THE OWLS' NEST - Mostly U.S. Politics
This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
With no government action, Exxon experts told us during a visit to The Post last week, average temperatures are likely to rise by a catastrophic (my word, not theirs) 5 degrees Celsius, with rises of 6, 7 or even more quite possible.Here's Lindsey Graham on Republican policy towards Muslims:
How many of you believe we lose elections because we're not hard-ass enough on immigration? I believe we're losing the Hispanic vote because they think we don't like them. I believe that it's not about turning out evangelical Christians, but about repairing the damage done by incredibly hateful rhetoric driving a wall between us and the fastest growing demographic in America, who should be Republicans…If you wanna ask Hispanics why they've gone from 44 percent of support for the Republican party to 27, they'll tell you "we don't think you like us." And given what I've heard I would be in their camp, too...It's not because of social issues that we will lose. It's positions we take regarding social issues that can disconnect us from America at large. How many of you believe there should be an exception for a woman that has been a victim of rape, has become pregnant? I don't believe you can be pro-life and win an election if you're gonna tell a woman who's been raped she has to carry the child of the rapist, you're losing most Americans.
The Government can help protect its citizens against the random and the reckless violence of crime at gun point. We have come here to the Cabinet Room today to sign the most comprehensive gun control law ever signed in this Nation's history. Some of you may be interested in knowing—really—what this bill does: It stops murder by mail order. It bars the interstate sale of all guns and the bullets that load them. It stops the sale of lethal weapons to those too young to bear their terrible responsibility. It puts up a big "off-limits" sign, to stop gunrunners from dumping cheap foreign "$10 specials" on the shores of our country.A comment by Charlie Pierce:
Congress adopted most of our recommendations. But this bill—as big as this bill is—still falls short, because we just could not get the Congress to carry out the requests we made of them. I asked for the national registration of all guns and the licensing of those who carry those guns. For the fact of life is that there are over 160 million guns in this country—more firearms than families. If guns are to be kept out of the hands of the criminal, out of the hands of the insane, and out of the hands of the irresponsible, then we just must have licensing. If the criminal with a gun is to be tracked down quickly, then we must have registration in this country. The voices that blocked these safeguards were not the voices of an aroused nation. They were the voices of a powerful lobby, a gun lobby, that has prevailed for the moment in an election year.
But the key to effective crime control remains, in my judgment, effective gun control. And those of us who are really concerned about crime just must—somehow, someday—make our voices felt. We must continue to work for the day when Americans can get the full protection that every American citizen is entitled to and deserves-the kind of protection that most civilized nations have long ago adopted. We have been through a great deal of anguish these last few months and these last few years—too much anguish to forget so quickly.
Some days, I truly wish the Tree of Liberty was a cactus, so we wouldn't have to water it so damned much.
"What's going to happen when those Syrian refugees open fire in a Chick-fil-A"? Fox News' Todd Starnes, November 17.The Ebola insanity, of course, took place within the couple of weeks immediately preceding the 2012 election, when the Republicans were fearmongering as hard as they could to convince people that the world was simply falling apart, and it was all Obama's fault.
The bile is coming in over the transom so quickly it's getting hard to keep up, as the conservative media signal their latest xenophobic and Islamophobic outburst, this time targeting refugees fleeing war-torn Syria.
Not interested in having a serious debate about how or when to accept mostly Muslim refugees in the wake of the Paris terrorist massacre, Fox News is sponsoring a far-right hate brigade that not only targets refugees, but President Obama, too.
It's a bigoted bank shot for conservative commentators: Accuse Obama of coddling would-be terrorists (including widows and orphans) who are viewed as encroaching on our borders. Or so goes the battle cry, which accuses the president of abdicating America's national security -- and allegedly doing so on purpose.
*Fox's Jesse Watters: Obama is inviting in "the barbarians at the gate."
*Fox's Andrea Tantaros: "Everything that the president is doing seems to benefit what ISIS is doing."
*Ben Stein: Obama's "hatred of America" may be "because he's part black." "He does not wish America well."
In other words, there's a dark, invading force that Obama won't stop. In fact, he seems intent on welcoming it across the border so it can wreak havoc here at home.
Sound familiar?
Indeed, watching the Fox meltdown over refugees you might think, 'This is unique brand of rhetorical manure.' I mean, Obama putting Muslim refugees above the safety of Americans? Opting for a "forced infiltration"? But if you hit the rewind button to October and November 2014, then you remember, 'Oh yeah, they did pretty much the exact same thing twelve months ago with their full-scale meltdown over a domestic Ebola outbreak that never happened.'
Is this now becoming an annual autumn tradition? Some Fox talkers are even connecting the refugee/Ebola dots, although they fail to see it as problematic. "He's imported illegal aliens," said Watters of Obama. "Remember he brought all of the Ebola victims into this country?"
Remember Ebola, indeed.
In terms of sheer fearmongering, Fox News led the wild, right-wing pack. There was Elisabeth Hasselbeck suggesting America be put on lockdown, and her Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy absurdly claiming the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention was lying about Ebola because it's "part of the administration." (Naturally, Fox also promoted a conspiracy theorist who claimed the CDC was lying when it cautioned people not to panic.)
Andrea Tantaros fretted that people who traveled and showed symptoms of Ebola will "seek treatment from a witch doctor" instead of going to the hospital, while Rush Limbaugh implied Obama wanted Ebola to spread in America.
That last point is key to understanding the levels to which Fox talkers and their allies sink in their Obama Derangement Syndrome, both in 2014 and in 2015: The Obama administration didn't supposedly bungle the Ebola scare because it was incompetent. It bungled Ebola because Obama wanted Americans infected.
*Laura Ingraham: Obama's willing to expose the U.S. military to "the Ebola virus to carry out this redistribution of the privileged's wealth."
*Michael Savage: Obama "wants to infect the nation with Ebola" in order "to make things fair and equitable" in the world.
*Fox's Keith Ablow: Obama won't protect America from Ebola because his "affinities, his affiliations are with" Africa and "not us ... He's their leader." Ablow added, "We don't have a president who has the American people as his primary interest."
It's just ugly, rancid stuff; the kind of hate speech that has rarely passed for 'mainstream' conservative rhetoric in modern American politics. (For the record, the Obama administration was "vindicated" for the way it handled the Ebola scare, NBC News recently noted.)
Twelve months later we're witnessing the same kind of toxic sewage (what else should we call it?), as Fox leads the campaign to condemn the president of the United States a terrorist-sympathizer who can't be trusted to deal with Syrian refugees.
It's important to note that during the media's Ebola scare last year, lots of mainstream press outlets produced egregiously bad reporting that not only failed to illuminate the public, but it played into the fear the GOP was trying to whip up during the midterm election season. (Sen. Rand Paul: Ebola is "incredibly contagious.")
"Here's What Should Scare You About Ebola" read one overexcited New Republic headline, while CNN's Ashleigh Banfield speculated that "All ISIS would need to do is send a few of its suicide killers into an Ebola-affected zone and then get them on some mass transit, somewhere where they would need to be to affect the most damage."
I'm all for welcoming the huddled masses yearning to be free. It's the ones yearning to wage jihad that I'm worried about. What's going to happen when those Syrian refugees open fire at a Chick-Fil-A or launch a chemical attack at Disney World or explode a pressure cooker at Cafe du Monde in the French Quarter?
In the week since the (RADICAL ISLAMIC) terrorist attacks in Paris, a disturbingly large number of Republican governors and lawmakers (and way too many Democrats) have been running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
"The refugees are coming! The refugees are coming!" they shout from the rooftops.
Faced with an enemy who hates us for our freedom, some of these thought leaders have suggested taking actions that were "frankly unthinkable" in the aftermath of 9/11, when America itself came under attack—but that's not to say that they're entirely without precedent.
In fact, one proposal—rounding up everyone of a certain religious/ethnic persuasion and locking them away in internment camps—was even the subject of a very famous Supreme Court case.
Other ideas being floated harken back to earlier times, places, and events—such as pre-war (Nazi) Germany and the Spanish Inquisition.
Also, too ... (the) Benghazi!
Now, you might not like any of this, but it's "smart politics" ... or something.
[Terrorist organizations] are groups that each grew in the face of war. In fact, it’s not hard to associate each of the major terrorist groups with a specific conflict. Islamic Jihad grew from groups involved the Lebanese Civil War during the 1980s, al-Qaida and the Taliban from groups fighting the Soviet invasion (with subsequent U.S. support) in Afghanistan, and of course ISIS ISIL Daesh is an amalgam of groups that resulted from the conflicts in Iraq and Syria. Each group is a specific assembly of militia forces that attracts attention for a period, before the world moves on to being sure that the group resulting from the next conflict is the real problem.Says Sumner: "None of them is the second coming of the Nazis." Although fearmongering politicians present these rag-tag groups as en existential threat to Western civilization, they are not:
No matter how convenient that analogy is for either war-hawks or fear-peddlers, none of these groups is a threat to the existence or governance of any state, except possibly those destabilized nations in which their main force is located. They are not equipped with massive armies or power air forces.They cannot cause us serious harm. We, however, can indeed cause serious harm to ourselves and our societies if we lash out violently out of irrational fear.
In fact, the destabilization of the Middle East, which was a goal of both East and West throughout the 20th century, is the reason these groups have a place in which to grow. The Taliban was able to acquire Afghanistan in the dust following the Soviet retreat. Daesh has a handful of towns along a couple of hundred miles of highway only because both Syria and Iraq are so dysfunctional. To a large extent these groups aren’t that different from the people they replaced. Local warlords and regional strongmen. That’s the Middle East as we made it.
Daesh, which so many are trying to build into a horrible threat, has not even managed to topple Bashar al-Assad even though he was half-toppled before they made themselves known. Their threat to the government of the United States, or to any stable nation, is essentially nil. Their control is a lot less than total. Their funding wouldn’t pay the bills in Davenport, IA. Even if you take the higher estimates, the number of fighters they can field is about one tenth the size of the Iraqi Army (a real army, with real tanks, etc) in 2003. It’s about 1/40th the size of the Iraqi Army when it was crushed in the first Gulf War.
What Deash does itself is not a threat. What we do… that’s a different story.
The real measure of a terrorist act isn’t in the damage it does to individuals, but in the reaction it generates from groups, from nations, from the whole world.Sumner points out other, far more serious occurrences in terms of loss of life: a million people killed in Rwanda in 1994 over a few weeks; civil wars killing millions more; 110,000 deaths documented in Iraq, but best estimates of the actual total range upward from 650,000 (not to mention 4,279 combat deaths of U.S. military personnel; Mexican drug dealers have killed nearly 50,000 people in only their worst three years.
Which is exactly why terrorists do it. Terrorism works. It generates terror. It provokes a level of response hugely disproportional to the effort it requires (especially when you can count on a good percentage of politicians to run on a platform of fear, fear, fear). It elevates the status of those at its center from unknown thugs into household names. And when it happens somewhere that has deep meaning to many people—like Paris—that anger is magnified.
Which leads to the real threat from terrorism.
There are a lot of pundits claiming that Daesh is different from—and greater than—the threat from al-Qaida or previous groups for one big reason: Daesh has territory. They have that “Islamic state” where people can visit, learn to be evil, then be sent forth to spread disaster.ISIS/ISIL/Daesh nominally controls these areas, but they have to remain in the shadows; the moment they emerge into daylight, they will be destroyed. But the conflict and hatred will remain. The only long-term solution is to bring stable government to these troubled areas, government supported by the people, government that can enforce the rule of law. That's a solution that can only be postponed and delayed by rash, violent behavior on our part today as a result of irrational fear.
Only … we’ve seen that film before. It was called the Taliban. The Taliban not only held territory, they held much more territory, with many times the population of the towns held by Daesh. They did it openly, as the more-or-less recognized government of Afghanistan for five years. They were the caliphate before the caliphate was cool.
How are Syrian refugees referred to the U.S.?Follow the Time link for more.
The process begins with a referral from UNHCR. The U.N.’s refugee agency is responsible for registering some 15 million asylum seekers around the world, and providing aid and assistance until they are resettled abroad or (more likely) returned home once conditions ease. The registration process includes in-depth refugee interviews, home country reference checks and biological screening such as iris scans. Military combatants are weeded out.
Among those who pass background checks, a small percentage are referred for overseas resettlement based on criteria designed to determine the most vulnerable cases. This group may include survivors of torture, victims of sexual violence, targets of political persecution, the medically needy, families with multiple children and a female head of household.
What happens once a refugee is referred to the U.S.?
Our government performs its own intensive screening, a process that includes consultation from nine different government agencies. They meet weekly to review a refugee’s case file and, if appropriate, determine where in the U.S. the individual should be placed. When choosing where to place a refugee, officials consider factors such as existing family in the U.S., employment possibilities and special factors like access to needed medical treatment.
How do we know the refugees aren’t terrorists?
Every refugee goes through an intensive vetting process, but the precautions are increased for Syrians. Multiple law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies perform “the most rigorous screening of any traveler to the U.S.,” says a senior administration official. Among the agencies involved are the State Department, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. A DHS officer conducts in-person interviews with every applicant. Biometric information such as fingerprints are collected and matched against criminal databases. Biographical information such as past visa applications are scrutinized to ensure the applicant’s story coheres.
What percentage of applicants “pass” the screening process?
Just over 50%.
How long does the whole process take?
Eighteen to 24 months on average.
How many have been resettled here?
About 1,800 over the past year. They’ve been placed in dozens of states across the country, but most are in big states with large immigrant populations, such as California, Texas, Illinois and Michigan.
Who are they?
According to a senior administration official, roughly half the refugees admitted have been children. Around 25% are adults over 60. Only 2% of those admitted, the senior administration official said, have been single males of “combat age.”
GLENN GREENWALD:I mean, Afghanistan is the perfect example, Amy, which is, you know, if you go back and listen to what American political leaders, in both parties, and journalists and pretty much the entire country—I mean, 90 percent of the American population supported the war in Afghanistan. I mean, there were a good number of people who didn’t, but overwhelmingly people did.
What everybody was saying at that time was—they were speaking out of rage and anger and hatred and disgust for the Taliban for their involvement, or perceived involvement, or responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. And the idea was, we’re going to go to Afghanistan, and we’re going to obliterate the Taliban. We’re going to basically just bomb them out of existence. And the Bush administration has a completely free hand, cheered on by the media and the overwhelming majority of the American population to do exactly that. And they tried. And yet, as you just said, 13 years later, the Taliban is stronger than ever, because you cannot do that. All you end up doing is turning the people of Afghanistan against you, and therefore driving them into the arms of the Taliban. We just won’t learn that lesson.
And the reason we won’t learn that lesson is twofold. Number one is, a lot of what is being stoked are really potent instincts in human nature—our tribalistic instinct, our desire for vengeance, our desire to otherize people and then destroy them. And so, when you see carnage in Paris—I’m sure it’s true for you, I know it’s true for me—all of us have that impulse to say, "The people who did this are monsters, and we want to destroy them." But we, as human beings, have not only impulse, we also have reason. And the purpose of our reason is to control our instincts and impulses. We don’t just act by instinct and impulse. If we did, we’d be the lowest-level animals. But the media is trying to stoke that id part of our brain, and so is the government, to just focus on vengeance and focus on the desire to obliterate, even when it’s not in our interest to do so.
And then the second reason is, you know, the American media benefits immensely from war. A huge number of people watch CNN and MSNBC when there are wars. They get to go to war zones and dress up as soldiers, you know, with camouflage flaks, and they embed with the American media. It’s exciting for them. They win awards as part of their career. They feel nationalistic. They feel like they have purpose. Telling people that they’re part of a civilization war and fighting for freedom and democracy, that makes people feel really good, especially journalists. And so, journalists are hungry for war.
You could basically see them drooling in that press conference they did with Obama a few days ago where they tried to badger him into sending ground troops into Syria. So, all of these emotions and all of these instincts and all of these really ignominious impulses are combining into this really toxic brew, that we’ve seen many times in the U.S. over the last several—you know, since 9/11, but I don’t think we have seen it quite as potently since 2002 or 2003. And it’s amazing to watch everything just repeat itself.
"Life should resume fully," Hollande told a gathering of the country's mayors, who gave him a standing ovation. "What would France be without its museums, without its terraces, its concerts, its sports competitions? France should remain as it is. Our duty is to carry on our lives." In the same spirit, he added, "30,000 refugees will be welcomed over the next two years. Our country has the duty to respect this commitment," explaining that they will undergo vigorous security checks. Hollande noted that "some people say the tragic events of the last few days have sown doubts in their minds," but called it a "humanitarian duty" to help those people … but one that will go hand in hand with "our duty to protect our people." "We have to reinforce our borders while remaining true to our values," he said.And here's Senator Elizabeth Warren:
"[Syrians are] terrified that the world will turn its back on them and their children. Some politicians have already moved in that direction, proposing to close our country to people fleeing the massacre in Syria," Warren said. "That is not a real plan to keep us safe." She added that the United States has "a choice either to lead the world by example or to turn our backs to the threats and the suffering around us." Warren's comments come as a growing number of her Republican colleagues, and some Democrats, are calling for a temporary halt to President Obama's push to increase the number of refugees, including Syrian refugees, accepted into the country. She also took a veiled shot at the Republican presidential field, where Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush have suggested refugee resettlement should focus on Christians. Warren said that the United States isn't a country that sends "children back into the hands of ISIS murderers because some politician doesn't like their religion, and we are not a nation that backs down out of fear."Here's President Obama addressing the Republican presidential candidates:
"Apparently, they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America," Obama said. "At first they were too scared of the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are scared of three-year-old orphans. That doesn't seem so tough to me."Another Obama quote:
"When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted … that’s shameful…. That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion."
If the point of terrorism is to inflame, divide and frighten, surely the best response is to do just the opposite — to not give in to rage and anger and blindly lash out, to unite and not fan the flames of fear. After the awful attacks on Paris by ISIS last Friday, the French people found their voice in a few simple words, "Je suis Paris" or "I am Paris," a showing of solidarity and support. Meanwhile, nine U.S. governors, at last count, demonstrated how not to respond to terrorism, announcing that they oppose allowing Syrian refugees to settle in their states.
What would our nation be like if there was no more separation of church and state? If we replaced the Constitution with the Ten Commandments? These are the sort of questions that get asked at the National Religious Liberties Conference, a gathering of far right, theocratic political voters and operatives, all of whom want a government where we are actually one nation under God, and God is the Old Testament, vengeful type.
For a number of current GOP candidates for president, this isn’t an idea that fills them with terror. Instead, it’s the perfect pool to try to gain more support for their own presidential bids. Former Governor Mike Huckabee, current Governor Bobby Jindal, and Sen. Ted Cruz all came to Iowa to court the theocratic vote, hoping their backing might push their campaign further in the quest to rule the White House.
So what do theocrats talk about when they meet? Here are four jaw-dropping statements made at the National Religious Liberties Conference, and one idea that shockingly makes a lot of sense.
1) Gays should be put to death. Are there still people in the United States who honestly believe being homosexual should be a death sentence? So it seems, based on some of the literature being passed out at the event. “At the conference, where [Phillip Kayser] is giving two speeches on how local officials and others can defy the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, Kayser distributed the very pamphlet calling for the death penalty for gay people that caused a stir back when he endorsed Paul,” reports Right Wing Watch, who did extensive coverage of the weekend. “In the pamphlet, ‘Is The Death Penalty Just?,’ Kayser unsurprisingly concludes that the death penalty is in fact just, and lists homosexuality among the offenses deserving of capital punishment. Ironically for a ‘religious liberties’ summit, he also claims that the government should treat ‘breaking the Sabbath,’ ‘blasphemy and cursing God publicly,’ ‘publicly sacrificing to other gods’ and ‘apostasy’ as death penalty crimes as well.”
2) Anyone who doesn’t pray every morning is unfit for the presidency. For the far right theocratic wing, there really is a religious litmus test, and Sen. Ted Cruz is ready to prove his chops. “[A]ny president who doesn’t begin every day on his knees isn’t fit to be commander-in-chief of this nation,” Cruz told his audience. If there was any doubt that Cruz is a true believer who really, really wants this group of voters’ support, the fact that he not only showed up himself, but sent his father there to speak as well, should make his agenda clear. His father, who is a pastor, called his son the senator "the man of the hour.”
3) God trumps the constitution. Or at least, so say the potential presidents. According to Gov. Bobby Jindal, as long as a belief is a religious one, no one in the government should be able to place any sort of limit on what that religious person chooses to do. “No earthly court can change the definition of marriage, no federal government, no ACLU should be able to take away our religious liberty rights,” Jindal said to applause, according to Radio Iowa. “We were given those by God almighty.”
4) Vampires. They are a thing. If the rest of this seems pretty extreme, well, take a look at the pastor putting on the event. Kevin Swanson, the weekend host, gave a riveting speech that bemoaned the legal victories of equality for gay people, trans people and all of “secular” America, and said that the continuing trend would lead to even more evil entities. “The culture is becoming more and more radical,” Swanson said, according to Jezebel, and this radicalization is leading to “total chaos. Witchcraft is more and more popular, especially with the youth. It’s an adventure. Drunkenness is a disease. Homosexuality is an orientation. Cannibalism, vampirism is increasingly acceptable.”
Despite all of this fear-mongering, however, the GOP candidates did make one point that was actually quite rational. Regardless of what you think of the state of the country, and whether you believe a president needs to do God’s work or not, putting someone with no political experience into the highest political position available is asking for disaster.
“I’ve never had a job in Washington, so don’t blame me for the failures of Washington,” said Mike Huckabee, according to the Washington Post. “But I do believe that it’s important to have somebody who can articulate our vision and message, somebody who has had the experience of working a political climate that is extraordinarily hostile.” He later told reporters, “Is the presidency an entry-level job? If it is, then elect whoever you want. I realize a lot of people say, ‘We don’t want experience!’ OK, fine. But you won’t even hire someone to mow your lawn that’s never started a lawnmower.”
Even the theocratic wing of the party can be right occasionally.
Over the past 30 years, or at least since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene, the Republican rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced. Public figures are prisoners of their own prose styles, and Republicans from Newt Gingrich through Ben Carson have become addicted to a crisis mentality. Civilization was always on the brink of collapse. Every setback, like the passage of Obamacare, became the ruination of the republic. Comparisons to Nazi Germany became a staple.And again:
Republicans developed a contempt for Washington and government, but they elected leaders who made the most lavish promises imaginable. Government would be reduced by a quarter! Shutdowns would happen! The nation would be saved by transformational change!Says Brooks, "This anti-political political ethos produced elected leaders of jaw-dropping incompetence."
Welcome to Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and the Freedom Caucus.Pigs fly! Hell freezes over! David Brooks acknowledges that over the last 30 years, the Republican party has become steadily more insane!
People who would never board an airplane piloted by a person who has never flown before, or even used a flight simulator, apparently want to elect as president someone who has never served in public office.It was a huge shock to Republicans when Obama was reelected in 20012. Wehner says this was a psychological blow like that suffered by Democrats in 1984 with the reelection of Reagan; could be, but I find a more recent parallel in the 2004 reelection of Dubya. Okay, he stole it in 2000 with the help of his father's Supreme Court, and Kerry was an unappealing candidate -- but Dubya??!
... by 2012, President Obama was viewed by Republicans as a complete failure whose repudiation was inevitable. The fact that he easily won re-election, with 332 electoral votes to Mitt Romney’s 206, was a huge psychological blow to Republicans, much like the one Democrats experienced in 1984, when Ronald Reagan — despised by many liberals — won re-election in a landslide.When the Republicans swept the House and Senate in 2014, low-information Fox News voters were led by demagogues into believing that the policies Obama's administration had enacted in the previous six years would be undone; they have reacted with impotent rage against the Republicans they elected, who of course were constrained by the checks and balances of the U.S. constitution. Without a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, the Affordable Care Act can't be repealed, as some lying politicians promised; neither can the legislation legalizing gay marriage or the executive order on nuclear weapons with Iran (which lying demagogue politicians, pundits, and hate radio jocks are characterizing as Obama having handed Iran The Bomb).
The way this has worked itself out is in rage directed at Republican lawmakers. Many on the right refuse to recognize the institutional constraints that prevent lawmakers from doing what they want them to do, which is use their majority status in Congress to reverse the early achievements of the Obama presidency. One telling example: Advocates for the 2013 government shutdown insisted that doing so could fully defund the Affordable Care Act, when in fact no such thing was possible. Obamacare’s subsidies are an entitlement whose spending levels are not set by the annual appropriations process, meaning a shutdown could not unilaterally defund or eliminate it. No matter; with Republicans in control of the House and Senate, the Obama agenda was expected to be undone root and branch. The fact that it could not be undone created fury.Hence the popularity of Trump, Carson, and Fiorina.
In 1981, the first year of Ronald Reagan's presidency, Skousen was asked to be a charter member of the conservative think tank the Council for National Policy, founded by Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series of books. Other early participants included Paul Weyrich; Phyllis Schlafly; Robert Grant; Howard Phillips, a former Republican affiliated with the Constitution Party; Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail specialist; and Morton Blackwell, a Louisiana and Virginia activist who is considered a specialist on the rules of the Republican Party.I'm aware of the wingnuttery of LaHaye, Weyrich, Schlafly, Viguerie, and Blackwell; Robert Grant and Howard Phillips are new to me, and I have no desire to learn anything about them.
Skousen disregarded all federal regulatory agencies and argued against the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.[25] He also wanted to repeal the minimum wage, eliminate unions, nullify anti-discrimination laws, sell off public lands and national parks, end the direct election of senators, eliminate the income tax and the estate tax, remove the walls separating church and state, and end the Federal Reserve System.Here's an excerpt from an article by Hunter in Daily Kos entitled "Oh, Lord. Ben Carson's been getting his policy ideas from one of the kookiest kooks in conservatism."
For you youngsters out there who have never been exposed to the name Willard Cleon Skousen, think of him as a Cold War-era conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, but with about three Joe McCarthys and Glenn Beck's chalkboard stuffed inside his noggin via his ear-holes. He saw secret communists everywhere. He was convinced that Marxist forces had infiltrated Hollywood, and schools, and banking, and the arts, and architecture, and everything else you can name. He considered the American founding fathers to be descendants of "the Lost Tribes of Israel." He argued that American slaves had it pretty good, all things considered. He was certain that homosexuality was part of an elaborate plot to weaken America for the Ruskies."President Carson"? God almighty.
In short, there's not many ridiculous conspiracy theories he wasn't an active proponent of. For all these reasons, he continues to hold disproportionate sway among the stupid and the paranoid—oh, and it doesn't hurt that Glenn Beck has been peddling him for a long while now, making sure a raving lunatic's half-century old fever dreams still get a fair shake. In general, if you're a fan of Cleon Skousen you should damn well keep it to yourself.
John Boehner was a terrible, very bad, no good speaker of the House. Under his leadership, Republicans pursued an unprecedented strategy of scorched-earth obstructionism, which did immense damage to the economy and undermined America’s credibility around the world.
Still, things could have been worse. And under his successor they almost surely will be worse.
The White House still has not requested that the CIA and other intelligence agencies produce a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, a formal document that would compile all the intelligence data into a single analysis. An intelligence official says that's because the White House doesn't want to detail the uncertainties that persist about Iraq's arsenal and Saddam's intentions. A senior administration official says such an assessment simply wasn't seen as helpful.In other words, the White House -- determined to attack Iraq -- didn't want to gather and compile all the available information, because it was riddled with uncertainties and inconsistencies which would undermine their case for war. Damn the
STEPHANOPOULOS: OK. So we'll cut back to you on that later on.
But I do want to ask you one final question on this Hillary Clinton e-mail controversy. Which, of course, put you back in the news a bit this week, as well.
You were secretary of State during the early days of e-mails. You were one of the first secretaries, I believe, to set up a personal e-mail account. And you pushed to modernize the State Department's system.
Based on your experience, what do you make of these revelations this week and what would you recommend that she do now?
POWELL: I -- I can't speak to a -- Mrs. Clinton and what she should do now. That would be inappropriate.
What I did when I entered the State Department, I found an antiquated system that had to be modernized and modernized quickly.
So we put in place new systems, bought 44,000 computers and put a new Internet capable computer on every single desk in every embassy, every office in the State Department. And then I connected it with software.
But in order to change the culture, to change the brainware, as I call it, I started using it in order to get everybody to use it, so we could be a 21st century institution and not a 19th century.
But I retained none of those e-mails and we are working with the State Department to see if there's anything else they want to discuss with me about those e-mails.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So they want...
POWELL: (INAUDIBLE) have a stack of them.
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- they've asked you to turn them over, but you don't have them, is that it?
POWELL: I don't have any -- I don't have any to turn over. I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off. I do not have thousands of pages somewhere in my personal files.
And, in fact, a lot of the e-mails that came out of my personal account went into the State Department system. They were addressed to State Department employees and the State.gov domain. But I don't know if the servers the State Department captured those or not.
And most -- they were all unclassified and most of them, I think, are pretty benign, so I'm not terribly concerned even if they were able to recover them.
STEPHANOPOULOS: OK, Mr. Secretary, thanks very much for joining us this morning.
While you and others may be of the opinion that we can legislate away hurricanes with higher taxes, business regulations and EPA power grabs, that is not a view shared by many Louisianians.Yeah, you're right, Governor: It's not a view shared by many Louisianians. Nor is it a view shared by many outside of mental wards.
The prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has called an election for Oct. 19, but he doesn’t want anyone to talk about it.
He has chosen not to participate in the traditional series of debates on national television, confronting his opponents in quieter, less public venues, like the scholarly Munk Debates and CPAC, Canada’s equivalent of CSPAN. His own campaign events were subject to gag orders until a public outcry forced him to rescind the forced silence of his supporters.
Mr. Harper’s campaign for re-election has so far been utterly consistent with the personality trait that has defined his tenure as prime minister: his peculiar hatred for sharing information.
Americans have traditionally looked to Canada as a liberal haven, with gun control, universal health care and good public education.
But the nine and half years of Mr. Harper’s tenure have seen the slow-motion erosion of that reputation for open, responsible government. His stance has been a know-nothing conservatism, applied broadly and effectively. He has consistently limited the capacity of the public to understand what its government is doing, cloaking himself and his Conservative Party in an entitled secrecy, and the country in ignorance.
His relationship to the press is one of outright hostility. At his notoriously brief news conferences, his handlers vet every journalist, picking and choosing who can ask questions. In the usual give-and-take between press and politicians, the hurly-burly of any healthy democracy, he has simply removed the give.
Mr. Harper’s war against science has been even more damaging to the capacity of Canadians to know what their government is doing. The prime minister’s base of support is Alberta, a western province financially dependent on the oil industry, and he has been dedicated to protecting petrochemical companies from having their feelings hurt by any inconvenient research.
In 2012, he tried to defund government research centers in the High Arctic, and placed Canadian environmental scientists under gag orders. That year, National Research Council members were barred from discussing their work on snowfall with the media. Scientists for the governmental agency Environment Canada, under threat of losing their jobs, have been banned from discussing their research without political approval. Mentions of federal climate change research in the Canadian press have dropped 80 percent. The union that represents federal scientists and other professionals has, for the first time in its history, abandoned neutrality to campaign against Mr. Harper.
His active promotion of ignorance extends into the functions of government itself. Most shockingly, he ended the mandatory long-form census, a decision protested by nearly 500 organizations in Canada, including the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Catholic Council of Bishops. In the age of information, he has stripped Canada of its capacity to gather information about itself. The Harper years have seen a subtle darkening of Canadian life.
The darkness has resulted, organically, in one of the most scandal-plagued administrations in Canadian history. Mr. Harper’s tenure coincided with the scandal of Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto who admitted to smoking crack while in office and whose secret life came to light only when Gawker, an American website, broke the story. In a famous video at a Ford family barbecue, Mr. Harper praised the Fords as a “Conservative political dynasty.”
Mr. Harper’s appointments to the Senate — which in Canada is a mercifully impotent body employed strictly for political payoffs — have proved greedier than the norm. Mr. Harper’s chief of staff was forced out for paying off a senator who fudged his expenses. The Mounties have pressed criminal charges.
After the 2011 election, a Conservative staffer, Michael Sona, was convicted of using robocalls to send voters to the wrong polling places in Guelph, Ontario. In the words of the judge, he was guilty of “callous and blatant disregard for the right of people to vote.” In advance of this election, instead of such petty ploys, the Canadian Conservatives have passed the Fair Elections Act, a law with a classically Orwellian title, which not only needlessly tightens the requirements for voting but also has restricted the chief executive of Elections Canada from promoting the act of voting. Mr. Harper seems to think that his job is to prevent democracy.
But the worst of the Harper years is that all this secrecy and informational control have been at the service of no larger vision for the country. The policies that he has undertaken have been negligible — more irritating distractions than substantial changes. He is “tough on crime,” and so he has built more prisons at great expense at the exact moment when even American conservatives have realized that over-incarceration causes more problems than it solves. Then there is a new law that allows the government to revoke citizenship for dual citizens convicted of terrorism or high treason — effectively creating levels of Canadianness and problems where none existed.
For a man who insists on such intense control, the prime minister has not managed to control much that matters. The argument for all this secrecy was a technocratic impulse — he imagined Canada as a kind of Singapore, only more polite and rule abiding.
The major foreign policy goal of his tenure was the Keystone Pipeline, which Mr. Harper ultimately failed to deliver. The Canadian dollar has returned to the low levels that once earned it the title of the northern peso. Despite being left in a luxurious position of strength after the global recession, he coasted on what he knew: oil. In the run-up to the election, the Bank of Canada has announced that Canada just had two straight quarters of contraction — the technical definition of a recession. He has been a poor manager by any metric.
The early polls show Mr. Harper trailing, but he’s beaten bad polls before. He has been prime minister for nearly a decade for a reason: He promised a steady and quiet life, undisturbed by painful facts. The Harper years have not been terrible; they’ve just been bland and purposeless. Mr. Harper represents the politics of willful ignorance. It has its attractions.
Whether or not he loses, he will leave Canada more ignorant than he found it. The real question for the coming election is a simple but grand one: Do Canadians like their country like that?
As a review of recent right-wing rhetoric shows, for today's Republicans, Obamacare, the national debt, tax hikes on the rich, abortion, federal regulation of for-profit colleges, gun control, social safety net programs, marriage equality, torture detainee rights, and just about everything else conservatives hate are little different than Hitler's slaughter of 6 million Jews or America's original sin.
After four days of immersion, 8,000 to 10,000 participants depart, convinced that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax; government warnings about BPA plastic bottles are a plot designed to create hysteria to drive the public into the arms of the Nanny State; and that Rand Paul is a viable candidate for the presidency of the United States.His conclusion?
The Republican Party is at war with itself.
It appears to be losing.
"So he's a belligerent, loudmouth racist with not an ounce of compassion for less fortunate people," Krugman said, not pulling any punches. "In other words, he's exactly the kind of person the Republican base consists of and identifies with. It's clear that the very things that Upper West Side New Yorkers find detestable about him are exactly what endear him to the Republican base, which is basically people who see in him everything - even the big red face and the yelling - that makes him their kind of guy."
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, Pub.L. 85–315, 71 Stat. 634, enacted September 9, 1957, primarily a voting rights bill, was the first civil rights legislation passed by Congress in the United States since the 1866 and 1875 Acts.
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was also Congress's show of support for the Supreme Court's Brown decisions.[1] The Brown v. Board of Education (1954), eventually led to the integration of public schools. Following the Supreme Court ruling, Southern whites in Virginia began a "Massive Resistance." Violence against blacks rose there and in other states, as in Little Rock, Arkansas, where that year President Dwight D. Eisenhower had ordered in federal troops to protect nine children integrating a public school, the first time the federal government had sent troops to the South since Reconstruction.[2] There had been continued physical assaults against suspected activists and bombings of schools and churches in the South. The administration of Eisenhower proposed legislation to protect the right to vote by African Americans.
Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, an ardent segregationist, sustained the longest one-person filibuster in history in an attempt to keep the bill from becoming law. His one-man filibuster lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes; he began with readings of every state's election laws in alphabetical order. Thurmond later read from the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and George Washington's Farewell Address. His speech set the record for a Senate filibuster.[3] The bill passed the House with a vote of 285 to 126 (Republicans 167–19 for, Democrats 118–107 for)[4] and the Senate 72 to 18 (Republicans 43–0 for, Democrats 29–18 for).[5] President Eisenhower signed it on September 9, 1957.
In one of the little acts of subversion that creeps into “The Simpsons” every now and then ["The Simpsons" is a Fox show], a helicopter from Fox News was shown in 2010 with a logo, “Not Racist, But #1 With Racists.”Republicans jump up and down and scream that their party is not racist, and yet the GOP harbors white supremacists and Stormfront members (believe me, no one in those two groups votes Democratic). Egan points out that Dylann Roof was inspired by the Council of Conservative Citizens. Here are the first few lines of the CCC (like KKK; get it?) entry in Wikipedia:
The CofCC was founded in 1988 in Atlanta, Georgia, and then relocated to St. Louis, Missouri. The CofCC was formed by various Republicans, conservative Democrats, and some former members of the Citizens' Councils of America, sometimes called the White Citizens Council, a segregationist organization that was prominent in the 1960s and 1970s. Lester Maddox, former governor of Georgia, was a charter member.Here's the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry on the above-mentioned White Citizens Council:
The Citizens' Councils (also referred to as White Citizens' Councils) were an associated network of white supremacist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South. The first was formed on July 11, 1954[1] After 1956, it was known as the Citizens' Councils of America. With about 60,000 members across the United States,[2] mostly in the South, the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial integration of schools, but they also supported segregation of public facilities during the 1950s and 1960s. Members used severe intimidation tactics including economic boycotts, firing people from jobs, propaganda, and occasionally violence against civil-rights activists.The article goes on to say:
Unlike the Ku Klux Klan, which had revived for a time, the WCC met openly and was seen as "pursuing the agenda of the Klan with the demeanor of the Rotary Club."At a large Council meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, during the civil rights crisis of the 1960s, this mimeographed flyer was distributed:
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, sling shots and knives. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all whites are created equal with certain rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers.Back to the Council of Conservative Citizens: Egan points out that its leader, Earl Holt III, has donated over 60,000 to at least (I think) 34 Republican politicians, including 2016 presidential hopefuls Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul. Republican politicians were not ignorant of the open racism of the CCC when they accepted those donations; Holt's donations on behalf of the Council put him in the top 1% of Republican donors.
The Affordable Care Act is now in its second year of full operation; how’s it doing?
The answer is, better than even many supporters realize.
Start with the act’s most basic purpose, to cover the previously uninsured. Opponents of the law insisted that it would actually reduce coverage; in reality, around 15 million Americans have gained insurance.
But how good is that coverage? Cheaper plans under the law do have relatively large deductibles and impose significant out-of-pocket costs. Still, the plans are vastly better than no coverage at all, or the bare-bones plans that the act made illegal. The newly insured have seen a sharp drop in health-related financial distress, and report a high degree of satisfaction with their coverage.
What about costs? In 2013 there were dire warnings about a looming “rate shock”; instead, premiums came in well below expectations.
What about economic side effects? One of the many, many Republican votes against Obamacare involved passing something called the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act, and opponents have consistently warned that helping Americans afford health care would lead to economic doom. But there’s no job-killing in the data: The U.S. economy has added more than 240,000 jobs a month on average since Obamacare went into effect, its biggest gains since the 1990s.
Finally, what about claims that health reform would cause the budget deficit to explode? In reality, the deficit has continued to decline, and the Congressional Budget Office recently reaffirmed its conclusion that repealing Obamacare would increase, not reduce, the deficit.And he finishes with these two paragraphs:
Now, you might wonder why a law that works so well and does so much good is the object of so much political venom — venom that is, by the way, on full display in Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion, with its rants against “interpretive jiggery-pokery.” But what conservatives have always feared about health reform is the possibility that it might succeed, and in so doing remind voters that sometimes government action can improve ordinary Americans’ lives.
That’s why the right went all out to destroy the Clinton health plan in 1993, and tried to do the same to the Affordable Care Act. But Obamacare has survived, it’s here, and it’s working. The great conservative nightmare has come true. And it’s a beautiful thing.
Civilization was nice. It had a nice 5-6000 year run. Kind of neat to be alive to see it end.
In a recent analysis, Vocativ, an investigative and deep web news outlet, found that fatal police shootings in the United States outnumber all criminal gun homicides in 30 other developed nations.Click here for an article by By Bryan Schatz at Mother Jones entitled "There’s an International Standard for Cops and Deadly Force. Guess How Your State Ranks."
As the Guardian recently reported, police in the United States kill more people in days than other countries do in years.
My name is Wesley Norris; I was born a slave on the plantation of George Parke Custis; after the death of Mr. Custis, Gen. Lee, who had been made executor of the estate, assumed control of the slaves, in number about seventy.Warning: It's not pretty.
The rules were inspired by data showing that students in for-profit schools account for only about 12 percent of college enrollment, but nearly half of student loan defaults. Other data has shown that graduates of for-profit institutions are more likely than graduates of other institutions to carry debt of more than $40,000 when they leave school. Predatory schools are all the more problematic because they target veterans, minorities and the poor.Which party wants to ... ? Surprise, surprise: It's the Republicans.
The rules cover about 5,500 career training programs, some of which award college degrees but most of which award certificates. To comply, a training program would have to show that, on average, the annual loan payments of its graduates amount to less than 8 percent of their total income, or less than 20 percent of their discretionary income, after the cost of basic necessities like food and housing.
A program that failed to satisfy these criteria for four straight years would lose federal funding. Funding would also be denied if, over two years of a three-year period, the average loan payments exceeded 12 percent of total earnings and more than 30 percent of discretionary earnings. Programs nearing these thresholds would have the further obligation of giving students and prospective students advance warning that they are at risk of losing their federal grants and loans — and might need to find some other way to pay for college.
The rules cover both for-profit and nonprofit programs. But the Department of Education estimates that 99 percent of the 1,400 programs that would probably fail under the new standard are run by for-profit schools.
“Today’s ruling makes it clear that if we want to fix our broken health care system, then we will need to elect a Republican president with proven ideas and real solutions that will help American families,” said Chairman Reince Priebus. “Hillary Clinton supports big government mandates and expanding the government’s reach into our health care system, maneuvers that have made our health care system worse off.”Krugman's reaction: "Just to put this out there, and let my 60s roots show: Hey, hey, ACA, how many lives did you save today?"
Today's decision does not change the fact that Obamacare is a socialist takeover of health care forced down the throats of the American people without proper review, and it does not slow the massive and unprecedented transfer of wealth that is at the heart of the subsidy system. Make no mistake—Obamacare is not about helping those in need or improving health care delivery. It is about destabilizing our health care system, ceding more control to centralized government and replacing individual liberty with government dependence. It is incredibly troubling to me that a majority of United States Supreme Court justices—including, again, the Chief Justice—have found yet another way to uphold a portion of this disastrous law. Those who voted in the majority have set a dangerous precedent of blatantly disregarding the plain language of a bill as enacted by Congress. Mississippi was right, as were numerous other states, not to willingly entrench Obamacare by establishing a state-based exchange, and I will continue to resist any efforts that attempt to shove Obamacare deeper into this state. Republicans know there is a better way, and I call on Mississippi's congressional delegation to immediately renew its efforts to repeal and replace this train wreck of a law."UPDATE 2 - From Barbara Morrill at Daily Kos, a collection of comments by the Republican presidential hopefuls on the SCOTUS decision:
Jeb! Bush: "This decision is not the end of the fight against Obamacare."
Ted Cruz: "You the teenage immigrant washing dishes are paying illegal taxes right now today because of President Obama's deception, because of the IRS's lawlessness and because of the Supreme Court's judicial activism, violating their oaths of office ... I remain fully committed to repealing every single word of Obamacare."
Marco Rubio: "Despite the Court’s decision, ObamaCare is still a bad law that is having a negative impact on our country and on millions of Americans. I remain committed to repealing this bad law and replacing it ..."
Scott Walker: "Republicans must redouble their efforts to repeal and replace this destructive and costly law."
Rand Paul: "This decision turns both the rule of law and common sense on its head." Today's King v. Burwell decision, which protects and expands ObamaCare, is an out-of-control act of judicial tyranny ... repeal ObamaCare, and pass real reform ...
Rick Perry: "While I disagree with the ruling, it was never up to the Supreme Court to save us from Obamacare. […] It’s time we repealed Obamacare and replaced it ...
Chris Christie: "This decision turns common language on its head. Now leaders must turn our attention to making the case that ObamaCare must be replaced."
Bobby Jindal: "President Obama would like this to be the end of the debate on Obamacare, but it isn’t. […] Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, the debate will grow. Conservatives must be fearless in demanding that our leaders in Washington repeal and replace Obamacare with a plan that will lower health care costs and restore freedom."
Lindsey Graham: "Today’s decision only reinforces why we need a president who will bring about real reform that repeals Obamacare and replaces it with a plan that expands consumer choice, increases coverage, delivers better value for the dollar, and gives states more control, without stifling job creation.
Ben Carson: "Those of us who pledge to repeal #Obamacare must redouble our efforts and not waste time and energy mourning today's #SCOTUS ruling."
Mike Huckabee: "Today's King v. Burwell decision, which protects and expands ObamaCare, is an out-of-control act of judicial tyranny. […] As President, I will protect Medicare, repeal ObamaCare, and pass real reform that will actually lower costs, while focusing on cures and prevention rather than intervention."
There are three issues that, I find, most reporting on the program’s progress tend to ignore. The first is that the ACA was never intended to cover everyone – undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible, yet account for several percent of the population. Second, because signup isn’t automatic, there will always be some leakage, some eligible people who fall through the cracks. Finally, of course, a large number of states are refusing to expand Medicaid and in general trying to obstruct the law.The results are pretty encouraging!
So it seems to me that to evaluate the program we should (a) look at states that have implemented the law as it was intended to work and (b) compare with a realistic benchmark.
Almost 100 people were murdered over the last five years by registered users of Stormfront, the largest racist Web forum in the world, according to a report released today by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The forum in effect acts to nurture budding killers and give them moral support, the report says.And according to Jessie Daniels, a professor at the City University of New York, in an article at The New York Times, registered users of Stormfront have grown from 124,000 in 2008 to over 300,000 today. That's a lot of hate!
The answer is that those bearing the most severe costs of inequality are irrelevant to the agenda-setters in both parties. They are political orphans in the new order. They may have a voice in urban politics, but on the national scene they no longer fit into the schema of the left or the right. They are pushed to the periphery except for a brief moment on Election Day when one party wants their votes counted, and the other doesn’t.Hmm; "one party wants their votes counted, and the other doesn't"? Which would be Republican and which would be Democratic, do you suppose?
The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."UPDATE: Here's an excerpt from a companion piece, "A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union":
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin…Click here for a link to a document consisting of the declarations of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.
As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of annexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery.And another, from Alabama:
Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as it change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions—nothing less than an open declaration of war—for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and. her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans.And here's Texas:
...in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states....UPDATE, AUGUST 15, 2015: Colonel Ty Seidule, professor and Head of the Department of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point:
Was the American Civil War fought because of slavery? More than 150 years later this remains a controversial question.Click here for the video.
Why? Because many people don't want to believe that the citizens of the southern states were willing to fight and die to preserve a morally repugnant institution. There has to be another reason, we are told. Well, there isn't.
The evidence is clear and overwhelming. Slavery was, by a wide margin, the single most important cause of the Civil War -- for both sides. Before the presidential election of 1860, a South Carolina newspaper warned that the issue before the country was, "the extinction of slavery," and called on all who were not prepared to, "surrender the institution," to act. Shortly after Abraham Lincoln's victory, they did.
