Russia: Saving Face, not Regaining Empire

Throughout the Crimea crisis, there have been two competing theories on Russian motives: (1) they are regaining their empire; (2) they are saving face, in the wake of their worst geopolitical setback in decades. While the former got lots of airplay for its drama, and for its consonance with the consensus view of Putin as rageful autocrat; in the end, the latter was correct – the crisis is passing, and Russia seems not to be planning to move into Ukraine’s ethnically Russian eastern provinces.

Crimea’s annexation complete, Putin is once again collegial. When commenting on new US sanctions against Russia, he said explicitly that Russia would nonetheless permit the US military to use Russian airspace in support of operations in Afghanistan, as they have for the past decade. Putin tacitly accepts that there had to be consequences for annexing Crimea – he’s likely appreciative that US sanctions have been so anemic. He likewise expects the US to accept the annexation as the price of the swiping Ukraine out of the Russian sphere.

Unlike Britain and France, Russia’s empire survived World War II stronger than ever, with Moscow as the seat of power of the USSR and its satellites in Central and Eastern Europe. As recently as 1989, Berlin was the line of demarcation between the US and Russian spheres. Since the Berlin Wall fell, the US sphere has moved steadily east, absorbing former Russian allies along the way. Remarkably, except for Russia herself, EVERY former member of the Warsaw Pact is now a member of NATO, and of the EU (except Albania, whose application is pending). Russia accepted this advance, relinquishing its former holdings without a fight.

It didnt have to be this way. The US could just as well have stood by its promise to Gorbachev to respect Central and Eastern Europe as a buffer between Russia and the West. Russia might have forcefully protested Poland’s accession into NATO – and might have responded militarily when the Baltics followed. Russia did not.

President Clinton set an expansionist agenda, effecting it through his brilliantly-conceived (if innocuously-named) “Partnership for Peace.” His successors have followed his winner-take-all approach. In 25 years, the line demarcating the Russian and American spheres has moved 800 miles east, from Berlin to Kiev. To appreciate how far that is, consider that if the line had moved that much in the opposite direction, Russia’s sphere would now reach the Atlantic, and US influence would end at Iceland. While Moscow is more than 1100 miles from Berlin, it is fewer than 600 miles from Riga or Vilnius and only 300 miles from the Ukrainian border.

Crimea is the modest price for another remarkable victory for the US’ aggressive, expansionary foreign policy, which has successfully gambled that Russia would not (much) resist. With the addition of Ukraine, and the exception of Russia and Serbia, the US sphere now encompasses the entire Western World. For 25 years, Russia has lacked the resources and-or political will to fight back against what it reasonably perceived as American aggression – until now.

Ukraine, for Russia, is very different from the rest of Eastern and Central Europe. Ukraine and Russia have been integrated as a single polity for most of the past 300 years, sharing a common history, culture and religion. Ukraine is also far more populous than other countries in Eastern Europe – its 42 million+ inhabitants are comparable to the combined population of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Bulgaria and Romania.

When the US aided protests against Ukraine’s democratically-elected pro-Russian government, it crossed a line. Welcoming that government’s overthrow and recognizing Ukraine’s revolutionary pro-West leadership was an outrage that’s been politely ignored in the media, recalling the attempted coup of Chavez in 2002, during which the US also seemingly blanked on its commitment to democracy and the rule of law – when the opportunity to be rid of a nuisance head-of-state presented itself.

A Russian president could look away as the rest of its former empire was swept up by the victorious West – but to suffer the loss of Ukraine without a fight was unthinkable. The good news for US interests is that Putin, dealt a bad hand, misplayed the little he had. By seizing Crimea, he’s effectively ceded the balance of Ukraine and ruined Russian-Ukrainian relations. He’s also validated the concept of popular secession – which Chechnya and Russia’s many other ethnic enclaves will not fail to notice.

However the US media’s demonization of Putin should end, along with the name-calling (“autocrat”, “bully” and “thug”), which only thwarts popular comprehension of the issues. For more than a decade, Putin has been a good partner in the war against terrorism. He has enabled US policies in Iran, Syria and Afghanistan, and promises to continue to do so. The most unfortunate effect of Crimea’s annexation is that it will be a sticking point in Russian-Western relations – as Cyprus is for Turkey, and the West Bank is for Israel.

To close with an audacious long-term prediction: we arent yet in the end game of NATO/EU expansion. That process will not conclude with Ukraine or Georgia or Belarus – it will end with Russia’s accession. “Russia” as opposed to “The West,” after all, are only plied as terms of art. Russia is, and has always been, an intrinsic, historic part of the West; and according to the logic of the European Coal and Steel Community, Russia will ultimately assume her natural place within NATO and the EU alike, against their common adversary, China; and as well against religious fundamentalism and irredentism.

2 excellent articles from scholars of Russian-American relations:

http://www.thenation.com/article/178344/distorting-russia

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/opinion/getting-ukraine-wrong.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

Their Religious Freedom v. Your Healthcare

Objections over birth control coverage in employer-provided health insurance are no more than an attempt by employers to intrude upon, control the lives of, and impose their religious beliefs on their employees, outside the course and scope of their job. No one can stop a private employer from posting the 10 commandments in your cubicle, installing Vishnu as your screensaver, or (Christ have mercy) leaving “A Clay Aiken Xmas” on an endless loop on the factory floor. But insinuating their beliefs into an employee’s family planning decisions – medical matters reserved for consultation with one’s doctor – is offensive.

Imagine an employer is a Jehovah’s Witness – and he objects to providing health insurance coverage to his employees for blood transfusions. (Faith prohibits Jehovah’s Witnesses from donating, storing or receiving blood – though I’ve never heard of a Jehovah’s Witness making such an objection as an employer, so this is strictly hypothetical.) Next imagine that Jehovah’s Witnesses sued the US Government so they could exclude transfusions from health insurance coverage mandated of large employers by the ACA.

This is not intended to be a slippery-slope argument – that if we permit employers to deny certain kinds of health insurance coverage to their employees, it would open the door to all manner of 11th century healthcare policies. Rather the illustration is meant to highlight the absurdity of allowing one person’s religious beliefs to impinge on another person’s access to modern medicine. Few would quarrel with Jehovah’s Witness’s choice to die for their religious beliefs – but most would have a problem with their expectation that other people should die for them.

Employers, under the Civil Rights Act, cannot discriminate in hiring on the basis of a job applicant’s religion – nor can they fire an employee for practicing their religion. (Churches are exempted, and can hire and fire based on an employee’s religion alone.) This means, among other things, that an employee is free to donate a fraction of his salary to the Church of Satan, or use it on Friday to enjoy a philly cheesesteak, or purchase a condom from the corner pharmacy – and his employer cant do anything about it.

Health insurance is just another form of compensation. Whether an employee acquires birth control with salary, or with employment-based health-insurance, in either case the employer is providing the compensation, and the employee is making the final decision on how he will use that compensation – to obtain birth control, or not. Distinctions between the two cases are spurious. What an employee does with the compensation he earns is up to him – not his boss.

The company at the center of the controversy – Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma retailer – claims to be very much concerned about employee compensation being used to obtain birth control. But it has no compunctions about sending money to its Chinese suppliers, from whom it gets the vast majority of its merchandise. China’s abortion rate is TRIPLE that of the US, with more than 13 million abortions per year – and that doesnt include another 10 million morning-after pills sold annually. Abortion in China is effectively REQUIRED by law under the one-child policy. When a woman who’s already had a child becomes pregnant, she may face fines and other sanctions if she does not obtain an abortion.

If abortion were a serious concern, Hobby Lobby could not send money to China, knowing that it’s far more likely to finance abortions there, compared to the same money being sent practically anywhere else on earth. One can only infer that their preoccupation with abortion does not rise to the level where it might cut into their profits. Hobby Lobby is happy to force its employees to make sacrifices for the firm’s religious beliefs – but the firm is unwilling to make sacrifices itself – and happy to turn a blind eye to make a buck.

Religious freedom is a good thing, if only because the alternative is so noxious. But that liberty in a polyglot society is about an individual’s freedom within his or her defined individual sphere – such freedom does NOT include an employer’s right to reach into his employees’ private lives, to impose his religious beliefs on them.

Refs:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/29/new-obamacare-rules-will-give-broad-exemptions-to-religious-employers-but-theyre-still-not-happy/

http://www.hobbylobby.com/our_company/

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/02/1259591/–Christian-values-Hobby-Lobby-purchases-its-products-from-1-family-planning-nation-China

http://www.christianpost.com/news/christians-question-hobby-lobbys-defense-biblical-stance-against-obamacare-lawsuit-87935/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_China#Statistics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#Number_of_abortions_in_United_States

The Crimean Monkey Trap

Things were going badly enough for Russia when Ukraine’s pro-Russian government came ever-so-close to formally embarking on EU membership – nearly following the Baltic states and many former Warsaw-Pact Slavic countries in Central and Eastern Europe into economic and military alliance with the West, expanding the EU and NATO 1000 miles east, right up to the Russian border. To thwart Ukraine’s turn toward the EU, Russia paid through the nose. While the EU was only offering $1 billion in loans conditioned on government reforms, Russia put up $15 billion in unconditional loans, plus other aid. Even though a majority of Ukrainians preferred the path of EU membership, Ukraine’s president took the Russian money – and was deposed by the popular uprising that ensued.

Russia thought they had the deal sewn up, securing their ancient ally and halting at last the EU’s (and with it, NATO’s) inexorable advance. When Ukrainians rose up and deposed their government, demanding that EU negotiations resume, Russia was left as the spurned lover. Putin, it seemed, did everything he could to obtain his desired result. He used politics and propaganda, applied pressure, and when all else failed, he coughed up a fortune to buy Ukraine’s loyalty – only to fail.

This was not Eastern European business as usual, where strongmen strike deals and ordinary people resignedly accept their lot. When the Ukrainian government adopted a position the Ukrainian people found intolerable, Ukrainians overthrew not just their government – they broke the chains of 300 years of subservience to self-dealing leaders, rejecting Russia and turning to the West.

Putin understands that if oil and gas money cannot buy Russian allies, then she is destined to lose them all. After Ukraine’s revolution turned Russian victory into defeat, Putin seemingly couldnt resist trying to snap off one part of Ukraine that he might be able to keep. Had he been a better tactician, he might have tried to manipulate the formation of Ukraine’s nascent government onto a pro-Russian track – perhaps to find a middle path for Ukraine, between the Western and Russian spheres, as he sought last fall. But his seizure of Crimea now all but guarantees Ukraine’s defection to the West. They would be joining Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia and Croatia – all former Russian allies who have joined NATO and the EU since the USSR’s dissolution.

Russia seems to have learned little from it’s 2008 war with Georgia, when it intervened to aid the secession of two Georgian provinces. The long-term consequence: Georgia, Stalin’s birthplace, is also on track to join both the EU and NATO; its relations with Russia have been ruined for decades to come. Crimea is another monkey-trap for Putin – by seizing it, he has lost Ukraine, and left Russia more isolated than ever, with Western alliances expanded to her border.

Paul Ryan Still Doesnt Get It

Losing national elections rarely causes conservatives to pause and reflect on their ways. Only once in the past 6 presidential election, going back to 1993, have they won a majority of votes – which only tells them they should be more conservative.

A year after going down on the USS 47%, Paul Ryan still hasnt grasped the not-so-awesome electoral consequences of saying mean things about poor people and minorities. In a recent radio interview, Ryan derided what he perceived as the “tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value of work.”

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus did not miss his meaning: “inner city culture” is a euphemism for “black ghettos” – analogous to “states’ rights” as code for “segregation” and “Kenyan” as code for “nigger” – all of which allow racists to signal their true sentiments on an open channel.

Ryan, of course, asserts that his reference to an inner-city culture without a work ethic did not indicate blacks specifically, but, you know, referred to all those other non-working inner-city generations of men too. The problem with Ryan’s defense is that later in that same interview he said, “this tailspin or spiral that we’re looking at in our communities, your buddy Charles Murray [has] written books on this.” What’s Charles Murray’s most famous book? That would be the “The Bell Curve,” which argues that inferior black socio-economic outcomes are caused by inferior black intelligence. Wanna borrow my shovel, Paul?

If Ryan still doesnt seem like a complete piece of garbage, remember: he’s the the guy who went to a private college on social assistance, then made a post-undergrad hobby of demeaning other people who rely on social assistance as “takers.” Every so often he’ll release a so-called “budget plan,” whose primary features are slashing social assistance, cutting taxes on the rich, and refusing to name the tax loopholes he’d close to pay for the tax cuts, leaving us (in the GOP style) with a gargantuan budget deficit.

We’re not done piling on Ryan. He sees social insurance as “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” Hey it could be worse: social assistance could also send shallow, self-righteous hypocrites to college, so they might one day become Congressmen who denigrate anyone else who uses social assistance to improve their lives. As Ryan put it, “We call it a poverty trap. There are incentives not to work, and to stay where you are…. We got to have the courage to face that down…. And if we succeed, we can… get people back to work, and get people back to meeting their potential.”

Ryan thinks the cause of American poverty and unemployment is a cushy American safety net. But the impact of social insurance (unemployment, food stamps, housing, welfare, etc.) on peoples’ willingness to work isnt a purely theoretical matter. Nations around the world offer social insurance of varying degrees of generosity – if Ryan were right, we’d expect to see fewer people in the workforce in countries with generous social insurance. And guess what: we find the opposite. The US, with by far the stingiest social insurance in the developed world, doesnt just have the most poverty, shortest lives, highest infant mortality and declining education levels – the US also has among the lowest labor force participation rates (LFPRs) in its working-age population, and by a wide margin.

Remarkably, while paying lip-service to their crudely conceived notions of free enterprise, conservatives fail to grasp one basic implication of their beliefs: if you make work more valuable, more people will want it. If work, by law, included such benefits as unemployment insurance, disability, sick leave, maternity leave, paid vacation, overtime pay, etc.; then conservatives, by their own dogmas, should predict that more people would want to work and enter the labor force.

This is precisely what we see when we look at patterns of work-force participation in the West. Scandinavia, with the most generous social insurance, and liberal labor laws, has some of the highest working-age LFPRs in the world. Sweden is tops at well over 80%, but many other European nations are at 77% or higher. The US comes in at 73% – and is trending down.

Ryan – who stopped his education after a bachelor’s degree, eager to get out into the world and annoy people with facile rantings – may be a racist, but he is surely a hypocrite, and concerning social policy, an utter ignoramus. In other words, he is the ideal GOP VP candidate – and we should expect to hear plenty more from him in the months and years ahead.

Inequality: the Source and the Cure

Inequality begins with poverty, and is perpetuated by underinvestment in education, health and social insurance. One in four American children are born into a poverty that’s deeper and harder to escape than poverty in other western countries. They arrive to public school at age five or six as damaged goods – one can hardly expect any public school system to reverse the harm done, no matter the budget. The US spends a lot on education – but like healthcare, education spending is tilted toward the heroic, not the fundamental: America is the land of elite $50k/year universities – and of failing elementaries and high schools.

Top universities like Harvard operate like modeling agencies: they only want you if you’re pretty. By comparison, the Marines Corps believes that it can take anyone and turn him/her into a Marine. Americans so thoroughly accept the distinct roles of public and elite schools, that they hardly give it a thought. The best American universities – public and private both – run like modeling agencies, admitting only the best of the best, and rejecting the rest. But at the same time Americans expect their public elementaries and high schools to function like the Marine Corps, and turn out disciplined, literate and numerate young people, no matter their circumstances when they enter.

We already know that poor children are different from other children in real, observable ways. Being in poverty as a child has long-lasting negative health and income effects, and the differences even show up in brain scans. Poor kids arrive to kindergarten with all-but insurmountable deficits. If public schools are to be effective, they have to take kids at a younger age. By beginning public school at age three or four – adding pre-K, and even pre-pre-K – and guaranteeing at least 2 quality meals per day, 5 days per week over what should be a 200 day school year – the public will have the opportunity to invest in all of our children at a critical, formative age, so that when they get to kindergarten, they arrive ready to learn.

Head Start, America’s most famous pre-K program, has had fantastic results. When Head Start kids become young adults, they are more likely to finish high school, begin college and go to work – and less likely to become teen parents. They’re also healthier. This should be the model for a nationwide public pre-K system – this is how America can escape its cycle of poverty and inequality. By giving every child the means to reach their full potential, America can live up to its meritocratic ideals. Its self-image notwithstanding, America today is the least meritocratic country in the West. An American child’s destiny lies not in his talents, but in the circumstances of his birth. This isnt surprising, given the vast disparity in health and education resources available to different American children, depending on who they were born to, not on their innate talents.

While investing in public pre-K now, the US should follow up with free public community colleges at the other end. It is an embarrassment that America’s only federal universities are military schools. The federal government might lead by example and create a federal college system that’s free to anyone who passes an entrance exam. The exam can itself be a tool for maintaining high school standards. Alternatively/additionally the federal government could provide aid and offsets to reduce the cost of locally-based tertiary education to zero.

For decades, each successive American generation had far more education than generations past. But that trend ended abruptly around 1970, after which American education-levels flat-lined, and inequality exploded. Jump-starting growth in American education – both at the front and back end – is the key to future prosperity, to break America out of its funk.

Of Crimea, Kosovo and South Carolina

One aspect of liberalism implicated by Crimea is a people’s right of self-determination. Abraham Lincoln subscribed to none such, and American historians give him a free pass on it. The USA did not invade and conquer the CSA to end slavery, but as an end in itself. Constitutional scholars past and present are equivocal on states’ right of secession, and the Constitution is of little help in resolving an issue that’s thankfully only come up once. Critiquing the most revered lines of the Gettysburg Address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” H.L. Mencken wrote, “It is poetry, not logic…. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.”

Take away the Russian troops and the Ukrainian revolution and ask a simple question: if Crimeans voted by a supermajority to sever ties with Ukraine, in favor of independence or union with Russia, why shouldnt we validate that choice? After all, states dont really have rights – people do.

What’s playing out in Crimea and across Eastern Ukraine today isnt new – only the players are. Much of Eastern Europe is and has for centuries been a mixed-up place, where ethnicity, language and national identity varies from town to town and province to province, without respect to political boundaries. The archetypal case remains Yugoslavia, which ultimately splintered into 7 different countries. Much of the Balkans were and are fractal – there was never any way to draw clean lines on a map to provide discrete enclaves for distinct ethnicities. Bosnia was the most mixed up of all, lacking a genuine national identity or even a language. War came first – terms like “Bosniak” and “Bosnian language” were post hoc inventions to condemn, condone or otherwise explain hostilities among one people who shared one language and one history.

Like Bosnia, Crimea is a region NOT associated with a specific national identity or language. The last of its late medieval inhabitants – the Tatars – were forcibly displaced 50 years ago, and today constitute about 10% of the total population – most of whom only moved back in the past 20 years. More than half the population describes itself as “Russian”, and three-quarters call Russian their native language. Legally and politically, Crimea was part of Russia from 1783 until 1954 – it was only ceded to Ukraine through a bizarre gesture on the part of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Russian with Ukrainian connections and sympathies. About one-quarter of Crimeans today are ethnically Ukrainian – and that’s the most ever.

The US answered this question, albeit under very different circumstances, when Kosovo sought independence from Serbia – a move that the US supported and subsequently recognized. (Russia did not and does not.) The US rationale is that Serbian aggression justified Kosovo’s secession – that since there’s been no Ukrainian aggression against Crimea, secession is not rightful. The argument is entirely unpersuasive, and conceals the realpolitik on which US positions are based: Ukraine stands to be an important ally, and so the US takes her side in the dispute; Serbia was an adversary, and so the US recognized Kosovars’ right to self-determination. For what it’s worth, Kosovo was an ethnically Albanian enclave within Serbia – but why should we care about the particularities of nationality, religion or culture – a people’s right to self-determination – much less any right – shouldnt depend on it. And for the moment, we might also put aside the intellectual question as to how small a polity can be to enjoy the right of self-determination. (A province? A city? A block association? A condo? You and your cat?) Crimea is more populous than 10 other European countries – Kosovo among them.

If we’ve learned anything from European history, we should appreciate that in the interest of long-term peace and stability, Crimea should probably be part of Russia – and it should certainly be aligned with whatever state its population prefers.

It is the process that should determine the legitimacy of the end result. Obviously an election to determine Crimea’s allegiances cannot be fairly conducted under the occupation of foreign troops – and so of course the coming referendum will be illegitimate. But the issue should be considered and resolved in the abstract, to apply to all future cases: a people probably should have a relatively unlimited right to disassociate from a polity, to form their own or join another – if only because the alternative is so noxious: the application of coercive force to prevent them from so doing. Such a resolution is good enough for Scotland, which will have been part of the UK for about four-score and two years longer than South Carolina has been part of the US – when it holds a referendum on independence this coming September….

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination#Defining_.22peoples.22

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States

http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/04/do-states-have-a-right-of-secession/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referendum,_2014

How the GOP Became the Whites-Only Party

Immediately after winning the 1980 GOP presidential nomination, Ronald Reagan went to Philadelphia, Mississippi and gave a speech on “States’ Rights.” It was a curious venue for a curious subject. In the same southern town just 16 years previously, 3 civil rights activists were murdered by the local police department, the county sheriff and the KKK. “States’ Rights” had a special meaning: it stood for opposition to the civil rights movement. It would be like giving a pro-guns speech in Columbine today – a massacre which happened 15 years ago.

Reagan advisor Lee Atwater said in a 1981 interview, “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you cant say ‘nigger’…. So you say stuff like ‘forced busing, states’ rights’ and all that stuff…. You’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

Conservatism among poor whites was and is fundamentally about racism. The GOP, not by accident, but BY DESIGN, is a party for whites only. Though they feinted toward inclusiveness during the 90s, their Tea Party wing – birthers and all – still doesnt care enough about winning the White House to strike a deal on immigration reform – a necessary first step toward taking a fraction of the Hispanic vote – without which they have little chance of winning a national election.

LBJ knew that the Civil Rights Act would drive white southerners to the GOP. The so-called “solid south” had been wobbling since the 1940s, when Strom Thurmond formed the “States’ Rights” party, whose single policy goal was maintaining segregation. He took 4 southern states in the 1948 presidential election. Coming just 4 months after passage of the Civil Rights Act, the 1964 Presidential election saw 5 southern states go to the GOP, whose candidate, Sen. Barry Goldwater, voted and campaigned against the Act. With his home state, they were the only states he won. The same 5 states went to George Wallace in 1968, again running only on segregation. Wallace remains the most successful third-party presidential candidate of the past 100 years. Racism, and nothing else, was all it took to win the white southern vote. And still is.

One of Nixon’s advisers dubbed it “the southern strategy” – stripping the white southern vote from the DNC though appeals to racism. Remarkably, one facet of the southern strategy explicitly included pushing southern blacks into the Democratic Party, to lower that party’s stature in the eyes of racists. As a Nixon adviser put it, “The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the south, the sooner the negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”

Success breeds success – Nixon’s “southern strategy” has grown to define GOP electioneering and politics, as increasingly virulent strains of conservatism have taken over the GOP – a once-great party with a strong liberal tradition. Since Reagan, GOP candidates have competed in general elections on Goldwater’s conservative policy positions, using Nixon’s electioneering strategy. The quadrennial GOP presidential candidate’s visit to the outrageously racist Bob Jones University (which forbids interracial dating) only ended after Bush Duh went in 2000, after which BJU unilaterally decided to withdraw from politics.

The language the GOP uses has evolved – where before we had “states’ rights” and “busing”, we now hear about “the takers”, “the 47%”, “illegals” – and then there are the birthers. The common element is belief in an “enemy within,” against whom a nation unifies in animus. Patriotism – nominally defined as love of country – is routinely expressed as hatred of particular people within it.

The birthers – crazies who suggest that Obama was born in Indonesia or Kenya – are NOT fringe elements within the GOP – they are mainstream. Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Newt GIngrich – all GOP national candidates – have made remarks sympathetic to or supportive of them.

And that’s how we got here – with many poor, white Americans supporting a political party that opposes there own financial interests. Among 46 million Americans in poverty, more than 30 million are white. Red states are themselves net recipients of federal dollars – receiving far more in federal support than they pay in federal taxes. Increasing the size of government almost invariably means that rich, liberal states will pay more; while poor, conservative states will receive more – and yet red-staters are against “big government.”

Almost 10 years ago, Thomas Frank took a crack at this issue with his book “What’s the Matter with Kansas.” His conclusion was that conservatives pulled a bait-n-switch on poor whites: luring them with demagoguery on cultural issues (abortion, death penalty, gay marriage, flag burning, etc.), in the hope that they wouldnt notice their regressive stand on fiscal issues (reducing taxes on passive income, slashing social insurance). There’s a lot of truth in his analysis – though Frank, a decent Kansan himself, was a bit too genteel in his conclusions.

In a Russian fairy tale, a genie appears to a peasant and says he will grant him any wish – on the condition that whatever he receives, his neighbor will receive double. After thinking it over for a minute, the peasant replies “kill one of my cows.” Poor whites have long taken pride that they’re somewhat less poor than poor  blacks. They remain content with losing, as long as they think those other folks will lose more.

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_civil_rights_workers_murders

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2007/11/dogwhistling_dixie.html

http://www.economist.com/node/17467202

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/news/2012/02/23/11042/debunking-poverty-myths-and-racial-stereotypes/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia,_Mississippi#Reagan.27s_visit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Jones_University#2000_election

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_conspiracy_theories#Campaigners_and_proponents

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1948

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Presidential_Election

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1968

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#Atwater_on_the_Southern_Strategy

http://www.teapartynation.com/forum/topics/the-birther-manifesto

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/tea-party-nation-goes-birther

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-birther-myth-persists-among-tea-partiers-all-americans/

Crimea 2

From a US standpoint, Crimea is not a crisis, but an opportunity. Only a GOP senator could be too dumb to grasp that when an adversary has a conflict with one of his major allies – that’s a GOOD thing. Instead of seeking calm, Kerry in Kiev should be working both sides to make them angrier – and using the tension to draw our NATO allies closer – perhaps to provoke Putin into sending more troops – or to dare Crimeans to vote to join Russia – either of which may well push Ukraine to renounce its recent deal with Russia, and recognize that its long-term security and prosperity depend on an alliance with the west.

It simply cannot be overstated: this is best opportunity the US has had in decades to split Ukraine and its 40 million souls from Russia, and seal them up in western military and economic union. The Crimea, as the price of the bargain, is a pittance.

From a Ukrainian standpoint, this is the dread scenario of the past 20 years, ever since Ukraine turned over its nuclear arsenal in exchange for a Russian guarantee of territorial integrity. Every day now, Ukrainians are treated to images of Russian troops on Ukrainian soil, and thinly-veiled threats from a bellicose Russian president. Each day that passes, Ukrainians are learning the utter worthlessness of their alliance with Russia. The Obama administration could hardly have scripted Ukraine’s alienation from Russia any better.

Liberal values are not implicated here. There are NO human rights issues at stake – nor is there a threat of war. Morally, we should be indifferent as to whose flag flies over the Crimea, so long as it isnt noxious to the principle of self-determination – and along those lines, a popular referendum would probably see a majority of Crimeans prefer to be a part of Russia, not Ukraine.

Of course the concern is over precedent – it wont do to have big powerful countries swiping land from weak neighbors. The US and its NATO/EU allies can and should beat that drum for all its worth, to tarnish Russia’s already-dismal reputation as a treacherous, irresponsible world citizen. But by all means they should NOT do anything to precipitate the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Crimea. Ukraine, not the Crimea, is the big prize to be won. With Ukrainian elections coming end of May, the US should want Russian troops to stay – in fact, the more, the better – to further marginalize Russia, and to swing Ukrainian elections to pro-west, Russia-phobic candidates.

The Crimea is already Russian in all but name, and has been for 200 years. Before this so-called crisis began, Russia had everything it wanted from the Crimea – a sympathetic government, economic ties, military bases, and a prosperous and growing Russian population. – Everything except the Russian flag flying over Crimean government buildings. The US should be happy to give Putin the latter too – and be sure that it costs him the rest of Ukraine.

Russia only recently put up $15 billion to buy the Ukraine out of its flirtation with NATO and the EU – coughing up 20 times what the EU was offering in loans, plus other aid – without conditioning any of it on government reforms. What is rarely mentioned in the press is that Russia paid big for this alliance, and now they are rather stupidly blowing it.

If in a decade Russian flags sit atop public buildings in Sevastopol, while EU flags sit atop public buildings in Kiev, this will have been a great coup for the US and its allies, and a devastating Russian blunder.

Originalist Abortion

Conservative justices – Thomas, Scalia, Allito, Roberts (in descending order of extremism) – take issue with abortion rights because they believe, among other things, that they require us to “rewrite” the Constitution to gain a modern reading – that the Constitution’s 18th century drafters and ratifiers; and-or the 14th amendment’s 19th century drafters and ratifiers would not have subscribed to women’s reproductive freedom. These conservatives dont treat the Constitution as a “living document” – but instead would freeze it in time, holding its meaning constant since it became law, which occurred in 1791 for the Bill of Rights, and 1868 for the 14th amendment. Since people in 1791 and-or 1868 would not have regarded abortion as a right, they will argue, then we should not. This style of Constitutional interpretation is called “originalism.”

Clearly, if the Constitution’s protection of privacy evolves with modern sensibilities, then a woman’s dominion over her reproductive organs cannot be seriously questioned – almost every rich, modern country – including the US – has resolved this issue to permit abortion on demand, without significant limits. But a woman should also have the same rights to early-term abortion under a conservative, originalist reading of the Bill of Rights and 14th amendment.

Few people know that when the Constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified in the late 18th century, early-term abortion was legal in EVERY state – and had been legal under the common law for centuries. In fact, abortion was legal in every US state from colonial times up until 1821, when Connecticut passed the US’s very first anti-abortion law.

The roots of legal abortion predate American history. The Christian philosopher St. Augustine (4th century AD) adopted Aristotle’s moral reasoning (4th century BC), sanctioning abortion until the “quickening” – when the fetus is felt to kick, which doesnt happen till after the 1st trimester. Thomas Aquinas (13th century) adopted Aristotle’s belief that the soul entered the male fetus in the 40th day (90th day for females!) – and so also permitted early-term abortion. The Catholic Church followed these prescriptions, and permitted early-term abortion until 1869.

What even fewer people know is that early 19th century anti-abortion laws were adopted NOT to protect fetuses or embryos, but to protect women from a potentially dangerous practice. Such laws did not necessarily address abortion per se, or women, but the drugs that induced abortion, and the druggists who dispensed them. The Connecticut law is a good example – it outlawed “abortifacients” – poisons which were used by women to induce an abortion – and subjected apothecaries to prosecution for distributing them. Like most early 19th century anti-abortion laws, the Connecticut law did NOT subject women to penalty or punishment for abortion. Most of the early laws did not apply to early-term abortions in any case. And despite such laws, abortifacients were widely advertised in major US cities throughout the mid-19th century; during which time abortion remained quite common in America – most frequently practiced by married Protestants, right through the 1860s, when abortion laws first targeted women.

Some of the founding fathers objected to adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution. One specific fear was that if we had a discrete list of rights, someone could argue that a particular right’s absence from the list was evidence that it was not a right. To cure this problem, the 9th amendment was included in the Bill, expressly stating that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” it’s primary purpose is to prevent one specific legal argument: you cannot construe the absence of a “right to abortion”, for example, in the text of the Constitution as indicating that the right doesnt exist. (The charm of conservatives is their fondness for seizing on the one Constitutional interpretation that the Constitution itself forbids!)

Even if the 9th amendment evidences the existence of other rights, one cannot argue that everything a person was allowed to do in every state in 1791 (and-or 1868) is a human right. But abortion is special – it’s hard to imagine anything more intimately personal – nor an interest into which the intrusion of the state is more noxious.

Early anti-abortion laws were meant to regulate the practice of medicine, and protect women, not fetuses. Laws aimed at forcing women to take pregnancies to term were quite uncommon before the 1860s. An originalist reading of the Constitution must incorporate the fact that early-term abortion – from colonial times, right through the mid-19th century – was an entirely acceptable part of mainstream American life. A law outlawing the practice entirely would likely have shocked an 18th or 19th century sensibility. For these reasons, abortion should be regarded as a Constitutional right, whether you give the Constitution a modern or an originalist reading.

Refs:

good articles on the history of abortion in the early US:

https://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/history_abortion.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97may/abortion.htm

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft967nb5z5&chunk.id=d0e195&toc.id=d0e71&brand=ucpress

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/news/2013/08/08/71893/scarlet-letters-getting-the-history-of-abortion-and-contraception-right/

https://www.connerprairie.org/Learn-And-Do/Indiana-History/America-1800-1860/Women-And-The-Law-In-Early-19th-Century.aspx

other background info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortifacient

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights

19th – early 20th cent. ads for abortion drugs:

PS Roe v. Wade’s holding is based on the due process clause of the 14th amendment, which has been interpreted to require the states to respect most of the explicit and implicit rights in the bill of rights. In the case of Roe, this is the right to privacy – that states cannot insinuate themselves into such personal decisions made by a woman in consultation with her doctor.

Prior to the 1920s, the states were NOT bound by the bill of rights – in state court, you had no constitutional right against self-incrimination, privacy, counsel, speech, etc. This changed primarily during the 1960s, and today states are bound by most (not all) of the rights specified or implied in the Bill of Rights.

Crimea

Putin surely doesnt mean to do the the rest of the West a favor – but his invasion of the Crimea is a blessing, which the US and EU should receive with cautious gratitude.

From a realpolitik standpoint, the US has much to gain from Russia’s annexation of Crimea. For a nominal cost, this will put a permanent wrench in Ukrainian-Russian relations, which the US and EU (and NATO) can exploit to pull Ukraine firmly into their sphere of influence – especially given that the next round of Ukranian elections will now heavily favor anti-Russian, pro-EU candidates.

Russia subjugated and annexed the Crimean peninsula in 1783 – it had been under Tatar and Ottoman rule for centuries. The Tatars used it as base for their slave trade – Russian peasants had themselves been the Tatars primary commodity. By 1900, Russian colonization had made Crimea an ethnic mix – about 1/3 Russian and 1/3 Tatar. But by the outbreak of WW2, ethnic Russians had become a majority, and have been ever since. In 1944, Stalin forcibly removed all of the ethnic Tatars from the Crimea (killing about half of them in the process), and also deported many other Eastern European minorities, leaving behind a Crimean population that was probably 60-70% Russian and 15-20% Ukrainian.

Ten years later, in 1954, Khrushchev gifted the Crimea from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR. Crimea wasnt then, nor has it ever been, particularly Ukrainian. Crimea’s population today is only about 25% Ukrainian – and that’s the most it’s ever been. The Crimean peninsula has had an ethnically Russian plurality for 100 years, and a majority for 70 years. It is by far the most Russian and least Ukrainian of all of Ukraine’s provinces.

Even as part of Ukraine, the Crimea has had considerable autonomy, briefly declaring its own independence in 1991 before accepting to remain part of Ukraine, with even more autonomy. When Ukraine’s pro-Russian government was overthrown last week, Crimea’s parliament responded by legally dissolving its own government, and reconstituting with more pro-Russian leadership. One of the new Crimean PM’s first acts was to ask Putin for help in guaranteeing Crimean security and stability – inviting the Russian invasion that followed.

Put simply, the Crimean peninsula is largely autonomous and ethnically Russian, and has been for a very long time – that it falls under Ukrainian sovereignty is a historical accident. Furthermore, if ever put to a vote, it’s population would almost certainly prefer to be a part of Russia.

The US needs to tread very carefully here – what’s happening in Crimea today is dangerous as a PRECEDENT – in and of itself, it is of little consequence. The Russian navy already has a huge presence in Crimea. There are no particular moral implications – no human rights have been threatened – and there’s no real reason why the US should prefer that a Russian or Ukrainian flag flies over Sevastopol. Rather, the US should exploit the crisis to its own advantage – tightening up and perhaps expanding its NATO alliances.

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Council_of_Crimea

map showing percentage of Ukrainian speakers by province:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ukraine_cencus_2001_Ukrainian.svg

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/02/27/Crimea-Parliament-Dissolves-Government-Elects-Pro-Russia-Chair

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/28/barack-obama-vladimir-putin-ukraine-russia

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/03/02/284807613/is-it-too-late-for-ukraine-to-take-back-crimea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution