Another YouTube Moment: Obama Will Repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

I think that towards the middle there are Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who got slaughtered by right wing militia in Weimar Germany in the twenties of last century. Rosa Luxemburg had this famous slogan 'freedom is always the freedom of the person who thinks differently from you'.

The cover from the Nation reminds me of a great piece by José Antonio Burciaga.

http://flickr.com/photos/lamusa/393445916/

Bravo Alberto!

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth"

Henry David Thoreau

Sure, Don't Ask Don't Tell is terrible - especially from the perspective of 2009.

Sixteen years ago, the culture was demonstrably different - an entire generation that has become politically active was in grade school or in diapers. We've become a remarkably more tolerant and progressive society as those born between 1980 and 92 have begun to come of age.

Not to excuse the stagnant odor of DADT, but the term was coined by Barney Frank - "don't ask, don't tell, don't listen, don't investigate." It was his compromise solution to simply allowing homosexuals to legally serve for the first time in the nation's history - yes, only half of President Clinton's campaign promise at best - but still, an important half-step. Rep. Frank has always defended that decision to negotiate, even while continuing the vital work of guaranteeing legal equality to all Americans.

In 1993, the strident opposition to Democrat Sam Nunn and Colin Powell (our buddy, right?) and the coalition with Republicans that he built couldn't be overcome - indeed, Congress went to the extraordinary step of passing a law making it illegal for the President to simply change the rule.

So Rep. Frank led the way toward a compromise. Great, brilliant, or even just plain good? Probably not - and Clinton never had the capital to advance that ball again. Bush, of course, has zero interest.

But, as you yourself have said Al, sometimes you gotta open the door just a crack...and some things have to wait.

I'm thrilled Obama will pursue this, apparently. I hope he also spends some of his massive political capital on full and legal gay marriage rights as well.

earlier in the week, but the general thought seemed to be "fine, Gibbs said 'yes' but he didn't say when," intimating that it wouldn't happen anytime soon.

Barney Frank has listed DADT as one of his main objectives with regard to GLBT rights and Obama certainly will support it.  We'll see how soon it happens but I bet sooner rather than later.

Two more bits of good news:

John Berry, the openly gay director of the Smithsonian's National Zoo in DC and former assistant secretary of the Interior during the Clinton years, has been tapped to head the Office of Personnel Management, the entity that governs personnel rules and regs for all civilian Federal jobs, and which has a big influence on Pentagon personnel operations.  Suddenly, the Federal government will be on the forefront of gay-rights issues once again.

And Ellen Tauscher has said that she intends to reintroduce her DADT-repealing legislation in a few weeks.  This is the legislation that Democrats backed but which faced a certain Bush veto.

For those who prefer to cheat, The Nation has a key to their cover.

I wonder whether Jesse Jackson has any mixed feelings about being included on the roster of heroes when all the other ones are dead?

Look again, Al. A number are still alive! Not just Jackson.

I don't know all the names (great opportunity to learn some history!), but John Lewis and Dolores Huerta are also alive.

Hello: First off, I think (but can't say positively) that this is my first comment here, so let me start by saying that I find this blog to be pretty fascintaing, and while I don't always agree with you, I think that the points you make are always thoughtfull, and entered into with a sense of decency and good faith. Now, for my comment: I don't see how the Rick Warren deal and the repeal of DADT are related, and I don't see in your post that you really connected the two issues, or specifically stated how you feel they are connected, so I am wondering if you could draw that out a little more. I'm certainly willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around your argument. Anyway, thanks again for your blog, and take care.

Jason - Welcome to the comments section. Good question. Let's see if I can explain what I mean: 

When Clinton was rumored to be about to move to allow gays and lesbians in the military in 1993, the religious right (at the time Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and others) moved virulently to squash it. Today, 16 years later, the old guard of the religious right has given way to a new generation, the most influential of them being Warren.

There is, inside the religious right, a power struggle between the old guard and the new guard. Whereas we see Warren as backwards and reactionary, the old guard sees him as heretic: they view his compassion on AIDS and support for anti-poverty efforts as heresy. Obama's placing him on the inaugural program gives him a leg up in that internal struggle on the religious right. (Religions, in my view, being thinly masked struggles for power, all of them.)

In doing so, he places Warren in his debt (he emerges atop the old guard through that big TV moment), and while it remains to be seen whether it buys Warren's silent acquiescence to the coming change in the gays in the military policy, it certainly has bought it prior to the inaugural, giving the incoming administration time to gain traction for its repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. It just becomes impossible now, even in moments when Warren will indubitably oppose some Obama policies, for him to make it personal and to vilify Obama as his predecessors did to Clinton, therefore whipping up their troops to go into a kind of political jihad of calls to Congress and such.

That's what I mean by my concept of "disarming the culture wars time bomb."

I think the same motives were at play when Obama met with conservative columnists at George Will's house the other night. He's both giving that group a leg up over their internecine competitors among right-wing pundits, while also coopting them into some non-ideological points of common ground, and disarming them from typing personal invective and fury later on.

It's really really hard to call a jihad against someone you've broken bread with, or someone that gave you a national TV slot to trump your internal competitors with. It's a great chess game underway. So far, it's working.

Hope that provides a little more insight into how I see it.

I just came across this story at TNR's The Plank which provides some insight as to how the PE's organizer roots has long permeated his daily thought process and is not just limited to orchestrated events. It tells of a time at Harvard where some of the PE's class discussion insights were compelling enough for the professor to use it as a test question. According to the professor...

"It was a basic question about the future of the city. It summed it all up in some way…: "What can cities do in the United States about their own future?" ... It turns out that cities in the United States are created by state law. They're very much influenced by the way state law organizes them. ... There's a debate about whether we should build up the inner-city as the future of the city, or, to put it in the strongest terms, abandon it and integrate everyone into the larger metropolitan area. ... The issue was, what role does the city have to play in that question? Could the city influence policy in one way or the other? That’s the legal question. The question Barack asked, he was posing those two alternatives. I had them discuss that. ...

There are many different angles to thinking about the city. ... [E]conomic development--thinking about investment here and not there. In the District [of Columbia] and not Virginia. If Goldman Sachs moves across the river to New Jersey, it's a big deal to the city of New York. Or they think about attracting investment. What do you do? Again, it's some box. You notice in this conversation that whether or not poor black people are living in cities does not come up. [Except that] poor neighborhoods are seen as an inhibition to investors. ...

Since he had worked in the poor black community, he had this as his vision. It was not just that he asked one question once. He had this idea, an idea about thinking about this problem that influenced me enough to put it on the exam."

 

Here's the link to Noam Scheiber's blog entry about it http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/01/15/obama-s-urbanism-plus-bonus-law-school-story.aspx

Nation cover is wonderful - but wondering why Myles and Zilphia Horton aren't included.  Expect if asked, Rosa Parks would have given credit to her time spent working and learning with people at Highlander.

For those who haven't yet learned about their work: The Long Haul, by Myles Horton is a place to start.  Zilphia most remembered for her contribution to the music that still inspires us today.

Al, Great answers to Jason's great questions. My follow up question to your interpretation/assertion of Obama's "disarming" tactic is this: if "breaking bread with" and assisting in Warren's political struggles within his community is meant to make it harder for him to loudly/effectively oppose Obama's repeal of DADT (or other social policies), doesn't it require Obama to act quickly while the "bread" is still warm in Warren's stomach? If too much time elapses, won't any goodwill (or, really, 'guilt' about being a jerk as you've describe the affect of the disarming process on the recipient) Warren feels give way to his natural human tendency to revert to his original positions? It seems to me that he might adopt the "what have you done for me lately?" attitude toward Obama if Obama waits too long to take advantage of Warren's (hopefully) being disarmed by his political kindness. In other words, Warren might briefly put down his knife while eating with Obama, but he's a human, so he'll pick that knife back up (and strongly oppose Obama on social issues) before too long unless he's ever truly convinced that his opposition is wrong and not just uncomfortable for him psychologically to oppose a "friend.".

Al,

Your analysis is consistenly brilliant. I would just encourage you to be a bit more open minded to the possibility that some of us receive more from religion than "thinly masked struggles for power." I'm often amazed that so many of us on the left are so quick to dismiss religion and to marginalize those with a religious perspective.

It's unfortunate that religion is so often misused for political purposes. Nothing has done more to undermine religion than religion itself -- the way it's been cynically misused to frighten, manipulate and control.

Yet, setting all of that aside, for the sincere seeker, there is the possibility of finding in one's heart that "still, small voice." My path to that place of deep, inner connection is Sufism -- the mystical branch of Islam. But it's not about the particular path; it's about the place of connection, the Oneness, Spirit, Everything/Nothing, the Tao, God (whatever one chooses to call it).

I believe Barack Obama has shared this journey and genuinely understands it. I'm not so cynical to believe it's all a show for the dumb masses. If it is, he's got to be the most briliant manipulator ever. But my sense is that his inner connection to the great mystery genuinely informs his politics.

For what it's worth, I came to this as a skeptic. Studied biology, chemistry, physics and math at Johns Hopkins; then became a software engineer; then changed directions and attended law school on full scholarship. My academic credentials are strong. I did not come to religion from a place of ignorance, but rather from a place of doubt. Yet something in my heart kept calling me -- over and over again -- to spiritual path after spiritual path. Sufism finally took me over the hump to a deep and direct experience of the divine because it allowed me to taste and know that place of inner connection for the first time. Each person has to find the particular path that fits.

Cannot tell you the extent to which my life has shifted. I'm far more open and loving than ever before; fare more generous, really wanting to share what I have with those less fortunate; my relationships are so much more beautiful (and way less needy); I love my work so much more, as it has become part of my sense of inner connection. Sometimes I teach classes for skeptics who want to taste that deep inner connection. Often really intelligent, educated people.

I share this not to convert anyone, but to encourage open mindedness. I see dismissiveness of religion as one of our blind spots on the left -- despite the extent to which religion has informed and motivated historic progressive struggles such as the Civil Rights Movement.

Al said nothing about what individuals receive from religion, only what drives most of what goes on inside organized religions.  Religions are social institutions and exhibit the same political and power struggles of any human-made institution.

You note that Sufism is where you found your spiritual home.  Al is speaking here of the US evangelical Christian movement, which I am sure you will agree is much more like a US political party with its infighting, factions, and internecine struggles to establish the true faith and get the most eyeballs on their public pronouncements.

Roy and Allan - I use the term rather broadly to include any public infliction of people's cosmic beliefs on the rest of us. With that I lump in all the "New Age" tendencies, too (as Harold Bloom pointed out in his book, "The American Religion," the New Age tendencies are merely differently worded versions of Evangelical christianity.

If you, Roy, or anybody has a set of religious worldviews that work for you, all power to ya, that's great. I can't say it's wrong for you. And I wouldn't anyway. But beyond that, I'm disinterested. I wouldn't try to convince anybody to be a non-believer any more than I accept anybody trying to convince me to be a believer. I think it's like anything else in one's private life: not a topic for conversation in civilized life.

I love that Jackie Robinson is listed as number 42 on the Nation's key.

Al -- I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I respect your right to be an atheist or agnostic. (By the way, I really mean that, and I don't see it as my place to convince others of anything when it comes to matters as personal, subjective and unproveable as religion.) What I'm referring to was your aside: "Religions, in my view, being thinly masked struggles for power, all of them."

There's so often a dismissiveness of the religious inpulse among those on the left. A belief that only the weak and the stupid have a need for it. A lack of interest in understanding the religious mind. A view that religion is, in essence, a crock. I think that's a mistake. Even if you're not into relgion for yourself. Dismissiveness gets in the way of knowing others -- including many of those in the progressive movement. It certainly gets in the way of building bridges toward those with whom we have far less in common politically.

Even though I completely disagree with the politics of Rick Warren, even though I see the gay rights movement as the next frontier of the civil rights struggle, I'm glad Barack Obama is inclined to reach out to him -- completely separate and apart from the soundness of the politics. It's important for us to know each other.

Would that be too much to ask? a yes or not on whether all American troops will be out of Iraq in 16 months? I mean, repealing DADT is child's play; how about we get down to the nitty and gritty?

Hasn't he already said this?

Though Obama's not going to lock himself into specifics, I have no doubt he'll begin a withdrawal from Iraq as soon as possible. I'm not sure about Afghanistan. On the one hand, one would think that a man so brilliant would know better than to make it his war. But it's hard to ignore his own words during the campaign.