Maikimo.net taxonomy tags

I’m not sure why this silly-ass Federal Marriage Amendment being debated in the Senate today bugs me so; I think its presence on the national screen just shouts to me how far our national discourse has degenerated.

The whole damn thing is — or ought to be — unthinkable in the United States: Amend the U.S. Constitution, the foundation of our republic, to deny marriage equality to same-sex couples? IOW, amend the very document that guarantees rights for all citizens to take away some citizens’ rights?

All animals are created equal.
But some animals are more equal than others.
—George Orwell, Animal Farm

I don’t give a flying Cheney what my government representatives think about homosexuality and same-sex marriage — they can think anything they want but they can’t be allowed to start legislating state-sanctioned discrimination. If they’re willing to start discriminating against some of us now, at some point we’ll be the ones being discriminated against, for nearly any eventual definition of we.

Dear God, how much foresight does it take to see this? This amendment (obviously) brought to us by the same foresighted geniuses who dreamed up the Bush Doctrine of Preemption, which would be better called “Massive Motivator for Other Nations to Arm to the Hilt.”

I’ve just about given up on my Republican representative and senators — one of whom is the (in)famous Sen. Frist — to act sanely and foresightedly, but I wrote them today anyway using the MoveOn petition form that also sends an email to “the President, signer’s Senators, Representative in Congress, and other political leaders.” I wrote —

Despite all rhetoric to the contrary, this proposed Constitutional amendment is the moral equivalent of Jim Crow.

I am a heterosexual Christian committed to social justice and civil rights for all of us.

Whether I agree, or you agree, with any particular group is not relevant: your job is to uphold the U.S. Constitution for all U.S. citizens.

I believe any government official who seeks to alter the Constitution to legislate discrimination is derelict in his or her duty — and must be fired.

Please reconsider your position and reject this proposed amendment.

[several expletives deleted]

What’s the upside to enduring this unadulterated, literally un-American crap? Hmmm … Well, after all this, the return of rational, thoughtful national discourse about things that matter — a return that’s at least possible if not certain under a Kerry/Edwards Administration — ah, it will be sweeter than honey, will it not?

LA Times: Editorial: ‘Bush’s doctrine of preemption undermines President John Quincy Adams’ understanding that the United States “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”’ (paraphrased).

WaPo: Robin Wright quoting Ted Galen Carpenter: ‘It’s a lesson in hubris. The administration thought it had all the answers, but it found out through painful experience that it did not.’

MilitaryWeek.com: Karen Kwiatkowski: ‘The soldier [just back from Iraq] was asked what Arabic he had been taught in order to do his job … “Stop. Get down. Kneel. Shut up.”’

The New Yorker: Joshua Micah Marshall: ‘Did the Bush Administration create a new American empire — or weaken the old one?’

TPM: Josh interviews George Soros: ‘This administration’s ideology of power and dominance doesn’t work and is profoundly un-American.’

WaPo: Glenn Kessler: ‘Many nations might have been willing to support a war if the administration had been willing to give U.N. weapons inspections a few more weeks, but the administration refused to alter its military timetable.’

The Nation: Editorial: ‘Washington has shifted into scandal gear … which might be called wargate … since the cost of the mistake was a war.’

Lots of people are quoting Michael Kinsley in yesterday’s Slate article, Unauthorized entry. I’m quoting him, too, to highlight two particularly meaningful summarizations within.

Pointing out the logical inconsistency of the following reason to attack Iraq, as paraphrased here by Kinsley, has changed the minds of some of my formerly war-leaning friends — and caused others to call timeout, and put one in an infinite loop —

[Bush, paraphrased]: I am ignoring the wishes of the Security Council and violating the U.N. Charter in order to enforce a U.N. Security Council resolution.

I’ve never seen a better one-paragraph summary of The Bush Doctrine and its implications:

Bush is asserting the right of the United States to attack any country that may be a threat to it in five years. And the right of the United States to evaluate that risk and respond in its sole discretion. And the right of the president to make that decision on behalf of the United States in his sole discretion. In short, the president can start a war against anyone at any time, and no one has the right to stop him. And presumably other nations and future presidents have that same right. All formal constraints on war-making are officially defunct.

This is why this present course will reap the whirlwind:
We have declared open season on everyone. For everyone.

(For more on The Bush Doctrine and its implications, see Wendell Berry’s excellent A Citizen’s Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America.)

[via Aardvark]

Amazingly, most people don’t even know about the Bush doctrine and what it entails.

Officials are concerned that if America strikes first, it will appear the U.S. has started a war.

Wendell Berry — whom Steph for years has proclaimed a “master poet” — provides A Citizen’s Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America (aka The Bush Doctrine that was published by the U.S. Administration in September 2002):

This [NSS] document affirms peace; it also affirms peace as the justification of war and war as the means of peace and thus perpetuates a hallowed absurdity. But implicit in its assertion of this (and, by implication, any other) nation’s right to act alone in its own interest is an acceptance of war as a permanent condition. Either way, it is cynical to invoke the ideas of cooperation, community, peace, freedom, justice, dignity, and the rule of law (as this document repeatedly does), and then proceed to assert one’s intention to act alone in making war. One cannot reduce terror by holding over the world the threat of what it most fears.

This is a contradiction not reconcilable except by a self righteousness almost inconceivably naive.

Wendell Berry is a man after my own heart. Or is that vice versa? :-)  He writes well what I fumble in trying to articulate at all. Dear God, how exhilarating to read such a writer!

This is essential reading for every U.S. citizen.

[via Doc]