QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
“There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.
There is no greater guilt than discontentment.
And there is no greater disaster than greed.”
The Way of Lao-tzu
Lao-tzu, c. 604 - c. 531 B.C.E.
SENSE AND NONSENSE—“WHIM -WHAM THE DEVIL OUT OF THEM”
From the editor: I was very small for my age until late in my high school years. Consequently, I found myself being bullied by boys who couldn’t resist taking advantage of someone smaller. When I discussed this problem with my father, he had some simple advice: “Just pick up a stick and whim-wham the devil out of them,” he would say confidently. Upon hearing this advice as a youngster, a 50-pounder with arms as thick as toothpicks, I was not sure I wanted to test my father’s advice in the ring of adolescent testosterone. I did try it once or twice with somewhat mixed results. I ultimately decided I could fare much better if I simply used my brain rather than the nearest piece of solid lumber.
However, I have always relied upon the “spirit” of my father’s advice. Since my youth, I have interpreted his words as “Don’t be afraid to level the playing field.”
Unfortunately, President Obama and the people who surround him are afraid to level the playing field. Obama is allowing himself and the Office of the President to be bullied by the “Big Lie.” In review, this lie includes, but is not limited to the following:
- The richest one percent of Americans create jobs.
- The Republican Party is the party of fiscal responsibility.
- The Democratic Party is the party of big government.
- Global warming is part of earth’s natural cycle of temperature change.
- “Trickle-down” economics raises all ships.
- Corporations are persons protected by free speech.
Obama’s fear of the Big Lie only serves to embolden the bully. So much so that Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell can afford to announce his number-one priority is to make sure Obama is not elected for a second term.
McConnell then follows up with a letter dated Nov. 29, 2010 to Senate Majority Leader Reid. The letter was sent the day after McConnell, Boehner, and Cantor met face-to-face with Obama, Reid, and Pelosi to emphasize the need to compromise on legislation awaiting action by the Senate. McConnell’s letter was co-signed by himself and Jon Kyl and includes the signatures of all 42 Republican members of the Senate. Instead of compromise, the letter presents Reid and Obama with a mandate: “…we write to inform you that we will not agree to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers.”
In other words, Senate Republican demagogues will take their collective bats and balls and go home if the rest of Congress and the Office of the President do not comply with their demand. To hell with the START treaty. To hell with re-instating unemployment benefits. To hell with repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” To hell with food safety legislation that must be voted on again in the Senate because of a parliamentary glitch. To hell with the DREAM Act.
At the time of this writing, President Obama shows no signs of being a fighter. The only signs have come from House Speaker Pelosi who is pushing an effort to de-link tax cuts for the middle class from tax cuts for the richest one percent of Americans. President Obama could use his bully pulpit to remind American voters of the words of the man who institutionalized the use of the big lie with unimaginable and horrendous results. Adolf Hitler writes in vol. I, chapter 10 of Mein Kampf the following chilling description of the concept:
All this was inspired by the principle -- which is quite true within itself -- that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
McConnell’s letter embraces the art of lying by promoting the falsehood of trickle-down economics. However, Obama has already signaled he will accede to the McConnell ultimatum. Perhaps he has no choice, but he could at least confess that, in so doing, he is participating in the disastrous political art of lying.
Maynard Chapman, Editor
The Compass
JOHN PAUL STEVENS—A SUPREMELY GOOD WRITER AND CRITIC
From the editor: If the electorate needs a breath of fresh air, we can turn to retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, age 90. In rapid fire succession, Justice Stevens has focused much needed attention upon the clear trend toward politicization of the Supreme Court. His ability as a jurist who is able to translate legal obfuscation into language that laymen can understand became very apparent in his 90-page dissent opposing the Court’s 5-4 decision last January to remove limits on political spending by corporations.
In the third paragraph of his dissent (joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor), Stevens writes, “In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters….Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.”
Stevens destroys the contention of the majority in Citizens United v. FEC with the following words: “The Framers (of the Constitution) thus took it as given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized (sic) the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind.”
Justice Stevens also has been vocal and active since his retirement last June. He agreed to an interview with “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley. The interview was aired by CBS in November. Justice Stevens was candid regarding the Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore. When Pelley asked Stevens what should have been done, Stevens said, “It (the court) should’ve denied the stay, period.”
“And therefore let the recount go on in Florida?” Pelley asked.
“That’s right,” Stevens said.
The Bush campaign had asked the court for a stay, to stop the recount, on the grounds the recount would cause irreparable harm to the nation. The night before the court was to hear the request for a stay, Stevens ran into another justice at a party. Stevens shares the conversation he had with his colleague:
“And I remember both of us saying to one another, ‘Well, I guess we’re gonna have to meet tomorrow on this, but that’ll take us about ten minutes,’ because it had obviously no merit to it. Because in order to get a stay in any situation, the applicant has to prove irreparable injury and there just obviously wasn’t any irreparable injury to allowing a recount to go through because the worst that happens is you get a more accurate count of the votes. But much to our surprise, on the next day, the majority did decide to grant a stay.”
Stevens also used the Pelley interview to comment on legal rights of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism. José Padilla was an American citizen. He was arrested in the U.S. on suspicion of terrorist ties. He was held in a military prison incommunicado without charges for four years on nothing but the order of President Bush.
“I thought that very possibility is a potential threat to every citizen in the United States, if you can be subjected to that kind of detention without access to courts or lawyers or the rest, it is a matter to be very concerned about,” Stevens said.
Pelley reports that the court dismissed Padilla’s appeal on a technicality, but Stevens and three other justices had wanted to rule on Padilla’s detention. Stevens aimed his dissent at the Bush administration with a blunt warning. He wrote, “If this nation is to remain true to ideals symbolized by its flag, it must not wield the tools of tyrants….”
Justice Stevens’s latest withering salvo is an essay on capital punishment. The essay, titled, “On the Death Sentence,” is actually a review of a new book by David Garland titled, Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition. Stevens’s essay will appear in the Dec. 23, 2010 edition of “The New York Review of Books.” It is also currently available on the NY Review of Books website.
The essay is full of interesting background and context on the history of capital punishment decisions by the Supreme Court. For example, Stevens writes that in Furman v. Georgia (1972), “Attacks on Furman, like the related vigorous and continuing criticism of liberal Warren Court decisions protecting the right of criminal defendants and minority voters, were an important part of the Republican Party’s ‘Southern strategy.’ The history of racism in the South partly explains the appeal of the ‘states’ rights’ arguments that helped move the ‘solid South’ from the Democratic to the Republican column in national elections.” Furman produced a moratorium on executions in the forty-two jurisdictions that authorized them.
Throughout the essay, Stevens repeatedly documents “wrong turns” taken by the court especially in deciding how juries in death penalty cases are chosen and what evidence they may hear. He ends the essay by politely and diplomatically suggesting Garland’s book should have taken a more definitive stand against capital punishment in the U.S.
Justice Stevens is not only a breath of fresh air. His bright mind and pertinent observations serve as a reminder of the importance of keeping a Democrat in the Office of the President – unless of course that Democrat has been infected with “bi-partisan” fever.
Copyright © 2010, The Compass Society
