Nation-Building

In the debate over health care, and the associated debate over illegal immigration, I've often heard the argument that "health care isn't one of the rights defined in the Constitution." This argument seems to me to deny the very concept of human rights itself.

Let's make no mistake - the present era is 100% different from the world just 60 years ago. The passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions mark a major turning point in the entire history of humanity and civilization. That is the world we live in now and that world is better in every respect than the previous one.

The Constitution of the United States was written in that old world - but what makes it such a brilliant document is that it anticipated the new world, even though at its draftin it was still saddled with language that was a compromise to the old (in particular, the slaves are 3/5ths of a human being clause, the silence on slavery, etc.)

No, health care is not an explicit constitutional right. So what? Here's the genius of our Fonding Fathers: rights are not defined by whether they are in the Constitution or not. No government has authority to "grant" us rights. Rights are inalienable and can be generalized as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. It took almost 200 years for that basic truth to be made explicitly universal by the UDHR but we, as a planetary civilization, have finally managed to complete the work the Founders started.

By that standard, basic health care (ie, emergency room to treat a gunshot wound or antibiotics to cure a child's raging fever - not sex changes or botox) is clearly a right - obviously health is the key to Life. But it's also Liberty, in that being too poor to afford health care is in essence an economic oppression. And it's equally obvious that being ill is an obstacle to the Pursuit of Happiness, not the hedonistic kind but rather the betterment of home and hearth, and pursuit of opportunity and self-betterment.

A basic minimum standard of care is thus in my view a universal human right as critical if not more so than free speech or religious freedom.We are a nation founded on explicitly humanistic and moral principles, therefore we have a duty to extend these rights to all persons, not just those who are citizens. We cannot argue on one hand that rights are universal and then on the other hand argue that only a priveleged class may be afforded them.

Health care can be delivered by the private secctor, of course. But insurance is the mechanism by which health care is made affordable to all, irrespective of class or status. The details are of course subject to political reality (and leadership) but denying even a basic level of coverage to any group is tantamount to a betrayal of our core values. Not liberal or conservative values, mind you, but our Founding values as a nation.

Labels: health care, politics, progressives, Purple

Continue reading/discuss is there a "right" to health care? ...

Congratulations to Senator-elect Brown - in the end, he was a better candidate and ran a better campaign against the hapless Martha Coakley, who thought she could coast on Kennedy-Obama coat-tails into office. A single statistic explains all - @marcambinder notes that "Coakley had 19 events after the primary through Sunday; Scott Brown had 66." And more than anything else, the election outcome last night was not because of governing philosophes or political ideologies, but simply the economy, stupid.

The political blogsphere is of course consumed with the significance of MA-SEN as pertains to Obama's anniversary in office, and the conventional wisdom is gelling across the usual lines. The GOP in full concern-troll mode says that Obama has governed as a leftist and thus must seek bipartisanship; of course it's precisely because of Republican ideological obstructionism, filibustering every bill in the Senate and negotiating over health care in bad faith, that the Democrats have needed 60 votes to pass any bill instead of a simple majority. Then again, when your 60 vote "super majority" includes Democrats who also negotiate in bad faith, like Joe Lieberman, then you never really had 60 votes to begin with.

The simple truth is that Obama has sought a middle ground on health care insurance reform and pursued a bipartisan approach from the beginning, taking single payer off the table right off the bat, making a (in retrospect, also bad faith) deal with the industry on drug reimportation/price negotiation, and favoring but not drawing the line on a public option. As David Leonhardt points out at the NYT, the health-care reform bills before Congress are substantially more conservative than Bill Clinton's 1993 bill or even Richard Nixon's 1971 bill!

Meanwhile, the progressive left, immune to the irony inherent in their own ideological posturing, interpret last night as vindication of their argument that Obama hasn't been progressive enough. In one sense, they are right - Obama has certainly not been governing as a leftist (in a sane world, this critique by the left wing would serve as sufficent rebuttal to the GOP's claim that Obama has been too partisan, but...). But they also seem to think that Barack Obama is Howard Dean, when Obama explicitly campaigned as a moderate in all respects. Obama spoke of change, and the progressive Left translated this as "do everything the opposite of Bush" because from their perspective, that Bush was wrong on every decision and policy is an absolute political axiom. (I'm happy to list Bush policies that I agree with in a future post, but not right now).

Last night's loss by Coakley was Coakley's fault alone and as I have argued was in no way a referendum on Obama's first year in office; it should be noted that Scott Brown even won Ted Kennedy's home district of Hyannis, which suggests that the MA electorate (which is predominantly Purple, not blue or red) was looking for a Senator who respected them, not one who saw the seat as a birthright. As Mike Allen also noted on MSNBC, Coakley was leading Brown by 15 points only one week ago, which would not have been the case if this were a referendum on Obama or the Democrats.

And yet the race does indeed materially change the political environment under which Obama must labor for his second year. In some ways this is a preview of November, where the Democrats are guaranteed to lose more seats, so at some point Obama was going to have to figure out a way to govern without a supermajority in the Senate anyway. The question is what strategy to use.

The choice facing Obama and the Democratic leadership is to either a. pursue transformative, partisan, progressive-leftist change or b. pursue incrementalist, bipartisan, moderate-liberal change. The progressive netroots are as immune to reason on this as they were about the public option; they think that it's worth abandoning health care, fighting Quixotic battles over ideological policies and achieving nothing, and maybe even primarying Obama in 2012. In this, they are allied to the Republicans, though they don't realize it. The only progressive who does understand reality is Chris Bowers.

Obviously I favor choice b. because long ago I realized, by actually paying attention to Obama's speeches and rhetoric, that this is what he believes in, and the post-MA-SEN political environment essentially makes this the only pragmatic route to getting anything of substance done at all. You can have meaningful health care reform without a public option, you can have meaningful climate change policy without cap and trade, you can have meaningful financial reform without increasing corporate taxes.

In a perfect world, Obama would have been able to pursue bipartisan, transformative change, but that would have required an opposition party with more dedication to the national interest rather than their own political interest. But even 60 seats was an illusion - it was really 59 + Lieberman (who backstabbed Reid), and of the 59 remaining a large bloc are Blue Dog Senators who are fiscal hawks (which most of America, even liberal blue state America, doesn't see as a bad thing, something progressives don't seem to really understand).

The political environment for the GOP Senators is also different as well. The threat of a Democratic Supermajority is gone, so the incentive for minority party unity is gone. With the election in November ahead, and Obama's brilliant decision to make financial sector reform and deficit reduction the next priority, many Republican Senators are going to want to lay claim to partial ownership on these issues to show the voters that they are doing their jobs. The crew at Open Left, Swing State Project, and Congress Matters will break down the 2010 Senate races in obsessive detail over the next few months and it will be clear that there are going to be at least a few Senators (R) who will be very receptive to Obama's imminent charm offensive.

And doing their jobs is the way that all Congress critters, R or D alike, keep their jobs. Chris Bowers posits a simple hypothetical to everyone out there who thinks otherwise:

If you think the political situation for Democrats would have been better if they had different messaging or passed different legislation, consider a simple hypothetical:

• 
  
  Over the past year, instead of saying and doing what they did, Democrats in D.C. and President Obama passed exactly the legislation, and engaged in exactly the sort of messaging, you suggest..
  
  


• 
  
  Despite doing this, current economic conditions are exactly the same as they are today.
  
  

In this hypothetical, if you think the political situation would be any different for Democrats than it is currently, then you are deluding yourself.

Or even more succinctly, "If you are not facing scandals, and times are good, then you will be popular no matter what you pass into law. This is about being in power when times are bad." The key then is to pass legislation that may not be "perfect" but at least is "good" in that it makes a material differenmce to people's lives. And that's not going to happen without bipartisanship. Even if the GOP still refuses en masse to cooperate, then at least the Democrats have a message for November: look, we tried, but the GOP obstructed everything, even deficit reduction and financial sector reform! It's not like we have a super majority in the Senate to force it through!"

So, what is the bottom line? MA-SEN was no referendum on Obama, but it was a sea change. In many ways it is better that this happened now instead of (inevitably) in November, because we won't waste the next 12 months seeking mythical 60 vote super majorities and appeasing Lieberman and engaging in pointless negotiations with Snowe. Instead, the illusion is gone, and the Republicans no longer have the cover they did for their nihilistic obstructionism. Obama is freer to seek common ground and find practical, if limited, solutions. To that end it's worth recalling Obama's own comments from MLK day this past monday:

...our predecessors were never so consumed with theoretical debates that they couldn't see progress when it came. Sometimes I get a little frustrated when folks just don't want to see that even if we don't get everything, we're getting something. (Applause.) {Rev. Martin Luther] King understood that the desegregation of the Armed Forces didn't end the civil rights movement, because black and white soldiers still couldn't sit together at the same lunch counter when they came home. But he still insisted on the rightness of desegregating the Armed Forces. That was a good first step -- even as he called for more. He didn't suggest that somehow by the signing of the Civil Rights that somehow all discrimination would end. But he also didn't think that we shouldn't sign the Civil Rights Act because it hasn't solved every problem. Let's take a victory, he said, and then keep on marching. Forward steps, large and small, were recognized for what they were -- which was progress.

It's a bitter irony indeed that progressives, of all people, are the ones who are most opposed to progress today.

Labels: liberal, President Obama, progressives

Continue reading/discuss Massachusetts Senate Race post-mortem: a progressive failure ...

Today, Massachusetts votes for a Senator to replace Ted Kennedy in a special election scheduled on the eve of President Obama's first anniversary in office. The expectation is, to put it bluntly, that Republican challenger Scott Brown will probably defeat incumbent Martha Coakley (who was appointed to fill the empty seat after Sen. Kennedy's passing last winter). The immediate impact of a Coakley loss would be to reduce the Democratic coalition by one, from a filibuster-proof 60 to merely 59. The thinking goes that this imperils President Obama's entire governing agenda, kills health care reform, and is a preview of further losses this November (where the Dems are already expected to lose seats in both the House and the Senate).

The spin from the right is that a Coakley defeat is a victory for the oppressed masses who reject Obama's socialist agenda and vindication of the Tea Party movement. But a Brown victory is more likely to come from depressed Democratic turnout, and a split independent vote, than any conservative surge. Brown himself is only a transient darling of the conservatives for the black eye he will give Obama; the moment he casts his first pro-choice vote, he'll be labeled a RINO. That's the reality of blue-state politics.

The question is, why is the Democratic base depressed? The spin from the left is that Obama hasn't been liberal enough. In this argument, Obama's failures to close Guantanamo immediately, put the single-payer reform on the table, etc - basically, Obama's failure in their eyes to govern as a far-left ideological progressive instead of the center-left liberal pragmatist he has been his whole life and actually campaigned as - is the cause.

And yet, as I have argued before, it is precisely the far left who have failed to learn the central lesson of the Bush era - that ideology is the antithesis of policy. The change that Obama talked about bringing to Washington was not a promise of knee-jerk reactionism to Bush, and govern purely in ABB mode. Rather, it was to stop ideological governance entirely and bring an intellectual, pragmatic, and principled Administration to power in the hope and belief that genuine progress on our various policy ills can be found. But what progressives demand instead is a repeat of the Bush era, only skewed the other way. Yes, that too would technically be Change, but not Hope. Certainly that sort of change is nothing to believe in.

The true culprit of a Coakley loss is that the independent vote - who represent a majority of registered voters in Massachusetts and the silent majority of citizens in the United States as a whole - was lost. Not by Obama per se but by the very far left who sought to turn every victory into a defeat. The battle for the public option is a perfect example of this, which is a case study for the aphorism, "the perfect is the enemy of the good."

So, is MA-SEN a referendum on Obama? The far left has already concluded it is, and will seek to push Obama further left. But in many ways, the loss of the 60 vote majority is freedom for Obama. No longer does Joe Lieberman have veto rights over the agenda; a Republican like Brown is someone who might actually be willing to work across the aisle. With 59 seats the validation of Obama's strategy to seek common ground is a reality - and a neccessity. And Obama would have had to seek this common ground in November anyway; as the Dems woudl surely have lost seats then too. But now, he has a year to really show how much he can do.

This race isn't a referendum on Obama's past, it's a liberation instead. Moderate Republicans like Snowe and Brown will now be empowered the way Lieberman was to defy their party. And it is they who have incentive to help Obama deliver now, because with a 41 seat minority, the GOP can no longer claim that the Democrats own everything. Their political strategy of threatening a filibuster on every vote now has teeth - which means that failure to find common ground really is theirs as much as Obama's - and possibly even more.

Related, Bernard Avishai makes a passionate case in defense of Obama's governance, and I think the all-too-appropriate title of his post is probably emblematic of a fundamental paradox at the heart of our politics. Avishai offered brief commentary on the Coakley race in the same vein this morning.

Labels: conservatism, Democrats, President Obama, progressives, Republicans

Continue reading/discuss Is the Massachusetts Senate race a referendum on Obama's first year? ...

There's really no better term for Pat Robertson than "Christian extremist" - there's not much point in going over his long history of public outbursts of intolerance, racism, and hatred, except in noting that ordinary Christians (and evangelicals in particular) bear as much responsibility for his ravings as ordinary muslims do for the sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki. That is to say, none.

But Robertson's recent comments about Haiti were particularly cruel and (if I may offer my opinion) un-Christian, even by his standards. During his televised 700 Club program, he said,

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about. They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.' True story. And so the devil said, 'Ok it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another."

Here's video of Robertson making the remarks:

There's pretty righteous outrage from the Christian sphere about this - for example, see Burke's Corner - so I'll leave the theological remonstrations to them. And for what it's worth (YMMV) Robertson did urge his millions of listeners to donate to Haitian relief - unlike the utterly reprehensible Rush Limbaugh.

But it also is worth noting that Robertson makes a historical libel against Haiti as well, one rooted in a colonialist mindset. A spokesman for Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network attempted to do damage control by releasing a statement which actually served to emphasize the historical libel all the more:

On today's The 700 Club ... Dr. Robertson also spoke about Haiti's history. His comments were based on the widely-discussed 1791 slave rebellion led by Boukman Dutty at Bois Caiman, where the slaves allegedly made a famous pact with the devil in exchange for victory over the French. This history, combined with the horrible state of the country, has led countless scholars and religious figures over the centuries to believe the country is cursed. Dr. Robertson never stated that the earthquake was God's wrath.

This is a common theme in the post-colonial narrative about Haiti, which is always described as a "broken nation" or "failed state" in a historical vacuum, as if the woes of this island nation were entirely of its own making. But if you look at the actual history of Haiti, a different picture emerges. In many ways, Haiti is the living proof of the universality of human rights and the true birthplace of freedom in the Western hemisphere.

This history of Haiti is a long one, and so deserves serious scholarship instead of a blog summary. There's in fact a brilliant three-part series published 5 years ago by licensed minister Jean R. Gelin, Ph.D., who was born in Haiti and makes a passionate and inspiring case for his homeland's true history, not as some land of devil-worshipping savages but as a Christian nation, founded in Enlightenment values, and then ravaged and exploited by the imperial powers of the 19th century - especially France and the United States. The three part series, entitled God, Satan, and the Birth of Haiti, is reprinted on BlackAndChristian.com: part I, part II, part III. I can't possibly excerpt enough of it to do it justice, just read the whole thing - but I will note some of main points that Gelin makes:

- Haiti is the only nation in the history of the world where African slaves successfully led a revolution and threw off the yoke of slavery, to win both emancipation and independence from France in 1804. This predated the Emancipation Proclamation by almost 60 years.

- Many of Haiti's first leaders were Catholic christians and invoked their faith's long theological heritage against oppression and tyranny as te basis for their struggle. Haiti remains 80% Christian today.

- There supposed "pact with the Devil" made by leader Boukman Dutty was actually a prayer to the "God of Heaven", not to the Devil or to voodoo pagan gods. The idea that a black savage could be so devout is incomprehensible to those who insist on the devil's pact reading of the events, and they insist that even if Bookman invoked god that day, he must have meant the Devil, because how could a savage understand God?

- the very logic of the "devil pact" libel is nonsensical. Why would the devil want to help them achieve freedom? Why would God be on the side of the slavers? In the Bible, God is always freeing slaves - like the Israelites in Egypt. Does the devil pact libel really make any theologic sense? (Robertson and his apologists are making a theological argument after all, so this is a valid counter argument within that context).

- Even after Haiti's birth, it remained the plaything of imperial powers. One of the major burdens and contributors to Haiti's descent into poverty was a vast sum of blood money it was forced to pay to France as recompense for its own independence. Think about the logic of this for a moment. It is akin to demanding that the descendants of slavery in the United States pay reparations to the US government! And it wasn't just the French who demanded protection money from Haiti either - at various times in its history, Haiti has had to make payments to forces from the US, Germany and Britain.

The United States has remained active in Haiti's affairs in the 20th century, particularly from 1994 to 2004. Even with the best of intentions in recent decades, continued interference has left Haiti utterly dysfunctional and corrupt. Mr. Robertson would have us believe this is all the work of the Devil; maybe in one sense he's correct. But Haiti has never willingly signed any pact with the powers that have dictated it's existence - it's always been on the recieving end. I hope that the aftermath of the earthquake gives Haiti a chance to rebuild itself, in more ways than one - and this time perhaps we can actually help rather than hinder.

Related - Talk Islam's posts on Robertson. Also there's an interesting story about the Polish-Haitian connection. And finally, here's a list of easy ways to donate to Haitian relief, either online, by phone, or via text message/SMS.

Labels: Christianity, Haiti, Racism, WEC

Continue reading/discuss Devil's advocate: Pat Robertson and Haiti's curse ...

I've been meaning to comment on the Copenhagen conference, since the perspective from the Indian press is probably quite different from that in the US media. According to the papers here, Obama forced his way into a private meeting between Chinese premier Wen Jibao and Indian PM Manmohan Singh because he didn't want them "negotiating in private". China and India resisted all attempts by the US to make the Copenhagen draft legally binding, and fought monitoring and transparency tooth and nail. This plays well here as a strike against US/Western imperialistic moralizing, on behalf of the developing nations, whose champions are now... China and India? really?

I am frankly disgusted. India and China - both nuclear powers and members of the UN Security Council - can no longer by any stretch of the imagination be considered "developing nations" and they are cynically using their endemic poverty as bargaining chips to benefit their industrial and economic elites. It's precisely those hundreds of millions of poverty-stricken Chinese and Indians who are going to suffer the most from global warming, while the rich ensconce themselves ever further into their posh enclaves.

The problem is that the failure of the US to unilaterally act on climate change gives the industrialized asian giants the political cover they can need to avoid doing anything. They see it as a zero-sum game - and they are wrong. But the truth is that the ball is indeed in our court; we still are the highest per-capita emitters of greenhouse gases. This is why it is imperative that we act, regardless of what Chindia does.

Taken together, I suspect that Chindia is a worse offender than we are - but in their recalcitrance is our opportunity. If the US is now forced to act unilaterally, then we and not they will be the owners of the New Energy economy. China has a lead on nuclear power but pebble-bed reactor technology only faces regulatory, not technical hurdles in the US. And we are the leader in wind turbines, not to mention other projects like the Polywell reactor and more exotic stuff like the National Ignition Facility at Livermore. All the pieces are in place on our home turf, and if we aggressively go after the prize of an alternate energy economy then we will remain dominant on the world stage, to Chindia's dismay.

Ultimately, global warming's solution is indirect - and it's all about energy. If the US can enact strict new emissions standards, a cap and trade program, and massive investment in alternate energy sources (say, a goal of 50% of our domestic power by 2025) then we win. And because it's not a zero sum game, so too do the poor in the developing world. If only China and India saw it that way too, we could really achieve something.

Labels: China, global warming, India, poverty

Continue reading/discuss Rotten in the state of Denmark: Chindia at Copenhagen ...