Strode Reality: Andrew Sullivan: 'The Politics of Homosexuality: Intro On Prohibition'

Source:Strode Reality- columnist and author Andrew Sullivan giving a lecture about homosexuality, in 2010.

"Andrew Sullivan, "The Politics of Homosexuality," Princeton University, 2/18/10.

Part 1 of 7:

1. Intro & Prohibitionism part 1

2. Prohibitionism part 2

3. Prohibitionism part 3

4. Liberationism

5. Conservatism

6. Liberalism

7. Conclusion

See also: Audience question

The arguments put forth in this speech can be studied in more complete detail in Andrew's book Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, which can be purchased here... 

Source:Strode Reality

Unlike Andrew Sullivan, I'm not religious at all and therefor don't pretend to either be religious or an expert on The Bible. But I am a current affairs blogger whose very familiar with the U.S. Constitution and the American, federal, liberal, democratic, republican, form of government. And because of that, I know that America is a federal republic, not a theocracy. 

The Bible or any other religious book, can say that homosexuality is immoral and therefor it's not murder or assault, when gays are physically assaulted, terrorized, even raped, and murdered, simply because they're gay. But the United States of America is not a theocracy (Christian or otherwise) and therefor we are not governed by The Bible or any other religious book. We're governed by the United States Constitution.

And because of the U.S. Constitution, I also know because of both the 4th Amendment and the 14th Amendment, which protects Americans right to privacy and guarantees every American's right to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution, I know that prohibition of homosexuality, even in the privacy of consenting adults, is unconstitutional, at it should be. 

You can also see this post at The New Democrat, on Blogger. 

You can also see this post at The New Democrat, on WordPress.

Andrew Sullivan: Neither Living Nor Dead

Source:The New Democrat

Before I give you my take on the U.S. Constitution, I'm going to give you takes from others further Left of me and from people who are to my Right and further Right.

Today's so-called Progressives who are really Social Democrats to be real and blunt about it see the U.S. Constitution in European democratic terms and want to and see America as their type of social democracy. Where government is more centralized with more power and more resources for the good of the people. And where most if not all all things done though government are through majoritarian means with majority rule. They probably see our constitutional amendment process as undemocratic because of what it takes to repeal or amend an amendment. As well as forcing all Americans regardless of generation and the times as having to live under the same Constitution and Rule of Law.

Conservatives and Libertarians see the Constitutional in its original form. (Or that is what they say) And anything that is not specifically laid out for government to do based on the words of Constitution, they see as unconstitutional when government tries to perform those functions. Neoconservatives or the Traditional Values Coalition lets say when it comes to personal choice and freedom say that anything that is not granted specifically with the exact words laid out in it for the people, those rights don't exist for the people. And that government can deny those actions for them. The same-sex-marriage debate is a perfect example of it.

I guess I'm somewhere in the middle on this which is where a Liberal would be between a Social Democrat on the Left and a Libertarian on the Right. All of the amendments and constitutional rights that we have as individuals with the constitutional amendments and Bill of Rights apply to all of us at any time. But when it comes to things for either the people or what can government can do I'm not what is called a strict-constructionist which is sort of a bogus term to begin with. And even people who call themselves that find ways to expand government power to meet their own political goals.

Just because same-sex-marriage doesn't exist in the Constitution, or marijuana, or gambling and perhaps even property rights and the Right to Privacy doesn't mean we don't have the right to practice those things as long as we aren't hurting innocent people with those practices. The Fourth Amendment clearly limits what government especially law enforcement can to when it comes to regulating individuals own lives. And the Fifth Amendment clearly limits what government can do to one's property. And can't simply decide to take it over or take it away simply because it wants to. The Equal Protection Clause clearly protect all classes of Americans equally and doesn't grant government the right to discriminate because it doesn't like one class of people.

I'm a Liberal Constitutionalist because I believe in the Constitution and more broadly liberal democracy. The rights that we have just from the words themselves will always be there unless they are repealed or amended through a super majority process. As it should be because we are a Constitutional Federal Republic in the form of a liberal democracy. Not a social democracy and those things are different. And just because the Constitution doesn't specifically say an individual or government can do something, doesn't mean they can't. You have to look at the Constitution and see where those rights exist or not.

The Dish: Andrew Sullivan: 'Why Am I Moving Left?'

Source: The Dish- Symbol of the GOP. 

Source:The New Democrat

Whatever Andrew Sullivan is calling himself these days, I still consider him to be a Conservative. Conservative Libertarian even if that makes you feel better. Because similar to Barry Goldwater it is not that conservatism has changed, but similar to liberalism it is the people who call themselves Conservatives or Liberals that have changed. Using the old labels and throwing out the classical ideology and putting in something that is more comfortable with their ideological perspective.

Today's Conservative is someone who's supposed to believe that the Federal Government should decide who can and can't marry.

That deficits and debt doesn't matter except when there is a Democratic administration.

That tax cuts automatically pay for itself.

That America can afford to and must police the world.

Security before liberty.

That expanding government into the economy is a good thing if it is done with private market principles.

The Second Amendment is not only absolute, but the only absolute Constitutional Amendment that we have. Meaning it isn't subjected to any form of regulation.

That there's so such thing as waste in the Defense Department. Even though it is a government agency run by bureaucrats. And no limits to what America can spend on defense.

Corporation's are people.

Andrew Sullivan's politics hasn't changed. He believes the same things that he did probably twenty years ago. But what has changed is the Republican Party and the broader American Right. To the point that Sullivan looks moderate to liberal or libertarian by comparison. But conservatism today is what it was when Barry Goldwater put it on the map in 1964. That big government is government that interferes in the economic and personal affairs of Americans. Whether it is taxing a lot of their money from them to spend on their behalf. Or trying to run their personal lives for them.

The modern rightist or Republican or what I call rabid partisans on the right do not resemble what it means to be a Conservative. Because as much as they may talk about how much they love the Constitution they spend as much time trying to change it. Instead of being about conserving individual freedom both economic and personal. Limited government, that government closest to home is the best government. Defend America first with a limited foreign policy. Not try to police the world ourselves. And keeping spending down so we don't rack up large deficits and debt.

The rabid partisan is against Barack Obama no matter what even if they are actually in favor of it. Instead of fixing problems looking to blame President Obama for everything that has happened since the Earth was created. It is not that conservatism has changed, but the far-right that used to be so small in the Republican Party that they looked like a group of people who want to outlaw eating meat. Where today they have enough power to decide if the Republican Party can win elections or not. Sullivan is still Sullivan, but his party has changed.
Source:The Free Speech Project

Andrew Sullivan: Why Rand Paul Matters

Source:The Dish  

For me, though, these clips make Paul’s candidacy more appealing, not less. What the GOP needs is an honest, stringent account of how it has ended up where it is – a party that has piled on more debt than was once thought imaginable and until recently, has done nothing much to curtail federal spending. Reagan was a great president in many ways, as Paul says explicitly in these clips.

But Reagan introduced something truly poisonous into American conservatism.

It was the notion that you can eat your cake and have it too, that tax cuts pay for themselves and that deficits don’t matter. This isn’t and wasn’t conservatism; it was a loopy utopian denial of math. And the damage it has done to this country’s fiscal standing has been deep and permanent. It is one of modern conservatism’s cardinal sins. And Paul is addressing it forthrightly – just as he is addressing the terrible, devastating consequences of neo-conservatism for America and the world in the 21st Century.

What we desperately need from the right is this kind of accounting. It’s what reformers on the left did in the 1990s – confronting the failures of their past in charting a new future. Taking on Reagan on fiscal matters may be short-term political death, as Corn suspects and maybe hopes, but it is vital if the GOP is to regain some long-term credibility on the core question of government solvency. Compared with the ideological bromides and slogans of so many others, Rand Paul is a tonic. And a courageous one at that. 

The New Democrat 

I really respect Senator Rand Paul and love Andrew Sullivan (you know platonically) because of their damned straight honesty and forthrightness.  Andrew, on his blog, The Dish, today compared the supply side economics of the Reagan and G.W. Bush administrations with the overreach of the Democratic Party at the time of the emergence of the New Left in America. The base of that party became so radical in the late 1960s and 1970s that it gave liberalism and Liberals a bad name.  It took Bill Clinton ,in the early 1990s, to bring the Democratic Party back to Earth, so to speak, and make it a center-left party again. 

Senator Rand Paul was speaking the plain truth when he said that President Jimmy Carter had a better, more responsible and conservative fiscal record than President Ronald Reagan.  President Carter had a balanced budget as one of his goals and he pushed that throughout his presidency. He had a very rough economy and never got there but it wasn't because of the overspending of his administration or the Congress.  It was because of the bad economy of the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

President Reagan abandoned the goal of a balanced Federal budget by 1984 in late 1981 or early 1982 when his Economic Recovery Act became law.  He was getting intelligence reports about the U.S.S.R. and the mess its economy was in.  Perhaps he got the idea that this would be the time to end the Cold War and put the Soviet Union out of business.  That meant building up the Defense Department in an attempt to bring the Russians to their knees so that they had to negotiate with the U.S. in order to survive economically. 

The fact is that our last fiscally conservative president was George H.W. Bush who was no radical,  right or left.  He had a pretty conservative fiscal policy and a tight monetary policy.  Without the 1990 Deficit Reduction Act that he negotiated with a Democratic Congress we wouldn't have reached the balanced budget in 1998 that we did. President Gerald Ford is probably the most fiscally conservative president we've ever had as far limiting what the Federal Government would do and spend.  It is not Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.  They were both supply side borrowers and spenders. 

Andrew Sullivan: If America Had Scandinavia's Tax Rate

Source:The New Democrat

Jonathan Chait had a column in the, formerly liberal (ha ha) New Republic magazine arguing that, as we celebrate tax day, the U.S. should be thinking about increasing taxes on everyone across the board except for the working poor.  He based his argument on the example of Scandinavia.  They have much higher tax rates than we do and have traditionally had a very strong economy.  They have good public services with a very generous welfare state and, as a result, have had strong economic outcomes.

Ross Douhat, a columnist for the, lets say, progressive New York Times opinion page wrote a response to Chait's column.  In it, he laid out why higher taxes work in Scandinavia and why they wouldn't work here.  For example, Sweden is physically about the size of Turkey but has only about nine-million people.  Sweden is also not only energy independent but also a net-exporter of oil and gas. They produce a hell of a lot of energy with a lot of land and a small population to take care of. To put it in simple terms, they can afford to be generous with their welfare state.

The U.S., on the other hand, is physically the size of a freaking continent going from one ocean to another, with a three-thousand mile border on the North with Canada and a two-thousand mile border with Mexico on the South and a population of over three-hundred and ten million people.  It is a net-importer of oil.  We are still paying other countries for our energy supplies and paying them to defend them.

We have a seventeen-trillion dollar national debt and have been basically stuck in, or trying to recover from, one recession or another since 2001. We simply do not have the resources to pay for what we currently owe to our population.  We also have a high poverty rate compared to the rest of the developed world.  Our working class is struggling just to pay their current tax obligations.  Most Americans simply can't afford Mr. Chait's, and others, socialist, big government tax rates now.

When our economy was booming in the 1980s and 1990s, our taxes were low and our government budget to GDP ratio was low. In plain English, the percentage of the national economy that the Federal Government spent was low in the 1980s and 90s.  In both decades, we had low unemployment, high economic growth and record low poverty levels.  This is what we are trying to get back to and we need to protect middle class tax payers by not increasing their rates.  At the same time, we need to invest more in infrastructure, education and job training so that more Americans can live in freedom and not depend on income assistance. 

Andrew Sullivan: 'Why is Liberal a Dirty Word?'

Source:The Dish- with Andrew Sullivan. Eat as much as you want, you might learn something. Comeback for 2nd's & 3rd's.

Source:The New Democrat

"[T]here’s reason to believe that today, many Americans eschew the term not because they associate it with any particular unpopular attitudes or issue positions, but merely because they’ve only heard it discussed negatively. In a thought-provoking 2013 paper, Christopher Claassen, Patrick Tucker, and Steven S. Smith of Washington University in St. Louis note that although most Americans prefer the term “conservative,” those same Americans are “remarkably consistent” in telling researchers that they prefer liberal policies. How come? One reason may be that “conservative” has positive “extra-political” associations. To many Americans, it connotes “caution, restraint and respect for traditional values,” positive attributes irrespective of one’s views on specific policies.

But even more important, Claassen, Tucker, and Smith suggest, may be the negative way in which “liberal” is publicly discussed. “When certain labels are emphasized or favored by political and media elites,” they write, “the public is more likely to identify with them than others. Public framing often promotes the term ‘conservative,’ while the term ‘liberal’ is used with much less frequency and has long had a more negative connotation.” Part of the reason Americans consider liberal an epithet, in other words, is because they mostly hear it used as an epithet." 

From The Dish

Since I started blogging in 2011, just from talking to people and looking at polling on particular issues, I've always believed and really before I started blogging, actually, that there has always been a lot more Liberals in America, than self-described Liberals. 

Think about it: 

Americans like the right to privacy

Believe in free speech overwhelmingly 

Believe in a free press

Believe in checks and balances 

Believe in personal freedom and responsibility

Believe in property rights

Believe in the rule of law

Believe in equal justice, equal rights, quality of opportunity for everybody, a safety net for people who truly need it. 

I don't want to put words in Andrew Sullivan's mouth, (but only because he might have too many of his own words and he suffocate if you put any more words in his mouth) but I think that's what he's talking about in his own article. Americans like associating with the word Conservative, because it tends to come with positive social and political associations. 

But when people think of Liberal, they think of the left-wing illiberal, (meaning not Liberal) the person with the long beard, who looks like he's never been to a barber shop in his life, whose living like it's still 1968 or 69, trying to take down the man. 

When Americans tend to think of Liberals, they think of the hipster revolutionary, who think that most so-called White people are immoral and bigoted and that Americans for the most part are too dumb to manage their own affairs for themselves and even think for themselves and we need a national government big enough to take care of everybody for them.

I think Andrew Sullivan's point here about Americans and Liberals, (and again I'm not trying to put words into his own mouth, for reasons I already explained) is that a lot more people in America are Liberals, but perhaps aren't aware of it, because they don't know what liberalism actually is, what liberal values really are. 

Or, Americans know what liberal means and what it means to be a Liberal and what liberalism really is, but they don't think it's politically and culturally safe enough to let the rest of the world know that they're a real Liberal and what it means to actually be a Liberal.