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.

.

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.

.

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%).

.

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."

.

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.

.

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:

.

"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

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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
hers.

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.

On Obamanomics

The following editorial was published in "The Morning Call" (circulation 90,000) on December 15, 2011. The original piece can be found here: http://articles.mcall.com/2011-12-14/opinion/mc-obama-myths-rozsa-yv-1215-20111214_1_debunking-two-myths-obamanomics-stimulus-bill

The Labor Department recently reported that 140,000 jobs were created in November, causing unemployment to fall to 8.6 percent, the lowest it has been in 21/2 years. When you add that to the nearly 3 million jobs that grew in the private sector over the past 21 months, you have to wonder whether Obamanomics is starting to work.

The answer is no. It has always worked.

Of course, statements like that run afoul of one of the far right's two cherished myths about Obamanomics. Since their usual response when contradicted is to fulminate against the nonbeliever, liberals are often advised to keep quiet and let them have fun with their myths. The problem with that strategy, though, is that it doesn't allow us to have fun with our facts.

Myth No. 1: Obamanomics failed to address the unemployment crisis.

The facts: Do you remember when unemployment was mushrooming? It only rose gradually at first, climbing from slightly under 5 percent when the recession began in December 2007 to slightly more than 6 percent nine months later. When Wall Street crashed in September 2008, that mild swelling became an explosion, with the rate skyrocketing at a catastrophic average of 0.4 percent per month until Obama's stimulus bill took effect roughly three months after being passed. By then, the joblessness percentage had doubled in a year and a half to 9.4 percent in the month (May 2009) the stimulus began to work.

At that point the explosion stopped. Thanks to the pump-priming effect of the stimulus, unemployment stabilized at between 9.4 and 10.1 percent for the next year and a half. After Obama attached a second stimulus to the Bush tax cut extensions of December 2010, it actually fell slightly, staying within the 8.8 to 9.4 percent range for the first 10 months of 2011. Now it's at 8.6 percent — still tragically high, but nevertheless a marked improvement given the mess that existed for more than a year before this president took office.

Myth No. 2: Obamanomics is socialistic.

The facts: This assertion would be quite justified if Obama's policies adhered to the tenets of socialism, which according to Merriam-Webster involves "advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods." Obama, though, is the president who refused to nationalize the banks after the Wall Street meltdown despite widespread calls to do so, who campaigned in 2008 not for a single-payer health care system but for a public option (to protect a free market presence in medicine), and who upon being elected replaced the public option with the individual mandate, a right-wing alternative that originated from the Heritage Foundation and was originally sponsored by Republicans like Newt Gingrich.

When confronted with such information, right-wingers usually resort to claiming that while Obama's policies may not be literally socialistic, they are putting us on a slippery slope toward socialism. This ignores that slippery slope arguments are fundamentally illogical, since they commit the fallacy of asserting one event will inevitably follow another without proving that such a succession is inherent.

It also ignores that many of America's earliest leaders supported expanding the government's role in areas of the economy that had previously been private or locally-administered. Indeed, one of the main reasons delegates at the Constitutional Convention wanted to discard the Articles of Confederation was that they believed a stronger central state was required to fund adequate infrastructure projects and prevent economic bedlam.

That same mentality prompted George Washington to create the first national post office, Thomas Jefferson to propose federal funding for schools, roads and canals, Abraham Lincoln to finance state colleges and the transcontinental railroad, and Theodore Roosevelt to pass laws regulating food and drugs, as well as advocate social insurance, minimum-wage laws, and eight-hour workdays. If those spending projects and regulations were all socialistic, then Independence Hall and Mount Rushmore must be the meccas of the far left.

All of this reminds me of a memorable quip from my political hero, Adlai Stevenson, which I think liberals should use today just as he employed it nearly 60 years ago: "I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends … if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."

Will GOP learn from Democrats' mistakes?

This article was originally published in "The Morning Call" website (circulation: 90,000) on November 21, 2011 under the title "Will GOP learn from Democrats' mistakes?" The link can be found here:
http://www.mcall.com/opinion/yourview/mc-newt-gingrich-rozsa-yv--20111121,0,4120825.story

If I were a Republican, I would be very concerned right now about the future of my party.

Allow me to explain. As of the moment, President Barack Obama is an extremely vulnerable incumbent. Unemployment remains chronically high, his approval ratings are mired in the low 40s, and he has done a horrendous job of selling his signature achievements to the public. While other geese have been in far hotter water than this and still managed to escape uncooked, it's clear that the Republicans can walk away with this thing if they nominate the right candidate.

That candidate is Mitt Romney. He is articulate, intelligent, squeaky-clean. His policy proposals are conservative enough to meet the basic economic, social, and foreign policy requirements of any Reaganite with realistic expectations (emphasis on the word "realistic") and his strong business record is perfect for a political market defined by economic hardship.

He is, in short, the kind of inoffensive moderate conservative who is capable of swaying independents while remaining acceptable to party regulars (the latter quality being sorely absent from this year's only other Republican moderate, Jon Huntsman). This is exactly what the GOP needs to win elections. If historical precedent wasn't enough to illustrate that point, current polls consistently back it up.

And yet …

And yet because the word "moderate" appears before "conservative" in Romney's ideological label, hard-line right-wingers are determined to find someone else. Hence the slew of month-and-a-half-long love affairs we've seen with a series of fad candidates. From late March through the end of April, the beau ideal was Donald Trump. They went through a lag period after he was deflated by his humiliation at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, but in mid-July they flocked to Michele Bachmann, where they remained until the end of August. Rick Perry took her spot in the beginning of September, and there he stayed until mid-October, when it suddenly became Herman Cain's time to shine. Now his four-to-six weeks are up, and Newt Gingrich is the latest craze.

Since the Iowa caucus is being held on Jan. 3, it's unclear whether Gingrich will still be on top when it matters most, since the recent past suggests he'll be right near the end of his month-and-a-half expiration date by that time. Barring any major gaffes on his part (not inconceivable given his track record), it's entirely possible that he'll be able to stay fresh just long enough to pull it off in Iowa and then take the whole thing. That said, it is equally conceivable that he'll fizzle out shortly beforehand and thus either give the nomination to whichever lucky rebound candidate replaces him or, as happened post-Trump, cause a lag in the Anyone But Romney movement, allowing Mitt to emerge triumphant while the hard right scrambles for a suitable replacement.

This latter scenario is obviously in the best short-term interests of the party, but it doesn't address its deeper problem. As groups like the tea party become increasingly powerful in the Republican organization, they keep knocking out moderate conservatives who would have been elected and replacing them with zealots who snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In 2010 this cost them the Senate, as the tea party spurned moderate conservatives four times in favor of extremists (Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado, Linda McMahon in Connecticut, and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware) and, in turn, lost general elections which by all indications Republicans could have otherwise won. Now this same habit threatens to cost them the presidency, for while Romney may still lose to Obama, it is delusional to believe that a Gingrich, Cain, Perry, Bachmann, or Trump could ever beat him.

It is this delusional quality that would make me a very concerned partisan indeed if I were a Republican. When the Democrats went through a comparable phase in the 1970s and 1980s, they nominated a series of liberal stalwarts — George McGovern in 1972, Walter Mondale in 1984, Michael Dukakis in 1988 — who were beaten even in elections that data showed could have been won had they gone with a more moderate alternative (Ed Muskie instead of McGovern, Al Gore instead of Dukakis). Republicans would be well advised to learn from this recent historical lesson.

On Occupy Wall Street

This article was originally published on the "Newark Star-Ledger" website (circulation: 300,000) on October 14, 2011 under the title "Agenda for Occupy Wall Street: A Rutgers grad student's proposal."

The pundits are claiming that Occupy Wall Street lacks a coherent agenda. I have one for them that can be summed up in two words: Rebuild America.

Although Occupy Wall Street’s anger has been targeted at the American plutocracy (a term best defined by Theodore Roosevelt as “government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the ‘money touch,’ but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers”), it would be a mistake to assume, as many right-wingers have done, that this movement is driven by a desire to wage war against a particular class. People are taking to the streets not because they wish to punish the wealthy for being successful, but because the working class is being deprived of the opportunity to achieve similar success.

Millions of Americans are struggling desperately to obtain full-time work at a living wage, finding again and again that the jobs they need don’t exist. The argument that putting more money in the pockets of big business and the wealthy creates jobs has been discredited by the fact that both groups are richer than ever before while unemployment remains chronically high. At a time when so much of our infrastructure is crumbling and so many nascent industries are calling out for cultivation, the obvious answer is an ambitious government program that invests money in developing our nation while simultaneously putting people back to work. Because such an endeavor would cost a great deal and America can’t afford to further increase its dangerously large deficit, the only fiscally sound way for this to happen would be to raise taxes on the wealthy. Unfortunately, a seemingly impenetrable coalition of libertarians and conservatives, buttressed by the strong financial backing of plutocrats like the Koch brothers, is preventing such tax increases from being implemented.

This is where Occupy Wall Street has stepped in, and this is why I propose that their agenda consist of three parts:

1) They should define their cause around the passage of the American Jobs Act. For one thing, it is far more difficult to propose new measures than it is to exert pressure behind initiatives that already exist. What’s more, this is a bill that would actually go a long way toward fulfilling many of America’s needs. It would invest billions in construction projects and infrastructure improvements, thus strengthening our society while lowering unemployment, as well as protect the jobs of our teachers, police officers, and firefighters and expand the private sector workforce by making it illegal for businesses to discriminate against the unemployed.

2) Republicans and tea party members claim that infrastructural programs are both socialistic and fail to create jobs. Because history proves the lie to such assertions, it is vital for Occupy Wall Street to wield this tool to its advantage. It must be pointed out that programs such as the ones they propose have a distinguished history in America, tracing back to the origins of our republic and being supported by presidents like George Washington (the Post Office Act of 1792), Abraham Lincoln (the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862), Franklin Roosevelt (the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act of 1935), and Dwight Eisenhower (the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956). On each occasion these programs were remarkably successful at not only employing large swathes of the population, but at developing our nation and increasing its prestige in the world community. Even Obama's stimulus bills accomplished more than their critics wish to acknowledge. Although unemployment had been rising at a catastrophic rate of 0.4 percent per month between the month of the Wall Street meltdown (September 2008, when it was at 6.2 percent) and the month Obama's policies could take effect (May 2009, when it reached 9.4 percent), it stabilized between 9.4 and 10.1 percent as a result of the first stimulus bill. After Obama attached a second stimulus to the Bush tax cut extensions, it fell to between 8.8 and 9.4 percent, where it has remained ever since.

3) They must work to reelect Barack Obama. While many of the criticisms of his presidency are legitimate, it is clear that he is trying to define the election of 2012 around the American Jobs Act. If he is defeated, there can be no doubt that whichever Republican replaces him – be it Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, or anyone else – will oppose not only that specific bill but all other internal improvement measures that follow the tradition of Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. If Obama wins, on the other hand, the fact that his victory will have been built around job-creating internal improvements will compel him to push for that agenda. This is a rare perfect storm of political opportunity, and Occupy Wall Street should take advantage of it.

Because we live in a culture that focuses on sound bytes instead of sophisticated arguments, even a movement as admirably diverse as Occupy Wall Street needs to find a simple way of summing up its position. While many of the current slogans are effective, there is one that truly captures not only the spirit of the movement, but the policies which it should support.

That slogan, once again, can be summed up in two words: Rebuild America.

The original article can be found here: http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/2011/10/agenda_for_occupy_wall_street.html

On Civil Rights

This article was originally published in "The Express Times" (circulation: 40,000) on October 3, 2011 under the title "Public schools in Pa., N.J., flunk civil-rights teaching test."

Can you identify the source of this quote?

“We conclude that in the field of public education separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

If you can’t, don’t worry. Not even today’s high school students are expected to know that it came from the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. In fact, when 12,000 12-graders last year took the National Assessment of Educational Progress U.S. History Exam, all they were asked to do was identify school segregation as the problem being addressed in that passage.

It didn’t matter. Even after being given several hints (including extra sentences from the excerpt and the detail that it had been written in 1954), only 2 percent of the test-takers could provide a correct answer.

Unfortunately, a recent study by the Southern Poverty Law Center made it clear that this is hardly an isolated instance of historical ignorance. As the report points out, “across the country, state educational standards virtually ignore our civil rights history.”

And before you go about laying the blame below the Mason-Dixon Line, the reality is that the South far surpasses any other section of the country when it comes to this subject, with nine of the 12 states that scored the highest in civil rights history coming from the former Confederacy. New Jersey, on the other hand, received a score of 15 percent on civil rights topics, earning it an ‘F.’ Pennsylvania’s ‘F’ was even more embarrassing, as it came with an abysmal score of zero.

Perhaps the most obvious problem with this widespread ignorance of civil rights history is that it neglects to recognize a large and important segment of the American community. With more than one-eighth of our population either wholly or partially of African ancestry, it is inexcusable for such a critical aspect of the black experience to be so inadequately taught.

What’s worse, a lack of understanding about the civil rights movement ultimately devalues the importance of race in other areas of our history.

For example, race impacted the debates at the Constitutional Convention (causing slaves to be counted as three-fifths of a person when assigning congressmen), shaped regional economies during the antebellum period (causing the South to remain agrarian while the North was industrialized), gave birth to the Republican Party (as a vehicle for opposing the expansion of slavery), and, more than a century later, helped the GOP win social conservatives by nominating candidates who opposed the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, including Barry Goldwater (who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act as unconstitutional) and Ronald Reagan (who denounced the Voting Rights Act as “humiliating to the South”).

This dearth of historical knowledge also has far deeper social implications. In the absence of a more sophisticated understanding of civil rights history, Americans have been left with a simplistic “Hollywood” fairy tale, one in which the racists of the past are so blatant in their villainy that most of us can rest comfortably with the knowledge that no one outside of a fringe group could hold similar views today.

When the word “racist” is used to conjure up grotesque caricatures instead of flesh-and-blood human beings, then it becomes all too easy for people to insist that the term for such a bogeyman can’t possibly apply to police officers who racially profile African-Americans, shopkeepers who instruct their employees to trail black customers, and tea partyers whose intense hatred for our first black president is unusual even for the normally superheated world of American politics.

Until we remember that the racists of the past were men and women who – though willing to picket a desegregated school, cast a ballot for George Wallace, or raise hell when a black family moved into their neighborhood – were for the most part no better or worse than the rest of us, we will always be susceptible to repeating their mistakes.

Of course, this isn’t to say that race is the only area of history in which the public’s knowledge is woefully limited. From the religious right-wingers who claim America was founded as a Christian nation (and thus ignore Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists and Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, as well as James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments) to the radicals of all stripes who wear the Guy Fawkes mask from “V for Vendetta” (without knowing that Fawkes’s goal was to create a Catholic theocracy in England), ignorance of the past can be seen in almost every aspect of our political life.

That said, because racism remains such a serious problem in America today, improving our knowledge of the civil rights movement seems like a particularly good place to begin correcting this deficiency.

The original article can be found here: http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/10/guest_column_public_schools_in.html

On Gay Rights

This article was originally published in "The Morning Call" (circulation: 90,000) on October 2, 2011 under the title "Santorum complaints hypocritical."

In a recent interview with Politico, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum issued a scathing denunciation of Google. "If you're a responsible business," he remarked, "you don't let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country."

One might expect such strong words to be reserved for the greatest rascals of American capitalism – you know, like the Wall Street firms whose chicanery plunged our nation into its current economic mess, or perhaps the corporate executives who throw hardworking employees onto the unemployment rolls instead of accepting modest cuts to their own massive salaries. What could Google have done to provoke such a condemnation from the erstwhile senator?

To answer that question, one must look back to 2003, when an Associated Press reporter asked Santorum why he opposed gay rights:

"We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now (a reference to Lawrence v. Texas), that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they (homosexuals) undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery."

And again:

"In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."

While Santorum may think saying he only wants to protect family and marriage conceals the hatefulness of his views, history reveals that most advocates of oppression have come up with excuses for their prejudices. When Grover Cleveland spoke out against the right of women to vote, he claimed that he was motivated not by sexism, but by a desire to protect "the characters of the wives and mothers of our land." Similarly, when George Wallace fought against integration, he spoke for millions of segregationists when he dismissed charges of racism as "fantasy" and insisted that they opposed civil rights measures because they would lead to "the destruction of the Constitution and our nation."

In other words, Santorum wasn't fooling anyone, least of all prominent lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activist Dan Savage, who decided that it was time to strike back against the bullies. Using humor as his weapon, he declared "Santorum" to be a new word and held a contest to see who could come up with the funniest definition. Thousands of submissions were considered, and when a winner was finally selected, a website was created to solidify its place in the American lexicon.

Because of its unprintable nature, I can't tell you what definition Savage ultimately chose. Suffice to say that it became very popular, was viewed by millions of people, and has thus became the No. 1 hit whenever a Google search is conducted for "Santorum."

That brings me back to the recent interview, in which Santorum demanded that Google exempt him from its search engine's algorithm so that attention might be drawn away from Savage's website. There is a comic irony in seeing a man who — though quick to brandish a laissez-faire philosophy when opposing regulations on businesses that would protect workers and consumers — doesn't hesitate to call for interfering with the practices of one particular business because it is allowing him to be ridiculed.

In a way, this symbolizes one of the defining hypocrisies of the modern Republican Party, which supports the principle of "small government" when it is politically beneficial (such as by serving the financial self-interests of the base of rich donors referred to by George W. Bush as the "have mores") but abandons it as soon as that is no longer the case (like when it angers homophobes). While Santorum may be unusually obnoxious, the sad truth is that his views on gay rights aren't far removed from those held by most of his fellow GOPers. Even as we celebrate the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the Santorum incident is a sobering reminder that we still have a long way to go.

The original article can be found here: http://www.mcall.com/opinion/yourview/mc-santorum-rozsa-yv-20111002,0,2282411.story

On the Constitution

This article was originally published in "The Morning Call" (circulation: 90,000) on August 15, 2011 under the title "Constitution was born of compromise."

When reviewing "Atlas Shrugged," the magnum opus of libertarian paladin Ayn Rand, famed anti-communist Whittaker Chambers made this observation about her philosophy: "Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal."

Unfortunately, this mentality is all too prevalent among tea partyers today. While they may not share Rand's views on religion (she was a militant atheist while tea partyers are often Christian right-wingers) and social morality (she supported the rights of homosexuals and others with nontraditional lifestyles, whereas the tea party tends to favor their repression), they certainly ape her claim to having cornered all understanding of the Founding Fathers' will. This is a most unfortunate development.

Take, as an example, the brouhaha over President Barack Obama's health care reform legislation. As one of the critics of the health care law, the tea party claims that the 10th Amendment, which declares all powers not expressly enumerated to the federal government as belonging to the states and/or the people, renders the health care law unconstitutional.

Liberals and others who support the law point out how the commerce clause of the Constitution allows the government to regulate interstate commerce, while the general welfare clause permits the state to create new taxes and spending programs so long as their objective is to promote the overall well-being of society. They further add that not only do both of these criteria apply to the issue of health care reform, but that also arguing against them on 10th Amendment grounds would nullify virtually every important progressive social reform since the days of Theodore Roosevelt, from federal spending on education and transportation to the passage of Medicare and the outlawing of child labor.

Right-wingers, naturally, respond with points of their own, from citing James Madison's restrictive interpretation of the general welfare clause (and ignoring Alexander Hamilton's rebuttal) to claiming that excessive regulation impedes economic growth.

And each side ultimately expounds at length about the ideological and historical arguments that can buttress their respective positions. This is both natural and healthy, as reflected by the ongoing legal battle that has taken Obamacare to the federal district courts -- where jurists have so far issued wildly divergent rulings -- and will, inevitably, bring it to the Supreme Court.

Where tea partyers add an unhealthy element to these debates is that they insist not merely that they are right but that their opinions are the only ones capable of being legitimate. They don't view liberals and centrists as having different interpretations of the Founding Fathers' intent, but of deliberately wishing to subvert it. What's worse, they depict all modern Democratic presidents -- from the bold social liberals like Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson to the center-leftists like Bill Clinton and Obama -- as being not merely incorrect, which can be reasonably argued, but as being sinister and radical, which cannot.

The irony here is that the men whose ideas tea partyers embrace as immutable gospel were hardly monolithic in their views. Individuals like Madison, Hamilton, Jay, Pickney, Paterson, Randolph and Franklin disagreed so frequently and dramatically that ideologies from across the political spectrum can use their writings for support.

Indeed, when reading the Federalist Papers or the transcripts of the Constitutional Convention, it is the very contentiousness of those proceedings that makes the document produced in Philadelphia and ratified by the 13 states, from Delaware to Rhode Island, so magnificent.

While it is easy to craft a charter or manifesto when the individuals involved in composing it are of one mind, it is quite another to do so when disagreements fly as thick and fast as insects in the summer heat. The beauty of the Constitution lies in the fact that it was the product not of divine ordinances dispensed from a higher power, but of a series of courageous compromises agreed upon by imperfect men.

Tragically, this is one reality that tea partyers, in the name of their self-proclaimed crusade, refuse to accept.

The original article can be found here: http://articles.mcall.com/2011-08-15/opinion/mc-tea-party-constitution-rozsa-yv-0820110815_1_tea-partyers-health-care-constitution