I saw —yet again—one of those bumper stickers the gist of which is “Like your freedom? Thank a veteran.” These things drive me nuts.

Let me see if I can parse this whole thing. First of all, I find the sentiment to be a snide bit of conservatism. (Hold that thought.) The implication is that without our armed forces deployed in Iraq, we would soon find ourselves without freedom of the press; that unless we use our soldiers to invade and occupy somewhere, we will no longer be able to hold free elections.

Such thinking is of course incredibly bad thinking. Our armed forces have not been engaged in any kind of conflict the outcome of which would have affected our system of government since 1865. Everything since then has been wars of empire or wars of strategy. Even the invasion of Afghanistan, which could be justified in terms of self defense, was not occasioned by any threat to our actual constitutional structure, nor would we have lost any of our rights had we decided not to tackle the project. I will say nothing of Iraq.

I think it likely that the teabagger on the other side of that bumper would offer the rejoinder that, in our current two wars at least, we’re “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” To which I would reply, that’s not freedom you’re worried about, sweetheart, it’s safety. Those are two different things. You know, the things Patrick Henry was quick to distinguish one from the other: “Give me liberty, or give me death.”

And even that kind of thinking is ludicrous, not to mention cowardly. No one in their right mind suggests that any of the Islamic extremists are prepared to invade us. What are the teabaggers thinking is going to happen, Baghdad Dawn? I suggest those people check under their bed every night, and then sleep tight and leave the rest of us alone.

Yes, certainly, the extremists are constantly plotting to harm us. No question. But it’s also true that all such plots have been foiled by careful police work, not by armed incursions either “over there” or here. And it’s also true that our military response to the problem has served as our enemies’ greatest recruitment tool. So thanking a veteran for keeping us safe is offbase as well.

So does this mean I hate our military? Of course not. The men and women who choose to serve in our armed forces are mostly people with a vision of service. I respect that more than a teabagger would believe possible.

However, I distrust our military, and in that I don’t think I am alone. It seems to me, from my reading of Max Farrand’s Annals of the Constitutional Convention, that most if not all of the founding fathers were of the same opinion. And certainly our greatest general-Presidents believed as I do. Can you imagine George Washington or Dwight Eisenhower suggesting that patriotism required us to, in effect, idolatrize our army?

Our founding fathers were clear on the subject: funding is to be restricted and controlled by the Legislative; the armies and navies are to be commanded by the Executive, a civilian. There is no independent military, and this arrangement is the source of our liberty, not the use of firepower. One only has to think of places such as Turkey, Pakistan, Chile, to realize that our liberty excludes our army from our freedoms. And that is why we remain free.

Oh, and how am I so sure that it’s a conservative bumpersticker?

You’re welcome.

Today at school we received one of those forwarded emails that are ludicrous on their face but which a certain portion of the population treats as gospel. It was this one, about the U.S. Mint removing the slogan “In God We Trust” from the new dollar coin.

IT HAS BEGUN! the email shrieks, and the person who sent it to the whole faculty prefaced it with “I know at least one of you will go to Snopes, and it has already checked out.”

Well, I can take stuff as personally as the next Teabagger, so with narrowed eyes and wrinkled lip I headed straight to Snopes, where of course the entire email is reproduced in its entirety and debunked as completely false. Quel surprise. I replied to all, which is what I always do. I never, but one day I’m going to, say, “I dare you to forward this!!!1!1!”

I also did not write nor send the following email:

Dear troops:

This is ridiculous. Every single one of these emails y’all forward so breathlessly is FALSE. Every. Single. One.

Has it not occurred to you that you are being lied to? That someone is lying to you? For reasons of their own? And those reasons include keeping you riled up, angry, outraged at what “they” are doing to “our” country?

I cannot be the only person on this campus with a BS detector. For Moloch’s sake, people, we are educators, and it behooves us to be more skeptical than it seems many of us are. You should immediately question any email that comes to you that contains anything that is “outrageous.” Because, as I’ve already stated: Not. One. Of. Them. Is. True…. Ever.

More than that, you should be teaching our students to be just as skeptical as you are. Hell, you should be teaching them to be as skeptical as I am. That is our job as educators in a free nation.

The people who create these emails are counting on your being gullible idiots. I don’t know who they are (although I have suspicions) and I don’t know what they want you to buy or vote for (although I have suspicions), but I know they want you to buy or to vote for something. And they’re willing to lie to you to keep you outraged enough to do it. The only question now is, how gullible an idiot are you?

Cheers,

Dale

Thank you, dear reader, for listening.

So Rand Paul, teabagger extraordinaire, wins the Republican senatorial primary in Kentucky and goes on Rachel Maddow’s show to do his victory lap. (I know, right?)

So Maddow asks him if he would have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He says no. While he is in fact not in favor of discriminatory practices, the government, he says, has no bidness telling restaurants whom they must serve.

Well. Hilarity ensues, of course, but my favorite rightwing burble is Senator John Cornyn (R, naturally-TX, of course) He said

Maddow’s inquiry was a “gotcha question.” “If I’m walking down the street minding my own business and somebody sticks a microphone under my nose about a law that was passed 40 years ago, without more detail — I think it probably caught him a little bit by surprise,” Cornyn said in Paul’s defense.

Honey, please. Paul had 15 minutes to explain himself, and this is after giving the same answer to a newspaper and to NPR, and he acquitted himself admirably. He said exactly what he believes. As for his being “caught by surprise,” if that is so, then I say good on Rachel Maddow for exposing this guy for an even bigger idiot than he already appeared to be.

My question for Cornyn at this point: Do you seriously want this specimen on your team in the Senate? Really and truly, do you??

I think I’ve found our problem.

Senator Lindsey Graham, who was a JAG and even serves as a Senior Instructor at the Air Force JAG School, on the idea of legislation to strip citizens accused of terrorism of their rights as citizens:

Even if you’re an American citizen helping the enemy, you should be viewed as a potential military threat, not some guy who tried to commit a crime in Times Square.

No, Lindsey, no, you’re missing the point. That’s exactly how it should be viewed: as a crime in Times Square. Such a violent act does not require that we elevate its perpetrator to some holy-warrior status. Nor does it require that we cue “The Star-Spangled Banner” and smear our faces with Special Forces make-up and scream, “Wolverines!” (Look carefully at that quote page, and be very afraid.)

Idiot.

God in Heaven.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Can you imagine the hubris involved in this project? It staggers the mind. For one thing, it reminds me of this (t-shirts available here).

I, of course, am no Greek scholar or even anything halfway resembling a Christian theosophist, so I breathlessly await their free-market translation of this passage, or of this one, which of course comes right after one of their prime examples of how Bill Clinton Barack Obama has subverted all meaningful religious instruction since the Synod of Hippo.

Get me the President on the phone. I’ve just had an insight that’s bloody brilliant in re: negotiating with our new BFF, the Republicans, over the stimulus package.

I am reminded of Green Acres, that masterpiece of American absurdism, whenever Oliver Douglas went to haggle with Mr. Haney. Oliver would behave in a rational manner, starting with a low bid, and then when Mr. Haney countered with something higher, attempting to meet Mr. Haney somewhere in the middle.

Except it never worked like that. Every time Oliver would raise his offer, Mr. Haney would respond by raising his. Rather than the paradigm of honorable compromise that Oliver was following, Mr. Haney saw that he didn’t have to give anything away because his opponent was willing to give up what he had started with.

This is in fact what is happening now with the Republicans and the stimulus package. President Obama stated his goals with the stimulus package, and the Republicans immediately made a counteroffer: more tax cuts. The President offers to cut taxes, the Republican counter with “no contraceptives!” And so it goes.

Instead, the Current President should enter that room with the Republicans this afternoon and deal with them like Lisa Douglas: they say to ditch the contraceptives, he returns with raised taxes. They respond with OK, you can keep the contraceptives. He responds with draconian regulation of Wall Street. They say, OK, Clinton-level income tax rates, but that’s our final offer.

You see how that works? When you’re dealing with Mr. Haney, you have to be Lisa Douglas.

Hm. Haney. Cheney. Mere coincidence? I think not.

Here’s a news story for you. Go read it. I’ll wait for you.

Rick Davis is breathtaking in his Orwellian manipulation of the language. Here’s my brief analysis of what he’s doing to the public:

“John McCain held the Bush administration’s feet to the fire more than anyone else for the first four years of the administration.”

Okay, that’s an easy one. Surely even the most brain-damaged nutjob realizes straight out that there’s been another three and a half years of Bushdom, during which McCain voted with the Current Occupant’s desires 90% of the time. These votes include voting to authorize the administration’s torture policies; kill the new GI Bill; authorize unwarranted surveillance; kill expansion of SCHIP; you name it, he’s voted with the White House position. (If I were a real blogger, I’d link to all those votes.)

“…he has attacked Sarah Palin and thrown the George Bush card back on the table.”

“The George Bush card”? Really?? The sitting President, the leader of McCain’s party, is now equivalent to Willie Horton?? It’s an amazing admission on Davis’s part that the past eight years of Republican governance have been an appalling disaster. He cannot possibly have meant that.

“If you bring up his association with William Ayers or Rashid Khalidi it’s, ‘Oh boy, that’s off limits; you can’t do that,’ but they can prosecute a campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars with no accountability.”

William Ayers? ::sigh:: A mischaracterized relationship with no discernible influence on Obama’s thinking or policies. A bogeyman. Rashid Khalidi? A completely falsified characterization, outright lies as to who Khalidi is and what he stands for. A racial bogeyman.

And notice the asymmetry of the sentence: two scary people = …? The natural end of that equation should be the aforementioned George W. Bush, but Davis can’t go there, can he? So he just tapdances. And notice too the awful awfulness: “prosecute… millions of dollars… no accountability.” Just what accountability does U.S. law, and here I’m thinking of the 1st Amendment, provide for campaigns, Rick? What accountability is Obama evading that McCain is adhering to? (vid. sup., re: Ayers, Khalidi)

“You have to wonder what his version of America is going to look like when people who disagree with him get attacked over and over again,” Davis said.

This is a stunning statement, absolutely gobsmacking. It’s a direct dogwhistle to the people who sincerely believe that Obama intends to establish a police state and round up all “right-thinking” people after his election. Crazy? Absolutely, but I’ve read their blog posts and the unhinged comments thereunto. These people are completely panic-stricken about the coming black power/Islamic/socialist destruction of our country. One is reminded of the recent research on the conservative brain being motivated by fear.

The statement is also a damnable hypocrisy, given the hell-for-leather tar and feathering the Republican party has been engaging in since Newt Gingrich passed out his little pamplet of labels to use against liberals. In this campaign alone, remember flag pins? Saying the Pledge? “Hate America”?

Not only all of the above, but Obama just aired a 30-minute infomercial in which he didn’t mention John McCain, or even the opposing side, even once. Can you imagine a 30-minute McCain production doing that? I didn’t think so.

In short, Rick Davis’s got nothing but LOLPreznents: “Hugely successful campaneing: ur doin it wrong.” Only four more days, my friends.

In Indiana — stop me if you’ve heard this one — a congressional candidate recently attended a meeting of the American National Socialist Workers Party (ANSWP), where he made a speech. The occasion was the 119th birthday of Adolf Hitler. There was a large portrait of the man, a Nazi flag, and everyone in photos of the event was wearing a swastika armband.

The candidate later defended himself on his website by describing the speech as:

my attempt to raise awareness of how the great porn dragon inspires Jews into pornography and prostitution and then, like the snake he is, turns the public against the Jews.

Well.

I’ll link to the site where I read this in a moment, but first a thought experiment: with which of the two major political parties in this nation is Mr. Zirkle affiliated?

That didn’t take long, did it? My thesis today is: why the hell didn’t it take you long? Yes, there are loonies on both sides of the spectrum, we all know that, but why is it that this particularly nasty kind of loony gravitates to this one party?

To be fair, the state party is horrified and trying desperately to disconnect themselves from Mr. Zirkle, but I think the question still stands, and I think the party needs to do some soul searching: why is it that racist, anti-worker, anti-poor, anti-women, anti-gay candidates automatically affiliate themselves with this party, and not with their rivals?

Perhaps more germane to the party bigwigs is the question: why would most citizens assume that this is the case?

I think this question needs to be asked particularly by those whose first reaction would be, well, now, that’s not necessarily the case.

Go read about it here.

No, I didn’t get anything done on the symphony all weekend. Leave me alone.

However, I was struck by an ad on the TV. You may have seen it. In it we are told that “we [the U.S.] didn’t wait…” to be told or shown how to do a string of wonderful things, and now we’re not going to wait before solving the global warming problem.

Okay, I just googled it and have discovered that this is an ad from Al Gore. The mind boggles. How this got out of the brainstorming phase is beyond me, because…

We didn’t wait…

• …to storm the beaches at Normandy. Actually, yes, we did. Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. We didn’t bother getting involved until everyone else was waist-deep in that particular Big Muddy.
• …on civil rights. Hello? What??? Then where exactly did all those images of thousands of people clogging the Mall come from?
• …to put a man on the moon. Well, after Sputnik captured our attention, certainly, we worked our ass off, but until then we had no such ambition.

Sorry, Al, baby, you lost me on this one. Admirable sentiment, but historically illiterate. Abysmally.