By protecting the lawbreaking license for other powerful individuals, [the political and media classes] strengthen a custom of which they might avail themselves if they too break the law and get caught. It is a class-based, self-interested advocacy. That is why belief in this prerogative and the devotion to protecting it transcend political ideology, partisan affiliation, the supposed wall between political and media figures, and every other pretense of division within elite classes. — Glenn Greenwald, With Liberty and Justice For Some
In this week’s sift:
A perfect tragedy should … not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity: for this moves neither pity nor fear; it merely shocks us. … Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the character between these two extremes — that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.
— Aristotle, Poetics
In this week’s sift:
- The Tragedy of Mitt Romney. There was a good case to be made for electing Mitt Romney president, until he started running. Now he wants to be president so badly that he’ll say anything, even it means turning his back on his own greatest accomplishments. That’s a tragic flaw of Shakespearian proportions.
- Jim Crow Returns. When did use of the term voter fraud start to ramp up? In 1965, precisely when the Voting Rights Act banned the previous ways of disenfranchising minorities. Now Texas is trying to get the VRA declared unconstitutional.
- Walking Back Mr. Daisey and other short notes. This American Life did a whole episode on how it was conned by Mike Daisey. (I linked the original episode, so I’d better tell you about this one too.) It’s an interesting lesson in truth and journalism. Oklahoma doctors can lie to prevent an abortion. Pat Robertson is anti-family. Baseless rumors about ObamaCare. Did Goldman Sachs have a moral compass to lose? Public vs. private morality. A skypunch. And more.
- Book recommendation of the week: Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham. Not the similarly-named book from the Hunger Games series, but a fascinating work of speculative anthropology. It turns out that with our current biology, humans can’t survive in the wild without cooking. So humans could not have discovered cooking. Some apes must have discovered it, and then evolved into humans.
- Last weeks’ most popular post. Where Are We on Citizens United? got 135 views. The most-clicked link was 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying.
- This week’s challenge. Good challenges are hard to come up with. Help me out. Suggest some in the comments.
[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.
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr (1787)
In this week’s sift:
- The Republic of Babel. Tyranny can manage with a simple vocabulary of commands, but democracy can’t do its business without a rich discussion-language of shared concepts and frames and taken-for-granted assumptions. That’s what the culture wars are really about: Will American democracy conduct its business in a secular language or in terms defined by Evangelical Christianity?
- Rush’s Apology and other short notes. Conservatives admit that “slut” is unacceptable language, but they ignore the underlying content, which consists of vicious lies. If JFK nauseates Rick Santorum, it’s because Rick can’t tell the difference between institutions and people. Parents homeschool for a lot of reasons. What everybody should know about the price of gas. An economist denounces the global-warming deniers who quoted him. Young people aren’t buying houses. Where the deficit doesn’t come from. And Eliza Doolittle’s Dad was wrong about morals.
- Book recommendation of the week: Speaking of JFK, Stephen King’s new 11/22/63 is a great read. It doesn’t fit into any standard category. It’s sort of SciFi, sort of romantic, sort of historical, not at all creepy, and very character-driven. The past really is a foreign country, especially Dallas.
- Last [two] weeks’ most popular post. Republicans Have Gone Crazy Before got 372 views. The most-clicked link was the Wallace Shawn interview on Chris Hayes’ Up. It seemed strangely meaningful to me that Shawn (who played the hyper-capitalist Ferengi Grand Nagus on Deep Space Nine) calls himself a socialist.
- This week’s challenge. Usually, I think the best way to deal with Rush Limbaugh is to ignore him, because he feeds off outrage. But I’m thinking this might be his Don Imus moment. (Check this out.) Sign the petition urging his advertisers to drop him.
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:
The state is committed to the strictest neutrality as far as religious associations are concerned. This must not, however, be considered as a right of the churches as such. It is, rather, the fulfillment of the rights of the individuals composing the church. … In any other sense than this, it is absurd to talk about the rights of an association.
— Joseph L. Blau, Cornerstones of Religious Freedom in America (1949)
In this week’s sift:
- What Abortion Means to Me. When you’re a married man, so-called “women’s issues” become your issues too.
- Religious Corporate Personhood. The institutional-religious-liberty principle Catholic bishops are claiming is foreign to the American legal tradition, and would have appalled the authors of the First Amendment.
- Prop 8 is Still Irrational. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is the latest court to apply the rational-basis test to banning same-sex marriage. It failed again.
- Book recommendation of the week: The Myth of Choice by Kent Greenfield. What if we’re neither fully autonomous individuals nor automata controlled by our environment?
- Culture Wars Rise With the Economy and other short notes. If the economy is getting better, Republicans will have to run on social issues. Purple squirrels. Nancy Pelosi tries to “Stop Colbert”. A new push on global-warming denial. Obama and the marshmallow cannon. And the cutest thing I saw this week: video of a wolf pup and a bear cub.
- Last week’s most popular post. Five Takeaways from the Komen Fiasco got 885 views, the most by any Sift article in several months.
- This week’s challenge. Usually I focus this feature on the outside world, but this week I’d like you to help me popularize the Weekly Sift. The Sift doesn’t have an advertising budget (or a revenue stream), so its readership grows only if people like you spread the word. If you think this blog’s point-of-view deserves more attention, help it get some: Tell a friend, forward it, recommend it on Reddit or StumbleUpon, blog about it, share a post on Facebook, tweet a link.
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.
We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.
— unnamed Apple executive
I’ll bet that guy … does strongly believe that Uncle Sam has an obligation to stop foreign pirating of Apple’s intellectual property and to maintain the deployments of the U.S. Seventh Fleet and of the 100,000 U.S. troops in the Asia-Pacific region that make it safe for Apple to use [long] supply chains.
— Clyde Prestowitz
In this week’s sift:
- Where the Jobs Are and Why. Suddenly in the last two weeks, we’ve seen an amazing run of articles about manufacturing, sparking lots of insightful commentary. Fulfilling the President’s pledge to bring manufacturing jobs home will be even more complicated than it looks.
- Barack X, the Fictional President. Bill Mahr, Jay Rosen, and the New Yorker explain what Obama is up against, and the challenge Mitt Romney has so far dodged.
- The Return of Death Panels and other Short Notes. No, the ACA doesn’t say old people can’t have brain surgery. Poor English boots a candidate off an Arizona ballot. Do Newt’s infidelities predict a strong presidency? The world’s cutest car. What’s wrong with corporate raiding? Occupy didn’t invent the 1%. Dead people didn’t vote in SC. And Elizabeth Warren explains what’s wrong with Mitt’s taxes.
- Last week’s most popular post. Property vs. Freedom had 245 views. The most-clicked link was to Democracy Now’s episode on the McDonalds’ coffee case.
- This week’s challenge. If I’m feeling too challenged to think of a challenge, maybe we all could use a week off.
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:
The sequel to Escalating Bad Faith got crowded out again.
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
— Martin Luther King
In this week’s sift:
- Four Fantasy Issues of the Right. It’s hard to have the political debate our country really needs, when so much of what we end up talking about is baseless: creeping Sharia, things Obama never said, voter fraud, and lies about Obama’s birth, religion, or political philosophy.
- What is Job Creation? What keeps our businesses from hiring isn’t lack of capital, it’s lack of customers.
- Truth Vigilantes and other short notes. The Times gets an earful from its readers. Defending corpse desecration doesn’t support our troops. What if Tebow were Muslim? Colbert’s Super-PAC demonstrates the absurdity of our campaign-finance system. The Republican establishment shuts down criticism of Romney. The charming geekiness of Vi Hart. And more.
- Last week’s most popular post. The Four Flavors of Republican got 441 views on this blog, and was also popular on Daily Kos. The most-clicked link was Explaining Socialism to a Republican.
- This week’s challenge. Friday is the anniversary of the Citizens United decision that expanded the corporate personhood doctrine and let corporate money flood into our elections. Occupy the Courts is organizing a national day of protest at federal court buildings around the country.
The sequel to last week’s Escalating Bad Faith is delayed to next week.
The Weekly Sift 
