1. Even on – especially on – the most contentious issues, we must give each other The Presumption of Grace.
That thought, central to how I view both the national town square and humanity, is almost nowhere to be found in the first hours of discussion and media coverage of the impending Supreme Court decision that will strike down Roe. The press will cheerlead for conflict, the politicians will largely give the media fodder, and the activists on both sides will play their parts, most with genuine passion.
But if we are to get through this as one nation, to set an example for our children, and find our way to a more perfect union, even now, we must give each other The Presumption of Grace, evincing respect, appreciation, understanding, humility, and calm.
Let’s figure this out with lowered voices, not raised and clenched fists.
Some of you will dismiss my plea as unrealistic and besides the point.
Please don’t.
Contribute to The Presumption of Grace today, in every way.
2. I arrive at this point of view because it is my general orientation, but also because of the specific way I feel about abortion, as both a public policy issue and a medical one. And a moral one.
Like so many Americans, I feel both of the following ways, simultaneously and in inexplicable/explicable contradiction:
Abortion rights proponents Kathryn Kolbert and Julie F. Kay (via the New York Times)
Enabling [women] to choose whether, when and with whom they have children is central to gender equality and essential to the ability to control one’s own life.
Humanist Caitlin Flanagan (via the Atlantic)
What I can’t face about abortion is the reality of it: that these are human beings, the most vulnerable among us, and we have no care for them. How terrible to know that in the space of an hour, a baby could be alive—his heart beating, his kidneys creating the urine that becomes the amniotic fluid of his safe home—and then be dead, his heart stopped, his body soon to be discarded.
I don’t just agree with both of those points of view intellectually; I feel them intensely, emotionally at my core.
If you are both someone who appreciates the corrosive, endemic ill effects of the patriarchy and a parent who has viewed a sonogram, you probably feel the same way(s) I do. And the same way(s) as Kathryn Kolbert, Julie Kay, and Caitlin Flanagan.
3. My near-certain view for a very long time has been was that this court would overturn Roe. There are those who will say that many of the justices who will vote in the majority lied during their Senate confirmation hearings. I am of two minds about that, although I think pretty much every current sitting justice engaged in a comparable practice when it comes to parsing their hearings. To study the life histories of Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett, and (to a slightly lesser extent) Gorsuch was to know this day would arrive at the earliest possible moment. I am not here to ITYS per se; I am just sharing my view that I can’t understand how or why anyone is surprised by this.
4. Here are two other seemingly contradictory positions that I also hold simultaneously: The legal reasoning of Roe was not sturdy and overturning Roe will undermine the High Court’s legitimacy as an institution for tens of millions of Americans.
On the first point, I need not explain much here, except to note, as Justice Alito does in his draft opinion, that many leading liberal legal scholars have bemoaned the weak foundation on which the landmark decision has rested.
On the second, there is no hiding from the reality that this will be only the latest example of how Republicans are profoundly changing the direction of the country even in areas in which the majority of Americans stand opposed to both Republican presidents and their ideas. At Madeleine Albright‘s funeral, America saw five Democratic politicians who won the popular vote in every recent presidential election except 2004 (1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020). And, yet, the Supreme Court justices nominated by Republican presidents are poised to overturn a long-standing constitutional protection that has been the law of the land for half a century and which polls consistently show that over 70% of the American people believe should remain in place. For many, this decision will delegitimize the Supreme Court’s authority, especially given the highly political and controversial manner in which two of the three justices nominated by Donald Trump made it onto the bench.
5. I know a fair amount about American politics and I cannot even begin to guess how (and how much) this decision will impact the midterms. Let me think more about it more and get back to you.
6. I do know this: A lot of Republican politicians who have been publicly pro-life are going to have trouble answering some press and public questions now. Starting with one of the most enduring and searing: If abortion is murder and illegal, why shouldn’t women who have them be indicted, convicted, and given the death penalty?
7. The breach of confidentiality is a “great” media story but/and it has unfathomable implications both for the internal workings of the court and the court as an institution. This is not, despite some Republican attempts at misdirection, the most important aspect of this matter, but, make no mistake, the leak raises titanic issues that Chief Justice Roberts and the High Court’s administrators need to address both publicly and privately.
8. Josh Gerstein, one of the reporters who broke this story for Politico, is someone I have known for a very long time. He is one of the most brilliant and fairest journalists in the world. All the implications of this scoop/story notwithstanding, we are blessed to have this be in his hands.
Please extend everyone The Presumption of Grace on this difficult matter as we, the American Family, work through this.
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The prospect of tactical nuclear strikes on the European mainland would, Mr. Putin undoubtedly hopes, test the cohesion of the NATO alliance. While nobody wants to be quoted on the record, senior Europeans are already whispering to sympathetic journalists about concerns that the Biden administration is escalating too far and too fast. Would France and Germany continue to back American policy if Russia strikes Ukrainian targets with nuclear warheads? Is American public opinion ready for a replay of the Cuban missile crisis?
The Ukraine war is not yet 10 weeks old, and it has already revolutionized world politics. The next 10 weeks could be even more dramatic. President Biden could soon face as stern a test as any American president has since World War II. We must hope, and pray, that he is up to the job.
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Henry Olsen, speaking for Red (and much of Purple…) America in the pages of the Washington Post:
[Afghanistan] showcased what would become a defining feature of the past year: Biden’s inability to manage events. The administration’s false or self-delusional reassurances that the Taliban would not, could not, conquer Afghanistan in a matter of days showed its utter inability to predict or react to things it could not fully control. Similarly, for months, Biden’s economic team ignored, then pooh-poohed, the risk of sustained inflation. Now it is left fatuously blaming Vladimir Putin, corporate greed and supply-chain problems. Americans who see rising prices in virtually every facet of their lives think less of a president who seemingly can neither face nor tell the truth. And let’s not even mention the chaos on our Southern border, except to note that polls have shown that Biden sports even lower ratings for how he’s handling immigration than he has overall.
These examples of incompetence are supplemented by the inability of Democratic leaders to even come close to satisfying their own voters’ demands. Time and again, Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) said something, anything, had to happen on the long list of bills that were supposedly critical to America’s future. Yet, they still cannot get the party’s moderates and progressives on the same page. The result: America’s centrists are scared by what Democrats want to do, while the left is angry about what Democrats failed to do. Even the hapless Jimmy Carter did not push away independents while enraging the party base a mere 16 months into his doomed presidency.
Related: Watch Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, who faces a tougher reelection than she might, engaged in the kind of distancing that is likely to become very common within her party as November approaches:
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