AJC.com > Opinion > Woman to Woman > Archives > 2007 > November
November 2007
Should Americans be more patriotic?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Rebuttal
In those intense days following 9/11, there was something in the air that looked like a surge in good old-fashioned patriotism. We bought flags and waved them proudly from our porches. We cried with strangers, united not only by fear and confusion, but love of a nation under attack.
The fear still lives with us, part of the “new normal” that comes after a major assault on American soil. Yet the confusion is gone, and we’re back to loving the nation in the way we have since its inception: with an open heart and a critical eye. We no longer wonder if speaking our mind is patriotic; we know it is. We no longer worry if decrying the policies of an administration is heresy; we know it is not.
How un-American it would be not to value this privilege, and when others are denied such freedoms, we should intervene. Yet look what happens when full-scale intervention is a knee-jerk response to chaos.
Still, it’s fair to wonder: have we just become a nation of complainers? Dr. Ralph Young, senior lecturer at Temple University and the author of “Dissent in America,” doesn’t think so. Or, rather, he thinks that’s okay: “Complaining is part of the process of ‘doing something,’ he explains. “If enough people speak out, eventually someone in authority has to listen.” Many of us will be speaking out on Election Day, an event no true patriot should miss.
As for the Flag Pin Scandal of the Century, Barack Obama explained neatly why he no longer wears that symbol of post 9/11 unity: “You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who serve.”
Bill Clinton served (unlike his successor, winning the presidency in uncontested victory) only to have his very right to lead rejected. Remember? “He’s not my president” was the rallying cry of the so-called “values voters.”
Some things are bound to strike us as unpatriotic sentiment. That’s democracy for you: a messy, miraculous work-in-progress, with every voice needed in the fray. If we can’t handle dissent, then no flag, waving or worn, can save us.
Is the Legacy of the 1960’s positive or negative?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Generations following the baby boom grew up hearing about the 1960’s like it was a fantastic party they had just missed. Yet once overly revered, the era now haplessly stands trial in a kangaroo court, blamed for everything that’s wrong with America. While writing his new book, “Boom! Voices from the Sixties,” best-selling author Tom Brokaw (“The Greatest Generation”) kept hearing from wary boomers, “What are you going to call this one? The Worst Generation?”
Newt Gingrich might have used that title, as well as his compatriot Dick Armey, who once announced, “I think all the troubles in the country began in the sixties.” Oh really, Dick? So I guess rigidly prescribed sex roles and segregation were good things?
In evaluating the sixties. it’s smart to start a few years earlier. As Woodrow Wilson once said, “The seed of revolution is in repression”. The stability of the fifties was marred by repression, marred by institutionalized racism.
Despite its excesses, the decade that followed spawned a revolution with many lasting triumphs: the ideals of Martin Luther King, increased opportunities for women, a war that inspired legions of social activists, many of whom, stereotypes to the contrary, continue to work for the disenfranchised.
Some developments of the era still haunt us, like the terrible fallout of drug abuse. Other problems have been nullified. Vietnam soldiers often returned home to less than a hero’s welcome. Yet when an Atlanta radio station recently conducted a campaign to send 375,000 overseas service members a Thanksgiving letter, listeners of all political stripes participated. They saw no connection between supporting a soldier and supporting a military conflict.
Tom Brokaw concludes rightfully in “BOOM!” that the jury is still out on the sixties.
Yet we can’t allow detractors from the right to hang the whole decade in effigy as they continue to chip away at social gains and civil liberties, all that went right in that sometimes wrong-headed decade.
Remember: the seed of revolution is in repression. So if you still feel like there was a party you missed, hang on. With the way things are going around here, you just might get a second chance.
Rebuttal
Andy cheerleads the sixties just months after Rolling Stone magazine’s 40th anniversary and weeks after the passing of writer Norman Mailer. Both were groundbreakers for the “anything goes” revolution. But in Rolling Stone’s anniversary interview, even Mailer criticized several of its results, including the explosion in drug use — which he himself struggled with. He blamed activists like Timothy “turn on, tune in, drop out” Leary for “wasting a generation.”
Unlike Andy, I’m grateful that my parents didn’t join the “anything goes” sixties cultural revolution. Instead of letting it all hang out at Woodstock, they served in the Peace Corps in India. (And it’s just a tad ironic that because they then named me the Hindi word for “peace,” people who are nostalgic for the psychedelic sixties chant Shanti, Shanti, Shanti in yoga classes from Berkley to Boston.)
What Andy calls ‘excesses’ are actually the natural result of a movement that transitioned our entire culture away from natural law and objective standards. In “The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America,” Roger Kimball documents just how radical the shift was. As he writes, “The success of America’s recent cultural revolution can be measured not in toppled governments but in shattered values. If we often forget what great changes this revolution brought in its wake, that, too, is a sign of its success: having changed ourselves, we no longer perceive the extent of our transformation.”
Yes, specific injustices needed to be addressed - but many activists never realized that correcting them required the very absolute truths - like “all men and women are created equal” - that they were trying to erase! And once absolute values were gone, social problems skyrocketed: everything from STD’s to violent crime to divorce. Since the 1960’s, for example, except for a brief uptick during WWII, the divorce rate has been consistently two to three times higher than it was before.
Norman Mailer lamented to Rolling Stone, that in the 1960’s “everything was getting cheapened… We live in a cheaper environment now than we used to.” How tragic, that many people only see the powerful need for absolutes once they are gone.
Is Hillary Clinton’s gender
a disadvantage in the presidential race?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Reading how the other democratic candidates “piled on” Senator Clinton at the recent debate, and the inevitable speculation about whether her gender is a disadvantage, made me want to laugh. Up until now, the press had played super nice, and the other Democratic candidates had been stymied by how to attack a woman without looking like cads. Even ABC’s Cokie Roberts later admitted that Clinton “Had way too favorable press at this point in the season,” and, “She’s been playing the gender card all along.”
Even beyond Hillary Clinton’s status as a policy leader, she has a clear and calculated advantage as a woman. She can stand out in a sea of men as having a unique perspective. And nearly six in ten Democratic primary voters are women - a population already viewing her gender as neutral or a plus. According to a November 1 survey by the women’s political group Emily’s List, fully 95 percent of female democrats said Clinton’s gender would either make her a “better” president (27 percent) or would make no difference (68 percent).
And she has another advantage that isn’t politically correct, but is nevertheless very real. Male candidates simply may not feel comfortable attacking a woman as nastily as they would another man. And if they do attack her, it not only makes her a sympathetic figure, it gives her some great PR the next day.
The day after the October 30 debate, Senator Clinton received a coveted endorsement from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). On a conference call with Clinton supporters, AFSCME president Gerald McEntee enthused, “Six guys against Hillary, and I’d call that a fair fight. This is a strong woman.”
Can you imagine any male candidate having that leverage?
As a woman, Clinton has the best of both worlds. And she knows it. After all it, worked really well in her 2000 Senate race with Rick Lazio. Lazio made the mistake of approaching her podium in a crowding manner during a debate, and his negatives shot up. We all know how that ended.
There’s nothing wrong with Senator Clinton shrewdly using whatever advantage she has. But let’s not pretend the advantage isn’t there.
Rebuttal
Hillary Clinton may not be at a gender disadvantage, yet anyone who thinks being female actually shields her from a rough race is sure forgetting recent history.
So men are reluctant to hit Clinton hard, afraid of looking like cads? Then I’m a little confused here. Which Hillary Clinton have we been going easy on over the years? The one turning us into a socialist village, the one who had a lesbian affair in the White House, or the one who killed Vince Foster?
Calling Clinton’s gender an advantage feels so arbitrary that we may as well ascribe advantages to all things Hillary. Approximately 50 percent of all Americans can’t imagine ever voting for her? Advantage: Clinton! Widespread concern about having her husband’s influence back in the White House? Advantage: Clinton!
No, it’s hard to see the great advantage she has in being Hillary Clinton, let alone a woman.
So why position her gender as a leg up? While I don’t agree with Bill that Hillary’s “swiftboating” has begun, I can’t imagine that Team Rove doesn’t have a 3-point plan already making the rounds. Step one: Paint her as the “Teflon candidate.” Step two: trump up ads from the “Concerned Women of America Against Socialist Lesbian Killers.” Step three: traditional values voters eventually buy into this smear campaign, comforted by pundits’ assurances that, “It’s only fair.”
Hillary Clinton does herself no favors by playing it both ways; being a woman should neither protect her from rough competition nor win her extra votes. Yet don’t imagine for a New York minute that Clinton won a landslide senate victory because Rick Lazio was mean to her in a debate. She was up five points in the polls before ever stepping up to that podium.
Viable presidential candidates have always been a tough, thick-skinned bunch. We needn’t extend any special courtesies to the lone female in this race, the African-American, the Mormon, the 9/11 hero. Hit ‘em hard, but hit ‘em fair. Maybe then we can vote for what really matters: a man, or woman, who can truly lead this nation.
Advantage: Everyone.
Should companies be doing random drug tests of office professionals?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Picture this: You come into the office each morning and take a urine test to determine if you’re engaging in any illegal activities, on or off the job.
Sounds like I’ve been smoking something? Well, such is the logic of zealots who would allow regular drug testing in any profession, for any reason whatsoever.
Substance abuse has deeply affected our country. Yet the solution isn’t to force workers to repeatedly prove their innocence in a far-from-reliable, humiliating procedure. Urine analysis can yield an estimated 10-30 percent false positive. Just as unnerving, it can reveal an employee’s treatment for depression or heart disease, or an existing pregnancy in its early stages. Does your boss have a right to know all that?
I have nothing against the 1989 Supreme Court case ruling that there is no privacy violation when “Employees subject to the tests discharge duties fraught with such risks of injury to others that even a momentary lapse of attention can have disastrous consequences….” As a retired pilot friend who agrees with the policy likes to say, “I was responsible for a lot of lives up there.”
Extra scrutiny is vital for firefighters, train conductors, and airline pilots. The rest of us are primarily responsible for the safety of others in one place — behind the wheel of our cars. Random check points on Saturday nights? Now that makes sense. Approximately 16,000 Americans are killed by drunk drivers every year; I lost a grandfather I never knew to such a crime.
Yet no amount of personal tragedy changes this: the right to a private life outside of work is no small thing in a free nation. While fighting the war on drugs, we should be careful not to wage war on what the late Justice Brandeis once called, “the right to be left alone…the right most valued by civilized men.”
Still think any battle plan is civilized enough, compared with the scourge of illegal drugs? Fine. Then you won’t mind if the airlines institute complete body cavity searches of every passenger, to determine just who might be smuggling drugs through our country.
After all, if you’ve got nothing to hide …
Rebuttal
Okay, let’s dispense with the scare tactics and deal with the real world. I know someone whose addiction to painkillers has denied him several jobs because the drugs show up during employment screening. These companies are well within their rights to deny him employment - so why wouldn’t they be within their rights to randomly test someone after employment? Surely drug use matters far more once an employee holds a piece of the company’s future in his hands!
The government often requires drug testing in positions affecting physical safety. But is that really all that matters? What about an equity analyst whose insightful reports affect whether your 401k tanks? What about the guy down the hall whose clear thinking avoids stupid corporate financial decisions? What about the sales woman whose revenue-generating ability affects whether you have a job next year? I honestly don’t think those people have the right to be totally “left alone.” They may not affect another person’s physical life, but they sure can affect their livelihood — and the life of the company.
And please. No-one thinks employees should go through a humiliating test every week. But well-controlled drug testing of randomly-selected employees a few times a year isn’t onerous, as long as the results are kept private and false positives are planned for and re-tested.
The stakes are bigger than people may realize. Department of Labor data shows that in 2005, nearly 20 million people in America - almost 7 percent of the population — were considered illicit drug users. And three in four had gainful employment at the time! This does not even include alcohol, which accounted for another 55 million workers who binged at least once within the last month of testing.
Verizon Wireless is one of many companies that both does random drug tests in safety-related positions, and screens office professionals when necessary. In a telephone interview, Verizon Wireless Executive Director for Public relations Sheryl Sellaway explained, “Drug and alcohol abuse pose a direct and significant threat to the goal of a productive and efficient working environment. At the end of the day, we are going to do business in the best way possible, and our drug testing process is not only to protect innocent bystanders on the street, but to protect Verizon also.”
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Commentary
By Shaunti Feldhahn
We are just six years from 9/11’s aftermath, but worlds away, patriotically. Today, commentators are applauded for disparaging America: for saying that we’re the wealthiest nation and yet the stingiest. We’re the greatest military power, but invade other countries and kill their women and children. We’re largely Judeo-Christian, and thus no better than the Al Qaeda fanatics — which, by the way, our foreign policy created. In case you didn’t know.
That garbage makes me sick — and worried about our future. One of America’s strongest assets has always been the unshakeable pride of a free people in their great country; the belief that we are unique in the world and worth fighting for. Yes, it is the right and duty of every citizen to speak against perceived injustices and leadership error. But I’m furious when I see Americans - Americans! - applauding a Venezuelan dictator who tells the United Nations that we’re an instrument of “domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.”
It’s infuriating when people who enjoy America’s blessings gripe - without doing much to change things — that we either don’t intervene enough with our wealth or intervene too much. As if it’s a mortal sin to actually try, in our imperfect way, to do something about the problems we see in the world!
This has recently become very personal to me. In this column I’ve often quoted David French, a Harvard Law graduate and leading expert on constitutional law and religious freedom. He also happens to be one of my closest friends. In a time of war, he felt it was his duty to support our country by joining the U.S. Army Reserve JAG Corps. Two weeks ago he was called up, leaving his wife and two small children for a front-line combat unit in Iraq.
When I think about David’s self-sacrificial patriotism, I am floored to see Barak Obama refusing to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem, or saying he took off his flag pin after the Iraq war, preferring instead to “tell the American people what I believe what will make this country great.”
It’s already a great country, Senator, filled with great people. And anyone who doesn’t think so does not deserve to be our President.