NewsBusters (blog) | USA Today: Trump Driving Liberals to Yoga NewsBusters (blog) This news comes to us by way of the May 29 USA Today in which Paul Singer reports that the election of Donald Trump has driven many liberals to take up yoga as a means of escape or to energize themselves for the "resistance" ahead. So perhaps those ... |
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USA Today: Trump Driving Liberals to Yoga - NewsBusters (blog)
"The word liberal in this context has nothing to do with today's partisan language, but refers instead to the Latin root, pertaining to liberty. And at the heart of liberty in the Western world has been freedom of speech. From the beginning, people understood that this meant protecting and listening to speech with which you disagreed," Zakaria argued.
That means, he said, not drowning out "the ideas that we find offensive."
In addition, Zakaria noted what he called "an anti-intellectualism" on the left.
"It's an attitude of self-righteousness that says we are so pure, we're so morally superior, we cannot bear to hear an idea with which we disagree," he said.
"Liberals think they are tolerant but often they aren't," he added.
No one, he continued, "has a monopoly on right or virtue."
In fact, it is only by being open to hearing opposing views that people on both sides of the political spectrum can learn something, Zakaria said.
"By talking seriously and respectfully about agreements and disagreements, we can come together in a common conversation," he said.
"Recognizing that while we seem so far apart, we do actually have a common destiny."
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Fareed Zakaria: Liberals think they're tolerant, but they're not - CNN
A Gumatj dancer from East Arnhem Land performs at the opening ceremony of last weeks convention on constitutional recognition in Mutitjulu, near Uluru. Photograph: Calla Wahlquist for the Guardian
A constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice in parliament is unlikely to ever be accepted by the majority in the Liberal party, the Institute of Public Affairs executive director has warned.
John Roskam, the head of the influential libertarian thinktank, rejected the proposal put forward by the Referendum Council at a meeting of more than 250 community leaders at Uluru, labelling it an attempt to enshrine racial division in the constitution.
Conservative Coalition MPs including Craig Kelly and George Christensen have lined up to criticise the proposal, but it was supported by MP Julian Leeser, suggesting the issue will be highly divisive in the party room.
In a statement on Friday the Uluru conference said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were the sovereign first peoples of Australia and a significant practical change was needed, not a symbolic reform. In addition to the proposed Indigenous voice in parliament, it called for a commission that would lead to a treaty.
In 2015 the IPA campaigned against constitutional recognition, arguing instead that all references to race should be removed from the constitution to assert the principle of equality.
On Monday Roskam told Guardian Australia parliament represented all Australians and the suggestion of a separate Indigenous voice was just as offensive as to give people a special say due to their religion, or gender or anything else.
In reality, all policy decisions are Indigenous policy decisions, because Indigenous Australians are Australians.
Roskam said that the moral force [of the Indigenous body] would be very significant, in effect making it difficult to override it, describing it as an effective veto on matters of policy such as the Northern Territory intervention.
On the proposed treaty, Roskam argued it was impossible for the crown representing all Australians to make an agreement with a subset of Australians, the Indigenous nations.
The idea of a treaty is radical identity politics. In any case a country cannot have a treaty with itself.
He said the point of the 1967 referendum, in which Australia resolved to count Indigenous people in the census, was to make us all the same but the recognition proposal would do the opposite.
All parties should focus on what unites Australians and brings us together. These proposals are unlikely to ever be accepted by the majority of the Liberal party.
The IPA is highly influential in the Coalition, leading campaigns against superannuation reform that resulted in major changes to the governments election policy and forcing reform of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act back on to the agenda.
On Monday Ken Wyatt, the commonwealths first Indigenous minister, told ABC AM he was extremely confident the Uluru talks would lead to a referendum on recognition next year.
Wyatt said scare campaigns had the potential to derail the process and advocated an awareness program that informs all Australians of the intent behind the set of words what it means and that its not in enshrining special privileges.
But it is in fact recognising the reality that Aboriginal and Torres Islander people lived on this continent long before settlement, and that Australias history should be reflected in that statement within the constitution.
Leeser, a Sydney Liberal MP and constitutional conservative, welcomed the Indigenous delegates strong rejection of earlier proposals for purely symbolic recognition or anti-discrimination reforms which he characterised as a one-clause bill of rights.
Leeser said the government should consider a representative body if it did not have voting rights or a right of veto. He said the Liberal party traditionally had been opposed to a treaty but a settlement could be contemplated.
The conservative Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly said the Indigenous body in parliament would be very divisive in the community and many in the Coalition party room would be very reluctant to pursue the full recommendations agreed at Uluru.
He said there were now a number of Indigenous MPs and they were a strong voice for their community.
Influential backbench MP George Christensen told Sky News it was dangerous to give one group special privileges that no other group in the country has.
Christensen said he would vote against the proposal in both the lower house and in any referendum, saying recognition was segregating us.
He said the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, which was abolished by the Howard government, was a demonstrable failure ... [that] elevated one section of our society to a special basis where there were special policies in place for them.
Christensen said that government should work for practical outcomes for Indigenous Australians, such as jobs, health and education rather than the academic, elitist issue of recognition.
Cape York Institute senior policy adviser, Shireen Morris, said the proposal was not about dividing Australians but creating a fairer relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Australian government.
Morris said parliament already makes Indigenous-specific laws and could do so without the race power, as it had done for the Northern Territory intervention.
All this proposal says is: of course Indigenous should have a fair say and a fair voice in policies that affect them.
Morris said the objection to the crown making a treaty with itself were philosophical but in practice the government enters agreements all the time, including native title agreements.
The Referendum Council has been contacted for comment.
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Liberals won't accept Indigenous recognition model, Institute of Public Affairs warns - The Guardian
Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press
HALIFAX -- When the Nova Scotia election campaign started 30 days ago, Liberal Premier Stephen McNeil set the tone of the race by warning supporters that his tight-fisted approach may have turned off some voters.
"We had to make tough choices, choices that weren't always popular," the Liberal premier said on April 30, acknowledging a frugal style of governing that has allowed him to deliver balanced budgets in the past two years despite weak economic growth.
As voters head to the polls today, many will likely be recalling how McNeil's majority government was defined by its decision to rein in spending by limiting wage increases within the public sector. That led to ugly standoffs with the province's nurses and public school teachers, culminating in protests at the legislature, brief strikes and back-to-work legislation that the unions said was draconian.
There was also a series of cuts to seniors' long-term care and public service organizations, including cutbacks to non-profit groups serving those with hearing loss, eating disorders and epilepsy. And in 2015, thousands of people working the province's film industry took to the streets to protest the government's decision to eliminate a film tax credit.
Despite McNeil's hard-nosed approach, the Liberals maintained a strong lead in decided voter support throughout their mandate, with the Progressive Conservatives under Jamie Baillie well behind in second place, and
Gary Burrill's New Democrats a distant third.
Still, a closer look at the polls showed there was a cost to McNeil's approach. Though his party has remained in first place among decided voters, his own popularity lagged behind that of his party.
In the two months before the election campaign, the Liberals attempted to soften their image by spending tens of millions of dollars in a flurry of daily announcements. The party then tabled a budget last month that included a modest tax cut for about 500,000 Nova Scotians.
Three days later, McNeil pulled the trigger on an election, an announcement that reminded Canadians that Nova Scotia is the only province that does not have fixed election dates.
At dissolution, the Liberals held 34 seats in the 51-seat legislature, the Progressive Conservatives had 10 and the NDP 5. There was one Independent and one seat was vacant.
By the end of the campaign, some polls suggested the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives found themselves in a tightened race, with Baillie repeatedly hammering McNeil for what Baillie describes as a health-care crisis.
On Monday, Baillie again returned to a theme that he said was resonating with voters.
"Everywhere I go in Nova Scotia, people tell me that they are frustrated and afraid because of the state of our health-care system," Baillie told a rally in Dartmouth. "Everyone acknowledges there is a crisis in health care -- everyone except Stephen McNeil."
In particular, Baillie has made a point of telling voters McNeil had failed to deliver on a 2013 promise to make sure every Nova Scotian had access to a family doctor. About 100,000 Nova Scotians are still looking for a doctor.
The health issue is crucial to the Tories' success because there is little else to distinguish their platform from that of the Liberals, especially when it comes to fiscal policy.
Baillie, who is contesting his second election as leader, is promising four years of balanced budgets if elected. McNeil is promising the same. And both men are promising to keep public sector wages in line.
By contrast, NDP Leader Gary Burrill campaigned on a platform that calls for adding close to $1 billion to the province's accumulated debt over the next four years if he becomes premier.
Burrill, elected leader just over a year ago, has said his party was inspired by Justin Trudeau, whose Liberal party won the 2015 election by, among other things, pledging to spur the economy by using deficit financing.
The Liberals have described the NDP's leader as "anti-capitalist," while a Tory spokesman called his platform a "reckless spending orgy."
The NDP's commitment to deficit financing stands in contrast to the approach taken by the province's first NDP government, which won the general election in 2009 by promising to table three consecutive balanced budgets -- a promise they eventually broke.
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Nova Scotia election day: Penny-pinching Liberals seeking second term - BNN
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that two of North Carolinas congressional districts are unconstitutionally constructed based on race. In doing so, the court further clouded an already opaque line of case law and made it even more difficult for states to comply with the Voting Rights Act. It also inadvertently called parts of the VRA into question in a way that could reshape the congressional delegations from the South in a manner the court likely did not intend.
The ruling in Cooper v. Harris is the culmination of two decades of litigation. The history of that district is important in understanding the twisting strands of jurisprudence and shifting theories of democratic representation that led us to this point. A look at that history will show how the Supreme Courts liberal justices abandoned their principles in pursuit of a purely political win for Democrats.
North Carolinas congressional delegation gained a twelfth House seat after the 1990 census, which coincided with some new VRA interpretations from the U.S. Department of Justice. The VRA was originally read to bar states from using their voting lawsincluding the drawing of district linesto dilute the votes of minority groups. By the 1990s, the DOJ had come to believe that the best way to uphold this provision was to require that states with significant minority populations maximize the number of districts with majority-minority populations.
In North Carolina in 1991, this meant making two majority-black districts instead of the one the Democratic state legislature had proposed. Earlier court rulings also required that all districts be equal in population, and because the black population of North Carolina was not all in one place, this ensured the legislature would do some creative line-drawing. The result was this map, with the 12th district there in pink:
Its not a pretty picture, and in the 1993 Supreme Court case that resulted, Shaw v. Reno, Justice Sandra Day OConnor called the lines a bizarre shape. The case forced the Supreme Court to confront for the first time the contradictory aims of not diluting the black vote while also not gerrymandering people on the basis of race. At that point, Republicans were among those challenging the district lines.
Its not easy to square the circle. Distributing black North Carolinians equally across all districts would, given the racial polarization of voting then prevalent, have likely resulted in districts sending 12 white representatives to Congress. On the other hand, cramming most into two serpentine districts destroyed the idea that each congressman represents a discrete geographic community. The lines of the 12th district, like those of the 1st (the brown inkblot in the eastern part of the map) were not contiguous with any one region, but built to capture the members of one race and separate them from the other, elevating race over all other factors. As Justice OConnor put it,
A reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who belong to the same race, but who are otherwise widely separated by geographical and political boundaries, and who may have little in common with one another but the color of their skin, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid.
The court held that, under the Constitutions Equal Protection Clause, race-based redistricting must be held to a standard of strict scrutinyit would only be allowed if it were in pursuit of a compelling government interest, narrowly tailored to achieve that interest, and the least restrictive means to achieve it. They sent the matter back to the lower court to sort it out, and after another Supreme Court case, Shaw v. Hunt, the Supreme Court held that although the states purpose was to obey the DOJ requirement, the remedy the state chose was not narrowly tailored.
Essentially, the Shaw cases allow and even encourage states to create majority-minority districts, but they cant go crazy with it. The court was clearly unsettled by the highly irregular and geographically non compact district, but had difficulty articulating a standard for how weird-looking was too weird-looking. As with Justice Potter Stewarts famous definition of pornography, on racial gerrymandering the court knew it when they saw it.
In 1997, the state redrew the lines to be similar, but less stretched out and meandering:
The districts were less ugly, but intended to achieve the same result. The 1997 map was meant for the 1998 election, but further litigation in district court found it still to violate the Equal Protection Clause. The legislature scrambled to draw an even more compact set of districts in time for the 1998 election while the district court decision was on appeal. This was the result:
Although this reduced the 12th district down to 47 percent black, the incumbent Democrat, Mel Watt, was still re-elected with 55 percent of the vote (down from 71 percent in 1996). The case reached the Supreme Court the next year in Hunt v. Cromartie.
With the lessons of the Shaw cases in mind, the legislature claimed that the lines they drew in 1997 were not race-based but party-based. Their goals were protecting incumbents, which was constitutionally permissible, and not racial, which might not be. The high court sent the case back to the district court, which did not buy the legislatures story and held that the gerrymander was race-based and unconstitutional.
In 2001, the Supreme Court heard the appeal from that decision in the case of Easley v. Cromartie. This time, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court sided with the legislature. The opinion, written by Justice Stephen Breyer, held that because the categories of black voters and Democratic voters so heavily overlapped, it was difficult to say what the legislatures motives were and, absent more evidence, they would assume the permissible motive of incumbent protection.
Of course, by that time the 2000 census had been compiled and new districts were needed in any case, but the ruling in the Cromartie cases would still influence the state legislatures next attempt. In 2001 the legislature, still controlled by Democrats, drew a map that helped incumbents and divided the states congressional delegation almost evenly, producing six Democrats and seven Republicans (the state had gained a thirteenth seat in reapportionment that year). The result looked a lot like the 1997 map but, as it was done for avowedly partisan purposes, the Supreme Court did not get involved.
The Shaw and Cromartie cases produced a strange, intent-based way of looking at redistricting. Race-based line-drawing was forbidden, unless it was strictly necessary to comply with the VRAs goals of ensuring minority representation and remedying past discrimination. Party-based line-drawing, on the other hand, was mostly allowed and examined far less rigorously. Redistricting cases involving race became exercises in divining legislative intent as much as looking at maps. Such a tricky and uncertain process often leads to the judge substituting his or her perception for the legislatures intent.
The results under the 2001 map held steady as Democrats held between six and eight of the 13 seats throughout the decade. In 2010, a new census called for new districts, but this time Republicans controlled the state legislature for the first time in a century. Their increasing dominance in the South combined with new technology in redistricting led to a 2011 map that was more convoluted than any that came before:
The aim was the samepolitical gerrymanderingand that purpose still overlapped heavily with racial gerrymandering. But this time the players were different. The new lines produced a 9-4 Republican delegation, which increased to 10-3 after the 2014 midterms. Now Republicans were demanding that the map be upheld and their professed intent be taken at face value, while Democrats now called the map a racist disgrace and demanded that the courts alter it. The parties flip-flop was so routine that it went largely unremarked upon, but it does show both sides aimed for political power first, and constitutional theory second.
In the 2011 map, Republicans increased the black population of the 12th district from 43.8 percent to 50.7 percent. In their telling, this was to ensure continued compliance with the VRA while maximizing Republican advantage in the surrounding districts. Now that Republicans had bought into their former theory, however, Democrats abandoned it, saying the new lines were primarily race-based, with political considerations a smokescreen for an impermissible purpose. The district court and appeals court opinions focused on this and found against the legislature, ordering new districts to be created for the 2016 elections.
The Supreme Court appeal in that case, Cooper v. Harris, came down this week. It played out partly along the lines of intent, with one side believing the legislatures professed purpose and the other doubting it. In Cooper, though, an additional wrinkle emerged. The majority opinion, written by Justice Elena Kagan, questioned the need for the 12th district to be majority-black at all.
The Constitution does not typically allow for dividing people on the basis of race. As discussed in the Shaw opinions and elsewhere, it is only allowed in congressional districting because of the history of black disenfranchisement, and even then is only permitted under certain strict conditions. One of these conditions is that the regions white majority must vote sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat the minoritys preferred candidate.
Justice Thomas is the modern-day intellectual descendant of Justice John Marshall Harlan, who famously wrote in 1896 that our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.
That was certainly the case at the time that the VRA was passed in 1965, when despite a sizable black population North Carolina had not elected a black representative since 1898. But according to Kagan and four other justices, by 2017 electoral history provided no evidence that could demonstrate effective white bloc-voting.
Thats quite a shift for the courts four liberal justices. Four years ago, in Shelby County v. Holder, Kagan joined three other liberals on the court in dissenting from a ruling premised on that very proposition. In that case, five conservative justices struck down one section of the VRA because the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions. The liberals, led by the redoubtable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined in a fiery dissent stating that in 2013 the VRA surely has not eliminated all vestiges of discrimination against the exercise of the franchise by minority citizens. By 2017, apparently it had.
The mirror image of the flip-flop is seen on the conservatives dissent in Cooper, but their reasoning is more plausible, being at least based on the courts precedents. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the three dissenters in Cooper (Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the decision). One of his primary complaints is that the liberals ignored the precedent of the Cromartie cases, in which the political gerrymander was permissible where a racial one was not.
To Alito, the case deals with a political gerrymander, making the presence or absence of white racial-bloc voting irrelevanttheyre different issues requiring different analyses. The Kagan group, on the other hand, sees this as a race case but twists the logic 180 degrees from their ruling in a similar race case in Shelby County.
The only consistent justice in all of this is Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas joined the conservatives in striking down VRA preclearance in Shelby County and joined the liberals in ignoring VRA anti-dilution rules in Cooper. That is unsurprising; Thomas has always been the most logically consistent justice on the Supreme Court. His position has always been that race-based districting is suspect, no matter what the VRA says.
Thomas is the modern-day intellectual descendant of Justice John Marshall Harlan, who famously wrote in 1896 that our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. Other justices accept this ideal only when it suits their purposes. In 2013, the liberals believed racism in voting patterns to be so widespread that it required a federal bureaucracy to ensure minority voting rights. In 2017, they proclaimed race-based voting patterns to have ended. The switch is so results-based as to defy any other explanation.
We should hope for higher principles from our highest court. On redistricting, at least, Justice Thomas is the only up to the job.
Kyle Sammin is a lawyer and writer from Pennsylvania. Read some of his other writing at kylesammin.com, or follow him on Twitter @KyleSammin.
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Why The Supreme Court's Liberals Flipflopped On Gerrymandering - The Federalist