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Judge Vaughn's Brilliant Ruling and the Ridiculous Right Response
Yesterday's ruling by Federal Judge Vaughn Walker that California's blatantly illegal attempt to deprive citizens of rights based solely on their sexual preference was one of the most cogent and thorough pieces of legal writing I've ever read. And I have a law degree, which means only that I've read a lot of briefs and rulings over the years. He picked out 80 facts from the two-week-plus trial over which he presided and methodically and rationally dissected each of them. His logic is unassailable. And the ruling is so well written that it doesn't take a legal degree or background to read it and understand it. He clearly understood that he was deciding a case with major consequences throughout the nation and he wanted to issue an air-tight ruling.
He did just that.
I applaud His Honor for the courage to make the only decision that could be defended against a law that was so heinously irresponsible that it was unabashedly anti-American. As Rachel Maddow said on her MSNBC news show last night, rights are not supposed to be subject to a vote. That's why they are called "rights." Rights are part of our inherent nature. Those who believe rights should be subject to arbitrarily whimsical overrule by a tyrannical majority would be the first to scream if their religious liberty or their freedom of speech were overruled by a majority that found them distasteful.
And the Right, as if to prove how shabby is its reasoning, how baseless is its opinion, how un-American is their belief, lashes out at Judge Walker for what one of their leading spokesman called a "sign of a "Soviet-style" government takeover. Only someone who has no clue about history, no accurate view of the old Soviet Union and its practices, could conjure up such a ludicrous charge. This judge was appointed to the bench by one of the Right's adored heroes, George H. W. Bush. The case against the proposition was argued by two great American lawyers who agree on almost nothing else, one from the Right and one from the Left. For someone who disagrees with the ruling merely because she doesn't like it and not on the basis of logic, reasoning or law, to use that kind of language about the ruling just reveals the complete emptiness of the rhetoric of the Right on this whole matter.
It seems crystal clear to me that these two pieces of communication side by side epitomize the whole essence of the Right-Left battle going on in this country. The left offers detailed insights and analysis based on law and logic. The right counters with bumper-sticker slogans that are blatantly and provably false, designed to do only one thing: scare those who hear the message. This is a clear case of love vs. fear. Love has won, at least for the moment. I predict that it will be monumentally difficult for the Supreme Court, where this case is surely headed, will be unable to find any legal or logical basis on which to overturn Judge Walker, and that it will do so anyway. Because it has become a tool of the Right. I further predict that once the Supremes do the Right Pretzel Twist, history will judge them as the worst set of majority justices since Dred Scott.
Other than that, I have no strong feelings on the subject. :-)
Liberal Philosophy, Conservative Philosophy and the Great American Center
It seems to me that, when it comes to politics, Americans can be seen as divided into four basic camps: liberals, conservatives, centrists and apathetics. The first three groups vote, to one or another degree, and they're the focus of my thoughts here.
There are likely dozens of points of differentiation between liberals and conservatives. Here are the most important that leap to mind.
Faced with a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the general welfare and the good of the individual, liberals will tend to support the public good and conservatives will tend to favor the individual's rights and position.
Liberals believe in equality of opportunity implemented through government regulation and laws where necessary. Conservatives believe that fairness derives better from an unregulated and freely competitive society.
In terms of international policy, liberals tend to favor multinational efforts (e.g., the United Nations) aimed at diplomatic solutions to conflict that are ultimately mutually beneficial. Conservatives tend to favor the promotion of America's national interests, as they perceive them, over and if necessary at the expense of other nations and to oppose U.S. involvement in multinational organizations like the UN and the OAS.
Cultural pluralism and tolerance for a wide range of viewpoints characterizes liberal thinking while conservatives are inclined to oppose policies that encourage pluralism and immigration.
In general, liberals favor a large and strong central government that can equalize and homogenize policy and practice across state borders. Conservatives, by contrast, favor states rights over national government power and a resultingly smaller federal government.
There is of course a broad spectrum of intermediate positions between these two extreme variants as I've painted them here. But those who subscribe to the tenets of one or the other of these political philosophies -- and who apparently comprise about 60% of the voting public (35% liberal and 25% conservative, approximately) -- tend to make political decisions and cast votes based on these philosophical frameworks.
What of the center? How do unaffiliated, independent voters make difficult political decisions where they can't or don't have enough information or time and attention to make a fully informed objective decision? What ruler do they measure against? My sense is that the broad center of America, which despite being a minority nonetheless determines the outcome of virtually all elections, makes decisions based primarily on two factors: what they deem to be in their own best interest and what they perceive to be the views of their neighbors and friends. This tends to vary issue by issue, location by location. As a result, the center acts as an unpredictable balance of liberal and conservative perspectives. I also think they tend to cast less well-informed votes on the issues that fall outside the main editorial focus of election cycles.
For example, if you are asked to choose among three candidates for, say, the airport commission, how do you know which of those candidates is really the best person for the job? Without spending considerable time researching them, you probably don't. But if you're a liberal and one of them is endorsed by the local Democratic Party, you probably have a tendency to vote for that candidate. Similarly, if you're a conservative and one of the candidates is favored by the GOP, you probably cast a vote for that person. In both cases, you have a right to expect and believe that the candidate you choose will at least subscribe to the broad philosophies of governance of the party endorsing them.
But the independent? It seems to me they have no steady or reliable basis on which to make such judgments and therefore tend to make largely arbitrary decisions. This is the group to whom political advertising is mostly directed. Exposure is more important than substance or policy.
Somehow, this seems to be at the root of a great many of our political problems as a nation. Uninformed voters making arbitrary decisions about second-tier candidates and policy questions tend to produce scattered and often contradictory results.
I don't have a solution but it does seem to me the problem is one that gets far too little attention and debate.
