Second, Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig, one of the country's most knowledgeable and dedicated advocates of reforming the core corruption that drives the Congress (as well as a vocal Obama supporter), elaborated on the points I made with an excellent piece at The Huffington Post.  Lessig's whole piece should be read, but its central point is that no matter how much one likes this bill or however much good it achieves -- and, as I've always said, the good in it is clear (expanding coverage and restricting some industry abuses) -- it was enacted by invoking and strengthening precisely the same corrupt, sleazy practices that have long driven Washington.

Third, Joe Scarborough this morning used my Saturday column as the basis for several segments on the health care bill, including this quite revealing 7-minute exchange with The Nation's Chris Hayes about how the bill serves the interests of the various lobbies:

The last point that Joe and Chris made there was the key one:  if one wants to argue that this is a good bill, that's reasonable, but to claim that it is an example of Democrats' "standing up to special interests and the health insurance lobby" is so blatantly false that everyone -- especially supposedly independent commentators -- should be deeply embarrassed to espouse it.

The reason this matters so much -- aside from the intrinsic need to debunk political propaganda -- is because corporate control of the Government is one of the most serious problems, if not the single most serious problem, the nation faces.  Every future bill -- from "financial reform" to energy bills to national security and surveillance legislation -- is dominated by that central fact.  To pretend that these interests were vanquished or "neutralized" here -- all in order to glorify the President as the Greatest Leader Since Abraham Lincoln with the type of sycophantic, Leader-worship hagiography unseen since 2002 -- is not just deeply misleading but, worse, helps conceal what remains the greatest threat to the democratic process:  a threat that is not only stronger than ever, but has been made stronger as a result of the last several months.

Those would be the same "American taxpayers" who are now being told that they have to suffer cuts in Medicare and Social Security because of budgetary constraints, who are watching as the most basic social services (the hallmark of being a developed country) are being rapidly abolished (from the 12th Grade to basic care for children, the infirm and elderly), and are burdened with a national debt so large that America's bond ratings are being degraded by the minute.  Why should those same American taxpayers bear the enormous costs of Israel's military purchases (as Israel enjoys booming economic growth)?  Especially if the issue is presented as cleanly and honestly as Scherer did here, and especially if Israel continues to extend its proverbial middle finger to even the most basic U.S. requests that it cease activities that harm American interests, how much longer can this absurdity be sustained? 

On a related note, a new Rasmussen Poll found that only 58% of Americans now view "Israel as an ally" -- down from 70% just nine months ago.  The same poll found that 49% of Americans believe Israel should be "required" to stop building settlements, with only 22% disagreeing.  That's why the primary objective now of AIPAC and its bipartisan cast of Congressional servants is -- as Scherer put it -- "to pressure the Obama Administration to avoid airing disagreements publically [sic]."  Indeed:  you can't have the American people knowing anything about the U.S./Israel relationship and the ways in which the interests of the two countries diverge.  

Having these issues discussed openly and having the American citizenry be informed might shatter all sorts of vital myths, which is exactly what has happened over the last month, which has, in turn, led to this change in public opinion (that, along with the fact that the Israeli Government, by being viewed as the opponent of Obama, has incurred the wrath of large numbers of Democrats who are loyal to Obama and automatically dislike any of his critics or opponents).  That's why their overriding goal is to hide all these differences behind a wall of secrecy -- "the Administration, to the extent that it has disagreements with Israel on policy matters, should find way[s] to do so in private," demanded Democratic Rep. Steve Israel -- because an open examination of this "special relationship," how it really functions, and the costs and benefits it entails, is what they want most to avoid.  It's common in a democracy for government officials to openly air their differences with allies; why should this be any different?

Dear Ms. Coulter,

I understand that you have been invited by University of Ottawa Campus Conservatives to speak at the University of Ottawa this coming Tuesday. . . .

I would, however, like to inform you, or perhaps remind you, that our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or "free speech") in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States. I therefore encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here.

You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges. Outside of the criminal realm, Canadian defamation laws also limit freedom of expression and may differ somewhat from those to which you are accustomed. I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind. . . .

Hopefully, you will understand and agree that what may, at first glance, seem like unnecessary restrictions to freedom of expression do, in fact, lead not only to a more civilized discussion, but to a more meaningful, reasoned and intelligent one as well.

I hope you will enjoy your stay in our beautiful country, city and campus.

Sincerely,

Francois Houle,

Vice-President Academic and Provost, University of Ottawa

Personally, I think threatening someone with criminal prosecution for the political views they might express is quite "hateful."  So, too, is anointing oneself the arbiter of what is and is not sufficiently "civilized discussion" to the point of using the force of criminal law to enforce it.  If I were administering Canada's intrinsically subjective "hate speech" laws (and I never would), I'd consider prosecuting Provost Houle for this letter.  The hubris required to believe that you can declare certain views so objectively hateful that they should be criminalized is astronomical; in so many eras, views that were most scorned by majorities ended up emerging as truth.

For as long as I'll live, I'll never understand how people want to vest in the Government the power to criminalize particular viewpoints it dislikes, will never understand the view that it's better to try to suppress adverse beliefs than to air them, and will especially never understand people's failure to realize that endorsing this power will, one day, very likely result in their own views being criminalized when their political enemies (rather than allies) are empowered.  Who would ever want to empower officious technocrats to issue warnings along the lines of:  be forewarned:  if you express certain political views, you may be committing a crime; guide and restrict yourself accordingly?  I obviously devote a substantial amount of my time and energy to critiquing the actions of the U.S. Government, but the robust free speech protection guaranteed by the First Amendment and largely protected by American courts continues to be one of the best features of American political culture.

 

UPDATE:  When Noam Chomsky (yes, I'm quoting him twice in one day) is asked whether he thinks America is irrevocably broken and/or whether its political process has any extremely positive features, he typically says -- as he did in this 2005 interview:  "In other dimensions, the U.S. is very free. For example, freedom of speech is protected in the United States to an extent that is unique in the world."  That's the critical point:  as long as the State is absolutely barred from criminalizing political views, then any change remains possible because citizens are free to communicate with and persuade one another and express their political opinions without being threatened by the Government with criminal sanctions of the kind Provost Houle conveyed here and which are not infrequently issued by numerous other Canadian and European functionaries.

 

UPDATE II:  Just to underscore the point:  last year, Canada banned the vehemently anti-war, left-wing British MP George Galloway from entering their country, on extremely dubious "national security" grounds.  Galloway is a vociferous critic of Canada's involvement in the war in Afghanistan as well a defender of Hamas, which were clearly the bases for his exclusion.  Though that was under a different law than the one with which Coulter is threatened, that's always the result of this mindset:  those defending these sorts of speech restrictions always foolishly think that the restrictions will be confined to those views which they dislike, and then are astonished and outraged when these censorship powers are turned against views with which they agree (the Bush administration sought to exclude Muslim scholars from the U.S. who were critical of its wars based on the same rationale).

To see how a genuinely principled individual thinks about such things, see this comment from a right-wing Canadian decrying the exclusion of Galloway despite the fact that he finds Galloway's left-wing views noxious in the extreme.  In 2006, Newt Gingrich advocated that free speech rights should be restricted for "radical Muslims" because they were preaching dangerous "hatred," speech which Gingrich wanted criminalized.  Those who defend "hate speech" laws like the ones in Canada and Europe are Gingrich's like-minded comrades, even if they want to criminalize different views than the ones Gingrich happened to be targeting.

Of course, these are the same exact people who spent years funding the Iraq War without end and without conditions even in the face of extreme public opposition, which consistently remained in the 60-65% range.  Indeed, the wholesale irrelevance of public opinion was a central tenet of GOP rule for eight years, as illustrated by this classic exchange between Dick Cheney and ABC News' Martha Radditz in May, 2008, regarding the administration's escalation of the war at exactly the same time that public demands for withdrawal were at their height:

RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ:  So?  You don’t care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

For years, the explicit GOP view of public opinion was that it is irrelevant and does not matter in the slightest.  Indeed, the view of our political class generally is that public opinion plays a role in how our government functions only during elections, and after that, those who win are free to do whatever they want regardless of what "the people" want.  That's what George Bush meant in 2005 when he responded to a question about why nobody in his administration had been held accountable for the fraud that led to the Iraq War:  "We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections."  Watching these same Republicans now pretend that public opinion must be honored and that our democracy is imperiled when bills are passed without majority support is truly nauseating (of course, Democrats back then protested Cheney's dismissal of public opinion as a dangerous war on democracy yet now insist that public opinion shouldn't stop them from doing what they want).

A poll taken by WorldPublicOpinion.org in the wake of Cheney's comments found that Americans overwhelmingly believe that public opinion should play a major role in key political debates, with 81% saying politicians "should pay attention to public opinion polls because this will help them get a sense of the public's views," with only 18% saying "they should not pay attention to public opinion polls because this will distract them from deciding what they think is right."  And 83% believe "that the will of the people should have more influence that it does."

But, for better or worse, our political and media class does not believe that.  That's why the GOP (with substantial Democratic help) funded the Iraq War indefinitely and without conditions even in the face of massive public opposition.  It's why the Wall Street bailout was approved by both parties despite large-scale public opposition, and why a whole slew of other policies favored by majorities are dismissed as Unserious by the political class.  The Washington Post's Shailagh Murray explicitly said that public opinion is and should be irrelevant to what political leaders do because people are too ignorant to have their views matter:  "Would you want a department store manager or orthodontist running the Pentagon? I don't think so."  The American political system is now based on the central premise that nothing is more irrelevant than public opinion, and nobody has embraced that premise more enthusiastically than the Republicans who ran the country for the eight years prior to Obama's presidency, including those now most gravely insisting that public opinion must be respected lest the Republic fall.

 

UPDATE: How do Republican leaders reconcile their claim that "consent of the governed" compels adherence to majority opinion with their vehement opposition to the public option and Medicare expansion, both of which command the support of large majorities of Americans?  Doesn't their opposition to those highly popular measures rather blatantly violate their new professed belief in the sanctity of public opinion?

On a different note, it will likely interest some people here that Noam Chomsky -- no blind partisan he -- said yesterday that if he were in Congress, he would "hold his nose" and vote for the health care bill because, as flawed as it is, it's an improvement over the status quo.

Finally, please note that I'm not making an argument about whether public opinion should or should not dictate outcomes; the point is about those who are wildly inconsistent in their advocacy on that issue.  If you really want to go to the comment section and address the question of how much public opinion should matter, feel free, but please don't labor under the impression that it has anything to do with what I've written here.

 

UPDATE II:   A new CNN poll today finds that Americans oppose the current health care plan by a margin of 59-39%, but a sizable portion of those opposed -- 13% -- oppose it because "it is not liberal enough" (see questions 20 and 21):

Thus, a majority of Americans either support the plan or believe it should be more liberal (52%), while only a minority (43%) oppose the plan on the ground that it is too liberal.

 

UPDATE III: For a particularly striking example of how the Right, in the form of National Review, was once so dismissive of "public opinion" when it suited them -- i.e., when they wanted to defend Jim Crow laws even in the face of majority opposition -- see here:

 

Pharma supports the bill. Insurers are incoherent on it, but there's not a ferocious and united campaign to kill the proposal. The American Medical Association has endorsed the Senate bill. The hospitals have endorsed the bill. Labor has endorsed the bill. The business community is split, with larger employers holding their fire.

Indeed, PhRMA is so in favor of this bill that, over the last week, they've spent $6 million on an ad campaign aimed at undecided House Democrats to try to pressure them to vote for the bill.  And while the most hackish Obama loyalists (echoing the administration) have been claiming that the health insurance industry is vehemently opposed to and working to defeat this bill, Ezra commendably acknowledges the reality that they have done little in that regard (Marcia Angell -- Professor at Harvard Medical School and the former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine -- said a few weeks ago of the health insurance industry:  "What they're fighting for is the individual mandate. And if they get that mandate [which the final bill contains], if everyone does have to buy their commercial products, then they're going to be extremely happy with it").

Now, if someone wants to argue (as Kevin Drum has) that sleazily bribing these industry interests with secret deals was a necessary evil -- a shrewd, pragmatic way to get a health care bill passed, without which it could not have happened  -- that's one thing.  I think that's debatable  -- after all, the central promise of the Obama campaign was that it would circumvent those factions by appealing directly to the armies of citizen-supporters they had lined up --  but at least that's an honest, rational argument.  Bribing these industries was ugly and sleazy but necessary.

But to pretend that this bill represents the "Twilight of the Interest Groups," that special interests have been "neutralized," that this bill is some sort of great victory over the health insurance and drug lobbies, is just hagiography and propaganda.  Being able to force the Government to bribe and accommodate you is not a reflection of your powerlessness; quite the opposite.  Everyone would love to be forced into a "twilight" like that.  It's one thing for the Obama administration and the DNC to issue self-serving claims like this (we've stood up to the insurance and drug companies!), but those who hold themselves out as independent commentators ought to keep their feet on the ground.

As for the related Obama defense that the way this bill was crafted fulfilled his campaign promises because he said he would include these industries "at the table":  please.  It's true that Obama did say that, and that this clearly meant he intended to try to accommodate some of their concerns so that they didn't wage jihad against his bill.  That's fair enough.  But it's also true that he repeatedly railed against the Washington practice of crafting bills by negotiating in secret with lobbyists and industry interests, and his whole I'll-put-these-negotations-on-C-SPAN promise was specifically designed, he said, to prevent a health care bill from being negotiated based on secret deals with the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

But that's exactly how he ended up negotiating this bill -- using the exact secret processes that he railed against and which he swore he would banish.  It was only because The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim uncovered the secret memo-deal the White House had entered into with PhRMA -- a deal they had publicly denied until then and until PhRMA demanded they publicly affirm it -- did we know that the administration had agreed to oppose drug re-importation and bulk price negotiations, measures Obama (and the Democrats generally) repeatedly promised to enact.  Indeed, when it came time to vote on drug re-importation, the administration concocted false "safety concerns" about re-importation in order to whip against Byron Dorgan's re-importation amendment, rather than admit that they really opposed it because they secretly promised they would to PhRMA, which hates drug re-importation because it lowers prices.  And it was only two days ago that we finally had confirmed what (at least to me) was obvious all along:  namely, the White House had agreed in secret with health care industry representatives that there would be no public option in a final bill, even as the President publicly feigned support for it and pretended to be fighting for it.

In other words, this bill was negotiated using the standard, secret, sleazy Beltway lobbyist/industry practices that candidate Obama frequently condemned and vowed to defeat.  And these industries extracted such huge benefits as a result of these secret deals -- a bill shaped to their liking and profit objectives -- that they are essentially in favor of it.

Again, none of this is proof that the health care bill is a bad idea -- it's possible that a bill which pleases these industries also produces, on balance, more good than harm (by expanding coverage and restricting some industry abuses).  But being in favor of the bill is not a justification for making misleading claims to try to glorify what it achieves or, worse, claiming that it represents a change in the way Washington works and a fulfillment of Obama's campaign pledges.  The way this bill has been shaped is the ultimate expression -- and bolstering -- of how Washington has long worked.  One can find reasonable excuses for why it had to be done that way, but one cannot reasonably deny that it was.  And one can truthfully say many things about the political power of industry interests in Washington after this is all done; that they were "neutralized" and are in their "twilight" is most assuredly not among them.

 

UPDATE:  Matt Yglesias also says Ezra Klein's claims about interest groups are "wrong" and that the reality is the "reverse" of what Klein wrote:  "interest groups were able to get their way on most key points without needing to seriously attempt to deliver votes in exchange. . . . the interest groups were able to get 85 percent of what they wanted in exchange for absolutely nothing."  Does that sound like their having been "neutralized" and sent to their "twilight"?  This highlights a primary point I'm making here:  Yglesias is as enthusiastic a supporter of this bill as one can find, yet, at least in this regard, is still able to be realistic about what it actually is and is not.

If I were the Israelis, not only would I bomb Iran, but I'd do so in such a way as to create as much trouble for China, Russia, Europe and the United States as possible.  

Calling on a foreign country to act in a way that creates "as much trouble as possible" for your own country seems to be the very definition of being "on the other side," does it not? (and his cover sentence -- "Are the Israelis less obnoxious than me? I guess we’ll find out soon enough . . . ." -- changes nothing).  That's especially true since the action Reynolds is endorsing -- Israel's bombing of Iran -- likely would, according to America's top military official, directly result in the deaths of American soldiers:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, warned last Thursday that an Israeli attack on Iran might lead to escalation, undermine the region's stability and endanger the lives of Americans in the Persian Gulf "who are under the threat envelope right now."

By Reynolds' own standards, blithely endorsing such outcomes would seem, definitively, to place one "on the other side."  But over the last week, as the U.S./Israel dispute has blossomed, the American Right generally has engaged in much conduct that they have always denounced as disloyal and treasonous.  Almost unanimously, they have adopted what Jeanne Kirkpatrick famously condemned as a "Blame America First" attitude, with super-patriots such as National Review and Charles Krauthammer, among many others, heaping all blame on America and siding with the foreign government.  According to these Arbiters of Patriotism, this dispute is The Fault of America; indeed, when it comes to American conflicts with Israel generally, as Kirkpatrick put it in her famous refrain:  "somehow, they always Blame America First."

Along those lines, the Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman yesterday formally condemned Gen. David Petraeus for warning that Israel's conflict with the Palestinians increases anti-American hatred and endangers American troops due to a "perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel."  Foxman attacked Petraeus' remarks as "dangerous and counterproductive" -- and, indeed, they are:  "dangerous and counterproductive," that is, for those (like Foxman and the neocon Right) who want the U.S. to blindly support Israeli actions even when doing so directly harms American interests.  As Andrew Bacevich explained in Salon yesterday, the fact that Petraeus has now linked U.S. support for Israel to harm to U.S. interests will make it impossible for Israel-centric neocons to stigmatize that linkage ever again, and is thus "likely to discomfit those Americans committed to the proposition that the United States and Israel face the same threats and are bound together by identical interests."  Isn't it Barack Obama's overriding duty as Commander-in-Chief to listen to his military commanders and take aggressive action against anything which undermines America's war effort and Endangers the Troops -- including Israel's settlement expansions?

Beyond that, wasn't it only recently that attacking Gen. David Petraeus the way the ADL has done was deemed so unpatriotic that it merited formal, bipartisan Congressional condemnation?  As Joan Walsh proposed yesterday, shouldn't Congress now be preparing to condemn the ADL and Foxman for their attack on Petraeus, launched at him as he commands brave American men and women in harm's way, fighting for our country?  After all, Petraeus is responsible for the safety of those troops and is trying to alert government leaders about policies which endanger those troops and undermine the American war effort.  What kind of person would attack Gen. Petreaus for doing that, all in the name of serving the interests of a foreign government?  One hasn't seen attacks on Gen. Petraeus this vicious since he condemned torture and called for the closing of Guantanamo, thereby provoking the unhinged wrath of America's Right.

And then we have what I thought was the patriotic standard that one should not attack the President in his conduct of foreign policy during a time of war.  What happened to Joe Lieberman's solemn 2005 warning that "in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril"?  This is the same Joe Lieberman who, along with his conjoined twin, John McCain, this week went to the Senate floor to rail against President Obama for the crime of Excess Criticism of Israel.  Isn't Al Qaeda going to be emboldened if they see the Commander-in-Chief being weakened and attacked by these U.S. Senators as inept and our country riddled with internal divisions of this sort?  That was the argument made by these same right-wing super-patriots for years (and, indeed, is now being echoed -- not ironically but earnestly -- by their mirror images on the dissent-hating, Beltway version of the "Left," such as Newsweek's Jonathan Alter).  But for the neocon Right, that uber-patriotic standard seems to have been suspended as of January 20, 2009, and (like so many standards) is revoked altogether when it comes to Israel.

Whatever else is true, the American Right is now openly siding with a foreign government against their own, and bitterly Blaming America for these problems.  They're protecting this foreign government's actions even though our top Generals say those actions undermine our war effort and directly endanger American troops.  They're advocating policies -- such as the Israeli bombing of Iran -- which America's Joint Chiefs Chairman has gravely warned will seriously impede our wars and lead to the deaths of our soldiers.  They're demeaning the top American General with command responsibility for two theaters of war.  And, in a Time of War, they're attacking the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief -- and relentlessly depicting him as weak and inept -- all because he's prioritizing American interests over those of a foreign country.  All of that seems to severely breach the standards of Patriotism they have long advocated and which have long prevailed, to put that rather mildly.

* * * * *

Perhaps most notably, all of this is taking place as a new poll of Israelis finds that "a sweeping majority of Israelis think [Obama's] treatment of [their] country is friendly and fair"; "most Israelis don't believe politicians who call Obama anti-Semitic or hostile to Israel"; and "more [Israelis] said Netanyahu's behavior [in this conflict] was irresponsible than said he acted responsibly."  Put another way, the American neocon Right is demanding a level of American loyalty to Israel far higher than Israelis themselves expect, and (as usual) the American neocon Right is far more blindly supportive of the Israeli Government than Israelis themselves are.