News Roundup for 7/6/11

Gov. Scott Walker

-Headline of the Day-
"Scott Walker's bogus 'mission accomplished' moment."

When Gov. Scott Walker decided to end collective bargaining for public employees in Wisconsin, you'd have thought the world was going to end. Everyone freaked out, commies and hippies turned the state capitol into occupied territory, and people marched around with the most uncomplimentary signs.

Well, Scott showed them! Mere days after the bargaining ban went into effect, the Kaukauna school district announced that a $400,000 deficit had turned into a $1.5 million surplus. Success! And they all called him mad...

There's just a little hitch; that would've happened without the ban. According to the report, "the teachers union had already offered up financial concessions that would have produced almost identical savings and an almost identical surplus."

"What's more, the use of this one district to declare Walker's policies a success is almost comical in its cherry-picking," we're told. "There are 424 school districts in Wisconsin, and as the AP recently noted, Walker's policies mean draconian budget cuts to 410 of them, with labor officials and school districts predicting increased class sizes and layoffs."

An unpopular Republican Governor just making crap up to cover his ass? Unheard of! (Plum Line)


-Republican re-engineering-
It blew up the last time, but GOP experts have detected the flaw in the design:


Click to embiggen

See, the problem was that the Hindenburg wasn't big enough. (Political Wire)


-Bonus HotD-
"If the Top 25 Hedge Fund Managers Paid Taxes Like You and Me, We'd Cut 44 Billion of the National Deficit."

But of course, that'd be godless communism. (Smirking Chimp)

Republicans Have an Odd Definition of "Exceptional"

Wikipedia defines the concept of American exceptionalism this way:


American exceptionalism refers to the theory that the United States is qualitatively different from other nations. In this view, America's exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution, becoming "the first new nation", and developing a uniquely American ideology, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and laissez-faire. This observation can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville, the first writer to describe the United States as "exceptional". The term "American exceptionalism" itself was first used by members of the American Communist Party in the 1920s, in reference to their belief that "thanks to its natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions, America might for a long while avoid the crisis that must eventually befall every capitalist society."


Of course, the entry goes on in some detail, but the broad concept is pretty much all there; America is a unique nation for many reasons. Personally, I believe the most important distinction is that we are a nation founded in law -- we exist for a reason. Where other nations may exist because of ethnic or religious identity, America does not. And we aren't defined by our existence within the borders of an ancient monarchy or tribe. "I am American" means something very different from "I am French," for example.

The problem with American exceptionalism isn't that the concept exists -- in fact, it's not difficult to see the validity of the argument. The problem is that it sounds vaguely like an argument that it is not; that the US is better than other nations and entitled to take liberties in the world. It was the Bush administration and their defenders who argued that America the Exceptional had the right to invade Iraq, in defiance of international law.

As a result of this distortion of the concept as an expression of hyper-nationalism, Republicans have taken to demagoguing the phrase. The left does not believe that America is exceptional, they argue, which means that they believe America is not great. For them, it's an argument without facts, an empty buzz-phrase like "manifest destiny."

Of course, the biggest problem with Republicans wielding the idea of American greatness like a weapon is that there's absolutely no evidence that they actually believe it. Since Reagan at least, the Republican Party -- Reagan's "optimism" be damned -- has been characterized by a "can't do" attitude. America did great things once, built massive public works projects and is the first and only nation to put a person on the moon. But not anymore. Americans and American government are hopelessly incapable of even the simplest efforts, let alone grand projects. By Republican arguments, Americans are exceptional only in their incompetence and laziness -- a nation of boobs incapable even of running a school, let alone building a huge dam.

Take a google of the term "restoring America's greatness." You'll find articles about Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, as well as more local demagogues.

But you can't "restore greatness" to a nation that's already great. Republicans would savage an opponent who made that argument, yet it's extremely common on the right.

And do Republicans believe Americans themselves are exceptional? Clearly not. In arguing against extending unemployment benefits, Republicans basically say that Americans will not work unless they're forced to, that the average American will sit in front of the TV eating Fritos until their benefits run out. They believe that the bulk of Americans are lazy and dishonest.

And do they believe that America is defined by the concepts laid out in the Constitution, rather than a national or religious identity? Of course not. Find one Republican willing to argue that the US was not founded as a Christian nation. In short, they believe the national identity is defined by something that is not American.

And ethnic identity? The right is dominated by xenophobes worried about Hispanics and Muslims "taking over." Just yesterday I reported that the Tea Party Nation warned of an "invasion of America" by "non-European immigrants." America is now a Christian European country. There are a lot of those and the concept is not exactly exceptional.

So the next time you hear some rightwing commentator or a Republican politician expound on the importance of American exceptionalism, remember that there's no evidence that they actually believe what they're saying.

-Wisco

The Howling Zero

The Howling Zero appears
static clicking into focus
and the screen shuttered to my eyes
contracts and bends
to her shrilling

From the void spray tiny hooks
glinting barbed and silver
like the necklace of the Zero
confusing me because
on the hook am I
fish or
am I worm?

News Roundup for 7/5/11

Tea Party rally

-Headline of the Day-
"Tea Party Nation column warns of dangers of 'non-European immigrants.'"

One of the things that make Tea Party denials of racism hard to swallow is the fact that they're always saying racist stuff. In this case, Eliana Benador writes for the Tea Party Nation that there's an "invasion of America" by "non-European immigrants."

"As we celebrate America’s Independence Day, it's noteworthy that the percentage reduction of original American voters, might have been a defining factor in the election of someone like the current president, who among other goals, seems to be keen in opening further our borders to endlessly increasing numbers of immigrants who, regardless of their skin color, are bringing in a whole new texture of culture, 100% foreign to what America's origins were as its wonderful adventure began back in 1776," she writes.

According to the report, "Tea Party Nation has previously published writings that warn of the impending "extinction" of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) population."

Apparently deciding that none of this was offensive enough, Benador went on to argue that freedom of religion doesn't actually mean you have the freedom to practice your religion.

"However, the First Amendment does not stipulate that 'freedom of religion' must be upheld even if the followers of a religion have perpetrated an attack on, and massacred, our civilian population in times of peace, especially if that religion incites to the destruction of our country, our people, and our values," she says.

In related news, Daily Beast reports there's a "startling number of white-power candidates" running for office this year -- as Republicans.

Yup, no racism here. (Raw Story)


-Bachmann History X-
Michele Bachmann explains the Fourth of July:


Click to embiggen

Any questions? (McClatchy)


-Bonus HotD-
"U.S. Renewable Energy Production Has Surpassed Nuclear."

Hippy whirlygigs and suncatchers now put out more power than huge space-age tea kettles, beating nuclear output by 6%.

Clearly, the terrorists have won. (ThinkProgress)

The Anti-Patriots

What is America?

That seems to be a major point of contention these days. Is the nation a support system for the wealthy or is it a place were we can say "we're all in this together?" Republicans seem to have taken the former view and have been busy rewriting history to conform with a new political correctness. For them, the American Revolution was a rebellion against taxation by what seems to be a bunch of extremely pious anarchists. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen -- by no means a wild-eyed liberal -- compares the Republican Party to a cult. It would seem that this cult has developed a new creation story -- one that bears very little resemblance to the actual founding of this nation.

John Nichols looks back at the comments of Thomas Jefferson on the 50th anniversary of our founding and finds an expectation of reason. Far from being a religious zealot, Jefferson mentions God only to dismiss the idea from government. "All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man," Jefferson wrote. "The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them."

Jefferson was speaking of monarchy and the "divine right of kings," but the argument applies today, to an upper class that thrives on entitlement and a party that believes that the wealthy are more deserving than anyone else. There are no "betters" in America, no ruling class -- or, at least, there shouldn't be. But the Republican Party has done more to reinstate that ruling elite than anyone else. There's a reason that Franklin Roosevelt called them "economic royalists."

But it was E.J. Dionne who ruffled a few feathers this Fourth with an Independence Day column. Dionne deconstructs the Declaration of Independence and finds a document that's almost nothing like what a modern Republican would write.


The very first item on their list condemned the king because he "refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good." Note that the signers wanted to pass laws, not repeal them, and they began by speaking of "the public good," not about individuals or "the private sector." They knew that it takes public action — including effective and responsive government — to secure "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Their second grievance reinforced the first, accusing the king of having "forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance." Again, our forebears wanted to enact laws; they were not anti-government zealots.

Abuses three through nine also referred in some way to how laws were passed or justice was administered. The document doesn’t really get to anything that looks like Big Government oppression ("He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance") until grievance No. 10.


So, what the right would have us believe were a bunch of Bible-brained anarcho-libertarians expressed a desire to govern through law. The supposedly individualist founders wrote that they intended to join in the dreaded collectivism. They saw democracy and collective will as the logical step toward a new age of reason -- the Age of Enlightenment.

"Slowly but surely, activists on the right have seemed to try to appropriate the colonial era as their own, as if they — and they alone — are the direct descendents of the Founding Fathers, and they deserve ownership of the revolutionary principles," writes Steve Benen. "We're supposed to believe the leaders of the era were states-rights libertarians, embracing the attitudes of Ayn Rand and Grover Norquist generations before their birth." Never mind that Rand despised democracy nearly as much as Norquist despises the government the founders built. These are not the patriots, these are the anti-patriots who would undo everything the revolutionaries built, then pretend that this undoing was what those revolutionaries intended, but somehow never managed to get around to.

-Wisco