Barack Obama's Legacy

This editorial was published in "The Morning Call," PolicyMic, and CNN on April 30, 2012:(http://www.mcall.com/opinion/yourview/mc-obama-legacy-rozsa-yv--20120429,0,2903223,print.story), (http://www.policymic.com/articles/7695/after-1-200-days-obama-has-left-his-mark-on-america/latest_articles), and (http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-783451).

With one of Barack Obama's signature legislative achievements on the Supreme Court chopping block and his re-election bid against Mitt Romney shaping up into a close race, many conservative pundits are claiming the president's very legacy is in peril. Since their assertions have been given ample play in mainstream media outlets, I decided it would be appropriate to offset them with a different perspective. Here is a look at some of Obama's most important achievements, nearly 1,200 days into this presidency:

•Foreign policy. Per one of the central promises of his 2008 presidential campaign, he ended the war in Iraq, with the last U.S. troops being withdrawn in December 2011. He also presided over the tough decisions that led to the assassination of Osama bin Laden, thus helping bring closure to the emotional wounds of the Sept. 11 attacks. Finally, Obama underwent concerted diplomatic efforts to repair relations with nations that had grown alienated from America by George W. Bush's foreign policies, particularly with his concerted outreach to the Muslim world as spelled out in his "New Beginning" speech at Cairo University. Only the lingering war in Afghanistan exists as a major tarnish on his foreign policy achievements.

•Domestic policy. Even if the Supreme Court overturns Obama's health care reform law, he still will have amassed an impressive legislative record, including civil rights measures (the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act), significant financial regulatory reforms (the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act), consumers rights bills (the Credit CARD Act, the Food Safety Modernization Act), and economic relief initiatives for those struck hardest by the recession (the Helping Families Save their Homes Act, the Small Business Jobs Act).

•The economy. Obama stopped the Great Recession from deteriorating into a second Great Depression. Although the first nine months of the Great Recession saw only a gradual climb in unemployment (from just under 5 percent in the last pre-recession month, November 2007, to slightly more than 6 percent in August 2008), the Wall Street meltdown of September 2008 caused it to spiral out of control. Unemployment rose at a dangerous average rate of almost 0.4 percent per month from the time of the crash to May 2009. Once Obama's stimulus bill began taking effect, however, the jobless rate stabilized; after doubling to 9.4 percent in the year and a half since November 2007, it remained at or under 10 percent for the next 18 months. Since then it has declined, in large part due to a second stimulus Obama appended to the Bush tax cut extensions, with unemployment ranging from 8.5 percent to 9.1 percent throughout 2011 before falling to a low of 8.2 percent in March.

Overall, the president whose legacy Obama's is most likely to resemble is the same one with whom he was so often compared only a few years ago — John F. Kennedy.

Some of the reasons for this are obvious: Like Obama, Kennedy broke long-standing barriers of prejudice by virtue of his election (Kennedy for Catholics, Obama for African-Americans) and developed a public image as a charismatic, eloquent and scholarly idealist. Just as important, however, Kennedy also racked up a number of important accomplishments during his tenure, including creating the Peace Corps, signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, launching the race to the moon, navigating America through the Cuban Missile Crisis, and using federal troops to help integrate the South.

Inevitably, both presidents also saw their mystiques fade during their administrations, thanks to their own blunders (Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs, Obama and the BP oil spill), the disappointment of liberals unhappy with compromises (Kennedy on civil rights, Obama on health care reform), and the venom of right-wingers who not only accused them of being socialists and/or communists but also popularized conspiracy theories fueled by prevalent prejudices, such as claiming Kennedy was taking orders from the Vatican or that Obama wasn't born in this country.

Like all parallels between history and the present, the Kennedy-Obama analogy isn't perfect, given the different circumstances in which they governed. In the end, though, Kennedy is still remembered for the barriers he broke and the way his policies helped America, and likely would still be recalled that way even if he had been defeated for re-election in 1964. Regardless of what happens to Obama in 2012 — at the Supreme Court or the ballot box — the same will almost certainly be true for him.

How The Military Should Handle Neo-Nazis and Ron Paul Supporters

This editorial first appeared on PolicyMic (April 3, 2012). The original version can be found here: http://www.policymic.com/articles/6398/ron-paul-supporters-wrongly-banned-from-the-military-while-neo-nazis-permitted-to-serve/headline_story
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Nathan Wooten has a portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging in his living room. He named his son after a leader of the German S.S. He regularly posts comments on National Socialist message boards and created a personal profile on a white supremacist social networking site. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, Wooten is a neo-Nazi.
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Until last month, he was also a sergeant in the Missouri National Guard.
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Some quick context:
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- Wooten's superiors had been aware of his neo-Nazi affiliation for almost a full year, not acting upon this information until it was leaked to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In early 2011, three of Wooten's colleagues reported that he was openly professing racist views to them.
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- His behavior was in clear violation of military regulations, which explicitly forbid its members from getting involved with groups that "actively advocate supremacist doctrine, ideology, or causes."
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- The military's tardiness in dealing with Wooten isn't exactly standard practice when it comes to their handling of personnel who get mixed up in politics. Back in January, an Army reservist named Jesse Thorsen appeared in uniform at a Ron Paul rally to endorse the libertarian congressman. As the Associated Press reports, "the military's reaction was swift" when they heard about this, since soldiers are prohibited from appearing at political functions in uniform or making public political speeches (although they are allowed to vote and attend rallies). Thorsen was punished with a formal reprimand, one that will likely inhibit his chances of advancing through the ranks in the future.
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There have been other recent instances in which the military encountered controversy due to the ideological views of its members: Gary Stein, the Marine Corps Sergeant who created a Tea Party page on Facebook, said he would refuse to follow President Barack Obama's orders if he disagreed with them; Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, had repeatedly advocated violence against Americans prior to his bloody rampage, although the military failed to act when they heard about it; and intelligence expert Craig Baxam was arrested after his efforts to assist a Somali affiliate of Al Qaeda were discovered. On each of these occasions, however, the ultimate problem was not the political views of the soldiers, but rather the fact that they had openly declared either a willingness to insubordinate their commander-in-chief (Stein) or sympathy for America's avowed enemies (Hasan, Baxam). As such, their situations are not comparable to those of Wooten and Thorsen, for whom their expression of certain political beliefs is the primary matter at issue.
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The key difference is that the military was wrong for what it did to Thorsen. It is unrealistic to claim that a soldier who has one set of political opinions is incapable of effectively serving citizens with differing views, since by that logic all soldiers would be required to abandon their Constitutional right to free political thought upon enlisting. While it makes sense to prevent soldiers from adopting or advocating philosophies that will (a) undermine their ability to perform their duties as required and/or (b) render them unable or unwilling to respect and protect all of their fellow citizens equally (see Stein, Hasan, and Baxam), it is absurd to argue that those requirements are violated by simply supporting an ordinary political candidate, be it Ron Paul or anyone else. Similarly, while the military has the right to demand that its members not claim that their personal political views represent the ideas of the institution as a whole, it is ridiculous to claim that a soldier who simply makes his occupation known while espousing certain beliefs -- be it by wearing a uniform or actually stating his vocation -- is implicitly conflating his individual perspectives with those of his larger organization. Unless he directly makes that claim, the institution entrusted with defending our Constitution should always err on the side of guaranteeing the rights prescribed in that document to its personnel.
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I anticipate that these views may surprise some of my regular readers, given that I have written editorials in the past criticizing Ron Paul for his misrepresentation of Constitutional history and urging his supporters to avoid the dangers of dogmatism (I also noted that white supremacists are a part of Ron Paul's coalition, although they are far from being a majority within it). Nevertheless, they must remember that true progressives place a high premium on the integrality of freedom of thought, one best captured in the writings of Voltaire (one of my favorite authors) and summarized by the aphorism of his biographer, Evelyn Beatrice Hall:
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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
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The protection to which Thorsen is entitled, however, does not apply to Wooten. Subscribing to neo-Nazi political views is not the same as believing in libertarianism (like Thorsen), progressivism, centrism, or conservatism. While those ideologies may have wildly different positions on important policy questions, none of them inherently relegate any class of citizens to a status of basic civic inferiority. Neo-Nazis, on the other hand, do not respect the human rights of African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Jews, and other ethnic groups they deem to be "lesser." Consequently, a neo-Nazi like Wooten cannot be reasonably expected to do the duties he owes to all his fellow citizens, which disqualifies him from military service on a fundamental level. Even worse, because his responsibilities as an honor guard involve being a physical symbol of American values at the funerals of deceased servicemen, it is downrighting insulting to World War Two veterans to have them posthumously honored by a man who openly reveres the tyrant they risked their lives to topple. As such, it was unconscionable for Wooten's superiors to knowingly allow him to remain in service, especially in light of how other officers immediately punished Thorsen for an offense that was, at the very least, far lesser in scope (assuming one even believes that it should be an offense in the first place). A public accounting of their decisions must be made, with jobs lost if the justifications are shown to be inadequate.
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I won't offer any hypotheses as to why Wooten received superior treatment than Thorsen, since intelligent speculation is impossible without firsthand access to the private documents issued at the time on those subjects. Instead I will conclude with a personal confession: I am far from unbiased when it comes to discussions of neo-Nazis. When I read about someone like Nathan Wooten, I am reminded of a 12-year-old boy who nearly lost his life in an anti-Semitic hate crime, one in which his peers tried to drown him in a lake while chanting "Drown the Jew!" Before that incident, he had schoolmates confront him with the charge that he worshipped Satan, inform him that he wasn't allowed to play with them because their parents didn't want Jews in their homes, show him swastikas that they had drawn on their binders and carved into their desks for his consumption, and pelt him with coins as a particularly cruel way of mocking the stereotype of Jewish greed.
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That young man, as you may have already guessed, was me. I learned many things from that ordeal, but foremost among them was the knowledge that -- while I may disagree with individuals like Jesse Thorsen -- there is a fundamental difference between opinions that differ from my own and ones that imperil my very existence. Nathan Wooten's beliefs fall into the latter category, and people who share them have no place in positions of power or influence in any free society.

A Republican War on Women?

This editorial was originally published on PolicyMic (March 22, 2012) and can be found here: http://www.policymic.com/articles/5832/a-republican-war-on-women

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Is it fair to claim that the Republican Party is waging a "war on women?"

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Let's look at the facts. Although the phrase in question only regained its political fashionability within the last few months, the sad truth is that the Republican Party's hostility to women's rights traces back much longer than that. The days when Senator Margaret Chase Smith electrified Congress with her eloquence and sharp logic subsided long ago; in their place is the party whose much-heralded "Reagan Revolution" was ushered in by a former California governor who proudly made good on his 1980 presidential campaign promise to quash the Equal Rights Amendment.

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That spirit is still evident today. With four examples from 2012 alone, one can see it:

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- Rush Limbaugh's reference to Sandra Fluke, and by implication any woman who supports federal guarantees of insurance coverage for female contraception, as being "a slut" and "a prostitute" for supposedly wanting other people to pay for her sex (Limbaugh initially refused to apologize but changed his tune when advertisers began to pull out of his program).

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- The passage of a Texas law requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before receiving an abortion, one accompanied by tentative counterparts in Virginia and Pennsylvania.

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- The proposal in Wisconsin of a particularly misogynistic law that would brand single mothers as child abusers for not being married, one put forward by a legislator who later admitted that he opposed divorce for any reason, even arguing that women in abusive relationships should just remember what they used to love about their husbands and "re-find those reasons and get back to why they got married in the first place."

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- The fact that the field of Republican presidential candidates includes: a man who wants to eliminate funding for Title X programs that would fund Planned Parenthood (sans abortion procedures) and help poor women receive everything from cancer screenings and pap smears to birth control and wellness checkups, a man who has based a large part of his condemnation of Obama's contraception insurance mandate on the grounds that "[sex] is supposed to be within marriage" and birth control is "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be," a man who voted against the Family and Medical Leave Act, and a man who says victims of sexual harassment "can't escape some responsibility for the problem" by not just quitting their jobs.

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Facts such as these dominate the public image of the Republican Party today, and they can't be scrubbed out simply because they're justified by sympathetic female cultural reactionaries, be they commentators like Phyllis Schlafly and Ann Coulter or politicians like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. On the one hand, it is quite hyperbolic to classify all of this as a literal "war on women," since that term more appropriately applies to the extreme atrocities facing the unfortunate female residents of nations like Afghanistan, Iran, and the Congo, even though it's worth noting that America - unlike nations such as Great Britain, Israel, and Germany - has never had a female head of state. At the same time, the hyperbole is one that Republicans have brought upon themselves. By opposing policies that will allow women full control over their own bodies, sexual choices, marital statuses, and workplace rights, they deny them the ability to fully control their own lives.

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This makes me pine for the days of feminism. Not the militant caricature that was given a deliberately pejorative connotation by the likes of Rush Limbaugh (who, among other things, coined the phrase "feminazis"), but the feminism that simply insists that people shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against others because of biological differences (in this case related to gender) or attempt to impose their personal cultural views regarding sex on those who don't share them. That brand of feminism is very much needed today. As Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler put it best, "feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings."

Health Care Reform and the Anti-Injunction Act

This editorial was originally posted on PolicyMic.com on March 14, 2012. It can be found here: http://www.policymic.com/articles/5408/the-supreme-court-s-decision-on-the-affordable-care-act-could-be-impacted-by-the-anti-injunction-act

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As the Supreme Court prepares to start its hearings on President Barack Obama's health care reform legislation (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA), it makes sense that conservatives and libertarians are eager for the case to proceed as quickly as possible. After all, any ruling issued before November 2012 will constitute some manner of victory for their cause: A complete overturning of the bill will be celebrated as a vindication of the anti-PPACA position and a humiliation for Obama, a complete upholding of it can be used to freshly galvanize the right-wing base against the president (especially given the failure of party frontrunners Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum to accomplish that task), and a ruling rejecting the individual mandate while maintaining the rest of the measure would force Obama into a fight with Congress over an alternative to the mandate (of which there are at least nine), one that could be used to paint him in an unflattering light at the height of the election season.

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Just as a wealth of potential benefits await opponents of PPACA if the Supreme Court issues a ruling within the next few months, virtually none can be gained through additional delay. Indeed, worse than none — after January 1, 2014, provisions of PPACA will be implemented that will directly benefit large sections of the general public (the subsidization of insurance premiums for single adults and individuals with income up to 400% of the poverty line, the ban on insurance companies discriminating based on pre-existing medical conditions, the expansion of Medicaid eligibility to all individuals with income up to 133% of the poverty line, the establishment of health insurance exchanges), thereby significantly weakening the movement to eliminate the bill.

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In the end, though, none of this should matter to any conservative or libertarian deserving of those titles. If their oft-proclaimed disdain for judicial activism has roots in anything other than partisan rhetoric, they should want all hearings on the matter to be postponed until at least 2015.

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To understand why, one must look back to the days when Andrew Johnson inhabited the White House. According to the Anti-Injunction Act of 1867, courts are prohibited from striking down tax laws before they take effect, with their power strictly limited to handling cases brought to them by plaintiffs who sue the government after paying the tax in question. This directly pertains to the individual mandate, a penalty contained in the Tax Code against individuals who have the financial means to afford insurance but choose not to acquire it (this is to protect patients from having their premiums raised by people who wait until they become sick to obtain coverage). Because the legal opposition to PPACA has predominantly focused on the individual mandate, any postponement of a ruling on that individual measure would need to be accompanied by a delay in the entire case, one that would have to remain in effect until at least 2015 (the individual mandate would come into effect in 2014, making 2015 the earliest year in which a plaintiff could file suit).

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Inevitably, many of PPACA's opponents are seeking loopholes in this legal barrier. One common claim is that because the text of the health bill itself never refers to the individual mandate as a "tax" but instead uses the term "penalty," the Anti-Injunction Act doesn't apply to it. This, of course, ignores that the mandate is not only contained in the Tax Code but is collected by the Internal Revenue Service. The other major argument, as summed up by Paul Clement (an attorney representing the states challenging PPACA), is that "the challenge here is to the mandate, and not the penalty that enforces it." That logic is even more absurd, since the mandate isn't operative without the penalty; indeed, it can't effectively be a "mandate" without the enforcement mechanism of a penalty in place to implement it.

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The hard truth is that the individual mandate is a tax (semantics-based protests to the contrary notwithstanding), and as such falls under the aegis of the same law that has encompassed comparable bills for nearly a century-and-a-half. For the Supreme Court to make an exception in the case of PPACA would be a classic case of judicial activism as defined by Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, i.e., "The practice in the judiciary of protecting or expanding individual rights through decisions that depart from established precedent or are independent of or in opposition to supposed constitutional or legislative intent."

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The good news in all of this is that the Supreme Court has already hired a special lawyer to argue in favor of applying the Anti-Injunction Act to PPACA, which he will begin to do on March 26th. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that legal precedent will actually be upheld by the judges, at least not if we have a recurrence of the judicial hyperpartisanship that has reared its ugly head in other recent Supreme Court rulings (Bush v. Gore and Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commissioncome to mind). What's more, even if the Supreme Court ultimately is convinced to enforce the Anti-Injunction Act (Chief Justice John Roberts is rumored to be especially likely to be swayed by it), one will still need to be concerned about the reaction within the conservative and libertarian communities. If the hysteria that tarnished the right-wing's response to the campaign to pass PPACA is any indication — from the accusation that it was a "Nazi" bill to the hyperbolic myths about things like "death panels" — there could be quite an ugly backlash.

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Then again, maybe they'll be too distracted by the presidential election to notice or really care that the PPACA hearing was delayed. Or maybe they'll be so focused on another anti-Obama bugaboo that they won't have the energy to expend on this issue.

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Or maybe, just maybe, they'll remember what they ostensibly believe as conservatives.

The Founding Fathers and Progressivism

The following editorial was first published on PolicyMic on March 8, 2012 (http://www.policymic.com/articles/5168/memo-to-ron-paul-and-glenn-beck-america-s-founders-were-not-anti-government/featured_writer).

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If there is one point on which far too many conservatives and libertarians agree, it is that there is something deeply un-American about economic progressivism. It can be found in Ron Paul's references to his liberal opponents not understanding the Constitution or Michele Bachmann's insinuations about "anti-Americans" on the left, and it manifests itself more directly in the jeremiads of Glenn Beck and Mark Levin.

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It's easy to see why this line of thinking has so much appeal for economic right-wingers. As a talking point, its effectiveness is hard to surpass; by linking their own ideas to those of America's major leaders and juxtaposing them with the allegedly antithetical beliefs of their opponents, they make it possible to brand those who disagree with them as being at best uninformed and at worst agents of a radical or even downright sinister un-American agenda. Of course, such polemics are only justifiable if they sync up with the facts. A brief overivew of American history quickly reveals, however, the truth is much more complicated than any set of sweeping assumptions.

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We can start with the Constitution itself. Although often cited as the bulwark in the laissez-fairest's defense of limiting federal involvement in the economy, one of the primary impetuses behind the calling of the Constitutional Convention was the need for central economic authority. Under the initial governmental pact known as the Articles of Confederation, Congress lacked the power to lay or collect taxes, found that requisitions asked of the states were almost always ignored, and couldn't even impose uniform tariff policies throughout the nation. Most significantly, the federal government lacked the instruments with which to effectively confront economic crises that were national in scope, such as the post-war conflict between debtors and creditors which, as James Madison later wrote, "contributed more to that uneasiness which produced the Constitution and prepared the mind for a general reform" than any other issue.

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The Constitution was thus viewed as an instrument which would solve these problems by granting more power to the central national state. Newly enumerated powers included the ability to pass commercial regulations, "coin money" and "regulate the value thereof," impose taxes, and even regulate how states could punish citizens who had gone bankrupt, then considered to be one of America's most pressing humanitarian issues. While Founding Fathers like Madison wanted even more powers expressly delegated to the federal government (such as being able to establish universities, promote the arts and sciences, secure payment of the public debt, etc.), they didn't push to have them to be listed because, as Madison explained nearly a half-century later, "the rejection or not adopting of particular propositions" was never intended to imply that those powers were thereby excluded from the federal aegis (given the nuances of parliamentary protocol, different enumerations were rejected for any number of reasons). "In expounding the Constitution and deducing the intention of its framers," he explained, "it should never be forgotten that the great object of the Convention was to provide, by a new Constitution, a remedy for the defects of the existing one."

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In short, the Founding Fathers did not want Americans to so fear losses to their liberty that they avoided implementing policies needed to meet national exigencies, economic or otherwise. From Madison reminding his readers to avoid "a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names" to Alexander Hamilton scoffing at the notion of people avoiding a given measure "from a remote possibility of its being abused," they believed that state authority should endeavor to avoid extremes - be it the tyranny of King George III or the chaos of the Articles of Confederation -- and instead opt for a middle-ground, with federal authority being usually limited so as to maximize personal freedom but still increased whenever pragmatism called for it. While these arguments did not prevent the Constitution from being fiercely maligned by its opponents (the Antifederalists), the arguments of its supporters (the Federalists) ultimately prevailed, with each of the 13 states eventually deciding to join the union structured around the increased federal powers called for in that document.

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Subsequent presidents then interpreted those powers as they deemed appropriate. George Washington chartered the First National Bank, created the federal post office, and enforced the government's right to levy unpopular taxes by quashing the Whiskey Rebellion. Thomas Jefferson, despite espousing a non-interventionist approach to economic questions, saw no inconsistency in championing generous federal subsidies for public school education, the promotion of the arts and sciences, and job-creating transportation infrastructure. Abraham Lincoln formed the Department of Agriculture, passed both the first income tax and the first progressive income tax, and used federal money to build the transcontinental railroad and create land-grant colleges (the forebears of today's public universities). Theodore Roosevelt passed laws regulating food and drugs for cleanliness and safety, broke up corporate trusts, and advocated social insurance, minimum-wage laws, pro-union legislation, and eight hour workdays.

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While most of these measures are taken for granted by Americans today, they constituted major expansions of state power into areas of the economy that had previously been entirely private at the time they were proposed. More important, they weren't backed by presidents who are currently viewed as controversial by the bulk of the right-wing (such as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, or Barack Obama). Indeed, to see how firmly Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt are etched into the rock of America's national identity, one doesn't need to look any further than Mount Rushmore.

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It's important to note that I'm not trying to invert the fallacy made by economic consevatives to liberals' advantage - i.e., my goal is not to argue that America's most important leaders would have definitely favored the progressive economic policies detested by the right-wing today, be it health care reform and New Deal-esque stimulus packages or measures protecting labor organizing rights and welfare policies aiding the poor and disadvantaged. For one thing, the voluminous quantity of writing produced by the Founding Fathers makes it very easy for supporters of both laissez-faire and economic interventionism to find material supporting their respective philosophies (the views of Madison and Hamilton on the general welfare clause being one prime example). In addition, progressives should welcome the debate sparked when conservatives claim that too much government regulation inhibits economic growth, that having the government provide certain goods and services stifles creativity and hinders efficiency, that welfare programs to assist the poor and unemployed disincentivizes individual initiative, or that progressive stimulus programs are too expensive to be fiscally safe. While liberals may disagree with these arguments, there is nothing intellectually dishonest about their use by the right-wing in political debate, and if we are confident in the correctness of our position (which we should be), there is no reason to object when we are expected to rebut them.

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That said, if conservatives are confident in the merits of their positions, they should not feel the need to fight liberals with calumnies. While socialists want all economic power centered in the state and radical libertarians want virtually none to exist there, the vast majority of Americans are sensible enough to realize that there is a happy medium between those two dangerous extremes, and are conflicted primarily on ascertaining where that medium rests. When conservatives attempt to win them over not by appealing to fact, but by wrongly claiming – either directly or by implication – that their opponents are somehow "un-American," they engage in the strategy of winning hearts by cheating instead of earning minds through honest persuasion.

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Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it best: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

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For more reading, feel free to check out the sources I used, including: "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" by Bernard Bailyn, "The Great Challenge: The Myth of Laissez-Faire in the Early Republic" by Frank Bourgin, "Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse" by Richard John, "The Foundations of American Economic Freedom: Government and Enterprise in the Age of Washington" by E. A. J. Johnson, "The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln" by Philip Shaw Paludan, and "The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt" by Lewis L. Gould. I also encourage you to look at primary sources, including "Notes on the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787" by James Madison, "The Federalist Papers" by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, and "The New Nationalism" by Theodore Roosevelt.

Liberals and Mitt Romney's Mormonism

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The following editorial was first printed on PolicyMic.com on March 4, 2012. It can be found here: http://www.policymic.com/articles/4950/mitt-romney-s-mormonism-should-not-be-fodder-for-liberals-in-election-2012/featured_writer
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Thanks to his recent victories in the Michigan and Arizona primaries, Mitt Romney once again has emerged as the strongest contender for the Republican presidential nomination. As such, I think it is appropriate to draw attention to the unique dilemma he will pose to liberals in the event that he is the ultimate victor in Tampa.
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Up until now, the non-Protestants who have overcome barriers of religious exclusivity through their presidential nominations have all been liberal Democrats, including Al Smith in 1928 (the first Catholic presidential nominee), John F. Kennedy in 1960 (the first Catholic to actually win the presidency), and Michael Dukakis in 1988 (the first Eastern Orthodox presidential nominee). As such, the challenge for liberals in 2012 will be making sure that we stand firm in our opposition to religious prejudice when the target is Romney, a conservative Republican, instead of one of our own.
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The signs so far are not auspicious. Of the 22% of Americans who say they would not vote for a Mormon presidential candidate, self-described liberals outnumber conservatives within that group by three to two (27% to 18%). Their animus seems to stem from the Mormon Church's right-wing political activism on issues like gay marriage and women's rights, a sentiment best summed up in a recent New York Times editorial by author Jane Barnes, who cited it when claiming that the Mormon Church "does not respect the separation of church and state" and that "individual Mormons have obeyed like sheep."
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While I agree with Barnes that religious institutions like the Mormon Church should not have as much political pull as they currently possess, and further share her disgust with the homophobia and misogyny underlying the support for Proposition 8 and opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, it is disingenuous to single out Romney's coreligionists for their actions here while not pointing out the comparable activism of dozens of other religious groups (most notably those on the Christian Right). In the end, a politician's faith should only be a disqualifier for higher office if he or she has shown a tendency to be unusually subservient to his or her religious institutions when performing the inherently secular duties of public office. Although no evidence exists that this would be the case for Mitt Romney as an individual (at least no more than it would for candidates like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum), detractors like Barnes assume that because he is a Mormon, he will be abnormally deferential to his faith. The strong argument can be made about religious beliefs playing too large a role in general in our political life must not be abused to discriminate against one religious group.
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This doesn't mean that liberals won't also need to fight anti-Mormon assaults from conservatives. Right-wing prejudice against Romney first became evident during his presidential run in 2008, when Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals admitted that "most evangelicals still regard Mormonism as a cult," a view echoed by Texas Governor Rick Perry's pastor late last year. Such views still clearly hold weight now, as indicated by Romney's consistently poor showing in the primaries among voters who describe the religious beliefs of the candidates as being "very important" to them. A Public Religion Institute Poll even found that 49% of evangelical voters refuse to acknowledge that Mormonism is a Christian denomination. While Romney's numbers no doubt be even lower among this group were he not widely viewed as the pragmatic alternative to Newt Gingrich and Santorum, the fact that he is still struggling among individuals who place a high premium on religion is indicative of the larger problem.
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There are plenty of excellent reasons to oppose Mitt Romney - his plutocratic economic agenda comes foremost to mind, followed closely by his long history of ideological vacillation - and liberals will be remiss in our duty to the American people if we don't guarantee his defeat as a result of them. At the same time, we will be equally remiss in our obligation to our own values if we allow our cause to be marred by the stain of religious bigotry, either by allowing it within our own ranks or refusing to condemn it in our adversaries.
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History will be watching us.

On Abortion Rights

The following editorial was first published on PolicyMic (February 28, 2012). The original piece can be found here: http://www.policymic.com/articles/4756/pennsylvania-ultrasound-bill-wrongly-restricts-women-s-right-to-choose

A new bill proposed by Pennsylvania Representative Kathy Rapp would require any woman seeking an abortion to first undergo an ultrasound. During this procedure, the doctor would be forced to put the view screen in her field of vision so she can see the fetus and observe its heartbeat. Although she'd have the right to close her eyes, there is no doubt that this ordeal would still put her through an exceptional amount of psychological and emotional stress.

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Then again, perhaps she should be grateful that the people trying to diminish her ability to make lucid choices about her body are at least leaving her with unquestioned sovereignty over her eyelids.

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All questions regarding the legality of abortion ultimately revolve around whether aborting a fetus is an act of murder; after all, abortion should obviously be prohibited if it constitutes an act of homicide, while it is entirely justifiable if it doesn't constitute the taking of a human life. Unfortunately, the debate as to when life begins still rages on among scientists, with prominent figures in that community taking both sides of the question. Indeed, a 2009 Pew Poll found that 52% of scientists identified as liberal (who, according to another Pew Poll taken that year, support abortion rights 70% to 23%), 35% as moderate (pro-choice by 55% to 37%), and 9% as conservative (anti-abortion by 63% to 30%). For those who worked specifically in biology and medicine, 58% self-labeled as Democrats (pro-choice 60% to 31%), 31% as Independents (pro-choice 47% to 44%), and 6% as Republicans (anti-abortion by 63% to 32%).

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In the absence of a scientific consensus as to life's inception, a free government based on the concept of individual rights must respect each woman's liberty to use her own judgment should an unwanted pregnancy occur. While other people in a woman's life certainly have the right to try to influence her decision - through moral persuasion, a practical analysis of alternatives, or yes, even an ultrasound procedure - the state should not have the authority to force any of those influences upon her. Barry Goldwater, one of the modern Republican Party's foundational figures, explained it best when he observed that despite personally opposing abortion, "in a pluralistic society the issue is not ours to decide alone."

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Unfortunately, this issue has heavy religious overtones, which raises passions and causes drastic schisms in perspectives. The aforementioned Pew Poll found that only 28% of Americans whose religious attendance was weekly or more support abortion rights, compared to 53% whose attendance was monthly/yearly and 64% for those whose attendance was seldom/never. Positions also varied wildly among different religious groups, with white evangelical Protestants being the least likely to support abortion rights (23%), Jews being the most likely to do so (76%), and those without any religious affiliation ranking second highest (68%). In short, while religious views are hardly the sole factor that determines outlooks on abortion, religion undeniably provides emotional fuel for this fiery issue.

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This brings us back to Kathy Rapp, who earlier this month defended a House Resolution that proclaimed 2012 to be "Year of the Bible" by insisting that "the Bible was instrumental in the founding of our country." A few weeks earlier, she had even supported dedicating November 2011 as "King James Bible Heritage Month," which Jews like me noticed excluded not only our co-religionists, but all other non-Christians. Of course, this is exactly what Rapp and other members of the Christian Right -- including Pennsylvania's own former Senator, presidential candidate Rick Santorum -- intend to accomplish. By depicting America as a nation founded on the conservative values taught in their interpretations of Christianity, they can justify imposing their moral beliefs on those who don't share them, be it by banning abortion, limiting female access to contraception, preventing homosexuals from marrying or serving in the military, or using public schools to promote their religious beliefs through teaching creationism or mandating school prayer. What liberals need to remind them is that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion," to quote a treaty signed by President John Adams. If that doesn't work, then they should respond by quoting Thomas Jefferson himself:

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"Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights ... Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential to a free society."

Ron Paul and the Millennials

This editorial first appeared in "The Morning Call" on February 24, 2012. The original article can be found here: http://www.mcall.com/opinion/yourview/mc-ron-paul-candidacy-rozsa-yv--20120224,0,1900573,print.story. It was subsequently published on PolicyMic, with the link to that piece being found here: http://www.policymic.com/articles/4638/why-ron-paul-appeals-to-millennials

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As Ron Paul's inability to expand his base within the Republican Party makes his bid for the GOP presidential nomination seem increasingly futile, media outlets are discussing whether he'll make another run as a third-party candidate. While the jury is out as to what he'll decide, one thing is certain: Paul would perform very well among the millennial generation.

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The Texas congressman's strong support among people ages 18 to 36 is apparent everywhere, with the pro-Paul buzz that has long pervaded college campuses and online message boards now being reflected in the primaries, where he has won the youth vote in most states.

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While some believe this reveals a pre-existing libertarian streak among millennials, that diagnosis overlooks some inconvenient details. For one thing, many in this same generation turned out in droves four years ago to elect Barack Obama.

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What's more, his young followers are quite the eclectic bunch: Ayn Rand worshipers and old-fashioned paleoconservatives, Ph.D. candidates in economics and quasi-illiterate conspiracy theorists, stoners smitten by his stance on marijuana legalization, and bigots who embrace the racist newsletters published under his name, all topped off by a generous sprinkling of trendies who flaunt their independent-mindedness by mimicking other self-proclaimed independent-minded people, among whom Paul is currently chic.

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So why are so many millennials gravitating to Paul? Simple: They are a generation in rebellion against banality.

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That's why there was such a rally behind Obama in 2008. For all the attention paid to how his candidacy was making history by breaking racial barriers, Obama attracted millennials by being a throwback, offering the thoughtfulness, gravitas, and eloquence of John Kennedy after eight years of the callow faltering of George W. Bush.

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By contrast, Paul's appeal comes from the fact that he's perceived as refreshingly novel. Even as he insists that his message contains nothing more than old-fashioned constitutional ideals (a claim many historians vigorously contest), Paul is primarily adored for being a gleeful slayer of sacred cows, from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Reserve to the military-industrial complex and countless social welfare programs. At a time when the public has been inundated with partisan talking points so overused that they've jelled into platitudes, Paul stands out by being unapologetically iconoclastic.

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While the millennial instinct to oppose banality is healthy, however, the consequent idolization of individual political figures is not. For Obama, the main result has merely been disappointment, since, like Kennedy, his luster has faded now that the abstract art of inspiration has clashed with the grubby realities of governing (Kennedy's brand didn't recover until it was sanctified by assassination). The Paul boom, on the other hand, could lead to something much worse.

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Because millennials have been ill-served by an education system that skimps on history and political theory, many mistake Paul's knack for shaking up our national conversation for a sign that his ideas are the only meaningful ones in the ideological marketplace.

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What they fail to understand is that, when past presidential aspirants purveyed ideas like Paul's, they were accompanied by other statesmen intelligently advocating different perspectives. Just look back to 1952, the last year in which one of Paul's political heroes, Robert Taft, competed for the Republican presidential nomination. His chief opponent was Dwight Eisenhower, a centrist
well-versed in the work of philosopher Eric Hoffer; the winner of that battle went on to face Adlai Stevenson, a cerebral progressive whose innovative policy proposals inspired the next two Democratic presidents.

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While our era has an analogue to Taft in Paul, we don't have any Eisenhowers or Stevensons, and this is what Paul illuminates — not that his views are or aren't the correct ones to adopt in today's debate, but rather that a substantive debate isn't even taking place.

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Millennials who fail to recognize this crucial distinction risk mistaking Paul's bold unorthodox belief for infallible truth, thus turning them into dogmatic libertarians no better than the dogmatic liberals and dogmatic conservatives they rightfully deride. While it is easy and comforting to believe that one political hero or one set of ideological assumptions will solve all of our problems, the prevalence of such mind-sets is what caused our political culture to become so banal in the first place.

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The lesson we should instead learn is the one President Eisenhower himself best articulated: "In a democracy debate is the breath of life."

Recusing Elena Kagan

The following editorial was published in "The Morning Call" (circulation 90,000) on February 2, 2012. The original piece can be found here: http://www.mcall.com/opinion/yourview/mc-justice-kagan-health-care-law-rozsa-yv--20120201,0,6790089,print.story

As Obama's health care law reaches the Supreme Court, the clamor from conservatives and their libertarian sympathizers becomes shriller every day. From Dick Morris and Hans von Spakovsky to WorldNetDaily and The Washington Times, the call rings clear:

Justice Elena Kagan, they insist, must recuse herself from the case.

The argument against Kagan hinges on the assumption that her service as solicitor general under Barack Obama violates the U.S. Code section stating that "any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

For this to apply to Kagan, a precedent would need to exist in which other ex-solicitors general who served on the Supreme Court were compelled to recuse themselves when asked to rule on policies they had supported under their presidential bosses.

Instead the previous jurists to whom this would have indisputably applied (William Howard Taft, Stanley Reed, Robert H. Jackson, and Thurgood Marshall) had the matter left to their personal judgment. Indeed, because so many Supreme Court judges have had politically active pasts before their appointments, it would have been unrealistic to disqualify them each time a controversial issue intersected with their earlier careers.

Hence Taft, who had been solicitor general for Benjamin Harrison before being appointed to the court by Warren Harding, was around to rule on antitrust cases despite having helped draft the Sherman Antitrust Act under Harrison (as well as vigorously enforcing it during his own presidency). Similarly, Marshall was allowed to uphold regulations that prevented racial discrimination in the sale of private property even though he had supported Lyndon Johnson's Fair Housing Act while serving as his solicitor general.

Although there is no historical or legal basis supporting a Kagan recusal, the same can't be said about one of her peers. A financial disclosure form released last year revealed that Clarence Thomas' wife, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, received more than $150,000 from a political action committee that has been especially vocal in opposing health care reform, in addition to nearly $15,000 from a lobbying firm that has focused on that issue. What's more, between 2003-07 she received more than $600,000 from the Heritage Foundation, which has been at the forefront of the anti-health care reform movement.

When comparable financial conflicts of interest were discovered about Judge Abe Fortas in the 1960s, they ultimately ended his judicial career, first forcing him to ask President Johnson to withdraw his nomination for chief justice (after it came out that business groups with potential court interests had paid him $15,000 to deliver a series of speeches) and then leading to his
resignation (after it was discovered he had accepted a $20,000 annual retainer from a Wall Street financier who was under investigation for securities violations).

Since the precedent sorely lacking in the anti-Kagan movement actually does exist against Thomas, it would stand to reason that the people calling for her removal from the health care case would also be demanding the abstention of her conservative colleague.

They aren't demanding that, of course, because the hoopla over Kagan isn't really driven by a sincere concern about judicial ethics. The only reason right-wingers are focusing on Kagan's relationship with Obama is because they believe her recusal will increase the likelihood of the health care law being overturned. Since having Thomas step down as well would negate the advantage of removing Kagan, they dismiss his conflict of interest even as they harp on
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This kind of logical inconsistency is by no means limited to the health care law and the Supreme Court. It can be seen when conservatives and libertarians denounce the so-called fiscal irresponsibility of Obama's $1.2 trillion in stimulus funds but ignore, or even support, the nearly $1.3 trillion we've spent so far for Bush's stimulus, the massive tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.

Likewise, it is evident when right-wingers who speak of the need for small government support policies that expand the state's power so long as it promotes their specific ideological objectives (like stopping homosexuals from getting married or curtailing women's reproductive rights).

In short, the Recuse Kagan campaign isn't only noteworthy as a particularly egregious instance of partisanship trumping reason, but it also serves as one more example of the double standards used by the political right when trying to advance its agenda.