The Congressional Heckler

By now everyone has heard (or heard about) Rep. Joe Wilson shouting "You lie!" during the President's speech, so I don't need to tell the story - but read between the lines of this sentence from the NYT's account. This is cold:

"Mr. Wilson also phoned the White House and reached Mr. Emanuel, who accepted an apology on behalf of the president."

He "reached" Rahm Emanuel - which means he's not important enough to have a direct line. And President Obama was not going to hear his apology, so Rahm accepted it instead.

My schedule is pretty hectic over the next day or so, but as soon as I can put together some refined thoughts on the speech, I'll post them.

Fear and Knowledge

Over at Empirical International, Matt has a couple of excellent posts answering ten "challenges" to evolutionary biology posed by Jonathan Wells, a prominent intelligent-design advocate. The challenges are part of an old chain email that tries to convince high-school students to confront their unsuspecting biology teachers with ammunition against the supposed fraud of evolution. Ever the gentleman, Matt writes, "Wells holds PhDs in Molecular and Cell Biology from Berkeley and Religious Studies from Yale, so he's obviously no slouch and I do not believe he is deliberately trying to deceive people." Well, speak for yourself, Matt. I've been blogging for over a year now, so my ability to assume good faith was lost long ago.

Kidding aside, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Dr. Wells is honestly questioning widely-accepted science (instead of cynically selling out to hacks and pseudoscientific organizations like the Discovery Institute, where he is a fellow). Matt already addressed the numerous scientific errors Wells makes in his criticisms, a task for which he is manifestly more qualified than I am, so we'll put aside those concerns for the time being. For my part, I'd like to explore why seemingly-intelligent people cling so desperately to junk science like intelligent design in defiance of all logic and scientific consensus. I think the phenomenon raises some interesting issues.

There's no small amount of fuss about a supposed showdown between science and religion in our age, and among highly-educated people, I imagine the consensus is that science is "winning." Until 9/11, there was a rough agreement that religious faith was waning, at least in the developed world, and it's not hard to imagine why some people - and I'd place Wells and his ilk among them - feel threatened. There's something very scary about the prospect of one's world seemingly fading away, an unsettling feeling that your cherished, familiar traditions are being replaced by an indifferent empiricism whose evangelists are openly hostile to your heritage. Or at least that's how they see it. For others of us, the picture is considerably less bleak: the advancement of human knowledge is exciting and potentially world-changing, and regardless of our religious beliefs, it should be considered a good thing.

Fundamentally, that's why ID advocates are off-base. Religion - or at least Christianity - is not about making empirical claims. It's not about explaining, in any scientifically meaningful sense, how the universe came to be, and when it addresses its subject matter appropriately, its claims are beyond the realm of scientific testing. The temptation to scientifically explain the world using God is misguided and counterproductive.

It didn't start with intelligent design, though. We can look back at least as far as 1613, when the Flemish Jesuit Leonardus Lessius published De Providentia Numinis, an argument about God and Christianity which proceeded by venturing into explanations of the physical universe. It was, to say the least, a troubling sign of things to come. As the philosopher Michael Buckley writes:

De providentia numinis occupies a position from which the Church will seldom depart in its apologetic response to the gradual rise of atheism in the Western world. Lessius’ problematic methodology separates the question of god from the cognitive claims of Christology in the classic distinction between revelation and reason. The centrality of Christ is relegated to revelation – Christ does not evoke faith in the Father; his intelligibility is consequent upon faith. What Lessius presents is not the person and message of Jesus, but those cosmological and historical experiences which are open to any human being.

When you think about it, this is a pretty remarkable shift, one which basically amounts to a tacit admission that personal experience of the sublime is intellectually insufficient as grounds for belief. Born of this sentiment is the fundamentalist tendency to look for "answers in Genesis," which will always be a fool's errand. Religion should not appeal to science for coherence, not only because it doesn't need to, but also because science doesn't need religion. Science is perfectly coherent without religion.

But that's not the only reason why the ID-style approach is misguided - or why ID advocates are scared. There is another significant concern behind their way of thinking, one that has to do with the way people imagine nature. The Christian idea of a world created ex nihilo is not a world that precludes contingency, but it is a world where the contingent embodies (in some way) a divine idea or image, if not divine intent. It is a world in which, as Louis Dupré writes, "nature retains an intrinsically normative character," a "further stage in the process of revelation." For Christian thinkers of centuries past, nature was filled with meaning, if not intentional structure. Again, as Dupré puts it, "the epistemic apriori imposed no categorical structure upon the real, but a perspective for reading what was directly, but never simply or exhaustively, given." Most Christians, I imagine, are intent to continue viewing nature in this way, but the rise of evolutionary theory exploded forever the idea of a manifestly-ordered creation. Right?

People like Dr. Wells are afraid of the question - so they continue to insist, against all evidence, that evolution cannot possibly account for the world we see. They are, of course, wrong. Their work perniciously undermines real science to support pseudoscience. And on theological grounds, their efforts are completely unnecessary: contingency, however we imagine it to work in the universe, does not make the world devoid of meaning or beauty. God does not exist as some sort of heavenly puppetmaster, and it was always theologically childish to imagine God that way. However we may conceive of creation and of the nature that developed after the origins of the universe, we can at least admit the possibility of a pervasive divine grace, free from the temporal limitations of humanity, able to see what was, is, and will be; imbuing the world with meaning even as it unfolds in ways that are unpredictable to us. Vain attempts to fit science and the world into our preconceived notions of providence are doomed to fail. But the honest and unbiased pursuit of knowledge - whether scientific or spiritual - has the potential to unlock not just information, but understanding.

Breaking News!

Can anyone explain the purpose of the vague, uninformative, self-contradictory, and bizarre non-story the NYT is featuring this morning? The article, "Obama Faces a Critical Moment for His Presidency," contains the breaking story that...um...healthcare reform is important? Being president is tough? Add in the reporter's (philosopher's?) string of rhetorical questions, and you've got a real head-scractcher:

He faces a crisis of expectations tough to manage. Can he form a health care compromise that satisfies both his liberal base and fiscal conservatives in his own party, much less the other one? Can he stanch the slide in support for the war in Afghanistan even as he considers sending more troops? Can he soothe discontent with an economy that appears to have bottomed out but remains moribund? Can he change the tenor of debate in a capital that seems as polarized as ever?

Um, I don't know. That's why I read the newspaper. But that's far from the worst part of this piece. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the hallmark of poor journalism: a simplistic narrative!

Mr. Obama is hardly the first president to run into trouble after the bunting and balloons have vanished, but his slipping support has fueled a narrative about a young and relatively inexperienced president who overinterpreted his mandate and overreached in his policies. His job approval rating has fallen to 56 percent from 62 percent since February in polls taken by The New York Times and CBS News. Other surveys register an even sharper drop.

Wait: having a 56% approval rating = unpopularity? And who thought that having a 62% approval rating after a month in office was sustainable? It's like the pundits who pretend to be shocked that healthcare reform used to have astronomically high public support, and now its support has fallen. Well, duh: when there's no plan to oppose, the abstract idea of "reforming" something sounds pretty good!

The second issue here is the narrative being "fueled" by "slipping support" (again, 56%?) If anything, the narrative is being fueled by lazy and opportunistic reporters who aren't interested in writing a nuanced story about why governing, even for someone as powerful as the President, is so difficult - and who know that "WUNDERKIND OBAMA SLIPPING FAST" is a much more exciting headline. Ooo, look! A hero is stumbling! One could write a story about the intricacies of Congressional politics, the slowness of bureaucracy, or the naturally incremental nature of the American political process - the kinds of helpful, informative pieces that normally appear in the NYT - but for today: narrative! Even weirder, then, that this sentence should immediately follow:

But his overall standing with the public is still healthy [...] If he ultimately gets some form of health care program passed that he can call a victory, this turbulence may ultimately be forgotten.

Translation: everything I just said is crap, and even I know it. If any kind of healthcare bill gets passed (which is basically set in stone at this point), we'll all forget that I wrote this terrible article.

Gitmo Prison Blues

While filling in at the Daily Dish, Chris Bodenner does us all a favor by tearing apart Elise Cooper's weak arguments against moving Guantanamo prisoners to facilities in the United States. Cooper's piece, titled (apparently without irony) "No Terrorists in My Backyard", brags that there was a consensus against housing Gitmo prisoners here among those interviewed: namely, security experts and members of Congress. The problem: they're nearly all Republican politicians. And one of the two security experts is Michael Chertoff, who hardly counts as impartial - when he was head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division in 2003, he sided with John Yoo's memo that exempted the military from federal law during wartime and authorized torture at the prison. He had a hand in making Gitmo the nightmare it was, and unfortunately remains, for the US.

Bodenner does a fine job demonstrating why none of Cooper's arguments make sense, and he notes that the piece "reads like a cobbled-together press release." It does have a bit of a thrown-together feel to it, especially this humdinger from Rep. Tom Rooney:

Congressman Rooney points out that since a lot of money was spent in making Guantanamo Bay a state of the art prison America should keep the detainees there. He does not support the Obama administration’s view that Guantanamo must be closed because of the stigma associated with it.

Where to start with this (besides the obvious question of why we elect such people to Congress)? How much Guantanamo cost to build has nothing to do with whether or not we should keep it open; that question is decided by its helping or hindrance of our national security objectives. So the "stigma" of Guantamano is a very good reason for closing it - but, just for clarity's sake, let's not call it a stigma. That understates its danger. Guantanamo is an incredibly powerful recruiting tool for our enemies, and since we can safely imprison terrorists without handing them a recruiting tool, the security cost of keeping it open far outweighs the benefits. With no coherent argument opposing this move, it's hard to characterize Republican behavior as anything besides posturing.

Nodding Towards Nullification

On a conference call organized by Americans for Prosperity, Sen. Jim DeMint and Rep. Michele Bachmann, two of the more reliably nutty members of Congress, made some oblique references to nullification when discussing the states' response to healthcare reform. From TPMDC:

A caller asked DeMint what the states could do in order to stop unconstitutional action by the federal government on health care. DeMint replied, "I think the key to pushing back against the federal government is some governors and state legislators who champion individual freedom."

DeMint said he would love to see states go to court to invoke the Tenth Amendment: "If we had some states come together and say the only way to save this country is to push back." He also added: "I think you'll see some states say no more, we're not going down with the federal government."A few minutes later, Bachmann commented on this possibility as well, noting that the efforts of some Republican governors to reject stimulus money failed in large part because they were too isolated from one another. A collective action, on the other hand, would stand a much greater chance of success.

The idea that states can selectively ignore or deny the validity of federal laws is nullification. Responding to the statements of DeMint and Bachmann, Josh Marshall - who, by the way, holds a PhD in American History from Brown, where he must have studied with Gordon Wood (jealous!) - calls nullification "a crackpot idea from the start" that "hasn't been seriously entertained anywhere in the county since the Civil War (with the exception of feigned attempts in the South during the Civil Right Era)." This is basically true, but allow me one small quibble: the assertion that nullification was a "crackpot idea from the start" doesn't ring perfectly true to me.

Nullification can be traced back before the Civil War to Thomas Jefferson, who most clearly articulated the idea in response to the almost-certainly unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which, among other things, criminalized "false, scandalous, or malicious writing" against the government. Jefferson was enraged by the Acts, and not just because they were a transparent power grab by his political rival, President John Adams.

In 1798, the consensus on the relationship between federal and state power was fragile at best, and Jefferson's Kentucky Resolution asserted boldly that "the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself." To that end, Jefferson (and James Madison, who drafted a similar resolution in Virginia) articulated a more compartmentalized vision of constitutional interpretation, arguing that each branch and level of government had the authority to interpret the Constitution for itself. Madison, it should be noted, was not willing to go as far as Jefferson on this notion: he proposed using the federal judiciary to settle disputes, and though he admitted it would not be a perfect system, he still insisted that "as some such Tribunal is a vital element, a sine qua non, in an efficient & permanent Govt. the Tribunal existing must be acquiesced in, until a better or more satisfactory one can be substituted." Basically, governments need an ultimate arbiter. Jefferson, for his part, preferred to settle disputes by democratic referendum (a view he defended in an 1823 letter). The problems with this approach are obvious, but it's still a bit of a stretch to assert that this theory was "crackpot from the start." It was certainly wrong, but Jefferson and Madison weren't just any random folks writing about government (cough) - and hey, they were wrong for pretty interesting reasons.

How Democracy Is Supposed To Work

Sen. Grassley recently remarked that the "the outpouring of anger" at healthcare townhalls has convinced him that reform efforts should be changed. Conor Clarke lays out what the Senator doesn't seem to understand:

I think it's worth mentioning that the Grassley theory of "the public" is pretty much the exact opposite of how American democracy is supposed to function. Famously, public representatives are supposed to distinguish between the "vicious arts" of faction (Madison's words) and the "permanent and aggregate interests of the community" (Hamilton's). Of course, it might be the case that protestors laying seige to Fort Grassley actually represent the aggregate interests of the public. But you won't find evidence for that conclusion at a townhall meeting.

Washington, D.C.! It's Paradise to Me

I'll be heading back to D.C. this weekend, and beginning the day I arrive, my schedule will permit very little free time - so don't expect regular updates for at least the next several days. If I run across something interesting, I'll try to post a quick reaction or a question about it, but that might be all I have time to do until my schedule loosens up a little bit.

If you'd like some bloggy reading material while I'm away, allow me to plug the work of a couple of friends. First, JDR's superb blog Deep Focus, which offers incisive, thoughtful, and well-informed (the latter is a particular rarity when it comes to his favorite topics) commentary about whatever the author read in the NYT that day politics and the media, particularly with regard to the Middle East. I also eagerly anticipate bloghaddad's newest offering, In the Woods. It's just getting up and running, but I have high expectations, since it's coming from an exceptionally talented and refreshingly provocative writer. If you want a sample of his stuff, check out the comments on a few of my posts. (And he's someone whose first forays into blogging precede my own - making him something of an elder figure around here.)

If this blog doesn't reference the writings of Messrs. Reger and Haddad very frequently, it's not because they're not producing good material, but because I don't want to invite the reader to make comparisons between their work and my own. I have to hang on to my audience somehow...

Here Are A Few Suggestions

Contra Paul Krugman's column today, Megan McArdle doubts that the federal government's response to the financial crisis validates "big government":

...We did three things differently than we did in 1932:

1. We didn't follow a contractionary monetary policy
2. We shoveled gigantic wads of cash into the banking system without much regard for who it was going to, or what they might spend it on
3. We maintained a high level of spending that kept aggregate demand from contracting as powerfully as it did in 1932.

Only the last, I think, can be seen as a vindication of "Big Government" in the sense that Krugman means. It's also totally unsustainable, and it will be interesting to see what happens to the economy as the government is forced to pull back on the stimulus over the next year or so by either raising taxes, or cutting back on spending. [...]

I'm not sure what we just went through validates any reasonable philosophy of government, except "give officials room to make ad-hoc decisions, and hope they don't do too badly."

The set-up of that response is awfully misleading. Right-wing critics of "big government" generally have rather harsh critiques of the American welfare state, which is comparatively modest (as a percentage of GDP, we spend about half as much on welfare services as the highest spenders - Denmark and Sweden - and spend substantially less than nearly every European nation). As Krugman points out, when the Great Depression hit, most of the "big-government" safety nets that have helped people avert the worst today - Medicare and Social Security being two of the most prominent - didn't exist. So the existing structures of what conservatives derisively call "big government" are as important in evaluating the weathering of this crisis - and the effectiveness of "big government" generally - as the spending decisions made by Congress, the Fed, and the President.

And as for McArdle's shrug that the only lesson from this crisis is "give officials room to make ad-hoc decisions, and hope they don't do too badly": how about admitting that there is a proper time and place for Keynesian macroeconomic policy? How about abandoning visceral opposition to any kinds of government intervention in the economy? How about recognizing that government sometimes has to behave differently from individuals - so when individuals are cutting back, governments can and should spend more? When John Boehner advocated that the government "tighten its belt," it wasn't just some guy talking - it was arguably the nation's most powerful Republican actually suggesting that the government cut off spending in the middle of an economic crisis - possibly pushing the country into a depression - either to show solidarity with American citizens, or attempt to balance its budget during a recession, or some other wacky idea that he apparently saw as the solution to our economic woes (I won't pretend to understand what goes on in that guy's head).

The government's ability to mitigate the worst of this crisis was due in part to actions that, granted, cannot be continued indefinitely, but to suggest that weathering this storm says nothing about the virtues of big government takes some pretty remarkable libertarian tunnelvision.

The Other War

Over at Obsidian Wings, Eric Martin is highlighting a piece criticizing the Feminist Majority Foundation's support of troop escalation in Afghanistan. The argument is twofold: it notes that further warfare will only add to the suffering of civilians, especially Afghan women, and it criticizes the new Afghan political elite for being every bit as backwards and misogynistic as the Taliban was. The authors write:

Under the Taliban, women were confined to their homes. They were not allowed to work or attend school. They were poor and without rights. They had no access to clean water or medical care, and they were forced into marriages, often as children.

Today, women in the vast majority of Afghanistan live in precisely the same conditions, with one notable difference: they are surrounded by war. The conflict outside their doorsteps endangers their lives and those of their families. It does not bring them rights in the household or in public, and it confines them even further to the prison of their own homes. Military escalation is just going to bring more tragedy to the women of Afghanistan [...] The U.S. military may have removed the Taliban, but it installed warlords who are as anti-woman and as criminal as the Taliban. Misogynistic, patriarchal views are now embodied by the Afghan cabinet, they are expressed in the courts, and they are embodied by President Hamid Karzai.

This brings up the important question of what, exactly, we're trying to achieve in Afghanistan. Policymakers have surely factored human suffering into the grim arithmetic of determining the costs and benefits of war, but what if the authors are right - what if it's the same villainy, only with new villains?

The possibility or impossibility of creating an effective, liberal Afghan government is a question that the Obama administration will have to face head-on. The sad answer is probably that Afghanistan's geography alone - to say nothing of its history, culture, or politics - makes it almost impossible for NATO or any other outside force to establish effective political rule, much less political rule that would be acceptable to Westerners. (I think the authors' assessment of the war as imperialist aggression is myopic, but that's a different argument.) But still, after reading their argument, my main reaction was to ask for patience - the war is not yet over. Perhaps there's still a chance.

But ultimately, the exact nature of the political leadership and the state of women's rights in Afghanistan are secondary concerns: the main mission of the war is to fight terrorism. Security from al Qaeda is the goal that will determine NATO's course of action and the metric by which its success will be judged. The question is this: does the Obama administration think that nation-building in Afghanistan is the best way to fight terrorism? Lots of people are discussing Marc Lynch's recent contention in Foreign Policy: "I just don't really see why trying to build an Afghan state is a significant American national interest, or that it can be done at a price commensurate to its significance." If Afghanistan becomes a (relatively) safe and stable place, can't al Qaeda simply regroup somewhere else? And if that's the case, is there any point to nation-building in Afghanistan? Eric Martin notes that, in addition to achieving very little in national-security terms, it would simply strengthen the hellish conditions Afghan women and children live in:

The authors do highlight one (of) the primary obstacles to creating a liberal-ish government in Afghanistan that will safeguard women's rights: there are no major political factions, or constituencies, that would push for - or even support - such a government. [...] And in pursuit of propping up this corrupt, warlord dominated, misogynistic government, we are killing thousands of Afghans - including and especially women and children. In addition to creating conditions that lead to more and unspeakable hardships for those same women.

I don't know for certain if that's true, but I worry it probably is. If the current leadership retains power, women will continue to suffer. If the Taliban regained power, women would suffer. The only chance for women in Afghanistan is the hope that credible Afghan political leadership (however backwards) could be engaged and pressured by the international community into reforming and modernizing its treatment of women. If Afghanistan is isolated from the world, that hope is gone. But maybe it's naïve to believe it could exist in the first place.

Perhaps chief among the neoconservatives' fantasies was the conviction that democracy could be created at gunpoint. Maybe human rights activists are just as deluded to think war and nation-building can change anything for women in Afghanistan. Are there really just two options - abandonment or nation-building - both of which are hopeless?

Talking About It

After running a 5K this morning, my dad and I visited a local running store. There was a collection of running medals hanging near the entrance - medals won by customers and donated to the store to be used in Special Olympics competitions. A little coincidence tonight, then, when I read that Congressman Frank Kratovil of the Maryland 1st serves on the Board of Special Olympics Maryland. I'm sure they do great work in Maryland, just as they do here. I also read that Rep. Kratovil attends Episcopal Church in his hometown, that he plays guitar, that he has a wife and four sons. Normally I don't spend so much time reading up on the biographical details of freshman members of the House, but I wanted to get a better sense of why someone thinks he'd be better off dead. This is Representative Kratovil, hanging in effigy at a healthcare protest in Maryland:

Politico notes that whoever tied the noose seems to know what they're doing.

The point of this post isn't to associate all opponents of healthcare reform with the smirking jackass pictured above; it's not to suggest that all conservatives are contemplating violence against elected officials - or anyone, for that matter. If the events of the last few months have shown us anything, it's the importance of precision in language. This photo is the most notorious icon of a debate that has turned unbearably sour. But in showing it and explaining my thoughts on this issue, I still want to be very clear that while Republicans might not all be polishing their effigy-making skills, the dishonesty shown by the party's leaders on healthcare is staggering. Even by their standards.

Not everyone has a massive forum like a television channel, a newspaper editorial page, or a blog with a million readers (though if wishing made it so!) - but anyone who has a forum at all, even a small one, needs to speak up. Even if it's just your co-workers in the break room, your friends on the email chain, or your relatives at the family get-together, healthcare reform is too important to lose for lack of conviction. On this issue, the worst are full of passionate intensity.

When Barack Obama was running for president, my family hosted a house party for neighbors who were supporters and others who were on the fence. We met a lot of people that night from the surrounding blocks, and at one point we discussed why the election mattered to us - and why we were supporting then-Senator Obama. One neighbor, a hospital nurse, explained to a room of about 25 of us why healthcare reform meant so much to her. Every day, she said, she sees sick and injured people brought into the emergency room. Many of those are children, and accompanying them are nervous mothers and fathers. As she choked up a little bit, she described to a silent audience the look she so often sees on the faces of fathers who quietly take her aside - out of earshot of their wives and children - to tell her that they can't afford to pay for their child's treatment. Grown men, trying their best to protect and provide the way their fathers and grandfathers did before them - reduced to humiliation and tears as they softly plead, "Please help me. I can't pay for you to treat my child."

In this wealthy nation, where we can provide for so much, where we cherish equality, where we rise and fall as one - this is unacceptable. Even beyond that, it is unacceptable on a basic human level that anyone should go without such a basic necessity when the means exist to guarantee it. We can fight over policy details, but we are compelled by our basic compassion to have a good-faith debate on how to solve this problem. A good-faith debate.

That is, a debate where facts and arguments are met with facts and counterarguments. Where ideas are listened to, considered, and responded to honestly. Not a debate where the GOP's last Vice Presidential candidate tells outrageous lies about "death boards" and killing off mentally-disabled children. Not a debate where FOX News, GOP members of the House, and the Washington Times spread completely made-up stories about the government euthanizing the elderly.

Oh, and by the way: a debate happens when two or more parties engaged in spirited argument about an issue. When people who lack any understanding of the proposed healthcare legislation show up at town-hall meetings to scream nonsense, it's not a debate, and it's not good for anyone. I don't know whether these events are being organized by shadowy GOP organizations, but I do know that they're being promoted constantly on FOX News - both its television and radio components - in the form of wall-to-wall "news coverage." When people who live in an information bubble are fed a constant diet of anger, hatred, and lies, it's no surprise that they become totally unable to engage in dialogue with their fellow-citizens over an important policy change. It's just sad.

So yeah, I have no problem that the White House is getting out in front of this mendacious bile. In fact, I think it's wonderful that they're soliciting material from disinformation campaigns so they can set the record straight. Are they collecting a list of names? No. Are they asking for the content of right-wing propaganda so they can combat it? Yes. The lies on the right are like insects crawling in the mud under a rock: when somebody exposes them to sunlight, they'll shrivel. I understand if they're unsettled by a fact-based campaign. They have a lot of lies to be ashamed of.

A great example of the disingenuous flap over this non-story is the increasingly-addled Peggy Noonan (she of the delicate sensibilities), who wandered into the fray in her recent column:

But most damagingly to political civility, and even our political tradition, was the new White House email address to which citizens are asked to report instances of “disinformation” in the health-care debate: If you receive an email or see something on the Web about health-care reform that seems “fishy,” you can send it to flag@whitehouse.gov. The White House said it was merely trying to fight “intentionally misleading” information.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas on Wednesday wrote to the president saying he feared that citizens’ engagement could be “chilled” by the effort. He’s right, it could. He also accused the White House of compiling an “enemies list.” If so, they’re being awfully public about it, but as Byron York at the Washington Examiner pointed, the emails collected could become a “dissident database.”

I have a question for you, Peggy. Why is this harmful to political civility? Should lies go unanswered? And is there any evidence whatsoever that the White House is creating an enemies list? Have they asked for the email addresses of the people sending this stuff - and even if they collected those email addresses (a fantasy so paranoid as to be almost beneath consideration), what, pray tell, do you think they might do? It's not like they'd arrest people, throw them in some lawless prison with no charge and no lawyer, and then torture them to get evidence for a secret illegal trial with no jury while asserting the right to hold them indefinitely. It's not Bush we're talking about here.

So yeah, we need to have this debate. We need to talk about this issue. But I have no patience for dishonesty, hatred, demagoguery, or ignorance. Certainly not now, when the stakes are so high. Counter the lies with facts. Fight ignorance with knowledge. And if you hear people telling lies about euthanasia, enemies lists, death boards, or anything else, correct them - calmly and politely, but firmly. This is the time to win on healthcare. This is the time to score one for those fathers.