"We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
"It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm."
-- President Barack Obama
Second Inaugural Address
January 21, 2013
This terrible thing that has gripped the nation -- this thing that has left me feeling more emotionally ravaged than any news event since September 11, 2001 -- is not principally the story of a sad, sick man who walked into an elementary school and massacred children. It is principally the story of his mother, a sad, sick woman who was obsessed with guns, loved guns, collected guns, and believed that guns were keeping her safe, probably right up until the moment her son used one of her prized firearms to blow her head off.
You know the story: The terrorist Adam Lanza tried to buy his own gun, but was unable to -- Connecticut being one of the few states in which gun control laws are slightly more than nominal. But that didn't matter. His mother, Nancy Lanza, had a whole collection of legally-purchased death machines for him to choose from. He chose three.
As I've said before in this space, I am pretty close to a gun control absolutist; I basically think all guns should be illegal. I think that the Second Amendment is a stain on our Constitution, and should be repealed -- that it is every bit as antiquated, irrelevant, and hateful as the abandoned Constitutional language which condoned slavery. I do not respect "the rights of hunters and sportsmen." I think invading the woods and killing the animals who live there is itself an unambiguously evil act. I think this is the twenty-first century, and we are no longer hunter-gatherers. We are trying to have a civilization here.
But obviously my views on guns put me in a tiny minority, even among those who favor strong gun control. Obviously the U.S. is never going to outlaw guns altogether. But recent analysis does suggest a significant middle ground -- mandatory background checks, the end of the gun-show loophole, the banning of high-capacity magazines, the return of the assault weapons ban -- that could be within reach, and it's better than nothing.
The gun people are going to have to accept that a gun is not a tool; it's a disease, and any one of us can die of it at any moment, and it must be cured. This is a lot to ask of the gun people, and of their champions in the legislature. And so, in acknowledgment of the sacrifice they're going to have to make if American society is to survive itself, I think we on the left are going to have to concede on some precious ideological points as well.
Our culture is saturated with mindless violence posing as entertainment. After Sandy Hook, I no longer feel able to pretend that this isn't part of the problem. Of course it is. Violence, especially gun violence, is glorified and fetishized in movies, television, music, and video games to a ridiculous degree. It used to make me uncomfortable. Now it makes me physically sick.
I've never favored any kind of censorship, and I've often scoffed at the suggestion that a song or a video game could be held responsible for a horrific act. I would now happily trade the creative freedom of Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, and various rappers for even a few of the lives claimed in recent decades by shooters whose emulation of Hollywood violence seems obvious.
No, I don't think we should repeal the First Amendment along with the Second. I would not support an attempt to remedy the pop culture problem through legislation that outlawed any kind of content or expression. But I do think that the purveyors of gun-fetish entertainment are by definition mediocre artists, that they should be ashamed of themselves, and that all Americans who care about their neighbors' safety and survival should make this message clear.
In real life, a gun is sometimes described as the weapon of a coward. The argument is that if you need to be able to push a button and kill people in order to win, then you are a pathetic loser. Well, I think the same is true of artists who can't tell a story without endowing their characters with the ability to blow each other away. It's cowardly, unimaginative storytelling. Sure, you can always give your work a quality of superficial suspense and gravity if the threat of gunplay is a factor. Sudden gun violence in movies can be shocking, emotional, and even funny. That's why a good writer shouldn't have to rely on it. Come on -- you're a professional storyteller. You owe us more than the cowardly, pathetic approach of arming your characters to the teeth and having them shoot each other. Grow up.
President Obama's recent resolution to do something about America's gun problem is encouraging. I hope it does lead to some genuine reforms. Right-wing lunatics have been saying for years now that Obama "wants to take away your guns." Sane, informed people have countered that Obama has in fact expanded gun rights (national parks!? Amtrak!?). My message to the President and other Democrats: They're going to accuse you of trying to take their guns away whether you do or not. So please, TRY TO TAKE AWAY THEIR GUNS. At least try. Lives literally depend on it.
During Ann Romney's recent appearance on The View, Whoopi Goldberg noted that presidents and first ladies must "talk to the mothers whose children are coming home in bags, from war," and asked Ms. Romney, "When you're facing these mothers...how will you explain to them that your sons haven't gone?" Ms. Romney's pathetic answer was that one of her five sons is a doctor, "and he works with veterans."
Unfortunately, Whoopi didn't ask the question as neatly as I presented it in the above paragraph. On her way to the question, she made a factual error -- "Now, I believe that your religion doesn't allow you to go fight" -- which effectively changed the subject, and allowed Ms. Romney a haughty rebuttal about how plenty of "members of our faith" serve in the military.
It was an honest mistake. Mitt Romney avoided Vietnam by religious deferment, which does suggest a religious objection to war. But he wasn't taking a moral stand; he was for the war, as long as he didn't have to do anything about it. He was a pro-war, nineteen-year-old male, and combat was not against his religion, but he got a religious deferment and spent 1966-1968 trying to convert the French to Mormonism -- or, as Ann Romney put it, "serving his mission." And so, what should have been a story about the lack of military service among Romneys became a story about Whoopi Goldberg lying about Mormonism.
But at least there was a story about Mormonism. It's hard to believe that there's only one week left of the presidential race, and Mitt Romney still has not had to answer a single substantive question about his religion. Barack Obama is called a Muslim more often than Mitt Romney is called a Mormon.
It only comes up on the margins. A company run by an ex-Mormon is using the Romneys' likenesses to sell authentic Mormon "temple garments." Some have read polygamy into "binders full of women." One megachurch pastor recently said, "It is better to vote for a non-Christian [Mormon] who supports biblical principles...than a professing Christian like Barack Obama who absolutely repudiates what Jesus Christ said about some key issues." Tricia Erickson, an evangelical ex-Mormon, claims that the Latter-Day Saints Church "has been trying since the beginning to get someone in the presidency, because they believe they have to establish their authority so when Jesus comes to earth, the Mormon Church will take control of the government and the Mormons will be the government of God on earth."
And then there's Billy Graham, apparently still alive. Graham met with Romney recently, and then Graham's association quietly removed Mormonism from its list of cults. This week, Graham placed a full-page ad in a Wisconsin newspaper: "I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman." (Graham can't come right out and say he supports Mitt Romney, so he expresses contempt for women and gays, and knows everyone will get the idea.) Last week, Graham's son, Franklin, published an article headlined, "Can An Evangelical Christian Vote for a Mormon?" Turns out the answer is yes.
Only the late Christopher Hitchens was sensible enough to assert, one year ago, that Romney "should be asked to defend and explain...his voluntary membership in one of the most egregious groups operating on American soil." Otherwise, Mormonism is only mentioned by Romney, and his surrogates and apologists, as a political advantage. They cite his charitable donations, including the 10% of his income that's tithed to the Mormon Church. Jon Podhoretz looked at Romney's 2010 and 2011 tax records (there being no others to look at) and declared Romney "an extraordinarily, remarkably, astonishingly generous man...Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant, stupid or a liar." (I think that to call Jon Podhoretz ignorant, stupid, or a liar would be extraordinarily, remarkably, astonishingly generous.) The folly of equating religions with charities is another subject, but for now, let's remember that the Mormon Church spent $25 million pushing Proposition 8. Religious donations are not necessarily about feeding the hungry. They're also about killing civil rights.
We're supposed to accept Romney's tithing as virtuous, just as we're supposed to accept his "mission" of 1966-1968 as the equivalent of military or community service. Beginning with the Republican convention, the campaign has touted Romney's church leadership, but has never had to answer for Bishop Romney's cruelty toward women, or the church's sexist culture, or the fact that Romney was a Mormon leader while the church was still officially racist. When discussing immigration policy, Romney gets to throw in the irrelevant footnote, "My father was born in Mexico," but he never has to comment on why his father was born in Mexico. (It was because Mitt's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, thought it was more important to have five wives than to live in "the greatest nation on Earth." What was that about traditional marriage, Billy Graham?)
Religious conservatives have convinced many of us that to question a religious belief is somehow an act of intolerance. It isn't. A religion is a set of ideas, and ideas should be challenged. To disapprove of a religion is not akin to racism or sexism. Race and gender are not choices. But nobody is born religious. Religion is a choice, and it's appropriate and necessary that political candidates are held accountable for their choices.
It's obvious that if Mormonism were an issue in the election, it would hurt Romney's chances. I know, I know -- all religions seem bizarre to outsiders; Mormonism is no crazier than any other faith. But if you close your eyes and point to an undecided swing state voter, chances are you're pointing at someone who has no trouble believing in a virgin birth or a resurrection, but would be very surprised by this:
"Mitt Romney truly, unequivocally believes that when he dies, he is going to become a god in Heaven. He is going be given his own kingdom/planet. He will be able to call his wife Ann by the secret name that is only given to him in the Mormon secret ceremonies...When he calls her on to his planet, they will have relations to populate the planet with spirit children..."
Mormonism is no crazier Judaism, Islam, or Christianity -- but it's much more secretive. Ann Romney's non-Mormon parents weren't allowed to attend their daughter's wedding ceremony. Very few religious Americans practice a faith this secretive. And this very secretive religion has produced a very secretive presidential candidate. Running for president without disclosing your history as a taxpayer might seem shocking -- what is he hiding? -- but it isn't, really, if your religion has so much to hide that your infidel in-laws aren't allowed to attend the wedding. Romney's religious background is about being infallible, unaccountable, and exclusionary.
These points might be irrelevant if we knew that Mitt Romney's religious beliefs were personal and metaphorical, and would have no bearing on his conduct as president. But there's no reason to believe this. Romney has never explicitly promised, as JFK did, that his religion was not a factor. Romney's own running mate has promised the opposite: "I don't see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith, chirped Paul Ryan in the vice presidential debate. "Our faith informs us in everything we do." Bad news.
There's evidence that Mormonism is fundamental to the Romney campaign; you just have to be a Mormon to catch the references. Mormon blogger Lowell Brown told the Los Angeles Times that "when an active LDS person like myself sees Romney, hears him talk, sees his family, you recognize that. He looks and sounds like one of us." In the article which contains that quote, Mitchell Landsberg points out that among Mormons, "the U.S. Constitution is considered to be divinely inspired, enshrining [the Mormon concept of] free agency in a democratic society"; and that when Romney says things like, "We're a nation that's bestowed by God," he's using a sort of code, much the way George W. Bush used coded religious language for evangelicals.
"The 'exceptional' nature of the United States is a recurring theme in the Book of Mormon...In the first chapters of the text, Nephi [a mythological prophet] shares a vision in which an angel shows him a nation populated by 'Gentiles' who 'went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters' to a 'land of promise' (1 Nephi 13:13-14), [and] then fought a war against their 'mother Gentiles' (vs. 17) and that 'God was with them...and they were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations' (vs. 18-19). These passages are widely interpreted by Mormons as referring to the Pilgrims and other early American settlers, as well as the American Revolutionary War. Later in the text, a prophet named Ether prophesies that in the last days before the second coming of Jesus Christ, 'a new Jerusalem should be built upon this land' (Ether 13:5), in other words, upon the American continent. In essence, the Book of Mormon is widely interpreted by Mormons as 'sacralizing' the United States. Thus, America tends to have a unique and central role in Mormon eschatological thinking. It's not a stretch for many contemporary Mormons to make the leap between the central role of the United States in religious prophecies and the role the United States should play in the wider global political sphere."
If Mitt Romney can run for President of the United States and not once have to answer questions about that, then the media, as well as both major political parties, have failed the American public.
The election is one week away, and the Republican nominee belongs to a secretive religious order, which Billy Graham himself regarded as a cult just a few weeks ago; and its teachings have many absurd and disturbing things say about the origin, purpose, and future of the United States. Are we really just going to ignore this, because we don't want to appear critical of a religion?
Many things about the 2012 election season have been predictable. We knew Romney would be the Republican nominee; we knew it would come down to a handful of swing states; we knew Obama would have the organizational edge and Romney would have the financial edge. But it never occurred to us that the GOP would come out in favor of rape.
Todd Akin's famously ignorant remarks ("If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down") were criticized by many prominent Republicans, but only for political reasons. In fact, the official Republican platform advocates the criminalization of abortion, with no exceptions for rape or incest. That's the view held by many mainstream Republican leaders, including the vice presidential nominee. Paul Ryan recently referred to rape as just another "method of conception." We've reached the disturbing point where opposing reproductive rights, but allowing exceptions for rape and incest, has become the moderate position.
Just a few years ago, Rick Santorum was an extremist among conservatives. Today, he's standard issue. Santorum said earlier this year that pregnancy via rape is "a gift from god," and that rape victims should "make the best of a bad situation" by sacrificing the remainder of their lives to their rapists' children.
Pennsylvania's Republican Senate candidate Tom Smith recently claimed that "having a baby out of wedlock" is "something similar" to pregnancy by rape. When an incredulous reporter asked if he really meant what he seemed to be saying, Smith replied, "Put yourself in a father's position. Yes, it is similar." Why not put yourself in a woman's position, Tom? But he can't. Concerning a woman's choices, Smith thinks it's really her father's feelings that deserve understanding and protection. He's also assuming that all fathers are like him -- mindless zealots who'd just as soon see their daughters become victims of violent crimes as raise children independently.
Now meet Richard Mourdock, Indiana's Republican Senate candidate, who said this week in a debate, "I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that god intended to happen." It took Mourdock less than twenty-four hours to add: "God creates life, and that was my point. God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that he does. Rape is a horrible thing, and for anyone to twist my words otherwise is absurd and sick."
No need to "twist his words otherwise" -- what Mourdock is very plainly saying is that rape is pretty bad, but abortion is much worse. To these men, a fertilized egg is a person, but a woman is not.
When these absurd and sick men make these comments about rape and abortion, I detect in their voices a certain relish. These are not gaffes; this is the way they feel, and they seem to enjoy making these points. Mourdock thinks he's being compassionate! These old-time religionists get off on belittling the "legitimacy" of rape, because they don't quite believe in rape. They think rape is something a woman accuses a man of, after the fact, out of shame or caprice. They think women essentially "want it," whether they know it or not, and that even if the "method of conception" is a "horrible situation," the rapist is still bestowing "a gift from god" for which the woman should be grateful, and eternally beholden.
They believe that women are commodities to be consumed by men. By fetishizing the fetus, they demean the female, reducing women's value to one biological function. A woman is an appliance to them, a thing totally subsumed by children, whether she's had them or not. The whole notion of an "exception for rape or incest" is a canard -- by what method would they ask a woman to prove that she's been raped? The "exceptions" game is a way of making an extreme position appear nuanced and moderate.
Mitt Romney is refusing to answer questions about Richard Mourdock, but we don't need his answers; they're perfectly clear already. Romney is a big Mourdock supporter. He's heartily endorsed Mourdock, and has even starred in a TV ad on Mourdock's behalf -- something Romney has not done for any other Senate candidate. Even in light of Mourdock's rape-is-next-to-godliness comments, Romney has withdrawn neither his endorsement nor the ad.
Romney and the Republicans want you to think the election is all about the economy, but that's just their way of getting in the door. What they really stand for is a retrograde, patriarchal police state which derives its power not from the Constitution but from an anthology of ancient, barbaric myths. Their highest legislative priorities have nothing to do with taxes or the deficit, and everything to do with crushing the progress women and minorities have made over the last century.
We know this is what they want to do, because it's what they've already done. Tea Party Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010. Their campaign messaging was all about the economy, but once sworn in, they introduced an unprecedented 916 anti-women bills. Their only action on the economy has been calling President Obama a socialist.
The Republican Party is incapable of serving the American people, because Republicans don't know what people are. They think corporations are people. They think fetuses are people. They think wealth is a measure of virtue, facts are a liberal ploy, and rape is an act of god.
The third presidential debate confirmed that Mitt Romney's assured performance in the first debate was a fluke. Or it was all he had in him. Or he can't function against a functional opponent. Anyway, it turns out Romney really is the tongue-tied, vacant-eyed, hollow-headed, ineffective fop-machine everyone always thought he was. October surprise!
Last night, Romney seemed wan and huffy. His most noticeable physical feature was not Reagan hair, but Nixon sweat. As he hiccupped his way through a muddle of fragmented talking points, he appeared confused. This time, he didn't try to dominate and control the conversation. He couldn't. He confirmed the solidity of Obama's foreign policy, by agreeing with it, in between claims that it is weak and wrong.
From his very first answer, it was as though he still hadn't recovered from his humiliation toward the end of last week's debate. Could this also explain his surprising failure to attack Obama on the subject of Benghazi? Obama supporters felt pretty sure the president would do well in this debate, but we assumed Romney would at least score a few points hitting him on Benghazi. Nope! Apparently Romney agreed with us; he'd already lost that one, last week.
There was a great, iconic moment in the third debate. The chaterati insist on boiling these things down to a few words, and so horses and bayonets is to this debate as binders full of women was to the last. But this was entirely different.
Binders full of women was simply an awkward turn of phrase, though it seemed to express hidden truths about Romney's attitude toward women. He was losing the debate on women's issues, with or without the gaffe. It wasn't even a gaffe, really -- it was just weird. It was just a weird thing Mitt Romney said. Horses and bayonets is something Obama said, in a thrilling rejoinder. He neatly dismantled Romney's argument, while implicitly making the case for nuanced thinking.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We're now at under 285. We're headed down to the low 200s if we go through a sequestration. That's unacceptable to me. I want to make sure that we have the ships that are required by our Navy. Our Air Force is older and smaller than at any time since it was founded in 1947. We've changed for the first time since FDR -- since FDR we had the -- we've always had the strategy of saying we could fight in two conflicts at once. Now we're changing to one conflict. Look, this, in my view, is the highest responsibility of the President of the United States, which is to maintain the safety of the American people. And I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars, which is a combination of the budget cuts the president has, as well as the sequestration cuts. That, in my view, is making -- is making our future less certain and less secure.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Bob, I just need to comment on this. First of all, the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen. The budget that we are talking about is not reducing our military spending. It is maintaining it. But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn't spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we're counting ships. It's what are our capabilities.
There are times, and this was one of them, when Obama's clearest presidential antecedent is Jed Bartlet. President Bartlet's staff used to worry, before debates, that their boss would "be Uncle Fluffy" -- meaning bland, folksy, and inoffensive. When Bartlet ran for reelection, his Republican challenger was Robert Ritchie, the governor of Florida, and their debate began like this:
GOVERNOR RITCHIE: We don't need a Federal Department of Education telling us our children have to learn Esperanto, they have to learn Eskimo poetry. Let the states decide. Let the communities decide on health care, on education, on lower taxes, not higher taxes. Now, he's going to throw a big word at you -- unfunded mandate. If Washington lets the states do it, it's an unfunded mandate. But what he doesn't like is the federal government losing power. But I call it the ingenuity of the American people.
MODERATOR: President Bartlet, you have sixty seconds for a question and an answer.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Well, first of all, let's clear up a couple of things. Unfunded mandate is two words, not one big word. There are times when we're fifty states and there are times when we're one country, and have national needs. And the way I know this is that Florida didn't fight Germany in World War II, or establish civil rights. You think states should do the governing wall-to-wall. That's a perfectly valid opinion. But your state of Florida got $12.6 billion in federal money last year-- from Nebraskans, and Virginians, and New Yorkers, and Alaskans, with their Eskimo poetry. Twelve-point-six out of a state budget of $50 billion. And I'm supposed to be using this time for a question, so here it is: Can we have it back, please?
