Washington Liberals

[This is a response to the Seattle Times’ March 15 editorial Criticism of Common Core is misdirected.]

You need to get the history of CCS right. The standards, the curricula and the tests are all one strategy. One begets the others. Teachers are forced to teach to the tests, so the standards mandate curricula. Pearson Corporation owns the whole thing and expects to profit $1 billion this year.

CCS was initiated by the Gates Foundation, which commissioned the two professional associations of governors and state school superintendents to hire David Coleman and others to write the standards. The driver is Gate’s idea that if we could measure deficits and progress in every student in every school, we would be able to improve our “production process” to prepare students for college and to be better workers. For this reason, CCS demands 70% nonfiction in the Language Arts curricula. Instead of preparing students to be independently thinking citizens, they are prepared to analyze non-fiction works and regurgitate evidence.

Turnout was huge at Saturday’s 41st LD Town Hall at Somerset Elementary School in Bellevue. Scores of people were standing around the perimeter of the gymnasium. The largest component of the crowd was school teachers dressed in red, many of them holding signs in favor of fully funding education.  There were scores of teachers outside the school when I arrived.

The state legislators, Rep. Judy Clibborn (D-Mercer Island), Sen. Steve Litzow (R-Mercer Island), and Tana Senn (D-Mercer Island) seemed relaxed and full of good humor. They called for civility, and everyone in the audience was civil.

The legislators did not make prepared speeches. Instead, they immediately accepted questions from the audience.

Clibborn said that the 41st LD is close to the center of many of the road projects: I-405 expansion, SR-520 bridge replacement, and SR-167 interchange. But people in the eastern part of the state have little interest in funding road projects in the western part of the state.

Clibborn said that business leaders are some of the most vociferous supporters of increasing the gas tax to fund transportation, because their delivery trucks can’t deliver goods fast enough, and their workers sit in gridlock. Unless the state invests in transportation, economic growth will falter. Even Republican Steve Litzow agrees that we need to raise the gas tax.

An added benefit, which nobody dwelt upon, is that the gas tax will discourage driving; it’s a carbon tax.

Another benefit of the gas tax, for the corporations, is that it’s regressive. Heck, Boeing and Microsoft made sweetheart deals to avoid paying most state taxes, but they demand publicly-funded transportation and other infrastructure. See Microsoft and Boeing convinced Gregoire to back a costly tunnel, but they avoid paying state taxes.  Also, did you notice that the proposed light rail line runs to Redmond?

Several speakers railed against tolling of I-90, saying it would harm Mercer Island and especially people there who live on fixed incomes. All three legislators were eager to show that they oppose tolling of I-90. But Clibborn warned that they can’t guarantee that tolling won’t happen, because the legislature needs to come up with money for road and bridge construction and maintenance, and the tolling option was added as a condition for passing legislation. Again, legislators from the eastern part of the state don’t want to pay for our road construction.

I have limited sympathy for the opposition to tolling of I-90. Mercer Island is one of the wealthiest communities in the state. If anybody can afford to pay tolls, they can. After the town hall, I said this to Richard Erwin, chair of the King County Dems. He said that people would leave Mercer Island if I-90 were tolled, and land prices there would go down. He said that much of the value of homes on Mercer Island is a function of the good schools. But parents will dislike sending their kids there if they have to pay tolls.

All three legislators and Rich Erwin live on Mercer Island, and it’s understandable that they’d oppose tolling, to please their constituents.

Probably some elderly people have all their assets in their homes and property, which are probably worth a lot of money.  Of course, some Mercer Islanders rent and really are quite poor, and some poorer people commute on I-90. But such driving needs to be discouraged if we are going to save the planet from climate catastrophe — and save the Seattle area from traffic deadlock and filthy air.

A couple of guys made short speeches about the burden of taxation on people like themselves on fixed incomes. At least one of them (Klaus, I believe) was from Mercer Island. At each 41 LD town hall meeting I’ve gone to — and I’ve been to four or five of them — someone makes such an anti-tax speech. It’s always an old guy in his 60s or 70s.  Maybe they are Republican plants.

I was given a chance to ask a question, and I said, “The elephant in the room is the fact that Washington State has the most regressive tax system in the nation.” There was sustained applause from the crowd. I mentioned that the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy had yet another study which gave evidence for Washington State’s status as the most regressive. I also mentioned that the US is the most regressive among the major industrialized nations, though what I really meant to say was that the US has the most unequal distribution of wealth.

I threw in a jab about the fact that rich people on Mercer Island complain about taxes and tolls. Then I said, “This is directed mostly at Sen. Litzow. Will you support Gov. Inslee’s proposal for a capital gains tax? How will you work to fix our insane, upside-down tax system?” I mentioned that rich companies like Microsoft and Boeing are exempt from many taxes. I added that Republicans are largely to blame for the anti-tax mentality, but the voters should support an income tax and should stop voting against their own self-interest. I said I could speak for an hour on the topic.

The old guy to my left, who had read a prepared speech about not tolling I-90, looked stony faced and angry.

Litzow said that we can’t blame (just) Republicans for our tax system. Democrats were in control of government for many recent years. He’s partly correct. Ex-Micrsoft general manager Ross Hunter helped arrange billions in tax breaks for his former employer. Inslee arranged an $8.7 billion tax break for Boeing. Basically, Boeing and Microsoft own the legislature and many of our US Congressional delegates. But Republicans are most eager to oppose taxes. Dems generally supported I-1098 (high earners’ income tax) and a capital gains tax.

Litzow said that the reason voters rejected an income tax is that they didn’t trust the government to do the right thing. He said he’d support a flat tax.

I should have shouted out a follow-up question about his call for a flat tax, since a flat tax is regressive.

I also should have asked Steve Litzow this challenge: Republicans including you are willing to raise the regressive gas tax. Will you support raising taxes on the rich to make our tax system less regressive?

After all, The Norquist anti-tax pledge allows signers to support raising regressive taxes only.

We have socialism for the rich in America, and especially in Washington State. The rich get bailouts and tax breaks. They enjoy the benefits of prosperity, infrastructure, policing, laws, war profits, government contracts, roads, and an educated workforce. But too often they manage to avoid paying taxes.

This week’s New Yorker has an article about inequality (“Richer and Poorer”, by Jill Lepore). It talks about the Gini index of inequality. In 1968 the Gini index for the U.S. was 0.386. In 2013 it was 0.476. The UK, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden and Finland are between 0.200 and 0.300.  Similarly, the top 1% of Americans earned twenty-four percent of all income in 1928 and eleven percent in 1944. Then it started to rise, and it was back up to twenty-three percent in 2013.

According to the New York Times’ The Rich Get Richer, “the 1 percent has captured about 95 percent of the income gains since the recession ended.”

The sales tax is regressive.  So are the gas tax and road tolls.  The real solution to the state’s budget problems is to enact fair taxation — something the Republicans, and some Democrats, are opposed to.

Back to the town hall … SB 5899  and HB-1922 would change the rules on payday loans, such as those offered by Money Tree.  Much of the progressive blogosphere is expressing outrage over Democrats’ support of the bill because, they say, it will exploit poor people and charge them exorbitant rates of interest.  There was a question at the town hall about the bills. But first some background.

In a facebook post, Sarajane Siegfriedt wrote

The forces pushing SB 5899 (the Moneytree bill that would undo the payday lending reforms we fought so hard for in 2009) passed the Senate after 2 hours of floor debate and 40 amendments voted down. (Thanks Maralyn Chase, Sharon Nelson and Pramila Jayapal!) The new loans are actually much worse, with fees piled upon fees up to 276% APR. Senators Liias, Kaiser, Ranker and Hobbs co-sponsored it. The Moneytree Bassfords gave $3,800 (the max) to Sen. Marko Liias, but don’t expect the vote in House Business & Financial Services to be different, with $3,800 to Springer, $3,800 to Stanford, and $950 to Hurst.

Then there’s $3,800 to Clibborn, $1,900 to Pettigrew and $950 to Tara Senn. Let’s hope the House puts its values for the working class ahead of the Moneygrabbers. If you have a Town Hall today (3/14), ask your Reps to vote down SB 5899 the dirty money Moneytree bill.

…

Watching extended debate on SB 5899, small consumer installment loans, with prime sponsor Marko Liias (D-21) defending a bill that every agency and faith community opposes. He claims today’s payday loan product is broken. It’s not. He compares this new product with a payday loan which would be cheaper for the first weeks, but much more expensive over the average life of the loan, three to six months. He repeats the talking points of Moneytree.

Standing in opposition and offering 40 amendments (!) are our heroes of the evening Sens. Pramila Jayapal, John McCoy, and Minority Leader Sharon K. Nelson. Thank you Maralyn Chase for acknowledging those of us watching live on TVW. Thank you Jeannie Darneille for quoting the state’s Asset-Building Coalition about the lack of humanity in this bill. Thank you Cyrus Habib who said “I must be going blind” because I didn’t see anyone in the gallery or the hallways asking for this product, which amounts to usury.

We’re getting a strong lesson in social justice being crushed by corporate money. The payoff, if there is one, is that many other bad Senate bills will die at 5 p.m. Wednesday for lack of floor time. I have a mental image of floor time being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Senate rules suspended to continue meeting past 10 p.m.

Pam Roach chimes in that she took out a payday loan when she had 5 kids under 9 years old. Jan Angel claims that it’s needed (by other people) and it’s better than going online. The conclusion was known from the outset. Passed 30-18. The mystery is why Marko supported it.

…

Cindy Ryu has certainly called this one correctly. She will be a lonely voice on the House Business & Financial Services Committee. The Chair loves the Bassfords and the others have pretty much maxed out from them. It will have to be done in Rules or from the floor. Cindy, please let us know when the hearing is scheduled. We need to turn out.

Before the town hall began I asked Judy Clibborn about her support for the bill. She said that Pew Research was in favor of it and the opponents are misinformed.  Sarajane wrote on facebook

Pew Research has sent a letter opposing the bill and stating that our current regulations are very strong and should stay in place. The Attorney General has also opposed the bill. And the Department of Defense actually had a great report in predatory lending products, including installment loans. The DOD caps interest and fees At 36% just like our current regulation does. This bill just allows lots of additional fees on top of the 36% plus a longer term which makes it way more expensive.

In a response to a question about SB 5899, Clibborn defended the bill, which she said still needs work. She said that without the reforms, poor people will resort to online lending, which is less regulated and much worse. 

Opponents of SB 5899 say that such talk is just echoing Money Tree talking points.

Some teachers asked the legislators to oppose the inclusion of student test scores in the evaluation of teachers. One teacher quoted studies showing that test scores bare no relation to teaching quality. Litzow said that test scores are just one portion (a small portion) of teacher evaluations and so should be included.

At teacher noted that Litzow wore red, but she doesn’t trust him.

Litzow repeatedly said during the question-and-answering that we (he and teachers) will have to agree to disagree.

URGENT: Is one of your WA State Legislators on the House Appropriations Committee?
(ALSO – See Solutionary Rail article at Crosscut.com)

Unwanted pregnancy is contributing to a new “caste system” in America. Is that about to get worse? 

When new and better technologies become available only to people who are already privileged, the rich get richer and opportunity gaps get wider. That’s exactly what’s happening with family planning—and unless trends change, a recent revolution in contraceptive technology may deepen America’s economic divide.

Many factors intersect to create poverty or keep people mired there: racism, sexism, untreated illness and mental illness, hopelessness created by lack of opportunity, structural barriers between social classes, and more. Disruptive, unsought pregnancy and childbearing is one of these factors, both a cause and consequence of poverty. Modern long- acting contraceptives offer women impressive protection, literally toggling the fertility default setting to “off” until a woman wants it on. But as with so many empowering tools, access is least available to those most vulnerable to having their family wellbeing, dreams and opportunities derailed.

The Lucky Ones

My daughters both headed to college in the last two years, along with a flock of friends who have been raiding our refrigerator since middle school. As the children of middle class and professional mothers, many of the girls left home with the best birth control that money can buy—state of the art IUD’s or implants that drop the rate of surprise pregnancy below 1 in 500 annually and last for years. We moms might not be able to prepare our girls  for sexual pressures that didn’t exist back in the day, but we could virtually guarantee that a daughter we loved wasn’t going to have her education and dreams derailed by two pink lines on a pregnancy test.

For both males and females, but especially for young women, being able to reach educational goals and settle into a career before parenthood offers a huge boost to lifelong prosperity. It also stacks the odds in favor of a stable partnership and healthy children who then go on to have healthy, prosperous kids of their own. Strong girls with strong social support can sometimes carve out impressive paths for themselves despite early unexpected pregnancy. But stories of their achievements captivate us because they are heroic—and the exception to the rule.

The High Human Cost of Poor Contraception

Very few young single mothers get pregnant because they actually want to. Even fewer plan and prepare for pregnancy or obtain recommended preconception care. Today, 82 percent of teen pregnancies and 70 percent of pregnancies among single woman under the age of thirty are unintended, and most of those children are born into poverty. The consequences of those pregnancies are enormous: more abortions, less healthy moms and babies, more infant death, more high school drop-outs, college foregone, lost earning potential, domestic violence, repeated disruptions in family structure as young moms try to find reliable partnerships, more mental health problems and anti-social behavior in children, and public budgets stretched to the breaking point as states try to fill in resources and services once provided by stable families.

The part that’s most cruel is the growing split in who does and doesn’t get hit by the tsunami of hardship linked to ill-timed or unwanted pregnancy–a divide so dramatic that some have called it an emerging “caste system.” In 2008 unplanned pregnancy was five times as common for women below the poverty level as those above.

Across race and class divides in the U.S., young women voice surprisingly similar aspirations regarding when they ideally would like to have kids—how many and under what circumstances. But there the similarity ends. Girls who have grown up with the benefits of financial security and higher education have more and better tools to manage their fertility—and they tend to bring children into the world when they feel ready.

By contrast, girls raised in families that are up against the hard edges of life, those fighting to make ends meet on low wages in rough communities, depend on cheaper and less effective birth control—or crossed fingers—and they often end up with very different lives than the ones they dreamed of. Their desire to get ready before getting pregnant crumbles against a wall of disempowerment: low access to sexual health information, financial barriers to medical care, cultural disruption, racism and classism, a social fabric of low expectations, gender based violence, and more. Unintended pregnancy is the top reason teens drop out of high school, and less than 2 percent of these young mothers go on to complete college by age 30. It’s a formula for multi-generational poverty.

Old Left/Right Solutions Not Working

Isabel Sawhill is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank. Sawhill may be best known as proponent of marriage. In a series of books and monographs over the course of 40 years, she has extolled the economic advantages of stable partnerships and the benefits to children of two parent families, lining up research evidence to support her claims. But more to the core, Sawhill is an advocate for flourishing children, and in her latest book, Generation Unbound, Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage, she concedes that interventions aimed at promoting marriage and preventing divorce are not the answer. They simply don’t work. Family formation in the U.S. is changing, and there’s no going back.

Liberal analysts might say we told you so, but their solution—more social services and financial support for struggling single moms—hasn’t worked either. For every child lifted out of poverty by such programs, more are born into fragile families with the odds stacked against them. Today nearly half of births in the U.S. are paid for by Medicaid, and that number is rising. In Sawhill’s words, “To reduce poverty, we must slow down entries into poverty, not just speed up the exits.”

What else can we do to ensure that children are born when parents are ready? How can we enable young people to find their place in the world before they find themselves changing diapers? How can we buy them some time so that they can create stable partnerships for co-parenting before the stork arrives? A partial solution lies in the highly effective easy-to-use birth control methods that let me send two daughters off to college, confident that if they began to explore their emerging sexuality, or if they used poor judgment at a party, or if god-forbid they got assaulted, they wouldn’t come home for the summer eating for two.

How Revolutionary Contraceptives Change the Equation

My daughters are beneficiaries of a technology revolution in contraception, the biggest leap forward since the Pill became available in the 1960’s. The current technology shift is a transition from every-day or every-time methods like the Pill and condom to long acting reversible contraceptives known for short as LARCs. LARCs include hormonal and non-hormonal IUD’s and contraceptive implants.

Pills and condoms work great in the lab, but in the real world where most of us live, they produce annual pregnancy rates of 1 in 11 and 1 in 6 respectively, mostly because it’s so hard to use them consistently and perfectly. Pills and condoms are way better than the desperate measures taken by our ancestors (Metal pessaries? Weasel testicles? Eew!), but the statistics are still painful. After 50 years of widely available pills and condoms, half of pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned, and despite the shame and stigma, 1 in 3 women has an abortion at some point before hitting menopause.

With a LARC, surprise pregnancy becomes truly surprising. Annual failure rates range from 1 in 500 to 1 in 2000, depending on the method. The game-changer is that long acting contraceptives toggle the fertility default to off until a woman wants it on. No one method works for everyone. But once an IUD or implant is settled into place, ambivalence, intoxication, impulsivity, sexual coercion or general life chaos no longer puts a young woman on the path to premature parenthood. Pregnancy is opt-in rather than opt-out.

When she is ready, a woman who wants a baby simply has her LARC removed. (She can expect the same rate of fertility she would have had without it.) Then, immediately after giving birth, she can have a new one placed so that she is protected again until she wants another child. LARCs that are provided in the hospital at the time of labor and delivery are called “bedside LARCs.” They are safe for breastfeeding and help to prevent rapid repeat pregnancies, which tend to be higher in risk because a new mother’s physical reserves are low. Bedside LARC is the cutting edge of contraceptive care.

Fair Access Essential to Narrow Inequality

Middle and upper middle class teens and women are making the transition to top tier long acting contraceptives and reaping the benefits, but “the best birth control money can buy” has a high up front cost, as much as $1000. For many emerging adults, coming up with that kind of cash is unimaginable. The Obamacare contraceptive mandate may eventually make these life-changing technologies available to all with no surcharge. Large scale research suggests that when this happens a high percent of teens and women will choose LARCs for themselves and the rates of teen pregnancy and abortion will plummet. In the meantime, religious and political conflict, coupled with outdated medical practices and other bureaucratic challenges means that top tier methods are not consistently available to young and poor women—in other words, those who are the most vulnerable to ill-timed pregnancy and least able to take the hit.

The fortunate young women I have watched growing up can pursue their dreams with a high level of confidence that they won’t get derailed by a surprise pregnancy. For a young  woman relying on pills or condoms or her boyfriend’s ability to pull out, that simply isn’t true. Unless we want to see America’s economic divide grow wider and deeper, we need to ensure that reliable, state-of-the-art family planning options are equally available to emerging adults from all stations in life.

Originally published at ValerieTarico.com

A number of local organizations have been working with a couple of members of the Seattle City Council (Mike OBrien and Kshama Sawant) to bring a resolution forward against the TPP (the secret Trade Agreement that corporations are hoping will get fast-tracked very soon by congress). Support was building and a plan was formed to bring the resolution to committee on March 17th and to the full council on March 23rd. BUT this work drew the attention of business interests and the Obama administration and they are now pushing back hard. AS GOES SEATTLE, SO MAY GO THE NATION!

It is time now to make sure Seattle Council members know where we stand on this egregious coup by the multinational corporations over WE THE PEOPLE.

PLEASE CONTACT THEM RIGHT AWAY, and get your family members and friends to do so also. They need to hear from us as soon as possible or the resolution may be dropped!

The message should be that the TPP, negotiated in secret, with no public involvement, has harmful provisions that threaten Seattle’s ability, as well as the State of Washington’s ability, to protect our environment, health, and worker’s rights. This is due to investor state provisions in the TPP that allow multinational corporations to sue governments in secret trade tribunals when they believe a law or regulation harms their profits. Seattle needs to stand up and oppose this attack on our sovereignty.

Here is an easy way to e-mail them: council@seattle.gov.

I ask that you call also. At a minimum, please call the first five. Here are the numbers:

Sally Bagshaw 206 684 8801
Sally Clark 206 684 8802
Jean Godden 206 684 8807
Bruce Harrell 206 684 8804
Tim Burgess 206 684 8806
Tom Rasmussen 206 684 8808
Nick Licata 206 684 8803
Mike O’Brien 206-684 8800
Kshama Sawant 206-684 8016

Hell with the DNC! We’ve got to be able to do better than the Pepsi versus Coke brand war of Republicans versus Democrats and their Bush versus Clinton dynastic choices. We need an independent progressive party and independent candidates.

It’s not that I don’t agree that any party championing progressive policies couldn’t inspire more Americans to vote. I do. What I think is now a tired, recycled every four year idea is that the Democrat Party has enough democracy left in it to actually change.

We voted for “hope and change” in 2008. We delivered the mandate and the majorities and what did we get? We got Wall Street bailouts, Insurance co. enshrinement, more perpetual war, zero accountability for war criminals, torturers, liers, pussy-footing on climate and the fracking oiligarchy, with zero defense of people losing homes, etc, etc. Too-little-too-late leadership post 2014 election loss, with meaningless pandering gestures are just desperate attempts to rescue relevance after a massive betrayal of our aspirations and real momentum for actual change.

Even now, when the Democrats have supposedly seen the light… THIS WEEK we saw a ramp up in the active campaigning to “fast tracking” of perhaps the most catastrophic transfer of power – from real human citizens to oligarchic transnational capital and the corporations – in the history of the world, i.e. TPP and its companion so-called “free trade” agreements.

If you want final proof on how little it matters to the Democrats or Republicans what you think, check out this recent presentation by Lawrence Lessig – and note the literal “flat line” on the how public opinion matters. And note the graph on who recovered in this “recovery”. And remember the money primary statistic “.024%” that puts us on par with China (or Hong Kong anyway) in terms of actual democracy.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwWH307tDYE

How stupid, desperate, dysfunctional are we that our perpetual hope against hope argument is to keep looking to our abuser the DNC to stop suckling at the tit of the oligarchy and come back to the People?

DNC – kiss my ass! It’s time for a real choice.

See How the Democrats Could Win Every Election.

Originally on facebook.

You know those vast parking lots at Northgate Mall, Walmart, Home Depot and other big box stores? Not only do they take up space and create an environment hostile to pedestrians, they contribute to stormwater runoff pollution and they stand nearly empty much of the time. And yet, they’re totally exempt from the Commercial Parking Tax that Seattle levies on lots where customers pay to park.

The Transit Riders Union has been working with progressive legislators in Olympia on legislation that would authorize a tax on Non-Residential Parking Facilities, requiring the parking lot owner to pay for these huge expanses of pavement. This progressive tax would close the loophole that exempts “free” parking spaces that actually come with high social costs. It would raise badly-needed revenue for public transit, as well as being good for the environment and improving our urban landscape.

Now is the time to contact your representatives in the House in support of HB 2186! Name the bill number and tell them you support a tax on non-residential parking facilities.

It’s easy to find your legislators here: http://app.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/

Or, just call the legislative hotline, 1-800-562-6000, leave a message with your name and street address, and it will be forwarded to your legislators.

Join the Delegation for Affordable Transit!

San Francisco recently made the riding the bus free for low to moderate income youth, senior and disabled riders. So why did King County just raise fares for all these riders? Senior and disabled riders have seen their annual bus pass costs increase more than fourfold since 2010.

With the March 1st fare increases, Metro now has among the highest fares in the nation. C’mon King County – we can do so much better than this!

The Transit Riders Union is forming a Delegation of hundreds of riders to meet with elected officials and present our vision of affordable public transit. Join us! Our first meeting with County Councilmembers will take place in mid-April, date and time to be announced soon. Is your quality of life compromised because fares are too high? Do you have friends or family who count quarters and budget for each ride to school or services? We want your voice in the Delegation. Together we’re going to win affordable transit!

Join TRU

In What scares the new atheists John Gray argues that militant atheists, such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Danniel Dennet, are mistaken in their belief that secularism can cure the world’s problems. Rather, suggests Gray, the atheists are cultural imperialists who, like the proponents of Social Darwinism a century or so ago, wish to impose their unsupported utopian scheme upon others.

In the case of the Social Darwinists, atheism was used to justify eugenics and Nazi racism.

In the case of the new atheists, anti-religious ideology is being used to impose western, secular values upon people who prefer more traditional outlooks.

Gray thinks that the source of the new atheists’ misplaced Utopianism is a mistaken view of human nature.  “This is, in fact, the quintessential illusion of the ruling liberalism: the belief that all human beings are born freedom-loving and peaceful and become anything else only as a result of oppressive conditioning.”   In another paragraph he says, “The conviction that tyranny and persecution are aberrations in human affairs is at the heart of the liberal philosophy that prevails today.”

But which of the new atheists has claimed that humans are inherently good? A liberal would agree that humans aren’t born freedom-loving and peaceful; each of us has aspects of both angel and demon.  Indeed, liberals believe that society needs a paternalistic government, with secular institutions, to guide us away from ignorance and brutality.  According to liberalism, the civilized Enlightenment values of reason, science, and democracy are the foundation for a just society.

Nor do I believe that we need “oppressive conditioning” to civilize people. We just need to provide education and a decent standard of living without constant war.

Teaching kids about evolution, sex and global warming does not count as oppressive conditioning.

The main alternative to liberal government as a source of morality is the Church (or the Mosque or the Synagogue). One reason many devout Christians vote Republican is that they mistrust the secularism of government. How odd that Christians end up supporting war and the rich! Jesus of the Sermon of the Mount would have supported peace and the poor — i.e., liberal values. Of course, there are other versions of Jesus in the Bible; the Jesus of Revelations is a destroyer.

Another alternative to government as a source of values is the market. As a progressive, I don’t believe the market is sufficient: we need government to regulate the market, protect the common good, and, indeed, lay a foundation for the market to work. Quoting Robert Kuttner: “As Karl Polanyi famously wrote in a seeming oxymoron, ‘laissez-faire was planned.’ Markets could not exist without states defining the terms of property ownership and commerce, creating money, enforcing contracts, protecting patents and trademarks, and providing basic public institutions.”

But Gray is not an opponent of liberalism. He writes, “Considering the alternatives that are on offer, liberal societies are well worth defending. But there is no reason for thinking these societies are the beginning of a species-wide secular civilisation of the kind of which evangelical atheists dream.”

Gray’s point is that the new, militant, evangelical atheists are mistaken in their beliefs that there is a solid scientific (or philosophical) foundation for atheism. Furthermore, he believes that educating the public about this foundation won’t necessarily lead to the dissolution of religious beliefs and the end of violence. Gray is pessimistic about the prospects for the growth of secular, liberal values.

Gray is correct that there’s no guarantee a conversion to atheism will improve our condition.  But whoever said that there’s a guarantee?

Gray starts his essay recalling the illiberal uses to which atheism was put in the early 20th century, when Social Darwinism was used as a justification for racism and eugenics.  His point seems to be that the new atheists’ antagonism towards religion is another sort of illiberal, intolerant attempt to impose particular values on others.  In short, are the new atheists cultural imperialists, hoping to impose a particular, Western view of how society should be organized upon people who prefer to live with traditional, religious organizations.

Gray is pessimistic that secularism will win.

I am less pessimistic.  As Martin Luther said, in the long arc of history, there is a tendency towards justice and progress.  This is just an empirical observation, not a teleological law.  There’s no guarantee that education and secularism will save the world, but it’s our best hope.

Moreover, unlike the new atheists, I think the enemy of progress isn’t so much religion as greed, prejudice, and ignorance. Religion is often misused, but it’s also often a source of progress. The new atheists exaggerate the extent to which religion is harmful. They paint with an overly broad brush.  Not all religion is illiberal and violent.   Religious leaders played a large role in Abolitionism, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Peace Movement.   Martin Luther King was devoutly religious.  Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement served the poor and opposed war. Catholic priests and nuns in The Plowshares Movement bravely took peaceful, direct action against nuclear weaponry. Most Christians, Muslims, and Jews are peaceful and moderate.

Anecdotally, I recall registering voters at a Catholic college near Pittsburgh in the year 2000. I feared that the nuns would be hostile. Instead, they welcomed my presence as a Kerry supporter, and they were charming and bright.

Gray acknowledges that, despite the many instances in which religious people have allied themselves with forces of violence and corruption,

the fault is not with religion, any more than science is to blame for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or medicine and psychology for the refinement of techniques of torture. The fault is in the intractable human animal. Like religion at its worst, contemporary atheism feeds the fantasy that human life can be remade by a conversion experience – in this case, conversion to unbelief.

I agree with the first two sentences above. The final sentence — about the hopelessness of education and secular values — is overly pessimistic. Moreover, I don’t think it’s necessary for a liberal person to oppose religion as vociferously as the new atheists often do.  Secularism needn’t be militantly anti-religious.

The natural allies of Christians are progressives, not Republicans — provided fundamentalist Christians can be weaned from their extreme beliefs and turned to a more liberal Christian understanding.  There are millions of liberal Christians, Jews, and Muslims who combine faith with progressive values. Rather than opposing all religion, secular progressives should find allies among liberal religious people.

The enemy isn’t religion. The enemy is greed, hatred and ignorance. Certainly religion, of a liberal variety, can help with the battle against greed and hatred.

Robert Kuttner, of the American Prospect, has written a clear and convincing repudiation of right wing worship of the free market — the kind of worship you hear from the Freedom Foundation.

Kuttner writes in It’s Bizarre: Libertarians Are Clueless About the ‘Free Market’ That They Worship: “the free market is neither efficient, nor fair, nor free from periodic catastrophe.”

On the supposed efficiency of the market, Kuttner mentions global climate change as a huge market failure. “The price of carbon-based energy is “correct”—it reflects what consumers will pay and what producers can supply—if you leave out the fact that carbon is destroying a livable planet.” He goes on:

The other great catastrophe of our time is the financial collapse. Supposedly self-regulating markets could not discern that the securities created by financial engineers were toxic. Markets were not competent to adjust prices accordingly. The details of the bonds were opaque; they were designed to enrich middlemen; the securities were subject to investor herd-instincts; and their prices were prone to crash once a wave of panic-selling hit. Only government could provide regulations against fraudulent or deceptive financial products, as it did to good effect until the regulatory process became corrupted beginning in the 1970s. Deregulation arguably created small efficiencies by steering capital to suitable uses—but any such gains were obliterated many times over by the more than $10 trillion of GDP lost in the 2008 crash.

In short, we shouldn’t mistake corruption and negligence for freedom. We need government to regulate markets, provide for the common good, and lay the foundations for capitalism itself.

As Karl Polanyi famously wrote in a seeming oxymoron, “laissez-faire was planned.” Markets could not exist without states defining the terms of property ownership and commerce, creating money, enforcing contracts, protecting patents and trademarks, and providing basic public institutions.

As Kuttner admits, nowadays government is so corrupted by private interests, in particular from Wall Street, that it often doesn’t serve its intended function. Consequently, the public has lost faith in government and the political system. Of course, Republicans and libertarians love it when government doesn’t work and when people give up hope. We need to fix that.

For related articles see

Countering anti-government propaganda: the case of the Freedom Foundation

Without government, we’d be hunter-gatherers

Bring on the Reagan Counterrevolution

Government is like a Computer Operating System