later vanished, meaning they must have been frozen water that vaporized after being exposed, Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in a statement.
“These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice,” Smith said.
“There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can’t do that.”
Categories: General, Science | 3 Comments
June 19th, 2008
Mindless fun. This one of my blog posts turned into a work of art. Click on the picture for the larger view.
Categories: General, Writing | 3 Comments
June 19th, 2008
The government can now outsource abuse, becasue now its is a bedrock principle of our political class that no one who violates your rights can be held to account for that if the President asked them to violate your rights. If the President tells a company it’s legal, it’s legal.
The reports say that conservative Democrats pushed for this. If that’s true, and I have reason to doubt it, it has now become a staple of the conservative movement that the President and his helpers are above the law and that the 4th Amendment is not actually a sacred right.
Why the hell should I vote in November?
Categories: General | 10 Comments
June 19th, 2008
Must be a kooky, DFH:
The new report, he writes, “tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individual’s lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.
“The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full-scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted –both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.
“In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. . . .
“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
War crimes are war crimes, and torture is torture and equally bad whether it is practiced by Pinochet’s goons or under the order of a US President. We have to stop making excuses like “well, they aren’t as bad as Pinochet!”. That may be true, but it is also irrelevant. Once you make torture, once you make unlimited, unchecked detention part of your normal procedure you have crossed the line into abuse. And you cannot limit abuse once you have crossed that line, as our own experience in Gitmo and Iraq have shown. These people should be pariahs and we have to start treating them like such if we are ever going to prevent these things from happening again.
Categories: General | 13 Comments
June 18th, 2008
Send them to the Haugue:
The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn’t the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers.
It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials.
… The quintet of lawyers, who called themselves the “War Council,” drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military’s code of justice, the federal court system and America’s international treaties in order to prevent anyone — from soldiers on the ground to the president — from being held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes.
The Bush Administration — out of abject cowardice or simple hatred of democratic norms — acted in a way that a Stalin or a Pinochet would have appreciated. These people are dime store monsters, nothing more, and they should be hel accountable for their actions. I hope that, like Pinochet, they one day run out of places to hide.
Categories: General, Legal Issues, Terrorism | 16 Comments
June 17th, 2008
The lesbian couple were the first to participate in a 2004 challenge of California laws against same-sex marriage, exchanging wedding vows only to see the ceremony voided later.
But on Monday, Martin, 87, and Lyon, 84, exchanged vows again. This time, California law — at least for now — was on their side.
“I think it’s a wonderful day and I have to thank our mayor for most of it,” Lyon said. “I’m very happy and very grateful for all of you.”
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who helped launch the series of lawsuits that led the court to strike down California’s one-man-one-woman marriage laws, presided at their wedding at City Hall.
Well-wishers cheered when the couple emerged from Newsom’s office after the ceremony. Video Watch crowd greet couple with cheers »
“When you consider these two women, who have been denied their rights for 55 years — put yourself in their shoes and you start to feel a little bit differently,” said Newsom, adding that allowing gay and lesbians to marry is about giving them the respect and dignity they deserve.
Fifty-five years. Fifty-five years together, committed to each other and to their lives together. Fifty-five years is longer than I have been alive. My parents weren’t even in grade school when this relationship started. My mother was in another country. Fifty-five years, through thick and thing, through good and bad. Fifty-five years of heartache, joy, exasperation, fights, reconciliations and love. Fifty-five years, and today, finally, their relationship gets its due. Fifty-five years together, and some people think their love is tainted and their relationship worth nothing and less than nothing.
But they are wrong. They’ve always been wrong and now, even if it is fifty-five years too late, the rest of the country is beginning to understand just how wrong.
Categories: Culture, General, Legal Issues | 2 Comments
June 16th, 2008
I have gotten myself in hot water over this before, but I still think it an important enough topic to risk more flames.
Tim Russert’s death is a tragedy. Anytime that young is taken from his friends and family, that is an undeniable tragedy. And, from all accounts, on a personal level, Russert was apparently a kind, polite, and generous man. The testimonials and eulogies all speak to that. Bu they all say something that is not true: he was a journalist other journalists should aspire to emulate. We can go through the record if you would like, but it is really secondary to the point. Just for he sake of argument, accept my notion that Russert was poor at his job. Saying that, though, seems to anger some people. I have been told that such criticisms are not appropriate. But I don’t see why not, for people who lived a public life, criticism of that public life should be out of bounds.*
The effect a person had on the public is, to me, an essential topic of discussion. It is important to understand public figures, the successes they had and the failures they suffered in order to help understand what is good and bad for the public. The good and the bad have to be discussed at a time when the pub;lic is payoing attention. You don’t want the lasting impression of Russert’s professional life to be one of success. If it is, then you create a situation in which young reporters and the public at large are convinced that “gotcha” questioning and holding every conversation unless specified otherwise off the record are high journalistic standards. If the criticism are forced to the side for the length of the public discussion of a man;s public life, then the criticism are not heard and misinformation is allowed to be presented as the truth. That is not good for the public at large.
I understand the desire to be nice to the recently passed, for the sake of their grieving friends and family if nothing else. But I don’t see why that consideration is more important than a respectful attempt to get at the truth of a person’s public life.
*I should say here that I am not talking about wakes or funerals or what is said or done there. I am not on the right wing — I do not have a set of politically correct guidelines for what a wake/memorial/funeral should look like. Those events are for the loved ones of the deceased, they can celebrate the deceased’s life in anyway they fit and God damn anyone who would take that comfort away from grieving people.
Categories: Culture, General | 23 Comments
June 13th, 2008
Some good debate on issues of economic justice over at Mr. Dawntreader, starting a few comments in to the third page. A note, if you do decide to join the discussion, please keep the discourse civil, and note that the site owner moderates all comments, so any comments you post will not appear immediately.
Categories: Politics | No Comments
June 13th, 2008
One of the more striking things about the decision yesterday was just how unhinged, almost Malkin or Limbaugh-like Scalia sounded:
Reflecting how the case divided the court not only on legal but, perhaps, emotional lines, Justice Scalia said that the United States was “at war with radical Islamists,” and that the ruling “will almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed.”
“The nation will live to regret what the court has done today,” Justice Scalia said.
That is a talking point straight out of the worst recesses of the right wing fever swamp. It is also a cowards argument. I know, I know — I am being shrill and unkind and hardly polite. But I am tired of having to take this nonsense seriously just becasue some gasbag with a microphone or a Justice’s robe says it. Habeas corpus is the first freedom: without the right to challenge the executive’s power to detain you, you are not free. if the executive can decide who to hold, how long to hold them, and even whether or not they will ever be charged with a crime, then the government has a method for the complete control of its citizens. whether it chooses to use that method on you at any given time is merely a detail. You are not free in those conditions — you are merely a prisoner the government has chosen not to confine. No democracy can long survive the threat of a government that can lock you away without recourse. Democracies cannot survive without habeas corpus. And Scalia and Roberts and Thomas and Alito want to throw that freedom away. Why? Because a small group of fanatics got lucky once*. The country faces no threat to its existence. Al Qaeda are not the Nazis of the 1930s and 40s or the Soviets of the Cold War or, heck, even the Confederacy or the British of 1812. They are in no posiiton to bring down this nation. they can, on occasion, with if the stars all align perfectly against us, kill people. That is a horrible thing and something to be guarded against and fought. But it is not a threat to the survival of the nation and it is certainly not as dangerous to the nation as the repeal of habeas corpus would be.
To be so afraid of such a small threat that you would be willing to throw away the very foundation of liberal democracy is a cowardice so vast that I cannot even comprehend it. How does a man so filled with unreasoning fear manage to walk out of his own home, much less talk to strangers coherently? Certainly such a coward does not belong anywhere near a Judicial bench. No man who sees planet-devouring monsters in small terrorist groups can be expected to deal fairly with questions of justice and security. Obviously, his deep paranoia and personal fear-fullness will blind his legal judgment.
Oh, I’m sorry. Did I go too far there? Was I impolite? How terribly rude of me. Of course we must take seriously the notion that giving up the first freedom of liberal democracy is a necessary and required step to defeating a group that poses no serious threat to the survival of the nation. I say bollocks that. It is the argument of a coward or, even worse, a man willing to knowingly exaggerate the threat in order to terrify his fellow citizens. either way, it is a contemptible notion deserving only derision. If you really are so afraid that you want to toss the constitution over the side for the illusion of safety than your are obviously not thinking rationally. Such people should be given a cup of hot cocoa, a pat on the head, tucked into their beds, and be kept out of the way of the rest of us as we deal with the real problems at a level somewhere above that of a panic attack.
*And let’s be clear here — they did get lucky. If any of the major party candidates who ran in 2000 had been in the White House instead of Bush, it is very unlikely that the 9/11 attacks would have succeeded, at least to the massive extent that they did. perhaps that is why Scalia is reacting the way he is to these cases: guilt over his putting his pet idiot into the white House.
Categories: 9/11 Report, General, Legal Issues | 19 Comments
June 12th, 2008
By a 5-4 vote, the Constitution has survived another day:
The Supreme Court has ruled that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts.
The justices, in a 5-4 ruling Thursday, handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
“We hold these petitioners do have the habeas corpus privilege,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court majority in the 70-page opinion.
To be clear here, the Administration is claiming that it can arbitrarily decided who gets a trial or a hearing before a judge and who does not. By arguing that these people do not have rights to a trial, the Bush Administration is claiming that they have the right to detain people and then decide who gets to hear their appeals and even whether or not to allow them to appeal their detention in the first place. That is unjust and immoral and it is a direct assault on the constitution’s protections. Foreigners in this country are entitiled to the same rights and protections as US citizens when charged with a crime. It is ludicrous to believe that should change on either just the Executive’s say so or becasue of the location of the prison. Someone held by the federal government is held by the federal government whether they are in Alabama, Gitmo, or the moon.
If these people are prisoners of war, then treat them as such. If they are not, then they are criminals and should be treated the same as every other criminal in the care of the federal government. Inventing a third class of people that the executive gets to do with as they please cannot be an option under our constitution.
Categories: General, Legal Issues | 13 Comments
June 12th, 2008
Confused why liberals don’t think that Democrats should go on Fox? This might help explain it.
Categories: Media, Politics, Race | 11 Comments
June 11th, 2008
Madeleine Albright points out yet another disastrous consequence of Bush’s imperialist war of choice: by announcing he would trample the sovereignty of any foreign nation without provocation (he threatened Iran again just yesterday), Bush forced every vulnerable nation into a defensive posture, strengthening their resistance to enforcement of international law and their reluctance to allow any interference in their internal affairs, even for humanitarian relief in disasters. In the process of destroying two countries to no benficial effect, Bush reversed a 10-year trend toward consensus on human rights, and made international intervention in crisis situations impossible.
Categories: Culture, Darfur, Economics, General, Iran, Iraq | 4 Comments
June 11th, 2008
Commenter LarryE (at #4):
I long ago concluded that much of what is sneered at as being “politically correct” would in an earlier era be called “common courtesy.”
Amen. Kevin has often said similar, but instead of “common courtesy” he used “not being an asshole.”
Categories: Bloggin, Culture | 28 Comments
June 11th, 2008
I don’t care who you are.
Categories: Humor, News & Current Events, Satire | 1 Comment
June 9th, 2008
Via SayUncle, Dunkin’ Donuts has pulled a Rachael Ray TV ad because she had the gall to wear a black-and-white paisley scarf which — if you’re a pants-wettingly-hysterical right wing blogger like Michelle Malkin, and you squint at it just right — could be construed as a keffiyeh, which, of course, makes Rachael Ray (and, by extension, Dunkin’ Donuts) pro-terrorist. Got all that? Good. Apparently, DD rightly defended the ad at first, but the noise from the right-wing echo chamber (motto: “Don’t think, just repeat”) became more trouble than it was worth.
And these dumb fucks have the gall to lecture liberals about so-called “PC bullshit?” Give me a damn break.
As I side note, I’m a little disappointed that this didn’t warrant an Xrlq “non-liberal morons” post…
UPDATE: Xrlq belatedly takes requests:
Charles Johnson and Michelle Malkin also caught Rachael Ray red-handed … wearing a scarf during a massive heat wave on the East Coast in an ad intended to promote doughnuts not manufactured by Krispy Kreme. And in this case, the dextrosphere got results; at great expense to Non-Krispy Kreme, Non-Krispy ended up pulling that vile and disgusting ad that implied that it’s OK to wear scarves in 100 degree heat to promote doughnuts not made by Krispy Kreme. Or for Rachael Ray to appear in an ad without revealing her entire neck, or more skin in general, or something like that. She certainly wouldn’t look good in a burka, so maybe that’s where they’re going with this. “m [sic] not sure exactly what their objection was, but in any event, hey, it must have been good ‘cuz they got a buzz inside the blogosphere and obtained results outside it. All hail the new media.
Categories: News & Current Events, Terrorism | 35 Comments
June 9th, 2008
Oh, I loves me some Paul Krugman:
Fervent supporters of Barack Obama like to say that putting him in the White House would transform America. With all due respect to the candidate, that gets it backward. . . . [I]f he wins in November, it will be because our country has already been transformed.
Mr. Obama’s nomination wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago. It’s possible today only because racial division, which has driven U.S. politics rightward for more than four decades, has lost much of its sting.
And the de-racialization of U.S. politics has implications that go far beyond the possibility that we’re about to elect an African-American president. Without racial division, the conservative message — which has long dominated the political scene — loses most of its effectiveness.
Take, for example, that old standby of conservatives: denouncing Big Government. . . .
Americans have never disliked Big Government in general. In fact, they love Social Security and Medicare, and strongly approve of Medicaid — which means that the three big programs that dominate domestic spending have overwhelming public support.
If Ronald Reagan and other politicians succeeded, for a time, in convincing voters that government spending was bad, it was by suggesting that bureaucrats were taking away workers’ hard-earned money and giving it to you-know-who: the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks, the welfare queen driving her Cadillac. Take away the racial element, and Americans like government spending just fine. . . .
The cause of [the] right turn, as Mr. Perlstein shows, was white fear of urban disorder — and the associated fear that fair housing laws would let dangerous blacks move into white neighborhoods. “Law and order” became the rallying cry of right-wing politicians, above all Richard Nixon, who rode that fear right into the White House.
But during the Clinton years, for reasons nobody fully understands, the wave of urban violence receded, and with it the ability of politicians to exploit Americans’ fear.
It’s true that 9/11 gave the fear factor a second wind: Karl Rove accusing liberals of being soft on terrorism sounded just like Spiro Agnew accusing liberals of being soft on crime. But the G.O.P.’s credibility as America’s defender has leaked away into the sands of Iraq.
Let me add one more hypothesis: although everyone makes fun of political correctness, I’d argue that decades of pressure on public figures and the media have helped drive both overt and strongly implied racism out of our national discourse. For example, I don’t think a politician today could get away with running the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad.
Unfortunately, the campaign against misogyny hasn’t been equally successful.
By the way, it was during the heyday of the baby boom generation that crude racism became unacceptable. Mr. Obama, who has been dismissive of the boomers’ “psychodrama,” might want to give the generation that brought about this change, fought for civil rights and protested the Vietnam War a bit more credit.
He gets so much right, in such a short space. Every time I read him, I’m glad there’s even one person out there so insightful, so clear, and so uncompromising. Read it all.
Just to have something to say: I’m especially glad for his remarks on “political correctness” - otherwise known as “not being a gratuitous asshole”. Conservatives are against that, for the obvious reason, but for decent people it’s something that they don’t need to be encouraged to do in the first place. He could have gone further, however: treating people with respect is not just the right thing to do, it’s part of the social harmony everyone pretends to want. To the extent that anyone sneers at the thought of calling people by the names they themselves prefer, not telling bigoted jokes, or not using group slurs, they are not just causing hurt feelings (which, in some bizarre way, has come to be a mark of “rugged individualism”), but they are standing for a world in which some groups can be treated dismissively, and humiliated, by those with more power - a world in which petty oppressions are still the privilege of the privileged, and in which the grand oppressions they contribute to are always implicitly waiting to make a comeback. Our willingness to take “political correctness” seriously (sorry, Krugman, but not everyone “makes fun of” it) is a test of our willingness to live as decent people in a society of equals - a test that conservatives have chosen to fail, putting themselves increasingly outside the ethos of a society that is, slowly and fitfully, bettering iself.
Categories: Culture, General, News & Current Events, Politics, Race | 8 Comments
