Now’s The Time

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Easter is early this year, like our premature spring and the occasional glimmers of a steamy summer ahead. What’s late includes congressional cooperation on gun safety measures, legal equality in marriage (and other) contracts for all citizens and a whole slew of progressive legislation designed to assist the struggling American public. These politically tangled and confusing topics are often examined, here on the blog, having received in-depth coverage in the Friday editions emailed to members. Eric’s ability to paint a larger picture of the news of the day lays the groundwork for candid, insightful discussions and enlightening conversation. If you’re reading this now, you may be one of those who has come to depend on them.

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On to the topics of the day, including gun safety issues and matters of the court. Because so much of this conversation centers on the Constitution, let’s agree that media is not just late to this party, but complicit in failing to promote a basic understanding of the larger argument regarding the founders intent, religious persuasion or the originating document that continues to keep us at swords point.

The founders were moneyed, propertied business men, anxious to avoid — then, as now — taxation without representation. Some of them were pragmatic, some were altruistic, and few of them were Christian in the sense ascribed to them by fundamentalists today. At a time when people had little access to religious choice, the prevailing religion was clearly christian (with a small c) but hardly overriding. The lack of mention of God, except in the most general terms, illustrates the internal wariness that sought to protect a secular government against religious interference.

And while some of the founders might have seen themselves as visionaries, not all were so willing to lift the common (hu)man into equality. Their remarkable declaration for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” certainly didn’t describe their own social network. Clearly, if the Constitution was not a document subject to change and social evolution, people of color would remain 3/5’s of a citizen and women would be entirely without rights not deigned them by a male sponsor.

Our founding document was agreed upon by the 13 original colonies as rebellion against a common foe, not because the states themselves were anxious to combine their respective powers under a federal entity. As Ben Franklin is reported to have declared, we have a republic if we can keep it and now, grown big and clumsy, aggressive and opportunistic, our republic is still wrangling matters of states-rights and religious doctrine. If we need an illustration of that, we need look no farther than our High Court.

Considering arguments concerning California’s Proposition 8 and DOMA, the Supreme Court has had a real “airing” this week. I’m not sure they know it, but they are on trial as much as is their anachronistic discussion about gender bias. Remarks by Antonin Scalia have been particularly egregious, reflecting a moralistic homophobia that’s difficult to miss. Meanwhile, Roberts seems to think all social issues have been long decided and Sam Alito wonders how decisions on such a “new thing” as gay marriage might be within their purview. All three of these justices are married with children, Scalia with nine of them; Roberts with two adopted. All are practicing Catholics. It shows. Let Jon Stewart elaborate; you’ll miss him when he goes on hiatus later this year.

As gay pundit Andrew Sullivan recently pointed out, same-sex marriage is hardly new, given his 25 years of activism on its behalf. In an argument that simply can’t be put any more simply, how is it constitutional to deny a citizen that which deeply impacts his/her “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” more personally than whom they love and commit to? It appears that the Defense of Marriage Act cannot escape the obvious: that it was voted into law as a religiously inspired defense against the moral wrongs of homosexuality, and is therefore not constitutional. Meanwhile, the Prop 8 issues are much more complex, and it appears that the Supremes will punt on that case, although hopes remain high that DOMA will soon be a thing of the past (with a decision due in June.) We should not, of course, count our chickens, with conservative Justice Kennedy the swing vote in both cases.

Another issue with constitutional implications revolves around gun laws, conservative panties in a twist over their perceived threat to the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. Surely there has to be SOME limits on what that looks like. Here in the Pea Patch, I’m sure there would be gut-busting argument on limits of any kind, rocket launchers included. I got a response from my Bagger Representative on this topic the other day that thanked me for my interest but said that she would continue to guard my constitutional rights for me. I suspect those are the same rights she guards when she promotes the states’ authority over my uterus and birth control methods.

In a fiery speech on Thursday, surrounded by the parents of murdered children, Obama attempted to shame conservative leadership into compliance with the wishes of the country, over three-quarters of whom approve background checks for gun buyers. Fewer, but still a majority, find assault rifles and extra-large ammo clips unnecessary for either hunting or self-protection, and would be happy to see them unavailable for purchase. Once more — and much to the point of this article — we find the president using his skills as an organizer to encourage public involvement for progressive change.

On this particular, he’s right. Because the political ideologies have fought one another to a standstill, nothing can change until we raise our voices in unison. Because the House of Representatives — the branch of government that sets the agenda for new legislation and controls the purse strings — refuses anything but the most radical of Republican bills, the Democrats have begun to depend on a less polarized Senate. Passing popular legislation through the Senate, with the assistance of a few brave bi-partisan Republicans, creates a way to engage the public in pressuring the House to allow debate, perhaps a vote.

To catalyze the movement that might push legislation forward, Mike Moore recently wrote persuasively for viewing the bone-shattering damage done by these kinds of rifles — the rounds hitting at a velocity nine times that of a hand gun — and insisting that we must look upon the slaughter done by these instruments of war if we are to rise out of our lethargy. Regretfully, I agree. Moore argues that the civil rights movement was pushed forward on pictures of the brutalized body of young Emmett Till, and the Viet Nam war lost both its romance and moral authority when pictures of Mai Lai and napalm-burned children began to surface in magazines.

I remember those years when the news showed real footage of gun battles and napalm strikes, when death wasn’t sanitized, when caskets returning to Dover weren’t ‘managed’ by a PR machine anxious to keep us from experiencing the raw edge of reality. In those days, the news impacted us at heart-level, making nonsense of cerebral arguments. Those were the moments that brought us to our feet, that put a picket sign in our hands and sent us into the streets. It was shock that made us look. We need to look again.

We need to look at gun safety measures and ask why ANYONE would defend against them. We need to look at laws that limit the civil liberties of our citizens and rise up against them. We need to create a backlash against the obstruction that is threatening our economy and limiting our future. Now is the time, as — one by one — the glaring inequities of our time take center stage.

Not pissed enough, you say? Not riled up enough to take to the streets? How about the recent poison pill inserted into the short-term spending bill that Obama signed into law this week, to keep the government running? The rider, attached anonymously, was called the “Monsanto Protection Act.” It granted the U.S. Department of Agriculture authority to override any judicial ruling stopping the planting of genetically modified crops.

Don’t you just love this recent push to create laws to stop other laws? In Missouri we’ve got a bill to deny any law passed that limits gun rights. Will we be able to pass a law to call THAT law bogus, I wonder? And poison pill is the right name for the rider, that’s for sure. We all know about the kind of poison Monsanto offers. Estimates are that 40 to 60 percent of our food is now bio-tech, modified food from Monsanto engineers. And it’s not like this pill was a surprise: a quarter-million of us signed a petition opposing it. Others demanded that Obama kill the rider, but — alas — no president has ‘line item veto power,’ the ability to remove an unwanted portion of a bill. It was all or nothing.

Is the poisoning of our food enough to get us on the streets? The murder of our little kids? The denial of civil liberties? The enforcement of unnecessary austerity? What will it take to get determined enough to risk a little skin? Is any of this real enough to us to begin to shake everything up, to give those attempting to con us a glimpse of an activist public? Now’s the time to organize, to throw our intention into renewing our relationship with a Constitution that has promised us life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It’s spring, it’s a new era, and we are beginning to sense a new purpose and a new way forward. We can’t exist at stalemate, the past constantly pulling us back down into sleep and slavery. It’s up and over, now. Now’s the time!