The Failures of Romneynomics

This editorial was originally published at PolicyMic on June 11, 2012(http://www.policymic.com/articles/9526/romneynomics-failed-miserably-and-it-s-time-for-the-obama-campaign-to-call-him-out).
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The American people have made it clear that unemployment will be the dominant issue of this election. Polls consistently show voters prioritizing it far above every other policy question, with nothing else – not health care reform, not balancing the budget, not international relations, not gay rights – managing to place even a close second by comparison. Consequently, voters need to be made aware of some ugly truths about Romneynomics if they are to make an informed choice in November.
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The most important facts can be divided into two categories:
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1) Romneynomics caused Massachusetts to lag behind the rest of the nation in job creation and income growth.
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One of the most illuminating ways to measure a leader's success is by contrasting the conditions where he governed with those in analogous states. By this metric, Romney's gubernatorial career was an abysmal failure. During his tenure as governor, in which he enacted major spending cuts and raised revenue through fees that targeted the working class (instead of tax increases that would focus on the wealthy), Massachusetts ranked 47th out of the 50 states in job creation. Its unemployment rate was higher than the national average after he left office, despite having been lower than the national mean when he first took over. Further, for those who were lucky enough to remain employed, Romneynomics caused a considerable decline in their net compensation. Even as median household income increased in the rest of the country, it fell by roughly $2,000 (adjusted for inflation) in Romney's Massachusetts. These "Romney bonuses" (as those with a particularly ironic bent might call them) played no small part in why hundreds of thousands of state residents moved elsewhere at the time hoping to find work.
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By contrast, Obama's policies have helped America weather the Great Recession and retain one of the strongest economies in the developed world. When the president took office in January 2009, unemployment was skyrocketing at a catastrophic rate of nearly 0.4% per month thanks to the Wall Street crash of September 2008. Indeed, before his first stimulus began to take effect, joblessness had actually doubled in eighteen months flat, from 4.7% in November 2007 (the last month before the Great Recession) to 9.4% in May 2009. Once the stimulus started to be felt, however, unemployment stabilized, remaining at or under 10% for the following year-and-a-half. An additional stimulus passed in December 2010 (weeks before the GOP gained control of the House of Representatives) then caused an overall trend of decline in unemployment that still continues today, with rates dropping to 8.7%-9.1% in 2011 and 8.1%-8.5% as of the first five months of 2012.
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2) Romneynomics has already been tried in Europe, and it has failed there.
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Europe reacted to the Great Recession with drastic government spending cuts, or "austerity measures," and is lagging far behind America as a result. In May 2012, as the United States posted an unemployment rate of 8.2%, the 17 nations in the European Union saw joblessness climb to a record high of 11%. The countries that implemented the most severe austerity measures, like Spain and Greece, reported the highest rates (exceeding 20%), while the United Kingdom, which jumped on the austerity bandwagon late in the game, saw its nascent recovery turn into a double-dip recession once it implemented the draconian right-wing spending cuts. What's more, despite concerns about the costliness of stimulus measures, annualized growth in federal spending has actually been slower during Obama's first term (1.4%) than under the terms of his immediate predecessors (8.7% and 4.9% under Reagan, 5.4% under Bush I, 3.2% and 3.9% under Clinton, 7.3% and 8.1% under Bush II). Finally, America's economy has grown at an average of 3.7% each quarter in the post-stimulus era, a number that Europe today can only envy.
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This comparison is of critical importance because Romney intends to repeat Europe's mistakes here in the U.S. In order to meet the budgetary requirements of his current economic plan, Romney would have to implement 29% spending cuts to every domestic program except for Social Security by 2016. This would necessitate significant rollbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' disability compensation, SNAP (i.e., food stamps), child nutrition programs, assistance for secondary education, and SSI benefits for poor, elderly, and disabled individuals. As a result, millions of Americans would be driven below the poverty line and those who are already poor would only suffer more. Meanwhile, millions more would be rendered unable to afford health insurance or college tuition. Additionally, the removal of such massive government investment from the national economy would also cause a major contraction, akin to the double-dip recession that is currently causing unemployment to shoot up in Britain. One of Obama's most important achievements was steering America through the Great Recession without succumbing to the European siren song of austerity. Romney, on the other hand, would follow Europe's example. That is why Obama must emphasize, ad infinitum and if necessary ad nauseum, two key points: (1) That America has fared better in this global economic crisis than Europe because he has avoided austerity measures, and (2) That Romney would follow in Europe's example.
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In short...
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While it is easy to blame the media for not drawing sufficient attention to the flaws of Romneynomics, the main burden of responsibility lies with Obama's re-election team. No campaign can be successful without ensuring that the vital aspects of its message are inextricably linked with the public's conceptions about the stakes of the election. This includes not only what a campaign promotes about its own candidate, but what it identifies as the Achilles' heels of its opponents, from Bill Clinton linking Bob Dole with the unpopularity of Newt Gingrich and the 104th Congress ("Dole-Gingrich") to George W. Bush's ridiculing John Kerry's alleged evolutions of opinion on the Iraq War ("flip-flop").
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Obama can certainly take pages directly from the Clinton and Bush reelection efforts. One can imagine him putting Boehner and Ryan on the spot by calling for a special session of Congress and challenging them to either pass widely supported economic programs or else be exposed as partisan ideologues (a la Harry Truman in 1948). Perhaps he could even air commercials that highlight Romney's main character weakness (his history as a flip-flopper) by juxtaposing videos of the different positions he has taken on a number of issues. Most important of all, however, the president must guarantee that the key details of Romney's economic record aren't just mentioned, but reiterated until they become the year's dominant political memes. Phrases like "47th out of 50" and "Romney bonuses" should become household words, while the theme that America needs to be "Not Like Europe" must reflexively come to every voter's mind whenever he or she thinks about Romneynomics. Four years ago, the Obama campaign forever intertwined themes such as "Hope," "Change," and "Yes We Can" with the political brand of their candidate. For an electoral narrative that will be defined by job creation, they must find equally memorable and pervasive ways to ensure that every voter knows the ugly truths of Romneynomics.

What Mitt Romney Should Learn From His Father

This editorial was originally published at PolicyMic on June 6, 2012(http://www.policymic.com/articles/9352/why-mitt-romney-is-a-coward).

Back in 1964, a Republican Governor named George Romney performed an act of rare political courage. As party delegates convened in San Francisco to coronate Senator Barry Goldwater as their presidential nominee, Romney noted Goldwater's opposition to civil rights legislation and announced that because "his [Goldwater's] views deviate as indicated from the heritage of our Party, I will do everything within my power to keep him from becoming the Party's next candidate." Despite the vicious racism of the extreme right-wing (which had taken over the GOP through Goldwater's candidacy), Romney stood by his vow, even willfully incurring their wrath by refusing to endorse Goldwater.
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Half a century later, it is George Romney's son, Mitt Romney, whose moral courage is being tested. Unfortunately, this is a test which he has thus far failed in two major ways.
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First he failed in his handling of Richard Grenell, a conservative* foreign policy expert who resigned from the Romney campaign after homophobic backlash to his sexual orientation made it impossible for him to do his job. The controversy was not based on any complaint about Grenell's beliefs or credentials (given that he had spent seven years under President George W. Bush as head of the American mission's communications department in the United Nations), but instead on the fact that elements of the Christian Right did not feel comfortable with an open homosexual serving in such an influential Republican post. As Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association wrote on Twitter, "Romney picks out & loud gay as a spokesman. If personnel is policy, his message to the pro-family community: drop dead." Romney responded to this by limiting the extent of Grenell's involvement with his campaign, eventually compelling him to resign due to how his "ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues."
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Now he is failing by allowing Donald Trump to be one of his spokesmen, despite the billionaire's recent re-embrace of birtherism. The belief that Barack Obama was born outside of the United States has already been thoroughly debunked, from the impracticality of his Honolulu parents making a sudden trip to Kenya and the presence of two birth notices in local newspapers from the time to the fact that, more than a year ago, the State of Hawaii actually released the original form of his birth certificate to the general public (state law only permits its residents to have access to duplicates). More ominous, however, is that it appeals to latent racist tendencies among its supporters. As an article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology pointed out earlier this year, "the influence of racial prejudice in contemporary U.S. society is typically manifested in subtle, indirect forms of bias." Because "most Whites attempt to avoid appearing biased in their evaluations of Blacks ... Whites' prejudice is more likely to be expressed in discriminatory responses when those actions can be justified by other factors." As the head of the study later commented, "Whites who were prejudiced against Blacks were more likely to see Obama as un-American," a bias that did not carry over even to white liberal politicians like Vice President Joe Biden.
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It is undeniable that, by obtaining the Republican presidential nomination, Romney has managed to succeed where his father came up short (in 1968). Whether this was due to political savvy, good luck, or (most likely) a combination of the two matters far less than whether Romney makes good use of his new power and influence. That was a test that George Romney passed - and which his son, on at least two occasions so far, has not.
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* - The word "conservative" was originally "neoconservative." After Richard Grenell read the editorial and complained about the use of that appellation, however, it was changed by the editors at PolicyMic.

Review for "The Avengers"

This editorial was originally published at PolicyMic on May 18, 2012(http://www.policymic.com/articles/8342/weekend-movie-review-the-avengers-may-be-the-best-comic-book-film-ever-made).

Film critics haven't been mincing words about The Avengers. From Hollywood Life and The Washington Times to the Dekalb County Times-Journal, pundits of the silver screen are not only praising Joss Whedon's take on the band of Marvel icons, but referring to his motion picture as the greatest superhero film ever made. While I don't quite agree with this superlative assessment, it hits very close to the truth.

A brief retrospective of recent cinematic history is necessary to fully understand why. The last dozen years have been something of a Golden Age in comic book movies. Ever since the success of Bryan Singer's X-Men in the summer of 2000, cineplexes have been bursting at the seams with narratives inspired by or ripped straight from the pulpy pages of graphic novels. Lucrative blockbusters like Spider-Man, Spider-Man 3, and The Dark Knight were the highest grossing films in their respective years of release (2002, 2007, and 2008), while especially acclaimed entries like Iron Man and The Dark Knight have netted prestigious Oscar nominations and spots on critical top ten lists.

In the midst of this deluge, two categories have emerged. First there are the traditional superhero stories, characterized by the familiar tropes of likeable good guys, memorable baddies, and unapologetically melodramatic three-act story archs (the Spider-Man and Iron Man series are perhaps the most popular in this group). Alongside those have been the more existential pieces, defined by their topicality, thematic depth, and attempts to transcend normative genre strictures (more famous examples include Unbreakable, The Dark Knight, and Watchmen).

Saying that The Avengers falls into the first category, though true, does it a bit of an injustice. While no single aspect of it stands out as unusually superb, every element that needs to fall into place does so beautifully.

As these types of movies rise or fall based largely on the merits of the characters, it certainly helps that The Avengers has quite a range of compelling figures in its arsenal. Leading the pack of heroes are a pair of dueling archetypes (metaphorically and literally): Iron Man/Tony Stark, a blithely egomaniacal playboy and renaissance man, and Captain America/Steve Rogers, whose Boy Scoutish persona almost comes across like Marvel Comic's answer to DC's Superman. They are accompanied by the mild-mannered Dr. Bruce Banner, who when roused to anger transforms into the terrifying green behemoth known as the Hulk; Thor, the Norse god of thunder; Black Widow, a Russian superspy; and Hawkeye, a master archer and "World's Greatest Marksman." This eclectic crew is led by Nick Fury, director of a government military agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D that is responsible for assembling the titular Avengers to deal with crises once they become global in scale.

Each of these characters is perfectly cast, from Robert Downey Jr. as the inimitably sharp-tongued Stark to Samuel L. Jackson as the sullen but gravitas-laden Fury. The standout here is almost certainly Mark Ruffalo as Banner, whose depiction of a man deftly controlling the tempest of his own emotions is memorable in its stirring poignance. Tying all of them together is a plot in which the heroes search for a MacGuffin known as the Tesseract that must be kept out of the hands of Loki, the Norse god of mischief and brother to Thor who aspires to use that device to (of course) rule the world. While the story itself is not particularly original, it is utilized to its fullest potential, keeping the narrative running at a smooth clip and causing its two-and-a-half hour running time to fly right by.

All of this is spiced up by Whedon's distinctively intelligent and engaging writing style. From witty lines (Tony Stark introducing himself to Bruce Banner: "Dr. Banner, your work is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster.") to unexpected moments of physical comedy (such as a scene in which one character receives a surprising but richly deserved humiliating beating), the screenplay proves to be almost as much of a character as any of the protagonists themselves, adding levity to prevent the story from being bogged down in its own sturm und drang while maintaining the proper dramatic perspective throughout the proceedings.

This isn't to say that The Avengers is without its weaknesses. While Loki is an adequately detestable villain, he hardly compares to comicdom's more legendary celluloid foes (Alfred Molina's Doctor Octavius, Heath Ledger's The Joker), and the story's intelligence is more surface than substantive, causing it to lack the thoughtfulness of The Dark Knight or philosophical layering of Watchmen. Nevertheless, The Avengers stands out as a practically perfect popcorn flick, thoroughly entertaining even the most disillusioned moviegoers (of which I am one) from the opening frame to the second post-credits scene (which I highly recommend audience members stick around to see). When it comes to the traditional type of superhero movie, it's hard to do any better.

My Editorial Appears in Obama Campaign Commercial

One of my PolicyMic editorials was recently cited by the Obama campaign in a commercial attacking Romney's stances on women's issues. In addition to checking out this clip to see that reference, I would also highly recommend it as an accurate and searing critique of right-wing misogyny today.

My editorial can be found at the 1:07 mark in the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/nypMSXKgtaA?feature=player_embedded

If you want to read the original piece itself (which discussed a proposed anti-abortion law in Pennsylvania), see this link.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/4756/pennsylvania-ultrasound-bill-wrongly-restricts-women-s-right-to-choose

Confessions of a Freedom-Hating, Tax-Loving, Marriage-Destroying Liberal

The following editorial was first published on PolicyMic (May 10, 2012) and can be found here:
http://www.policymic.com/articles/8039/this-is-my-confession-i-m-a-liberal-who-hates-freedom-loves-taxes-and-has-declared-a-war-on-marriage-satire

My fellow American liberals,

I would like to make a modest proposal.

For far too long, we have been accused of terrible things. In the last decade alone, our opponents have said that we're un-American, that we're Communists, that we're a "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show."

It's time we 'fessed up to it.

I know that's asking a lot, but what's right is right, and if the right is right and the left is wrong, then the left needs to leave its leftist wrongness so that it can start doing right by the right.
All right? So with Jonathan Swift as my guide, here I go:

1. We hate the Constitution.

Hell, we hate the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and just about everything our Founding Fathers believed in. In part, that's because we've seen too many Michael Moore movies, but mostly it's because ...

2. We hate freedom.

The state is our God and we know that if we just give ourselves over to it, all of our problems will be solved. That is why we support health care reform, financial industry regulations, and consumer protection measures. There is just nothing we want more than an all-powerful, all-encompassing nanny state guiding us through every step of our lives. Just look at how much ...

3. We love taxes.

After all, none of us really contribute anything to society on our own, so what better way to punish the most productive members of society (i.e, the rich) than by forcing them to give their money to lazy layabouts through entitlement programs?

I'm guessing it now goes without saying that ...

4. Joe McCarthy was right all along.

Academia, the media, Hollywood, and the Democratic Party are full of covert Communists gradually inching America toward the Soviet system, one liberal program at a time. In fact, I wasn't even allowed to register for my first PhD course until I'd sworn to take an oath on a copy of Marx. Technically I'd be violating that oath by telling you all of this, but luckily I switched "Das Kapital" with "Groucho and Me" at the last minute.

Speaking of things that are funny ...

5. We love killing babies.

Abortion, stem cell research, those death panels in Obama's health care reform bill ... you name it, we're laughing at it. True story: Jon Stewart's entire audition for "The Daily Show" gig consisted of telling dead baby jokes.

Do you know what we take very seriously, though?

6. We want to ruin the institution of marriage.

This is why we want gay people to be able to marry each other. With the institution of marriage forever sullied, we can have lots of frenzied hedonistic dirty hippie sex free of any sense of restraint, propriety, or guilt. Who wouldn't want that?

Oh yeah ...

7. We're persecuting members of the Christian Right.

They're right about our "secular-socialist" agenda. I personally spend the first half of my day mulling over how I can ruin at least one person's faith in God (although when I succeed, I usually spend the second half trying not to get shot). I mean, we're liberals, so we already know we're going to hell (it was the baby killing, wasn't it?), and we get bored pretty easily, so we're trying to take as many people down with us as possible. I heard the weed down there is great.

I feel like I'm leaving something out. Eight has always been my lucky number, so I probably need one more thing ...

8. We already know Barack Obama wasn't born in this country.

Back in 1961, when the liberal establishment heard that a Kenyan graduate student in Hawaii had just married a white teenager who was three months pregnant with their illegitimate child (and she had only become a legal adult nine weeks earlier), we knew that that biracial baby would grow up to become the perfect instrument for our socialist schemes. That's why we ignored the fact that segregation was still around, told them that we were setting their child up to be president, insisted that they make the 21,458 mile roundtrip from Honolulu to Nairobi so he could born in Kenya instead of Hawaii (don't ask), and then planted fake birth notices in the "Honolulu Advertiser" and "Star Bulletin" to throw everyone off the scent. Later we also passed a law prohibiting Hawaii from releasing the official birth certificates of its residents, so that way when Obama was only able to provide the obvious forgery we called a "duplicate," we'd have an excuse.

Of course, there is another possibility. It could just be that liberals have a different interpretation of the Founding Fathers' intent and the Constitution, generally oppose expanding state power but believe that it is necessary when there are greater social problems that can't otherwise be effectively addressed without it (injustices in the medical industry and on Wall Street, consumer safety), believe the wealthy should pay more in taxes because they can afford it (even though they generally pay less in aggregate), believe that there are far more people who benefit from welfare and genuinely need it than there are those who abuse it, think women should have the right to decide for themselves what to do with their bodies, believe homosexuals should have the exact same rights as any other adult couple, simply want the Christian Right to stop trying to blur the separation between church and state, and elected a president who - regardless of what you think of him - has already proven as much as can be reasonably expected of him that he was born in this country.

Nah. That would be ridiculous.

How To Tell If You're An Ideologue

This editorial was originally published on PolicyMic on May 5, 2012. It can be found here: http://www.policymic.com/articles/7874/as-president-obama-officially-kicks-off-the-2012-campaign-how-to-tell-if-you-re-an-ideologue

No one wants to be an ideologue. Defined by Merriam-Webster's Dictionary as "an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology," ideologues are correctly viewed as one of the banes of the political world. While at their most extreme, they provoke violence and oppress non-believers, even the more innocuous ones manage to hinder debate and exacerbate social divisions, often being as obnoxious as possible in the process.

Yet although no one wants to be an ideologue, the indisputable fact remains that ideologues are still everywhere. They just don't view themselves as such, which brings us to the purpose of this essay - how to tell if you're an ideologue.

To start, ask yourself the following question (which I've put in boldface for reasons that will be explained at the end of the editorial):

Do you believe it's possible for well-intentioned, well-informed, independent-minded, and intelligent people to disagree with your political views?

Even the most ardent zealot usually says yes when this question is merely posed hypothetically, since doing otherwise would involve admitting to being an ideologue (or at least a pompous jerk). For this question to work, however, you need to test yourself with concrete examples instead of applying it as an abstract self-assessment. List three political issues that are especially important to you. Then, for each one, name three individuals whose positions are the opposite of your own, making sure to include both people who are directly involved in your life (anyone you've debated face-to-face, commenters you've encountered on message boards) and those who aren't (politicians, pundits, influential intellectuals).

After you've done that, think about how you've treated them or what you thought about them privately. How many have you assumed weren't poorly informed or in some other way just didn't "get" the things that you better understood? How often did you claim someone wasn't really "independent minded" like yourself, whether it was because they were unduly influenced by the media, their religion, a political party, or anything else that had "brainwashed" them? Have you dismissed people as being downright irrational or stupid? Do you often believe someone is really driven by some ulterior motive, such as prejudice, greed, or a radical political agenda?

Make no mistake about it, there are many, many people out there who possess some or even all of the negative characteristics I just described. Thousands of years of recorded history exist to attest to that, enough to glut the appetites of even the most avid misanthropes. That said, the defining characteristic of an ideologue is the tendency to automatically jump from Point X, or the fact that another person doesn't share his or her point-of-view on an important political issue, to Point Y, or the conclusion that said disagreement is in and of itself proof that the other person is stupid, ill-informed, brainwashed, and/or malevolent.

This doesn't mean that believing or accusing another person of having those traits automatically makes you an ideologue. What it does mean, however, is that the burden of proof falls on you to actually demonstrate that those things are true.

If you think someone is using poor reasoning or is ill informed, don't just rest on the assertion that if they knew what they were talking about they would support this policy or agree with that theory. After they state their position, ask them to list their facts, provide their sources, and explain their logic. Then check their facts for accuracy, their sources for reliability, and their logic for fallacies. When it comes to the deeper beliefs on which they're basing their opinions, dissect why you think they're wrong - and, just as important, make sure you are aware of your own assumed ideological premises, rather than taking for granted that any intelligent person would automatically share them.

At no point should you ever openly declare that the other person has revealed himself to be stupid, brainwashed, or poorly informed. If you can demonstrate errors in their facts, sources, logic, and basic ideological premises, your conclusions about the other person's intelligence and knowledge will become self-evident. The moment you directly say that your opponent is intellectually wanting simply on the grounds that he or she disagrees with your views, on the other hand, you reveal that you have reached a point in which you don't feel comfortable defending your beliefs and must blindly accept their veracity. That, in turn, reveals that you are an ideologue.

Similar rules apply when attacking someone's character. If you believe that someone's position betrays a radical political agenda, demonstrate the connection between the belief in question and the larger agenda they allegedly possess. It isn't enough to simply say that holding a certain opinion automatically proves a larger belief system; you need to demonstrate the link between Point X and Point Y. Likewise, if you feel someone has a certain belief because of a personality flaw - such as greed, power-lust, or prejudice against other groups of people - explain either how the belief in question proves the ulterior motive or, even better, how the actual person you're talking to has actually revealed it in him/herself. Merely asserting these things to be true reveals not only that you are an ideologue, but also that you are the most dangerous type of ideologue - i.e., the one who feels the need to vilify dissenters.

I'm not claiming to have always perfectly followed the standard I just laid out. Indeed, I suspect most people have acted like ideologues at some point or another in their lives; after all, human beings are proud creatures. That said, I do know that there are well-intentioned, well-informed, independent-minded, and reasonable people who disagree with my political views. No matter what your views happen to be, I guarantee the same thing is true of you.

POSTSCRIPT: WHY THE OPENING QUESTION WAS IN BOLDFACE

I encourage all people who encounter ideologues trolling the message boards here to respond with the boldface question I put in this article. Don't let them get away with not answering it or simply brushing it off either. While not feeding the trolls is usually the best route, forcing accountability on them is a close second.

Soliloquy of an Insomniac Writer

This editorial was originally published on PolicyMic (May 3, 2012). For the original piece, see below:
http://www.policymic.com/articles/7850/behind-junior-seau-and-john-edwards-there-s-a-real-person-who-s-suffering/featured_writer

Like most of the writers I know, I don't sleep well.

This is probably because when you're a writer, your mind never entirely shuts off. When it isn't busy whirring away on your next literary project(s), it is almost certainly seeking material that can inspire it to produce something new. Even when you don't think your mental roamings are going to build up to anything - even when you sincerely believe, for example, that your aimless wanderings through online news sites are nothing more than the diversions of a sleep-addled mind - on a subconscious level, your brain is always seeking fuel to feed its bottomless hunger for new excuses to employ the written word.

If you're lucky, what you find will be intriguing, entertaining, or even uplifting. If you aren't so fortunate, you'll wind up stumbling across stories like these from the headlines of May 2, 2012:

- A right-wing milita leader with Nazi sympathies and an avowed hatred of illegal immigrants murdered four people in a shooting spree outside of Phoenix before turning his gun on himself. One of his victims was a toddler girl.

- In Egypt, eleven people were killed during a clash between protesters supporting an ultraconservative Islamist preacher and a group of unknown attackers. The Muslim Brotherhood and other influential Egyptian political parties have used this as an excuse to boycott meetings with military leaders to draft a constitution, thus furthering that nation's dangerous instability less than a month before a critical presidential election.

- In Oceanside, CA, football star Junior Seau was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A beloved player as well as legendary linebacker, Seau showed no signs of depression, leaving his friends and family mystified as well as distraught. His devastated mother was quoted asking, "Junior, why you never tell me?"

- An engineering student at the University of California San Diego was hospitalized after agents at the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) accidentally left him handcuffed in a cell for five days. After being rounded up in a drug raid, the young man had been cleared of any wrongdoing and was told that he would be shortly taken home. The DEA officials then forgot he was there, leaving him without food or water and forcing him to survive by drinking his own urine.

- At the trial of erstwhile presidential candidate John Edwards, a former staffer testified as to his wife's reaction upon learning that he had been having an affair. The ex-aide recounted how Elizabeth Edwards - then in the midst of a battle against cancer she would ultimately lose - tore at her clothing and exposed her chest while telling her husband, "You don't see me anymore." As this story was being relayed to the court, one of John Edwards's daughters left the room in tears.

Each of those anecdotes could easily be used as the focus for an op-ed piece that would do credit to PolicyMic's reputation for informed and lucid commentary. Middle Eastern politics, racism and xenophobia, violations of civil liberties, political sex scandals, celebrity suicides - these are the ores from which skilled writers can mine great insights or, failing that, pound out crowd pleasing polemics.

Woven together, however, these stories simply remind me that behind every polished editorial, there is real human suffering. It is easy to overlook that these days, residing as we do at a time when slick talking points and :30 second sound bytes trump thoughtful reflection. This is especially true for anyone who regularly writes and/or talks about political and social issues; after a while, even the most sensitive pundits find that their emotional sensoria have been numbed by the deluge of tragedies they constantly hear about and discuss.

While the potential for editorializing may seem clear in the light of day, though, at night the human reality of it all can settle in. Once that happens, all that comes to mind is the great question Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote for Sherlock Holmes:

"What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? That is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever."

Indeed.

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.