Kemstone's Journal

Listening to these Republican candidates talk about Obama, I often wish we actually had the kind of president they’re attacking. The paint him as some kind of progressive lion, zealously going after the super-rich on behalf of the working class, steadfastly holding to an ideology of civil liberties even if it compromises America’s safety, and systematically dismantling our empire abroad, all the while apologizing to the world for our previous transgressions. I don’t know who this person is that they keep railing against, but it’s not the Obama I know.

The fact is that the Republicans are banking on the majority of their base having a completely distorted view of the president thanks to conservative news sources like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc. These media outlets have made a calculated decision to create their own narrative about who Obama is and what he wants to do, to emphasize every tiny little thing that supports that narrative and de-emphasize, ignore, or even outright lie about anything that doesn’t.

The Obama you see on Fox News is not a real person but actually a fictional character based on the stereotype of liberals that conservatives have in their minds. He wants to raise taxes, impose strict regulations on business, cut defense, eliminate gun rights, encourage more abortions and gay marriages, read terrorists their rights, and purge all religion from the public sphere. When the Republican presidential candidates talk to their debate audiences and the crowds at their campaign rallies about Obama, they’re talking about this guy, a radically liberal president who—unfortunately for them—doesn’t actually exist.

The real Obama hasn’t raised taxes. He’s far too timid to take the political risk. He’s cut taxes across the board and agreed to extend the Bush tax-cuts for two years. He says he’ll fight to let them expire next time, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

As for the idea that he’s imposing crippling regulations on businesses, that is simply absurd. Barack Obama is the Goldman Sachs president. His entire financial team and his last two chiefs of staff have been Wall Street insiders, and according to internal memos it would appear that they dictate his every move in that area. The “historic financial reform” legislation that passed last year is widely acknowledged by bankers to be a complete joke. Not one of the people who caused the financial crisis of 2008 has been prosecuted for committing fraud, and Wall Street continues to thrive thanks to taxpayer bailouts (which Obama supported) while the rest of the country struggles.

I hear over and over again that Obama has drastically cut defense spending. Simply not true. Defense spending has increased every year since Obama took office, it’s just that the rate of increase has gone slightly down thanks to the cutting of a few strategically unnecessary projects like stealth-fighters designed to fight the Cold War. Some might say that it’s merely stretching the truth to refer to a slower rate of increase as a “cut”, but I call it lying.

And as for the whole general idea that Obama is weak on defense, consider his doubling-down in Afghanistan and the recent foray into Libya. He withdrew troops from Iraq but only because he was forced to under a treaty signed by the Bush administration which he tried and failed to renegotiate.

On gun rights, Obama has not lifted a finger to do anything about it, other than quietly write an op-ed on the issue after the Gabby Giffords shooting, in which he did not endorse a single reform that didn’t enjoy at least a 60% approval in polls. And afterwards he did absolutely nothing to attempt to initiate those reforms.

On social issues, one can point to the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and pretend that Obama is the “fierce advocate” of gay rights that he claimed to be, but he dragged his feet on that issue for quite some time and he still refuses to publicly come out in support of gay marriage. And on abortion, what has Obama done? Nothing. He won’t even touch that issue with a ten-foot pole, so afraid is he of the potential criticism. But he will make it harder for young women to obtain birth control.

When it comes to the idea that Obama would rather read terrorists their rights than keep America safe, this is where the distance between the real Obama and the fictional Obama is at its widest. Not only has Obama continued the civil liberties abuses that began under the Bush administration, but he’s actually expanded them, to the point where now it’s written into the law that the president has the power to throw American citizens into prison without a trial purely on suspicion of ties to terrorism. He appeared to make a genuine effort to close down Guantanamo as soon as he took office, but when that failed he never brought the issue up again, and the prison remains open and could conceivably remain so for generations. He doesn’t do waterboarding anymore but he hasn’t prosecuted anyone responsible for that war crime, all the while bringing the hammer down on whistleblowers like Bradley Manning who dared to make the abuses of our military public. Finally, if you really want to know whether or not Obama is soft on terror, you can ask Osama bin Laden.

And lastly, there’s the matter of religion. Newt Gingrich told a crowd of supporters that as soon as he takes office, he’ll repeal every single anti-religious act passed by the Obama administration. That shouldn’t take long, as no such acts have been passed by the real Obama. The fictional Obama is the one carrying out this “war on religion” we keep hearing about. After all, that guy is secretly Muslim and born in Kenya, and obviously on a crusade to undermine America’s Christian moral foundation.

Running against a fictional character may work for the Republican candidates in the primary, but it’s going to blow up in their faces if they try that in the general election, which is exactly what Obama is counting on. If Mitt Romney accuses Obama in a debate of raising taxes, Obama will be poised and ready with the facts to prove that he has not. The same goes for the accusation that he’s cut defense, gone after gun rights, and so on. The major political advantage Obama has garnered for himself by going against his liberal base time and again on nearly every single issue is that the Republicans can’t make a fact-based attack on him for doing any of the things that liberal presidents are normally criticized for doing. The best they can do is say that he talked about doing such things in the 2008 campaign.

If they’re forced to run against the real Obama, there are plenty of things to criticize him for, but they are guilty of those same things themselves. Romney could expose every last way in which Obama has been a puppet of Wall Street, but he knows quite well that he’s running to be the next puppet of the very same interests.

But the truly funny thing is that aside from his ties to the financial industry, most conservatives would like the real Obama if they knew who he was. If you just changed the D in front of his name to an R and read off a list of the actions he’s taken since his term began, they’d understand him to be a moderate who is slightly left-of-center on some issues but right-of-center on most.

The real Obama governs like a moderate Republican of former days, before the party drifted off to its right-wing fringe. The real Obama would win a national election against any of these clowns the Republicans have put forward in this primary, and they know it. That’s why they have no choice but to run against a fictional character instead, and it’s why they’re going to lose the general election when the curtain is pulled back and independent voters get a good look at who Obama actually is.

You never know when life will suddenly land you right in the middle of a semi-historic event, but when it does it helps to be equipped with a camera and your own blog.

I haven’t had much time to write lately as I just recently returned from Germany after teaching English there for three years, and I’m currently back in the USA for about a month before starting work in Japan. During that time I’ll be criss-crossing the country and visiting every old friend and family member who might want to see me. One of those visits took place this past Saturday evening, and it led to something completely unexpected.

I have an aunt and uncle with three kids who live on Long Island in Glen Cove, NY, and I went there Saturday expecting merely an afternoon and evening of chatting with the parents and playing with the kids. During an epic 5-hour session in their swimming pool (the heat was still pretty unbearable on Saturday) my aunt got a phone call from one of her friends from their church. Apparently, two fellow church members—a gay couple by the names of Gaitley and Jim—were having a small ceremony at the town hall at midnight just as the new gay marriage legislation was going into effect in order to be among the first gay couples in the state of New York to have their marriage officially recognized.

My aunt asked me if I wouldn’t mind going, and of course I said “of course!” Just a few weeks ago I’d been cheering the state legislature’s decision from across the ocean in Germany, and now I had an opportunity to be right at the epicenter of the historic occasion. I wouldn’t pass up such an opportunity for the world.

So at 11:15 I went with my aunt, uncle, and two of their kids (the third will, I expect, eventually regret his decision not to go) to Glen Cove’s town hall and were greeted at the back entrance by the mayor himself, Ralph Suozzi, and his wife. The front door was closed and locked, and there were no formal announcements made regarding the ceremony. They wanted to be extra cautious in case there were any nuts out there who might be inclined to make some kind of bloody political statement.

It was a relatively small gathering, about 30 people altogether, and the first thing the happy couple did was get everyone in attendance together for a few photographs downstairs. The actual ceremony would take place upstairs where the clerk could print out the marriage license and have them sign it, but this wouldn’t be able to happen until 12:01.

It was hot and crowded upstairs, but the anticipation of the moment to come was enough to keep the attendees from complaining. Someone had brought a case of bottled water to hand out to anyone who wanted one, which was a nice gesture.

Because of the timing issue, they had to separate the ceremony into two parts. At about quarter to eleven, Mayor Suozzi started things off by saying a few words to the effect that this was one of the proudest moments of his political career and he didn’t care if it lost him a few votes in the next election. I think it’ll actually help him, as just about every gay person and supporter of gay rights in Glen Cove will now be much more likely to show up to the polls than they might have been before—a political calculation I think it would be wise of the current President of the United States to make as well.

After the “I do”s, they paused to let the remaining time before midnight pass, and that’s when Gaitley addressed the crowd to make his emotional speech about what this meant to him. He said that while they’d actually been “married” twice before (once as an unofficial ceremony and once in a different state where gay marriage was legal) this meant the most to him because now his partnership with Jim would be officially recognized by his home state as 100% equal to the marriages that all other couples enjoy. He compared the feeling of being in a gay relationship to being a Jew during Christmas, watching everyone else enjoying the whole Santa Claus thing but knowing that it wasn’t for you. He said, “But today it feels like not only is it Christmas but Santa is real and he’s coming!”

The crowd was mostly made up of middle-aged and older people, not exactly the stereotypical image of gay rights enthusiasts, but they were all visibly happy for their friends, applauding frequently throughout Gaitley’s speech.

Gaitley remarked on how he’d never expected this to happen in his lifetime, but here they were. Jim was a lot more shy than his partner, first declining to say anything but then remarking on how happy he was to have found such a wonderful circle of friends in Glen Cove. One thing that was apparent to everyone was just how overjoyed the two of them were. Gaitley was positively beaming.

At midnight, the clerk printed out the marriage license and the two of them got to filling out the paperwork. The number on their marriage license was 10, so it appeared that 9 other couples in New York had beaten them to the punch, but it was still cool enough to witness the 10^th gay marriage in the history of the state of New York, as that number will probably balloon to tens of thousands very shortly.

Once everything was signed and notarized, Mayor Suozzi stepped up to complete the ceremony. The rings were exchanged and the pronouncement was made: “By the power vested in me by the state of New York, I now pronounce you married!”

Big kiss, thunderous applause, champagne corks popping…just like any other wedding only with one additional element: this was not only a marriage but also a victory. This was the culmination of decades upon decades of fighting relentlessly in pursuit of equality on the part of the gay community, and in New York state they’ve now triumphed. It should only be a matter of time before the rest of the country follows suit.

Two nights later I was visiting another set of relatives whom I don’t want to besmirch by identifying in any way, but suffice it to say they’re from an older generation and spend a good deal of time watching Fox News. I had to hear their reaction when I mentioned that I’d been to a gay wedding, and it was a combination of amusement and mild disdain.

We launched into the standard arguments for and against gay marriage, and I poked holes in every case they laid out. “The purpose of marriage is for procreation,” they said. “Then what about a barren woman? Should the state ban her from getting married? What about a very old couple that can no longer produce children? No marriage for them either?”

“If gays can get married, what’s to stop a man from marrying a cow?” My reply: “There’s no slippery-slope argument. As long as there’s consent from both parties, the marriage should be legal. Cows, children, and inanimate objects can’t consent, so the slope ends at gay couples (and possibly polygamy, which I also don’t have a problem with)”.

Of course it all boils down to religion. “The Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman.” “Or a man and many women,” I said, “the Bible says that too.” “The Bible says homosexuality is an abomination.” My reply: “If God hates gay people, why did he create so many of them? Either he made a mistake or he meant to create them.” They insisted that God doesn’t make mistakes, so I insisted it had to be part of his intention. Their only response was that it might be some kind of test. I decided not to say that if God intends to test people by making them fall in love with members of the same sex and then demanding that they never act on this love, he’s a cruel sort of God indeed.

Love, after all, is really what it’s really all about. I wished my relatives could have been at this ceremony, as the love between Gaitley and Jim was powerful, their joy at having this love now deemed equal to the love of everyone else was palpable. I don’t think anyone could have been at this ceremony and not seen it as a good thing.

“They just want to be treated like everybody else,” I said. In unison they replied, “They’re not like everybody else!” Resisting my urge to start singing my favorite Kinks song, I summed up their feelings by saying, “So you believe that your heterosexual love should be legally superior to their homosexual love?” They said yes.

And that’s really all there is to it. People who are opposed to gay marriage don’t necessarily hate gay people—they just see them as inferior, and don’t believe their love is as valuable as the love between a man and a woman.

The solution is clear, and luckily the gay community has already been carrying it out with great success for some time now: come out. Come out of the closet and let everyone see your love, let them see how happy it makes you and how the only difference between it and the love they feel is that it’s directed at someone who happens to share the same anatomy.

If everyone in the country could attend a gay wedding and experience that kind of joy first-hand, there’s no doubt in my mind that gay marriage would be legal nationwide within a couple of years. Here’s hoping it will be anyway.

According to televangelist and radio-host Harold Camping, the rapture will take place tomorrow, the 21^st of May 2011 at 6 p.m. Eastern time. I may be a stubbornly skeptical secular humanist, but I really hope he’s right.

If all of the fundamentalist Christians are suddenly whisked away to Heaven tomorrow, that’ll free up the rest of us to finally get serious about some things we really need to get serious about but which the religious right has been obstructing us from tackling for a long time. Granted only the true believers will be raptured up—so all of the congressional Republicans will still be around—but a great deal of their constituents will be gone. They’ll have to face reality and stop legislating Christian morality, as not only would it be politically pointless to pander to a group no longer dwelling on Earth but the Salvation Game will be over and the chance to earn brownie-points with The Man Upstairs will have officially passed.

So we can stop with all the silly anti-abortion legislation and get to work on protecting the environment. Assuming Armageddon doesn’t follow shortly thereafter, those of us remaining on Planet Earth will now know with certainty that this planet is all we’ve got so we’d better take care of it. And if Armageddon is coming, I can just imagine all those children born due to abortion-restrictions looking at the legislators who passed them and saying, “Gee, thanks a lot.”

One can assume that if the rapture does take place it will only have a really strong impact in the United States, as the Far East and Muslim World don’t have quite as many devout Christians in key positions within their societies. A few Europeans may vanish too, but only a very small amount because while Europeans may hold steadfast to their Christian traditions—including baptism, confirmation, and closing everything down on Sundays—most of them don’t really take that stuff seriously.

I would like to see what happens in Uganda, where a strong faction within the government (prompted by American religious conservatives, of course) has been pushing to enact legislation that would make homosexuality punishable by death. If the rapture happens they’ll have to acknowledge that it really doesn’t matter anymore—the doors to Heaven will be closed and the straight people left behind will be just as damned as the gays.

We might as well let them get married—if it weren’t for the fact that Holy Matrimony will no longer have any meaning either.

The best result of the rapture will undoubtedly be peace in the Middle East. Once God lets the cat out of the bag that he actually does exist and that the Christians had it right all along, there will no longer be much reason for the Muslims to fight the Jews, will there? They can at long last sit down together, have a few beers, grill up a few pork sausages, and laugh about all those silly rules they’ve spent their whole lives following.

But I must confess that what I’m most looking forward to are the post-rapture interviews with all the high-profile Christians who didn’t make the list. I can’t wait to see Pat Robertson try to explain his continuing presence on this plane of existence. He’ll probably try to chalk it up to the fact that he didn’t hate the gays enough.

Of course no post-rapture interview will be quite as deliciously ironic as those given by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, authors of the Left Behind series.

But when I come to think of it, I don’t think there are any high-profile Christians who are holy enough to make the cut. In all likelihood, if God were to carry out the rapture tomorrow there will just be a few scattered disappearances of old ladies throughout the Midwest, nobody really noticing except for their astonished families.

Armageddon will continue as scheduled, brought about purely by humans with no help from God—as was the plan all along.

Let me offer an idea. The next time you’re arguing with a conservative (if you never argue with conservatives, you should try it sometime) call yourself a “small-government progressive” or “small-government liberal” and see how they react.

If you call yourself a liberal or progressive, they’ll just dismiss you and everything you have to say immediately. You’ve labeled yourself as their Political Enemy, and in their mind you couldn’t possibly have any worthwhile insight to offer. When you speak they won’t be carefully considering your arguments—they’ll just be fishing through their memories of recent Fox News segments in search of an applicable talking point to counter with.

Of course there are plenty of rational conservatives who are fully capable of independent thought—I’m referring now only to a certain type of right-wing ideologue who rely on the Rush Limbaughs, Bill O’Reillys, and Glenn Becks of the world to do their thinking for them. If you call yourself a “progressive” they’ll dismiss you, but if you attach the “small-government” caveat, it’ll make them blink. They may be conditioned to hate the word “progressive” but they’re also conditioned to feel warm and fuzzy whenever the word “small” is placed in front of the word “government”.

Suddenly they’re slightly more receptive. “Small-government progressive?” they’ll ask, their curiosity aroused. Now you’ll have a fair chance to explain your positions, as now their minds will be prepared to agree with at least some of what you have to say.

Start with something that you probably already agree on: bank bailouts. You may be a progressive but you don’t think the government should just hand over hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to Wall Street banks that crashed the economy with no strings attached. That’s about as bad as Big Government gets, and you’re just as outraged as the conservatives are. (For those of you who’ve been told by the media that most of this money has been repaid, I’d urge you to take a closer look and read about how these banks have managed to “pay us back” with our own money and still deprive us of $165 billion in interest). If you’re feeling confident, you may even want to drop a subtle reminder that the bailout happened under the Bush administration.

Next you can explain that you don’t think the government needs to spend nearly $700 billion a year on defense, about seven times as much as the country with the next highest military budget, China. About 36% of all our tax money goes to the military (more if you count veteran’s benefits, but we like those), which it uses to fight unnecessary wars or maintain unnecessary military bases all around the world. As small-government progressives, we don’t think we need an Empire. The military should only be used for genuine peace-keeping and humanitarian missions (done with international support and cooperation) and for defending the homeland from actual threats—like if England ever decides it wants its colonies back.

You might even get some agreement there, but now it’s time to start making your conservative friend’s head spin. When you say you want small-government, it means you also want the government out of people’s private lives. That means you oppose South Dakota’s new law forcing women to wait 72 hours for an abortion, Oklahoma’s law forcing women seeking an abortion to listen to a detailed description of the fetus before undergoing the procedure, Arizona’s law paving the way to imprison abortion providers, and all of these draconian measures implemented by Republicans to place the government squarely between women and their doctors—essentially giving the government dominion over women’s own bodies. Ask them how they can call themselves “small-government” conservatives and still support laws like this.

Also ask how they can claim to be in favor of “small government” and support anti gay-rights measures taken by Republicans like Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia who rescinded the right of state workers to be protected from discrimination based on sexual preference. Suddenly what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom is not only the governnment’s business, but they can actually fire you for it. Is that “small government”? How about the countless bills banning gay marriage? Can your conservative friend really call himself a fan of “small government” if he wants the government to tell people who they can and can’t marry?

Or how about marijuana prohibition—laws that tell us what substances we can or can’t put in our own bodies? You might be able to defend these laws on public safety grounds if there weren’t so much evidence that marijuana is safer than alcohol, which remains perfectly legal. In any case, should a “small-government” conservative support measures like that taken by Rick Scott in Florida to force all state employees to undergo frequent drug tests (which I’m sure has nothing to do with his personal financial stake in a drug-testing company)? Apparently the government should be so big that it routinely examines the chemical composition of your own urine.

Perhaps your conservative friend is beginning to realize that he’s not such an advocate for small government after all. To really put him to the test, ask him if he supports the “financial martial law” legislation in Michigan that allows the governor to declare a state of “fiscal emergency” in a town and appoint an unelected manager with the power to break union contracts, dissolve entire municipalities, and nullify boards and councils of elected officials. Had this been proposed by a Democratic governor, wouldn’t he have been up in arms about it? But because it’s a Republican and because it’s being done in the name of “fiscal responsibility” he’s perfectly willing to let Big Government become so big that it can literally override the will of the voting public.

If you’re still having a conversation at this point, there may actually be some room for common ground. Maybe he’s more consistent in his belief in small government than many so-called conservatives today. Can’t you both agree that what’s important is not so much the size of government but its effectiveness? You may call yourself a progressive and he may call himself a conservative, but you can both be in favor of smaller, smarter government.

We progressives don’t want the government to control every aspect of people’s lives—we just want it to exert more control over those aspects of life where some degree of government involvement is essential. Let’s make sure our drinking water is safe, our food isn’t poisoned, our air is clean, our drugs are well-tested, and so on. Let’s make sure there are enough rules and regulations to prevent Wall Street from crashing the economy again. Let’s not hand over $56 billion of taxpayer money in the form of subsidies to oil companies that are already enormously profitable (how is that not Big Government?), but let’s make sure that if we let those companies drill for oil off our shores, they actually have an adequate plan to contain a spill if it occurs.

Progressives don’t want Big Government. We just want a government that does what it’s supposed to do, and if we can resist falling into the black-and-white narrative of Big-Government Liberal vs. Small-Government Conservative that the media traps us in, we might find that we have more in common with our Fox-viewing friends than either we or they would expect.

All you have to do is challenge the framing a little bit to get them to open their minds to a healthy dose of nuance. Progressives aren’t who they think we are, and many of them are not as closed-minded as we might think they are. In any case, middle-class conservatives and middle-class progressives definitely share far more economic interests with one another than we do with the giant corporations and billionaires who own the media and both political parties.

They’ve taken over our government, shrinking it only in the areas that present obstacles to them while expanding it to absurd proportions in all of the areas that benefit them. Conservatives may think they have a monopoly on the concept of “small government”, but my hope is that we start forcing them to think about what they mean by that. Perhaps some of them will realize that when it comes to certain core issues about the role of government, both conservatives and progressives can be on the same side.

We demand smaller government (except for the defense department).

The government needs to balance the budget (as long as it doesn’t involve raising taxes).

The government better not mess with the free market (so it should let giant corporations merge and monopolize every industry).

The government needs to look out for the interests of the middle class (by letting the richest people take as large a share of the nation’s wealth as possible).

The government has to drastically cut spending (but continue to pay billions for military equipment designed to fight the Soviet Union).

The government’s primary responsibility is to eliminate the threat of Islamic terrorism (which it can do by invading Muslim countries, killing loads of civilians, and imprisoning and torturing their friends and neighbors).

The government needs to stay the hell away from religion (unless it’s to impose Biblical law on all citizens).

The government better not step between us and our doctors (unless it’s to deny us the choice to have an abortion).

The government needs to stay out of our private lives (except when they’re telling us who we can and can not marry).

The government needs to stay out of our private lives (except when it comes to tapping our phones or groping us at the airport).

The government needs to stay out of our private lives (except when they’re telling us which chemicals we’re forbidden to put in our bodies).

The government needs to do everything it can to create jobs (except hire people directly).

The government needs to do everything it can to create jobs (by cutting tax-rates for giant corporations that don’t pay any taxes anyway).

The government needs to do everything it can to create jobs (as long as it doesn’t force companies to create those jobs in America instead of overseas).

We demand smaller government (by which we mean eliminating oversight of Wall Street so that they can continue to get rich by putting the entire economy in jeopardy).

We demand smaller government (by which we mean letting corporations maximize profits by deceiving and screwing over consumers at every opportunity).

We demand smaller government (by which we mean letting the coal and oil industries cut whatever corners in terms of worker and environmental safety that they see fit).

Our biggest concern is for the well-being of our grandchildren (but it’s not even worth considering whether scientists are right about climate change).

We firmly believe in living by Christian values (except for loving thy neighbor and caring for the less fortunate).

We believe in abiding by the constitution (except for the parts about equal rights and the separation of church and state).

Our ideology is superior to all other political ideologies (because it’s based on our gut feeling that it is).

The White House successfully moved to have a federal appeals court judge grant a temporary freeze on the recent ruling of another judge which would have forced the military to stop enforcing the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. The Obamapologists are out in full force, saying that he had to appeal the ruling because the only way to make a repeal of the policy permanent would be to do it legislatively.

Not true. Here’s how Obama could end the policy once and for all in just two easy steps:

Step 1- Issue an executive order halting the implementation of DADT.

Step 2- Get re-elected.

If Obama were to use his position as commander-in-chief to insist that the military not discharge anyone for being gay under his watch, such an order could theoretically be reversed by the next president. But in the mean-time, you’d presumably have thousands of soldiers coming out and serving openly without fear of discharge.

By the time a republican has a chance to take over, assuming Obama is re-elected, gays will have been serving openly in the military for 6 years, and since these nonsense arguments about unit cohesion are nonsense, everyone would be able to see quite clearly that a ban on openly-gay soldiers was not in fact the only thing holding our military together.

More importantly, if you suddenly decide to start kicking them out again, you’d have to fire thousands of soldiers who have already been serving openly (without any problems) for years, and even some who were openly gay from the moment they enlisted. Even the most conservative military leaders wouldn’t want the kind of chaos that would ensue from a re-instatement of DADT and they would almost certainly uniformly oppose it. The next republican president would be in for quite a fight if he were to try and re-instate it, and with the majority of the country and all of the military leadership against him he would almost certainly not want to take up that fight.

In fact, we don’t even need 6 years. Just 2 years of openly gay soldiers serving in the military without causing any problems would be enough to make a potential re-instatement of the policy too messy to implement.

All Obama has to do is say the word and he’ll have brought about one of the most significant advancements of civil rights in recent history. But he won’t. And he wonders why people are “whining”.

For someone who claims to be strongly against the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, Barack Obama sure knows how to keep it in place. As the commander-in-chief, he could have issued an executive order from Day 1 telling the military to stop enforcing the policy until legislative action could be taken. And now that a federal judge has ruled that the policy is unconstitutional, he could simply tell the Justice Department not to appeal that decision.

He hasn’t done either of these things, because he still claims that the only way the policy can be repealed is through the senate. He insists that the policy will be removed and it will be removed “on his watch” but does anyone honestly expect the current U.S. Senate in which everything gets obstructed including previous efforts to repeal DADT to actually get the 60 votes necessary to overcome the filibuster? Trusting the senate to get it done is like trusting private health insurance companies to cover sick people out of the goodness of their hearts.

Obama clearly hates this issue. Just take a look at the first minute of this clip from this past week’s MTV town hall in which somebody asked him why he doesn’t use his executive power to end the policy. Pay attention to the first thing he says in response to her:

Obama: “First of all, I haven’t mentioned that I’m against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, I’ve said very clearly including in a State of the Union Address that I’m against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and we’re gonna end this policy.”

You can hear the annoyance in his voice see it in his facial expression. It’s like he’s thinking “What more do you people want from me? Don’t you realize it’s two weeks before an election?”

And that’s really what’s going on here. Obama is a part of the machine and the machine believes that gay rights issues are bad electoral politics. Even though the majority of Americans consistently support the repeal, he’s somehow still afraid of the uproar from the right-wing noise machine that would result from a decision on his part to stop the implementation of the policy. As though the Tea Party crowd isn’t already clamoring to get to the polls and vote against him.

Obama, those guys are energized enough. Forget what your establishment-insider friends are telling you—what you need to do is energize the liberals. Give them a reason to get out and vote. And what better gift can you hand them but one of the most significant advancements of Civil Rights this country has seen in a generation? That’s change we would believe in.

But Obama isn’t about change. He’s about playing by the rules of a crooked system and treading ever-so-softly on every single issue in a pathetic attempt to ruffle as few feathers as possible.

Obama, you have an opportunity to just let the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy die by not appealing the court’s decision to strike it down. But you are appealing the decision, you are forcing gay soldiers to continue to live in fear of being discovered and booted out of the military, and you are putting their fate in the hands of a legislative body so broken and corrupt that the repeal of the policy could conceivably be blocked for years. If you want this done as you so forcefully insist you do, you have to do it yourself.

You’re the goddamn president, Barack. You are supposedly the leader of this country. So quit making excuses and fucking lead already.

Yes, legalizing marijuana and letting gays get married are conservative positions. In fact, you can make the conservative case for these things simply by paraphrasing Tea Party slogans:

Git yer goddamn gub’ment hands outta my private life!

Conservatives are petrified with fear that the government is coming for their guns. Well, they’re not. But they are coming for your pot. In 2008, the government arrested 847,864 people for marijuana-related crimes, only 93,640 of which involved anything other than possession. If you’re simply suspected of selling pot, they actually bust into your home with guns blazing, terrifying your children and shooting your dog:

They don’t bust down your door for drinking alcohol, and alcohol is a much more debilitating and dangerous drug than marijuana.

Conservatives should stand up for an individual’s right to put substances of their own choosing into their own bodies. Yes, they can make reasonable exceptions when it comes to truly dangerous drugs like heroin, but if they really care about Freedom they should insist on the freedom to smoke a little grass. About 70 million Americans (roughly 4 in 10) have admitted to trying marijuana at least once in their life—are conservatives saying that 40% of Americans are criminals?

And when it comes to gay marriage, conservatives should be even more in favor of allowing it because it goes to Freedom of Religion. Most conservatives would agree that however you choose to worship the Lord is your own business, and while they may disagree with many people’s interpretation of God’s word they would almost certainly agree that the government has no business telling any church what sacred rituals it can or can’t perform.

But a ban on gay marriage means the government actually prohibits churches from marrying gay couples. Many churches have no problem with uniting two people of the same sex in holy matrimony and they would do it if they could.

Now, conservatives don’t have to like gay people or even tolerate them, but what right do they have to tell a church that does embrace homosexuals that it’s not allowed to? How would they like it if some fundamentalist Islamic interest group lobbied to ban women from receiving Holy Communion because they believe it’s an affront to God? If one religion has no business telling another religion what to do, then why shouldn’t the same be true for different denominations within the same religion?

People who are prejudiced against gays can still hate them—they can still refuse to acknowledge that these couples are really married in the eyes of God—but what other Christian denominations do is none of their fucking business and it’s none of the government’s business either.

If conservatives were actually ideologically consistent, they’d insist that the Freedom they hold so dear include the freedom to smoke pot in your own damned home and the freedom to marry whomever you damn well please.

Liberals can celebrate a big victory in the so-called “Culture War” today, as a federal judge in California ruled that Propostion 8, which bans same-sex marriage, is unconstitutional.

The gay community, as well as those of us who care about civil rights, ought to thank former rivals Ted Olson and David Boies for coming together and making the case that moral prejudice is not sufficient grounds to deny a certain group of people their equal rights under the constitution. The judge listened to the arguments and agreed with what I’ve been saying, that there is no logically-defensible argument for banning gay marriage.

Now we’ll have to bite our nails until the case makes it to the ultra-conservative U.S. Supreme Court, where we risk a proclamation that gay marriage is not protected by the Constitution—a ruling which could take decades to undo. But just because the current SCOTUS leans heavily toward the right doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. They certainly rule in favor of big corporations against the little guy in every single case that comes before them, but the big corporations don’t really have a dog in this fight.

Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito will likely vote to overturn the California ruling, while Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor and [presumably] Kagan will vote for it. That leaves Anthony Kennedy, who has a history of ruling in favor of gay rights. That’s 5-4 in our favor.

But that’s not to say we should rest easy. As recently as 2009, the SCOTUS ruled in Stafford v. Redding that schools are allowed to strip-search children, and the big corporations didn’t have a dog in that fight either. Plus, extending Partner’s Benefits to gay couples could cost Big Health Insurance some money, so that’s also some cause for concern.

In any case, this is a step in the right direction. Whether or not the Supreme Court sends us ten steps back in a few years, gay rights advocates have at least earned the right to celebrate for now.

“But you don’t understand,” they say. “This is a conservative country. You liberals want all these reforms but you ignore the fact that most Americans disagree with you.”

As one of those liberals who is constantly haranguing Obama for not delivering on the progressive changes he promised in his campaign, I hear this argument all the time and not just from conservatives. Obama apologists insist that I just don’t understand how unpopular my ideas are. Obama is the president of all Americans—not just progressives. He has to lean conservative because America is conservative.

Well, that may be the conventional wisdom, but as is often the case it turns out that it’s actually just conventional bullshit. The pundits constantly repeat their mantra that “This is a center-right country.” They said it in 2004 when Bush was re-elected and republicans gained seats in congress, and back then it might have been justified. But they said it again in 2006 when democrats regained control of the House and Senate, insisting that the particular democrats who won only did so because they were more conservative. And I clearly remember on the night of the 2008 election, after Barack Obama won the presidency with a huge majority, that the pundits were still saying, “In spite of this, it’s still a center-right country.”

Why does this conventional bullshit exist? Two reasons. The first is that it’s useful for the establishment if everyone believes that most of the country is conservative. One of the core elements of conservatism is the resistance to change, and naturally those who benefit from the existing power structure have an interest in preventing any changes to it.

The second reason is poll-data, and it’s the cold, hard, indisputably factual nature of this data that continues to allow people to get away with the claim that most Americans are conservative. This is the Gallup Poll they’re always thinking of:

Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21% calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.

What gets left out of this picture is the all-too-obvious fact that the poll doesn’t actually tell us whether someone is conservative or liberal, but only the words they choose to describe themselves. There is a difference between a self-identified conservative and an actual conservative.

All right, you might be saying, but where is the poll-data that shows that the majority of the country is actually liberal? Well I’m glad you asked, because it just so happens that this data really exists. Media Matters did a study in which they collected poll-data which indicates what Americans think on an issue by issue basis. Now before you go saying that Media Matters is a totally biased, radical left-wing organization, you have to consider that they collected this data from the most reliable, unbiased polling organizations out there: American National Election Studies, Gallup, Pew Research Center, etc.

Any liberals who are seriously looking to win this argument with conservative friends ought to read the entire study in detail and memorize some of the statistics, but for those without that much of an attention-span, I’ll offer a [somewhat] more brief and hopefully more colorful presentation of the findings. I certainly won’t cover all that data but I’ll present a large enough sampling.

If you look at the numbers, you’ll see that when you ask about specific issues, the majority of Americans consistently take the more liberal position. That means that not only is America itself is more liberal than everyone thinks, but that many self-described conservatives are more liberal than they think as well. Wherever you think you might fall on the ideological spectrum, answer these questions honestly and see just how liberal or conservative you really are.

The Roll of Government

Everyone knows that Americans hate Big Government and would rather make it so small that you could drown it in a bathtub, right? This is probably the biggest unifying idea behind the entire Tea Party Movement. Let’s see how you (and America) really come down on this issue.

1. Would you say “The less government, the better” or “There are more things the government should be doing”?
2. Can the Free Market can handle complex economic problems without government involvement or do we need a strong government to handle complex economic problems?
3. Do you agree or disagree that the government should provide more services even if it means an increase in spending?
4. Agree or disagree: “The government should care for those who can’t care for themselves”?

How did you do? As for how America did, the results may surprise you. 58% said the government should do more things as opposed to 42% who think it should do less. 67% said we need strong government to handle the economy while only 33% said the Free Market can take care of itself. 43% agreed that the government should provide more services even if spending increases, but only 20% disagreed. Finally 69% agreed that the government should care for those who can’t care for themselves. It turns out that Big Government isn’t as unpopular as they’d have us believe.

Business and Unions

Businesses are good and unions are bad, right? Most Americans think government should stay completely out of the business sector and let the Free Market work its magic. Unions are an unnecessary burden on business-owners who need to be free to make as much profit as possible. Let’s see what you think:

5. Should government reduce income differences?
6. Should business strike a fair balance between profits and public interest?
7. Does America benefit from Free Trade, or is it harmed by the global economy?
8. Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of unions?
9. Do you favor or oppose an increase in the minimum wage from $5.15/hour to $7.25/hour?

When it comes to income disparity, 47% said the government should take steps to reduce it but only 35% said it shouldn’t. 58% agree that business should strike a fair balance between profits and public interest, while only 38% disagree. 48% of Americans say the country is harmed by Free Trade agreements while only 25% say we benefit from the global economy. Much to my personal surprise, 56% of Americans have a favorable opinion of unions while 33% have an unfavorable view. And a whopping 84% favored the increase of the federal minimum wage while only 14% thought $5.15 was enough for those clods at the bottom of the social ladder.

Taxes

Everybody hates taxes. Surely we’re an extremely conservative country when it comes to taxes. That’s how republicans keep getting elected, isn’t it? Obviously if you ask Americans questions about taxes, you’ll see that the big-spending liberals are in a dismal minority.

10. Do you think your own taxes are too high, too low, or about right?
11. Do you think taxes for upper-income people are too high, too low, or about right?
12. Do you think taxes for corporations are too high, too low, or about right?
13. Which do you think is more effective in stimulating the nation’s economy: tax-cuts or spending on infrastructure?
14. Were the Bush tax-cuts worth it or not?

Well, not surprisingly, 53% of Americans think their taxes are too high, but wouldn’t you think that number would be higher? It turns our that 41% of people think they’re tax-level is about right (only 2% think it’s too low). As for the rich, wouldn’t most Americans say that rich people should get to keep most of their money and not be punished for their success? Well, only 9% think taxes for the wealthy are too high, while 66% think they’re too low (21% say they’re about right). As for corporations, only 5% think they pay too much in taxes while 71% say they don’t pay enough (19% think they pay their fair share).

The stimulus package was incredibly unpopular [right?] so I’m sure most Americans would rather have less taxes than more spending. Well, apparently 60% of Americans think spending on infrastructure is more effective than tax-cuts while only 34% think it’s the contrary (incidentally, the facts are on the majority’s side). As for those awesome Bush tax-cuts which exploded the deficit, only 39% say it was worth it while 53% said it wasn’t. I guess we’re not as taxophobic as everyone thinks.

National Security

Okay, now we’re getting to the area where conservatives have a clear advantage. Surely most Americans support strong defense spending and continued vigilance in the war on terror. Surely the benefits of this strategy outweigh the harms.

15. Is America more or less respected than it was in the past?
16. Is the best way to reduce the threat of terrorism to reduce our presence overseas?
17. Are we spending too much, too little, or just the right amount on defense?
18. Should the U.S. emphasize diplomatic rather than military efforts in fighting terrorism?
19. Agree or disagree: “The best way to ensure peace is through military strength?”

Even the hawks will agree that America is less respected now than in the past, with 65% agreeing and only 7% agreeing, but I’m sure it’s only because the rest of the world sucks and not because America is doing anything wrong. But wait—by a margin of 45 to 32, Americans say we ought to reduce our presence overseas, by a 43 to 35 margin they say we’re spending too much on defense, and 67% think we should emphasize diplomatic over military efforts in the fight against terrorism.

Don’t worry, conservatives. At least more people—49%—agree that peace is best ensured through military strength while a paltry 47% disagree. Although, the fact that the number of people agreeing with that statement is down sharply from 62% in 2002 might be cause for some concern.

Domestic Security

Everyone wants to appear tough on crime, so Americans must be conservative when it comes to issues of gun control and criminal punishment.

20. Do you think current laws governing the sale of firearms should be more strict or less?
21. Would you favor or oppose a law requiring people to obtain a police permit before buying a gun?
22. Which is more effective in dealing with crime: Attacking social problems or more enforcement?
23. Do you favor or oppose the death penalty?

In spite of the influence of the NRA, 56% of people think gun laws should be more strict and only 9% say less (33% say it should be kept the same). As for the law requiring a police permit, an incredible 81% are in favor with 19% opposed, which goes to show just how liberal people can be when presented with a very specific rather than broad question.

As for crime, 65% think it’s more important to attack social problems to just 31% who think more enforcement is the answer. As for the death penalty, it’s pretty much a dead-heat with opponents having just recently overtaken proponents by a margin of 48 to 47, but the trend is unmistakably drifting away from favoring capital punishment. Bunch of bleeding-heart libs we are.

The Environment

We may be bleeding-hearts, but are we tree-hugging hippies too? Surely the majority of Americans believe that the earth is doing just fine and all those environmentalist wackos are just ranting and raving about nothing. Ask yourself how much you care (a great deal, a fair amount, only a little, or not at all) about the following issues and see if America agrees:

24. Pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.
25. Air pollution.
26. Loss of tropical rain-forests.
27. Extinction of plant and animal species
28. Global warming

It turns out that when asked, 84% care a great deal or a fair amount about water pollution as opposed to 16% who care very little or not at all. 79% care about air pollution while 20% don’t. 73% care about rain-forests (thanks, Disney) while 27% don’t. 69% care about the extinction of plant and animal species while 31% are apparently speciesists. And in spite of all the campaigns to call it a hoax, 65% think global warming is a problem while only 34% don’t.

Okay, so if you ask people if they care about the environment, most will say yes. But what about the actual policies? When it comes time to put up or shut up, most people would probably put their pocketbooks above their environmental conscience, right? Ask yourself if you favor or oppose these measures:

29. Opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for oil drilling.
30. Setting higher emissions standards for automobiles.
31. Imposing mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions.
32. Spending more government money to develop solar and wind technology.

The results are the same. Americans oppose Alaska oil drilling by a margin of 57 to 41. They favor higher emissions standards by 79 to 18, imposing controls on greenhouse gases by 79 to 19, and favor more spending on solar and wind by a whopping 86 to 12.

To be fair, we haven’t yet asked anyone to pay for these things. Now ask yourself these questions regarding the environment and energy:

33. Would you be willing to pay higher prices to protect the environment?
34. Would you be willing to pay higher taxes on gasoline if the money was used to research renewable energy sources?
35. Would you pay more for electricity if it were generated by renewable sources?

Well holy hell, it seems that Americans are willing to pay. By a margin of 60 to 37, most Americans would be willing to pay the price for environmental protection. We’d be willing to pay more for gasoline in order to research renewables by a margin of by a margin of 64 to 33. And by a margin of 75 to 20, we’d be willing to pay more for our electricity if came from renewable sources. Wow, there may be some hope for us after all.

Immigration

Seeing as how the Arizona “Papers, Please” law still enjoys popular support, you’d think most Americans would be conservative when it comes to immigration.

36. Which is the best response to illegal immigration: Penalizing employers who hire illegals, increasing border control, or building more fences?
37. Would you favor or oppose a program providing a path to legal citizenship for illegal immigrants currently living in the country?

49% of Americans think the best approach to immigration is to penalize employers, with only 33% calling for more border control and a pitiful 9% thinking fences are the answer. As for the idea of a path to legal citizenship, it may shock you that 80% of Americans are in favor of this idea and only 19% oppose. We’re not even a conservative country when it comes to this.

Health Care

During the seemingly endless battle for health-care reform stretching from last year into this, we were told that the country is too conservative to introduce a public option. We were made to believe that Americans are petrified of any government involvement in the health care system. Are we really?

38. Is it the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage?
39. Would you rather maintain the Bush tax-cuts or make sure all Americans have access to health care?
40. Would you be willing to pay $500 a year or more to ensure that all Americans have health insurance that they can’t lose no matter what?
41. Given a choice between a health care plan that attempts to cover all Americans, a more limited plan that would cover some currently uninsured groups, or a plan that keeps things basically as they are, which would you choose?

The results would make Tea Party heads explode. We’re apparently a nation of socialists. 69% of Americans think it’s the government’s responsibility to provide health-care for its citizens while only 28% think it isn’t. 76% of us say that providing access to health care is more important than maintaining the Bush tax cuts while only 18% say otherwise. Amazingly, 82% of American would be willing to pay $500 or more to provide their fellow citizens with health care while only 6% would not. As for the competing plans, 52% want the strongest possible plan while only 24% want something more limited (I hope they’re happy with what they got) and a paltry 14% wanted to maintain the status quo. How we ended up with what we did is a testament to the influence of private insurance.

Social (Wedge) Issues

Okay. I’ve shown you that when you ask Americans about economic or security issues, most of them lean towards the liberal position. But we all know that a huge chunk of voters don’t give any thought whatsoever to those issues when they go to the polls. They vote based on their religious moral convictions. It doesn’t matter how much damage a candidate will do to their own financial interests—as long as they’re pro-life, that’s who gets their vote.

Indeed, when people self-identify as conservatives they’re probably thinking in terms of social issues. So when we ask people specific questions about these issues, this is where liberals must run into trouble. This is where we’ll find that we are in fact in the minority, that most Americans are not with us, and we’d better compromise on these ideals if we ever want to reach out to the broader population.

So for those of you who thought you were a conservative when you began reading this but are now beginning to have some doubts, I’ll offer you one last chance:

42. Would you like to see the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade?
43. Do you favor or oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion?
44. Do you approve or disapprove of Congress’ involvement in the Terry Schiavo euthanasia case?
45. Do you support or oppose embryonic stem-cell research?
46. Do you think women should have an equal role with men in business, industry, and government, or is a woman’s place in the home?
47. Agree or disagree: “Homosexuals should have equal job rights”?
48. Should gays be allowed in the military?
49. Should gays be allowed to adopt children?
50. Should gay couples be allow to marry?

As for abortion, America is solidly pro-choice, with only 29% in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade and 62% opposed. 56% oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion while 35% are in favor. As for euthanasia, 76% say it’s none of the government’s business while only 20% think they were right to step in on the Terry Schiavo case. Regarding embryonic stem-cell research, 61% support it and 31% value cells in a Petri dish over the health of fully-grown adults.

When it comes to women, our mothers have taught us well—78% think their role in the public sphere should be equal to that of men while only 8% are still living in the 19th century.

Finally, we come to gay rights. The last of the persecuted groups to really come out and forcefully advocate for fair treatment still has a long way to go, but they’re getting there. Most people at least agree that gays should have “equal job rights”. 89% say yes and only 9% say no—while only 30 years ago that margin was still at 55 to 33.

What about other rights? 60% now say that gays should be allowed to serve in the military, up from 52% in 1994. Only 46% say they should be allowed to adopt, but that’s up from 38% in ‘94. And while only 37% of Americans now believe that gays should have the right to marry (because they haven’t read my blog post on the subject yet), that’s up from a mere 27% a decade ago. The arc of the moral universe is indeed long, but it bends towards liberalism.

Conclusion

If you’ve read to the end of this piece, you should congratulate yourself. Now you are inoculated against the argument that America is a center-right country and we should just accept whatever small amount of change we’re given because the majority is against us. The next time someone throws that at you, throw the link to the report from Media Matters back at them (or the link to this blog entry if you want to be that awesome).

If you think of yourself as a conservative but found yourself taking the liberal position on most of these questions, consider that you may only be reluctant to call yourself a “liberal” because that word has been demonized by the right-wing media for the last few decades. It’s been so demonized that many liberals have taken to calling themselves “progressives” instead, and while some insist that there’s an actual distinction there, I tend to use the terms interchangeably. But of course now they’re going after the word “progressive” as well.

It’s time for those of us who are not afraid to self-identify as liberals to push back and wear our label proudly. Not only are we liberal, but most Americans are liberal as well—even if they won’t admit it.

Only in this way can we shatter the conventional bullshit that America is a conservative country and the government must therefore govern conservatively. Once that Gallup poll data starts showing more people self-identifying as liberal than conservative, candidates who run on progressive platforms might realize that they don’t actually need to compromise those principles when they get to office—that if they just stand up and make the case for the kinds of changes liberals are calling for (single-payer health care, strict Wall Street regulation, comprehensive immigration reform, strong environmental protection, investment in renewable fuel sources, etc.) they’ll have the American people right behind them to take the fight to the establishment and to finally win.