Only Connect . . . Live in Fragments No Longer.  – E.M. Forster

Warning: This is going to be one of those pretentious, inflated-with-false-self-importance analyses of the last three years.  Cross-posted to Indigo Journal.

Just shy of three years, several hundred thousand hits, over 1000 posts by me, over 3500 comments from you, I’ve reached the end of this little experiment.

I had some specific goals when I set out.  One of those goals was to see whether, in the midst of all the immaturity and personality disorders on display in the blog world, online political discussion in South Carolina could actually be done in a mature, smart way.  I’m a bit older than most bloggers, and have a busy life.  I have neither the time nor the temperament for blog wars.  I just wanted to see if this forum could attract thoughtful people to a smart discussion of the relevant issues.

Count that one as a success, thanks to people like Silence Dogood, RobW, Deacon Tim, Peddler, Rodney, Jon, Tammy, Blue South, Waldo, Eric, Anthony, Jennifer, Tim, and many others.

I have been very fortunate not to have the kind of commenters that dominate some of the other South Carolina blogs.  If I had ended up with the same four or five people screaming at each other, not listening, simply looking for an outlet to do some weirdly exhibitionistic, passive-aggressive thing, I would have packed it in a long time ago. I got lucky.

The second goal I had was to try to shine a light on the politicians in this State who do and say nutty and damaging things.  There are so few checks on power here.  My operating premise, admittedly a shaky one, has been that if the good people of this State were actually made aware of some of this stuff, democracy would work.

I’d count that shine-a-light goal as . . . well, overly ambitious, and perhaps flawed in its premise.  There’s still a State Senator who compares a presidential nominee to Osama bin laden – and is reelected.  And the head of the state Republican party who still says that the Democrats want to surrender to terrorists – and is positioned to head the National party.  And a Republican debate audience at the Koger that loudly and enthusiastically cheers the idea of torture.  And a couple of US Senators who support suspending habeas corpus. We still have lots of folks from both parties who think they’re doing God’s work by trying to inject religious dogma into everything from school science curricula to license plates.  And candidates who, even after constitutionally making it a non-issue, continue to go for the ol’ reliable, the gay button, to win votes by further marginalizing the most vulnerable.

We have a long way to go, indeed.

Three years later, we’re still at the bottom of the good-things lists and top of the bad-things lists.  In many ways, we’re still acting like adolescents in this State rather than fully functioning adults. Don’t try to tell me there’s no correlation.

And while in this recent election, the rest of the country was able to see how the ship had run aground and needed to chart a new course, we here in South Carolina continued to reward all the wrong things.  Did you really hear anybody argue convincingly that Henry Brown and Joe Wilson were smart, energetic, effective Congressmen?  The rest of the country saw the need for change.  Apparently, we South Carolinians value familiarity above all else.

I’m now very hopeful about the direction of this country.  That presidential election feels monumental. As for South Carolina and the rest of the old Confederacy, moving in a different and potentially isolating direction . . . who knows?

Those bloggers who tried to label me may be surprised to know that I’m actually conservative in a lot of my thinking.  But I’m also about being respectful to groups of people I may not completely understand yet.  And not going through life primarily motivated by fear.  And caring about facts. And in considering issues of public policy, using rationality more than emotions. And understanding the Constitution, including things like separation of powers and the religion and speech clauses of the First Amendment.  And, my personal pet issue, acting as good stewards of the natural world.

These things have really never seemed to me to be about liberal or conservative.  They’re just about being human.

What I do know very clearly is that I do not want to be associated with the Republican Party as it currently exists. Ronald Reagan, save me from your followers. (Hat tip: Jesus bumper sticker.) Lee Atwater lives, especially here in South Carolina.  The candidates and politicians still pull out that tired, old playbook without shame or penalty.  So much of political life seems to be about gamesmanship, division, and self-interest, when it should be about governing and solving some very big problems.

For the record: I do believe it is entirely possible to be a conservative Republican in South Carolina without being sanctimonious, judgmental, cynical, shallow-thinking, emotional, button-pushing, and generally unlikeable.  It’s possible, but apparently also pretty difficult.

And then there are the right-wing blogs, several operating as ethically-suspect fronts for undisclosed paying clients, others written by wacky, angry people looking for other wacky, angry people to affirm their wackiness and anger.  Just yesterday on Twitter there was a Tweet from SCHotline calling President-elect Obama “Curious George.” Yep, comparing our first African American president to a monkey. Seriously: What is wrong with these people?

The third goal I guess I had with my blogging was to change some minds.  Count that one as a failure.  I now don’t believe arguments in blogs ever change minds.  We come at political issues with a lifetime of unique experiences and prejudices. So did I really think some funny-named anonymous writer on the internet could change your mind? Maybe for a while. But I got over it.

New insights and a shift in focus are perhaps the most we can hope for. Sometimes I was able to see how I was being short-sighted or unfair in my arguments, thanks to some commenters.  But that’s mostly fine-tuning stuff.  I didn’t flip on any issue of significance, and I’m pretty sure you didn’t either.

So that brings me, finally, to the one thing I think blogs can do: Connect people. Like the people I met for lunch or a beer.  (You know who you are.)  And the emails or phone calls from people willing to reveal a bit more of themselves than they would in a blog comment.  Even the strictly-online connections among the 700-plus (and counting) commenters who were brought together by the apolitical question of how to live a full life, a question raised by the story of a guy named Chris McCandless.

So I’m going to leave the keyboard for a while to do other things. I’m headed into the woods with the dogs. I’m going to take the fishing boat down to Sparkleberry.  I’m going to read a few novels that have been sitting on my bedside table – well,  if my brain can still handle something longer than four paragraphs.  I’m going to paddle the kayak down Cedar Creek, keeping an eye and ear out for the Ivorybill.

All along, it’s been about figuring out what’s important.  Still is.  As for this blogging stuff, it’s somebody else’s turn.

Thanks.   Sincerely.

Carpe diem.

It’s an unusual thing for lawyers in a pending case to write an op ed piece for the newspaper trying to advance their position. It’s unusual because doing so can get close to an ethical line It’s the kind of thing that conferences are held about and professors debate. They debate it because there’s an ethical rule for lawyers (Rule 3.6 for those keeping track) called “Trial Publicity.”

That rule says:

A lawyer who is participating or has participated in the investigation or litigation of a matter shall not make an extrajudicial statement that a reasonable person would expect to be disseminated by means of public communication if the lawyer knows or reasonably should know that it will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter.

I’m not saying the op ed piece (the one I’m getting to – quit being so impatient) violates that rule. Presumably the attorneys and their firm gave that question some analysis and decided they were on solid ethical ground. But I mention it because it is just one of the reasons that the whole piece struck me as odd. After all, an op ed piece is by definition designed to influence somebody.

Even poorly reasoned ones.

The lawyers representing the State DMV in the lawsuit over the “I Believe” license plates have written an op ed piece for today’s State. (See? I told you I would get to it.) Kevin Hall’s and Butch Bowers’ piece is titled “Freedom From Religion?” (Kevin Hall is active, incidentally in SC Republican politics and has apparently been been on the short list to be the next King or Grand Poobah or whatever the state Republican Party calls that position.)

OK, here’s an excerpt:

So what’s all the fuss about a driver wanting an “I Believe” license plate on his or her car? Why is there such widespread and apparently unconditional support for expressions of sports loyalty, dance steps or secular humanism, yet such hostility for individual religious expression?

The answer: Many in our society, under the guise of supporting religious liberty, want to remove religious expression from public discourse.

Of course, that’s not the answer at all. The answer, if one is actually looking for it, is that the Constitution speaks to the government’s establishment of religion, but doesn’t speak to its establishment of an affinity for sports teams or dance steps.

Surely the authors of this piece, especially if they’re involved in the litigation, know this.

The authors go on and on with this canard. There’s hostility toward religion blah blah blah, we conservative Christians in South Carolina are poor, downtrodden, persecuted blah blah blah. You know the routine. If you live in South Carolina and don’t find these arguments hilarious about conservative Christians being politically put-upon, you’re not paying attention.

They then move on from this Christians-aren’t-as-protected-as-shaggers argument to blur another line:

In its simplest terms, the battle over the “I Believe” license plate reveals a fundamental divide in our society — those who believe the First Amendment protects all religious expression and celebrates our diversity, and those who would twist the First Amendment to guarantee a complete exclusion of public religious expression.

Again, this overstatement of their opponents’ position can only be intentional. No one is arguing for “a complete exclusion of public religious expression.” You can go into the public square, or Finley Park, or anywhere else you want to go and publicly express your beliefs to your heart’s content. One only has to drive past the State House lots of days to see someone doing exactly that.

The difference, for those who actually want to understand rather than spout propaganda, comes when the government starts expressing religious views. As in: Making a license plate for one particular religion.

So you as a citizen can express them all you want thanks to one of the two religion clauses in the First Amendment, the one called the Free Exercise Clause. You can put a religious bumper sticker on your car, and there’s nothing the State can do about it.

The government, on the other hand, is limited by the other religion clause called the Establishment Clause. The government has to stay neutral in matters of religion, including the avoidance of favoritism of one religion over another. (If you want to know the reason behind the framers’ insistence on government neutrality, I’d love to get into that history lesson at the appropriate time.) The word “Establish” is fleshed out by a very long line of cases from the United States Supreme Court. And if the First Amendment expresses a “hostility” toward religion, well, you can thank James Madison.

This is the point completely missed, intentionally or otherwise, in the authors’ misleading statement:

When religious liberty and freedom of expression are at issue, the best — and constitutionally required — approach is to allow citizens to express themselves. Government cannot and should not use its power to silence religious expression.

But they’re not done yet with the doesn’t-pass-the-red-face-test arguments:

Our state government is not giving preferential treatment to a particular religion by making the “I Believe” license plate available for purchase any more than it is giving preferential treatment to the square dance over the foxtrot by making the square dance plate available. Instead, individual citizens are simply using license plates to express themselves and their own personal preferences.

In fact, by picking one dance over another (and yes, it’s an absurdity that we have any of those plates, but let’s not go there right now), the government is giving preferential treatment. That’s what a choice is: preferential treatment. The difference is the First Amendment doesn’t speak to dances. It does speak to religions.

I rarely suggest that I am some sort of expert in the topics I cover. That’s the point of blogging: You can be a complete blowhard and express opinions on all kinds of things you know nothing about. But trust me on this one. I know the religion clauses. And the “I Believe” license plates are blatantly unconstitutional. Surely the authors of the piece know they have a losing position. And consequently they’re moving into the court of public opinion.

One more point: At the end of the case, when the State loses, the Plaintiffs will be entitled to have the State pay their attorneys’ fees (aka “your tax dollars”) under the applicable statute. And you can just bet that the authors here are going to squawk about that. But that’s the financial consequence of the the State and their attorneys making transparently frivolous arguments about dance steps.

At that point, the Plaintiffs, including the Reverend Jones, will be entitled to not only attorneys’ fees but our thanks as well.

There’s lots of interest out there in this story.

Update: There are comments on this entry on McCandless as well as this other entry.