I've been blocked

My accomplishment of the day. He can dish out cold-hearted sneers all day, but remind him of his dog-murdering son and he turns all mushy.

Walker just dropped out. That's not good

Scott Walker dropped out of the Republican primary race today. Last week, Rick Perry dropped out. Most of my liberal friends on Facebook and Twitter cackled gleefully and made fist-pumping “oh, yeah” noises over each of those. They enjoyed the schadenfreude of watching two people they disliked being humiliated and slinking home with their tails between their legs. They shouldn't have enjoyed it. Walker and Perry dropping out is bad for us.

The more people there are in the primary, and the longer they last, the better it is for us. The worst thing that could happen for us is for all of them to drop out (except, presumably for one. No one running as a Republican would be very good for us). There are two simple points involved. One is financial/economical and the other is sociological.

The money issue is the easiest to explain. Lots of candidates eat up a lot of money. Money spent running against other Republicans in the primaries is money not available to spend running against the Democratic candidate in the general election. I want the big donors to spend it all in the primaries. Walker in particular was positioned to waste a lot of money. He was the Koch brothers' anointed. They have publicly promised to spend almost a billion dollars this cycle to create a government to their liking. The longer he looked viable, the more of that money he would have sucked up. Now they are free to decide whether to spend that billion on another presidential candidate or to spread it around buying as many congressional seats as possible (which is what I would have done from the beginning). Allowing the money to become more focused is bad for us.

The sociological issue is almost as simple. The longer the primaries remain competitive without a clear front runner, the more divided the party is going into the general election. After the convention, they'll need to spend valuable time uniting the party rather than running against our candidate. The sooner someone emerges from the pack as the obvious winner, the sooner they can focus their money and supporters on defeating our candidate. Bringing the party together is a major strategic issue. The longer a party remains divided between viable candidates, the more supporters become dedicated to their candidates. The more they become dedicated to their candidate, the more they begin to see other candidates as the enemy. If the enemy wins, their enthusiasm for supporting them approaches zero. An actual convention battle would guarantee hundreds of thousands of supporters, if not millions, either staying home or voting for third parties in November. In 2008, Obama's greatest challenge wasn't defeating McCain, it was regaining the support of the Clinton bitter-enders.

My conservative/Republican friends seem to understand this calculus far better than my liberal/Democratic friends do. We look at every Republican joining the race as mere entertainment. They look at every Democrat joining the race as bad news for Clinton. We need to learn from them. If Carson and Fiorina keep up with Trump, that's great. If Jeb!, Kaisich, and Cruz stay viable, that's even better. If Jindal and those other guys look viable, that means we've all suffered major head injuries and need someone to get us to the ER as fast as possible.

To summarize: lots of Republicans = good, one Republican = bad.

Hobby Lobby and privacy

 Over the last few days, while looking at some of the pre-trial commentary on the Hobby Lobby vs. Obamacare suit, something that's been nagging at me finally jelled into a coherent thought. The primary arguments will be over whether the government is violating the religious freedom of the owners of Hobby Lobby by requiring the insurance they contribute to for their employees to cover birth control. I think the feminist issues have been covered well by my side and both sides have covered the religious freedom angles. My epiphany was over the privacy angle, which actually grows out of the liberal argument about whose religious freedom is being infringed upon by whom. All of these issues are inextricably intertwined. It's the job of the Supremes to untangle them and decide which thread is the Constitutional issue they want to opine on.

How does privacy fit into this? I'm fairly sure privacy is not even a choice among the bases the Supremes will use to make their decision. Robert Bork, who was Reagan's first choice for Scalia's seat argued that there is no right to privacy and, as far as I know, neither side in this case is making an argument that it is relevant. But it is. Be patient with me.

The Green family, who own the Hobby Lobby chain, claim they don't want to control the sex lives of their (female) employees, they just don't want to be forced to pay for aspects of those sex lives that they don't approve of. Ty disapprove of birth control, which they (very incorrectly) equate to abortion. By their logic, they don't want to pay for scarlet women to kill babies. That's not the issue. The issue is the privacy of their employees. Not anyone's religion. Privacy.

Compensation for a job can include a lot of things, pay for work, paid time off, bonuses, stock options, and insurance. These things the employer gives to the employee in exchange for work of some sort. In most jobs, this means the employer has a great deal of control over what the employee can or cannot do during what are considered working hours. Periodically, in the past, employers have tried to control their employees during their off-work hours. Schools, both private and public, have been well known for imposing morality codes on teachers that apply to every hour of every day. Over the last decade or so, many secular employers have tried to exert control over their employees off-the-clock vices. They have tried to control their employees smoking and drinking, even when these haven't affected their job performance, in the name of keeping insurance costs down. Other employers drug test for pot use, even when this hasn't affected job performance, and a cost to the company, just in the name of the employer's pecksniffery. The liberal, libertarian, and even, occasionally, conservative counter-arguments to these efforts has been that whatever the employee does off-the-clock is none of their employer's damn business. Different parts of the spectrum can have different rationales for objecting or supporting some of these employer demands. From the perspective of privacy, none of it is justifiable. Which brings us back to Hobby Lobby.

Insurance is part of the total compensation package that an employer gives to an employee. If a female employee wants to use their insurance to cover birth control, the Greens say they are being made to subsidize something they disapprove of. But what if the employee chooses to use part of her pay for birth control? How is that different? Pay and insurance are both part of the total compensation package. If the employer has the right to tell an employee how to use their insurance, why don't they have the right to tell them how to spend the monetary part of their compensation package? Why not tell them which cable channels they can subscribe to? Why not tell them to eat more vegetables, like Michelle Obama isn't?

The Greens want to intrude into the most basic economic transactions of their employees. In its most extreme, how is this degree of control different that the company store or the plantation. Conservatives love the plantation analogy; how can they defend this one?

Stop celebrating

I'm going to go against my Democratic and liberal friends here and temper my enthusiasm about Terry McAuliffe's victory in Virginia. I'm glad he won. I'm glad Virginia is becoming more purple. But, we should be appalled that the margin of victory was that close. Cuccinelli and Jackson are nuts. Why was McAuliffe only able to win by two points? Polling for the the last few months has has McAuliffe ahead of Cuccinelli by double digits. That narrowed a little bit over the last two weeks, but McAuliffe still should have won by close to ten percent.

Pollsters will all tell us that predicting off year elections is extremely difficult. Turnout is low and a well-motivated minority can make a big difference. Also, when there are a limited number of races in the country, outside interests will have an exaggerated influence. That said, we really sucked in this election. Democrats and liberals all over the country were appalled at Cuccinelli and Jackson and establishment Republicans were unenthusiastic. They should have been slaughtered.

Get out the vote efforts have been a strength of the Democratic Party for decades. Were we really beaten by Santorum's Strikeforce? That's cause for shame. That's cause for us to be very worried about next year. I'm very skeptical about all the happy talk among Democrats and liberals about the coming implosion of the Republican Party. Pundits have been saying this after almost every election since 1988. It's not going to happen! Gains by Democrats and liberals will happen inch by inch. If this is the best we can do, we need to worry about next year.

Mini-Snopes: Congressional pay edition: again

I've run into two different versions of this in the last few days. I suppose it's tied to the same populist frustration as the last one.

Let's be clear. Neither members of Congress, nor the President, nor the Vice President get their pay for life. That is bullshit. Think about it for a minute. Do you really think some one-term, House member is going to get his pay for life after only "working" for two years? Even if you're going to be extra cynical and say "they would if they could" the correct answer is, they couldn't and they never will.

Members of Congress get a civil service pension just like the person delivering your mail or sending you your tax return does: it's a formula based on the number of years they worked for the government times their highest pay grade times a fractional multiplier. The total cannot equal their final pay, even if the were boyhood friends with Jefferson Davis like Strom Thurmond was. Ever since they began to pay for Social Security and Medicare in 1984, they have been eligible to collect from them.

I'm all for economic populism, but let's focus on the right things. How much pay Congress makes is not important. How much pay you make is. How much Social Security and Medicare your parents, grandparents or you collect is. How much food, rent, and medical support other vulnerable American get is. If you've fallen into the the trap of hating the poor, then do it for the veterans. Many of them are poor, old, hungry, and sick. Everyone loves the veterans, in theory. It's too bad they don't care as much for the civilians that the veterans were protecting.

Please go, Ron

In a display of a serious irony deficiency, Ron Paul uses his taxpayer funded, government website to argue for secession from an overly intrusive government.

Is all the recent talk of secession mere sour grapes over the election, or perhaps something deeper?

Sour grapes, with a delicate bouquet of racism and batshit insanity.

Currently there are active petitions in support of secession for all 50 states, with Texas taking the lead in number of signatures. Texas has well over the number of signatures needed to generate a response from the administration...

Dear Texas, No. Sincerely, Barack H. Obama

...and while I wouldn't hold my breath on Texas actually seceding, I believe these petitions raise a lot of worthwhile questions about the nature of our union. Is it treasonous to want to secede from the United States?

To want to? No. To try? Yes.

Many think the question of secession was settled by our Civil War.

It was.

On the contrary; the principles of self-governance and voluntary association are at the core of our founding.

Yes, they were. But it's still treason.

Clearly Thomas Jefferson believed secession was proper, albeit as a last resort. Writing to William Giles in 1825, he concluded that states:

"should separate from our companions only when the sole alternatives left, are the dissolution of our Union with them, or submission to a government without limitation of powers."

Keep in mind that the first and third paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence expressly contemplate the dissolution of a political union when the underlying government becomes tyrannical.

You see, Ron, it might surprise you and many of your Tea Party followers to find out, the Declaration is not part of the Constitution. It's also not part of our law codes. I know, you've only collected a government paycheck to write laws that pass Constitutional muster off and on for thirty-six years, so you might not have had time to learn that fact. Do we have a "government without limitation of powers" yet? No. One of those limitations is that Constitution thingy that your not so familiar with. Another, paradoxically, is that part of the government that you collected a paycheck from. You members of Congress are supposed to show some restraint, if only because you fear the other party coming to power some day. Third, are the American voters, who still get to throw you out if they don't like how you're doing your job. You see, under a government with truly unlimited powers, we don't get to do that.

The Federal government kept the Union together through violence and force in the Civil War, but did might really make right?

It might not have made it right, but it did make it legal. Remember what I said about voting above? The "Federal government" is not an entity separate from the American people. It is chosen by American people and made up of American people. We chose to keep the Union together and, in doing so, we made it legal.

Secession is a deeply American principle. This country was born through secession. Some felt it was treasonous to secede from England, but those "traitors" became our country's greatest patriots.

The founders of most new countries were almost always, at one time, traitors to the old regime. That does not make treason "a deeply American principle." Being founded by secession does not make secession "a deeply American principle." Let me put this in terms you might understand. You're a gynecologist. Being born of a cesarean section does not make climbing screaming and naked through your mother's abdomen a deeply defining characteristic of your being and it certainly does not justify doing it a second time.

Drift off topic. Whine, whine, whine.

If a people cannot secede from an oppressive government, they cannot truly be considered free.

You might be right, but you are pulling a bait-and-switch con on us. You started when you brought the Declaration into this. The Declaration of Independence is a philosophical argument. Let me repeat myself, the Declaration is not part of the Constitution, nor is it part of our law codes. A philosophical argument can always be made for secession, though it won't always be a valid argument. Whining because you lost two elections in a row is not a valid argument. Not getting your way is not a valid argument. And even when you do have a valid argument for secession, it's still treason and you better be sure all of your fellow secedees are on your side and you better be ready for a fight.

Newt's plan: "Fire everyone, even me!"

As Newt Gingrich would be the first to tell you, Newt Gingrich is a smart guy, an imaginative, forward thinking kind of guy who is willing to look at unconventional solutions to difficult problems. This kind of bold and daring thinking was on display at last night's debate. In answer to a question from the audience, "what are you going to do to bring down the debt?" he said:

I agree generally with the need to reform government. I think that, if we were prepared to repeal the 130-year-old civil service laws, go to a modern management system, we could save a minimum of $500 billion a year with a better system.

Gingrich--like Plutarch, Gibbon, and Churchill--was an historian, so he doesn't throw dates around willy-nilly. When he says "130-year-old civil service laws" he has something very specific and historical in mind. That specific and historical thing can only be the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883. This act was a bipartisan reform, written by a Democrat, Sen. George H. Pendleton, and championed by a Republican president, Chester Alan Arthur, both of whom, like Gingrich, were historical personages willing to take on unconventional and smart positions. The purpose of the law that Gingrich wants to repeal was to eliminate corruption and increase the professional quality of the civil service by reducing the number of patronage positions. This the genius of Gingrich's forward thinkingness; who needs professionalism and laws against corruption when one has modern management system? Only unimaginative, small thinkers who aren't Newt Gingrich, that's who.

Newt Gingrich's brilliance is not limited to history and modern management systems. He's also a master of mathematics far beyond the ability of lesser minds to comprehend. Take that number of "minimum of $500 billion a year." As we know, Gingrich is very specific in his brilliance; he must have something concrete in mind when gives a number like that. But what could it be. According to the latest analyses by the OMB (p. 122), the entire Federal payroll for 2011 was $ 432.6 billion. That number includes not just the civil service, but also all four branches of the military, active reserves, the judicial branch, the legislative branch, and the president himself. At this point, mundane minds are probably thinking, "gee, that doesn't add up. After firing the entire government, how does he expect to eliminate another $67.4 billion, at a minimum?" This is here Gingrich's sublime mind comes into play. He knows there are plenty of ways to squeeze more blood from the federal turnip. For example, he could stop paying their pensions, cancel veterans benefits, refuse to allow any of the 4.6 million new unemployed he just created to collect the unemployment insurance they've been paying for, and make them pay back some of their salaries from previous years. Lesser minds would never suggest such daring solutions.

Or he might be talking out of his ass.

Note: I'm not saying anything that wasn't already said here. I'm just more sarcastic than they are.

Did Santorum just call Obama the Antichrist? Updated

The short answer is "yes."

For over thirty years, the religious right has been teaching its followers that they are under siege by modern society, by liberals, by secularists, and by the Democratic Party. Anything they find even moderately unpleasant, their leaders tell them is an attack aimed directly at destroying, not just them, but Christianity and Christians. This paranoid world view fits very well into the Protestant end-times narrative. If they already believe that they are under constant attack by vaguely defined, almost irresistible forces it's not much of a jump to believe that those forces are diabolical in nature. And many do make that jump.

Rick Santorum gladly encourages those feelings of paranoia in his audience and is trying to direct them into a force that he can ride into the White House. When Obama says every kid should go to college, Santorum says that's because the Left uses college to indoctrinate our kids. The secular Left, he warns, wants to crush religious dissent, just like in the old Soviet Union. The day day after Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, Santorum railed that "he has done more to assault religion in this country than any president." Santorum has never been one to shy away from over the top rhetoric including, of course, the Hitler card.

Today he managed to go beyond Hitler and the Soviet Union. Today, he suggested to his followers that Obama is the Antichrist or, at the very least, paving the way for the Antichrist.

They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is the government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights, what’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that. But if we do and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.

So, you might ask, where's the Antichrist in all that talk of the French Revolution? Guillotines have a special place in most versions of the end-time narrative being passed around. The non-raptured Christians who stay behind and battle the Antichrist during the Tribulation are supposed to be martyred on the guillotine if they are captured. End-time writers base this detail on Revelation 20:4.

"Judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands."

This is not an obscure detail; this is something that any apocalyptic Christian will instantly recognise. Google "antichrist" and "guillotine" and you will get over two million results. This is something that even secular survivalists have added to their repertoire of things to be paranoid about. Browse through those Google results and you'll find them all tied up with FEMA concentration camps, the New World Order, vapor trails, Bilderberg, and the Illuminati. It shows up in the Ron Paul forums.

The Obama-Antichrist link isn't new. The urban legend debunking site Snopes has had a page on this since 2009. Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, who was arrested last fall for shooting at the White House was quoted by acquaintances as believing Obama was the Antichrist. Till now, that kind of talk has been limited to televangelists and the fringe. Santorum is taking a big leap by bringing it into the mainstream.

The Antichrist angle is new low, even for Santorum. He needs to be called to account for it.

Update: It looks like the guillotine dog-whistle is going to be a regular part of Santorum's stump speech. He repeated it in Oklahoma today.

It was a secular revolution on which we relied on the goodness of eacother. This is the left’s view of where America should go. And of course where did France go? To the guillotine. To tyranny. If there are no rights that government needs to respect, then what we see with ObamaCare is just the beginning of what government will do to you.

What a disgusting human being.

I vote for number three

Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin issued a statement today explaining why the state's strict new voter ID law is no problem.

There are more photo ID’s currently issued than there are registered voters in Wisconsin.

As I see it, this statement can be interpreted several ways:

1. Walker thinks everyone in Wisconsin already has an ID.
   
2. Walker thinks people who don't vote also don't drive.
   
3. Walker thinks sixteen year olds can vote.
   
4. Walker is dumb as a post and believes all of the above.
   
5. Walker believes we're dumb as posts and will believe one of the above.
   
6. Walker is play a dog whistle game with the paranoid right and wants them to think Democrats have been stockpiling multiple IDs to commit massive voter fraud.

Obviously, he hates freedom

Ronald Reagan was once the president of that Screen Actors' Guild, so it is safe to say he's the favorite labor leader of conservative Americans. But if such a thing even exists, who would you say is the conservative movement's second favorite labor leader? Take a minute. I'll give you a clue. Probably only older conservatives will know the name--cold war conservatives. If you said the man who Reagan called "one of the world’s greatest labor leaders," anti-Soviet activist, Solidarność leader, and eventually president of Poland Lech Wałęsa, buy yourself a drink.

Now, of all living labor leaders, who would be the most problematic one to join the Occupy Wall Street protesters? If you said the man who Reagan called "one of the world’s greatest labor leaders," anti-Soviet activist, Solidarność leader, and eventually president of Poland Lech Wałęsa--well, you dont deserve another drink, because it was a gimmee, but put a paper unbrella in that drink because that's who's flying to New York this week.

"How could I not respond," Walesa told a Polish newspaper Wednesday. "The thousands of people gathered near Wall Street are worried about the fate of their future, the fate of their country. This is something I understand."

A former shipyard worker who led Poland's successful revolt against Soviet communism, Walesa said "capitalism is in crisis" and not just in America.

"This is a worldwide problem," he told the Lublin-based Dziennik Wschodni newspaper. "The Wall Street protesters have focused a magnifying glass on the problem."

About that King quote

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the former IRA supporter whose main claim to fame these days is holding endless hearings to demonize American Muslims, does not like the Occupy Wall Street protesters. That hardly makes him unique among Republicans. GOP presidential contenders, talking heads and members of Congress have been lining up to condemn the protesters. But something King said the other day has me curious. Appearing on Laura Ingraham's radio show, after calling the protesters "anarchists," "anti-American," and a "ragtag mob," King went on to say this:

We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy. I'm taking this seriously in that I'm old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can't allow that to happen.

That comment has been floating around FaceBook today in poster form. Notice, he's not talking about the culture of sixties protest. He's not upset about drugs, sex, and rock and roll. He's talking about the actual policies that the sixties protesters pushed into the mainstream.

I need to ask you Mr. King, which of those policies do you think were so bad. Was it ending segregation and expanding equality for African Americans? Was it allowing younger people to vote? Maybe it was equal pay for women. Or cleaning up our air and water. Or perhaps it was the demand that we end a pointless war that had already killed and maimed tens of thousands of young Americans and appeared unwinnable. Which of those things do you find so horrible Mr. King?

My wife says--and I agree--that many middle aged conservatives seem to be motivated by nothing more than bitterness over their experiences in the sixties and seventies. They were out of step with the prevailing culture of that time and they want to retroactively take revenge on it by undoing the accomplishments of those years. They pretend that there are principles behind their actions, but it's really just emotional payback for some. In the same interview, King called the protesters "a bunch of angry 1960s do-overs." It looks to me like it is King who wants a do-over on the sixties.

Why would a conservative be against that?

The often confused Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) thinks President Obama's jobs plan is a secret plot to keep gays from getting married, or something like that.

This may be, uh-uh, something nice he’s throwing out for uh gay folks that are living together so he can tell them actually you’re better off not getting married, uh because there’s a marriage penalty here.

Or maybe it's an attack on straight marriage.

If you’re the head of a single household, you have an exemptions at $225,000. If you're all other cases $200,000. So it really penalizes married individuals ... But if you want to get divorced it is good news for you

No, it's definitely about the gays.

Now, of course, the founders, uh they all understood marriage to be between a man and a woman and um that's the way the history of the country's been.

Or, whatever.

This president, according to the power to, as the old saying goes, the power to tax, the power to destroy, takes a shot at uh conven-- traditional, conventional marriage.

Since Gohmert has so much trouble keeping even one thought clear in his head, I suppose it would be futile to point out that it is congress--specifically, his branch of congress--that has the power to tax (and destroy) and not the president.

Bloomberg defends the banks

New York mayor and former Republican Michael Bloomberg has said some surprisingly sane and occasionally even progressive things over the last couple years. But the Occupy Wall Street protests have brought out his old self. I suppose it's not surprising since he did make most of his fortune from investing. Appearing on a local radio show, he had this to say about the protests:

The protesters are protesting against people who make $40-50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet. That’s the bottom line. Those are the people that work on Wall Street or on the finance sector.

This is a complete mischaracterization of the protests. The protests are not against mid-level employees. They are against bank presidents and top level executives, the ones who make policies for the banks. They are against the biggest people at the investment houses, the ones who make millions from inventing "financial products," irresponsibly throwing millions and billions of our dollars around, and who still get million dollar bonuses when everything goes south. When people say "banker," they do not mean the cashier at their local branch.

We need the banks, if the banks don’t go out and make loans we will not come out of our economy problems, we will not have jobs.

We need banks. I can agree with that, but I don't think many, if any, of the protesters are saying let's abolish all banks.

I think we spend much too much time worrying about how we got into problems as to how we go forward.

Why is it that only white collar and well connected criminals get this blanket pardon when they destroy other people's lives? You never hear other crimes treated that way. "I think we spend much too much time worrying about who murdered whom. The important thing is talk about how to prevent murder as we go forward." I have a better idea. Let's investigate. If crimes were committed, we put the criminals on trial and send them to jail. We test out that old deterrent theory of harsh punishment. Saying no one will ever be prosecuted sure hasn't helped prevent crime.

Also we always tend to blame the wrong people. We blame the banks. They were part of it, but so were Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae and Congress.

Yes, Congress does deserve a lot of the blame for the collapse. But their responsibility lies in deregulating the financial sector and not performing any over site on Wall Street.

There might be some legitimate reasons for criticizing the Wall Street protesters, but their choice of target is not one of them.

We won't have Thaddeus to kick around any more

Michigan Rep. Thaddeus McCotter ended his presidential bid Thursday, after struggling to secure a foothold in the race for the 2012 GOP nomination.

“Today, effective immediately, I have withdrawn my candidacy to become the Republican Party’s nominee for the Office of President of the United States of America," he said in a statement.

A show of hands please. Who even knew that he was running, or remembered, if you if you once heard about it.

So much propaganda in such a little piece

Here's another one of those chain mail style statuses floating around Facebook. As far as I can tell, it's been around since early summer.

SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT ... If you cross the North Korean border illegally, you get 12 yrs. hard labor. If you cross the Afghanistan border illegally, you get shot. Two Americans just got eight years for crossing the Iranian border. If you cross the U. S. border illegally you get a job, a drivers license, food stamps, a place to live, health care, housing & child benefits, education, & a tax free business for 7 yrs ...No wonder we are a country in debt. Re-post if you agree

Where to start... where to start? Lets start at the bottom.

"No wonder we are a country in debt." The implication here is that our national debt is caused by giving goodies to illegal immigrants, not by running two wars while reducing revenue or from any other cause. For over a year now, politicians and pundits have been telling us that the debt and deficit are the single worst problems facing the country, that they are a threat to the very existence of our country. In that context, this little note is is saying that "they," the illegal immigrants, are destroying America. It is only self-defense to fear and hate them. That is, as our high-school English teachers tried to teach us, the thesis statement of this particular essay.

Now lets go to the top. "If you cross the North Korean border illegally..." Why are we talking about North Korea, Afghanistan, and Iran? Two of these countries are the surviving members of the Axis of Evil and the third is one of the worst places on Earth to live. Is the writer saying that we should view them as role models and try to be more like them? Even though many of the intended readers of the note will say "hell, yeah!" at the idea of killing people who try to cross our borders without the proper papers, that's not really the point of mentioning these three countries. The point is a matter of contrast. The brutal punishments handed out by the Axis of Evil are strong. Handing out goodies is weak and that weakness is destroying us.

Who is it that is creating that weakness? Is it the writer? No. Is it the reader? Presumably, also no. Since the writer and the reader would never do anything to destroy America, it must be someone more powerful. The policies that are destroying America must come from an elite internal enemy, a second "they" aligned with the external enemy to bring about our destruction.

Let's look at that list of goodies. At a casual glance, it would be easy to say, "yeah, if you pretend to be a citizen, you can get the same things citizens get. So what?" But the response this kind of letter is trying get isn't a shrug. It's phrased so that the implication is not that illegal immigrants can get these things, it's they will automatically be given these things.

To make that implication, the writer has engaged in an intellectual bait-and-switch. The US example comes forth in a list, which makes it appear that all four are talking about the same thing. If you enter North Korea illegally you get prison; Afghanistan, shot; Iran, prison; America, presents! But, the four are not the same. If you enter North Korea illegally and get caught, the government sends you to prison. If you enter the US illegally and get caught, the government does not give you presents; it puts you in jail for a while, then deports you. Maybe that's more lenient than shooting you on the spot, but it is not a basket full of goodies.

The list of goodies itself isn't just dishonest; it's calculated to create a strong sense of resentment. The reader sees that illegal immigrants automatically are given a job, health care, child benefits, a place to live (and housing!), and a tax free business for seven years and the reader's expected reaction is, "no one gave me those things. I have to work hard for what I get." A sense of personal injustice is created. Before the reader has a chance to think about anything, their mostly emotional response is further provoked by the sneering conclusion, "No wonder we are a country in debt." Not only is the reader being screwed, but our children and the whole country are being screwed by these foreign invaders and the enemy within.

If the reader had paused long enough to look closely at the list and think about it, they would have seen how laughably absurd it is. A tax free business for seven years? Just for being an illegal immigrant? How do you get these things? Is there a government office that you go to to apply for them? If I go to that office and tell them I'm an illegal immigrant, can I get health care and a seven year tax exemption?

The whole piece would be laughable if it, and others like it, weren't resonating with so many good people. Americans are hurting. The working poor are seeing their hopes of rising into the middle class dashed. Millions in the middle class are facing the real possibility of sliding downward. Additional millions are unemployed, using up their last resources, and facing a national leadership that is indifferent to plight when it isn't openly hostile to them. We're scared, we're hurting, and we want to know how we got into this mess. We want someone to blame. Propaganda like this little note distract us from finding real answers.

Propaganda like this is calculated to bring out the bully in people. We feel powerless in the face of an increasingly cold and hostile world. Rather than confront the forces that are hemming us in and taking away our sense of control over our lives, this kind of propaganda encourages to find someone even more powerless than we are and to take our our frustrations on them. As long as we are fighting each other down here, the people at the top of the food chain have nothing to fear from us.

The person who wrote this little note almost certainly did not have all of this in mind when they wrote it. Many of the elements in the note have been circulating for years. This particular version dates back to the beginning of the summer. A longer email blaming the debt on immigrants was circulating two years ago. It was based on a piece published on a conservative web site two years before that. Scopes traces the seven tax-free years claim back at least to the sixties. In a more generalized form, this kind of politics of resentment is as old as propaganda. And that's old.

So much propaganda in such a little piece.

• Scapegoating. Check.
  
• Conspiratorial paranoia. Check.
  
• False equivalency. Check.
  
• politics of resentment. Check.
  
• Bald-faced lies. Check.
  
• Divide and conquer. Check and check.

98% of the people who read this post won't send it on to their crazy uncle...

Remember when shouting "yee-haw" cost Howard Dean the Presidency?

Good times. Good times.

They are not the same

Yesterday, disgusted over Boehner telling Obama that the time he requested to address Congress just wasn't convenient, I posted on Facebook:

I have never seen a president treated with as much disrespect by the other party as Obama by the Republicans. Not Nixon by the Democrats. Not Bush by the Democrats. Not even Clinton by the Republicans. It seems there is no bottom to how low the modern Republican Party will go.

I received some "likes" from the usual liberal suspects. I also received some surprisingly tough pushback from friends who I think would all call themselves independent. All of them forcefully argue that Democrats are just as bad a Republicans. One says Bush had it tougher. Another said " The bile ... oozes out about equally from both sides of the aisle." I tried to clarify several times that I'm not talking about pundits, talk radio, or some guy with a blog. I'm talking office holding politicians and republican Party officials. I offered this as evidence:

• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a Republican mayor and party official sending around pictures of a watermelon patch replacing the White House lawn?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress shouting "you lie" during a presidential address?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress calling the president "God's punishment on us" as leo Berman did?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of members of Congress questioning the president's citizenship or encouraging those that do?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress calling the president "an enemy of humanity" as Trent Franks did?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress saying of the president that they are "very concerned that he may have anti-American views” as Michele Bachmann did or un-American as Trent Franks did?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of members of Congress saying the President leads a “gangster government” as Steve King and Bachmann did?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a governor saying a presidential contender "pals around with terrorists?"
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress saying the president should be impeached even though he can't think of a reason why as Michael Burgess did?
  
• What is the Democratic eqivalent of a member of Congress comparing the president to Hitler as Paul Broun has done? For decades that has been the hallmark of extremist political commentary.

You might have noticed that I have no patience with arguments based on a false equivalency. The behavior of the two parties is not the same and hasn't even been close since the early nineties. Again, there have always been nuts in the streets, but before about '92 both parties kept them at an arm's length. For the last two decades, the Republicans have been embracing their worst extremists and legitimizing them and the Democrats have not.

I'm going to throw this open to a new audience. Understand, I'm not looking for people to gang up on my friends, I really want to know how equal you think it is. If you know someone with a good argument for equal nastiness from the Democrats, I'd like to hear it. Give me examples. Are there equivalent cases of Democratic Party officials and office holders treating a Republican President the way Republicans are treating this Democratic President? Feel free to go back through both Bush's, Reagan and even Nixon.

Tell us, by name, who you want to fire

Meet Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), another Republican who thinks paying off the debt RIGHT NOW is more important than putting Americans to work.

when’s the government going to sacrifice? Everyone’s been pinching pennies, the government budgets have almost doubled the last couple years. Most companies are laying off workers, especially small businesses, the federal government’s hiring federal workers. So my question is, when is the government going to sacrifice in order to help us get our financial house in order?

It's easy--in fact, cowardly--to rant against "the government" as an abstract noun. But the government is "we the people" and bureaucrats are civil servants, our neighbors who earn good middle class paychecks that they bring home and spend in our communities. Brady deserves some teeny tiny credit for admitting that he wants Americans to lose their jobs, but he still hides behind someone's skirts and says he wants "the government" to do it. "We the people" are the government, but, more specifically, you, Congressman Brady, are the government. Congress, arguably, is the most important branch of government.

I would love to see hearings on "downsizing" government where one American after another appeared to ask, "Congressman Brady, why do you want me to be out of a job? Senator McConnell, why do you want me to be unable to pay my bills? Congressman Ryan, why do you want to take food out of my children's mouths?" I want them to have to look each person in the eyes and give them answer. The Republicans want to create more unemployed families at the same time they want to cut unemployment benefits. Why do the Republicans want to see Americans suffer?

Where I stand on the family

Since I have not yet decided whether I will seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States, I thought it would only be fair to let my many supporters know where I stand on the issues. Over the last few days, there has been quite a bit of talk about a pledge that FAMiLY LEADER, a religious right group in Iowa, has been sending out to candidates. They will not endorse anyone who does not take a vow to support every point in the document. So far, only Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum have signed the vow and Tim Pawlenty's campaign has said they are looking at. Considering the controversies that have begin to develop around the vow, Pawleniy's people are probably patting each other on the back for taking their time. Two points are currently getting most of the commentary: a pledge to ban pornography and the implication that black kids had a better family life during slavery. That's a shame, because the whole document is a worth a close look. Let's start with the title.

THE MARRIAGE VOW
A Declaration of Dependence upon MARRIAGE and FAMiLY

The lowercase "i" in the group's name symbolizes individual submission. By using that spelling as the subject of their vow, are they asking presidential candidates to swear fealty to their group? for the most part, FAMiLY LEADER takes some pretty standard positions as found in any right-wing group with "family" in its name. They spell it out in the first few sentences of the vow's introduction.

Faithful monogamy is at the very heart of a designed and purposeful order – as conveyed by Jewish and Christian Scripture, by Classical Philosophers, by Natural Law, and by the American Founders – upon which our concepts of Creator-endowed human rights, racial justice and gender equality all depend. Enduring marital fidelity between one man and one woman protects innocent children, vulnerable women, the rights of fathers, the stability of families, and the liberties of all American citizens under our republican form of government.

Got that? All human rights, racial justice, and all the liberties enjoyed by Americans come from the Judeo-Christian concept of marriage as practiced during the last few centuries (but not by Mormons). The free press and no free room and board for King George's troops come to you courtesy of marriage. The second sentence is quite interesting. It's a good demonstration of the patriarchal mindset of the religious right. Fathers' rights need to be protected; mothers' rights do not. Women are vulnerable creatures that need to be protected, presumably by being subject to the rightful power of a father/husband. This treatment of women is scattered throughout the document.

Moving right along, a little ways down the first page, we come to the slavery statement that has raised a few eyebrows. It is the fist bullet point in list of background points before the vow itself.

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.

It's nice of them to acknowledge that slavery was "disastrous," but to argue that it was better for families than living in the twenty-first century is, at best, ignorant and, at worst, disgustingly dishonest. Under slavery, blacks were forbidden by law from marrying and subject to different members of the family being sold off at any time by their owners. Rape of slaves by whites was common and not a crime. And why mention Obama? Are they saying that he is to blame for the sad state (according to them) of African-American families? Not in so many words, but they are engaging in a very old propaganda practice of placing a person they oppose (Obama) in close association with ideas that they assume their audience will also oppose (slavery and weak families).

On Sunday, FAMiLY leader Bob Vander Plaats announced they would be pulling that paragraph from the document. The announcement came with the usual political non-apology apology, "After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued, and such misconstruction can detract from the core message of the Marriage Vow." He is saying, in effect, he doesn't he was wrong, he just thinks this was the wrong time to say it. Santorum's campaign issued a short statement saying he was pleased to sign the document (when it still included the slavery statement) but also thinks Vander Plaats did the right thing in removing that part. Bachmann's campaign says that just because she signed the vow she doesn't mean she agreed with the introduction to the vow. Good golly, no! They added, "In no uncertain terms, Congresswoman Bachmann believe[s] that slavery was horrible and economic enslavement is also horrible." Bachmann is actually quite fond of inappropriate slavery metaphors. She has called gay relationships slavery. She called the healthcare reform bill slavery. In recent days she has been calling the national debt slavery. Just for the record, I too think slavery was bad, I think Vander Plaats was an idiot for thinking or saying that, and that Bachmann and Santoum do not get a pass for signing such a thing.

The last item in the introduction lists various things that have "debased the currency" of marriage. These include adultery, "quickie divorce," bad examples by celebrities, tolerance of gays, and the "anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual or public health." Who out there is arguing that promiscuity "optimizes individual or public health?" I don't know, they don't name any names. This isn't the only straw man they bring up. The bullet point on the forces undermining marriage comes with a huge footnote that tells us "No peer-reviewed empirical science or rational demonstration has ever definitively proven" that growing up in a nuclear family isn't good for kids, that increasing the population is best increased by undermining the family, that "practices such as adultery, bisexuality, homosexuality, anal intercourse, group sex, promiscuity, serial marriage, polygamy, polyandry and extramarital sex, individually or collectively, lead to general improvements in" public health. The last is followed by a long list of venereal diseases, "anal incontinence," and abortion-related complications. None of these things has ever been proven because no one has ever tried to prove them and no one has ever made those claims.

Page two gives us the vow itself.

The Candidate Vow:

Therefore, in any elected or appointed capacity by which I may have the honor of serving our fellow citizens in these United States, I the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow [I can also attest, according to the footnotes] to honor and to cherish, to defend and to uphold, the Institution of Marriage as only between one man and one woman.

Just like King Solomon did. Okay, I'm probably disqualified from getting their endorsement right now because I don't like all those promiscuous gays having premarital sex. I think they should get married like the rest of us. Did you know gays had much better family life when they were slaves? It's true.

I vow [or attest] to do so through my:

• Personal fidelity to my spouse.
  
• Respect for the marital bonds of others.
  
• Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution...

Maybe I'm not out of the running yet. I love my wife. I respect other people's marriages, even the gay ones. I like the Constitution.

...supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.

Um, do I get to define what constitutes a "constitutionalist"? According to the footnotes, a "constitutionalist" hates gay marriage, so I'm probably out again.

• Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage – faithful monogamy between one man and one woman – through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.

Here's the thing, kids. The word "marriage" defines two completely different types of agreements in the United States. The first is best defined in anthropological terms. It is an agreement made in public, before a community, by members of that community, regarding a change in the household arrangements and kinship of two of its members. It establishes legitimacy and inheritance rights for any children (previous or future) of the two getting married. It can signify an alliance between the kinship groups of the two. It usually involves and exchange of move able property and an elaborate ceremony. The other kind of marriage is a legal contract, registered with a local government. Legal marriage covers much of the same ground as communal marriage and puts the force of law behind many of its agreements, plus some agreements not usually mentioned in communal marriage. To engage in one type of marriage, it is not necessary to engage in the other. And, importantly, the institutions involved in one type of marriage cannot dictate to the other institutions what is or isn't allowable. Churches that do not allow divorce cannot tell the state to enforce that that by not allowing divorce in legal marriages. The state cannot tell churches who they can and cannot marry. The existence of the two as separate marriage agreements is a recent historical development. Both types of marriage have evolved and been redefined many times through history. To say otherwise is just plain wrong. I think the state can and should redefine marriage to respond to changes in the social and legal realities of our culture. This one is going to lose me a lot of points.

• Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.

Um, okay.

• Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended "second chance" or "cooling-off:" periods for those seeking a "quickie divorce."

I do not support the government telling people when they can and cannot get a divorce from legal marriage. Divorce is a private decision. If the couple getting divorced wants to involve their church or any other community, that is their decision, but it is not the government's business. The government telling people they have to give their spouse a second chance is an intolerable intrusion into peoples' private lives. As to the "anti-marriage aspects" of the law are, I'd need to know what those are. I doubt that I would define those things as widely as FAMiLY does.

Is this a good place to mention that Newt Gingrich won't sign the pledge until some changes have been made. He hasn't publicly said what those changes are. My bet is on either fidelity to your spouse or quickie divorce.

• Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.

This is an easy one. No.

• Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.

See Previous answer.

• Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.

"The innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy?" Who talks that way? Besides, what's this innocence business? I thought we were all born into sin. This is another straw man. Is there a politician anywhere in America who is in favor of human trafficking, sexual slavery, or infanticide? Of course not. The footnote on this point is mostly a rant against abortion. I'm in favor of legal abortion. As any medical procedure carries with it a risk of complications or death, I favor policies that help as many women as possible avoid being put in the position of having to consider getting an abortion. Those policies include broad access to affordable contraception along with early and comprehensive sex education. This probably loses me some more points.

This is the point in the pledge has drawn the most controversy, but only for its mention of pornography. Vander Plaats appeared surprised by the controversy. "We are not calling for a nationwide ban on pornography," he told Talk Radio News, "The bullet point doesn’t even come close to calling for that." He explained that the point was a promise to oppose women being forced into pornography or prostitution. That doesn't really clarify things. The usual way to oppose women being forced into prostitution is to ban prostitution. Are we to assume he's not against prostitution as long as there is no force involved? And why should he not be in favor of banning pornography? I would think that would be a winner among his constituency.

• Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.

There are a couple of points and at least one straw man in this rather tortured sentence. First, who is in favor of sexual harassment? Only the harassers. As to safeguards, sexual harassment is already illegal in the military. The problem, today, is a lack of enforcement and a culture of looking the other direction. It is also almost entirely a problem of heterosexual men harassing women. I'm not sure how you protect troops from adultery. Is he asking for a ban on adultery or is just opposed to soldiers being forced into it? The last part of the sentence is a call for a complete ban on letting women serve in or near combat. Once again, women are frail things that need to be protected.

• Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.

I'm against "anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control" including Old Testament law and Christian Dominionism.

• Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.

I'm not a big fan of bloating the population to serve some agenda, or even just for the hell of it. I'm more of a ZPG kind of guy. However, I have some questions about the specific benefits you call out. Economic. I get it. More workers means a bigger economy. But we have fifteen million unemployed right now and the pundit class is talking about massive unemployment becoming a permanent fact of life. The only way we can employ many millions more, especially if they get Texas-style educations, is if we drive wages so low that they can be competitive with third world sweat shops. Think Ireland before the potato famine. Strategic--more kids means a bigger army. this kind of natalist policy is very popular in totalitarian states. Actuarial--I assume that means those tens of millions of good, Christian sweatshop laborers will be paying into yours and my Social Security. Finally, demographic--what does than mean? What is demographic security? Again, I can only assume. Most writers who fret adout the demographic future of America are worried about white Protestants losing their dominanace. The message is "we must breed more so they don't bury us." Vander Plaats says it very gently, but the message is blood and land nationalism and it is very ugly. That makes me a very emphatic no on this one.

• Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA's $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.

I'm against reducing the size of the government just for the sake of reduction. I believe there a number of functions that the government performs that are good and necessary and that the government does well. I want a government big enough to continue doing those things, but no larger. The idea of a big-government liberal is nonsense. I don't know of any liberal who wants a bigger government just for the sake of bigness. We wouldn't have a $14.3 trillion public debt if the last Republican president and his Republican allies in congress hadn't insisted on massive tax cuts without paying for them, on waging two overseas wars without paying for them, and on continuing to waste money providing corporate welfare to massive businesses that don't need it.

A bigger issue than Vander Plaats questionable numbers is this: why is it so important to deal with the debt and deficit--and they are two different things--why is it so important to do it right now? The debt does need to paid for at some point, but why is it so important to do it in the middle of a recession? I'm a dyed in the wool Keynesian. I believe that the government should spend money as a stimulus during hard times and pay those bills off during good times. It's easy to rant against "the government" and "bureaucrats" as abstract nouns. But the government is we the people and bureaucrats are civil servants, our neighbors who earn good middle class paychecks that they bring home and spend in our communities. Downsizing government means firing people, taking paychecks away from their families and their communities. Downsizing government also means the government stops buying things and stops hiring contractors with a domino effect throughout the entire economy. And that means more families lose their paychecks. I am too much of a pro-family person to support that.

• Fierce defense of the First Amendment's rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.

Another strawman position, this time with extra added paranoia. Is there someone out there who wants to prevent religious people from adhering to "faithful heterosexual monogamy?" Forced gay marriages for all? If so I haven't heard of them. Almost everyone supports religious liberty and the ones who don't are almost always fundamentalists of one religion or another who want to shut down other religions. Freedom of speech allows people like Vander Plaats to make any verbal defense of "faithful heterosexual monogamy" that they want, but it doesn't exempt them from criticism, even rude intolerant criticism. The same freedom of speech that Vander Plaats wants is given to those who oppose him. Even if they wanted to, no one has the right to shut mister Vander Plaats up or to stop him from practing "faithful heterosexual monogamy." Paranoid fantasies of thought police criminalizing Christianity for standing up for their version of marriage are just that, paranoid fantasies. There are no thought police. I consider myself a fierce defender of the first amendment, both for Vander Plaats' type of Christians and for his opponents. Freedom of speech and religious conscience are only real if they extend to all opinions and beliefs.

I'm all for families, marriage, and conjugal fruits, but I don't think I'm going to get FAMiLY LEADER's endorsement. I can live with that.

I hate bullies, I really hate bullies

Tea Party Nation's Rich Swier is, without question, the most disgusting person in America this week. Maybe someone more vile than Swier will pop up tomorrow, but I have no doubt that he will still have earned a high spot on my worst persons in the world list at the end of the year.

Swier, who has a radio show in Sarasota, Florida, is a minor figure on the far right and uses his influence to advance all of the worst aspects of the tea party movement. As Vice President of United West.org, he warns his readers about the threat Shariah Islam (sic) poses to the US Constitution.* At Red County, he encourages his readers to boycott Disney because their new Pixar movie Cars 2 is eco propaganda. At Tea Party Nation, he despairs because the White Protestant character of the US is going extinct as brown immigrants flood the country. But, what makes him stand out from the ranks of third-tier right wing extremists is his unblushing defense of bullying.

Bullying among children and teens has been around forever. Usually, the grown-up response has been to ignore it, dismiss the importance of it, and occasionally even encourage it. Only very recently have the adults who have the responsibility for protecting kids begun to offer more than tepid disapproval for bullying. As the anti-bullying movement was gaining steam in the US, many people were made aware of the problem by several suicides of young gay people getting wide coverage by the press. These suicides have had mixed results for the anti-bullying movement. On the one hand, they dramatized the seriousness of the problem. On the other hand, they inextricably tied the movement, in many peoples' minds to LGBT civil rights.

Public support of anti-bullying efforts has almost exactly paralleled that of hate crime legislation. On the face of it, hate crimes legislation should not be controversial. Everyone belongs to a group someone else hates, whether it is their race, religion, age, sex, class, state of health, or club membership. When a person is attacked for being part of a group, it goes beyond an attack on that one person; it becomes an attack on that group. Burning a cross in an African American family's yard is more than vandalizing their lawn; it an effort to intimidate all blacks and tell them that they are not welcome there. It is terrorism writ small. Hate crime laws add additional time to the sentence of someone guilty of such an attack on a group.** Hate crime legislation ran into resistance only when some of the sponsors of the legislation tried to add sexual preference to the list of characteristics vulnerable to hate crimes.

Now that anti-bullying efforts have become identified as an LGBT issue, the religious right is using the same fear inducing tactics they used to rally their supporters against hate crime legislation. Anti-bullying, they argue, is a sinister wedge by which the radical homosexual agenda will teach our kids homosexuality. They claim the legislation will ban all speech critical of gays. They darkly warn that Christianity itself could be criminalized (making the unstated claim that their particular hateful interpretation represents all Christianity). Opposition to hate crime legislation and anti-bullying have become an article of faith on the religious right and, through their influence, an article of faith in the Republican Party. Google around for a few minutes and you'll see that I'm not exaggerating.

So far, most religious conservatives have contented themselves with opposing anti-bullying programs. Rich Swier takes things one step further, he argues that bullying--at least of gays--is a good thing. Swier is outraged that the group Gulf Coast Gives raised money to bring "homosexual activist" Hudson Taylor (a straight athlete) to Sarasota to give a talk about bullying of LGBT kids. Swier sets his argument up this way:

The problem is the entire bullying campaign is a sham created by radical gay activist Kevin Jennings. ... As MassResistance.org reports, "The homosexual movement in the public schools has always been based on lies and deception. But until the mid-1990s, they were still having difficulty getting into the schools. Then they found the key to their huge success -- what they call 're-framing the issue'".

So what does "re-framing the issue" mean?

It means changing the dialogue from homosexuality is bad behavior to bullying homosexuals is even worse behaior.(sic)

Swier then quotes from a 1995 presentation by Jennings that he believes reveals the plot by the "homosexual movement" to get to our kids through the school system.

"In Massachusetts the effective reframing of this issue was the key to the success of the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. We immediately seized upon the opponent's calling card--safety--and explained how homophobia represents a threat to students' safety by creating a climate where violence, name-calling, health problems, and suicide are common. Titling our report 'Making Schools Safe for Gay and Lesbian Youth,' we automatically threw our opponents onto the defensive and stole their best line of attack. This framing short-circuited their arguments and left them back-pedaling from day one.

[...]

We know that, confronted with real-life stories of youth who had suffered from homophobia, our opponents would have to attack people who had already been victimized once, which put them in a bully position from which it would be hard to emerge looking good. More importantly, we made sure these youth met with elected officials so that, the next time these officials had to vote on something, there would be a specific face and story attached to the issue. We wanted them to have an actual kid in mind when they had to cast their votes.

"This," Swier concludes, "is not bullying. It is peer pressure and is healthy." What is "this?" The only behavior aimed at LGBT kids up to that point in his piece is violence and name-calling. Swier apparently thinks these activities are healthy peer pressure. He continues: "There are many bad behaviors such as smoking, under age (sic) drinking and drug abuse that are behaviors that cannot be condoned. Homosexuality falls into this category." I'm sure we all remember in high school when the concerned jocks went around beating up kids who drank in order to lovingly remind them that such behaviors cannot be condoned.

Swier likes his essay. He published it at Red County, Tea Party Nation ran it as an editorial (no link, registration required), and he pasted a version of it in the comments at Gulf Coast Gives. However far his influence reaches, he has now provided anti-gay bigots with an argument that bullying is a good thing. What will kids think when they hear so-called adults claiming that bullying is healthy peer pressure? Whether or not they believe it, how many bullies will be tempted to try it out as a justification for behavior that should not be condoned?

LGBT kids are not the only kids who are bullied. Bullies target anyone who is vulnerable and a little different. Black kids, poor kids, nerds, fat kids, new kids, those who don't speak English very well, the handicapped, the unattractive, the short, the unathletic, and the shy are all subject to torment. In order to continue expressing their disapproval of gays, conservatives will gladly throw all these kids under the bus and return to the traditional "kids will be kids" dismissal of the very real psychological and physical terror that is inflicted on the bullied.

Society among school age kids is made up of various binary distinctions: jocks vs. nerds, popular kids vs. unpopular kids, the demographic majority vs. minorities, kids who come from over here vs. kids who come from over there, bullies vs. the bullied. Which of the last two do you think Rich Swier was?

NOTE: I have made some grammatical corrections and rearranged two paragraphs for better clarity since first posting this piece.

* Appropriately, the animated globe at the center of United West's logo is spinning backwards. They also have a poll on the Islamic threat that you might want to crash.

** Extra sentences, based on context, are nothing new. Murder of a political leader is called assassination and is treated as more serious than other murders. Punching a fireman in the nose during a bar brawl is nowhere as serious as punching a fireman in the nose while he's trying to put out a fire.