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An important cautionary tale from the Onion.

Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be
NOVEMBER 14, 2009 | ISSUE 45•46

ESCONDIDO, CA—Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ideas he seems to think are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and principles that brave men have fought and died for solely in his head.

Kyle Mortensen would gladly give his life to protect what he says is the Constitution’s very clear stance against birth control.

“Our very way of life is under siege,” said Mortensen, whose understanding of the Constitution derives not from a close reading of the document but from talk-show pundits, books by television personalities, and the limitless expanse of his own colorful imagination. “It’s time for true Americans to stand up and protect the values that make us who we are.”

According to Mortensen—an otherwise mild-mannered husband, father, and small-business owner—the most serious threat to his fanciful version of the 222-year-old Constitution is the attempt by far-left “traitors” to strip it of its religious foundation.

“Right there in the preamble, the authors make their priorities clear: ‘one nation under God,’” said Mortensen, attributing to the Constitution a line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which itself did not include any reference to a deity until 1954. “Well, there’s a reason they put that right at the top.”

“Men like Madison and Jefferson were moved by the ideals of Christianity, and wanted the United States to reflect those values as a Christian nation,” continued Mortensen, referring to the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison, considered by many historians to be an atheist, and Thomas Jefferson, an Enlightenment-era thinker who rejected the divinity of Christ and was in France at the time the document was written. “The words on the page speak for themselves.”

According to sources who have read the nation’s charter, the U.S. Constitution and its 27 amendments do not contain the word “God” or “Christ.”

Mortensen said his admiration for the loose assemblage of vague half-notions he calls the Constitution has only grown over time. He believes that each detail he has pulled from thin air—from prohibitions on sodomy and flag-burning, to mandatory crackdowns on immigrants, to the right of citizens not to have their hard-earned income confiscated in the form of taxes—has contributed to making it the best framework for governance “since the Ten Commandments.”

“And let’s not forget that when the Constitution was ratified it brought freedom to every single American,” Mortensen said.

Mortensen’s passion for safeguarding the elaborate fantasy world in which his conception of the Constitution resides is greatly respected by his likeminded friends and relatives, many of whom have been known to repeat his unfounded assertions verbatim when angered. Still, some friends and family members remain critical.

“Dad’s great, but listening to all that talk radio has put some weird ideas into his head,” said daughter Samantha, a freshman at Reed College in Portland, OR. “He believes the Constitution allows the government to torture people and ban gay marriage, yet he doesn’t even know that it guarantees universal health care.”

Mortensen told reporters that he’ll fight until the bitter end for what he roughly supposes the Constitution to be. He acknowledged, however, that it might already be too late to win the battle.

“The freedoms our Founding Fathers spilled their blood for are vanishing before our eyes,” Mortensen said. “In under a year, a fascist, socialist regime has turned a proud democracy into a totalitarian state that will soon control every facet of American life.”

“Don’t just take my word for it,” Mortensen added. “Try reading a newspaper or watching the news sometime.”

Frankly this may be the single greatest thing they have written since the “Bush tours parts of the country destroyed by his disastrous presidency” video clip. There is simply no part of this story that isn’t entertaining…

My favorite part may be the “fascist, socialist… totalitarian state.” I have that same cognitive dissonance every time I see protest signs on Fox “News.” The healthcare line is a very close second however.

I also love “According to sources who have read the nation’s charter.” After why actually read it when you can find a source.

They just need a follow up story on people crusading for things the bible doesn’t actually say, and 70% of American life will be encapsulated in two short pages. Beautiful.

At One News Now – the house organ of the arch-conservative group American Family Association – they published an article by Marcia Segelstein in which she declared:

Listen up, parents. The goal of sex education is not to prevent unwanted pregnancies and diseases. The goal is to promote sexual freedom.

Segelstein’s assertion here is demonstrably false (a simple check of any sex education program would show that). But, the right has a long history of using depravity narratives to discredit sexuality education. The phrase “sexual freedom” is intended to evoke those narratives; sexual freedom as used in this contest is supposed to connote libertinism – sexuality unbounded by moral or ethical constraints. Segelstein’s article is an attack on sex education using Miriam Grossman’s “research” and book as a background. Grossman is known in conservative circles for her book Unprotected which argued that female college students are “unprotected” from romantic turmoil as a result of political correctness. Her recent book – which Segelstein is pimping – is a lengthy, right wing attack on sex education. Jessica Valenti of Feministing describes Grossman’s book thus:

What Miriam Grossman wants to teach your child!!!:

When girls have sex, it is often at bars or because they’re drunk. Also, they’re depressed.

The more you have sex, the sadder you become: “As the number of casual sex partners in the past year increased, so did signs of depression in college women.” (Cough, bullshit, cough)

Even fictional characters can get herpes: “It’s easy to forget, but the characters on Grey’s Anatomy and Sex in the City are not real. In real life, Meredith and Carrie would have warts or herpes. They’d likely be on Prozac or Zoloft.”

After a one-night-stand, girls are swooning, and guys don’t give a shit: “You might think of him all day, but he can’t remember your name.”

You can say really creepy things about sex, so long as its written in cursive.

Grossman, like Segelstein, objects to sex education based not on content per se but on what she perceives as an attack on moral authority that arises from sex education classes:

And don’t expect school sex ed programs to back up parents when it comes to moral and religious teachings. [Mirriam] Grossman writes that many sex ed instructors encourage students “to question what they’ve been taught at home and at church,” and to develop their own views on the subject of sex. It not only undermines parental authority, it has the potential to promote dangerous behavior in an age group already eager and willing to break rules.

The problem with sex education is enunciated in Rebecca Hagelin’s review of Grossman’s book:

That they [sexuality eduators] actually believe teens should engage in sex at all should be enough to cause outrage – but it goes much further than that. Dr. Miriam Grossman’s new book, “You’re Teaching My Child What?” documents how they seek to shape an entire generation’s world view to support and advance a free sex mentality that would shock even a “free love” child of the radical 60’s.

Many educators are obsessed with promoting a promiscuous lifestyle. One particularly disturbing tactic is to strip our little girls of their natural inclination toward modesty and replace it with an attitude of sexual dominance. They teach young women that the way to get ahead in the world is not through their grace, or goodness, or intelligence – but through their sexual power.

Hagelin, like Segelstein and Grossman, is trading in depravity narratives – attempting to scare parents away from sex education with the threat that their children will become Lady Heather from CSI. The basic format of the depravity narrative was captured in an early version: a sex ed teacher demonstrated how to perform oral sex on one of her male students. This story was hugely effective in stirring up opposition to sex education; it contained a host of parental fears summarized in a single short story; that their children were being corrupted by immoral adults, that sex education was all about actual acts of sex, that sex takes place in the classrooms. Parents are already afraid their teens are having sex, and having it as school where they are away from parental supervision, that teachers don’t care if students are having sex, or worse, that teachers are actually seducing their students; the teacher in the depravity narrative not only is seducing her students but is doing so for no reason. The story has never been verified or proven; no student on whom oral sex was performed in class has come forward, no teacher was ever disciplined for it, no witnesses have ever come forward. IOW, it’s a right wing urban legend. Depravity narratives have come a ways since the 1960s when this one was first being traded in right wing gatherings but they still work the same way – they play on parental fears about adolescent sexuality.

So, these two concepts – that sex education teachers want to sexually corrupt teens and that teens want to break rules – intertwine to create the nearly ideal “strict father” critique of sexuality education – it violates all the hierarchies valued by the conservative mind. Teachers undermining parental authority, students being taught to violate moral rules, students being taught to question the rules of authority figures, teachers abandoning their correct roles as moral instructors.

To the conservative moralist – in this case Grossman, Segelstein, and Hagelin – the real problem with sex education is found in the way it leads to a breakdown of accepted systems of authority.

From George Lakoff’s The Political Mind:

You need a strict father because kids are born bad, in the sense that they just do what they want to do, and don’t know right from wrong.

and:

Mapped onto politics, the strict father model explains why conservatism is concerned with authority, with obedience, with discipline, and with punishment. It makes sense in a patriarchal family where male strength dominates unquestionably. Authority, obedience, discipline, and punishment are all there in the family, organized in a package.

Normal teenage behaviors – testing boundaries, attempting to establish an independent identity and to explore and find one’s own moral standards – in the view of the strict father moralist is interpreted as wanton disobedience, attempting to avoid punishment and to reject discipline – both self discipline and discipline imposed from outside by valid authorities. The problem with sexual freedom – a term by the way not used by even the most liberal American sexuality educators – is found in its exempting of the individual from moral constraints; the freedom is not freedom to behave sexually as one’s moral guide one, but freedom from the sexual rules imposed by moral authorities.

Segelstein’s objection to sex education (quoted above but let me repeat it here) is that sex education undermines parental ecclesiastical authority:

Grossman writes that many sex ed instructors encourage students “to question what they’ve been taught at home and at church,” and to develop their own views on the subject of sex.

The structure then is [obeying authority] = [moral] and [questioning authority] = [immoral]. The primary risk created by sex education is a moral one – that students will make immoral choices and be punished by STIs or unintended pregnancies. The moral imperative (btw, love that phrase) on parents, community and nation is protect teens from punishment by teaching and reinforcing right morals which will prevent punishment; even the strictest of father’s does not actually wish to punish his wayward children but he must use punishment to keep them from making wrong (immoral) choices.

If, then, teens are motivated to break rules which will result in punishment, sex education is suspect because it reinforces their desire to break rules. Rules codify morality; when sexuality educator encourage students to “decide for themselves” they are inviting students (who already want to break rules) to make immoral choices. The intellectual frame then is [individual] is [immoral]. The language of choice, of self-determination, of freedom of conscience, is alien to this moral view of the world.

The sexually healthy person of the comprehensive approach is a person with self-worth, who exercises empathy in making responsible sexual choices, whose responsible choices lead to sexual health, which includes using to contraception to manage the risks STIs and unintended pregnancy; the sexually healthy person recognizes that men and women should not be held to different moral standards, that heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality are all normal and healthy sexual orientations, that if marriage is good for heterosexual couples it is good for same sex couples. The sexually healthy person expects to be confronted by moral and ethical choices and expects to discuss those with his/her partner. In addition, a sexually healthy person will demonstrate his/her maturity by making responsible choices grounded in an ethic of consent, mutuality and openness.

This sexually healthy person is not the ideal held up by these authors. Segelstein quoting Mirriam Grossman:

“From a review of many of today’s sex ed curricula and websites, it would appear that a ’sexually healthy’ individual is one who has been ‘desensitized,’ who is without any sense of embarrassment or shame (what some might consider ‘modesty’), whose sexuality is always ‘positive’ and ‘open,’ who respects and accepts ‘diverse’ lifestyles, and who practices ’safer sex’ with every ‘partner.’

The key concepts here are hidden in plain sight in the language of this passage. One is desensitized to something unhealthy – an allergen for instance. If you drive past the same thing every day, you stop seeing it consciously. By comparing sexuality to a disease or allergen, something negative, Grossman is reinforcing a right wing view of sexuality which is profoundly negative, she is telling us that people who talk about sex are doing something questionable.

The next key word is “modesty”; by connecting embarrassment and shame to modesty, Grossman is again reinforcing a right wing view of sexuality – that one should be embarrassed and ashamed to discuss sexuality. In her book Talk About Sex, Janice Irvine quotes a woman who says that in two decades of marriage she and her husband never once talked about sex and everything was fine in their marriage. Silence about sexuality is valued over frank discussion. Hagelin uses an evocative phrase:

One particularly disturbing tactic is to strip our little girls of their natural inclination toward modesty . . .

The sexually healthy person of comprehensive education learns [sexuality] is [natural], and therefore nothing to be ashamed about and something we can and should be able to discuss. Hagelin’s frame is nearly the opposite – [modesty] is [natural] and open discussion is not. The idea of “modesty” is a powerful one for sexual conservatives – it crops in terms of language, teaching, clothing, and relationships. Modesty is not just covering one’s nakedness it is an entire complex of attitude and behavior which treats sexuality as taboo, something one should carefully avoid discussing in detail.

Next, we encounter the concept of ‘positive’ and ‘open’ sexuality. These ideas are clearly problematic since Grossman included scare quotes. The opposites of these are ‘negative’ and ‘closed.’ Grossman ties these ideas to her dismissive attitude toward sexual orientation, which she describes with the offensive term lifestyle. Problematic to the sexual conservative is the notion of sexual orientation because is suggests that identity may be fluid, that gay people aren’t immoral and bad and straight people might not be moral and good. The problem with positive and open sexuality is its acceptance that conventional sexual morality is wrong.

Finally, Grossman throws in the obligatory attack on contraception. Contraception is a favorite target of sexual conservatives. Although contraception is not failsafe, it is imperfect, the medical consensus is overwhelming – consistent correct use of contraception is the best means by which individuals can protect themselves from STIs and unintended pregnancy. Reread the passage:

who practices ’safer sex’ with every ‘partner.’

At first this objection doesn’t make much sense; the objection isn’t to safer sex per se but to the implication that its practice implies that people will have more than one partner in their lives. Hagelin usefully provides the most bald-faced expression:

When you destroy the beautiful and selfless concept of committing one’s sexuality and heart to only one person for life, then there’s no room for the traditional family unit in our future.

It’s as simple as [monogamy] is [moral]. In the pedantic phrasing of Utah’s legislators – abstinence before marriage and faithfulness after. It’s a prescription intended to edit out all the messy ambiguities of sexuality. You never have to worry about STIs.

Segelstein opts for a series of analogies she hopes will sway the reader. Where sex and sexuality are concerned, she says that parents wouldn’t let kids make up their own minds about smoking cigarettes or eating unhealthy food, therefore they should not allow them to make up their own minds about sex. Segelstein is doing her best here to frame her argument as [morality] is [healthy]. On a larger, Grossman does the same thing in her books – trying to build a case that [immorality] is [unhealthy] which she claims to demonstrate by showing that sexually active college age women are depressed, alcoholic, riddled with disease. The rhetoric is simply that moral choices are also the healthy choices.

The sequential argument is simple: parents are the valid authorities and will teach their children correct morals which will lead children to make correct choices and thus experience good health. The “proof” that is offered amounts to the statement – if you only have sex with your spouse, you will never get an STI and therefore you are healthy.

While modern sex educators are busy introducing “diverse” sexual lifestyles to their students, what they are not doing is looking out for their health. Dr. Grossman asks the logical question: “Why don’t sex educators emphasize that casual sex and multiple partners is a health hazard?” Why don’t they make it clear that engaging in sexual behavior with someone means risking exposure to the bacteria, viruses, and full-blown sexually transmitted diseases of each and every one of his or her previous partners.

I’ve tried to not be overly critical of this moral system but I need to pause here and point out the very limited definition of sexual health being employed by by these authors. They are saying [no STIs] is [sexual health]. There’s almost consideration for attitude or behavior. There’s no discussion of the damaging psychological effects of sexual shame in which people are ashamed of their bodies and their sexuality, there’s no discussion of what is in fact sexually healthy functioning. A while back, an fundagelical pastor challenged all of the married couples in his church to demonstrate their sexual health by having sex every day for thirty days. That challenge arises from the same view of healthy sexuality – simply being married and having sex with your spouse is considered healthy. But sexual health is a far broader concept than simply the legal and relationship setting for your sexual activity. Marital rape is not healthy sexuality. Sex which is coerced or lacking in mutuality is not healthy. But in the moral world created by Segelstein, Grossman and Hagelin, there’s no discussion of these issues and that is one of the many central flaws of their view of sexual morality.

Hagelin concludes her article with advice for parents.

There are steps you must take now to protect and equip your daughter with her own moral authority over those who would abuse her femininity.

Through deliberate parenting every day you can affirm her value as a whole person. Find other families who share your personal values and surround her with friends and unconditional love. Encourage and help her to find strong female mentors who are marked by their goodness, wisdom, and sincere commitment to family. Teach her to discern and dissect the messages of those who seek to advance a radical agenda. Help your daughter discover the joy and peace of mind that comes with teen years that are free from the threat of sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and the low self- esteem sexually active girls report having deep in their hearts.

That she wraps up by telling parents they need to teach girls to live without worry is revealing. Hagelin – again echoing Grossman – is telling parents that teenage girls should abstain from sex because then they have worries. The words that should jump out from Hagelin’s passage are “joy” “peace” and “free”. She’s telling parents that if their daughters have sex, they will experience sadness, dis-ease (and disease) and will not be free. Lakoff points out that in strict father morality, freedom is found through obedience; by obeying authority figures you are free of worry and stress and you are liberated. When Hagelin tells parents to “equip your daughter with her own moral authority” she’s not talking about empowering girls to make their own moral choices; she’s talking about teaching girls a superior moral code which will allow them to be morally superior to those around them, and hence, free of temptation.

The right is mounting an attack on sex education and the mainstream medical and mental health understanding of sexuality. This rising chorus makes sense as an expression of the belief – common among social conservatives – that they are a tiny, moral minority under siege by an immoral and dissolute culture; the diagnosis is not pluralism or modernity (though both are criticized) it is the lack of morals. The cure then is to offer more and stricter morals, to literally teach young people to obey authority figures who will deliver moral rules to be obeyed, to quash those who would challenge moral authorities and finally to equip children with “morals” so they can resist temptation.

Faced with the myriad failures of conservative social policy – teen pregnancy and STIs after a period of decline have both increased in recent years as abstinence only education has been foisted on American students – the conservative response has to declare our problem is not bad policy but bad morals.

Barack Obama is being besieged from all sides about his pending decision on what to do about an undeclared war. I don’t know why this should be his decision alone. If conservatives in congress still have ants in their pants for war, as they did when Lyndon Johnson was president, why don’t they summon the courage to commit. Better yet, maybe Obama should ask them to declare war on a country that had much less to do with the 911 attacks then Saudi Arabia. I’m not the expert here, but shouldn’t congress convene debate on what could become the biggest blunder since Viet Nam.

Johnson was obviously steered by the specter of falling dominoes, vitriolic Republicans like Goldwater and a largely uninformed public, (things never seem to change), wanting strength instead of weakness in his reluctant adventure into an undeclared war that John F. Kennedy wanted to end.

Thanks to President Johnson’s tortured decision to sign into law something called the “Freedom Of Information Act”, we have access to a fascinating piece of American history. Bill Moyers, who will regrettably end his unsurpassed television journalism in April, and who served under President Johnson, has picked out what he believes are the most important recorded telephone conversations between Johnson and the people he asked for guidance, (some of whom were not in an inner circle of friends, which seems to be Obama’s method also.)

If America ever gets to hear recordings of George W. Bush’s or Dick Cheney’s conversations, I think we will be horrified beyond anything we’ve ever experienced. They were not asking friends and potential enemies what they thought – they were rushing the United States into a fire sale of Biblical proportions.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe tapes of Bush and Cheney will illuminate why we dove into a war which Cheney himself warned against a few years earlier, but I’m doubtful Cheney would allow any tapes of his actions to survive under the auspice of, (you know), SECURITY; a word I’ve come to hate more then I ever dreamed possible, because it’s meaning had much more to do with SECRECY under these “men.”

Moyers starts this weeks program, which I’m sure he hopes Obama will see, saying:

Granted, Barack Obama is not Lyndon Johnson, Afghanistan is not Vietnam and this is now, not then. But listen and you will hear echoes and refrains that resonate today.

And ends with:

Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we’re fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.

Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.

And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he’s got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.

And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.

We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes.

You simply have to watch, hear, or read this program here, (two parts.)

Isn’t it interesting how real journalists like Moyers and Amy Goodman give everybody as much access to their programs as possible, while CNN’s and FOX “news” videos routinely disappear from YouTube.

Charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo

Via HuffPo’s Ryan Grim, Glenn Greenwald and Daily Kos.

In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter.

The measure, cosponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), authorizes the Government Accountability Office to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed’s opaque deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions. The Fed has never had a real audit in its history and little is known of what it does with the trillions of dollars at its disposal.

…“Today was Waterloo for Fed secrecy,” a victorious Grayson said afterwards.

Greenwald:

Populist anger over elite-favoring economic policies has long been brewing on both the Right and Left (and in between), but neither political party can capitalize on it because they’re both dependent upon and subservient to the same elite interests which benefit from those policies.

Big, big news. This was a rare defeat for the people who normally run things in Washington.

Via Raw Story (emphasis added):

Influential US lawmakers on Thursday called for levying a new income tax to pay for the war in Afghanistan, warning its costs pose a mortal threat to efforts like a sweeping health care overhaul.

…The group included House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey; Representative John Murtha, who chairs that panel’s defense subcommittee; and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank.

The proposal, a heavily symbolic measure seen as having next to no chance of becoming law, would impose a war surtax on income beginning in 2011 — though it would allow the president to delay implementation by one year upon deciding the US economy is too weak to sustain such a tax shift.

Symbolic? No chance of becoming law? Why is serious governance treated as a joke in Washington?

Its true!  One of our regulars here at OneUtah provided free legal services to the prisoners in Guantanamo.  See if you can guess who?

Apparently AG Eric Holder’s firm also represented these terrorists, and that pretty much proves that Obama IS effectively, Al Quaida.

Here’s proof.