THE SCRAPBOOK has been patiently awaiting it, and it finally arrived last week: Senator Harry Reid’s December 7 declaration that Republicans who have spoken out against the nationalization of American medicine–otherwise known as “health care reform”–are akin to those Americans of yesteryear who spoke up in favor of slavery.
“All Republicans can come up with is this: Slow down, stop everything, let’s start over,” said the Senate majority leader. “If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said slow down, it’s too early, let’s wait, things aren’t bad enough.”
In one sense, this was a comforting piece of demagoguery. Reid would not make so outlandish or insulting a claim if he weren’t feeling desperate about the prospects for Obamacare, especially in light of those astonishing opinion polls that reflect ever-diminishing public support for Barack Obama–now at the lowest level (46 percent) for any modern president at this juncture–and his scheme for health care reform. In another sense, we may also be thankful that Reid didn’t make the obvious partisan leap–all too common during the Bush presidency–of comparing Obama’s opponents to Hitler. Of course, if health care reform continues to lose steam in contentious congressional meetings, we might start hearing the Hitler/Nazi talking point.
Which leads THE SCRAPBOOK down the familiar path of correcting rhetorical travesties. Not only is the Obamacare/slavery analogy deeply tendentious and offensive to Republicans, it is flat-out wrong, historically. Is it possible that the Democratic leader in the Senate is unaware that the Republican party was founded in 1854 as an antislavery party–Abraham Lincoln, anyone?–and that the political faction that really, truly, actually did oppose the abolition of slavery during the Civil War was Harry Reid’s own Democratic party?
For that matter, push the story a century ahead and consider passage of the 1964 Civil Rights bill. It is true that the measure was proposed by a Democratic president (John F. Kennedy)–although largely as an expansion of an earlier Civil Rights bill (1957) that had been enacted under a Republican president (Dwight D. Eisenhower), who also created the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. But the truth is that the 1964 Civil Rights bill enjoyed overwhelming Republican support in the Senate–only six GOP senators opposed it, all on libertarian/constitutional grounds–while no less than 21 Democrats opposed it (including Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, whose son Al Jr. is in the habit of misrepresenting his father’s historic “no” vote).
And guess which Democratic senator presided over a historic 54-day filibuster to kill the Civil Rights bill during that contentious spring and summer of 1964? The answer: Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who still holds office today, and was in recent years the Democratic leader in the Senate–the very same job currently held by Harry Reid.
Who, when the subject comes to slavery, civil rights, and Republicans, ought to–but doesn’t–have the decency to hold his tongue.
Don’t Know Much About History . . .
Being patriotic, THE SCRAPBOOK is glad but not surprised to learn that nine out of ten Americans want schools to teach the founding principles of the country and the story of the American Revolution. Being worldly-wise, however, THE SCRAPBOOK is sad but not surprised to learn that the schools do so shabby a job of it that when it came to a simple test of knowledge about the founding, nearly 83 percent of those same Americans failed.
The news comes to us from a survey commissioned by the American Revolution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit whose website is a font of information valuable for teachers, students, and the general public. Headed by the art historian Bruce Cole, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the center is working to create the first Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.
What would it take for the center’s findings to register with school systems? Colleges aren’t listening either. Go to the fascinating website whatwilltheylearn.com, run by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, and see which top colleges and universities require a course in American history or government for graduation. Quick preview: 18 do, 119 don’t.
With our formal institutions of learning so uninterested in passing on the founding heritage, it’s left to private efforts to satisfy Americans’ appetite for our history. The success, to take just one example, of the splendid 2008 HBO miniseries about the life of John Adams is -encouraging. And there is some consolation in knowing that, even when detailed knowledge is lacking, the big ideas seem to be getting through.
The American Revolution Center’s study found as much. When asked the most important values upon which America was founded, most of the 1,001 adults surveyed answered: freedom and liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and freedom from tyranny.
Scenes from the Great Recession
Why is demonizing the banking industry such a popular pastime in Washington these days? Maybe to distract people’s attention from another industry that has enjoyed exceptional good fortune and rapid salary growth over the past year: the federal government.
Dennis Cauchon of USA Today reports, “Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time–in pay and hiring–during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.” The “average federal worker’s pay” is now “$71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.” But the eye-popping figures are at the high end:
When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.
This is a bipartisan scandal, by the way. As Cauchon notes, “Then-president Bush recommended–and Congress approved–across-the-board raises of 3% in January 2008 and 3.9% in January 2009. President Obama has recommended 2% pay raises in January 2010, the smallest since 1975. Most federal workers also get longevity pay hikes–called steps–that average 1.5% per year.”
That’s Not Funny . . .
New York Times enviro-blogger Andy Revkin, generally friendly to the global warming crowd, published a humorous item last week on Copenhagen hookers offering free services to the thousands of politicians and bureaucrats in town for the U.N.’s global warming confab (we think this is what people who share the same line of work call “professional courtesy”). Climatologist Michael Schlesinger of the University of Illinois was outraged at this undisciplined outbreak of levity and emailed Revkin (while cc-ing his entire distribution list):
It’s good to be reminded that global warming is all about the science–that scientists have reached a consensus based on rational inquiry, that environmental reporters convey these facts without fear or favor. And that there is no ideological enforcement whatsoever, no siree.
‘Avatar’: Are Neocons to Blame?
Variety‘s Todd McCarthy has just reviewed James Cameron’s highly anticipated new movie Avatar, which, as far as special effects go, sounds like nothing we have ever seen. (At $500 million, it better be.) The plot, however, is a different story: In the year 2154, the U.S. military sends an expedition to the planet Pandora in search of a mineral essential to Earth’s survival. But in order to save our planet, we must essentially destroy the one inhabited by the Na’vi. McCarthy describes “an overarching anti-imperialist, back-to-nature theme that will play very well around the world” and how “unavoidable Vietnam vibes emanate from the scenes of futuristic choppers descending upon the verdant jungles and mountainsides of Pandora.”
“Thematically,” writes McCarthy, “the film also plays too simplistically into stereotypical evil-white-empire/virtuous-native clichés, especially since the invaders are presumably on an environmental rescue mission on behalf of the entire world, not just the U.S. Script is rooted very much in a contemporary eco-green mindset, which makes its positions and the sympathies it encourages entirely predictable and unchallenging.”
Rumor has it that an alternative ending to the script includes a stunning revelation that, in fact, the Earth did not need this precious mineral to be saved after all and that it was the product of a green conspiracy made public only after a hacker successfully accessed the scientists’ emails and posted them for all to see.
</π> <β><π>Sentences We Didn’t Finish
“The community-organizing group ACORN said Monday that an internal investigation had concluded there was no criminal conduct by employees who offered advice on how to hide assets and falsify lending documents. ACORN’s chief executive described the report, by former Massachusetts attorney general Scott Harshbarger, as ‘part vindication, part constructive criticism’ . . . ” -(Associated Press, December 8).
