Decrying Religious Tests While Pushing Doctrine

I disagree with senator Feinstein and other Democrats for questioning judicial nominee Amy Barrett about her Catholic faith, which does constitute a kind of religious test for public office. Judges should not be subject to grilling about their religious convictions (or lack thereof) as an indication of how they will interpret and uphold the law.

I have to say though, it would help matters if conservative bishops would not threaten to deny communion to Catholic lawmakers seeking in good faith to do their jobs. It’s hypocritical to decry religious tests on the one hand and then, on the other, hold believers’ souls for ransom if they refuse to toe a particular doctrinal line.

How the Right Embraces Climate Change

If you believe the science, and even the least sensationalistic predictions of what global warming will do in the 21st century, then you also believe that people on all points of the political spectrum will eventually come to accept the reality of human-caused climate change.

The questions is, how do conservatives get there? After years of denial, hostility and obstruction, how will those on the right manage to fold this particular piece of reality into their worldview?

I think a clue to this process can be seen in the evolution of the right’s thinking about the Iraq War. Back in the 2000s, of course, opposition to our invasion, occupation and mismanagement of Iraq was central to the politics of the left and a core point of division between red and blue. Those who opposed the war were, to many Bush supporters, unpatriotic, terrorist-loving traitors. To Democrats, the war was an immoral, unnecessary war of choice spilling horrific amounts of blood and treasure, while doing nothing to prevent the spread of terrorism. These contrasting narratives largely defined the 2004 (Bush-Kerry) presidential election.

Today, in 2017, we have a conservative, populist president who campaigned on retroactive opposition to the Iraq War (even claiming—falsely—he was against it from the beginning), voted into office by legions of former Bush supporters who now seem to feel about Iraq largely the way Kerry supporters did 13 years ago. How does this happen?

Selective memory and a re-ordering of the significance of events to support a revised narrative. Today, the populist right has embraced the idea that Iraq was part of a globalist political philosophy that runs through mainstream Republican and Democratic thinking. Iraq, they believe, stains Democrats as much as Republicans.

The primary evidence is the bipartisan “yes” vote in Congress in October 2002 authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein. Forgotten is the mountain of false and distorted intelligence put out by the Bush administration at the time to convince Congress that Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction; the subsequent opposition to the war by mainstream Democratic politicians; the extreme unlikelihood that the war ever would have happened with a Democrat in the White House in 2003; and—most importantly—the strong grassroots opposition to the war among leftists and moderates which began in the run-up to the invasion and only strengthened as the war progressed, and the failure of the grassroots right to pull their support, even after no WMDs were found and Bush’s “mission accomplished” turned into a quagmire.

So how does this work for climate change? Via the Future Right’s downplaying of Al Gore and left-wing environmental activism, Obama’s support of climate accords and those on the left (and moderate right) supporting policies like a carbon tax, and instead putting the focus on the forces of globalization and the political elite’s failure to act for reasons of economic self-interest. “Look at all the money given to Democrat [sic] politicians back in the twenty-teens by [insert carbon-emitting multinational],” they’ll say. It will be a much harder sell, given the very clear history of the right standing in the way of progress on climate, but I think they will try to pull it off.

Some might say it doesn’t matter how conservatives get there, as long as they get there. Let them have their own version of history, if that helps. But the problem, as with Iraq, is how much damage is done before they make that leap—and in this case, much of it may be irreversible.

How can the Current Left help them along? By doing what they can to de-politicize the climate debate. The fate of our planet (and species) should not be a political shibboleth, and if the right will cling fiercely (for now) to climate change denial as a cultural and philosophical touchstone, the left must try to loosen that grip by not using environmentalism as a political bludgeon.

The ACLU and Holding the Line on Speech Protections

In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville this week, some are calling on the ACLU to rethink its historic commitment to defending free speech across the political spectrum, regardless of the unpopularity or offensiveness of the message. The best way to ensure an equal voice for disenfranchised groups, it is argued, is for the ACLU to consider power dynamics and historical context when choosing whose First Amendment rights to defend.

I have a hard time with this position. It’s untenable to ask the ACLU to choose which political speech is worth protecting under the law and which isn’t. Free speech is not like housing or education or health care, where law and policy can be doctored to level the playing field; it’s the fundamental bedrock of democracy and civil society.

Even the perception that legal means are being used to amplify some people’s speech and suppress others’ (whether aimed right or left) is politically destabilizing and promotes radicalization. The alt-right, while not members of a historically disenfranchised group, already see themselves as marginalized victims of a liberal establishment. It’s important for the ACLU to maintain its historic stance as nonpartisan defender of civil rights.

Then there is the generalized erosion of public space, leaving us with fewer and fewer neutral forums for demonstration and debate. With private entities such as Twitter and Google blocking content as they please, now is not the time to weaken or bifurcate speech rights.

We should instead focus on, and support, all the ACLU does to promote freedom of expression, voting rights, criminal justice reform, religious freedom and the separation of church and state.

Suburbs From KOP to Voorhees Embrace New ‘Main Streets’ —But Not Cherry Hill

Michaelle Bond’s article in the Inquirer about citified “main streets” coming to the suburbs has everything you’d expect: interviews with developers and city planners, somewhat silly-sounding quotes from random members of the public, and the hint of snark (all that astroturf!) usually found in the Inky's coverage of anything suburban.

Really, though, what’s happening in King of Prussia, Exton and elsewhere is better than what came before (in the recent past) and better than any contemporary alternatives if one accepts the inevitability of growth. The article’s observation that these complexes “cost open space” overlooks the notion that these high-density projects gobble far less land than traditional housing tracts and shopping centers.

It also reminds me, yet again, of how tremendously stupid Cherry Hill was to reject a similar (and at the time, ahead of the curve) proposal to redevelop the Garden State Park property on Rt. 70 along pedestrian and transit-friendly lines. Not only was the tract perfectly situated to give the sprawly township the semblance of a town center, it lies adjacent to a (woefully underused) passenger train station, on NJ Transit’s Atlantic City Line.

I was working for a newspaper in Haddonfield at the time development of the land was being debated (2005-06) and remember then-mayor Bernie Platt trumpeting the approved plan as “mixed-use,” a politician-speak mangling of that term if there ever was one. True mixed-use developments are dense and pedestrian friendly; the only thing “mixed use” about today’s Garden State Park is that one can drive to the grocery store, drive to the restaurant, or drive to the townhouse—or risk life and limb dodging SUVs while walking across a sea of asphalt.

Garden State Park: A sea of sprawl... and a train station.

Appropriation is Not Necessarily Exploitation

I wrote this in response to a friend's Facebook call for comments on a New York Times piece, "In Defense of Cultural Appropriation."

I think much of 20th century social progress was abetted, if not in some cases directly driven, by what many today dismissively call “cultural appropriation.”

This more or less began in the '20s with nascent integration in jazz, and really picked up steam after the war, as the nation gradually grew to understand African-American culture as more than just inferior or quaint.

Remember, as recently as the turn of the last century, W.E.B. Du Bois had to plead for cultural relevance and respect on the basis of “the American fairy tales and folklore [being] Indian and African.” How far we have come since then, with mainstreaming and universal acceptance of art forms rooted in black culture as quintessentially American.

Especially, and somewhat ironically, in the South—a cultural cauldron in ways going far beyond the violence and victories of Civil Rights. What we call R&B, Rock & Roll—even folk, country and gospel music—was the result of many decades (centuries, really) of cultural cross-pollination, often driven, now as ever, by talented young people more interested in inspiration than labels and boundaries.

It’s true Elvis was seen as a white guy who could sound black, and had his first hit with an Arthur Crudup blues song. It’s also true that Chuck Berry was considered a black guy who could sound white, and had his first hit with a reworking of a western swing fiddle tune first recorded by Bob Wills.

Throw into the mix influences criss-crossing the pond—most importantly the effect of American music on young Britons in the 50s and 60s, which subsequently awakened young white America to this nation’s full musical heritage—and the positive effect this had on the fortunes of a generation of black musicians—and the picture becomes even more complicated. (At the risk of sounding unfashionably uncynical, it's been a long time since pop music appropriation equaled exploitation, despite what Jesse Williams may believe.)

Art does not fit into the neat boundaries proposed by academicians, and never will.