Our Views: With Roe fallen, it's time for an urgent new debate

We hope to see a way forward for our state (Louisiana) to unite around practical steps, even as debate over the Roe decision plays out. Not least, that requires a new commitment to age-appropriate sex education in schools, including real access to information on avoiding unwanted pregnancy. It also means looking at strengthening private social services and the public safety net for people who face enormous financial obstacles to raising children, or more children — an area in which some of the most anti-abortion states, including ours, are also the stingiest. And above all, it calls for the Legislature to revisit its refusal to create exceptions for victims of rape and incest. We have always been concerned by some lawmakers' rather cavalier attitude toward the difficult cases that arise — and will arise with a vengeance, once abortion is completely banned. This is no longer a theoretical issue; for years, legislators could vote for sweeping abortion bans knowing that federal courts would prevent their enactment. That backstop no longer exists. Further, rape and incest exceptions, although opposed by Louisiana Right-to-Life this year in the Legislature, would be consistent with the anti-abortion views of many Republicans. That a woman — or child — should be victimized twice, once by her attacker and then again by the state ordering her to take the pregnancy to term, is not going to be popular, even here. Yes, the court has ruled. But the debate over Louisiana’s approach to the difficult problems raised by a complete abortion ban has never been more urgent. ~NOLA.com - Our Views https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_d8e65dcc-f65e-11ec-9f5a-8ba6d2d38071.html

Placing the Blame on High Gas Prices

Americans are outraged about the high prices at the pump because the United States is now the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, followed by Saudi Arabia and Russia. It is also the third-largest exporter behind those two countries (And, by the way, we became the world’s energy titan even with decades of increased regulations on drilling, production and use of oil and gas.) Finally, the U.S. is also the world’s second-largest importer of oil because many of its refineries are built to process only types of oil mined from other countries. Naturally, Americans want the industry to increase production so prices can fall. Indeed, Biden has begged American companies to increase production and capacity to ease the burden on consumers. They have refused. Why? Yes, they are enjoying record profits and rewarding stockholders. But, according to the financial press, there is a second, equally important reason. Which brings us to the hopeful part of this story. Even before the pandemic, the industry had decided the future for fossil fuels was not great because the growing impact of climate change was increasing demand for renewable fuels. They see this pattern in the record sales of electric vehicles and the decision by American carmakers to go almost fully electric in 10 years. They see it in record growth worldwide in investments in solar and offshore wind development. Meanwhile, Putin’s murderous war, while pushing prices higher right now, is speeding the transition away from fossil fuels. European countries are advancing their timelines to renewable energy so they can stop buying Russian oil and gas. Oil and gas executives know ramping up production and drilling now will cost many billions over several years that could leave them sitting on product as demand begins slipping — just like during the pandemic. So they’re choosing to squeeze as much profit out of the world’s misery while bankrolling for their futures in renewables. It’s business. Of course, governments can ease the pain. The U.K. is using a windfall profits tax on oil companies to ease the bills on low-income households. Don’t expect that to happen in the U.S.; Republicans would block any such attempt in the Senate. A better way to look at these record prices is as a signal that better days are coming for the planet, and Louisiana. Higher prices will mean less fossil fuel use and reduced emissions, which eventually will reduce sea level rise and the size of hurricanes. In the long run, that’s good news. Bob Marshall, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Louisiana environmental journalist, can be reached at bmarshallenviro@gmail.com, and followed on Twitter @BMarshallEnviro. https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_63a5b6ce-f312-11ec-b4b6-1b49ba4ec12d.html

The ‘pursuit of happiness’ means having the right to privacy

Americans face two contradictory visions of democracy. One is represented by a right-wing, activist Supreme Court and Christian nationalists. The other needs a leader. In the first vision of the United States, a sliver of the electorate (White, Christian, male) exploits anti-majoritarian aspects of our democracy (e.g. the filibuster, the electoral college, gerrymandering) to use the awesome power of the government to impose values rooted in the 19th century on a diverse country. (Unsurprisingly, the beneficiaries are largely White, Christian and male.) Oppositional forces (modernity, science, diversity) are foreign, elite and alien. This vision posits that to achieve “ordered liberty” for a diverse, noisy, rambunctious people, we must respect the right to self-determination — to choose one’s family, one’s lifestyle, one’s profession and one’s philosophy of child-rearing. That necessitates restriction on government so as to protect a sphere of private conscience. It’s what Louis Brandeis called the “right to be left alone.” The latter view is shared by a majority of Americans in diverse policy arenas, including contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, child rearing and lifestyle. And until Friday, the Supreme Court dating back nearly a century had jealously guarded that sphere of privacy. Before Griswold v. Connecticut was decided in 1965, the court in the 1920s protected the right to send your child to the school of your choice and receive instruction in a foreign language; in the 1950s, the right to choose your profession; and the right to travel in 1958 — none of which are expressly set forth in the Constitution but all of which are essential to a free people. The court in 1923 held that “liberty” includes the right “to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” All of that — all of it — is up for grabs if the views expressed most directly by Justice Clarence Thomas are accepted. It’s a world few progressives or conservatives would really want to chance. But aside from the court, the invasion of all personal decision-making of privacy is now the driving force behind the MAGA movement. It wants to control how schools teach race, what teachers say about sexual and gender identity, how parents treat transgender children, and, now, whether women can be forced to give birth against their will. Whether tyrannical busybody rules are adopted by political bodies (made less democratic by gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc.) or the court, the society that results will be antithetical to the modern vision of a society in which individuals define their own lives and make intimate decisions without fear of the government or deputized vigilantes punishing them. This conflict between two views of America comes at a time when the Democratic Party is struggling to articulate the values of ordinary Americans and to both unify its own base and expand to a larger share of the electorate. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s reckless and reactionary activism, we can see clearly the common value in dire need of support: the right of privacy. As the Supreme Court for about 100 years has explained, this entails the right to self-determination, to self-realization and to personal autonomy. Privacy, like liberty, is threatened by a Christian nationalist movement that wants to freeze the United States in the 19th century and remove our individual choices. The interests (the right to abortion, to same-sex marriage, to contraception, to raising your child as you see fit, to set up a household of your choosing) are varied. Some interests are as old as the republic with newfound urgency (e.g. the right to be secure in one’s home without no-knock raids), and some are entirely new (the right to control your own online data). The theme however is singular: The right to live free from the tyranny of the government and the mob. Quite simply, privacy makes possible the “pursuit of happiness,” which each person must define for themselves . Perhaps the Democratic Party can construct a unifying theme (Privacy is on the ballot!), or perhaps it requires a new political movement akin to other advocacy organizations (Americans for privacy). It might entail a new fusion party that can endorse candidates who respect the right of privacy. One can imagine an agenda dedicated to codifying rights of privacy in federal and state law, to securing privacy rights in referendums and initiatives and even passing a simple constitutional amendment that preserves the right of privacy as it existed before Dobbs. In sum, Americans need a counterweight to a Christian nationalist movement that seeks to impose on the majority the set of social beliefs of the minority. They need a movement to defend the myriad ways 330 million Americans engage in “pursuit of happiness” — ways as diverse as the country itself. All they need is the leadership, energy and determination to harness that most innate human desire — to fulfill one’s own destiny. Opinion | We need a pro-privacy movement to combat Christian nationalism - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/27/privacy-christian-nationalism/?utm_campaign=wp_follow_jennifer_rubin&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl-jenniferrubin&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F37375fb%2F62b9ba7ccfe8a21601c54261%2F5976f806ade4e26514bcc8c9%2F6%2F16%2F62b9ba7ccfe8a21601c54261&wp_cu=798fbc1be6589a3768fb139e53083601%7C654c090c-4cc9-11e0-a478-1231380f446b

America's bishops pushed hard for the end of Roe. Now they call for unity and healing. What reality is that?

In 1974, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, then president of the University of Notre Dame, warned Roman Catholics against ceding the abortion debate to "crude zealots who have neither good judgment, sophistication of procedure nor the modicum of civility needed for the rational discussion of disagreements in a pluralistic democracy." This week, the "crude zealots" won. America's Catholic bishops are doing a victory lap over this decision. Four of the five justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade were conservative Catholics. (Chief Justice John Roberts, also a conservative Catholic, voted to uphold the Mississippi abortion ban at issue in the Dobbs case, but did not support overturning Roe outright.) The bishops have been pushing for the overturn of Roe for decades, and many of them were glad to overlook Donald Trump's moral lapses because he declared himself anti-abortion. In his single term (at least so far), Trump, with the help of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, kept his promise and larded the court with three conservative justices eager to reverse 50 years of court precedent. Now these same church leaders are calling on Americans to unite, and for dissension to end. "It is a time for healing wounds and repairing social divisions," the bishops wrote in a statement. "[I]t is a time for reasoned reflection and civil dialogue, and for coming together to build a society and economy that supports marriages and families, and where every woman has the support and resources she needs to bring her child into this world in love." What planet do they live on, to suggest that such an outcome is remotely plausible? Strife will just devolve to the states. Indeed, a 2021 investigation by the National Catholic Reporter found that major anti-abortion groups were funding voter suppression efforts in key states, endorsing Donald Trump's Big Lie and pushing for future Republican victories. That doesn't sound like "coming together" to me. Worse, abortion bans could be the first step toward a police state for pregnant women and anyone who may help them terminate a pregnancy. As the New Yorker's Jia Tolentino predicts, pregnant people could conceivably be surveilled to ensure they do nothing to endanger a "preborn" child — and could be charged with murder if a miscarriage or stillbirth is confused with an abortion. But women who want to get pregnant may also be at risk. The Catholic church condemns in vitro fertilization (IVF) because of its doctrine that life begins at conception, wary that some fertilized eggs could be discarded or used in medical research. If a state decides to take the same position, where does that leave infertile women and couples? In their statement hailing the Roe decision, the bishops congratulated anti-abortion activists on all the alleged good they have done to support pregnant women over the years. But they might also consider all the money that was squandered on this decades-long struggle, and the moral compromises they made along the way. Trump's narrow election victory in 2016 was almost certainly fueled by older, white Catholics in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan who listen to what the church says. But the Catholic hierarchy's abortion obsession has had other pernicious side effects. During the pandemic, bishops' nitpicking over the extremely remote connection between abortion procedures and the development of life-saving COVID vaccines meant that the U.S. church did not wholeheartedly endorse Pope Francis' view of vaccination as a moral obligation. How many hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated Americans died because of those strange abortion qualms? On the bishops' planet, only the innocent "preborn" have any real right to life. The rest of us must adjust to the dictates of what increasingly looks like a doctrinaire Supreme Court dominated by ultra-conservative Catholics. Catholic bishops celebrate a big win: But as they have sowed, so shall they reap | Salon.com

A clear and present danger

For well over 200 years, American elections have relied on a basic principle: the losers peacefully accept defeat. Trump and his followers represent a catastrophic departure from that history. They are not conservatives at all, but wild-eyed radicals. In the name of making America “great again,” they are trashing the very traditions that ensure American greatness. “We are in a dangerous place at the moment,” Ben Berwick, counsel for the advocacy group Protect Democracy, told the Times. “There is a substantial faction in this country that has come to the point where they have rejected the premise that when we have elections, the losers of the elections acknowledge the right of the winner to govern.” That’s why it’s critical for Congress to pass a package of reforms, now being crafted by a bipartisan group of senators, to plug loopholes and clarify ambiguities that this “substantial faction” could exploit in the future to thwart the democratic process. One rule would reinforce Mike Pence’s insistence, in the face of Trump’s pressures, that the vice president has no authority to alter or question election outcomes. Another would make it much harder for members of Congress to challenge results reported by the states. A third would strengthen the authority of the federal judiciary to overrule renegade state officials and legislatures that try to manipulate vote totals. States could also use financial help to protect election officials from harassment. The danger to democracy is clear, and it is present. True conservatives have a profound duty to stand up to Trump and his followers and confront that danger. ~ Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. https://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/catoosa_walker_news/opinion/columns/steven-roberts-a-clear-and-present-danger/article_4275c3ce-f3ba-11ec-a4ac-5f10df4a60f1.html

We already achieved ‘energy independence.’ What good did it do us?

Somehow no one appears to have noticed. “Energy independence” is a political slogan in search of a concrete definition, but based on context, conservatives appear to be referring to situations when the United States sells more oil and petroleum products to the rest of the world than it buys from other countries. The United States initially became a net exporter of oil and petroleum products in late 2019, while Trump was in office, for the first time since at least the 1950s.. There were a few months in late 2020 and early 2021 when that vaunted new trend reversed, and the United States again imported slightly more than we exported. But even then, total petroleum production and consumption still remained nearly even. That was the loss of “energy independence” that Republicans often decry, and (incorrectly) blame on President Biden’s supposed “war on fossil fuels” rather than the pandemic and its volatile effects on petroleum markets. But even that quickly reverted back again. Since last October, we’ve been exporting more than we import each month, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an independent government statistical agency. That is, we got back to “energy independence” under Biden, but Republicans forgot to update their talking points. And what of the reports that fossil-fuel firms ratcheted down production in the past couple of years, allegedly because Biden was waging war on them? It’s true that earlier in the pandemic (i.e. pre-Biden), energy production declined both domestically and internationally. No surprise, given that oil prices briefly turned negative. A lot of companies went bankrupt and investors lost money. In fact, Trump helped negotiate a cut to global oil production to help stabilize plummeting prices, another fact Republicans sometimes conveniently forget. If we actually want to get energy costs down, if we want to completely insulate ourselves from global price shocks, what we ultimately need is the technological investments that keep energy cheap, reliable and, coincidentally, clean. That means investing in renewables, including: installing grid-scale solar wherever possible. Encouraging consumers and businesses to transition to electric vehicles, stoves and heat. And especially, developing better battery technology. Despite the perception that renewable energy is some expensive, indulgent cause of liberal tree huggers, it’s already quite cheap. It’s cheaper, for instance, to build and operate an entirely new wind or solar plant than it is to continue operating an existing coal facility. But without better storage technology, we’re stuck with using easily storable fossil fuels, which are dirtier and subject to geopolitical turmoil. We can’t control what the Russians do. We can’t control what the Saudis do. What we can do is electrify everything and make sure the electricity we use is cheap. That’s the solution if you want to stick it to oil companies, as many on the left do; it’s also the solution if you want abundant, inexpensive and truly independent energy sources, as the right has been coveting for decades. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/07/energy-independence-oil-gas-renewables/

Is there a sickness in U.S. culture? Yes: The GOP gun cult.

But Republicans do have a point about American culture — just not the one they’re trying to make. There is a sickness in America. It’s our gun cult, which has no counterpart in any other advanced democracy. Republican politicians, the gun lobby and gunmakers — the unholy trinity — are complicit not only in weakening gun laws but also in glorifying firearms and encouraging their sale. After every mass shooting, Republicans inspire more gun sales by warning that Democrats are planning to confiscate guns. By increasing the number of firearms in circulation, that makes the next mass shooting more likely. Guns have overtaken flags as an obligatory accessory in Republican campaign commercials, and people who have used guns allegedly for self-protection, such as Kyle Rittenhouse, have become Republican folk heroes. Gun ownership has become a mark of tribal identity in red America. More than twice as many Republicans as Democrats own guns, and by far the most popular reason for buying one is personal protection. Protection from what? Well, it’s no mere coincidence that gun sales have been soaring (primarily among White men) while right-wing politicians and propagandists have been hyping two phantom menaces: First, the criminal threats supposedly posed by desperados from “Democrat cities,” Black Lives Matter protesters and undocumented immigrants. Second, the political threat from Democrats who are supposedly “grooming” children, replacing “legacy Americans” with immigrants of color, and bringing communism to this country. The message to Republicans is that only the Second Amendment can protect their lives and liberty. Republicans are so alarmed about imaginary Democratic plots that 40 percent say violence against the government can be justified. Much of the GOP fearmongering has an obvious racist taint. Blake Masters, a Senate candidate from Arizona who has Donald Trump’s endorsement, blamed gun violence on “Black people.” Yet in the second-deadliest mass shooting in the past month (the one at a Buffalo grocery store), the 10 people who were killed were Black and the alleged perpetrator was a white teenager who was motivated by the “great replacement” theory that Republicans such as Masters espouse. Republicans are contributing to the bloodbath engulfing America by blocking gun-safety laws while promoting gun ownership. The result is that in 2020, guns became the leading cause of death among children. Unless the gun cult fades on the right, children — and adults — will continue to die needlessly. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/07/republican-gun-cult-america-sickness-myths-conspiracy/

There’s no reasoning with a GOP hijacked by disinformation

A new study shows how distorting disinformation has become on the political right in the Trump era. Brian Guay of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and others set out to learn why, as previous studies of social media patterns have found, Republicans share between 200 percent and 500 percent more fake news (fabrications published by sites masquerading as news outlets) than Democrats. Were they less able to distinguish fact from fiction? More psychologically predisposed to political bias? In part, yes. But the researchers found that “the issue primarily seems to be a supply issue,” Guay told me. “There’s just way more fake news on the right than the left.” In experiments giving Democrats and Republicans equal amounts of fake news that confirmed their world views, Republicans were more likely to share the falsehoods — but only 1.6 times more likely. This suggests that Republicans don’t have some “overreaching hunger” to traffic in untruths; they simply can’t avoid it because they’re so immersed in the stuff. Guay’s is the latest of many studies identifying the disinformation “asymmetry” afflicting the right in the Trump era. In lay terms: Garbage in, garbage out. Republican voters hear lies by the thousand from Trump and imitators such as Johnson and Cruz. They hear new conspiracy theories daily from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and other Trump-inspired elites. It’s hardly surprising that, thus exposed, they become more toxic in their language, more extreme in their ideology and more outraged. If you saw “evidence” everywhere you turned, from people you trusted, that the country is being run by socialist pedophiles bent on disarming the populace, extinguishing your race and destroying the United States, you’d probably be outraged, too. At the very least, you might not be in the best frame of mind for a constructive conversation about ending gun violence. ~Dana Milbank Columnist https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/gun-safety-compromise-impossible-gop-disinformation/

Christian nationalism on the rise in some GOP campaigns

Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, said those Jan. 6 displays were not surprising. According to a recent survey by the institute, white evangelical Christians were among the strongest supporters of the assertion that God intended America as a “promised land” for European Christians. Those who backed that idea were far more likely to agree that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence ... to save our country.” “To my mind, white Christian nationalism is really the threat,” Jones said. Elizabeth Neumann, chief strategy officer for Moonshot, a tech company that aims to counter online violent extremism, disinformation and other harms, said Christian nationalism began picking up steam around 2015 amid a rising narrative of purported persecution of Christians. Neumann, who served in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations and grew up in an evangelical Christian household, called the movement “heretical and idolatry” and an “apocalyptic vision (that) very often leads to violence.” Many pastors are pushing back against it, she added. “I see Christian nationalism as the gasping, dying breath of the older generation in America that is afraid that Christians are going to be replaced,” she said. https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2022/05/29/christian-nationalism-on-the-rise-in-some-gop-campaigns/