Monthly Archives: March 2015

Op-Eds

Dog-Whistle Bites Man: Mike Pence and “Religious Freedom”

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RGBStock Pack of Hounds

Wikipedia defines dog-whistle politics as “political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup.” It’s a time-honored tactic used by politicians of all persuasions. But, as Indiana governor Mike Pence learned on March 29 under intense questioning by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, sometimes it calls out unintended dogs.

Pence stammered and prevaricated, refusing to answer Stephanopoulos’s simple, pointed, yes-or-no question: Does Indiana’s new “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” protect business owners who claim religious motivations for refusing service to LGBT customers?

Pence’s difficulties stem from the law’s dog-whistle purpose. That purpose isn’t to protect religious freedom, either in general or with respect to a purported obligation of businesses to not discriminate. It’s to signal “Christian” (dog-whistle for “anti-gay evangelical”) voters, donors and interest groups that Republicans are on their side.

Prior to last week, Pence generated continuous, if minor, buzz as a dark horse prospect for the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential nomination. If he did indeed aspire to that crown, his klutzy defense of the new law almost certainly put it beyond his reach.

Even the ugly truth — that conservatives think the anti-gay vote is still a major electoral factor which might put Republicans over the top in 2016 — would have served Pence better than his live-on-national-TV meltdown.

Better yet, at least in terms of supporting American values of individual freedom, he might have laid down the libertarian line that business owners should be free to serve, or to not serve, anyone they please for any reason. That might have cost him votes, but it would at least have possessed the virtue of being right.

Personally I find it refreshing when a politician blows the dog-whistle and finds himself (or herself) surrounded by snarling pit bulls instead of the cuddly, eager-to-please puppies he expected.

I’d love to hear the baying of bloodhounds any time a progressive appeals for “access to” (dog-whistle for “I’ll make someone else buy it for you”) contraception, abortion, health care or housing.

When a bought and paid for politician calls for increases in “defense spending” (dog-whistle for “more corporate welfare for Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon”), I long for the appearance of a veritable pack of rabid wolves.

I’ve heard it said that the truth will set us free. I have my doubts. But it’s preferable to dog-whistle politics.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

 

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

Mandatory Voting vs. Consent of the Governed

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Diagram of US Federal Government and American ...
Diagram of US Federal Government and American Union. Published: 1862, July 15. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At a Cleveland town hall event in mid-March, president Barack Obama mulled the possibility of legally requiring Americans to vote, noting the existence of such laws in other countries like Australia. “It would be transformative if everybody voted,” he said. “That would counteract money more than anything. If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map of this country.”

It’s easy to understand Obama’s sensitivity on the subject of non-voting. He won re-election in 2012 with a popular vote of just barely one in five Americans — a hair over 50% of votes cast by a little more than 40% of the population. Not much of a mandate, is it? Nearly six in ten Americans either chose not to vote or weren’t allowed to vote (children, convicted felons in some states, etc.).

Obama’s estimate of Americans’ intelligence is noteworthy as well. When he says that mandatory voting would “counteract money,” what he presumably means is that Democrats would win more elections if they could force people who don’t pay attention to the debate — the campaign commercials, campaign brochures and campaign events that money buys — to vote. To re-write the Statue of Liberty’s famous line, “give me your ignorant, your uninformed, your apathetic …” I don’t know if he’s right about that, but doesn’t it seem a bit unflattering to Democrats and to their prospective new constituents?

Mandatory voting sticks in libertarian craws for obvious reasons, one of which Sheldon Richman notes in a March 25 column on the subject: A “right” to vote implies a right to NOT vote. Voting might be a “right,” or it might be a “duty,” but it can’t be both.

Mandatory voting also flies in the face of the alleged basis of American government’s legitimacy, per the Declaration of Independence:  “Consent of the governed.” Compelled voting smacks of “you must consent whether you want to or not.” Which, of course, is not really “consent” at all.

Over the last half-century, voting in American elections has become easier and easier. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited racial discrimination in registration and voting.  The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (“Motor Voter”) made registration easy and convenient, available at any government office. Many states have loosened their absentee voting rules and some are moving to “vote by mail” systems eliminating the need to schlep down to a physical polling place and wait in line.

Yet only 37% of eligible voters cast ballots in the 2014 mid-terms.

Maybe the majority of Americans who don’t vote are trying to tell Obama and his fellow politicians something. Polling by Rasmussen says that fewer than 20% of Americans believe the federal government enjoys that “consent of the governed” I mentioned earlier.

Maybe it’s time to proceed to the next step the Declaration mentions and “alter or abolish” the federal government for lack of consent to its existence and actions.

Maybe it’s time to do things differently.

Maybe that’s what “mandatory voting” advocates are so afraid of.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

Florida Senate: Wrong on Cuba

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RGBStock Havana

On March 24, Florida’s State Senate voted 39-1 to condemn recent moves by president Barack Obama toward normalizing US relations with Cuba.

There’s no nice way to put this: Those 39 state senators voted in favor of maintaining the Castro regime in perpetuity. They voted against freedom for 11 million Cubans. Incidentally, they also voted against the economic interests of all Floridians and against reunification for Florida’s families of Cuban descent.

Freedom is a virus. Wherever free people go, they spread the desire for freedom to those less free than themselves. That desire is infectious. It’s also deadly to authoritarian regimes.

For 55 years, the US government has quarantined Cuba via embargo. That quarantine didn’t prevent the spread of authoritarianism from Cuba to other parts of the world (see, for example, Nicaragua and Venezuela). It just prevented the spread freedom to Cuba.

We’ve seen this effect, and its opposite, elsewhere. The obvious pairing to demonstrate the claim is China versus North Korea. China has become progressively more free over the decades in which it has enjoyed normalized relations with the US. Not completely free by any stretch of the imagination, but much freer. North Korea, under sanction and embargo, remains an utterly totalitarian state.

In Cuba, the embargo’s beneficiaries are the Castros and their henchmen.

In America, the embargo’s beneficiaries are moneyed interests who don’t want to compete with Cuban sugar, cigars or tourist destinations, as well as generations of “anti-Castro” Cuban emigre politicos who procure donations and US government grants to think about and talk about overthrowing the Castro regime … with no prospect of ever actually doing so, and no desire to see it done unless the transition puts them, and only them, in power in Cuba.

In Cuba and in America, everyone else is a victim, not a beneficiary, of the embargo.

It’s time for Cuban students to start attending America’s universities and for Cuban farmers to start selling their goods in America’s markets.

It’s time for American tourists to start visiting Cuba’s beaches and for American engineers to start improving Cuba’s infrastructure.

It’s time for Florida and Cuba alike to gain the advantages of new nearby trade partners (Tampa is closer to Havana than it is to Atlanta).

It’s time to end the quarantine and spread the freedom virus.

If Florida’s politicians won’t lead on this issue, they should at least get out of the way.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.