Thank You, Dr. Koop

by Cliston Brown | Feb 25, 2013 | Political Commentary

Dr. C. Everett Koop, who served as the U.S. Surgeon General under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, died today at 96 years old.

Dr. Koop was a true hero and a great American, and it is hardly disputable that many Americans alive today owe their lives and their health to him. In fact, the nearly ubiquitous expectation of condom use today, in order to prevent the spread of disease, can be traced directly to Dr. Koop and his extremely visible advocacy of safe sex.

Safe sex may seem like a no-brainer today, but in the 1980s, when social conservatives were feeling their oats—with one of their own in the White House and the so-called “Moral Majority” becoming a political force—it took real courage for Dr. Koop to lead a public crusade for the usage of condoms.

It was a real surprise to just about everybody that Dr. Koop would lead this crusade. A deeply religious, devout, conservative Christian, he considered homosexuality, non-marital sex and abortion to be morally wrong. I could not disagree more with his point of view on these issues. And yet, the fact that he was able to put his views, and the pressure of his ideological peers, aside and go where the facts led him—that is what elevated Dr. Koop to a true national treasure.

Confronted with the AIDS epidemic, which at that time was largely seen as a “gay plague,” those who supported Dr. Koop’s appointment expected him to condemn homosexuality and advocate sexual abstinence. Dr. Koop instead launched his public crusade in which he worked tirelessly to educate the public that the safest way to have sex was to use a condom every time.

Dr. Koop did not simply issue a report and leave it at that. He all but shouted it from the rooftops, using his office as a very public, very visible platform to spread the word across the country and the world. And it worked. When the 1980s began, condom use in non-marital, sexual relationships was by no means a given, particularly among gay couples, or among straight couples in which the female was on the pill. By the time I graduated high school in 1990, it was well understood that if you planned to have sex, you needed to use a condom. In terms of public health, there are probably two things anybody alive at the time remembers: “Just say no (to drugs),” as Nancy Reagan told us; and “Use a condom every time,” courtesy of Dr. Koop.

Additionally, Dr. Koop suggested that children receive comprehensive sex education starting in elementary school, which is still—unfortunately—a controversial issue today, nearly 30 years later. And, in another service to public health, he took on Big Tobacco and promoted the idea of a smoke-free society. We are not there yet, but every year, fewer and fewer Americans are engaging in this risky behavior.

And while Dr. Koop never veered from his belief that abortion was murder, he also refused to cave in to pressure from the right and endorse errant, pseudo-scientific theories that abortion would cause lasting harm to women who underwent one. It is a pity that there are those today who do not have the courage or the wisdom to follow his example.

In a time when it has become increasingly unlikely for those with strong viewpoints to overlook those views, and do what is necessary to save lives and improve public health, Dr. Koop stands as a beacon of reason, courage, and rectitude. Dr. Koop did the right thing for his country and his fellow human beings, even though he undoubtedly disapproved of the actions that made his condom crusade necessary. Despite his beliefs, he was right in his actions. I believe history will record that Dr. C. Everett Koop was one of the most influential and consequential human beings of the 20th century.

In matters of religion, I am an agnostic. I don’t know if a god exists, and frankly, I don’t care. But if the God in which Dr. Koop believed devoutly all his life does exist, and the good doctor has, in fact, met his maker today, I am confident that this divine being has welcomed Dr. Koop warmly, and congratulated him on a job well done.

Godspeed, Dr. Koop. Thank you for a life of service unmatched by almost anyone alive today.

State of Disunion

by Cliston Brown | Feb 11, 2013 | Political Commentary

So, there are going to be two responses to President Obama’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday. One, the official Republican Party response, will be delivered by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), also known (at least to this blogger) as the only Republican with a strong chance to win the presidency in 2016.

The second response could foreshadow the reason why Rubio might not be the next president. That response, on behalf of the supposedly defanged and doomed-to-irrelevancy Tea Party, will be given by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky).

Let’s put aside, for a moment, this question: How is it that the opposition gets to make two televised responses to the president’s remarks on the State of the Union? And instead, let us consider what these dueling rebuttals say about the state of the opposition.

In short, there is such a cleavage, at this point, between establishment Republicans and the conservapopulists, that they can’t even get together on a single response to a president that they all despise. This does not bode well for their prospects for unity in upcoming elections.

One of the things that worked against the Republicans in 2012 was the fact that the Kamikaze wing of the party—disaffected Tea Partiers and other assorted fringe kooks— couldn’t get behind Mitt Romney until his nomination became inevitable. One after another, the assembled collection of third-rate goofballs (such as Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum) rose to challenge him and finally succumbed to his monetary and institutional advantages. But the months-long spectacle severely damaged the party’s brand among moderate voters and ultimately, it could be argued, helped sink Romney’s chances by forcing him to pander to the wingnuts, thereby losing him the middle—and the election.

The establishment is now trying to fight back, but having set this mess in motion, the Republican leadership is now finding out how difficult it is to put the goofpaste back into the tube. That’s why the Republicans will have dueling rebuttals tomorrow night.

The bottom line is this: the fact that Sen. Paul is giving a Tea Party speech is a clear signal that the conservapopulists are not going to go gently into the good night which Karl Rove and his colleagues have all planned out for them. You see, Rove and other intelligent Republicans have learned the lesson of the 2012 election—that the spectacle of a Republican Party full of nutballs like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock scared the crap out of centrist voters and drove them, grudgingly, into the arms of the Democrats.

But the Tea Party folks don’t share that view.

In Ayn Rand Paul World, Mitt Romney and the Republicans lost in 2012 because they weren’t conservative enough, and heroes such as Akin and Mourdock were viciously slandered and taken down by the evil liberal, “lamestream” media.

The reason the Tea Party types believe this ridiculous tripe—although most objective observers see it, rightly, as delusional—is because, for the most part, Tea Partiers only talk politics with other Tea Partiers. They reinforce to each other their collective delusion that a majority of Americans think the same way they do—and because they don’t talk very much with anyone who doesn’t think that way, they’re shocked when the electorate rejects their ideas, and they assume that the Democrats must have stolen the election.

The Republican Party has created quite the dilemma for itself. Having invited the kook wing into the party, in a grab for the low-hanging fruit of its votes, the Republican Party has alienated moderates and made itself dependent on the Tea Party. Having seen moderates alienated by the Tea Party, the Republicans can’t compete if the Tea Partiers stay on the sideline. But without the middle, which the Tea Party has alienated, the Republicans also cannot win.

The smarter move, better in the long term, is to kick the Tea Party out of the tent and try to get some moderates back into it. It’s a far better growth strategy, as Rove and other establishment Republicans clearly recognize. But the Tea Party isn’t going along with the plan. It not only likes being inside the tent—it believes it built the tent, with its one-time electoral triumph in 2010, and it is entitled not just to be inside the tent but to run it.

I believe it was Lyndon Johnson who said that it was better to have a troublesome faction inside the tent, pissing out, than to have it outside the tent, pissing in. The trouble for the Republicans is that the Tea Party, wild and undisciplined, is inside the tent and pissing everywhere—outward onto moderate voters, and inward all over establishment Republicans who would actually like to win another election in their lifetimes. The GOP has created a monster that it can no longer control, and it is now in the unenviable position where it loses if the Tea Party stays or leaves.

And if the Republican Party can’t get control of this situation, tomorrow night’s Rubio-Paul split could be an ominous preview of things to come—perhaps a divisive GOP presidential primary in 2016, or maybe even a shattering of the party that could see both men in the general election, splitting conservative votes, and both getting squashed by the Democratic nominee, a la 1912. Get your popcorn ready.

Sen. Tom Harkin: On Fiscal Cliff, "No Deal Is Better Than A Bad Deal"

by Cliston Brown | Dec 31, 2012 | Political Commentary

As we appear to be headed over the so-called “fiscal cliff” tomorrow, barring a last-minute deal, I’ve got to say that I think it’s a lot of ado over very little. What the “fiscal cliff” entails, if we go over it, is largely a return to the Clinton-era tax rates for everyone, which will be inconvenient but not debilitating. I’m not looking forward to paying more in taxes, but I’m happy to cough it up if it will help balance the budget and pay our nation’s bills.

Going over the so-called cliff also results in steep cuts to defense spending, and frankly, we are long overdue to become more efficient in our military spending. We’ve been making billionaires of defense contractors for far too long, buying high-priced hardware that the military itself doesn’t want and isn’t asking for. We already have more and newer military hardware than just about the rest of the world put together; unless we’re expecting to every other country in the world to get together and invade our shores, we’re spending way too much on defense.

I recognize there are other concerns, and my biggest concern is the significant scaling back of federal unemployment benefits. I would hope we could address that separately, along with targeted tax cuts for people who actually need to buy food and clothes rather than another yacht.

But has it crossed anybody’s mind that the reason this thing has turned into such a big deal is because we have overhyped it so much? I keep hearing about how it’s going to tank the economy, but I’m not convinced of that. We had these tax rates in place in the 1990s, and the economy boomed, and that was largely because we were finally behaving responsibly — we were taking in more in revenue than we were spending, which convinced investors to invest in America and its economy.

At this point, the thing I’m most worried about is that President Obama and the Democrats will agree to a bad deal rather than waiting a few more days and cutting a better deal from a position of strength. I agree entirely with the comments of Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who was quoted by the Associated Press this morning as saying the following:

“No deal is better than a bad deal. And this looks like a very bad deal the way this is shaping up,” said Harkin.

He suggested instead letting tax rates revert to the higher levels that existed when the economy was strong under President Bill Clinton, adding, “I ask, what’s so bad about that?”

I’m with Senator Harkin on this one.

Gun Apologists: Stupid Excuses, Bad Analogies and Trite Talking Points

by Cliston Brown | Dec 15, 2012 | Political Commentary

I wrote a post on the gun issue (“Our Deadly Love Affair With Guns“) less than two weeks ago, after a professional football player killed his girlfriend and himself in Kansas City. I’m not going to repeat the same arguments now; if you want to see what I think about America’s problem with guns, that post sums it up very well.

But in the wake of yesterday’s horrific, senseless massacre of 20 children between the ages of 5 and 10, as well as seven adults, today I just want to deal with some of the absolutely idiotic excuses, analogies and talking points I have encountered in the last 24 hours on this issue.

I was talking with a friend around lunchtime yesterday, and we started throwing out some of the ridiculous things we expected to hear from the gun apologists. The first one we came up with was this: “Well, if the teachers/the principal/the janitors would have had guns, this never would have happened (or fewer kids would have been killed).” Naturally, I’ve seen that argument quite a bit since yesterday. It was completely predictable, because that’s what the gun apologists always say after the occurrence one of these increasingly frequent gun massacres in a public place. OK, sure, it’s possible that an armed teacher might have killed the killer before he got off more than a few rounds. It’s also possible that said teacher, possibly scared to death and perhaps not a gun enthusiast, would have done more harm than good, and that a bunch of kids may have been caught in the crossfire. A grade school should not be the Wild West; the answer to gun violence is not more guns. The answer is to ensure that there are fewer guns and that they are not easily accessible to lunatics.

So, from Trite Talking Point #1, let’s move on to our first Really Bad Analogy (which also doubles as Trite Talking Point #2). In a Facebook discussion, some fellow chimed in on a friend’s thread by saying that people die in car accidents, so you can’t single out guns, because people using cars sometimes get killed too. Well, no. The purpose of a car is to transport one or more individuals from place to place. If somebody dies in a car, it is almost always accidental. Very few people ever take it into their heads to use a car as a weapon. Guns, on the other hand, are designed to cause physical harm; that is the purpose of a gun. A person who procures a gun does not do so for any other purpose but to shoot it. And guns, being a bit smaller than a car, and able (unlike vehicles) to hurl bullets at a distance, are more easily hidden, can get into more places, and are easier to kill people with. Even if some nutjob decides to start killing the USA in his Chevrolet, he can’t take a car into a school, a church, a supermarket or an office building. It won’t fit through the door. To kill, intentionally, with a car, almost never happens and isn’t nearly as easy as killing intentionally with a gun.

And by the way, there is one other area where this ridiculous analogy does not hold: car usage is heavily regulated. There are laws governing how a car is used, and people who violate those laws risk losing their driving privileges. Unsafe or unwise usage of a gun does not necessarily result in a person facing any legal sanction at all, unless somebody ends up injured or dead. You want to drink and drive? If you are caught, you’ll be arrested and possibly lose your license—just for being drunk behind the wheel. When was the last time somebody got arrested for handling a gun while drunk (without, of course, killing or wounding somebody first)?

Let’s go now to Trite Talking Point #3, which is also our first Stupid Excuse: more gun regulation won’t make any difference; killers will just use other weapons. This excuse for inaction is ridiculous, and I’ll demonstrate why.

Let’s say the psycho who shot up all those kids in Connecticut yesterday had entered the school with a knife instead of a gun. What are the differences between the two weapons? Well, first of all, if you have a gun, you can kill from a distance. If the killer stands in the door of a classroom, he can start plugging people from there, and nobody will be able to get past him without getting shot. But if he goes in with a knife, he first has to get close enough to a victim to actually use the knife; it also takes more time than shooting (which is very fast) and makes the assailant more vulnerable to being tackled or otherwise impeded by the other adult in the room. Additionally, and this is very important: with a knife, an attacker can only attack one victim at a time. He may get one victim, maybe even several, but the others are going to run, and since the knife-wielder has no gun, and can’t kill at a distance, he can’t possibly stop all of them.

I keep hearing, from the gun apologists, about the 22 kids in China who got stabbed a few days ago. But you know what? Those 22 kids all lived. Every one of them is alive. Their parents will get to see them grow up. There’s a reason why the fictional Sgt. Jimmy Malone, in his famous speech in The Untouchables, says “They pull a knife; you pull a gun … ” That’s because it’s easier and more efficient to kill with a gun than it is to kill with a knife. For any individuals to whom this isn’t obvious, all I can say is any such people are lucky that breathing is an involuntary exercise. If they had to think about it, they’d suffocate.

OK, let’s plow forward and deal with Bad Analogy #2. One argument that gun-control advocates make is that other comparable countries have far fewer gun deaths than the United States, which in a typical year has about 10,000 deaths related to guns. Sometimes it’s around 9,000, other years closer to 11,000 or 12,000, but it’s usually right around that 10,000 mark. Other western democracies, such as Britain or Canada, usually have anywhere from 50 to a couple hundred gun deaths in a given year.

Of course, yesterday, a gun apologist on Facebook countered that argument with this: most of these countries are smaller than Texas, so the comparison is invalid. Well, no, that’s actually a really bad analogy, because the point isn’t that a country like Britain, with one-fifth of the U.S population (but many more people than Texas, by the way) has fewer gun deaths; that is to be expected. The point is that if you compare apples to apples and look at it on a per-capita basis (number of gun deaths per 100,000 people), the U.S. total is off the charts. Britain, with 60 million people, has about 50 gun deaths in a given year. The United States, with slightly more than 300 million people, has about 10,000. All things being equal, either Britain should have 2,000 gun deaths a year, or the United States should have about 250. On an apples-to-apples basis, we have about 40 times more gun deaths per capita than Britain every year. Do we have 40 times as many evil or crazy people, per capita, than the United Kingdom has? No. But we do have 280 million guns.

Well, that’s a pretty good sampling, but I’m going to close here with Stupid Excuse #2: we can’t do anything about guns because the Second Amendment guarantees everyone’s right to a gun.

Well, let’s start with the text of that amendment:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

You’ll notice, if you read that 27-word sentence carefully, that its mandate (” … the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”) is conditional; the right to keep and bear arms is predicated on, and justified by, the security needs of the state. In the 18th century, when the founders adopted this amendment, there was no large, standing army; average citizens could be called upon at any time to defend their country or community. I could make a very strong case here that the current strength and structure of the United States armed forces obviates the need for every American to be armed and ready to fight off an invasion or insurrection.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has chosen to interpret this amendment much more loosely than I do, and my point, although I consider it to be correct, is also moot. So let’s move on to another argument that might hold up a little better:

Every Constitutional right has limits.

For example, let’s look at an amendment to the bill of rights that most Americans hold absolutely sacred: the First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Does anyone care to argue that this amendment, and the rights contained within, are not limited? Then I’d like to ask you to do a series of experiments:

1) First, strip naked at the corner of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago while chanting verses from your religious text of choice.

2) Then, put your clothes back on (please) and catch a cab to the nearest theater. Buy a ticket, walk in, and halfway through whatever Harold and Kumar are doing at White Castle, start screaming that the theater is on fire.

3) Next, assuming you have not yet been arrested, go home and start blogging about how you’ve got a great plan to shoot the president, and while you’re at it, go ahead and post that the local school board leader likes to have sex with 12-year-olds.

4) After you’ve finished with these contributions to the world of journalism, go out into the middle of the street with a picket sign and block traffic.

Oh, wait—you mean you can’t legally do any of these things? But the First Amendment is clear, isn’t it? Congress cannot make any law that prevents free exercise of religion, speech, press or assembly, right?

Yes it can, as the Supreme Court has previously ruled—if, and only if, the free exercise of those rights creates a clear and present danger to others. If you shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, when there is no fire, and people get hurt, you have broken the law and can be prosecuted, as you can if you threaten the life of the president, libel somebody, or obstruct vehicular traffic, for example. Can anyone seriously argue that the potential misuse of a gun does not also create a clear and present danger to others? If we can limit the First Amendment, generally considered the most sacred of them all, on grounds of basic common sense and public safety, why are we prevented from using common sense and public safety to limit the Second?

I go back to what I wrote on December 3rd: America has a gun problem. What are we going to do about it? Will the horrifying school shooting in Connecticut and the tragic deaths of so many young children wake us up? If it doesn’t, what exactly will it take? Do we have to come to the point where some nutcase takes a gun into a maternity ward and starts killing newborns? Or are we going to strike a blow for common sense and public safety now?

How Obama Can Throw The GOP A Curve

by Cliston Brown | Dec 13, 2012 | Political Commentary

United Nations ambassador Susan Rice took one for the team today, formally withdrawing from consideration to be Secretary of State after weeks of unending attacks by a swarm of Republican Senators led by John McCain (R-Arizona), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire).

The criticism of Ambassador Rice, based on what I can see, was completely unwarranted and unjustified. The statement she made after the Benghazi tragedy was based on what the intelligence services gave her to work with. Perhaps she can take some small comfort in knowing that this really had nothing to do with her. This was strictly about politics. Unable to turn the tragedy in Libya into electoral defeat for President Barack Obama last month, the Republicans went after Rice in part so they wouldn’t come away completely empty-handed; they wanted a scalp, and they got one.

But this is also about ensuring that Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) becomes the next Secretary of State, so that his Senate seat can be opened up for a special election, possibly helping Sen. Scott Brown (R) return after his decisive loss to incoming Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D).

As much as I respect and admire Sen. Kerry, a great public servant and true American hero, I almost hope the president picks someone else, just to demonstrate that these kinds of antics by McCain and his fellow travelers will not produce the results they want. It would be terribly unfair to Kerry, whose qualifications for the job are unquestionable, but then, what’s happened here has been terribly unfair to Susan Rice, too.

Wouldn’t McCain, Graham, Ayotte and every Republican in Washington be taken completely by surprise if President Obama nominated outgoing Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) as the next Secretary of State? It is hard to imagine Lugar wouldn’t be unanimously approved, and nobody in America is better qualified for the job. He also has a history of working together with President Obama, who spent a great deal of time as a Senator accompanying Lugar on overseas trips to help lock down loose nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union.

We’d get a terrific Secretary of State who would inevitably be confirmed with the support of both Republicans and Democrats; there would be no chance that the Republican tactics would be rewarded with the return Scott Brown to the Senate; and Obama would send a message to the Republicans that he cannot be played.

Well, it’s just a thought.