Month: June 2004

More p.c. hell from Britain.

SECESSION: Speaking of theocrats, some of the nuttier parts of the religious right are now advocating actual secession from the Godless United States. Catholic cleric James McCloskey once rhapsodized about this idea as well. But he was dreaming of bigger things than “Christian Exodus.” They’ve decided to encourage Christians to go to … South Carolina. What would the new paradise look like? The message board has some pointers:

“Well on one hand I kinda favor a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. But should homosexuals speak up, they should be deported, sanctioned, or held in jail,” said one person, discussing whether their new ‘country’ should endorse or permit lifestyles they believe go against biblical teachings.
Other visitors had ideas on what laws might be applicable in their new South Carolina home. “No alcohol sold on Sundays at all. All entries into the town would be policed with random checks for alcohol abuse, breathalyzers mandatory. No places of business open on Sundays. All schools, public, private or otherwise would teach creation, have the Ten commandments placed and say prayer before classes start. No landlords allowed to rent to couples just living together … Abortion would not be legal in any circumstance.”

Not everyone wanted the new “Christian” republic to be quite so rigid. But you get the idea. Any takers? Mr Rove?

An avalanche of hostility. Could they have found a single person to say a single good thing about him? Nah. Just don’t call them a liberal magazine.

BOBBY VS RONNIE: Here’s a fascinating transcript of a 1967 debate between Bobby Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. (Thanks to a devoted reader.) I’d say Reagan does extremely well. How was it that a man who could out-debate Kennedy was soon to be described as a moron? Here’s his discussion of racism:

I happen to believe that the greatest part of the problem lies in the hearts of men. I think that bigotry and prejudice is probably the worst of all man’s ills the hardest to correct… Now we’ve found it necessary to legislate, to make it more possible for government to exert its responsibility to guarantee those constitutional rights. At the same time, we have much more that can be done in the area of just human relationships. I happen to bridge a time span in which I was a radio sports announcer for major league sports in our country, in athletics, many years ago. At that time the great American game of baseball had a rulebook whose opening line was: “Baseball is a game for Caucasian gentlemen.” And up until that time, up until World War II, there’d never been a Negro play in organized major league or minor league baseball in America. And one man defied that rule–a man named Branch Rickey of one of the major league teams, and today baseball is far better off and our country is far better off because he destroyed that by handpicking one man and putting him on his baseball team, and the rule disappeared. Now I don’t say this is the only answer, but we must use both, and I think the people in positions like ourselves like the Senator and myself, like the President of the United States, can do a great deal of good, perhaps almost as much as proper legislation, if we take the lead in saying those who operate their businesses or their lives on a basis of practicing discrimination and prejudice are practicing what is an evil sickness. And that we would not knowingly patronize a business that did such a thing, and we urge all right-thinking people to join us and not patronize that business. Soon we will make those who live by prejudice learn that they stand alone …”

Yes, Reagan was a skeptic about legislating tolerance. But these are not the words of a racist.

“Society has always regarded marital love as a sacred expression of the bond between a man and a woman. It is the means by which families are created and society itself is extended into the future. In the Judeo-Christian tradition it is the means by which husband and wife participate with God in the creation of a new human life. It is for these reasons, among others, that our society has always sought to protect this unique relationship. In part the erosion of these values has given way to a celebration of forms of expression most reject. We will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality.” – Ronald Reagan, July 12, 1984. That’s a useful reminder to me not to get too carried away by Reagan’s differences with Bush-style conservatism.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “You refer to Adam Clymer as a Bush-hater. Wouldn’t it be better to say that Bush is an Adam Clymer-hater? After all, it was Bush who called Clymer a “major league asshole.” But if Clymer doesn’t care for Bush because of that, I can’t say I blame him.
You must remember, dislike of Bush is not, as many conservatives seem to think, some irrational mental disease affecting loony partisans. Bush brought this on himself. The whisper campaign against McCain in 2000; uncompromising on his agenda after an election where the other guy got more votes; the ads questioning the patriotism of Max Cleland; saying some in the Senate “didn’t care about the security of the American people” because they backed a different Homeland Security Bill from Bush’s (after Bush fought the very idea for months); campaigning ferociously and indiscriminately even against the Democrats in congress who supported him on the big issues of Iraq and tax cuts — these and other actions caused a lot of bad feeling for Bush, and it’s a big reason why the Democrats are so united against him.
You’ve already rightly pointed out the many ways Bush pales in comparison to Reagan. In that same line of thought, can you envision Reagan behaving in a similar manner as the examples above?” – More feedback on the Letters Page.

My memoir of discovering Reagan as a teenager in Britain.

Cal Thomas remembers how he ignored them.

A great event in Iraq. Kinda like this one. You can barely find them in the papers. If hostages had been captured, or Zarqawi had killed again, it might be another story.

CREEPING SECTARIANISM: The attempt by Karl Rove to turn organized fundamentalist Protestantism into a wing of the Republican Party continues apace. It is as insulting to religious faith as it is counter-productive.

ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY: June 7 was the fiftieth anniversary of the suicide of Alan Turing, one of the forefathers of modern computing who was also critical in cracking the Nazi Enigma Code that helped win the war against Hitler. For these achievements, he was persecuted, given estrogen injections and threatened with jail because he was homosexual. Just another gay man fighting for his country only to be treated with contempt and cruelty – like so many American servicemembers today.

MORE ‘FATUOUSNESS’: Another writer – from California – sees some parallels between Arnold and Ronnie:

Reagan is gone but, perhaps fittingly, California’s new governor is a spiritual clone, another immigrant who sought his fortune in Hollywood, who ousted an incumbent Democratic governor with a color in his name (Gray instead of Brown) on the promise to clean up the mess in Sacramento, whose political skills are sometimes underestimated, and who out-Reagans Reagan in exuding can-do optimism.

Arnold is certainly far closer to Reagan’s spirit than Dubya.

EMAIL OF THE DAY I: “I think your points on Reagan’s AIDS record are well taken. But what about Reagan’s record on civil rights? What do you make of his opening the 1980 campaign by declaring his support for states rights in Philadelphia Mississippi, a town whose only claim to fame is the murder of three civil rights activists in 1964? There’s a reason the Republican Party hasn’t been able to win more than 10-15 percent of the black vote since 1964, despite the widespread social conservatism of many black voters. Reagan’s legacy is one of indifference or outright hostility toward African-Americans, a hostility signaled by his naked appeals to white Southern voters using racial coded messages. Imagine if George Bush opened the 2004 campaign by leading a rally against gay marriage in Laramie. No one would have to think hard about what kind of message he was sending to gay voters.”

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “Schwarzenegger’s pro-choice stance as governor of a state that is overwhelmingly pro-choice, in a time when abortion remains legal in all fifty states, is admirable but can hardly be described as courageous. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, signed into law a bill decriminalizing abortion as governor of California, at a time when such a bill was still quite controversial, particularly within his own party. He later said that he regretted his own decision to sign the bill into law, but actions in the end are what matters, no rhetoric. Reagan, like Nixon, Ford, and Bush Sr, all pandered rhetorically to the cultural populist instincts of the south and sunbelt, but were in practice for the most part cultural libertarians. George W Bush seems quite intent on reversing that trend, and it will be the downfall of the post-Goldwater conservative movement, and the Republican majority. Mark my word on it.”

Yesterday’s announcement by the increasingly impressive interim prime minister of Iraq, Ayad Allawi, that most of the militias in Iraq have agreed to disband and be absorbed within the new Iraqi army is obviously good news. I’m not sure what to make of the fact that Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Fallujah brigades are not part of the deal, but the momentum toward a new Iraq seems to be continuing. It is probably too much to hope for that the most recalcitrant parts of the insurgency should formally disarm at this point – but they are looking more isolated as a result. Allawi’s statements last week, together with his announcement today, are tentative signs that we may have a real leader in the making here. Here’s hoping.

WHY BUSH IS IN TROUBLE: Take a look at this analysis from Adam Clymer’s NAES outfit and Ruy Teixera’s take on it. Yes, Clymer is a Bush-hater – but the polling is sound, and shows how weak Bush is at this point in the race in the swing states. Swing voters are highly alienated by Iraq and the economy. Maybe they’ll change their tune. But time is running out.

My review of Tony Hendra’s ‘Father Joe’ and account of George Tenet’s resignation are now both posted to the left.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan’s “provocation” quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth – a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.” – Natan Sharansky, in the Jersualem Post.

NOT SO FATUOUS: Ramesh Ponnuru dissents from my view that Ronald Reagan was more socially liberal than much of the Republican Party today. He writes that

Some people, eager for a Reagan in their own image, make it sound as though he were a social liberal – as though he had never written “Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation.” To compare Reagan to Arnold Schwarzenegger is fatuous.

Hmmm. I did not describe Reagan as a “social liberal.” (I wrote that “If Reagan has an inheritor, it isn’t George W. Bush, but, in a limited sense, Arnold Schwarzenegger…”) Reagan was opposed to abortion, and regarded Roe vs Wade (rightly, in my view) as terrible law. He did precious little to advance civil rights. But he was definitely more easy-going about modernity than the current Republican leadership. He barely mentioned abortion in his eight terms of office, and never addressed a pro-life rally in person. He rarely went to church as president and was the first president to have an openly gay couple sleep over in the White House. He and his wife were no strangers to male homosexual company. Reagan also appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court, and in Anthony Kennedy, gave birth to the judicial father of the gay rights revolution. His biographer, Lou Cannon, wrote that Reagan was “repelled by the aggressive public crusades against homosexual life styles which became a staple of right wing politics in the late 1970s.” In 1978, Reagan put his career on the line opposing the Briggs Initiative in California that would have barred gay teachers from working in the public high school system. In an op-ed at the time, Reagan wrote:

“Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.”

That was 1978 – a very enlightened position at the time. You might quibble with this analysis, but describing Reagan’s cultural and political similarities with Schwarzenegger is by no means “fatuous”. Both Schwarzenegger and Reagan hailed from California; both came from the socially liberal world of Hollywood; both were and are conservative pragmatists; both managed to reach across regional and cultural lines to win support. Bush, in contrast, is a Texan, culturally moored in the religious right, with limited ability to reach voters in socially liberal milieus. That’s my point. I think it stands.

I have been upbraided for not mentioning Ronald Reagan’s AIDS legacy in describing him as my hero. The basic argument from the gay left is that Reagan was single-handedly responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of people by negligence. This, however, borders on loopy. Reagan should indeed be faulted for not doing more to warn people of the dangers of infection early enough (Thatcher was far better). But the truth is that it was pretty obvious very early on that something dangerous was afoot as AIDS first surfaced. Just read Larry Kramer at the time. Many people most at risk were aware – mostly too late, alas – that unprotected sex had become fatal in the late 1970s and still was. You can read Randy Shilts’ bracing “And The Band Played On,” to see how some of the resistance to those warnings came from within the gay movement itself. In the polarized atmosphere of the beleaguered gay ghettoes of the 1980s, one also wonders what an instruction from Ronald Reagan to wear condoms would have accomplished. As for research, we didn’t even know what HIV was until 1983. Nevertheless, the Reagan presidency spent some $5.7 billion on HIV in its two terms – not peanuts. The resources increased by 450 percent in 1983, 134 percent in 1984, 99 percent the next year and 148 percent the year after. Yes, the Congress was critical in this. But by 1986, Reagan had endorsed a large prevention and research effort and declared in his budget message that AIDS “remains the highest public health priority of the Department of Health and Human Services.” In September 1985, Reagan said:

“[I]ncluding what we have in the budget for ’86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I’m sure other medical groups are doing. And we have $100 million in the budget this year; it’ll be 126 million next year. So, this is a top priority with us. Yes, there’s no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer.”

But the sad truth is also that there was never going to be an easy answer to HIV in the Reagan years. Throwing even more money at research in those days would not have helped much. Anthony Fauci’s NIH, goaded by heroes like Larry Kramer, was already pushing for focus and resources; FDA red tape was loosened considerably; and the painfully slow scientific process continued. The fact that we got revolutionary drugs in trials by the early 1990s was itself an heroic scientific achievement – arguably the most miraculous progress in a medical emergency since the polio vaccine. Should Reagan have done more? Yes. Were people like Bill Bennett and Gary Bauer responsible for delaying a real prevention response because only gays were dying? You bet. But was Reagan ultimately responsible for so many tragic, early deaths? No. HIV was. Viruses happen. It’s a blemish on his record, but not as profound as some, with understandable grief, want to make it out to be.

AT LONG LAST: Three vital new websites: “Queers against Terror”, “Conservative Punks,” and a whole blog devoted to debunking Noam Chomsky. Yay!

This image put a catch in my throat.