Where are you on the Roe v. Wade matrix?

(From "Why Republicans should stop talking about Roe v. Wade.")

I'm in the 18%. I'm surprised I have so much company!

40 years ago today, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Roe v. Wade.

Justice Blackmun wrote:

The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however... the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment.... or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment.... These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty"...  are included in this guarantee of personal privacy....

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation.

Was the state's interest in protecting the unborn child sufficient to permit some regulation? The answer was yes, but not before the "viability" of the unborn. As to whether the killing of that pre-viable entity ought to be seen as the killing of a human being, justifying rescue by the state, the Court refused "to endorse any theory that life, as we recognize it, begins before live birth," since "those trained in... medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus."

Pre-viability, the decision whether to continue with a pregnancy would rest with the woman within whose body the mysterious process was taking place, and it would not be the role of the state to make that decision for her, no matter how firmly the majority of the people believe they have solved the mystery and they know that what she is doing is murdering a child.

"In all these cases, and many others, liberals take positions that make them look good and feel good..."

"... and show very little interest in the actual consequences for others, even when liberal policies are leaving havoc in their wake."

This is the tragic flaw of liberals. I have seen it so clearly living in Madison, Wisconsin all these years. I believe these are people who really do care about goodness: They want to be good. If I could get one idea through to them, it would be: Goodness requires vigilance against the pursuit of the feeling that you are good, complacency about the belief that you are good, and satisfaction with the goal of achieving your own personal goodness.

"We need more harlequins, fewer ticktockmen."

Said Icepick in last night's thread about Boston banning drinking games in bars. He began:

I recently read "The Scouring of the Shire" chapter from Return of the King. It was disturbing how much the Shire under (ultimately) Saruman's direction sounded like modern America. The country is being run by over-officious jerks, and the American people are putting up with it. Land of the free no more....

And then:

We need more harlequins, fewer ticktockmen.

A link goes to the Harlan Ellison story "Repent Harlequin!' Said The Ticktockman." 

Icepick advises:

Professor, I believe you need some more tags. One for over-officiousness, and perhaps tags for harlequins (see Swartz, for example) and for ticktockmen (anything with Bloomberg).

Ellison begins his story with a quote from Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience":

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purposes as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

Ellison introduces that quote with: "There are always those who ask, what is it all about? For those who need to ask, for those who need points sharply made, who need to know 'where it's at,' this...."

That story was published in 1965, when the phrase "where it's at" was quite the thing. 

ADDED: I just bought "Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the 20th Century," which contains "Repent Harlequin!"

"A culture in which women are expected to remain virgins until marriage is a rape culture."

Asserts E.J. Graff in The American Prospect.

In that vision, women’s bodies are for use primarily for procreation or male pleasure. They must be kept pure. While cultural conservatives would disagree, this attitude gives men license to patrol — in some cases with violence — women's hopes for controlling their lives and bodies.

Fighting ideology with ideology.

"He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to... run."

Tagg Romney tells on his dad, Mitt.

"If he could have found someone else to take his place...  he would have been ecstatic to step aside. He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his country, but he doesn’t love the attention."

Imagine what it would have been like if Mitt Romney had broken open and expressed all of this, but maybe that was inherently impossible. A self-effacing modesty was baked in.

In this context, here's a Ross Douthat column from last August, prompting Romney to reveal his Mormon faith:

The broader Mormon experience... could help make the case for his philosophy as well as illuminate his human core.... Conservatism sometimes makes an idol of the rugged individual, but at its richest and deepest it valorizes local community instead — defending the family and the neighborhood, the civic association and the church. And there is no population in America that lives out this vision of the good society quite like the Latter-day Saints.

Mormonism is a worldlier, more business-friendly religion than traditional Christianity, but it does not glorify wealth for wealth’s sake... Mormonism represents “our country’s longest experiment with communitarian idealism, promoting an ethic of frontier-era burden-sharing that has been lost in contemporary America.”

Imagine if all of that were opened out and shown to the American people. Well, you can't. I can't. Not in one modest man's campaign. Not with all the predictable pushback.

"The liberal news and culture website Slate published an online map Friday that it says will show a 'daily tally of gun-deaths in America'..."

"... basing that tally on incidents collected by an anonymous Twitter user. The organization, however, won’t say who is behind the tweets or how reliable its data is as a statistical compilation."

Gun deaths? So... just mix in the accidents and the suicides. Now, personally, as you may know from previous discussions on this blog, I think suicide is murder. Morally, it should be recognized as the deliberate killing of a human being. But many people withhold moral judgment and express only sadness and sympathy. I am sympathetic when the self-killer is mentally ill, but I'm also sympathetic when those who murder others are mentally ill.

But what's with grouping self-murder and murder of others for the purposes of Slate's gun-death map? It's a great way to boost the numbers. Google statistics, and I think you'll see that in the United States, there are twice as many suicides as murders, and that proportion is also true within the category of gun deaths. Shooting oneself is the most common method of suicide.

I realize some people think that there would be less suicide if people didn't have guns at hand. But I wonder how many of the mentally disturbed/emotionally overwrought men who shoot themselves to death are self-executors — that is, persons who feel a compulsion toward violence and stop themselves. There are murderers — like Adam Lanza — who murder and then kill themselves. There is no sympathy for these suicides, yet many people think: I wish he'd killed himself first.

If he had, it probably wouldn't have made the news, but if you'd read his story, you would have reacted the way you usually do to suicide: How sad... if only he'd perceived that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem... whatever it is you usually think when you read that an isolated, bullied 20-year-old man has shot himself in the head. Would you ever think to speculate that he knew that he had an irresistible, evil impulse to gun down children, and, thank God, he had one last shred of humanity and turned the gun on himself?

Gun deaths. You can collect them on a map as faceless pins, all looking alike. It's all numbers. No individuality. What are you counting? I don't know what these pins represent. Use a different color for suicides. And which suicides are uncontrolled mental illness? Who is checking out because of uncontrolled physical pain? Identify the justified killings, done in self-defense. I want to know which ones are criminals gunning down other criminals. I'd like to think about policy with some complexity and without irrational fear mongering.

Ironically, Slate seems to want to inspire urgency about the loss of human life, but it is reducing the lives we're supposed to care so much about to a bunch of dots who matter only because they're a massive crowd. Where is the individuality? There is particularity to each death, despite the common element of the gun.

Why are people having so much trouble understanding rhetorical devices?

You may remember Justice Scalia the other day tweaking the kids at Princeton for not being able to handle reductio ad absurdum:

It's a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the 'reduction to the absurd'...

It can't be, of course, that the Princeton students never get argument that comes in the form of taking a principle you know your interlocutor holds dear and presenting him with other things that could fall within the principle that you know he'll object to. It's irritating to be on the receiving end. The one who wields that argument is playing with ideas, fun-loving, and challenging. The one on the receiving end doesn't want to play along. He may get super-serious and offended: How dare you talk about something I hold dear alongside those horrible things that all decent people loathe?! It's an argument with which older, calmer people needle the emotional young.

Scalia never said homosexuality is like bestiality. Here's the passage in his dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas that heats up his opponents:

State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are... sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices. Every single one of these laws is called into question by today’s decision; the Court makes no effort to cabin the scope of its decision to exclude them from its holding.

Now, it's rhetoric to act like he equated homosexuality with bestiality. It's rhetoric to say — as the Princeton student did — "Do you have any regret or shame for drawing these comparisons you did in your dissents?"

It's rhetoric to respond to that question — a demand for an account of Scalia's inner life — by mocking the student's inability to understand rhetoric. That was cold, intentionally cold. Hey, you Princeton guys are supposed to be smart. But Scalia could have chosen a warmer approach without selling himself out. That question could have been answered:

Actually, I do have feelings and I know that many of the opinions I write upset people, but what would cause me regret or shame would be to let things like that sway me from deciding the cases according to the law. I'm a judge, and when I'm doing my judge work, I have to stick to being a judge. And part of being a judge is to demand that a case express a rule that can be applied to other things that are similar. The question in Lawrence was whether moral feeling, standing alone, is enough to support a law. If the majority was saying no, then it needed to commit to that proposition across the board, and I was testing that, and a test really does need to be sharp and probing. I get that it pains you, but step up and argue with me. Tell me why bestiality is different from the other things on the morality-only list. Actually, it's pretty easy: The animal has feelings. We have feelings. Animals have feelings. Feelings matter. But as a judge, I can't do feelings. Come on, have some empathy for me in my plight!

I've gone on quite long about Scalia, but Scalia wasn't the inspiration for this post. What got me started on this track was the difficulty readers had with 2 of yesterday's posts that entailed the use of rhetorical devices. One consisted of 2 quotes: "What is the gun community going to do about this tragedy?"/"I dunno. What is the gay community going to do about Penn State?" This linked to Instapundit, who provided the source of the quotes and who now has a couple updates that suggest he's getting pushback similar to some of what I see in my long comments thread, e.g., "Professor Althouse, the comparison is absurd, bigoted and offensive any way you cut it. You should be ashamed of yourself for linking to it with approval."

See? Shame on you! I am offended! Come on, think about it. Figure out the puzzle. It's an analogy, pithily phrased, and thus an occasion to pick apart the ways in which the 2 statements are/are not parallel. Many readers in my comments thread did understand the rhetoric and deal with the coherence of the analogy, but many fell into the sort of expression of outrage that's so common and so dull these days. At least show you understand the rhetoric and then tell me it's in bad taste to be humorous and challenging over topics so raw and painful.

The second post that got me started on this topic was the one that linked to this Matt K. Lewis item "The media should be ashamed of its Connecticut coverage." I'd quoted only the last few lines of that piece, where he proposed "some common sense media control." He's doing a twist on the post-Newtown gun control arguments, switching the right under threat from the 2d Amendment to the 1st Amendment. I thought that was clever and thought-provoking, but unfortunately some readers didn't get it. One said: "Professor Althouse, I'm not sure whether you got punked or if you get that this article is satire and are endorsing it's [sic] specious point." Oh, jeez, that's annoying! I like to keep things crisp around here. Are people going to be so dull that all humor will need arrows pointing at it saying it's humor?

Actually, I see that the 2 comments I've selected for quotation here are by the same person. Maybe he's simply pretending to be dull and doing the Theater of Outrage. That's rhetoric too, and I need to get it.

"[W]hen does regulating a person’s habits in the name of good health become our moral and social duty?"

Asks David B. Agus, a USC medicine and engineering professor, in an op-ed that's #1 on the NYT "most emailed" list:

The answer, I suggest, is a two-parter: first, when the scientific data clearly and overwhelmingly demonstrate that one behavior or another can substantially reduce — or, conversely, raise — a person’s risk of disease; and second, when all of us are stuck paying for one another’s medical bills (which is what we do now, by way of Medicare, Medicaid and other taxpayer-financed health care programs).

Get ready. It's coming.

"If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?"

Justice Scalia is out and about, antagonizing — antoninonizing — students, this time at Princeton, with "a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the 'reduction to the absurd.'"

Scalia said he is not equating sodomy with murder but drawing a parallel between the bans on both.

Then he deadpanned: "I'm surprised you aren't persuaded."

[The student] said afterward that he was not persuaded by Scalia's answer. He said he believes Scalia's writings tend to "dehumanize" gays.

Actually, he's humanizing you by crediting you with the capacity to comprehend rhetoric and engage in an on-the-fly verbal interchange. But it is easier to dehumanize your adversary. Afterwards.

What do they teach you at Princeton?

ADDED: Jaltcoh has 3 thoughts about this.

AND: David Lat reminds us about what Judge Posner said about horse meat: "a state is permitted, within reason, to express disgust..."

Torture in "Zero Dark Thirty": "It’s enough to make you wretch. It’s arguably the best and most important part of the movie."

Spencer Ackerman — whose wretched spelling may make you retch — struggles with the question that's plaguing movie fans today: Does the much-praised, Oscar-worthy Kathryn Bigelow film approve of torture?

One scene features a bloodied, disoriented and humiliated man strapped to a wall with his pants around his ankles. A second scene depicts the same man having liquid forcibly poured down his throat; later, he’s shoved into a box that could barely hold your stereo...

I'm no longer willing to view movies like this. (And I saw "3 Kings," which had a man getting liquid — crude oil — poured down his throat.) But this is what perhaps counts as serious film art these days. Crappy film entertainment is also full of torture (horror films).

Ackerman defends Bigelow: the film "presents a graphic depiction of what declassified CIA documents indicate the torture program really was" and "does not present torture as a silver bullet that led to bin Laden; it presents torture as the ignorant alternative to that silver bullet."

Bigelow's critics, linked in Ackerman's article, are worried that the film may convince people that torture is effective and worthwhile. This all sounds too rational. What does sitting quietly in a dark room with a crowd of comfortable strangers, watching huge, bright, clear moving pictures of actors pretending to be tortured do to our souls? I know the stock answer is: It's worse to live comfortably and complacently with a head free of any such picture. But the stock answer assumes that our souls are already dead.

"Justice Antonin Scalia believes the law can and should enforce moral standards," says David Savage, incorrectly.

In the L.A. Times. Why is it so hard to read Scalia's Lawrence v. Texas dissent? Experts — purported experts — like Savage, insist on seeing something that Scalia directly tells us he is not saying. He says laws may rest on morality, not that they should:

Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens that its view of such matters is the best.... I would no more require a State to criminalize homosexual acts – or, for that matter, display any moral disapprobation of them – than I would forbid it to do so....

And by the way, Scalia has already committed to the proposition that Lawrence dictates the end of the exclusion of gay couples from legal marriage:

If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is “no legitimate state interest” for purposes of proscribing that conduct, and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality), “[w]hen sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring,” what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising “[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution”? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry. 

The majority had claimed that Lawrence did not "involve” the issue of gay marriage, and Scalia said that could only make sense if you think "principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this Court." (Of course, Scalia dissented in Lawrence and may decline to adhere to it, but it won't be because he thinks laws should enforce morality. It will be because he thinks courts should not strike down laws simply because there is no support for them other than morality.)

ADDED: Another post about Scalia, law, and morality, and I rather laboriously spell out some legal distinctions in the comments, here.

What it takes to save someone who's fallen on the subway tracks.

It takes a woman applying moral pressure on men who have the strength to do it. You need the strength and the will. The woman created the will in the men.

Same as it ever was. But women need to know this.

Want to hear Bob Costas scold America about our terrible, terrible guns?

Here's the video from last night's NBC football broadcast. 

Well, you knew it was coming. In the aftermath of the nearly unfathomable events in Kansas City, that most mindless of sports clichés was heard yet again: Something like this really puts it all in perspective. Well, if so, that sort of perspective has a very short shelf-life since we will inevitably hear about the perspective we have supposedly again regained the next time ugly reality intrudes upon our games. Please, those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective.

Here's my perspective: A man committed murder and then murdered himself. But no, the perspective we're supposed to achieve is about how it's the gun that did it. Costas proceeds to read from a column by sportswriter Jason Whitlock, which I recommend reading in full. Here are my — not Costas's — extracts from that column:

A 25-year-old kid gunned down his 22-year-old girlfriend in front of his mother and three-month-old child, and all he could think to do in the immediate aftermath is rush to thank his football coach and football employer....

Kid?  A 25-year-old kid? Why are we infantalizing the adults who play sports? A man committed a vicious murder. All he could think to do? As if he were mentally deficient! When I first read this, it struck me as racist, but now I see that Whitlock himself is black. Perhaps that allows him to feel free to talk about the dead murderer as if he were a child.

... Twenty-eight hours after one of their best friends killed the mother of his child and himself, Chiefs players will take the field and play a violent game.

Their best friend transformed himself into a dead murderer. They should grind their lives to a halt in his memory? A violent game? A man kills 2 human beings and they should respond by feeling squeamish about the violence of the sport? They should equate play violence to real violence? No. I'd say it's an occasion for drawing a sharp line between a game — a game with rules, played voluntarily — and the most evil transgression.

You may argue that we all grieve differently. You may argue that playing the game is the best way to move on and heal....

Heal? Grieve? It was murder. Displays of sympathy for the murderer are inappropriate. To play the game was to deny the murderer any more power than he seized for himself. Put him at a distance. He is not you. 

I would argue that your rationalizations speak to how numb we are in this society to gun violence and murder. We’ve come to accept our insanity. We’d prefer to avoid seriously reflecting upon the absurdity of the prevailing notion that the second amendment somehow enhances our liberty rather than threatens it.

We're numb unless we react to one man's transgressions by relinquishing our attachment to traditional liberty? What other constitutional rights should we give up to prove our sensitivity to a transgressor's act of violence? Throw out free speech, because look at those riots over there? Freedom from search and seizure — that can't be worth it, now, numbsters, can it?

That is the message I wish Chiefs players, professional athletes and all of us would focus on Sunday and moving forward. Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.

But we won’t. We’ll watch Sunday’s game and comfort ourselves with the false belief we’re incapable of the wickedness that exploded inside Jovan Belcher Saturday morning.

Belcher was a murderer, responsible for what he did. To say otherwise is infantalizing, dehumanizing. There's not some outside force "wickedness" — unless you believe in The Devil! — that possesses a man and "explodes." How do you know that one day, that might not happen to you? In Whitlock's view, we're blind and complacent if we don't see that potential. We might just go nuts one day and if there are any weapons around, that random explosion will lead to death. Better ban the guns.

"A drunk guy vomited over the railing onto about a dozen audience members seated in the orchestra..."

"... right in the middle of one of [Paul] Rudd’s big monologues on Wednesday... There was mass chaos for several minutes, but the cast played right on through, ignoring the disruption."

"Given the severity of the situation, and the number of people affected, it’s pretty amazing that the show was able to go on uninterrupted...."

I guess the show, called "Grace," wasn't much about what happens to other people. Carry on! Don't notice the troubles that fall upon your fellow human being. That tends to be the message of great art, I think. Or do I have it backwards?

"You have to be a terrible monster to write."

"Someone might have told you something they shouldn’t have told you, and you have to be prepared to use it because it will make a great story. You have to use it even though the person is identifiable. If you can’t do it then writing isn’t for you. You’ve no right to be here. If there is any way I can help you get into law school then I will. Your morality will be more useful in a courtroom."

Is there some rule that says you can't get engaged while still married?

You broke up with your wife 2 years ago. You're on the path toward divorce. The legalities aren't tied up. Can't you promise to marry the new woman in your life? What's the morality problem— beyond the basic moral problem of divorce?

Looking at the pictures of Dinesh D'Sousa and Denise Joseph, I can't help suspecting that some people are bridling at the difference in age, beauty, and — perhaps — race.

Repeating the old marshmallow test — the one about kids' capacity for delaying gratification.

And changing the results by exposing the kids — pre-temptation — to untrustworthy/trustworthy adults.

“Being able to delay gratification — in this case to wait 15 difficult minutes to earn a second marshmallow — not only reflects a child’s capacity for self-control, it also reflects their belief about the practicality of waiting,” says Celeste Kidd, a doctoral candidate in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester and lead author on the study.” Delaying gratification is only the rational choice if the child believes a second marshmallow is likely to be delivered after a reasonably short delay.”

You can imagine the social policy the researchers would like to support. The ability to delay gratification is tied to future economic success (according to the old study), and if the capacity for delaying gratification is purely a matter of character, it seems to justify different economic results. One can feel good about being a big old conservative, who favors equal opportunity and scoffs at equalizing the results. You want differential outcomes, because they are deserved and they are incentives.

But if we find out that a child raised around unreliable adults will adapt by taking the rewards that are available in the present and that this child has shown good aptitude in refraining from delaying gratification, our conservatism won't feel so comfortable anymore and we're amenable to arguments about equalizing outcomes.

E.J. Dionne asks "Does our presidential campaign lack a moral core?"

He purports to delve into the debate:

However you analyze it in electoral terms, the exchange between President Obama and Mitt Romney was most striking as a festival of technocratic mush — dueling studies mashed in with competing statistics. In many ways, the encounter offered voters the worst of all worlds: a great deal of indecipherable wonkery and remarkably little clarity about where each would lead the country.

However you analyze it? Well, I don't even have to check the debate transcript to remember a striking use of the word "moral." Let me get the exact quote from the transcript. Jim Lehrer had just asked "what are the differences between the two of you as to how you would go about tackling the deficit problem in this country?" And Mitt Romney said:

Good. I'm glad you raised that, and it's a -- it's a critical issue. I think it's not just an economic issue, I think it's a moral issue. I think it's, frankly, not moral for my generation to keep spending massively more than we take in, knowing those burdens are going to be passed on to the next generation and they're going to be paying the interest and the principal all their lives. And the amount of debt we're adding, at a trillion a year, is simply not moral.

But Dionne would like you to think of the debate is just a big indecipherable mush. And then the whole rest of his column is about — can you guess? — Nuns on the Bus! Because who's better than nuns "to remind us that our decisions in November have ethical consequences?" I'd say Mitt Romney was better, in his utterly clear statement quoted above, which is in no way "technocratic mush" or "insufferable wonkery," Mr. Dionne. But... hey! Look! Nuns! Nunnnnzzzz!

Email from John Kerry: "I have one message burned into my memory..."

What?! I can't believe Kerry would evoke his old "memory which is seared — seared — in me" line. If you don't have that seared in your memory, here's a 2004 WaPo article, "Kerry's Cambodia Whopper."

It's weird to get email from a character from the past and have it begin with, essentially, remember me, the big liar. The email reads:

I have one message burned into my memory for everyone who cares about the outcome of this year's presidential election:

Respond quickly and powerfully to attacks from the other side...

If you tune in to the convention, you'll see that Mitt Romney and his allies have no qualms about misleading voters if it means defeating President Obama.

But their attacks won't work if enough people step up to protect the President's record.

Meanwhile, over on Rush Limbaugh's show, the complaint is that the Republicans are afraid to attack Obama. After the first night of the convention, he quotes Fox News commentator Ed Rollins, who said: "Not hitting on Obama was a perfect way to go. We all know the Obama record and don't need to have it reinforced." That exasperates Rush:

Clearly what we've known for years is true. The Republican hierarchy, from its consultants on down, truly believes that mentioning Obama by name and then criticizing will cause these swing voters that [focus groupster Frank] Luntz had that I told you about to run straight back to the Democrats. It is clear they believe it.

Naturally, I profoundly disagree.

But I think also it's obvious that these people don't see this as a turning point election. They see it as just another one in the cycle. Here's Joe Trippi. Joe Trippi is a Democrat consultant. Trippi ran Howard Dean's ill-fated campaign in 2004 when John Kerry (who served in Vietnam, by the way) ended up being the nominee. He was also on the Fox show this morning. After Ed Rollins said, "Yep, yep! Not hitting Obama was the perfect way to go," Joe Trippi said...

TRIPPI: Christie last night, there's been some disappointment he didn't go after Obama enough. But what he did was talk to the undecideds out there. If he had pounded on Obama in that way, I think it woulda turned those people off.

RUSH: Folks, I'm literally going insane hearing this. I want to know why these independents don't get turned off when Obama calls Romney a murderer and a felon. Why is it that independents only get turned off? Why is it that our guys are agreeing with a Democrat consultant? Why is it that the independents only get turned off when we're critical? And we're not even being "critical" when we tell the truth!

Did you notice the name John Kerry in there?

Kerry's name came up in a different point in the show yesterday, when I caller said:

You know what, Rush, I am so sick of the Democrats painting Mitt Romney as some out of touch rich guy.  I mean, can we say John Kerry, John Edwards, Algore, and you know I see Kerry is scheduled to speak at the DNC next week.... So they're actually featuring the most out of touch rich guy at their own convention.  I mean, how can they get away with this, Rush?

Rush said:

'Cause he's a Democrat, and Democrats care about poor people and Republicans don't, and that's it.  I'm doing this my 25th year.  I have every day, for 24-plus years, said what you just said.  I've been pointing it out.  I've written columns about it. I've said it on TV. I've said it on radio. I've made speeches about it.  Kerry is five times wealthier than Romney, and... he inherited it all, and he's much more flagrant in his consumption of his wealth.... than Romney is. 

I think he means that Kerry married into money. His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry inherited her money, which Kerry married into. 

Romney gave away his inheritance.  He gave it away.  He donated it to charity.  Look, I understand your frustration, 'cause you don't like being on defense.  Why do we have to respond to these guys?  They feel the need to do it because the truth still isn't out there, and it's wrapped up in something that isn't complicated at all.  Kerry is a Democrat; they care about the poor.  Republicans only care about the rich and Wall Street, and that's what doofuses, morons, in this country believe.  The people who are not informed, who think they're lifelong Democrats, born and raised hearing that every day of their lives, particularly if they're members of unions, that's what they've heard.

I must say I did not know that Mitt Romney gave away his inheritance. I hear it said over and over that he was born into money, and I don't remember ever hearing that Romney gave the money he inherited from his father away. But it's true. He gave the money to found a school at Brigham Young University.

Why don't we hear more about it? I assume it's the same thing Ann Romney was talking about the other night: "Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point." In my mind, this connects to what Jesus said about charity and good works:

Be careful! When you do good things, don't do them in front of people to be seen by them. If you do that, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

When you give to the poor, don't be like the hypocrites. They blow trumpets in the synagogues and on the streets so that people will see them and honor them. I tell you the truth, those hypocrites already have their full reward. So when you give to the poor, don't let anyone know what you are doing. Your giving should be done in secret. Your Father can see what is done in secret, and he will reward you.

And yet the task at the moment is winning the Presidency (not heaven). We're told people don't find Romney likeable enough, and the Democrats pound away on the message that he's a horrible man. He doesn't care about people.

Jesus said:

People will insult you and hurt you. They will lie and say all kinds of evil things about you because you follow me. But when they do, you will be blessed. Rejoice and be glad, because you have a great reward waiting for you in heaven. People did the same evil things to the prophets who lived before you. 

But then, reading on, we see:

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its salty taste, it cannot be made salty again. It is good for nothing, except to be thrown out and walked on.

"You are the light that gives light to the world. A city that is built on a hill cannot be hidden. And people don't hide a light under a bowl. They put it on a lampstand so the light shines for all the people in the house. In the same way, you should be a light for other people. Live so that they will see the good things you do and will praise your Father in heaven.

That's saying let your good works show. I don't want to say Jesus contradicted himself. Commenters will explain this seeming discrepancy, which is undoubtedly the subject of numerous sermons that I have not sat through. But I have read that passage many times over the years.

And... city on a hill. City on a hill! Talk about your Republican conventions.