Remembering what freedom looks like

The video that my first hour U.S. History 3 class watched during our unit on the end of the Cold War.



It still makes me cry, in my private moments.

Enjoy.

Profound. Or something.

Or why we shouldn't take ourselves so seriously.











Oh yeah. Feel the depth.

That's what she said.

The change we've been waiting for

It couldn't possibly just be that progressives are wrong. About anything, no less.

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It couldn't even possibly be the obvious - that Americans cannot be forced to trust (the most serious contradiction in terms humanity's history has to offer) a government that has so thoroughly earned its mistrust - because that would mean that progressives are wrong about something.

And that's just too extreme for any progressive to swallow. Ever. And always will be.

As long as they're right about everything. And can explain everything else as everyone being too stupid to know their wisdom.

It may be that this is what Montequieu and Madison and Acton and Mill and Twain warned us about. Or perhaps progressives can explain to us how they are right and everyone else is wrong about even that.

It's not just the snottiness. The straight-faced slander of racist or crazy for those who disagree with the health bill. The arrogance behind the progressive response to the distrust of the health bill and those who passed it.

It's the backwards logic behind the whole premise.

You have the right to health care. So if you don't exercise that right, we'll fine you. And we'll imprison you, if you still further do not exercise that right.

How would that work with speech?

If you do not criticize your government for passing legislation with such backwards logic - you have a right that you will be imprisoned for if you do not exercise it - would you be imprisoned for criticizing the legislation - which would express your hostility to the enlightened wisdom behind such a walking contradition?

Or would you be imprisoned for not criticizing it - since this would be more consistent with the logic that rights are something to be enforced against citizens by a governing authority?

How would that work for religion?

If you choose to exercise your right of freedom of religion by not practicing it or by not attending a church, regularly, shouldn't we pass laws that enforce that you exercise that right if it is to truly be a right, by the logic of this health care law?

How about for the press?

If you choose to start a newspaper but all it ever has to say is just how terrific the world is, and, in particular, how hunky dory government is, would that make you a progressive or would that get you a sentence?

How about freedom of assembly?

If you choose not to protest your government, shouldn't the government be able to imprison or fine you for failing to exercise a right that the Founders risked their lives for you to have? You ungrateful slob.

I was under the impression that being liberal was conceived as the suspicion of all this horseshit. Especially the most pernicious horseshit of all these days.

That government knows best.

Especially when it's run by people like me. And not like those other losers who always fuck things up. And willfully resist my infallible judgment.

That's the narrative, at least. A narrative, because nothing could ever just be right or wrong.

Because if it was, people would be capable of being right or wrong, in their judgment.

And if progressives are people, that might imply that they could be wrong. About any one of their positions. Including their holiest of holy grails.

And no self-respecting progressive could stand for that.

Because that gets back to that impossible notion that progressives could be wrong.

Which would mean that they are the obstacle to progress they've been seeking to remove. Perhaps they really are the change they've been waiting for.

Now the rest of us are just waiting for them to change. For once.

Maybe starting with something a little less condescending this time around.

Oughta be a law

The Boston Herald, a well-known bastion of right-wing bile, hate, and neo-Nazi death metal, has written a most loathesome and underhanded editorial on the likes of one Ms. Rachel Maddow, of CNBC lineage, which can only be characterized as gross libel, shameless slander, and a desperate attempt to upend the unstoppable bullet train of progress that has lately taken the nation by storm.

And a sure sign that leftist manhandling has gone over as a smashing success in Massachusetts. Just like with the rest of us.

Rachel Maddow for what?

I cringe as I post the racist poison and hostility to lesbian sharp dressers everywhere that drips from these words, with apologies to the kind-hearted and dearly beloved racists and homophobes responsible for the post, in toto.

"After a week of serious grownup news, what we all really needed was a little comic relief and thank goodness for the self-absorbed rantings of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for supplying it.

In an apparent attempt to reverse slumping ratings, Maddow’s bosses even took out an ad so she could vent uncensored about how Sen. Scott Brown 'smeared' her by indicating in a fund-raising letter that Democrats were trying to recruit her.

Now we’re a little unclear how a run for Senate - however improbable - constitutes a 'smear.' But that aside Maddow’s petulance seems, well, just a little contrived.

Brown, of course, has been inundated with interview requests since his January election victory. He’s just as popular on the Republican fund-raising circuit.

And Maddow might want to contemplate these numbers: Brown got 1,167,178 votes in that Senate election. Maddow’s total national Nielsen Company ratings run about 881,000 (but only 240,000 in the coveted 25 to 54 age group).

Now if only Keith Olbermann would buy a summer home on the Cape..."

Why such unaldulterated misogyny (think about that one, for a second) can see the light of newsprint, I will never know.

Oughta be a law.

No lying necessary

Does this guy ever stop lying? Ever?

Paul Krugman: Going to Extreme

These two pearls, in particular, stand out.

"All of this goes far beyond politics as usual. Democrats had a lot of harsh things to say about former President George W. Bush — but you’ll search in vain for anything comparably menacing, anything that even hinted at an appeal to violence, from members of Congress, let alone senior party officials."

As Greg Pollowitz, at the National Review, puts it:

"Oh really? Google 'Kill George Bush' to find out how wrong Krugman is.

One of the long forgotten ones:

Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams apologized Thursday for saying she could kill President Bush, remarks that drew scorn from Bush loyalists and shook up the International Women's Peace Conference in Dallas.

'My feelings now and again get way ahead of me,' Ms. Williams said. 'I couldn't kill anybody, but I must confess that I'm extremely angry with the Bush administration and what they have done. To say that was wrong.'"

Or this last bit of wisdom from our noble Nobel-winning economist:

"In the short run, Republican extremism may be good for Democrats, to the extent that it prompts a voter backlash. But in the long run, it’s a very bad thing for America. We need to have two reasonable, rational parties in this country. And right now we don’t."

Paul's right about that one. The problem is it is people like Paul who are the problem. When he says we don't have two reasonable, rational parties, he's right. We don't even have one. We have two parties committed to their own power at every cost. And no amount of dishonesty, like the kind embodied in this article, is too dishonest for that purpose. Dishonesty that Paul has with himself as much as with everyone else.

The only people who could possibly believe that kind of bullshit he's writing here - that only partisans of the opposing party are guilty of the kind of ugliness Paul cites in this article - are the very kinds of folks who both carry that kind of ugliness in their hearts and who make it more likely with their infinite manipulations of language and argument for partisan advantage.

Paul just can't get figured out that all that deception and self-deception only sells with his own kind. Noone honest could take it seriously, unless they are seriously naive in the ways of politics and partisans, generally.

Same goes for Republicans who engage in this kind of bullshit.

It's laughable in the extreme for such people to do this and say to everyone else, "Trust me. I mean it."

Isn't there somewhere we can trust where this kind of dishonesty is not the norm?

Because it sure isn't politics. Or government.

And it is strange beyond recognition that these people would be so dishonest and then ask the American people to trust them to exercise power over the most intimate concerns in their lives.

The problem, at this point, is not that Americans do not recognize this. They do. The problem is that people like Paul don't care that people don't trust them.

And that's exactly the kind of arrogance that power breeds that our Founders and the strongest thinkers about power and politics wanted checked.

And the reason we have a democracy is to choose people we can trust, better, when this kind of dishonesty becomes the norm.

How can we possibly trust such dishonesty? We can't, is the answer. And we should make choices, accordingly. In life, as much as politics.

Democrats need a powerful reminder, this coming election, that the dishonesty will not be rewarded. And that power, for any purpose, is not a good enough philosophy of governance.

People like Paul may never face their failings. As human beings as much as as democratic participants. Some people never escape their own bullshit.

But that doesn't mean we should have to live with it.

And, if there is anything about the American experience that I have become convinced of it is that, though Americans and our government have done much wrong, in the past and the still present, we, generally, get honest with ourselves about that wrong, with time. And correct our mistakes.

And then and only then is when real progress occurs.

No lying necessary.

"It takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people"

Representative John Dingell (D-MI) makes clear just what is at stake in this health care legislation and debate.



Americans have a decision to make about whether this is the future they will resign themselves to.

Choose wisely.

Do it for love

You know what I love about Sara Bareilles?



That she'll wear her heart right there out on her sleeve. And she's gonna succeed the right way. Whether you fuckin' like it or not.

That's my girl.

Oh, and as it turns out. Living life the right way tends to be make for more real success in life. In all the ways that really matter.

Reason #1,678,983 for why you, and not Congress, are the source of any real happiness and success in your life.

Sing it, Sara.

Why I love liberal democracy (maybe I will marry it, wiseguy)

Though I hear that's illegal in most states.

Lacking consensus, policies should fail

T.R. Fehrenbach is a pimp. And this column is his bitch, in a serious way.

"Amid all the genuine bad tidings blasting our sensibilities each news day, we are being subjected to the notion that our system of government isn't working. Something's wrong in Washington. This is mostly coming from the semi-educated media and commentator classes, but apparently it is believed to the extent that Congress has recently received its lowest confidence rating: 10 percent.

The idea that the institutions of the U.S. are fundamentally flawed is arrant nonsense. Washington and the Constitution, as amended, are working pretty much as the Founders intended them to work. I have heard and seen all this before, during the Great Depression and run-up to WWII, when supposedly sensible men argued that free institutions weren't up to the challenges of economic crisis and totalitarian dictatorship. We showed them...

...If this coalition wants to effect real change, it must hold together for more cycles; otherwise, it was a fluke. The evidence to date is that the Obama coalition has already lost cohesion; therefore those it put in office have little right to push agendas. Our institutions are right to resist, meantime.

The Founders, both Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, were mortally fearful of tyranny, whether popular or elitist. This is why they created three independent equal branches, two legislative houses and reserved powers not granted the federal apparatus to the states.

This last has been gutted by every strong president, but the division of powers within the federal branch leaves ample room for stopping popular stampedes. The Senate is supposed to slow down or thwart the House; it was designed that way. So was the fact that a few small states can block the will of the great, imperial states. In fact, cloture — cutting off debate — is a newer rule. Originally a single senator could block action.

What I'm getting at is that if you have no consensus, you get no results — nor should you. This doesn't mean the country sinks; it just means you can't implement purely partisan policies. We keep the Army, Navy and Treasury going, you notice. If the American people want reforms and pursue them long enough, not just for the moment, they usually get them. Muddling through, the democratic-republican way, is better than marching off a cliff like morons.

After all, it's worked for more than two centuries."

We showed them, indeed. And we'll do it again, bitch. As many times as necessary.

Take that to the bank, Mr. Bin Laden.

You, too, America.

God, I love this country.

Progress means we get better

It's nice to see that hearts still beat, occassionally, in Washington.

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And proof that laughter is worth a thousand sticks.



A lot of pride, now as ever, from folks whose hearts are small. Good to see some people start to talk, and laugh, about that honestly.

Note to the smallhearted. The notion that this is progress is a lie. Always has been. For as long as humans have walked the earth. Even the cynics know that's true deep inside those teeny-weeny little hearts.

When we're not lost in our own bullshit, that is.

Even when you're lost, taking a road to nowhere doesn't lead to progress.

It just means your still lost and not acknowledging it.

Progress means we get better. For real.

About time we started down that road.

Why television doesn't sell wisdom

Remember that the next time your premise your politics, your thinking, or your life on what people say on TV.

More or less

Might makes right. And what those in power say must be true. Why else would they have the power, after all? And who are we to question them?

Iran's Ahmadinejad: Sept. 11 attacks a 'big lie'

It's a foolish mistake that has trailed us for as long as humans have organized governments. And it is the mistake that is at the heart of power, it's manipulations and its abuses.

Those who have it will have you believe that they know, unerringly, what to do with it. And that is the danger.

We take for granted a free country where we can challenge that notion at our own risk. If you want to see a country that believes that might makes right and that the use of force trumps honest understanding, this is the regime.

The question for us is, "Do we want to look more like them? Or less?"

Just ask Mahmoud

That about sums it up.

Iran, Syria may talk a big talk, but too scared to act

That's why military action against Iran is unnecessary. That and the real possibility that they really aren't arming themselves (though I do have my doubts).

The reason why it's foolish is because it rallies Iranians to a regime that they might otherwise unseat. Which is the only sustainable way that Iran will move away from it's hostile posture with the U.S. and Israel.

And because it rallies all of the Muslim world against the U.S., Israel, and the West, and to the defense of lunatics like Osama bin Laden.

Perhaps none of that matters to us. Perhaps what we care about it waving our dicks about hoping that doing so will end all of this drama once and for all. Or maybe just for now and long term consequences be damned.

Good luck with that, by the way. Tell me how that works out for ya.

And when it doesn't work, make sure to send me a postcard about how it's all the nice people who fuck everything up in the world.

Apparently, that's what it means to be a man. If you're a lying, manipulative shithead, that is.

Just ask Mahmoud.

The truth about our lying

Tracy Clark-Flory writes the most honest thing about children and sexuality that I've read in a long time.

Lying to kids about sex

In response to pop psychologist Linda Papadopoulos' proposal to keep "lad magazines" on top shelves in Great Britain, to end sexist images on public billboards, to show music videos with graphic language after hours, when children are often in bed, to add parent controls to gaming systems, and to ban ads for sex-related jobs at career centers, Clark-Flory writes:

"It's an admirable aim, and I suspect Papadopoulos's heart is very much in the right place, but her solution seems rather superficial. Putting racy magazines on the news stand's top shelf only makes them more alluring. The same goes for all the other targeted vices: It isn't as though kids won't eventually find out that such things exist -- and by the time they do, these adult secrets are imbued with an added electric charge. It seems a disservice to kids to so completely and thoroughly shield them from the realities of our sexualized culture, because they'll have to face it themselves eventually.

Not to mention, it's awfully hypocritical to try to protect teenagers from these 'bad' things, while consuming said 'bad' things ourselves -- and kids are smart, they'll notice. In fact, I'm pretty sure teens come equipped with a hyper-developed vomeronasal organ capable of sniffing out adult inconsistencies. That isn't to say that there aren't plenty of things youngsters simply aren't ready to be introduced to, but, so often, attempts at preserving young people's innocence essentially delivers the message, 'Live as I say, not as I do.' It's less about protecting them and more about allowing ourselves to maintain a certain level of cognitive dissonance -- because, hey, at least we're looking after the children. It's like, instead of vacuuming up our filth, we sweep it under the rug without ever questioning why our house is always so damn dirty."

It is a little insane, to me, today, the ways that our hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance, lying and manipulation pass for honest understanding and discussion of issues like this one.

The truth about our lying is that we do it often. And we get so used to the lying that we forget that it isn't the truth. And that the truth is that none of us is terribly honest, honestly, about this matter or many of the issues that we face, in our own personal lives, nevertheless in our politics.

And the only way to get to better resolutions of our concerns on this front, as on every front, is more honesty. And the only way we will get more honesty is when people feel more safe to be honest. With themselves and with one another.

Most of our problems, in liberal and illiberal cultures, center around the degree to which our lies cover up the truth. And the ways that our illiberal efforts to manipulate make sure that honest discussion never takes place.

Perhaps we are unable to unravel our dishonesty. Perhaps it is in our genes. Or maybe it is because we are wicked and incapable of anything better. Or perhaps it is because our causes are too important for something more honest.

Or perhaps we are all too afraid to be honest. And too afraid to admit we are too afraid.

Perhaps that is as good as we will ever be.

Or perhaps that is yet one more lie to cover all the other lies we tell ourselves and one another.

And perhaps we are not only strong enough for more honesty, perhaps we will be stronger, still, for it. Perhaps we are stronger for it, already.

Perhaps that was the point of all that freedom in the first place.