The Weekly Sift

[T]he accumulation therefore of Property … and its Security to Individuals in every Society, must be an Effect of the Protection afforded to it by the joint Strength of the Society, in the Execution of its Laws. Private Property therefore is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing; its Contributions therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered as conferring a Benefit on the Publick, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honour and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or the Payment of a just Debt.

— Benjamin Franklin,
“Queries and Remarks respecting Alterations in the Constitution of Pennsylvania” (1789)

In this week’s sift:

• Where are we on Citizens United? Financing campaigns with unlimited corporate money has never been popular, and the battle for the Republican nomination shows why. Legislation, constitutional amendments, new court cases — is anything going to fix this?
• Answering the rhetoric of the rich and other short notes. Cracked magazine is a surprising source of common sense. Limbaugh follow-up. Abused workers pack the products you order online. Are women really people? A judge blocks Wisconsin’s voter-ID law. An orbital view of the Nile at night. Turning greenhouse gases to stone. Why I like Cenk Uygur. And lots, lots more.
• Book recommendation of the week. I got the Ben Franklin quote above from Common as Air by Lewis Hyde. The history and philosophy of intellectual property in America is more complicated than the entertainment industry would have you believe. The subject launches Hyde into a re-examination of property in general, an issue that’s been on my mind for a while.
• Last week’s most popular post. The Sift had a slow week. Rush’s Apology and other short notes got 167 views, the first time a short notes post has been the most popular. (Something like 200-300 people get the Sift in ways that don’t show up in those stats.) I know I’m prejudiced, but I think The Republic of Babel deserved more attention than it got.
• This week’s challenge. I’ve been trying to think of a way for feminism to go on offense, rather than just try to mitigate all the horrible proposals that are out there and respond to clowns like Rush Limbaugh. If women’s-rights issues that seemed settled are debatable again, doesn’t that demonstrate the need to have an Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution? The 27th Amendment got ratified 203 years after it passed Congress. So why not try to get those last three states the ERA needs? Check out what the National Organization for Women is trying to do.

No Sift next week. Back on March 5.

Much of the current conservative movement is characterized by this sort of historical amnesia and symbolic parricide, which seeks to undo key aspects of the Republican legacy such as Reagan’s elimination of corporate tax loopholes, Nixon’s environmental and labor safety programs, and a variety of GOP achievements in civil rights, civil liberties, and good-government reforms. In the long view of history, it is really today’s conservatives who are “Republicans in name only.”

— Geoffrey Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin (2012)

In this week’s sift:

• Republicans Have Gone Crazy Before. The new book Rule and Ruin reminds us just how wacked out Republicans were in 1964. But by 1970 the party was mostly sane. Could it happen again?
• When the Priests’ Scandal Becomes Relevant. I usually cringe when someone responds to the Catholic bishops’ attacks on reproductive rights or the Affordable Care Act by  bringing up the pedophile-priest scandal, because it’s almost always a cheap shot. But when priests strike heroic poses in the imaginary War on Religion, it reminds me how little courage they showed when faced with a real moral challenge.
• Santorum’s Education Commissars and other short notes. Rick Santorum expresses his small-government philosophy by calling for the feds to impose political “balance” on college faculties. The Grand Nagus is a socialist. Citizens United is coming back to haunt the Supreme Court. Why aren’t young couples marrying? The government subsidizes Big Macs over salads. Same-sex marriage hits a tipping point. And hats off to John Fairfax, whose obituary is much more interesting than mine will ever be.
• Book recommendation of the week: Rule and Ruin by Geoffrey Kabaservice. Not only does it provide this week’s quote, it figures prominently in “Republicans Have Gone Crazy Before”.
• Last week’s most popular post. What Abortion Means to Me got 488 views. Religious Corporate Personhood also did well, with 277. The most-clicked link was the cartoon Religious Exemptions for Piety and Profit, followed by the Squirrel is Purple. (Follow-up: Purple Squirrel in Pennsylvania Provokes a Host of Theories.)
• This week’s challenge. The billionaire Koch brothers are spending millions to keep Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in office and to defeat President Obama. If you’d like to throw the stubborn ounces of your weight onto the other side of the scale, you can support the Walker recall or the Obama campaign.

I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

— George Carlin

In this week’s sift:

• Five Take-Aways from the Komen Fiasco. This last week has been a minefield of rumor and misdirection. I try to sort it out and see what there is to learn.
• Scary Guys Named Saul and other short notes. Why Gingrich doesn’t care who the real Saul Alinsky was. Mitt’s gaffes are bad, just not as bad as they sound. Fox can’t win against the Muppets. Should unresponsive adolescents be euthanized? And the Republican presidential candidates take a 3-hour cruise.
• Last week’s most popular post. Where the Jobs Are and Why had had 190 views.
• Book recommendation of the week: Flunking Sainthood by Jana Reiss. Reiss tries to master one new spiritual discipline a month for a year — and fails completely. But the result is a fascinating meditation on everyday life and what we want out of spirituality.
• This week’s challenge. Go over to the web site of Planned Parenthood, which does a lot of work no one else is doing. Whether you feel like doing anything after you get there is up to you.

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”

– Rousseau, On the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men

While property in some form is possible without liberty, the contrary is inconceivable. 

—  Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom

In this week’s sift:

• Property vs. Freedom. You won’t often hear the debate over SOPA/PIPA phrased that way, because Property is supposed to be Freedom’s inseparable partner. But they actually have a fairly contentious relationship.
• The Frontrunner Turns Into a Newt and other horserace notes. A wild week of Republican politics tempts me into covering the horserace instead of the issues.
• We Need More Bureaucrats and other short notes. IRS budget cuts increased the deficit and hurt customer service. One million signatures to recall Walker. Obama wants to see Betty White’s birth certificate. That famous McDonald’s coffee lawsuit might not be what you think. And more.
• Last week’s most popular post. Four Fantasy Issues of the Right got 167 views. Under the radar, Why I’m Not a Libertarian continues to rack up about 80-90 views a week, and is over 20,000 now. The most-clicked link was What If Tim Tebow Were Muslim?.
• This week’s challenge. Don’t let the media filter tomorrow’s State of the Union address for you. Watch it yourself before anybody tells you what’s in it.

The sequel to Escalating Bad Faith got crowded out again.

When we talk about the process, then, we are talking, increasingly,
not about “the democratic process,”
or the general mechanism affording the citizens of a state a voice in its affairs,
but the reverse: a mechanism seen as so specialized
that access to it is correctly limited to its own professionals,
to those who manage policy and those who report on it,
to those who run the polls and those who quote them,
to those who ask and those who answer the questions on the Sunday shows,
to the media consultants, to the columnists, to the issues advisers,
to those who give the off-the-record breakfasts and to those who attend them;
to that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out,
the narrative of public life.

– Joan Didion, “Insider Baseball” (1988)

In this week’s sift:

• Escalating Bad Faith, Part I: Recess Appointments. The controversy over President Obama’s recent recess appointments sounds boring and technical, but it’s a symptom of a cancer in our democracy that has been growing for decades.
• The Four Flavors of Republican. How NeoCons, Corporatists, Theocrats, and Libertarians co-operate and conflict.
• My Boring Primary Season and other short notes. Ah, for the halcyon days of 2007, when presidential candidates by the dozen vied for my attention all summer. Mitt as “locust capitalist”. Why “equality of opportunity” is a risky meme for conservatives. The real lesson of Kim Jong Il. Santorum’s Grampa was “free” to owe his soul to the company store. Montana’s Supreme Court rejects corporate personhood. And more.
• Last week’s most popular post wasn’t that popular: Under-reported Stories of 2011 got 143 views. The most-clicked link was the Salon Hack List.
• This week’s challenge: If you don’t already know, find out who the likely congressional candidates are in your district, and whether you have a senatorial election this year.