Churches Participating in Pulpit Freedom Sunday Should Lose Tax Exempt Status

It seems today that I am finding many blog-worthy topics to discuss.  I just read an article posted on Facebook by the The Everlasting GOP Stoppers that discusses Pulpit Freedom Sunday.  This is an attempt by a bunch of pastors across the country to bait the IRS into investigating them.  Here's how this works:

Churches enjoy federal tax exemptions.  Tax law stipulates that tax-exempt organizations, such as churches, cannot engage in partisan politicking.  These churches will preach decidedly partisan sermons, video tape them, and send them to the IRS.  This is an effort to bait the IRS into investigating them and offer them an opportunity to challenge the law.  The leaders of these churches claim that this law stifles religious liberty and free speech.  Here's why they are wrong.

The law does not say that religious organizations cannot campaign or engage in partisan politics.  It doesn't say that they can't actively support a particular candidate.  What it says is that, if they choose to engage in these activities, they can no longer remain tax exempt.  Let's be clear about tax exempt organizations...being tax exempt is a privilege, not a right. 

The real problem I have with this is that these are supposed to be religious leaders.  What kind of religious leader will knowingly violate a law when they are being given a gift in their tax exempt status?  What does that teach your church members?  Take the gifts given to you, but do nothing in return?  That's a pathetic excuse for a religious leader. 

If I were the decision maker in this instance, I would use the tapes from these churches and simply revoke the tax exempt status of each organization.  No investigation.  Why investigate when you have the proof provided by the organization itself?  Let them take it to court.  They will lose.  And they should be ashamed of themselves for this behavior.  This is the kind of behavior that gives religion a bad name, and they will have to answer for that someday. 

Judge in Oklahoma Uses the Bible in Decisions

From The Raw Story (via The Liberal Voice):

The American Civil Liberties Union last week sought to overturn an Oklahoma County judge’s decision to prohibit a transgender woman from changing her legally recognized name.

James Dean Ingram, who lives as a woman, requested to change her name to Angela Renee Ingram. But District Judge Bill Graves denied the name-change, claiming it was “fraudulent.” In a similar case last year, Graves cited the Biblical book of Genesis and expert testimony to conclude that “the DNA code shows God meant for them to stay male and female.”

The ACLU has appealed Ingram’s case to the Oklahoma Supreme Court in hopes of reversing the decision.

 This disgusts me.  Since when is it okay for our judges to cite biblical references in their decisions?  I have to wonder if there would be outrage if a judge cited the Koran in a decision.  

Even conservatives should be outraged about this.  This judge is denying people's right to decide their own names.  Talk about big government!  This judge should be reprimanded for his obvious bias and removed from the bench.  This is unacceptable.

The Need for Healthcare Reform Hits Home

I've spent a lot of time arguing with people about the Affordable Care Act.  Many times these people have told me how they shouldn't be forced to carry insurance because they don't get sick and need medical care.  I've often asked them what happens if they have an accident that causes them to need the care and they aren't covered.  They always tell me that they are responsible and will pay off the bill for their care.  Today, my family had to deal with the problem of having unaffordable medical care without insurance. 

My little sister, who is only nine years old (10 in 12 days!  Happy early birthday!), had an accident and broke the growth plate in her wrist.  She needs surgery to repair the break or she may be in danger of having her arm deformed for the rest of her life.  My father, who works as a preacher, does not have employer-provided insurance.  So this leaves my family with the burden of paying full price for the surgery.  Because the injury is not life-threatening, it is not something that the doctors are obligated to perform.  Of course, being a preacher, my father doesn't make a lot of money.  The high cost of the surgery is way too high for my father to afford.  As of the time I'm writing this post, he is still searching for a way to pay for the surgery. 

Many people will say that he should look for assistance, but he makes too much money.  Of course, while he makes too much to qualify for assistance, he doesn't make enough to be able to afford medical care.  This is exactly why we need the ACA.  The only academic study of the effects of the act showed that the results of this kind of universal healthcare will be that medical costs are driven down.  Lower medical costs and competition in insurance exchanges will drive the price of insurance low enough for people like my father to afford.  The evidence of this was given in the article Lessons for coverage expansion: a Virginia primary care program for the uninsured reduced utilization and cut costs that appeared in the journal Health Affairs in February of this year. 

So as people like Mitt Romney continue to condemn healthcare reform, I ask them to put their money where their mouths are.  Write a check to cover my little sister's surgery or shut your mouth about healthcare reform when you've never had to face a situation like this.  The same goes for anyone who supports this moron's bid for the presidency...if you think that this reform isn't needed, then I invite you to drop a line to my 9-year-old little sister and try to explain to her why she could be forced to live with a deformed wrist for the rest of her life.  But at least you weren't forced by the government to be responsible and cover your own healthcare costs...and that's worth causing a little girl to live with the pain, right?

Get better soon little sister...I'm sure Dad will figure it out.  I love you.

Update:

Through the grace of God and the assistance of family and friends, it looks like my sister will be able to have her surgery.  Thank you to everyone who helped make it possible and those who prayed for her.  

Romneyfish Flips Again

In another episode of "Romney's Full of Crap," we have Mitt saying that emergency rooms are a viable option for people who have no health insurance. 

"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance.  If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care."

This was an attempt to justify his goal of repealing the Affordable Health Care Act if he was to win the election.  There are so many problems with this...let's get started.

First, let's look at the problems with repealing the individual mandate, but keeping other provisions of the law such as the increased age limit on parents' coverage and elimination of denial for pre-existing conditions.  If we expand the number of people insurance companies are forced to cover, and don't require everyone to have insurance, the cost of insurance will skyrocket.  The point of requiring everyone to maintain coverage is that healthcare providers won't have to write off medical bills for uninsured persons and pass the amount owed on to the rest of the people who have insurance.  This is a major factor in the increasing cost of medical care.  If this problem still exists, and we expand coverage, we will only see rising costs of healthcare and insurance rates.  It won't work. 

The other problem is that Mitt is entirely full of crap.  He knows very well that emergency rooms aren't an option for healthcare.  Let's take a look at some previous quotes from Romney on emergency rooms as healthcare for the uninsured:

"Look, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility, particularly if they are people who have sufficient means to pay their own way."

 "When they show up at the hospital, they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that's not a form of socialism, I don't know what is.  So my plan did something quite different. It said, you know what? If people can afford to buy insurance ... or if they can pay their own way, then they either buy that insurance or pay their own way, but they no longer look to government to hand out free care. And that, in my opinion, is ultimate conservativism."

So Mitt's plan was that people could choose to either have insurance, pay in cash when services are rendered, or be denied healthcare.  So...according to his plan, if you don't have insurance or you can't pay cash in advance of any services rendered, you just get denied and sent home to either get better or die.  Okay, I don't agree with letting people just die because they can't afford the same care as rich people, but if that's what you want, then I think he needs to stand up and tell the country that this is what he believes.  And he would also have to make a law that allows healthcare providers the option of turning away patients who are dying if they don't have insurance or the money to pay in advance. 

See where the problem lies here?  We either have to let people die, watch healthcare costs continue to skyrocket, or mandate that everyone take personal responsibility and stay insured. 

But the most entertaining piece of this story is the fact that Mitt showed us once again that he is willing to lie and tell people what he thinks they want to hear in order to win the election.  He flip flops like a fish out of water.  He really makes me wonder if the Republican party chose him in an effort to lose this election.  What other explanation is there for putting a candidate out there who does nothing but lie, offend people, and reverse his position on issues every other day?  I don't know...maybe some liberals infiltrated the GOP and worked their way to the top so that they could destroy the Republican party from within.  Or is that just the wishful thinking of a dreamer?

A Look at Polls - Bad News for Romney

As the election continues to draw closer...we find ourselves looking at polls more every day.  The problem with polls is that there is always a margin of error.  There is always also the potential for pollsters to sway the results.  So there is no way to be sure about any particular poll.  The only ways to combat this problem are to look at the averages of the polls from various sources, or try to find the most historically accurate polls.  I have decided to do both of these.

According to the results of the 2008 Presidential election, the most accurate polls were Pew and Rasmussen.  Because they are easier to find, I decided to look at the Rasmussen polls.  Here is the current data that should have Romney worried:

According to the most current data - Rasmussen has 237 electoral votes for Obama and 196 for Romney.  This leaves 105 toss-up votes.  Of those votes, Rasmussen shows Obama leading for 76 of the votes while Romney only leads for 29 of them.  If this remains true, then Obama should walk away with the election.  In fact, Obama only has to win 33 of those votes to win the election.  This means he could lose the states that only have him ahead by 1 point (Ohio and Virginia), and he will still win the election. 

I'm sure conservatives will say that this poll is biased in some way (probably because their neighbors and friends hate Obama so that means the entire country must).  So I'm also going to average some of the major polls to get a better picture of the situation.  Here are the overall numbers:

Rasmussen (estimated based on state polls) - 47.4 Obama - 46.6 Romney
Real Clear Politics (used by Fox News and MSNBC) - 48.6 Obama - 44.7 Romney
Gallup - 47 Obama - 47 Romney
Purple Poll - 49 Obama - 44 Romney

The answer is somewhere in the middle of all of these numbers, so let's take an average.

The averages of these polls show Obama leading 48 to Romney's 45.6.  So it seems that, no matter how you break it down...Romney is hurting. Let's just hope this continues.  I may even continue to average the polls and publish the results...I may just turn out to be right.

Romney's Tax Release Misses the Point

I don't think Mitt really gets it...well, that's the understatement of the century.  Today, the Romney campaign released his 2011 tax returns.  The returns show that he paid a 14.1 percent effective tax rate.  The problem is that he manipulated his taxes, effectively overpaying so that his actual taxes conformed to his earlier claims about how much he paid.  He did this by not claiming some of his charitable contributions.  Before any conservatives try to say that this shows that he is a great guy...don't be fooled.  First, it is obviously a political ploy meant to keep him from looking like a fool for overstating how much he pays in taxes.  Second, he has the ability to claim a deduction on the charitable donations he didn't claim for 2011.  He can claim this deduction after the election, making the current rate meaningless.

But what he really missed is that it's not about the numbers.  It's about the dishonesty.  He released a "summary" of his taxes dating back to 1990.  Why a summary?  Why not just publish the returns?  Because there is something there to hide.  That is the only possible reason he would allow the speculation and accusations to continue.  What he is hiding is obviously still the hot topic of debate.  Is it his tax shelters?  His close ties to Bain investments?  Questionable tax practices?  We don't know because he won't do what every candidate has done since his father released 12 years of returns in 1968.

I think that Romney believes releasing a few numbers to the public will make us all forget that he is still very obviously hiding something.  I also imagine that he'll be very surprised over the next month and a half when he is still on the receiving end of continued attacks about his suspicious, and likely unethical, tax activities. 

Paul Ryan Actually Tells the Truth...Almost

My home state had the wonderful privilege of a visit from Paul Ryan recently.  While I normally disagree with everything that comes out of this man's mouth (because it's either a lie or complete nonsense), I actually found a statement in his speech with which I agree.  In the speech, Ryan referred to the Senate as a dysfunctional pit where important issues wallow.  For once, I completely agree.

Of course, the reason for this is because Senate Republicans are following the party line and blocking every bill that they come across.  Let's look at a few important examples from this year alone:

June 2012 - Senate Republicans block the Paycheck Fairness Act
This bill "sought to bar companies from retaliating against workers who inquire about pay disparities and open pathways for female employees to sue for punitive damages in cases of paycheck discrimination." 

July 2012 - Senate Republicans block the Disclose Act of 2012
This bill would have required independent groups who spend unlimited amounts of money on attack ads during elections to disclose the names of donors who contribute more than $10,000.  What's very interesting about this is that, only 12 years ago, 14 Republicans who opposed the act voted for a very similar disclosure.  Those Republicans include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and former Republican Presidential candidate Senator John McCain.  Both of these Senators are quoted as supporting disclosure:

Senator McConnell - "why would a little disclosure be better than a lot of disclosure?"

Senator McCain - "I promise you this. I promise you there will be huge scandals… because there’s too much money washing around, too much of it… we don’t know who, who contributed it, and there is too much corruption associated with that kind of money. There will be major scandals."

July 2012 - Senate Republicans block the Bring Jobs Home bill
This bill was intended to reward companies for bringing jobs from overseas back to the United States, a practiced termed "insourcing."  The bill would also have ended the tax deductions that companies could take on the costs of moving jobs out of the country. 

You can see why I would agree with Ryan in his assessment of the dysfunction in the Senate.  What he didn't mention is that the dysfunction is coming from Senate Republicans.  I will warn him, if he keeps this up, he might someday actually utter a completely honest and intelligent thought.  That would tear the GOP apart.

Romney's Statements Fuel Division and Islamophobia

We had an interesting conversation on the American Complaint Department radio program Tuesday.  During the conversation, the question was asked if we thought that the country would band together if we underwent another attack like the 9/11 attacks.  At the time my thoughts were that, in today's political climate, I don't think we would see the same level of cooperation that we saw following the attacks in 2001.  What we've seen in the last two days have confirmed my belief. 

Late on September 11, the Romney campaign released a statement criticizing the Obama administration on their response to the violent protests at our Cairo and Libya consulates that led to the death of four Americans.  While I have a list of reasons that Romney's statement is absurd, irresponsible, and unpresidential, I'm more concerned right now with the aftermath of the statement. 

I've seen so many people posting social network updates about President Obama "apologizing" for America.  This comes directly from the statements made by Romney in response to the tragic incidents in Cairo and Libya.  Ignoring the fact that none of this is true, all this has done is divide the people at a time when we should be coming together to mourn the loss of more lives on September 11. 

Not only is this division showing how poor our political discourse is, but it is also showing the growing trend of Islamophobia.  I keep seeing it in the comments online.  Here are some examples in discussions about President Obama:

"I expect nothing less from a Muslim sympathizer..."

 

"Muslims are determined to kill or convert all to Islam no matter what through their religious doctrine. This ideology will never change and all of Islam and it's nations should be classified as the axis of evil and terrorism against the USA..."

"...go suck the Muslims.! You [are] sympathetic to these rats who want us dead and against Christians obviously..Muslims belong in their Arab nations..."

" A Muslim is a filthy Muslim..There is no such thing as good Muslims"

What a horrible way to look at the world.  Is it any wonder that some Muslims hold a negative opinion of the United States.  Furthermore, who cares if Obama is a Muslim?  There is no religious test of office for the President.  The only criticisms these people have are that (1) President Obama is Muslim, which is insignificant, (2) Islam is a religion of violence, which is about as true as saying all Christians believe in the protests and anger of the Westboro Baptist Church, and (3) building peaceful relations with Islamic nations is somehow poor foreign policy.  I don't even know how to explain the last one.  I guess peace is poor policy. 

I made a statement on the radio program that much of this Islamophobia comes from simple ignorance.  I have thought about this statement and I would have to retract what I said.  There is no excuse of ignorance in today's world.  These people are on the internet.  They have access to the information and have been given the information necessary to stop being bigots, but they refuse.  These people are driven by pure hatred and stupidity.  They fear what is different and hate anyone who dares to question them.  This is the attitude that permeates the Republican party today.  It irresponsible and dangerous for a country to be run by a group, or a person, with this mentality.  This is why I will be casting my vote for President Obama in November.  I will not accept a country run by bigotry and hate. 

The American Complaint Department

For any of you who do not follow my Facebook page, I recently announced that I have recently become a writer for the online newspaper The American Complaint Department.  Please check out the website and read my first article.  You will find it under the Liberal Complaint section.  Here is a brief preview of the article:

Out of Context

If this election were won by the people who can take the most innocent statements and turn them around to mean something completely different, President Obama would be in trouble.  There has always been a habit of taking a phrase or statement made by a politician out of context during elections.  However, the absurdity of the practice is so dramatic this year that even those on the side of the offending party are beginning to get annoyed. 

Click here to read the full article.

While you're there check out the articles from the other writers and keep coming back! 

You can also tune in to the online radio program on Tuesday evenings on blogtalkradio.  I may even occasionally make an appearance! 

Living the Pole Life

Tonight I saw a posting on my Facebook page.  It was a link to an article about a children's pole fitness class.  Some people are up in arms about the classes because they feel that they will be sexualizing children.  As a child psychologist, Dr. Derek Swain, stated, he worried about the association with the sex industry and the fact that it could "increase the likelihood of girls becoming strippers when they’re older."

I must admit that my initial gut reaction is to feel the same way.  Dr. Swain is right that this activity is associated with the adult entertainment industry.  That should make anyone nervous when the activity is being taught to children.  But, many times our initial reactions must be examined to fully understand why we feel this way. 

When I think about why I worry about this, its not because I actually see anything wrong with what these kids are doing.  The dance that they are taught is not sexual in any way.  It is only society's filters that are making it sexual in any way.  In fact, pole dancing can be quite athletic and beautiful.  I have seen people of both sexes perform moves with a pole that display incredible strength, athleticism, and an artistic talent comparable to many great dancers.  In fact, a friend of mine who has studied pole fitness has created a documentary about pole fitness called Pole Life.  Here is a long trailer that shows much of the beauty and talent that are involved in this art.

After watching this video, how can you not see how beautiful this is.  I associate this with some of the most beautiful dance that I have ever seen.  There is nothing sexual about this unless we apply a filter to it that society has told us has to be applied.  Apply this test.  Watch a few minutes of this video of some professional aerialists perform.

Did you notice something?  There was nothing sexual about that show.  It was a beautiful ballet performed by aerialists.  The performers in Cirque du Soleil have become world-renowned for the beauty and skill that they display in their shows.  These people make a living doing something very similar to what many people can only associate with strippers and sex.  So maybe its not that there is anything concerning at all with the pole itself.  Maybe the problem exists within society.  Maybe its how we judge...and the fact that we judge...something that doesn't deserve to be given the stigma that we give pole dancing. 

I could go one and on giving examples of how this can be a beautiful artform.  But I think there is only one example I need.  Go back to the Pole Life video and start at 4:25 and watch about 25 seconds.  Seriously...go watch it.  Did you see the joy in the faces of the children as they spun, danced, and climbed?  How could anyone apply anything sexual or wrong to the fun that these children are having?  What's more, they are getting great exercise.  That is important in a society that has an obesity epidemic that is reaching critical levels. 

After analyzing the situation, I think my initial reaction was wrong.  There is nothing at all wrong with this artform unless it is used in an inappropriate manner.  The fact is that there is an entire subculture of pole aerialists that has developed.  These are not strippers or deviants.  They are people who have discovered the beauty in an artform and sport that many of us have not yet come to accept.  Instead of taking it from me.  Check out the Pole Life documentary.  Watch the trailer, learn something.  You might just discover something about how you look at the world...you may even find a love for a sport that will help you get in shape and express yourself in a way that nothing else has. 



With the exception of the Cirque du Soleil video, the images and videos in this post are all from the Pole Life documentary and Facebook page.  Please visit and support Pole Life The Documentary and spread word about the documentary.  I am not in any way affiliated with the production.

Jeremiah Goulka, Confessions of a Former Republican (reposted)

As you can imagine, I spend a fair amount of time looking through news and other blogs for new material.  With the speed of the internet, I often find myself discussing news that other people have already found.  I try to add a new spin, or at least my opinion. 

There are a lot of times that I am discussing or debating an issue with a conservative and I ask, "how can this person seriously believe what he (or she) is saying?"  Much of this is because what the person is saying isn't logical, but sometimes it's just because their idea of logic is just not how things work in the real world.  I came across an article today written by a man who used to be a Republican.  It details his transition away from the party, including the ideals that he knows are not based in the real world.  I think it is a great article so I'm reposting it in its entirety here.  Please note that nothing after this was written by me.  Please visit TomDispatch.com for the original posting.

Tomgram: Jeremiah Goulka, Confessions of a Former Republican

by Jeremiah Goulka

Here, to my mind, was one strange aspect of the political convention season just past: since the great meltdown of 2008, brilliantly engineered by various giant financial institutions gone wild, we’ve seen a collapse in the wealth of middle-class

African Americans and Hispanics, and a significant drop in the wealth of middle-class whites. Only the rich have benefitted. Though the draining of wealth from the middle and its fortification at the top have been a long time coming, the near collapse of the economy four years ago was a disaster whether you look at the rise in unemployment figures, poverty, the use of food stamps, gauges of upward mobility, or just about any other grim measure you’d care to employ.

All this suggests that the twenty-first century has largely been an American riches-to-rags story. It was this that gave both political conventions an almost fairy-tale-like quality, since the single life trajectory featured prominently at each of them by just about every speaker you’d want to cite was the opposite. Everybody, even

Mitt Romney ("My dad never made it through college and apprenticed as a lath and plaster carpenter..."), was obliged to offer a wrenching, heartwarming tale of rags (or relative rags) to riches (no relative about it). The theme, heavily emphasized at the Republican convention and an undercurrent at the Democratic one, wasn’t I feel your pain, but I celebrate my gain.

There are, in our world, so many journeys of every sort. It’s strange to see only one of them emphasized and celebrated, the one that, at the moment, is perhaps the least likely to speak to the actual experience of most Americans. With this in mind, TomDispatch today offers quite a different journey -- not economic, but political, and of a sort no one usually thinks to write about. It’s Jeremiah Goulka’s trip out of a particular kind of fantasy world and into what, in 2004, Karl Rove (then an unnamed source for journalist Ron Suskind)

pejoratively called "‘the reality-based community’ which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'" Rove added -- that moment being the highpoint of Bush-era imperial self-celebration -- "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

　

Joining the Reality-Based Community

Or How I Learned to Stop Loving the Bombs and Start Worrying

I used to be a serious Republican, moderate and business-oriented, who planned for a public-service career in Republican politics. But I am a Republican no longer.

There’s an old joke we Republicans used to tell that goes something like this: "If you’re young and not a Democrat, you’re heartless. If you grow up and you’re not a Republican, you’re stupid." These days, my old friends and associates no doubt consider me the butt of that joke. But I look on my "stupidity" somewhat differently. After all, my real education only began when I was 30 years old.

This is the story of how in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and later in Iraq, I discovered that what I believed to be the full spectrum of reality was just a small slice of it and how that discovery knocked down my Republican worldview.

I always imagined that I was full of heart, but it turned out that I was oblivious. Like so many Republicans, I had assumed that society’s "losers" had somehow earned their desserts. As I came to recognize that poverty is not earned or chosen or deserved, and that our use of force is far less precise than I had believed, I realized with a shock that I had effectively viewed whole swaths of the country and the world as second-class people.

No longer oblivious, I couldn’t remain in today’s Republican Party, not unless I embraced an individualism that was even more heartless than the one I had previously accepted. The more I learned about reality, the more I started to care about people as people, and my values shifted. Had I always known what I know today, it would have been clear that there hasn’t been a place for me in the Republican Party since the Free Soil days of Abe Lincoln.

Where I Came From

I grew up in a rich, white suburb north of Chicago populated by moderate, business-oriented Republicans. Once upon a time, we would have been called

Rockefeller Republicans. Today we would be called liberal Republicans or slurred by the Right as "Republicans In Name Only" (RINOs).

We believed in competition and the free market, in bootstraps and personal responsibility, in equality of opportunity, not outcomes. We were financial conservatives who wanted less government. We believed in noblesse oblige, for we saw ourselves as part of a natural aristocracy, even if we hadn’t been born into it. We sided with management over labor and saw unions as a scourge. We hated racism and loved Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., particularly his dream that his children would "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." We worried about the rise of the Religious Right and its social-conservative litmus tests. We were tough on crime, tough on national enemies. We believed in business, full stop.

I intended to run for office on just such a platform someday. In the meantime, I founded the Republican club at my high school, knocked on doors and collected signatures with my father, volunteered on campaigns, socialized at fundraisers, and interned for Senator John McCain and Congressman Denny Hastert when he was House Majority Whip Tom DeLay's chief deputy.

We went to mainstream colleges -- the more elite the better -- but lamented their domination by liberal professors, and I did my best to tune out their liberal views. I joined the Republican clubs and the Federalist Society, and I read the Wall Street Journal and the Economist rather the New York Times. George Will was a voice in the wilderness, Rush Limbaugh an occasional (sometimes guilty) pleasure.

Left Behind By the Party

In January 2001, I was one of thousands of Americans who braved the cold rain to attend and cheer George W. Bush’s inauguration. After eight years hating "Slick Willie," it felt good to have a Republican back in the White House. But I knew that he wasn’t one of our guys. We had been McCain fans, and even if we liked the compassionate bit of Bush’s conservatism, we didn’t care for his religiosity or his social politics.

Bush won a lot of us over with his hawkish response to 9/11, but he lost me with the Iraq War. Weren’t we still busy in Afghanistan? I didn’t see the urgency.

By then, I was at the Justice Department, working in an office that handled litigation related to what was officially called the Global War on Terror (or GWOT). My office was tasked with opposing petitions for habeas corpus brought by Guantánamo detainees who claimed that they were being held indefinitely without charge. The government’s position struck me as an abdication of a core Republican value: protecting the "procedural" rights found in the Bill of Rights. Sure, habeas corpus had been waived in wartime before, but it seemed to me that waiving it here reduced us to the terrorists’ level. Besides, since acts of terrorism were crimes, why not prosecute them? I refused to work on those cases.

With the

Abu Ghraib pictures, my disappointment turned to rage. The America I believed in didn’t torture people.

I couldn’t avoid GWOT work. I was forced to read reams of allegations of torture, sexual abuse, and cover-ups in our war zones to give the White House a heads-up in case any of made it into the news cycle.

I was so mad that I voted for Kerry out of spite.

How I Learned to Start Worrying

I might still have stuck it out as a frustrated liberal Republican, knowing that the wealthy business core of the party still pulled a few strings and people like Richard Lugar and Olympia Snowe remained in the Senate -- if only because the idea of voting for Democrats by choice made me feel uncomfortable. (It would have been so… gauche.) Then came Hurricane Katrina. In New Orleans, I learned that it wasn’t just the Bush administration that was flawed but my worldview itself.

I had fallen in love with New Orleans during a post-law-school year spent in Louisiana clerking for a federal judge, and the Bush administration’s callous (non-)response to the storm broke my heart. I wanted to help out, but I didn’t fly helicopters or know how to do anything useful in a disaster, so just I sat glued to the coverage and fumed -- until FEMA asked federal employees to volunteer to help. I jumped at the chance.

Soon, I was involved with a task force trying to rebuild (and reform) the city’s criminal justice system. Growing up hating racism, I was appalled but not very surprised to find overt racism and the obvious use of racist code words by officials in the Deep South.

Then something tiny happened that pried open my eyes to the less obvious forms of racism and the hurdles the poor face when they try to climb the economic ladder. It happened on an official visit to a school in a suburb of New Orleans that served kids who had gotten kicked out of every other school around. I was investigating what types of services were available to the young people who were showing up in juvenile hall and seemed to be headed toward the proverbial life of crime.

My tour guide mentioned that parents were required to participate in some school programs. One of these was a field trip to a sit-down restaurant.

This stopped me in my tracks. I thought: What kind of a lame field trip is that?

It turned out that none of the families had ever been to a sit-down restaurant before. The teachers had to instruct parents and students alike how to order off a menu, how to calculate the tip.

I was stunned.

Starting To See

That night, I told my roommates about the crazy thing I had heard that day. Apparently there were people out there who had never been to something as basic as a real restaurant. Who knew?

One of my roommates wasn’t surprised. He worked at a local bank branch that required two forms of ID to open an account. Lots of people came in who had only one or none at all.

I was flooded with questions: There are adults who have no ID? And no bank accounts? Who are these people? How do they vote? How do they live? Is there an entire off-the-grid alternate universe out there?

From then on, I started to notice a lot more reality. I noticed that the criminal justice system treats minorities differently in subtle as well as not-so-subtle ways, and that many of the people who were getting swept up by the system came from this underclass that I knew so little about. Lingering for months in lock-up for misdemeanors, getting pressed against the hood and frisked during routine traffic stops, being pulled over in white neighborhoods for "

driving while black": these are things that never happen to people in my world. Not having experienced it, I had always assumed that government force was only used against guilty people. (Maybe that’s why we middle-class white people collectively freak out at TSA airport pat-downs.)

I dove into the research literature to try to figure out what was going on. It turned out that everything I was "discovering" had been hiding in plain sight and had been named: aversive racism, institutional racism, disparate impact and disparate treatment, structural poverty, neighborhood redlining, the "trial tax," the "poverty tax," and on and on. Having grown up obsessed with race (welfare and affirmative action were our bêtes noirs), I wondered why I had never heard of any of these concepts.

Was it to protect our Republican version of "individual responsibility"? That notion is fundamental to the liberal Republican worldview. "Bootstrapping" and "equality of opportunity, not outcomes" make perfect sense if you assume, as I did, that people who hadn’t risen into my world simply hadn’t worked hard enough, or wanted it badly enough, or had simply failed. But I had assumed that bootstrapping required about as much as it took to get yourself promoted from junior varsity to varsity. It turns out that it’s more like pulling yourself up from tee-ball to the World Series. Sure, some people do it, but they’re the exceptions, the outliers, the Olympians.

The enormity of the advantages I had always enjoyed started to truly sink in. Everyone begins life thinking that his or her normal is the normal. For the first time, I found myself paying attention to broken eggs rather than making omelets. Up until then, I hadn’t really seen most Americans as living, breathing, thinking, feeling, hoping, loving, dreaming, hurting people. My values shifted -- from an individualistic celebration of success (that involved dividing the world into the morally deserving and the undeserving) to an interest in people as people.

How I Learned to Stop Loving the Bombs

In order to learn more -- and to secure my membership in what Karl Rove sneeringly called the "

reality-based community" -- I joined a social science research institute. There I was slowly disabused of layer after layer of myth and received wisdom, and it hurt. Perhaps nothing hurt more than to see just how far my patriotic, Republican conception of U.S. martial power -- what it’s for, how it’s used -- diverged from the reality of our wars.

Lots of Republicans grow up hawks. I certainly did. My sense of what it meant to be an American was linked to my belief that from 1776 to WWII, and even from the 1991 Gulf War to Kosovo and Afghanistan, the American military had been dedicated to birthing freedom and democracy in the world, while dispensing a tough and precise global justice.

To me, military service represented the perfect combination of public service, honor, heroism, glory, promotion, meaning, and coolness. As a child, I couldn’t get enough of the military: toys and models, movies and cartoons, fat books with technical pictures of manly fighter planes and ships and submarines. We went to air shows whenever we could, and with the advent of cable, I begged my parents to sign up so that the Discovery Channel could bring those shows right into our den. Just after we got it, the first Gulf War kicked off, and CNN provided my afterschool entertainment for weeks.

As I got older, I studied Civil War military history and memory. (I would eventually edit a

book of letters by Union Gen. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.) I thought I knew a lot about war; even if Sherman was right that "war is hell," it was frequently necessary, we did it well, and -- whatever those misinformed peaceniks said -- we made the world a better place.

But then I went to a war zone.

I was deployed to Baghdad as part of a team of RAND Corporation researchers to help the detainee operations command figure out several thorny policy issues. My task was to figure out why we were sort-of-protecting and sort-of-detaining an

Iranian dissident group on Washington’s terrorist list.

It got ugly fast. Just after my first meal on base, there was a rumble of explosions, and an alarm started screaming INCOMING! INCOMING! INCOMING! Two people were killed and dozens injured, right outside the chow hall where I had been standing minutes earlier.

This was the "surge" period in 2007 when, I was told, insurgent attacks came less frequently than before, but the sounds of war seemed constant to me. The rat-tat-tat of small arms fire just across the "wire." Controlled detonations of insurgent duds. Dual patrolling Blackhawks overhead. And every few mornings, a fresh rain of insurgent rockets and mortars.

Always alert, always nervous, I was only in Iraq for three and a half weeks, and never close to actual combat; and yet the experience gave me many of the symptoms of PTSD. It turns out that it doesn’t take much.

That made me wonder how the Iraqis took it. From overhead I saw that the once teeming city of Baghdad was now a desert of desolate neighborhoods and empty shopping streets, bomb craters in the middle of soccer fields and in the roofs of schools.

Millions displaced.

Our nation-building efforts reeked of post-Katrina organizational incompetence. People were assigned the wrong roles -- "Why am I building a radio station? This isn’t what I do. I blow things up…" -- and given no advance training or guidance. Outgoing leaders didn’t overlap with their successors, so what they had learned would be lost, leaving each wheel to be partially reinvented again. Precious few contracts went to Iraqis. It was driving people out of our military.

This incompetence had profound human costs. Of the 26,000 people we were detaining in Iraq, as many as

two-thirds were innocent -- wrong place, wrong time -- or, poor and desperate, had worked with insurgent groups for cash, not out of an ideological commitment. Aware of this, the military wanted to release thousands of them, but they didn't know who was who; they only knew that being detained and interrogated made even the innocents dangerously angry. That anger trickled down to family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. It was about as good an in-kind donation as the U.S. could have made to insurgent recruitment -- aside from invading in the first place.

So much for surgical precision and winning hearts and minds. I had grown up believing that we were more careful in our use of force, that we only punished those who deserved punishment. But in just a few weeks in Iraq, it became apparent that what we were doing to the Iraqis, as well as to our own people, was inexcusable.

Today, I wonder if Mitt Romney drones on about

not apologizing for America because he, like the former version of me, simply isn’t aware of the U.S. ever doing anything that might demand an apology. Then again, no one wants to feel like a bad person, and there's no need to apologize if you are oblivious to the harms done in your name -- calling the occasional ones you notice collateral damage ("stuff happens") -- or if you believe that American force is always applied righteously in a world that is justly divided into winners and losers.

A Painful Transition

An old saw has it that no one profits from talking about politics or religion. I think I finally understand what it means. We see different realities, different worlds. If you and I take in different slices of reality, chances are that we aren’t talking about the same things. I think this explains much of modern American political dialogue.

My old Republican worldview was flawed because it was based upon a small and particularly rosy sliver of reality. To preserve that worldview, I had to believe that people had morally earned their "just" desserts, and I had to ignore those whining liberals who tried to point out that the world didn’t actually work that way. I think this shows why

Republicans put so much effort into "creat[ing] our own reality," into fostering distrust of liberals, experts, scientists, and academics, and why they won’t let a campaign "be dictated by fact-checkers" (as a Romney pollster put it). It explains why study after study shows -- examples here, here, and here -- that avid consumers of Republican-oriented media are more poorly informed than people who use other news sources or don’t bother to follow the news at all.

Waking up to a fuller spectrum of reality has proved long and painful. I had to question all my assumptions, unlearn so much of what I had learned. I came to understand why we Republicans thought people on the Left always seemed to be screeching angrily (because we refused to open our eyes to the damage we caused or blamed the victims) and why they never seemed to have any solutions to offer (because those weren’t mentioned in the media we read or watched).

My transition has significantly strained my relationships with family, friends, and former colleagues. It is deeply upsetting to walk on thin ice where there used to be solid, common ground. I wish they, too, would come to see a fuller spectrum of reality, but I know from experience how hard that can be when your worldview won’t let you.

No one wants to feel like a dupe. It is embarrassing to come out in public and admit that I was so miseducated when so much reality is out there in plain sight in neighborhoods I avoided, in journals I hadn’t heard of, in books by authors I had refused to read. (So I take courage from the people who have done so before me like

Andrew Bacevich.)

Many people see the wider spectrum of reality because they grew up on the receiving end. As a retired African-American general in the Marine Corps said to me after I told him my story, "No one has to explain institutional racism to a black man."

Others do because they grew up in families that simply got it. I married a woman who grew up in such a family, for whom all of my hard-earned, painful "discoveries" are old news. Each time I pull another layer of wool off my eyes and feel another surge of anger, she gives me a predictable series of looks. The first one more or less says, "Duh, obviously." The second is sympathetic, a recognition of the pain that comes with dismantling my flawed worldview. The third is concerned: "Do people actually think that?"

Yes, they do.

Two of My Passions Combine in a Whirlwind of Awesomeness

Today two of the great loves of my life are crossing paths in my blog.  It is the first day of Colts football for the season (and by the looks of it...a loooong season for us fans - hey, we're building from the ground up...give 'em a break), and NFL players are standing up to make a statement to an ignorant politician who is trying to stifle the rights of people in Maryland. 

Left to right: Chris Kluwe, Brendon Ayandejo, and Emmett C. Burns, Jr.

Many of you may have heard of Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo speaking out in favor of gay marriage.  I will begin by saying that I'm so happy to see a person who has a stage like Ayanbadejo standing up and using it for the right reasons.  Well done, sir.

On the other side of this...Maryland House of Delegates member Emmett C. Burns Jr. discovered Ayanbadejo's support of gay marriage, and promptly took action.  He sent a letter to the Ravens organization with the following message:

"I find it inconceivable that one of your players, Mr. Brendon Ayanbadejo, would publicly endorse Same-Sex marriage, specifically as a Ravens football player...
I am requesting that you take the necessary action, as a National Football League Owner, to inhibit such expressions from your employees and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions. I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing."

If you missed it...let me highlight a specific quote from this letter, "I am requesting that you take the necessary action, as a National Football League Owner, to inhibit such expressions from your employees and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions."  Translation: Threaten your player's job to make him stop advocating and speaking up in support of gay marriage.

We didn't need any further evidence that morons like Burns are not at all interested in the fundamental rights of the people, but he provided it anyway.  I guess he just doesn't care for the First Amendment, but I don't think people opposed to gay marriage put much stock in any of the Constitution. For those of you who are not familiar with Burns (because I wasn't until this story), here is a little information.  He is a Democratic politician serving his fourth term in the Maryland House of Delegates.  Yes, I said Democratic.  They make crazy lunatic in all forms and I don't restrain myself from calling a jackass for what he is because of a political party.  From what I read, this tool is a Baptist Minister.  Westboro would be so proud! 

On a quick side note...what is the obsession so many Baptists have with homosexuality?  I know its not all Baptists, but good grief!  Why am I always hearing about Baptists doing something to the LGBT community?  To all of you obsessed Baptists out there...please read the rest of the Bible!  There is a lot more in it than a couple of verses about homosexuality!  Moving on...

In a bright silver lining to this story, Vikings punter Chris Kluwe sent the following letter to Burns in an effort to inform him of exactly how much of a douchebag he really is. 

Dear Emmett C. Burns Jr.,

I find it inconceivable that you are an elected official of Maryland's state government. Your vitriolic hatred and bigotry make me ashamed and disgusted to think that you are in any way responsible for shaping policy at any level. The views you espouse neglect to consider several fundamental key points, which I will outline in great detail (you may want to hire an intern to help you with the longer words):

1. As I suspect you have not read the Constitution, I would like to remind you that the very first, the VERY FIRST Amendment in this founding document deals with the freedom of speech, particularly the abridgment of said freedom. By using your position as an elected official (when referring to your constituents so as to implicitly threaten the Ravens organization) to state that the Ravens should "inhibit such expressions from your employees," more specifically Brendon Ayanbadejo, not only are you clearly violating the First Amendment, you also come across as a narcissistic fromunda stain. What on earth would possess you to be so mind-boggingly stupid? It baffles me that a man such as yourself, a man who relies on that same First Amendment to pursue your own religious studies without fear of persecution from the state, could somehow justify stifling another person's right to speech. To call that hypocritical would be to do a disservice to the word. Mindfucking obscenely hypocritical starts to approach it a little bit.

2. "Many of your fans are opposed to such a view and feel it has no place in a sport that is strictly for pride, entertainment, and excitement." Holy fucking shitballs. Did you seriously just say that, as someone who's "deeply involved in government task forces on the legacy of slavery in Maryland"? Have you not heard of Kenny Washington? Jackie Robinson? As recently as 1962 the NFL still had segregation, which was only done away with by brave athletes and coaches daring to speak their mind and do the right thing, and you're going to say that political views have "no place in a sport"? I can't even begin to fathom the cognitive dissonance that must be coursing through your rapidly addled mind right now; the mental gymnastics your brain has to tortuously contort itself through to make such a preposterous statement are surely worthy of an Olympic gold medal (the Russian judge gives you a 10 for "beautiful oppressionism").

3. This is more a personal quibble of mine, but why do you hate freedom? Why do you hate the fact that other people want a chance to live their lives and be happy, even though they may believe in something different than you, or act different than you? How does gay marriage, in any way shape or form, affect your life? If gay marriage becomes legal, are you worried that all of a sudden you'll start thinking about penis? "Oh shit. Gay marriage just passed. Gotta get me some of that hot dong action!" Will all of your friends suddenly turn gay and refuse to come to your Sunday Ticket grill-outs? (Unlikely, since gay people enjoy watching football too.)

I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won't come into your house and steal your children. They won't magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster. They won't even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery because all of a sudden they have the same legal rights as the other 90 percent of our population—rights like Social Security benefits, child care tax credits, Family and Medical Leave to take care of loved ones, and COBRA healthcare for spouses and children. You know what having these rights will make gays? Full-fledged American citizens just like everyone else, with the freedom to pursue happiness and all that entails. Do the civil-rights struggles of the past 200 years mean absolutely nothing to you?

In closing, I would like to say that I hope this letter, in some small way, causes you to reflect upon the magnitude of the colossal foot in mouth clusterfuck you so brazenly unleashed on a man whose only crime was speaking out for something he believed in. Best of luck in the next election; I'm fairly certain you might need it.

Sincerely,
Chris Kluwe

P.S. I've also been vocal as hell about the issue of gay marriage so you can take your "I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing" and shove it in your close-minded, totally lacking in empathy piehole and choke on it. Asshole.

Well said, Kluwe.   I don't really have a lot to add to that.  Obviously Burns is another anti-Constitutional prick who doesn't care about others' rights.  I'm glad Ayanbadejo and Kluwe are showing the world that people with a stage can speak out for reason and equality.  I saw a website with a new campaign supporting the LGBT community that I love...LEGALIZE LOVE.  I couldn't say it better.

Visit LegalizeLove.com to show your support and get a free Legalize Love bumper sticker!