An Open Letter to the Republican Party

There are a lot of things we agree on. We agree this country is in trouble, and we both have doubts that President Obama is the person to fix it. However, Tuesday's election illustrates that the baggage that Obama had weighing him down, the slow economic recovery, the uninspiring campaign, the lingering doubts over his continuation of Bush era foreign policy, was less of a hindrance than Romney's baggage. And what, you might ask, was Romney's baggage. You were, Republican Party, you were.

I think it is best for the nation that both parties produce the best candidate possible, which is why I did not join many of my fellow Michigan liberals in voting for Rick Santorum in the primaries. To that end, here are some thoughts. First, and on a rather broad level, I really think you need to stop sliding further and further into a hard line stance and interrupt the ideological feedback loop you seem to be in. On some level I kind of want you to keep sliding until you slide over a cliff, but that is just petty. However, as you get further and further out there, it forces your candidates to look like loonies to much of the country in order to win your primaries. Just putting someone on the same stage as Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann damages their credibility. When Republicans go crazy, moderates go Democrat.

On a more specific note, become the party of fiscal responsibility! Right now you have a large credibility issue as you appear to be the party of low taxes for the rich. Showing a willingness to compromise, a temporary increase to top tax brackets in exchange for permanent alterations to an entitlement program for example, would go a long way to making claims of fiscal responsibility believable.

Perhaps a related issue is your image of being a party of hawks. Perhaps you are still recovering from the damage President Bush did to your image in his terms, but you need to get on top of that. Keep our military at home, then we can cut the military budget, and that, in turn, feeds back into your image of actually being fiscally responsible. My suggestion would be to drastically decrease the size of the standing military, and leave research budgets alone, or even increase them. Our safety lies in having the most advanced military, not the largest standing military, and if one looks at the beginning of American involvement in both World Wars we shifted fairly radically from a peacetime footing to a war production footing when we need to. The American people will rise to a challenge when we need to, don't keep us in needless wars, costing us billions of dollars and even the lives of our young adults, just so we will be ready when needed.

Regarding social issues, I think you have three problems, abortion, same-sex marriage, and birth control. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of your base feels that their rights are being taken away if others have the right to make their own decisions regarding these things. This is unfortunate from my point of view because I favor giving people the freedom to make their own decisions, and unfortunate from your point of view because a growing proportion of the voting population seems to agree with me. While I would love it if you decided to share my point of view, I agree that this might alienate some of your supporters too much. You might try painting yourself as the party of liberty, protecting a citizen's right to choose their position on these issues, contrasting with a perception that to be a Democrat one must be pro-abortion, rather than simply pro-choice. This is risky, as it is inaccurate, but when has that stopped you?

It might be safer to pick an issue and improve... I mean change... your stance on that one while maintaining your... repressive... position on the other ones to keep your base. I hope my tone of voice conveys my personal disgust for that option, but it might make political sense. Same-sex marriage could be a reasonable stance to change, because it has been implemented in a few states without the catastrophic societal collapse so feared in some circles. Furthermore, one could even spin the campaign as a defense of marriage if you were to try to make all couples get a civil union to be a joint couple in the eyes of the state, thus protecting marriage to be a religious ceremony. The problem with choosing same sex marriage is that homosexuals are a much smaller proportion of the population than women, so oppressing them is comparitively easy. This is not to say that all homosexuals view same sex marriage as a topic of supreme importance, that no straight people view it as a topic of supreme importance, that all women believe reproductive health is the most important issue, or than no men do, just a comment about the relative size of the groups these reforms most affect.

Campaigning for contraceptive access seems like the safest choice. While many in our nation are opposed to access to contraceptive, ostensibly because it lends itself to immoral behavior, inconsistently enough, the same people do not shun phones because they facilitate gossip or the Internet because it begets... piracy... yes, piracy. Well, you are Amish, then your stance is perfectly consistent, also congratulations on reading an article posted on the Internet somehow! Unless you did it by doing something you are not supposed to, in which case, bad Amish, BAD! Just kidding, much respect to the Amish, I do not want to share their lifestyle, but I think it is a beautiful and logical choice. Where was I? Oh yes, supporting contraceptives also enhances your pro-life stance, as contraceptives, unlike making abortions illegal, actually do something to reduce abortions. The biggest problem with this stance is there is not much for you to do with it. Since contraceptives are legal and widely accepted, there isn't much publicity in simply holding that position, and trying to make them more accessible for women is going to seem at odds with your stance on keeping government small.

Regarding immigration, speculation is that you are actually going to try and work with the Democrats to improve this. In which case, kudos to you!

Regarding the environment, it is probably safe to keep ignoring it, that seems to be working for the Democrats. If you could though, coming up with a small government way to reduce human impacts on our environment would give you significant leverage to implement those small government ideas.

Well, that's about it. Good luck Republicans, the phrase evolve or die comes to mind!

We Shall Overcome, Someday

Michigan recently passed a bill to prevent public institutions from providing benefits to couples who are not legally married; here is an article on the topic. Although the bill is being challenged and I hope it is overturned, I am not interested, or able, to discuss its legality. I did not study to be a lawyer, I studied to be a philosopher, so what I want to talk about is how very wrong this bill is!

It seems clear that some of the support for this bill originates from an antipathy toward same sex couples; insofar as this antipathy wells out of some sort of Christian sentiment, this makes me sick. There is an incredible hypocrisy within the American "Christian" political movement when it comes to sexual mores. Although premarital sex and adultery are condemned from the pulpit they are ignored when Christians go political, in fact, I have noticed a surprisingly widespread sentiment among Christians that premarital sex "isn't that bad" or "is a fact of life." Perhaps premarital sex and adultery are easier to accept as facts of life because they are things that heterosexuals might desire, making this a classic case of trying to remove the splinter from the eye of the homosexual community whilst ignoring the plank in our own. To make it absolutely clear, I am NOT advocating that anybody attempt to legislate against premarital sex or adultery, simply that people who have somehow accepted that these things should be dealt with in the realm of morality, not legality, extend that understanding to same sex couples. Finally, I must admit that comparing homosexuality, premarital sex, and adultery is not the fairest of comparisons. Adultery seems, by fair, the most harmful and disrespectful of the three, so why are we taking benefits away from same sex couples and blithely permitting them to adulterers?

At best this bill might be described as a way for the state to save a little bit of money, which is something states always seem to need to do. However, even in this more charitable interpretation the bills supporters do not end up looking terribly moral. Now, instead of passing the bill in order to hurt a group of people with which they have a difference of opinion, they are simply looking for a group they perceive as unpopular enough that they can summarily divest them of benefits without office threatening repercussions. Less disgusting, perhaps, but still disgusting.

This bill also highlights why marriage for heterosexuals and domestic partnerships for homosexuals is not an adequate, effective, or moral solution. As long as different couples have different commitments binding them it will be easy and, therefore, tempting to set different standards and benefits for them. Perhaps we will simply have to abolish marriage as a civil institution and issue all couples domestic licenses to reach a compromise with the hard line religious movements, which, insofar as marriage is a religious ceremony, ought to be done anyway according to the Constitution. In the end, two different types of "marriage" for two "different" types of couples is morally untenable, separate but equal is still inherently unequal.

In my last sentence there is an implicit comparison between the Gay Rights movement and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, which is why I am writing this post on Martin Luther King Jr. Day specifically. I think that such comparisons are quite warranted, in fact I would be willing to call the struggle for Gay Rights the Civil Rights movement of our era, since it is, at heart, just that, a struggle for civil rights. By making this assertion I do not mean to imply that we have accomplished our struggle for racial equality and now we can move on. ("But we have a black president now, we must be done!" "No, BAD reductionist! The fact that we consider Obama black is itself something worthy of unpacking.") I simply mean that Gay Rights have been the focus of much public attention and legal action recently.

Although the struggle for racial equality may still be ongoing, I think it is entirely appropriate highlight another struggle on MLKJ Day, so long as one does not try to diminish the importance of racial equality, or any other form of equality. To borrow a concept that I have heard attributed to the Third Wave Feminist movement, in order for any of us to be free from oppression, we must all be free from oppression. I can think of two worthwhile ways to interpret that off the top of my head. As long as anyone is oppressed we must still accept the idea that oppression can be justified, which opens everyone up to the risk of becoming included in an underclass. Or, as long as anyone is oppressed, we must find ourselves entangled in the system of oppression, even if as unwilling oppressors, and systems of oppression hurt all moral beings, be they "oppressed" or "oppressor." I rather favor the second interpretation, but both are interesting.

So, today let us dare to dream of a future free of oppression, then do what we can to move toward such a bright future. We shall overcome, someday.