jcdevinejr

[jcdevinejr]

New York’s disgrace

This is an issue for everyone. It has nothing to do with gender, religion or race - it’s important and it’s not going away. jcd

On January 22nd, while most of us were intently following the Trump/Pelosi follies on government shutdown, New York State’s Reproductive Health Act (RHA) became law. It deserves serious attention.

The new legislation, passed by a wide margin in the NY Assembly and signed into law by Governor Cuomo, is a horror show; it’s baby butcher Kermit Gosnell back in business, repackaged, sold and celebrated as a brave and shiny step forward.

The RHA actually has little (arguably nothing) do with reproductive health. It’s a political action, designed to normalize the killing of unborn children. It undermines our common commitment to protecting the vulnerable among us, and it is a chilling indicator that America is backing away from our bedrock principle of liberty and justice for all.

The Act turns reality on its head. In stunning contradiction to common sense, it declares that the tiny infant child in its mother’s womb is not a person; until natural live birth, it has no legal standing, and evidently no moral significance.

Forget everything you know about DNA, beating heart, and sensitivity to pain; in New York, the little child with eyes and ears and fingers and toes, the one squirming about waiting to be born, is not a person at all. He or she is disposable.

In New York, killing an infant in the womb is no longer homicide—even an assailant’s attack that kills a pregnant woman’s unborn child is not considered homicide. In New York, an infant that survives a botched abortion attempt need not be saved; after all, it’s not a person. In New York, those lives don’t count.

In effect, the RHA permits terminating the life of an unborn child at any point during pregnancy. The only fig leaf of legitimacy is that after the 24thweek, the abortion must be determined ‘necessary for the mother’s health’ by the attending professional; but with no guidelines or criteria and no penalty for misjudgment, the new law is nothing less than a blank check for the latest of late term abortions, for virtually any reason.

Upon its passage, New York legislators jumped to their feet with thundering cheers and applause. Governor Cuomo trumpeted New York’s leadership and urged the rest of the nation to follow. He directed that the World Trade Center and major NYC bridges be illuminated in pink, flaunting his triumph to everyone in the city—including those nauseated by their state’s newfound disregard for human life.

Numerous polls indicate that while a majority of Americans consider themselves pro-choice, they also believe that reasonable abortion restrictions and controls are warranted; four of five Americans oppose late-term abortions.

In the real reproductive health arena, there have been amazing strides by modern science and medicine in diagnosis and treatment of tiny infants in the womb—including remarkable procedures such as heart surgery and full transfusions—all with rigorous protection of the mother’s health. There are exceedingly few circumstances (most medical experts say there are none) in which an abortion is needed to save a mother’s life.

Evidently, these very positive trends are driving pro-abortion advocates to push even harder. There was the Kavanaugh insanity, setting aside civility, basic fairness and due process in a fierce attempt to block a Supreme Court nominee who might someday take an unfavorable position on Roe v. Wade. In 2018, Planned Parenthood set a new record in number of abortions performed and profits from their grisly work.  In Hollywood (just the place for moral guidance) abortion celebrations are now in vogue.

Late term abortion is one of those issues on which Americans must cut through our divisive politics and start pulling together. Those concerned about children temporarily separated from their illegal immigrant parents can surely recognize that unborn children are also defenseless persons needing protection. Those who maintain that there are too many guns in American should agree as well that 61 million abortions are far too many.

New York’s radical new law and Governor Cuomo’s shameless celebration of it is a blaring wake-up call. All Americans – not just Catholics, not just conservatives, not just Republicans—should stand together in opposition to the escalating barbarity.

I’ve believed for decades that future generations will look back at today’s America— just as we are now looking back 150 years at the atrocity of slavery—and wonder ‘what were they thinking?’

We kill our young. It’s that simple. And it’s wrong.

Author’s note: I wrote this column nine days ago. Since then at least four states have signaled their intent to produce similar legislation.

Jack DeVine

January 2019

[jcdevinejr]

Partisan politics first, everything else later (if ever)

More on the Wall, the government shutdown and partisan politics (as if we haven’t heard enough about it!) icd

Extreme political division is tying our country in knots. In this bi-weekly column, I regularly argue for bi-partisanship. But as I write this, the situation on our southern border is unraveling daily, 800,000 of our employees are not being paid, and our elected officials are willfully prolonging the mess.

We’re seeing the obvious: it’s impossible to be unilaterally bipartisan. Like it or not, governing is a team sport. So with apologies in advance for picking sides, let me do just that: it is the Democrats who are intransigent.

In his statement this past Friday from the Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said “he [President Trump] thinks he’s winning. He’s not”.

That statement, in a nutshell, conveys Schumer’s hubris. He thinks it’s about winning or losing. True, public opinion polls so far show that a majority of Americans hold Republicans and Trump primarily responsible for the impasse. But resolving it should have nothing to do with political advantage, and everything to do with what’s right for the nation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is similarly untethered from her sworn responsibility. She reminds us every day that the president said he’d be “delighted to take the heat” for a government shutdown, if necessary to achieve measures he believes essential to securing the border.

In retrospect, that was a dumb thing for Trump to say, and he is taking plenty of heat. But what in the world does that have to do with our nation’s critical decisions about border security? Evidently, the only thing that matters to Pelosi and Schumer is who gets the blame. Doing the right thing? Maybe later.

Democrats enjoy replaying Trump’s campaign promise that Mexico would pay for the wall—another obviously dumb thing for him to say, but similarly irrelevant to the question of how we control our border.  

Decisions like this ought to be dirt simple. It’s like replacing bald tires on your car. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is that the car is unsafe, and it would be nice if someone else (Mexico?) were to pay for the new tires; but if we need better ones to protect our family, we get them. Period. Done.

Certainly the president is every bit as concerned as his opponents about political consequences. But bipartisan agreement requires compromise, and Trump has dramatically scaled back his earlier demand for a 2000-mile concrete wall. His border security proposal is reasonable, objectively sound, and fully consistent with views expressed for years by mainstream Republicans and Democrats. It should be an easy yes for all concerned—unless they let politics get in the way.

The president offered further compromise this past Saturday, including extended legal status for DACA “dreamers” and others with expiring Temporary Protected Status. Pelosi declared the new proposal a ‘non-starter’ before he’d even presented it. Her message, loud and clear: don’t waste your breath, Mr. President, we’re not budging.

She and Schumer claim to fully support border security and they shed crocodile tears about the government workers being ‘held hostage’ by Trump. But their actions show zero concern for either.

The Democrats’ posture on border security is just another step in their endless, corrosive ‘resistance’ to all things Trump. Apparently, that political tactic is catching on worldwide. Watching from afar, the catharsis in the UK over Brexit looks depressingly similar to what we see in Washington.

Last week, Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan to execute Britain’s departure from the European Union, an immensely complex action mandated by UK voters three years ago, was soundly rejected by the Parliament. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbin (the UK’s Chuck Schumer) derided her for incompetence and convinced his colleagues that her plan is completely wrong—but he offered not a clue about what might constitute a better one. So the opposition ‘wins’, but the wheels keep spinning. Sound familiar?

The big picture here: America’s border security problem is very real and it will only get worse. 95% of the world’s population is on the outside looking in, and many of those have very good reasons to want to come here.

To protect our own citizens, current and future, we must gain control of who’s allowed in and who is not. The president deserves credit for being unwilling to kick that can down the road.

We need to resolve this mess. Political advantage shouldn’t matter. Polls shouldn’t matter. Blame shouldn’t matter. Chuck, Nancy and the Democrats – save your posturing for the 2020 campaign. For now, just do your jobs.

Jack DeVine

23 January 2019

[jcdevinejr]

Resistance: telling it like it’s not

Today’s political resistance to everything Trump continues to strike me as unwarranted, harmful to the nation, and counterproductive even for the Democrats. Here are some timely examples. icd

Happy New Year! Here we are in 2019 with Americans more angry and polarized than ever, a divided Congress, a belligerent president, and the opposing party obsessed with taking him down. Meanwhile, neither side is paying sufficient attention to the real issues facing the nation.

As we wrestle with these issues, it doesn’t help to have to sift through a constant smokescreen of political doubletalk.

This week it’s the wall. Illegal immigration is a very real problem. Schumer and Pelosi tell us with faux sincerity that Democrats are all for border security but they insist on spending taxpayers’ money wisely. A wall is an imperfect solution, they say, and way too expensive.

They must hope that Americans can’t do the math. A billion dollars is more money than most of us will see in our lifetime, but on federal budget scale ($4 trillion) it’s loose change—25 cents out of every thousand spent.

The government shutdown is a disgrace; American workers should not be stuck with the bill for political leaders’ intransigence. But let’s stop pretending that it’s about anything other than 2020 election politics.

And there is the never-ending saga of the Mueller investigation. Democrats delight at the mounting body count (Flynn, Manafort, Cohen) and tell us that these will tee up the long-awaited takedown of their real target. But the victims skewered by Mr. Mueller are men whose primary sin was association with Trump—so far, his probe has revealed nothing remotely approaching an impeachable offense.

Let’s be honest: no one is concerned about possible campaign finance reporting infractions; or violation of the 1799 Logan Act; or a rumored plan for a Trump Tower in Moscow; or even about Russian collusion in the 2016 election. It’s about finding an excuse to unseat the elected US president, nothing more.

And there was the unceremonious firing of Defense Secretary Mattis. General Mattis is an apolitical, no-nonsense and extraordinarily capable leader—he answered the call of duty, came out of retirement and gave the Trump’s Defense Department much needed experience and professionalism. He deserves Trump’s profound thanks, not public insult.

Here we have Donald Trump at his worst, displaying the utter lack of grace that continues to damage his own presidency and may well prevent his reelection in 2020. But to listen to Democrat leadership’s sputtering outrage, Trump’s action is

yet one more big-ticket item for the impeachment ledger. That’s nonsense: a president has every right to reshape his staff; doing so is commonplace and healthy.

More important is the president’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria, counter to his Defense Secretary’s advice (reportedly the disagreement that wrecked the relationship between Trump and Mattis). Decisions like this one rest squarely on the shoulders of the president, not the Secretary of Defense.

Obama made a similar call on Iraq a few years ago and it didn’t work out very well. But there have been other cases when American presidents have rejected their generals’ counsel—Kennedy on the Cuban missile crisis and Truman during the Korean War, as prime examples—and we can be eternally thankful that they did. And there have been times when presidents did not push back on military advisors—Lyndon Johnson for one, early in the Vietnam war—with disastrous consequences.

History will tell us, in its own due time, whether Trump is right on Syria; but credit him for having the courage to make his decision in the face of certain, withering criticism from all sides.

One might expect Democratic progressives to be jumping for joy at Trump’s decision to diminish American military engagement in foreign conflicts. Evidently, they are too aroused by the scent of blood in the water (Trump‘s) to risk agreeing with him on anything at all.

The term “resistance”, borrowed by Democrats from the courageous underground opposition to the WWII Nazi menace, lends an unwarranted air of nobility to what is, at its core, inherently destructive behavior. The US presidency is a monumentally tough job, and its success is in all of our interests. There’s nothing noble about investing in failure.

Resistance may prove to be a political winner, damaging Trump so effectively that Democrats take back the presidency in 2020. But if so, they will inherit a government so dysfunctional—a condition that they’ve actively promoted—that their time at the helm won’t be any easier than Trump’s troubled tour of duty.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In resuming her House leadership mantle, Nancy Pelosi pledged that the new Congress will be “transparent, bipartisan and unifying”. We’ll see.

Jack DeVine

January 9, 2019

[jcdevinejr]

‘Tis the Season…

A step back to think about Christmas.. jcd.

Whatever happened to Christmas? No doubt my memory is colored by nostalgia, but I miss the real Christmas of old, the one that truly was magical, the Christmas that was all about family and caring and giving. I’m guessing that many of my contemporaries (folks in their mid-70s) miss it too.

At this time of year, my memory bank is flooded with visceral, detailed recollections of a very different time. I remember early dusk on cold northeast days with Christmas lights everywhere; good cheer at every stop of my paper route; midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, up way past my bedtime, and then still being unable to sleep in anticipation of Christmas morning.

Christmas music always stirs up those memories: our John Carroll HS choir trekking to a rural country church with gifts and carols; strains of Christmas music filling the darkened US Naval Academy chapel on evening Catholic choir rehearsals; and years later, singing those same timeless pieces with the superb choir at St John’s United Methodist Church, right here in Aiken.

Christmas holds particularly deep meaning for sailors at sea and soldiers at remote outposts; it is a time of both intense loneliness and an uncanny sense of connection to loved ones far away.

But the true spirit of Christmas is slipping away, inexorably, a bit more each year.  The Christmas we old folks remember has been superseded by the superficial, commercial and secular—and frankly, boring—21stcentury version.

What’s happening? To some degree, it’s simply the march of time. There’s cultural disintegration all around us. Inexplicably, the same folks who fly into a tizzy over the tune “Baby it’s cold outside” can happily bob their heads to the beat of unspeakably vile Rap music. Economics have changed too: with today’s thirst for instant gratification, funded by open-ended credit card debt, not many wait until Christmas for that special gift.

But there’s more to it than that. Christmas is of course a religious celebration; some in our society find that offensive, and they’re getting traction. While there may not be an organized plot to steal Christmas (the Grinch, maybe), the trend is clear—an ongoing, politically correct movement to secularize everything, to strip religious sentiment from Americans’ daily lives.

It begs the jackpot question: when did freedom of religion morph into prohibition of religion? Are we OK with that?

My old-guy muttering has nothing to do with shoving religious beliefs down anyone’s throat. I mourn the demise of the deeper meaning of Christmas for the simple reason that it’s a good thing. The underlying message of “peace on earth, good will toward men” speaks to what America is all about.

Just as Christmas has its roots in Christianity, so does our nation. We see undeniable evidence of that throughout our history, in the words of the founding fathers, of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, and in the immutable text of our Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

Christian principles and ethics are deeply embedded in our American culture and laws. They’re baked in. Our core values stem from that foundation.  Here in the USA, all—whether in a majority or a tiny minority—are free to exercise their beliefs in any religion or none at all, and all benefit from our nation’s Judeo-Christian roots.

Taking offense at just about anything seems to be a popular pastime these days, but there is no logical reason for anyone to be offended by the visible manifestations of others’ beliefs. Some choose to be offended anyway; that’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t impose any obligation, constitutional or otherwise, that we eliminate the source of their supposed offense.

Satisfying the dissatisfied is always a slippery slope, and in my view, we have already been far too accommodating. To what lengths must we go, and at what consequences, to ensure that those who dislike Christianity are shielded from the traditions that so many others revere?  

Interestingly, the giant failed experiment of communism offers a lesson in the ultimate outcome of government-imposed secularization. In travelling through Eastern Europe and in Russia, my wife Peggy and I saw beautifully restored churches packed with devout worshippers, free once again to worship as they please. Evidently, they missed Christianity too.

Judeo-Christian traditions and values are at the very foundation of American culture. They’re in our DNA. America will always offer complete freedom of religious belief to all; and we can do so to the benefit of all, without diluting or compromising that bedrock foundation.

Jack DeVine

Christmas, 2018

[jcdevinejr]

Chaos in France - and here

A perspective on the riots in Paris and in the US, and an attempt to connect those dots with the violent behavior that is becoming more common everywhere. This one for publication in the Aiken Standard on 12 December. jcd

Maybe it’s time to start paying attention to the riots in France—not because of the issues that supposedly triggered them, but because they are yet another indication of rapidly disintegrating order in society, everywhere.

The Paris riots have been going on for four weeks now. They’re generally being described as protests, but these days there is little distinction between rioting and protesting. Watch the videos: they’re riots.

The French yellow-vest movement was prompted by new taxes imposed by the Macron administration to finance France’s commitment to combating climate change. Paris is the birthplace of the climate change accords, and Macron wants to lead by example—and maybe shame Trump and the US while he’s at it.

Evidently the folks who actually have to pay for Macron’s climate leadership don’t like it very much. And I for one agree that using an economic cudgel to force compliance with a politically driven environmental policy is likely to run aground at some point.  

But not so fast. Suggesting that folks who are torching cars are doing so with some higher principle in mind gives them far more credence than they deserve.

Early on, President Macron showed his naiveté about the opposition he’s facing. He caved quickly to the protesters, announcing a deferral of the tax that started the uproar. He tried to meet with the movement’s leaders but found that the rioters have no leaders and they don’t know what they want. Macron’s reward for attempting to accommodate them? The rioting spread and intensified.

What is happening in France is not protesting, it’s anarchy. And it’s not just France. We’re seeing the same frightening images, more and more, everywhere.

There are far too many examples right here at home. During the Trump inauguration and only a few blocks away—the day our nation demonstrates to the world our tradition of peaceful transfer of power—we saw masked marauders smashing storefronts, burning cars and breaking windows. University campuses routinely erupt into violence whenever an undesirable (i.e., conservative) speaker dares to visit.

Protest has been a mainstay of US democracy since—and even before—the nation was founded. Martin Luther King demonstrated by his own actions how meaningful protest can inspire fundamental change. His recipe was simple: confront obvious injustice with dignity and without violence.

That’s the distant past, replaced today by unrestrained mob fury with no objective other than doing maximum damage. These are grown-up children acting out the way two-year olds do: irrational tantrum. They’re angry and they want everyone to know it, and they’re capable of inflicting far more harm than a toddler in a playpen.

They do so with impunity. Rioters expect at worst a slap on the wrist, and on the upside they collect accolades and street cred. In Portland, police stood back (at the Mayor’s orders) and watched as marauders threatened, harassed, and pummeled bystanders and wantonly destroyed property. At universities, rioting students are back in class the next day.  

We can’t dismiss such behavior as an aberration. Is it not of a kind very much akin to the pervasive violence – including gun violence – that horrifies us all? And is it not rooted, in part at least, with the identity politics embedded in public communication, entertainment and education? Are not our colleges, in a misguided quest for diversity, in effect grooming our kids to resent those of other colors and backgrounds?

We’ve been down this road before. Recall the turbulent 60’s. Seemingly out of nowhere, the Watts riots erupted with stunning ferocity, and then spread to cities across the country. Eventually the rioting burned itself out, but for many years cities and their inhabitants bore its scars. Those same years were punctuated by the murders of Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

That was an ugly, ugly period in American life. We learned from it, and we need to take steps to ensure that we don’t slip back.

Last week there was a national mourning over the passing of former President George H.W. Bush. Momentarily all sides looked past their differences, acknowledging the power of Mr. Bush’s innate kindness and gentleness. We pined for a return to the days of more respectful tone in our national discourse.

Some took that as just another opportunity to blast President Trump for his routinely nasty rhetoric. Fair enough, but he’s hardly alone—it was sadly ironic to listen to pundits deriding the president with language every bit as derisive as his.

Paris is right around the corner. Be careful, America.

Jack DeVine

December 2018

[jcdevinejr]

The Great Melting Pot

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore”

That is the beckoning call of our Statue of Liberty, penned in 1883 by poet Emma Lazarus and carved into the statue’s base. It is a marvelous sentiment, famously capturing the spirit of a nation built almost entirely by immigrants.

And it’s more than poetic sentiment. Centuries after its founding, the USA continues to be a nation of immigrants. Each year, we take in about 20% of the world’s migrants— much more than ‘our share’, in the sense that the total US population is less than 5% of that of the entire world. We add about one million immigrants to our citizenship rolls annually.

Many, now ‘breathing free” in the US, thrive here and are enriching themselves, their families and their new country.  It’s the great American success story.

But how does that square with the heralded caravans of migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador now knocking on our door, and a Trump administration bound and determined to keep them out?

The answer is that unlawful entry and residence here is an entirely different matter than entry and residence sanctioned by US law, policy and practice.

It’s not clear how that the 2018 migrant caravans came to be—who organized, encouraged and funded them—but it stands to reason that upwards of 10,000 people did not spontaneously and simultaneously decide to pack a few belongings, leave their homes and commence a life-threatening odyssey. Somebody gave them a push.

But regardless of their intended political impact, the caravans are serving to transform the illegal immigration issue from an abstract policy matter to a starkly human one. Today we have thousands of Central American migrants on our doorstep demanding to be let in, while the world watches.

Popular media dub the situation as a humanitarian crisis and describe the migrants as refugees. But most acknowledge that they are simply seeking a ‘better life’. We can understand and respect that—like many places in the world, their home countries are impoverished, violent and unhealthy. But the caravan migrants are fleeing economic disadvantage, not religious or political persecution, and asylum is not the remedy.

The caravans are just one part of a much larger problem. The estimated ten thousand in caravans is roughly equivalent to the number of illegal entrants apprehended or turned back each and every week on our southern border.  And if these were to succeed in achieving mass entry into the US, bigger and better caravans are sure to follow. Donald Trump’s “invasion” term is not so far-fetched after all.

The heart of the matter is that many more people want to live here than we could possibly assimilate. The driver for immigration to the US, legal or not, is that our country offers opportunity available nowhere else in the world. The attraction is magnetic.

There is little doubt that the president’s strong stance against illegal immigration has political roots; his position has resonated with the public, for good reason, since the day he announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination.

Trump’s rhetoric is, as usual, unnecessarily abrasive, but his position is hardly radical; it is remarkably consistent with views articulated many times by presidents Bush (both), Clinton and Obama.

The Democrat position on illegal immigration seems principally to be wholesale opposition to everything the Trump administration does, on the basis that all is racist, cruel, immoral, etc.  Regardless of merit (I think little), those accusations don’t help at all.

Lately Democrats have advanced the idea that instead of investing more resources on border control (e.g., mobilizing troops in the face of oncoming caravans), our money would be better spent on helping the migrants’ home countries improve the conditions that prompted the exodus.  It’s a nice thought, but completely unrealistic.

The USA’s magnetic attraction to residents of poor countries will persist as long as this is a better place to live than anywhere else.  We need to keep it that way. And no amount of American financial aid will change that balance.

The president’s basic message, however muddled by bombast, is that we have not just the right but also the responsibility to know who’s knocking at the door and to admit only those who follow our laws and who will build, not harm, our nation.

That is how we continue the American prosperity that benefits all of our citizens, existing and prospective. It’s the only way to keep Lady Liberty’s candle lit.

Jack DeVine

November 2018

[jcdevinejr]

Incivility? or Thuggery??

Nasty, intrusive, intimidating anger is going mainstream. It’s scary. My thoughts here - This ran in the Aiken Standard on November 14th.  jcd

We hear a lot about incivility these days, but that word is just too tepid to convey what’s really happening. Civility means politeness, courtesy, deference; it’s opening the door and saying ‘after you’. Incivility is the opposite: rudeness, boorishness, cutting in line.

But today’s incivility—intrusion, confrontation and intimidation—is on a whole new plane.

For months we’ve seen videos of Trump administration officials and notable conservatives—Sarah Sanders, DHS Secretary Nielsen, Senators McConnell and Cruz, others—in public places with their families, being screamed at, taunted, hounded. We watched angry ‘protesters’ roaming the halls of the Senate chambers during the Kavanaugh hearings, cornering and hectoring Republican Senators.  

These are precisely the actions urged by Representative Maxine Waters: “if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere”.

Think about that for a moment: “not welcome anymore, anywhere”!

Rep. Waters is prone to saying loony things, so her words were not particularly shocking. What is shocking is the deafening silence from the leadership in the Democratic Party. Some in fact are doubling down.  Per Hillary Clinton, “civility can start again when the Democrats take the House or the Senate”.

Evidently not. Last Thursday night, just two days after the mid-terms, an angry mob showed up at conservative TV commentator Tucker Carlson’s house, shouting “racist scumbag!” and “we know where you sleep!” as Carlson’s wife (he was not at home) hid in the pantry, frantically dialing 9-1-1.

The Carlson episode has garnered plenty of attention, with responsible voices on both left and right demanding that this kind of behavior cease. But will it? It seems like it’s picking up steam.

Adam Pyke, a leader of Smash Racism DC, the Antifa group that marched on Carlson’s house, seemed quite pleased with their accomplishment. In his Internet account, he reveals clear—and very troubling—insights into the minds of those who do such things.

Pyke explained that last Thursday’s incursion was not a mob, just a demonstration by 13 or 14 protesters who congregated outside Carlson’s house for about ten minutes. (I guess that Mrs. Carlson would probably have just continued with dinner unfazed by the commotion if she’d known that she had only a dozen or so loud angry strangers on her doorstep, after dark, yelling, pounding on the door and promising “we’ll be back—and we won’t tell you when!”)

According to Mr. Pyke, their action was called for because of Carlson’s xenophobia, his whitenationalism, and his “ideology that’s led to thousands of people dying by the hand of the police, to trans women being murdered in the streets”.  The whole point, he says,is to “deliver an emotional counterpunch to bad political actors… to frighten and unsettle them”.

We’re glad that he cleared that up. Tucker Carlson is a talk show host with ideas disagreeable to them; so they descend on his home one night, scream epithets and “frighten and unsettle” his wife and family. Where’s the problem?

The twisted mentality at play here is that one side of our political divide considers the other to be inherently evil and concludes that whatever bad things happen (shootings, pipe bombs, bad hurricanes, whatever) are directly attributable to that evil. Therefore it is perfectly appropriate—civic duty, actually—to intimidate, threaten, harass or do whatever else they choose to oppose the evil.

When taken to task for tolerating such outrageous behavior, the usual Democrat rejoinder is “Trump started it!”.  And yes, our president’s language is routinely pugnacious and provocative.

But what’s happening today has been brewing for a long time, a direct consequence of the politics of polarization honed to perfection by both sides. It’s hardly unique to Trump; Obama’s mild manner belied his regularly derisive and divisive words. Supporters and media follow suit. It’s politically effective perhaps—but corrosive.

Coincidentally, the assault on Carlson’s home came just one day before the 80thanniversary of the infamous Kristallnacht, the ‘night of the broken glass’. Marauding bands of Nazis, on a mission to rid their country of all Jews, assaulted thousands and damaged countless synagogues and Jewish-owned homes, hospitals, shops and cemeteries.

History is a great teacher. Nazi Germany is a chilling example of how a modern society can lose its way, with disastrous consequences.We’re not there yet, but fascist tactics by folks who call themselves Antifa (anti-fascist) is a dangerous lurch in that direction.  

Jack DeVine

November 2018

[jcdevinejr]

Two sides to every story

This was not a published column - just a piece I wrote for a friend who asked for my views on several key issues, for discussion with her friends before the mid-term elections. Interesting exercise though... jcd

The political issues today are packed with talking points and conflicting assertions, from all sides. With an important election coming up, it can be difficult for voters to sift through it all and get to the heart of the matter. Here are a few examples:

1. Abortion

What we hear:Every woman must have the right to choose—it’s her life and her body. And abortion is legal, guaranteed by the US Constitution.

The rest of the story:Obviously, there’s another life at stake—the unborn person she is carrying, one who is wholly dependent on her. Moreover, every human action is a matter of choice; what matters is not the right to choose, it is the rightness of the action chosen.

Taking of a human life is morally and ethically wrong, regardless of motivation. The Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, currently makes abortion legal. It doesn’t make abortion right.

Since Roe v. Wade, nearly 60 million unborn lives have been taken. And the matter is hardly settled; the Court’s ruling is illogical, it continues to be questioned and it is vulnerable to revision or reinterpretation.

2. Immigration

What we hear:There is pervasive poverty and suffering worldwide. Many are seeking a better life. We’re a generous people, a nation of immigrants— we should open our doors and let them in.

The rest of the story:America is a beacon for the world. There is no more valuable commodity in the world than American citizenship. Since our nation was founded, immigrants have helped our nation grow and thrive becausethey embrace our ideals and our culture and they commit to following our laws. That is not true of people who enter the country illegally and bypass our immigration process.

Furthermore, uncontrolled borders will do no favors for anyone, not the people who already live here, the new arrivals, or the world at large. Americans are only 5% of the world’s population – many of the other 95%  (billions!) would prefer to live here. We must continue to encourage legalimmigration and at the same time to protect all citizens—current and new ones—from significant economic, security and health threats from unknown, undocumented intruders. Failure to do so can destroy the American dream for everyone.

3. Environment

What we hear: Climate change is real. The earth is getting warmer. We must take immediate, aggressive action to stop global warming before it destroys the planet.

The Rest of the Story:It’s true – climate change IS real and the earth is getting warmer. But that’s normal—earth has been warming and cooling for its entire lifetime, over four billion years. Mankind just got here; our contribution to global warming has been very small compared to the natural climate variation and therefore even very aggressive actions to reduce our carbon footprints would at best have barely perceptible effect.

On the other hand, the proposed aggressive attempts to limit global warming would be harmful to many. One of the single biggest factors in human health and lifespan is availability of electricity – over a billion people on earth don’t have any. Actions such as those agreed to in the Paris Climate Accords would have miniscule effect on climate change but would drive electricity prices up, making it inaccessible to many.

Planet earth is our only home. Protecting the environment is our fundamental responsibility. We must conserve resources and manage wastes. But we can’t change the earth’s climate, and we should not hurt others in a futile effort to do so.We must learn to adapt to climate change, not try to ‘fix’ it.

4. Gun violence/gun control

What we hear:There are too many guns in America and too much gun violence.  Enough it enough. It’s time to prohibit ownership of guns that are particularly dangerous.

The rest of the story: Yes, there may be “too many” guns in America (on average, roughly one per adult American)—but a ban doesn’t make guns disappear, it simply makes them illegal. Murder is already illegal. Guns are easy to produce, inexpensive and available worldwide. A ban would diminish ownership by law-abiding citizens, but is unlikely to have any affect on those bent on using them for harm.

The enemy is not the NRA, or conservatives or Republicans. Guns don’t shoot people, people do. A far more sensible approach to the gun violence problem is to (1) Address the underlying influences or causes of violence in modern society, such as entertainment and social media, (2) take actions to identify and disarm individuals likely (based on factors such as past behavior, psychological disability, etc.) to commit crimes using guns, and (3) put in place rigorous defense and security of vulnerable locations such as schools.

5. War and Peace

What we hear:The consequences of warfare are catastrophic. At all cost we must prevent war and promote peace.

The rest of the story:We all agree. But the central lesson of war and peace over the ages is that weakness invites hostility while strength secures peace and freedom. We’ve learned too many times that well-intentioned pacifists, advocating such policies as reduced defense spending or unilateral disarmament, often increase rather than decrease the likelihood of war.

And finally: President Trump vs. the Democrats’ Resistance

What we hear:President Trump is evil, he is the root cause of the anger and incivility in our country—therefore we all must do whatever we can to drive him out of office.

The rest of the story:  True: our president is abrasive and combative; his demeanor makes many uncomfortable.

On the other hand, he is our duly elected president. Since taking office, he has proven to be remarkably energetic, resilient and effective. He has taken major steps forward in the national economy, taxes, trade imbalances, foreign relations, national defense, and other areas. Not all agree with the president’s actions: but it is only fair and sensible to judge him by what he’s done, not by his language or demeanor.

Just as importantly, the opposition party has chosen from the outset a strategy of total ‘resistance’—obstruction by any means—to all actions taken by the president and his administration.  The resistance essentially impedes the direction chosen by the electorate in 2016. A particularly stark recent example of resistance-in-action was last month’s tumultuous Kavanaugh hearings.

It is up to every voter in the next elections to make informed, objective choices. Each vote should render the voter’s judgment about the long-term direction of our nation, considering on balanceboth the effectiveness of the current administration and the net harm vs. benefit of the Democrats’ resistance to it.

Jack DeVine

November 2018

[jcdevinejr]

The Mid-Terms: all about Trump

This one ran just before the mid-term elections. It’s moot now - we know how it came out (both sides declared themselves winners), but the principle of judging performance rather than personality will continue to be important. jcd

Many analysts are characterizing next week’s midterm elections as a referendum on Donald Trump. They’re right: but it’s not a referendum on his still-young presidency, it is a referendum on Donald Trump the man.

The political calculus is simple. Donald Trump’s opponents hate him, they think everyone else in the country should hate him, and they believe they can transform that hatred into a blue-wave election.  Perhaps so.

I use the term reluctantly. Hate is a uniquely unsettling word in our vocabulary, one used much too casually these days. But by its textbook definition—passionate, intense abhorrence—the term fits. The Trump hatred by Democrats and media is visceral, unreasoned and consuming. Many loathe him so much they would rather see the country fail than see his presidency succeed.

They would of course deny that, but the last two years tell the tale.  On day one of the Trump presidency, the Democrats adopted the strategy of ‘resistance’, meaning total anything-goes obstruction to everything he does.

In some cases resistance has meant taking policy positions that directly contradict those held for years by both sides. For example, recall the strong concerns expressed by presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama regarding the threat of illegal immigration—concerns that are completely consistent with Trump’s position today, but somehow are suddenly considered racist.

It turns out that virulence can be packaged and marketed effectively. Democrats channeled their Trump-hatred into the Judge Kavanaugh debate, to the degree that a large fraction of Americans now detest a man whom they’d never heard of six months ago, embracing without question and with little basis the slander that he is a sexual predator and a judicial extremist.  

A particularly ugly consequence of bitter hostility among politicians is the incivility it engenders. The political chasm between regular Americans—even friends, colleagues and family members—gets ever deeper and wider every day.

The incivility has been perking for a long time, well before Trump arrived on the scene, and now it’s boiling over. One year ago a deranged gunman opened fire on a group of GOP congressmen on a baseball field, nearly killing Steve Scalise; Maxine Waters calls for public confrontation of administration officials and many comply; Hillary Clinton asserts there should be no civility until Democrats regain control of government; on the streets, we’ve progressed from angry protests by Black Lives Matter to Antifa mob action.

Meanwhile, Democrat leadership tacitly accepts the growing turmoil. Barack Obama, ignoring the traditional decorum of former presidents, has joined the fray and is now fiercely criticizing his successor.

Democrats will argue that I’ve got it exactly wrong, that the incivility and violence— even last week’s horrendous murders at the Tree of Life Synagogue—are all rooted in Donald Trump’s campaign rally bluster and snarling tweets. Absent Trump, all would be sweetness and roses.

Has Trump’s rhetoric exacerbated the problem? Have his political opponents, invested in total resistance, gone too far? Does the media fan the flames irresponsibly? Yes to all. And although they all run around like third-graders yelling “they started it!”, I believe that the Democrats’ destructive behavior and their media echo chamber have been far more damaging to the nation than Trump’s bombast.

Like many, I have been uncomfortable with Trump the man, the candidate and now the president. His demeanor and his impulsive outbursts do not reflect the kind of dignified mature behavior we expect of our president.

Nevertheless, any objective assessment of Mr. Trump’s actions as president would conclude that they have been measured and remarkably effective. In the face of constant headwinds, he’s dealt with a wide range of domestic and international issues, and he’s pulled the dust covers off of serious problem areas (North Korea, China, trade imbalances as examples) that have been festering for years. Pick your topic—economy, taxes, environment, foreign affairs, national defense—there’s plenty of room for disagreement on specifics, but he’s moved forward decisively on all fronts.

Like it or not, we’re stuck with an election that is all about Donald Trump. But that doesn’t mean that it should somehow become an opinion poll on Trump’s demeanor or his language or his personality. I’d argue instead that each voter should consider, as objectively as possible, the nation’s health and posture today as compared to that in January 2017, and cast his or her ballot accordingly.

Personally, I’m hoping that our nation will vote collectively for a country that supports our president rather than one that undermines him.

Jack DeVine

October 2018

[jcdevinejr]

The climate change fog

After every major hurricane, we can count on reflexive assertions that it’s all due to global warming and that it’s high time we fixed that problem. Here’s my perspective on the issue. This one ran in the Aiken Standard on 17 October. /jcd

Not all the important news lately has been about Kavanaugh hearings and partisan politics. Climate change is again front and center.

Two monster hurricanes slammed into the southeastern US so far this year—many consider them to be harbingers of global warming. And last week the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its most sobering report yet, indicating that catastrophic consequences are much closer at hand than previously thought.

Global warming probably is real and the UN report is certainly terrifying—but both are widely misunderstood.

Most scientists agree that the earth is warming, and it follows that tropical storms, fueled by warm seawater, are becoming more energetic and therefore more harmful. And for that reason we must continue to improve in preparing for and dealing with major storms.

In its updated study, the IPCC projects that major consequences from global warming—droughts, wildfires, floods, food shortages and related social upheaval—will occur at lower temperatures than previously estimated, and as soon as 2040 if current warming trends persist.

It’s a doomsday scenario: in so many words, The IPCC scientists warn that we are facing global economic and social calamity in just two decades.  They may be crying wolf— we’ll know in 2040—but regardless, their report actually reveals several important perspectives:

1.    Whatever is affecting the earth’s climate since the dawn of the industrial age (about 200 years ago) is layered on top of the natural heating and cooling cycle that’s been ongoing throughout its four billion years of existence. 

The central unresolved question in the entire analysis is how much of the observed post-industrial temperature increase is due to mankind’s actions vs. how much would have happened if we weren’t even here. We may be able to modulate mankind’s influence but we can’t do anything about Mother Nature’s part.

2.    Our planet is now home to about 7.5 billion people, ten times as many as just a few centuries ago, all consuming resources and emitting wastes. That’s a big part of the problem and it’s not going to go away.

3.    Although characterized as a stern warning of the proximate danger of climate change, the UN’s IPCC report also confirms in the bleakest of terms the futility of the Paris Accords. It makes clear that the greenhouse gas emission targets of Paris (unlikely to be met in any event) would not significantly change the climate trajectory; truly draconian economic disincentives—such as carbon taxes in the range of thousands of dollars per ton—would be needed.  That’s not going to happen. Even the $50/ton posited by President Obama was considered economically debilitating.

4.    The initiatives under consideration to combat climate change would not stop it, they would just delay the onset of serious consequences. But that’s not a success strategy: the same calamitous outcome a decade or so later would be no more tolerable than in 2040.

All of this points to a single inescapable conclusion. Of course we should minimize atmospheric emissions. But trying to control our planet’s climate is a fool’s errand, and it makes little sense to turn the world’s economy upside down and to make electricity unaffordable—and therefore unavailable to billions—in a futile effort to do so.

The rational alternative is to adapt to climate change, just as flora and fauna have done for millennia. With no intergovernmental guidance, animal life moves about the planet to find food supplies where the changing planet provides.

Coastlines have been changing forever. Water supplies come and go. Land becomes fertile and then not. Plants species adapt and grow (or die) as the climate changes around them. In our advanced technological society, we have the capability to foresee changes and to engineer means to adapt and adjust to those changes.

Take a lesson from the Dutch. Centuries ago, they recognized that their tiny, low-lying country would forever be imperiled by the neighboring North Sea. So they built and maintained dikes to keep it at bay. Today in Holland there is a massive, computer-controlled network of levees and gates and storm barriers to control flooding, and they plan to upgrade that system as needed to accommodate projected sea level increases. The Zuider Zee (the inland sea we learned about in grammar school Geography class) is now verdant farmland.

That’s climate control the old-fashioned way. We can’t prevent hurricanes but we can protect people from their ravages. Responsible environmentalism means conserving resources, managing wastes, and living in harmony with our environs. That’s what we must do—and it’s all we can do.

Jack DeVine

October 2018

[jcdevinejr]

The Resistance Goes Nuclear

This is a column written in  frustration about the indefensible unfairness visited on Judge Kavanaugh in the recently completed Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. It defies any possibility for bipartisanship, bad news for us all./jcd

It was presidential candidate Bill Clinton who in early 1992 coined the phrase ‘politics of personal destruction’. Curiously (in retrospect) he was against it.

But he was on to something. Character assassination is today being deployed with frightening effect in the Democrats’ campaign to keep Judge Brett Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court. It’s working just fine, a near perfect tactic—were it not for the human carnage in its wake.

Kavanaugh is a judicial superstar. He has served for 12 years on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, the nation’s second highest court, amassing over 300 rulings, 13 of which have been used as a basis for Supreme Court decisions. By all accounts, he is a brilliant, reasonable and hard-working jurist.

Democrats had already vowed fierce opposition to whomever Trump nominated to replace retiring Justice Kennedy—the protest lines were manned and ready the night of his announcement—so it was a foregone conclusion that the nominee would be in for a bruising confirmation battle. But no one had any idea just how bruising and how personal it would become.

In two short months, Democratic senators, with media help, managed to paint Kavanaugh as a primal threat to our democracy, one who would protect Trump from impeachment and along the way single-handedly reverse Roe v. Wade.  Then, just days before the scheduled committee vote, they rolled out their big gun—an allegation of sexual assault by Kavanaugh, 36 years ago, when he was in high school. Ka-Boom!!

Since then, a Supreme Court nomination debate has morphed into a national catharsis on whether to believe Kavanaugh or his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Her testimony last week was emotionally compelling but provides little evidence—she cannot recall the time or place of the assault. Judge Kavanaugh’s unequivocal and impassioned denial was equally compelling.

The Democrats’ position is no secret: Kavanaugh is guilty. But let’s be clear. Their battle in the senate is not about women’s rights or protection of sexual assault victims; it is about blocking the nomination. Each Democratic senator is wrestling with the wholly political calculation of how to justify his or her predetermined vote against Kavanaugh, and how it will play out in the voting booths. The Ford allegation is simply a means to that end.

We don’t know yet if they will succeed. What we do know is that Judge Kavanaugh and his family have been horribly damaged. His reputation is forever tarnished. Polls indicate that roughly half of Americans now believe that this man—virtually unknown three months ago—is a vicious sexual predator.

That’s a tragedy; and I say that with no disrespect to Dr. Ford or her allegations. The #MeToo movement, constantly invoked as impetus for opposition to Kavanaugh, is a call for belief, respect and support of sexual abuse victims. That’s all good and it’s long overdue, but it is not—and cannot be—a basis for substituting blind belief for the innate fairness and due process that are the hallmarks of our democracy.

It is simply not possible to prove, without direct corroborating evidence, what did or did not happen 36 years ago. Therefore, there is no basis to presume that Brett Kavanaugh is guilty of the alleged offense. It is that simple, regardless of politics or popular opinion.

Meanwhile, the personal attacks continue. The new buzz is that Kavanaugh’s angry denials reveal a temperament not suited for the Supreme Court.  Baloney. A much better gauge of his judicial temperament is that which he’s displayed day in and day out in a dozen years on the nation’s second highest court. And anyone with a pulse would be outraged at being slandered and slimed in front of the entire nation.

Judge Kavanaugh is not the only one who’s angry. On Thursday, we saw South Carolina’s Senator Lindsay Graham in full fury—his emotional reaction to the behavior of his Democratic colleagues was obviously authentic; and it was particularly impactful because he is by nature steady and mild-mannered, often hammered by Republicans for being too conciliatory and too willing to work across the aisle.  

Senator Graham’s outburst was soundly criticized by the left and even lampooned by Saturday Night Live. That’s a good indicator that he struck home. He spoke from the heart, and it showed.

Senate confirmation of a president’s Supreme Court nomination is important. Rigorous challenge is expected. But baseless destruction of the nominee’s good name, and with it public respect and trust, is shameful. This is not the first time. It must stop.

Jack DeVine

October 2018

[jcdevinejr]

Kavanaugh, the next chapter

This is an angry column. I wrote it shortly after Senator Feinstein’s release of the sexual abuse accusation against SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh, after ‘completion’ of the Judiciary Committee’s two month evaluation and days before the planned committee vote. I considered it an all-time low in gutter politics. Of course now we know that it keeps getting lower. This column ran in the Aiken Standard on 9/19/18. /jcd

Every two weeks when I sit down to write this column, I gird myself to argue passionately for fairness and bipartisanship—for the simple reason that I don’t think our democratic republic can survive otherwise. And then like clockwork I’m forced to confront a new, worse than ever, political low blow.

It happened again. My mid-August column called for bipartisan support of the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination. Today that’s water over the dam—a tidal wave actually—with more ferocity and damaging power than hurricane Florence.

As everyone now knows, a bombshell allegation of an unreported sexual assault 36 years ago by the then teen-aged Brett Kavanaugh has just sidetracked the imminent senate vote.

It’s a runaway train with new facts emerging hourly. We don’t know where this is heading, but for now let me go out on a limb with my own sense of how we got here.

First let’s reprise the pre-bombshell chronology:

1.    From day 1 of the Trump presidency, full-on Democrat resistance to everything.

2.    Pre-packaged Democrat faux fury about the president’s SCOTUS choice, with protesters organized and in place even before they knew who it would be.

3.    Months of vetting, meetings with senators, and senate review of the 300-plus Kavanaugh rulings and hundreds of thousands of pages of records (more than provided for any high court nominee in history, but dismissed by Democrats as inadequate.)

4.    Repeated demand for postponement for whatever reasons come to mind: president under investigation, Cohen’s plea bargain, etc.

5.    Four days of Senate Judiciary committee hearings, a pre-planned circus of disruption and chaos.

It is painfully clear that the Democrats’ objective from the outset has been to derail Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, whoever it is, by any means possible. In that context, it is hard for folks on either side to evaluate objectively the stunning revelation of a possible sexual assault, albeit one that just appeared out of the blue.

So far, all Democrats and even some Republicans—in the age of #meToo, understandably skittish about appearing less that fully supportive of an alleged sexual assault victim—today are somberly milling about saying ‘gee it’s really too bad we just found out about this, but we can’t rush to judgment’. And they’re right.

Timing is everything. The New York Times calls the bombshell’s timing ‘unfortunate’. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who released the anonymous allegation just last Friday, acknowledged that she had this information since July. Several analysts noted that her reasons for its last-minute release ‘remain hazy’.

Hazy my foot.  The reason is that its release had to be last minute in order to have any chance of stalling the senate vote until after the mid-term elections. All that went before, the sober examination of Kavanaugh’s qualifications and judicial philosophy, was just political theater. Timing indeed is everything.

We’re told that the accuser initially insisted on anonymity and only this past weekend chose to go public. But that too seems questionable: she evidently had engaged legal support, taken a lie-detector test and assembled well-packaged media information well in advance of her Sunday change of heart. Just one day later, she expressed willingness to testify before Congress.

Democrats have a history of this kind of thing, particularly in SCOTUS appointments. They rolled out Anita Hill only after the conclusion of Clarence Thomas’s grueling hearings—hearings that were then reconvened for what Thomas characterized as a “high tech lynching”. Hill remains a darling of the left, despite zero corroboration of her testimony that permanently tarred Justice Thomas’ reputation.

And let’s not forget the utter destruction of Judge Robert Bork, still a low point in senate history, led by Ted Kennedy.  

Many Democrats justify their Kavanaugh treatment as repayment in kind for the 2016 GOP refusal to go forward with a Merritt Garland hearing. That’s plausible, except for the fact that Justice Scalia’s unexpected death occurred late in Obama’s second term. By that time, GOP held the senate majority and already given bi-partisan support to Obama nominees Kagan and Sotomayor.  It was neither unreasonable nor unprecedented (the “Biden Rule”) to wait until the next president was in place before proceeding on Garland.

The Garland appointment did not run aground when Mitch McConnell tabled it. That happened when Donald Trump won the 2016 election.

Whatever the outcome of this sad affair, Senator Feinstein’s delay in releasing critical pertinent information is unconscionable. It doesn’t serve the interests of the nation, the court or any sexual assault victims; it serves only partisan political motives.

Jack DeVine

September 2018

[jcdevinejr]

Chuck Todd’s Alternate Truth

I wrote this column in response to the Chuck Todd Essay re declining confidence in American media (ie, the ‘fake news’ issue), that appeared initially in the Atlantic and was then republished in numerous papers. I submitted it to the Asbury Park Press; they did not run the full column but extracted parts as a letter to the editor on September 15th. /jcd

Objective readers, ask yourselves:  Is the Chuck Todd essay that was reprinted in last Sunday’s Asbury Park Press (“Are news media really the enemy of the people?”) a fair assessment of Americans’ growing distrust of their press? Or is it exactly the kind of distorted commentary that more and more Americans are dismissing as ‘fake’?

Mr. Todd is a prominent figure, knowledgeable and articulate on this subject. But he is also deeply conflicted. As Political Director for NBC News, he is a major player in the cutthroat business of network news, where NBC is locked in combat with its #1 competitor, Fox News.

The problem is real: televised news is rapidly losing all credibility with the American public. But his assessment is simplistic, razor thin and self-serving. It’s pure blame game. He lays it all at the feet of Fox News, its nefarious founders, Rupert Murdoch and the late Roger Ailes, and by extension its legions of avid watchers. And he conveniently ignores the rampant biases of the other side.

There is no doubt that Fox News is in the tank for the president, and Todd thinks it’s awful that some folks get all their information from that one source.  But he expresses not a peep of concern about those who get all their information from the other 90% of televised media, the part that is immersed up to its ears in its own Trump-hating tank.

It is telling—and almost comical—that Todd’s prime example Ailes’ destructive political strategy was his emphasis on the negative, specifically in “making opponents unelectable”. Seriously? Chuck, have you watched MSNBC recently? Is that not their relentless, day-in-and-day-out drumbeat? They tried their best to convince voters that Trump was unelectable; failing that, they’ve been preaching ever since the election that he is unfit and his presidency must be stopped.

You may agree or disagree; just don’t pretend that one side or the other is unbiased.

Todd justifies the dichotomy by arguing that it’s all a matter of truth. They tell it, the other guys don’t. They hold the moral high ground. Since truth is on their side, any rebuttal or challenge of it must be untrue, false, truly untrue.

He takes potshots at the always-convenient target of ‘alternative truth’, but he might want to think twice about that one. Alternative truth is often the other side of the story, the relevant factual information that biased commentators omit because it might undermine their preferred narrative.

Omission is a particularly effective tactic of technically true but deceptive reporting.   It’s the stock in trade of everyday newscast and commentary on both sides, including print media. Read the front page of the New York Times and ask yourself what’s missing. How did they decide which topics they put there and which they bury on page 6, or what relevant facts (“truth”) they slip into the last paragraph or skip altogether?

Notice also that along with the sober emphasis on truth, Todd’s piece is packed with the subtle bias of innuendo. There’s implied racism (hostility to reporters is the worst he’s seen since coverage of the segregated south in the 50’s and 60’s); and greed, because Fox News prime time hosts compromise principle for big pay checks, (presumably more generous ones than those of their MSNBC counterparts); even ageism, the sad susceptibility to one-sided reporting of weak-thinking senior citizens  (like me, I suppose).

Chuck Todd’s screed misses the mark. Importantly, the problem is deeper and wider than he suggests. It’s not just free press, it’s free speech—which is under attack on all fronts. Large swaths of our media—news and commentary, entertainment and social media—is hard at work shaping American thinking along progressive lines and actively restricting conservative points of view. American universities consciously shield their students from harmful views (they call it hate speech), and their schools of journalism are in many cases incubators for left-leaning reporters, feedstock for the newsrooms of tomorrow.

We have become a polarized nation. Polarization is a team sport with both sides playing enthusiastically. Donald Trump is divisive, and at every juncture his actions are met with equally divisive ‘resistance’. At last week’s moving memorial services for John McCain, Democrat leaders extolled McCain’s bipartisanship. The next day, they turned the Senate Kavanaugh hearings into a circus of protest and obstruction.

A more helpful assessment from Todd would include an acknowledgement of shared accountability, along with some thoughtful suggestions how we might dig out of our common hole. You might call such an alternative essay fair and balanced.

Jack DeVine September 2018

[jcdevinejr]

John McCain, Home Again

My thoughts on John McCain, back home at USNA where his memory will be honored, not politicized. This ran in the Aiken Standard on September 5th, following his Sunday burial there. /jcd

On Sunday, John McCain was laid to rest in the US Naval Academy Cemetery. It’s the perfect place. He’s back home in the arms of his beloved Navy, away from the chaos of politics.

His burial followed a full week of public adulation, culminating in Saturday’s magnificent memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral. The testimonials, including eulogies by former presidents Bush and Obama, were heartwarming and moving—a seeming reprieve from the ferocious partisanship of recent years.

It was a temporary reprieve at best. Make no mistake, many Democrats’ warm embrace of their departed Republican foe are driven by McCain’s well-known bitter feud with Donald Trump.

The very publicized celebration of McCain’s bi-partisanship is well deserved, but rings hollow coming from people who are invested up to their eyeballs in full-on resistance to every action taken by their political opponents.  Similarly, many Republicans seem unable to let go of their anger over McCain’s unwillingness to provide carte-blanche support to the party line.

John McCain was both a genuine naval hero and a renowned public servant. A POW in North Vietnam for over five years, he stood fast in the face of protracted pain and suffering; as the son of a senior Navy admiral, his resilience was uniquely visible and inspirational.  And upon release from captivity, he returned to Navy service and then embarked on an entirely new and equally remarkable political career.

Every square inch of the Naval Academy is steeped in tradition. It is awe-inspiring to be in the tangible presence of greatness. I recall as a plebe, shortly after entry in 1961, being in formation in Tecumseh Court and thinking about how many legendary figures in naval history had trod those same worn cobblestones.

Tucked into one corner of the ‘Yard’, the USNA cemetery is a particularly sacred place. John McCain is in good company there.  His body rests next to that of Admiral Chuck Larson, his USNA classmate and lifelong friend. Notable Academy graduates from the Civil War to present day have been laid to rest there; their common legacy is unswerving dedication to duty.

Medal of Honor awardee Admiral Jim Stockdale is there too. For seven and a half grim years, Stockdale was the most senior officer in captivity in North Vietnam. Over that time, his leadership enabled John McCain and other POWs to endure their relentless, unspeakable abuse. It is impossible for those of us who were not there to have any real comprehension of the extraordinary courage under extreme duress shown by Stockdale, McCain, and so many others in that obscure corner of the world.

These days we tear down monuments to individuals whose life accomplishments were extraordinary, Robert E. Lee as an example, based on shifting popular sentiment. That won’t happen at the Naval Academy; there, John McCain’s memory will be preserved and revered.

But on Capitol Hill and in the newsrooms of America, the sniping will proceed unabated. By Sunday morning, with echoes of Saturday’s glowing tributes still in our ears, the political knives were already out, with renewed calls for resistance on all fronts.

John McCain charted his own course; no one can do so without bucking fierce head winds and rousing intense controversy. His relationship with the president is a very small part of his legacy and is no surprise. He was tough, combative, aggressive— par for the course for jet fighter pilots. He never suffered fools, and much in the president’s behavior is, let’s face it, foolish.

But the centerpiece of his political legacy is his demonstrated commitment to bi-partisanship. Is it not glaringly obvious that politicizing John McCain’s death completely contradicts that central lesson of his life?  Wouldn’t his memory be better served if we were all to follow his lead and find a way to bridge our divides for the good of our nation?

The haunting Navy Hymn, a timeless feature of church services at the Academy and at Naval stations worldwide, was sung by the Navy choir at Sunday’s funeral service. It is a simple prayer:

Eternal Father strong to save, whose arm hath bound the restless wave …

Oh hear us when we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea.

Half a century later, it still sends chills.

John McCain faced peril on the sea, in the air, in the jungles, and at the epicenter of political controversy.  He’s now back in Annapolis, among a pantheon of heroes. There he can rest in peace, far from political turmoil.

Jack DeVine

September 2018

[jcdevinejr]

Legislating from the Bench

My views regarding the necessity of achieving the judicial independence intended by the founding fathers, rather than a politically biased (in either direction) auxiliary legislative branch. this column ran in the Aiken Standard on 8/8/18. /jcd

Last week, US District of Columbia Judge John Bates ruled that the Trump administration must restart the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, because they have not provided sufficient rationale for terminating it.

That ruling makes no sense. Current US policy on DACA was put in place by Barack Obama’s executive order, not by legislation. In principle an executive order has no more legs than the executive who issues it—even President Obama acknowledged its limitations. The courts didn’t require Obama to justify ordering DACA, so how can they now decide that Trump must justify cancelling it?

Presumably, Judge Bates knows that. Perhaps his ruling is founded on his personal conviction that DACA’s a good thing (I’m inclined to agree, with some caveats). Or perhaps it is based on his broad political and/or ideological orientation.

Or very likely, his ruling is nothing more than a political tactic, a holding action to keep DACA in place for a while longer—and one that possibly could be upheld by tie vote from a shorthanded US Supreme Court, if his political soul mates in the US Senate manage to fend off the Kavanaugh nomination.

The problem, of course, is that none of that has anything at all to do with Judge Bates’ sworn duty to uphold the law and the Constitution.

This is nothing new, just the latest in a series of post-Trump politically driven judicial actions, beginning with rejection of the Trump immigration travel ban (subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court). Progressive judges have become major players in the “resistance”, a wholly political action, in direct contravention to the constitutional role of the Judicial Branch of government.

Which brings us directly to the Kavanaugh nomination.

It is clear that Brett Kavanaugh is exceptionally well qualified for appointment to the US Supreme Court—we’d be hard-pressed to find a candidate with shinier credentials. But his candidacy has one serious and uncorrectable shortcoming: he was nominated by Donald Trump and is therefore facing fierce opposition from Democrats in the Senate.

At this point it appears that Kavanaugh will be approved, but by the slimmest of margins and on a completely party-line vote.

For perspective, let’s compare the Kavanaugh nomination to other noteworthy ones. The rock star among progressive Supreme Court justices is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Like Kavanaugh, she is an impeccably qualified and intellectually impressive jurist. Conservative judicial hero Antonin Scalia demonstrated time and again his professional respect and personal friendship with Justice Ginsburg, despite their poles-apart political views.

When nominated by Bill Clinton, Ginsburg made no effort to hide her liberal bona fides. If there’s ever been a shoe-in vote to uphold Roe v. Wade, it would be hers. But somehow she managed 96-3 approval (including 46 Republicans!) in her Senate confirmation. How times have changed.

One often repeated basis political opposition to the Kavanaugh nomination is the ‘unfairness’ of Trump’s opportunity to appoint two reliably conservative members to the Court. But wait: did not president Obama appoint Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, to dissatisfied grumbling from the GOP but only modest opposition?

There is a real and very significant distinction between an ideological conservative jurist and one who is committed to rigorous adherence to the Constitution. I believe that Judge Kavanaugh is solidly in the latter camp and would support a constitutionally valid position on any matter coming before the Court, irrespective of partisan considerations.

Bottom line: Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination should be acted upon forthwith; and every senator’s vote should be based on his or her assessment of the merits of Kavanaugh’s candidacy, not on partisan pressures or presumptions about the position he might take on some future case.

Politicization of our courts—at all levels—is a serious problem. It exacerbates today’s extreme partisan divide between Americans, the chasm that in my view is the greatest single threat to survival of our democracy.

Legislating from the bench should be worrisome to all, regardless of political persuasion. Would progressives be happy with a future US District Court, heavy with Trump appointees, countermanding an executive order from a President Warren or Harris based solely on policy disagreement? I doubt it.

And we all (media and politicians included) need to stop looking for a political boost from the courts. Chief Justice John Roberts reminded us that their job is to call balls and strikes, nothing more. I’ve not always been happy with Judge Roberts’ strike zone, but his counsel is right on the money and it should be remembered by jurists on every bench.

Jack DeVine

August 2018

[jcdevinejr]

Can we agree on a few things?

This is just another plaintive (and futile?) cry in the dark for some level of mutual respect among our warring political factions. We really need to reach across the divide. This ran in the Aiken Standard of August 22nd. /jcd

I’ve always believed that if we could strip away all the anger and finger-pointing, we’d find that left and right are not all that far apart. By and large, we all want the same things for our nation; we disagree primarily on how to achieve them.

So far, there’s not much evidence to support that theory. It seems that we’re too busy in hand-to-hand combat over our differences to give even passing thought to any points of agreement.

But let’s try it anyway. Let’s take a handful of today’s lightning rod issues and look for the common ground. It’s there. Here’s a random sample: : Surely we can all agree that our borders must be protected. By spectacular good fortune, we live in one of the most desirable countries on earth. 95% of the world’s population, good people and bad, are on the outside looking in. We can’t just leave the gate open.

1.    Immigration: Surely we can all agree that our borders must be protected. By spectacular good fortune, we live in one of the most desirable countries on earth. 95% of the world’s population, good people and bad, are on the outside looking in. We can’t just leave the gate open.

We’re a nation of immigrants and we can appreciate the cultural richness created by that heritage; we can be open-minded, welcoming, caring and generous.  And we can argue about what immigration standards to set, whether or not to build a wall, how we deal with people who are here illegally. But these are all just facets of the overriding reality: If we don’t exercise reasonable control over who comes into our country, all that is good about it ultimately will be lost.

2.    Abortion: Unborn babies, in the latter stages of their development in the womb, are human beings. There is no fundamental difference between an infant a month or two before birth and that same infant a month or two after: in both instances, he or she is viable but wholly dependent, fragile and defenseless.

With full respect for the mother’s health and her right to make personal choices, that defenseless little baby, in or out of the womb, has the right to life guaranteed to all by our constitution and by natural law.

We can debate separately about when human life begins, and even Roe v. Wade identifies that as an unresolved issue. But can we not agree that late-term abortion is simply wrong?

3.    Gender: We can agree—although these days it is popular not to—that gender is a matter of biological reality, not choice. With rare exceptions (less than one in a thousand), the chromosomes in every one of the trillions of cells in a human body identify each of us as unambiguously male or female.

Individuals may prefer to have different biological construction and are free to take on whatever lifestyles they want, without prejudice. But changing clothes, or injecting hormones, or even surgically rearranging body parts does not change the underlying reality.  

4.    Planet Earth: Earth is our only home; we must preserve and protect it for the generations to come.

Conservatives have had a field day ridiculing the new environmentalist campaign against plastic straws. But the idea has merit. Non-biodegradable single-use products continue to accumulate on land and sea, with no end in sight. Plastic straws are a tiny fraction of the problem, but we need to start somewhere and it makes sense to focus on a visible, specific target.

Meanwhile, the global warming debate rages on. I’d argue that earth’s human riders cannot materially alter its natural and continual climate change. But we have complete control of how we conserve resources and manage our wastes. That is the real environmentalism that we can all agree on.

The list goes on. We all want economic fairness, social justice, security and civility, world peace. I’d bet that in every case we could find as much room for agreement as disagreement, if we just tried.

Years ago, in Japan, I was involved in a complex contract negotiation. In that culture, it was common practice to discuss, in gory detail, every element of the proposed contract, not just the points in contention. It was painfully tedious. But in retrospect, I think that exercise in acknowledging our agreements made it easier for each side to stretch and bend a bit to accommodate the other.

Does this line of thinking help at all? Perhaps. Maybe it will give some of us pause before we launch into demonizing those on the other side. Maybe our opponents actually are not subversive, or racist, or sexist or whatever – maybe they’re after the same things we are.

Maybe we can learn to disagree without being disagreeable. What a concept!

Jack DeVine

August 2018

[jcdevinejr]

A Peek into the Future

Take a step back and think about what’s ahead for our kids and grandkids... This one ran in the Aiken Standard on July 25th. jcd

Family milestones inevitably cause us to pause for a bit and think about what’s really important.

Last week, my wife Peggy and I celebrated our 50thwedding anniversary. It occasioned happy conversations with our sons, grandkids and assorted other friends and family. And it also prompted a bit of serious reflection. We’re on the down slope of life, but what kind of world are we leaving for the next generations?

I’m no visionary. But I do pay attention to what’s happening all around us, and I’m old and grey enough to have a sense of where we’re headed. So with no hard knowledge but lots of opinion let me posit my views as to what’s ahead, in four critical areas:

On climate change and the environment: Planet earth is a tough old bird. It will keep hurtling through space, just as it has for the past four billion years, pretty much ignoring its human riders. Earth’s climate will continue to change. Mankind won’t alter those changes to any perceptible degree, regardless of how many Kyoto or Paris agreements are signed or scrapped – but we will adapt, as all flora and fauna constantly adapts, and our ability to foresee and adapt to climate changes will improve steadily with advancing technology.

Our much more impactful environmental problems will be primarily population related. Conservation of natural resources, waste management and prevention of pollution will become dominant factors in the economy and lifestyle of people everywhere. Failure to be true environmentalists in that sense will be hugely consequential. We’d better get on with it.

On world peace and nuclear weapons: The depressing view: mankind has been at one another’s throats since time immemorial, and I don’t see anything that’s likely to change that. Worse, man’s capability for mass destruction continues to grow.

Which brings us to nuclear weapons. It is truly astonishing that since 1945 not a single nuclear weapon has been deployed in anger. Nevertheless, there are thousands of nuclear warheads in existence today, and it would take only one to trigger massive, perhaps irreversible, global catastrophe. Nuclear technology is now fully mastered – the genie’s not going back in the bottle.

Those grim facts lead inexorably to two conclusions: (1) nations must maintain close, transparent and mutually supportive relationships, however difficult and distasteful, and (2) our nation must maintain a robust, world-class defense capability, indefinitely.

On the USA: Survival of our beloved nation is by no means assured. The USA is already pushing the envelope in terms of life span of democracies worldwide. In my view, today’s extreme partisanship is crippling our ability to achieve enduring progress on anything. Absent collaborative, constructive interaction among elected officials and public, the wheels will come off for sure.

The encouraging news is that what’s wrong with our internal governance is becoming obvious to all. We can – and must – correct it.

There are two corollaries. First, It is imperative that we exercise reasonable controls on immigration, so that we can grow without imperiling the very aspects of our nation that have enabled our prosperity thus far. Remember that we are barely four percent of the world’s population. For each American on earth there are about twenty others, many of whom would happily come here. To protect today’s and future citizens, we must be careful about who we admit.

Secondly, our Constitution is a fundamentally sound roadmap and it’s taken us this far. We need to stick with it, not reengineer it.

On religion and morality:  Fifty years ago, Time Magazine raised the question “Is God Dead?” – prematurely, it seems. But there are many indications that organized religion is dying out, with corresponding decline of morality and ethics. In my view – practical, not theological – that’s a devastating problem.

There is hope. Over decades, we’ve seen cyclic shifts in social mores, probably due to the stubborn reality of the consequences of bad choices. Perhaps we can look ahead to a time when the unquestionable benefit of traditional marriage and the nuclear family asserts itself once again. And I’ve always believed that the day will come when society looks back at the era of unrestricted abortion and wonders ‘how could they kill their young?’

________

The above is conjecture. But the certain lesson for the leaders of tomorrow is that gadgets, computers, smart-things and brilliant programs won’t save you.  We’ve already learned that these both solve problems and create new ones (e.g., Facebook, smart phones). It will be human interaction and ethical behavior that carries the day.

We’re passing the torch. Godspeed to its next keepers!

Jack DeVine

July 2018