ReligiousLeftLaw.com

Free Exercise of Religion: A Perspective from the Religious Left

What should the word religion mean in the First Amendment? The Pew Forum recently released the results of a survey revealing that nearly 23% of Americans describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated – as atheist, agnostic, or  more typically “nothing in particular.” See Pew Forum. Should this mean that this group should receive no protection under the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment? I leave aside the fact that the majority of this group believes in God, but does not affiliate with an institutional church. The Free Exercise Clause should centrally be read to protect freedom of conscience whatever its source. When government forces someone to do something they feel morally obligated not to do or forbids someone not to do something they feel obligated to do, a just system would recognize that this burden on freedom of conscience is at least regrettable and often impermissible.

Sometimes burdens on freedom of conscience are permissible. If a person feels a moral obligation to engage in human sacrifice, certainly the law should recognize that the interest in human life outweighs the religious interest. Sometime burdens on freedom of conscience should not be permitted. For example, it is widely understood that the Supreme Court erred when it determined that Native Americans could be prohibited from using peyote in their religious ceremonies. Since burdens on conscience could sometimes be permissible and sometimes not permissible, it seems that balancing the relevant interests at stake is necessary if just results are to be achieved.

With respect to association of religion claims, no normative weight should be placed on the fact that the claim is religious in character. For example, it seems to me that Catherine Corbin, Larry Sager, and Chris Eisgruber are right in concluding that religious freedom of association claims should not be regarded as special. The Court has ruled that religious institutions may pick ministers for any reason whatsoever, and surely they should be able to pick ministers according to their doctrinal requirements even if those requirements are obnoxious. So too the Sierra Club should be able to pick officers according to their mission. But suppose a church decides to discriminate on the basis of race in selecting a minister when it is no part of its religious doctrine to do so. The so-called ministerial exception would permit this exercise of bigotry in the name of church autonomy. That position is decidedly unattractive.

As a qualification to this discussion, I would first observe that it should be possible to raise Free Exercise claims in situations in which a religious practice is not supported by a claim of conscience. That is, the practice is not required by conscience, but is a part of the religious tradition. If it is supported by tradition, but not required by conscience, I would think that is entitled to less weight than conscience claims. On the other hand, this may be an instance in which religion should have an entitlement to be considered where secular claims do not.  

Second, there is an important secular claim to conscience that I do not consider to be within the scope of the religion clause. Consider a utilitarian who believes herself morally obligated to maximize human happiness. The problem with this moral position is that it renders virtually all actions of the utilitarian as morally required, and it would make all those actions cognizable under the Free Exercise clause. That is too much not only for the law to administer, but I also doubt that utilitarians actually experience all their choices as morally freighted and I further doubt that when the law impinges on choices they would otherwise make that they regularly experience these foreclosed choices as impingements on their moral life. Of course, there will be such experiences for utilitarians, but I suspect those experiences are rooted in something more particular than a general commitment to utilitarianism.  

Finally, I think the flight of many (most?) secular liberals from a strong conception of religious freedom accompanied by opposition to religious freedom restoration acts strikes me as wrong-headed. It fails to appreciate that religious freedom has always been balanced against other interests. It is short sighted because it appears to be rooted in the view that the religious right has a monopoly on religious freedom claims – a reading of politics belied by our history. And it raises again the question why the secular left defends so many hateful and harmful views under the speech clause, but seems prepared to let its rightful opposition to right wing religious views morph into a nearly full scale abandonment of the defense of religious views it has historically maintained.

 

 

Poem by a Vietnam War veteran

AP photo from the Vietnam War

 

Date of estimated return from overseas (DEROS) for my soul:

 

At times when I am calm

I remember

that even if you waited for it

nothing came as suddenly

as gunfire

and nothing (not even the Lieutenant)

seemed as stupid

as the silence which followed

 

At such times I know also

that each of us

who fought in Vietnam

was spiritually captured by it,

and that each remains

a prisoner

of his own war-

 

It is, therefore, not surprising

that for some (like for me)

the AfterNam emptiness

published no D.e.r.o.s.

for the soul....

 

Yet, in moments better known to me,

when reason drifts

and whole worlds are illuminated

with Platonic images

dancing images

dancing against the cave-walls

of my mind,

lit by a single candle

borrowed from a twilight wish,

I take the stairs two-at-a-time

and wait in the second floor window

of my days,

hoping that someday will come next morning

and that I’ll recognize the soul of a much younger me

come diddy-boppin’ down the street,

eating a sky-bar

and hefting a duffle bag

filled with new and more believable myths

that I might live by

(not to mention back pay)

while humming something about

going to San Francisco

and something about a flower in somebody’s hair

 

Frankly, I don’t know if I’d throw flowers

or run down stairs, meet him at the curb

and beat Hell out of him-

leaving me the way he did!

 

I mean, it’s not like my damned soul,

dressed up like Jennifer Jones in drag,

and waved farewell with a lace hanky

from the base of a Bon-Sai plant

in a To do Street floral shop

while i woke the next morning and

couldn’t cry anymore

or laugh like before

or give a shit period.

 

And my soul didn’t go berserk

under the too bright light

of a Government Moon

and go roaring down Highway #1

doing a wheely on a cycle

like James Dean in a steel pot

and flak jacket

laughing Red Baron kind of laugh

and quoting Kipling’s Barrack-Room

Ballads—

 

No.

 

My soul just did

what most souls did.

Just disappeared one afternoon

when I was in a firefight

Just “walked away” in the scuffle

like a Dunhill lighter

off the deck of a red-neck bar.

 

Peculiar,

A man can lose his money,

his woman

(even his mind)

and still he can come back,

but if he loses his courage

or his pride

then-

it is over.

 

Memorial Day: Praying for Peace While Waging Permanent War?

Memorial Day is, by federal law, a day of prayer for permanent peace.    But is it possible to honestly pray for peace while our country is far and away number one in the world in waging war, military presence, military spending and the sale of weapons around the world? 

Permanent War

Since 1980 the US has engaged in aggressive military action in 14 countries in the Islamic world alone, according to research published in the Washington Post:  Iran (1980, 1987-1988), Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011), Lebanon (1983), Kuwait (1991), Iraq (1991-2011, 2014-), Somalia (1992-1993, 2007-), Bosnia (1995), Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-), Sudan (1998), Kosovo (1999), Yemen (2000, 2002-), Pakistan (2004-) and now Syria.  In this hemisphere, US military forces invaded Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989), and landed 20,000 military forces in Haiti (1994).

US Global War Machine

The US has 1.3 million people in the military and another million serve in the military reserves.  The US has over 700 military bases in 63 countries across the world deploying over 255,000 US military personnel there.  The Department of Defense officially manages over 555,000 buildings on 4400 properties inside the US and in over 700 properties across the globe.   The US has over 1500 strategic nuclear warheads, over 13,000 military aircraft,  dozens of submarines, many of which carry nuclear weapons, and 88 huge destroyer warships. 

Global Harm

Nearly 7000 US military people died as a result of the wars waged by the US since 9/11.  Just as important, in Iraq over 216,000 combatants, most of them civilians, have died since the 2003 invasion.   No one even counted civilian deaths in Afghanistan for the first five years of our war there.  Our drone attacks have murdered hundreds of children and hundreds of civilian adults in Pakistan and dozens more in Yemen.  

World Leader in War Spending

US military spending is about the same as the total of military spending by the next eight largest countries combined, that is more than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, UK, India and Germany combined. 

Since 9/11 US spending on our military cost well over $3 trillion.  Direct combat and reconstruction costs for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11 have officially cost US taxpayers $1.6 trillion dollars according to the Congressional Research Service.   Additional trillions have been spent on growing the Pentagon budget and for present and future increased health and disability benefits for veterans.

The US military captures 55 percent of our national discretionary spending and spending on veterans benefits is another 6 percent.  Since 9/11 military spending has increased by 50 percent while spending on other discretionary domestic spending increased by 13 percent according to the National Priorities Project.

Corporate War Profiteers

With these trillions being spent on war, there are legions of corporations profiting.

The number one war profiteer is Lockheed Martin, according to USA Today, with annual arms sales of $36 billion.  Not surprisingly Lockheed Martin spends over $14 million a year lobbying the people who make the decisions about how much money is spent on weapons and which weapons will be purchased.  Their CEO is paid over $15 million, according to their 2015 shareholder report, and on their board is James Ellis, a former Admiral and Commander in Chief of US Strategic Air Command, who gets paid over $277,000 for the part time work and James Loy, former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, who gets over $260,000 for his part time work.  Lockheed receives substantial government contracts amounting, by one calculation, to over $260 from each taxpaying household in the US.  They are so entitled that a 2014 special investigation by the US Department of Energy found Lockheed used taxpayer funds to lobby for more taxpayer funds.

Number two war profiteer is Boeing with annual arms sales of $31 billion.  Boeings spends over $16 million a year lobbying. The rest of the top ten corporations profiting from war include BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Raytheon, EADS, Finmeccanica, L-3 Communications, and United Technologies.  You can track their corporate contributions to members of Congress, especially the politicians on the Appropriations Committees of the House and Senate on Open Secrets.

While most of the lobbying money has gone to Republicans, all the arms merchants hire lobbyists who can influence Democrats and Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

And these war profiteers do not just sell to the US government.  The US sold more than $26 billion in weapons to foreign nations and has been number one for a long time though recently that title has been going back and forth with Russia as to which is the world biggest international arms merchant. 

What To Do

On April 4, 1967, in his famous Riverside Church address, Martin Luther King Jr. said the US government was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.  In response he called for a true revolution of values.  This revolution calls us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies including war and the contrast of wealth and poverty in our own country and across the world.

Former US President and General Dwight Eisenhower warned citizens as he left office of the growing military industrial complex.  He saw the influence of the war machine and urged all citizens to be alert and force “the huge industrial and military machinery of defense” to respond to democracy and the peoples’ desires for peace.

What must we do?  First, we must learn the facts and face the truth that the US is the biggest war maker in the world.  Second, we must commit ourselves and organize others to a true revolution of values and confront the corporations and politicians who continue to push our nation into war and inflate the military budget with the hot air of permanent fear mongering.  Third, we must admit what our country has been doing wrong and we must make amends for the violence the US has waged on countries all over our world.  Fourth, we must withdraw our military from all other countries, dramatically downsize our military, disarm our nuclear weapons, and truly stick to defending our own country.  Fifth, we must work for peaceful, just solutions for conflict here at home and across our world.  Only when we work for the day when the US is no longer the world leader in war will we have the right to pray for peace on Memorial Day.

 

 

Joining the Fight Against Inequality

The following provocative policy proposals are found in Anthony B. Atkinson’s book, Inequality: what can be done? (Harvard University Press, 2015): 303-304.

1. The direction of technological change should be an explicit concern of policy-makers, encouraging innovation in a form that increases the employability of workers, emphasizing the human dimension of service provision.

2. Public policy should aim at a proper balance of power among stakeholders, and to this end should (a) introduce an explicitly distributional dimension into competition policy, (b) ensure a legal framework that allows trade unions to represent workers on level terms, and (c) establish, where it does not already exist, a Social and Economic Council involving the social partners and other nongovernmental bodies.

3. The government should adopt an explicit target for preventing and reducing unemployment and underpin this ambition by offering guaranteed public employment at the minimum wage to those who seek it.

4. There should be a national pay policy, consisting of two elements: a statutory minimum wage set at a living wage, and a code of practice for pay above the minimum, agreed as part of a ‘national conversation’ involving the Social and Economic Council.

5. The government should offer via national savings bond a guaranteed positive real rate of interest on savings, with a maximum holding per person.

6. There should be a capital endowment (minimum inheritance) paid to all at adulthood.

7. A public Investment Authority should be created, operating a sovereign wealth fund with the aim of building up the net worth of the state by holding investments in companies and property.

8. We should return to a more progressive rate structure for the personal income tax, up to a top rate of 65 percent, accompanied by a broadening of the tax base.

9. The government should introduce into the personal income tax an Earned Income Discount, limited to the first band of earnings.

10. Receipts of inheritance and gifts inter vivos should be taxed under a progressive lifetime capital receipts tax.

11. There should be a proportional, or progressive, property tax based on up-to-date assessments.

12. Child Benefit should be paid for all children at a substantial rate and should be taxed as income.

13. A participation income should be introduced at a national level, complementing existing social protection, with prospect of an EU-wide child basic income.

14. (alternative to 13.) There should be a renewal of social insurance, raising the level of benefits and extending their coverage.

15. Rich countries should raise their target for Official Development Assistance to 1 per cent of Gross National Income.

“The proposals are set out in a way that should apply quite widely to different countries, even if some are specifically designed with the UK in mind….”

Alongside the above proposals, Atkinson proffers some specific “ideas to pursue,” such as a minimum tax on corporations and a “thoroughgoing review of the access of households to the credit market for borrowing not secured on housing.”

Among other things, these titles should help us assess Atkinson’s proposals vis-à-vis an understanding of the comparative differences between (or relative strengths and weaknesses of) capitalism and socialism:

• Ackerman, Bruce, Anne Alstott, Philippe van Parijs, et al. Redesigning Distribution: Basic Income and Stakeholder Grants as Cornerstones for an Egalitarian Capitalism. London: Verso, 2006.
• Bardhan, Pranab, Samuel Bowles and Michael Wallerstein, eds. Globalization and Egalitarian Distribution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press/New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006.
• Chang, Ja-joon. 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011.
• Crocker, David A. Ethics of Global Development: Agency, Capability, and Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Dasgupta, Partha. An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Drèze, Jean, Amartya Sen and Athar Hussain, eds. The Political Economy of Hunger. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1995.
• Elster, Jon and Karl Ove Moene, eds. Alternatives to Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
• Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Oxford, UK: Polity, 1990.
• Goodin, Robert E. Reasons for Welfare: The Political Theory of the Welfare State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
• Goodin, Robert E., et al. The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Harrington, Michael. Socialism: Past and Future. New York: Arcade/Little, Brown & Co., 1989.
• Harvey, David. Limits to Capital. London: Verso, 2006 ed. (first ed., 1982).
• Harvey, David. Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism: New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Luntley, Michael. The Meaning of Socialism. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1990.
• Nussbaum, Martha C. Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
• O’Connor, James. The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973.
• Offe, Claus. Contradictions of the Welfare State. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984.
• Offe, Claus. Disorganized Capitalism: Contemporary Transformations of Work and Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.
• Piketty, Thomas (trans. Arthur Goldhammer). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.
• Prashad, Vijay. The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. London: Verso, 2012.
• Przeworski, Adam. Capitalism and Social Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
• Robertson, James. Future Work: Jobs, self-employment and leisure after the industrial age. New York: Universe Books, 1985.
• Schweickart, David. Against Capitalism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.
• Schweickart, David. After Capitalism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
• Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
• Shaikh, Anwar. Globalization and the Myths of Free Trade: History, Theory and Empirical Evidence. New York: Routledge, 2013.
• Therborn, Göran. The Killing Fields of Inequality. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2013.
• Van Parijs, Philippe, ed. Arguing for Basic Income. London: Verso, 1992.
• White, Stuart. The Civic Minimum: On the Rights and Obligations of Economic Citizenship. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Widerquist, Karl. Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No (Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
• Wolff, Richard D. Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2010.
• Wolff, Richard. Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2012.
• Wolff, Richard D. and Stephen A. Resnick. Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.
• Wright, Erik Olin. Envisioning Real Utopias. London: Verso, 2010.

Malcom X: May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965

 

“…[T]oward the end of his life [Malcolm X] argued that blacks should put aside religious and philosophical differences and recognize they had a common oppressor. Antiblack racism, he argued, negatively affects all blacks, regardless of faith or party affiliation, and thus blacks should unify to resist racial oppression on nonsectarian and non-ideological grounds. Although he continued to believe in the necessity of autonomous black institutions, he did come to relax his opposition to alliance with progressive whites.

Malcolm X’s ideas of internal colonization, black communal self-determination, skepticism toward the black elite and the Democratic Party, and racially autonomous political organizations influenced a generation of black activists and have had a significant impact on the contemporary political culture of African Americans. As Manning Marable remarked, ‘Dead at the age of 39, Malcolm quickly became the fountainhead of the modern renaissance of black nationalism in the late 1960s.’ Indeed, shortly after his assassination in 1965, many of Malcolm X’s ideas were developed and promoted by several black leaders under the slogan ‘Black Power,’ a phrase popularized by Stokely Carmichael.”—Tommie Shelby.

Painting by Trevor Jenkins

With analytical acuity, Shelby proceeds to examine the “philosophical content and social-theoretic underpinnings” of Black Power nationalism so as to ascertain its contributions to, and thus its contemporary relevance for, a “pragmatic black solidarity” in which “there must be room…for disagreement over the precise content of political action and policy initiatives.” On this account, neither black self-determination nor black nationalism preclude the extension of “solidarity to other racially stigmatized groups and even to committed nonracist whites.” And the ideal of black self-determination, “at least with respect to blacks in America, requires a sharply delimited trans-institutional and decentralized form of black political solidarity.” Shelby insists that “black political solidarity must be noncorporatist,” meaning “[n]o black party, association, or institution can legitimately claim to speak for black people as a whole. Instead, there should be multiple and independent black organizations and advocacy groups that take up particular issues that affect black interests.” This political solidarity nonetheless has principled grounding insofar as it entails joint commitment to particular values and goals, “understood as the faithful adherence to certain political principles, including antiracism, equal educational and employment opportunity, and tolerance for group differences and individuality, and to emancipatory goals, such as achieving substantial racial equality—especially in employment, education, and wealth—and ending ghetto poverty.” Finally, pragmatic black nationalism “is a form of black solidarity that aims, ultimately, to transcend itself.” Please see Shelby’s We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (2005).

Suggested Reading:

• Breitman, George. The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary. Ney York: Pathfinder Press, 1967.
• Breitman, George, ed. Malcolm X Speaks. New York: Grove Press, 1966.
• Breitman, George, ed. By Any Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews, and a Letter by Malcolm X. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970.
• Carson, Clayborne. Malcolm X: The FBI File. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1991.
• Clark, Steve, ed. Malcolm X Talks to Young People: Speeches in the United States, Britain, and Africa. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1991 ed. (1965).
• Cone, James H. Martin & Malcom & America: A Dream or A Nightmare. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991.
• DeCaro Jr., Louis A. On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X. New York: New York University Press, 1996.
• Dyson, Michael Eric. Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Epps, Archie. The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard. New York: William Morrow, 1968.
• Goldman, Peter. The Death and Life of Malcolm X. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
• Johnson, Cedric. Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
• Karim, Imam Benjamin, ed. The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches by Malcolm X. New York: Merlin House/Monthly Review Press, 1971.
• Malcolm X (with the assistance of Alex Haley) The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Grove Press, 1964.
• Malcolm X. Malcolm X on Afro-American History. New York: Merit Publishers, 1967.
• Malcolm X (Bruce Perry, ed.) Malcolm X: The Last Speeches. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1989.
• Malcolm X (Clark, Steve, ed.) February 1965: The Final Speeches. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1992. 
• Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011.
• Shelby, Tommie. We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.
• Terrill, Robert E., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor. The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution. London: Free Association Books, 1989.
• Wood, Joe, ed. Malcolm X: In Our Own Image. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992.

Can You Trump That?

Donald Trump has teased the voting public before. He has flirted several times with the possibility of running for president. In 2012, he even rose to near the top of some early opinion polls. Each time, however, Trump backed away from an actual candidacy. Indeed, there are many who believe that these quadrennial presidential flirtations are nothing more than a marketing ploy. What better way for the ever-theatrical Trump to draw attention to his name? And since his name is his brand, success demands that it must always be in the public's mind.

But what if this time is different? What if Donald Trump surprises the experts and decides to run? There are some reasons to believe that he might be ready to do that. Just a few days ago, he said that he might soon announce a "big surprise." A couple of months ago, he announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee and indicated a reluctance to renew the contract on his television show The Apprentice. And, furthermore, Trump has hired campaign staff -- in Iowa, in New Hampshire, and in South Carolina, three early caucus and primary states. Serious campaign staffers are people who depend on their reputations for their livelihood. Presumably, they would not enlist on a fool's errand.

So, will Trump seek the Republican nomination? And, more to the point, what are his odds of success?

Contrary to what many people think, I believe that Trump has a decent chance of winning the nomination should he decide to pursue it. Let's review the issues that Trump has hinted he would run on.

He has repeatedly indicated his strong support for preserving Social Security and Medicare. This would seem to be a no-brainer, of course, except that it flies in the face of Republican orthodoxy. Paul Ryan's infamous budget (the Orwellian "Path to Prosperity") has targeted those programs for years. The most recent iteration of this misbegotten budget would privatize Medicare and turn it into a voucher system by 2024. Seniors are a vulnerable demographic. They should not be made to navigate the intricacies of a voucher system.

By running on the promise to preserve Social Security and Medicare, Trump would be campaigning against the Republican establishment in the name of protecting the Republican base. The Republican base, after all, is an older demographic. Polls show that among this older demographic Medicare and Social Security are popular ideas. Indeed, the only reason the base has not rebelled against Paul Ryan and his ilk is cognitive dissonance. Older Republican voters by and large do not believe what is in the budget. Trump's candidacy, if it should come to pass, would drive a wedge between establishment and base.

Of course, Mike Huckabee is already trying out precisely this campaign. Huckabee, however, does not have the campaign resources to stir the Republican base from its complacent state of cognitive dissonance. To do that, you need to arouse people, and to arouse people, you need resources -- money, staff, advertising budgets. Donald Trump, should he run, would have these resources at his disposal. If he ran on Social Security and Medicare, hard and loud, and showed himself prepared to confront Republican orthodoxy, he might have a winning hand.

Trump has also shown himself opposed to the negotiation of additional international trade deals. Most recently, he has stated his opposition to the creation of the Trans-Pacific free trade zone. He argues that the agreement amounts to an attack on American manufacturing. By lowering tariffs, it would make foreign-made goods more attractive to American consumers at the expense of domestic jobs.

I part company with Donald Trump on this analysis. While I certainly agree that out international trade agreements have favored the interests of capital over labor, I don't believe that the ideal of international trade should be abandoned. I would much prefer to use trade agreements as a vehicle for writing into law protections for labor around the world.

But that is not what Donald Trump is proposing. He would scuttle the deal altogether. He sees it as a part of an ongoing narrative -- the hollowing out of the American heartland.

Again, Trump is positioning himself as radically opposed to the Republican establishment. Should he mount a campaign like this, furthermore, he runs the risk of playing with the dangerous fires of demagoguery. That said, opposition to free-trade deals is a position held by many in the Republican base. It is an issue that could carry the day in a fractured field. And, again, Trump has the resources to drive this case home.

I would not and could not vote for Donald Trump. For me, his dabbling with "birtherism" in 2012 simply went too far. Birtherism was always a conspiracy of the fringe. Trump was among those responsible for moving the mainstream of American politics a little closer to the lunatic fringe. He is not someone I would want to see occupying the Oval Office.

Still, if Trump is serious, if he is not just stroking his ego or promoting his brand name, he has formidable assets. If he showed himself willing to campaign forcefully on Social Security, Medicare, and free trade, he could make a competitive run for the Republican nomination. And in the free-for-all that 2016 promises to be, a "competitive campaign" may be all that is needed to snatch a nomination that is looking more and more like a rugby scrum.

Cross-Posted: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/can-you-trump-that_b_7271122.html

The Sullied Science & Political Economy of Post-Industrial Agriculture (Or: ‘Toward Agroecology & Food Justice’) — A Basic Bibliography

The title of this compilation is a mouthful, but its content can be chewed with leisure and is easily digestible. I hope it also proves both nutritious and a gustatory delight.

The Sullied Science & Political Economy of Post-Industrial Agriculture (Or: ‘Toward Agroecology & Food Justice’) — A Basic Bibliography

Christian Europe and the Islamic World

“This is [an excerpt from the] transcript of a talk [Kenan Malik] gave at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels on 10 May 2015 on ‘The many roots of Christian Europe, the many sources of the Islamic world.’ It was part of a series of talks to accompany an exhibition of ‘The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Art’ entitled ‘L’Empire du Sultan.’”

[….] “The translation into Arabic of Aristotle, Plato and other Greek philosophers helped transform Islamic thinking. In particular, it helped create what is sometimes called the Rationalist tradition, a tradition that began with the Mu’tazilites in the eighth century and culminated with the two greatest of Muslim philosophers, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rush’d, some four hundred years later.

The Rationalists saw learning as an ethical duty. They took from the Greeks not just their spirit of rational inquiry but also their faith in the almost boundless power of the human intellect. Most were deeply pious, and accepted the Qur’an as the word of God. But they challenged the idea that religious truths could be accessed only through divine revelation, insisting that reason alone would suffice. Most insisted, too, that all theological arguments must adhere to the principles of rational thought. Even the interpretation of the Qur’an and the Sunna were, in Rationalist eyes, subordinate to human reason.

By the time the greatest of these philosophers, indeed the greatest Muslim philosopher, Ibn Rushd, was publishing his translations of, and commentaries on, Aristotle, the Rationalist tradition was already on the wane. Islam came eventually to define itself not through rationalism, but through mysticism on the one hand – the Sufi traditions – and, on the other, a more literal understanding of Revelation, such as that embodied in the Sunni traditions.

The tradition of Muslim Rationalism is these days barely remembered in the West. Yet its importance and influence, not least on the ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition, is difficult to overstate. It was through Ibn Rushd that West European philosophers rediscovered their Aristotle, and his commentaries shaped the thinking of a galaxy of thinkers from Moses Maimonides to Thomas Aquinas. And Córdoba, Ibn Rush’d’s home, became a principal meeting point of Islam and Christianity, a centre through which Christian scholars came to access not simply Islamic thinking, but to rediscover Greek philosophy too.

While today we may have forgotten the importance of Muslim philosophers, Christians of the time certainly recognized it. In The Divine Comedy, Dante places Ibn Rushd with the great pagan philosophers whose spirits dwell not in Hell but in Limbo ‘the place that favor owes to fame.’ One of Raphael’s most famous paintings, The School of Athens, is a fresco on the walls of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, depicting the world’s great philosophers. Among the pantheon of celebrated Greek philosophers including Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras and Diogenes stands Ibn Rushd.

It was not just Greek philosophers that shaped Islamic thinking. From Persia to India to China, civilizations across the globe became sources for Islamic culture and learning. India, in particular, with the establishment of Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century indelibly shaped Islam. When we think of the Muslim world today, we usually think of the Middle East. But the largest Muslim communities are in Asia – in Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, China – and here Islam draws upon a multitude of cultural and religious sources.

Today, there is a tendency to think of Islam as walled-in, insular, hostile to reason and freethinking. Much of the Islamic world came to be that way. But the fact remains that the scholarship of the golden age of Islamic thinking helped lay the foundations for the European Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. Neither happened in the Muslim world. But without the Muslim world, it is possible that neither may have happened, at least in the form they did.” [….]

For the entire transcript of his talk, please see Kenan Malik, “A Cathedral, a Mosque, a Clash of Civilizations,” at Pandaemonium

The respective images (from Malik’s post): Roger Hayward, Watercolor painting of the Hagia Sophia, and 13th century Arabic translation of ‘Material Medica.’

The US News Rankings are Positively Harmful

U.S. News and World Reports claims to perform a service for students when they rank schools. In fact, the rankings are harmful to students in significant ways. It is not just that the academic rankings are marred by those who game the system and by the fact that everyone who ranks the schools has only fragmentary knowledge of the schools they rank. Much more serious is the impact of the weight the magazine gives to the grade point averages and test scores of the admitted students. In order to compete on these measures, first undergraduate schools and in the last decade law schools are spending millions of dollars throwing money at students who will help their average GPA or test scores in order to hold their U.S. News ranking or to move up in the rankings. The result, of course, is that students who do not get merit scholarships are paying inflated tuition to support the merit scholarship programs.

It would take a lot of faith in GPA’s and test scores to suppose that the marginal increases in the average numbers of the school actually mean that the student body is better. This means that law schools individually are literally wasting millions of dollars. This waste is all the more infuriating in that the millions could be spent on programs for students or scholarships for low income students or both. Wouldn’t it be a better world if law schools spent their millions on what they thought was best for their school rather than what would make them look better to a magazine?

In fairness, I should mention that one aspect of the rankings actually encourages law schools in one context to do the right thing. The magazine considers employment of students after law school to be an indication of a school’s quality. It would be nice to report that schools feel a responsibility in a tight job market to assist graduates tied down with loans they shouldered to pay for their legal education. But few do. U.S. News to the rescue. In order to create higher employment rates to look better for the magazine, many law schools subsidize graduates in paying for their salary in an internship during the year after graduation. This is surely good for those graduates. They gain experience, and a not inconsiderable percentage are hired after the internship.

But U.S. News is not in business to help students. They recently decided to weight those jobs less, thus reducing the incentive to subsidize the jobs. From the perspective of rankings, this makes some sense. Better a job with more security than a one year subsidy.

But we should recognize the obvious. The rankings of U.S. News are an unreliable guide to quality, and their existence harms law schools and law students. 

Building Blocks of Segregation & Deprivation in Baltimore

Two important and complementary pieces addressing long-standing housing segregation and the dominant model of urban redevelopment projects that emerged from the 1960s and 1970s: First, “The Building Blocks of Deprivation” by Daniel Pasciuti and Isaac Jilbert at Jacobin and, next, Richard Rothstein of the Economics Policy Institute explains why and how “Baltimore, not at all uniquely, has experienced a century of public policy designed, consciously so, to segregate and impoverish its black population,” in his essay, “From Ferguson to Baltimore: The Fruits of Government-Sponsored Segregation.”

Images (including more inspiring photos) found here.

 

Arguing for Basic Income

I had forgotten Robert Goodin’s elegant argument (Goodin himself describes it as ‘undeniably cheeky’) in favor of basic income schemes, having read it over twenty years ago. It runs as follows: “[S]chemes paying everyone an unconditional basic income are less presumptuous than more conditional programs of support [i.e., the two-tiered system—social insurance and social assistance—that characterizes our social security policies generally]. Not only are they less prying and intrusive, less demeaning and debasing…. [t]hey also make fewer assumptions and presumptions about those whom they are aiding. That in turn makes schemes of basic income support more efficient, in one important sense than more conditional schemes of support. [….] [Most conspicuously, basic income schemes are] less prone to sociological error and less vulnerable to social change than are alternative models of social security provision. [….] Efficiency as such is of no independent moral importance to us. So at root the reason we should cherish the target of efficiency of basic income strategies is simply that that guarantees we will, through them, be able to relieve human suffering as best as we can.”—Robert E. Goodin, “Basic Income,” in Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1995): 228-243, reproducing material from “Toward a Minimally Presumptuous Social Welfare Policy,” in Arguing for Basic Income, ed. Philippe Van Parijs (Verso: 1992): 195-214.

Further Reading:

• Ackerman, Bruce, Anne Alstott, Philippe van Parijs, et al. Redesigning Distribution: Basic Income and Stakeholder Grants as Cornerstones for an Egalitarian Capitalism. London: Verso, 2006.
• Birnbaum, Simon. Basic Income Reconsidered: Social Justice, Liberalism, and the Demands of Equality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
• Groot, L.F.M. Basic Income, Unemployment and Compensatory Justice. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2010.
• Iyer, Raghavan. “An Unfinished Dream,” in Iyer’s Parapolitics: Toward the City of Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979: 299-331. As Iyer writes, “It is hardly surprising that the utopian proposal of ensuring a guaranteed annual income to every adult should be a recurring topic of controversy since [Edward] Bellamy wrote Looking Backward in 1888. Whether or not this proposal is politically feasible at present, it would be worthwhile to consider some of the drastic implications of the proposal for social theory and contemporary values, and for a daring vision of the future. [....] The unprecedented divorce of basic income from work, and of involuntary work from survival, would have significant repercussions on the level of income distribution, attitudes to work, social differentiation, social stratification, occupational ranking, and even the definition of success and failure.” This essay is indispensable for clear and courageous thinking about the notion of a Guaranteed Basic Income.
  
• Robertson, James. Future Work: Jobs, self-employment and leisure after the industrial age. New York: Universe Books, 1985. An early argument for a Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) based on the fact that structural (i.e., chronic and then permanent) unemployment in affluent, post-industrial societies, in others words, the likelihood that conventional full employment will never be restored, means there are too many people without a basic subsistence income, their basic needs no longer met by the traditional provision of social security in welfare-state capitalist societies. Robertson argues that the GBI “will lead to a liberation of work, helping to remove the existing divisions between people who are employed and people who are unemployed, between people of working age and people who are retired, and between men and women’s work.”
• Sheahen, Allan. Basic Income Guarantee: Your Right to Economic Security. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
• Van Parijs, Philippe, et al. What’s Wrong With a Free Lunch? Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001.
• White, Stuart. The Civic Minimum: On the Rights and Obligations of Economic Citizenship. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• White, Stuart, “Social Minimum,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/social-minimum/
• Widerquist, Karl. Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No (Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
• Widerquist, Karl and Michael W. Howard, eds. Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model (Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

See too the posts on this topic over the last several years at Crooked Timber.

Does He Have a Prayer? Mike Huckabee Runs for President

In 2008, Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas made a strong run for the Republican nomination for president.  He won the Iowa caucus and carried over four million popular votes across the length of the Republican primary.  In the wake of the nominating contest, there were even some commentators who suggested that it was Mike Huckabee, not Mitt Romney, who should be perceived as the heir-apparent for the 2012 Republican nomination.

Still, Huckabee decided to sit out the 2012 contest, apparently because of a desire to increase his and his family's financial security.  He had his Fox News gig, his speaking engagements, and even lent his name to some dubious "alternative" treatments for diabetes.  Now, however, he has joined the ever-growing field of contenders for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

Does he have a prayer?  It's legitimate to pose the question in just this way because it is clear that Huckabee wishes to make the case that his own candidacy best represents the way fundamentalist Christians read the Bible and see the world.  He wants to be their candidate, and to be the bearer of their "biblical" worldview in the political arena.  His first career, after all, was as a Baptist minister.

To get a sense of the campaign he is likely to run, we should take a look at his new book, "God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy."  The title alone is evocative.  He wants to be the candidate of traditional small-town America.  He disparages New York as little better than "Sodom and Gomorrah" (p. 2).  Fly-over country, that is where Huckabee finds the true America, the places where Second-Amendment "liberties" are celebrated, and people are free to eat fried foods and "sawmill gravy" without government intrusion.

The heart of Huckabee's book, however, is religious.  Its main thesis is that fundamentalist Christians have become the new politically dispossessed.  It is a thesis that needs to be looked at carefully, because it simply isn't true.

Let's start with Chapter One, entitled "The New American Outcasts."  The protagonist of this chapter is Dan Cathy, the President of the Chick-Fil-A restaurant chain.  In the summer of 2012, Cathy publicly expressed his opposition to same-sex marriage and was immediately attacked by leading political figures.

But Dan Cathy was hardly helpless.  Huckabee recalled how he came to Cathy's defense.  He proposed on his national television show that August 1, 2012, be made into "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" and urged his viewers to patronize Cathy's stores on that day.  The customers came, bought their sandwiches, and Cathy undoubtedly earned a tidy profit.

Huckabee's larger point, that Dan Cathy represents a new type of American outcast, is bizarre.  He is the Chief Executive of a major American corporation with over 1,600 stores.  When he took a political stand, he met with political resistance.  Politics is like that -- you can't always get your way.  Sometimes you even lose.  But Dan Cathy had highly-placed allies of his own.  A former presidential candidate -- Mike Huckabee -- used his own prestige and political capital to drive business to Cathy's stores.

"Outcast" is the wrong word for Dan Cathy, just as it would be the wrong word to use for Hobby Lobby.  Cathy was -- and remains -- a man of wealth and influence who has access to political leaders most Americans can never hope to enjoy.

It is plain, however, that Huckabee intends to make opposition to same-sex marriage a centerpiece of his campaign.  Again, we can take a look at another chapter from his book, this one entitled "Same-Sex Marriage and the Law (God's and Man's)."  Huckabee employs all of the usual tired, threadbare arguments against same-sex marriage.  If you depart at all from monogamous, heterosexual marriage, you will lose the ability to draw lines.  Why not groups of men marrying one another?  Or groups of women?  Why not polygamous marriage (one man and many women, or many men and women all at once)?

He reads the Bible as if the only form of marriage it approved was monogamous heterosexuality.  Even a casual reader of the Book of Genesis, however, will understand it as approving of alternative forms of marriage such as the polygamy of the patriarchs.

Still, one sees the outline of a political strategy in the way Huckabee states his case.  He wants social conservatives to feel under siege, to feel embattled, to have a sense of alienation.  It is out of that sense of alienation that Huckabee hopes to build his movement.

I tend to think that his message of unrepentant social conservatism will fail.  It will fail for at least two reasons.  First, Huckabee is not the only social conservative in the race.  Ben Carson has been running an effective stealth candidacy for months and coalescing support around a social conservative message.  So also has Ted Cruz.  Both of these candidates know how to appeal to the alienation and isolation of social conservatives.

More importantly, however, I think Huckabee will fail because social conservatism is increasingly a spent political force.  There was a time -- thirty years ago, even twenty -- when religiously-motivated social conservatives like  Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed commanded instantaneous national attention.  In those days, it seemed like the energy and the enthusiasm was with them.

But we have since witnessed a demographic changing of the guard.  Now the supporters of same-sex marriage are the ones with the excitement and the enthusiasm and the clear mandate of public opinion.  Mike Huckabee will not ride social conservatism to the Republican nomination for president.

Still, I do believe that Huckabee does have a "prayer" at winning the nomination, though perhaps not much more than that.  And that is through a message of economic populism.  He instinctively understands that substantial portions of the Republican base are not well off.  Especially in the South, they are older, and can best be described as working class or lower-middle class.  Quite rightly, they see themselves as economically insecure.

And so Huckabee has come out against those Republicans -- like Paul Ryan or Chris Christie -- who would cut Social Security or Medicare.  And he's stated his forceful, uncompromising opposition to additional free-trade agreements.  Sounding very much like Ross Perot, Huckabee wants to present himself as the defender of American jobs against the large multi-lateral corporations.

Most Republicans are either unable or unwilling to state the case for economic populism.  Can you imagine Mitt Romney ever saying anything remotely like this?  This willingness to say things against "Republican type" may make Huckabee one of the more interesting contenders in the race.

In the end, of course, I would not vote him.  I think he is profoundly wrong on same-sex marriage.  And while I agree with him on Social Security and Medicare, his overall anti-government message is at odds with his selective desire to defend these programs.  It is, after all, the government that provides Social Security and all of the other social-safety-net programs that, yes, even Mike Huckabee's constituents rely on. We should be in the business of building a stronger, more robust government, one that guarantees universal health care and access to higher education.  But that is a story for another day.

Cross-posted: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/mike-huckabee-does-he-have-a-prayer_b_7219004.html 

Alito and Scalia: Have You No Sense of Decency Sirs?

In the 1940s and 1950s, countless people in the US were being bullied and brutalized by the anti-communist scare tactics and character assassinations of Senator Joseph McCarthy.  The end of the McCarthy red-baiting era began when Joseph Welch stood up to McCarthy after he attacked a young lawyer on his staff.  Welch was appalled by McCarthy’s callous disregard and despite McCarthy’s power, challenged him by stating: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” He concluded by saying “You’ve done enough.  Have you no sense of decency, sir?  At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

In the recent marriage equality case, Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia argued that marriage equality opens the door to polygamy, underage sex, and incest between brothers and sisters.   This is the modern equivalent of McCarthy red-baiting and deserves the same response.

The cruel, illogical, heartless and hateful arguments of Alito and Scalia give considerable support and inspiration to right wing groups who literally demonize our sisters and brothers and sons and daughters who seek only to marry their same sex partners just like the rest of us. 

Alito and Scalia give comfort to the likes of Rush Limbaugh who stated marriage equality leads to incest.  To Rick Santorum who compares same sex relationships to bestiality and pedophilia.  To the head of ironically named American Decency Association who claimed that gay rights is a satanic attack on the US.  And to legions of other people and groups who practice hostility and violence against our sisters and brothers.

It is one thing to have these fringe haters outside on the courthouse steps.  We allow the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi parties to demonstrate out on the steps.  It is another matter entirely when they are in the exalted position as members of the court and while there feeding the fires of hatred in their public arguments.

It is past time for family, friends, lawyers, legal associations and law schools to ask Alito and Scalia to halt and to answer the question “Have you no sense of decency, sirs?”  

Alito, long criticized for being a cranky, malicious mouthpiece of the anti-gay movement, was at it again when the court heard the marriage equality case.  Alito is already famous for visibly shaking his head and mouthing opposition to President Obama in his 2010 State of the Union address and for throwing a mini-tantrum when other justices dissent.

Alito argued that approving the right to marriage equality for gay and lesbian people would open the door for 12 year olds to marry, for brothers and sisters to marry, and make polygamy possible for four lawyers who all want to marry each other.  Alito’s problems are so often raised and widely known that they are characterized as his “polygamy perplex” by The New Yorker.

Alito’s fallacious slippery slope arguments, transparently couched as questions, were so ridiculous that they prompted John Stewart to ask whether, in the case where women fought for the right to vote, Alito might have asked “What if one day a dog wants to vote? How about that ladies?” 

Antonin Scalia, of course not to be outdone, argued that if marriage equality was recognized ministers would be forced to conduct such marriages even if their religious organizations opposed them.  When Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that no ministers have ever been forced to conduct gay marriages Scalia would not hear of it.  When the lawyer arguing the case and Justices Breyer and Kagan pointed out that the First Amendment already protected priests, rabbis, imams and ministers from conducting marriages inconsistent with their religions, Scalia refused to concede.  Scalia, like Alito, also asked if marriage equality means polygamy would have to be recognized.

As one wise friend pointed out, our country still has the Ku Klux Klan but we do not take their arguments seriously.  And there are no respected people openly espousing their arguments on the Supreme Court.  No respected person openly argues that blacks and whites should not marry.  Nor do any people argue openly that women do not deserve the right to vote.  Yet, there are people on the Supreme Court who continue to openly repeat the brutally crude applause lines of right wing anti-gay hate groups.  It is time that stopped.

It is time all people of good will stand up to the haters, especially those on the Supreme Court, and say, “Until this moment, Justices, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…You’ve done enough.  Have you no sense of decency, sirs?  At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

 

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Boxing: Sweet Science and Brutal Agon

A select bibliography, “On Boxing—Sweet Science & Brutal Agon,” is posted over at the U.S. Intellectual History blog. A downloadable version of the list is here.* This post from the archives highlights several dimensions of the sport.

* The downloadable version has now been considerably expanded from the first draft at the U.S.IH blog.

Happy May Day or, International Workers' Day

On this May Day, we’ll introduce some Communist & Socialist Parties in Israel (edited from Wikipedia entries)

“Maki (Hebrew: מק"י‎, an acronym for HaMiflega HaKomunistit HaYisraelit (Hebrew: המפלגה הקומוניסטית הישראלית‎), lit. The Israeli Communist Party) was a communist political party in Israel [Founded, 1948, dissolved, July 1973]. It is not the same party as the modern day Maki, which split from it during the 1960s and later assumed its name. Maki was a descendant of the Palestine Communist Party (PCP), which changed its name to MAKEI (the Communist Party of Eretz Yisrael) after endorsing partition in 1947, and then to Maki. Members of the National Liberation League, an Arab party that had split off from the PCP in 1944, rejoined Maki in October 1948, giving the party both Jewish and Israeli Arab members, while the Hebrew Communists also joined the party. It also took over publication of two communist newspapers, Kol HaAm (Hebrew) and Al-Ittihad (Arabic). The party was not Zionist, but recognized Israel, though it denied the link between the state and the Jewish diaspora and asserted the right of Palestinians to form a state in accordance with the United Nations resolution on partition. [….] In 1973 Maki merged with the Blue-Red movement to form Moked, and subsequently disappeared as an independent party. Moked won one seat in the 1973 elections. Later it became part of Left Camp of Israel (in 1977), then Ratz (in 1981).”

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“Maki (political party) an acronym for HaMiflega HaKomunistit HaYisraelit (Hebrew: המפלגה הקומוניסטית הישראלית‎, Arabic: الحزب الشيوعي الاسرائيلي‎ Al-Ḥizb ash-Shuyū'ī al-'Isrā'īlī, lit. Israeli Communist Party) is a communist political party in Israel and forms part of the political alliance known as Hadash. It was originally known as Rakah (Hebrew: רק"ח‎), an acronym for Reshima Komunistit Hadasha (Hebrew: רשימה קומוניסטית חדשה‎, lit. New Communist List), and is not the same party as the original Maki, from which it broke away in the 1960s.

Rakah was formed on 1 September 1965 due to internal disagreements in Maki. Maki, the original Israeli Communist Party, saw a split between a largely Jewish faction led by Moshe Sneh, which recognized Israel’s right to exist and was critical of the Soviet Union’s increasingly anti-Zionist stance, and a largely Arab faction, which was increasingly anti-Zionist. As a result, the pro-Palestinian faction (including Emile Habibi, Tawfik Toubi and Meir Vilner) left Maki to form a new party, Rakah, which the Soviet Union recognised as the ‘official’ Communist Party. It was reported in the Soviet media that the Mikunis-Sneh group defected to the bourgois-nationalist camp.

The 1965 elections saw Rakah party win three seats, comprehensively beating Maki as it slumped to just one. Rakah’s opposition to Zionism and the Six-Day War meant they were excluded from the national unity governments of the sixth Knesset. In the 1969 elections Rakah again won three seats. During the 1973 elections Rakah saw a rise in support as the party picked up four seats. Before the 1977 elections the party joined up with some other marginal left-wing and Arab parties, including some members of the Israeli Black Panthers to form Hadash. Hadash means ‘new’ in Hebrew, a possible reference to Rakah’s name; it is also a Hebrew acronym for The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality. In the meantime, the original Maki had disappeared after merging into Ratz in 1981. In 1989, members of Rakah decided to change the party’s name to Maki to reflect their status as the only official communist party in Israel. The party remains the leading force in Hadash to this day, and owns the Al-Ittihad newspaper.”

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“The Da’am Workers Party (DWP) (Arabic: حزب دعم العمالي‎, Hebrew: דעם מפלגת פועלים‎) is a revolutionary socialist Jewish–Arab political party in Israel, where it is commonly known by the acronym Da’am (Arabic: دعم, Hebrew: דע"ם). It calls for political and social revolution in favor of workers’ rights, the nationalization of key industries, Jewish–Arab coexistence, and gender equality. The name…originates from Arabic and is a reverse acronym for the name Organization for Democratic Action (Arabic: منظمة العمل الديمقراطي‎, munadhamat al-'amal ad-dimoqrati). The name also means ‘support’ in Arabic.

The party was founded in Haifa in 1995 as a breakaway from Maki, the Communist Party of Israel. In the 1999 elections the party won only 2,151 votes (0.06%), well below the electoral threshold of 1.5%. The 2003 elections saw a fall in support to just 1,925 votes, though their percentage (0.06%) remained roughly the same due to a reduced turnout. Nevertheless, they still did not pass the threshold. In the 2006 elections the party more than doubled its support, winning 3,692 votes (0.11%). However, with the raising of the threshold to 2%, they were even further away from obtaining even a single seat in the Knesset. In the 2009 elections they again failed to pass the threshold and did not receive any seats. In the 2013 elections they received 3,374 votes (0.09%) and again did not obtain a seat in the Knesset. The party did not contest the 2015 elections.”

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“Hadash (Hebrew: חד"ש‎, lit. New), an acronym for HaHazit HaDemokratit LeShalom uLeShivion (Hebrew: החזית הדמוקרטית לשלום ולשוויון‎, lit. The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality); Arabic: الجبهة الديمقراطية للسلام والمساواة‎, al-Jabhah ad-Dimuqrāṭiyyah lis-Salām wa'l-Musāwah) is a radical left-wing political coalition in Israel formed by the Israeli Communist Party and other leftist groups. It currently has five members, as part of the Joint List, in the 120-seat Knesset.

The party was formed on 15 March 1977 when the Rakah and Non-Partisans parliamentary group changed its name to Hadash in preparation for the 1977 elections. The non-partisans included some members of the Black Panthers (several others joined the Left Camp of Israel) and other left-wing non-communist groups. Within the Hadash movement, Rakah (which was renamed Maki, a Hebrew acronym for Israeli Communist Party, in 1989) has retained its independent status. [….]

It emphasizes Jewish–Arab cooperation, and its leaders were among the first to support a two-state solution. Its voters are principally middle class and secular Arabs, many from the north and Christian communities. It also draws 6,000–10,000 far-left Jewish voters during national elections.

The party supports evacuation of all Israeli settlements, a complete withdrawal by Israel from all territories occupied as a result of the Six-Day War, and the establishment of a Palestinian state in those territories. It also supports the right of return or compensation for Palestinian refugees. In addition to issues of peace and security, Hadash is also known for being active on social and environmental issues. In keeping with socialist ideals, Hadash’s environmental platform, led by Maki official Dov Khenin, calls for the nationalization of Israel’s gas, mineral, and oil reserves.

Hadash defines itself as a non-Zionist party, originally in keeping with Marxist opposition to nationalism. It calls for recognition of Palestinian Arabs as a national minority within Israel. Despite it Marxist–Leninist roots, Hadash has in recent times included elements of Arab nationalism in its platform.”