Georgia’s 10th Congressional District is among the most conservative in the state. Just a year after being elected to fill the unexpired term of the late Rep. Charlie Norwood, freshman Paul Broun faces a challenge Tuesday from State Rep. Barry Fleming. The winner will take the House seat in November.
U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Athens) is questioning the religious convictions of his opponent in the Republican primary for the 10th congressional district seat as the election on Tuesday approaches.
“It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t understand redemption and salvation and a changed life in accepting Jesus as lord and savior,” Broun says of state Rep. Barry Fleming (R-Harlem) in an interview which aired Thursday on Georgia Public Broadcasting’s WACG 90.7 FM in Augusta. “It’s not about religion but about a relationship with Jesus.”
But Fleming is a Christian, and according to his website, is an active member of Harlem Baptist Church. He has served as chairman of the board of deacons there, among other duties, the website says.
“Paul is wrong on that,” Fleming says of Broun’s remarks in an interview scheduled to air on Friday. “My Christian faith is the center of my life and I’ve tried not only to witness to other people in my life but I’ve tried to live a life as an example for others, and I’ll continue to do that.”
Broun, meanwhile, repeatedly accuses Fleming of “bearing false witness,” as he put it, by distorting votes he’s made in Congress, adding that lying violates the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments. Fleming denies he has lied and invites doubters to check the Congressional Record.
The candidates, who have similar positions on social and fiscal issues, have been distinguishing themselves by questioning each other’s integrity in a negative campaign spiral.
Syndicated columnist Bob Novak, writing about the surprising number of conservatives who are backing Democrat Barack Obama rather than Republican John McCain for the presidency, captured their widespread sentiment when he quoted one "Obamacon" with impeccable GOP credentials: "The Republican Party is a dead rotting carcass with a few decrepit old leaders stumbling around like zombies in a horror version of ‘Weekend at Bernie,’ handcuffed to a corpse." These Obama supporters hold no illusions about Obama’s liberalism, but they are so angry at the GOP, Novak writes, that they seek a "therapeutic electoral bloodbath."… [I]n a two-party system, when one party screws up royally, the voters reward the other party.’
(OC Register; emphasis added)
It’s actually quite affirming that some conservatives have decided to rebel against what the Bush administration and its abettors and enablers and are prepared, in the best traditions of democracy, to throw the rascals out.’
Because ‘conservative’ sure doesn’t mean what it used to. It doesn’t actually even mean ‘conservative’ anymore.
Obama has clarified his supposed opposition to allowing a woman to have a late term abortion in circumstances when the pregnancy causes the mother mental distress. (The Swamp) He does not think mere ‘mental distress’ is a reason to permit such an exception.
According to Linda Douglass, the Obama campaign’s senior spokesperson, the senator from Illinois was making a distinction in the magazine interview between medically diagnosed mental illness and the kind of mental distress that an unwanted pregnancy causes many a pregnant mother. (The Swamp)
He does think such an exception should be permitted in circumstances in which there is medically diagnosed mental illness — a position that still doesn’t please either side of the abortion argument. (The Swamp)
Condi Rice is proud —PROUD, I TELL YOU — that the US went to war in Iraq. And she’s sure that the world isn’t more dangerous as a consequence. Meanwhile, some Republicans are apparently in a state of alarm and despondency over the President’s current activities. They’re worried about the President, already sufficiently unpopular, is being shown fiddling about while the economy goes up in flames.
Yet another point in Obama’s favor: the Christian Conservatives and evangelicals have decided that McCain is, after all, God’s candidate. That is to say, while many of them feel that McCain was most definitely not God’s first choice, God most definitely prefers him to Barack Obama.
So even though they — meaning the lead mouthpieces of the Christian Right — said they would never, ever do it, Senator McBack ‘n Fill carefully repudiated his every principled stand during the primaries. Besides: he’s incontrovertibly not Obama. They’ve evidently decided on these grounds that they have to support him for not being Obama, whether they like it or not. I get the impression that they don’t much, even now, but are trying to make the best of him. That’s so sweet.
But if I didn’t already know how I am going to vote, I’d take their decision to unite behind McCain as a sign. As a small-C christian small-L liberal of the Quaker, or Friendly, Persuasion — if of any persuasion — I view the stance of the opposite sort of Christian as a fairly reliable indicator of on which side of the line I should not plant my banner.
They may mean well. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I cannot agree with their objectives.
“Will the one who wants to be the bringer of ‘change we can believe in’ keep his promise if elected on November 4? To win this election, Mr. Obama is ready to abandon or modify some of his strongest commitments. So he decided to refuse public financing for his campaign and the spending limits attached thereto. Thus he is prepared to vote yes in the Senate for a bill that would justify the wire tapping authorized by Mr. Bush. He has also revised his position on the presence of troops in Iraq and has given assurances to pro-Israeli organizations. … These are the rules of the game and we shouldn’t exaggerate the importance of such tactical gestures. And neither should anyone imagine that politics has ceased to be politics, nor that it’s possible to win an election in the United States or elsewhere without being a realistic politician.”
This is a crucial post from Crooks and Liars for disillusioned Dems (like me) and for anyone, anywhere who has considered voting for McCain (unlike me). It’s extracted from a June 19 post by Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report, the The Carpetbagger Report.
I’ve been disappointed by Obama’s recent stance on several issues, aptly summarized here, and have acknowledged the accuracy of the following:
But though I am all for casting a cold eye on Obama’s policy shifts and inconsistencies, I don’t wish to imply that he is less consistent than McCain. Let’s just review the list which Crooks and Liars has helpfully compiled:
It’s been tried before, in a variety of ways. Starting with the time of our American Revolution…and continuing through the War of 1812, the Mexican army attack on the Alamo, the Spanish American War, and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor – through two world wars – this country, when united, has never been defeated.
In fact, history will show that each time America has been attacked from without, she has grown notably stronger!…
The Communists took a different tack. … they devised a cunning plan to establish Communist cells in this country, made up almost totally of Americans…
By changing the moral compass of our country, especially in the young generation, they would literally take over our culture – and eventually our government – from within.
That’s right folks! Like the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the cunning communists, we’re sneaking into your towns to recruit the young!
And now, according to facts just revealed by Focus on the Family, a frightening new assault is well under way, on our very processes of government. Focus is the leading family advocacy outfit in the country and happens to be based in Colorado, where they’ve had a ringside seat for the activities of a multimillionaire named Tim Gill. This man and other extremely wealthy men who share his priorities have demonstrated that enough money can buy virtually anything … maybe even a country.
Tim Gill founded Quark, a very successful software company, and 14 years ago began pouring much of his massive wealth into the homosexual rights movement. Dozens of gay rights organizations owe their existence to Gill. That list includes the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN – the nation’s leading homosexual activist group in America’s schools). I’ve written here before about the goals GLSEN has for our schools and the minds of our young; they are determined to see that all teachers imbed acceptance, even admiration, for every kind of deviant behavior into the curricula and permanent perceptions of America’s students.
I’m sad to say how many people in my rural Georgia community agree with Pat Boone. We’ve got some real work to be done here.
RELATED: It was nice to see Peter Wehner write in the WaPo today that Christian conservative “critics of Obama have an obligation to provide a fair and honest critique, and the attacks leveled by Dobson fall terribly short of that standard.”Morbo has the entire James Dobson salvo against Barack Obama and detects an air of desperation. I certainly agree.
Scott at World o’Crap has some fun walking us through WorldNetDaily CEO Joseph Farah showing us how to sniff out the subversive elements infesting America’s vital news organs. He begins with a quote from a Dobson radio ad:
“Mom…”
If the Colorado legislature has its way…
“A man in a dress came into the girl’s restroom at school today.”
We could all be dealing with a new type of predator.
“Honey, there was a man in the women’s showers at the gym today, and the management said it was, it was Colorado law.”
And instead of our kids worrying about class work, they’ll be worrying about who might be in the restroom with them.
“No way I’m going in there (school bell), I’d rather wait all day if a guy’s in there.”
Our children must be protected from predators, but if Governor Ritter won’t veto Senate Bill 200, all public restrooms, including those in our public schools, will be open to anyone of any sex.
Have you ever opened up your local newspaper and wondered why there is so much coverage of homosexuals and issues of concern to homosexuals?
One of the more bemusing stories of the day involves a man from Texas named Robert Hurt. Hurt is a rancher (and father of 14) from Kerrville Texas. Over the years he has made several trips to Washington DC and he is not happy with what he has seen.
While visiting our nations capital he was appalled to find that many of the buildings have artwork that portrays women who are (hold on to your hats)…. NEKID !!!
I heard Mr. Hurt call in to a radio show this afternoon and discuss his shock upon entering a building near the US Capitol only to find what he called ‘naked women sculptors’. Now I will admit at this point I was curious to know why these women showed up to work without clothes. But after listening I realized he meant naked female sculptures.
It seems that every time Mr. Hunt turned around he found another appalling example of nekidness, which as he put it ‘is not what America is about’. He lays the blame with Lady Godiva and presumably evil Europeans.
At the Texas GOP convention recently he proposed they adopt a resolution calling for all of the naked statues to be removed from our sacred cities (though he did suggest that maybe it would be ok in San Francisco).
I saw a story about 17 girls in a Gloucester, Mass., high school who made a pregnancy pact to get pregnant by any means necessary because they wanted to raise their children together.
And that’s exactly what they did.
Now this upsets Ms…. er, I’m thinking that in this case “Ms.” just won’t do! The appropriate honorific really has to be either “Miss” or “Mrs.”… Robinson and she goes on at some length about it. I’ll spare you the rosy prose and cut to her proposed solution:
One of the women from the town - I believe she was an attorney - said that they had to try to figure out what to do with all the guys who were having sex with girls who were 15.
“That’s statutory rape” she said. You think?
The parents of these little baby makers need to be slapped… HARD.
Then the baby makers and the men - correction - boys they had sex with need to be slapped… HARDER.
The last time I checked, statutory rape was a serious crime. In Massachusetts, offenders can receive up to a life sentence. So there’s nothing to figure out. Do to these guys what the state of Georgia did to Genarlow Wilson when, at the age of 17, he had consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl. Put them behind bars.
Now I know there are some people who would say locking the kids up wouldn’t do any good. But I don’t just think the boys should be locked up. I think the girls should go to the slammer as well.
Flummoxed, I hardly know where to start. Count me among those who believe locking up kids won’t do any good. It will do great harm! And I know just a little bit about the topic. I live in a town with six state prisons — prisons are economic development in rural towns like mine — and I sit on the advisory board of the youth prison. I invite anyone who thinks a young person convicted of consensual sex belongs in a prison to go visit one!
For God’s sake, do you really think the punishment fits the crime?
But let’s just say for a minute that you do. I promise you, you put that kid in that prison and he (or she) is going to come out aprisoner. There are real prisoners, real criminals, in there! What have you done? Made another prisoner! And what has it cost you? Prisons are expensive! Fortunately, most of the law enforcement professionals I know understand that. Apparently it’s the politicians — and the public — who don’t!
The Genarlow Wilson case that Robinson cites made Georgia a national embarrassment and was overturned by our Supreme Court (Genarlow is now attending Morehouse College and his attorney was named Newsmaker of the Year last year in a 7,000 word piece by the Fulton County Daily Report). It was messy and complicated but few believe it should have gone the way it did and the laws have been changed as a consequence.
To throw kids in jail is to give up. It is an abdication of our adult responsibility. And it is a shameful attempt to blame our failing on the kids. A look at the divorce, infidelity, child abuse, and abandonment rates suggests just how utterly and completely hypocritical the fine upstanding adult population is that seeks to lock up the kids for doing the same thing their parents’ generation did! Further, evidence indicates these kids want information about sex from their parents. The parents aren’t giving it!
What’s worse, instead of talking to our kids about sex, we talk about abstinence, then turn our backs on them as we sexualize, fetishize, and ogle them in every advertising, media, and pornographic (where’s the middle-aged porn?) representation of them in our culture. Then we blame them and want to lock them up for our our desires! Kids don’t need us to leer at them — they need us to talk to them!!! And they don’t need us to criminalize them because we are afraid of either our desire or theirs!!!
So, what of the legitimate interest of the law to protect young people? William Saletan wrote a piece last fall in Slate on rethinking the age of consent. “Age-span” provisions in the law have become common. Using the research that finds differences in the age of physical, cognitive and emotional readiness, he would extend those provisions accordingly and finds the beginnings of a logical scheme for regulating teen sex:
I’d draw the object line at 12, the cognitive line at 16, and the self-regulatory line at 25. I’d lock up anyone who went after a 5-year-old. I’d come down hard on a 38-year-old who married a 15-year-old. And if I ran a college, I’d discipline professors for sleeping with freshmen. When you’re 35, “she’s legal” isn’t good enough.
What I wouldn’t do is slap a mandatory sentence on a 17-year-old, even if his nominal girlfriend were 12. I know the idea of sex at that age is hard to stomach. I wish our sexual, cognitive, and emotional maturation converged in a magic moment we could call the age of consent. But they don’t.
OTHER RESOURCES: Recently John Stossel did a full hour on The Age of Consent which features 14 video reports still available online. The Midwest Teen Sex Show is a video podcast done on a shoestring budget by three 20somethings who say they’re frustrated by the relatively chaste sex-education taught in high school. Go see Juno. I sensed an emergent millennial morality in it and the ultrasound scene is particularly relevant to this post…
N.B.: None of this is to suggest that I advocate kids having sex. I advocate sex education and adults talkingappropriately with young people about sex.
Charlie Crist—the Republican Governor of my very own state— is right: “Once somebody has truly paid their debt to society, we should recognize it, and we should honor it and we should welcome them back into society and give them that second chance.” (NYT) I’ve always thought that it was disgraceful that Florida permanently banned ex-felons from voting, serving on juries, or obtaining state licenses, unless they went through a prolonged process of getting their rights restored. This didn’t often happen.
I always assumed that there must be other states had the same rules, but it turns — according to The New York Times — out that in 47 of them, ex-inmates get their rights restored automatically. So Florida was in a tiny minority, the other members of which are Kentucky and Virginia. I’m glad Gov. Crist has moved us forward, even though it’s just a few baby steps.
I ran across a new term for my political lexicon today when I read about black conservative castrati in the 2008 election cycle. The author was reflecting on a recent AP report on American black conservatives feeling conflicted over Barack Obama’s candidacy. This resulted in the following screed. (All emphasis is from the author.)
With 90+ percent of black Americans voting Democrat regardless of who the candidate is, it will be bad enough as it is. But I, for one, expect you, black conservative Republican men to have enough balls to stand on principle, not on your emotions. You’ve shown your testicular fortitude by being publicly conservative against a tide of Identity Politics. Don’t start behaving like castrati now.
Stop thinking selfishly. We’re not choosing a President of Black American Dream Fulfillment; we’re choosing a President of the United States.
Our own Dennis Sanders struggled with the very same question this weekend, and it comes on the heels of similar musings from Colin Powell, Armstrong Williams and J.C. Watts, among others. The timing of this was fortuitous for me, as I had just taken the opportunity to talk to an old friend of mine, Carl “T” (last name withheld by request) who has been facing a similar dilemma.
It’s probably worth noting that I’m recounting a conversation which takes place in New York State with a black, conservative Republican. For many analysts, such a meeting is akin to driving your car down the highway and hitting a unicorn. I brought up the subject of the column by Dennis and couldn’t resist asking him if he was thinking of voting for Obama.
“No.” I was informed. “Going with Bob Barr.”
My initial reaction, of course, was to show appreciation for anyone who decides to stand up for the viability of third party candidates against the stanglehold which the two main parties hold over the system. But pressing (very carefully) further, I found that Carl had been given reason to be disillusioned this year by both John McCain and Barack Obama.
First, he felt that McCain was a glaring example of how the Republican Party had drifted too far astray and was no longer a truly conservative group at all. I didn’t push the issue, as I had heard it before from other Republicans of all stripes. Obama, on the other hand, had reminded him of the absolute failure of the GOP to really open up to minorities and he was now thinking about leaving the party entirely. He mentioned Colin Powell, Condi Rice and a few other prominent African American figures in government. The problem, he pointed out, was that these people were all “the picks” rather than the choice of the masses. In his mind, the shortcomings of the GOP were not found in the party leadership, the platform or the message. The failure, he felt, was on the part of the voting base.
National leaders, he pointed out, were more than willing to appoint prominent African Americans to high profile positions of power. He saw nothing inconsistent in the party’s message and platform in terms of providing opportunity for minorities. But, he sadly noted, they simply don’t elect black people to higher office. Carl was not blind to the fact that there is not a single black face in Congress for the GOP at this time, nor to the lineup of candidates who were even considered for the Republican nomination. (White guys one and all.)
“This is New York,” he pointed out. “Up in Utica we had a very solidly Republican district until 2006. You think we could ever put a black guy in Congress from there today? Not gonna happen.”
I suppose I can see his point. You can have the most inclusive platform imaginable and appoint all the minorities you like to high places. But until you can convince your voters to consider electing more minorities to national office, you’ll probably have trouble bridging that gap. Telling conservative, black men to “grow some balls” and to “do what is right” while challenging their manhood if they stray from the (predominantly white) herd probably won’t do much to close that chasm either. And yes… Obama probably does stand as a stark reminder of that divide.
Doug Carlson sees a firestorm unleashed by the California court’s marriage ruling. Me too. But I see the fire burning in a totally different direction than Doug. What got me going in Doug’s post, though, was his use of quotation marks around the word “marriage.”
Yesterday on Fresh Air linguit Geoff Nunberg had a stirring essay on just that topic. I urge you to listen in its entirety. To entice you I quote extensively from it here. It’s titled, Love and Marriage: Still Going Together?
A couple of months ago, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary made some long-overdue revisions in the definitions for a bunch of gender-related words. Before then, the dictionary definition of girlfriend, in the meaning sweetheart, read “a man’s favorite female companion,” which would have precluded lesbians from having girlfriends in the romantic sense. And the old definition of love read “that feeling of attachment which is based upon difference of sex and which is the normal basis of marriage.” So both words were given new definitions that would cover their use to refer to same-sex relationships.
But this isn’t a matter of rampant political correctness or of giving the words new meanings. It isn’t as if the English language has ever ruled out talking about lesbians having girlfriends, much less kept Shakespeare from describing a romantic attachment between two men as “love.” It’s just that when the original definitions were written, those sorts of relationships were officially invisible. Those re-definitions came to mind as I was listening to the renewed debate about gay marriage. To a lot of people, that notion isn’t simply a threat to God’s plan or the social order but an affront to English. As one conservative columnist put it, “It’s a desecration of language.” Do a Google search for Web pages containing “same-sex marriage” and the like together with “oxymoron,” and you turn up 125,000 hits, most of them posted by people who would tell you that the phrase same-sex marriage is as semantically anomalous as female rooster.
Now, it’s true that most people with reservations about gay marriage aren’t primarily motivated by their concern for the proprieties of English usage. But it’s always useful to be able to frame your position on an issue as a defense of the traditional definition of a word. It’s a way of folding your argument into the language itself so that it doesn’t require analysis. What could be more cut and dried than a dictionary entry?
In this particular case, though, dictionaries themselves aren’t always helpful in sorting things out. Lexicographers know that nobody’s going to go to the mattress to defend the traditional definitions of words like love and girlfriend. But when it comes to marriage, they start looking nervously over both their shoulders. People only look the word up to make a point, and when they don’t find what they want, they’re liable to organize a letter-writing campaign or punch in an angry blog entry.
Some dictionaries try to placate both sides with a Solomonic solution. Both Merriam-Webster’s and the Oxford American Dictionary have retained their old definition of marriage as a union between people of the opposite sex and added an additional sense of the word that applies specifically to same-sex unions that resemble traditional marriages. It recalls the editorial practice The Washington Times followed until recently, where it always put marriage in quotes when referring to homosexuals.
But there’s no way to split the baby here…
For more on that allusion to The Washington Times, see here for the memo marking the day the threw in the towel and accepted the inevitable.
Heres’s Nunberg’s wonderful concluding paragraph:
[This] discussion would benefit if everybody could agree to lose the word “traditional,” which has probably worked as much mischief over the last half century as any other word in American public life. It’s a word people use to muddle the past so that it doesn’t have to explain or justify itself. In fact, when people defend something as traditional, what they have in mind almost always turns out to be a purely modern concoction, like the pastiche of Chippendale, French Provincial, Queen Anne and Colonial that goes by the name of “traditional” on an Ethan Allen bedroom set.
“Traditional marriage” brings to mind the same sort of thing, a hodgepodge of customs, laws, and restrictions, secular and religious, jumbling places and periods willy-nilly. In either case, you can’t tell what’s the frame and what’s the filigree.
According to Brazilian columnist William Waack, after over a year of campaigning, Barack Obama has failed to sufficiently define himself. And the Republicans - with Hillary’s help - have already begun to do just that.
“Hillary made it quite clear to the Republican campaign machine on which points Obama appears vulnerable: for example, he needs to start wearing American flag pins on his lapels. It may seem ridiculous to the Brazilian public, Read the rest of this entry »
This should be the best of times for John McCain. After all, the presumptive Republican nominee has pretty much gotten a free ride from the news media while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have duked it out, but the septuagenarian’s campaign is sprouting problems like zits on the face of a 15-year-old.
To wit:
* His biggest liability is Mister Twenty-Seven Percent, yet George Bush keeps stepping on his lines.
* His best chance against Obama is to sell himself as a straight-talking maverick, but the record shows that he has been anything but.
* The organization of his campaign has been so slipshod that he is bleeding top advisors because of their embarrassingly unsavory past and present associations.
* He has big money problems, as in not having nearly enough himself and his wife’s “f— you” refusal to release her financial records.
* His recent flip-flop on troop withdrawals from Iraq shows how vulnerable he is on this increasingly unpopular war.
* He keeps undermining himself because of his inability or unwillingness to master the finer points of policy, including the economy and foreign affairs.
* He is being pressured to enlist in the right-wing’s sputtering culture war, including blasting the California same-sex marriage decision, and risks further alienating the GOP’s lunatic fringe if he does not.
* He could be seriously hurt by an increasingly likely third-party presidential bid.
* He has no coattails, which means that the many vulnerable Republicans up for re-election are more or less on their own. That might not be a bad thing considering how problematic this candidacy is.
Why can it be said that America is the world’s greatest social experiment? This article By Thomas Klau from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland outlines the transformation that is bound to take place in and out of the United States the moment Barack Obama takes the oath and enters the Oval office.
“In the United States where the relationship between Black and White remains burdened by old guilt and fresh resentment, this marks a turning point in civilization. But the election battle now playing out in the United States will not only alter America.
“At the moment, it’s virtually inconceivable that a major party in any European country would elect a politician of Black-African origins to be their leading candidate. We Europeans - and particularly us Germans - live with this reality quite unconsciously and totally at ease; it seems normal and is taken for granted that the leading representatives of our country have the same skin color as the majority.”
“The day that Obama has the Democratic nomination in the bag, cracks will begin to appear in our collective innocence. It will shatter completely when a Black family moves into the White House in January 2009. And this shift in awareness which would go hand-in-hand with our shattered innocence, would not bypass the rest of Europe. Suddenly we would have to ask ourselves questions we have never asked before. Indeed - what would it mean to us if the child or grandchild of an African became a candidate for the chancellorship? The answer is a recognition that unless we want a society in which skin color predetermines the awarding of offices and influence, much of Europe will have to change its mindset.”
“It would be the strongest signal yet that the frenzied, paranoid jingoism - and with it torture, arbitrary detention and negligent wars of aggression - imposed by elements of the political right after September 11th 2001 - has finally lost its dominance. After eight years of George W. Bush, the rest of the world deserves such a signal just as much as the United States.
By Thomas Klau
Translated By Ulf Behncke
May 16, 2008
Germany - Financial Times Deutschland - Original Article (German)
If no giant scandal, assassination attempt or other misfortune occurs against all expectations and throws things into disarray, Barack Obama’s nomination as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate for the November 4th elections is secure. That in itself is an epochal step: Never before in the history of American democracy - or any democracy - has a Black candidate stood such a good chance of being elected to a country’s top position by a White majority.
In the U.S.A., where the relationship between Black and White remains burdened by old guilt and fresh resentment, this marks a turning point in civilization. But the election battle now playing out in the United States will not only alter America.
At the moment, it’s virtually inconceivable that a major party in any European country would elect a politician of Black-African origins to be their leading candidate. We Europeans - and particularly us Germans - live with this reality quite unconsciously and totally at ease; it seems normal and is taken for granted that the leading representatives of our country have the same skin color as the majority. But this normalcy also means that German citizens with a certain skin color must remain excluded - regardless of whether they have a German passport, were born in Germany, speak German, Swabian or Saxonian.
EUROPE TOO, MUST CHANGE
This is, if we follow this line of reasoning through to the end - racism. We tend to live with it rather uncaringly and unconsciously - unless of course we are of German-African origin. And it is precisely at this point that Obama’s success changes us as well. The day that Obama has the Democratic nomination in the bag, cracks will begin to appear in our collective innocence. It will shatter completely when a Black family moves into the White House in January 2009. And this shift in awareness which would go hand-in-hand with our shattered innocence, would not bypass the rest of Europe. Suddenly we would have to ask ourselves questions we have never asked before. Indeed - what would it mean to us if the child or grandchild of an African became a candidate for the chancellorship? The answer is a recognition that unless we want a society in which skin color predetermines the awarding of offices and influence, much of Europe will have to change its mindset.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. election.
When California’s Supreme Court decision nixed a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage the question immediately raised by some talk show radio hosts was: will this be back now as a big campaign 2008 wedge issue?
The likely answer: back…yes…….but not quite..because voters have a few teenie-weenie other things on their minds this year. The Associated Press has come to the same conclusion:
[NOTE: An earlier version of this story had this link attributed to the New York Times. That was an error, due to a reference from a Times story on the ruling that was cut in favor of using the more recent AP piece. We regret the error.]
Yesterday’s California Supreme Court decision striking down a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage reintroduces a hot-button social issue into the presidential campaign.
Republicans used same-sex marriage to great political effect in 2004, putting proposed bans on the ballot in Ohio and other states to get conservatives to the polls. But now it will have to compete for attention with the economy, the Iraq war, and other issues.
Indeed, there were already rumblings yesterday reflected in some news reports and on some talk shows of some thinking of trying to put a new measure on the ballot and of a court challenge to the California ruling.
But the dynamics are different this year:
And impact of the gay marriage issue could be muted, not just because neither the Democratic front-runner, Barack Obama, nor the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, support gay marriage, but because McCain’s opposition to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage - on federalist grounds - makes it more difficult for the right to get a lot of traction out of it.
Still, the issue is likely to come up in some races (or be raised by the so-called “independent” groups that make commercials to support or negatively define candidates). And you can already see how even this clear-cut California court ruling can be spun.
“California Court Strips Children of Right to Mother and Father,” declares the headline of Cybercast News Service’s hot-button-pushing article which declares “the court does not recognize that children have any right whatsoever to a mother and a father. In the decision, the California court sees children primarily through the eyes of same-sex couples who want to secure custody and control of children. The court makes emphatically clear that it deems this to be a right of same-sex couples that is equal to–and identical to–the right of married mothers and fathers to adopt or conceive and raise their own children.”
Spin is spin is spin…
So will it become another wedge issue used against the Democrats as hot buttons are pushed and voters cast their votes on this issue? Read the rest of this entry »
As ABC News reports that John McCain is poised to flip on abortion, it’s worth remembering that social conservatives have done some flipping of their own.
The Southern Baptist Convention called today for the legalization of abortion in certain cases, including those where there was “carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental and physical health of the mother.”
I was pointed in the direction of that article by Randall Balmer, “an evangelical Christian whose understanding of the teachings of Jesus point him toward the left,” a visiting professor at Yale University Divinity School and Dartmouth College, and editor-at-large for Christianity Today. He’s also an Episcopal priest who has written a book, God in the White House.
In a Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross last January he had this to say about the emergence of abortion as an issue for the religious right to organize around:
According to one of the architects of the religious right, who told me this directly, after they had organized on the issue of Bob Jones University and more broadly the issue of government interference in these schools, as they understood it, there was a conference call among these various evangelical leaders and the political consultants who were trying to organize them into a political movement, and several people mentioned several issues. Finally the voice on the end of one of the lines said, `How about abortion?’ And that’s how abortion was cobbled into the agenda of the religious right, late in the 1970s in preparation for the 1980 presidential election. […] Ronald Reagan, of course, was a divorced and remarried man who, by the way, as governor of California in 1967, signed into law the most liberal abortion bill in the country. So he was an odd choice for evangelical activists, especially as we look back on their agenda these days.
And of the emergence of the Religious Right:
[W]hat I try to expose in the book and I think I document copiously is that the religious right did not–did not–coalesce as a political movement in direct response to the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. In fact, the Southern Baptist Convention, which is hardly a bastion of liberalism, had passed a resolution calling for the legalization of abortion, and this was a resolution that was reaffirmed in 1974, again in 1976. It was not the abortion issue. What galvanized evangelicals as a political block, as a political movement, was instead the actions of the Internal Revenue Service to go after the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, because of its racially discriminatory policies, and that Carter was unfairly blamed for this by the architects of the religious right, and they used that against him and mobilized to defeat him four years later in 1980. […]
Bob Jones University did not allow African-Americans to be enrolled at the school until 1991 and did not allow unmarried African-Americans as students until 1995. The lower court ruling that really became the catalyst for the rise of the religious right was a ruling called Green v. Connelly, issued in 1971, by the district court of the District of Columbia; and it upheld the Internal Revenue Service in its ruling that any organization that engages in racial segregation or discrimination is not, by definition, a charitable organization and as such has no claim to tax-exempt status. And as the IRS began applying that ruling and enforcing it in various places, including Bob Jones University, that is what galvanized evangelical leaders into a political movement that we know today as the religious right.
Some unfortunate resonances there don’t you think?
As the Bush era draws to a close, Europeans are anxious to know what about American policy will change when he’s gone - particularly if a Democratic victory occurs as planned.
“In view of the ongoing presidential campaign, the American exception seems as strong as ever. Where else but in America would a primary race go on for more than a year? Where else would candidates obtain tens of millions of dollars a month from their supporters? Where else would party foot soldiers have the chance to select the candidate for the highest post? … All three candidates take lyrical flight in discussing the American dream. Above all, none will hesitate to resort to force.”
“Clearly, a Democratic victory in November would undoubtedly open the door to a more left-wing America. But it would be a kind of American left, certainly not modeled on Europe. Both candidates have rejected a “single payer” system for health insurance, like the Canadian and European models. The change ahead will not mean the end of the American exception, but the end of American triumphalism.”
LEADING ARTICLE
Translated By Kate Davis
May 8, 2008
France - Challenges - Original Article (French)
All countries are exceptional. But the United States gladly considers itself exceptionally exceptional, different from all other developed countries in its social organization and its fundamental values. The State is less extensive and the distribution of wealth more unequal. The United States is also more strongly committed to what Margaret Thatcher called the “Victorian values:” individualism, voluntarism, patriotism.
Thus the Bush government, which supports conservative values domestically and demonstrates an unlimited self confidence externally, is the most “exceptional” known in recent years. But at the end of Bush’s mandate, isn’t the United States entering a new cycle, characterized by the rejection of conservatism and a convergence with Europe’s standards?
In reality, three quarters of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and for example, vigorously support a system of universal health care. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both have promised to address that. They also want to improve their image in the world. The next government will certainly initiate significant reforms, such as closing Guantanamo or adopting a more rigorous environmental policy in order to address some of the country’s more aberrant characteristics.
Yet in view of the ongoing presidential campaign, the American exception seems as strong as ever. Where else but in America would a primary race go on for more than a year? Where else would candidates obtain tens of millions of dollars a month from their supporters? Where else would party foot soldiers have the chance to select the candidate for the highest post? John McCain won the nomination o
