JFMK School of Government
Who’s Running the Country?
Three and a half months into Obama’s second term, it is newsworthy that so many of these positions still need filling. While Senator John Kerry’s quick appointment led to an easy way out of the effervescing Susan Rice entanglement, both the White House and the Senate are finding that stalling replacements for executive posts is a great way to play politics well after the November election. There are, of course, some benefits to this—was any American business really stifled by the 10-month vacancy in the Department of Commerce, a bureau with responsibilities so nebulous that it deals with not only business programs, but also with oceans policy, weather forecasting, and tourism? But, as much as it pains to me to utter, we do have a government for a reason; our elected leaders should be able to make sure it functions in the fashion it was designed.
What’s Going On
While a prayer service is obviously not the place for politics or inadvertent fear mongering, something crucial has been missing from the government’s response thus far to the marathon bombing. Leadership. Answers. Truth in a time of unmitigated angst. While the president successfully brought the nation together to mourn, he has yet to provide any clues to the information we all desperately crave—what the hell is going on?
Government, Get Out of Marriage
Marriage is most certainly an institution, as every defender of “traditional marriage” will go through pains to remind you. But of what sort? Social conservatives will say it is a religious one, and such an assertion would not be untrue. LGBT activists will say it is a primarily government-sanctioned one of societal import, and this reading would also be correct. In American society, getting married comes with a host of tax breaks and the right to take care of children. Then again, so do civil unions. It is somewhat difficult to eloquently describe the value differential between marriage and civil unions, with the current prevailing argument being the rather compelling one that gap between the two is based wholly on discrimination in a two-tiered system.
On Liberty
Just a week ago, the concept of liberty seemed to be receding in the public eye. President Obama’s nomination for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John O. Brennan, was set to earn confirmation with overwhelming support, despite questions arising from his role as architect of the administration’s drone policy. While the initialization of the sequester signaled the type of reduced spending libertarians yearn for, pretty much everyone in the country would have preferred the government actually working out policy and governing in real time. Questions about the drone policy were repeatedly stonewalled, with little outlook of any progress in clarifying the rights American citizens maintain in the eyes of their government.
Nullus Italus Papa
When Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation earlier this month, American liberal commentators began conjuring fatuous scenarios in which the Roman Catholic Church would quadrate with their progressive ideal of a crusader for social justice that is permissive of changing social norms. Former Crimson editor E.J. Dionne ’73 penned a provocative editorial calling on the College of Cardinals to forego two millennia of tradition and elect a nun. Others have chimerically proffered the suggestion of a Bishop of Rome in favor of same-sex marriage or abortion rights.
