My Turn

[billroper]

I know that many of you are upset that Bush won. I'm not, nor -- I must admit -- would I have been extremely upset if Kerry had won, although I don't believe that he was the better of the two candidates.

I also know that this opinion probably makes me about as popular as a skunk at a picnic. There's not a lot I can do about my opinion, I suppose, but maybe I can try to explain why it is my opinion.

While I don't believe that all of the Bush tax cuts were wonderful (for instance, I think that an estate tax starting at a relatively high level -- say, $10 million or so -- would be a reasonable idea), I think that they've provided a reasonable stimulus for an economy that was sorely in need of one after the Internet bubble burst. I think that reductions in the marriage penalty are good public policy as is providing some sort of equalization between the tax rate on dividends and capital gains, even if I think that there are better mechanisms than the one that was actually added to the tax code. (Why? Well, the problem is that taxing dividends at a higher rate than capital gains incents corporations to do stupid things with money that they probably should distribute to the shareholders.) I hope -- in the future -- to see something done about the Alternative Minimum Tax so that it stops catching the middle class in a net that wasn't designed for them.

I believe that Bush is trying to come to grips with the massive unfunded liabilities in our Social Security and Medicare programs. While it may be true that his current plan for private investment accounts could require $2 trillion in transition funding, I've seen estimates that the unfunded liability is about 40 times that. As a tail-end Baby Boomer, I'd like to feel like I have a chance of getting some benefits without riding too heavily on the backs of the the folks who will still be working at that time. Kerry's sole proposal in that area involved means testing benefits and I believe that anyone who actually was successful in saving for their retirement will find themselves means tested out once we start doing that.

I was briefly intrigued by Kerry's proposal for the government to step in as a insurer of last resort for catastrophic illness, but the actual proposal that I saw presented would have covered 75% of the cost of treatment. While this might be a wonderful thing for those who can afford the remaining 25% of the cost (Senator Kerry and his wife come to mind), it's a piss poor solution for the folks who can't afford it and still find themselves having to choose between bankruptcy and death. Bush seems to be working toward a system where health insurance becomes insurance again, as opposed to the current system of low deductibles and co-pays that makes everyone insensitive to the actual cost of treatment and which encourages overuse of the resources by those who are covered, while forcing those who aren't covered into the most expensive care available, either in emergency rooms or just in being the only people who are paying the "rack rate" for services that are widely discounted.

I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but I saw an interview with Bush last week where he made it clear that he was in favor of allowing civil unions. Yes, the questioner did a double-take, asked again, and Bush confirmed this. I believe that -- despite the massive backlash against gay marriage that we saw at the polls yesterday -- there's a reasonable possibility of putting together a majority opinion in favor of civil unions and not applying the entire body of marriage-related law to a relationship that isn't exactly the one that the law was designed for. And I think that -- if you polled public opinion -- you'd find that there are a lot of people who would be in favor of implementing all of the humanitarian benefits that civil unions would provide, such as next-of-kin relationships and inheritance, if you didn't simultaneously provide governmental subsidies that were designed to support the nuclear family of the 1950s. We wouldn't call it "marriage", because it just ticks a lot of people off to no good purpose -- and gets you into having to examine a huge mass of case law. And there's no reason that the form shouldn't be available to both same sex and mixed sex couples.

And people entering into a civil union should have whatever kind of ceremony that they and their religion (or lack thereof) support. And they can refer to their relationship in any way that seems appropriate to them. It's none of my business.

I don't agree with the restrictions that Bush has placed on Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, but I believe that it is a respectable position to take in a country where a substantial number of people believe that human life begins at conception, despite the fact that this is not my personal belief.

Like many of you, I worry about reductions in our civil liberties as a result of the War on Terror. But I don't believe that Bush's behavior is substantially different than we would see from a Democratic administration under these circumstances, much as bedlamhouse pointed out in his extremely cogent post earlier today. And I see that -- when a court rules that he has overstepped the bounds of law and Constitutionality -- the Administration obeys those rulings.

I know that many of you find Bush's foreign policy and the Iraq War to be reprehensible. I respectfully disagree.

I am an American. I am proud to be an American, but I have not always been proud of the things that we have done. Our support of various dictators in our attempt to confine global Communism is a blot upon our history, no matter how good an idea it might have seemed to have been at the time.

That world no longer exists. Soviet-style Communism is an idea that is being consigned to the ashheap of history. I have seen Germans dancing on top of the Berlin Wall, a sight that I never thought I would see in my lifetime. The chance of global annihilation in a nuclear war is far less than it was when I was young -- which is not to say that cities might not yet be destroyed again by nuclear weapons, but that the human race is much more likely to survive long enough to spread beyond this planet.

And I am proud that my country helped all this to happen.

There are those who say that we brought the attacks on 9/11 on ourselves and -- to some limited extent -- they are correct. We had help, of course, from the British and the French, as we created countries out of whole cloth following World War I, set up monarchies that turned to dictatorships, and threw together peoples who would hever have been in a single state together if they had a choice about it. But we drew such entertainingly straight lines on the map and believed that they would work out.

We were wrong.

Among all of the nations in the world, Americans are perhaps the best at forgetting. This turns out to be a tremendous asset. We have forgotten that "No Irish need apply". We have forgotten that a Catholic could never be elected President. Some day, we will forget that we can't elect someone Jewish, or black, or female as President, and we'll forget about discriminating against them in other ways. Because we've proven to be pretty good at forgetting and I don't foresee that changing.

There are other places in the world that desperately need to forget the wrongs that were done to their people ten or fifty or five hundred or more years ago. And I see no better hope for helping them to forget than the twin memes of democracy and capitalism.

If we can help them learn, just as we continue to learn, that the measure of a person is not who his ancestors were, but who he is and who he might become; that there is truth in Jefferson's statement "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness", then we may be able to help them forget why it is that they should hate each other.

Some people claim that you cannot impose democracy at the point of a gun and this would be true. But I look at Afghanistan, where the people with no tradition of democracy stood in line for the chance to vote, and I believe that there is fertile ground in so many places for these ideas. And I look at the news reports from Iraq and I see, in between the people who are determined to hate and kill, a people who might just be willing to put hate aside for a while and see how it works.

We have a chance to be on the right side of history.

We have a chance to fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

And given the danger that is posed by radical Islamic regimes that engage in state-sponsored terrorism, I believe that we would be foolish to pass up this chance.

I hope and pray that we succeed.

Comments

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

Thanks Bill. I really do appreciate your perspective on this since you are, I admit, one of my few friends that I know voted for Bush. I think when it boils down to it my distate of Bush is tolerable. My fear of Bush however stems from two things I'd love to hear your response to (really!:-)
1) Supreme Court
2) In his acceptance speech Bush said : And we will uphold our deepest values of family and faith. When I hear that I can't help but feeling that a) my values of family and faith are quite different than his and if he, as head of our government is going to espouse values for our entire country he'd better be clear about them and b) what if I don't have the same faith? What if I don't believe in the God you are frequently referring to? Can I be an American and still be an atheist? I'm not but still, I wonder about that as a non-Christian. It worries me because there seems to be a real trend in this country towards trying to insist on America being a Christian country.

So anyway - those are my biggest worries. What say you?

Thanks for the perspective. Hugs.

[billroper]

Bush has promised to nominate judges who are "strict constructionists". I believe that he should be held to that promise.

Now, what does that phrase mean? To my mind, this means a judge will read the text of the Constitution and the text of the law and attempt to reconcile them. He will not arbitrarily discard bits and pieces of either that don't fit his personal belief structure. He will consult the legislative record and the record of the original Constitutional convention if he has doubts about what a particular section is meant to do.

Sidebar: much of what we refer to as "the politics of personal destruction" can be traced back to the defeated Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork. This is a sad thing, because Bork's own statements make it trivial to defeat him on his merits. One of the things that he said was that the Ninth Amendment was like an inkblot and that judges were not permitted to make up what was under it.

But here's the text of the amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

I can't think of an amendment that's inherently more important. The Bill of Rights did not limit our rights; it merely spells some of them out because they had been particularly abused recently.

And Bork should have been defeated because of this.

The other important point in judicial nominations is the concept of stare decisis, that appropriate respect should be paid to existing case law and that it should not be overturned without compelling reason.

I believe that these are the important questions that the Judiciary Committee and the Senate should ask of Bush's Supreme Court nominees. If they are held to these standards, I believe that we will have little to fear.

On the subject of religion: although Bush apparently holds a deep Christian faith, his mother took him to the woodshed several years ago on the subject, because of the statement that he made about Jews not going to heaven. After discussions with his mother and Billy Graham, he apologized for this, acknowledging that he was wrong to be -- effectively -- speaking for God on such an issue. I hope, but cannot prove, that he's internalized that thought broadly and deeply.

My personal core religious belief is that a benevolent God would create a great many ways to be in his good graces. So I expect that he's pleased by good Christians, Jews, Moslems, Wiccans, and even atheists who act in a moral and ethical fashion.

I think that it is a mistake to say that schools should not teach morality. I believe that schools should not teach religion, but there's a big difference between the two. And I believe there is a broad moral intersection that we can find in this country. I hope that President Bush helps us to do so.

One of the most powerful things that I ever read was, of all things, a one page public service ad in a DC comic book that pointed out how all of the major religions have a version of the Golden Rule. We need to understand this, we need to look for the things that we have in common, the things that we collectively agree on, and promote that morality.

Thus, it's not that a display of the Ten Commandments in a public space is inherently a bad thing, but it's too limiting. We need to be more inclusive of the wide variety of historical documents and beliefs that inform our collective morality and ethics and give them all a chance to shine.

How much of this will Bush do? Not nearly enough. But I am heartened by many of his statements about Islam following 9/11. And I hope that he believes them.

Does this help?

And hugs back atcha.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

I think that it is a mistake to say that schools should not teach morality. I believe that schools should not teach religion, but there's a big difference between the two. And I believe there is a broad moral intersection that we can find in this country. I hope that President Bush helps us to do so.

One of the most powerful things that I ever read was, of all things, a one page public service ad in a DC comic book that pointed out how all of the major religions have a version of the Golden Rule. We need to understand this, we need to look for the things that we have in common, the things that we collectively agree on, and promote that morality.

Morality is one of those slippery slope things. We can both agree that killing people is generally bad, but completely disagree on the reasons.

Education is often concerned not only with the transfer of knowledge, but also must give the "why" behind it. Thus, if you say "thou shalt not kill", you're teaching religion despite the fact that we agree about the result.

I don't have a good answer for this. I believe our ancestors did the best they could simply because they were a far more homogenous people. By design, our country isn't.

[billroper]

Understanding that you view teaching morality as a slippery slope, I have to say that I reserve the right to be unimpressed by slippery slope arguments. In my experience, both liberals and conservatives use the slippery slope argument at will in order to buttress their preferred argument. I believe that we should put on some spikes and walk carefully along those slopes if it will get us to where we need to go. :)

I think that discussions of morality can be approached from a variety of points of view in an educational setting so that we can see how different lines of reasoning can lead to the same conclusion. And, yes, there is danger of offending people with an argument that includes "If there is a God, why would he say 'thou shalt not kill'?", but it may just be that such a discussion is as offensive to some Christians as it would be to some atheists.

Gretchen sometimes says that the only right we seem to have today is to be offended at what someone else is saying. Whether she's right or not, I think we all need to be a bit less quick to take offense at things -- which will allow us to have better discussions.

(And note that last remark is not directed at you -- it's directed at my hypothetically offended individuals in the discussion of morality in a classroom setting.)

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

I think that discussions of morality can be approached from a variety of points of view in an educational setting so that we can see how different lines of reasoning can lead to the same conclusion.

This is actually the point I find to be the slippery slope.

In all philosophies, one will eventually work their way back to axioms. The same is largely true for morals. Regardless of whether or not the result is the same, the axioms will differ since the question eventually will be "Why?".

Thus, it doesn't matter if we agree that killing people is, in general, bad. Exploring the axioms will take you inevitably to various religious tenets. Our public schools have proven themselves incapable of dealing with such issues without eventually devolving into an implicit preference to one religion or another.

If I didn't believe this was the case, I would have no reason to be concerned.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

Very nicely said. To be honest, I don't think it makes a great deal of difference who won. *shrug* We'll make it either way.

[unclechristo.livejournal.com]

the only points I would add to your thoughtful and interesting post is that Iraq had no Islamic terrorists until after the US invasion, and that Saddam was there in the first place largely thru US support as he was our man against Iran. The US did this knowing about the massacre of Kurds by Saddam.

And Afghanistan is really only under Karzai's democratic rule in Kabul - outside Kabul Afghanistan is still run by Opium Poppy growing warlords that America originally supported to help be rid of the Taliban.

I'm all for getting rid of despots - but spreading the WMD stories, stopping Blix from finishing his job, and going it alone without UN resolution 2, and without an afterplan was silly IMHO.

15,000 Iraqis killed - is that enough?
How many would be enough to set Iraq free?
I don't have the answers - just looking back I feel that a war at that time was a chosen war, and not a necessary one.

"Kill the people to set them free - who put this price on their liberty?" - Peter Paul & Mary form the song El Salvador

another fun quote
"Extending the war into Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Exceeding the U.N.'s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."
-- From "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam"
by George Bush [Sr.] and Brent Scowcroft, Time Magazine, 1998

[(Anonymous)]

Hi,

I appreciate your points and would like to add some comments.

Invading Iraq was a debatable policy decision. Regardless of the actual state of WMD and terrorist connections, there was a humanitarian (hard to believe, I know) rationale as well. The alternative to invasion was the continuation of the sanctions regime, which we imposed on Iraq to induce Hussein to mend his ways. We did not fully appreciate his complete indifference to the suffering of his own population. It is not clear how many Iraqis continued to die from the sanctions after the oil for food program was initiated, but I have seen estimates of 5,000 per month before.

What I find much harder to argue are the mistakes made during and after the invasion. The lack of adequate numbers of troops, disbanding the Iraqi army, believing Chalabi, and the almost complete absence of any post-war planning. This has hindered us in Iraq and has limited our abilities to credibly threaten Iran or North Korea.

I hope very much we are successful too.

Donald

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

I hope we succeed too. But...

I'm not an economist, but my readings don't seem to support the idea that the tax cuts helped one iota. I seem to recall Greenspan saying the cuts were ok, *if* we kept the budget balanced. Going from a record surplus to a record deficit doesn't seem to show the slightest concern about balance. Some far-right types I used to know once said the real point of Reagan was to bankrupt the country spending on right wing stuff so that there would be no money for the left to spend on their evil programs (ok, they were a lot more blunt and obnoxious in the statements, I'm toning it down).

Soc. Sec. well, we need to do something. I'm game.

I mostly agree with your position on health insurance, but I don't believe GWB. We'll see.

I saw the GWB statements on civil unions. I also saw (thank you John Stewart and that liberal archive footage) him saying the exact opposite when being nominated. Which do I believe?

We agree on stem cell. Go Governator.

OK, civil liberties. I'm really, really bothered by our treatment of the 'enemy combatants'. Yes, GWB obeyed the courts when they said no, but it seems so plain that the detentions were morally wrong in the first place that I'm appalled. And we just had a new set of JD memos saying more people are not subject to the Geneva Convetions or our laws. The Patriot Act pales in comparison to me. I suppose it's my defining point as a bleeding heart liberal. To me everyone, yes including terrorists, murderers, whatever, is first and foremost a human being and must be treated accordingly.

On the whole war thing. I think we were lied to. Specifically and with intention. I really think we went in because Sadam had threatened GWB's dad. That said, if GWB had told the truth I think he could have made a case for deposing Sadam that I would have bought into. I remember having this conversation with Sam as we drove to the hospital. A strong case could be made that Sadam was there because of us, and therefore we had the right and responsibility to take him out.

And I suspect that you can impose democracy at the point of a gun, but that it takes at least 70 years to phase it from the gun to full democracy as you have to wait until everyone alive was born after the intial takeover. It may take 140, or 210 years though.

[scs-11.livejournal.com]

I also know that this opinion probably makes me about as popular as a skunk at a picnic. There's not a lot I can do about my opinion, I suppose, but maybe I can try to explain why it is my opinion.

Bill -

It's true that you and I often wind up on opposite sides of this discussion. But I'm not posting today in order to argue with the reasons for your opinion. We may disagree, but our disagreements have not and do not make me think the less of you. Your reasons are always well-thought through, and that process only adds to my opinion of you - even when we disagree, it's clear when we are working from different principles or when we have different thoughts as to what is a fact and what is not.

Or more succinctly, you're welcome at my picnic any day. It always makes for such good conversation. :-)

There is one thing you indulge in which I wish you'd approach differently (but remember, you're still welcome at my picnic!), and that's on dealing with the abuses perpetrated by both sides.

When people point out abuses by the current administration or its supporters, your response is to point out the abuses committed by the other side or its supporters.

You are correct, both sides commit abuses.

But when your only response is to point of the other sides abuses and you don't criticize either sides abuses, it smacks of justifying or minimizing those abuses.

It may not be your intent to give that impression, and knowing you I believe that you consider them reprehensible. But from where I sit, your responses don't give that appearance.

Maybe I'm the only person who perceives it that way; God knows I've been out in left field before. But when I see a side I support doing unconscionable things, I move immediately to prevent it in any way I can. I do so because I know such actions breed retribution, and because as a member of my side, I can be more effective in preventing my sides abuses than in preventing the other sides. It's why my letters to my senators are more effective than my letters to your senators, and vice-versa.

Bill, I don't question your honesty or your heart; I have great confidence in both. I merely question whether or not this tactic achieves what you desire.

So yes, feel free to point out abuses. But please also make the point that neither side is justified, and that both sides do harm to the system by perpetrating them.

See you at the next picnic,

Steve

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I concur with Steve on both points. You're welcome at my picnic any time; even if we disagree I have confidence that you're worth talking to. But some of your LJ posts remind me of those by a certain close-minded disciple of Rush Limbaugh that I interact with on another forum. You wouldn't know this guy, but you wouldn't want to be like him, even on points where you agreed.

[billroper]

Fair enough.

Part of the reason that I've been posting a goodly amount of right-leaning stuff on my blog lately is that so many of my friends are posting left-leaning stuff. It got to the point where I was reading a fair number of right-wing blogs (not the real nut cases) just to remind myself that there were rational people that agreed with me. :)

And if I saw something there that I thought was interesting, I passed it along -- recognizing, of course, the biases of the site I was taking it from.

[billroper]

It may be that I'm excessively cynical. :) Actually, the phrase that I've used about our political class is that I suffer from "the soft bigotry of low expectations". Thus, I'm seldom surprised by abuses; my reaction to them largely depends on how harmful I believe the particular abuse is.

So, for instance, when Mark was pointing out that Fox News was biased, my reaction was pretty much "So what? All news sources are biased."

Much like bedlamhouse, I'm frequently prepared to argue either side of a subject. Thus, if someone says X is bad, I do frequently say that "so are Y and Z". If I'm not making clear that I agree that X is bad, then that's my bad, and I'll endeavor to be clearer about it in the future.

Note that in the election abuse post I made a few days ago, I did make a point about both sides. I just felt that the Democrats were ahead because it was going to be a lot more painful to have to replace all of those damned tires. :)

But point taken.

[mrlogic.livejournal.com]

Nice post, Bill, and I see your point on a lot of these, and even agree with some. I share the concern of some other commenters that there are certain things you don't mention and seem to be willing to accept as if they were not important. (The Supreme Court, and the tendency toward a Christian State, were two things mentioned that occasion my deepest concern.)

[billroper]

Thanks. folkmew asked about these things first and I've responded to her above.

[patoadam]

Thanks for posting this! From my point of view, I find it difficult to understand how someone who is as well-informed on the issues as you are, and not in the grip of a conservative political or religious ideology, could support Bush, so I find your post very interesting.

I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing here. I really wan to know what you think, and I hope you can respond to my comments.

the Bush tax cuts... provided a reasonable stimulus for an economy that was sorely in need of one

A temporary recession is no excuse for permanent tax cuts. The tax cuts that aren't permanent now probably will be within four years. Because of the Bush tax cuts, our children and grandchildren will suffer from a combination of higher taxes, reduced government services, and reduced economic activity. Even the federal government borrows money at rates that exceed inflation, so paying for government spending with borrowed money always costs more in the long run.

I believe that Bush is trying to come to grips with the massive unfunded liabilities in our Social Security and Medicare programs.

Surely Bush's budget deficits have done more to imperil Social Security and Medicare than anything he could possibly do to rescue these programs.

which is not to say that cities might not yet be destroyed again by nuclear weapons

I think that our invasion of Iraq has made it more likely that terrorists or a terrorist state will detonate a nuclear weapon in an American city, for at least three reasons:

1) Our invasion of Iraq, combined with the threat implicit in Bush's "Axis of Evil" remark, has apparently frightened North Korea and Iran into accelerating their nuclear weapons programs. North Korea routinely sells conventional weapons to other governments. Might they sell nuclear weapons to terrorists? What will Iran do with nuclear weapons, once they acquire them? See the book _Crisis on the Korean Peninsula: How to Deal With a Nuclear North Korea_, by O'Hanlon and Mochizuki.

2) The rulers of many Muslim countries officially support our invasion of Iraq. The people living there don't. This has lead to increased unrest in these countries. In Pakistan, Gen. Musharraf has survived several assassination attempts already. A successful revolt in Pakistan could put their nuclear weapons in the hands of Islamic terrorists. See _Against All Enemies_, by Richard A. Clarke, who at the time of 9/11 was the top counterterrorism expert in the Bush administration.

3) After we invaded Iraq, we failed to guard Iraq's nuclear reactor sites, which had been guarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency, an agency of the U.N., ever since Desert Storm. Nuclear equipment was systematically stolen from these reactors over a period of several months. This included equipment used to manufacture centrifuges used to enrich uranium. This information comes from Yahoo News articles from around the middle of October. I'm surprised Kerry didn't emphasize this in the closing weeks of the campaign.

Some people claim that you cannot impose democracy at the point of a gun and this would be true.

Yup. And when did it become acceptable to invade another country because it wasn't democratic?

But I look at Afghanistan

Bush left such a mess in Afghanistan that I wonder if he wipes his butt when he poops. See Cristo's comment on Afghanistan.

And I look at the news reports from Iraq

Saddam Hussein was *on* *our* *side* in the war on terror. The last time his regime attempted a terrorist act against the U.S. was in 1993. He opposed Islamic terrorists because they believe in rule by the clergy according to holy Koranic law (Shari'a). He tried to keep terrorists out of Iraq. At the time we invaded, there was exactly one terrorist camp in Iraq, in a part of Iraq not controlled by Saddam. Now we have 18,000 to 20,000 insurgents in Iraq attacking our troops. Again, see _Against All Enemies_, a book I think every American voter should read. Also, see my song The Osama bin Laden Happy Dance, which you heard me sing at OVFF. I don't agree with many of the opinions ObL expresses in this song, but all the factual details ObL cites are accurate.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I missed the song at OVFF.

More unfortunately, the whole country didn't hear it before the election.