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Politics : View from the Center and Left

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To: Dale Baker who wrote (240612)	12/28/2013 12:20:39 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) of 541477

The case of the Dixie Chicks v. Duck Dynasty: suntimes.com excerpt: What’s surprising to me is that anyone even takes arguments of this sort seriously to begin with. Surely at some basic level, everyone realizes that content-neutral pleas for certain procedural rights are almost always motivated by something else. Liberals hate the filibuster when Senate Republicans use it to block Obama nominations, but love it when Wendy Davis uses it to protect abortion rights. Conservatives love states’ rights when they are arguing against some national economic program, but hate it when a state has end-of-life policies they disagree with. Various leftists support yelling over New York City police Commissioner Ray Kelly, but panned Tea Party disruptions of congressional town halls as harassment. Most of the time, proclaimed commitments to uncoerced free speech, minority parliamentary power, states’ rights and any other content-neutral procedural rule are not serious. Some people are seriously concerned about process for its own sake, but such people are few and far between. Everyone else has a substantive agenda and merely stakes out the short-term positions on content-neutral procedural justice that further that agenda. Filibusters are good when they block what I dislike, but bad when they block what I like. States rights are good when states do what I like, but bad when they do what I dislike. Private economic coercion of expression is good when it shuts down comments I dislike, but bad when it shuts down comments I like. And so on. Given this reality, why do we even play the game where we pretend to believe in some sort of content-neutral procedural justice rules? Who are we trying to fool? What’s the use of having shell arguments about process that everyone knows are driven by core disagreements on substantive agendas? I don’t get it.

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