The language of the unheard

It is not my intention to write about rioting, looting, and other criminal mischief that occurred last night in Ferguson, Mo., after the decision of the grand jury empaneled to investigate the death of Michael Brown was announced.

Neither is it my intention to write about that decision, the "no bill" result, that means that for now Darren Wilson will face no charges in connection with that death.

As to the latter, as I wrote last night on Facebook, there was a process followed.  Process produces justice, whether or not we like the result.  In any criminal matter, no matter who is being investigated or accused, the process, when followed, produces justice.  Injustice results from the failure to follow process.

As to the former, to the extent that those actions were taken in actual protest of the grand jury's decision, those actions are wrong and should be prosecuted as criminal acts.  To the extent that those were the actions of opportunistic criminals, they are irrelevant to our purposes here.

Everything that has occurred in connection with this case--the riots, the protests, the candlelight vigils, the political entanglements, the efforts of the police to discredit Michael Brown, the racial disparity between the Ferguson police force and the community it serves, the handling of the long-term investigation, the handling of the grand jury, the prosecutor's half-hearted presentation of the case to the grand jury, the handling of the immediate investigation, the statements of the witnesses, and so on, up to and including the killing of Michael Brown, are symptoms of a much larger problem.

Symptoms, not the problem.

This problem is one that few people want to discuss honestly, because they are so entrenched, so dedicated to the idea that they must prevail in the controversy, that they cannot recognize the problem.

A quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., from a 1966 interview with Mike Wallace has gotten considerable exposure in recent days.  In that interview, King was seeking to explain the context of race riots across the United States, most famously in the Watts district of Los Angeles but elsewhere as well, where the "Black Power" movement pushed back against King's advocacy of nonviolent resistance.  He said:

I will agree that there is a group in the Negro community advocating violence now. I happen to feel that this group represents a numerical minority. Surveys have revealed this. The vast majority of Negroes still feel that the best way to deal with the dilemma that we face in this country is through non-violent resistance, and I don't think this vocal group will be able to make a real dent in the Negro community in terms of swaying 22 million Negroes to this particular point of view. And I contend that the cry of "black power" is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.

In the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11/01, when American jingoism hit a fever pitch, we engaged in very little self-examination and focused the entirety of our attention upon striking back at our enemies.  Those attacks were given a status in American lore equal to that of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941--namely, that the terrorists who attacked us had unfairly and unreasonably targeted a nation entirely innocent of wrongdoing against them, that it was an unprovoked attack, undertaken from pure hatred of Americans for who we are.

Maybe all of that is true.  But few Americans were interested in testing the hypothesis.

The problem with the quintessential jingoist battle cry--"My country, right or wrong!"--is that it excludes the real possibility that we can be wrong.

Do not misunderstand me:  The 9/11 attacks were wrong and utterly unjustifiable.  I am not suggesting in any way that we deserved those attacks.  But as humans we have to live in the world.  We have to deal with other humans as they come to us, not as we would like for them to be.  To be the most effective at protecting ourselves, and in a broader sense to execute our morality,¹ we must seek to understand those who hate us, and why, and if we can reasonably modify our behavior to neutralize that hatred, we owe it to ourselves at least to consider doing so.  This is true regardless of the merits of that hatred.  Even if it is entirely irrational, we must first seek to reform ourselves.

¹ Regular readers of this blog know that I do not equate morality and religion at all, but I am reminded of this passage from the Sermon on the Mount that I find particularly instructive as one of the keys to being a good human:  

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." 

(Matt. 5:43-48 (NIV).)


Qualitatively, the problem we as Americans must face today is the same.²  There is a seething hatred and resentment for law enforcement among minorities.  We can treat that hatred as a disqualifying condition.  The result of that will be more of the same thing we have seen for the last fifty years (or maybe for much longer).  Racial minorities will continue to live in a peculiar combination of a lawless community and a police state.  Genuine criminals will continue to act with impunity to persecute those in their communities who are less willing to pursue violence as an economic tool, while law enforcement will continue to treat members of those communities uniformly as subhuman predators.

² I am not equating racial minorities with radical terrorists.  This is merely a question of the normative approach to an intractable problem, not a value judgment about the participants.

In the last day, I have read a great deal of commentary from law enforcement sources who seek to justify Darren Wilson's actions, to uphold the decision of the grand jury as not only a just result but a proper one, and to focus upon building up the law enforcement community as a great bulwark against the lawlessness of minority communities.

What I have yet to see is a single person ask the question:  Why do black people hate cops so much?
Or, at least, when the question is asked, the focus is on what might be the defect in black people that causes them to hate the brave, honest, and true police officers who are only there to help the community.

Never is the question asked:  What, if anything, is it that cops are doing that creates distrust in the black community?

Even if you believe that Darren Wilson's actions were justifiable, have you stopped to ask yourself, is it possible that a cop in his position could be trained to handle that situation better than it was handled?

If you refuse to ask that question, isn't that really the same as saying that we want a cop in Wilson's position to kill Michael Brown?

What the law enforcement community has done over the last few months since Brown was killed has been entirely focused on justification for the killing.  Apart from the use of body cameras,³ there has been no real talk among law enforcement about what to do to make that kind of situation more rare, to improve the professionalism of police officers, not only through the improvement of their policing skills but also by teaching them to defuse controversies and to resort less often to deadly force.

³ While I think body cameras are a good idea, law enforcement officials should not need to be scared by the possibility of scrutiny into doing the right thing.

Can we legitimately say that the Ferguson community got the best outcome it could reasonably expect on August 9?  And as this scenario plays out time and again on our American soil, are we as Americans getting the best outcomes we could reasonably expect?

I don't think so.  I think we can do better.  In fact, I know we can. And it starts with holding those who have power responsible for the way they exercise it, maybe not in a criminal sense, but through the improvement and professionalism that can only come from introspection and correction.

It is time to stop apologizing for Darren Wilson.

Even if you believe that Michael Brown was a thug whose death has left this world a better place, it is time to stop apologizing for Darren Wilson.

It is time to stop using the violence that has resulted as an excuse for inaction or, worse, as an excuse for what has occurred.

Likewise, it is time to stop using the inaction that has occurred as an excuse for violence.

I am not nearly as concerned with what happens to Darren Wilson, or to those who have burned stores and cars, as I am with what happens to Ferguson's police department, or to the broader law enforcement community, or to our nation as a whole.  Wilson is one man, and the problem is far bigger than him.

We cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by what happens, or doesn't happen, to him.

We have bigger problems to deal with.

But, why law enforcement, you ask?  Why shouldn't the black community go first with introspection and reform?  The reason is simple:  We need to start with law enforcement because law enforcement has the power.

No meaningful reform has even been undertaken that did not begin with the decision of those in power to relinquish that power in some respect.

Just now, as if on cue, one of my closest friends texted me that she had been crying all day.  Her commentary shows where her heart is--right where I expected it to be.  "I'm afraid the place I want to leave for my children will never happen," she wrote.  "I hate to be that way but until people learn that events don't happen in a vacuum and [no longer] refuse to have open and truly honest discussions, we will keep reliving this nightmare over and over."

This is true, of course.  We have to start somewhere, so let's start here.

Exploding your heroes

I've been thinking for several days about what to write about Bill Cosby.  Writing about the subject of his recent public relations troubles presents several challenges for me.

It's a story that involves the tearing down of a black American icon.  As a white guy, albeit a very progressive one, especially on racial matters, I believe it's necessary to proceed with caution.  There are too many white folks who are eager to tear down black icons whenever the opportunity presents itself.

It's a story that involves rape.  As a man, albeit a very progressive one, especially on matters relating to women's empowerment, I believe it's necessary to proceed with caution.  There are too many men who are eager to cast doubt upon claims of rape, if not to excuse rape outright, whenever the opportunity presents itself.

It's a story that involves allegations of criminal conduct from long ago.  As a lawyer, and as one who believes strongly in the Constitutional protections afforded to the accused, I believe it's necessary to proceed with caution.  There are too many people who are eager to convict people, or acquit them, in the court of public opinion, whenever the opportunity presents itself.

It's like a subway where all three of the rails are electrified.  But I have something to say about all of this, after a lot of careful thought.

I have always viewed Bill Cosby as a comedian first and foremost.  I watched the Cosby Show because it was popular and funny and seemed culturally significant.  I watched his later sitcom (the underappreciated Cosby, with Phylicia Rashād, Madeline Kahn, and Doug E. Doug) mostly because it was funny.  His stand-up comedy--or, really, sit-down, as he mostly told stories from a chair--was and is brilliant.  Like the best comedians of his era--Bob Newhart in particular comes to mind--he has an exquisite sense of timing.  If you want to learn to tell jokes and stories in a comedic way, study him.

Aside from being a comedian, he's a highly educated man.  He holds an earned doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.  When he speaks on serious matters, people listen to what he has to say.

Psychologically, it's hard for me to square my mental image of this man who's made me laugh for so long a time with the very ugly accusations against him.

It is, in a very real sense, the same as the very ugly accusations against Stephen Collins.  I have been a Stephen Collins fan since he starred in Tales of the Gold Monkey--another underappreciated show--and while I thought 7th Heaven was a treacly mess of bad writing and worse acting,* he was my favorite character.

* - Despite that, I have seen every episode, because one makes concessions when one's wife likes things that one doesn't.

And yet during that time he was apparently forcing a young girl to touch his penis.  It's just hard to square the one image with the other.

Unlike the allegations against Stephen Collins (who admitted to his criminal conduct on tape), the allegations against Bill Cosby are of a nature that they probably can't be fully substantiated, and Cosby isn't talking.  It's of course possible, though extremely unlikely, that the women (or some of them) who have come forward to accuse him of forcible rape have done so in hope of getting something for themselves.  But the truth is that there has long been a trail of whispered accusations of affairs and such, and the oldest contemporaneous allegation of rape is nearly fifteen years old.

There is a tendency for people to hold celebrities up as heroes.  I've never been one of those people, but even I have to admit that until recently if you were going to pick a celebrity to be a personal hero, Cosby wouldn't have been a bad choice.  There are a lot of people, especially white people, who, upon seeing the Cosby Show, came to view black people--especially black professionals--in a different light...namely, as people, rather than black people.  It was a watershed moment in American television and American culture.

The problem is that when you pick humans to be your heroes, they have an annoying tendency to blow up in the face of your hero worship by being human.  Humans do bad things.  They make mistakes.  Sometimes those mistakes are tragic.  Sometimes those mistakes are crimes, repeated many, many times, and sometimes those crimes affect the victims for the rest of their lives.

I don't know whether the allegations against Cosby are true or not, but there is an awful lot of smoke for there not to be any fire. I do know that even the possibility that it could be true has left me profoundly disappointed and sad.  And that's not something I ever expected out of this guy.

Turning the tide

It's an important day in Arkansas today.  This morning, the Arkansas Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the state's appeal from Judge Chris Piazza's decision earlier this year invalidating that portion of the Arkansas Constitution that restricts marriage to one man and one woman.  And as I type this, a federal district judge is hearing arguments in a similar case that seeks the same result.

The good guys in both cases are represented by Jack Wagoner, a talented Arkansas trial attorney who brought these cases to vindicate a simple principle:  That we ought to treat that committed relationships of homosexual couples with the same force and dignity with which we treat the committed relationships of heterosexual couples.

A lifelong friend of mine is one of the plaintiffs in the federal case.  She and her wife have been married for quite some time, and they have children together.  They have built a life of love and a family together in exactly the same way as any other married couple does.  What had been missing until Judge Piazza's ruling was the legal recognition of their marriage.  They were able to get that legal recognition--and corrected birth certificates for their children, reflecting both parents' names--during the short window between the ruling and the issuance by the Arkansas Supreme Court of a stay of that ruling a few days later.

I have heard all of the arguments why my friend and her wife don't deserve the same thing as my wife and I got when we married.

It has been argued that their relationship is immoral and sexually deviant.

It has been argued that their relationship is detrimental to their children.

It has been argued that the people of Arkansas voted by an overwhelming majority to keep marriage restricted to opposite-sex couples.

It has been argued that Arkansas has a compelling interest in promoting heterosexual marriage for the protection and benefit of children.

It has been argued that recognition of same-sex marriages will degrade the value of opposite-sex marriage.

It has been argued, by persons who appear to be serious in their argument, that recognition of same-sex marriage will lead to incest and bestiality.

It has been argued that only opposite-sex marriage carries the tradition of millennia.

It has been argued that the Bible commands us to sanction only those marriages that are between one man and one woman.

These arguments are not real arguments.  They are pretexts.

These arguments, no matter how sincerely felt by those who advance them, constitute the moral bankruptcy of prejudice and hatred.  Those who advance them are bigots, whether or not they clothe themselves in the flag or the cross.  As loath as I am to call ugly names, there is no other name that fits.

We are at a place where people of good conscience can no longer disagree about this subject, not today, not knowing what we know, and especially not in our Constitutional Republic.

Others have noted, and I echo, that each of those arguments, modified only as to the subject, was lodged against what states referred to as "miscegenation," the marriage of members of different races.  More than forty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court saved us from the bigoted instincts that led to those kinds of laws.  The reasoning of the unanimous Court was a beautiful and powerful statement of equality before the law:

The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. ... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.

Just as not one person--other than Mildred and Richard Loving and their family, and the different-race couples who became free to marry--was affected by the invalidation of the anti-miscegenation laws, no individual in our society who is not gay will be negatively affected by the full equality of same-sex marriages before the law.

If you don't believe that same-sex marriages are right, you are perfectly free not to enter into one.

But how can you dare to tell my friend that she is less than you, less American, less worthy than you are of making a dignified commitment to the person she loves and wants to spend the rest of her life with?

Could you look her in the eye, in person, and say to her that she is not your equal?  That she is not entitled as entitled to the happiness she seeks as you are to the happiness you seek?

I could not, even if I were motivated by some irrational hatred to think those things.

But I would be lying if I said that marriage equality won't change Arkansas.  It will change us, for certain.  It will bring us closer to the promise of freedom that so many have fought to achieve.  We Americans have not always been the best people we could be.  Slavery, Jim Crow, the internment of Japanese-Americans, 100% Americanism, the denial of equal rights to women, the removal of Native Americans from their lands--these are but a few of our moral transgressions, of our failure to honor our highest principles.  Sometimes it seems that we have gotten it wrong more often than we've gotten it right.  But at every turning point, at every time when we have been faced with the opportunity to turn away from the old ways and toward our greater promise, there have been brave men and women to show us the way.  They have rarely constituted a numerical majority, but they have always been a moral majority, operating with truth and logic and above all principle on their side.

In the coming days and weeks, the seven justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court, and the district judge and (most likely) three appellate judges, and maybe even the U.S. Supreme Court will decide these issues.  I'm hoping for the triumph of love over hatred, of equality over prejudice.  The tide will turn.  It's easy to be impatient, but we'll get there eventually.  We always do.

Enough with platitudes and poppy-wearing

I've spent most of the day thinking about this blog entry.

This is Veterans Day.

Ninety-six years ago today, World War I ended, so this day has been variously marked as Armistice Day and Remembrance Day, especially among the Allies who won that war.  As that conflict receded from our collective memory, the day came to be the day on which we honor all of those who served in the American military, in wartime or not.

This is a day that makes me angry.

It's not that I have a problem with honoring veterans.  Much to the contrary, in fact.  Regardless of the circumstances, the veterans we honor today pledged themselves to a purpose greater than themselves, to the defense of this nation.  There aren't enough words in the English language to describe the meaning of such a selfless act.

But there are several aspects of the behavior of Americans on this day, and on all the other days, that anger me, or at least disappoint me.

It is a small thing to say thank you to veterans on this day.  In fact, it's such a small thing that it might literally be the least we could do.  That doesn't mean it's not important--it is. 

When our country goes to war, a debt of honor accumulates.  It's absolutely true that "freedom isn't free," as the sign in front of Sam's Club this morning read.  These men and women have agreed to pay that cost for us as a whole.  But in the great ledger of life, that creates a credit balance.  To the ones who return from war, we owe special consideration in education and job training and jobs and housing and health care.  We owe it to the ones who return from war with physical and psychological injuries to restore them to health as best we can, and if we can't, then we are obligated to give them the care we can give them.  And to the ones who don't return, well, we owe them our respect, and we owe their families the support that has been taken from them.

But we owe an even greater debt still.  We owe it to our veterans to create as few of them as are necessary to the survival of the Republic.  For most of my adult life the cost has been too great.  The leaders who decide to go to war have been altogether too cavalier about that cost, and they have been cruelly reluctant to pay for the consequences of those decisions.  It is as though they have some mental block about what it means to lose 4,425 American servicemembers and to expose 32,223 more to the wounds of war, all in a war of choice in Iraq.

It is no criticism, no diminishment, no derogation of their service to say that the casualties these Americans experienced in our name were founded on a lie.

More than ten years on, it still angers me that no one who lied to advance us into war with Iraq has been called to account for it.

George W. Bush happily paints pictures fraught with subconscious symbolism and hawks his revisionist-history books.

Dick Cheney remains a sought-after political commentator.

Condoleezza Rice gets to help pick the football playoffs and golf at Augusta National, and is mentioned on the short list for when Roger Goodell either retires or is fired as NFL commissioner.

In a just world these people, and others, would be in jail, doing a small part to pay the debt they incurred without reason.

They won't be called to account, because no one is brave enough to do so, no matter how much the wound on our American soul gapes and bleeds.

Most Americans have heard the saying, "My country, right or wrong."  We are conditioned almost from birth to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world.  In some respects that's true, but not always.  I would not trade my American citizenship for any other, but it does us no good to believe that we are great when we are not great, that we can do no wrong when we so obviously do wrong every day.

We are not the greatest nation on earth.

But we can be.

When in the early days of the Republic Stephen Decatur, one of those days' great and daring naval heroes, raised his glass to toast America, this is what he said:

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.

We cannot help but be Americans.

But is it too much to ask that we do what we can to recognize where we fall short and to put it right?

Can't we insist that together we bring more light than heat to the world?

In my mind, that starts with making this holiday mean something real.  Enough with the platitudes and poppy-wearing.  Let's set about the work of making this country something worth fighting for.  That's how we repay that debt.

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard

(Not really. The competition is stiff.  But it's close.)

I live in Arkansas House of Representatives District 35, an area that covers my own Cammack Village as well as The Heights, Riverdale, and some other neighborhoods of Little Rock.  In this election, the candidates are Clarke Tucker for the Democrats and Stacy Hurst for the Republicans.

As I indicated Monday, I planned to vote for Clarke Tucker--and later that day, I actually made good on my threat by early voting.  As the three or four of you who read this blog* know, Stacy Hurst had virtually no chance of getting my vote, so this was more of an academic exercise from the beginning. You can think of these comments as sort of a coda.

* - Hey, I said "read," not "enjoy."

Consistent with this district's left-leaning reputation, Hurst has run a campaign that emphasizes how moderate she is--sort of.  She has certainly cultivated a reputation as an independent politician, which I suppose is kind of refreshing, coming from a Republican.  I quickly reviewed her campaign materials, and they tend to be long on platitudes and short on detail.  In fact, her campaign website is utterly devoid of any substantive discussion of what she's planning to do.

I probably would have left well enough alone if I hadn't gotten this letter in the mail on Tuesday.


(Click on the images for a larger view.)


Now, let's be clear:  Stacy Hurst has no shot at winning the election unless she gets votes from some Democrats.  There just aren't enough Republicans in the district for her to win if she runs the kind of hard-right campaign that has characterized the mainstream GOP over the last 10 years or so.  So it's unsurprising that she would put this kind of letter out.

To summarize:  The author, Chris McNeal, claims to be a Democrat and speaks highly of Clarke Tucker.  But McNeal says he voted instead for Stacy Hurst.  Why?

• In his opinion, she's a fantastic candidate who as "served well as a city director" for 10 years, with associations with lots of non-profit organizations.
• She supports the "private option" implementation of Medicaid expansion.
• She supports pre-K expansion.
• She "has expressed to me personally a number of refreshingly progressive stances on some social issues."  No real word on what those are; for all we know, she could be against the "no abortions after 12 weeks" law but in favor of the "no abortions after 20 weeks" law, which would be progressive for a Republican.

McNeal then concedes that Clarke Tucker more accurately represents his views.


Turns out that the real reason McNeal supports Hurst is because Republicans are "unwilling to compromise with Democrats"--which means, in his view, that we need to elect a Republican.  His theory is that electing Clarke Tucker will lock our district "out of the room" because the Republicans won't work with him.  (McNeal assumes that Republicans are going to be in control.)  Instead, if we're going to have any hope of influencing the Legislature, we need to elect a Republican.  And his choice is Stacy Hurst, because she's willing to stand up to her fellow Republicans.

As the post title indicates, that's one of the dumbest, most self-contradictory things I've ever heard.

Here's the real story:

The last edition of the House of Representatives featured 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and one Green.  Because of the extraordinarily short 3-term limit, the makeup of the House turns over frequently.  Because few organizations poll state house races, we simply don't know what the makeup of the House will be come January.

Let's say the GOP does retain control of the House and Hurst wins.  If they have more than a one-vote margin, who will be the first Republican they ignore?  Stacy Hurst--because the more conservative Republicans are professionals at shutting out those who disagree with them, which will almost certainly include Hurst on any issue that McNeal thinks is important.

Meanwhile, since we know little about how Hurst would vote in the House (aside from her support for the private option, which passed a Republican-led General Assembly to begin with, so Representative Hurst wouldn't be unique), it's entirely possible that as a functional matter Hurst will be a reliable GOP vote on most issues.

Which means that her votes would, in most cases, not reflect anything that is broadly representative of her district.

I have little tolerance for Democrats who whine that we need to elect Republicans because the Republicans are so mean.

If electing Clarke Tucker means he's "out of the room," so be it.  But what happens if we elect Hurst, and the Democrats somehow end up controlling the House?

Well, I suppose it's a fair point that the Democrats would work with Hurst, because Democrats are interested in good ideas no matter where they come from.

I don't agree with McNeal that the "glory days of the Democratic Party of Arkansas are probably over."  True, there aren't any liberals left with the stature of a McMath, a Clinton, a Bumpers, or a (David) Pryor.**  But you can't fight demographics.  There will be a time in the near future when the Republicans find themselves locked out of the majority, even in Arkansas, by their relentless anti-minority programme.  How do we profit as Arkansans by rewarding the Republicans for that agenda at a time when it doesn't quite cost them elections?

** - There were plenty of Democrats in those "glory days" who weren't so progressively glorious, either. **cough** Faubus **cough** As the pre-eminent political scientist V.O. Key, Jr., observed back in 1949, the one-party (Democratic) system in the South was really a "no-party" system--everyone, conservative to liberal, was a Democrat, so the party label meant nothing about actual politics.

The Republicans have spent a lot of energy and money over the last decade or so to purify their party into an arch-conservative theocracy-loving economy-wrecking machine.  It's a terrible thing, but it has happened.  When you put the R by your name, you're signing up for that legacy.  Stacy Hurst doesn't get to throw us a few bones and pretend that legacy doesn't apply to her.

If you're in District 35, and you haven't voted yet, please consider voting for Clarke Tucker.

Why I'm voting for the Democrats

I've been voting in elections for 21 years now, and in all that time, I can count on one finger the number of Republicans I've voted for--and still have a finger left over.

It's true.  I've never voted for a Republican, and unless something changes drastically, I'm not likely ever to do so.

If you want to dismiss me as a partisan hack, then just stop reading here, and go read something else.  I won't mind.

But those of you who care to know why, keep reading.

It's not that I'm on Team D.  I'm moderately interested in politics, but I've never given a campaign contribution.  I rarely put out yard signs.  I don't go door-to-door canvassing for my candidates.  I haven't phone-banked.  There was a time in my life when I imagined I would do these kinds of things, and more--even maybe running for office one day.  I won't rule it out, but it's not really on my bucket list.

To be honest, I'm less than enthusiastic about most of the candidates this year--on both sides.  Mike Ross is a nice guy, a good guy, but he's far more conservative than I like.  Mark Pryor...what to say about him?  I loved being represented by his father.  Let's just say Mark is no David Pryor. And his commercials have been incredibly uninspiring.  I'm not sure what to make of John Burkhalter, the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor.

For reasons I'll discuss below, I'm voting for them anyway.  But before I explain why, I'd like to relay a bit of insight I gained into what most people seem to feel.  Many times, the comment is that voting is choosing the lesser of two evils (or, variantly, the lesser of two lessers).  In the city where I live, Cammack Village, there is a contested non-partisan race for alderman.  The two candidates are the incumbent, whom I don't really know, and a challenger whose principal motivation in running for alderman is that he owns several rental properties and doesn't like a new ordinance that requires rental properties to undergo extensive inspections.

I know the challenger.  On a personal level, I like him a lot.  Politically, he's a hard-core Republican.  I would never vote for him for high office.  But I don't like the ordinance that was passed any more than he does.  (I'm all for holding landlords to reasonable standards, but this ordinance goes too far, and it seems plain that the primary purpose is to reduce the number of rental properties in this town.)  So our interests are aligned on that issue, and beyond that and the rates the city is able to negotiate for utilities, I really don't care what the city council does.

The problem is that at least until recently, he didn't live here.  He owns several properties here, and he's supposedly occupying one now, but I think it's a stretch to say he lives here.

The incumbent is also a Republican (judging, at least, from the signs in her yard).  She voted for the ordinance, and her campaign literature doesn't give the slightest clue as to what she stands for.  She did put out a letter that engaged in a lot of mudslinging against her challenger, which I could have respected except that she didn't explain anything about what she wanted to do if re-elected.

To me, negative campaigning is often necessary, but negative campaigning without a positive counterpoint is worse than useless.

So I have come to understand why it is that a lot of people just can't stand either candidate, or either party, and can't bring themselves to vote.  I can't make a decision on the known merits of either candidate, and I refuse to vote for someone just because I know him (or don't know her).

I'm going to vote.  In that race, I probably won't make a decision until I'm in the booth.  On the rest of the races, though, I'm decided.

Why for the Democrats?

There are three reasons.

First, the quality of the Republican candidates is poorer than I've seen in a long time.  As the GOP gets pulled to the radical right, the nominations process is only attracting people who care very little about making the government function well and very much about being combative against the things they are against.

Asa! Hutchinson (I think borrowed the apostrophe from Lamar! Alexander for this race) has run for governor four times and lost three times (pending this election).  He's a hyperpartisan Republican who's served in whatever radical role the GOP has thrown at him for twenty years.  And he borrowed his economic plan from Sam Brownback, who's run Kansas so far into the ground economically it might never climb out of the hole it's in.  No thanks.

Tom Cotton wants to be the Senator from Kochland.  He claims to be in favor of making tough choices--but sometimes those choices are tough because they're economically stupid.  What he prescribes will be great for the billionaires and horrible for everybody else.  He strikes me as a sociopath.  No thanks.

French Hill, banker, running for Congress.  My mind about him was made up when he put out an ad talking about how ordinary people don't spend money they don't have, so the government shouldn't either.  It's not true.  Ordinary people spend money they don't have all the time.  They buy houses and cars on credit.  They use credit cards.  If people didn't spend money they don't have, our economy would grind to a halt.  But, even more importantly, French Hill is a banker.  His entire business model is based on people borrowing money because they don't have enough to do what they want to do.  Either he is that dumb, or he thinks we are.  No thanks.

(On the other hand, I'm a big fan of Hill's opponent, Patrick Henry Hays, and will cast my vote for him enthusiastically.)

Leslie Rutledge, running for Attorney General.  Matt Campbell over at Blue Hog Report* has done yeoman's work in exposing her for the fraud she is.  This is a woman who worked as an attorney for DHS, who used her state email account to send and/or forward racist, lewd, and otherwise inappropriate messages, and who committed misconduct gross enough for her DHS bosses to mark her file "DO NOT REHIRE."  (We still don't know what the misconduct was; she refuses to have her personnel file released.)  No thanks.

* - One of my favorite blogs.  Matt is an attorney, he knows how to use the Freedom of Information Act, and he applies his considerable analytical skills to hold his targets' feet to the fire.  I wouldn't want to get crosswise with him as several Republicans have done recently.

Mark Martin, running for re-election as Secretary of State.  He's not the famous NASCAR driver.  He's rarely in the office; he doesn't live in Little Rock (even though he's required to do so by law); he makes few public appearances.  And all of that's fine.  There have been some other issues, like spending $100,000 of state money to hire attorneys in violation of a court order, that are less fine.  But when his opponent set up a section on her webpage where people could check their voter registration status--using a technology that is perfectly legal to use, which linked to the Secretary of State's official website lookup--he sent a State Capitol police officer to her campaign office to hand-deliver a letter demanding that she take the section down.  The purpose was clear:  To use the prerogatives of his office and taxpayer dollars to intimidate his opponent for political purposes.  No thanks.

Stacy Hurst, running for state representative in my district (35).  Engineered, with some allies in the Little Rock School District, a scheme whereby her opponent's four-year-old would be denied admission to the pre-K school her opponent and his wife preferred, while simultaneously attempting to bait them into accepting special consideration for acceptance into a different school (ahead of other applicants). No thanks.

These are genuinely scummy people.  These are, by far, not the only Republicans who meet that definition.  (Jason Rapert is one, but he's not on my ballot.)  Not all Republicans are scummy, of course.  One who's not is John Thurston, who's running for re-election as Commissioner of State Lands.  I've known John for a long time, and he's a good man.  But by being a Republican, he aligns himself with these scummy people, so I'm voting for his opponent, Mark Robertson.

Second, the Republicans can't seem to articulate what it is they're for.  Each of the Republicans is running, in some measure, against Barack Obama.  I'm hardly Obama's biggest fan.  I did vote for him three times (2008 primary, 2008 general, 2012 general) and I don't regret any of those votes.  It's probably politically smart to run against him, given how irrationally unpopular he is in this state.  But gee whiz, he's not on the ballot.

What I don't hear a lot of from the Republicans is what they are for.  Being against Obamacare isn't being for anything.  Other than that, virtually nothing.  Asa!, for example, is vowing to "hit the ground running and never look back."  What does that mean?

Apparently it means he wants to cut income taxes on the wealthiest Arkansans.  We've tried that before on the national level.  It doesn't work.  All it does is hamstring the ability of the state government to function.

I don't view any of the candidates I noted before as seeking to serve the people of Arkansas. What they seem to be interested in doing is gaining the powers and prerogatives of the office, mostly in order to institute radical policies, like abortion restrictions, that have little to do with the quality of life in Arkansas but much to do with imposing their moral views on everyone, regardless of rights or merits.

Third, there is a difference between the parties.  I know there are a lot of people who don't see much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.  Sometimes that's true.  But there's a big difference that might be the most important of all.

There are lots of things I'd like to see the General Assembly take on--ideas that aren't partisan, just good ideas about how to bring good jobs and a better economy to this state.  For example, broadband access in rural Arkansas is non-existent or prohibitively expensive.  I know how having access to broadband has changed the way I work and play.  I'd like to see the state government make a special effort to spend money to improve broadband access statewide.  Eighty years ago, FDR brought us the Rural Electrification Administration, which financed the wiring of rural America, such that mostly reliable electricity is available everywhere people live.  How much better could life be if we could do the same to bring broadband to rural Arkansas?

I have no confidence that a Republican-led state government would ever give that idea any consideration at all--at least, unless they could funnel the money to wealthy people.

For the last thirty years, if not longer, the Republican Party has been animated by the guiding principle that the government is incapable of doing anything right.  When you believe that the government can't do anything right, what is a government that you head going to look like?  Will it ever do anything right?  Of course not. 

The truth is that the government gets a lot of what it does right.  Sometimes the government does things that interfere with what you want to do.  The police officer writes you a ticket for exceeding the speed limit.  The EPA regulates the toxic waste you want to dump rather than disposing of properly.  The IRS requires your business to keep detailed records to make sure that you're paying taxes at the legal rate.  The city building inspector holds you to the fire code.  These are things that we really need the government to do because they affect all of us. 

What I want is a government that will step in to protect the public interest and to protect individual rights, that will use its weight to make life easier here, and that will foster an economic environment that is both fair and free.  I think of it like a baseball game.  On the sandlot, there are no coaches and no umpires, and there are a lot of fights and the winner tends to be whoever's the biggest bully.  I want our experience with government to be more like the World Series, where there are umpires to make sure everybody plays fair and where there are coaches to help us players make decisions about how to play.

Of course, the analogy breaks down, as all analogies eventually do.  But the larger lesson is that the GOP seems dedicated to making certain that the government works as poorly as possible.

If you owned a business, would you hire employees who hope the company fails?

Of course not.

So why would you ever put people in office who think the government is bad and needs to be destroyed?

Much ado about something

Annise Parker is the openly gay mayor of the City of Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city.  At her urging, earlier this year, Houston's city council enacted a broad anti-discrimination ordinance, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, pregnancy, genetic information, family or marital status, military status, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

These last two categories have proven controversial--particularly the "gender identity" category.  The ordinance prohibits discrimination against persons who are anatomically or genetically one sex but who identify with the other sex. For some reason, protecting people who fall into that category engenders (if you'll pardon the pun) a great deal of hatred and histrionics among conservatives.  

The City of Fayetteville recently enacted a similar ordinance.

I suppose that the people who oppose this measure are uncomfortable with being unable, legally, to express their hatred and intolerance of differences by deliberately causing unnecessary pain in those who are different.  In some cases, they clothe this hatred, this desire to treat others inhumanly, in the mantle of "traditional values."  Traditional values, they argue, prohibit us from giving societal approval to gender-bending.  Hate may indeed be a traditional value among that crowd, but traditional does not necessarily mean "good."

In other cases, opposition to this ordinance is driven by what they term a desire to protect innocent citizens from sexual predators.  The argument is that an ordinance that prohibits discrimination against men who dress and live as women requires businesses and organizations to allow men to enter women's bathrooms in order to engage in various types of sexual deviancy, up to and including sexual assault.

The theory is that in order to assault women and children who are using a women's bathroom, men will pretend to be women, dressing as women for the purpose of lurking, undetected, until they can execute the planned assault.

The truth is that this ordinance will make it illegal to bar anatomical men who live as women from using women's facilities.  But to suggest that it will somehow leave us without recourse to prohibit sexual assault, or that sexual predators will be emboldened by this ordinance, is simply foolish.

I've been in probably thousands of public restrooms in my lifetime.  Never once has anyone checked my genitals at the door to determine whether I could enter or not.  Men who want to commit this kind of sexual assault are no freer to do so than they have always been.  A man who makes a practice of gratuitously exposing his genitals in the women's restroom--or worse--could be reported and could, even under this ordinance, be arrested and charged.

Like so many conservative attacks on progressive legislation, this one is also ridiculous.  HERO is the law in Houston, and in time I believe it will properly become the law everywhere.

Several Houston-area megachurches, conservative in theology, have launched a challenge to the ordinance.  Unsatisfied with representative democracy in which their position is no longer dominant, these churches have led the charge to subject HERO to a citywide referendum.  They gathered more than 50,000 signatures on petitions to force a vote, but because of numerous errors in the signature-gathering process, there were only about 17,000 valid signatures, not enough to call for a referendum.  So they have sued the city, seeking to have their invalid signatures counted.

And that's where things get sticky.  As part of that suit, the city issued civil subpoenas to the churches, demanding that the churches turn over sermons and other communications with parishioners regarding HERO, the mayor, the petition drive, and other related topics.  As you might imagine, that act has been met with howls of derision, complaining that Houston is now seeking to make it illegal to preach against homosexuality, and that this is merely the first (or latest) step toward interning conservative Christians in concentration camps.

These complaints, as far as they go, are rooted in ignorance.  Houston is not seeking to outlaw speech against homosexuality.  It claims it is not even interested in assessing whether these churches violated their obligation not to engage in political activities based upon their tax exemption.  Rather, Houston is attempting to determine whether the churches gave instructions to their parishioners regarding how to fill out a petition, in order to show that the advocates were aware of the requirements for petitions but deliberately disregarded them.  That might be relevant to the lawsuit, depending upon what arguments the advocates make in support of their lawsuit.

But probably not.  It was a bad idea to issue these subpoenas.  Communications between a religious leader and his or her congregants are essential to the exercise of religious freedom.  Creating a situation where religious leaders believe their statements can be subpoenaed by the government and used against them in a proceeding creates a chilling effect on those statements.  The government has no business inquiring into the content of those statements.  I can see only two reasonable exceptions to that policy--one being the situation in which a religious leader incites followers to violence, the other being political activities that violate the requirements for tax-exempt status.  Even the second makes me uncomfortable; instead, I would prefer that we simply repeal the tax exemption.

Less importantly but with more impact, the city miscalculated, or forgot about, the extreme sensitivity of many Christians to any real or imagined attack on their privileges.  For that reason, it was a bad political maneuver.  Nothing motivates many Christians into a tantrum more quickly than suggesting that they aren't above being questioned.

Somehow I doubt that many of the people who are so outraged by the subpoenas because of the loss of rights those subpoenas represent would be equally outraged if the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity were taken away by a majority vote.