Friday, May 27, 2005

On Thinking Independently

In yesterday's print edition of The Baltimore Sun, two op-ed pieces talked about Americans' supposedly impaired ability to think for themselves. Oddly, one was from the left and one was from the right.

The one from the left was PBS journalist Bill Moyers' "PBS under siege from right." Moyers, whom oldstyleliberal greatly respects, is the former host of the weekly NOW program on the Public Broadcasting System. He recently made the Sun-excerpted comments in a speech to the National Conference on Media Reform.

Moyers is the former host of NOW because he came under fire for alleged liberal bias in the content of his program. To Moyers, reporting on "the little fibs and fantasies as well as the Big Lie of the people in power," which was job number one of NOW, is not biased, it's the heart and soul of journalistic objectivity.

"The Big Lie" is, to hear Moyers on the subject, the prime modus operandi of the current Bush Administration. Its "princes and priests" are, he says,

... the people obsessed with control, using the government to threaten and intimidate ... the people who are hollowing out middle-class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class in a war to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq's oil ... the people who turn faith-based initiatives into a slush fund and who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets ... the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy.

When "Washington officials to set the agenda for journalism," Moyers says, journalists

... invariably [fail] to provide context, background or any sense of which claims hold up and which are misleading. ... An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only on partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda, is less inclined to put up a fight, to ask questions and be skeptical. That kind of orthodoxy can kill a democracy - or worse.


The op-ed piece from the right which touched on the same topic of enforced orthodoxy vs. independent thought was Thomas Sowell's Why liberals hate black self-reliance. Sowell, who is himself black, claims liberals intentionally keep African Americans dependent on Democratic-initiated social programs so as to be able to count on their votes.

These purported cynics, the liberals, can't afford to let blacks know "the truth" about their own history — for example, that "reductions in poverty among blacks and the rise of blacks into higher-level occupations were both more pronounced in the years leading up to the civil rights legislation and welfare-state policies of the 1960s than in the years that followed."

"Least of all," writes Sowell, can liberals "afford" to let California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, a black whom President Bush controversially aims to appoint as a federal judge,

... become a national figure on the federal bench. The things she says and does could lead other blacks to begin to think independently — and that in turn could threaten the whole liberal house of cards. If a smear is what it takes to stop her, that is what liberal politicians and the liberal media will use.


So the Bush conservatives are accused of engaging in a plot to "squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy," while the liberal Democrats are allegedly engaging in a "smear" campaign against major Bush judicial nominees. In both cases, if these pundits are right, Americans' ability to think for themselves would be impaired.

Sure, that would be bad news ... but the basic attitude of oldstyleliberal to all this rhetorical mudslinging is, can't we all stop and take a deep breath? Can't we dispense with the bombast, from both sides, and together set about making a more perfect union? Can't we put away these verbal stilletos which turn today's politics into a bloody playground rumble?

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Hail! The Fearless Fourteen

These fourteen moderate U.S. senators, seven Republicans and seven Democrats, brokered the compromise which averted The "Nuclear" Option, the proposed rule change which would have made minority filibusters of the most ideologically extreme White House judicial nominations all but impossible to carry out.

Their courage in breaking ranks with their respective party leaders and putting our government above ideological partisanship are to be congratulated by all patriotic Americans. Thanks to them, the U.S. Senate is back in business!

Senator
Robert C. Byrd
(D - WV)
Senator
Lincoln Chafee
(R - RI)
Senator
Susan Collins
(R - ME)
Senator
Mike DeWine
(R - OH)
Senator
Lindsey Graham
(R - SC)
Senator
Daniel Inouye
(D - HI)
Senator
Mary L. Landrieu
(D - LA)
Senator
Joseph Lieberman
(D - CT)
Senator
John McCain
(R - AZ)
Senator
Ben Nelson
(D - NE)
Senator
Mark Pryor
(D - AR)
Senator
Ken Salazar
(D - CO)
Senator
Olympia Snowe
(R - ME)
Senator
John Warner
(R - VA)

Sunday, May 22, 2005

The "Nuclear" Option

oldstyleliberal has been trying to figure out how he feels about the looming "nuclear" threat in the U.S. Senate — i.e., the action contemplated by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to change Senate rules and allow ending filibusters by simple majority votes when the topic at hand is a federal judicial appointment. Right now, such filibusters, like all other types, require a supermajority of 60 senators to end them.

Some of the bench nominations of the Bush White House are currently threatened with being held up by a coordinated Democratic filibuster. There are 44 Democrats (and one Independent) in the Senate, so a united front on their part could put the kibosh on any particular Bush nomination.

Especially, a nomination (not now but perhaps very soon) to the U.S. Supreme Court, which under the right circumstances could eventually reverse Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion. Since oldstyleliberal is pro-choice, he naturally leans against changing the filibuster rule. But one should always be leery of one's own biases when something truly important beyond those biases is at stake.

That's why oldstyleliberal was happy to run across an article in the Perspective section of the Sunday Baltimore Sun this A.M. In "Ex-senators wary of 'nuclear' threat," Sun staffers polled several respected ex-senators on their thoughts about Bill Frist's "nuclear" option.

One, Clifford Hansen, a Repbulican senator from Wyoming from 1967 to 1978, gave oldstyleliberal a sound, principled reason, other than his support for Roe, for wanting to keep the Senate rules as they are:

"Being a Republican, we were the minority party, and I suspect there are some similarities between our situation then and those that the Democrats find themselves in today. I am sure that it would have concerned me if there were limits on the filibuster. When I was in the Senate, the Democrats were in control, and we had made a lot of friends with the Democratic Party, and I realized then that if I were going to get anything done, I had to reach out and establish some real friendships with members on the other side."

In other words, the nation is best served when the majority party cannot impose its will alone, without horse-trading with the minority — and vice versa. That's why a filibuster that can be kept alive by 41 senators until the horse-trading takes place makes good patriotic sense.

So count oldstyleliberal as being against changing the Senate filibuster rule vis-à-vis judicial nominees. Senators one and all, just say no to the "nuclear" threat!