Brad Warthen's Blog

A secessionist Freudian slip

My favorite part of the concurrent resolution described in my last post is this:

Whereas, the several states of the Untied States of America, through the Constitution and the amendments thereto, constituted a general government for special purposes and delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary right to their own self government. Now, therefore,

Yep, you read that right, and all I did was copy and paste if from the online text of H. 3509. It does indeed say "the Untied States of America."

Hey, if you can't break up the Union one way...

Nullification: Are we going to do it again?

Michael Rodgers over at "Take Down The Flag" is worried that we are, with S.C. House bill 3509, which seeks a concurrent resolution. And you know, you can easily see why he would think that, given such language as this:

Whereas, the South Carolina General Assembly declares that the people of this State have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State, and shall exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right pertaining thereto, which is not expressly delegated by them to the United States of America in the congress assembled; and ...

I found that "sole and exclusive right" bit interesting, with the way it seemed to brush aside the federalist notion of shared sovereignty. That language seems to go beyond the purpose stated in the summary, which is:

TO AFFIRM THE RIGHTS OF ALL STATES INCLUDING SOUTH CAROLINA BASED ON THE PROVISIONS OF THE NINTH AND TENTH AMENDMENTS TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.

The point being, of course, that since we do HAVE the Ninth and 10th amendments, every word of this resolution is superfluous unless it means to negate federal authority in some way not currently set out in law.

And a certain neo-Confederate sensibility is suggested with the very first example of the sort of action on the part of the federal government that would constitute an abridgement of the Constitution under this resolution:

(1)    establishing martial law or a state of emergency within one of the states comprising the United States of America without the consent of the legislature of that state;...

As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up: The bill's sponsors are indeed suggesting that this resolution is needed to declare that we won't let Reconstruction be reinstituted.

Because, you know, that Obama is such a clear and present danger. Or something. I guess.

Of course, not everyone is shocked, appalled or amused at the notion of a new nullification movement. Check out this op-ed piece we recently ran online, about Mark Sanford and nullification.

Much ado about photo ID (column version)

    Yep, you already read this here, back on Friday. But I post it not for you blog regulars, but for folks who saw it first in the paper today, and decided to come here for the version with links.

    And if you did that, welcome to the blog...

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

The photo ID bill that caused such a flap in the House Thursday is one of those classic issues that political partisans make a huge deal over, and that seems to me entirely undeserving of the fuss.
    It’s not so much an issue that generates conflict between Democrats and Republicans as it is an issue that is about conflict between the two parties, with little practical impact beyond that.
    The way I see it is this:

• It’s ridiculous for Democrats to act like this is some kind of insupportable burden on voting, even to the point of walking out to dramatize their profound concern. Why shouldn’t you have to make the kind of basic demonstration of your identity that you have to make for pretty much any other kind of transaction?
• It’s ridiculous for Republicans to insist that we have to have this safeguard, absent any sort of widespread abuse here in South Carolina in recent elections. Where’s the problem necessitating this big confrontation with the Democrats? I don’t see it.

    Some of my friends and acquaintances defend parties by telling me that they legitimately reflect different philosophies and value systems. Well, when you scratch the surface and get at the values that inform these two overwrought, pointedly partisan reactions, it doesn’t make me feel any better either way. In fact, it reminds me why I can’t subscribe to either party’s world view.
    Democrats believe at their core that it should be easier to vote. I look around me at the kinds of decisions that are sometimes made by voters, and it seems to me sometimes that far too many people who are already voting take the responsibility too lightly. Look at exit polls — or just go up to a few people on the street and ask them a few pointed questions about public affairs. Look at what people actually know about candidates and their positions and the issues, and look at the reasons they say they vote certain ways, and it can be alarming. Hey, I love this American self-government thing, but it’s not perfect, and one of the biggest imperfections is that some folks don’t take their electoral responsibility seriously enough. Why would I want to see the people who are so apathetic that they don’t vote now coming out and voting? Yet that seems to be what many Democrats are advocating, and it disturbs me.
    And beneath all that sanctimony from Republicans about the integrity of the voting process is, I’m sorry to say, something that looks very much like what Democrats are describing, although Democrats do so in overly cartoonish terms. There’s a bit of bourgeois disdain, a tendency among Republicans to think of themselves as the solid, hard-working citizens who play by the rules, and to be disdainful of those who don’t have their advantages — which they don’t see as advantages at all, but merely their due as a result of being so righteous and hard-working. There’s a tendency to see the disadvantaged as being to blame for their plight, as being too lazy or immoral or whatever to participate fully. The idea is that they wouldn’t have these problems if they would just try. What I’m trying to describe here is the thing that is making sincere Republicans’ blood pressure rise even as they’re reading these words. It’s a tendency to attach moral weight to middle-class status. Republicans seem to believe as an article of faith that there are all these shiftless, marginal people out there — relatives of Cadillac-driving welfare queens of the Reagan era, no doubt — wanting to commit voter fraud, and they’ve got to stop it, and if you don’t want to stop it as much as they do, then you don’t believe in having integrity in the process.
    Basically, I’m unimpressed by the holier-than-thou posturing from either side. And I get very tired at all the fuss over something that neither side can demonstrate is all that big a deal. Democrats can’t demonstrate that this is a great injustice, and Republicans can’t demonstrate that it’s needed.
    And yet, all this drama.
    While I’m at it, I might as well abuse a related idea: early voting.
    We’ve had a number of debates about that here on the editorial board, and I’ve been told that my reasons for opposing early voting are vague and sentimental. Perhaps they are, but I cling to them nonetheless.
    While Democrats and Republicans have their ideological reasons to fight over this idea, too, it’s a communitarian thing for me. I actually get all warm and fuzzy, a la Frank Capra, about the fact that on Election Day, my neighbors and I — sometimes folks I haven’t seen in years — take time out from our daily routine and get together and stand in line (actually allowing ourselves to be, gasp, inconvenienced) and act as citizens in a community to make important decisions.
    I’ve written columns celebrating that very experience, such as one in 1998 that quoted a recent naturalized citizen proudly standing in line at my polling place, who said, “On my way here this morning, I felt the solemnity of the occasion.”
    I believe in relating to my country, my state, my community as a citizen, not as a consumer. That calls for an entirely different sort of interaction. If you relate to public life as a consumer, well then by all means do it at your precious convenience. Mail or phone or text it in — what’s the difference? It’s all about you and your prerogatives, right? You as a consumer.
    Something different is required of a citizen, and that requirement is best satisfied by everyone getting out and voting on Election Day.
    With or without photo IDs.

This column is adapted from a post on my blog, which includes a lot of other commentary that did not make it into the paper. For the full experience, please go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Caller strikes blow for George Washington and other white folks

Just thought I'd share this voicemail from over the weekend, of a type that I get from time to time. I like to share the joy when I can.

It's from a reader who wanted to see more about George Washington's birthday in the paper. I thought at first maybe this was someone who had missed the point that this year was Lincoln's 200th, and thought Washington should have gotten as much play as Honest Abe. But no; that wasn't the caller's problem.

Here's the audio, and here's my transcription of the money part of the message, in case you can't hear it:

...On Martin Luther King's birthday, y'all had pages and pages and pages of stuff, for weeks and weeks and weeks. I think it's a 'sgrace... your paper is not for our state; it's for the black people; it's not for the white people; you're a racist paper; that's why nobody takes you anymore. Goodbye.

But how about those spiffy MODERN blue laws?

Got a release today from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, calling my attention to a NYT editorial headlined "A Dry Sunday in Connecticut," and saying that in case I wanted to write anything about Sunday sales of liquor, to consider the following:

• Archaic Blue Laws make no sense in a 21st-century economy where Sunday has become the second-busiest shopping day of the week.
• Beer, wine and spirits are already permitted for on-premise consumption at bars and restaurants seven days a week.  Allowing the sale of beer, wine and spirits at off-premise retail outlets on Sunday would simply give adult consumers more choices and added convenience.
• The state will benefit from the increased tax revenues generated by an additional day of package store sales.  Contrary to some who believe that Sunday sales will just spread six days of sales over seven, recent implementation of Sunday Sales in 12 states (Colorado’s repeal was too recent for data) shows that in 2006 Sunday sales generated $212 million in new sales for retailers.  This figure is expected to increase annually.  See economic analysis of those states here.
• No legislation forces any package store to open on Sundays. It simply gives store owners the right to decide for themselves which days to open. 
• Sunday liquor sales will not lead to increased drunk driving.  According to an analysis using government data on alcohol-related fatalities, there is no statistical difference in states that allow Sunday liquor sales compared to those that do not.

Which provokes me to say,

• First, we have no plans to do any editorials on the subject. I doubt we would reach consensus, partly because I'm such a mossback. I miss having a day of rest, so pretty much anything that is still proscribed on Sunday, I'm for keeping it. And before you secularists have a fit and fall in it about "establishment of religion," yadda-yadda, I don't much care which day of the week you pick. Make it Tuesday, if that makes you feel less threatened and oppressed. Just pick a day on which we can all kick back and not be expected to run around and get things done, just because we can. And don't give me that stuff about how I don't have to shop just because the stores are open. Yes, I do. There is so much pressure on my time that I can't possibly get everything expected of me done in six days, and if you give me a seventh on which to do them, I'll have to use it. And if you don't understand that, there's no point it our talking about it. The only way to have a day of rest is for there to be a day in which we roll up the sidewalks, so to speak, and everybody understands that you couldn't do it that day, so they don't expect you to. Now I know we're not going back to those days, but I am not inclined to add anything else to the list of stuff going on 24/7. You remind me that "Sunday has become the second-busiest shopping day of the week," and you think that's an argument for doing something else on Sunday? You're kidding, right? It just makes me tired thinking about it. Get somebody else to write your editorial; you're barking up the wrong tree with me. And all of you kids, get off of my lawn! Dagnabit.
• Is your use of the term "archaic blue laws" meant to suggest that there's another category of spiffy, modern blue laws that you don't mind so much? Or are you just being redundant?
• Correct me if I'm wrong, but your point about increased tax revenues means that people will be buying more liquor, right? I see how that's a good thing for you and the fine folks at the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, but how is that a good thing for the rest of us?
• Yeah, right -- nobody would be forced to open on Sunday. This reminds me of when I worked in Jackson, TN, and the owner of the largest department store in town fought against lifting the blue laws because he said that if you lifted them, the big chain stores would come to town and drive him out of business. Besides, he liked giving his workers Sunday off. And he was Jewish, by the way. The newspaper ignored him (even though he was its biggest advertiser, for those of you who keep track of such things) and kept advocating for lifting blue laws, that eventually happened, the big chain stores came to town, he had to open on Sundays, and he soon went out of business anyway. When it comes to competition, folks, "choice" can be a myth. If your competitors are all doing it, you have to.
• I'll take your word for it on the drunk driving. Although it seems a bit weird that you'd be selling MORE liquor (remember the tax revenues thing), but people won't be driving drunk more. Whatever.

Just look upon me as a disgruntled beer drinker -- one who was perfectly happy buying enough on Saturday to make it through the weekend, and thinks anybody who wasn't organized enough or self-aware enough to know ahead of time that he might want a beer on Sunday is pretty pathetic. Dagnabit.

Happy birthday, Abe and Chuck

So, if you were invited to simultaneous birthday parties today, for Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, and the actual honorees would be there alive and participating in the celebration, which one would you go to?

Me, I'd pick Lincoln. They say he was a lot of fun at parties. Also, I look up to him and what he did more. Nothing against Darwin, but I suspect that if he hadn't worked out natural selection, someone else would have. But if Lincoln hadn't been president, the union would have fallen apart -- nobody else would have been as single-mindedly stubborn about holding it together. I mean, why do you think so many of my fellow South Carolinians are still ticked at him? And even though all of my ancestors that I know about fought for the opposite outcome (five great-great grandaddies that I know about), this Southern boy is glad that the U.S. of A. is still around. So it all worked out well in the end.

All of which reminds me that I need to get back to reading Obama's favorite, desert-island-must-have book, Team of Rivals. I've let myself get sidetracked with re-reading O'Brian, and reading Moby Dick for the first time, so I need to buckle down and get back to Goodwin.

As for Darwin, I thought I'd share this interesting piece that I saw in The New Republic, headlined "Charles Darwin, Conservative?"

Basically, it examines the great irony of modern politics, which is that conservatives tend to snub Darwin, even though his idea of order arising from nature without a guiding plan fits THEIR ideas about how society can produce civilization without guiding government.

Meanwhile, liberals who honor Darwin act as though they don't believe in that principle one bit, since they think you need a strong guiding hand of government to have order.

George Will made much the same point in his column that we ran Sunday, but I think the point is made more clearly in the TNR piece.

By the way, I side with the modern-day liberals on this point: I don't think you can have order without government. Take away the guiding hand, and you get Somalia -- warring militias running around firing AK-47s at everybody. But you know already that I thought that. I'm a rule-of-law guy.

As for the thing that everybody fights about over Darwin... Well, I'm a Catholic, and I hear the pope made peace with Darwin awhile back.

You know what I think about evolution, and natural selection? I think that is just exactly the way God would create the world. I don't see Him doing it like Cecil B. DeMille, six days and abracadabra, here's the world. I think He'd do it the slow, majestic, complicated way. Evolution seems just His style, to me. But what do I know?

(Now watch this: The controversial part of this post won't be the Darwin stuff; it'll be that I said nice things about Lincoln.)

Y'all listen in, now, ya heah?

Well, this is something new. I just now got down in my external e-mail far enough to see this item from 9:37 this morning:

**Press Conference Call**

White House Domestic Policy Council Brief for Southern Reporters on American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Thursday, February 5, at 1:30 p.m. ET, Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council, will discuss the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan on a press conference call with southern reporters.  Barnes will discuss the impacts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan and answer questions.

WHO:              White House Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes

WHAT:            Press conference call

WHEN:            Thursday, February 5, 2009

                          1:30 p.m. ET

Well, looks like I missed it. (They might not have let me in anyhow, since although I'm Southern by birth and inclination, I haven't held the title of "reporter" since 1980.) So I'm left to guess. Do you think it was just like the briefing for the Yankee reporters, except they talked slower and said y'all a lot? Did they say, "Don't y'all tell a soul, but we're gonna give y'all extra heppin's of stimulus and treat the Yankees like red-headed stepchildren?" Did they use metaphors only we'd understand, involving field peas and the Chicken Curse?

I don't know; I'm left to wonder. And one of the things I wonder is, why couldn't Robert Gibbs have handled this briefing? You'd think it would be right up his alley. Although she was born in Virginia, and did undergraduate at Chapel Hill, is Melody Barnes a real Southerner? Who's her Daddy? How did she end up working for Ted Kennedy, and belonging to the New York Bar Association? Mercy sakes alive... I reckon I'd understand a heap more if Ah'd been able to listen in...

How dumb can an unfunded mandate get?

I've never compiled an All-Time, Top Five List of Dumbest Unfunded Mandates Ever, but if I did, Robert Ford's "idea" (I'm using the word loosely, hence the quote marks) to require local gummints to take off on Confederate Memorial Day would certainly make the list. There's nothing new about it, of course -- he's pushed this one before -- but hey, a classic is a classic.

I find myself wondering whether Sen. Ford and Glenn McConnell are going to go back on the TV circuit with their Separate Heritages act -- you know, McConnell in full Confederate dress-up; Ford in dashiki talking Black Liberation -- or maybe they already have done that again in this cause, and (mercifully) I missed it.

In case you know not whereof I speak, the two Charlestonians, in a determined effort to show us all that there IS something odd in the water down there, went about in costume a few years back emphasizing that black and white South Carolinians should be encouraged in celebrating their very separate heritages -- as though we have naught in common. Brilliant.

So is SC not as gay as we were told?

Just got a spam e-mail advertising "Exclusive Gay Travel Packages in 2009!"...

... and no mention of South Carolina, despite what we heard in the past.

South Africa, however, does get a mention.

And no, I don't know how I got on this mailing list.

My kryptonite

Just so you know that despite all the critical things I say, I believe the governor and his people are good and decent folk, gently reared, I share the following exchange.

Next week, I'm to be the governor's guest at the annual pre-State of the State briefing luncheon. Cindi and Warren will be there too, along with editorial types from elsewhere in SC. It's a standing ritual. So Joel Sawyer writes to ask me:

Hey, Brad...saw you'd RSVP'd for the lunch next week. Can you remind me again on your food allergies? Thanks.

Joel Sawyer
Communications Director
Office of Gov. Mark Sanford

So I wrote back as follows:

First, please don't bother. It's more trouble than it's worth. I have a lifelong habit of just grabbing a bite later.

But in answer to your question, my main allergies are to:
milk -- anything with even a trace of dairy products, from butter to cheese to ice cream
eggs -- which means no mayo, and other things that may not be immediately obvious
wheat -- which bars anything from a bakery, and less obvious things such as gravy thickened with flour (or cream, of course)
chicken -- and no, I don't know which came first, this or the egg allergy
nuts -- especially pecans.

See what I mean? I'm more trouble than I'm worth. Always have been, unfortunately.

Why, you may wonder, did I not just stick with the "Don't bother," and not go on? Because it's so blasted awkward. At a public occasion like that, I don't care it there's nothing I can eat (really; I'm used to it, and I'd rather not take risks on ingesting a hidden fatal allergen inserted by a well-meaning cook who thinks cream means quality). But I find it often bothers my host more than it bothers me that I don't eat. Also, others who don't know the score will see me pushing my food around or ignoring it entirely and think I'm being petulant or intentionally rude or something. Really. It happens. If I can avoid that by having at least something I can eat while pushing everything else around on the plate, that's all to the good. I don't mean to overdramatize, but my systemic weirdness does make dining in public more awkward for me than for most folks. (It has had larger consequences, such as keeping me from serving in the military -- I could never have survived on K rations or MREs. It sounds stupid to people who don't live like this, but it's my reality.) I grew up not wanting to draw any attention at table, but knowing that the only way to avoid such attention is to let my host put himself out in my behalf, which is another kind of awkwardness. Then there's always the possibility that the host WILL put himself out for me, but fail in the effort (I can generally tell at a glance if I can't eat it), which is twice as awkward. But what am I supposed to do?

Of course, I could stay away from the luncheon, but it is a useful occasion. And if I don't go, what does that say? Anyway, I look forward to seeing the gov. I don't think we've spoken since this event last year. (Or maybe the one before; I forget.)

This post is just to let you know that I have no problem with putting my life into the governor's hands -- or the hands of his staff. And that's something I wouldn't do if I had as low an opinion of the governor as some of y'all think I do.

Now Blagojevich -- I'd never eat anything he put on the table.