Will America ever overcome its redneck puritan roots?

[Edi]

When my state (Michigan) passes an ammendment to the constitution banning gay marriage, there's no hope

This is somethin I cant understand. Your constitution gives all people in the US rights, so how can you pass a law that breaks the constitution?

It's a bit more complicated than that. They have the federal constitution, which is what everyone usually means, but each state has its own separate constitution as well, though that is subordinate to the federal one (i.e. can't contradict it). The problem is that there is no constitutionality review of any laws by any mechanism other than going through all levels of the court system (often first state lower, state appeals, state supreme, and/or same for federal) until it gets to federal Supreme Court (SCOTUS). So they can pass whatever fucking bullshit they want and it's going to be law until successfully challenged all the way to SCOTUS. Completely fucked up, unlike the systems for constitutionality review in parliament that Sweden and Finland have which prevent 99% of bullshit from passing even into the proposals, never mind actual law.

Edi

[Pablo Sanchez]

This is somethin I cant understand. Your constitution gives all people in the US rights, so how can you pass a law that breaks the constitution?

You Scandinavians and your icy so-called "logic."

Here's the explanation--
The amendments to the US Constitution do not guarantee people those sorts of rights. They focus more on general issues like freedom of speech and religion, guaranteeing the right to vote to women and so on and so forth. There is actually nothing in the constitution which specifically guarantees equality to homosexuals (or women for that matter). Non-whites, yes. Gays, no. When the question reaches the courts it's quite likely that they will interpret the law in such a way as to retroactively extend the guarantees to gays, OTOH.

So, under the rules of the constitution, it is up to the individual states to decide these things, or for congress to make a law. To then be tested judicially.

Another possibility being attempted by the enemies of the human race is the possibility of a constitutional amendment specifically denying the right of gays to marry. I think that is one of the worst ideas ever, because IIRC it would be the second time an amendment was hijacked by batshit insane religious extremist trying to fulfil a narrow political agenda by denying people rights (prohibition being the first time, natch).

[Edi]

This is somethin I cant understand. Your constitution gives all people in the US rights, so how can you pass a law that breaks the constitution?

There is actually nothing in the constitution which specifically guarantees equality to homosexuals (or women for that matter). Non-whites, yes. Gays, no.

Other than the 14th Amendment, that is. As well as the part that other rights that are not directly enumerated in the C must NOT be considered to not exist (if it was elsewhere than 14th A). That there makes for a blanket equality clause that I do not see denied anywhere except in the religious delusions of fundamentalists.

Edi

[Pablo Sanchez]

Other than the 14th Amendment, that is. As well as the part that other rights that are not directly enumerated in the C must NOT be considered to not exist (if it was elsewhere than 14th A).

That would be the mighty Ninth.

That there makes for a blanket equality clause that I do not see denied anywhere except in the religious delusions of fundamentalists.

Mmm. You're right. It's embarassing to be corrected on my constitution mistake by a furriner, but you are correct.

[White Haven]

...Is it too late to let the South win? I can move out of Virginia, just give me a couple weeks of warning before the split. I could even swallow my hatred of 'South Will Rise Again!' bumper stickers, if it'll mean that a large chunk of the fundies GO AWAY.

[fgalkin]

In a word: no. The cultural differences between the BHEFAs and the normal people are to vast and too ingrained. Its not just their stance on gay marriage or abortion, but their education (scientific or otherwise, BHEFAs were known to ban FABLES because they invited critical thinking and this was harmful to biblical literlaism. I shit you not, this really happened, and this is the reason they were giving), their family dynamics, and more importantly, their entire worldview. Any event that is going on in the world would be interpreted in two completely different ways by you or me and by a BHEFA. Its like they live in a completely different universe. And the worst part is that they hate us, and much more in fact, than we hate them. We cannot force them to change, and they don't want to change.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Patrick Degan]

The plain fact is that in this country we have 50 million people who would cheerfully allow America to burn if it means having a president in office who takes his marching orders from the Invisible Sky-Father.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I am, more and more, convinced that Marina and Julius are right: the United States of America is now the declining Res Pvblica Romana writ large. We have been consumed by crass populism and pandering on both sides, and a decent into keptocracy and generalized corruption and ideological rigidity. Look around you and what's happening to us: war hysteria, religious pandering, Orwellian jingoism and disinformation; resentment in the working classes. Its all familiar.

I am afraid, very afraid that they may be right: we're simply waiting for our own Imperator Divi Avgvstvs Caesar.

[THEHOOLIGANJEDI]

Simple question. Certainly, there are many Americans (millions of them) who do not fit this stereotype. Unfortunately, there are even more who do fit it, and like it or not, success in politics seems to require reaching out and connecting to these people, complete with their seething hatred of sexual deviance, their religious bigotry and ignorance, their tendency to confuse flag-waving jingoism with patriotism, etc. This ensures that the mentality itself will persist, for if change will not come from above and it will not come from below, where will it come from? Schools and the next generation? That's a battleground the redneck fundies have seized already, with considerable success.

So can anyone foresee a time that America will not be ruled by the lowest common denominator?

Or So it seems. I really hope someday we will, But it would take a massive population decrease to probably do anytime soon.

[Alyrium Denryle]

In a word... no. America will not outgrow its fundie puritain roots in the near future. In fact, I forsee a downard spiral after Bush gets his SCOTUS appointees approved.

[Raptor 597]

I am, more and more, convinced that Marina and Julius are right: the United States of America is now the declining Res Pvblica Romana writ large. We have been consumed by crass populism and pandering on both sides, and a decent into keptocracy and generalized corruption and ideological rigidity. Look around you and what's happening to us: war hysteria, religious pandering, Orwellian jingoism and disinformation; resentment in the working classes. Its all familiar.

I am afraid, very afraid that they may be right: we're simply waiting for our own Imperator Divi Avgvstvs Caesar.

Indeed, I completely agree. However, it is indeed the crass populism forcing the party to make the outrageous measures. The people are so apathetic, the "victors" need poor fiscal policies to keep them happy and complacent. In my opnion, at my best we can receive a mighty and just Caesar to bring us to victory, but I doubt it. I think the Republic will decline and decay into nothing but a regional hegemon, but who knows?

[THEHOOLIGANJEDI]

Geez, When I woke up this morning I was soo down. I am starting to think that this may well a sign we are an the Threashold of Doomsday.

THE EARTH IS DOOMED!!

[/b]

[Kamakazie Sith]

So can anyone foresee a time that America will not be ruled by the lowest common denominator?

As soon as we have a leader that will tell the majority what they want to hear so he/she can be elected but has actually no intention of following through.

[JME2]

Geez, When I woke up this morning I was soo down. I am starting to think that this may well a sign we are an the Threashold of Doomsday.
[img]snip[/img]
THE EARTH IS DOOMED!!

[/b]

"I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were silenced."

[THEHOOLIGANJEDI]

Geez, When I woke up this morning I was soo down. I am starting to think that this may well a sign we are an the Threashold of Doomsday.
[img]snip[/img]
THE EARTH IS DOOMED!!

[/b]

"I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were silenced."

Which for All we know probably isn't too far from the truth.

[The Yosemite Bear]

actually you have me thinking of comments by Jefforson and Franklin about the exact same subject...

dammit why couldn't the libertines have won?

[Uther]

See the thing is though, in the end, the liberals always win. Progress may be slowed down, or even stopped at times, but it never gets reversed. Abortion will continue to be legal, prayer will stay out of public schools, segregation isn't coming back. Did any one really thing the USA was going to allow gay marriage in the next five years? It was only 15 or 18 years ago that being homosexual was barely even TALKED about in popular discourse. Social change doesn't happen that fast. It took over 100 years for the south to wipe out legalized discrimination. In 30 or 40 years, you'll have civil unions, if not full blown gay marriage.

Bob Novak said last night that US is a conservative country, and I think he's right. But ultimately it's a Burkean conservative, and change does happen, albiet slowly.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Not liberials "Libertines" those freaky metrosexuals like Been franklin or Thomas "she's 15 she's beutifull and she's mine" Jefforson.

[Shadowhawk]

...Is it too late to let the South win? I can move out of Virginia, just give me a couple weeks of warning before the split. I could even swallow my hatred of 'South Will Rise Again!' bumper stickers, if it'll mean that a large chunk of the fundies GO AWAY.

Wow. I've never thought of it that way.
What would the United States be like if all those Southern Fundie states had broken away 140 years ago, and stayed away? Or if we let them (read: encouraged) to secede today?
Sure, the economy would be wonky for a little while, but at the moment, I simply can't see any significant, long-term downside to it.

[White Haven]

The REAL interesting thing is what happens when you ponder the party splits. If one nation only had a significant Democratic presence, and one had onle a significant Republican presence, then they'd quite likely split at the seams into at least a pair of new parties ranging from the moderate to the left, for Democratic, and moderate to the right for Republican. It's an interesting hypothetical, when you think about the political ramifications in the newly-formed nations.

[phongn]

Wow. I've never thought of it that way.
What would the United States be like if all those Southern Fundie states had broken away 140 years ago, and stayed away?

Nobody can predict with any accuracy, but the South would have probably been re-integrated with the North by military or economic forces sometime later.

Or if we let them (read: encouraged) to secede today? Sure, the economy would be wonky for a little while, but at the moment, I simply can't see any significant, long-term downside to it.

"Wonky?" More like total economic chaos.

The REAL interesting thing is what happens when you ponder the party splits. If one nation only had a significant Democratic presence, and one had onle a significant Republican presence, then they'd quite likely split at the seams into at least a pair of new parties ranging from the moderate to the left, for Democratic, and moderate to the right for Republican. It's an interesting hypothetical, when you think about the political ramifications in the newly-formed nations.

In the US system, if there was a single "superparty" the most likely outcome is that said superparty would split into two smaller parties or one other would attain enough strength to contest the superparty.

[Elfdart]

Eric Alterman and Charles Pierce sum it up for me:

• November 3, 2004 | 11:11 AM ET

Let’s face it. It’s not Kerry’s fault. It’s not Nader’s fault (this time). It’s not the media’s fault (though they do bear a heavy responsibility for much of what ails our political system). It’s not “our” fault either. The problem is just this: Slightly more than half of the citizens of this country simply do not care about what those of us in the “reality-based community” say or believe about anything.

They don’t care that Iraq is turning into murderous quicksand and a killing field for our children. They don’t care that the Bush presidency has made us less safe by creating more terrorists, inspiring more anti-American hatred and refusing to engage in the hard work that would be necessary to make a meaningful dent in our myriad vulnerabilities at home. They don’t care that he has mortgaged our children’s future to give trillions to the wealthiest among us. They don’t care that the economy continues to hemorrhage well-paying jobs and replace them with Wal-Mart; that the number without health insurance is over forty million and rising. They don’t care that Medicare premiums are rising to fund the coffers of pharmaceutical companies. They don’t care that the air they breathe and the water they drink is being slowly poisoned and though they call themselves conservatives, they even don’t care that the size of the government and its share of our national income has increased by roughly a quarter in just four years. This is not a world of rational debate and issue preference.

It’s one of “them” and “us.” He’s one of “them” and not one of “us” and that’s all they care about. True it’s an illusion. After all, Bush is a millionaire’s son who went to Yale and Harvard and sat out Vietnam, not even bothering to show up for his cushy National Guard duty, and succeeded only in trading on his father’s name and connections in adult life. But somehow, they feel he understands them. He speaks their language. Our guys don’t. And unless they learn it, we will continue to condemn this country and those parts of the world it affects to a regime of malign neglect at best—malignant and malicious assault at worse.

Given the media’s talent for pandering to their lowest common denominator, the things that have driven us crazy about their past pathetic performance are bound to get a lot worse. Most of us—readers and writers of this web log and peoplelikeus-- derive an awful lot of benefit from being Americans. We owe it to our better selves, and though it sounds horribly clichéd, to our children-- not to walk away from this battle. I will admit, however, it’s pretty damn hard to see through this fog just where to turn before we march.

A final word to readers while we all try to take in the news. I deeply appreciated all the warmth and gratitude sent in yesterday, and I send it back. Everybody should understand, however, that I get paid to do this. Everybody else who contributes of their time and expertise does it because they just happen to care so damn much they can’t help themselves. No one, as all my readers know, is more important to the flavor and voice of this site than the great Charles Pierce. I know he’s done much to keep my spirits up this past year and illuminate the corners of the media that would go unseen and unreported save for his proverbial eagle eye and rapier wit. As you can see below, Charles is particularly moving and brilliant today and I just want to say how lucky I feel that he chose Altercation as his home away from home. Go Sox.

Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA
Hey Doc --
As Mo Udall once put it, the people have spoken, goddamn them.

They showed up. The Republican base, that is. The people who believe that their marriages are threatened by those of gay people, the people who believe there were WMD in Iraq and that Saddam waved a hankie at Mohammed Atta, the people who believe His eye is on every embryo. They all showed up, and there are more of them than there are of us. This was a faith-based electorate and, for whatever reason, their belief was stronger than our reality. This is a country I do not recognize any more.

The kids didn't vote. African-American turnout seems to have stayed pretty much the same as it was in 2000, despite all the talk. We lost seats in the Senate and in the House. (Daschle is a pretty momentous beat, despite the fact that he's not a wartime consigliore and never was.) They elected a polite David Duke in Louisiana, and someone who doesn't believe gay people should teach school in South Carolina, and a creep in Oklahoma, and somebody who's fairly obviously drifting into the fog in Kentucky. The pretty clearly indictable DeLay tactics in Texas worked like a charm. These are all victories won on grounds on which we cannot compete. When gay marriage trumps dead soldiers in Iraq, how do you run a race without dissolving into fantasy?

I don't know this country's mind any more, let alone its heart.

I started getting worried when my friend inside the Kerry bunker stopped calling, and then the nets were so damned slow about calling anything. (And NBC was precipitate in calling Ohio, no matter how it turns out, so little Russ and Jack Welch can congratulate each other this summer on Nantucket.) They had to know about New Hampshire sooner than they called it, and Minnesota and Michigan, neither of which was very close.

So, truly, no concession, no matter how much Russert wants one. Lawyer it up in Ohio to the very last second. Make them sweat. Make them bleed. But know that you ran this time for the president of a very different United States.

Later, that same day...
Hey Doc --
OK, now I'm starting to feel the gorge rise. Let us content ourselves with this. The country voted for these guys with its eyes open. Let us hear no complaining about "bait and switch," and a "uniter, not a divider," and on and on and on. It even returned a national legislature consonant with the incumbent's agenda. There will be permanent tax cuts that will institutionalize a national debt that will force some sort of evisceration of Social Security and Medicare. There will be continued military adventurism in the Middle East. There will be Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Chief Justice Antonin Scalia. There will be more lying and more vengeance.

So let there be no whining when your husband's National Guard obligation leaves him under fire for six extra months, or when Granny and Gramps are eating cat food, or when it become increasingly impossible to meet the economic needs of the middle-class family.

No complaining. None of it.

You wanted this guy. Now you have him, unleashed.

[The Dark]

I'm actually going to go out on a limb and say it's possible, though unlikely. The Sojourners have begun placing spots in newspapers blasting the current political situation, including using fundie's quotes against them. I found out about them through an ad which began with Falwell's quote of "Blow them all away in the name of the Lord," and went on to discuss how 200 theologians and Christian ethicists have signed a petition against that stance, including some names I recognize from traditionally conservative institutions such as Asbury Theological Seminary, as well as some from Virginia Theological Seminary, good ol' Stanley Hauerwas from Duke, and theologians from just about every Methodist seminary I know of. I think we're starting to see a true split in Christianity, and at least part of the "Church" is assembling themselves against the current political situation, given that:

We reject the false teaching that a war on terrorism takes precedence over ethical and legal norms.
We reject the false teaching that America is a "Christian nation," representing only virtue, while its adversaries are nothing but vicious.
We reject the false teaching that any human being can be defined as outside the law's protecting, and the deminization of perceived enemies, which only paves the way to abuse.
We reject the false teaching that those who are not for the United States politically are against it or that those who fundamentally question American policies must be with the "evil-doers."

Jim Wallis writes for the Sojourners' website, and this quote in his commentary on the results of the election jumped out at me.

the best contribution of religion is precisely not to be ideologically predictable or loyally partisan but to maintain the moral independence to critique both the left and the right.

Besides, these guys must be good...they link from their site to the Onion and the Daily Show . (And I think they don't let Hauerwas write anything because his language would cause computers to explode...he makes Mike look like a Puritan ).

[Darth Wong]

Since I've never heard of these "Sojourners", I won't hold my breath waiting for them to turn the masses.

[Wicked Pilot]

So can anyone foresee a time that America will not be ruled by the lowest common denominator?

Foresee: yes.

Live to see: no.