Speak values

Drew Westen, our local but nationally renowned psychologist who explains to politicians how to more effectively deliver their message to voters based on his research, has a piece on HuffingtonPost that's worth reading.

It's a plea to President Obama to speak out more forthrightly on social issues. In trying to avoid rankling the social conservatives, with their black/white, right/wrong mentality, he could make his case better. Here's a sample:

What my collaborators and I have found will strike many readers as surprising: On every issue we have studied, from abortion to immigration, a well-refined progressive narrative, designed to speak to the hearts and minds of the American people in their language, not the language of activists and advocates, can beat the strongest of conservative messages nationally by 15-20 points. Even in the Deep South, where I live, we can win by strong double digits with common sense, center-left messages on issues such as abortion. . . .

The reality is that when Democrats clearly state their values on this issue, Americans prefer their message over a strong, well-crafted "pro-life" position by double digits.

Westen and pollster Stan Greenberg tested various messages on abortion for voter reaction. This message beat a strong conservative message nationally by 20 points and in Georgia by a 2:1 margin:

I'm not pro life, I'm not pro choice, I'm pro common sense. None of us truly knows what's in the mind of God, and the government has no business telling a man and a woman when they should or shouldn't have kids based on somebody else's interpretation of Scripture. But we need to find the common ground on abortion, reflecting our shared moral beliefs, not the beliefs that divide us. That means doing everything we can to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, teen pregnancies, and abortions. And it means preventing abortions late in pregnancy, except when the mother's life or health is in danger, because abortion shouldn't be used as a form of birth control, and it shouldn't be used when a fetus is too far along. This should be a personal and moral issue, not a political one.

Westen concludes:

I suspect President Obama would be comfortable with either of these messages, because from what I know of his position on abortion and his religious faith, both messages map closely onto his personal values. The point is that the president does not need to choose between urging mutual respect and taking a strong stand. He can do both. And he needs to.

Let's hope someone in the White House is listening. Obama is doing great; but the Republican message-machine is powerful. Obama has a tendency to try to avoid stirring them up, rather than being candid. But then he is capable doing just what Drew prescribes: like his great speech on race in Philadelphia and not shying away from talking about abortion at Notre Dame. He needs to speak out on the issues that they are throwing at Sonia Sotomayor -- racism, judicial activism, judges "making policy," emotions' role in judicial decisions --before her hearings.

Ralph

Bill O'Reilly - ? accessory to murder ?

At what point does rabble-rousing hate speech constitute being an accessory to someone who commits the murder you are all but asking to have carried out?

Salon.com reports on Bill O'Reilly's relentless denunciation of Dr. George Tiller, who as far as we know was a compassionate, humane doctor who performed abortion services completely within what was legal. Through decades he has received death threats, his clinic has been bombed, and he was actually wounded by gunshots intended to kill him several years before his assassination yesterday.

According to reporting by Gabriel Winant on Salon, O'Reilly mentioned Tiller on 29 on-air episodes in the past 4 years, most recently in April 2009. He writes:

"There's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists."

According to Salon, among the things O'Reilly has said of Tiller: (1) He destroys fetuses for just about an reason right up until the birth date for $5,000; (2) He's guilty of "Nazi stuff;" (3) A moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida; (4) This is the kind of stuff that happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union; (5) operating a death mill; (6) executing babies about to be born.

And what is his evidence? None. Tiller has been investigated and acquitted by a grand jury who found no evidence of illegal actions.

I admit it's a stretch to connect O'Reilly's rants with the actual assassination, but he is one of those who create the climate of hatred and lies that fanatics and mentally unstable people take as a license to kill -- in the name of saving lives of the unborn.

Ralph

Assassination

Let's call it what it is: assassination and terrorism and fascism.

The murder of Dr. George Tiller yesterday at his church removed one of the reportedly three doctors who do late-term abortions. This is a much-maligned procedure that is rarely performed and is legal only in cases of a threat to the mother's health or because the fetus is defective and unviable.

By first person accounts, Dr. Tiller was a compassionate man and a humane doctor who operated within the law, despite trumped up charges and investigations. He had previously not only received countless death threats, but his clinic has been bombed and he was wounded in a previous attempt on his life.

The Colorado Independent reports:

Hours after the Sunday morning shooting death of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kan., a Boulder physician — who says he could be the only doctor in the world still performing the procedure — said Tiller’s assassination was the “absolutely inevitable consequence” of decades of anti-abortion fanaticism.

I’m profoundly sad and I’m furious and I think the American people need to understand that we have a fascist movement in this country,” Dr. Warren Hern told The Colorado Independent on Sunday. “We don’t have to invade Iraq to find terrorists. They’re right here killing abortion doctors.”

“Every doctor that does abortions has been under an assassination threat for decades,” Hern said. “The anti-abortion movement message is, ‘Do what we tell you to do or we will kill you,’ and they do. This is a fascist movement.”

Hern laid blame for Tiller’s death at the feet of the anti-abortion movement’s encouragement of violence against abortion providers and the Republican Party’s “exploitation” of the extremist rhetoric. . . .

Janet Napolitano was forced to retract a Homeland Security report that mentioned right-wing extremists as a threat, because of an outcry from right-wing politicians and radio/tv ranters.

Randall Terry, who had led protests at Tiller's clinic in 1991 as head of Operation Rescue said:

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions.

Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder. Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

Notice that he says "peacefully protest," but he's concerned about having to surrender "our most effective rhetoric and actions." He does not condemn the murder of the doctor. It is this kind of support that leads fanatics and mentally unstable to feel justified in doing the killing.

This is not about whether a fertilized ovum is a human being or when an embryo becomes a living being. This is about vigilantism, terrorism, hate speech, hate crimes and, yes, a fascist movement in God's name.

Ralph

One more . . .

Add one more voice to those insiders who are criticizing the way we handled Iraq and/or who are speaking out in opposing torture.

General Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, has called for a truth commission. He said there were failures at all levels of civilian and military command that led to abuses in Iraq and that "if we do not find out what happened, then we are doomed to repeat it."

He also said this:

"during my time in Iraq there was not one instance of actionable intelligence that came out of these interrogation techniques."

Judges do make policy

Senator Diane Feinstein said on Face the Nation today that, of course, judges do in fact make policy.

Responding to Republican insistence that judges should not make policy, she said: "In my experience, 16 years on the [judicial] committee, that's not true. If there is no precedent, judges do make policy. If there is no precedent, an appellate court judge will, in effect, by their opinion, make policy."

Up to their usual tricks of obfuscation, when they talk about it, they say "make laws." Nobody on the Sotomayor/Obama team has said "make laws." They've said "make policy." They're not quite the same. What we're talking about is where the law is not clear and must be interpreted by judges. Whatever decision is made, that contributes to the tradition of case law and will be used in future decisions as precedent. That is how ambiguous laws evolve into policy.

Republicans set up a straw (wo)man in order to be outraged and rant about "activist" judges. No one can make a factual case that Sotomayor has been an activist judge by her record.

Poor things; they just can't help it. It's part of their nature. The only pity is that they do still have certain amount of power to obstruct and make things difficult.

Ralph

Rational thinking vs emotions

Sonia Sotomayor's nomination has put the question front and center: do judges make their decisions solely on the basis of the law and reason, or are their decisions influenced by who they are, what their life experiences have been, and what group identities they belong to?

Of course, in the heat of this Supreme Court nomination, Republicans are challenging the idea that one's feelings enter into decisions at all, along with the idea that the court needs balance based on gender, ethnicity, and other background issues.

I take the position that decisions are far more influenced by emotions and by life experiences than most people realize; and now we have brain-imaging research that shows this to be true.

This is probably no more true in any issue than ones on equal treatment for same-sex behavior. And this makes me wonder why Ted Olson is taking a high profile case that seems unlikely for the conservative lawyer that he is. I'm not suggesting that he is a closeted gay man; there's nothing I know to suggest that. But being gay oneself is not the only way one's empathy may be formed to see issues differently.

In 1992, I was asked to form a new committee on gay/lesbian issues in the American Psychoanalytic Association. The trouble in forming such a committee was that, with one exception, we did not have openly gay members (because of prior discrimination) who could be asked to be on the committee. Nevertheless, several respected members of the Association volunteered and served as members. I found out later that some of those who did were moved to volunteer because they had a gay family member or a good friend or respected colleague.

Knowing a gay or lesbian person as an individual changes one's impression of the stereotype. I'd be willing to bet that Anthony Kennedy and Ted Olson each has a gay family member or a close friend or law clerk, who has helped him see the injustice of discrimination on the basis of whom one loves.

Ralph

Thanks, but no thanks

The biggest surprise of the week was the announcement by Ted Olson and David Boies that they will represent a lesbian couple who are challenging the State of California on the grounds that the separate-but-unequal institution of domestic partnership, instead of full marriage, violates equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, creating a class of second-class citizens.

The surprise is that Federalist Society member Ted Olson is arguably the most respected conservative lawyer in the country, having defended Reagen in the Iran-Contra scandal, and having argued and won Bush v Gore before the Supreme Court. The other part of the surprise is that David Boies was the opposing attorney in Bush v Gore. The old rivals have teamed up to push same-sex marriage in the federal courts and, presumably, to the Supreme Court.

Which has created great consternation among supporters of gay marriage. Because they fear that it will go to the Supreme Court and lose. As I wrote before, a favorable decision would require the four liberal judges (and we don't yet know about Sotomayor) plus Kennedy. And, although he wrote the opinions on the last two major gay-issue decisions (and, yes, let his feelings show in both; see my blog of May 28), there is no indication that he would decide in favor of gay marriage.

My thought is that it's too risky at this point, both for a negative decision which would set back the cause a decade, but also that going the legislative route is the better course. The momentum that we are seeing in the northeast states is mostly a legislative one, not judicial.

Even George Will said as much this morning on This Week With George Stephanopolis. He said it is working it's way through the state legislatures in an orderly fasion, and no one seems to care; if you shift it to the courts, it will only derail that orderly process and create a backlash if judges impose it.

That was the other big surprise. He didn't actually say he favored it, but his tone of approval at the way the states are approving gay marriage strongly suggests it. George Will? Another conservative voice for gay marriage?

Ralph