David Steury
Number of articles: 27First article: February 28, 2013
Latest article: April 22, 2015
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Google keeps religion private with (lack of) Easter Doodle
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Kicking the can Electile dysfunction: campaigns need civility
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Kicking the can Arguing against Alito: Why expert opinion should be respected in court
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Kicking the can The importance of education beyond the job market
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Kicking the can Why we need to take religion out of politics
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Kicking the can: A lifetime of lessons: what I learned at Bowdoin
It’s a scene that most seniors are familiar with: you’re with a few friends, chatting, having a good time, perhaps celebrating the coming of spring. A lull in the conversation comes, and one of your friends starts staring intently at his drink. After that silence lasts just a second too long, he says, prematurely nostalgic, “I’m going to miss this place.”
The mood instantly turns melancholy, and for a minute everyone stares into his drink, mumbling in agreement. Finally, someone says he just doesn’t want to think about it or that whatever, he is super excited for the real world.
With finals and then graduation uncomfortably soon, there’s a question worth asking ourselves and our peers: What have we learned in our undergraduate years at Bowdoin—four years that are promised to be the best of our lives?
I’ve learned a few things. I’ve learned that high-school me was dead wrong and that I’ll use math quite a lot throughout my career.
I’ve learned about the allegory of the cave, and that I unquestionably want to see more than the shadows on the wall and that I am mystified when others do not. I’ve learned that I love studying law, legal reasoning and all the implications of the rules we write for society, and that I will probably go to law school. I’ve learned that people from all walks of life have a shared humanity and that no matter what, a person is a person, and should be treated as such.
I’ve learned that I’m not, as I believed when I arrived on campus nearly four years ago, a socialist. Instead of drifting to the left at Bowdoin, my studies, my friends and my professors have put me on a political tract much closer to Michael Bloomberg than Ralph Nader.
As living proof that you can leave Bowdoin more conservative than you went in, I would like to congratulate the National Association of Scholars and all right-wing alarmists for being so stunningly wrong about Bowdoin being a liberal indoctrination machine. To be fair, to have become more liberal than I was four years ago, I would need to wave around a copy of Mao’s “Little Red Book” and think that Russell Brand’s ravings are even a little coherent. I also didn’t exactly turn into Ronald Reagan.
I’ve learned that moral relativism has to be much more limited than many of us might like. Obviously not every society and subset of society needs to share exactly the same rules and morals, but fundamental human rights are well worth defending—even when that defense looks an awful lot like imperialism.
We are willing to label certain behaviors or practices patently wrong within our own society, and there is no reason we should not extend our analysis—carefully—beyond our borders. We’re not right about everything, however, and we must be willing to accept that and strive to improve. But we must also be willing to accept that there are certain things we are very much right about—for instance, that the right to dissent must be inalienable.
To claim that values are relative and that atrocities such as the Charlie Hebdo massacre could be excused because of cultural differences embodies a very dark form of nihilism that throws away millennia of human social progress.
Rather than waste our breath on misplaced sensitivity, we should think of what values can help humanity exist freely without fear of violent reprisal for real or imagined slights.
I’ve learned that my peers have an immense amount to teach me, and that your worldviews might be best fleshed out late at night with your roommates while you try to finish that one last piece of homework before bed. I’ve learned that columns can be written in an hour if you’re sufficiently desperate. I’ve learned to accept criticism and to give it. I’ve learned to learn by doing. I’ve learned to better appreciate all the arts and sciences and to be fascinated by disciplines about which I know little.
I’ve learned to learn at Bowdoin, and I’ll carry these four years of knowledge with me for the rest of my life.
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Kicking the can: Laws should regulate only harmful religious action, not thought
To effectively govern a civil society, people develop sets of laws by which all members must abide. We start with the obvious ones: Don’t kill and don’t steal.
From there, we work through the particulars and derivations of those rules, outlawing assaults and deciding that some forms of theft (grand theft auto, bank robbery) are worse than others (palming a pack of gum). We regulate substances, trade, education and relationships, presumably in the hope that such guidelines or restrictions will make people’s lives easier and more productive.
As the body of laws grows, some laws that burden one group of people over another and compel them to do something contrary to their beliefs or heritage develop. At that point, we have three choices. First, we can say tough beans and enforce compliance. Second, we can re-evaluate the necessity of the law. Third, we can make an exception.
The trend in the United States has been towards the third option. In 1993, Congress passed the federal version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in response to the State of Oregon’s refusal to extend unemployment benefits to two American Indians. The State of Oregon refused on the grounds that the American Indians had ingested peyote, an illegal drug, during a religious ceremony.
A Supreme Court decision—penned by Antonin Scalia—upheld Oregon’s judgment. The RFRA passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. After another Court decision limiting the scope of the RFRA to federal laws under the 14th Amendment, 21 states have passed their own versions of the RFRA with varying degrees of fidelity to the original law.
The primary function of the law is to prohibit the government from “substantially burden[ing]” the free exercise of religion, even with a law of “general applicability,” unless the government could show both that the law is pursuant to a “compelling government interest” and that the law is the “least restrictive” method of furthering that interest. That is, it must withstand “strict scrutiny,” the most stringent test for evaluating the constitutionality of a law.
The first test of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment went in front of the Supreme Court in 1878 in “Reynolds v. United States.” In Reynolds, the Court upheld an anti-bigamy law, worrying that if it granted a religious exception to the law then religious convictions would trump societal and governmental authority and every citizen would “become a law unto himself.” The Court was right. Civil society does not function well when citizens can opt out of certain rules.
However those rules should not be too onerous. We should heed John Stuart Mill’s declaration that “the only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute.” That is, it is antithetical to our notions of liberty to restrict behavior that does not do harm to others.
Disfavored behaviors tied to certain religious beliefs, such as the use of hallucinogens, should not be legislated against so long as they do no harm to the public. If we are to permit an exception to a law on religious grounds, we ought to strike down the law altogether.
Seeking to control every aspect of life is illiberal, and we ought to avoid it. Otherwise we might, out of respect to religious freedom, end up with a body of laws with so many religious holes it it that it resembles Albert Hall in “A Day in the Life.”
Lacking a definition of religious liberty in the Constitution, in the Reynolds case, the Court turned to a law passed in the Virginia House of Delegates and drafted by Thomas Jefferson to define the term. It found that the limit of religious liberty came and government could interfere “when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.” This should continue to be the standard against which religious liberty is measured. Obviously, the government cannot turn into the thought police, but society can and must regulate behavior in a measured and uniform way.
In a later letter, Jefferson wrote that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions” and that he and the nation would be steadfast in defense of a citizen’s right of conscience but that “he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.” We must write our laws precisely and with a light touch so that they do not require religious exemptions and we must be careful to regulate action, not thought.
Where we are inclined to offer an exemption, we should ask one question: Are we as a society comfortable extending this right to all, regardless of religious belief? If we answer yes, then we should realize that the law has no place in a liberal society. If the thought makes us shudder, we should consider the law one of Jefferson’s social duties, against which an individual’s claim to a natural right might be harmful to others and thus must fail.
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Kicking the can: The importance of education beyond the job market
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s presumed candidacy for president recently set off a discussion about the utility and necessity of a college degree. Walker never graduated from college, choosing to run for public office before finishing his degree.
Of course, pundits and everyday Americans alike asked whether the president should have a college degree in this day and age (the last president to only have a high school diploma was Harry Truman). However, those voices were vastly outnumbered by Walker’s supporters, who took the opportunity to lament the fact that a bachelor’s degree is considered a necessity for many occupations.
On the one hand, they have a point—it is terribly elitist to explicitly or implicitly require an academic qualification for an elected position that represents the whole of the United States. But it is not his lack of a college degree that should disqualify Walker from the White House. It is the utter contempt that Walker and many of his supporters have for the most respected system of higher education in the world that makes him a uniquely terrible candidate for the Oval Office.
When defending the liberal arts, we often point to the value that graduates of schools like Bowdoin add to the workforce. In a world that increasingly calls for technical skills, our alumni, administration, and faculty laud the liberal arts for preparing students to be versatile members of the workforce. Liberal arts students are praised for being “quick learners” and for their ability to “think critically” in the workplace.
That is all well and good, but it is a poor defense of academia and the liberal arts in particular. Education cannot be wholly about vocation. This, in particular, Walker does not understand. As part of a Walker-backed budget proposal, the charter of the University of Wisconsin had to be amended to strike the parts about seeking to “improve the human condition” and the “search for truth,” to be replaced by merely meeting “the state’s workforce needs.”
The ensuing dustup caused Walker to claim that the changes had just snuck their way in there, but clearly either Walker or one of his staffers thought they were a good enough idea to insert into the proposal.
The utility of education, and in particular the sort of “impractical” education offered by Bowdoin and its peer schools, cannot be confined to the workplace. To claim that education should exist merely to enable the next generation of worker drones to be more productive worker drones not only cheapens education, but also cheapens millennia of scholarship in the search for truth and meaning.
It shows immense disrespect for the giants upon whose shoulders we stand to claim that academia should turn its focus to workforce needs alone. Of course, we can all agree that people should have a skill that can get them ahead in the world and that a certain degree of vocational education is necessary for a productive and successful society.
But we should all also agree that while an understanding of the Federalist Papers helps very few job seekers, it helps us to be better citizens and voters. A deep understanding of history or the natural sciences or the wonders of mathematics may not always be the hard skill that we need, but it certainly helps us to navigate the world.
As we get older, many of us will have children. At that point, it will be our duty to impart our knowledge and values to the generation that will replace us. Our academic engagement will help us to present our children with a nuanced view of the world. When they ask us difficult questions about events yet to occur, we will be able to present a reasoned answer. Just as we are now taught, our children will be able to understand rather than to blindly follow.
A purely vocational notion of education does little to further our ability to understand where we came from and where we’re headed, and it does not encourage us to be valued members of a society in any way besides contributing to the GDP. (It must be noted that all of the benefits of education I mention theoretically contribute to GDP indirectly.)
Civic engagement, self-examination and cultural understanding are values that must be taught by parents or by the educational system. An academy that teaches the values of great artists, thinkers and scientists will help our civilization achieve its full potential.
Very few people would truly embrace the idea of an educational qualification for higher office. If Bill Gates announced tomorrow his candidacy for the White House, none would criticize his lack of a diploma. Being elected governor of one of the 50 states is no small feat, and especially considering Walker’s considerable accomplishments, his lack of a B.A. certificate hanging in his study should not disqualify him from the presidency.
However, his evident lack of understanding of why the academy exists is alarming, and Walker’s positions are exemplary of the anti-intellectualism that pervades certain circles in our country. Every member of society can derive value from learning for learning’s sake. Perhaps Walker should think about improving the nation’s secondary education systems and making higher education more accessible rather than attempting to eviscerate American learning. Plato, whose writings helped form the basis of modern Western civilization, envisioned a society headed by the “philosopher king.” He would be dismayed that we are contemplating the elevation of its antithesis to our highest office.
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Kicking the can: Mainstream conservativism is necessary for strong liberal politics
William F. Buckley was one of the greatest political thinkers of the 20th century, and I agree with him on very little. Buckley made a career of pushing back against liberalism on TV, in prose and most famously in the publication he founded in 1955, the National Review. He constantly questioned the wisdom of progressivism, despised communism, was a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of laissez-faire economics and called for society to embrace a common set of morals.
He was viewed as the intellectual conservative icon of a generation. This did not, of course, mean that Buckley was immovable—in fact, after writing a particularly nauseating piece entitled “Why the South Must Prevail” in 1957, Buckley eventually changed his views, becoming a staunch opponent of George Wallace and an admirer of Martin Luther King, Jr., pushing for a national holiday honoring the latter.
Vigorously opposed to anti-Semitism, he was instrumental in helping to root it out in the mainstream Republican Party and refused to employ anyone with such beliefs. Buckley was correct when he wrote, in the mission statement for his newly founded magazine, “Our political economy and our high-energy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas—not by day-to-day guesswork, expedients and improvisations….A vigorous and incorruptible journal of conservative opinion is—dare we say it?—as necessary to better living as Chemistry.”
In short, Buckley was a perpetual thorn in the side of those in power, asking them to question themselves and their beliefs, reminding the nation that there can be a dark side to progressivism.
We liberals, especially the more radical variety, need and deserve pushback from our stodgier counterparts. Many of us believe our ideas to be unconditionally right and thus beyond reproach, dismissing dissenters as ignorant or greedy. Instead, we must be willing to hear and accept criticism and to shape our raw ideas into something workable and necessarily non-utopian. Conservatives provide the pushback against “guess work, expedients and improvisations” that we need, and instead of rejecting out of hand a preference for a more static set of rules we should carefully measure new ideas against existing ones, always asking whether we are truly improving.
Policy can almost always be improved by conservative input and criticism. Social Security, while undeniably a boon to the average American and a matter of life and death to many of our poorer citizens, may go bankrupt in a matter of years thanks to a lack of foresight in its funding scheme. Here at Bowdoin, the conservative impulses of many students and administrators have questioned the wisdom of divestment. While divestment is a very nice idea, it is simply a proposition of financial martyrdom with no realistic end goal. Do we really think that society can simply quit using fossil fuels?
Of course, conservatives do not have the monopoly on asking tough questions and thinking about a policy’s implications far down the road. But they are historically very good at raising an argument where no self-respecting liberal is willing to do so—generally out of fear of being labeled uncaring or ideologically impure.
Implicit within this argument is the notion that progress will always win out over conservatism, and thus conservatism is only valuable as a foil for progressivism. That’s clearly a problem. So it is paramount to draw a distinction between radical conservatism and mainstream conservatism. Radical conservatism includes the Tea Party and the religious right—political groups that wish to apply antiquated rules to modern society. I say “radical” not because all members of those groups are particularly extreme, but because they agitate for a wholesale shift in the status quo, just like “radicals” on the left. Mainstream conservatism, in the tradition of Buckley, President Eisenhower, and (dare I say?) Mitt Romney, exhorts society to go slow and to think about all the implications of change. The message is “let’s not stray too far from our base principles” rather than “we must unconditionally adhere to the ideas of our society’s founders.”
Will the urging of conservatives always or even often lead progressives to change their minds? No. This is historically evident. Some questions raised by conservatives are brought up and then, gradually, resolved. We appear to be at the tail end of assuaging doubts about marriage equality, for instance. The involvement and influence of conservatism in public discourse tempers public policy and helps us understand precisely what we’re doing. As Buckley said of his magazine, and perhaps of conservatism in general, “It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so.”
As much as we might be inclined to forge ahead, having voices like Buckley’s are indispensable to the responsible development and implementation of ideas—lest we wantonly legislate from the heart and end up in an inelegant, broken dystopia. I would exhort conservatives to be heard, and I would expect any progressive with a modicum of intellectual honesty to engage. If we cannot defend our ideas to naysayers, we cannot expect to defend them against the harsh realities of the world.
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Kicking the can: Law is not on the side of parents who refuse to vaccinate their eligible children
For a large part of my (albeit short) life, I was blissfully unaware of the anti-vaccination movement. I knew that some people dismissed medicine out of hand—generally on religious grounds—but I had no idea that a growing number of otherwise reasonable and educated people believed that vaccinating their children was somehow unhealthy.
My parents and their friends belong to community where due deference was given to the opinions of doctors and scientists, and wholesale rejection of scientific findings was considered irrational. How lucky I was. While my ignorance was bliss, the ignorance of anti-vaccination parents constitutes a grave public health risk—one that was recently thrust into the public consciousness by an outbreak of measles at Disneyland.
Measles is a disease that spreads easily through the air—much like the common cold—but is much more dangerous. In developed countries like the U.S., death only occurs in about 0.2 percent of measles cases, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, in less developed countries, the mortality rate can be as high as 10 percent.
But, there’s another difference between measles here and in the sort of place only National Geographic and the Navy SEALs venture: the infection rate is on the rise here. According to the CDC, between 2002 and 2007 there were well under 100 cases of measles in the U.S. each year. In 2014, there were more than 600. And just 37 days into 2015, there have already been 102 cases. Not surprisingly, nearly all of those who contracted measles were unvaccinated.
Parents have all sorts of reasons for refusing to vaccinate their kids, but none of them are valid. From religious objections to a rejection of anything unnatural, and from the demonstrably false belief that vaccines give kids autism to some really hilarious conspiracy theories, parents latch on to ignorant justifications that can hurt their own kids or others.
Of course, certain individuals have medical conditions that prevent them from being vaccinated, and they instead rely on the herd protection of a healthy populace to avoid contracting dangerous infectious diseases. The greater the percentage of people in a country that are immunized, the harder it is for a disease to gain a foothold. And because vaccines are not 100 percent effective, it is important for everyone who is able to get vaccinated.
Some parents of vaccine-ineligible children have threatened to sue the parents of unvaccinated children for endangering their kids. More power to them. It’s certainly not inconceivable that they win.
One parent who deserves such a lawsuit is Dina Check, a Staten Island mother who filed suit against the City of New York for its refusal to let her unvaccinated child attend school during a chickenpox outbreak.
“The devil is germs and disease, which is cancer and any of those things that can take you down. But if you trust in the Lord, these things cannot come near you,” said Check, who did not vaccinate her child on religious grounds.
I’d urge her to tell that to children in the third world—many of whom, I’m sure, place a great deal of trust in God—who cannot obtain the measles vaccine, and are susceptible to contracting the disease and dying.
Check’s lawsuit, Phillips v. City of New York (2015), was dismissed in federal court. The U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit said that New York City’s refusal to allow unvaccinated students to attend school during an outbreak was constitutional, citing a century-old decision that stated the police power of the state extended to vaccination requirements, and that New York’s rule could have been much stricter and remained Constitutional.
Phillips and the previous case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), demonstrate that states’ interests in keeping their citizens safe are so important that they supersede even religious objections, which are usually protected by our constitution.
With the growing wave of antipathy towards vaccination, we should not forget that smallpox, one of the most horrific diseases known to mankind, was eradicated thanks to vaccines.
Barring the efficacy of lawsuits to force parents to vaccinate their children, states should move quickly to require vaccination for all those eligible and energetically pursue the goal of a healthy populace.
Perhaps the best argument that a court has laid forth that could support vaccine mandates comes from Prince v. Massachusetts (1945), which dealt primarily with child labor laws, but briefly delved into the issue of vaccination.
Justice Rutledge, writing for the majority argued that: “the family itself is not beyond regulation in the public interest, as against a claim of religious liberty…[a]nd neither rights of religion nor rights of parenthood are beyond limitation…[The state’s] authority is not nullified merely because the parent grounds his claim to control the child’s course of conduct on religion or conscience. Thus, he cannot claim freedom from compulsory vaccination for the child more than for himself on religious grounds. The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death.”
It may be true that we give parents ample opportunity to fuck up their kids. But this is a question of them fucking up other people’s kids, and we should absolutely prohibit the possibility.
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Kicking the can: State of the Union offers hope for next two years
With the midterm elections far behind us and the new Congress in session, there is reason to hope that President Obama’s last two years in office may be his two most productive. The last four years under a divided government have been bleak, to say the least.
Obstructionist Republicans have bitterly fought nearly everything the president and his party have wanted, including must-pass bills such as continuing resolutions and debt ceiling increases, leading frustrated Democrats to all but shut out Republicans in the Senate.
Meanwhile, conservatives demonize the President and the Democratic Party, sometimes with bizarre theories. Former Sen. Scott Brown, for example, claimed that terrorists would take advantage of the “porous” border to infect Americans with Ebola (which is actually the exact plot of a Tom Clancy novel), and then-Rep. Tom Cotton asserted that ISIL and Mexican drug cartels would team up to kill innocent Americans.
Both are smart enough to know that those claims are patently ridiculous. One of the two was elected, partially thanks to such fear-mongering. But now that Republicans have more than achieved their midterm goals and attained large (but not filibuster- or veto-proof) majorities in both houses, it seems possible to move beyond such childish stunts and get on to legislating.
In his State of the Union address to the new Congress on Tuesday, President Obama laid out one policy that many Republicans wholeheartedly support. He asked Congress to give him fast-track authority on trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that would open many Asian markets to American business and strengthen intellectual property rights around the world.
Fast-tracking would essentially give the President the power to negotiate trade deals independently of Congress, then submit the finished product to Congress for a quick, amendment-less, up-or-down vote.
Predictably, many Democrats and their allies are none too pleased with the president’s intentions, claiming that the deals will cost innumerable American jobs. They’re probably wrong, but that’s not really the point here. Rather, the point is that the president and a Republican-controlled Congress agree on something. It’s really just a cherry on top that the bill in question will help ensure American competitiveness in the 21st century global economy.
What else can the president and Congress do to cooperate and get things done? The approval of the Keystone XL pipeline comes to mind. The unfortunate thing about the pipeline is that it has become a symbol in the fight over climate change.
Its approval should have been routine, and experts (such as, you know, the U.S. Department of State) have found that its environmental impact would be negligible. Of course, the pro-pipeline jobs argument is ridiculous as well—perhaps a double-digit number (!) of permanent jobs would actually be created by its construction.
In fact, oil companies don’t particularly care about the pipeline anymore. They’re transporting the fuel they extract via rail, rendering the pipeline superfluous for their purposes. If anything, the pipeline would reduce the environmental impact of the tar sands oil extraction in question, as a pipeline is much less prone to spillage than a train.
Ultimately, it’s just an empty fight between conservative firebreathers and environmentalists opposed on principle. In the past, the president has signaled that he might not be opposed to the pipeline’s approval, and it is likely that his recent veto threat is no more than posturing. The president wants Congressional Republicans to know that he won’t just swallow whatever bill comes before him. He should use the pipeline as a bargaining chip, perhaps in exchange for the closure of a major tax loophole or a part of the his ambitious community college plan. He and the minority Democrats will get something they want, and Republicans will be able to claim a major victory that really doesn’t cost anything. The best part? It’s even more than win-win: such a deal will set the stage for future cooperation.
Perhaps the clearest signal that congressional Republicans are ready to get down to the business of governing comes from what they’re not saying. It’s been a while since I’ve heard the oft-repeated campaign promises to repeal Obamacare and tear down the president’s health care policies.
The official Republican response to the State of the Union, delivered by Sen. Joni Ernst, only contained three sentences about the law, and although she used the word “repeal” once, she was much less confrontational than during her campaign, when she promised to “make ’em squeal” in Washington.
Republican leadership knows that repealing the law is unfeasible and appears to be backing off and focusing on more practical targets.
Enacting fast-track authority for trade deals could be one of the first steps in building a productive relationship between President Obama and a Congress that sounded awfully bloodthirsty during campaign season.
If the legislative and executive branches can get off to a good start, perhaps Obama’s last two years can resemble President Bush’s last two years. Bush and the Democratically-crontrolled 110th Congress took steps to save the American automobile industry and passed legislation to bail out the U.S. financial system. Republicans may be willing to govern with the help of the president and Democrats, but after a sweeping victory they will want to claim some of the spoils if they are going to sit down at the negotiating table and do business.
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Kicking the can: Embracing the right to human dignity
Lately, Bowdoin has been full of events that point to one question. What do freedom of speech and critical inquiry mean on our campus, particularly in relation to each other?
Undiscussed is a student group that has brought speakers with opposing viewpoints on abortion to campus to spark conversation and thought.
Much of the campus recently participated in Yellow Shirt Day, an annual event inspired by a protest of an anti-gay marriage speaker who visited Bowdoin in 2005.
Last year, two student group advisors were booted from their positions for failing to sign a non-discrimination agreement that they felt ran contrary to their faith.
In an inappropriate letter to the editor, a trustee condescendingly chastised a student for his pro-Palestine views and accused him of not understanding the First Amendment. As a campus, we tend to be very progressive and are often loudly proud of that fact. But we also had all seen the Offer of the College innumerable times prior to signing the matriculation book and began our first years at Bowdoin ready to gain a standard for the criticism of our work and views.
Can Bowdoin have a specific viewpoint and still claim to be an institution of critical inquiry, or does the College’s adoption of an idea preclude it from fairly weighing different viewpoints?
First, let us dispense with the idea that this is a First Amendment debate. It’s not. The First Amendment prevents the government from restricting freedom of speech, not private institutions like Bowdoin. However, Bowdoin does exhort the importance of free speech and states that it is the “cornerstone of intellectual life” at the College. Thus, it is our own standards, not those of the government, to which we must hold ourselves.
In the Faculty Handbook, immediately after the lionization of free speech, there is a passage that in some interpretations may serve to limit it.
In it, the College affirms its responsibility to protect its community from discrimination and intimidation, and says that “[E]very student and faculty member at Bowdoin must maintain toward every other student and faculty member an unqualified respect for those rights that transcend differences of race, sex, or any other distinctions irrelevant to human dignity.”
Now, first, let me say that that is a fantastic sentence. Were I in a lazier mood, I would leave the discussion right there because there is absolutely nothing that can follow the message and construction of that phrase, which came from a book with possibly the dullest title ever.
It is easy to dismiss a person whose ideas, routines, preferences or culture do not fit into your ideal. But differing opinions and the experiences that shape them can challenge our own opinions and experiences, and we should not shy away from that.
Learning about a different view might add nuance to our own opinions, even if they are changed very little or not at all. It seems that if we are serious about our inquiries and our desire to sharpen our minds and our arguments, we must not ignore our critics.
Perhaps the most cherished idea at Bowdoin—and indeed in the entire American experiment—is that human beings are equal at their core. This does not mean that differences in characteristics that lead to success do not exist. Clearly, some people are better equipped to succeed in today’s world than others. Others get lucky.
But we are all afforded an equal measure of human dignity, and a right that is given to one of us should not be withheld from another. We have tried to build a society on that idea, and we will continue to progress with that principle squarely in our sights.
Bowdoin has consistently affirmed its commitment to the common good and its unequivocal stance on political equality, and it has no obligation to give a platform to speakers with views contrary to that mission.
If a certain political statement cannot be made without “unqualified respect for those rights that transcend…distinctions irrelevant to human dignity,” then it has no place in a pluralistic society or an intellectual tradition like Bowdoin’s, and we do not need to give it the time of day.
Even keeping in mind, that we should constantly be engaging in self-criticism and questioning whether or not our views are correct, there are certain things that we can take as given. Human dignity is one of those things.
If an argument does not begin under the assumption that humans must have political equality, there is no reason for Bowdoin to provide a purveyor of that argument with a soapbox.
While Bowdoin should not be in the business of rejecting an argument’s conclusion, it can and should be in the business of rejecting premises that deny human dignity.
All too often, the first people to complain that their freedom of speech is being trampled are the ones with arguments that relegate an entire subsection of humanity to a second-class position. Along with freedom of speech comes a marketplace of ideas. Time and space are valuable, and we should not expend such scarce resources giving a platform to valueless positions.
Bowdoin, as both a buyer and seller in that marketplace, has no obligation to use its resources to further arguments that are contrary to its pluralistic worldview. If you are losing in the marketplace of ideas, you should perhaps re-evaluate your position.
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Kicking the can: Misplaced blame: Michaud’s supporters wrongly scapegoat Cutler
During the 2014 election season in Maine, one of the most oft-repeated messages from the Maine Democratic Party was that Eliot Cutler, an independent candidate in the state’s gubernatorial race, was only siphoning liberal votes away from Representative Mike Michaud, the Democratic candidate.
That position seemed to be validated on November 4, at least in the minds of many die-hard Democrats: Michaud lost his race in a blue(ish) state against a Republican rival who, just as in 2010, won with less than 50 percent of the vote.
Unfortunately, this excuse for electoral failure does not stand up to examination, and Democrats should instead look inward to explain just how Maine got stuck with another four years under Governor Paul LePage.
First, let’s think about the pure results. Somehow, incredibly, one of the least popular governors in the United States was re-elected with more than a ten percentage point improvement over his 2010 performance.
In 2010, LePage received 38 percent of the vote and won by under two points, defeating Cutler. In 2014, with an underwater approval rating, LePage received over 48 percent of the vote, topping Michaud by five points and falling just shy of a majority in the three-way race. Not only failing to defeat such a vulnerable candidate, but also seeing him win by a wider margin than before is simply embarrassing.
This campaign cycle, the most common question I was asked was “How could you support Eliot Cutler when he’s just taking votes away from Mike Michaud? Do you want LePage to win?”
My answer? Easily—because he wasn’t, and because Michaud couldn’t have won even with Cutler out of the race. Polls asked Cutler supporters who they would vote for in a head-to-head race between Michaud and LePage, and the results varied greatly.
Even the most Michaud-friendly poll I found showed just over a 2:1 advantage for Michaud among Cutler’s supporters, far less than would have been required for Michaud to seal the deal. In fact, if all of Cutler’s voters had gone to the polls without his name on the ballot, about 80 percent would have had to cast their ballots for Michaud to make up for his 30,000-vote deficit.
The fact is that in this most recent campaign, Michaud wasn’t the best candidate for the job. Given that a significant part of his campaign was dedicated to telling Cutler supporters to vote for him because Cutler couldn’t win, I’m not entirely convinced that Michaud thought Michaud was the best candidate for the job.
Unfortunately, the biggest blunder of the entire campaign came before it even started: when Eliot Cutler declined to run as a Democrat. Clearly, he had reasons for not doing so: namely, he’s not a Democrat, and did not want to be beholden in any way to the Democratic Party while in the Blaine House.
However, it’s fairly clear that if he ran as a Democrat, he would now be the governor-elect of Maine. Pollsters consistently found that in a Cutler-LePage race, Cutler would steamroll LePage.
That miscalculation, whether intentional or not, cost him the governorship and cost the people of Maine a governor who wouldn’t punctuate his political attacks with rape jokes.Michaud is an incredibly run-of-the-mill Democrat who sought office in a state that tends to be unreceptive to that type of candidate.
He’s a nice guy; he has populist positions; he’s socially liberal, and he wants to increase the minimum wage. Boring. He brought very little to the table that signaled an active improvement in policy.
Maine seemed to be full of people who really wanted Cutler, perhaps convinced by his property tax plan or his ideas for the economic rejuvenation of Maine’s mill towns or his unwavering support of reproductive rights.
But they ended up supporting Michaud because they believed the Democratic narrative that Cutler, running outside the two-party system, couldn’t win.
Looking at Maine’s electoral history, it is clear what brand of leader Mainers usually elect. Successful and remembered Maine politicians tend to be those that can reach out to both sides of an argument, develop real ideas and work across party lines to reach a mutually agreeable conclusion. Leaders like former senators George Mitchell and Olympia Snowe, Angus King and Susan Collins come to mind. It is a pity that we will not now be able to add Eliot Cutler to that list.
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Kicking the can: Closed minds ask to close borders: remedying Ebola paranoia
A couple weeks ago, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal issued an executive order directing state officials to monitor travel between West Africa and his state, while also prohibiting recent travelers from leading a normal life—like not being able to visit grocery stores. The federal government has not done enough to “prevent the entry of the Ebola virus disease into the United States of America,” Jindal asserted while warning of a potential “public health emergency” stemming from the virus’ ability to spread from one infected person to many others. Governors in other states, including Chris Christie in New Jersey and Andrew Cuomo in New York, followed suit with draconian executive actions targeting Ebola. Here in Maine, the state is prepared to go to court to force a nurse—who has tested negative for the virus—to be quarantined.
People in Louisiana, Maine and around the nation are irrationally paranoid about this disease. The quarantine orders are sure to ignite more controversy, more fear and inspire more states to treat the one Ebola-related death and two transmissions within the United States as a state of emergency. Given that some in the conservative media have taken to calling Obama “President Ebola,” I am tempted to think that the orders and other elite calls for strict containment are purely cynical and cheap political stunts.
Let’s pretend that, contrary to all expert opinion I’ve heard, Ebola is more than a negligible threat to the United States and that something must be done about it beyond the capabilities of our existing public health institutions. If so, Jindal’s actions and insinuations—coupled with the rants of other far-right politicians and pundits—fit perfectly with the conservative narrative as of late. Got a problem? Seal the border.
Tea Party-style populists who claim to support a free market invariably leave their convictions at the border. Too few jobs? Seal the border and keep manufacturing here. Illegal drugs being imported? Seal the border and shoot everyone heading north in a speedboat near San Diego. Refugee children from Central America seeking a peaceful existence? Seal the border and send them right back to their parents. Working in Washington this summer, one of the more unbelievable calls I received was from an individual worried about little immigrant children bringing Ebola across the border as part of an intricate ISIS plot. The caller demanded that the government immediately act to seal the border. He said that no elected official in Washington would receive his vote unless they immediately grabbed a gun and went down to defend the border. Sealing the border, the narrative goes, keeps America America—to hell with everything else.
The problem here is that sealing the border is incompatible with a globalized society and an international market economy. In such a world, border closures are rarely a good way to deal with anything—even a scary disease with a slim chance of exposure. Closing borders inhibits the exchange of goods and ideas, leading to lower output. Closing borders promotes xenophobia and encourages a jingoistic dislike of people and cultures. Closing borders furthers an us-versus-them mentality that degrades cooperation, reduces trade and closes off opportunities for our own people and for human beings around the world. America is what it is today in large part because of its interaction with the rest of the world, not in spite of it. I, alongside other more liberally inclined commentators, never tire of reiterating that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants and that most of our border-crazy counterparts badly need a history lesson.
Nigeria recently solved its Ebola problem. It did not do so by closing its borders. It did so by quickly identifying the sources of the disease and quarantining infected patients. It did so by smartly tracking how the disease entered the country and identifying who could have caught it. Nigeria does not have nearly as advanced a public health infrastructure as the United States, and it has managed to solve its own Ebola crisis. It did not need to resort to absurd, isolationist measures to remove the disease from its country.
We live in an open society. Admitting outsiders and foreign goods has never destroyed America. In fact, in almost all cases, it has enriched our country. We are a nation that imports goods from many countries, then sends a crate of our own products back. We bring students, workers and refugees from all corners of the world, and then our own children go abroad to learn and contribute in other parts of the globe. Panic-driven isolationism will never solve our nation’s problems. Instead, we must share information, goods and services with as many people and nations as possible to gain a deep understanding of the problems facing us. Then—inside our borders and out—we will prevail.
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Kicking the can: Examining Lattegate: Why political pissing matches must end
Last week, a scandal broke in Washington. A major instance of inappropriate interaction between the Executive Branch and the Armed Forces surfaced, shocking Americans from Berkeley to Bangor. The incident, which involved players from enlisted men all the way to the top of the chain of command was the latest in a series of controversies that have shrouded the federal government in a cloud of shame.
What was that scandal, you ask? The Commander-in-Chief made an unconscionable display of disrespect towards our men and women in uniform. What specifically? Now that you make me say it…he forgot to take his cup of coffee out of his hand to salute while disembarking Marine One.
The reasonable observer sees this picture: a Commander-in-Chief who had just recently started bombing a radical organization that has made a nasty habit of beheading journalists, steps off his helicopter wondering when the Ebola virus would hit America. He distractedly bungles a custom that’s been around for a tenth of our nation’s history by failing to transfer the beverage that, if I were him, would be keeping me alive, to his other hand. Whoops. Then he gets back to the business of blowing up people who have stated that they not only want to destroy the United States but have also begun a rapid conquest of Iraq and Syria.
But in today’s polarized and caustic political environment, such a silly mistake is taken by an extreme and unfortunately large fringe as further evidence for why the President—elected twice by the American people and grateful beneficiary of the American dream—is a traitor and uses the American flag as a Kleenex.
What in any sane political climate would garner a couple laughs and a shout-out on late-night television attracted attention from multiple cable news networks and (allegedly) serious political figures like Sarah Palin and Karl Rove.
It seems to be the era of cheap shots, where the mean-spirited personal attack is more valuable than the substantive political debate. Many Americans seem to truly believe that this President’s mundane actions are threatening their way of life, and have resorted to the basest of rhetorical tactics to assert their points.
In targeting mistakes like a bungled salute or resorting to name-calling—like Fox’s in-house quack Keith Ablow did this summer when he called Michelle Obama fat on national television and went on to assert that she “dislikes America”—the extreme element of the debate appeals to the worst side of people and introduces controversy where none belongs.
When the debate is consumed by irrelevant bits and pieces, the marketplace of ideas ceases to function and is replaced by a rhetorical cage fight. In the blogosphere, all too often a Hot Air writer will call the President a socialist and then someone at the Daily Kos will fire back that, well, Michele Bachmann is an utter psychopath. Pundits at Fox and MSNBC ridicule one another and compete to see who can accuse the other of hating freedom more. Instead of analyzing the policies proposed by each side, the political process is reduced to a pissing contest on the national scale.
Distractions like lattegate (apparently, it was actually a chai, enraging Karl Rove, who apparently can’t say chai without visible discomfort) degrade the national political discussion and lead citizens and media elites to waste time slinging mud instead of learning how the person for whom they cast a vote will work for them and for the nation.
Focusing on such silly things and calling each other names fuels the discontent that many Americans feel towards our political system and trivializes the political process.
We shouldn’t focus on which cup was in whose hand while they did what. Clearly, we should focus on the contents of that cup.
I, for one, am disgusted that it was not coffee.
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Kicking the can: Arguing against Alito: Why expert opinion should be respected in court
It seems that whenever summer begins and I no longer have a bi-weekly soapbox to shout from, those in lofty positions of power start doing really stupid things. While I’m certain that the publication schedule of college newspapers is exogenous to the occurrence of ridiculous actions from public officials, I can’t help but take personal offense and assume that the culprits are saving their antics for late May to spite me and my loyal readers, which include and are probably limited to my mother, my girlfriend and Will Ossoff ’15. Now that the Orient will publish my drivel again, I’d like to go back to the beginning of the summer, and a certain Supreme Court case—Hall v. Florida.
Freddie Lee Hall was convicted of a particularly vicious murder in 1978 and summarily sentenced to death. Although a trial judge had found “substantial evidence” that Hall had “been mentally retarded his entire life,” Hall was kept on death row thanks to a Florida law that used a so-called “bright-line” test for determining whether or not a defendant is mentally disabled. Under the law, if a defendant scores above a 70 on an IQ test, he or she is deemed intellectually competent and eligible for the death penalty, with no more questions asked. Hall scored in the low 70s, deeming him intellectually competent by the bright-line test, which led him to appeal the test. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, agreed with Hall, noting that “[i]ntellectual disability is a condition, not a number.”
The unsettling element of this decision was not the outcome, but rather the margin and the dissent. Justice Samuel Alito filed a strong dissent to the five-justice majority decrying the Court’s reliance on “the positions adopted by private professional organizations…most notably the American Psychiatric Association.” In other words, according to Alito, Florida can kill whoever Florida wants, regardless of constitutional limitations to the cruel and unusual practice of executing the mentally handicapped.
Alito argues that the bright-line test is sufficient to dodge the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and that the opinions of professionals should have no place in coloring the judicial process. This is especially ironic given that the IQ standard specifically relies upon an examination administered by professionals.
Alito will accept the IQ measurement but will not accept that the measurement can be flawed or that, as Justice Kennedy pointed out, “[a]n individual’s score is best understood as a range of scores on either side of the recorded score.” Instead, Alito would seek to affirm the right of states to capriciously execute its citizens, even if doctors have said that those citizens are medically unable to be full members of society and ultimately accountable for their actions.
In cases of law and justice, Alito writes, “what counts are…the standards of the American people—not the standards of professional associations, which at best represent the views of a small professional elite.” After all, who cares what educated people, trained to identify mental illness, have to say about a potentially mentally ill defendant? The views of the lynch mob should not take precedence over the informed opinions of highly educated professionals. In fact, a key tenet of our system of government is that the majority doesn’t always get what it wants. James Madison argued that “an interested and overbearing majority” could trample the rights of the few. Of course, he was speaking to the principles of government as a whole, but this philosophy that the less powerful must be protected in a just, inclusive government can extend to this situation. The state, governed by the majority, wanted to kill Hall. But Hall, with the help of those whose job it is to know what they’re talking about, pointed out why it would be unjust to put him to death and ultimately prevented it from happening.
To dismiss the views of professionals is to misunderstand why we have them in the first place. Professionals inform the public in all matters ranging from personal health, finance, how computers work and politics. If we did not care what learned people had to say, we would still think that the Earth is flat and that leeches can cure diseases. Eschewing the views of professionals when we do not agree is easy but it is also dangerous. The views of professionals reflect our society’s best understanding of the fields they represent, and that understanding should not be compromised by vindictive urges or a base idea that things should be different. As a civilized society, we must not simply kill those who have done wrong, especially when it is possible that they cannot fully grasp the weight of their actions. Justice Kennedy and the majority understood this and gave due deference to people who know what they’re talking about. Rather than applying leeches to our ailments until the life blood is drained from society, we must ask the right questions of the right people to arrive at a just and practical conclusion.
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Kicking the can: Gang green: Bowdoin divest must improve message
When deciding the path for our country to take, democratic principles as we now interpret them dictate that we defer to the will of the people. Political elites know that to enact policies, one must generally have the people on your side. Good ideas and potentially sympathetic groups come in all kinds of packages, and often it is the delivery rather than the idea that is important in the public eye. Bad ideas can be very persuasive when presented well, and good ideas can be presented terribly and correspondingly fail to gain traction. The political battle becomes less about who can produce the most convincing idea than who can field the best PR team.
At their inceptions, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street were considered comparable movements for Republicans and Democrats respectively. They were the grassroots of the extreme wing of their parties coming together and working for change. There is one obvious and notable difference between the two parties, however: the Tea Party still exists and OWS does not.
The Tea Party started by expressing itself in living rooms and had respectable people wearing ties at its helm. It developed a compelling message of personal freedom and responsibility and made its way into the hearts of many Americans. The Tea Party, as I’m sure you all remember, was at first the “Taxed Enough Already” party that complained mostly about having to pay for things like roads and schools. I’m not really any more a fan of OWS ideology—they missed the bull’s eye by the same amount that the Tea Party did—but they did a much worse job of selling their image. Sexual assaults, drugs, and homeless people do not a great political point make.
Previously a nicely polished movement with wide appeal, the Tea Party eventually turned into a conservative race to the bottom that has become a nightmare for Republican Party elites. In 2010 Republican candidates were able to ride the Tea Party wave into office, but now they are having massive branding problems because of the Todd Akins and Richard Mourdocks of this world. If that’s not current enough for you, there’s also Lindsay Graham’s challenger, Det Bowers, a pastor who views women’s love of their children as the leading cause of their husbands’ cheating. The Republican elite cannot rein in the growing number of weird candidates running in Republican primaries, and it is hurting their image nationwide. At least some, like Jeb Bush, have realized that they cannot look like their economic policy was developed by a coked-up Ayn Rand, or have their social agenda resemble the Westboro Baptist Church with more guns.
Opponents of fracking have done a truly fantastic job of packaging their viewpoints, while supporters have been hard-pressed to come up with arguments that are compelling in the public sphere. Stories of flammable tap water and general ecological devastation are powerful, as is the voice of Middlebury’s Bill McKibben, the charismatic and passionate environmental activist who might as well lead the movement.
Fear is a powerful political tool, and the opponents of fracking have harnessed it masterfully to the detriment of better ideas. For instance, regulation or a clear establishment of accountability would perhaps be preferable in a utilitarian sense to an outright ban. But images of fire coming from a faucet drown out meek cries of “regulate!” In lieu of good PR from a more centrist side—somwhere between “no way in hell” and “drill, baby, drill”—those with the best story, if not the best ideas, have won out.
Perhaps the only well-known and talked-about political movement here at Bowdoin is the campaign for divestment of fossil fuels. The idea has taken hold at many schools, several of which are actively considering it. Bowdoin’s divestment movement is much less successful. Students tend to roll their eyes at the mention of it.
I’ve heard general Bowdoin apathy blamed, but I propose another reason: really, really bad relations with the campus. Building a slum on the quad (happened last year, sorry first years), circulating petitions that many students have called misleading, and a general “you’re with us or you’re killing the world” vibe don’t really result in making friends.
Part of having a persuasive message is knowing your audience, and many students here tend to be unreceptive to showy or preachy movements.
The secret to electoral or policy success is not necessarily a good idea. People are more convinced by a well-articulated message than a coherent idea. Most people often won’t look past a gilded exterior to a bad idea on the inside, and it is even harder to ignore really bad delivery to embrace a good idea.
The importance of branding and messaging cannot be underscored enough for political entrepreneurs, and citizens should strive to evaluate messages beyond the initial glitz. In our democratic marketplace of ideas, it is the skilled promoter rather than the skilled idea-maker who is rewarded most.
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Kicking the can: Electile dysfunction: campaigns need civility
Spring is in the air. Brunswick, Maine is finally melting. Ivies is right around the corner. This morning, I heard birds chirping outside my window, and I suspect that the first buds will appear on the Quad’s trees any day now.
And, because it’s an election year, there are absolutely hilarious ads from primary candidates surfacing, either viciously targeting incumbents or sprinting ahead in a race to the ideological bottom.
In today’s environment of political polarization and competitive primaries, candidates bring out the rhetorical big guns in primary races, attacking their opponents for being too conciliatory or not ideologically pure enough. In order to cater to the ideological elements that make up a significant percentage of primary voters, candidates swing far to the extremes of their party. The impractically ideological rhetoric in primary campaigns can have dangerous implications for policy when weird candidates advance through the election system and eventually become elected officials.
“When The Moment is Right” is a new ad released in opposition to John Boehner by J.D. Winteregg, a primary challenger. The ad prescribes Winteregg as a remedy for “electile dysfunction,” or rather the condition of having a Boehner for 23 years. Winteregg childishly reduces Boehner’s name to its phonetic pronunciation and condemns the Speaker of the House for activities such as playing golf with the president, which is supposedly indicative of Boehner being too comfortable in Washington and not being able “to get the job done.”
Another gem, this one from Montana, depicts a Republican Candidate for the House of Representatives shooting down a drone allegedly belonging to the US government. Entitled “Rifle Shot,” the ad demonstrates to viewers exactly what Matt Rosendale thinks about government surveillance.
Not only does the ad focus on an issue that does not exist—the government does not routinely deploy drones to spy on American citizens—but it also advocates violent remedies to the make-believe problem. To Rosendale, any influence by Washington is a huge problem, and he literally opens fire on the problems he perceives.
Sensational campaign ads are hardly anything new. “Daisy,” perhaps the most famous campaign ad ever (it’s universally known among people who study that sort of thing), appears to promise nuclear Armageddon if Barry Goldwater rather than Lyndon Johnson is elected president. That ad was aired during the halcyon days affectionately referred to as the “golden age” of American politics—days when polarization was at a minimum.
Ads fire up the electorate and may not be completely representative of the political situation; they appeal to base emotions such as fear, hate, or frustration and often do so quite crudely.Campaign ads are designed to educate the public about candidates, sway undecided voters, and pump up a candidate’s core electorate. As public opinion, especially that of voters who participate in primary elections, becomes increasingly polarized, rhetoric in those races gets fierier and candidates’ positions and promises get more extreme.
This is especially true in primary elections. Those who vote in primaries tend to be party elites and those at ideological extremes. Joe Six-Pack does not generally vote in the primaries. The more candidates rely on rhetoric and base emotions to sell their positions, the more present such rhetoric and emotion becomes in everyday political discourse.
I don’t want to argue for civility as a virtue. Obviously, the defining feature of these ads is vitriolic and often rude rhetoric, but a lack of civility is a symptom, not a problem in and of itself. It’s a symptom that feeds back into and perpetuates the original problem of polarization, but politeness is not inherently a virtue in politics, a realm where remaining silent can result in disastrous consequences.
While ads such as Rosendale’s and Winteregg’s may just be pure political calculation to win votes, they legitimize an environment in which lawmakers can hate each other, engage in ad hominem attacks, and imply violent action against things with which they disagree.Shooting drones while seated on a four-wheeler with grain silos in the background may win votes from a vocal minority, but bringing such imagery to an already gridlocked and dysfunctional legislative environment does little to improve America’s outlook.
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Kicking the can: Alternative spring break: small steps for awareness and the common good
Each year, the Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good sends a group of students to Guatemala City for Spring Break. The students spend a week working with Safe Passage, an education nonprofit founded by the late Bowdoin alumna Hanley Denning ’92. In the community, Safe Passage works in and around the largest Guatemala City garbage dump. It provides educational support and English instruction for the children of the community and extracurricular clubs to nourish students’ interests. For younger children, the organization provides schooling full-time, and it will soon expand to provide full-time education for many older children as well.
It also runs community and economic development programs that provide alternative opportunities for the mothers of children enrolled in Safe Passage’s programs. It would be hard to find fault in Safe Passage’s work, and to say that the organization does not have a tangible positive effect would be to ignore visible changes in the community.I was one of the students who spent a week with Safe Passage this past Spring Break. As you might imagine, my time there both moved me and informed me about the lives of disadvantaged people so far removed from our world. I learned a lot, saw a lot, and understood a little. What I did not do was help the situation.
I went into the week assuming my presence would not magically shift the sands of Guatemala City and empower the least fortunate in the region, changing the pace of years of war, systematic oppression, and political and economic disenfranchisement in the country. I’m sad to say I was right. My accented Spanish and awkward participation in preschoolers’ educational songs and dances may have brightened the day of a couple small children, but my participation during that week did not change the circumstances that those same children face today, tomorrow, and later in life. In fact, our presence in some classrooms may have done more harm than good. It often felt like we were disrupting the classroom dynamic and preventing teachers from doing their jobs.The structure of the weeklong program reinforced my views on most of the community service we engage in during college—that we are observers and nominally participants, and we are largely preparing to do something more meaningful later. A portion of the volunteer fees we pay must go into Safe Passage’s budget, providing some immediate inflow of cash. That goes to sustain the organization.
Participation as a short-term volunteer on a “support team” includes learning a lot of facts about the area as well as about the organization. Participants are told about long-term volunteer opportunities as well as sponsorship opportunities. In short, they are being groomed to provide either time or money to the organization sometime down the line, ultimately sustaining the organization and its mission.
Our trips and our projects do not work miracles. They are more for us than for any of the communities in which we work. Through our experiences, we gain knowledge and awareness which encourage us to take action in the future. We should not expect that our actions will have a real impact, and if they do, we should not expect that impact to be substantial. Undoubtedly, some students are able to bring about projects or programs that have a visible effect on some aspect of the world. What the rest of us can do, however, is learn.
We can make ourselves aware of the world around us and how we fit into it. We can learn what we can do down the line to promote positive change. We can be encouraged to donate, especially once we have real jobs, and choose to put our money somewhere it will promote development and sustained community growth.
A dedication to the Common Good must necessarily go beyond “doing your part.” Not everyone has to dedicate their lives solely to the betterment of others—I certainly don’t plan to. The important thing is to be constantly cognizant of the world at large and the situations facing those outside our own communities.
But it is potentially destructive to think that most action we take now makes more than a microscopic difference. There are certainly exceptions, and Bowdoin students have proven themselves time and time again able to make those exceptions happen. But generally, for now, we are learning. Our knowledge gained both in the classroom and on trips such as ASB Guatemala will make us better citizens in the future. We cannot all be Hanley Denning, but we can, in some small way, help further her legacy.
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Kicking the can: Why we need to take religion out of politics
When one thinks of politics at its worst, one probably thinks of endless debt ceiling negotiations or perhaps Underwoodian scheming and deception (“House of Cards” fans will know what I mean). Politics at its worst is dishonest or dogmatic. It oppresses and excludes, or strives for personal gain on the backs of the less powerful populace. So I was skeptical when Cathi Herrod of the Center for Arizona Policy, which supports a bill that would have allowed businesses to refuse service to LGBTQIA individuals, called the tactics of her opponents “politics at its absolute worst,” in a statement on the Center for Arizona Policy’s website on Feburary 22. Apparently, the individuals and business groups who opposed the measure engaged in politics at its worst when they asserted that this form of legalized segregation was anything other than nice wholesome religious folks exercising the right to practice their religion.
In brief, the Arizona bill would have expanded the definitions of “exercise of religion” and “person” to include corporations and other businesses as people and then allowed these people to act or not act as they see fit to exercise a sincerely held religious belief. The bill was written in support of businesses across the nation who have turned away gay customers because of their sexual orientations. Similar bills have popped up across the nation, though Arizona’s made it the furthest. Luckily, amid pressure from business groups across the state and nation, including the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the legislation on Wednesday night.
Politics is at its worst when legislation that is clearly intended to marginalize a minority group makes it to a governor’s desk. It is at its worst when a dominant group tramples the rights of others, using their own rights as justification.
Many on the religious right have been calling for a discussion of religious liberty in the United States. We should have that conversation. We should ask ourselves how far we are willing to let religion penetrate into our supposedly secular nation, and whether we are willing to forego decency and legal equality in pursuit of free, unhindered exercise of religion.
Constitutionally and practically speaking, free exercise of religion is guaranteed unless restricting it is the least restrictive way of achieving a compelling government interest. Legal equality is a compelling issue, and allowing religious beliefs to be used as a legal justification for discrimination conflicts with that interest. Asserting an inviolable right to practice religion in the public sphere, and the right to use religion as a justification for one’s actions or inactions towards others, interferes with the rights of all.
The religious freedom problem extends beyond LGBTQIA individuals being denied service. Some laws protect religious people who violate Do-Not-Resuscitate orders because of their religious mandate to preserve all life. This infringes on people’s property rights to their own bodies. Perhaps more insidiously, religious freedom has been used as a justification for parents refusing desperately needed medical care for their children, at times resulting in a child’s death. Even here at Bowdoin, the religious freedom argument has been used to attack the the College’s removal of Rob and Sim Gregory as formal advisors to the Bowdoin Christian Fellowship when the Gregorys’ refused to sign a non-discrimination agreement that stated that students could not be excluded from any campus groups.
As usual, legal instruments like this can be challenged with a simple thought experiment. All of the rhetoric surrounding Arizona’s bill, of course, has concerned Christian business owners excluding gay customers. The same legal justification the bill offers could be used by Muslims to exclude Christians—something I’m sure the bill’s supporters would not favor. Guaranteeing “freedom of religion” to the extent that it infringes on other peoples’ rights is not just destructive to a few—it would create the potential for a compartmentalized society.
Instead, the ideal for a heterogeneous, diverse society lies in a strictly secular public square where religion is personal and does not dictate public life. The will of God has created an ‘other’ and excluded it throughout history, and in a pluralistic society like ours, such divisive concepts cannot be given a full place at the table. People are free to believe what they choose, but for an egalitarian society predicated on rule of law, they cannot be allowed to act on those beliefs.Politics is at its best when we include and protect rights for all rather than promote narrow interests.
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Kicking the can: America the unilingual: Coke’s Super Bowl ad
I’ll be honest—when I heard Coca-Cola’s wholly inoffensive and now controversial Super Bowl commercial featuring the song “America the Beautiful” in multiple languages, I wasn’t actively watching the game. I was in the Union working, hearing the sounds from East Rutherford drifting out of the pub, and I was confused when I couldn’t understand the words to such a recognizable melody. I quickly realized exactly why, and refocused on my readings, thinking little of Coca-Cola’s cute nod to American pluralism as a way to sell soda.
I thought I was cynical about racism and xenophobia in America until I saw the subsequent uproar from certain circles calling the commercial un-American and calling Coca-Cola the “official soft drink of illegals crossing the border.” After seeing these reactions, I realized I had not been cynical enough.
I don’t think there could be anything less offensive than children singing a patriotic song. The commercial is an innocent reference to American multiculturalism and idealized inclusivity. Clearly, nativist pundits see it as their duty to squash the hopes of children who believe in the American Dream and replace their positive view of America with one of a nation of bellicose closed-mindedness.
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Kicking the can: Reconsidering ‘decency’ to politicize tragedy
One topic that invariably comes up following a national tragedy is decency. What is “decent” public discourse regarding an event that has destroyed people, families and communities? Do we as individuals and as a nation offer our condolences and refrain from discussing the tragedy in anything but in a consoling way? Is it indecent to point out what can be done to prevent such a tragedy in the future?
There is one side that always comes out in favor of decency following a tragedy: whichever side whose argument is hurt by the event’s occurrence. Do not politicize this tragedy, they implore, respect those who are grieving and leave policy and politics for a less troubled time. They paint anyone who seeks to talk about such an event in any more than a soothing way as insensitive and divisive. They implore politicians not to drag the tragedy and those affected into the political fray.
If that is decency, then to hell with decency. When disaster strikes, perhaps the least productive thing we can do for the long-term benefit of society is to grieve with no eye towards what can be done to prevent such events from reoccurring. Silence does nothing to help us. If being “indecent’”means asking tough questions and requiring examination of the social standards and institutions that led, directly or indirectly, to the tragedy, then a dose of indecency is precisely what we need.
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Kicking the can: Bowdoin diversity does not reflect nation’s
Peoria, Illinois, is sometimes referred to as the most average city in America. It is home to Caterpillar Corporation, one of the largest manufacturers of heavy equipment in the world, which employs over 15,000 of the city’s 120,000 residents. A test for new products and services used to be, “will it play in Peoria?” Peoria is nearly 70 percent white, with African-Americans accounting for almost all the rest of the city’s population.
According to the 2010 census, the median income for a household in Peoria was $36,397, and incomes there have undoubtedly been hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis. In 2012, 51 percent of voters cast their ballots for Barack Obama, and 47 percent voted for Mitt Romney, closely mirroring the nation’s margin. Peoria is heartland America, incredibly average by most standards.
Here at Bowdoin, we often speak of our commitment to diversity and how we want to be representative of America. In October, the chairwoman of our Board of Trustees went so far as to say that Bowdoin now looks a lot like America. While that may be true compared to Bowdoin 20 or 30 years ago, it is dangerous to foster the idea that Bowdoin is a particularly diverse place or that Bowdoin is a cross-section of America.
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Kicking the can: Data dump: what new mathematical methods mean for social sciences
Thanks to the work of popular social science authors like Steven Levitt of Freakonomics and Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, data analysis is a hot new trend in social science. Unfortunately, not everyone can be a Silver or a Levitt. Objective, data-driven research can help to clarify much in the social sciences, but scientists who jump onto these new methods with little statistical training or rigor do their disciplines a disservice. Objective study is very important to social science, but so is traditional, subjective observation and we must remember that many of the social sciences were founded the development of regression analysis. Academics, and we who encounter their work, must be careful to receive statistical information with a health skepticism.“Correlation does not imply causation!” Anyone who has taken a statistics class or any data-driven course, has heard this phrase (often from a professor who is constantly peeved by people conflating the two concepts). Depending on the professor’s exasperation level, it is possible that she just finished reading a social science journal. Granted, it’s relatively rare that an article will openly claim causation where there’s none to be found, but implicit claims often lurk. And even in instances where causation is not claimed, some researchers dive no further into a topic after determining correlation. Correlation can tell us quite a lot, but we cannot pretend to understand an issue without determining the causes behind it.Correlative relationships are powerful rhetorical tools, and everyone from self-styled Facebook pundits to Ph.Ds use them to try to prove points. One familiar example is the oft-repeated claim that areas with high rates of gun ownership have comparably lower crime rates than those with lower gun ownership rates. This is true. But is it a causal relationship? Doubtfully. Areas with high gun ownership tend to be rural areas that would see low crime regardless of the size of its weapons cache—there are, after all, few multinational drug cartels in central Kansas. Just because the causal relationship is dubious doesn’t mean that it’s not great rhetoric. Correlative relationships provide fantastic material for argument, but many of these arguments demonstrate just why simple correlation shouldn’t be trusted as proof in academic research.Causal relationships are shown by revealing the relationship between correlated phenomena. Laboratory experiments are of limited value in the social sciences, so such relationships are explored by examining the effect of one thing on another in real world context.In many cases, researchers will accept statistical correlation as causation if there is a theoretical or cultural rationale for it—though they may sometimes do so to their own detriment. For instance, I recently read an academic paper detailing the relationship between a Paraguayan’s native language and her educational and economic achievement. The paper claimed that speaking Guaraní, the country’s most widely-spoken language, has measurable effect on—not just correlation with—achievement. This phenomenon is culturally possible—the Guaraní language has the stigmatized reputation as being backwards and less value than Spanish, the dominant language in Paraguay’s economy. However, the researchers failed to control for their subjects’ socioeconomic backgrounds. Socioeconomic background and language are no doubt strongly correlated, but both are also show strong correlation with achievement. Without controlling for that variable, among others, it is impossible to know whether Paraguayans’ mother tongues truly influence their economic or educational success.Cases like this bolster the argument that nuanced social and economic issues are perhaps better examined through more qualitative analyses than with complex mathematical models. Western social and political thought is to this day heavily influenced by the discoveries of the ancient Greeks and Romans; the great minds of these societies used little more than description and allegory to illustrate psychological and philosphical insights that remain relevant to this day. Political and social thinkers still cite Socrates’s allegory of the cave, for example, as an impressively illustrative of the way that distorted or incomplete information can create a gap between perception and reality. Émile Durkheim, who foundmodern sociology and shaped the structure of many modern social sciences, made these contributions to human understanding before mathematical analysis of huge data troves was de rigeur. Today’s social scientists would do well to remember that some of the best work done in their disciplines was completed without the use of sohpisticated mathematical models.Tim Groseclose, a professor at UCLA, observed that the social scientists who were mose effectively using quantitative methods often had a background in economics. I agree with Groseclose, but would expand this category to include all scientists with rigorous statistical or mathematical training. However, the researchers best at analyzing troves of data will not necessarily be those who produce the best results in social science. The social sciences need academics to interpret our world through logical analysis and thoughtful case studies and number-crunchers to filter through huge swaths of data and conduct rigorous analysis. What the fields do not need is flawed statistical study that contributes little to humanity’s understanding of itself.Thanks to the work of popular social science authors like Steven Levitt of Freakonomics and Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, data analysis is a hot new trend in social science. Unfortunately, not everyone can be a Silver or a Levitt.
Objective, data-driven research can help to clarify much in the social sciences, but scientists who jump onto these new methods with little statistical training or rigor do their disciplines a disservice. Objective study is very important to social science, but so is traditional, subjective observation and we must remember that many of the social sciences were founded the development of regression analysis.
Academics, and we who encounter their work, must be careful to receive statistical information with a health skepticism.
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Kicking the can: Wire tapping allies risks U.S. global reputation
Ever since Edward Snowden became a household name this past summer, the new status quo is to hate the NSA. The programs revealed by Snowden’s leaks have garnered near-universal criticism, from the ACLU to France to China—seemingly everyone except for David Cameron and Peter King.
Americans are having, and will continue to have, a conversation about what is proper and what is necessary in terms of communications surveillance. The rest of the Western world will continue to express disbelief at being spied on by Washington while Michigan Representative Mike Rogers suggests that the French sip a glass of Dom to celebrate 70 million of the nation’s calls tracked in one month. Wherever the conversation will lead, a couple of things are clear: there is absolutely no excuse for tapping Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel’s phone, and the NSA’s programs have almost certainly done some good.
Many officials maintain that Snowden’s leaks have done damage to American national security, and have created some serious questions at home and abroad about the propriety of the surveillance and the intentions of the NSA and the federal government.
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Kicking the can: In praise of oligarchy and the smoke-filled room
For an Orient columnist, the timing of the debt ceiling deadline is inopportune. Columns are due Tuesday at 5 p.m. before publication on Friday, leaving a two-day gap in which many exciting things can happen. In the time between my deadline and the time this issue is printed, either House Republicans, Senate Democrats, and the White House will work out a deal to raise the debt ceiling or the United States will default on its debt obligations. Nothing too exciting.
But from the uneasy vantage point of Tuesday afternoon, I think I can say the apocalypse is not nigh, and I hope I am not proven wrong by the time this is published. There’s no panic setting into the markets yet, though yields on short-term debt have spiked. Despite fiery rhetoric from both sides, there will probably be at least a short term resolution. But enough speculation—if what I write now isn’t outdated in a matter of hours, it certainly will be by Friday.
The question is how the resolution will play out. For that answer, I look to history. Serious problems have rarely been solved by bellyaching, whining, and tactics remarkably similar to those used by kidnappers. Negotiations have much more potential to take place when reasonable representatives of each party sit down in closed-door meetings and talk.
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Kicking the can: Buckskin Bill and America’s caustic gun culture
Not too long ago in Idaho, along the banks of the Salmon River, lived a man who went by the name of Buckskin Bill. He lived off the land, and was something of a hermit, often accompanied by only his 30-millimeter rifle in the gun tower he built overlooking the river. His sworn enemy was the National Forest Service, and had fortified his land—on which he was allegedly squatting—to defend against its agents. Nothing and no one would take away his freedom, he swore. He liked his way of life and would stop at nothing to retain it.
Buckskin Bill and his miniature cannon are illustrative of the gun culture that grips much of America today. Whether it is reasonable or not, reactionary citizens believe the government is attempting to subvert their values and way of life, and believe that their guns—large, scary guns, of the sort seen in Arnold Schwarzenegger films—are the only things standing between them and a progressive, totalitarian government.
When politicians, especially the liberal variety, start talking about gun control, these reactionaries get very skittish. Rather than seeing a good-natured effort to reduce the availability of guns to criminals, they view it as a sinister plot to rid “real” Americans of their guns and thus relieve “the people” of their last recourse against the government.
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Kicking the can: Endless summer of congressional distractions
As our school year begins, the ephemeral distraction of summer begins to fade from the minds of Bowdoin students. Now we settle in for four months of work and play, problem sets and papers, midterms and a bit of Epicuria. We’ve had our summers, whether we spent them in a cutting-edge diabetes lab at Harvard, teaching English to disadvantaged children, competing in a Robocup tournament in the Netherlands, or researching crop insurance policy in Idaho.
Now, we reconvene in Brunswick knowing that the distraction must end, as we return to our real work—becoming educated and investing in our futures.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no end in sight for the many distractions that plagued our nation’s leaders over the last three months.
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Kicking the can: Much needed internet tax bill will protect mom-and-pop stores
At long last, the Senate has begun to show a sliver of sense on certain taxation issues. A comprehensive online sales tax scheme, known as the Marketplace Fairness Act, has passed a series of test votes in the Senate with as many as 75 in favor—including many Republicans who signed Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge. The legislation, which gives states a mechanism for collecting sales taxes on online purchases, is expected to pass the Senate with overwhelming approval on May 6. Perhaps the only negative aspect of this news is that it took so long to arrive.Critics of the bill come from two ends. There are the rabid anti-taxers such as Norquist, who believe that any tax increase is a bad tax increase. To be clear, the claim that this is an expansion of the sales tax is debatable at best and a lie at worst.
Taxpayers are already required to report their online purchases and pay the corresponding sales tax. Clearly, no one does it; currently there’s no enforcement mechanism, and not even the most faithful taxpayer saves receipts from a year of online purchases in order to pay a little bit more when tax day rolls around. All the bill does is give states the authority to collect a sales tax from online purchases made by its citizens. It also requires states to provide free software to businesses that automatically calculates and collects sales tax.
It is also seen as a cash grab by poor state governments—which it is. Many of those lobbying for the bill represent state and local governments. They need revenue, and tax-free online sales cut down on revenue that they should lawfully receive. By giving states the power to enforce sales taxes on online purchases, revenues will increase without putting much more burden on the consumer and without any de jure increase in taxes.
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Kicking the can: Include more old members in House selection
The annual cycle of College House selection is nearing completion. New House members have received their acceptances, and most Houses have invited over and gotten to know those who will replace them. House elections will take place soon, and the leadership structure of next year’s Houses will begin to take shape. When housing closes on May 20, old House members will be unceremoniously swept aside, leaving no legacy other than a picture on a wall.
Like any group of people, students in College Houses want to build and propagate a culture. Those who live in each House create a culture every year, drawing affiliates and others who are similarly inclined. During the application process, first years (and occasional upperclassmen) apply to the house(s) to whose culture they are most attracted. Of course affiliation has something to do with it, but the different cultures that Houses have seems to be a big indicator of where people apply.
Last year, Quinby House had a wonderful group of people with a lackluster reputation. As a result, it saw a low application rate. This year, Quinby’s reputation was far more positive—and it enjoyed more than a 100 percent increase in applications. The correlation seems fairly obvious.But the perpetuation of a valued culture does not necessarily occur. In fact, the Office of Residential Life seems to want to minimize the creation of a culture within the Houses in the name of the Houses being open and accessible to all. The overall feel of a House is often a result of ResLife’s good intentions. Both times I have observed the process, I have heard stories of people placed in houses where they do not belong. People apply to a House based on the culture it is perceived to have, and each House identity is distinct. In some cases, students do not feel they fit in in the House thanks to the tinkering ResLife has done, or they are put in an altogether different House, where they find they don’t mesh perfectly with the House’s dynamic.
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Google keeps religion private with (lack of) Easter Doodle
Sunday, March 31, 2013 will go down in history as the day a multinational corporation viciously attacked the moral sensibilities of a third of the world. Google intentionally and maliciously insulted billions of people—including millions of its users—throwing them under the bus in its pursuit of its aggressively liberal politics.
At least that’s what the religious right likes to think.Last Sunday, Google commemorated labor organizer Cesar Chavez’s birthday with a Google Doodle in his honor. Of course, last Sunday marked another important day: Easter. The way right-wing pundits such as Erick Erickson and Glenn Beck see it, Sunday’s Doodle was a slap in the face to billions of Christians worldwide. The simple act of commemorating something other than Easter on Easter was described as everything from “a poke in the eye” to a “clearly intended message that Google doesn’t deign to wish [Christians] well on their sacred day.” In short, it was something that the righteous stewards of American morality could not abide.
Google does not make a habit of commemorating religious holidays, Christian or otherwise. It recognized Easter with a Doodle back in 2000, with nothing more than a pair of eggs to replace the “O”s in its name. One is hard-pressed to find Doodles celebrating Jewish or Muslim holidays. Instead, Google chooses to recognize secular holidays like Thanksgiving and Mother’s Day, nations’ independence and election days, and the birthdays of famous and important people.
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The U.S. needs a better primary system
Spurred by the embarrassing displays of ineptitude by fringe Conservatives in the 2012 elections, Karl Rove’s Super PAC, American Crossroads, unveiled a new initiative dubbed the Conservative Victory Project in early February.
Its purpose is to ensure that “unelectable” conservatives don’t make it past the primary, allowing only electable candidates to advance to the general election.
Citing the likes of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, Rove argues that conservatives will continue to lose winnable elections if voters in the primaries keep selecting uncontrollable and occasionally just bizzare candidates.