Month: January 2021

Biden’s Challenge: to Unbreak America

Taming a raging fire

If someone tallied the number of times Joe Biden used the words “unity” and “together” in his inaugural address, it would have run over a dozen, but whatever the score was, it’s a measure of the dominant theme of Joe Biden’s inaugural address: in unity is strength, and unity is achievable.

And yet, when Biden spoke to the reality of political conflict at this time, his words were those of hope, but his tone was plaintive. “Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire,” and “we must end this uncivil war.” These phrases hang in the air like pleas for reconciliation.  But who will answer them?

Of the host of challenges facing Joe Biden, from a pandemic out of control to the plundering of the planet, the “raging fire” of politics and the fuel that feeds it are the most fundamental. We will get past the most toxic phase of Covid-19 in a matter of time. But most of the other problems—economic inequality, racial injustice, an inequitable health care system, environmental breakdown, our allies’ mistrust—will remain intractable without an end to the uncivil war.

Continue reading “Biden’s Challenge: to Unbreak America”

“Digital Oligarchy” – Europeans Say No to Social Media Trump Ban

European leaders have a point—up to a point

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire condemned decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Apple, et al to shut down Donald Trump’s social media accounts.  Le Maire accused Big Tech of forming a “digital oligarchy,” and called for public regulation of big online platforms.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized a “breach” of the “fundamental right to free speech” as “problematic.”

I get it. “Digital oligarchy” is apt.  I applaud the efforts of Europeans to hobble Big Tech as they have been doing and will continue to do; we should have been doing a lot more of it on our side of the Atlantic. If it weren’t for the unshackled free market ideology dominating American politics for the last 40 years, we might have been doing it.

Nevertheless, maybe they should butt out of the Trump social media lockdown controversy for the time being . . . at least until the dust settles around the transition to the Joe Biden administration.

The old analogy of “freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” applies in this situation.*  If Angela Merkel had had to live in a country with its leader shouting ‘fire!’ every day for four years straight, ultimately leading to an attack on the nation’s Capitol building by a lawless, violent, gun-toting mob bent on overthrowing the government, she might be willing to bend a little to the practicality of muting that voice as soon as possible, whether by Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, or my local mail carrier (I’d rather entrust the power to her than to the aforementioned, but that’s going to have to wait for The Revolution).

Continue reading ““Digital Oligarchy” – Europeans Say No to Social Media Trump Ban”

Watch Out! Article V Constitutional Convention Nears Reality

Overhaul of the Constitution sounds tempting: don’t bite

There are some things that liberals don’t like sitting like bedrock in the U.S. Constitution.  In particular, the Electoral College to elect the president, and the assignment of two senators to each state.  Then there’s the First and Fourteenth Amendments when extended by the Supreme Court going back to the 1880s to give the same protections to corporations as to real breathing humans.

Liberals, as well as many conservatives, also dislike the scope of powers conferred on the U.S. President that have expanded over the years. At least they dislike them when the president belongs to the opposing political party. (As a Virginian, I would like to point proudly to our Senator Tim Kaine’s principled crusade to limit the chief executive’s license to conduct wars, starting with the Obama Administration.)

How might these anti-democratic features of the Constitution be remedied? In fact, Article V of the Constitution provides for a method to completely overhaul the Constitution.

Say that again? What we customarily have in mind when we think of amending the Constitution is passing an individual amendment with two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress, then ratified by three-quarters of state legislatures.  It’s what’s been done to add all 28 amendments (28 in 229 years) to the original 10 in the Bill of Rights. That cautious procedure is in Article V, but also in Article V is something truly radical: a full-blown Constitutional Convention called for by two-thirds of the states (34 out of the current 50). The Congress would then be required to hold the convention, and a new constitution coming out of it could eventually be ratified by “the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof”—i.e., 38 out of 50 states.

Continue reading “Watch Out! Article V Constitutional Convention Nears Reality”