Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

I know you don’t consider yourself a PC liberal. But you sound more and more like one.

The word "bigotry" is bandied about your blog so much and so inconsistently that I have no idea what it means anymore. I know it is at the heart of who you are as a homosexual activist (and you clearly are one, though you do, to your credit, disagree with the more shrill activists out there) and therefore the first arrow in your rhetorical quiver, but you are seriously overusing the term and seeing the sickness of bigotry in far too many places.

Mitt Romney is an "anti-atheist bigot"? So a person of faith can’t state that he or she thinks that a person of faith is best suited for office? Really? It’s just plain silly to even get upset over this and it is a sign of neurosis IMO to call it bigotry.

But that seems to be your plan these days. Steyn’s an anti-Muslim genocidal bigot.  Romney’s a bigot. Practically every Christian that does not share your mushy Christian views is a anti-homosexual bigot. And on and on. It is getting to be too much. You can’t seem to disagree with anyone without eventually calling them a bigot. Right out of the old liberal/leftie playbook. That’s disappointing because you are way better than that.

Let me respond. Romney first. He said "We need to have a person of faith lead the country." That’s a clear view that only someone of religious faith should become president. If he had said "we need a Protestant to lead the country," would it have been bigotry? Surely it would be. Ask a few Catholics and Jews if you need confirmation. So what’s the difference? Using someone’s personal religious convictions as a criterion for public office, and disqualifying those who do not share certain convictions, is indeed bigotry. Just because a certain form of bigotry is popular doesn’t make it right. Atheism is no more and no less an existential decision than faith. America is dedicated to religious freedom, which means and must mean the right not to believe in anything. Romney has shown he does not share this view of America. His view is that atheists should not be president. He played that card as a way to ingratiate himself with Christians who do not share his Mormon faith. It was a card from the bottom of the deck.

Steyn? Well, I didn’t call him a bigot. So the point is silly. But he did write somewhat breezily of the option of "culling" large numbers of people solely on the basis of their faith. I dunno. What do you think? 

He was against them before he was for them. Or did I get that wrong? It’s hard to keep track.

Not 1994 – 2002. He’s pro-choice. Five years ago. I repeat: five years ago. Money quote:

I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose.

Listen to him refuse to acknowledge that he even accepted an endorsement from a pro-life group:

(Hat tip: Hotline.) Notice that Romney talks warmly of the "courage" of a woman to have an abortion.

Oxford-style debate comes to America. Yay! And this one you can listen to online, with luminaries such as Alan Wolfe, Bill Galston, Barry Lynn, Susan Jacoby and Jean Bethke Elshtain who gets tghe money quote:

"One should not, from any direction, separate America’s citizens who accept a secular world from those, the religious, who alleged do not. Citizens of religious commitment are among the most enthusiastic supporters of a secular government. They don’t want established religion, but they also understand that to support a secular government and state does not commit us to a thoroughly secularized society, shorn of religious voices, symbols, activities and commitments. We would be a greatly impoverished country were this to come to pass. So too damned religious? Nope. Just pretty damned American…."

There she is, at the front of the picket line in front of the White House way back in 1965. Before Stonewall, there was a vital gay rights movement not coopted by the far left or by the Democratic Party fundraising machine. Frank Kameny, another of the key founders of the movement, remembers Gittings (AP obit here) who died Sunday thus:

I will miss Barbara keenly She was a truly valued and cherished colleague, associate, and friend — one of a kind in my own life. We were in close, continuing, and cooperative contact, mutully supportively and enormously productively for both of us individually and for the world around us, from the early 1960s until the very present. She was my co-council at Pentagon security clearance cases, worked closely and extensively with me in the psychiatric effort, cooperated in writing published articles and chapters and in joint speaking engagements where we complimented and supplemented each other nicely — and a fellow picketer and demonstrator.

When I look at Gittings’ successors, in particular the waste of time, money and space that is the Human Rights Campaign, I remember a time when gay activism had integrity and courage.

Harry Brighouse thinks this is the best first paragraph of an academic book:

Affluence breeds impatience and impatience undermines well-being. This is the core of my argument. For detail and evidence, go directly to the chapters; for implications, to the conclusion, which also has chapter summaries.

I’d be more amused by the worst first paragraph in an academic book, a contest with a somewhat steeper competitive curve.

The latest evidence that you no longer live in a free country. Remember: citizens as well as non-citizens can now be indefinitely detained without access to a federal court. For your freedom, you have to rely not on the Constitution, but on the beneficence of one man: Dick Cheney. (Yes, I know, strictly speaking that the president is commander-in-chief, but we have learned who really runs the "dark side" of the Bush anti-terror apparatus.) And you can be tortured if he decides it’s in the interests of military necessity.

A Republican macher has been charged with financing Islamist terrorism.

Don’t miss firedoglake’s coverage of the prosecution’s summation: here and here. They really have shown what bloggers can do, and my hat is off to them.

More indispensable reporting from Murray Waas on the Libby trial. Money quote:

In the fall of 2003, as a federal criminal probe was just getting underway to determine who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the media, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the then-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, sought out Cheney to explain to his boss his side of the story.

The explanation that Libby offered Cheney that day was virtually identical to one that Libby later told the FBI and testified to before a federal grand jury: Libby said he had only passed along to reporters unsubstantiated gossip about Plame that he had heard from NBC bureau chief Tim Russert.

The grand jury concluded that the account was a cover story to conceal the role of Libby and other White House officials in leaking information about Plame to the press, and indicted him on five felony counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice.

At the time that Libby offered his explanation to Cheney, the vice president already had reason to know that Libby’s account to him was untrue, according to sources familiar with still-secret grand jury testimony and evidence in the CIA leak probe, as well as testimony made public during Libby’s trial over the past three weeks in federal court.

Yet, according to Libby’s own grand jury testimony, which was made public during his trial in federal court, Cheney did nothing to discourage Libby from telling that story to the FBI and the federal grand jury. Moreover, Cheney encouraged then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan to publicly defend Libby, according to other testimony and evidence made public during Libby’s trial.

Did Libby invent a story to protect Cheney from liability? Was Cheney a de facto accessory to perjury? I’m convinced Fitzgerald smells something big here. So do I.