I know John touched on this earlier, but I am amazed at how low the ADL has sunk. There was a time in my lifetime when this was an organization to look up to. Like the ACLU and the NAACP, the ADL was an organization committed to justice and protecting core ideals and beliefs regardless of the political winds of the moment. All three groups were born in response to mobs of hate attacking minority groups in America.
The NAACP was a response to the Jim Crow backlash to Reconstruction and the open terrorist campaign of neo-Confederate white extremists in America. The ACLU was founded in the wake of the Palmer Raids and a Conservative effort to piss on the Bill of Rights. The ADL was founded in response to the Confederate campaign of hate spilling past blacks and extending to immigrants–especially immigrants with weird religions like Catholicism and Judaism.
In 1913 a Jewish worker in Atlanta was accused of raping a Southern girl. He was lynched by the same kind of hate fueled mob that inspired (and still inspires) the NAACP to call out racism. Out of that lynching, the Anti-Defamation League was born.
For most of the last 100 years these three groups have been true to their core missions, but that is no longer the case. While the NAACP and the ACLU continue the fight for justice, the ADL has quit the field.
Once the ADL was an organization of heroes. No more. Now when bigots call for a lynch mob to form out of fear and religious intolerance, the ADL no longer stands in the way. Now they call on their members to grab a rope and join the rampage.
Peter Beinart has a post up that helps to explain how the ADL went down the hate spiral of Wingnutopia. He makes a good case for how an important organization destroyed its credibility in an effort to appease the powerful and the extremists in their network.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, but it took less than a century for Abe Foxman’s ADL to find common cause with the spirit of bigotry that lynched Leo Frank.
When the flash mobs of hate came for mosques and followers of Islam–Abe Foxman’s ADL decided that silence was insufficient approval. In a through-the-looking-glass bootleg move, the ADL now celebrates religious intolerance. More than that, they encourage their followers to join the old school American pastime of hate/fear fueled mob action. I can hardly wait to hear Foxman justify a lynching because the mere existence of the mooslim victim had hurt someone’s feelings.
Foxman’s re-branding of the ADL may be complete, but it is is the worst re-branding effort since New Coke.
Cheers
beltane
Foxman can complete the transformation by changing the Anti-Defamation League’s name to the simpler, more elegant, Defamation League.
Pavlov's Dog
Bravo!
Little Boots
Everything sucks. Everything becomes shit. It really does seem like we are living in a particularly ugly era. Maybe most people in most eras thought this, but I doubt it. Everywhere we look there is some organization turning into a shitty piece of shit. It’s a little depressing sometimes.
Lev
I knew Foxman was a creep when he talked about Fred Malek’s Jew counting was no big deal, and how he should totally be forgiven and should still exercise political influence and all.
I’m a big fan of forgiveness myself, but that sort of thing should be a career-ender, in my opinion. Maybe you can improve as a man after that, but you don’t get to be a politician after that.
Kryptik
@Little Boots:
It’s not even so much the fact that the organizations are FAILING, so much as they’re being totally subverted from the inside out into being the total antithesis of what they’re supposed to be, and yet have the audacity to claim that this is what the spirit of their industry or organization ALWAYS was.
Orwell weeps at his warnings being taken as instructions.
Little Boots
I mean Abe Foxman’s been an asshole forever, but the fact that he’s there, that honorable people let him be their spokesman is just a sad, sad testament to something.
Dennis G.
@Kryptik:
That captures a lot about our politics in 2010.
Cheers
Little Boots
That’s kind of it, Kryptic. I mean, how many organizations can you actually point to with pride. I’m a Democrat, I like the Democratic Party, but Jesus fucking christ. who the hell wants to hold that up. Is there anything.
Little Boots
And I like your Orwell line, by the way. Too true.
Tom Hilton
Eloquent and heartbreaking. Well done.
BR
Incisive and poetic.
Allison W.
Well I guess they have a new mission: standing up to reverse racism.
it’s an epidemic I tell ya
General Stuck
I’ve been generally optimistic about this country dealing with it’s problems and gradually making America a more perfect union, but these days, it seems the better angels of our nature have caught the last train for the coast.
Epicurus
Thanks to both Dennis and Kryptic; you’ve nailed it once again. Ignorance is Strength. I do have a faint hope that by continuing to point this out, we are at least recognizing the problem. Step 3? Profit….
beltane
@Little Boots: We’re in one of those transitional periods right now, where many of the old institutions are in decay, but no new ones have been created to replace them. The status quo isn’t permanent, so just take the long view and realize that change is inevitable.
Little Boots
And if we’ve recognized the problem, Epicurus, what then? What do we do, here in the land of teabags?
Little Boots
I’m okay with the long view, beltane, I really am. Maybe I’m being pessimistic, but this is an ugly country right now. I’m not sure what to do about it. I’m not sure there are answers. Maybe what you’re implying is right, we just gotta ride it out for now, put up with the bullshit. wouldn’t be the first time. But it pisses me off if that is what we’re down to.
MikeJ
Oh noez! Teh evil teabaggerz is out to get us! is the liberal equivalent of the rapture freaks. Father Coughlin was just as bad, the anti-Kennedy forces were just as bad, Strom Thurmond’s 1948 supporters were just as bad.
There is nothing special about now. There is nothing special about any of the fuckwits on the right or about those who oppose them.
We have a black president who signed a far reaching health care reform bill into existence. Doom and gloom is for suckers.
Wile E. Quixote
Now that Abe Foxman and Joe Lieberman have let us know about the threat of mosques in NYC someone needs to let them know about this.
El Cid
Yeah, well
I’m not. They’re a bunch of racist anti-Arab and hysterical anti-Muslim assholes who pretend to be an equality and civil rights organization, one which regularly cheerleads for any bombing and attack campaign by the US or Israel against any of the peoples they despise, and trash anyone who questions a crazy ultra-right militarist view on the Arab and Muslim world.
For fuck’s sake, this was an organization carrying out domestic spying operation, not only against any public figure failing to be sufficiently pro-militarist on Israeli policies, but too eagerly anti-apartheid back when apartheid South Africa was Israel’s good buddy helping their nuclear weapons program and hiring Israelis to train South African, Angolan, and Mozambican death squads.
These are just awful, awful fuckstains and this idea that there is some awesome noble legacy of recent decades by the ADL is just ridiculous.
Little Boots
Thank you MikeJ, for erasing November. It is certainly appreciated, as it will probably suck.
kdaug
@Little Boots: Gah. Your words, my mouth, etc.
“TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
Maybe they felt it in the past, maybe not. Change is upon us now though, and we feel it. Don’t see an alternative to keeping our heads down and push through the “interesting times”.
Nothing will be the same after.
Little Boots
Yeah, maybe it’s for the best, kdaug. Anyway, it probably can’t be stopped. For now, we’ve done what we can. I believe that.
Cacti
The ADL
Protecting America from the threat of the First Amendment since 2010
Little Boots
They’re better than that. Or were. Sad.
BDeevDad
Saw a thread earlier that summed it up nicely. People are changing
to
kdaug
@Little Boots: For the better, for the worse – either way it’s coming. The gears are in motion, and I can’t see how they’re stopped. (And I would love an “out” at this point).
Pay attention to what’s important, remember what inspires you, and hold on to those you love.
The storm is coming. Find shelter where you can.
Brachiator
@Dennis G.:
Good stuff.
@General Stuck:
It’s not hopeless. Look at how Mayor Bloomberg stood up against the mob and gave them a lesson in NYC’s best examples of religious tolerance.
The big lie of the tea baggers is that they know what America is all about. It’s long past time for people to fight back. Too much is at stake to do otherwise.
Porlock Junior
@Wile E. Quixote:
Nice! They omitted one thing, though: When the Grabblers blow away in a gentle breeze like some loose ashes, and we visualize a peaceful green field, we should sing a peaceful song, like “Tomorrow Belongs To Me”.
Maybe they couldn’t get the rights. Good presentation, anyway.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal
@BDeevDad: I think it is summed up by the age old ethical principal: Better Him than Me.
The Dangerman
I had never heard of Leo Frank previously (the Jew lynched in the death of Mary Phagan); that in 1913, a 13 year old (Phagan) was working up to 66 hours a week making pencils is a shocking reminder of what was happening less than 100 years ago. How far we’ve come (not far enough, but…).
That case almost had it all; racism, antisemitism, the KKK, etc; Frank, almost surely innocent, was lynched by a mob motivated into action by the Fox News of it’s day; how far we’ve NOT come wrt sensationalized news and opinion.
Sad, sad, sad; I grieve for where we are headed as a Country. The shit will hit the fan and the fires will burn, figuratively and literally…
Little Boots
I know deep down, it’s not hopeless. Not hopeless at all. It just seems that way, mostly, these days.
General Stuck
Never said it was.
Martin
Yea! Tomorrow is Prop 8 ruling day. I do not think we could get a more favorable trial than this one, so if it doesn’t come through for us, I don’t know when it ever will.
Mark S.
I wonder how much this has to do with the alliance between Israel and fundamentalist Christians. If there is one non-Jewish group that doesn’t give a shit what Israel does, it’s the Hagee type fundies. I think Foxman didn’t want to hurt the fee-fees of his most loyal supporters.
Of course, the fundies have a different idea of how all this is gonna end.
Lev
The worst thing about this is that, in some way, I know that this really is good news for John McCain.
Little Boots
I don’t know, Martin. Eventually everyone will forget they ever hated gay people, but for now, this trial is pretty much the best that we can hope for. It really was ridiculously one-sided, at least in terms of logic.
BDeevDad
I’d like one interviewer to ask the question….
I’d imagine the squirming would be hilariously uncomfortable. I checked, the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu is about 10 miles from Pearl Harbor. Is that the minimum distance the Park 51 Mosque can be from Ground Zero?
The Dangerman
@kdaug:
I agree, something is coming; I called it “fires” above. Just as tapas (or tapasya if you prefer), the fires can cleanse and purify. I hope for the best and prepare for the worst (i.e. shelter).
The dumb fuckers that are touting how the tree of Liberty has to be given blood occasionally COULD be right, but I dont think they are right on whose “blood”.
Ecks
There are quotes from the Victorians, even going back to the ancients about how this new generation are going to hell in a handbasket, they just don’t respect their elders like they used to… It was Aristotle, or someone of his generation who was very upset that the way the slaves dress these days you can’t even tell them apart from their masters.
When the Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii in ash, it preserved a town in mid swing, including graffiti on the walls slagging off local politicians as engaging in sex acts with dogs, and it buried the prostitutes who put nails in their shoes so that when they walked in the dust they left imprints saying “follow me.”
But if you’re looking for something constructive out of the recent upheavals, I see that the banner add on the right side of this blog is advertising anger management classes. Looks like a growth industry investment opportunity to me :) At least, until things settle down again, and then get really pissy all over in another decade or so.
Little Boots
The gun nuts are armed but stupid.
This whole think could go either way.
Mark S.
@Little Boots:
That’s the goddamn truth. Sorta like how conservatives claim that racism ended in 1963.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal
@BDeevDad: I think 8,000 miles should just about do it.
El Cid
@BDeevDad: There is no place on Earth where a Mosque is acceptable, and certainly space is off-limits.
Porlock Junior
Thanks for saying this.
El Cid is right (of course) that the corruption started long ago, but the stink wasn’t inescapable till fairly recently, in ADL and a bunch of affiliated places. In the summer of 2006 I began to feel that I’d walked through a space warp into a production of Rhinoceros. The feeling hasn’t gone away.
Ecks
@El Cid: well exactly. And surely they’ll have an eternity to worship mooslimness when they all (inevitably) go to hell, right? So why crowd out the few years they have on this mortal coil with it, when they could do something far more fun and uplifting instead. Like, say, being Christians!
Martin
@Little Boots: Well, isn’t it always, to be honest. Over time, we always win, though it’s frustrating how hard they work to prevent the inevitable.
Little Boots
And how long it takes, Martin. So damn long. I feel like I’m sitting through a movie where the ending is so freaking obvious, but I’m forced to go through every stupid twist and turn first. Boring, and annoying.
celticdragonchick
@Epicurus:
The table top wargame Warhammer 40K manages to provide the necessary ironic quotes in the spirit of what you provide.
Dick Cheney, Abe Foxman and Saint Sarah would approve.
A good soldier obeys without question. A good officer commands without doubt.
A man can remake the world if he has a dream and no facts to cloud his mind.
Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush.
Camouflage is the color of fear.
Faith is the sturdiest armour. Hatred the surest weapon.
Faith without deeds is worthless.
For a warrior the only crime is cowardice.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest this side of the grave.
Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.
If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth dying for.
If you want peace, prepare for war.
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.
Innocence proves nothing.
Inspiration grows from the barrel of a gun.
It causes me constant pain. I would not have it any other way, for it serves as a remainder against complacency.
It is better to die for the Emperor than to live for yourself.
Knowledge is power, hide it well.
Only in death does duty end.
Only the awkward question; only the foolish ask twice.
Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair is an illusion of the mind.
Prayer cleanses the soul, but pain cleanses the body.
Sometimes the good must perish so that the rest survive.
The ends always justify the means.
The Known is but a shadow of the Knowable.
The rewards of tolerance are treachery and betrayal.
There is nothing to fear but failure.
There is nothing to fear except fear itself.
Tolerance is a sign of weakness
Victory needs no explanation, defeat allows none.
We ask only to serve.
What can a man know of the Universe that knows not his own mind.
What is the terror of death? That we die, our work incomplete. What is the joy of life? To die, knowing our task is done.
What is your fate? My duty is my fate.
Some more favorites:
“There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt”
A small mind is a tidy mind.
A small mind is easily filled with faith.
All untruths are sedition.
An empty mind is a loyal mind.
Be strong in your ignorance.
Better crippled in body than corrupt in mind.
Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.
hamletta
@The Dangerman: Back in the ’80s, when The Tennessean was a good newspaper, they carried a long-running series about the Leo Frank lynching.
An elderly black man had come out with exonerating evidence that he’d been (understandably) afraid to speak about at the time.
The Leo Frank case led to the re-formation of the Ku Klux Klan on Stone Mountain, and this time, it wasn’t just black people, but Jews and Catholics who were the objects of their hatred.
The mansion of the bastard who led the group was later bought by the oldest Lutheran parish in Atlanta, which made the news when its beloved gay pastor refused to step down when he entered into a relationship. He was put on trial within the church and de-rostered, but the national synod later voted to allow gay pastors to have partners.
Haha, stupid Klan man!
Dennis G, your post is angry and beautiful. Why would people choose to be on the wrong end of the arc of justice?
Martin
@Little Boots: Unfortunately, we’re stuck in this movie for a few more decades.
JohnR
I don’t see what everybody’s so worked up about – the ADL is just focused on their core missions, which are to do anything and everything to make sure that the Right People stay happy with Israel and that the Wrong People are annoyed and persecuted at every opportunity. It might help to remember that the Jews are still people, and people who have rarely, if ever, regarded empathy and tolerance towards their Enemies as positive things. Come to think of it, that makes them people again – sort of a great Circle of Redundancy argument.
celticdragonchick
@MikeJ:
I hate to point out that there is plenty of historical precedent for bad things happening in this country (and others) during times of demagogue idiocy while foreign wars are underway and over 10% of the population is unemployed…not mention while racial hatred is being stoked for political gain.
Sorry, but I can easily see some real dinki-dau shit going down in this case.
JohnR
@Little Boots:
Oh, God – must you remind me of Episode 3 again? I’d almost forgotten it.
celticdragonchick
@Little Boots:
Until the (race/kill teh geyz/next attempt at succession/fill in the blank) war moves to your neighborhood…which is when things get real interesting real quickly.
MikeJ
@celticdragonchick: I’m not saying what we’ve got now is pleasant, I’m just saying it’s not unprecedented, and I don’t think it’s the end of the world. Bad shit will happen, most of us will muddle through, and in 20 or 30 years somebody else will tell us that things have never been as bad or as desperate as they will be then.
Which doesn’t mean don’t fight it, it means don’t be so quick to give in.
Comrade Kevin
@Allison W.:
This is a phrase that people should stop using, along with “reverse discrimination”.
It was designed to make it sound like racism against white people is actually WORSE than other forms. It’s like a modern-day version of “white slavery”.
Uriel
@Kryptik:
About the best summation of the current political landscape I’ve seen.
Kudos, golf claps, and such.
Wish I had something to add, but really, that kinda sums it up.
El Cid
@Uriel: For a while during the Bush Jr. years I said this. Then they changed my mind and suddenly I saw it was Idiocracy they were using as an instruction manual.
Uriel
@General Stuck:
No, you didn’t say it, but let’s be honest- I’m sure you’ve thought it.
I know I have.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
It’s interesting, though – Ground Zero is regarded as a sacred site becuase nearly 3,000 people were killed there by terrorists.
Yet over 4,000 Cherokee died on the Trail of Tears, forced to march off their homes by the US government and settlers. Even more died from other tribes.
And none of these wingnuts seem to regard that as a tragedy at all…
Bill E Pilgrim
OT but any open thread is way down the page in dead territory by now:
In today’s Neocon pamphlet AKA the WAPO, Michael Gerson channels his inner Maureen Dowd and comes up with a completely fresh angle that no one else has thought of:
Barack Obama isn’t emotional enough.
Guy must have been in a coma for the past six months. That fad passed a few months ago, Mike.
El Cid
@Phoenician in a time of Romans: Those weren’t real people, except when some rural Southerner or Southwesterner wants to mention that they’re 1/16 Cherokee or something to imply that they got some magical huntin’ or survivalist blood in ’em.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Phoenician in a time of Romans: Well and also, there were Muslims who worked there who were killed in the World Trade Center attack. So how is an Islamic community center built in the neighborhood being “insensitive” to the victims?
To claim that Trade Center attack was an attack “on Jews” is to adopt a racist stereotypical view itself that the ADL would condemn if anyone else did it.
Ecks
You were missing two key words, and that made it look like it was comparable to the various historical stories about brown-people and/or non-jewish europeans dying. You really can’t compare stories from textbooks to real people being murdered by terr’ists, for heavens sake. And murdered just because they loved freedom!!1
I need a hot bath now. With bleach, acid, and a wire brush. The stoopid, I can’t get it all off.
El Cid
Yeah. The right gives so much of a damn about the WTC as “sacred ground” that they’re happy to shit all over attempts to aid the people who actually responded to and directly suffered from the attacks themselves.
Anyone who thinks that the right wing gives a shit about the actual WTC attacks, or its victims, or New York city, is horribly wrong and mistaking an excuse for reactionary right wing attacks on hated groups as some sort of pro-victim solidarity.
They don’t love NYC or the WTC site — they just hate the people they hate.
They never gave a shit about Vietnam vets either, except for martyring themselves with bullshit conspiracy theories about how Vietnam was still keeping thousands of Americans in tiger cages into the 1980s (‘You Are Not Forgotten’ bumper stickers) and how every librul in the nation made sure to find a Vietnam vet to spit on when they weren’t spreading the homosekshul agenda.
Likewise, the ADL doesn’t love Jews or Israelis. It loves Israeli militarist policymakers and propagandists, and they don’t give a shit if their preferred policies help or hurt average Israelis or Jews, ’cause, you know, greater good, higher cause, fuck ’em.
Mark S.
@El Cid:
And to Republicans, that’s the greatest tragedy of all.
NobodySpecial
@Ecks: Um, quite a few of them weren’t white or American. Just to correct the record a bit.
asiangrrlMN
I don’t know much about the ADL, so I won’t comment on that. I will, say, however, that while I think at some point the country will progress (unless it completely dies out, which is also possible) past this point. I’m just afraid I won’t live to see it. Let’s face it. I don’t plan on living a long life, and the immediate future is pretty bleak. And, I am resigned as to just how very ugly it’s going to get in the meantime.
Uriel
You know, the thing that gets me is, reading through the comments at Dennis’ link, the discussion sounds like it could have taken place on 9/12 or the next two weeks after.
All of the expected dog whistles are in full display- from the “koran=hate America=sharia everywhere=omg!” crap, to the “we’ll just splatter dog and pig shit all over the place and then watch, HAR HAR!”
I get where, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, this kind of thinking might seem understandable, even if wildly off base and contrary to everything this country is supposed to stand for.
But, fuck, it’s been almost a decade now- can we, as a country , just take a few fucking steps back and acknowledge that there is just a little, tiny bit of nuance regarding Islam apart from the obvious “Muslims! Boogidy, Boogidy! Cut offa u heads!” meme?
Like,maybe some small percentage of Muslims are actually human beings who merely want to along, with no desire to kill anyone at all. I mean, christ, it’s not inconceivable.
El Cid
The Daily Show had a very funny bit by Kristin (sp?) Shaw about Sarah Palin and her idiot “Mama Grizzly” shit, but, god-damn, Jeebus, I get fucking sick just hearing that raving maniac’s screeching ultra-dumb voice. I always hated it but it didn’t used to be that bad.
I think it’s like how when you’re first thrown into a pool of cold raw sewage, it’s a huge shock, but then after you’ve been in it a while you don’t feel the cold as much as you do the diseases.
asiangrrlMN
@Uriel: Can’t we step back and see that the president isn’t a sockulist fascist bisexual Kenyan usurper? Apparently, no, we (as a society) cannot. Can’t we step back and remember how W. decimated the country during his eight year regime? Nope. Not that, either. By the way, I’m sorta giving you your ‘right after it happened’ bit, though I didn’t feel that way at the time and many people I knew didn’t, either. However, I think you have a much too high opinion of people in general.
El Cid
@Uriel: Remember during the 1980s when there was some comment by some Japanese auto chief about how they didn’t want to build in America because how American workers were lazy and illiterate? [Note: It was in 1992 and it was the Speaker of the Japanese Diet, just after Bush Sr. visited and apparently the American delegation didn’t impress upon their visits to Japanese plants.]
HAR HAR HAR! INCINERATING BUCK TOOTH YELLOWS IZ FUNNY!
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN: Pffft. George W. Bush was never even President and anyway it was like 400 years ago so all this stuff is what Obama done. Just like how 9/11 was Bill Clinton’s fault, but the Bush Jr. economic boom was due to the Newt Gingrich Congress paying down the deficit.
Uriel
@El Cid:
To be honest, Palin made me want to puncture my ear drums from about the the one minute mark into her introductory speech at the RNC convention. I can very vividly remember sitting at work, listening to the audio of her blathering, thinking, “Dear sweet god, what new gem of jack-assery are these people up to now.”
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: Yeah, no shit. Everything is a Dem president’s fault. I forgot that. My bad. I heartily concur with you on Palin, by the way. I can’t stand the sight or sound of her. The fact that she has such staying power speaks ill of our society. And, not that I want to be a nagging fake-wife, but shouldn’t you be in bed?
@Uriel: I didn’t hear her speech until days later. I knew nothing of her except she granted Craig Ferguson Alaskan citizenship on his show. The two minutes it took for me to research her was more than enough for me to gag.
asiangrrlMN
By the way, I have a question for any Constitution experts in the crowd. If the crazies actually manage to repeal the 14th amendment, could they make it retroactive?
El Cid
@Uriel: Actually I found the RNC speech insulting but interesting, because at that point I just didn’t know that she was a complete vapid lunatic shit-head dumber than any of the leading conservatives which came to my mind.
So, thinking she was an actual, real-life governor type person, who had a reputation for having taken down a corrupt Republican establishment, I was thinking of her more as some sort of serious political threat.
And then she just became screechy crazy lady and the voice got a million times worse.
And now that I haven’t really heard it that much in a while, the Daily Show segment was just too much to bear. I am weak.
Uriel
@asiangrrlMN:
No, actually I have pretty much the opposite.
I’m just saying,given the most abjectly base reaction to the events of 9/11, after a decade even the most unthinking troglodite should at least feel a desire to come up with something *new*, even if it’s still based in fear and loathing.
Which is to say- huh, wait a minute- maybe you’re right after all….
asiangrrlMN
@Uriel: Heh. I think I am. A friend used to tell me that I was an optimist because I was disappointed when people didn’t do the right thing. He was right. Even though I expect people to be asshats, it still disappoints me when they live down to my expectations.
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN: If they repeal the whole 14th Amendment it would make the US government liable for any debts incurred by the Confederacy, and it would also re-legalize the ability of those who participated in armed insurrection against the US government to be Senators and Congress members etc.
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: Oooooh, interesting. Except, they only want to repeal the nasty ‘any child born in the States is automatically a citizen’ bit. That’s the part in which I’m interested. I don’t think they want to repeal the rest of it, but it sounds like it might be up their alley (the latter part, anyway).
I guess my question is, should I be exploring my dual citizenship possibilities?
Uriel
@asiangrrlMN:
That is one feeling I can empathize with.
Damn it- now I’ll never be a supreme court justice.
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN: I’m guessing that the GOP neo-Confederates just don’t want to mention those other bits.
You should always be reinforcing your dual citizenship possibilities.
roshan
Laura Ingraham gets ripped a new asshole, courtesy COLBERT
Favorite line: “This writing is terrible” (related to her book)
Uriel
@El Cid:
By the way, I should mention that you have won the internets and such. Not that that’s all that impressive, since they were invented by Al Gore, who happens to be fat….
asiangrrlMN
@Uriel: Me, neither! We can NOT be SCOTUS together!
@El Cid: Good point. Hm. I shall look into it. I couldn’t live in Taiwan, though. I would melt into a puddle. Mebbe I’ll just for-realz marry TattooSydney and live in Oz.
El Cid
BBC’s NewsHour did a segment on their 2000 UTC broadcast on this ‘controversy’ and put hard questions to the project’s manager or director or whatever.
And then they followed up with Rick Lazio, who immediately suggests that the project’s being funded by scary foreign Muslim powers.
The BBC’s Julian Marshall then asked Lazio if it could be proven that the financing was clear to his objections, would he still object to the project?
Lazio’s answer was (a) I will not speculate, and (b) I’d still oppose it because it adds pain and people around New York will be angered and hurt.
Presumably because people who suffered in the 9/11 attacks may not be worthy of federal aid, but by god we’re going to speak for them and say that in their interests Muslims and Arabs or Arab-looking types should be kept forever from being anywhere near Ground Zero.
kay
@asiangrrlMN:
Conservatives haven’t thought this through.
We’re all birthright citizens. It’s presumptive. I didn’t undergo any qualifying analysis to be a citizen, and either did you. We’re granted citizenship one way: by birth (other than naturalization). I am exactly as much a citizen as any child of undocumented, no more, no less.
They’d be calling every person in the country’s citizenship into question.
They’re fucking nuts.
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: Well, you know, actions speak louder than…no, wait, words speak louder than money…or something like that.
@kay: Well, yes, they are crazy for even considering it. I know the chance they will pass it is very slim. However, given that I AM the child of two people who were not citizens at the time nor legal permanent residents nor undocumented immigrants serving in the military (both my parents came for grad school and met in Tennessee), I take a modicum of interest in this whole stupidity because it would be just like them to try to retroactively take away citizenship from people like me.
El Cid
@kay: As long as it’s rewritten in such a fashion as to make Obama not a citizen any more.
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: You jest, but I think that is one of the two top reasons they want to repeal the 14th amendment. The irony, of course, is that McCain is the candidate who wasn’t born in the States.
Hm. I should try to sleep, I guess. Night/morning, all. Zai jien! (Practicing my pigeon-Mandarin).
kay
@asiangrrlMN:
It’s funny, (sad, but funny) because we have a Laotian community here and a lot of them come to our law office. I assume it’s word of mouth. Anyway. I was asked this same question (retroactive repeal of citizenship) out of nowhere, yesterday.
It makes me sick to my stomach that they’re scaring people with this, but I think, given the current climate, it’s a reasonable question.
I’m no constitutional scholar, but I have no earthly idea what the “status” of Lindsey Graham’s parents were at his birth.
I think they have to check all our papers, because I think we’re all birthright citizens. We’re all anchor babies, until I see some documents proving otherwise.
I think it’s typical that conservatives didn’t consider where they got their citizenship, because they got it by birth, just like you. A normal person would ask that question first, right?
bago
As the Hereditarily challenged son of an Alaskan Truck Driver and Lunch Lady, I feel a duty to rage against hereditary entitlement. Most importantly her “ignorance is strength” proclamations, defining “Real America”.
Can I just say that the half term Governor of a state of less than a million people should step the fuck off.
You don’t even rate big enough to compete with Da Bronx.
Alaskans are such size queens.
NobodySpecial
@El Cid:
Wow, you play Red Alert 2 as well?
wilfred
@asiangrrlMN:
Wouldn’ repeal of the 14th amendment also result in the loss of corporate personhood?
No way they would ever let that happen.
Remember November
@Uriel:
Also, too.
20th Century prophet. Betcha he and Carlin are having a laugh at our sorry asses.
Remember November
Repealing the 14th Amendment would nullify a few Presidents of this country. JQ Adams- 1st “Anchor Baby President”
I say we have Congress take a year off and go back to school and re-edumakate themselves as to the Articles and Amendments of the Constitution.
Svensker
@El Cid:
Thank you. On point and to the point, as usual.
Betsy
You’re wrong to doubt it. Think how Americans felt when the country was ripped in two during the Civil War. THAT was a “particularly ugly era.” Moreover, I can speak only of American history, but there have always been powerful demagogues and people willing to follow them. There has always been hatred and fear of those not defined as white, and of those who critiqued the existing power/financial structures.
That’s not to deny that there’s ugly shit now, and that it represents a genuine threat. But so did the Klan in the 1920s, and McCarthyism in the 1950s. I think it’s easier to look at McCarthyism as an anomaly, a threat that was ultimately easily contained. But that most definitely was not how it seemed to liberals and leftists at the time.
All we can do now is what people have always done when confronted with this kind of hate- and fear-mongering. Stand up to it, volunteer for organizations that try to make the world better in some way, and make your voice heard.
Quicksand
With all due respect, New Coke was a triumph compared to this crap.
Nellcote
@Remember November:
I think members of congress should have to pass the standard citizenship test they give to immigrants.
btw Newt has been pushing this 14th amendment bs since ’96 at least.
And no way is Prez Obama about to sign something like this.
Jay in Oregon
@El Cid:
Into the 1980s? I saw POW-MIA flags flying along with American flags the last time they went up around town — which was last month.