HALF-FULL REPORT 03/29/13

Congress wasn’t in session this week, so news media attention focused mostly on oral arguments before the Supreme Court on lawsuits involving the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and California’s Proposition 8.  Coverage by the MSM was even more shallow and biased than usual.

As a matter of social policy, arguments for same sex marriage are pretty lame, and are legally surreal.  But it’s been some while since facts, logic, the Constitution and precedent have had much impact on Supreme Court decisions.  "The Supreme Court has been considering whether to overturn two duly enacted pieces of legislation on the basis of novel theories about the Fourteenth Amendment that had occurred to almost nobody until quite recently," note the editors of National Review.

Most observers expect the Supremes to toss out DOMA on narrow grounds.  The fate of Prop 8 is harder to read.  Former Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson got slapped around by the Justices when he argued gay marriage was a constitutional right.  If Prop 8 gets tossed, it may be on grounds of standing, because California didn’t defend it. 

The real tragedy is the decline of marriage, said Investors Business Daily.  Gay marriage will accelerate social disintegration.  Which is, of course, a reason why liberals support it.  But the "seismic" shift of public opinion has happened in large part because Jonathan Rauch and others "helped reposition the gay rights movement from libertine to conservative, from gays being a threat to our social order and institutions to wanting to be a respected part of them," said  Peter Wehner.

Gay marriage has been supported in 7 of 8 opinion polls conducted this year, but by the relatively narrow margin of 51 percent to 43 percent.  And gay marriage has fared much better in the polls than it has at the polls.  This may be because support for gay marriage is strongest among young people, who are less likely to actually go vote.  It may also be, in part, because of how pollsters ask their questions.  

Nowhere has the shift been greater than among Democrat politicians.  Now that the election is safely past, one after another came out in favor of gay marriage this week.  There is no constitutional right to same sex marriage, Justice Elena Kagan said during her confirmation hearings in 2009.  I bet she’s "evolved" since then.

Republicans have been "evolving" too.  Sen. Rob Portman,R-OH, changed his position because his son is gay.  I could imagine a GOP presidential candidate supporting gay marriage, said Karl Rove. If Republicans keep "evolving," social conservatives will walk, said Gary Bauer. 

The GOP shouldn’t change its platform plank opposing same sex marriage, but Republicans shouldn’t act "like old Testament heretics" either, said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.  They should be respectful of and warm and welcoming to gay marriage supporters who are with them on other issues. He had in mind people like college junior Tyler Bowman, who was conspicuous at a gay marriage rally because he was wearing a T shirt that touted 2^nd Amendment rights.   "Many of my friends in college who are gay are also either Republican or libertarian," he said.

* * * *

There’s been "evolution" on immigration reform, too. The "Gang of Eight" is putting the finishing touches on a comprehensive immigration reform bill.  When they hear specifics of what’s been proposed by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla, a large majority of Republicans support it, according to polling and focus groups conducted for Resurgent Republic.

Immigration reform is a top priority for him, President Obama says.  But if that were true, he and labor unions wouldn’t keep trying to insert "poison pill"  provisions.  A "path to citizenship" for illegals can’t be made contingent upon border security, say Zero and Big Sis.  We beg to differ, say Rubio and  Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

Opposing immigration reform was "one of the major blunders in Republican history," which led to the Democrat takeover of the Senate in 2006 and Barack Obama’s election in 2008, said Dick Morris.

* * * *

Liberals in the bigfoot media forced Dingy Harry Reid to schedule Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s gun control bill for a vote after all, I noted in a column earlier this week.  President Obama wants to "shame" Congress into approving it. It hasn’t worked with Sen. Marco Rubio, who will  join Sens. Mike Lee, R-UT, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz,R-Tex, in a filibuster.

Support for gun control has plummeted, according to a CBS poll.  The window in which to pass the assault weapons ban has closed, Politico noted, sourly. Zero has to know this.  But he still may be prefer to talk about gun control, because his economic policies are even more unpopular.  When the Democrat budget was brought to a vote in the Senate, it passed by only one vote.  All the Dems who voted no are up for re-election next year.

* * * *

Rather than face the voters again, many Democrats in the Senate are retiring.   This gives Republicans a reasonable chance to win the six seats they need to take the gavel away from Dingy Harry.  Not all the political news this week was good for the GOP.  Ashley Judd isn’t going to run for the Senate in Kentucky after all.

* * * *

The Shroud of Turin does in fact date from the time of Christ, according to tests performed at the University of Padua.  It’s not a "medieval forgery."  That’s good news during Holy Week.

* * * *

Here’s good news – and bad. For an exercise in his course in "intercultural communication," Prof. Deandre Poole of Florida Atlantic University told students to write the name "JESUS" on a piece of paper, put it on the floor face up, and step on it.

He wouldn’t, said Ryan Rotela, a devout Mormon.  The exercise is offensive, he told Prof. Poole.  He was going to complain about it to Prof. Poole’s superior.

Which Mr. Rotela did.  The university promptly suspended…him.  By complaining about the exercise, Mr. Rotela had violated the student code of conduct, he was told in a "Notice of Charges" sent by Associate Dean Rozalia Williams.  Because he confronted Prof. Poole, he might also be charged with intimidation and harassment, Dean Williams wrote. Mr. Rotela was suspended from the class, and told he might be expelled.

Then Fox News did a story about the incident.  Emails and phone calls from incredulous and angry people all over the country flooded into FAU’s administrative offices.  It began to dawn on the dimwitted fascists there they’d stepped in it, big time.

Florida Atlantic’s first effort at damage control was the standard liberal "we’re sorry if anyone was offended" non-apology apology.  But the angry phone calls and emails kept coming.  So FAU issued a second apology, this time a full grovel:

"We are deeply sorry for any hurt regarding this incident, any insensitivity that may have been seen by the community and the greater community at large," said the dean of students.  Mr. Rotela would not be punished for complaining about the exercise, and will be permitted to complete the course, with a different instructor.

Ryan Rotela was satisfied, but not Florida Gov. Rick Scott.  He wants a detailed report on the incident from the chancellor of the state university system, Frank Brogan.

"Whether the student was reprimanded or whether an apology was given is in many ways (inconsequential) to the larger issue of a professor’s poor judgment," Scott said in a letter to Mr. Brogan. "The professor’s lesson was offensive, and even intolerant, to Christians and those of all faiths who deserve to be respected as Americans entitled to religious freedom."

The exercise has an ugly precedent. "If suspected Christians (in 17th Century Japan) failed to stomp on an image of Jesus, they were often drowned or crucified," noted Bryan Preston.  "The Tokugawa shogunate used such punishments, and the fear they inspired, to crush Christianity and close Japan off to all foreign contact. Thousands were murdered by the state in what amounted to a Christian holocaust."

And it isn’t enough for FAU just to stop persecuting the innocent. Prof. Poole should be dismissed.  So should Associate Dean Rozalia Williams, and anyone else in the administration who had a hand in the decision to suspend Ryan Rotella.

We should be grateful for Mr. Rotella.  He demonstrated that one person with the courage of his convictions can still, sometimes, form a majority.

And we  should be appalled by his classmates.  For me, what’s most distressing about the incident is that just one student complained.

The stomping on Jesus exercise is an entire lesson in the textbook Prof. Poole used.  Students at other colleges have been told to do this, too.

The great ally of fascism is indifference, said Pastor Martin Niemoller, who spent 7 years in Nazi concentration camps.

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist," he said. "Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.

"Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me."

The students who wrote JESUS on a piece of paper, then stomped on it, were guilty of more than just the shameful silence Pastor Niemoller decried.

"We were only following orders," I suspect they’d say if asked why they complied.  That excuse was heard a lot at the Nuremberg trials.  It didn’t fly then.  It shouldn’t now.

"Why do so many young people today vote for dependency, when the essence of youth is a quest for independence?" wondered Robert Tracinski.   

Because they’re bathed constantly in leftist dogma, says Dennis Prager. We’ve paid too little attention to what our children are being taught in college, and by whom.  If this incident doesn’t prod us into action, then we, too, will be guilty of a shameful silence.

* * * *

Jack Wheeler named the HFR the HFR, I think, to highlight the importance of perspective, because whether a glass is half full or half empty depends on how we look at it.  Holy Week (today especially) is a good time for reflection.  We should reflect more on the beams in our eyes than on the motes we spot in the eyes of others.

Conservatives have lost a lot of elections recently, and a lot of arguments, like the one on gay marriage.  We may lose the country in consequence.  This mostly isn’t our fault.  Our problems stem primarily from the enormous bias of the news media, and from the explosive growth of "low information" voters.

But much of it is our fault.  And it’s a lot easier to fix what is our fault than the things over which we have little control.  These, I think, are the principal political sins of conservatives:

Excessive pessimism.  It may be too late to repeal Obamacare, frets Ed Morrissey.  On gay marriage, "We lost.  It doesn’t matter what SCOTUS does.  It’s inevitable now," said Rush Limbaugh.

I have great respect for both Ed and Rush, but BS.  Yes, it will be hard to repeal Obamacare.  The last election was, as Ed says, our best chance to do so. But it’s never too late to stop doing something stupid and to start doing something smart.  Eastern Europeans had real, full blown Communism, and got rid of it.  Obamacare will do to the Dems what the Iraq war did to the GOP, predicts Shikla Dalmia. 

She’s right.  Obamacare already is enormously unpopular – and only the parts Democrats thought people would like have been implemented so far.  We didn’t capitalize on Obamacare’s unpopularity in 2012 because Mitt Romney was absolutely the worst possible candidate to run against it, and because 20-something "low information" voters can’t see the train wreck coming.  But next year the Medicare cuts we’ve been warning about will happen, and the 20-somethings will be hit with huge health insurance premium hikes.  The news media have done all they can to conceal the truth about Obamacare, but when the bad (stuff) actually hits the fan, they’ll be able to do so no longer.

On gay marriage, SCOTUS is likely to toss DOMA on narrow technical grounds, because Justice Anthony Kennedy is (as usual) the swing vote, and he doesn’t torch the Constitution.  He just singes it around the edges.  The likely consequence is that more blue states will adopt gay marriage, but Red States won’t.  This is by no means an ideal outcome, but it’s far from total defeat.  There are many more battles yet to be fought.  If we up our game, we’ll win more of them.  In the end, I doubt that God will be mocked.

Terrible tactical sense.  Frederick the Great (1740-1786) was the greatest military strategist of his age.  His most famous maxim is: "He who defends everything defends nothing."  It’s time conservatives learned this.  We battle against every liberal thrust because it’s a matter of principle, we say.  But it is stupid, not principled, to fight constantly on ground of the enemy’s choosing.  We must choose the battles we fight, and the manner in which we fight them, more carefully.

Immigration reform and gay marriage illustrate what I mean.  Dick Morris is right about the consequences of the way we’ve handled immigration, and the potential benefits of embracing reasonable reform.  Just getting the issue off the table helps us, which is why Zero and the Dems want to keep it alive.

The shift in public opinion on gay marriage means that fighting to preserve the status quo ante is futile.  We need to recognize, as Peter Wehner has, that the shift took place in part because advocates of gay marriage advanced a conservative argument for it, and that there is some merit to that argument.  And we need to recognize the libertarian option advanced by Rand Paul and others offers both the best opportunity to preserve what we can of traditional marriage, and to appeal to those who support gay marriage.

Our tactical sense is terrible in large part because of our enormous self regard. We see ourselves as the wise and selfless guardians of Truth, Justice and the American Way.  We’re unwilling to compromise, because we see every dispute as a matter of principle. And because we view those who disagree with us – even on relatively small matters of strategy and tactics – as not merely mistaken, but as morally inferior.  So we treat them with hostility, as we have Hispanics and gays.  They’ve reciprocated that hostility at the voting booth.

A noxious consequence of the interaction between our terrible tactical sense and our enormous self regard is the zest with which we attack other Republicans.  I’m a social conservative, but I’m sick unto death of the threats from the "Family Values" people to walk if the RNC says something nice about supporters of gay marriage.  I’d prefer a budget along the lines proposed by the Republican Study Committee in the House, or by Sen. Rand Paul, to that proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan.  But I recognize that that’s not going to happen (yet), and I am sick unto death of those conservatives who accuse Ryan, House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell et al of "cowardice" because they recognize the dangers of getting too far ahead of public opinion, and who airily dismiss GOP efforts to restrain spending because they are not as great as they would like.  The most innumerate people in America are those conservatives who believe in addition by subtraction.

Times are tough.  I think soon they’ll get a lot tougher.  The America we know and love may not survive them.  Some of us may not survive them.  I think we will…if we seek with humility the assistance of the Author of Liberty, and we strive to do something about those beams in our eyes.

Today is the anniversary of the saddest day in the history of Mankind.  Sunday is the anniversary of the most glorious.  He is Risen, so the glass is more than half full.