Kirsten Powers/USA Today (and a conservative she corrects the record):
Kevin Williamson is wrong. Hanging women who have an abortion is not pro-life
Is it out of bounds to argue that women should be hanged for having an abortion?
An actual debate is raging over this question following yesterday’s firing of conservative writer Kevin Williamson from The Atlantic for expressing this view on multiple occasions. Williamson apparently believes this is “pro-life.”
Conservatives fanned out to attack The Atlantic and “the Left” for their closed- mindedness in not embracing a view that calls for the humiliating, torturous killing by the state of women who have had an abortion...
Here is Williamson’s view as expressed in a podcast: “I would totally go with treating [abortion] like any other crime up to and including hanging -- which kind of, as I said, I’m kind of squishy about capital punishment in general, but I’ve got a soft spot for hanging as a form of capital punishment. I tend to think that things like lethal injection are a little too antiseptic.”
“I’ve got a soft spot for hanging.”
Little Green Footballs’ Charles Taylor hit the nail on the head in a Twitter debate with Williamson about his view: “You don’t just want these women to die, you want them to suffer.”
But according to Williamson’s defenders, this is just another viewpoint like, say, believing in supply-side economics or that the government is too big. It’s “mainstream conservativism,” apparently.
Except it’s not.
Powers did a good job of taking the hanging issue —um— head on. Of course, conservatives have pushed the envelope before. Rich Lowry/National Review when John Derbyshire was fired:
His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.
Fact is, if your persona is “in your face” edgy commentary, some publications (and some employers) are not going to find you a good fit. That might even change over time (see Dave Weigel, Washington Post first gig but back again now) and it applies to leftists as well (see Matt Breunig, Demos). So Williamson’s firing is less about the victimhood of conservatives having nowhere to write (I know it’s silly, but that idea is being pushed), and more about the humdrum and banal business of publishing, where partings of the way happen now and again in a business that doesn’t grant tenure to their firebrands.
This from Jeet Heer on Williamson is pretty good.
• Institutionally & tonally, Atlantic is geared towards consensus world of "reasonable discourse." But that's not American politics in age of Trump, where tribalism & blunt demands are dominant voice.
• One way elite pubs try to thread the needle is to subsume all Never Trump conservatives into category of "reasonable." Which explains why Williamson got hired by Atlantic despite batshit sensibility.
• Elevating Never Trump conservatives is I think the wrong approach since they really are fringe in their own movement & don't tell us much about where conservatism is.
Katie McDonough/Jezebel:
Jezebel Regrets Its Decision to Hire Cannibal Witch as Writer-at-Large
We should not have hired Cannibal Witch, an elegant writer and thinker who, we have come to believe, after serious consideration, does indeed eat children.
Yeah, that was a mistake.
Speaking of firing:
Norm Eisen andConor Shaw/USA Today:
Donald Trump needs to fire EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, not promote him
What makes Pruitt stand out is that while everyone else is following the president’s lead, he is going further with what seems like an act of defiance: He reportedly went behind Trump’s back to secure substantial raises for two aides after the White House refused to approve them. (One of the staffers, it bears noting, was the one who improperly searched for housing for Pruitt on EPA time). Pruitt claims he didn't know about the raises, even though the law requires his personal approval.
One must admire Pruitt’s willingness to treat his boss with the same disdain that Trump has shown for ethics and the taxpayer’s trust. Pruitt has even had the gall to tell friends about his ambition to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions — and Trump reportedly floated Pruitt's name for that job this week. Perhaps we should start calling him President Pruitt to honor his ambition to be just as unconstrained and scandal-ridden as Trump, and his aspirations to acquire perks like a bulletproof vehicle, an expanded 20-person security detail, and a $100,000-a-month membership for privately chartered flights.
Whatever his title or job, Pruitt should not retain it for much longer. It is time for him to go.
Madeleine Albright/NY Times:
Will We Stop Trump Before It’s Too Late?
Fascism poses a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II.
What is to be done? First, defend the truth. A free press, for example, is not the enemy of the American people; it is the protector of the American people. Second, we must reinforce the principle that no one, not even the president, is above the law. Third, we should each do our part to energize the democratic process by registering new voters, listening respectfully to those with whom we disagree, knocking on doors for favored candidates, and ignoring the cynical counsel: “There’s nothing to be done.”
I’m 80 years old, but I can still be inspired when I see young people coming together to demand the right to study without having to wear a flak jacket.
Thomas B. Edsall/NY Times, a good and long read:
The Contract With Authoritarianism
Political analysts have become more and more aware of how voters’ sense of themselves as liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans, has taken on heightened importance. Affirming one’s political tribe or community has in many respects become more important in deciding whom to vote for than the stands candidates take on issues.
In a March paper, “Ideologues Without Issues,” Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, wrote:
The power behind the labels “liberal” and “conservative” to predict strong preferences for the ideological in-group is based largely in the social identification with those groups, not in the organization of attitudes associated with the labels. That is, even when we are discussing ideology — a presumably issue-based concept — we are not entirely discussing issues.
Mason continued:
Identity-based ideology can drive affective ideological polarization even when individuals are naïve about policy. The passion and prejudice with which we approach politics is driven not only by what we think, but also powerfully by who we think we are.
David Joy /NY Times magazine:
Gun Culture Is My Culture. And I Fear for What It Has Become.
In the wake of mass shootings, a lifetime of gun ownership leads to unsettling questions.
We were at the back of the store looking in the glass case at 1911s. All of a sudden, her eyes got big and she raised her hands then ducked behind me and grabbed onto my arm. I turned and stared down the aisle where a kid who looked about 18 was aiming an AR-15 the salesman had handed him. The muzzle was pointed in our direction. Ashley was terrified. I’ve been at the counter enough to know the predicament — wanting to shoulder a rifle to test the feel but having nowhere sensible to aim. The kid lowered the rifle and went back to talking to the salesman, neither seeming to notice us standing there, Ashley frozen behind me.
On the way out, she just kept saying: “He was a kid. He looked like he should’ve been in high school. What does a kid need a rifle like that for? What does anybody need a rifle like that for?” And the truth was, I didn’t have an answer. The truth is, there are guns I feel justified in owning and guns I feel belong on battlefields. I know the reasons my friends give for owning these weapons, and I know that their answers feel inadequate to me. I know that part of what they’re missing or refusing to acknowledge is how fear ushered in this shift in gun culture over the past two decades.
Fear is the factor no one wants to address — fear of criminals, fear of terrorists, fear of the government’s turning tyrannical and, perhaps more than anything else, fear of one another. There’s no simple solution like pulling fear off the shelf. It’s an intangible thing. I recognize this, because I recognize my own and I recognize that despite all I know and believe I can’t seem to overcome it. I’m sure that part of why I carry is having a pistol put to my head when I was 14. I’m sure that part of it is having hidden behind walls while shots were fired. Maybe it’s a combination of those two things coupled with headlines and hysteria, the growing presence of mass shootings in American culture.
In the end, we need to make people less afraid. Easier said….
...than done.