The Trouble With Phil

Let's start with what was actually said.  Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson, in a series of unscripted interviews with GQ, said the following, igniting a storm of controversy, accusation, and cultimating in his eventual suspension from his show on A&E.

Phil On Growing Up in Pre-Civil-Rights-Era Louisiana
“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

On sin and sinfulness
Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right

Almost overnight, Robertson has gone from a pop-culture star to a cause celeb on the American Right with the likes of Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin wading into the media waters to defend him.  Most of those defenses echo the same "free speech" refrain -- Robertson was only speaking his mind and he has a first amendment right to do so.

And he does have a right to do that -- the trouble with it as a defense is that no one is taking that right away from him.  Robertson's not in prison and no one is threatening him with anything like it.  Invoking the 1st Amendment in Robertson's defense amounts to an endorsement of some kind of government regulation prohibiting businesses from firing people for things they say to the media.  It's hard to imagine that Palin and Jindal would actually back such a measure.

Ultimately the problem with Robertson's comments isn't the faith behind them; it's the politics they inform.  Suggesting that pre-civil-rights black people in Louisiana were happy and godly and that post-civil-rights black people aren't suggests that the systematic racism and oppression which characterized the Jim Crow south was somehow good for African Americans.  That line of argument picks up the patronizing notion of a "white man's burden" lumps it together with an implied racial component to entitlement and welfare, and flings the whole sordid mess at the feat of the people who fought for equal rights.

Likewise, Robertson's judgments on sin -- ignoring the patent absurdity of placing homosexuality at the center of some kind of hierarchy of sinfulness -- has repercussions in the world of politics.  While Robertson does condemn adulterers, idolaters, and prostitutes as well as drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers in the same breath, those people do not find themselves in the unenviable position of having their government judge them ineligible for participation in civil institutions by virtue of their sins.  While Roberson's defenders point to an apparent lack of concern for his identification of drunks as sinners, the fact is that drunks are not out fighting for their right to sit by a loved one's deathbed and comfort him in his final hours.

Homosexuals are.

Robertson's comments could thus be understood more succinctly to mean "ya'll don't need rights; you need Jesus."

For those fighting and sacrificing for those rights such a sentiment is deeply offensive.

Get Ready For Stupid

Unless something very significant changes in Washington in the next 12 hours or so the US government is going to start shutting down in in the early hours of Tuesday morning in a last-ditch attempt to keep from defaulting on its debts.  To be clear, the entire mess is avoidable; the budget line-items covered by a debt increase amount to expenditures which Congress has already signed off on and the only thing standing between the House and a budget that would sail through the Senate and across the President's desk is political grandstanding over an issue on which they've already held more than 40 votes.

What's happening in Washington right now amounts to the Republican Party threatening to wreck the nation and its economy if they don't get their way.  It's government by hostage taking.

False Religion

The hits just keep on coming from the Republican Party, both in Washington DC and, apparently, in Richmond.  Virginia plays host to the only competitive Governor's race this year and as things heat up national attention is focused in on the race between Ken Cuccinelli (R) and Terry McAuliffe (D).

As weird as that race is shaping up to be -- Cuccinelli is actively under investigation by the FBI and McAuliffe is featured in almost every Cuccinelli doing what looks like a shot -- it's nothing compared to the race for Lieutenant Governor featuring Republican E.W. Jackson and Democrat Ralph Northam, who's name I actually had to look up because he's so irrelevant to the race.

Northam is an unmemorable candidate and his presence or absence in the race will likely not move the polls one point in either direction.  Jackson, on the other hand, is a loose cannon, espousing all manner of highly controversial, almost theocratic, views on a wide range of social issues.  The most recent, though far from the most outrageous, of these was given voice in a sermon he gave at the Restoration Fellowship Church in Strasburg, VA in which he described non-christians as "engaged in some sort of false religion."

Good luck defunding Obamacare

It is rare that this blog, leftist as it is, agrees with much of anything that Karl Rove has to say but before being Leftist I strive to be a Pragmatist and in this I have to give Karl a tip of the hat.  His editorial in the Wall Street Journal is spot on.

Understanding Chemical Weapons In 10 Easy Lessons

This post on PolicyMic is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. There are many, many good reasons for the United States to avoid involvement in the Syria situation, not the least of which is that the people we would be aiding - the rebels - have had their movement largely co-opted by more or less the exact same folks we've spent the better part of the last decade fighting in Afghanistan.

Wesley Messamore, however, thinks that we lack "moral authority" to intervene in Syria because of "10 chemical weapons attacks Washington doesn't want you to talk about."

Let's run down Mr Messamore's list, shall we?

Syria

There is something profoundly unsettling about the raft of political pundits and play-callers who seem absolutely sure of themselves as to what the Obama administration and the US Government more broadly should do about Syria.  Polls show that the American people, by and large, do not support military intervention in Syria and that a large majority want Obama to seek the approval of Congress before undertaking any use of force.

At least that latter point is one that we can all agree upon.  The recent leaks about the US intelligence apparatus in conjunction with the lingering memories of the Bush Administration's fabrication of a casus belli for the Iraq war have left Americans justifiably skittish of a hawkish President.  

So Obama should go before Congress... and then what?

Of course the NSA used taxpayer dollars to cover PRISM costs

Apparently the new revelation in the ongoing NSA spying story is that the agency used taxpayer dollars to pay for the participation of US communications companies.

Well of course they did.  The NSA story is perhaps the most important political story since Watergate but that doesn't change that this is a fairly obvious point.

The NSA is a government agency. It has a taxpayer funded budget and expecting private corporations to pick up the tab for its operations in time of war or peace is arguably a great deal worse than using tax dollars to fund the latest NSA outrage.
Also, if the NSA were forcing private companies to cough up for its quasi military intelligence operations there would be a fair case for some 3rd Amendment violations on top of the trampling of the 4th and 5th.

It's not news when it's obvious and it's certainly not scandalous.