Dawn Is Me

Interesting commentary by David Brooks in this morning’s NYT (registration required).

He speculates that if Roe v. Wade had never been written by Justice Harry Blackmun, the political landscape wouldn’t now be so toxic that the Senate Republican majority is now considering getting rid of the fillibuster.

Mr. Brooks seems to believe that, if Roe v. Wade had not given women a “right to abortion,” the issue would have been legislated in the individual states, with compromise language that would have “reflected the views of the centrist majority that has always existed on this issue.”

But since that didn’t happen, the debate (such as it is) has been hijacked by frothing fanatics on both sides. Frothing fanatics, by their very nature, aren’t going to come to any centrist compromises about anything.

Brooks writes: The fact is, the entire country is trapped. Harry Blackmun and his colleagues suppressed that democratic abortion debate the nation needs to have. The poisons have been building ever since. You can complain about the incivility of politics, but you can’t stop the escalation of conflict in the middle. You have to kill it at the root. Unless Roe v. Wade is overturned, politics will never get better.

Let’s not play games, Mr. Brooks. Maybe we would need to get Roe overturned in order to allow for the political process to find a compromise that will diffuse this divisive issue in the American political landscape. But that’s not what would happen.

Not with this President.

To a large degree, public debate over issues has been replaced by poisoned political marketing. People seem to be susceptible to marketing, to the detriment of reasoned thought and decision-making. The frothing fanatics, by exercising their right to free speech, seem determined to create brainless mobs. I don’t think that would be a good thing either.

Am I advocating restricting free speech? Hell, no. As a journalist, the right to free speech is almost as dear to me as the right to a free press. I’m just finding it a little difficult to feel sanguine about the inevitability of that reasoned political debate. Too many of the frothing fanatics have been elected to office for me to feel good about it.

And too many Americans seem willing to let themselves be a target market rather than putting the brakes on those who have decided that our Constitution needs to take a back seat to the Bible.