Yes. That’s indeed what I’d be doing – assigning “anti-atheist bigotry” as my primary focus and doing all I can to change public opinion and society for the better in terms of this form of bigotry…at the expense of other priorities. I am not sure I agree that the problems the Senate needs to address ought to be weighed thusly.
I don’t think voting against a bigot, and advocating against bigotry, would take away from other priorities. I’m not saying throw a fit - just vote no, and explain why.
Perhaps you should look it up.
In general, I try to be cognizant of whether a statement suggests a personal preference or is in support of a specific proposal. I’d be interested in seeing an example from me that illustrates what you describe above.
Sure. Just as I feel that a nominee who favors banning guns would be able to apply the law as outlined in Heller and MacDonald notwithstanding his or her own policy preferences. Naturally, I would fear that this nominee would be damaging in edge cases. But ultimately, as I have said for the past eight years, elections have consequences, and Obama was entitled to appoint those who shared his goals.
Can you find any post from me over the past eight years which departs from that position?
So was bigotry against every other demographic at one point or another.
Didn’t make it right then, doesn’t make it right now.
You are correct in that the political calculus works out that atheists are an easy group socially against which to discriminate, but that’s why we put protections into the constitution and civil rights law in the fist place, to protect those groups who were vulnerable to being a socially acceptable group against which to discriminate.
But the particular type of discrimination in play here – urging that voters not vote for atheists – is the type of bigotry that has never been reached by those laws, and indeed is actually protected by the First Amendment.
Is anyone saying otherwise? Sure he can urge people not to vote for atheists. But it’s still an obnoxious thing to do (that also reveals deep and insulting misunderstanding of non-religious folks). He might remain legally eligible for high office, but he’s certainly not a good fit with those views.
Yes:
Since when do fans of teams that use the DH watch baseball?
Well, you can always go with the McConnell strategy of “rejected nominees all the way down”…
So…Ivanka?
If I give you a link to the post in question, could you please take a look at my point on this subject and clarify where I might be misunderstanding?
If the next guy is just as bad, or worse, is there some law that says you HAVE to accept him? I don’t think so.
Exactly.
The President, and his senior appointees, are not bound by the same restrictions that govern the civil service. The remedy for a President that says, “I will never appoint an atheist to my Cabinet,” is strictly political – that is, the public can choose to support or reject such a plan at the ballot box.
So in that sense, the government can apply a religious test and there is no legal remedy.
After William Ruckelshaus and Elliot Richardson had both resigned rather than fire Archibald Cox, Robert Bork was next in line. He discussed resigning as well with Ruckelshaus and Ruckelshaus told him not to – that essentially Nixon would simply keep appointing Acting Attorneys General until he found a janitor at the Justice Department willing to carry out the order, and that it was more important for the department to not lose their senior leadership in one fell swoop.
The same calculus applies here.
5 USC § 3349a provides, in relevant part, that a newly elected president may appoint acting officers without Senate consent for a period of 300 days, and § 3345 provides that when an office becomes vacant the President may staff it for up to 210 days.
The import of these rules is that while there is no law that says I have to accept anyone, the President may appoint people to the role of Acting Attorney General for 300 days, and when that appointment expires the person he appointed as Acting Deputy AG becomes Acting AG for 210 days, and so forth.
So my brave stand does not, in fact, frustrate the President’s appointment of a line of people bigoted against atheists.
Honest question, now, for you and all concerned: were you aware of the provisions of 5 USC § 3345 et seq (the “Federal Vacancies Reform Act”) and were you factoring the provisions of that rule into your analysis?
I wasn’t aware of that, but it doesn’t change my calculus. In the long run it’s absolutely vital to show disapproval of bigotry – acceptance of bigotry, even if it’s a lesser form, will do more damage to the country than opposition, even if it results in some period of time with someone who might be worse in some way than the first bigot. It’d be better, for example, if the Senate kept rejecting a hypothetical President Duke’s white supremacist nominees, demonstrating their unacceptability, even if this results in a 10 on the white supremacist scale in a cabinet position than a 9. If the 9 is voted in, that gives both President Duke and his appointee more political influence and power, normalizing them to some extent.
OK.
Do you believe that this position is true also for bigotry against atheists, and that no reasonble person could disagree with you? That is – you keep using the example of a KKK / white supremacist nominee, and I agree that your calculus is correct for this example, but I think it’s correct because of the opprobrium that a vast majority of the voting public would deliver to such a nominee. In other words, KKK beliefs are already firmly placed in the “richly deserving social pariah” category in the public mind.
I’m asking you if you also think it’s the right position for bigotry against atheists, which is already normalized and accepted by a wide swath of society, when the tradeoff might be someone worse with respect to racial and sexual identity rights.
And if you believe it’s right (which I suspect you do) do you contend that every reasonable person must also agree it’s right, or could a reasonable person weigh the damage the second, worse, Acting Attorney General might be for racial civil rights and LGBT civil rights, and make the contrary decision based on his view of political necessity?
A further thought experiment:
Let’s imagine we’re back in 2008, and you learn that Senator Obama believes that same-sex marriage is a moral necessity. Some of his advisors urge him not to share this belief, and instead affirm his public support for “one-man, one-woman” as the only permissible model for legal marriage.
If you have the opportunity, do you urge him to publicly support same-sex marriage leading up to the election? What if you were to learn that polling suggested that this issue might swing the election to his opponent, and he assured you that after his election, he was prepared to gradually reverse his position?
(Note that this is purely a thought experiment – I have ever reason to believe Obama was honest about his beliefs and that he, like many other Americans, simply came to change his mind. I did, after all).
I believe it’s right, but I think a reasonable person can disagree. I assume you also believe this.
Yes. I think bigotry against atheists is foolish and misguided. We have effectively limited our elected officials to religious believers of one stripe or another for years with no apparent universal virtue in their number. Some good, some venal, just as we’ll find in the atheist population. In fact, if I can hazard an intemperate guess, I suspect more atheists can convincingly claim that they have thought, in detail, about what it means to be good, and why they choose that path, than religious believers have, at least on a per capita basis.
But I think choosing this as a hill suitable for fighting and dying is the wrong practical choice. So as a reasonable person, I’d likely not hold the line on this issue if I were a senator.
First the came for the atheists, …