let me make it perfectly clear up-front that i think abortion is a fundamental right that women today must have if they're not to be relegated to the status of second-class citizens. it's not abortion itself that i hate (although i do think we should try and minimize it's use as much as possible), it's the
issue of abortion that i hate.
in particular, i hate the way it has come to dominate the national debate at the expense of many other equally important issues. we on the left spend so much time worried about abortion that we systematically neglect the other issues on which the progressive movement was originally built.
indeed, today abortion is being used by the corporate right as a not-so-subtle smokescreen for gutting many other more important progressive causes. virtually all of the press coverage on the harriet miers nomination has centered on how little is known about her abortion views. but what is virtually certain are her views on things like workers' rights, environmental regulation, shareholder protections, and the priveleges of the executive branch. these are issues which should all be as near and dear to the progressive heart as abortion.
so why are all the voices we hear left and right so centered on the abortion issue? why aren't people taking a look at miers' record as a bigtime corporate lawyer? why don't we hear voices objecting on the basis of that record? what scares me more than anything else is that while the social political fringes left and right are obsessed with debates about abortion, we're going to allow bush to stack the supreme court with justices who are ready to roll our federal government back to 1925. think about a world with no EPA, no voting rights act, no right for workers to organize, maybe no social security. think about a world where the interests of corporate america trump the hard-won rights of individuals at every juncture. i don't want to overstate my case, certainly i don't think we're going to wake up tomorrow with all of those things gone. but a stacked supreme court can and will begin to erode these things slowly.
this isn't just an academic argument. harriet miers and the entire bush team know that as long as they appear vague, but vaguely appeasing on the abortion issue that they can center the debate there. they can toss the far right enough scraps to get her through, and nobody ever examines her opinions on these other important issues. i have little doubt that this is exactly the bush team's strategy, as the issues i'm talking about are exactly the issues bush cares about. he doesn't give a shit about whether abortion remains legal or not. he's a corporatist through and through, and you can be sure his nominees reflect his views on the issues that are important to him and corporate america.
it's time for the left to wake up and realize when they're being played.
