Tag Archives: faith

SIX POPULISMS

Posted on by

TPMCafe’s guest stint by Thomas Frank (One Market Under God, by the way, is a masterpiece) has stirred a spirited debate about the place of populism in a progressive future. Populism is a word which has rightly come up fairly frequently in more- and less-enlightened discussions of the left’s future, but too often it seems like folks are talking past each other. Here are six of the somewhat but not entirely related themes I think are in play in the way different people discuss populism:

Progressive Economics: In broad strokes, the economic policy proposals that get labeled as populist are the ones least popular with the Washington Post editorial board and the “Washington Consensus” crowd: fair trade or no trade; downward economic redistribution; unionization. Opposition to immigration often gets grouped in here as well as part of the same package, though for obvious reasons I’d rather apply the populist label to the push for equal labor rights for immigrants.

Direct Democracy: The other set of policy proposals which usually get the populist labels are the ones which bring political decisions under more direct control of the American public. This includes taking decisions away from judges and handing them over to legislatures and taking them away from legislatures and handing them over to public referenda.

Trust in crowds: Populism is also used to describe a posture – whether held by politicians or activists – of trust in the mass public and distrust in elites. Usually, trust in the public is justified by an appeal to the wisdom of common people in identifying their own problems and synthesizing their own solutions. And distrust in elites is justified on the grounds of their inability to understand those insights or, more often, their narrow interests.

Democratic Legitimacy: Populism also describes a particular kind of appeal made by elected or unelected political leaders. Candidates for office, especially, tend to get the populist label for seizing democratic legitimacy for themselves – that is, for framing themselves as the bearers and protectors of the people’s will. The corollary to the candidate as representative of the masses is the candidate as enemy of the elites, whose hostility is easily explained by their opposition to the popular policies and popular mandate.

Prejudice: Populism is also a frequently-invoked label to describe all manner of ugly prejudice, be it directed against Blacks, Jews, homosexuals, or immigrants. In this conception, populism is the cry of some self-defined majority against unwelcome interlopers. This meaning of populism – which gives elites a lot of credit – is never far when someone’s looking to discredit one of the others.

Economic Focus: Maybe the simplest sense in which the word populism is used is to refer to a focus on economic issues (rather than a particular stance on them), to the exclusion of others.

That makes two kinds of policy approaches, two rhetorical/ philosophical postures, a question of focus, and a very bad thing (generally thrown into the mix by pundits like Joe Klein to make everything associated with the word sound ugly). Each of them, though, has a way of showing up implicitly in discussions about what is or should be populist.

What does it mean, for example, to ask whether Bill Clinton was a populist President? He often gets described that way, in large part because he ran on the economy (“It’s the Economy, Stupid”), and because his challenge to Bush benefited significantly from a sense that Clinton represented the concerns of the American people with which the President had fallen out of touch (and supermarket ray-guns). Others associate Clinton with the decline of populism in the Democratic party, and of the party in the country, pointing to his conservative stance on issues like NAFTA and the technocratic underpinnings of the “Reinventing Government” concept. I’m not going to say they’re both right (I’d say Clinton campaigned as a populist, but he didn’t govern as much of one). I will say that on those terms, it’s no surprise that those conversations don’t get farther than they do.

Thoughts?

ROBERTS’ RULES

Posted on by

Good news: Edith Brown Clement is not, for the moment, a nominee for the Supreme Court.

Bad news: I’m starting to miss her already.

John G. Roberts’ America is not one which does the best traditions of this country proud.

People for the American Way has compiled some of the reasons why. Among the more troubling of his arguments:

School-sponsored prayer at public school graduations poses no church-state problems because students swho don’t like it can just stay home from their graduations.

Congress can ban flag-burning without a free expression problem because bans don’t prohibit the “expressive conduct” of burning the flag – they just remove the flag as a prop with which to do it.

Arresting minors for crimes for which adults are given citations poses no equal protection challenge because minors are more likely to lie.

On choice, Roberts authored a government brief in Rust v. Sullivan that Roe “was wrongly decided and should be overturned.” As for the Lochner litmus test, he dissented from a D.C. Circuit Court case upholding the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act. And at least in Law School, he apparently took a very broad view of the “takings” clause, opening the door to dangerous judicious activism targeting popular economic regulations which protect the economic security of the American people.

FREEDOM MEANS FREEDOM FOR EVERYBODY

Posted on by

Yesterday the General Synod of the United Church of Christ (you may remember them from their too-controversial-for-TV ads last year celebrating non-discrimination in church) made history by passing the first resolution by a Mainline Protestant denomination endorsing equal marriage rights for all couples:

It was both a theological statement and a protest against discrimination, said the Rev. John H. Thomas, the president and general minister of the denomination, which has 6,000 congregations and 1.3 million members. “On this July 4, the United Church of Christ has courageously acted to declare freedom, affirming marriage equality, affirming the civil rights of gay – of same-gender – couples to have their relationships recognized as marriages by the state, and encouraging our local churches to celebrate those marriages,” Mr. Thomas said at a news conference after the vote by the General Synod.Hector Lopez, a minister from a small Latino church in Southern California, said he was not at first enthusiastic about same-sex marriage. But after officiating at about a dozen such ceremonies in Oregon and seeing the respect and commitment of the couples, he said, “I experienced a passionate conversion.”…His hope, [Thomas] said, is that “we will not run from one another, because if we run from one another we run from Christ.”

Check out the General Synod’s blog here. You can hear the Rev. Chuck Corrie’s sermon on Matthew 11 and the challenge of “discerning God’s will on difficult issues” here.

The UCC’s statement of conscience echoes the one celebrated in this obituary for Rabbi Louis J. Sigel, a driving force behind Teaneck, New Jersey’s voluntary school integration, the first such decision by a township in this country. As the author, paraphrasing Reginald Damerell’s book, writes:

Rabbi Sigel – a Torah and Talmud scholar who primarily considered himself a teacher – calmed a fractious community meeting. A law professor who was a member of Temple Emeth stood and asked why the whole community had to be “disturbed” by a problem that he said black residents had created themselves by moving into one end of town. “The temple’s rabbi, Louis J. Sigel, rose,” Mr. Damerell wrote. “His rich voice carried throughout the auditorium” as he narrated a story from the Talmud about a man who sees a fire in another part of town and asks, “What have I to do with the needs of the community?” “Sigel’s voice rose in emphasis, ‘Such a man destroys the world!'” Mr. Damerell wrote. “Applause exploded through the auditorium.” That set the stage for a resolution from the floor commending the Board of Education “for studying possible ways to prevent de-facto segregation,” the author said. It passed, thus providing the integration side with a victory in its first skirmish. Because of his pro-integration stand, some temple members wanted to oust him, his family later acknowledged, but a large majority supported him.

Recognizing that the bush is burning without being consumed, our tradition teaches, gives us the hope to pursue liberation. But it isn’t realized until we recognize that our liberation is tied up with that of our neighbors – that our homes are not secure as long as theirs are on fire.

Posted on by

Tuesday night several groups at Yale sponsored an excellent debate between the Reverends Barry Lynn (of Americans United for Separation of Church and State) and Jim Wallis (of Sojourners Magazine) on the role of faith in public life. They’re both thoughtful and articulate speakers with a stake in a more progressive turn for this country.

Wallis is frustratingly off-base in his support for President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives as an opportunity to be seized by a religious left. The issue, as I’ve said before and as Lynn argued, is not whether religiously-identified groups are eligible for government support when they provide social services but whether they will be subject to the same regulations as everyone else when they are. Lynn quoted troubling comments from Wallis conflating denying funding to groups because they hold a certain faith with denying funding to those groups because they discriminate in hiring against those who don’t. And Lynn rightfully questioned Wallis’ attempt in writing to dichotomize racial and religious discrimination, pointing out that for some of the groups in question one identitiy is mapped onto the other – and that right-wing churches led by the likes of Pat Robertson haven’t been rejected for “preaching hate” like the Nation of Islam has. Wallis, to his credit, expressed unspecified concerns with the implementation of the initiatives, but declined the engage the issue of discrimination and instead expressed hope that the Supreme Court would sort it out.

My sympathies were more divided between the Reverends on the other issue which consumed much of the debate: What is the place of religious rhetoric in political discourse? I share Rev. Lynn’s concern that the halls of Congress not be overtaken with arguments over the details of scriptural interpretation. He’s right to argue that in a pluralistic, democratic society votes should be cast, and should be explained, based on popular rather than divine authority, and on the basis of shared rather than sectarian values. He’s right to observe that while religious rhetoric infused the Civil Rights Movement through and through, when members of Congress cast their votes in 1964, they explained them through appeal in large part to the values of equal protection set forth in our common law. And he’s right to reject Wallis’ tenedency to reduce “values” to religion and to reduce the political spectrum to religious right versus religious left.

That said, I think few of us disagree with Rev. Wallis’ contention that it’s long past time that the religious left disrupted what he calls the monologue of the religious right. And I’m not persuaded by the bright lines Lynn seeks to draw between the discourse in the halls of Congress, in the church, on opinion pages, at rallies, and on Meet the Press. Certainly, an advocate assumes a different voice than a representative, speaking on different grounds and to a different audience. But Wallis is right that there should be a place for our elected representatives to speak to their personal faith convictions as well as to our shared democratic ideals. He’s right that for Lynn to bristle categorically at any instance of biblical references by elected politicians does little to further the cause of religious freedom.

One audience member asked Rev. Lynn why he was comfortable with Senators quoting from “anything else in Bartlett’s Quotations,” but not the Bible, and in response Lynn made an illuminating distinction between a quote to persuade – invoked because the quote itself makes a persuasive argument for whatever is being advocated – and a quote on the basis of authority, which is invoked to bring down the authority of whoever said the quote in the first place as an argument in and of itself for what’s being advocated. Lynn’s belief is that Bible quotes are always brought in not to share creative persuasive arguments but to shut down argument by virtue of biblical authority. I’m not so sure. It may be complicated to distinguish between appeals to a biblical argument and invocation of biblical authority, but I think it’s critical that we do. I think it’s similarly critical that we distinguish between those who invoke their particularistic faith values as ends unto themselves, and those who offer them as a personal path to our shared faith in community, in individual freedom, and in social justice.

Posted on by

No real surprises in tonight’s press conference. That Bush saw the need to have it at all demonstrates what must be a growing sense that public opinion is only further solidifying against this administration on each of its major domestic policy initiatives. Still not much of a social security plan. Un-conservative as means testing may sound, ultimately it’s an approach to fray the social contract by transforming social security in the public mind from a universal compact into a payoff to the poor. The next step, a generation from now, is capitalizing on that image to further assault the program. Meanwhile, makes sense that Bush set himself up as the good cop on the “filibuster against people of faith” line, although he can’t really distance himself from that nasty line without actually, well, distancing himself from it. Interesting to see him say that his energy bill won’t help for a decade.

Posted on by

The founders:

…no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. (Article VI)

The President:

I don’t see how you can be president at least from my perspective, how you can be president, without a relationship with the Lord.

Posted on by

This is an election we should have won. This is an election we could have won if the candidate had been working as hard, and as smart, as everybody else that was trying to get him elected. We almost won it anyway. It could be that we did. But given Kerry’s unwillingness to wait as long as folks did in line to vote for him before saying, in the name of national unity, that their votes needn’t be counted, we may never know.

I think the most striking find in the exit polls was that significant majorities said they supported Kerry on Iraq but Bush on the war on terror. Funny thing is, main thing Bush has done in the name of stopping terror is ignore Osama bin Laden and create a terrorist playground in Iraq, while refusing necessary funding for homeland security. This says to me that Bush succeeded in making terrorism a question of character rather than of policy. Kerry was certainly savaged by the media in the same way Gore was, while Bush too often got a free pass. But Kerry failed for months to put out a coherent, comprehensible message on Iraq (as on too many other issues), and while voters rightly prefered an alleged flip-flopper to an obvious belly-flopper on the issue, I think he shot a lot of his credibility as a strong leader and he may have lost the rhetorical battle for Commander-in-Chief. His unwillingness to aggressively defend himself, especially from the vile Swift Boat Vet attacks, can’t have helped. What’s tragic, of course, is that Bush has flip-flopped far more, even on whether we can win the war on terror, and that the extent his policy has been consistent, it’s been stubbornly, suicidely dangerous. On this issue, as on every issue, some will argue that Kerry was just too left-wing, which is anything but the truth (same goes for Dukakis, Mondale, Gore). A candidate who consistently opposed the war and articulated a clear vision of what to do once we got there could have fared much better.

Then there’s the cluster of issues the media, in an outrageous surrender to the religious right, insist on calling “moral values” (as if healthcare access isn’t a moral value). Here Kerry got painted as a left-winger while abjectly failing to expose the radical right agenda of his opponent. Most voters are opposed to a constitutional ban on all abortion, but Kerry went three debates without mentioning that it’s in the GOP platform. That, and a ban on gay adoption, which is similarly unpopular. And while he started trying towards the end to adopt values language in expressing his position on these issues and on others, it was too little, too late. An individual may be entitled to privacy about his faith and his convictions, religious or otherwise but a Presidential candidate shouldn’t expect to get too far without speaking convincingly about his beliefs and his feelings (I’m hoping to get a chance to read George Lakoff’s new book on this – maybe Kerry should as well).

This election will provide further few to those who argue that Republicans are a cadre of libertarians and the poor are all social conservatives who get convinced by the GOP to ignore class. The first problem with this argument when folks like Michael Lind articulate it is that it ignores the social liberalism of many in the working class. There are others – like the economic breakdown of voting patterns in 2000, which would make David Brooks’ head explode because the fact is Gore got the bottom three sixths and Bush got the top. But few can argue that a not insignificant number of working class voters in this country consistently vote against their economic interests, and that at least in this election, they have enough votes to swing the result. Here too some will argue the Democrats just have to sell out gay folks and feminists to win back the Reagan Democrats. I think Thomas Frank is much closer to the truth: People organize for control over their lives and their environments through the means that appear possible, and the Democrats’ ongoing retreat from an economic agenda which articulates class inequality has left the Republicans’ politics of class aesthetics (stick it to the wealthy liberals by putting prayer back in schools) as an alternative. For all the flack he got over wording, Howard Dean was speaking to an essential truth when he recognized that working-class southern whites don’t have much to show for decades of voting Republican, and Kerry didn’t make the case nearly well enough. He also seems to have bought into Republicans’ claims that Democrats always spend the last few weeks beating old folks over the head with claims that they’ll privatize social security and forgotten that Republicans, in fact, will privatize social security if they can. So he let too many of them get pulled away to the GOP. Part of the irony of the debate over the tension between the left economic agenda and their social agenda, and whether being labelled with the latter stymies the former, is that as far as public opinion goes, I see much more reason for confidence that we’ll have gained tremendous ground on gay marriage in a generation than that we will have on economic justice. As far as policy goes, the next four years are a terrifying prospect for both, and for most things we value in this country.

Don’t mourn. Organize.

Posted on by

A month ago I wrote here about a “Catholic Voting Scorecard” prepared by Catholic Democrats to remind voters and the media that abortion isn’t the only issue on which the Conference of Bishops has taken a contentious stance, and that it shares more of them in common with the Democrats than the Republicans. Now Nathan Newman shares a survey of Catholic Senators compiled by Senator Durbin:

Unsurprisingly, Democratic Senators do poorly on the pro-life rating, but the news is in the Domestic and Foreign Policy ratings. Using the stated legislative priorities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Durbin has ranked the Senators on Catholic positions from the minimum wage to the right to unionize on the domestic front to the Iraq War Resolution and Global AIDS funding on the international side. And some Catholic Republicans are way off the Church’s legislative priorities. Senator Sununu and Santorum received the lowest domestic ratings (23%) with Bunning and Santorum tied with the lowest ratings in foreign policy (6%). Other Catholic GOPers with notably low ratings were Senator Domenici (27% Domestic, 12% International) and Murkowski (33% Domestic, 7% International). BTW Kerry had the highest domestic rating of any Catholic Senator (95%). Of course, conservatives will say only the abortion issue counts. Now, many Catholic leaders may say it counts more– and Durbin gives it its own rating, but it should raise questions in some quarters– hint to the media– that additional stories on who is a “good Catholic” could be done.

Now the Republicans can only be expected to keep exploiting the mantle of faith as long as it appears a potent strategy. But it’s time for the media to wisen up and broaden its sense of what construes Catholic politics. It’s time for the Church to levy the kind of pressure it has on behalf of what it calls “unborn children” towards fighting the poverty faced by children born in this country every day. And it’s time for the Democrats, religious or not, to stop shrinking from hypocritical attacks from Republicans.

Posted on by

In the latest round of the struggle for political license over Catholicism, Democrats, including my Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, have prepared a “Catholic Voting Scorecard” designed to demonstrate that when one integrates candidates’ stances on issues, from DOMA to child tax credit refunds, on which the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken stances, Democrats are better Catholics. Personally, I’d rather see John Kerry et al articulating the kind of Catholics they are and the policies that dictates (“My personal faith and political conviction demand that we mean what we say when we promise that no child is left behind”) than touting their fidelity to the policy proscriptions of the Conference of Bishops (“I’m 74% faithful!”). But this scorecard seems worth it, if nothing else, only for having elicited this tragically ironic condemnation:

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said both the bishops and the Democrats are confusing means with motives. “Many of the issues they’re talking about really have nothing to do with actual Catholic teaching or religion,” he said. “It is interpretation of economic policy.”

As I’ve alluded to before, the modern permutation of religion in political discourse into apologetics for social conservatism and the hollowing out of the economic justice which is central to all faiths is a deeply cynical and tragic abuse of the tradition. Where Jesus preached that the meek shall inherit the earth, Congressman King insists that whether the poor will have a share of the wealth of this nation is a matter of interpretation. This reminds me of nothing so much as last summer’s declaration by the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations that “the budget is not a Jewish issue.”

Posted on by

Howard Dean gets it right:

From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people…My view of Christianity . . . is that the hallmark of being a Christian is to reach out to people who have been left behind. So I think there was a religious aspect to my decision to support civil unions.

I can’t help wondering however, why Howard Dean’s God stops short of full civil marriage…

Posted on by

The Times reports on a new national clergy lobby designed to speak from a place of religious faith in calling for economic justice, civil liberties, and ethical foreign policy, and to disrupt the conservative monopoly on religion in political discourse:

“Clergy have to be careful not to rush in with solutions to big problems, but when they see gross injustice they have an obligation not to be silent,” [Sloane] Coffin said. “The arrogance and self-righteousness of the present administration are very dangerous. And silence by members of the clergy, in the face of such arrogance, is tantamount to betrayal of the Gospel or the Torah or the Koran.”

Several of the political group’s founders are from Midwestern and Southern states, including Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, which Mr. Pennybacker called “battleground areas” in which moderate and progressive Christians have been losing their “political voice” to Christian conservatives.

Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant working with the new group, said: “There’s been a concerted effort by Christian conservatives to question the faith of people who disagree with their positions in the same way that they question their patriotism. The Clergy Leadership Network will now be the amen corner for people of faith who express disagreement with the administration and the Christian Right.”

…”In many people’s minds the words `conservative’ and `liberal’ are firmly linked with positions on lifestyle issues,” Mr. Green said. “Within such a diverse coalition, these clergy undoubtedly have congregations with different views on gay rights and abortion. But they may be able to find common ground on issues like war and peace, social welfare and the need for jobs.”

Last night, incidentally, was the first meeting of Yale’s newly revived Jews for Justice group, also in part an effort to create a space for Jews on the left to articulate a social justice agenda supported by our Jewish tradition and our Jewish values, while providing a counterbalancing voice to those on this campus and nationally arguing that only hawkish views are authentically Jewish, or that only foreign policy should be a Jewish issue.

Posted on by

Yesterday thirteen of the strike-breakers Yale’s subcontracted firm had brought in joined Local 34 and 35 on strike. The comany bosses, seeing their workers begin to picket in the lot in Orange CT where they gather to be bused to Yale, called the police and pushed the rest of the workers onto the bus. The sight of the old strikers welcoming the new ones on the New Haven Green, surrounded by students and clergy, was a powerful demonstration that New Haven will continue to come together despite Yale’s short-sighted attempts to divide it – until such a time as Yale should choose to muster its power in the community to work with the mobilization for justice rather than against it.

In the afternoon, United Students Against Sweatshops leaders had a press conference here kicking off a national student campaign to support Yale workers. Well over a hundred Yale students showed up at a teach-in to hear from workers, organizers, students, and faculty about what they’re fighting for.

Today at 12 PM, several thousand workers and students from throughout the Northeast and beyond will be here gathering on the New Haven Green for a 1 PM march to call on Yale to settle just contracts now.