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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (9531)	11/4/2004 10:39:19 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

The Day the Enlightenment Went Out The New York Times November 4, 2004 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR By GARRY WILLS Evanston, Ill. This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution. This might be called Bryan's revenge for the Scopes trial of 1925, in which William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited. Disillusionment with that decision led many evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in politics. But they came roaring back into the arena out of anger at other court decisions - on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage. Mr. Rove felt that the appeal to this large bloc was worth getting President Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (though he had opposed it earlier). The results bring to mind a visit the Dalai Lama made to Chicago not long ago. I was one of the people deputized to ask him questions on the stage at the Field Museum. He met with the interrogators beforehand and asked us to give him challenging questions, since he is too often greeted with deference or flattery. The only one I could think of was: "If you could return to your country, what would you do to change it?" He said that he would disestablish his religion, since "America is the proper model." I later asked him if a pluralist society were possible without the Enlightenment. "Ah," he said. "That's the problem." He seemed to envy America its Enlightenment heritage. Which raises the question: Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation? America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11. The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies. Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed. It is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other. We torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs - as one American general put it, in words that the president has not repudiated. President Bush promised in 2000 that he would lead a humble country, be a uniter not a divider, that he would make conservatism compassionate. He did not need to make such false promises this time. He was re-elected precisely by being a divider, pitting the reddest aspects of the red states against the blue nearly half of the nation. In this, he is very far from Ronald Reagan, who was amiably and ecumenically pious. He could address more secular audiences, here and abroad, with real respect. In his victory speech yesterday, President Bush indicated that he would "reach out to the whole nation," including those who voted for John Kerry. But even if he wanted to be more conciliatory now, the constituency to which he owes his victory is not a yielding one. He must give them what they want on things like judicial appointments. His helpers are also his keepers. The moral zealots will, I predict, give some cause for dismay even to nonfundamentalist Republicans. Jihads are scary things. It is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment. Garry Wills, an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University, is the author of "St. Augustine's Conversion." nytimes.com Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

To: Mephisto who wrote (9531)	12/8/2004 2:24:05 AM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15516

As Questions Keep Coming, Ohio Certifies Its Vote Count December 7, 2004 The New York Times By JAMES DAO and ALBERT SALVATO WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 - The Ohio secretary of state officially certified on Monday that President Bush won that swing state by roughly 119,000 votes, but an array of Democrats, third-party candidates and independent groups continued to question the results, issuing new demands for a statewide recount and a formal investigation of the vote. Even before Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, issued the final tally, the Democratic National Committee said it would appoint an expert panel to review voting problems in Ohio - including long lines, voting machine errors and understaffed polling stations - that it said had disenfranchised voters in predominantly Democratic urban districts. Democratic officials, walking a fine line between their angry liberal base and centrist voters who consider the election over, said they were not contesting the results. But they said they planned to use the results of their investigation, which is to be completed by the summer, to demand changes to the electoral systems in Ohio and other states. "Like Florida in 2000, which gave us a lot of information and evidence that we used later on to improve our election system, Ohio will play that role for us this year," said Donna Brazile, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute. "There's no question that there's been a long pattern, a chilling pattern, of voter intimidation, voter suppression across the country over the years." Lawyers for the Green Party and the Libertarian Party - supported by Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign - are also expected to file requests on Tuesday in each of Ohio's 88 counties seeking a recount, a process that could take several weeks. The Kerry camp said it was not challenging the outcome of the contest but wanted to make sure all votes were counted. And on Wednesday, lawyers from the Alliance for Democracy, a group based in Massachusetts that advocates fair elections, plan to ask the Ohio Supreme Court to throw out the election results and declare Mr. Kerry the winner. Officials with the group, which is filing the request on behalf of 25 Ohio voters, said they would be able to demonstrate widespread irregularities and fraud in the heavily Republican counties surrounding Cincinnati. "We will allege in the complaint that the result should have been Kerry winning," said Clifford Arnebeck, a lawyer in Columbus, Ohio, who is co-chairman of the alliance. Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Mr. Blackwell, said Ohio's voting system was one of the fairest in the nation because each county board of elections includes two Democrats and two Republicans. "People would be alleging a conspiracy of both Republicans and Democrats to commit fraud," Mr. LoParo said. Mr. Blackwell himself, who oversees the state's voting system, has been severely criticized by Democrats as making decisions that benefited Mr. Bush. The new maneuvering comes 34 days after Mr. Kerry conceded Ohio and its 20 electoral votes to Mr. Bush, allowing the president to declare victory nationwide. At the time, Mr. Bush was leading Mr. Kerry by about 136,000 votes in Ohio, a margin Mr. Kerry's aides considered insurmountable. The final vote count showed that the margin had shrunk to 118,775 votes, or 2 percent of the total, after absentee and provisional ballots were tabulated and some Election Day counting errors were corrected, according to the certified results released by Mr. Blackwell on Monday. The voting in Ohio occurred under the scrutiny of squadrons of lawyers and volunteer monitors from the two major parties and several independent groups, which documented problems with long lines, errant voting machines and confused election officials. Republicans have asserted that while there were some problems, Ohio's election was generally smooth. Asked to comment about the Democrats' calls for an investigation in Ohio, Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, called the election there "free and fair." "The American people spoke very clearly on Nov. 2," Mr. McClellan said on Monday. "It was a clear victory for the president of the United States." Still, many Democrats and members of third parties around the country share a perception that the Ohio election was riddled with technical problems and fraud. The anger with the results has fueled successful fund-raising drives by groups that contend widespread irregularities occurred. The Ohio Green Party and Libertarian Party said they had raised more than $250,000 to defray the cost of recounting ballots in all 88 counties. And the Alliance for Democracy raised $108,000 through its Web site for the recount effort, Mr. Arnebeck said. Under Ohio law, the recount must begin within 10 days of the formal request and groups calling for a recount have to pay for part of the cost. Ohio's presidential electors are scheduled to meet next Monday to cast their votes for Mr. Bush, though it is virtually certain that the challenges and recounts will not be completed by then. James Dao reported from Washington for this article, and Albert Salvato from Cincinnati. nytimes.com Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company