Leonard Pitts on what happens after the flag comes down.
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else.”
That’s an observation widely credited to Winston Churchill, though it’s one he may or may not have ever made. Whoever said it, the truth of the axiom has seldom been more obvious than now, as we watch the fall of the Confederate battle flag. It is too early to say whether this will prove lasting. But the signs certainly point toward a seismic shift. ...
We appear to be on the verge of a long overdue national consensus that this American swastika is unfit for human consumption. And to think: All it took was the blood of nine innocent people. ...
The suddenness of the change in attitude toward that flag is bracing, reminiscent, in an odd way, of when the Berlin Wall fell: Nobody saw it coming — it happened.
That said, it is hard to be wholly invested in cheering what is happening here.
This week... I can't really describe the feeling of this week. Deep sorrow as we watched the funerals of nine innocent, welcoming people who paid for kindness with their lives. The upholding of healthcare as a right. The triumph of marriage for all. The sudden realization that the emperor of "Southern Heritage" was not just naked, but covered in blood.
It's been... a week.
Come on in.
Curtis Sittenfeld has a welcome... but feels a bit silly about it.
With the Supreme Court’s decision Friday that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage, surely I’m not the only straight person tempted right now to send a message of marital welcome to the gay community. But this temptation isn’t just presumptuous — it’s downright absurd. Of the four couples who were plaintiffs in the landmark case, some have been together longer than my husband and I have. Surely, it’s I who could learn a thing or two about commitment and devotion from the plaintiff Jim Obergefell, a widower in my hometown, Cincinnati, who had been in a relationship with John Arthur for 20 years when Mr. Arthur died of A.L.S. in 2013. The state of Ohio wouldn’t recognize Mr. Arthur and Mr. Obergefell’s marriage, which had occurred in Maryland, where the couple flew by medical jet to wed on the tarmac. Or perhaps the plaintiffs April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, the Michigan couple who have adopted four children, including some with disabilities, could give me advice on striking a balance between attending to my kids and spouse.
... if you don’t think marriage is for you, unless you’re George Clooney pre-2014, you’re probably correct. I’d no more attempt to convert marriage skeptics than I’d try to persuade my husband that brussels sprouts are delicious; it’s their life, and they’re his taste buds.
But really, this isn't so much a welcome as it is a confirmation that a marriage between two people can be a Really Good Thing. But it's not the only option.
Now that same-sex marriage is legal nationwide, plenty of gay people won’t get married just because they can, just as plenty of straight people don’t. Even so, how wonderful that the option exists for all of us.
Yes, isn't it?
Ross Douthat explains how conservatives got marriage for gay people.
Before there was a national debate about same-sex marriage, there was a debate within the gay community about whether it was a worthwhile goal to chase at all. ... One current of thought saw the institution of marriage as inherently oppressive, patriarchal or heteronormative, better rejected or radically transformed than simply joined. ... Gay couples wanted the chance for normalcy, straight Americans were surprisingly receptive, and so a conservative case for same-sex marriage — the argument that marriage is essential to human dignity and flourishing — became the public case for gay equality.
There you go, gay people. Thank a conservative for making your case for marriage. And for everyone, gay and straight, you know. You just
know, that this the warm up to another Douthat rant about the horrors of sex outside of marriage and the idea that marriage exists apart from popping out kids. It's also another another week of Douthat Challenges the World to Interpret.
The case for same-sex marriage has been pressed in the name of the Future. But the vision of marriage and family that made its victory possible is deeply present-oriented, rejecting not only lessons of a long human past but also many of the moral claims that inspire adults to privilege the interests of their children, or indeed to bring children into existence at all.
Quickly now. Tell me what that means.
Colbert King on the persistence of racism.
In our faltering efforts to deal with race in this country, a great deal of time is devoted to responding to symptoms rather than root causes. That may help explain why racism keeps repeating itself. ...
The United States has been treating evidence of racism, and not the causes, since the Civil War.
Slavery; “separate but equal”; segregated pools, buses, trains and water fountains; workplace and housing discrimination; and other forms of bias and animus have served as painful barometers of the nation’s racial health. They have been, however, treated like the pain that accompanies a broken leg. The effort was to treat or reduce the agonizing symptoms of the break rather than fix it.
King's piece hits hard, but his focus on getting to the root cause falters because it lacks any suggestion of a solution.
Kathleen Parker has her suggestion.
How do Charleston and South Carolina — and the nation — proceed from here? Once the eulogies have ended and life, indeed, goes on, what precisely can one, or many, of us do to resolve the problem of race?
Reconciliation is the word of the day, but how, practically speaking, does one get there? From leaders in Washington, we often hear of the need for a “national conversation about race.” Again, how? And what does this really mean?
And weird as it sounds, Parker's column might have more substance than King's when it comes to an approach moving forward. Yes, I know.
Ruth Marcus believes the rulings of the week vindicate Justice Roberts.
Roberts saved the Affordable Care Act, a second time, for the man who voted against confirming him. It was the right decision, a wise one, for the law, the court and the country.
For this, predictably, Roberts has been branded David Souter-lite. “He stands revealed as a most political Justice,” thundered the Wall Street Journal editorial board, accusing Roberts of “volunteering as Nancy Pelosi’s copy editor.”
That was among the milder critiques. “It’s time we admitted that our national ‘umpire’ is now playing for one of the teams,” said Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network.
Deep breath, folks. Roberts is no liberal squish. He’s not even a centrist squish. He’s a deeply conservative jurist, as witnessed by his impassioned dissent in the court’s same-sex marriage ruling the day after his supposed treachery on health care.
Could it be that Robert's ruling in the Obamacare case was so obviously right that only a deeply partisan judge like Scalia would be willing to not only disagree but take the massive damage that a strict copy editor approach to law would generate just for the sake of punching a Democratic president? I don't see anything in the last week that demonstrates Roberts is a neutral umpire. But he does appear to be sane.
Oh, and George Will (and no, I will not link) thinks that Robert's ruling "overthrew the constitution." Which pleases me immensely.
Margaret Sullivan on the NY Times new "minority reporter."
To some, it seems counterintuitive to cover the problems of economic inequality in America with a greater focus on the doings of the superrich. After all, this is not a set that’s starved for media attention. And how does this fit in with the journalistic charge to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted”?
After hearing from readers, I raised these questions Thursday morning to The Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet. On Wednesday, he announced that the paper’s longtime television critic, Alessandra Stanley, would start a new assignment: covering the “top 1 percent of the 1 percent.”
Yes, the NY Times will now sport a specialist in those whose socks are hand-darned from the fur of baby pandas. Why do we need a reporter focused on the extremely rich and not the almost infinitely more numerous the poor?
“The New York Times does enough about poverty and the middle class,” [Mr. Baquet] said. But, in this effort to focus on inequality, there will be more to come, he said.
See, the NYT does enough on poverty. Sheesh. Also, poor people also have such uninteresting lifestyles. You don't even want to know what they use for socks.
Gary Marcus on the thing in your head.
Descartes thought that the brain was a kind of hydraulic pump, propelling the spirits of the nervous system through the body. Freud compared the brain to a steam engine. The neuroscientist Karl Pribram likened it to a holographic storage device.
Many neuroscientists today would add to this list of failed comparisons the idea that the brain is a computer — just another analogy without a lot of substance. Some of them actively deny that there is much useful in the idea; most simply ignore it.
...
Too many scientists have given up on the computer analogy, and far too little has been offered in its place. In my view, the analogy is due for a rethink.
Most of the people claiming the brain doesn't act like a computer, don't know diddly about computers.