"I call on the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."
I can already hear Rush Limbaugh's derisive rant. This is obviously something said by a starry-eyed, naive liberal, right? It isn't, unless you believe President Ronald Reagan was an idealistic leftist.
Some nay-sayers, hell-bent on denouncing anything President Obama does, are now crying out "Weak!" and even "Treason!" about our president and President Medvedev of Russia signing a new nuclear arms reduction treaty this past week. Does no one else find it odd that Republicans, who laud Ronald Reagan at every opportunity, have suddenly forgotten Reagan's great cause: to rid the world of nuclear weapons? Do they not remember the cause celebre when President Reagan and Gorbachev signed the initial START agreement?
Well, I do remember. I admired President Reagan for his work to cool down the Cold War. I am old enough to remember the Red Scare days of my childhood when people built bomb shelters, when air raid drills were held more frequently than fire drills at my elementary school in Alameda, California. I have not forgotten the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 when everyone in Jewell Hall at UK thought we were standing on the precipice of World War III. It should come as no surprise that when President Reagan began efforts to engage the Soviet Union with efforts toward detente and later, with Gorbachev, to work toward a reduction of nuclear arms, I felt grateful.
Regan was quite clear in his feelings. In is Second Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985, Ronald Reagan said: "There is only one way safely and legitimately to reduce the cost of national security and that is to reduce the need for it. And this we are trying to do in negotiations with the Soviet Union. We are not just discussing a limit on a further increase of nuclear weapons. We seek, instead, to reduce their number. We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth."
Reagan made it clear, on numerous occasions, how he felt, once saying: "The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas--a trial of spiritual resolve--the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, and the ideals to which we are dedicated." I still believe this with all my heart, even more so after 9/11. No one and no security system can stop every single mad person bent on killing, but we must keep those fanatics from causing us to be like them. We must pass the test of our own will to remain true to the ideals on which our country was founded.
Has every Republican in Congress today forgotten what their hero said and believed? It would certainly seem so to hear those taking the mike at this time. Now, a
treaty--yet to be ratified or apparently even read--signed by Presidents Obama and Mededev in Prague is a travesty, at least according to the some of the same people who regard Reagan as the greatest president in our history.
I've read this treaty. It is not difficult or obtuse. This Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) begins efforts to keep loose nukes from the hands of terrorists and rogue states because the spirit of Reagan's START--the 1991 START-I--expired December 2009. What are some of the treaty's components?
1). Both Russia and the U. S. will cut their nuclear stockpiles to 1550 (rather than the 30,000 each had at the beginning of the conference). Who thinks 15,000 nukes makes us weak? In some cases, one would do the trick.
2). The treaty has a clear verification process. If we do as Reagan said--"Trust but verify"--as the treaty specifies, why was it good when Reagan did this and treason when Barack Obama does it?
3). President Medvedev of Russia said: "What matters most is that this is a win-win situation. No one stands to lose from this agreement." How is it that the Russian President sounds more reasonable than some in Congress? I grew up with Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the lectern at the UN, telling us the the USSR would "bury" us. Now it is congress people shouting that this treaty is doom and destruction.
Recently, the Obama administration released the Nuclear Posture Review,articulating its policy on nuclear weapons. It is here that the President declared:
1). The U. S. will not use nuclear arms against countries in compliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty.
2). The purpose of the U. S. is to deter attacks against this nation.
3). Washington's nuclear policy now concerns nuclear terrorism and proliferation, rather than potential wars between nations, as its first priority.
4). The president can re-evaluate the withholding of nuclear action should he or she feel it is warranted.
5). The Nuclear Posture Review does not rule out the use of nuclear weapons against those rogue states that will not sign the treaty and comply with it by allowing inspections--nations like Iran and North Korea.
The responses from Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Sean Hannity have been predictable and virulent. Hannity supports using nuclear weapons even against non-nuclear nations and has said so on Fox News many times. He wants "all options open," even in the case of a cyber attack. What then do we say when Iran gives the same excuse for their building up nuclear capability? Palin threw in the usual sound bites that show her lack of knowledge about the topic, and Gingrich went on and on about Obama's being a socialist and leading the worst "regime" since 1865. (I must say, some of this rhetoric is akin the hyperbolic speech leading up to the Civil War.) Glenn Beck cried, again, and worried that the treaty would cause the end of the world. Spare me.
Some Republicans no longer in power and no longer seeking power--George Shultz, Reagan's Secretary of State, for example--see things more sanely and without an eye to besting Obama and winning in 2010. People like Henry Kissinger say that our failure to articulate a willingness to reduce our nuclear arms makes us impotent to tell nations like Iran and others not to develop their own.
How liberal can a policy be when people like Shultz and Kissinger agree with it?
It was Ronald Regan who said:
"Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have." When President Obama expresses those exact sentiments, many call him naive. How about a little perspective, people? How about a little less hypocrisy?
Everything is not about elections. Everything is about finding a way to work together to protect, defend, and maintain this country and what it has been and can be. Our goal should be to keep fro being blown to smithereens, shouldn't it?
Monday, April 12, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
Caling Miss Manners: SOS!
Is civility dead and gone? It would certainly seem so. As citizens of the U. S., we have a constitutional right to assemble, to speak freely, and to petition our government. We have the right to protest government actions with which we disagree, even a duty to do so. But there are lines that we should not cross lest we diminish our message or the reputation of the group with which we associate. Few of us learn the lessons history teaches us, mostly because we think that message does not pertain to us. We do not learn from history because we are not the same people who learned it the last time.
As we listen to the hatred and vitriol being spewed in some protests today, I am reminded of a lesson I did learn from history because I am one of the people learned it last time. Some on the left lost both credibility and respect when peaceful anti-war protest became laced with hateful epithets hurled at soldiers who had honorably answered their country’s call. Environmental protest that had effectively called attention to our disregard of nature’s fragility lost support and credibility when words were replaced with violence. The honor and dignity of the Civil Rights nonviolent protest showed the ugliness of racism and yielded positive change through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. But when the non-violent protest was replaced by the armed anger of the Black Panthers, some of the progress made by people like John Lewis and Dr. King was overshadowed by the by the rage of others like Angela Davis, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale
Today, some on the right have forgotten the lesson history learned by some of us on the left. We remember what happened when some in our groups became so extreme that they engendered fear and hate. They did not persuade anyone. If anything, they caused a backlash, and liberal became an epithet equated with rage and unreasonable nastiness. Progressive ideals were largely regarded as naïve or more like Don Quixote’s swatting at windmills: unrealistic or even unreasonable. Those allied with the Tea Party movement have every right to express their disapproval of legislative acts that they do not like. But all must remember one immutable fact. There are philosophical differences between Democrats and Republicans. That’s what elections are about. Those out of power will always march against the winners. These protests are at the very heart of what it means to be an engaged American citizen.
But the ugliness of a fringe element—and note that I said fringe—allied with the Tea Party movement has become almost frightening in its intensity. Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D. Missouri), an African-American, was spat upon walking up to the Capitol Building. The face of that enraged man made me recall another face contorted in rage and shouting at Elizabeth Eckford in 1957 when she, as part of the Little Rock Nine, entered newly desegregated Central High School in Arkansas. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior, ever. Not when some spat on soldiers in the 1960’s and not when angry whites spat at black students integrating formerly all white schools. Ant not now. Furthermore, it was deplorable and reprehensible to see anti-war protesters call returning G. I.’s “baby killers,” and it is just as deplorable and reprehensible that Representative Randy Neugebauer (R. Texas) called Bart Stupak (D. Michigan.) a baby killer on the floor of Congress. And while I’m at it, it is never all right to call a gay man a “faggot,” and it was obscene for someone in the Tea Party crowd to shout that at Barney Frank (D. Massachusetts), just because the protester did not like Frank’s politics. And, it is abhorrent—beyond comprehension—for another in that crowd to call Representative John Lewis (D. Georgia) a “nigger.” To hurl this kind of racial slur at this man--a man beaten and jailed during non-violent Civil Rights marches, a man who faced hatred, clubs, and tear gas as he crossed the Pettus Bridge during the first march from Selma to Montgomery—is beyond the pale.
It is anyone’s right to express a contrary point of view of any policy. I applaud and cherish that right and use it myself, frequently. But it is never all right to level personal epithets when it is a policy with which you disagree. Grow up, people. Try to take your political discussions beyond playground taunts and behavior.
Finally, there are some facts that seem to have been lost in the shuffle in some of these protests:
1). The original Tea Party in Boston was a protest against Britain’s taxation of the colonists without colonial representation in Parliament; i. e., “taxation without representation.” We had an election in 2008, and voters chose their representatives. The protesters are represented, whether or not they like their representatives. That’s what the next election is about.
2). To those carrying placards reading: Keep the government out of my Medicare. It is the government that provides your Medicare. Medicare is a single-payer government-run program that most seniors love. Either don’t use it or get over it.
3). None of the cable news programs gives fair and balanced anything. I as liberal-leaning, watch CNN and MSNBC because I like to have my sentiments supported. I feel the same way about Fox News as some Glenn Beck lovers feel about Keith Oberman. And guess what? Not everything you read on the internet or in a forwarded e-mail is true. If you want to know what is going on, you must dig a bit deeper and read multiple sources. Don’t be lazy and take anyone’s word for anything.
4). Do not let someone else tell you what is or is not in a bill or what a politician did or did not say. Read the bill yourself. Listen to or read the transcript of the politician’s speech or broadcast yourself. I know you must have played gossip or telephone in elementary school. I know you know what happened to “So and so told someone who heard it from his cousin who knew….” Distortion of any resemblance to the truth is the result. Do your homework before you yell. Had some done this, no one would have shouted about a health care bill that advocated Death Panels much less believed it.
5). I voted for President Obama, but I fully understand that some, or even half, the American citizenry may not agree with me. You and I should be free to agree to disagree in a civil manner. And yet some of the Tea Party fringe elements feel no shame holding up a sign with Obama wearing African aboriginal attire and sporting a bone in his nose. If others standing next to those people don’t distance themselves from these sign-carriers, why should I not assume that they agree with this message? Ditto the protestors carrying signs of the president as Hitler or in white face. And to the birthers and all the cowardly GOP Congress members who are afraid to call them out, I have to wonder what you really mean.
All of us—left, right, and middle—have to find a way to work together to solve the problems facing us today and to do so in a civil manner. Very little constructive was ever accomplished by hysterics. Hissy fits rarely produce positive outcomes, and the fit-thrower is never respected. This country has some problems, but none that cannot be mitigated or solved if everyone sits down and discusses issues reasonably. Neither the left nor the right can ever have 100% of their issues enacted. Compromise is how this country was formed, and compromise is the only way it can survive. We have to rediscover civility and ways to have polite discourse, and soon.
As we listen to the hatred and vitriol being spewed in some protests today, I am reminded of a lesson I did learn from history because I am one of the people learned it last time. Some on the left lost both credibility and respect when peaceful anti-war protest became laced with hateful epithets hurled at soldiers who had honorably answered their country’s call. Environmental protest that had effectively called attention to our disregard of nature’s fragility lost support and credibility when words were replaced with violence. The honor and dignity of the Civil Rights nonviolent protest showed the ugliness of racism and yielded positive change through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. But when the non-violent protest was replaced by the armed anger of the Black Panthers, some of the progress made by people like John Lewis and Dr. King was overshadowed by the by the rage of others like Angela Davis, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale
Today, some on the right have forgotten the lesson history learned by some of us on the left. We remember what happened when some in our groups became so extreme that they engendered fear and hate. They did not persuade anyone. If anything, they caused a backlash, and liberal became an epithet equated with rage and unreasonable nastiness. Progressive ideals were largely regarded as naïve or more like Don Quixote’s swatting at windmills: unrealistic or even unreasonable. Those allied with the Tea Party movement have every right to express their disapproval of legislative acts that they do not like. But all must remember one immutable fact. There are philosophical differences between Democrats and Republicans. That’s what elections are about. Those out of power will always march against the winners. These protests are at the very heart of what it means to be an engaged American citizen.
But the ugliness of a fringe element—and note that I said fringe—allied with the Tea Party movement has become almost frightening in its intensity. Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D. Missouri), an African-American, was spat upon walking up to the Capitol Building. The face of that enraged man made me recall another face contorted in rage and shouting at Elizabeth Eckford in 1957 when she, as part of the Little Rock Nine, entered newly desegregated Central High School in Arkansas. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior, ever. Not when some spat on soldiers in the 1960’s and not when angry whites spat at black students integrating formerly all white schools. Ant not now. Furthermore, it was deplorable and reprehensible to see anti-war protesters call returning G. I.’s “baby killers,” and it is just as deplorable and reprehensible that Representative Randy Neugebauer (R. Texas) called Bart Stupak (D. Michigan.) a baby killer on the floor of Congress. And while I’m at it, it is never all right to call a gay man a “faggot,” and it was obscene for someone in the Tea Party crowd to shout that at Barney Frank (D. Massachusetts), just because the protester did not like Frank’s politics. And, it is abhorrent—beyond comprehension—for another in that crowd to call Representative John Lewis (D. Georgia) a “nigger.” To hurl this kind of racial slur at this man--a man beaten and jailed during non-violent Civil Rights marches, a man who faced hatred, clubs, and tear gas as he crossed the Pettus Bridge during the first march from Selma to Montgomery—is beyond the pale.
It is anyone’s right to express a contrary point of view of any policy. I applaud and cherish that right and use it myself, frequently. But it is never all right to level personal epithets when it is a policy with which you disagree. Grow up, people. Try to take your political discussions beyond playground taunts and behavior.
Finally, there are some facts that seem to have been lost in the shuffle in some of these protests:
1). The original Tea Party in Boston was a protest against Britain’s taxation of the colonists without colonial representation in Parliament; i. e., “taxation without representation.” We had an election in 2008, and voters chose their representatives. The protesters are represented, whether or not they like their representatives. That’s what the next election is about.
2). To those carrying placards reading: Keep the government out of my Medicare. It is the government that provides your Medicare. Medicare is a single-payer government-run program that most seniors love. Either don’t use it or get over it.
3). None of the cable news programs gives fair and balanced anything. I as liberal-leaning, watch CNN and MSNBC because I like to have my sentiments supported. I feel the same way about Fox News as some Glenn Beck lovers feel about Keith Oberman. And guess what? Not everything you read on the internet or in a forwarded e-mail is true. If you want to know what is going on, you must dig a bit deeper and read multiple sources. Don’t be lazy and take anyone’s word for anything.
4). Do not let someone else tell you what is or is not in a bill or what a politician did or did not say. Read the bill yourself. Listen to or read the transcript of the politician’s speech or broadcast yourself. I know you must have played gossip or telephone in elementary school. I know you know what happened to “So and so told someone who heard it from his cousin who knew….” Distortion of any resemblance to the truth is the result. Do your homework before you yell. Had some done this, no one would have shouted about a health care bill that advocated Death Panels much less believed it.
5). I voted for President Obama, but I fully understand that some, or even half, the American citizenry may not agree with me. You and I should be free to agree to disagree in a civil manner. And yet some of the Tea Party fringe elements feel no shame holding up a sign with Obama wearing African aboriginal attire and sporting a bone in his nose. If others standing next to those people don’t distance themselves from these sign-carriers, why should I not assume that they agree with this message? Ditto the protestors carrying signs of the president as Hitler or in white face. And to the birthers and all the cowardly GOP Congress members who are afraid to call them out, I have to wonder what you really mean.
All of us—left, right, and middle—have to find a way to work together to solve the problems facing us today and to do so in a civil manner. Very little constructive was ever accomplished by hysterics. Hissy fits rarely produce positive outcomes, and the fit-thrower is never respected. This country has some problems, but none that cannot be mitigated or solved if everyone sits down and discusses issues reasonably. Neither the left nor the right can ever have 100% of their issues enacted. Compromise is how this country was formed, and compromise is the only way it can survive. We have to rediscover civility and ways to have polite discourse, and soon.
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