Down With the Two-Party System

. . . kind of.

As it stands now, there are two major political parties that are supposed to somehow represent the infinitely more complex political views of hundreds of millions of Americans.  It's a political duopoly.  Our two political parties, meanwhile, are failing us spectacularly.

Not only are the two parties failing us, but the two-party system itself, regardless of which parties are in control, is failing us.  It is a system which actively suppresses diverse ideas and candidates and thinking-outside-the-box, which results is less choice and less democratic representation for Americans.

The 2000 presidential election is an apt illustration of this problem.  More people voted for Al Gore than George W. Bush, but Bush became president of the United States.  So you have a situation where the president of the United States did not garner a majority vote of Americans.  This might be attributed to two major factors.  First, the electoral college and, second, the presence of Ralph Nader.

Mormon and Green

It seems to me that every instinct that the current American political class has is wrong.  The economy is faltering badly after banks and insurance firms drove it to disaster with too many risks and bad investments?  Let's deregulate, cut programs to the poor and those most vulnerable, and lower taxes on the rich.  The western forests are unhealthy and in bad shape because of decades of mismanagement?  Let's manage them with an even heavier hand.  The debt ceiling is about to be reached, and default by the government could have dire consequences for an already weak economy?  Let's play political games with it.  Climate change problem?  Scientists are communists.  No one seems to have the gumption or desire to stand up for something better.

As I looked over and contemplated my glib list of problems, politically, with America, it became glaringly clear that the Democrats and Republicans don't have the solutions.  They are too entrenched and powerful to come up with big, new ideas to fix big, new problems.  I've known this for quite a while, of course, on some level I think we all do, but the idea is continually sharpening in my mind.  As a Mormon with the political convictions that I have, I feel more and more compelled to cast my lot with the Green Party.

What's Wrong With Us? Some ideas.

Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood, politically, but I made a list of what's wrong with America right now.  Enjoy:

1. Pointless, horrible wars that we won't end.
2. An assault on our civil liberties, mostly due to the Patriot Act.
3. A complete lack of initiative and desire to do something about climate change and out-of-control consumption of fossil fuels.
4. The deterioration of our public school system.
5. The ever-growing income disparity chasm between the rich and poor.
6. A broken health care system and no universal health care on the horizon to fix it.
7. Underregulated crony corporatism.
8. Insulated, unaccountable politicians.
9. Incivility and bigotry.
10. The New York Yankees.

To sum it up: we have a bipartisan assault on peace, liberty, niceness, the poor, and the environment.  Am I missing anything?

Don't You Make This Difficult For Me, Jon Huntsman

It's early, and my feelings are confused right now, but I think I'm starting to really like Jon Huntsman.  I mean, I liked him a lot when he was governor because we just never had governors like him in Utah.  He supported cap-and-trade legislation, he moved us forward on civil rights by supporting gay rights and civil unions, he supported immigrant rights, he called out those ridiculous congressional Republicans for being useless (his word was "inconsequential"), and he generally talked and acted like a moderate in a state where Republican politicians are almost universally crazies.  I even started to like that weird thing he does with his eyebrows.  He wasn't perfect, but he was pretty good.

Then he praised Obama and Clinton and went to work as the ambassador to China in the Obama administration, even when everyone knew he had national aspirations.

Now it is clear that he's running for president and he continues to talk like a moderate, reasonable conservative and, frankly, it's jarring.  Take a look at this article by the Deseret News and in particular the transcript of the interview he did with CNN's John King.

Liberal States' Rights

My visceral opposition to strong states' rights comes from a variety of sources.  First, I don't like the way my state generally does things.  Utah is a drag.  This is an intellectually shallow argument against states' rights, but its real for many people.

Second, I think the constitutional arguments behind it are pretty weak, or have become weaker in a changing world that the Founding Fathers could not possibly have foreseen.  I went into detail about this here.

Third, I think there are certain basic privileges and protections that the federal government should ensure that many states are hostile to, such as health care, which we'll discuss more below.  I support the federal government setting minimum standards for health care, the financial sector, etc. that are binding on states and put all Americans on a more equal footing.  As long as we are the United States of America, what's bad for one of us is bad for all of us.

Nearly Half of Americans Aren't Paying Income Taxes: Bad But Maybe Not in the Way You Suppose

It has recently exploded all over the internet that nearly half of American households do not pay income taxes.  There are enough deductions and credits for families making around $50,000 and less to avoid the income tax completely, though they still are paying federal payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and others.

While some see this as a broken tax system, I see it as a broken economy.  While some gripe that half of Americans aren't pulling their weight, I see it as nearly half of Americans are not making enough money to pay income taxes.  They live below the line where we have decided that a person is only making enough to cover basic expenses and should not bear the weight of income taxes on top of it.  Instead of trying to figure out how to get those people to start paying income taxes at their current salary, lets instead focus on how to get these people making enough money to be able to afford taxes after their basic needs are met.

In Which I Whine About Our Political Parties

Pres. Obama is certainly a better president that Pres. W. Bush was, and is certainly better than Sen. McCain would have been, not to mention the mediocre crop of hopefuls lining up to challenge him next year.  He's done some good things such as at least making an effort to end our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not starting any new wars (. . . yet, but we're keeping our eyes on you, Libya), making an effort to reform the health care and financial systems, and, importantly, changing the tone of discourse in the White House.  But it hasn't really been that great, overall.  Where he has tried to make some progress in areas of war and regulation reform, they have been meager and more or less disappointing.  I went over some of the failures before here.

Now we learn that Pres. Obama will not be shutting down Guantanamo Bay any time soon, like he promised, will reinstate military tribunals and not use our world-class criminal justice system, and will continue indefinite detentions without hearings.  He also fired the State Dept. spokesperson for criticizing the brutal detention of Bradley Manning, the Wikileaks leaker.  His record on civil liberties is no better than Bush's, which make me sick.

Divide and Conquer, Religious Style

NYDailyNews.com

Rep. Peter King is using his position as chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security to terrorize Muslims.  He is instituting hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims based on vague accusations that ordinary Muslims and their leaders have not done enough to speak out against terrorism.  He has yet to produce, of course, any proof of any of his claims that American Muslims are becoming more radicalized and that they are not adequately assisting the police and counter-terrorism officials.

The impetus for these hearings likely has nothing to do with the radicalization of Muslims, and everything to do with politics.  By turning Americans against each other politicians can pursue the old divide and conquer technique.  Anyone who knows American Muslims knows that they are just like everyone else.  They are mostly good, hardworking, honest people who value their freedoms and abhor oppression.  They are serious about their religion and embrace their cultural and familial roots.  While most are good, some are not.  The same could be said about nearly every group of Americans, no matter how you dissect them.  You could say the same about Catholics, Mormons, atheists, middle class, lower class, New Yorkers, Utahns, blacks, whites, and on and on. It is cliche but still basically true that the things that tie us together are both more numerous and more important than the things that differentiate us.

Democracy in Egypt and the Middle East

What you are hearing from Washington insiders regarding the uprising, or revolution, in Egypt is that Pres. Obama is in a very tough spot.  Republicans are surprisingly supportive of this view and are standing behind the president as he tries to figure out what to do.  It's tricky because we've been supporting, through billions of dollars in aid, Mubarak for decades, this despite the fact that he is an undemocratic autocrat who excludes his people from legitimate public debate and involvement.  But the US is okay with that because he has been friendly with Israel, he has been moderate in keeping fundamentalism at bay in Egypt, and the country has been stable under his rule.

This is the classic foreign policy realism point of view.  Realism is not concerned with right or wrong, moral or immoral, and the like.  Realism is concerned with who has power and how does that effect me?  The paramount concern for a foreign policy realist is one's own security and self-interest.  From the realist's point of view, Mubarak has been perfectly acceptable.  The idea of a revolution in Egypt, with the possibility of chaos or fundamentalism taking hold as a counter-weight to the possibility of real democracy taking hold, is a risk probably not worth taking.  So the establishment is treading very carefully, not really sure what to do about it.  Of course a stable democracy is the very best thing for America's self-interest, but the cost/benefit analysis is tricky.  This is why the Obama administration is making wishy-washy statements and being blamed for being one step behind the situation, and why Republicans are supportive.

And it's all wrong.

Constitutional Over-Correction: Extreme States' Rights

Utah's very own baby-faced tea-party senator, and self-styled Constitutional scholar, Mike Lee, recently held forth that, of all things, child labor laws are unconstitutional.  I guess I'm more sad than anything.  Sad because we have completely stopped thinking through issues and ideas carefully.  Rhetoric rules.

The best way I can describe what is going on is with a car analogy, which I understand is worn and cliche but I am nothing if not worn and cliche.  So, you are driving along on a road trip and you are eating a Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich and you look down for a second to rearrange the wrapping for your next bite and when you look up you are drifting into oncoming traffic.  The natural reaction is to jerk the wheel back.  But this is how rollovers happen, by over-correction.  The proper response is to course-correct more smoothly.

Worst News Story Ever

Apparently a washed up old rocker is not yet ready to endorse a half term governor and reality TV star as President of the United States of America.  We'll keep you updated as the story evolves.

Everyone please say a prayer for the future of our country, because if this is news we've got some serious issues.

You Are the Government: Wikileaks and Transparency

So Julian Assange of Wikileaks recently released about 250,000 secret documents from the State Department.  The very best thing you could possibly read about Wikileaks is Glenn Greenwald.  Here is a smattering, the tip o' the iceberg, of new information that we learned about our government's illegal and immoral activity from these documents that Greenwald  put together:

(1) the U.S. military formally adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to systematic, pervasive torture and other abuses by Iraqi forces;

(2) the State Department threatened Germany not to criminally investigate the CIA's kidnapping of one of its citizens who turned out to be completely innocent;

(3) the State Department under Bush and Obama applied continuous pressure on the Spanish Government to suppress investigations of the CIA's torture of its citizens and the 2003 killing of a Spanish photojournalist when the U.S. military fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad (see The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch today about this: "The day Barack Obama Lied to me");

(4) the British Government privately promised to shield Bush officials from embarrassment as part of its Iraq War "investigation";

(5) there were at least 15,000 people killed in Iraq that were previously uncounted;

(6) "American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world" about the Iraq war as it was prosecuted, a conclusion the Post's own former Baghdad Bureau Chief wrote was proven by the WikiLeaks documents;

(7) the U.S.'s own Ambassador concluded that the July, 2009 removal of the Honduran President was illegal -- a coup -- but the State Department did not want to conclude that and thus ignored it until it was too late to matter;

(8) U.S. and British officials colluded to allow the U.S. to keep cluster bombs on British soil even though Britain had signed the treaty banning such weapons, and,

(9) Hillary Clinton's State Department ordered diplomats to collect passwords, emails, and biometric data on U.N. and other foreign officials, almost certainly in violation of the Vienna Treaty of 1961.

Baseball and Politics: Expansion

I desperately want a major league baseball team in Salt Lake.  I could see myself going to a few dozen games every season.  As a lifelong Red Sox fan I would have no problem switching allegiances to a new, local team (especially after the Sox have won a couple World Series recently).  The only way I see this happening is through expansion.

There are currently 30 major league teams.  There are 16 teams in the National League and 14 in the American League.  The reason they are unbalanced is because in baseball every team plays just about every day, and teams play in (typically) three game sets, so you need an even number of teams in each league to avoid scheduling problems.  This means that the NL Central has six teams while the AL West only has four.  It would be ideal to add a couple of western teams to even out the leagues and enfranchise some disenfranchised parts of the country (I think Portland would be perfect for a second team).

I Hate Election Season

It's been a little slow around here and I can blame life being busy and tumultuous and, ironically, election season.  A political blog should be hoppin' during election season but I find that elections make me disillusioned and sad for America.  While we don't practice the most honorable politics in non-election seasons, during elections the level of political discourse on all sides plummets and candidates compete in a race to the bottom.  Perhaps the worst aspect of democracy is the elections.

The candidates believe, correctly, that Americans care more about wedge issues and digestible soundbites than substantive discussions of the issues.  They know by now that Americans like to be reaffirmed in what they believe as opposed to being challenged by new and novel ideas.  They know that Americans are tribalistic and like to think in terms of "us v. them" as opposed to finding ways to come together for the common good.  They are more interested in not making a gaffe than in saying or doing something truly memorable and inspiring and taking chances, because any little gaffe in this era of 24-hour cable news and the internet will be magnified beyond all reasonable limits of logic and decency.

Why I Can Kind of Sort of Support the Tea Party

I don't like the Tea Party, which should come as no surprise.  I don't like the fear-mongering and implicit racism that it invites in some (not all), I don't like the complete breakdown of civility, and I just don't like the politics of taking caring for the poor and elderly out of the government's hands.  I think the government has a valuable role to play in helping the underprivileged and underrepresented and in kick starting the economy when it tanks.  But they are doing pretty well this primary season (here is a list of their major victories).  Despite all of that, I find myself rooting for them, in some small way, for two reasons.

First, in the ulterior motive category, they give Democrats a better shot at holding on to seats that the Democrats otherwise would have certainly lost.  As a caveat let me just say that Democrats, as a party, are no great shakes.  But they are closer to what I espouse in politics than Republicans, so that's where my tentative loyalty lies.  So when I see races that should be Republican blowouts actually close and winnable for Democrats, I'm glad the Tea Party is doing well.  Some examples of this are the Nevada senatorial race, the Kentucky senatorial race, the Delaware senatorial race, the Colorado gubernatorial race, and a slew of house races around the country.  The primary voters are electing ultra-conservative candidates that moderate voters want no part of, and it's hurting their party.  If the Republicans fail to win back the House and Senate, you can point to the Tea Party as the reason why.

Second, *deep breath* I actually think they are good for democracy.  Most or all of those Tea Party primary wins came against the party-backed, system-approved incumbent or insider.  These are the type of candidates that expect to win because they are supported by the institution.  Reelection rates in America are somewhere north of 90%.  Politicians get comfy and complacent and power-hungry.  As a result we get a political class whose main goal is to continue to get reelected, as opposed to doing the work of the People.

So when a movement comes along which starts booting some of them out and putting the fear of the People in their hearts, I'm kind of on board.  I wish it was a movement of moderates or something more benign, and I hope they win as few general election contests as possible, but I see their intrinsic value nonetheless.  So, rock on, anti-establishmentists, vote out the stupids, but remember that I have a very different idea of what is stupid than you.

Liberaltarianism: Might Mormons Embrace a Liberal-Libertarian Alliance?

I once foolishly asked if the liberal dominance of the immediate post-Bush era would have the effect of liberalizing Mormon voters.  The answer came resoundingly recently with a Gallup poll that showed that Mormons give President Obama the lowest favorability marks of any group, 24%.  Sigh.

So I started wondering if there is anything that could be done about this.  In my mind Mormons should feel very comfortable leaning politically left on issues such as immigration (love thy neighbors, the special place of "Lamanites" in Book of Mormon prophecies), the environment (the sanctity of all God's creations), war (Gospel of peace), and poverty (BOM: no poor among you, all things in common, 4 Nephi), among others.  But I am continually disappointed.

In my meanderings trying to figure all this out I came across my solution du jour: liberaltarianism.  That's right, the fusing of libertarianism and liberalism.  This newish brand of Western politics could be just the thing to shake Mormons out of our political heterodoxy.  Or not, but let's take look.

Glenn Beck v. The Mormon Ethic of Civility

Can you guess which is which?

The political world is astir. Economies are faltering. Public trust is waning. Individuals feel vulnerable. And social cohesion wears thin. Meanwhile, stories of rage and agitation fill our airwaves, streets and town halls. Where are the voices of balance and moderation in these extreme times?

So here you have Barack Obama going in and spending money on embryonic stem cell research. . .  Eugenics.  In case you don't know what eugencis led to; the Final Solution.  A master race!  A perfect person. . .  the stuff we are facing is absolutely frightening.
 
During a recent address given in an interfaith setting, Church President Thomas S. Monson declared: "When a spirit of goodwill prompts our thinking and when united effort goes to work on a common problem, the results can be most gratifying."

You self-centered, self-righteous, socialist, out-of-control, dangerous, man-hating bitch. Shut your mouth. We might have bought into this crap in the 1960s because too many people were doing LSD. We’re not on LSD anymore. You need to start making sense.

Further, former Church President Gordon B. Hinckley once said that living “together in communities with respect and concern one for another” is “the hallmark of civilization.” That hallmark is under increasing threat.

Speaking to a Muslim Congressman:  "I have been nervous about this interview with you because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies". . .  And I know you're not.  I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans feel that way.

Religious Freedom and the Ground Zero Mosque

The Eleventh Article of Faith states: "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."

I stated in my last post that my evolving three pillars of Things I Care About The Most In Politics are peace, a healthy sustainable environment, and moral/religious agency.  I think if we safeguard these three things we can live in a pretty great world for a long time.  Of course the three are intimately intertwined.  War is usually based on scarcity of resources (the environmental aspect) or religious conflict.  If we could focus on cleaning up our religious conflicts and our environment, sustainable peace would surely follow.

Unfortunately, there are many right here in America who want to restrict the religious freedom of anyone that worships different than they do, thus creating more conflict and less peace.  The latest and most public incarnation of this bigotry is the uproar over the plans to build a mosque and Muslim information center a few blocks from ground zero.

The opponents of this mosque truly believe that those who died on 9/11 would be dishonored by the mere fact that Muslims would have a place of worship so near ground zero.  The only way this thinking makes sense is if you believe that all Muslims are responsible for the actions of al Qaeda and the extremist factions that want to harm the United States.  This is, of course, absurd and bigoted.

What Would the Founding Fathers Have Thought About Ebay?

So let's pretend that you discovered a new continent with seemingly limitless natural resources, fertile soil, and a varied climate.  It began to be populated by people from every nation, religion, and walk of life and was thus tolerant and dynamic.  Essentially, the potential for growth and progress was boundless.  And let's pretend that those people turned to you and your colleagues to establish a government that would endure and upon which they could rely for generations to come.  What would you do?

Remember that this Constitution could endure for hundreds of years and see changes in the world that you cannot possibly imagine. Would you write a short document that gave a basic framework and allowed for a variety of interpretations to fit the needs of future generations?  Would you write a document that that had some broad language but a strict interpretation to be followed by all future generations?  Would you create essentially a large volume of specific statutes to be followed for all time?  Would you be confident that your wisdom should be followed explicitly by the progeny of your generation hundreds of years down the line?  Or would you want them to be able to adapt to a changing world while holding on to a few key principles of freedom that you hold dear?

These are, in essence, the issues that America's Founding Fathers faced while creating our new nation and producing a Constitution.  For a little context, here's a real rough sketch of America in 1790, just a couple of years after the Constitutional Convention.  America had about four million inhabitants, including about 700,000 slaves.  New York City was the largest city with about 33,000 people, Philadelphia was next with about 28,000, which means that the nation was overwhelmingly rural.  Most people were self-sufficient to the extreme, meaning they produced their own food and made their own clothes and built their own houses and bred their own horses.

Mormons : America :: Catholic Monks : Rome

Recently at Slate.com, there was a series of articles which played out the thought experiment of how America may come to end in the near or distant future. Towards the end of this series the author speculated on who or what would carry the spirit and ideals of America forward like Catholic monks did with Rome. His conclusion: the Mormons.

There were several reasons. First, Mormons might be more likely to survive the collapse of America because of our commitment to food storage and our actively watching for the apocalypse. Second, Mormons believe that America was divinely appointed and inspired, and are therefore more likely to carry on its ideals and traditions, maybe even revering the Constitution after America is no more. Third, Mormons represent American values because we have been forced to assimilate to American culture after years of being outcasts and persecuted. In other words, we have worked very hard to fit in and seem normal after a pretty rocky start. Fourth, Mormons have fully embraced capitalism. Fifth, Mormons are always looking to the past as a source of strength. Not being too caught up in the present or future is good for survival in harsh conditions. Finally, Americans represent good old fashioned American values like family, civic responsibility, and the like.

This makes me uncomfortable for several reasons. I think like most Mormons, I tend to discount the point of view that says that Mormonism is a uniquely American religion. Of course we believe that Gospel truths are universal and eternal, applying equally to all nations and people. I understand, however, where this point of view comes from. It is true that the church was founded (or restored) here in America, that the Book of Mormon goes out of its way to extol the virtues of America and its founding, that modern revelation has pinpointed the spot of the Garden of Eden and New Jerusalem here in America, and the headquarters are in America. That is fairly persuasive evidence that this is an American religion.

And it is true that the American culture that dominates Mormonism pervades congregations throughout the world. Non-English speakers use English words in regards to Mormonism (for instance, many French speakers use the word "garments" and "Elder" even though those words either don't exist or are not used in such a way in French) and foreign members of the church tend to exhibit America-philia in their desire to visit America or move here. I don't think the church explicitly encourages such America-centrism, but its hard to argue that it does not exist on some level.

But the main point of the article and what I was interested in, was the way in which Mormons have gone out of our way to assimilate into American society to the point that we are regarded as the best single example of the confluence of America and religion. Has it made a positive difference in our religion that we are trying very hard to fit it?

On the one hand state and federal governments have ceased sending armed mobs and militias to take our property and change our religious practices, but on the other hand Americans are still deeply suspicious of our religion and really don't trust us. Are we trying too hard to be seen as quintessentially "American" at the expense of some of our core ideals for very little in return?

It used to be that one of the distinguishing features of Mormonism was the emphasis on community. Of course there was the United Order, but there were also various other community activities and community pride. For a good look at this phenomenon read Wallace Stegner's Mormon Country. I think that has been completely lost. We pride ourselves in our big houses on our big lots and our capitalism and our Western-style individualism. I don't think there is anything wrong with those those, in moderation, but it feels like we've gone too far and maybe a lot of it has to do, ironically I guess, with our desire to assimilate and seem "normal."

Perhaps, as well, this has something to do with Mormon politics. This extreme identity with conservative politics which only loosely coincides with Mormon beliefs allows an outlet for the majority of Mormons to enter the national discourse via a mainstream political vehicle. What have they gotten in return? A Southern base that distrusts Mormons and would not consider nominating a Mormon for President.

I would hope that members of the church identify themselves as Mormons first and Americans, democrats, or republicans following after. Not because there is anything grossly wrong with America, but because a nation is manmade and transitory, whereas our religion is eternal. A nation, any nation, is inherently flawed and limited, which is not the case with the Gospel.

I would hope that we could find the beauty and wisdom in all cultures instead of puffing our American chests and sneering at what we see as inferior nations, especially knowing that members of the church come from nearly all cultures and nations (even Muslim nations).

So I don't feel bad admitting that the fact that people see us as the very epitome of American culture makes me uncomfortable.