The Fall Election: Follow the leader

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Near the end of the film “Primary Colors,” there is a memorable exchange of dialog where a campaign aide expresses his disillusionment with the presidential candidate — because of a morally questionable, although quite legal, act that the candidate makes. The candidate’s response is (I am paraphrasing): “There are all these wonderful things we want to accomplish. Things you support and want to see as much as I do. But we can’t do any of it if we don’t win the election.”

On one level, it sounds like a classic case of the ends justifying the means. And I suppose it is. The question is how far are you willing to stretch the means to get to your end. In the film, it was really a small stretch. So it was easy to support the candidate’s assertion. But what if it had been a bigger one? What if it had been illegal? When does the rationale fall apart?

I think about this a lot as I watch the events surrounding the upcoming election. The Democrats appear poised to take over at least one house of Congress, if they don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (as they have so often done in the past) and if the Republicans are sufficiently stymied in their continuing efforts to manipulate election results to their advantage (i.e., steal the election).

But what then? What will the Democrats in Congress have to do to stay in power? Do they have to keep moving to the right (as the New York Times describes as continuing to occur in the South)? Or can they finally take a position that may be attacked as “liberal” without fearing an automatic loss of their seat?

When your views appear to differ from the majority of your constituents, it seems to me that you have only two legitimate choices: (1) Shift your position to be closer to those of your constituents, as much as you can without abandoning your principles, or (2) Convince your constituents to shift their position closer to yours (or convince them that your positions are in fact closer than they might think).

For too long, Democrats have focused on the first option. And it has gotten them next to nothing. The Republicans still manage to slice-and-dice them at each election. Partly, this is because Republicans often go for yet a third alternative: Denigrate your opponent so vigorously and raise the fear level so high that, at worst, voters see you as the lesser of two evils. They also are extreme advocates of the ‘end justifies the means” approach. It’s not what I recommend Democrats do, though it would be tempting to beat Republicans at their own game.

So I vote for choice #2. With the Republicans in disarray, there has never been a better time in the last 20 years for Democrats to stand up for what they believe, with the conviction that they can convince voters of their views. It isn’t enough to just state your position. You have to be able to sell it! If they can’t do that, perhaps they should lose.

I’m not suggesting a move to the extreme left. Any extreme position is, by definition, extreme and therefore not mainstream. And it won’t win. But I do mean to stop drifting to the right. I want to see Democrats win elections. Badly. I have had more than enough of the results of a Republican Congress and Administration. And, like the candidate in Primary Colors, I am willing to support some stretching in the name of winning. But not much. More importantly, a good candidate should be a leader. He should inspire voters to follow him, rather than just follow the lead of the voters. Part of the Democrats problem have had in recent years is an almost complete failure to have such candidates. If there was ever a time for them, it’s now.

Iraq videos under fire

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I would think it was political satire if it wasn’t so serious.

An article in today’s New York Times notes that “videos showing insurgent attacks against American troops in Iraq have steadily migrated in recent months to popular Internet video-sharing sites, including YouTube and Google Video.”

It goes on to note: “Their availability has also produced some backlash. In recent weeks, YouTube has removed dozens of the videos from its archives and suspended the accounts of some users who have posted them, a reaction, it said, to complaints from other users.”

There is an implication that at least some of the complaints have a political basis. That is, it is somehow “unpatriotic” to post these videos. More generally, it is certainly true that the Bush Administration has actively sought to prevent Americans from seeing this sort of footage.

As the Times article observes: “At a time when the Bush administration has restricted photographs of the coffins of military personnel returning to the United States and the Pentagon keeps close tabs on videotapes of combat operations taken by the news media, the videos give average Americans a level of access to combat scenes rarely available before, if ever.”

Help me out here. What exactly, in principle, is unpatriotic or immoral or whatever, about showing Americans an accurate portrayal of one aspect of what is going on in Iraq? Yes, it is true that we may disagree with the motives of some of the people making the postings, but that does not change the validity of the videos themselves.

Back in the days of the Vietnam War, scenes of combat were common on the networks’ evening news broadcasts. Historians have cited this as having had a significant effect in mobilizing the anti-war movement at the time. No doubt this is one of the reasons that the Bush administration doesn’t want such video available for the current Iraq war.

However, as many in the news media have claimed, the upcoming midterm elections will be, at least in part, a “referendum on the Iraq war.” If that is so, then shouldn’t the voters have the opportunity to be informed about what is actually taking place in Iraq? How can anyone defend the notion that seeing only the military’s Bush-approved sanitized version of events is giving voters the information they need to make an informed decision?

A spokesperson for YouTube defended the site’s removal of many of these videos, by claiming that they “display graphic depictions of violence…displayed with intent to shock or disgust…or with implied death.”

Let’s at least consider the possibility that what is taking place in Iraq is, in fact, shocking and disgusting. Certainly, there is “death;” that’s what war is about. To me, that argues for why such videos should be seen; not why they should be censored. Being shocked by the truth is one way that an electorate becomes informed.

One final note: The headline of the article in the print edition of the Times is “Now on YouTube: Iraq Videos of U.S. Troops Under Attack.” The headline on the Web site is “Anti-U.S. Attack Videos Spread on the Internet.” Huh? The Web site headline could easily be mis(?)-interpreted to imply that the videos themselves are anti-U.S. (i.e., unpatriotic) as opposed to meaning that the videos show U.S. troops under attack. I hope this was not deliberate.

Here Bush goes again

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As noted in this CNN.com article, President Bush is quoted as saying: “If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party, it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is, wait until we’re attacked again.”

This is just more of the same fear-mongering, logic-defying, overly divisive language that the Bush administration has been pushing for years. The only sad surprise would be if it is still effective in winning votes.

Here’s why Bush’s quote is so worthy of ridicule:

What Bush is saying is no different than if he said: “The best way for police to protect us from criminals is to arrest them and put them in jail, without a trial and without any means of protesting their incarceration — even before they commit a crime. Democrats want us to wait until they actually do commit a crime. But by then it’s too late!”

Is there any reasonable person who would agree with this idea? I mean other than most of the Republicans in Congress and the Bush administration. I certainly hope not. Doing so would violate just about every civil right and due process we have in place in this country. Not to mention, that there is no guarantee that we would not mistakenly imprison innocent people. Heck, we have routinely executed innocent people, even after they get a trial — as DNA testing has now proven. We certainly can’t assume we would never make a mistake about merely putting someone in jail.

Finally, just because the police don’t arrest people whose only crime is that they may be thinking about committing a crime (which, by the way, was the subject of the movie Minority Report, where the idea didn’t work out so well!), doesn’t mean the police sit on their butts and do nothing until a crime is reported. Ideally, they are working night and day to prevent crimes.

In the same way, the Democrats are not suggesting that we do nothing to prevent future attacks — just because they don’t agree with the excesses put forward by the Bush administration. Not even close. Democrats are just suggesting that there needs to be some limit as to how far we can go in this regard. Otherwise, who knows, we may someday start a war based on a completely false assumption, such as the presumed existence of weapons of mass destruction. Let’s all hope that day never comes.

Atheism books pick up the gauntlet

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In my prior posting, I gave my initial reaction to the publication of several new books on atheism, especially A Letter to a Christian Nation (by Sam Harris) and The God Delusion (by Richard Dawkins).

Interested in the reactions of others to these books, I read numerous online reviews. I was pleased to see that most have been quite positive. Still, even in many otherwise glowing reviews, a few common criticisms emerged. And while I certainly admit that there is room for criticisms (I even have a few myself), there are three related points that kept getting raised that I believe are largely irrelevant. Here’s why:

The book is preaching to the converted. That is, any theist that might benefit from a thoughtful reading of the book will either never pick it up or dismiss it out of hand shortly after beginning it.

To this criticism, I bluntly say: So what?

First of all, I largely agree with this criticism. It is almost certainly true for Dawkins’ book. Dawkins writes “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.” I have a similar hope for his superb book, as the arguments in it are so compelling as to seem nearly impossible to refute. But still, I can hardly imagine Dawkins’ wish getting granted. Dawkins does not help this cause by his consistently disparaging tone towards believers and their religious beliefs (such as his comment about the debate between monotheism and polytheism: “Life is too short to bother with the distinction between one figment of the imagination and many”).

However, this criticism implies that there is some hypothetical book that could have been written that would somehow surmount this difficulty and convince a large segment of theists to change their world view. I seriously doubt that. Arguments against a belief in God have been out there for hundreds of years with little effect overall. As I pointed out in my previous posting, religious belief systems are designed specifically to prevent their rejection by believers. Some people may manage to overcome this, but it won’t be easy.

If there is any hope for a shift here, it will be a generational one, heralded by a change in how our children are taught. Now that I think of it, perhaps that is why fundamentalists are so strongly against the teaching of evolution in our schools. And this is almost certainly the basis for what is depicted in the new film Jesus Camp. But I digress.

Making matters worse, this hardly seems like the right moment in history to expect any sort of major change to occur in the country’s attitude towards atheism. Here in the U.S., we live in a time when religion, especially fundamentalist religion, has greater influence on our political landscape that ever before.

As an analogy, I think back to the months before we invaded Iraq. I was among the very tiny minority that was speaking out against the idea of a “preemptive war,” attending rallies and writing letters to the editor protesting the impending war. However, I believe that there was nothing that I nor anyone else could have written at the time that would have had a significant effect. The aftermath of 9/11 was still too close, the Bush administration was too willing to present faulty intelligence as fact and to raise of the specter of nightmare nuclear scenarios, and the press was too busy searching for its missing spine.

Still, you have to start somewhere. Even if you know your voice will hardly be heard at first, you have to hope that if you speak the truth long enough, hard enough, and convincingly enough that eventually, the tenure of the times will change, and your voice will fall on more receptive ears. That has finally happened with the war in Iraq. Hopefully, it will someday lead to widespread support for atheism.

Finally, even if a book could be written that would satisfy the cited criticism, it doesn’t mean that Dawkins should have written it. That would be like saying that Michael Moore should make movies that get his point across but in a way that doesn’t annoy conservatives. Yes, it would be great if someone made such a movie. But there is room for and value in Michael Moore’s approach as well as others.

The book is a polemic. It is critical to the point of being nasty and insulting. This is not the way to win converts. You don’t change the mind of someone who disagrees with you by insulting them.

This is almost a corollary of the first criticism. So perhaps all I need say here is re-read what I just wrote. But let me go a bit further.

There is certainly substance to this criticism. Even a title such as “The God Delusion” starts off on a combative note. But, as Dawkins and Harris both point out, religion has gotten off too easy here for far too long. The level of “respect” expected when discussing religious beliefs, no matter how bizarre they may be, far exceeds what would be expected in any other area of discourse. Perhaps it is time to loosen this restraint.

If nothing else, the result of the approach of these books is to bring attention to themselves and the questions they raise. I doubt whether this would have happened with a more “polite” book.

The book isn’t really saying anything new or original.

Again, rather than debate whether this criticism is true or not, I once again reply: Even if it is true, so what?

It’s not as if every one in the country has been repeatedly exposed to these arguments. It’s not as if these ideas have been thoroughly debunked and proven to be false. Quite the contrary.

So, if someone can take worthwhile concepts, even if the someone is not the originator of the concepts, and present them in a new and thought-provoking way, in a way that can be more easily understood by a general audience, in a format that is more easily accessible than obscure journal articles, in a manner that garners national attention, starts a discussion as to the merits of these ideas, and perhaps ever so slowly changes the opinions of at least a few people, then I say: “Fantastic.”

To take another example, how many years after the Civil War was it necessary to argue that African Americans were not getting the civil rights they deserved? How many times was it important to say the same things over and over again? What would have happened to the civil rights movement if, back in the 1950’s, the country said, “We’ve heard all this before” and protesters replied, “Oh, okay, sorry about that” and went away? For one thing, I doubt we would have seen the successes that occurred in the 1960’s.

The modern defense of atheism is only in its earliest stages. If it takes repetition to make a dent in the public’s awareness, then so be it. If it will still take many years before the repetition has an effect, so be it. We are in this for the long haul. As the saying goes, all journeys begin with the first step.