John Danforth, Episcopal minister, former U.S. Senator, former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, and pro-life Republican, calls out his party on its religious extremism:
The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best hope for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to rediscover our roots.
Maybe this repulsion is why Danforth resigned so quickly from his UN post?
More Danforth, and more pundits below, including:
- Robert Kuttner on Schiavo unveiling the religious right
- Bill Bradley on the "inverted" Democrats
- Derrick Jackson on the failed promise of privatized public education
- Nicholas Kristof on African women threatened by Bush's astinence focus
- Today's cartoon
If I were purely cynical partisan, I'd hope the GOP ignores this sage advice from one of their more sensible leaders:
During the 18 years I served in the Senate, Republicans often disagreed with each other. But there was much that held us together. We believed in limited government, in keeping light the burden of taxation and regulation. We encouraged the private sector, so that a free economy might thrive. We believed that judges should interpret the law, not legislate. We were internationalists who supported an engaged foreign policy, a strong national defense and free trade. These were principles shared by virtually all Republicans.
But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.
I always said Bush picked the wrong former Missouri GOP Senator John to be Attorney General his first term. So who else in the GOP will join Danforth and Whitman in publically distancing themselves from the American Taliban?
Now we see them for who they are
And Danforth isn't the only one who may be waking up. Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect, writes in the Globe that the Schiavo fiasco has opened America's eyes, even Republicans, to the broader extremism of the religious right:
But isn't the religious right winning? The press has been filled with stories of earnest communities where biblical literalism is central to most people's lives. These communities, apparently, are growing, while those that reflect the spirit of the Enlightenment -- rational inquiry, religious tolerance, plural identities, strong civic life -- are shrinking. Many liberals conclude that they must live in a bubble not representative of the country.
However, the public response to the Schiavo case tells a more complex story. While most Americans believe in God and attend church, synagogue, or mosque, few welcome the busybody behavior of the religious right, most recently in its morbid embrace of Terri Schiavo.
And this closing paragraph hits the nail on the head:
Terri Schiavo's legacy could be the opposite of what the right intended. Americans are being reminded that the religious right and its politician-allies are zealots not just about abortion; they also want dogma to overrule science when it comes to stem cell research, contraception, and high school biology; they'd intrude on the most painful and intimate of family decisions -- all in the name of their own unchallengeable definition of God's will. Religious upsurge or not, this is not the country most Americans want.
Democratic Party inverted?
Lest we revel too quickly on the GOP's recent tremors, Bill Bradley, writing in the NY Times, warns Democrats that they have some long-term restructuring to work on themselves. He joins many others who want the Democrats to build a structure similar to the "pyramid" that started with after the Goldwater defeat, with a foundation of big wealthy donors (Scaife, Olin, etc.), a President on top, and lots of disciplined role-players (strategists, think tanks, commentators, etc) in between.
To understand how the Democratic Party works, invert the pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.
Democrats who run for president have to build their own pyramids all by themselves. There is no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on. Unlike Republicans, they don't simply have to assemble a campaign apparatus - they have to formulate ideas and a vision, too. Many Democratic fundraisers join a campaign only after assessing how well it has done in assembling its pyramid of political, media and idea people. [...]
Democrats choose this approach, I believe, because we are still hypnotized by Jack Kennedy, and the promise of a charismatic leader who can change America by the strength and style of his personality. The trouble is that every four years the party splits and rallies around several different individuals at once. Opponents in the primaries then exaggerate their differences and leave the public confused about what Democrats believe. [...]
If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade's commitment, and it won't come cheap. But there really is no other choice.
While I agree with Bradley's analysis, I have two concerns:
One, while we are building such a structure, we can still compete NOW, particularly in rural Western states with a left-libertarian message. We cannot continue to be the party that wants government to stay out of families' businesses, except for when we want government to be intrusive, say, with respect to gun ownership.
Second, I'm not sure that we have to build our foundation with Democratic versions of the Scaifes and Olins. Let George Soros and whoever else fund whoever they like, but we have demonstrated that we have the funding capability from a grass roots level.
New study shows privatized (ie, charter) schools no better than public schools
The Boston Globe's Derrick Jackson points to a forthcoming book debunking the claims of charter school advocates:
"Proponents of charter schools have a deregulationist view of education that says the marketplace leads to better schools," Lawrence Mishel, president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, said over the telephone. "The facts of the matter suggest that this view is without merit."
Mishel and three other university researchers from Columbia and Stanford universities are authors of the forthcoming book ''The Charter School Dust-Up." The researchers reviewed federal data and the results from 19 studies in 11 states and the District of Columbia. They found that charter school students, on the whole, ''have the same or lower scores than other public school students in nearly every demographic category."
What's more, claims by privatizers like Mitt Romney that charter schools perform better as they gain experience are not only false, the opposite is true! Newer charter schools perform better than those with four or more years running.
Bush's Abstinence focus killing African women
Nicholas Kristof has been traveling in Africa and finds that for African women, getting married may be the most dangerous path to AIDS:
Take Kero Sibanda, a woman I met in a village in Zimbabwe. Mrs. Sibanda is an educated woman and lovely English-speaker who married a man who could find a job only in another city. She suspected that he had a girlfriend there, but he would return to the village every couple of months to visit her.
"I asked him to use a condom," she said, "but he refused. There was nothing I could do."
He died two years ago, apparently of AIDS. Now Mrs. Sibanda worries that she and her beautiful 2-year-old daughter, Amanda, have H.I.V. as well.
The key to better prevention is simple: condoms. In the light of contemporary African attitudes, a massive public education program is needed to encourage condom use. [emphasis below mine]
The fact is that condoms have played a crucial role in the campaigns against AIDS that have been relatively successful, from Thailand's "100 percent condom program" to the efforts in Uganda, Cambodia and Senegal. And condoms don't cause sex any more than umbrellas cause rain.
That's a great last line.
Today's cartoon
Courtesy of Dan Wasserman from the Boston Globe: