Half Changed World

This afternoon, I’m heading out to take the boys to visit my family.  (T is going to a role playing game convention.)  Even without the boys, I’d be stressed about the drive (6-7 hours each way); with them, I’m totally dreading it. 

They’re actually pretty good travellers — particularly with the help of our portable DVD player.  But I’m totally intimidated by the logistics — things like having to take both boys into the stall with me when I need to pee.

Wish me luck.

My parents only have dial-up access, so I doubt I’ll be blogging while I’m there.   Bloggers seem to deal with planned absences by either arranging for guest bloggers or asking open-ended questions of their readers.  I’d have to pay for the higher level of Typepad service to have a guest blogger, so I guess you’re stuck with a question.

Mark in Mexico left a trackback to Lauren at Feministe’s post about Rove, whining that this was a distraction from the real business of the country.   On one level he’s right, the same way that MoveOn was originally founded to urge Congress to "Censure President Clinton and move on to pressing issues facing the nation." 

Mark’s list of the top 10 issues is "in this world today and, more specifically, in the United States, the issues that most concern people are (not in any particular order except for 1 and 2):

1. Terrorism/GWoT
2. Our troops in Iraq
3. Replacing 1, possibly 2, possibly 3 Supreme Court justices
4. G8 / African hunger/debt
5. HIV/AIDS
6. Social Security
7. Oil prices
8. Nuclear proliferation in Iran and Korea
9. A bloated, corrupt, inefficient United Nations
10. Hurricane aftermath in Florida and Alabama"

So, my questions for while I’m away are:

What would you list as the top issues of public concern?  In the US?  Where you live?  In the world?  How do they differ from your issues of concern?

I’ve posted my answers as a comment.

Note: even though TypePad is now encouraging you to log in with a TypeKey identity when you post a comment, it’s not required — just provide the usual info of name, email and (optional) URL.

Ben Adler at the New Republic interviewed a bunch of conservatives about their opinions of evolution, intelligent design, and what should be taught in public schools. It’s quite a fascinating read.

I was particularly struck by James Taranto’s casual reference to public schools as "government schools" — a subtle echo of Grover Norquist’s more agressive statement that "The real problem here is that you shouldn’t have government-run schools." 

I was also dumbfounded by David Frum’s statement — after saying that he does believe in evolution — that "I don’t believe that anything that offends nine-tenths of the American public should be taught in public schools. … Christianity is the faith of nine-tenths of the American public. … I don’t believe that public schools should embark on teaching anything that offends Christian principle."

Ok, but does that mean that he thinks teaching evolution offends most Christians?  I think the vast majority of Christians agree with the theory of evolution and have no problems with it being taught in schools.  Interestingly, I argued the same point last week over at Raising WEG, in response to Mia C’s question "But will any of the religious parents be discussing evolution and atheism with their children?"

***

Updated: Via Right Magazine (found by following my inbound traffic), I’ve learned that Frum says he was misquoted.  He writes: "I have no idea what proportion of Americans object to the teaching of evolution, but I very much doubt that it’s 90% or even 50%."

That’s a relief. 

Quick, what countries would CAFTA create a free trade agreement with?  I can’t tell you either without looking it up.*  I know the legislation for this passed the Senate last week and will be taken up by the House sometime this month, but that’s about it.  For a fairly significant piece of legislation, it’s been pretty much invisible from the public political discussion, at least from where I sit.  It’s a perfect example of the phenomenon discussed in this week’s CQ cover story (login required) — an issue that is of critical importance to interest groups, and of little interest to the vast majority of Americans.

I tend to fall in the squishy middle on free-trade.   Fundamentally, I don’t think it’s either feasible or desirable to slam the door on globalization.  Free-trade agreements matter a lot on the margins, but aren’t going to affect the major overall trends; for example, whether or not we pass free trade agreements, there’s not going to be a textile industry in the US.  I accept the argument that trade promotes overall growth — but there are clearly winners and losers, and I’m much more inclined to worry about those distributional impacts, which mainstream economists often airily dismiss as "short-term transitional issues."  But I also don’t think it makes programatic sense (v. political sense) to set up special programs for workers dislocated by free trade as opposed to workers who are unemployed for any other reason.

One of the ways that I figure out where I stand on legislation when I don’t have the time or interest to delve into the details is to look at who is supporting it and opposing it.  (This method isn’t perfect — even Rick Santorum supports some legislation that I like — but it works reasonably well most of the time.)   Probably the best thing that can be said for CAFTA is that it makes the US sugar cartel scream — and anything that pisses them off can’t be entirely bad.  Unions despise CAFTA, of course; unions have worried about free trade displacing jobs at least as far back as the early 19th century. (I wrote my undergraduate thesis about two 19th century labor activists, and it was amazing how modern their concerns sounded.) 

I hadn’t realized until I read this article in today’s Washington Post how partisan of an issue CAFTA has become — they predict that it will get less than 10 Democratic votes in the House, versus the 102 votes that NAFTA got 12 years ago.  There are a lot of historically free-trade Democrats who are opposing it because it has even less in the way of worker protections than past free-trade agreements and because the Bush Administration cut them out of the negotiations completely, making it a "take it or leave it" deal.  At the same time, some Democratic leaders whom I respect — including Jimmy Carter, Donna Shalala, and Henry Cisneros — are supporting it.

*Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

It’s 9:40, and D is just going to bed.  It was a gorgeous evening, so we picnicked by the fountain.  When we got home, he still needed to take his "jet medicine" (our name for the nebulizer treatments).  And then heaven forbid we should skip the bedtime story (Mrs. Armitage on Wheels, thanks to Jody).  So no original post today.

Instead, I offer this excerpt from Barak Obama’s Knox College graduation speech:

And then America happened.

A place where destiny was not a destination, but a journey to be shared and shaped and remade by people who had the gall, the temerity to believe that, against all odds, they could form “a more perfect union” on this new frontier.

And as people around the world began to hear the tale of the lowly colonists who overthrew an empire for the sake of an idea, they started to come. Across oceans and the ages, they settled in Boston and Charleston, Chicago and St. Louis, Kalamazoo and Galesburg, to try and build their own American Dream. This collective dream moved forward imperfectly—it was scarred by our treatment of native peoples, betrayed by slavery, clouded by the subjugation of women, shaken by war and depression. And yet, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, people kept dreaming, and building, and working, and marching, and petitioning their government, until they made America a land where the question of our place in history is not answered for us. It’s answered by us.

Have we failed at times? Absolutely. Will you occasionally fail when you embark on your own American journey? You surely will. But the test is not perfection.

Read the whole thing; it’s just lovely.  I particularly like how he brought his theme home to Knox college in particular:

And here in Galesburg, freedom found a home.

Here in Galesburg, the main depot for the Underground Railroad in Illinois, escaped slaves could roam freely on the streets and take shelter in people’s homes. And when their masters or the police would come for them, the people of this town would help them escape north, some literally carrying them in their arms to freedom.

Tim Russert, are you listening?

Today’s book is The Inheritance: How Three Families and America Moved from Roosevelt to Reagan, by Samuel Freedman.  I picked it up after reading a recommendation for it on a blog (sorry, don’t remember who) as a useful attempt to explain the rightward shift in American politics.

The book focuses on three immigrant families — one Irish-American, one Italian-American and one Polish-American — and their shifts over three generations, from loyal Democrats in the 1930s to Republican party activists in the 1980s and 1990s.  (The families were picked by working backwards from the most recent three.)  The book is impressively researched and the stories are interesting.  Some aspects of the story were very familiar to me, but others were totally unknown — machine politics in 1930s Baltimore, blue collar environmentalism in the late 1960s.  I enjoyed the book, although sometimes felt it got bogged down in more detail than necessary.

Freedman’s argument is that the first generation were loyal Democrats due to a combination of party machines, unions, ethnic loyality (think Al Smith) and gratitude for the jobs programs that helped them survive the Great Depression.  By the second generation, the son-in-law of one of the families had made the leap to management at Montgomery Ward, and moved to solidly Republican suburbs, and he adjusted his politics accordingly.  (Freedman notes that the wife in this family remained a liberal Democrat.) 

Another family turned conservative in the face of the civil rights movement and the growing welfare state, feeling that both were coming at the expense of white working-class families.  The third, also still blue-collar, remained Democratic, with one member becoming a leader in the new environmental movement.  However, by the third generation, this family had also moved into the Republican column, driven by the cultural conflicts around the Vietnam war and the scorn displayed by anti-war intellectuals for the working class men who were fighting it.

I found the discussion of the third generation the least persuasive, in part because it was so hard to see the three members as representative of the zeitgeist.  They were college Republicans in the  early 70s, when the counterculture had become mainstream.  Freedman argues that they presaged the Reagan revolution of 1980, and the Contract with America, but I’m unconvinced.  They were all New York Republicans, fiscally conservative (and true believers in Reaganomics and the Laffer curve) but socially moderate.  (One of them became a conservative hero for protesting the American Bar Association’s support of abortion rights, but also argued in favor of gay rights.)  It seems bizarre to tell a story about the rise of Republicanism in recent years in which the Christian right is totally missing.

I also found myself wondering "what about the Jews?"  In the early 20th century, Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the US didn’t look that different than the Catholic ethnics that Freedman follows.  (German Jews had been in the US longer and were better off and more assimilated.)  The needle trades were full of both Italians and Jews — members of both groups died in the Triangle Fire — and both groups were key in forming unions.  Why did Jews then take such a different political trajectory, such that they’re still one of the most reliable elements of the Democratic voting bloc?  Freedman’s book doesn’t offer an explanation.

So, a bipartisan group of senators, including Virginia’s John Warner, are announcing a compromise that will preserve the fillibuster.

Here’s the NY Times story, and the Washington Post story.  As might be predicted, bloggers on both the left and the right are screaming that their side caved.

Mark Schmidt had an interesting post this morning, arguing that a compromise would be a terrible outcome for Frist, but that a deal which allows Owen and Brown to go forward sets an extremely high standard for any future filibuster:

"That’s because in that combination, Brown or Owen would come to define the line of "extraordinary circumstances." That is, assume Brown goes through — after that, anyone with views less extreme than Brown would implicitly be considered not extraordinary. Bush could name Brown herself to the Court and Democrats would be paralyzed. And the problem with that is simply that there are no possible nominees to the Supreme Court whose views are more radical than Justice Brown."

I look forward to reading his comments tomorrow.

***

The best history of the fillibuster I’ve ever read is the opening chapters of the third volume of Robert Caro’s bio of Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate.   Caro summarizes how the power of the filibuster meant that (except for a few years when Roosevelt was at the peak of his power) the Senate was where bills went to die.

The first two volumes of Caro’s biography paint a pretty bleak picture of LBJ, arguing (among other things) that he blatently stole at least one election.   But in this volume, Caro describes how Johnson, as Senate Majority Leader, used his power to set the calendar to bring rambunctious Senators into line, ruthlessly blocking their bills unless they voted as he wished.  And Caro makes the case for how Johnson, SOB that he certainly was, racist that he arguably was, out of his own selfish desire to be President, did more to advance the cause of civil rights in the US than all of the noble "liberal lions" who had fought for civil rights for decades.

It’s a long book, but it’s worth reading.

I went to a conference today for work, and John Edwards was the dinner speaker.  He’s now the director of the Center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina.  He didn’t say anything terribly new or profound, but it’s amazing these days to hear a major political figure actually talking about poverty, and arguing for things like raising the minimum wage, increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit, even revitalizing the American labor movement.

He wasn’t my first choice in the 2004 primaries, but I think I may be signing up for Edwards 2008.

This morning, I went to a briefing on the "Maternal Wall" organized by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.  Much of it covered ground that I was already familiar with, but I really enjoyed the introductory speech by Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Wasserman Schultz is a freshman Representative from Florida, and I have to admit, I hadn’t heard of her before.  Her bio is quite unusual.  She’s 38 years old, and was first elected to the Florida state legislature at 26.  She’s also the mother of 6-year-old twins and a 20-month old.  And during the campaign, her opponent, a woman with adult children, consistently charged her with being a bad mother for running for office. 

Wasserman Schultz won me over with a story of how, at one event, she couldn’t find a pen and so took notes with a crayon.  Her opponent seized upon this as evidence of her "frazzledness" and lack of fitness for office.  When asked about it by a reporter, Wasserman Schultz responded "I may not always have a pen in my purse, but I always have crayons."   Me too.

Wasserman Schultz pointed out that there are only 4 women in Congress with children under 15, and only 2 with children under 10.  The classic women’s path in politics has been to get involved later, when children are in high school, or out of the house. Politics is a time-intensive career, but not one that requires a linear path of achievement. 

My Senator, John Warner, is on everyone’s list of the swing votes in the Senate on the "nuclear option" to prevent use of the filibuster. 

I disagree with Warner’s positions on the vast majority of issues, but I will always respect him for standing up against his party and saying that Oliver North was unfit to be a member of the U.S. Senate.  As Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, he’s been active in investigating the abuses at Abu Ghraib.  Most recently, he was one of the few Senators to oppose intervening in the Terri Schiavo case.

He’s one of the few Republicans who I’ve voted for.  I supported him over Mark Warner in 1996, who seemed to have nothing going for him but a lot of money (made flipping telecom licenses, no less), as well as in 2002, when the Dems didn’t nominate anyone.  He may well get my vote again in 2008.  But tomorrow, he’s getting a phone call.

Via 11d, I found this interesting debate between Amy Sullivan and Matthew Yglesias about whether it’s appropriate for politicians — especially liberal politicians — to speak out about the ways that pop culture coarsens our society and presents constant challenges to those of us trying to raise children.

The posts are worth reading in full, but the key statement of Yglesias’ position is "liberals are characterized by the belief that the state shouldn’t have substantive views about these things."  Given that, he believes that it is pure pandering for politicians who oppose censorship to use their position to criticize movies and television.  He writes:

"If Dan Gerstein wants to write op-eds decrying Friends then let’s have at it. Friends is not above criticism. But Joe Lieberman shouldn’t be doing this. If he wants to be a movie critic, or a rabbi, or whatever he should leave the Senate and let someone else write the laws."

As several of the commenters on his post point out, however, citizens look for politicians to do much more than pass laws.  We vote for candidates who seem to understand us and our problems, who invoke the aspects of America that we care about.  As much as Clinton’s "I feel your pain" has become a cliche, it worked.  And he was the master of proposing microprograms that didn’t cost a whole lot of money, didn’t do very much good, but sent the message that the government cared.

As Sullivan responds:

"I think that acknowledging the concerns of many Americans–even if you can’t fix them with a policy–is sometimes just the obvious and right thing to do, and shouldn’t always be given the perjorative label of pandering….sometimes it’s not about policies. It’s about proving that you’re not hopelessly out of touch with the real anxieties and concerns of many Americans."

I’d also like to see more people — politicians, sure, but also clergy, athletes, bloggers — helping people come together to develop ways to resist the onslaught.  Because there really is an onslaught.  I’ve written about the impact of advertising on my kids, and it’s only going to get much much worse as they get older.

NewDonkey writes:

"It’s not just about sex and violence; it’s also about consumerism, fashion-and brand-consciousness, and a generally superficial approach to life…. Matt is simply wrong to assume this is all about some "New Prudishness." As a parent of a teenager, I am not that worried that the ever-present marketers will turn him into a sex-addict or a sociopath; I’m more worried that he will turn into a total greedhead whose idea of the good life is stuff, and whose idea of citizenship is to demand a better personal cost-benefit ratio on his tax dollars."

It’s not enough to just say "turn off the TV."  It’s everywhere.  My son watches very little television at home, and we TiVo out the commercials.  But when we go to the doctor’s office, there are TVs in the waiting room, and when we go to the bookstore, the Dora books have ads for video games in the back.  And then there’s the matter of the other kids at school, as well as in the neighborhood.

As Jen commented on 11d, we’re seeing more and more parents — secular liberals as well as religous conservatives — feeling like the media is contrary to their values, and pulling the plug.   We’re also seeing more homeschooling for much the same reasons.  But the culture is pervasive and — unless we decide to become Amish — our children will eventually be exposed to it.  We can’t raise them in a bubble, even if we wanted to.

When I posted this week about D’s case of the "I wants,"  Parke commented:

"We also spend a lot of time in a church community with lots of other parents who are raising children in a similar way, so our children have many friends who also don’t get all the toys they want."

I don’t feel like I have such a community — and I think many people don’t believe that such a community is possible.  I think that there’s a power to talking about these issues in a way that makes people feel like they do have some control, rather than making them feel helpless and cynical.  The only people talking about this are the religious conservatives, and I don’t want to live in their community either.

I like what Anne wrote about this topic, although I’m not sure I entirely understand what she means:

"I became enamored with [the idea] a couple years ago, that to raise a family effectively today you must act counterculturally. That never fit quite right because I am too much a creature of our culture to turn my back on it entirely…. Instead, I can put myself and my family not against the culture, as ‘counterculture’ demands, but orthogonal (perpendicular in every dimension) to culture."