Ken

A WORD TO MY ultra-conservative friends:

Many people are having difficulty seeing the connection between your hyped-up rhetoric of recent years and the shooting last Saturday that killed six people and injured Gabrielle Giffords and 13 others.

There's good reason for that difficulty, and it speaks well of the American people—but there is a connection, just not the one we might expect.

The connection we expect, and rightfully reject, is causal.

It's the idea that somehow Sarah Palin putting Democrats in the cross hairs of a rifle, or Sharron Angle's thinly veiled threats about people arming themselves and turning to "second amendment remedies" if they lost at the polls directly caused this shooting.

The evidence for such claims seems thin at the moment, and will probably stay that way.

I WAS PART OF AN INTERESTING conversation on Facebook the other day, and it led to an even more interesting bit of research.

A friend had posted a link to the definitions of "American" in the Dictionary of Capital Letters and had received several comments.

One of those comments accused those who agreed with the Democrats on income tax rates for the wealthy of waging "class warfare".

I responded:

I question your use of the phrase "class warfare". I don't see anything adversarial (let alone war-like) about suggesting that those who reap disproportionate rewards because of the structure of our system have a responsibility to make a disproportionate contribution back to that system, and especially to the way it takes care of those who often work the hardest for disproportionately small rewards.

The top few percent in this country benefit immeasurably from living in a country with high education values, with a healthy populace, with less poverty, etc, and they benefit immeasurably from the economic freedoms and privileges the country provides for them.

Holding a fellow citizen responsible to do their fair part is not adversarial or war-like, it's a matter of respecting them as full fellow-citizens, and not just writing them off as leeches, whom we expect to take without giving back.

No one is suggesting the guillotine, or even eliminating great wealth--we're merely treating our very wealthy fellow citizens with the respect of asking them to play a part commensurate with their ability and rewards.

The other person replied that "class warfare" was not his invention, but the phrase used by Marx and his followers to describe their agenda for the rich to pay their fair share.

This piqued my interest.

THOSE OF YOU WHO have been following this series will recall that in the previous post I suggested that the question of whether humans are bad in some sense depends on our model of morality.

But before looking at the main models of morality, we probably should ask why we need morality at all.

This is a particularly interesting question in light of current political alignments in America.

The conservative coalition is, at the moment, thoroughly divided on the question.

THE NEW YEAR IS A TIME for new beginnings, and one of the most important new beginnings we could have in America is a return to a democratic (small-d) Senate.

Tomorrow is the only day of the year that a simple majority in the Senate can change the rules, so that a majority can pass a law.

Until recently, the filibuster—originally just a loophole in the Senate rules—has been an occasional tool for the minority to force more debate on a bill, or, much less frequently, to actually try to block one.

In the last few years it has become a general tool for holding the majority hostage.

I won't go into details (you can get them here if you like) but the big picture is:

1. In the fifty years following a 1917 rule change designed to limit filibusters, they averaged less than one per year—in the last two years they averaged close to 70 per year.
2. They are no longer used against a particular bill, but to slow down the work of the Senate in general, to hold one bill hostage until the majority agrees to pass another, and as a threat to gain concessions elsewhere.
   
   Often the very people filibustering a bill will vote for it once the filibuster is over.
3. The net effect of this is that the Senate is no longer run by majorities—even when those majorities are bi-partisan.

Filibusters need to be brought under control, and the only day this can happen is tomorrow, the fifth of January, because after that any rule changes can be filibustered!

You can help.

Take about 30 seconds to click here, and sign a petition urging senators to close this loophole.

Thanks,

-Ken