Month: December 2019

The Nation

For many in our nation, it’s hard to get “past” the facts of the President’s actions.  The most recent polling average shows that 48% of Americans want to impeach and remove the President from office.  45% are against that.  After all of the presentations and hearings, all of the speeches and tweets, it all comes back to roughly the same number we’ve been living with since the beginning of the Trump Administration.  Mr. Trump’s recent job approval rating is 53% opposed, 44% in favor (RCP).

In our “post fact” world America has two sets of facts.  There is what I consider the “real world” facts, and there are the “Fox News” facts.  These are two radically different stories telling absolutely opposite tales about the actions and intentions of the current President of the United States.  If you can’t agree on the “facts,” it’s hard to imagine you can agree on anything else.

The Facts

But for the purpose of today and this essay, accept the following set of facts (I know I’m asking a lot, maybe too much for some, but to understand what the House of Representatives is doing, you need to work with “their” facts).  

1. In 2016, Donald Trump accepted and welcomed help from Russian intelligence sources to win the Presidency.  Some of his top campaign workers cooperated with Russian intelligence, or its surrogate, Wikileaks, for election aid.  While the Mueller investigation was unable to reach a “criminal” standard for most of those actions, the Report made it clear that they happened (Mueller Report, Volume 1).

• In 2017-18 Mr. Trump and his associates did everything possible to obstruct the Mueller investigation.  In the Mueller Report, at least ten clear acts of Presidential obstruction of justice were explained (Mueller Report, Volume 2).  A Trump political appointee, Attorney General Bill Barr, decided not to allow those charges to go forward.

• In 2019, Donald Trump conditioned Ukrainian aid on the government of Ukraine opening an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden, and the Crowd Strike conspiracy, actions that would aid the Trump 2020 Presidential campaign.  This was not only outlined in the phone call with President Zelenskiy on July 25^th, but was an orchestrated plan using Mr. Giuliani and political appointees of the Trump Administration. (Intelligence Committee Report, Volume 1).

• Since the “whistleblower” report revealed the President’s plan, Mr. Trump has done everything in his power to block any investigation into what occurred.  He has absolutely refused to cooperate with Congressional investigation, ignoring subpoenas and denying witnesses.  His actions have attempted to prevent any Congressional oversight of his actions (Intelligence Committee Report, Volume 2).

Justice

These are the “facts” as the leadership of the House of Representatives seems them.  This is what Speaker Nancy Pelosi is using to determine what the next actions need to be. 

There are three ways to check an “out of control” Presidency.  The first is through regular criminal investigations.  Attorney General Barr is very familiar with this function of the Justice Department. In his first stint as Attorney General under the George HW Bush administration, Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh finalized his investigation into the Iran-Contra Affair.  Eleven Reagan Administration officials were indicted, including the National Security Advisor, an Air Force Major General, and the Secretary of Defense.

Attorney General Barr advised President Bush to pardon all of those convicted or waiting to stand trial.  In the current crisis of the Trump Administration, Barr has made it clear that the Justice Department is going to act as the President’s personal attorney, demanding unprecedented powers and protections for the Presidency.  In short, the Justice Department has become an extension of the Trump Presidency, not an unbiased arbitrator of the law.

Congress and Elections

So if the normal course of criminal investigation and prosecution can’t be used to oversee the Presidency, then it falls to the Congress to do the job.  But, if the President refuses to recognize Congressional powers to oversee, subpoena documents, or call witnesses; then Congress will have great difficulty doing that.  President Trump consistently shows that he will not cooperate with Congressional oversight.

The third way to check the President is the most obvious one:  elections.  We are less than a year away from the 2020 Presidential elections, and there is great comfort in saying:  let’s wait until November, wait until “the people” can choose.  

Here’s the problem.  The 2016 Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference in the 2016 election.  We know President Trump tried to pressure Ukraine to involve itself in the 2020 election.  President Trump has brazenly asked for help from Ukraine and China in investigating his political opponent.  And we know that the United States has done little to prevent the kind of election manipulation that took place in 2016.  We can’t trust that the 2020 election won’t be tainted even more.

Impeach Now

Working from the “facts” as the House sees them, there is no choice.  If the Justice Department won’t act, and the Congress is blocked, and the 2020 elections may be tainted: the House of Representatives must impeach the President for his actions.    

Impeachment needs to go forward, even if a Republican Senate is unlikely to convict and remove the President.  Impeachment is the only way to present “the facts” to the American people, even if the Senate “jury” is already tainted to ignore those facts (ask Lindsey Graham, who states that he won’t even look at the evidence).  

Americans need to know what happened.  If the Senate won’t act, then at least the nation will know when they go to the polls in November.  

That’s why Impeachment is crucial.

A Nation at War

Ukraine is at war with Russia.  Ukraine is the 29^th most powerful country in the world, rated just behind Greece and Thailand.  There have 1,205,000 in military service.  Russia is the second most powerful force in the world, with over 3 million in uniform.   That’s more than the “First Place” United States, by the way, with US forces at 2,200,000.

So if Russia really wants to invade and take over Ukraine, they have the military power to do it.  And it’s clear that the Russia’s President Vladimir Putin wants to take over, to “get Ukraine”.  He’s already taken one province, Crimea and invaded two others.  Putin wants today’s Russia to regain the “lost empire” of the Soviet Union.  And it’s not just Ukraine:  Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, and Moldova, are other European nations “on the block” for Russian expansion.

So what’s stopping Putin’s dream of Russian empire?

Russian Empire

There is the European Union, and NATO.  But most importantly, the United States of America directly supports Ukraine.  Russia recognizes that a full out invasion of Ukraine would, at the least, trigger crippling economic sanctions, and at the worst, a direct confrontation with the US and European military.  The US “thumb” is on the scale, balancing the Russian might.  America knows that their Ukrainian position “tweaks” Russia.  They also know that a full out military confrontation in Ukraine would put US forces in a difficult and dangerous situation.  

When Russia invaded and claimed Crimea, President Obama placed economic sanctions on them.  When Donald Trump was running for President, he made statements saying he would remove those sanctions, essentially accepting the Russian takeover.  Not surprisingly, many Ukrainian leaders spoke out against Trump during the 2016 campaign.  Hillary Clinton was likely to be even tougher on Russia than Obama was.  Reasonably, Ukrainian leaders were hoping she would win.  

That’s not “election interference” as many Republicans are now claiming.  Ukrainian leaders voicing their opinion of what’s best for their own country, even if they do it in editorials in American newspapers, isn’t attacking our election process.  That’s what the Russians were doing, from manipulating social media to hacking political emails, to direct attacks on US voting systems.  What the Ukrainian leaders did was the same kind of thing that Donald Trump does for Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom and Ben Netanyahu in Israel.

For Ukraine, regardless of whether Trump or Clinton is President, every ounce of US backing is important.  Since the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian Presidents, Poroschenko and Zelenskiy, have done everything they could to guarantee US aid, particularly military aid, to their nation.  US support for Ukrainians is not a luxury. It is a survival issue.

Fall of Communism

Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.  Much like Russia, when the Communist regime collapsed there, a huge amount of publicly owned industry went onto the open market.  Then the “supply and demand” of capitalism played out.  The supply of industry and property on the market was high:  that made those values lower.  Communism’s collapse created a fire sale on much of Ukraine’s means of production, and speculators made and lost huge fortunes.

It was an environment ripe for corruption, for buying officials to get an inside line on the sales.  It happened in both Russia and Ukraine, and created a new class of the wealthy called “oligarchs”.  Many of them got their millions illegally, and those that didn’t were forced to pay for illegal action to protect them.  Organized crime and organized government often became one and the same.

Corruption, Corruption, Corruption

So corruption was a huge issue in Ukraine.  Before the Russian invasion, in 2014 the people of Ukraine rose up against the Russian backed President, Victor Yanukovych, who rose from serving prison time to become a billionaire during his political career.  He’s the one that Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort worked for.  Once Yanukovych fled to Moscow, the people ransacked his multi-million dollar home.  They found a journal, listing illegal payments, including $12 million “under the table” to Manafort.

Even with Yanukovych gone, the United States and the European Union still had great concerns about Ukrainian corruption.  Vice President Biden led in putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to move against that corruption, even demanding the removal of the State Prosecutor, who wasn’t investigating the Russian backed leaders in exile.  Biden, following US and EU direction, threatened to withhold aid to do it.  The Prosecutor, Viktor Shokin was fired and a new prosecutor, willing to prosecute, was brought in.

Over a Barrel

Ukraine is over a barrel, the barrel of a Russian tank.  When President Trump asked the new President, Zelenskiy, “to do us a favor, though…” on the infamous July 25^th phone call, Zelenskiy didn’t have much of a choice.  When he discovered the US military aid and US recognition of his new administration in a White House meeting were being withheld, he had to find a way to grant the favor that Trump wanted. He scheduled a CNN interview, to announce investigations into the Joe and Hunter Biden and Counter Strike, as Mr. Trump asked. Only when the US Congress became aware of the funds block and pressured Trump to release it, did the Ukrainian leader cancel with CNN.

So when President Zelenskiy is asked today whether he was “pressured” by Mr. Trump, of course he says no.  The aid of the United States is critical and the Trump Administration still controls it.  Zelenskiy is like the kid in the principal’s office, hit by a bully.  When the principal asks, “who did this to you,” the kid answers “I don’t know”.  

The bully is still out there, and the kid doesn’t want to get hit again.

(note – this essay was written prior to the Intelligence Committee Report publication on 12/3/19)

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” – US Constitution, Article 2, Section 1

It’s written directly into the Constitution:  preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.  It was so important to the authors, that they wrote it into the oath, part of the first section about the President of the United States. 

Constitutional Process 

But the first step in “…preserve, protect and defend…” must be to actually respect the Constitution, an action the Trump Presidency has yet to do.  The Constitution grants the House of Representatives the sole power of impeachment.  There have been three Presidents in American History who have faced impeachment: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Richard Nixon in 1974, and Bill Clinton in 1998.  All three used every legal and political means to avoid being impeached.  

But all three respected the process, the system set up by the Constitution.  They respected the legal right of the House of Representatives to raise the question of impeachment, and, in two cases, stood trial in the Senate for Articles of Impeachment brought by the House (Nixon resigned before he was impeached).

But Mr. Trump, characteristically, has treated the House and its Constitutional authority with contempt.  The President’s attorney, Pat Cipollone, stated the following in his response to the House Judiciary Committee’s invitation to participate in their inquiry.

“…Regarding the purported impeachment inquiry…this baseless and highly partisan inquiry violates all past historical precedent, basic due process rights, and fundamental fairness” (WAPO).

The White House argument, echoed by the Republican House members, has been to demand that the process be altered.  They demand that the committees hold a separate “trial” of the President at each stage of the investigative process, with the President’s attorneys able to call witnesses and interrogate.  Their claim is that the process is un-American, and unfair to the President.

Who Investigates?

The difference between the Nixon/Clinton impeachments and the current Trump situation is the absence of action by the Department of Justice.  In the case of President Nixon, Special Prosecutors Cox and Jaworski did full investigations of the Watergate break-in and the White House cover-up.  In the case of Bill Clinton, Independent Counsel Starr did a four-year lead up to Congressional impeachment. 

Both during the Cox/Jaworski investigation and the Starr inquiry, the President’s counsel didn’t get an opportunity to question witnesses.  While Nixon was required to turn over evidence (the tapes) and Clinton was deposed (“the meaning of the word ‘is’”) they could not cross-examine during the investigative phase.

The same was true during the Mueller investigation.  And that effort did NOT result in impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

Two Functions -Two Committees

But the current Ukrainian crisis is different.  The President’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, refused to allow the Justice Department to investigate. He left the House of Representatives to perform two functions:  investigate, then determine whether the results of that investigation rise to the level of impeachment.

In order to do both, the House used the relevant committee, the Intelligence Committee, to perform the investigatory function.  They heard witnesses specific to the charges that the President demanded a “quid pro quo” from the Ukrainian government. He wanted  help for the 2020 Trump Campaign in exchange for military aid for Ukraine. 

Republican members of the Committee engaged in three forms of obstruction.  In the beginning, they attacked the procedural basis for the investigation.  When that failed, they tried to cloud the investigation with irrelevant issues. Republicans tried to bring up the actions of Hunter or Joe Biden, and the “Crowd-Strike” conspiracy theory.  The President might raise these later in the “trial” phase of the impeachment as “alternate theories”. But during the investigation they were presented as distractions to finding the facts of what the President did.

The third Republican strategy was to discredit the “fact” witnesses against the President.  From the honored former Ambassador to Ukraine, Maria Yovanovitch, to Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, the House Republicans spent a great deal of time trying to prove that somehow they shouldn’t be heard.  This is all part of a larger “theme” of Republican obstruction:  that the “Deep State” of career government workers somehow is trying to destroy the Trump Presidency. 

Investigation to Determination

While the Intelligence Committee continues their investigation, they have gotten enough information to forward to the Judiciary Committee.  Their function is to take the facts given, and apply them to the Constitutional definition of impeachable offenses.  The Constitution states:

 “…the President…shall be removed from office on impeachment for; and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The task of the Judiciary Committee is to determine what this means, and whether the facts presented by the Judiciary Committee are significant enough to impeach. 

This is similar to the judicial process of Grand Jury Indictment.  A Grand Jury hears evidence presented by the prosecution.  After all of the prosecutor’s evidence is heard, the Jury determines whether there is probable cause that a crime has been committed.  If they reach that conclusion, then indictments are issued, and a trial begins.  The “defense” doesn’t have an opportunity to intervene until the actual charges are made.

Once the Judiciary Committee concludes its hearings, it will make a recommendation to the full House of Representatives.  If they recommend impeachment, the House will vote on the charges to be sent to the Senate for trial.  A majority of the House could bring charges against the President.

The Defense’s Turn

President Trump and his lawyers are anxious to defend themselves against the “purported impeachment inquiry” but they aren’t that excited to involve themselves with the House of Representatives.  That’s fine for them.  They’ll get their opportunity to defend in a Senate trial, where the “jury” of Senators, at least fifty-three of them, is likely to be more sympathetic to their case. 

But a Republican Senate will still be restricted in their actions.  The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Roberts, will preside over the trial.  His goal surely will be a fair proceeding, one that will lead to a clear verdict. While a majority of the Senate could overrule the Justice’s decisions, if they do that, it will increase a perception that the President is getting favorable treatment, regardless of his guilt or innocence.  

It’s a Constitutional process, one that even Bill Clinton, accused of perjury and sexual impropriety, treated with respect.  President Trump has so far attacked the process. His actions further weaken the Constitutional bonds that hold our nation together. 

 Guilty or innocent (or somewhere in between) he needs to respect the process, and the Constitution.

Make Votes Count

Why should young people register to vote in 2020?  In much of the country, their vote won’t make a difference in who wins the Presidential election.  The Electoral College muffles the voice of Americans, with only a few “swing” states in play.  It is only in those “purple” states that individual voting really makes a difference in choosing the President.  And that’s something we need to change.

Democracy

The United States of America is a Representative Democracy, a nation where the people elect representatives to the government.  Those representatives then create, debate, and pass the laws that govern the people.  Just as “the people” indirectly legislate by electing the legislators, “the people” indirectly elect the executive to administer the nation.  The President is chosen by an arcane process where the direct vote influences, but doesn’t necessarily control, the final outcome.

In any “real” democracy, the “health” of the process is determined by the percent of the eligible population that participates.  Governments that are not democratic but want to “fake” that they are, always arrange for huge election turnouts, invariably giving vast majorities to the leader or party in power. They then claim a mandate to govern. 

“Real” democracies have “real” competition for elective office.  The more voters that turnout to vote in those elections, the healthier those democracies are.

On the list of world democracies, the United States ranks 26^th out of 34 in voter turnout.  The top five:  Belgium*, Sweden, Denmark, Australia* and South Korea all are over 78% of their eligible citizens voting (* mandatory voting).  The US is at 56% turnout (2016).  This means that nearly half of the voting age population in the US DOES NOT VOTE.  It also means that it’s always a minority of Americans that elects the legislature, and the executive (Pew). 

Make Registering Easy

There are technical laws that could increase voter registration in the United States.  Automatic voter registration rather than a separate process would work. Registration through driver’s licenses, or from tax or school records, is possible.  In addition, Belgium and Australia and other nations, have compulsory voting laws.  Australia’s fine for failing to vote is $20. 

In the US we could also remove jury selection from the voting roles.  Currently in many states juries are called exclusively from registered voter lists.  In Ohio, for example, if a citizen doesn’t register to vote, they won’t get called for jury duty.  There are plenty of other lists that could be used for jury selection:  income tax filers, state ID holders, even welfare lists.  Exclusively using voting lists for jury polls not only creates a disincentive to registering (if the potential voter doesn’t want to be on a jury), but could also skew the juries, particularly in those states that are engaged in voter suppression activities (Hannaford-Agor).

A Breakfast Conversation

But the most effective way to increase voter turnout in the United States is to convince potential voters that their vote makes a difference.  Which brings us to the Electoral College.

The most significant election, and the one with the largest turnout, is the Presidential election every four years.  In 2008, the highest voter turnout in recent times, 62.3% turned out to vote.  This was Obama versus McCain election, and resulted in the election of the first African-American President.  To paraphrase Joe Biden, it was “a big ****** deal.”  But it still meant that 38% of eligible voters didn’t vote.

There is an apocryphal story about a conversation between Thomas Jefferson and George Washington at lunch.  Jefferson complained about the bicameral legislature, saying the Senate was unnecessary. 

Washington then supposedly asked Jefferson, “why did you now just pour your coffee into your saucer, before drinking?”  

“To cool it,” Jefferson answered, “my throat is not made of brass.” 

“Even so, Washington responded, “we pour our legislation into the Senatorial saucer to cool it” (Monticello).

Electoral College

The Electoral College was put in the US Constitution because of the Constitutional Convention’s concern for giving too much power to a possibly ill-informed electorate.  The people directly elected the House of Representatives. The Senate was chosen by the State Legislatures, and as Washington supposedly illustrated, was designed to “cool” the House’s passions.  In the same way, the Electoral College was selected by the states, with state legislatures given the authority to choose electors to select the President.  That body actually votes for President; to “cool the passions” of direct democracy.

Today in all but two states, the Presidential candidate who wins the majority of the popular vote in a state wins all of the electoral votes.  The effect of that is that in a large majority of states the electoral outcome is foreseeable before any voter comes to the polls.

Note: in Maine and Nebraska each Congressional District chooses electors separately, with two more votes decided statewide.

In 2016 in California, Hillary Clinton won 61% of the popular vote.  All of the state’s 55 electoral votes went to her.  A Republican voting in California knew that essentially, their vote for President didn’t count. In Wyoming, 70% of the vote went to Donald Trump.  A Democrat knew that their vote wouldn’t influence the state’s 3 electoral votes.

Change the Process

Unless a voter is located in a “swing” state, there is little incentive to go vote in the most significant elections, Presidential.  For young voters in particular, the arcane “winner take all” Electoral College process discourages them from participating.

The obvious answer is to remove the Electoral College, and elect the President directly.  This would require a Constitutional Amendment:  two-thirds of the House and Senate, and three-fourth of the states all in agreement to pass.  There are far too many politicians and states that gain advantage from the current process for that to happen. 

But, since legislatures determine the elector selection process (US Constitution, Article 2, Section 2) there are a number of ways the system can be altered under the current law.  One proposal is the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact”.  State legislatures would agree to appoint electors based on who won the national popular vote, rendering the Electoral College a “rubber stamp” to the popular outcome.

State legislatures could also appoint electors based on the percentage of votes each candidate earned in the state. In 2016, under that process, California’s 34 electoral votes would go for Clinton, 19 for Trump, and 2 for Gary Johnson.  Wyoming would have 2 for Trump, and 1 for Clinton.  The danger of this process:  any third party votes might deny a narrow popular vote winner an Electoral College majority, placing the tiebreaker election int0 the House of Representatives.

It’s Purple Here

Here in Ohio, every vote makes a difference.  While almost all of the state offices are held by Republicans (hang in there Sherrod Brown!!) even in 2016 Trump only got 52% of the popular vote.  In 2012 and 2008, Ohio voted for Barack Obama. 

But that’s not true in most states.  And that reality,  “my vote for President really doesn’t matter” is a disincentive to new voters.  Of course their vote does matter for every other elective office on the ballot.  But the Presidential election drives voter turnout, and the United States should recognize that we are driving down the turnout, by law. 

It’s time to change.

Cathedrals to Creation

It’s in Northern Kentucky, just south of Cincinnati.  For only $75 you can get a “combo” ticket – one adult, good for the Creation Museum and a tour of a life sized replica of Noah’s Ark.  You can even catch a glimpse of the boat from I-75 as you speed toward Lexington.

The Creation Museum calls out to you:  “Prepare to Believe!!”  It is the most visible national sign of “creation science,” the re-branding of the Biblical book of Genesis as a “scientific” view.  The Museum even accounts for fossils, found in the silt and sand. They say they were buried during the Deluge.  Before the Flood, according to “creation science,” man and dinosaur coexisted on earth.

There’s nothing wrong with the Creation Museum, or the life sized Ark.  They are built with the same intent as Medieval Cathedrals, as monuments to religious devotion and belief.  To the believers, they are places to remind them of the wonders of their faith.  To the non-believers, those same places remind them of the religious dedication of their fellow men.

Science based on Faith

We learned the definition in school:  science is the study of the world based on developing a hypothesis, or theory, then using provable facts to support, modify, or dismiss it.  Religion is a belief system based on faith.  These are not opposites; they can both exist in the same space.  What cannot happen: provable facts cannot be confused with faith-based beliefs.  

So the facts of science, stacked into provable concepts, always subject to verification by new facts, are tangible.  You can look at evidence, physically touch the fossils, and understand the concepts of Carbon Dating and time.  Millions of years cannot be condensed into the Biblical generations adding up to 6000.

When I first started teaching school in the late 1970’s, public education in Ohio had reached a balance between facts and faith.  In science class, evolution was taught, and the facts were laid out.  Students were required to know and understand those facts, but they were not required to “believe” them if their faith taught them differently.  They could have “faith” in what they wanted, but had to know the facts to pass the tests.

There was a distinction between Biblical creation and evolution.  Good teachers made it clear that many of the scientists who worked in evolution, including Charles Darwin, believed they were describing “the plan” used by the Deity.  But “the facts” of evolution were delineated from the “faith,” whatever that was, of the scientists.

 Battle in the Schools

But there was a backlash that took hold later in the 1980’s.  It started with “creation science,” a skillfully manipulated “term of art” that cloaked faith in the language of science.  Since it sounded like science, the proponents demanded that it be given the same standing in science class.  In 1987 the US Supreme Court ruled that it was in fact faith, not science. Teaching “creation science” in public schools, the Court ruled, was the government taking “a side” in religion, in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution (Edwards v Aguillard 438 US 578, 1987). 

Then it was rebranded, this time as the “scientific theory of intelligent design.”  Intelligent design hypothesizes that the complexity of life on earth are too great to have been “random chance” over millions of years, and therefore required some unseen force directing its design – in other words, a Deity.  The proponents did an even better job of cloaking their religious views in scientific terms, and demanded that “intelligent design” get equal time with evolution in science class.

Courts v Politics

Federal District Judges have ruled that intelligent design does not meet the non-religious criteria set in Edwards to be taught in public schools (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Dist., 400 F. Supp. 2d 707, M.D. Pa. 2005).  But the pressure on teachers, administrators, and local school boards from religious groups has been intense. Many science teachers in public schools today avoid teaching about evolution.  Instead, they teach “the facts” of science, but leave the terms, evolution in particular, out.

While the battle may have been won in the Courts, it still plays out in Board of Education meetings every year.  And while the Courts may be on “secular” teacher’s side, that doesn’t help much when three out of five school board members were elected to back “intelligent design”.

It Started Here

Our political discourse today is rampant with differing “sets of facts”.  We look at, for example, the testimony in the House Intelligence Committee hearings, and hear absolutely opposite things.  For one side, there is clear evidence that the President of the United States attempted to bribe another nation for help with his campaign.  For the other side, it’s clear that the President did nothing wrong (or at least that’s what they say).  

Even in the Vietnam War crisis of the 1960’s, it seemed that there was a single set of facts that could be discussed.  And when the most trusted source of those facts, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, questioned the war, it impacted the view of the entire nation.  Today there is no person with that kind of influence.  We don’t just disagree, we don’t believe in the same set evidence and facts.

When did that happen?  Is our national factual dispute just the creation of Roger Ailes and Fox News?  Here’s a “fact” to think about:  the “facts” first disputed were in the classrooms of public schools.  Students were allowed to conflate facts and faith, and encouraged to “create” their own facts.  If that worked for evolution, why not for other uncomfortable “facts” in society:  for poverty, immigration, and climate change.  

Teachers aren’t the only ones teaching students.  Perhaps our national “accommodations” for creationism in the past forty years created a national willingness to accept only the facts that fit our existing views.  

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said:

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.”

That’s not what we’re teaching.