"Order Must Prevail"
May 3: Biden protest remarks … Arizona abortion law … Southern sea levels … National Day of Reason …
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Pres. Joe Biden yesterday delivered prepared remarks about the campus protests taking place around the nation. He articulated two fundamental American principles:
“The first is the right to free speech and for people to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard. The second is the rule of law. Both must be upheld…
“We are a civil society, and order must prevail.”
The first principle has to do with the rights of the people, as enshrined in the Constitution. The rest are the rights of the government and are made up.
The notion that no lawbreaking can be tolerated, that no challenge to the normal order of things can be countenanced, is a toxic one. And it’s false.
In fact, law enforcement tolerates trespassing and worse all the time. They’re called hostage negotiations. Or, if there’s a risk of self-harm, it’s a barricade situation. In both, police just…wait it out. They don’t go tactical from the get-go. Order doesn’t prevail for a while. The rule of law gets a coffee. To ensure optimal outcomes.
And, of course, lawbreaking is tolerated all the time. The U.S. is purchasing arms for Israel in violation of laws that prohibit such sales without protections for civilians. Corporate executives walk free and keep their jobs after using their corporations to break the law every day.
At 43 campuses around the country in recent weeks, there have been more than 56 times when police have come in and arrested protesters, almost invariably peaceful protesters engaged in the same civil disobedience we’re all taught in school was awesome when others did it. More than 2,200 people have been arrested so far. Typically, the charges are dropped because they’re bullshit.
The reason campus protests are spreading is the conviction that justice, not order, must prevail. That prioritizing order makes it impossible to challenge institutional injustice, to pursue change. Order is the armor that unjust laws wear.
No sane society enforces a zero tolerance policy against disorder. But first we upped the goal from defense — as in “Department of” — to security — as in “Department of Homeland.” And now mission creep has taken us to defending not just our physical security but order.
Any good parent comes to realize that long-term order, long-term stability, are not served with zero tolerance for a child’s moments of disorder. Bad parenting arises when a child’s disorderly conduct spurs parental anxiety, feelings of lack of control or disrespect.
But, earlier this week, Dartmouth University Professor Annelise Orleck was assaulted by police when she confronted them for their assault of students. She was arrested and as a condition of her bail was barred from campus.
Orleck is a past chair of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth. Many of the protesters, including those arrested and assaulted, have been Jewish.
It almost doesn’t matter which side of the protests Orleck was on. “Pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestinian” are unhelpful labels for thinking about all of this. Israel’s defenders can argue that Palestinians will be better off without Hamas. Palestinian defenders can argue that Israel will be better off without Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But everyone suffers when we ramp up ostensible protections in the name of order. Congressional Republicans are using Jewish fears — some of them more than justified — to leverage new limitations on speech, new controls of college campus, calls for deploying the National Guard. To restore “order.”
The mechanisms we erect to defend Jews will invariably be deployed against anyone seen as a threat to Jews. And when some Jews speak out against that injustice, then they, too, will come to be seen as a threat to Jews. And the machinery built to defend all Jews will be turned against some Jews. And eventually those mechanisms will be turned against anyone who challenges the mechanisms themselves. Which ultimately, will be all of us.
In the summer of 1960, presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-MA) praised the civil rights movement’s sit-ins. The illegal sit-ins. “[T]he peaceful student sit-in demonstrations, a historic application in our country of the principles of nonviolence through which Mahatma Gandhi won freedom in India,” Kennedy called them.
This unlawful, disorderly trespassing was something not only to be tolerated, he said. It was “part of the process of change,” he said. “The American spirit is coming alive again.”
Of course, it’s easier to cheerlead from the sidelines, and Kennedy as president had a checkered record on civil rights.
As Jeff Greenfield, a former colleague, writes for Politico, the American people historically have not liked mass protest movements. Not when college kids did it against unlawful, disorderly illegal wars in Asia. Not when Black people did it against unjust discrimination.
Jeff says that “The reality is those upheavals were an enormous in-kind contribution to the political fortunes of the right.” That was true, he says, even when the protests were entirely peaceful.
And it’s true. We’re slow that way. People embrace popular movements, like any change, slowly. Especially when one party spits on those fighting for change. When both parties exalt order over everything.
Instead of joining the knee-jerk recoil against protest, Biden could have held America’s hand and led us to embrace the protests. To feel good and hopeful that our kids care about ideals and people other than themselves. America, remember, also opposes Israel’s operations in Gaza.
Instead Biden delayed that moment when we could all be okay with the protests — which will end soon anyway because school’s out for the summer! (Needs more cowbell!)
Biden yesterday validated the use of governmental violence against peaceful civil disobedience, standing with the slow adaptors, potentially postponing the national recovery.
Another point from parenting: If your kid falls down, they will look at your face to determine whether they should feel upset. You, terrified, can reveal your panic and trigger your kid, or you can fake calm and give them calm.
Half of our leaders right now are showing to the people a face of panic, be it fake or real. Biden could have showed calm. Instead, he chose to exaggerate the threat and magnify fear. Which means we might struggle with this national trauma for longer than we might have. Maybe even until the election.
The South Shall Sink Again
Sea levels in the south are rising faster than in areas that didn’t actively make climate change worse by electing politicians who don’t think it’s real, the Washington Post reports in very different language than I just used.
According to the Post analysis, sea levels have risen since 2010 as much as they rose in the previous half-century: At least six inches. That’s the case at more than a dozen sites where sea levels are measured in the American southwest.
The rising tides are swamping Louisiana’s wetlands, a key mitigator of floods and storm surges, not to mention a thing of value in their own right aside from how they benefit us. And insurance companies are evacuating entire coastal regions the same way homeowners will if they ever figure out what’s going on.
Some high-water highlights of the water-level increases since 2010:
Jacksonville, FL: ↑ 6 inches
Charleston, SC: ↑ 7 inches
Galveston, TX: ↑ 8 inches
And disastrous hurricanes aren’t the biggest threat. It’s the steady drip-drip of more small-scale problems. High-tide floods, for instance, are now coming five times more frequently than they did in 1990.
There’s a reason it’s people without long to live who actually move to Florida.
National Day of Reason
Tomorrow, Saturday, is the National Day of Reason. Or would be, if reason were prevailing.
Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Jared Huffman (D-CA), the co-founders of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, have introduced a resolution declaring May 4 the National Day of Reason. Of course, passing it is another story.
The concept of a National Day of Reason — ideally a concept we could celebrate and practice all year long — arose in response to the National Day of Prayer, which actually does have official federal recognition despite it literally respecting an establishment of religion, as the Constitution says the government can’t do.
The National Day of Prayer, like the National Prayer Breakfast, and the national motto of “In God we Trust,” were part of the anti-Communist, anti-labor pushback by America’s religious right in the 1950s. And so far, most Democrats have gone along with it.
The rationale behind it is that prayer is a unifying force, that Judeo-Christian values are America’s bedrock. That America is one nation…under God.
None of it’s true. Prayer doesn’t unify; at a minimum it must exclude those who don’t pray. Judeo-Christian values are not America’s bedrock, representational democracy and checks and balances are. E pluribus unum is. America is not one nation under any deity.
The American Humanist Association has some ways you can work toward official recognition of a day honoring reason and even celebrate the day tomorrow. Within reason, of course.
Arizona Repeals Ancient Abortion Law
Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) yesterday signed out of law the 1864 ban on virtually all abortions in the state. The 1864 ban became effective once again after the right-wing Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Yesterday’s repeal of the ban passed the state Senate only narrowly, as most Republicans voted to keep the ban in place. The final vote was 16-14, with two Republicans joining Democrats to approve the repeal. Two.
The House had already voted for repeal, with three Republican members supporting repeal. Three.
Democrats couldn’t peel away enough Republican votes to expand reproductive rights further, so a 2022 ban will once again be the law of the land, outlawing abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.
Democrats to Help Keep Johnson as Speaker
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) next week is expected to call for a vote on whether to oust Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as speaker of the House.
Johnson doesn’t have enough Republican votes to survive. So Democrats are going to make up the difference.
Some Republicans aren’t happy about that. Neither are some Democrats.
So Democrats are calling this a one-time thing. If Johnson wants to change the rules — so that no lone member can call for a leadership vote — or wants to survive yet another leadership challenge down the road, at that point, Democrats reportedly will start asking for concessions in order to help stave off the scenario of another speakerless House as we had last year after then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) lost the gavel.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has already floated that the House should — I hope you’re sitting down — allow straight up-or-down votes on bills with majority support. Y’know, majority rules? That would mean dropping the so-called Hastert Rule, which Republicans adopted to ensure that when they’re in charge, the House will only vote on bills that most Republicans support. The rule is named for Republican former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), who was an actual, literal child molester, which hasn’t stopped his party from using his rule to molest democracy.
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“The rule of law gets a coffee”. Made me smile when I read that. Well put 👍🏻