Author: media girl

We like to tell ourselves that, as long as Roe stands, abortion is legal. We like to think that “reasonable” restrictions on abortion are … reasonable. We like to think that this is an issue best left ignored, shoved aside, open to compromise.

I beg to differ.

Two days after the GAO exposed underhanded political stonewalling on Plan B, I take the occasion to offer a different tale of what’s currently legal in the United States….

Five months ago, this post appeared relating one woman’s ordeal of find herself pregnant in this world where abortion is supposedly a Constitutionally-protected right:

Last October, Gabriela Flores ended her 16-week pregnancy by taking misoprostol pills sent by her sister from Mexico. She had no choice but to risk her life by taking illegally imported drugs, without any doctor’s supervision, because although abortion is technically legal in South Carolina, in Gabriela’s situation it may as well have been illegal.

South Carolina laws force women to get permission from their husbands, listen to biased anti-abortion “counseling” riddled with misinformation, and to undergo a mandatory waiting period. And abortions after 13 weeks are so restricted that no provider in the state will offer them.

Gabriela would have had to travel to another state, two and-a-half hours away, and since such a procedure is done over two days, she most likely would have lost her job. Gabriela was working in the fields supporting three children and herself on $150 per week. There is no way she could have afforded the $700 procedure.

The pills caused her to expel the dead fetus, which she buried in her back yard. One can only imagine the stress and pain of her whole situation. But her suffering was far from over.

She was reported to the police, who were told that the four-month-old fetus was born alive. Rather than showing concern for her health, sheriffs obtained a warrant and dug up the fetus. Prosecutors wanted to charge Gabriela with murder. They would have been legally able to do it if they’d been able to prove that the fetus would have survived on its own. Since there’s no way a four-month-old fetus could do this, they couldn’t get away with that charge. But had she been further along–say, five or six months pregnant–they probably would have been able to get away with it. Instead, they charged her with performing an abortion on herself–which is illegal under South Carolina law.

Let’s face it. Most women are not rich jet-setters going to cotillions and debutante balls and having weekly manicures. Most women cannot afford to not work. Most women are just trying to get by. These are the realities in this world. And these are the realities most women facing unwanted pregnancy have to accommodate.

Gabriela Flores is just one woman who’s invisible to the activists who say she, and all women of childbearing years, should be stripped of rights to self-determination and made breeders for the state.

This is happening now. Not next year. This is happening with Roe still recognized as law of the land

And this is happening as Republicans and Democrats turn their backs on reproductive rights to pander to the radical right in their battle for power.

The tragedy of all this is that the stakes aren’t measured by political calculus, but by human lives.

Forced to come to this country in order to survive, Gabriela had to leave two of her children behind on the other side of the razor wire and death fields of the border.

She broke her back in the fields for the privilege of trying to feed herself and her family on $150 a week and still have enough to send money to her children back home.

She had to endanger her health and her life to get an abortion. A snitch landed her in jail. The woman that helped her was arrested.

And now, she has been criminalized; she faces two years in prison and will likely face deportation. It’s unclear what will happen to the child she has here. Her whole life–never valued anyway–is being destroyed.

That’s just one result of the “pro-life” agenda. And it could get much much worse.

When rape victims can’t get Plan B prescriptions filled — even when Plan B prevents conception and in no way causes abortion (because pregnancy is prevented — we see how already existing politics are hurting women across the country.

Tell me that Gabriela Flores is not a victim of anti-abortion politics. Tell me that Gabriela Flores has people looking out for her. Tell me that the next Gabriela Flores cannot be your sister or your daughter or your best friend (or you).

And tell me again why a politician’s stance on governmental controls on abortion should not be important.

Please.

Can we calk about the pink elephant in the room?

Once upon a time I was a moderate. I believed in Keynesian economics. I believed in using market forces to help institute desired policy. I believed in empowering people so that they could take charge of their own lives. I believed in incentives in business and personal tax deductions and rebates. I believed that people had a right to privacy. I believed that the government should stay out of people’s private lives, but that the government is needed to protect people from not just crime but from abuse through pollution and fraud. I believed in free speech.

That was then. I was a moderate.

This is now … and I still believe all those things. But now I find myself labeled as “left.”

Time was when I could look at a conservative and find some things about him/her I liked. I appreciated the talk about fiscal responsibility. I appreciated the talk about empowering individuals. I appreciated the generally positive view on the future, on opportunity, on making one’s own life. I even appreciated Barry Goldwater (who was before my time), who said:

Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives.

and said:

A lot of so-called conservatives don’t know what the word means. They think I’ve turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That’s a decision that’s up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right. It’s not a conservative issue at all.

and even said:

The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they’re gay. You don’t have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay. And that’s what brings me into it.

Goldwater was the conservative icon. And he espoused what I understood to be conservative principles. Like him or not, there was something to be admired about Goldwater’s views.

Goldwater couldn’t get elected dog-catcher in today’s Republican party. Today’s Republicans consider conservatism to be a partisan flag that flies above the Stars and Stripes, and an ideology that calls for the State to dictate personal behavior.

Today’s conservatives are for establishment of religion.

Today’s conservatives are for regulating what happens in the bedroom.

Today’s conservatives are for controlling what is said and done in the doctor’s office.

Today’s conservatives are for imposing religious doctrine like “intelligent design” upon science teaching in schools.

And all that talk about fiscal responsibility? After Reagan and the two Bushes ran up ALL national debt accrued since WW2, we know that’s not true.

All that talk about optimism for the future? After all the fear-mongering and gloom and doom rhetoric we get now from conservative leaders, we know that’s not true.

How can they call themselves “conservative” when they’re trying to impose radical change on our country?

These modern-day conservatives

They make no sense to me

They like to tell us how to live

I wish they’d let us be

These modern-day conservatives

Are holier than thou

About your life they’re positive

You must obey them now

These modern-day conservatives

They like their power fine

They used to fight for liberty

Now you must toe the line

These modern-day conservatives

They make no sense to me

They like to tell us how to live

But I’d rather live free.

I am talking about the post-earthquake horror in Pakistan.

I can’t say which is worse: embarrassment and shame that I haven’t blogged this yet? Or embarrassment and shame that virtually nobody in the blogosphere has written a single thing about this.

But worse than embarrassment or shame is the horrible situation in Pakistan, where tens of thousands have died, and tens of thousands more, including children, still have not received any aid.

Let’s look at the facts:

50,000 dead, maybe more, many of whom were children, who were in school at the moment the quake hit.

10,000 more children are facing imminent death due to injury, infection, disease, starvation, dehydration, exposure to the sub-zero temperatures at night. 120,000 children are at risk.

These figures are conservative. And aid money has not been coming.

Almost two weeks after the quake, less than 14 per cent of the UN’s emergency appeal for £180 million has been received.

Unicef, the UN children’s organisation, yesterday estimated that 10,000 children will die in weeks. The figure was described as “conservative” by a UN field worker.

Although the official death count remains at 49,739, local authorities put it at almost 80,000.

UN relief coordinator Jan Egeland clarifies the urgency:

“The world is not doing enough,” Egeland said in Geneva. “We should be able to do this.”

He called for “a second Berlin air bridge” — nonstop flights reminiscent of the U.S. and British airlift of essential supplies into West Berlin in the late 1940s when Soviet troops blocked the city’s road links to the West for nearly 11 months.

“We thought that the tsunami was as bad as it could get. This is worse,” Egeland said. “The race against the clock is also like no other one. There is a terrible cutoff for us in the beginning of December, maybe even before, when there will be massive snowfalls in the Himalaya mountains.”

To help, you can give to Unicef or the Red Cross/Red Crescent. (Beware of scam artists. Stick with the established international organizations.)

Also, there’s a site with local Pakistani emergency info (in English).

Why does this get scant coverage in American media? Why is BBC World virtually they only coverage to be found on dish or cable?

From mediagirl.org:

Ask a dozen progressives what progressive means, and you’ll probably get a dozen answers. But odds are that they’ll all touch on the same core values: human and civil rights, effective government, improving the social safety net, including healthcare, anti-poverty programs and unemployment programs. Individuals will have their priorities within these areas, but this is the terrain. The priorities of individual progressives are not mutually exclusive. It’s a progressive coalition based on values.

Today, in one of his more weakly-reasoned posts in a year of some real doozies, Markos attempts to toss progressivism out the window and claim for himself leader of “the new progressives.” True progressivism apparently is a real problem for progressives, but most of us just don’t realize it.

The basis of this claim?

Wait for it….

The generation gap. (Oh, if I could buy the world a Coke!)

…I sense the generational divide between new school activists (those of us who came “of age” politically in the late 90s and 00s), and those who harken back to the 60s and 70s….

I’m increasingly convinced that the biggest intra-movement divide nowadays isn’t ideological — we mostly all agree on the same things — but generational. Old school activists view politics and the activist realm differently than new school activists (very generally speaking). Those differences manifest themselves in arguments over single issue groups, effective activism, partisanship, tone, style, pragmatism, the types of candidates we should run, etc.

I take it that the thrust of this is that we old fogies are just out of touch with reality.

I wrote above that most progressives “agree on most things”, but there are probably few issues, if any, in which 100 percent of progressives agree. And such disagreements are not necessarily born of ignorance, or “using Rove’s talking points”, or being a “DINO”. But disagreements born from research and exploration and each individual’s varied life experiences. This is a reality in which we must operate and thrive, and it can’t be by forcing a party line on every single issue. Because really, who will set the party line? Who will enforce it?

What Kos does not seem to realize is that he’s fallen for the conservative frame on progressive values — that they are too varied and mutually exclusive to be worth anything in a coalition. So, he argues, we must ditch those values.

I have a different interpretation of the political tea leaves of today.

In 1964, when Goldwater lost the presidential election, conservatives launched one of the most effective coordinated meta-campaigns to win not only political office but “the war of ideas.” They mobilized money for campaigns, sure, but they also pulled in big big money for think tanks, because they realized that if they were to win any lasting victory, they had to convince people that their ideas were better.

With the 1970s recession caused by a prolonged foreign war and spiking oil prices (sound familiar?), new ideas — any new ideas — had an automatic appeal just for being new. Even so, the Republicans couldn’t win until Iranian religious zealots took American hostages and held them for well over a year. That event, and the continuing economic woes, sank Carter, and Reagan won in 1980.

He was called “the great communicator” and “the teflon president” (because nothing stuck to him). He sold Iran weapons in a deal to free the hostages, killed tax breaks for alternative energy, blamed our economic woes on “welfare mothers,” and then “created prosperity” by breaking out the credit cards and launching into the then-greatest deficit spending in world history, thereby quadrupling the national debt and putting a lot of money into bankers’ pockets. But while people cried out, he never got rattled or defensive. He just smiled like grandpa and said to the American people, in effect, “Don’t you worry. Daddy’s going to make everything alright.” That qualified him for the “great communicator” moniker.

The Democrats countered with two smart guys but very weak political candidates, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, neither of whom had any personality or savvy political guidance. The Democrats had been blindsided by the war of ideas the conservatives were waging, and found themselves in the situation of a man who’s asked, “When did you stop beating your wife?”

The Democrats were aware they were under attack. They tried to stand up and fight, but they didn’t realize that they’d already been boxed into conservative frames. Mondale epitomized this moment when, in a political debate, he tried to be wry in saying, “We’re both going to raise taxes. The difference is that my opponent won’t tell you. I just did.” (Oh such wit.) He bought right into the conservative frame, and spoke about government programs in terms of taxes.

Doom was sealed for the Democrats when, four years later, Dukakis simply ran away. “I-I-I-I– I am not a liberal!”He had presided over the “Massachusetts Miracle,” but it didn’t matter because the Democrats were losing the war of ideas, and Dukakis himself didn’t even try to fight.

Now all of this may seem like ancient history for turks like Markos, who’ve known nothing but conservatism their entire lives. Growing up ignorant of real progressivism, he and others have lived their entire lives in an environment dominated and defined by conservative ideology, like a tree grown only as tall as the ceiling and no further, it has skewed their perspective of what’s possible. To them, it makes complete sense to attack progressive values, because they have no understanding of what progressive values have been about since Teddy Roosevelt founded the National Parks system.

New school progressives are also less tolerant of ideological orthodoxy. We don’t fall in line with the “acceptable” liberal position, frankly, because we’re not trained to fall in line. We are more likely to be educated in an economy that values “proactiveness” and “self-initiative” and “problem solving” over blindly following the orders of our boss.

In other words, “new school progressives” don’t really hold progressive views. Perhaps that explains his repeated and persistent attacks on people who don’t sign up for his “anybody but the Republicans” approach to politics, toe the Democratic Party line and to hell with values.

The political landscape is different, no doubt — the politics of old where “leaders” told us how to think and act is dead. The media landscape has changed — the era when a few editors and producers determined our “leaders” and excluded other voices is dead.

Here, again, his ignorance shines through. Where he gets this idea that we all just thought what we were told to think, I don’t know.  Rush Limbaugh? It certainly bears no resemblance to the reality I knew back when I was leaving home to vote in my first election.

These are the realities. Is there conflict between the new schoolers and old schoolers? It seems so. Is it insurmountable? Definitely not. The old schoolers need to realize that the world has changed and that politics in the 00s is a much different beast than the world in which they used to live. Business as usual is simply not an option.

That’s right. “Reality” today is discussed, analyzed and debated completely within the conservative ideological frame. The conservatives have won the upper hand in the war of ideas. And Kos argues that we must give up that fight, ditch progressive values, and just battle for a corner of conservative politics.

What we “old schoolers” know is that political atmospheres change, and that the war of ideas is never over. Give up? Never!

The “business as usual” Kos ascribes to us “old schoolers” is fairly limited, when he uses Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, both of whom made their names after Reagan was elected and conservatism was in full swing, as touchstones. But what about MLK, Jr? What about Cesar Chavez? What about all those brave souls who stood their ground and said, “No more!” and didn’t get overexposed in media to give kids jaded views of them? What about the “business as usual” as practiced by FDR? LBJ? What about the “business as usual” such as when Carter was pushing progressive tax cuts to cut breaks for the poor and encourage alternative energy development?

What’s clear is that Markos has no idea what “business as usual” was before he came of age.

And we (politically) young whippersnappers need to 1) be more respectful of the accomplishments of our political elders (something that I need to work on, obviously), and 2) realize that at the current pace of technological advancement, it won’t be long before we ourselves are obsolete.  That might take the edge off some of the hubris I note with some discomfort amongst some of my netroot colleagues.

Yes, talk about hubris. Pot, meet kettle.

(NOTE: UPDATE BELOW)

It hasn’t taken long for the big blog boys on the right and left to sound off on Harriet Miers. Not surprisingly, Markos and John Aravosis are already salivating. Apparently a Bush insider is just dandy for them. They seem to think this is a huge GOP blunder. Markos goes so far as to claim that Miers is a moderate — though how he would figure that, given that she has virtually no paper trail, who knows?

Here’s another take:

Karl Rove is no fool, and perhaps John and Markos and gloating Dems are falling for a feint. What happens if there’s enough suspicion and resistance on both sides of the aisle so that she cannot win an up or down vote?

Is Harriet Miers simply a red herring nominee whose rejection would set up nomination of a certified radical? Think about it….

[posted on mediagirl.org….]

After all, while Miers has some questionable episodes in her partisan past, it’s also clear that she’s not quite the right’s cup of tea.

Remember, we’re entering an election season, and the radicals need political cover, and Miers is not it. They push back, and Bush then is “forced” to name a radical wingnut like Owens or Brown or some crazy outsider like Dobson himself (don’t laugh … well, okay, laugh), and the GOP goes into the election reinvigorated with hot excitement in its base, and renewed energy to push back the fiscal conservatives who would spoil the party and end the pig-outs at the taxpayer trough.

In other words, Miers is the attenuated virus to stimulate the white corpuscles in the right wing body, thus strengthening the body against infection. Miers could be rejected and a verifiable wingnut will be called in to unite the right.

Meanwhile, such developments would further alienate the Democratic Party-über-alles folks from progressive voters, who already are rather mistrustful of aspiring flacks, perhaps for good reason. In other words, it could be that Miers was nominated to be rejected by a bipartisan bloc, leading to reactions that will strengthen the Republicans while pitting the Democrat appeasers against their progressive voter base.

Too crazy? Too Machiavellian for Karl Rove? Come on, be honest now.

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[Update: Lindsay notes that the set-up theory has been posed elsewhere by Tom Goldstein…

The nomination obviously will be vigorously supported by groups created for the purpose of pressing the President’s nominees, and vigorously opposed by groups on the other side. But within the conservative wing of the Republican party, there is thus far (very early in the process) only great disappointment, not enthusiasm. They would prefer Miers to be rejected in the hope – misguided, I think – that the President would then nominate, for example, Janice Rogers Brown. Moderate Republicans have no substantial incentive to support Miers, and the President seems to have somewhat less capital to invest here. On the Democratic side, there will be inevitable – perhaps knee-jerk – opposition. Nor does Miers have a built in “fan base” of people in Washington, in contrast to the people (Democratic and Republican) who knew and respected John Roberts. Even if Democrats aren’t truly gravely concerned, they will see this as an opportunity to damage the President. The themes of the opposition will be cronyism and inexperience. Democratic questioning at the hearings will be an onslaught of questions about federal constitutional law that Miers in all likelihood won’t want to, or won’t be able to (because her jobs haven’t called on her to study the issues), answer. I have no view on whether she should be confirmed (it’s simply too early to say), but will go out on a limb and predict that she will be rejected by the Senate. In my view, Justice O’Connor will still be sitting on the Court on January 1, 2006.

and Rick Hansen Interesting….]

[Update 2: FWIW, from the National Review’s site:

Don’t worry, it’s all just a Rovian strategy to pick someone who has little apparent qualifications so the Dems can spend all their capital attacking her. Eventually, Bush will give up and she won’t be confirmed. Then, he announces his TRUE pick, and the public runs out of patience for the dems trying to defeat two in a row. Eh? Eh?

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Look at how already, mere hours out of the starting blocks, the Dems are already once again at odds with their progressive base. Reid has come out endorsing Miers, which has won him few friends. And no doubt if Miers is rejected, Kos and company will jump back onto the game of blaming us progressives for our “pet issues,” which does nothing but bring Karl Rove joy.

And the Dems in ’06 will be in total disarray.

Then again, this gambit may not exist at all. Or she may be confirmed anyway. But that’s hardly cause for gloating on the left. Sterling Newberry offers caution:

All it takes to get the left to roll over is a well coordinated right wing campaign that Mier is unacceptable to the right. The right did the same thing with Roberts – screamed that he wasn’t acceptable. This is part of the strategy people – have the right scream so that the muddled middle has to think that she is one of them.

When “US v Rove” comes before the court, you’ll see what this really means – Bush is lawyering up the court, appointing two long time conservative hacks to the bench to block anything that might lead back to him.

(As a sidebar attraction, Ana Marie opts to chase the obviously pertinent question of whether Miers once fought Gang of 14 poster-child Priscilla Owen over a man. Anyway….)

For a good run-down on links around the blogozoid, including the unhappy wingnuts who’ll assist in the potential Rove gambit I posit above, go see The Heretik.

 

Imagine we’re in the decade of the 1960s. Imagine that the civil rights movement is heating up. Imagine African Americans agitating for their rights as Americans, demanding equal protection, equal access to the commons, equal rights under the law.

Imagine the heat they direct at the white racist establishment. Imagine the harsh words they have for the Jim Crow enforcers. Imagine white bigots in both parties getting outraged and indignant over these “Negroes with their pet issues.”

Imagine Democrats fighting these developments. Imagine white bigots representing the Democratic Party, taking money from the Democratic Party, speaking for the Democratic Party, saying miscegenation is an abomination, that blacks should know their place, that our American traditions demand this, that our children our being corrupted by these disruptions. Imagine bigotry being framed as “moral values.” Imagine bigotry being accepted as “divergent views.”

Cross-posted on MediaGirl and DailyKos. Read on….

Imagine other Democrats saying that these bigots are wrong. Imagine other Democrats saying that there are higher principles than playing to the establishment.

Imagine the cries of outrage over the infighting. Imagine the claims that the Democrats need a “big tent” to succeed. Imagine the assertions that the bigots belong in the Party, and those who object are hurting the Party.

And imagine the Democratic Party saying, “We don’t want to divide the nation.” Imagine the Democratic Party embracing bigotry and racism in order to chase after the bigotry vote. Imagine the Democratic Party turning its back on racial minorities. Imagine strategists and pundits complaining that civil rights is a losing cause, because “those people” haven’t already won their civil rights — i.e., the civil rights movement up until now has been ineffective, and therefore not worth supporting.

Imagine JFK backing down to state governors. Imagine a 7-year-old girl not being escorted to school by federal troops. Imagine LBJ going along with his good ol’ boy colleagues. Imagine segregation continuing with official sanction today.

Imagine no war on poverty. Imagine no civil rights movement. Imagine all the things that would be, and all the things that would not be, today, had the Democratic Party gone for the “big tent” fantasy and pandered to the establishment in everything, not just the Vietnam War.

Imagine what life would be like today if the Democratic Party did not stand up for what’s right in the 1960s.

Imagine what life will be like tomorrow if the Democratic Party does not stand up for what’s right today.

Imagine.

Of course, if you don’t want a cola — or any kind of sugared, carbonated beverage — this kind of question doesn’t help.

It seems that the same kind of thing is happening in politics, where people increasingly are seeing the two main brands, Democrat and Republican, offering two slightly different variations on the same basic treacly, gassy content.

You’d think that the disruptive nature of the internet would mean that bloggers, who ostensibly are not constrained by the mainstreaming pressures of mainstream political cultures, would be pushing for real progressive policies, or, for that matter, real conservative policies.

Strangely, when it comes to the mainstream bloggers, that does not seem to be the case. (Or maybe it’s not so strange, considering how some bloggers are now in bed with political PACs.)

Cross-posted on mediagirl.org and dKos … More after the jump….

And so we see a lot of agitation within the Democratic Party, and its supporters, to ditch its traditional values and just go for market share. Like New Coke and Pepsi Free, we get Cherry Democrat and Republican Lite, two competing products from brand names who don’t care about anything but market share.

People have noted how politics get marketed to the public. But what’s increasingly clear is how the two major parties are bringing market-think into politics.

The logic may make sense in business. MTV started with music videos, but eventually transformed itself into a reality television network, all in an effort to boost ratings, and thus perfectly “valid” for the corporate bottom line. But is this the way to go in politics? Forget what people stand for, just elect the right gangbangers, no matter how awful they are?

Does it really make sense to advocate a political direction that deliberately abandons the people who’ve counted on the Democratic Party to stand up for them? How is this a winning strategy? I thought ends-justifying-the-means rationales were discredited centuries ago.

Alas, the temptation to give in to the dark side is too great.

Some people think environmentalism is too inconvenient politically, despite the evidence that environmental problems are much bigger than politics. Some people think that women’s equality and reproductive rights are too inconvenient politically, despite the horrors that are happing across this country. They think a party should change its politics as willy nilly as MTV changes its program offerings, as long as it might gain market share.

The thing is — and perhaps this represents a break-down in my analogy — not even Coke or Pepsi would be so cavalier towards their the formulae of core businesses.

So why should the Democrats?

[cross-posted from media girl]

There’s been a lot of calling for real accountability when it comes to Bush and his administration’s neglect of essential government programs related to our national security and civil infrastructure, leading to the failures so bloody apparent in the aftermath of Katrina.

And I agree, Bush should be held accountable.

The Republicans are now trying to mount a big coverup campaign, by maintaining control over any investigation of what really happened. Why are they doing this? What do they have to hide? What are they afraid of?

The truth?

But I think it’s important for progressives to understand that this disaster is not just about Bush, and it’s not just about the Republicans who collaborated with Bush to dismantle our government — all the while increasing spending and feeding at the taxpayer trough.

The more important thing that happened in the past few weeks is the exposure of the utter bankruptcy of conservative ideology, which since Ronald Reagan (at least) has tried to claim that government is the enemy, that government must be destroyed.

What is obvious to most Americans is that we could have used effective government to not only respond to the Katrina disaster better, but also prevented much of the death and destruction. This is a case where the private sector just does not fit the bill. This is a case where government planning is not only helpful, it’s essential.

Bush knows it. His speech was all about government programs. He didn’t talk about how he freed the government contractors like Halliburton to take advantage of the desperation of the people suffering there by paying minimum wage for skilled construction jobs. He didn’t talk about policies to allow more pollution to contaminate the air and water. No, he was doing his best to sound like a Democrat.

Funny, that. And very revealing. Because this also reveals that Karl Rove knows that Republicans have to sound like progressives now.

Think about that. The entire American political landscape has changed. Metaphorically, we now see we need trees and all the Republicans have axes in their hands. They are not equipped to respond. We the People demand results, and the only way they can deliver is by embracing progressive values.

There’s a long battle ahead. The GOP controls the entire government, from White House to Congress to the court system. But I think the people — We the People of the United States of America — have had a wake-up call, thanks to Katrina. What happens now will take place in the context of a revived political culture — a political culture that sees government not as an obstacle but as our tool, not as the enemy but as our servant, not as a problem but as a problem solver.

And those who screech the conservative ideology are finding themselves with zero political capital. You don’t want an Amish auto mechanic. You don’t want a vegan BBQ chef. And you don’t want a conservative running government.

It just doesn’t work.

Will it last? I don’t know. But I do know that whether we hold Bush accountable or not, he’s not going to be standing for election any time soon. We need to focus on the future, and create it proactively, instead of simply reacting to what the Republicans do.

Alright, let’s fucking stop all this nonsense and get back to fundamentals.

When one person breathes, one person eats, one person shits, then there’s (duh!) one person.

A woman is one person. A pregnant woman is one person.

When a baby is born, that is the beginning of the baby’s life.

And before anyone scoffs at that notion, consider that life-beginning-at-birth is how we as a people, in our own culture, treat the entire issue. Consider:

When a baby is born, there is a birth certificate. The birth certificate is used to confer rights. When you can vote, when you can drive, when you can drink, when you can marry, when you join catechism, when you have a bar/bat mitzvah, when you qualify for Social Security, when you go to kindergarten, when you can sign legal contracts by yourself, when you are eligible to be drafted, when you qualify for Medicare, when you can get a discount at the movies, and every other way we as a society determine age-contingent matters. We say, “Since the day I was born,” to indicate our entire lives. Our tombstones show the year of death following the year of birth.

We celebrate birthdays, not erections, not that moment Mom and Dad did the dirty in the back seat of the car.  We talk of “one on the way” (but not yet here). When a baby is born, we say, “A new life came into this world.” We send out birth announcements. Christenings happen after birth. And as we have bridal showers before the woman is a bride, we have baby showers before the woman gives birth to a baby.

When a woman menstruates, we don’t have a funeral. When there’s a miscarriage, there can be terrible suffering and grief, but there’s no funeral or death certificate. When a birth delivers a dead fetus, it is called “stillborn,” not the death of a 9-month-old baby.

Even in the rhetoric employed by those who advocate government control of women’s bodies employs very clear language: “unborn” and “pre-born.” Both terms mean, literally, “not born,” meaning not yet of this world, not yet persons.

It’s a romantic to engage in nostalgia for the man’s small contribution by entertaining notions of life beginning at conception, but conception is just one prerequisite to birthing a new life, along with the billions of events that must happen in the woman’s body, including implantation and gestation, use of the woman’s body’s entire metabolism, sufficient nutrition for the woman, adequate health of the woman, as well as proper progress of all the cellular development within the woman’s womb … and, most important, childbirth.

Of course, we could demand that the government control all contributing factors to human life. Of course, unless one is using artificial insemination, an erection and ejaculation are also required — so perhaps the government should regulate and control men’s penises as well.

Or maybe not. Maybe not, because all of this talk of life beginning at any point other than birth is just ridiculous.

If you read some of the überblogs on the John Roberts hearings, you’ll see a lot of talk about the right to privacy — which Roberts himself called “the so-called right to privacy” in an internal memo when he was a young, bright-eyed legal turk in the Reagan administration.

So what is the average American to think? To most Americans — who, contrary to popular belief, are not lawyers — a “right to privacy” means a right to be able to close the door on governmental snooping, the right to private lives. And in that much, they are right.

But what the average American may not realize is that when legal eagles talk about “privacy,” they’re also talking about liberty — the right to do what one will without governmental interference or control.

Q: Should the government be able to peek at your library card?

A: “Gee, maybe, if it helps them catch bad guys.”

Q: Should the government be able to control what your doctor can and cannot tell you in the doctor’s office?

A: “No way! My doctor should be free to tell me everything I need to know.”

In other words, sometimes “privacy” is just privacy, and sometimes “privacy” is liberty.

When language gets in the way

Talk to the average American about privacy, and they’re going to think about provisions in the Patriot Acts to “sneak and peek” in efforts to find terrorists. Many Americans have wholeheartedly endorsed invasions of their privacy — in part because of delusional beliefs that by giving up their privacy they’re somehow safer (but which Americans were involved in 9/11?), and in part because they really are not aware of how these governmental powers can be abused. (Consider how Alberto Gonzales’ defense of the Patriot Act this summer focused on how the people in law enforcement weren’t going to abuse the law, which is a tacit admission that these laws were easy tools for abuse, and how many Americans just shrugged, as if that justified it.)

Yet when the pundits and politicos in the blogs and mainstream media drone on about privacy, most people probably think they’re talking about their library records, and most of them probably couldn’t give a shit.

The thing that all the privacy talk misses — and the essential matter of which Americans should be aware — is that when legal eagles talk about privacy, they aren’t talking about the government reading your emails but about the government controlling your liberty.

Griswold and privacy, Griswold and liberty

Legal eagles like to focus on privacy because that’s a right established in Supreme Court precedent more than 40 years ago, in a case involving (shocker of shockers) availability of birth control to married couples:

An 1879 Connecticut law (originally written by P.T. Barnum, of circus fame) forbade any use of contraception or the assisting of anyone seeking contraception. The statute held that any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception shall be fined not less than fifty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days nor more than one year or be both fined and imprisoned.

This statute was challenged and first reached the Supreme Court in the 1961 case, Poe v. Ullman. The Court dismissed the claim of a doctor and his patients that the Connecticut law denied their Fourteenth Amendment Due Process rights, on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue because the law had not been enforced in many years. In Poe v. Ullman, Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote one of the most-cited dissenting opinions in Supreme Court history, arguing for a broad interpretation of the “liberty” protected by the Due Process Clause.

A few months after the Poe decision came down, Estelle Griswold opened a birth control clinic in New Haven, Connecticut, Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, to dispense contraceptives, in order to test Connecticut’s law once again.

Griswold, the Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and C. Lee Buxton, a physician who served as the Medical Director of the League, were arrested and charged with aiding and abetting the commission of this crime under the Connecticut statute.

After a trial, they were found guilty as charged as accessories for giving a married couple information and medical advice on how to prevent conception and, following examination, prescribing a contraceptive device for the wife’s use and appealed the case.

On appeal, both the Appellate Division of the Circuit Court and the Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed the judgments of conviction. The Connecticut Supreme Court concluded that the conviction of Griswold and Buxton was not an invasion of constitutional rights. Griswold and Buxton appealed their case to the United States Supreme Court.

This wasn’t just about privacy. The heart of the matter was about liberty. Estelle Griswold was being prevented by the government from providing contraception information and assistance to a married couple.

Prevented.

By the government.

The legal precedent is focused on “privacy.” But in ordinary language terms, the real matter is government restraint upon liberty. Freedom.

The American value of freedom

America stands for freedom. We learn that in grade school. We hear it every day from our leaders. Any American with but a grain of idealism in his or her heart is going to believe it to some extent, no matter how badly we and our government manages to fuck up its execution.

America. Land of the free.

What is at stake is not “privacy” in the pedestrian sense, but our very liberty, our very freedom to live our lives without excessive government interference.

Consider this statement by advocate Nancy Keenan:

Tomorrow, John Roberts, President Bush’s nominee to Chief Justice of the United States, has an opportunity to give the public clear and direct responses to essential questions on fundamental freedoms, such as the constitutionally protected right to privacy. But will Americans get the straight answers they deserve? A troubling theme emerging from today’s remarks included a number of anti-choice senators seemingly laying the groundwork for Roberts to evade or refuse to answer questions.

This is inappropriate and contrary to the very purpose of these hearings. The debate must not focus on what questions Roberts can avoid answering. The American people want Roberts to give clear and candid answers on whether he believes the Constitution includes protection for our privacy. They want to hear more from the man who, if confirmed, would become the most powerful judge in the nation. Roberts must explain why he dismissed a fundamental liberty as the “so-called `right to privacy.'”

What she is talking about is not “privacy” in the sense of the common understanding of privacy — whether the government can know what you’re up to — but rather “privacy” in the sense of freedom — whether the government can control what you do.

The “right to privacy” when it comes to reproductive rights is about a right to liberty, a right to free determination, a right to control one’s own body.

If the government reaches into a woman’s body and seizes control of her womb and forces her to carry a pregnancy to term, forces her to remain pregnant until a baby is born and a new person exists, this is not just an invasion of privacy — this is an abrogation of the woman’s liberty. The government has made her into a slave to the government’s breeding laws.

Slavery.

So to all you non-lawyers out there, when you hear “privacy” in the hearings and read “privacy” in blogs and diaries written by legal eagles, do the translation in your head: “privacy” means liberty.

Your liberty. Your freedom.

Cross-posted from mediagirl.org

(Updated to correct a name typo in Alberto Gonzales’ name.)