Political Irony

An interesting article in the Washington Post discusses a speech that Sarah Palin gave at a right-to-life fundraising dinner. Palin talked about how twice in her life she considered getting an abortion, but decided against it. But she did gain sympathy for women who have abortions; “I do understand what these women, what these girls go through in that thought process.”

While the major point seems to be that she is happy about her decision, she ignores the fact that if abortion were illegal, she would not have had a decision to make. Ironically, Palin eloquently, if unintentionally, makes a strong case for choice.

Or consider Palin’s statement about the pregnancy of her daughter: “We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby.” If the right-to-life crowd had their way, there would be no decision to be proud of, or even made.

Maybe Palin can understand that you can be against abortion while being in favor of choice. Some things are just none of the government’s damn business. And that might just be something worth having a tea party about.

I’m feeling overwhelmed with irony the last few days, and not just because of all the teabagging going on. There are a bunch of really good articles that I haven’t had time to report on, so I thought I would just list them here.  All of them are worth a read.

Over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald has an excellent article talking about the new report from the Department of Homeland Security that warns of growing “right-wing extremist activity”. The ironic thing here is that the same right-wing pundits who who cheered on every domestic surveillance and police state program are now completely freaking out that these programs might get used against the right-wing lunatic fringe. This is doubly ironic because there are plenty of examples of right-wing terrorism in this country.

For that added touch of irony, Jonah Goldberg in the National Review claims that Obama’s Department of Homeland Security is now specifically targeting right-wing groups, and that the DHS has never and would never target “left-wing” groups in the same way. But as Greenwald points out, Goldberg’s article actually links to an article in the Washington Times that says:

In January, the same DHS office released a report titled “Leftwing extremists likely to increase use of cyber attacks over the coming decade.

Plus these pundits don’t bother to mention that preparation of the new report began more than a year ago, when Bush was still in office.

Our ironic radar also got a kick from an article in the Washington Monthly, which discusses the recent poll results that socialism is gaining in popularity in the US. The article points out that by accusing Obama — who continues to be hugely popular — of being a socialist, right-wing pundits like Rush Limbaugh are actually helping to increase the popularity of socialism. As they say “the irony is rich”.

Finally, the Huffington Post has an interesting article “The Five Strands of Conservatism: Why the GOP is Unraveling“. The point of this article is that it is amazing is that the Republican Party managed to hold together all the different conservative groups for as long as they did, when many of these groups hold wholly incompatible beliefs.

For example, Libertarians believe that things like drugs and abortion are none of the government’s business, while social conservatives want more government control of these areas. How did the Republicans ever convince these two groups to vote for the same candidates?

I’ve been thinking about the Tax-Day Tea Party protests, and the ironic thing is that I personally agree with much of the underlying sentiment of these protests, and wish that they had actually been real.

If you follow this blog, you know that I am a social liberal, but I am also a fiscal conservative and an unabashed capitalist (perhaps because of my experience as the CEO of more than one company). I believe that bailing out Wall Street and the automakers is a huge mistake and that anything that is too big to fail should be chopped up into little tiny pieces, not propped up and spoon fed our tax dollars.

So I am naturally sympathetic to protests against wasteful government spending. But even if I disagreed with what they were protesting (which I did not), I am almost always happy when people protest. Protest is not just a constitutional right, it is one of the foundations of our country. Anything that gets people involved with their government is a good thing.

So to those people who were actually part of a grass-roots effort to protest government spending, I salute you, and I apologize if I appeared to be making fun of your cause. Furthermore, if you were dismayed by the slimy efforts of Fox News and others to cynically capitalize on your protests, or of some politicians to co-opt your protests to attack our new president, then you have earned my highest respect and support.

Next time, though, do try to pick a name for your movement that isn’t also used to describe a sexual act.

UPDATE: Here’s a “serious and sincere letter” written to the Tea Partiers by a Democrat, that summarizes some of the reasons why progressives had a hard time taking the tea parties serious.