Hank Kalet

Is anyone else out there troubled at all by our use of the word “homeland” to describe the United States? It has a very nationalistic ring — nationalistic in the bad sense — almost fascistic.

Here is a fragment of a quote from President Bush, admitted out of context. Read it aloud and see how it sounds: “I reminded them that the most important job of government is to protect the homeland.”

I hear a vaguely German accent, almost can’t help falling into a Col. Klink imitation, and that troubles me.

This is not an implied criticism of the president — believe me, I have no problem being overtly critical. This is about language and the way we use it and how it affects what we do. If we think of the nation as a homeland, it changes our relationship, makes the soil and our borders and the physical fact of it more important than the ideals on which the nation was created, more important than the constitution that governs it, etc. And, if we take this thinking to its extreme, that means that in the name of protecting the homeland we can just torch the Constitution.

It’s a dangerous direction to take.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Is anyone else getting tired or reading this same old editorial on the MOM line from The Asbury Park Press? Just another one using suspect numbers to push a faulty argument.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

This was a tough race to watch, as Rhode Island Republcian incumbent Lincoln Chafee held off a challenge from the hard right of his party and retained the nomination for the state’s U.S. Senate seat.

The anti-Iraq War Chafee is an interesting character. As MJ Rosenberg writes in the TPM Cafe,

Sen. Chafee is the Senator the neocons (John Bolton, for one) most hate. And he is a good and decent man (and about the least senatorial senator I ever met; I mean that in a good way).

He not only voted against the Iraq War but also voted against the nomination of Samuel Alito and has been critical of the way in whcih the United States has dealt with the Israel-Palestine conflict.

At the same time, a Republican majority in the Senate — even if it includes someone like Sen. Chafee — leaves the GOP with too much power. It will continue to control the various committees and subcommittees, menaing that “drown-the-government-in-the-bathtub” types and anti-environmentl zealots will still have too much decision-making power.

So, as I said, I am torn. In the end, progressives like me have to remember that Sen. Chafee opposed the war and every anti-war candidate that wins is a loss for the Bush foreign policy, but also hope that enough Republicans lose their seats to shift control away. (The best outcome might be a Chafee win with some other Democrat putting the party over the top.)

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

I saw this on Talking Points Memo and had to pass it along. This qualifies as demented, I think.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Derrick Z. Jackson has coined what I hope will be the name that history gives to our misadventure in Iraq: the “Great False War.”

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick