The Actual Referendum

In 1964 Richard Hofstadter won the Pulitzer Prize for his new book "Anti-intellectualism in American Life." Forty eight years later, Americans are having a referendum on the intellect or, perhaps more accurately, on intelligence. It's not just the parade of republican politicians who seem to be holding a contest on who can publicly say the dumbest things; it's the heavy weight of public opinion stacked up behind them that not only doesn't care about intelligence but actually seems to admire the reverse. In Texas schools, they refuse to teach critical thinking on the grounds that it will undermine "the authority of the family." One is reminded that the first thing new militarist governments usually do is arrest all the professors and shoot their students. They can't tolerate criticism and the last thing they want is new ideas.

Economics is an interesting example. Academic economists have been studying the "business cycle" ever since the Great Depression and have developed an understanding of economic downturns as well as sensible policies for stimulating re-growth. Republicans, on the other hand, think the great geniuses of the "economy" are the richest businessmen --- "surely all that money says something about them!" ---  and want to run the national economy like a business. Of course, the national economy is not a business any more than it is a household budget. Of course, in all of this, we are asked to ignore the fact that it is businesses that get us into "business cycles" precisely by doing business as usual. Ignore whatever the academics say!

A century ago, the Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset, wrote "Revolt of the Masses" in which he described the evolution of "mass man" in modern times. One of the principal traits of mass man is that he completely loses sight of how modern times were developed out of science, literature, and the arts and begins to think of them as natural gifts, hence nothing that requires effort or sacrifice. Of course, Ortega was ignored as just another elitist intellectual.

The New/Old Republican Paradise

Mit Romney, as well as most other Republican "leaders", says that the economy will be fine and all kinds of new jobs will be created if we just lower the tax burden on the super wealthy, dispense with environmental protection, strip away regulations that monitor and control industry, and return to the golden days of all-American health care. Oh yes, we should also deport millions of "illegal immigrants", deny women their Constitutional right to choose an abortion, make it increasingly difficult for women to obtain contraception, and exclude as many poor people from voting as possible. While we are at it, we should break apart as many unions as possible and deny collective bargaining rights to as many workers as we can. 

This vision of paradise is, of course, nothing new. It is a perfect model of how the country ran in the 1890s and early 1900s. Unfortunately, being five or more generations away from those wonderful times, few Americans understand why we have unions and collective bargaining and why the vote is such a precious possession. Women did not have the right to vote until the 1920s; 18-year-old soldiers did not have the right to vote until the 1960s; and massive numbers of people were disenfranchised because they could not read or recite passages from the Constitution. 

One of the most admirable features of uncontrolled corporate Capitalism was the "company town." The corporation offered almost all available jobs, owned all of the housing, and ran most of the services (like food stores). Wages were kept so low that virtually nothing was left over after rents were paid, clothes were purchased, and children fed. Hours of labor were often six days per week for up to 12 hours per day. Children frequently had to work in the factories or mines just to keep the family going. The only restraint on corporations was to pay enough so that workers did not die in massive numbers. Meanwhile, few safety precautions were taken and workers died in accidents on a daily basis. 

This was not only a system with no regulation of industry; it was a system in which government supported industry. Workers who threatened to rebel or strike were taken out by police or military and either shot dead or put up for trial in judicial systems that were heavily oriented toward the corporations. Corporations simply owned government --- local, state, and Federal. Today, as we watch billionaires literally gushing money into support of Romney, it is easy to believe that we are headed back to the good old days in which business owns government and 99% of other people pay for it with their lives. 

What continues to boggle the imagination is why 50% of Americans will continue to vote for something like this when it is so enormously contrary to their own interests. I can only think that the reason for Republican success is their ability to hide behind the weird mask of "social issues" --- anti-abortion, anti-sex-education, anti-evolution, anti-science, and anti-gay-rights --- so that people don't look beyond to that paradise of starvation-level employment, social impotence, and child labor.

Some lessons gained in Wisconsin

Scott Walker and his ilk can win no matter how outrageous he behaves so long as he can out-spend his adversaries 8-to-1. And where did all that money come from? Certainly not from Wisconsin. There are super-rich people out there (like the Koch brothers) who are buying up political power all over the country.

But money doesn't do everything. Unions have over-stretched their demands and power and now people are down on them. That's a shame because history well documents the fact that unions are necessary in order to give workers a fighting chance against raw Capitalism. Unfortunately, we seem to be in a position of re-living history every century or so because most people do not learn history anymore. Probably half the people alive today were born after the Vietnam War. There is no memory of how labor was treated back in the late 19th Century.

Another fact is that wealthy conservatives are buying up political power in the states. They have not given up on the Federal government but they have realized that they can do a great deal of their damage through control of the states. Look at what has been happening to women's issues around the country, especially in Southern states where this strategy has been successful.

In an odd sort of way, what is happening now is a violation of the old conservative principle of "states rights." Except that it is not the Federal government that is intervening in self-determination of the states. It is big money from out-of-state. What would have happened in Wisconsin had the people of the state been able to exercise their own political choice without the intervention of foreign economic and political power?

Lying in Public

Why do people (so-called journalists) in the media allow politicians to make complete lies in their interviews? In effect, members of the media become accessories to this lying by allowing it to go through without question. Are they supporters of the lying camp? really, not always.

I think the answer is that they know they won't get more interviews if they call candidates out on lying. So they let it pass. Their reputations depend on landing the interviews with big candidates and politicians. So they sell their souls to advance themselves. And, meanwhile, the listening/watching public gets nothing but falsehoods and no intelligent criticism. 

That's really evil. How can democracy survive in a system like this?

Another One for the "Birthers"

After all this time, the "birthers" are still alive and well (if you can call anyone of that persuasion "well"). I know because one of my friends is one of them and he recently informed me that one of his kind had discovered an obscure Supreme Court decision that absolutely proved that Obama lacks the qualifications to be President. 

The decision in question is Minor v. Happersett (1875). It is actually a very interesting case in which Mrs. Minor, a native born US citizen and resident of Missouri, sued Mr. Happersett, a registrar of voters, for not allowing her to register to vote because she was a woman. Attorneys for Minor argued that she had a right to vote guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. But the Supreme Court argued that the US Constitution, even as amended, does not prohibit states from denying suffrage to women. Indeed, it was not until the 19th Amendment (1920) that Federal law prohibited states from discriminating on the basis of sex in determining the right to vote.

Since the 14th Amendment deals with citizenship and states that "no State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," the Court dealt first with Minor's citizenship rights as such. The birthers claim that language in the Minor v. Happersett ruling defines the class of "natural-born citizens" in such a way that Obama could not qualify. In fact, if this were true, large numbers of people would not qualify as natural born citizens, including John McCain, Mitt Romney, and my own step-daughter.

What the 14th Amendment says is that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." This is surely true; however, what this statement does not do is define the class of natural-born citizens. The class of citizens under the 14th Amendment includes persons born in the US of foreign citizens or visitors --- something the birthers do not like --- and excludes persons born outside of the US even though at least one parent is a US citizen. So the birthers cannot depend on the 14th Amendment for their ammunition and, instead, look to the language of the 1875 decision.

So here is the first part of the paragraph that the birthers like. "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners." This, the birthers claim, defines the class of "natural-born citizens." Of course, what it actually says is merely that no one ever doubted that children born in the US of US parents belonged in that class. That does not define the class; it merely designates an undoubted member of the class. 

What is interesting is that the same paragraph continues: "Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens." In other words, the Court acknowledged that there are other routes to membership in the class of "natural-born citizens" but saw no need to argue those issues since Mrs. Minor was clearly a citizen without going into any of those other arguments. 

Further into the opinion, it states that legislation "as early as 1790, . . . the children of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be considered as natural-born citizens." The generally accepted membership of the class of "natural-born citizens" is indeed children born in the US (and certain territories) to US citizens, children born in the US to foreign citizens (excluding diplomats), and children born outside of the US to at least one US-citizen parent. Admittedly some people argue with one or another of these members, but the opinion of Minor v. Happersett does not make any judgment about such arguments.

The American Dream

We hear a great deal about "the American dream" and I know pretty well what people these days mean by that. However, I am equally unsure what "the American dream" really means. What dream and whose dream are we talking about? If we are talking about the original immigrants or colonizers of America, I suppose that the dream was life without religious persecution and land that was free for settlement. They did, of course, begin to persecute themselves; and there was the little matter of clearing off indigenous people in order to settle. Not too clear in retrospect how virtuous any of that really was. 

Perhaps the first great vision of an "American dream" was Jefferson's vision of a nation of landed citizens. Democracy made sense in that situation even though I am skeptical that real democracy ever existed in the US. Anyway, the Industrial Revolution removed people from the land. The US Census does not even track the population of small farmers anymore; the number is too tiny compared to the general population (less than 1%). Even farming is industrialized today. What that means is that no one has a natural path to survival anymore. Everyone must "work the system" in some way in order to survive. So, in a Capitalist world, that means that almost everyone is a "surf" in the new system of "corporate capitalism." You take the wages that you can get and you make do with what you have.

So I suppose that, having been dropped into a struggle for survival off the land or without any other free supporting body, we imagine "the American dream" to be this: that everybody has a reasonable chance at succeeding if they apply themselves. But this is where we encounter the great rift in American political thought. Those of a Democratic persuasion focus on "everybody has a reasonable chance" and those of a Republican persuasion focus on "apply themselves." Thus, for Democrats the failure of the American dream is the fact that only a few have a reasonable chance while many have no chance at all. For Republicans, on the other hand, the failure is the fact that people are lazy and just do not apply themselves. Democrats tend to ignore the fact that many people really are lazy and or conniving and take advantage of gifts. Republicans tend to ignore the improbability of reasonable chances. But since no one is willing to talk intelligently across this ideological divide, there is little chance of moderating the rift. Elections stack up to being almost 50/50 match-ups between diametrically opposite tendencies. There is, of course, one other important dimension to this rift. Democrats believe that government is uniquely situated to help the people achieve the dream, and Republicans do not want government to interfere. Taxation is theft and the government should be stripped of most of its powers. What Capitalists want is protection of property --- hence, a police presence and large military budget.

As we work our way toward the election of 2012, the real issue before us is what kind of society we want. When it comes down to basics, that is what government is really about. Government is the way in which a people (commonwealth) exercises its collective power to shape its own destiny. The choices before us are in stark contrast to each other. Democrats believe that part of the aim of government is to "promote the general welfare" of society as expressed in the Constitution ("We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."). In this respect, they believe that parents should be given aid in rearing their children to become good citizens, that young people should be provided the benefits of education, that workers should receive reasonable compensation for their labors, and that everyone should have the benefits of adequate health care.

What Republicans seem to want is a tax policy that enormously favors extreme wealth and withdraws all Federal programs for promoting the general welfare. I confess that I do not understand what this means as a "vision of a desirable society" except that it would seem we should simply watch people starve and die in our cities and ignore the whole thing as much as we can. If this is not the Republican ideal, then how do they really see this policy working out?

The Price of Gas

Well, as expected, the Republicans are now blaming the price of gas on Obama. The real question, though, is whether anyone wants to explore the facts about why gas prices are where they are.

First of all, the Federal government does not own gas production. In our thoroughly revered system of free-market capitalism, the production of gas is owned by hugely wealthy oil capitalists. (Actually, these are the people who probably own the Federal government rather than vice versa.)

Second, the price of crude oil is largely controlled by the world market and the market, presently, is dominated by major speculation about the supply of oil coming out of the Middle East. Without much control, the major producers of gasoline will have to set prices based on the price of crude oil, speculation or not. The US is far from the only consumer in the marketplace. China and other countries are becoming aggressive consumers of oil.

Third, US producers of crude oil (oil pumped out of US territories) are currently exporting part of their production. Get it? US both imports and exports oil. The gas price has nothing to do with the current supply in the US and, hence, nothing to do with more drilling on and off shore. (But they are always eager to use any excuse to push us to allow more drilling!!) "Drill baby drill" will do nothing to gasoline prices in the US.

What nobody wants to talk about is the fact that if the US producers who presently export crude were to sell their oil in the US and, consequently, elevate the supply in the US, the price of gas would drop. But, naturally, the wealthy owners of our oil production have no interest in dropping the price of gas in the US when they can sell to countries where the price of gas is $5 or even $6 per gallon. Our revered capitalists simply have no interest in lowering American gas prices. As always, their great interest lies in making as much money as possible.