COMMENTARY

`Can an American who wants the United States to lose the war in Iraq be patriotic?'
By Geoffrey R. Stone, author of "Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime," is a law professor at the University of Chicago
Chicago Tribune via Axis of Logic, 24 December 2004

Dissent in wartime can be the highest form of patriotism. If citizens believe that our military or political leaders have blundered or our reasons for fighting are unjust, they must voice these concerns if they are to meet their responsibilities in a self-governing society. Dissent is not disloyal.

Like those who support a war, those who dissent in wartime want to protect our soldiers, further our national interests and ensure that the United States is a nation of which they can be proud.

But war breeds powerful and often dangerous passions. No one wants to hear that his son or daughter, brother or sister, is putting life and limb at risk for an ignoble or futile cause. In the throes of wartime, it is easy to lose sight of the essential difference between dissent and disloyalty.

Throughout our history, a succession of irresponsible and opportunistic journalists and politicians has intentionally blurred this line to incite fear and hatred. I recently encountered just such a "journalist" firsthand.

I was invited to appear on the TV show "The O'Reilly Factor" to debate the question: "Is dissent disloyal?" After the producer and I discussed the issue, host Bill O'Reilly (according to the producer) decided to redefine the question: "Can an American who wants the United States to lose the war in Iraq be patriotic?"

Of course, this is a loaded question. It not-so-subtly implies that those who oppose the war in Iraq want the United States to lose and, worse, want American soldiers to die (as O'Reilly later actually charged). Sadly, this tactic is all too familiar in U.S. history.

In 1798, when the nation was on the verge of war with France, Federalist newspapers in defense of President John Adams characterized Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and their followers as the "worst and basest of men" who were "preying on the vitals of the country." During the Civil War, defenders of the government attacked their critics as "artful men, disguising their latent treason under hollow pretensions of devotion to the Union."

In the 1919-1920 Red Scare, during which thousands of "radicals" were rounded up for deportation in the Palmer Raids, the Chicago Tribune screamed that "it is only a middling step from Petrograd to Seattle," and the New York Tribune fumed that strikers, "red-soaked in the doctrines of Bolshevism," were plotting "a general red revolution in America." After Pearl Harbor, Henry McLemore, syndicated columnist of the Hearst newspapers, demanded "the immediate removal of every Japanese from the West Coast." He added, "Personally, I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them." The columnist Westbrook Pegler shrieked, "To hell with habeas corpus." In the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy and his minions charged that there was a plot against America and that no one could support the Democratic Party "and at the same time be against communism." He decried "liberals" whose "pitiful squealing would hold sacrosanct those communists and queers" who had sold China into "atheistic slavery." And during the Vietnam War, Vice President Spiro Agnew charged that "the leaders of the anti-war movement" were "avowed anarchists and communists who detest everything about this country and want to destroy it."

This brings me back to Bill O'Reilly. In our "debate," O'Reilly protested that he did not mean to imply anything about the loyalty of those who "merely" oppose the war in Iraq, as long as they don't "root" for the enemy. Accepting his rather peculiar framing of the issue (it is, after all, his show), I argued that a patriotic citizen could in principle want his nation to lose a war--if the war is unjust and if "losing" means that fewer soldiers and civilians will die for no good reason. After all, patriotic Italians in World War II could well have hoped Italy would lose the war, the quicker the better.

O'Reilly insisted that losing the war in Iraq would necessarily mean that more Americans would die than if we did not lose (whatever "lose" means in this context), and that no patriotic American could therefore want the United States to lose. Of course, this isn't necessarily so. A patriotic American could reasonably believe (rightly or wrongly) that we have no business being in Iraq and that the sooner we get out the better. To cover the evident weakness of his position, O'Reilly resorted to the time-tested spewing of such ugly invective as "despicable," "traitor" and "disloyal" (not at me, but at those who might hold the hypothetical view he was determined to excoriate).

His purpose, of course, was to inflame his audience, without regard to the most fundamental values of the American system he claims to support.

What is the consequence of such demagoguery? As always in our history, it is to foster rage rather than reflection. After the show, I received a flood of e-mails capturing the anger I believe O'Reilly deliberately incited. A few examples:

- "You ought to be arrested, tried and convicted of wartime treason. And I don't have to tell you the penalty for that."

- "You are not only despicable, but should go ahead and move out of the U.S.A."

- "I must imagine that you will look over your shoulder a little bit, because maybe some soldier in a foxhole somewhere might be a tad angered with you. There may be a few GIs who would like to `speak' with you."

- "There is the tendency for citizens to take the law into their own hands in these cases; that is not outside the realm of possibility."

- "If anything happens to either of my loved ones serving overseas, I will hold you responsible."

- "Simply, you are un-American."

And so on.

Of course, these individuals have every right to their views, and the 1st Amendment certainly protects O'Reilly's vile incitement of such hatred.

But he dishonors the Constitution and his profession when he does so. This is not democratic deliberation. It is dividing Americans against Americans just for the sport of it. In my book, for people like political commentators O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh to exploit people's fears and anger in a time of war for nothing more than their own ratings is a pretty good definition of "unpatriotic."


Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

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Susan Sontag Observed a "Dumbing-Down" of American Values
DemocracyNow.org, 29 December 2004
AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
EXCERPT:
AMY GOODMAN: In March of this year, Susan Sontag spoke at the New School University in New York. During the event she was asked by the moderator about U.S. writers taking on political issues.

MODERATOR: Why is it that in the United States the writers, the poets, novelists, playwrights do not speak out on socio-political issue as they arise, and why are the writers in the United States in this extraordinary time of crisis so silent?

SUSAN SONTAG: Well, at the risk of sounding like Michael Moore, I do ask myself every day what happened to my country? I think there has been some incredible takeover that precedes the Bush administration the current really radical takeover of our government. These are really a bunch of radicals. This is not old-style republicanism, such as it was. I think there's been a kind of demoralization of the culture, a dumbing-down of the culture, and an extraordinary ascendancy of materialistic and anti-idealistic values. The conversation among writers that takes place in the last 20 years is for the most part just like the conversation of any other professional people on the make. They could just as well be advertising executives or businesspeople, or anything else. They talk about income and they talk about the comforts or lack of comforts of their personal lives, and -- but that's a kind of -- if I think back on my own life, the single most amazing phenomenon is the discrediting of idealism. And that was a gradual process. You can call it the triumph of consumerism. You can call it a lot of things, but I think now very few people in comparison -- that's not just a question of writers; it's a question of people. Very few people have the nerve to stand up for moral principles or have a sense of the right of criticism that's part of our national culture. What I don't like about the European question, and of course, I'm asked it all the time, too, is why don't you writers change things? You know, and -- with all due respect to the text that you wrote, you know, we have all felt, I think, for a long time, that we were in a one-party system, which one branch of this single party calls itself something else, the democrats. While there is real debate in the country, it's not represented at the level of the political class. You know, there's a recent debate about putting "under God into, or taking it out, rather, because it was put in rather late, into the Pledge of Allegiance, and in this debate -- I read in The New York Times, you probably remember the reference better than I do -- the person who was testifying was asked, after all, this was passed unanimously by the congress in whatever it was, 1920 or 1930. I don't know when it was. And then he said, does that means that obviously it represents everybody. No. No atheist, no professed atheist, can get elected to public office. No person, even a dog catcher in a small town, could get elected any more who says I'm against capital punishment, not that a dog catcher in a small town has anything to say about capital punishment, but there's certain positions now which are widely held by large numbers of people in this country, maybe not a majority, but maybe 30-40%, which are totally unrepresented by people who are elected, whether it's gay marriage, whether it's capital punishment, whether it's atheism and sorts. The political class displays unanimity of discourse, which doesn't represent the country. But little by little, everybody is falling into line and people are demoralized.

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Knowledge May Be Dangerous to Your Ideology and Your Faith
Careful Not to Get Too Much Education...Or You Could Turn Liberal
by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Common Dreams, 29 December 2004
EXCERPT:
I've been giving a lot of thought lately to a conversation I overheard at a Starbucks in Nashville last winter. It was a cold and rainy night as I worked away at my laptop, but the comforting aroma of cappuccino kept me going. My comfort was interrupted, however, by two young men who sat down in upholstered chairs near my table. One was talking, the other listening, in what appeared to be an informal college orientation. "The only trouble with David Lipscomb (a conservative Christian college nearby) is that old man Lipscomb apparently didn't like football. So we don't have a football team, but we have a great faculty." "But you do have to be careful about one thing," he said more quietly, coming closer and speaking in hushed tones, "My professor-I have this great professor-told me that you have to be careful not to get too much education, because you could lose your foundation, your core values."
SEE ALSO:
Familiar sop from the right: "Don't confuse me with the facts!"
Thunder from the Campus Right
Conservative students put academic freedom to new kinds of doctrinal tests
By Justin Pope
Associated Press, 29 December 2004
EXCERPT:
At the University of North Carolina, three incoming freshmen sue over a reading assignment they say offends their Christian beliefs. In Colorado and Indiana, a national conservative group publicizes student allegations of left-wing bias by professors. Faculty get hate mail and are pictured in mock "wanted" posters; at least one college says a teacher received a death threat. And at Columbia University in New York, a documentary film alleging that teachers intimidate students who support Israel draws the attention of administrators. The three episodes differ in important ways, but all touch on an issue of growing prominence on college campuses. Traditionally, clashes over academic freedom have pitted politicians or administrators against instructors who wanted to express their opinions and teach as they saw fit. But increasingly, it is students who are invoking academic freedom, claiming biased professors are violating their right to a classroom free from indoctrination.

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Happy New Year?
A Year of Living Dangerously
by James Carroll
Boston Globe, 28 December 2004
EXCERPT:
...fear and a sense of victimhood understandably stalked us in 2001, but instead of shaking those alien feelings off, we used them to construct an emergency garrison, from which we take aim at others, but which, also, is turning out to be our self-made brig.

Iraq, above all, is our prison, the place where America has taken its own self hostage. Thousands and thousands of men, women, and children who meant us no harm are now dead because of our striking out so blindly. And many more are living on the edge of disaster. But we Americans, too, are victims of our mistake. It is not only that options in Iraq seem so limited (How, exactly, do we get out? Well, by getting out), but also that the deathtrap of that war has come to define a vast shrinking of possibility, as the shape of our new century begins to actually show itself.

Only five years ago, the uncharted future was spread before us. We were an optimistic and confident people. Our firm membership in the global community was as clear as the televised sequence of midnight celebrations -- Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Delhi, Johannesburg, Paris -- that circled the earth at the glorious millennium. Watching that rotation on an axis of joy, the only "homeland" we wanted was the very planet, and our "security" was everyone's. The human family was never more aware of itself than that night, and we Americans were never more a part of it.

But this year, what a lonely nation we have become. And to how many fewer peoples are we the tribune of hope. How like exile is our "homeland," and what is "security" if it depends on suspicion of those who are unlike us?

The point of the New Year, traditionally, is to leave such brooding behind, but this broadly felt emotional weight is a warning that great things are at stake in America's argument with itself. Equally, it is a summons to resolution -- New Year's resolution -- to do nothing less, at last, than say no to the war in a way that will be heard.

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Our Democracy is in Danger of Being Paralyzed
Considerations for media reform
by Bill Moyers
DemocracyNow.org, 24 December 2004
EXCERPT:

So what do we do? What is our strategy for taking on what seems a hopeless fight for a media system that serves as effectively as it sells – one that holds all the institutions of society, itself included, accountable?

There’s plenty we can do. Here’s one journalist’s list of some of the overlapping and connected goals that a vital media reform movement might pursue.

First, we have to take Tom Paine’s example – and Danny Schecter’s advice – and reach out to regular citizens. We have to raise an even bigger tent than you have here. Those of us in this place speak a common language about the “media.” We must reach the audience that’s not here – carry the fight to radio talk shows, local television, and the letters columns of our newspapers. As Danny says, we must engage the mainstream, not retreat from it. We have to get our fellow citizens to understand that what they see, hear, and read is not only the taste of programmers and producers but also a set of policy decisions made by the people we vote for.

We have to fight to keep the gates to the Internet open to all. The web has enabled many new voices in our democracy – and globally – to be heard: advocacy groups, artists, individuals, non-profit organizations. Just about anyone can speak online, and often with an impact greater than in the days when orators had to climb on soap box in a park. The media industry lobbyists point to the Internet and say it’s why concerns about media concentration are ill founded in an environment where anyone can speak and where there are literally hundreds of competing channels. What those lobbyists for big media don’t tell you is that the traffic patterns of the online world are beginning to resemble those of television and radio. In one study, for example, AOL Time Warner (as it was then known) accounted for nearly a third of all user time spent online. And two others companies – Yahoo and Microsoft – bring that figure to fully 50%. As for the growing number of channels available on today’s cable systems, most are owned by a small handful of companies. Of the ninety-one major networks that appear on most cable systems, 79 are part of such multiple network groups such as Time Warner, Viacom, Liberty Media, NBC, and Disney. In order to program a channel on cable today, you must either be owned by or affiliated with one of the giants. If we’re not vigilant the wide-open spaces of the Internet could be transformed into a system in which a handful of companies use their control over high-speed access to ensure they remain at the top of the digital heap in the broadband era at the expense of the democratic potential of this amazing technology. So we must fight to make sure the Internet remains open to all as the present-day analogue of that many-tongued world of small newspapers so admired by de Tocqueville.

We must fight for a regulatory, market and public opinion environment that lets local and community-based content be heard rather than drowned out by nationwide commercial programming.

We must fight to limit conglomerate swallowing of media outlets by sensible limits on multiple and cross-ownership of TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, publishing companies and other information sources. Let the message go forth: No Berlusconis in America!

We must fight to expand a noncommercial media system – something made possible in part by new digital spectrum awarded to PBS stations – and fight off attempts to privatize what’s left of public broadcasting. Commercial speech must not be the only free speech in America!

We must fight to create new opportunities, through public policies and private agreements, to let historically marginalized media players into more ownership of channels and control of content.

Let us encourage traditional mainstream journalism to get tougher about keeping a critical eye on those in public and private power and keeping us all informed of what’s important – not necessarily simple or entertaining or good for the bottom line. Not all news is “Entertainment Tonight.” And news departments are trustees of the public, not the corporate media’s stockholders

In that last job, schools of journalism and professional news associations have their work cut out. We need journalism graduates who are not only better informed in a whole spectrum of special fields – and the schools do a competent job there – but who take from their training a strong sense of public service. And also graduates who are perhaps a little more hard-boiled and street-smart than the present crop, though that’s hard to teach. Thanks to the high cost of education, we get very few recruits from the ranks of those who do the world’s unglamorous and low-paid work. But as a onetime “cub” in a very different kind of setting, I cherish H.L. Mencken’s description of what being a young Baltimore reporter a hundred years ago meant to him. “I was at large,” he wrote,

in a wicked seaport of half a million people with a front seat at every public . . [B]y all orthodox cultural standards I probably reached my all-time low, for the heavy reading of my teens had been abandoned in favor of life itself. . .But it would be an exaggeration to say I was ignorant, for if I neglected the humanities I was meanwhile laying in all the worldly wisdom of a police lieutenant, a bartender, a shyster lawyer or a midwife.

We need some of that worldly wisdom in our newsrooms. Let’s figure out how to attract youngsters who have acquired it.

And as for those professional associations of editors they might remember that in union there is strength. One journalist alone can’t extract from an employer a commitment to let editors and not accountants choose the appropriate subject matter for coverage. But what if news councils blew the whistle on shoddy or cowardly managements? What if foundations gave magazines such as the Columbia Journalism Review sufficient resources to spread their stories of journalistic bias, failure or incompetence? What if entire editorial departments simply refused any longer to quote anonymous sources – or give Kobe Bryant’s trial more than the minimal space it rates by any reasonable standard – or to run stories planted by the Defense Department and impossible, for alleged security reasons, to verify? What if a professional association backed them to the hilt? Or required the same stance from all its members? It would take courage to confront powerful ownerships that way. But not as much courage as is asked of those brave journalists in some countries who face the dungeon, the executioner or the secret assassin for speaking out.

All this may be in the domain of fantasy. And then again, maybe not. What I know to be real is that we are in for the fight of our lives. I am not a romantic about democracy or journalism; the writer Andre Gide may have been right when he said that all things human, given time, go badly. But I know journalism and democracy are deeply linked in whatever chance we human beings have to redress our grievances, renew our politics, and reclaim our revolutionary ideals. Those are difficult tasks at any time, and they are even more difficult in a cynical age as this, when a deep and pervasive corruption has settled upon the republic. But too much is at stake for our spirits to flag. Earlier this week the Library of Congress gave the first Kluge Lifetime Award in the Humanities to the Polish philosopher Leslie Kolakowski. In an interview Kolakowski said: “There is one freedom on which all other liberties depend – and that is freedom of expression, freedom of speech, of print. If this is taken away, no other freedom can exist, or at least it would be soon suppressed.”

That’s the flame of truth your movement must carry forward. I am older than almost all of you and am not likely to be around for the duration; I have said for several years now that I will retire from active journalism when I turn 70 next year. But I take heart from the presence in this room, unseen, of Peter Zenger, Thomas Paine, the muckrakers, I.F. Stone and all those heroes and heroines, celebrated or forgotten, who faced odds no less than ours and did not flinch. I take heart in your presence here. It’s your fight now. Look around. You are not alone.

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Democracy in the Balance
How do we nurture the healing side of religion over the killing side? How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state?
by Bill Moyers
Sojourners, August 2004
EXCERPT:

It is widely accepted in Washington today that there is nothing wrong with a democracy dominated by the people with money. But of course there is. Money has democracy in a stranglehold and is suffocating it. During his brief campaign in 2000, before he was ambushed by the dirty tricks of the Religious Right in South Carolina and big money from George W. Bush's wealthy elites, John McCain said elections today are nothing less than an "influence peddling scheme in which both parties compete to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder."

That's the shame of politics today. The consequences: "When powerful interests shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get what they want. But it is ordinary citizens and firms that pay the price, and most of them never see it coming," according to Time magazine. Time concludes that America now has "government for the few at the expense of the many."

That's why so many people are turned off by politics. It's why we can't put things right. And it's wrong. Hear the great Justice Learned Hand on this: "If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: ‘Thou shalt not ration justice.'" He got it right: The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars, more clothes, or more vacations than anyone else. But they don't have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else.

I know: This sounds very much like a call for class war. But the class war was declared a generation ago, in a powerful polemic by a wealthy right-winger, William Simon, who was soon to be Secretary of the Treasury. By the end of the '70s, corporate America had begun a stealthy assault on the rest of our society and the principles of our democracy. Looking backward, it all seems so clear that we wonder how we could have ignored the warning signs at the time.

What has been happening to the middle and working classes is not the result of Adam Smith's invisible hand but the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual collusion, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that has made an idol of wealth and power, and a host of political decisions favoring the powerful monied interests who were determined to get back the privileges they had lost with the Depression and the New Deal. They set out to trash the social contract; to cut workforces and their wages; to scour the globe in search of cheap labor; and to shred the social safety net that was supposed to protect people from hardships beyond their control. Business Week put it bluntly: "Some people will obviously have to do with less….It will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more."

To create the intellectual framework for this revolution in public policy, they funded conservative think tanks - the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute - that churned out study after study advocating their agenda.

To put political muscle behind these ideas, they created a formidable political machine. Thomas Edsall of The Washington Post, one of the few journalists to cover the issues of class, wrote: "During the 1970s, business refined its ability to act as a class, submerging competitive instincts in favor of joint, cooperative action in the legislative area." Big business political action committees flooded the political arena with a deluge of dollars. And they built alliances with the Religious Right - Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition - who happily contrived a cultural war as a smokescreen to hide the economic plunder of the very people who were enlisted as foot soldiers in the war.

And they won. Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in America and the savviest investor of them all, put it this way: "If there was a class war, my class won."

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Happy Holiday?
The Christmas season is traditionally a time of expressing charity and goodwill toward others. But, somehow, that indiscriminant outpouring of good feelings toward several groups of Americans is not present. It's because these now dominant groups are systematically eliminating aspects of American life essential to this nation's contribution to creating a just and fair way of life. A large majority of  rightwing fundamentalist Christians and most of their evangelical brethren, members of the military and most veterans, and radical conservative Republicans in general, have successfully exerted their political will to sanction a second term for George W. Bush. Post election polls show these groups to be either largely ignorant of the issues or so principally dexterous as to be able to disregard the many contradictions of facts and positions taken by the candidate they have elevated. Their political and moral nature is inimical to democracy in America and now is distinctly not the time to be charitable and accept. These groups, perhaps unknowingly, are working whole heartedly against fundamental principles of political participation and against processes of democratic compromise. Their goal is to eliminate entirely the influence their opposition. They are acting to deny recognition in political and legal spheres and to enforce their social attitudes and so-called morality in the most intimate aspects of individual life. It does not seem to me to be a particularly good time to be merry and generous with these people. Sometimes war requires forgoing the holiday.
         --rb

CHILDREN OF THE FALLEN
Nearly 900 children have lost a parent in Iraq
By LISA HOFFMAN and ANNETTE RAINVILLE
Scripps Howard News Service, 15 December 2004

Sad to the depths of his 4-year-old soul, Jack Shanaberger knew what he didn't want to be when he grows up: a father.

"I don't want to be a daddy because daddies die," the child solemnly told his mother after his father, Staff Sgt. Wentz "Baron" Shanaberger, a military policeman from Fort Pierce, Fla., was killed March 23 in an ambush in Iraq.

On that terrible day, Jack and his four siblings joined the ranks of the largely overlooked American casualties who, until now, have gone uncounted. Although almost daily official announcements tally the war dead, the collateral damage to the children left behind has not been detailed.

But, from Defense Department casualty reports, obituaries and accounts in hometown newspapers, and family interviews, Scripps Howard News Service has identified nearly 900 U.S. children who have lost a parent in the war, from the start of the conflict in March 2003 through November, when a total of 1,256 troops had died.

Although comparably specific historical data is not available for other U.S. wars, military experts said the proportionally higher number of American children left bereaved by the Iraq war is unprecedented.

"This is a new state of affairs we have to confront," said Charles Moskos, a leading military sociologist and Northwestern University professor.

Overall, Americans in uniform today are far more likely to be married and have children than in the military of the past, Moskos and others said. And the reliance in Iraq on reserve forces _ who tend to be older and even more settled than active-duty soldiers _ also means more offspring at home.

Even though the federal government provides an array of benefits for widows, widowers and minor children, more help is needed _ including counseling _ for at least 882 American children left without a parent from the war in Iraq.

"As much as we are concerned about veterans' programs, we now have to be concerned about orphan programs," Moskos said. "This is the first time we have crossed this threshold."

According to the Scripps research, more than 40 percent of the 1,256 war dead through November were married, and 429 had children. At least half of those youngsters were 10 years old or younger. Among the parents who died were six women soldiers who had borne a total of 10 children among them _ another historic first for females in the U.S. military.

Perhaps most heartbreaking are the more than 40 troops who died without ever seeing their children. At least 34 wives were pregnant _ four with twins _ when their husbands died, and another15 had babies while their spouses were deployed. While some of the latter were able to return home on paternity leave, most died before they could.

Among those who never once held their babies was Army 1st Lt. Doyle Hufstedler, 25, of Abilene, Texas, who was killed in March when a roadside bomb hit his armored personnel carrier near Habbaniyah. In his uniform pocket, Hufstedler carried a sonogram picture of his unborn daughter, the only image he would ever have of Grace Ashley, who arrived six weeks after his death.

Ursula Pirtle gave birth to Katie, her husband's first-born and spitting image, 27 days after Army Spc. James Heath Pirtle, 27, of La Mesa, N.M., was killed Oct. 3, 2003, in an insurgent attack north of Baghdad.

"It's almost hard to look at her sometimes," Ursula Pirtle, who now lives in Harker Heights, Texas, wrote in a posthumous online letter to her husband. "I would give my right arm to get a chance to see you two together ... I know she would be the biggest joy you've ever known."

Despite their losses, Pirtle and most other surviving spouses say they still support the war. They say they are profoundly proud of their loved ones' willingness to give their lives for their country and to help bring democracy to Iraq. That pride helps their children cope as well.

Virginia Collier, of Harrison, Ark., found great solace in her husband's undimmed belief that the Iraq war was not only justified, but also engendering more good than the media has portrayed. A father of four, her husband, Army National Guard Sgt. Russell Collier, 48, was killed Oct. 3 trying to help a fellow soldier under fire in Taji, Iraq.

The pregnant wife of 1st Lt. Doyle M. Hufstedler III, Leslie Hufstedler, second from left, is consoled by family during a graveside ceremony in Abilene, Texas, on April 9, 2004. (SHNS photo by Josie Liming/ Abilene Reporter-News)

"He died doing what he loved," Veronica Collier told a local newspaper.

By all accounts, children also bring a measure of comfort to the bereaved spouses and other relatives, providing a tangible link to the parent who is gone. Hufstedler's widow, Leslie, said her daughter is a perpetual prod to get on with life.

Now sharing a home with her parents in Charlotte, N.C., Hufstedler, 25, said she dreads the coming Christmas season, which would have been the first for her brand new family, but she has resolved to celebrate for Grace's sake.

In Hinesville, Ga., Denise Marshall also expects a sad Christmas, a holiday for which her husband, Army Sgt. 1st Class Robert Marshall, once handled the biggest decorating chores.

That is the least of the new widow's problems. Since Marshall, 50, was killed in a rocket-propelled gun attack in April 2003, his wife has struggled financially and otherwise to care for their three children, all of whom have medical disabilities. The trio are getting counseling to help with their loss, but the emotional wound remains fresh.

More than a year after his father's passing, Marshall's son, Richard, 16, still has a hard time sleeping. Once, his mother said, Richard asked her, "Did Dad love his soldiers more than he loved us?"

The fierce love many fallen soldiers had for their children is evident in both the reasons they joined the service and in letters and e-mails they sent home.

Pfc. Stephen Downing, 30, of Burkesville, Ky., gave up his truck-driving job to join the Army to provide a better life for his children, Taylor, 9, and Stephen, 5.

"His kids were everything in the world for him," Downing's ex-wife, LeAnn Emmons, told a local newspaper.

A man with a soft spot for all children, Downing _ killed Oct. 28 by a sniper in Ramadi _ told his family he would also be fighting for the children of Iraq. "He told his kids that he wanted Iraqi kids to have the same opportunities (American) kids do," Emmons said.

It was his own bottomless love for his wife and two daughters that gave rise to the worst fear for Army Chief Warrant Officer William Brennan, an Army helicopter pilot killed in a crash Oct. 16 on a mission to protect Iraqi civilians fleeing under fire from insurgents.

"It's not the fear of death that wears me down. It is the feeling of not being there for my three girls," Brennan, 36, of Bethlehem, Conn., wrote in an Easter letter to his sister. Only 2 years old when his own father died, Brennan worried that, if he were killed, his children "would never know me."

Corey Shanaberger, widow of the Florida MP killed in March, is doing everything she can so her children will remember their father in both life and death. Baron Shanaberger left instructions that, if he died, his five kids should be permitted to see him in his coffin, believing that would help them come to terms with his passing and provide them some closure.

At the funeral home viewing, Jack and his twin sister, Grace, climbed up so they could touch and kiss him in his open casket. The children placed precious mementos in the coffin with him _ a little red truck, a stuffed puppy dog, a favorite doll, a photo.

Now, each night when the stars are out, Corey Shanaberger tells her children that one star is their daddy coming out of heaven to watch over them. They all blow a kiss to the sky.

"I always tell my children, 'You might forget what your daddy looked like but always remember what he felt like'," she said. "Always remember his hugs, always remember his kisses, and always remember his love."

###

An Open Letter to Time Magazine:
TomPaine.com, 23 December 2004
Cindy Sheehan's heartfelt rebuke to Time offers a perspective we hope the nation will hear more of in 2005 as we contemplate the consequences of our leaders' recklessness.

Cindy Sheehan lives in California.

Dear Time Editors:

My son, Spc. Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq on 04/04/04. This has been an extraordinary couple of weeks of "slaps in the faces" to us families of fallen heroes.

First, the Secretary of Defense—Donald Rumsfeld—admits to the world something that we as military families already know: The United States was not prepared for nor had any plan for the assault on Iraq. Our children were sent to fight an ill-conceived and badly prosecuted war. Our troops were sent with the wrong type of training, bad equipment, inferior protection and thin supply lines. Our children have been killed and we have made the ultimate sacrifice for this fiasco of a war, then we find out this week that Rumsfeld doesn't even have the courtesy or compassion to sign the "death letters"—as they are so callously called. Besides the upcoming holidays and the fact we miss our children desperately, what else can go wrong this holiday season?

Well let's see. Oh yes. George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to three more architects of the quagmire that is Iraq. Thousands of people are dead and Bremer, Tenet and Franks are given our country's highest civilian award. What's next?

To top everything off—after it has been proven that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, there were no ties between Saddam and 9/11 and over 1,300 brave young people in this country are dead and Iraq lies in ruins— what does Time Magazine do? Names George W. Bush as its "Man of the Year." The person who betrayed this country into a needless war and whom I hold ultimately responsible for my son's death and who was questionably elected, again, to a second term, is honored this way by your magazine.

I hope we finally find peace in our world and that our troops who remain in Iraq are brought home speedily—after all, there was no reason for our troops to be there in the first place. No reason for my son and over 1,300 others to have been taken from their families. No reason for the infrastructure of Iraq to be demolished and thousands of Iraqis being killed. No reason for the notion of a "happy" holiday to be robbed from my family forever. I hope that our "leaders" don't invade any other countries which pose no serious threat to the United States. I hope there is no draft. I hope that the five people mentioned here (and many others) will finally be held responsible for the horrible mistake they got our country into. I hope that competence is finally rewarded and incompetence is appropriately punished. These are my wishes for 2005.

This isn't the first time your magazine has selected a questionable man for this honor—but it's the first time it affected my family so personally and so sorrowfully.

Cindy Sheehan

###

The Politics of the Christmas story
By James Carroll
Boston Globe via TomPaine.com, 21 December 2004
THE SINGLE most important fact about the birth of Jesus, as recounted in the Gospels, is one that receives almost no emphasis in the American festival of Christmas. The child who was born in Bethlehem represented a drastic political challenge to the imperial power of Rome. The nativity story is told to make the point that Rome is the enemy of God, and in Jesus, Rome's day is over.

The Gospel of Matthew builds its nativity narrative around Herod's determination to kill the baby, whom he recognizes as a threat to his own political sway. The Romans were an occupation force in Palestine, and Herod was their puppet-king. To the people of Israel, the Roman occupation, which preceded the birth of Jesus by at least 50 years, was a defilement, and Jewish resistance was steady. (The historian Josephus says that after an uprising in Jerusalem around the time of the birth of Jesus, the Romans crucified 2,000 Jewish rebels.)

Herod was right to feel insecure on his throne. In order to preempt any challenge from the rumored newborn "king of the Jews," Herod murdered "all the male children who were 2 years old or younger." Joseph, warned in a dream, slipped out of Herod's reach with Mary and Jesus. Thus, right from his birth, the child was marked as a political fugitive.

The Gospel of Luke puts an even more political cast on the story. The narrative begins with the decree of Caesar Augustus calling for a world census -- a creation of tax rolls that will tighten the empire's grip on its subject peoples. It was Caesar Augustus who turned the Roman republic into a dictatorship, a power-grab he reinforced by proclaiming himself divine.

His census decree is what requires the journey of Joseph and the pregnant Mary to Bethlehem, but it also defines the context of their child's nativity as one of political resistance. When the angel announces to shepherds that a "savior has been born," as scholars like Richard Horsley point out, those hearing the story would immediately understand that the blasphemous claim by Caesar Augustus to be "savior of the world" was being repudiated.

When Jesus was murdered by Rome as a political criminal -- crucifixion was the way such rebels were executed -- the story's beginning was fulfilled in its end. But for contingent historical reasons (the savage Roman war against the Jews in the late first century, the gradual domination of the Jesus movement by Gentiles, the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century) the Christian memory deemphasized the anti-Roman character of the Jesus story. Eventually, Roman imperialism would be sanctified by the church, with Jews replacing Romans as the main antagonists of Jesus, as if he were not Jewish himself. (Thus, Herod is remembered more for being part-Jewish than for being a Roman puppet.)

In modern times, religion and politics began to be understood as occupying separate spheres, and the nativity story became spiritualized and sentimentalized, losing its political edge altogether. "Peace" replaced resistance as the main motif. The baby Jesus was universalized, removed from his decidedly Jewish context, and the narrative's explicit critiques of imperial dominance and of wealth were blunted.

This is how it came to be that Christmas in America has turned the nativity of Jesus on its head. No surprise there, for if the story were told today with Roman imperialism at its center, questions might arise about America's new self-understanding as an imperial power. A story of Jesus born into a land oppressed by a hated military occupation might prompt an examination of the American occupation of Iraq. A story of Jesus come decidedly to the poor might cast a pall over the festival of consumption. A story of the Jewishness of Jesus might undercut the Christian theology of replacement.

Today the Roman empire is recalled mainly as a force for good -- those roads, language, laws, civic magnificence, "order" everywhere. The United States of America also understands itself as acting in the world with good intentions, aiming at order. "New world order," as George H.W. Bush put it.

That we have this in common with Rome is caught by the Latin motto that appears just below the engraved pyramid on each American dollar bill, "Novus Ordo Seculorum." But, as Iraq reminds us, such "order" comes at a cost, far more than a dollar. The price is always paid in blood and suffering by unseen "nobodies" at the bottom of the imperial pyramid. It is their story, for once, that is being told this week.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

###

A Republican Dictionary
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor's Cut, The Nation, 9 November 2004

...we will stay and fight to retake our country from the forces of extremism, corruption, and incompetence that have set up shop in the White House, Capitol Hill, and K Street. Taking our cue from the venerable military strategist Sun-tzu, the first stage of this battle is to understand our opponents, who are as bold as they are devious.

Nowhere is their deception more in need of debunking than in the realm of political discourse, where they have over the last several decades created a veritable Orwellian Code of encrypted language. The key to their linguistic strategy is to use words, which sound moderate to us but mean something completely different to their base. Their tactics range from the childish use of antonyms, i.e., "clean" = "dirty" to the pseudo-academic use of prefixes--"neo" is a favorite--to the pernicious (and very expensive) rebranding of traditional political labels-- "liberal"--as an insult.

We need to break the code by building a Republican dictionary. Here's a small list I've put together to get us started. Please feel free to add your own contributions by clicking here. I'll be publishing more examples in the coming weeks.

BI-PARTISANSHIP, n. When conservative Republicans work together with moderate Republicans to pass legislation Democrats hate.

CLARIFY, v. Repeating the same lie over and over again.

CLEAN, adj. The word used to modify any aspect of the environment Republican legislation allows corporations to pollute, poison, or destroy.

FAIRER, adj. Regressive.

FAITH, n. The stubborn belief that God approves of Republican moral values despite the preponderance of textual evidence to the contrary.

FAITH COMMUNITY, n. Evangelicals, because they are saved, and hawkish conservative Jews, because they are useful. Israel is the bait-on-the-hook just waiting for God to take that Rapturous bite.

FISCAL CONSERVATIVE, n. A Republican who is in the minority.

FREEDOM, n. What Arabs want but can't achieve on their own without Western military intervention. It bears a striking resemblance to chaos.

GROWTH, n. The justification for tax cuts for the rich. What happens to the deficits when Republicans cut taxes on the rich.

HONESTY, n. Lies told in simple declarative sentences: "Freedom is on the march."

HUMBLE FOREIGN POLICY, n. The invasion of any sovereign nation whose leadership Republicans don't like.

HUMBLED adj. What a Republican says right after a close election and right before he governs in an arrogant manner. 

MORAL VALUES, n. Hatred of homosexuals dressed up in Biblical language.

MANDATE, n. What a Republican claims to possess when only 49 percent of the voting public loathes him instead of 51 percent.

THE MEDIA, n. Immoral elitist liberally-biased traitors who should leave Republicans alone so they can complete God's work on Earth in peace and quiet, behind closed doors.

PHILOSOPHY, n. Religion.

SIMPLIFY, tr. v. To cut the taxes of Republican donors.

SLAVE, n. A person without legal rights, e,g. a fetus.

BONUS DEFINITION: NEOCONSERVATIVES, n. Nerds with Napoleonic complexes.

###

Deep in the Heart of (liberal) Texas
By Dave Denison
Boston Globe, 19 December 2004

AUSTIN, TEXAS -- Liberals around the country took the reelection of George W. Bush hard, but nowhere was the pain more distinct and intimate than among liberals in Texas. This was, after all, the fourth time in a row they had yearned for Bush's defeat and lost: twice when he ran for governor, twice again for president. So when the comedian Jon Stewart appeared on a movie screen before a gathering of a few hundred Texas liberals on Dec. 4, he did what comes naturally to a satirist: He explored that pain.

The scene was the State Theater in downtown Austin. The Texas Observer, the gadfly magazine that has been home to such editors and writers as Ronnie Dugger, Willie Morris, and Molly Ivins, was celebrating its 50th anniversary with a series of panel discussions on the media, the elections, and the general state of things (in a word, dismal).

Stewart had agreed to send a "video tribute." Sitting at the familiar set he uses for "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, he let out a greeting in the manner of a cartoon Texan bellowing "Yeeee-haw!" Except Stewart shouted "Shaaahhh-lom!" He then attempted to praise the Observer for all its fine work in making Texas what it is today -- the joke being that almost everything the Observer has stood for seems to have gone up in smoke.

"Here's to 50 more years of . . . observing," he said in signing off. "Because as Democrats, that's probably all you'll be doing."

It got a big roar from the crowd. Texas liberals, by necessity, long ago learned the importance of laughing to keep from crying.

But Stewart's gibe stung a little, too. The Observer was born in 1954 out of the determination of a small group of liberal Democratic activists to break the conservative hold on the state Democratic party, which at the time was the only party that mattered in Texas. They started a weekly newspaper (later to become a biweekly) that, under the editorship of Dugger (then only 24), soon disappointed most of the backers by proclaiming itself an independent voice that "will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it." Most funders pulled out. Its circulation never grew beyond 14,000 and more often has hovered around 5,000.

And as for that project of breaking the conservative grip?

"As we all know, when the Observer started, Texas was a one-party state," Ivins said to a crowd of 700 at the anniversary dinner that evening, "and. . . well, here we are again." Every statewide office and both chambers of the Texas legislature are controlled now by Republicans. And the contagion has spread across the country, and has seized Washington, D.C.

Facts are facts, and it helps to face them while surrounded by a few hundred friends. So the day's events were, oddly enough, perfectly uplifting. Any program featuring the likes of Molly Ivins, former Texas governor Ann Richards (who gave an uproarious talk about her irritation with airport security pat-downs), populist author and broadcaster Jim Hightower, and a performance by Willie Nelson is sure to be a good time. The question hanging over the event -- is history moving backwards? -- was answered with reminders of gains won and the importance of hope. If nothing else, people were in the mood to celebrate survival: "We're still here."

. . .

When I took a job at the Observer in 1984, in the year of the magazine's 30th anniversary, I got it in my head that the nation seemed to be trying to return to the complacence of the 1950s. Ronald Reagan had just been reelected and the specter of an amiable two-term Republican in the White House, along with general American contentment and liberal futility, called to mind the era of Dwight D. Eisenhower. When I looked back at the earliest issues of the Observer, though, I found the opposite of complacence: Dissent was bubbling up like oil, and Dugger and his writers were wildcatters.

We can see now that 1954 was, in fact, the beginning of a turning point. Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin was censured by his colleagues on Dec. 2 of that year. A liberal resistance was gathering. The journalist I.F. Stone started I.F. Stone's Weekly in 1953. Not just the Observer, but the radical magazine Dissent (conceived at Brandeis University by literary critic Irving Howe and sociologist Lewis Coser) was launched in 1954. (Hugh Hefner also founded Playboy, but that's a different story.) Critics such as C. Wright Mills ("The Power Elite") and William Whyte ("The Organization Man") wrote pointed critiques of American corporatism, conformism, and materialism. The Supreme Court had ruled in the spring of 1954 against school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. A civil rights movement was stirring.

And yet, just as liberals were getting busy in the mid-1950s, so was a new kind of conservative. It was in 1955 that a young William F. Buckley started his magazine, National Review. The prospects for a new ideological movement on the right weren't obvious, nor did they look promising when Barry Goldwater was crushed by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But the movement arrived with Reagan in 1980. The conservative mood of the 1950s was transformed into the conservative movement of today.

Where does that leave marginal, out-of-favor political magazines like The Texas Observer? Perhaps the best answers at the Dec. 4 event were presented in a short documentary made by Texas-based filmmaker Paul Stekler. "Every government needs a minister of irritance," said longtime Observer funder Bernard Rapoport (the state's only socialist-minded insurance magnate), who added that the Observer can be "the most irritating publication I know."

The film recalled the forays of founding editor Ronnie Dugger into deep East Texas in 1955 to write about a drive-by shooting that killed a 16-year-old black boy -- the kind of crime newspapers were accustomed to ignoring at the time. Recounted, as well, was an Observer investigation in 1999 of a roundup of dozens of blacks in Tulia, Texas, on trumped-up drug charges that turned out to be the work of one unscrupulous local police investigator. That story got little press attention until the Observer came along. (After a rash of national publicity, the faulty convictions were eventually overturned and the accused set free.)

Dugger, who is now an independent writer living in Somerville, is shown in the film saying that every blow against injustice is worth striking; it reduces the volume of injustice in the world. Later, I asked him if he were starting a magazine today whether he might prefer a name like "Dissent" (or even a magazine like Dissent) over the more reportorial "Observer." He thought not. Being an observer always meant, in his mind, "observing with a serious edge."

"It's active looking, and telling," he said. "That's different than the passive idea of being an observer."

Fifty more years of that kind of observing? Whether liberals are in or out of power, it will be necessary work, and we'll need more of it in more places, at higher journalistic levels, than we've been getting. Without active, critical observing, democracy withers. And when that happens, history really can move backwards.

Dave Denison was an editor at The Texas Observer from 1984 through 1989 and at CommonWealth magazine from 1995 through 1999.

© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

###

Endless Lies Are Rationale for the Bush Agenda
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 15 December 2004

Certainly...the defining issue of the next two years, for Democrats as much as the president: Social Security. Specifically, whether to phase out the program or maintain it as the anchor of retirement security in the United States.

As Paul Krugman, Kevin Drum and many others have been making clear in recent days, the entirety of the president's argument is based on a series of well-constructed lies. The president's advisors were never more truthful than they were when they compared the coming round of disinformation and fear-mongering to their public campaign in support of the Iraq war in 2002.

The Social Security "crisis" is manufactured; there is no crisis. To the extent there are long-term financing problems, the president's plan will gravely worsen them. The problem we face isn't over Social Security, which continues to run up huge surpluses (just as it was intended to under the early-80s reform), but that our non-Social Security budget continues to run massive structural deficits. Or rather, it has returned to running massive structural deficits after getting into the black in the late 1990s through the combined exertions of a Democratic president and a Republican congress. Social Security isn't the problem, but rather George W. Bush's reckless fiscal policy.

In any case, as I say, the whole thing is lies. This isn't about the program's problems but about its success. That's why the president and his allies want to phase it out. It's not about financing but about ideology.

I'm going to try to dive more deeply into the dishonesty of the president's plan and explanations of different aspects of the debate, though much of it will simply be steering readers to the most concise and straightforward explanations from other sites and sources.

Much of what we'll be focusing on here is strategy: how to defeat the president's plan, which will rip-off men and women across the country who, in President Clinton's much mocked but still apt phrase, "work hard and play by the rules."

So, a few points on strategy.

One thing that Democrats must understand is that they cannot win this battle legislatively. At one level what I mean by that is simply the math we can all see. The president has comfortable majorities in both chambers and in his first term (when he was a minority president and had smaller majorities) he commanded historic levels of party discipline. If he can hold those caucuses together, he can pass this and sign it and that's it. Doesn't matter what Democrats do.

This is, of course, obvious, as simple as the math, as I noted. But the implications for strategy are not necessarily that obvious.

As I wrote a month ago, the Democrats have to start seeing themselves as a true party of opposition in large part because of the way President Bush has reshaped the capital into something much more like a parliamentary system. There's no point in Democrats trying to improve legislation at the margins, because they won't be given any real opportunity to do so. The logic of the situation dictates coming up with an alternative plan not only to make the differences clear to voters now but to set the issue stage for the 2006 and 2008 elections.

So point one is party unity. The Democrats don't just need to keep their caucuses overwhelmingly together on this issue. They need to avoid even a single defection in the House or the Senate. From what I hear from knowledgable sources this is already pretty close to doable in the House; and probably no more than three or perhaps four are even in play in the Senate.

Such unity has the obvious advantage of giving Republicans less breathing room in putting together majority votes in both houses. But it does much more than that. Making the elimination of Social Security a strictly Republican gambit raises the political stakes dramatically. Many Republicans will be far more cautious without bipartisan cover. Democrats must deny them even the thinnest of fig leaves. Making it a strictly Republican affair will also provide valuable clarity in the coming election, rather than the muddled picture created by Democratic defections on the 2001 tax bill.

Still another important benefit is the boon it will give to Democratic morale and energy in opposition. The coming debate over Social Security could become an engine for unity or disunity for Democrats. And the leaders of the party should be doing everything they can right now to lay the groundwork for making it the former rather than the latter. And party unity is the place to start.

If everyone isn't on the same page, that disunity will exacerbate the NewDem/Labor-Liberal divide -- something Dems simply can't afford right now. If they can achieve unity, they can demonstrate to themselves that they have points of common purpose that transcend their divisions. And that realization will itself make those divisions more manageable.

Luckily, such unity should not be that hard to achieve -- for two reasons. First, very few Democrats support privatization. Second, those relatively few in the centrist wing of the party who are open to the idea in the abstract are scared off by the budget-busting debt the president wants to take on to pay for his plan.

The worst thing that can happen for Democrats is that a few of their members of congress get played for fools by signing on to President Bush's plan in the hopes that they can secure some small improvements in the legislation or reflected glory for themselves -- slightly less money carved out of Social Security, bumping up the payroll tax cap, etc. Whatever miniscule benefits could be achieved in such a fashion would be greatly outweighed by the way that it would lessen the chances for fixing the damage after the next election.

The question will be how to enforce discipline at the margins. And here Democrats should take a page from the Republican playbook in 1994 (on health care) and 1998 (on impeachment).

I think Democrats should consider pulling together the major funders of the party, the official committees, the major organizations, basically the entire infrastructure of the Democratic party and making clear to individual members that if they sign on to the president's plan to phase out Social Security, those various institutions and individuals won't fund their campaigns. Not in 2006, not ever.

Similar committments can come from voters, activists and volunteers. And free rein to primary challengers. If a couple folks lose their seats because of underfunding or tough primaries, so be it. (In a subsequent post, we'll discuss how this compares to what the House Republicans did in 1998).

It's that important. And there is an importance to unity on this issue that transcends the particular debate over Social Security.

Next, as we've discussed before, this isn't a debate about 'reform', 'privatization' or 'saving' Social Security. It's about phasing out the Social Security program, or not. Framing it any other way concedes half the battle before the fighting even begins.

(There is a subsidiary question here of whether Dems take a stand-pat stance in general, or come up with their own 'plan' to go up against the president's. That's a question we'll return to.)

Third, beware the risks of arguments about risk.

Republicans want to make this an argument about people who believe in markets and people who don't. That's not true. But Democrats can make it seem true by framing too much of the debate on 'risky scheme' lines. Letting the argument be framed that way is a losing proposition because most Americans instinctively believe in markets and largely for good reason.

The issue here isn't markets. Most Democrats favor plans that would make it easier for middle- and lower-income families to save and invest money for retirement. That would make the overall retirement picture much better.

The issue is balance and commonsense. A breadwinner with dependents who gets a lump sum salary at the beginning of the year and invests it all in a few hot start-ups doesn't believe in the market; he or she is just a fool. A wise investment portfolio is balanced between riskier and more conservative investments. The best way to make this argument (and the most valid one) is to make it clear that Democrats want people to be able to invest. That really is the path to wealth. But Social Security is different. It is, among other things, a baseline of guaranteed retirement security and income for everyone. You get it whether you retire in boom times or bust times, whether life has dealt you good cards or bad cards. The two things are simply different.

A related danger is placing too much, or rather an incorrect emphasis on the windfall of money Wall Street would make because of phasing out Social Security. This is true, of course. And it helps impugn the motives of those pushing for the abolition of the program. But fundamentally it doesn't matter.

If privatization really were a good thing for most Americans, the fact that some people would make money on it wouldn't be a reason to oppose it. The reason to oppose it is that it's a very bad deal for most Americans. The fact that lots of Wall Streeters will get rich racking up fees on these tiny accounts only serves to show why they're pushing so hard for it.

Again, it's a matter of emphasis that I fear too many Democrats miss. Focusing too much on the Wall Street windfall risks placing the emphasis of the Dems opposition on something that is, fundamentally, beside the point. It can also make the opposition appear to be based simply in bitterness or resentment.

And this brings me to my final point. Focusing on the Wall Street stuff evades the key issue. And Democrats have built up a habit of doing that a lot on many issues -- thinking they can skirt against the wind, play up ancillary issues, and generally muddle through without facing up to the heart of the matter. The reasons they've developed this habit are many and for another post. But in the case of Social Security it is almost sure to lead to defeat.

This isn't about financing. It's about whether Americans get to keep Social Security, a program of guaranteed retirement insurance, which unlike the other key elements of a good retirement plan -- investments and pensions -- cannot be taken away.

Social Security has been overwhelmingly popular for well over half a century. Nothing suggests that popularity has diminished, save scare-mongering telling people that they won't be able to enjoy its benefits.

Democrats should run into this fight, not away from it.

###

A [Sick] Soldier for the Cause of Christ [One of Many]
Gary Cass is the new executive director of Fort Lauderdalebased Center for Reclaiming America, a grass-roots force in the cultural war against abortion and gay rights.
BY BETH REINHARD
Miami Herald, 9 December 2004

In the painting above Gary Cass's head, a Christian soldier kneels at an altar, surrendering his sword to the service of Christ.

Cass, too, sees himself as a soldier. Not in a military battle but in an all-consuming, all-important cultural war between secular humanism and Christianity.

His new mission: leading the Center for Reclaiming America, which advocates conservative Christian principles in public life.

Cass was hired in July and got to work on www.christianvotes.com, a national drive to push one million Christians to the polls. He helped target 400,000 evangelicals, whom he credits with helping President Bush win reelection.

Now, from a nondescript office building on Federal Highway, between an Olive Garden restaurant and an Exxon gas station, the 47-year-old Christian soldier is marching onward. He plans to identify politically active evangelicals in all 435 congressional districts, open a Washington lobbying office and boost his $1 million budget tenfold.

''Our biggest challenge is to make sure that the gains of this election cycle are not squandered,'' he said. Cass moved to South Florida from San Diego, where he had launched a petition to recall a fellow school board member who backed rules against harassing gay students.

The effort failed. But with the help of influential Republican politicians, Cass's socially conservative slate defeated board member Ted Crooks and his allies at the polls.

Cass' opposition to the so-called ''homosexual agenda'' led newspaper editorials to brand him as ''intolerant'' and ''spiteful.'' He drew criticism again when, after a local high school student shot two classmates dead, he blamed the campus' ``consistent disrespect for human life.''

But Cass espouses his beliefs with gentle references to Scripture, not with fist-pounding fire and brimstone. With a Tom Selleck mustache and thick brown hair, he's more Ronald Reagan than Pat Buchanan.

Crooks said Cass promoted his personal ambitions above the students' interests.

''He's all smiles and Christian brotherhood, but I always had questions about his intentions,'' Crooks said.

''That's ridiculous,'' said Jim Kelly, who also served with Cass on the school board. ``They make it sound like he was trying to impose Bible study and creationism, and that's not true. The people trying to impose their ideology were the liberals.''

Before he became a Christian at 21, Cass did ''things I don't want my kids to know about . . . all the things musicians are known for.'' He points to a scar on his chin from a near-fatal car crash.

After the accident, he joined a Christian rock group. He played the saxophone in Soviet-controlled Europe in the early 1980s, spreading the Gospel and falling in love with the band's singer, now his wife.

He did his religious training in California, earning a bachelor's degree from Vanguard University and graduate degrees from Westminster Theological Seminary.

His antiabortion fervor has led to three arrests, twice for blockading or protesting at clinics and once for rallying at the Supreme Court.

Cass is unsympathetic to liberals offended by his claim on moral values. Abortion and gay marriage are proscribed in the Bible, he believes.

''The fundamental problem of liberals is moral, not intellectual,'' he said. ``They're unwilling to do the will of God.''
SEE ALSO:
God and the GOP
Bush win energizes Christian groups
BY BETH REINHARD AND ALEXANDRA ALTER
Miami Herald, 12 December 2004
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
The View of Another Bigoted, Theocratic Fundamentalist Christian
NPR's Fresh Air, 15 December 2004
Terry Gross interview with Richard Viguerie.
Richard Viguerie is considered the "funding father" of the conservative movement. In the 1970s and 80s he pioneered direct mail political fundraising. He is a co-author of America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power. He now heads the organization American Target Advertising Inc.

###

Walking the walk on family values
By William V. D'Antonio
Boston Globe, 31 October 2004
PRESIDENT Bush and Vice President Cheney make reference to "Massachusetts liberals" as if they were referring to people with some kind of disease. I decided it was time to do some research on these people, and here is what I found.

The state with the lowest divorce rate in the nation is Massachusetts. At latest count it had a divorce rate of 2.4 per 1,000 population, while the rate for Texas was 4.1.

But don't take the US government's word for it. Take a look at the findings from the George Barna Research Group. George Barna, a born-again Christian whose company is in Ventura, Calif., found that Massachusetts does indeed have the lowest divorce rate among all 50 states. More disturbing was the finding that born-again Christians have among the highest divorce rates.

The Associated Press, using data supplied by the US Census Bureau, found that the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt. The AP report stated that "the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average of 4.2 per thousand people." The 10 Southern states with some of the highest divorce rates were Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. By comparison nine states in the Northeast were among those with the lowest divorce rates: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

How to explain these differences? The following factors provide a partial answer:

More couples in the South enter their first marriage at a younger age.

Average household incomes are lower in the South.

Southern states have a lower percentage of Roman Catholics, "a denomination that does not recognize divorce." Barna's study showed that 21 percent of Catholics had been divorced, compared with 29 percent of Baptists.

Education. Massachusetts has about the highest rate of education in the country, with 85 percent completing high school. For Texas the rate is 76 percent. One third of Massachusetts residents have completed college, compared with 23 percent of Texans, and the other Northeast states are right behind Massachusetts.

The liberals from Massachusetts have long prided themselves on their emphasis on education, and it has paid off: People who stay in school longer get married at a later age, when they are more mature, are more likely to secure a better job, and job income increases with each level of formal education. As a result, Massachusetts also leads in per capita and family income while births by teenagers, as a percent of total births, was 7.4 for Massachusetts and 16.1 for Texas.

The Northeast corridor, with Massachusetts as the hub, does have one of the highest levels of Catholics per state total. And it is also the case that these are among the states most strongly supportive of the Catholic Church's teaching on social justice issues such as minimum and living wages and universal healthcare.

For all the Bible Belt talk about family values, it is the people from Kerry's home state, along with their neighbors in the Northeast corridor, who live these values. Indeed, it is the "blue" states, led led by Massachusetts and Connecticut, that have been willing to invest more money over time to foster the reality of what it means to leave no children behind. And they have been among the nation's leaders in promoting a living wage as their goal in public employment. The money they have invested in their future is known more popularly as taxes; these so-called liberal people see that money is their investment to help insure a compassionate, humane society. Family values are much more likely to be found in the states mistakenly called out-of-the-mainstream liberal. By their behavior you can know them as the true conservatives. They are showing how to conserve family life through the way they live their family values.

William V. D'Antonio is professor emeritus at University of Connecticut and a visiting research professor at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

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