Over the past three months, someone close to me had to go to the hospital and it was a hectic time. During the interval, I had time to reflect on our relationship and I appreciate the many talks we used to have on life and politics. He is a bit more conservative than I am, so we tend to argue about the merits of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. But he has always had a respect for differences of opinion, and he’s always respected my right to think for myself. It’s something that I cherish and try to live up to in my own life.
These past few years I haven’t had many of those respectful type conversations with conservatives. They’ve tended to be two monologues running past each other, rather than dialogues where there is an exchange of ideas. During my teen years and into my twenties, I used to have conservative friends whom I used to be able to have conversations about politics where there was still a respect for the other person. That changed sometime in the mid to late 1990s. I’m not sure what happened. The type of conservative people that I met during the later 1990s tended to be less tolerant of differences of opinion than the one I met as a younger man. From their point of view, anyone who was liberal was anti-Christian or unAmerican and there was no way any opinions that I would try to express would be respected or taken seriously.
These past few years, I’ve gotten into some exasperating conflicts. I’m not really sure why some people think it’s o.k. to harass individuals who have opposing opinions and to try to intimidate individuals to make them afraid of exercising their freedom of speech. As Americans, we all have the right to express our own political opinions. I think that’s why I’m bothered so much by the political climate of today, where hyper partisanship rules and the Tea Party are pushing for uncompromising conservative politicians in the Republican Party. The gridlock and bad blood in Congress between conservative Republicans and the Democrats is bad in the long run for this country. I don’t think being a conservative Republican is bad. But I do think the intolerance of different opinions that I see on the Far Right is a very bad thing.
Though I criticize conservatives for this, I do not think they alone are guilty of this. I think this tendency is just one of the flaws of human nature. During the 1960s, radical leftist students would often shout down speakers who held different points of view. I think anytime a group sees things in black and white terms and thinks their way is the only way to do things, then that group will inevitably feel the need to impose their beliefs on everyone else. In history, you see this tendency manifest itself with Robespierre and the Reign of Terror, with Torquemada and the Inquisition, with McCarthy and the Red Scare of the 1950s, with Mao’s Cultural Revolution and with Stalin’s purges. It’s the danger of groupthink. I had an experience of groupthink in the 1990s when I attended an evangelical church.
The reason that the freedom of speech is important is that no one person is omniscient. It’s important to have a diversity of opinions in the market of ideas so that these ideas can be argued over and the strengths and weaknesses of these ideas can be tested. That’s why democracies, messy as they are, are ultimately stronger than dictatorships. We’re all human. I’ve met conservatives who are real jerks. But I’ve also met conservatives who are really kind and thoughtful individuals. Most liberals I know are nice. But I’ve met my share of liberals who aren’t so nice and are rather mean. Experience has taught me that there are certain people whom it is safe to be friends with and to have honest exchanges of opinions. And there are certain people that it is better to avoid.
For a democracy to function well, there should be some respect for a diversity of opinions. People can disagree and still be friends. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were close friends even though Jefferson was an ardent Republican and Adams was a strong Federalist. Conservative Ronald Reagan and liberal Tip O’Neil were friends in the 1980s. Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda were best friends even though Stewart was a conservative Republican and Fonda was a New Deal liberal. Conservative Orrin Hatch and liberal Ted Kennedy were closer friends who collaborated on many bills that really helped America. I end this blog with a quote from Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address:
During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety.
But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
A youtube video of Gabrielle Giffords returning to the House for a vote
A youtube video of the friendship of Republican Orrin Hatch and Democrat Ted Kennedy
A youtube video of the friendship of Republican George H.W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton
A youtube video of a scene from the HBO series “John Adams” about the friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams
If you enjoy this cartoon, take a look at these links for more of my political cartoons at Everyday Citizen. You could also join my Jasper the Cat facebook page.
Last year, while I was the political cartoonist for the Tri-City Voice, a controversy erupted in New York City over a proposed mosque that was to be built near the sight of the former World Trade Centers. The wave of Islamophobia led me to do research on the subject of prejudice against Muslim Americans. My research led me to contact Zahra Billoo, a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR for short. CAIR is America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization that strives to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding. I learned a lot from Zahra about many issues that the Muslim American community are facing and it inspired a few of my cartoons last year.
Thank you, Zahra, for taking part in this interview. Tell me a little about the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Does it focus on street protest, or more on lobbying legislators to pass anti-discrimination laws? What are some recent activities that this group is doing right now?
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is the nation’s largest American Muslim civil rights advocacy organization. Simply put, our mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, empower American Muslims and promote justice. Two core components of our work are providing direct legal services to help victims of discrimination, harassment and targeting and employing civic engagement as a tool to amplify the community’s voice.
I’m writing today from Sacramento where we are hosting the first-ever California Muslim Day at the Capitol. Several dozen American Muslims from across the state have converged here to speak with their local elected officials.
How did you become active in CAIR? Were there any heroes or books that had an influence on you?
I first got involved with CAIR when I interned at the Los Angeles office in 2004. Civil rights violations were on the rise in the early years post-9/11 and I was attracted to the cutting edge work CAIR was doing to protect liberties and defend the Constitution.
One of the five pillars of Islam is Zakat, which is charitable giving to the needy. So a strong sense of social justice is built into the Islamic faith. Would you explain to the readers of Everyday Citizen about Zakat? What are some ways in which Muslim Americans are fighting for social and economic justice?
Zakat is often translated to alms giving, or charity. Muslims are required to give 2.5% of their annual savings to charity. This money is used to help those who are less fortunate. Muslims believe that by doing this they cleanse their own wealth and fulfill their obligation of care for each other, as such bettering society.
Just as Christians often struggle with stereotypes due to fundamentalists groups like the Westboro Baptist Church, Muslims in America have to overcome the stereotypes brought on by the actions of radical Muslims that we hear on television. What are some ways that the Muslim American community have fought against radical elements and against terrorism?
9/11 was a turning point for the American Muslim community, one that really shook many into civic engagement. People started to realize that they needed to do education around who they were and what they believed, very quickly. Many began to host open house events both in their own homes and mosques, to open their doors and answer any questions their fellow Americans may have. Additionally, American Muslims are looking inward to ensure there are no violent elements within the community and that people are not misinterpreting the faith.
A few months ago, a controversy erupted when Lowe’s was pressured by conservative groups to withdraw its ads from the television show “All American Muslim”. This show attempted to show the diversity of the Muslim American community. How did CAIR react to the controversy? What effect do you think “All-American Muslim” had in showing a different view of American Muslims to the wider American public?
CAIR reacted to the controversy by urging people to exercise their First Amendment rights. Just as anti-Muslim activists have the right to rally opposition to shows like “All-American Muslim”, so then do social justice activists have the right to support the show and challenge the companies that caved to hate and pulled their advertisements.
I imagine the show overall had a positive impact on the view of American Muslims by the wider American public. Over 50% of Americans have never met a Muslim, television shows have the capacity to reach communities and homes that we may never make it to. Simply demonstrating, through the show, that American Muslims are ordinary people with ordinary lives and ordinary problems goes a long way. I visited a small town in Arkansas earlier this year and was amazed at the number of people who wanted to talk about the show. It was really telling about the way people can connect over very human, non-political issues.
In the CAIR website, I read about CAIR’s efforts to repeal sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Would you tell us about sections 1021 and 1022 and what the Everyday readers can do to help repeal these sections of the NDAA?
Sections 1021 and 1022 essentially authorize the government to indefinitely detain anybody suspected of terrorism or being connected to terrorism. This is incredibly frightening because it essentially codifies the authority to do what the government did in WWII when it detained thousands of Japanese Americans. Additionally, the terminology is so vague and sweeping. Consider that this applies to both citizens and non-citizens. Further, suspected indicates a pre-conviction detention. Lastly, terrorism is an incredibly political word. Some days it’s Japanese Americans, other days it’s Communists. It throws out entirely any hope for due process and puts into law some of the very frightening civil rights abuses we have already seen carried out by the Bush and Obama administrations.
CAIR is involved in efforts to pressure the government to reform our current immigration laws. They are especially focused on changing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement practices so they focus more on dangerous criminals and not on law abiding immigrants. How does this affect the American Muslim community?
The American Muslim community, like many others, is incredibly diverse even as it relates to immigration status. Some American Muslims are descendants of the slaves, others have been here for decades and are citizens, some were born here and others are undocumented. Immigration laws that marginalize undocumented individuals impact everybody. They are both a waste of tax dollars and undermine the capacity of community members to trust that law enforcement will help them when needed.
What advice would you give to a person who wants to learn more about their Muslim American neighbors?
I would advise them to reach out to their neighbors, invite them over for dinner or tea.
Here are more interviews that I did for Everyday Citizen
A youtube video of the CAIR Weekly News Update June 15, 2012
A youtube video of Zahra Billoo, CAIR-Northern California Executive Director, talking about the erosion of civil liberties due to the war on terror
A youtube video of the 1st annual “Muslim Day at the Capitol” in Sacramento, sponsored by CAIR
A youtube video of Affad Shaikh from CAIR-Greater Los Angeles Area and Kathy Masaoka, the co-chair of Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, discussing the Community Bridging Program (CBP) with Tony Valdez on Fox11
A youtube video of Rabbi Arthur Waskow being interviewed at the Annual CAIR-PA banquet, where he was a recipient of a Human Rights Award
A youtube video of CAIR Tampa director Ahmed Bedier speaking at the Tampa Dr. Martin Luther King, JR Interfaith Memorial Service
A youtube video of the The CAIR-Chicago Internship Program to train activists
On June 16, 2012, Peter Herbert wrote a great blog about the logic of Barack Obama’s recent decision to grant extended, renewable visas to illegal immigrants who came here with their parents as children, so that they can stay in school, on the job, or in the military. Immigration reform is an important issue, as it affects millions of lives and affects many businesses that rely on the labor of these people. On March 10, 2012 the group Campaign For An America Dream sponsored a walk of activists that started in San Francisco and hopes to travel 3,000 miles across the U.S. to promote the Dream Act and immigration reform. They’ve inspired a lot of conversation about the subject and have influenced many people whom they have contacted to consider the merits of a fair immigration reform. President Obama’s recent decision to stop the deportation of young illegal immigrants was partially influenced by the actions of activists like these Dream walkers, as well as a civil disobedience campaign of sit-ins and hunger strikes by Dream activists at Obama campaign offices in more than a dozen cities.
The protests at the Obama campaign offices started on June 5 in Denver, Colorado. Participants in the Dream Walk, as well as members of Colorado, Organize, Resist, and Escalate (COORE) will delivered a letter to the Obama Campaign office in Denver, then staged a “Coming out of the Shadows” rally. In addition, Veronica Gomez and Javier Hernandez, undocumented immigrant activists with the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, had staged a six-day hunger strike inside the Obama for America offices in Denver.
In recent weeks, the White House faced intense pressure from some of its closest allies — their voices often raised in frustration — to provide some relief for immigrant communities. The urging came from Harry Reid of Nevada and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top two Democrats in the Senate, and the Hispanic caucus in the House of Representatives, as well as Latino and immigrant leaders across the country.
Bleak figures reported early this month by the Department of Homeland Security showed that a yearlong program designed to shift enforcement away from illegal immigrants who pose no security risk was not producing results, with only about 500 young students nationwide spared from deportation.
And last week, students without immigration papers started a campaign of sit-ins and hunger strikes at Obama campaign offices in more than a dozen cities, saying that despite his promises, the president was continuing to deport immigrants like them.
After three years of record deportation numbers and cautious moves on other immigration policies, Mr. Obama finally used his executive authority in a sweeping way that surprised even his supporters, ending deportations for at least 800,000 immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally when they were children.
Whoever is President, the crucial factor for change will be how much agitation there is in the country on behalf of change. I am guessing that Obama may be more sensitive than McCain to such turmoil, since it will come from his supporters, from the enthusiasts who will register their disillusionment by taking to the streets. Franklin D. Roosevelt was not a radical, but he was more sensitive to the economic crisis in the country and more susceptible to pressure from the Left than was Herbert Hoover…
…So, yes, I will vote for Obama, because the corrupt political system offers me no choice, but only for the moment I pull down the lever in the voting booth.
Before and after that moment I want to use whatever energy I have to push him toward a recognition that he must defy the traditional thinkers and corporate interests surrounding him, and pay homage to the millions of Americans who want real change.
A youtube video of Veronica Gomez and Javier Hernandez on a hunger strike urging President Obama to stop deporting immigrant youth
A youtube video of a Campaign for an American DREAM and Salt Lake City DREAM Team rally at the State Capitol of Utah on May 10th, 2012
A youtube video of the Dream Walk
A youtube video of a Dream Act rally at the New York State Capitol on March 15, 2012
A youtube video of a Dream Act protest in Arizona during the GOP Presidential debate
A youtube video of President Obama announcing a new Department of Homeland Security policy that will allow certain young people who were brought to the United States as young children, do not present a risk to national security or public safety, and meet several key criteria to be considered for relief from removal from the country or from entering into removal proceedings
In the next week or so, the Supreme Court will be ruling on whether parts or all of Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, specifically the mandate on making people buy health insurance, is constitutional or not. This will have a major affect on the President’s prestige and political agenda, as this health care reform law is the President’s major achievement on domestic affairs. This is not the first time, however, that the President and the Supreme Court has clashed. James F. Simon, a Martin Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at New York Law School, has written three books about different times in history where the Executive Office and the Supreme Court have had clashes over the limits of the federal government. His three books, What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States, Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President’s War Powers, and FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The President, the Supreme Court, and the Epic Battle Over the New Deal describe three periods in which a strong President and an equally strong Chief Justice clashed over the limits of the Presidency and the Supreme Court. I’m reading FDR and Chief Justice Hughes right now, and hope to read the other books soon.
What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States describes the struggle between President Thomas Jefferson and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall over the constitutional relationship between the executive and judicial branches of government. Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States and he was a Republican who strongly believed in the power of state governments as a checks and balance to the power of federal government. John Marshall was a strong federalist who served as Chief Justice from 1801 to 1835. In Supreme Court decisions like Marbury vs. Madison, Fletcher vs. Peck, McCulloch vs. Maryland and Cohens vs. Virginia, Marshall enforced the Supreme Court’s right of judicial review, gave the Supreme Court the right to strike down state laws as unconstitutional, and affirmed federal supremacy over the states. Though Jefferson and Marshall were first cousins, their philosophical difference led to bitter conflicts over the meaning of the constitution. Joseph Ellis, an eminent historian, wrote in a review of the book for the New York Times Book Review
Simon hits his stride once Jefferson ascends to the presidency, in 1801, and Marshall, the mightiest of the ”midnight judges” appointed by the lame-duck President Adams, begins his long career as chief justice of the United States. The discussion of the landmark decision Marbury v. Madison, which established the principle of judicial review, shows Marshall as the master of what Jefferson called ”twistifications,” meaning arguments that circle back to do their greatest damage to Jefferson’s cause while claiming to defend it. The chapter on the impeachment trial of Justice Samuel Chase, another defeat for Jefferson, is a model of narrative history written by someone who knows the law. (The Chase trial became an important precedent during the Clinton impeachment trial because of the lofty standard it set for ”high crimes and misdemeanors.”) The tour de force is Simon’s chapter on the treason trial of Aaron Burr, the best brief version I have read. Hollywood could have a field day with this story, which features a supremely confident, if thoroughly conspiratorial, Burr; an obsessed Jefferson, hellbent on sending Burr to the gallows; and a laconic, slightly mischievous Marshall, determined to deny Jefferson the prize. Marshall’s ”not guilty” decision not only freed Burr, it also made treason difficult to use as a political weapon. And it established clear limits on executive privilege that eventually came back to haunt Richard Nixon during Watergate.
Marshall, in effect, won every major battle, chiefly because his more expansive view of the Constitution as a binding contract among the American people had the future on its side, a destiny clinched by the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War…
Abraham Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition (i.e., ”We hold these truths . . .”), and Jefferson wrote it. More accurately, it was founded on an argument about what that proposition means. You could also say it was founded on an argument between 1776 and 1787 as the seminal moments of the American republic. Or you could say that it was founded on a disagreement over whether the term ”United States” was a singular or plural noun. The beauty of the dialogue between Jefferson and Marshall is that it contained all these renditions. The chief virtue of ”What Kind of Nation,” no small achievement, is to recover that dialogue in all its messy grandeur.
Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President’s War Powers examines the clash between President Abraham Lincoln and Chief Justice Roger Taney over the powers that were bestowed to the President by the war powers in the Constitution. Both men strongly hated slavery, but Lincoln had a more expansive view of the powers of the federal government while Taney strongly emphasized its limits and the powers of the states. Though Taney opposed slavery and eventually freed his own slaves, he also believed that the Constitution gave the federal government no power to restrict the spread of slavery and this led to the infamous Dred Scott vs. Sanford decision of 1851. Lincoln believed that the Constitition gave the Presidency and the federal government implied powers in extraordinary times like the Civil War. In his inaugural address, Lincoln said:
But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say.
Taney, a devout Catholic Marylander who saw slavery as evil, had a gift for making compelling legal arguments. He helped Andrew Jackson attack the Bank of the United States on constitutional grounds, only to be turned down by an angry Senate for the post of Treasury secretary. But the Democrats won the Senate and Marshall died, enabling Taney to be confirmed as the new chief justice. The tide seemed to have turned against judicial supremacy and the national government.
Taney shocked and delighted his critics by refusing to lead a judicial revolution against Marshall’s nationalism. By the 1850s he was revered as a non partisan defender of the Constitution. That very reverence for the process of constitutional adjudication set the aging jurist on his collision course with Lincoln. Simon artfully paints Lincoln as a young lawyer from Illinois looking for a good case. Brilliant and passionate when he believed in his clients, Lincoln represented a Kentucky slaveholder who liked to bring his slaves back and forth from his farms on both sides of the Ohio River, until several ran away. He lost the case. As a congressman, Lincoln vainly demanded that the pro- war and proslavery Polk administration name the exact spot where Mexican forces had supposedly crossed the Rio Grande and attacked — earning himself the nickname “Spotty.” Only in 1854, with the Kansas-Nebraska crisis, did Lincoln find a fight worthy of his gift for conceding every point but the crucial one. He began to argue that slavery in the new territories went against the intentions of the Founding Fathers and could be legally excluded.
Taney argued nearly the opposite: The founders had made slavery the law of the land and its regulation a state matter. Had he been a pure states-righter or a party hack, though, he would not have wanted the Supreme Court to even hear a fugitive slave case like Dred Scott. Precisely because he wanted to preserve the Union as he saw it, Taney tortured the historical evidence in his famous declaration that blacks could never be citizens and had no rights. But Simon does not stop there. He follows the story into the Civil War, when Lincoln magnified the war powers of the presidency to save the Union and the Constitution from those he saw as its enemies. Taney, ailing and impoverished, stayed on the bench and vainly tried to save the states, and his Maryland friends, from the long arm of Lincoln’s law. War, he argued, does not change the constitutional limits of the federal government. In 1864, Lincoln went to his funeral — and a few weeks later appointed his Treasury secretary, the abolitionist Salmon P. Chase, to Taney’s seat on the court.
FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The President, the Supreme Court, and the Epic Battle Over the New Deal describes the fight between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes over the constitutionality of the New Deal programs and Roosevelt’s subsequent attempt to pack the Supreme Court. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were bringing relief to people suffering through a fifth year of the Great Depression, when the Supreme Court began to rule various statutes of the New Deal unconstitutional. In frustration, Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court with justices more amenable to his political programs. In the prologue, James Simon wrote three paragraphs that sum up the book and says why this history is still important:
In official Washington, only the U.S. Supreme Court appeared immune to FDR’s spirit. The Hughes Court was anchored by four ideological conservatives intractably opposed to Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Court’s liberal wing was led by Justice Louis Brandeis, supported by Associate Justices Benjamin Cardozo and Harlan Fiske Stone.
Chief Justice Hughes and his fellow Hoover appointee, Associate Justice Owen Roberts, held the balance of judicial power throughout the critical constitutional battles over New Deal legislation. By force of his commanding intellect and exemplary public service, Hughes was expected to lead the court. But in which direction? He sometimes appeared to split the differences between the two warring factions, writing eloquent majority opinions protecting civil liberties but frequently joining the Court’s conservatives in striking down New Deal statutes.
Roosevelt publicly derided the Court’s anti-New Deal decisions as relics of a bygone “horse and buggy” era. His criticisms did nothing to deter a Court majority that continued to declare one New Deal statute after another unconstitutional. Not even his triumphant landslide re-election appeared to influence the justices. Finally, in frustration and anger in early 1937, the president proposed a so-called reform plan that would allow him to appoint one new judge for every sitting justice seventy years of age or older. Because six justices were over seventy, including Hughes, the plan would have permitted FDR to stack the Court with new appointees favorable to the New Deal. His radical proposal raised two unsettling constitutional questions: Should a president be able to mold a Court to meet his political goals? And should ideologically driven justices be allowed to frustrate the popular will? Both questions are as relevant in the twenty-first century as they were in the Great Depression.
The questions that Simon asks in the last paragraph are relevant in light of the tensions between the Obama administration and the Roberts Supreme Court. The debate between liberals and progressives, who believe an activist federal government is necessary to help those suffering in this economic crisis, and fiscal conservatives and Tea Party members, who believe in a very limited federal intervention and have much more confidence in the free markets and local control, are echoing debates that Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Abraham Lincoln, Roger Taney, Franklin Roosevelt and Charles Evans Hughes had. The Tea Party are channeling the spirits of the Anti-Federalists, the Jeffersonian Republicans, the States Rights activists and the Barry Goldwater Republicans. Obama and the Democrats are in the spirit of the Federalists, the Radical Republicans of the Civil War era, and the New Dealers. This debate will never be resolved, and I think that’s a good thing for this country. As long as we respect the right of everyone’s freedom of speech, this debate will always invigorate our political discourse and inspire new activists, like the Tea Partiers, the Progressives, the Occupy Wall Street people, and many more in the future. One of the great things about the current book that I’m reading is though FDR and Hughes clashed with the New Deal and the court packing episode, it didn’t affect their friendship. They were able to respect the right of the other person to have a difference of opinion and they maintained great affection for each other. Simon would write:
Whatever enmity existed between Roosevelt and Hughes over the Court-packing plan had disappeared by 1939. Hughes denied that his relations with the president had ever been less than cordial. And Roosevelt, by the spring of 1939, had no reason to complain about the Chief Justice. The Supreme Court was no longer an obstacle to his legislative ambitions, which was more than he could say for rebellious conservative Democrats in Congress.
The friendly relations between Roosevelt and Hughes were vividly illustrated in June 1939, when the president prepared to welcome King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to Washington. Roosevelt had issued the invitation to the king in September 1938, at the height of the Munich crisis, as a goodwill gesture to solidify relations between the two nations. The president planned every detail of the royal couple’s visit, from the parade to the White House to the weekend menu at Hyde Park, which included hot dogs on the lawn. Chief Justice and Mrs. Hughes were invited to the state dinner, but Hughes, who was undergoing two days of medical tests, had to decline. Roosevelt personally called Antoinette Hughes to express his regrets that her husband could not attend. He urged her to attend the dinner without the Chief Justice and promised to seat her next to the king, if she did. She attended the dinner, and the president kept his promise.
A vimeo video of James F. Simon talking about Thomas Jefferson and James Marshall
Election times are here again and Obama is going through the same criticisms that all past Presidents face during an election year. If a Democrat is President, the Republicans accuse him of being a bleeding heart socialist who’s out to destroy the American family and raise taxes unreasonably. If a Republican is President, then Democrats accuse him of being a heartless corporate shill who is in the back pocket of CEOs and is a crazy Christian fanatic. As I’m to the left of the political spectrum, I’m biased towards that direction, but I realize that Democrats and Republican Presidents tend to be more complicated than that. In the 2008 elections, I was originally a Hillary supporter, but I’ve grown to like Obama personally. Obama is not as great as his supporters say he is, but he’s not the worst President in our history, as his conservative critics say he is. He’s a decent president, who has accomplished a lot more than we realize.
I read a historian write that you can’t really judge a President until 20 years after his Presidency is over, and the full implications of his policies are played out. I like Obama, but I have a hard time judging him. I generally like the direction of his policies, although I have disagreements with his immigration policies and other issues. It’s hard for me to really judge him just because the Republican opposition has been so vehement. Past Democratic Presidents could always find common ground with moderate and conservative Republicans on some issues to get things accomplished. There really isn’t any common ground between Obama and the conservative Republicans that make up today’s Congress. I don’t really blame Obama for this. Over the past few years, the Republican Party has gotten more uniformly conservative, and these conservative partisans have done what they can to push out the more moderate Republicans from having any influence. More mainstream conservatives like Senator Bennett and Senator Lugar lost elections to Tea Party conservatives who are much less likely to compromise. So the collaborations between Democrats and Republicans on major legislation, like Senator Lugar working with Senator Kennedy on the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 or Lugar’s collaboration with Senator Nunn on the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program of 1992, Senator Hatch’s famous collaborations with Senator Kennedy on the The Ryan White Aids Act, The State Children’s Health Insurance Program, The Americans with Disabilities Act, and various other legislation, are now less likely. It made me realize how important moderate Republicans really are to the political process.
Many conservative critics say that Obama is our worst President, but I don’t think Obama is a bad President at all. In my lifetime, the worst Presidents are probably Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. Both Presidents had some substantial achievements: Nixon opened up relations with China, pursued detente with the Soviet Union, and had some domestic programs that were surprisingly liberal; while Carter negotiated the Camp David Peace Treaty and had an energy conservation program that was decades ahead of its time. Both men though had deeply flawed presidencies that outweighed their good points.
Nixon overreacted to the Pentagon Papers and his enemies list, his use of the government to break into the psychiatric files of Daniel Ellsberg, the stonewalling of the Watergate investigation, his firing of his cabinet after his reelection, all point to a person who abused power and was a threat to the Constitution.
Carter was a good man who was way over his head when he was President. He had Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House, yet he kept his distance from the Democratic legislators that he needed to pass his programs, and as the writings of Tip O Neil, Walter Mondale and Ted Kennedy attest, Carter often baffled the people in his own party. Since Carter didn’t take the time to build up relations with these legislators, there was no sense of loyalty to Carter’s more moderate policy proposals among the liberals in the party and the liberals turned to Ted Kennedy during the 1980 Democratic primaries. A President with better political skills, like FDR, wouldn’t have let that happen.
I don’t think Obama is on the level of a Franklin Roosevelt or an Abraham Lincoln, but I do think he’s a decent President. In researching this blog, I found two articles that do a good job of articulating Obama’s achievements.
Measured in sheer legislative tonnage, what Obama got done in his first two years is stunning. Health care reform. The takeover and turnaround of the auto industry. The biggest economic stimulus in history. Sweeping new regulations of Wall Street. A tough new set of consumer protections on the credit card industry. A vast expansion of national service. Net neutrality. The greatest increase in wilderness protection in fifteen years. A revolutionary reform to student aid. Signing the New START treaty with Russia. The ending of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Even over the past year, when he was bogged down in budget fights with the Tea Party-controlled GOP House, Obama still managed to squeeze out a few domestic policy victories, including a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction deal and the most sweeping overhaul of food safety laws in more than seventy years. More impressively, on the foreign policy front he ended the war in Iraq, began the drawdown in Afghanistan, helped to oust Gaddafi in Libya and usher out Mubarak in Egypt, orchestrated new military and commercial alliances as a hedge against China, and tightened sanctions against Iran over its nukes.
Oh, and he shifted counterterrorism strategies to target Osama bin Laden and then ordered the risky raid that killed him.
That Obama has done all this while also steering the country out of what might have been a second Great Depression would seem to have made him already, just three years into his first term, a serious candidate for greatness.
And yet a solid majority of Americans nevertheless thinks the president has not accomplished much. Why? There are plenty of possible explanations. The most obvious is the economy. People are measuring Obama’s actions against the actual conditions of their lives and livelihoods, which, over the past three years, have not gotten materially better. He failed miserably at his grandiose promise to change the culture of Washington. His highest-profile legislative accomplishments were object lessons in the ugly side of compromise. In negotiations, he came off to Democrats as naïvely trusting, and to Republicans as obstinately partisan, leaving the impression that he could have achieved more if only he had been less conciliatory—or more so, depending on your point of view. And for such an obviously gifted orator, he has been surprisingly inept at explaining to average Americans what he’s fighting for or trumpeting what he’s achieved.
In short, when judging Obama’s record so far, conservatives measure him against their fears, liberals against their hopes, and the rest of us against our pocketbooks. But if you measure Obama against other presidents—arguably the more relevant yardstick—a couple of things come to light. Speaking again in terms of sheer tonnage, Obama has gotten more done than any president since LBJ.
Tim Dickinson wrote an article for Rolling Stone called The Case For Obama where he wrote:
Less than halfway through his first term, Obama has compiled a remarkable track record. As president, he has rewritten America’s social contract to make health care accessible for all citizens. He has brought 100,000 troops home from war and forged a once-unthinkable consensus around the endgame for the Bush administration’s $3 trillion blunder in Iraq. He has secured sweeping financial reforms that elevate the rights of consumers over Wall Street bankers and give regulators powerful new tools to prevent another collapse. And most important of all, he has achieved all of this while moving boldly to ward off another Great Depression and put the country back on a halting path to recovery.
Along the way, Obama delivered record tax cuts to the middle class and slashed nearly $200 billion in corporate welfare — reinvesting that money to make college more accessible and Medicare more solvent. He single-handedly prevented the collapse of the Big Three automakers — saving more than 1 million jobs — and brought Big Tobacco, at last, under the yoke of federal regulation. Even in the face of congressional intransigence on climate change, he has fought to constrain carbon pollution by executive fiat and to invest $200 billion in clean energy — an initiative bigger than John F. Kennedy’s moonshot and one that’s on track to double America’s capacity to generate renewable energy by the end of Obama’s first term.
On the social front, he has improved pay parity for women and hate-crime protections for gays and lesbians. He has brought a measure of sanity to the drug war, reducing the sentencing disparity for crack cocaine while granting states wide latitude to experiment with marijuana laws. And he has installed two young, female justices on the Supreme Court, creating what Brinkley calls “an Obama imprint on the court for generations.”
What’s even more impressive about Obama’s accomplishments, historians say, is the fractious political coalition he had to marshal to victory. “He didn’t have the majority that LBJ had,” says Goodwin. Indeed, Johnson could count on 68 Democratic senators to pass Medicare, Medicaid and the Voting Rights Act. For his part, Franklin Roosevelt had the backing of 69 Senate Democrats when he passed Social Security in 1935. At its zenith, Obama’s governing coalition in the Senate comprised 57 Democrats, a socialist, a Republican turncoat — and Joe Lieberman.
In his quest for progress, Obama has also had to maneuver against an unrelenting head wind from the “Party of No” and its billionaire backers. “Obama is harassed as well as opposed,” says Princeton historian Sean Wilentz. “The crazy Republican right is now unfettered. You’ve got a Senate with no adult leadership. And Obama’s up against Rupert Murdoch, Dick Armey, the Koch brothers and the rest of the professional right.” Compared to the opposition faced by the most transformative Democratic presidents, adds Wilentz, “it’s a wholly different scale.”
Despite such obstacles, Obama has succeeded in forging a progressive legacy that, anchored by health care reform, puts him “into the same conversation with FDR and LBJ,” says Brinkley, “though those two accomplished more.” Goodwin, herself a former Johnson aide, likens the thrust of Obama’s social agenda to LBJ’s historic package of measures known as the Great Society. “What is comparable,” she says, “is the idea of using government to expand social and economic justice. That’s what the health care bill is about. That’s what Obama tried to do with the financial reforms. That’s what he’s doing with education. The Great Society was about using the collective energies of the nation to make life better for more people — and that’s what Obama has tried to do.”
When this elections comes along, I’ll follow the advice that Howard Zinn gave to progressives in 2008. Zinn advised progressives to vote for Obama, but that after the elections, to stay active and work to move the public to issues that are important. Don’t rely on just Obama or Congress for progressive change. We have the responsibility to try to move the country towards fairer immigration laws, climate change legislation, gay marriage, controlling corporate power, combating economic inequality and helping the poor and suffering in our community. Howard Zinn wrote in the May 2009 issue of the Progressive Magazine
I say that to indicate that, yes, Obama was and is a politician. So we must not be swept away into an unthinking and unquestioning acceptance of what Obama does.
Our job is not to give him a blank check or simply be cheerleaders. It was good that we were cheerleaders while he was running for office, but it’s not good to be cheerleaders now. Because we want the country to go beyond where it has been in the past. We want to make a clean break from what it has been in the past…
…This is the position that the abolitionists were in before the Civil War, and people said, “Well, you have to look at it from Lincoln’s point of view.” Lincoln didn’t believe that his first priority was abolishing slavery. But the anti-slavery movement did, and the abolitionists said, “We’re not going to put ourselves in Lincoln’s position. We are going to express our own position, and we are going to express it so powerfully that Lincoln will have to listen to us.”
And the anti-slavery movement grew large enough and powerful enough that Lincoln had to listen. That’s how we got the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
That’s been the story of this country. Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it’s been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn’t just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that’s what we have to do today.
A youtube video of Barack Obama’s “The Road We’ve Traveled”
A youtube video of Barack Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
A youtube video of Barack Obama announcing the death of Bin Laden
A youtube video of Barack Obama signing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010
A youtube video of Barack Obama announcing the end of the combat mission in Iraq and discussing the future of the U.S. commitment to helping build a stable Iraq
A youtube video of Barack Obama signing into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — legislation to fight pay discrimination and ensure fundamental fairness to American workers
A youtube video of Barack Obama signing the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009
A youtube video of Barack Obama signing the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Act
A youtube video of Barack Obama talking about stabilizing the auto industry
A youtube video of Barack Obama signing the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act
A youtube video of Barack Obama nominating Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court
A youtuve video of Barack Obama nominating US Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court
This year the Boston Celtics have had an impressive run in the playoffs. Because of the age of their fabled Big Three players, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, the Celtics were not expected to go far in the playoffs. In the past several years, the Big Three has become the Big Four, with point guard Rajon Rondo emerging as one of the great point guards in Celtics history, having several clutch playoff performances in the past few years to lift the team on his shoulders. In the playoffs this year, the Celtics have gone all the way to the conference finals to take the Miami Heat to a seventh game. I’ve been a Celtics fan since the 1976 finals against the Phoenix Sun, when the Celtics had John Havliceck, Paul Silas, and Jo Jo White. My brothers and I are second generation Celtics fans, as my father was a fan way back in the 1960s, during those legendary Red Auerbach teams with Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Sam Jones, and Tommy Heinsohn. Being Celtic fans has always been an important thing in my family, as each decade has produced a new generation of great Celtics teams that win championships.
My dad became a Celtics fan in the 1960s, when Red Auerbach had teams that relied on Bill Russells defense and rebounding, and ran teams to the ground led by Bob Cousy’s fast breaks. When he was in the navy, he’d watch games in Madison Square Garden in New York, and he was able to watch the two great centers of the time, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. My dad though both players were great, but he always rated Russell as being a better player than Chamberlain. Chamberlain was a greater offensive player than Russell and could score almost at will. But he was not as good a team player as Russell was. Russell talents were geared towards making his teammates better players, and he was a deeply intelligent team player. As an example, my dad pointed out the different ways that Russell and Chamberlain blocked shots. When Chamberlain blocked a shot, he would dramaticly swat the shot out of bounds. This would create a lot of oohs and ahhs in the crowd, but the other team would still have possession of the ball. When Russell blocked a shot, he always tried to direct the blocked shot towards a teammate so that it would start a fast break. Russell didn’t care what the fans thought. He only cared about helping his team and winning the game.
Red Auerbach was a shrewd coach who knew how to develop a team and knew how to motivate his players. He was a character as a coach, yelling at the referees and doing what he could to be the center of attention. He had a habit of pulling out a cigar and puffing on it if he thought his team was going to win, which infuriated opposing teams. During his dynasty years as a coach, when he won 8 championships in a row, he built his team around Bill Russell’s shotblocking, rebounding and defensive talents. Bill Russell’s talents and the Boston system accentuated his teammates strengths and hid their weaknesses, and it created Hall of Fame players like Frank Ramsey, Bill Sharman, Sam Jones, K.C. Jones, Tom Sanders, Tommy Heinsohn, John Havliceck and Bob Cousy. Russell’s rebounds and outlet passes to Bob Cousy led to the first great fast break team in the NBA, as Cousy was one of the great fast break point guards of all time.
As a coach, Auerbach only had 7 basic plays that everyone in the league knew about. These 7 plays though had multiple options and the Celtics were a great passing team. Red Auerbach’s strength as a coach was his shrewd assessment of how to treat each players. With some players, he yelled at them and constantly goaded them, knowing that they needed to be pushed to reach their full potential. He knew though, that if he yelled at more sensitive players they’d go into a shell, so with those players he would encourage them and build up their confidence. In the wonderful Terry Pluto book Tall Tales: The Glory Years Of The NBA, he quotes Bob Cousy as saying:
Like a lot of us, Arnold was a gutter rat out of the ghetto. His strength was motivation. During a game, he was demonstrative and emotional, up and down on the bench, yelling, wearing your ass out. I’m sure that modern coaches would laugh at him because he didn’t use a big playbook, the videos, and everything else that teams have today. But he understood people, and that is crucial at the pro level.
In Tale Tales, Tom Heinsohn said:
Red was the ultimate sports management person. He had a way of listening to players and being honest with them. It wasn’t uncommon during a time-out for him to ask, “Anybody got anything?”
If we had an idea, we knew he really wanted to hear it. Sometimes he took our advice, and sometimes he didn’t. But he really listened.
In the dressing room, I sat between Cousy and Russell. If a lesser man were the coach, this could have been a difficult situation. The fans and press loved Cousy. He was great, he was flashy, and he was white.
Meanwhile, we had a great player in Russell, who was black, and the people in Boston didn’t understand what the hell he was doing. They thought basketball was scoring and they didn’t appreciate that Russell was the greatest defensive player who ever lived. Red became Russell’s John the Baptist. He spread the word about Russell to anyone who would listen, because he knew that Cousy’s publicity would take care of itself. In that way, he balanced the egos, and Russell also understood and appreciated what Red was doing.
Auerbach was able to create a team where everyone contributed through their own individual talents. Russell, K.C. Jones, and Tom Sanders were great defensive players. Cousy was the great passer. Tommy Heinsohn and Sam Jones were great shooters. Frank Ramsey and John Havlicek came off the bench and became the first great sixth men. He blended each of their individual talents for the benefit of the whole team. Rudy LaRusso of the Los Angeles Laker faced the Celtics in several championship games and said of the 1960s Celtics teams in Terry Pluto’s book:
We never had a center to compare with Russell, but we went to seven games with Boston in 1962 and 1966. I remember a couple of talks Schaus gave us in the playoffs that were along the lines of, “We know what Jerry and Elgin are going to do. They’ll have big nights. We can count on them. But we need it from the rest of you guys…”
Then I’d look at Auerbach and he was using 8-9 players and he built up the confidence in all those guys. We had a star system; they had a great team.
A youtube video of Bill Russell
A youtube video of Bob Cousy
I became a Celtics fan in 1976, when I caught the Boston-Phoenix championship series on television. That team was coached by Tommy Heinsohn in a fast break play with John Havlicek and Jo Jo White shooting the ball and Paul Silas and Dave Cowens ferociously rebounding the ball. I caught the Havlicek-Silas-Cowens team towards the end of their championship run, as they lost to the Dr. J Sixers team the next year and they began to lose in the late 1970s. My passion for the Celtics really got going with the coming of Larry Bird in 1979. Bird was, and is, my favorite basketball player. Bird was one of the great all-around players of all time. A good shooter, a superb passer and rebounder, Bird had the ability that Bill Russell had of making his teammates better players. Larry wasn’t a good one-on-one defensive player, but he played good team defense, cheating along the passing lanes to steal passes and dribbles. And he was probably one of the best clutch shooters of his generation. The only players of his generation as good in the clutch were Magic and Jordan.
With all of Bird’s talents, he wouldn’t have won a championship if Red Auerbach had not engineered a trade with the Golden State Warriors to get Robert Parish and Kevin McHale. Parish and McHale were great offensive and defensive players who helped Bird cover his one weakness: Bird’s weakness as a one-on-one defender. Parish and McHale provided the shotblocking and rebounding that anchored the Celtics defense of the 1980s championship teams. Peter May wrote in his book The Big Three about the basketball chemistry of Bird, Parish, and McHale:
On the court, they complemented each other at both ends. Bird and Parish worked an unstoppable pick-and-roll. Parish, who was rarely an option on offense and never complained about it, would set a pick while Bird figured out the rest. The pick-and-roll can work only if the man with the ball can shoot and pass, and Bird could do both. “No one could run a pick-and-roll like me and Robert,” Bird said…
Similarly, there was no way to defend McHale, who worked tirelessly on a litany of moves around the basket, a Luis Tiant in the post, always taking advantage of his unique frame, which seemed to be a combination of parts from a tall man’s store. he had the reach of someone three inches taller than he was, and at 6-11 he was already one of the bigger forwards in the league. He had the wingspan to stay off a player defensively and the ability to block a shot if challenged from anywhere. Offensively, he developed into an automatic basket by the mid-1980s if he had the ball in the post and wasn’t immediately double-teamed.
On defense, Bird would funnel his player into the middle, where Parish and McHale were waiting. Bird was never a solid individual defender, but he could play outstanding “help” defense, which more often than not violated the NBA’s rule on zone defenses. But he got away with it.
Surrounding the Big Three were some great players. The championship teams of the early 1980s had Tiny Archibald, Cedric Maxwell, Chris Ford, Rick Robey, M.L. Carr, and Gerald Henderson. My favorite Celtics team was the 1986 team with Bird, Parish, McHale, Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge in the starting five, and Bill Walton, Scott Wedman and Jerry Sichting coming off the bench. My family would go to mass at 9 a.m. and rush home after the service to watch NBA basketball on channel 5 with Tommy Heinsohn and Dick Stockton. My entire family were Celtics fans and we watched a lot of great games.
I loved the great rivalries that the Celtics had with other teams. In the early 1980s, the Celtics had a great rivalry with the Dr. J Sixers teams with Moses Malone, Maurice Cheeks, Andrew Toney and Bobby Jones. There were the great Celtics/Lakers rivalries with Magic, Kareem, Michael Cooper, and Byron Scott. My brothers and I hated the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons teams of Isaiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Vinnie Johnson, Rick Mahorn and Bill Lambeir. I remember playing basketball in the playgrounds with my brothers and our friends and we had several arguments about who was the better team and who was the better players. Until the mid 1980s, most of my friends were Sixers fans because of Dr. J. When the Sixers began to decline, people switched to being Michael Jordan fans. We lived in the Bay Area, Golden State Warriors territory, so I don’t remember anyone being a Lakers fan.
I remember a lot of great games and great series. I watched the famous 1988 playoff game where Bird and Dominique Wilkins got into a shootout in the fourth quarter of the seventh game of the Boston/Atlanta series. In that game, I remember McHale having a great game and Randy Wittman didn’t miss a shot. I remember Bird’s performance in 1984 where he just took over the game in the championship series versus the Lakers in Boston Garden. In the last game of the 1986 series versus the Houston Rockets, Bird just took over the game and I remember him going to the three point line to shoot a three pointer to stab a dagger into the hearts of the Rockets. There was the Greg Kite game in game 3 of the 1987 Celtics/Lakers championship series, where benchwarmer Greg Kite got 9 rebounds, played good defense against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and blocked a Magic Johnson shot.
One of my favorite games is actually a game where the Celtics lost. It was probably the last of the great Celtics/Sixers games. It was in the mid1980s. Dr. J and Charles Barkley both started out well. Near halftime, Danny Ainge and Sedealle Threate got into a fight. Towards the end of the game, Bird missed two free throws that would’ve won the game. Dr. J scored the last 8 points in the game, capped by a three pointer from a jump ball that won the game.
A youtube video of game 7 of the Celtics/Piston series of 1987
A youtube video of the Bird/Dominique shootout in game 7 of the Celtics/Hawks playoff of 1988
A youtube video of the 1986 Boston Celtics
A youtube video of Robert Parish talking about the Big Three of the 1980s and the Big Three of the 2000s
In the 1990s, the Celtics fell on hard times when the Big Three retired. The team was devasted by two tragic deaths that could’ve kept the winning ways going in the 1990s: the death of Len Bias in 1986 and the death of Reggie Lewis in 1993. The 1990s were tough times to be Celtics fans. My brothers eventually drifted off to follow Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls teams, but I stuck with the Celtics. They had some good players, like Dino Radja and Dee Brown, but the team no longer played with a championship calibre. There was a brief revival in the early 2000s with Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker, but the team couldn’t sustain its winning ways. The road to the championships were truly paved when Danny Ainge traded for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in 2007. The core of the team of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo have led the Celtics to championship, two NBA Finals appearances, three Eastern Conference Finals appearances and five Atlantic Division titles. Kevin Garnett anchored the defense with his intensity, strong rebounding and fierce leadership skills. Ray Allen provided clutch shooting and provided a memorable game 2 in the 2010 championships where he hit 8 three-pointers. Paul Pierce provided grit when he came back from an injury in the first game of the 2008 championships against the Lakers and scored 15 points in the third quarter, providing the leadership that made him the Most Valuable Player in the championship series. Rajon Rondo has developed into one of the greatest point guards in Celtics history, providing speed, good passing abilities, and the ability to take over games in the playoffs with his drives, passes and rebounding. During the playoffs he has produced countless triple-doubles, and he showed his toughness last year in the playoffs when he came back from a dislocated elbow to lead the Celtics to a playoff win.
The wonderful thing about these Celtics is how they sublimate their talents to help their team win. They play basketball in the same ways that the 1960s Russell Celtics, the 1970s Cowens Celtics and the 1980s Bird Celtics played. And many thanks should go to the role players that have helped Rondo, Pierce, Allen, and Garnett in the past 5 years: Kendrick Perkins, Rasheed Wallace, Glenn “Big Baby” Davis, Brandon Bass and many others.
As I write this, the Celtics just lost to the Miami Heat in the 7th game of the conference finals. I feel sad, but I’m proud of the team. I’ve been very happy watching this Celtics edition over the past 5 years. I have to admit that I’m not as fervent a follower of the NBA as I was as a kid. I only really begin watching the team on television during the playoffs. But the family are once again Celtics followers. Now the the siblings have children, we have to get the nieces and nephew to become Boston Celtics fans too. I end this blog with an article by Ray Watanabe where he quotes Ray Allen:
As he sat at the podium in front of the assembled media, expertly dressed as always in a greenish-tan suit and paisley tie, Allen sounded like he was pondering the end of more than that. Asked what it was like playing with Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce on the Celtics for the past five years, Allen departed from the clichéd line about not having time to look back on those things now. He sounded like he fully understood the magnitude of the moment. He even sounded a little ashamed.
“It’s always been somewhat- intimidating,” Allen said. “You walk into a building everyday and you see the banners and the retired jerseys and it just always makes you work a little bit harder. It’s been a privilege. When (John) Havlicek is in the building, when (Bob) Cousy is around, when Tommy (Heinsohn) is watching us every day and Bill Russell is at the games, those are like our big brothers.
“We know we have some big shoes to fill. There’s a lot that we need to do to compare to what they’ve done, and we’ve definitively fallen short. But we’ve gone out trying to play as hard as we can every night.”
Many Republicans today hold to a strong belief in a free market economic philosophy with a minimum of government interference. Within the Republican Party, libertarians like Ron Paul and the Tea Party activists are pushing the Republican Party to a more austere economic policy with cuts on government spending, a minimum of government regulations on businesses, and lower taxes on the wealthy, on the assumption that an unrestrained free market will eventually life all sections of the population. They look to the Reagan recovery of the early 1980s, where after passing tax cuts, cutting spending on social programs, and cutting business regulations, the American economy went through an economic upsurge in the mid 1980s. The unrestrained free market economy that libertarians and Tea Party members sound great on paper. But when you look at history, the boom-and-bust cycles of the unrestrained free market economy has wrecked havoc on the poor and the middle class. In the course of this country’s history, the United States has had periods of serious economic crisis in 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1907, 1919, 1929 and now today. And in those economic crisis the same things happen: a large percentage of people are thrown out of work, homes are foreclosed, banks go under, thousands of businesses go under, and charities are overwhelmed by the sheer need of the poor and homeless.
During those times, musicians have chronicled the struggles of the poor and the working class. In the nineteenth century the spirituals of the African American churches sang about the struggles that African Americans endured in segregationist America. Folk singers like Woodie Guthrie sang about the unemployed and the migrant workers of the Great Depression. The punk rockers and ska groups of the 1970s articulated the anger of the youths of the decaying manufacturing centers in England and America. Rap groups like Public Enemy described the despair of the inner cities during the 1980s and 1990s. One of the great musicians of social commentary today is Bruce Springsteen, who has been singing about the blue collar American for the past 40 years.
The Reagan years are seen by many conservative Republicans as the inspiration for their policies today. Before Reagan was President, the United States was going through a period of high inflation, high interest rates and high unemployment. Reagan’s economic policies did succeed in lowering inflation from 13.5% in 1980 to 4.1% in 1988, and in reducing interest rates from 20% in 1981. Reagan’s free market policies exacerbated economic trends of the 1970s where blue collar workers were seeing their manufacturing jobs disappear due to the increasing globalisation of the world economy. According to an article in the January 17, 1990 article by Peter Passel for the New York Times
Are you better or worse off than you were four years ago, asked Ronald Reagan in 1980. But George Bush’s image-makers chose not to press the rhetorical point in his Presidential campaign, and for good reason.
Young, male, blue-collar workers, part of the demographic coalition that has given Republicans a big leg up on the White House in recent decades, suffered devastating financial setbacks during the 1980′s. While the real earnings of 25- to 34-year-old men who graduated college rose by 9 percent from 1979 to 1987, the earnings of high school dropouts fell 15 percent. High school graduates did not do much better, absorbing a 9 percent cut.
The pinch on blue-collar workers has been tightening for years. From 1980 to 1990, after adjusting for inflation, the wages of blue-collar workers fell by 6.3 percent, while white-collar salaries rose 3.9 percent. “Even a strong economy did not arrest the decline of earning capacity of blue-collar workers,” said Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The manufacturing sector, heavily blue collar, suffered more in the 1981-82 recession than this time around. In the previous downturn, 2.2 million manufacturing jobs were lost. Many of the cuts were made in the name of fashioning a lean and newly competitive corporate America that could hold its own against foreign rivals. The streamlining process succeeded in making American producers more vigorous and, recently, manufactured exports have been one of the few sources of strength in the American economy.
Yet the process of squeezing more production from fewer workers is by no means over. This time, companies began shedding factory jobs 18 months before the recession began. Since January 1989, companies have eliminated 1.2 million manufacturing workers. “Manufacturing employment has been hard hit in this recession and for years before,” said Thomas Nardone, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Fewer Auto Sales, Fewer Auto Part.
During the Reagan years, Bruce Springsteen began to delve into more social commentary in his music. He became a star in the 1970s with albums like The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle and Born to Run. When the country’s economy took a turn for the worst in the late 1970s, Springsteen’s songs began to focus more on stories of individuals struggling to get by in urban America. Eric Alterman wrote an article for the April 11, 2012 edition of the Nation in which he wrote:
It’s hard to find an analogue for Bruce Springsteen anywhere in American history. Musically, he is an amalgam of so many disparate influences it looks ridiculous to list them together. (Don’t believe me? OK, here goes: Elvis, Dylan, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Frank Sinatra, Sam & Dave, the Shirelles, King Curtis, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, Roy Orbison, Gary “U.S.” Bonds, the Sex Pistols, Pete Seeger, the Swinging Medallions, Sam Cooke, Smokey Robinson, Jackie Wilson, Wilson Pickett…) But it is equally difficult to locate a proper political antecedent for Springsteen in American history. Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger are the obvious nominees, but the fact that they were associated with the Communist Party, as well as pretty orthodox folk singers, significantly limited their ability to be heard by many Americans. Springsteen, meanwhile, has managed to give voice to political values—what he calls “news with a beat”—that fall well leftward of the boundaries of mainstream political discourse.
This happened almost entirely by accident. Springsteen began his career singing about guitars, cars and girls before moving on to empty factories and abandoned quarries. His songs began as stories of individual characters divorced from what Trotsky called “the dialectic,” until, in the early 1980s, he began to read deeply in American history and literature. Springsteen began to ask questions of himself about what really determined the contours of the lives of the working-class characters whose tribune he had become. “A lot of the core of our songs is the American idea: What is it? What does it mean? ‘Promised Land,’ ‘Badlands,’” he would explain in 2009, decades after the transformation took place. “I’ve seen people singing those songs back to me all over the world. I’d seen that country on a grassroots level…. And I met people who were always working toward the country being that kind of place. But on a national level it always seemed very far away.”
In September 1979, Bruce began his first tentative steps into the political realms when Springsteen and the E Street Band joined the Musicians United for Safe Energy anti-nuclear power collective at Madison Square Garden for two nights. Springsteen’s album The River tried to reflect the hard times of the recession of the late 1970s. Some of the songs of Nebraska were partly inspired by historian Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States. The song Born In The U.S.A. criticized the treatment of Vietnam veterans, some of whom were Springsteen’s friends and bandmates. Springsteen contributed the song “Streets of Philadelphia” for the movie Philadelphia, a movie about a gay man dying of AIDs. Springsteen created in 1995 The Ghost of Tom Joad, inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and by Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, a book by Pulitzer Prize-winners author Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael WilliamsonBruce Springsteen wrote the song American Skin (41 Shots) in the aftermath of the shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean immigrant, and the acquittal of four police officers who had fired at him forty-one times. Here are two Rolling Stone reviews of two of Springsteen’s most celebrated albums.
Until now, it looked as if 1973′s dizzying The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle would be the last Springsteen album to surprise people. Ensuing records simply refined, expanded and deepened his artistry. But Nebraska comes as a shock, a violent, acid-etched portrait of a wounded America that fuels its machinery by consuming its people’s dreams. It is a portrait painted with old tools: a few acoustic guitars, a four-track cassette deck, a vocabulary derived from the plain-spoken folk music of Woody Guthrie and the dark hillbilly laments of Hank Williams. The style is steadfastly, defiantly out-of-date, the singing flat and honest, the music stark, deliberate and unadorned.
The people who hang out in the new songs dread getting stuck in the small towns they grew up in almost as much as they worry that the big world outside holds no possibilities — a familiar theme in Springsteen’s work. But they wind up back at home, where you can practically see the roaches scurrying around the empty Twinkie packages in the linoleum kitchen. In the first line of the first song, Springsteen croaks, “Born down in a dead man’s town, the first kick I took was when I hit the ground.” His characters are born with their broken hearts, and the only thing that keeps them going is imagining that, as another line in another song goes, “There’s something happening somewhere.”
…That you get such a vivid sense of these characters is because Springsteen gives them voices a playwright would be proud of. In “Working on the Highway,: all he says is “One day I looked straight at her and she looked straight back” to let us know the guy’s in love. And in the saddest song he’s ever written, “Downbound Train,” a man who’s lost everything pours his story, while, behind him, long, sorry notes on a synthesizer sound just like heartache. “I had a job, I had a girl,” he begins, then explains how everything’s changed: “Now I work down at the car wash, where all it ever does its rain.” It’s a line Sam Shepard could’ve written: so pathetic and so funny, you don’t know how to react.
I first listened to Bruce Springsteen’s songs when his album Born In The U.S.A. was a big hit in 1984. I’m not the fan that some of his more fervent followers are, but I like a lot of Bruce Springsteen songs. I admire his courage and eloquence in articulating the lives of everyday Americans, and think he’s one of this country’s cultural treasures. As this country faces its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, I’m glad that Springsteen is here to make sure that the voices of average Americans are heard.
Bruce Springsteen in the VH1 Storytellers series describing his music
Bruce Springsteen and the Blue Collar Worker
Many Republicans today hold to a strong belief in a free market economic philosophy with a minimum of government interference. Within the Republican Party, libertarians like Ron Paul and the Tea Party activists are pushing the Republican Party to a more austere economic policy with cuts on government spending, a minimum of government regulations on businesses, and lower taxes on the wealthy, on the assumption that an unrestrained free market will eventually life all sections of the population. They look to the Reagan recovery of the early 1980s, where after passing tax cuts, cutting spending on social programs, and cutting business regulations, the American economy went through an economic upsurge in the mid 1980s. The unrestrained free market economy that libertarians and Tea Party members sound great on paper. But when you look at history, the boom-and-bust cycles of the unrestrained free market economy has wrecked havoc on the poor and the middle class. In the course of this country’s history, the United States has had periods of serious economic crisis in 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1907, 1919, 1929 and now today. And in those economic crisis the same things happen: a large percentage of people are thrown out of work, homes are foreclosed, banks go under, thousands of businesses go under, and charities are overwhelmed by the sheer need of the poor and homeless.
During those times, musicians have chronicled the struggles of the poor and the working class. In the nineteenth century the spirituals of the African American churches sang about the struggles that African Americans endured in segregationist America. Folk singers like Woodie Guthrie sang about the unemployed and the migrant workers of the Great Depression. The punk rockers and ska groups of the 1970s articulated the anger of the youths of the decaying manufacturing centers in England and America. Rap groups like Public Enemy described the despair of the inner cities during the 1980s and 1990s. One of the great musicians of social commentary today is Bruce Springsteen, who has been singing about the blue collar American for the past 40 years.
The Reagan years are seen by many conservative Republicans as the inspiration for their policies today. Before Reagan was President, the United States was going through a period of high inflation, high interest rates and high unemployment. Reagan’s economic policies did succeed in lowering inflation from 13.5% in 1980 to 4.1% in 1988, and in reducing interest rates from 20% in 1981. Reagan’s free market policies exacerbated economic trends of the 1970s where blue collar workers were seeing their manufacturing jobs disappear due to the increasing globalisation of the world economy. According to an article in the January 17, 1990 article by Peter Passel for the New York Times
Steve Lohr wrote in the December 25, 1991 edition of the New York Times
During the Reagan years, Bruce Springsteen began to delve into more social commentary in his music. He became a star in the 1970s with albums like The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle and Born to Run. When the country’s economy took a turn for the worst in the late 1970s, Springsteen’s songs began to focus more on stories of individuals struggling to get by in urban America. Eric Alterman wrote an article for the April 11, 2012 edition of the Nation in which he wrote:
In September 1979, Bruce began his first tentative steps into the political realms when Springsteen and the E Street Band joined the Musicians United for Safe Energy anti-nuclear power collective at Madison Square Garden for two nights. Springsteen’s album The River tried to reflect the hard times of the recession of the late 1970s. Some of the songs of Nebraska were partly inspired by historian Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States. The song Born In The U.S.A. criticized the treatment of Vietnam veterans, some of whom were Springsteen’s friends and bandmates. Springsteen contributed the song “Streets of Philadelphia” for the movie Philadelphia, a movie about a gay man dying of AIDs. Springsteen created in 1995 The Ghost of Tom Joad, inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and by Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, a book by Pulitzer Prize-winners author Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael WilliamsonBruce Springsteen wrote the song American Skin (41 Shots) in the aftermath of the shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean immigrant, and the acquittal of four police officers who had fired at him forty-one times. Here are two Rolling Stone reviews of two of Springsteen’s most celebrated albums.
The October 25, 1982 review of the album Nebraska noted
Debbie Miller wrote in a review of the album Born In The U.S.A.
I first listened to Bruce Springsteen’s songs when his album Born In The U.S.A. was a big hit in 1984. I’m not the fan that some of his more fervent followers are, but I like a lot of Bruce Springsteen songs. I admire his courage and eloquence in articulating the lives of everyday Americans, and think he’s one of this country’s cultural treasures. As this country faces its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, I’m glad that Springsteen is here to make sure that the voices of average Americans are heard.
Bruce Springsteen in the VH1 Storytellers series describing his music
http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:vh1.com:177957
A youtube video of Bruce Springsteen singing Atlantic City
A youtube video of Bruce Springsteen performing The River
A youtube video of Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA
A youtube video of Bruce Springsteen performing Working On A Highway
The video for the Bruce Springsteen song Streets of Philadelphia
A youtube video of Bruce Springsteen performing The Ghost of Tom Joad
A youtube video of Bruce Springsteen performing American Skin (41 Shots)