Category: Politics Page 2 of 4

Few news organizations have as many people in as many places covering as much stuff as the New York Times or National Public Radio, and so I trust them as sources of good and relevant and accurate information. And yet try as they might to be objective, and they do try, that they cannot succeed should be obvious to anyone who knows anything about the strength and blindness of human bias.

Several articles in the NY Times lept out at me this past week or so as revealing this blindness. Two address the recent efforts of the majority Republican US Congress to reduce spending. One is an op-ed piece about those cuts whose headline is “The G.O.P.’s Abandoned Babies”. The other is an editorial headed “The War on Women”.

In both, the pro-life tilt of the Republican party is used as a foil against which to portray the party as having no compassion for children or women. They are, the author of one says, “pro-life before birth and indifferent afterward”. Their efforts to restrict federal funding of abortion services are nothing less than misogynistic.

This is, of course, no better than a conservative paper trumpeting the extension of abortion rights as “The War on Babies”. And it does not matter who is in power and who is making cuts, when budgets get cut, those cuts are made as carefully as possible to effect those with the fewest number of votes. As David Brooks pointed out, in the same publication, the problem does not lie with ideology or party, but with politicians unwilling to face their difficult task.

So, pardon me, Mr. NY Times, your biases are showing. I know these are opinion pieces. But the headlines you gave to them suggest the tilt.

Ironically, the Times this week as well ran a story about the New York City Council being incensed that crisis pregnancy centers in New York do not advertise themselves as ‘not providing medical or abortion services’, ‘tricking’ women into walking into their ‘trap’ and then feeding them loads of mis-information, contrary to honest service providers like Planned Parenthood.

Okay, I know that there are crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) whose operational practice is less than stellar. But they are rare. If I might make an observation on those that I have had the privilege of being associated with, their whole goal is to give the information that Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are denying women. The mis-information is not on the CPC side of the street, but in the halls of the abortionist who will not provide the woman an ultrasound to see the baby’s beating heart to make sure she wants to go through with a procedure that will stop that beating heart. The ‘war on women’, rests with those like Planned Parenthood who happily support efforts to get pregnancy centers to fill their advertising with disclaimers, but staunchly oppose bills to require that THEY THEMSELVES give accurate information to the women whose abortion fees fund them.

I’m all for civility. But I treasure honest clarity as well. Not seeing a whole bunch of it here.

And finally, in the Irony of Ironies Department, Life Division, NPR ran a story this week on Republican efforts in the House to alter EPA funding. One concern is that changes in the regulatory power of the EPA will reduce the agency’s ability to control mercury emissions, a pollutant particularly dangerous, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “for young children”. To raise awareness of this danger, the Environmental Defense Fund is running a television ad stressing this danger by using footage of an ultrasound of a fetus. The same ultrasound that Planned Parenthood refuses to show their patients, unconcerned, it would seem, about an abortion’s danger for “young children”.

The human heart is incapable of impartiality. Read. But read with discernment.

All the world is a stage and all of us who strut upon it are actors after some fashion. And in the political arena, where men and women must gather coalitions and support from a myriad of diverse points of view, I suppose that success depends upon a high level of thespian skill.

But I am so put off by blatant political theater. And at this point I can’t determine whether that is because I am at heart self-righteous and able to see the sins of others so much better than I can see the same sin in myself, or whether I am attune to something rotten in American politics.

It may be both. When it is so clear that the act of an elected official is aimed not at accomplishing anything of public value, but simply at making political points, I think I am justified to be put off by the smell.

Recently, newly elected Republicans in the US House of Representatives pushed a measure to repeal the Obama health care plan passed by the previous Congress. They pushed this knowing that it was meaningless. It would not pass the Senate. That a bill was submitted which all knew would accomplish nothing more than gain supporters “I-stood-up-to-Obama” points seemed not to bother any of them. But it was pure theater designed to amuse, if not deceive.

Monday, in similar fashion, Rick Scott, the multi-millionaire governor of Florida, unveiled the parameters of his new state budget. I was hopeful, but I should have known better than to expect something serious when Gov. Scott chose a gathering of those living under the ‘tea party’ label as the place to reveal his plan. He was playing to the house. His budget has no chance of passing in its current form. It is not realistic. And yet he can stand with a straight face on that stage and enjoy the cheers of those he is duping into thinking he is actually doing something. It is all theater. Why do we buy it?

Of course, all leadership demands drama to some degree. Henry V’s “Band of Brothers” speech is of course all Shakespeare, but something like it needs to be delivered before men head into battle, or little leaguers head into their first game. At some level, of course, it is dramatic and needs to be. And sometimes symbolic acts need to be taken. That, too, I understand. But drama and symbol must be wed to integrity. Anything else is mere play-acting.

Charity in debate is something I long for. I’m not a good one to champion it, of course. I often find after a heated discussion with someone on some topic mattering to the two of us the need to go to that person and ask his forgiveness for my tone or for words carelessly spoken.

But this pot would still like to address the kettle so that we all might step away from our blackness, listen to how we sound, and ameliorate our rhetoric in such a way that we might be heard and be effective in our persuasion.

The concern for civility has entered the national debate recently as a result of the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. I’m not persuaded that this shooting was the result of uncivil discourse. My hope is not that Rush Limbaugh would tone down his rhetoric. He won’t, nor will others whose shrillness is a part of their entertainment schtick. My hope is that those of us concerned for persuasion and not entertainment would stop letting those voices be the ones which inform our content and style. My concern is ultimately that the church, first, would become a place where variant views can be heard, discussed, and even strongly disagreed with, in a context of mutual respect and understanding.

With this background, I am intrigued, therefore, to read how Abraham Lincoln framed his rhetoric regarding slavery prior to his election to the presidency. There is no question that Lincoln opposed slavery. He was realistic enough to know, though, that the most to be hoped for politically at the time was containment, not abolition. He pursued what was politically viable and for that, he is skewered. But should he be?

It is easy to embrace and speak moral absolutes. But to be politically persuasive is far more difficult. And being persuasive was Lincoln’s goal.

Lincoln knew that in any debate there are several groups. There are hardened partisans on both sides of the issue. In his case, these were the abolitionists on the one end and the defenders of slavery on the other. He could not hope to take ardent defenders of the Southern practice of enslavement and move them to the abolitionists’ side no matter how skilled his tongue or passionate his desire. What he could hope to do was to persuade a third group, those uncertain, those whose opinions were not yet hardened. And so at these he aimed his message.

Doris Kearns Goodwin provides a fascinating account of his approach in her Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, a book that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Lincoln appealed to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, arguing that these principles alone forbid the right of one man to govern another without his consent. What was he trying to accomplish by so doing?

“By appealing to the moral and philosophical foundation work of the nation, Lincoln hoped to provide common ground on which good men in both the North and the South could stand.”

He knew that that common ground would not be embraced if he simply shouted angry slogans across the divide. His goal was not to shout and to alienate, but to reason and to draw together. His approach was radical for its time, and radical in our own. This observation is key:

“Unlike the majority of antislavery orators, who denounced the South and castigated slaveowners as corrupt and un-Christian, Lincoln pointedly denied fundamental differences between Northerners and Southerners. He argued that they ‘are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up…. When it is said that the institution exists; and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself.'”

He models for us something that our more passionate anti-abortion allies, and at times I, find very hard to comprehend:

“Rather than upbraid slaveowners, Lincoln sought to comprehend their position through empathy.” (page page 167)

This is hard, and it seems pragmatic. And yes, it did not persuade the hardened. The country still went to war; Lincoln was still assassinated. But there is something fundamentally right in his approach, right and important for all our personal discussions, whether it be political or religious.

Everything said in these pages (I have quoted from pages 167-168) is helpful. The whole book is helpful. But I leave you with this:

“Though the cause be ‘naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel,’ the sanctimonious reformer could no more pierce the heart of the drinker or the slaveowner than ‘penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him.’ In order ‘to win a man to your causes,’ Lincoln explained, you must first reach his heart, ‘the great high road to his reason.’ This, he concluded, was the only road to victory — to that glorious day ‘when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth.'”

May God give us ears to hear.

In recent days, the most interesting and level headed report on the connection between political rhetoric and assassination suggests not only that there is no connection between the rhetoric and the violent response, but even more that the political position of the political target is not even a motive for the assassin. He is more likely to pick a target based upon the fame he will receive. In the report, Alix Spiegel revisits a study produced by the Secret Service in 1999.

What emerges from the study is that rather than being politically motivated, many of the assassins and would-be assassins simply felt invisible. In the year before their attacks, most struggled with acute reversals and disappointment in their lives. Which, the paper argues, was the true motive. They didn’t want to see themselves as non-entities.

She quotes the author of the story:

“They [the assassins] experienced failure after failure after failure, and decided that rather than being a ‘nobody,’ they wanted to be a ‘somebody.'”

You can read (and listen to) the whole report here.

That drive for fame seems counter-intuitive to most of us because we are able to find other, more socially acceptable, ways to satisfy that basic human drive to be someone.

Whether there is a connection between rhetoric and violence remains to be proven, though greater civility in our public, political, and, yes, ecclesiastical, discourse is always to be desired. I tend to agree with the Atlantic’s Megan McCardle’s assessment, addressing the most recent tragedy, that the only violent rhetoric this guy was listening to were the voices in his head. She concludes by saying:

A terrible thing happened. We live in a universe in which terrible things happen. That’s no one’s fault — or maybe, everyone’s fault. Either way, I don’t see much in the way of solutions coming out of this – only terrible, terrible sadness.

I could decorate this paragraph with theological garland linking it to the Biblical story. But it would say the same thing.

This will be my final post stimulated by my recent read of David McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback.

At one point in his career as a New York Assemblyman, Roosevelt was impressed to lead the charge which would have removed the cigar making industry out of the homes in which it had become a massive business. To the conservative outside observer, this seemed like an anti-business, anti-family, government intrusion into the lives of citizens and the rights of business.

So it seemed to TR until Samuel Gompers prevailed upon him to actually tour the homes where this was going on. He found awful conditions, sweat shops, really, where great pressure  and little pay was given for labor that was unregulated and involved even the smallest of children.

The bill would move cigar making out of these homes and into a factory where those who did the labor could be well treated and well paid for what they did, and children enabled to be children. It became for him a matter of social justice. And for this, he was accused of being a socialist.

It’s a standard ad hominem against any act calling for social justice, but it was a necessary step for the government to take. We are often told that the free market will correct such ills, but it doesn’t. The market has a poor track record when it comes to issues of human rights or environmental concern. So it requires the power of those unassociated with dollars to act.

There are times that the government must act. And yet, always? That requires wisdom.

I remember a cartoon contrasting child rearing between now and a long time ago. In the one panel, a child falls from a tree, and the dad says to him, “C’mon. Shake it off. You’ll be alright.” In the other panel, the child falls, and the father says to the panicky mother, “The government should do something to make trees safer.”

And wisdom will always, it seems to me, move forward along two paths, two paths illustrated by the contrasting approaches of Roosevelt’s father and uncle. The uncle called for greater government involvement to solve the ills of the day. His father, in the meantime, established homes for indigent orphan boys, built museums, and helped widowed soldiers.

Both seem to be needed.

Politicians are really quite like us. They argue principle, but they are driven by deeper motives.

Conservatives say they are all about smaller government and LESS government intrusion. Until it comes to issues like defense and immigration. THEN it is okay to spend billions, create a larger bureaucracy, and increase the level of intrusion (as long as it is towards minorities).

Liberals say they are all about a greater role for government in creating the ideal society. Except, of course, in protecting the lives of the unborn or in giving resources and power to the military.

Conservatives and liberals clamor for fiscal responsibility in government. But I’ve not seen it from either party. Both tax and both spend. They only differ on where the taxes fall and where the expenditures are made as they try to reward their constituents with the only resources available to them.

My consolation in a now divided national government is that it will do less harm. But my sadness is that those things which could benefit from some kind of concerted attention will remain unaddressed.