There is a great political divide in our country today. I must respectfully but strongly disagree with Barack Obama’s assertion in his
keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. There is not “One America” today. I don’t know exactly how many there are, but politically speaking the United States of America is not in any sense a united and homogeneous country today.
On the one side of the great political divide are those who call themselves liberals or progressives. I include myself on that side. I will refer to them here as liberals because, as far as I can tell, liberal and progressive mean the same thing. The term “liberal”, however, has been so denigrated over the past couple of decades by Republicans and our corporate news media that not many people call themselves that anymore.
I think that’s a mistake. By changing what we call ourselves we are at least in part buying into the
stereotype of liberals painted by Republicans – and thereby granting undeserved credibility to that stereotype.
The liberal outlook is personified in the
U.S. Declaration of Independence, the
U.S. Constitution*, and the rules of the Democratic Underground. The Declaration of Independence declares that all “men” (and by extension, all people) have certain unalienable rights and that among those rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That in a nutshell is what separates liberals from the other side of the political divide. Almost everything else that separates us from the other side of the divide flows from those great principles.
The DU rules are largely an attempt by its liberal administrators to incorporate those principles into the running of their web site, which they do by emphasizing civility, the showing of respect for all DU members, and the absolute banning of bigoted statements. The U.S. Constitution is the attempt to incorporate those principles into the legal foundations of our nation*.
On the other side of the great political divide, at the other end of the spectrum, are Bush Republicans – the approximately
30% of our population who approve of the job that George Bush has done as President. It’s hard to tell exactly what these people believe in, but it is certainly evident that
they don’t believe in the major principles of the U.S. Declaration of Independence or the clauses of the U.S. Constitution which purpose it was to incorporate those principles into the laws of our nation. To them, our Constitution simply represents a barrier to what they consider to be more important ends. Yes, they provide lip service to those founding documents of our nation, since they are very fond of claiming to be “patriotic”. But that’s where their commitment ends.
* We must acknowledge, however, that the U.S. Constitution was an imperfect attempt to incorporate the principles of the Declaration of Independence. At its beginning it greatly restricted the right to vote, it allowed slavery, and it incompletely protected individual rights against the intrusions of government. However, through the amendment process the American people have addressed all of those and many other defects, and our Constitution has thereby greatly improved over the 230 years of our nation’s existence. Beyond the pale – clues to what is most important to both sides of the divideA lot can be ascertained about the character of a political group by what it considers to be “beyond the pale”, a term that is used to denote beliefs or actions that are considered so outrageous that they should not be tolerated.
One major thing that liberals consider to be beyond the pale are shows of contempt for individuals that are based on group identification – such as race, national origin, gender, religion, class or sexual orientation. Such shows of contempt are the antithesis of the great principles asserted in our Declaration of independence.
By demonstrating contempt for groups of individuals – in word or in deed – one suggests that the people who belong to those groups are not deserving of the same unalienable rights that other Americans are. Therefore, even the verbal expression of contempt for these groups encourages the abrogation of their human rights, and when publicly accepted even serves in many cases to encourage violence against them. A prime example of that kind of behavior is Ann Coulter
referring to John Edwards as a “faggot”. That statement, of course, was meant not only as an insult to John Edwards, but was meant as well as a show of contempt for all gay men.
There is very little overlap between the two sides of the great political divide as to what they consider to be beyond the pale. What Republicans mainly consider to be beyond the pale are criticisms of “their country”. (I put “their country” in quotes because most Republicans have a very different idea of what defines their country than do liberals.) A typical example is when Senator
Richard Durbin dared to describe, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, the torture of U.S. prisoners under the auspices of the U.S. government. Republicans were greatly outraged by Durbin’s description – not because of the despicable actions of our government, but because Durbin
exposed those actions. This principle also explains why
Michael Moore is singled out for contempt by Republicans. Moore actually went so far as to
imply that George Bush did an incompetent job of responding to the 9-11 attacks on our country –
before it became obvious to the whole world that that was indeed the case. Republicans can’t stand that kind of thing because it exposes the imperfections of their country – or rather our current Republican government – for a wider range of people to see.
Liberals on the other hand don’t shy away from criticizing the rulers of their country when appropriate. To them it’s not the
appearance but rather the
reality that’s important. As I noted earlier, they want their government to measure up to the ideals expressed in its founding documents. When it fails to do so, liberals feel that it is better to criticize their government, in order to facilitate the correction of its defects, than it is to remain silent about them. That relates to another major principle expressed in our Declaration of Independence: “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends (i.e., the inalienable rights of its citizens), it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” That statement, of course, goes way beyond recommending mere criticism of government when conditions so warrant.
But Republicans don’t see it that way. When liberals vigorously criticize their government, especially during war time,
Republicans call them “unpatriotic”. Thus, liberals and Republicans, to a very large extent, have diametrically opposite views on what defines patriotism.
The primary principles of today’s Republican PartyIt is more difficult to ascertain what Republicans are for than what they are against, since they rarely openly admit what they are for. For example, George Bush claimed that we had to invade Iraq in 2003 because their weapons of mass destruction posed a great danger to our country, and then when no weapons were found he claimed that the reason for our invasion was to bring democracy to Iraqis – even though all we’ve brought them is the
deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and the
destruction of their country, and even though the great majority of Iraqis
want us out of their country.
An important clue to what Republicans really stand for is provided by the documents written by the men of “
Project for a New American Century” (PNAC), many who have played crucial roles in the military policies and planning of the Bush administration. In their document, “
Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, they say that the U.S. military must be much stronger than any nation or combination of nations that might oppose our ambitions, because we need to “shape a new century favorable to American interests and principles”. There are numerous references to this sort of thing throughout the document, the bottom line being that we need to be able to deter competitors by “deterring or, when needed, by
compelling regional foes to act in ways that protect American interests and principles…”
A bit of reflection on the meaning of this document will show that it is the antithesis of our Declaration of Independence. Whereas our Declaration was a reaction
against a foreign power that was trying to compel our fledgling nation to serve their interests, PNAC’s document asserts the right of
our nation to compel
other nations to serve
our interests. And whereas our Declaration asserts the unalienable rights of
all humans, PNAC’s document asserts that people from other nations only have those rights to the extent that they serve
our interests.
Another important clue to what Republicans stand for can be seen in the domestic policies of George W. Bush and the Senate Republicans who have repeatedly supported him in virtually every one of those policies. Every single action of George Bush’s Presidency has served to advantage the wealthy and the powerful at the expense of everyone else. Such actions include, among many other things, his
tax cuts for the rich, his
cutting of social programs for the middle class and poor, his near total
lack of response to the lives endangered by Hurricane Katrina, his
abrogation of numerous laws and regulations that previously served to compel powerful corporations to act in a socially responsible manner, and his aggressive
anti-union policies.
The ultimate difference between the two sides – respect for the rule of lawRepublicans try very hard to create an image for themselves as being “tough on crime”. In so doing they invent victimless crimes such as drug use, with the result that half a million American citizens – mostly black, poor and highly unlikely to vote Republican – currently fill U.S. prisons for drug offenses, raising the prison rate in the United States to the
highest in the world. Gay sex is another favorite victimless “crime” for many Republicans, though that’s one that even our very conservative U.S. Supreme Court
has rejected.
But when it comes to some of the most important crimes of all – violations of the U.S. Constitution, international law, or our election laws, Republicans don’t seem to care much. For example, consider some Constitutional violations that George Bush has perpetrated on American citizens with the almost complete support of Congressional Republicans:
By authorizing the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies to conduct
warrantless spying on hundreds of thousands or millions of American citizens, he has violated our
Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches; in his
treatment of thousands of prisoners of war, he has repeatedly violated international law specified in the
Geneva Convention of 1949, as well the due process clause of our
Fifth Amendment, our
Sixth Amendment right to a public trial, to face one’s accusers, to be represented by counsel and to be informed of the charges against one’s self, and our
Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
When the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio (which caused George Bush to be “re-elected” President in 2004) was found to be
riddled with “irregularities”, Republicans voiced nothing but contempt for any investigation into that series of crimes of monumental importance. And the Bush administration thinks nothing of playing politics with the U.S. justice system by
firing federal prosecutors who refuse to be compliant with the political demands of the Bush administration.
All of these things vividly demonstrate how Republicans view the rule of law in our country – including our Constitution, which provides the foundation for our whole system of laws.
I said earlier in this post that one great principal of liberals is that they are against showing disrespect for individual people based upon group membership. There are legitimate exceptions to that principle, and the most important one today is the Republican Party. That Party is beyond the pale. Showing respect for people who support the policies of today’s Republican Party serves little useful purpose. We are dealing today with a group of people whose purpose is to hijack our country and
turn it into a Fascist state which serves the privileged few at the expense of the vast majority of American citizens and causes much of the rest of the world
to hate us. Adequately addressing that grave challenge will require something very different than the respect and civility with which Congressional Democrats traditionally relate to Republicans.
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