Abandoning NATO

Jonathan Steele argues in the Guardian that with the US taking an increasingly unilateral path, it is time to terminate NATO. The alliance was useful during the Cold War when Europe was threatened with Soviet invasion, but it is now past its use-by date; all it does now is provide a lever by which the US can bully Europe into backing its imperial ambitions. Add to the fact that NATO is now a signficant barrier to Europe standing on its own feet militarily (or at least making its own decisions), and the case is compelling.

But what about the historic good ties with the US? Freedland notes that

Ending Nato would not mean that Europe rejects good relations with the US. Nor does it rule out police and intelligence collaboration on issues of concern, such as the way to protect our countries against terrorism. Europe could still join the US in war, if there was an international consensus and the electorates of individual countries supported it.

But Europeans must reach their decisions from a position of genuine independence. The US has always based its approach to Europe on a calculation of interest rather than from sentimental motives. Europe should do no less. We can and, for the most part, should be America's friends. Allies, no longer.

Britain will never go for it, of course - but they're ambivalent about Europe anyway. The core European countries, OTOH - France, Germany, and the Benelux, who have seen all efforts to establish a European military screwed up by the US insisting on its dominance - probably feel very differently about the matter.

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New Zealand Political Comments

Grassroots

Further to the Alliance's demise, the Herald quotes from a letter sent to Alliance members by the outgoing leadership:

"We give notice that after the conference we will set up a new broad left activist organisation that will not run in the next election under its own banner, but will organise support for the Maori Party and Green Party and other progressive groups or individuals contesting electorate constituencies as appropriate."

I've argued for a while that the left needs its own think tank to provide intellectual ammunition to oppose the BRT, but I think that it also needs something like this: a grassroots organisation to encourage left-wing parties to stay left and maximise the chances of a left (rather than centrist) coalition government. It's good work, and I'm glad that the former Alliance leadership wants to do it. However, I also hope they'll avoid the usual left-wing problem of holding a grudge, and support any credible candidates the Alliance chooses to run.

Thoughts on the Alliance

There's been much coverage over the weekend of the "disintegration" of the Alliance, following the decision of its former leaders not to stand for office. But having read Span's take on the matter, I'm not sure that it's a disintegration so much as an opportunity for rebirth. The outgoing leadership had essentially lost interest in the party, seeing the Maori Party and the Greens as more credible left-wing vehicles. Under these circumstances, it's appropriate that they move on and allow others with greater commitment to take their place.

Unfortunately, commitment does not equal success, and the odds are against the Alliance making a comeback. MMP is effectively stacked to prevent new parties from gaining a foothold; the 5% threshhold is a signficant barrier, and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy - people won't vote for small parties because they have no chance of getting in (which is why we should ditch it). Which means that the Alliance contesting the list raises the prospect of a potentially vital 2 - 3% of the left vote disappearing into oblivion, or even of them taking the Greens with them. And as a left-wing voter, that's the last thing I want. Fortunately, the Alliance seems to realise that, and hopefully will be willing to endorse another left-wing party if they don't think they're going to make it.

Which really means that the Alliance's hopes lie in mounting a credible campaign for an electorate. They've done it before - Laila Harre made a good run in Waitakere in 1999, and Sandra Lee won a seat under FPP - but its still a big ask. And I can't imagine Labour stepping aside to let them in. Still, with the right candidate, in the right electorate, they might be able to make it...

The real problem, however, is pointed out by Just Left: the lack of a niche. When the Alliance was founded, Labour had clearly abandoned its left-wing principles, allowing a large amount of room for parties to the left of them. Now that Labour seems to have rediscovered its roots somewhat, there is less space to occupy. It's difficult even to come up with a killer issue on which to campaign - employment law has been fixed, the government is rebuilding state services, and has ended privatisations. A party to the left of Labour now simply represents "more" rather than a genuinely different approach. And I'm simply not sure that that's enough to get a party without much of a public profile back into Parliament...

Constitutional inquiries

The government finally seems to be getting its act together on constitutional review, with a proposal for a broad select committee style inquiry set to go before Cabinet. While it's dissappointing for those who wanted a full Royal Commission, I don't think it really deserves DPF's scorn as a Clayton's review. Yes, it will take time - but it needs it. The issues under consideration require a broad consensus if there is to be change, and if Don Brash was really interested in a debate on our constitutional structure (rather than simply trying to stoke tension to get votes), he'd support it. As for DPF's sneering at the idea of a "conversation witht he people", it depends on how it is done. If it is truly an attempt to promote grassroots discussion (as suggested by the Greens), then it should be supported. It's our constitution, after all; shouldn't we be involved in the process?

I think it's interesting that the government is also trying to focus squarely on the Treaty and put republicanism and a written constitution to one side for the moment. As I've argued here, the Treaty really is the prior issue, in that our answers on the other questions are going to depend significantly on how we approach the Treaty. Entrenching it as supreme law (as suggested by the Royal Commission on the Electoral System and pushed by Geoffrey Palmer) will drive us towards a more formal written constitution, for example, while the question of permanant Maori representation (or even, as ocassionally suggested, an upper house) will depend on what principles are extracted from it. Which means that this inquiry really is going to have to be followed by another one to deal with those other issues...

Can we fire them?

The chief executives of Auckland's local bodies unanimously agreed a "code of silence" on the issue of contaminated former agricultural land. I'm horrifed - firstly, that any local body would make such a decision (what happened to openness? What happened to informing people about dangers to their health?), but secondly, that it was made by the chief executives, who are unelected and now seemingly unaccountable to anyone.

Can they fire the fuckers?

Fighting the wrong war

A couple of months ago, US forces stormed Samarra in an effort to drive out the Iraqi resistance. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have worked. The resistance, it seems, have read their Mao:

When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances; harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws.

The same thing is going to happen in Fallujah. The US will take the city at the cost of several hundred civilian lives, but the resistance will simply go to ground. Then, when the US forces relax or turn their attention elsewhere, they will pop back up again to cause more trouble.

The US military have read their Mao too, and have been on the receiving end of these tactics in Vietnam. But despite this, they have failed to learn the lesson. The only way to defeat this sort of guerilla movement without committing widespread atrocities (which would be ironic given their claimed status as "liberators" of Iraq) is to win the battle for hearts and minds. Unfortunately, the US seems to be ignoring that battle (or else doing everything in their power to lose it). They are fighting the wrong war - is it any wonder that they seem to be losing?

Submissions and democracy

Big News asks (or rather, asked) "what is the point of opposing government bills when you are ignored?". The immediate cause of his complaint is the supposed lack of attention paid to submissions on recent legislation. While I can't comment on the committee process for the Care of Children Bill, having read the report on the Foreshore and Seabed Bill, I think it is wrong to conclude that the committee process has been a waste of time. While the committee failed to reach a verdict, the bill was still discussed, and amendments proposed and considered. The "failure" (if it can be called that) was political, in that no solid agreement could be reached on which amendments would be pursued. But reading past the rhetoric, there's very definitely a broad agreement between all participants but National and ACT on the general direction, and its just a matter of hammering out the details. I have no doubt that a compromise will be reached; what's unusual is that it wasn't reached in advance. And that's why I don't really consider it a "failure" - if a deal had been cut in advance, the public would have had far less input, and this way there is still a lot of scope for those with opinions on the bill to lobby parties as to which sorts of amendments they should support.

Likewise, I think it is simply false to claim that the submissions were wasted or have been ignored. Those with a memory longer than a goldfish may recall that when the bill went to select committee, the government's solution was all about crown ownership and management. Now they're essentially talking trusteeship and co-management through the vehicle of Maori Reservations. This change didn't come from thin air - it came from the submissions.

This is not to say that the government has paid equal attention or given equal weight to every submission, and nor should it. As I've said before, any solution to the foreshore and seabed needs the overwhelming support of Maori if it is to stick; it therefore makes sense to pay more attention to Maori concerns, and to move further towards their desired solution than that of those who oppose the bill on redneck grounds. Those who simply thought that the government should legislate to crush Maori claims were never going to get what they wanted - both because of Labour's political bent, and because it is not a lasting solution - but their submissions did still fill a purpose, in letting Labour know how far they might be able to move.

Big News also complains that

Come the final readings of these bills, the Government flip-flops. First its off to United Future for the Families Commission, will go to NZ First to pass the Foreshore and Seabed Legislation, and to the Greens to pass the Care of Children Bill.

That's not how voters wanted MMP to pan out.

Firstly, this isn't "flip-flopping" - the government isn't changing its beliefs or goals in any way. What it is doing is shopping around for a party which shares those beliefs or goals on any particular issue. What's inconsistent about that?

Secondly, it's exactly how I wanted MMP to pan out. In a democracy, the majority should shift; a permanant coalition creates a situation where one faction wins all the time, and another loses all the time, which simply isn't healthy. It's also important to note that the government's support is far broader than Big News suggests - 80% of all bills gain broad support, and even National and ACT have backed some legislation. And if nobody backs their legislation, then it simply doesn't happen.

But underneath these two complaints about the democratic process is the real issue, which is that Big News is upset that Parliament is passing legislation he doesn't like (and I say "Parliament" because he seems to be mostly complaining about conscience votes rather than party ones). But he's just going to have to grow up and learn to live with this. Contrary to his seeming belief, "democracy" does not mean "always getting your own way, regardless of how little support you have"...

Update: Fixed link. Big News renamed his post, and in the process removed the question I was quoting him as asking.

Roundup Ready Coca

Wired has a story about the emergance of a Roundup-Ready Coca strain in Colombia. The US government has been paying the Colombians to conduct a massive aerial spraying campaign in an effort to eliminate the Coca plant and thereby reduce cocaine production. Unfortunately, the plants just aren't dying anymore. There's a lot of speculation that the drug-lords simply bought themselves a few genetic engineers and used published techniques to implant Monsanto's (patented) Roundup-Ready gene, but it seems instead that the resistance is natural and propagated by farmers distributing cuttings to one another (which Wired naturally compares to file sharing). The US government of course is officially in denial, refusing to believe that simple-minded South American peasants could vanquish the American chemical industry with ten thousand year-old techniques, while making plans to escalate from herbicide to biological warfare agents. I guess they don't care about the prospect of a crop-eating fungus destroying people's crops and causing a famine if it's Colombians who will starve...

The economic backlash begins?

Economists have been warning for a while that Bush's economic policies of tax cuts for the rich coupled with increased spending would have consequences, and it looks like the backlash is already beginning. Despite positive news on unemployment and oil prices, and a stock market going wild at the thought of a return to gilded-age kleptocracy, the US dollar has fallen to a record low against the Euro. Why? Because people are selling out:

"It seems now that the longer-term investors like pension funds and perhaps monetary authorities are either hedging their dollar risk or moving assets out of the United States.

"It looks like the dollar has further to fall," Mr McMahon said.

While this may simply be a blip, if people are seriously divesting from the US because they don't want to be exposed to Bush and his trillion dollar deficits, it spells big trouble. The US runs an enormous trade deficit as well as a fiscal (government) one; it is therefore dependent on large influxes of foreign capital every day to keep the money-go-round spinning. If that capital dries up, or if foreign investors decide they want to get off, then you get Argentina. And a falling dollar, which erodes the value of US-dollar denominated assets, will simply encourage more people to get off...

Ratified

Russia has finally ratified the Kyoto Protocol. It's been approved by the upper house and signed by Putin, which means it will come into effect in 90 days.

I think this shows the way forward now that we are facing four more years of Bush. Under the Bush presidency, the US has not engaged constructively with the world, and it seems even less likely to in the future. And so, we are simply going to have to work around them...

Votes

The Hansard Reporting Service has been kind enough to provide me with the details of last night's voting on amendments to the Care of Children Bill. They note that they have not been proofread, and that there may be errors in the number counts or even the voting records themselves. Still, this is the best I can get until the Hansard Advance comes out next week.

There were three votes of interest. The first was on Supplementary Order Paper 294, from United Future's Murray Smith, proposing that no teenager be permitted to have an abortion without written notification of parental consent.

Ayes (26): Adams, Awatere Huata, Baldock, Brown, Carter J, Catchpole, Collins, Connell, Copeland, Duynhoven, English, Field, Gudgeon, Heatley, Jones, Mark, McNair, Ogilvy, Paraone, Perry, Peters J, Peters W, Smith M, Smith N, Turia, Turner.

Noes (94): Alexander, Anderton, Ardern, Barker, Barnett, Benson-Pope, Beyer, Bradford, Brash, Brownlee, Burton, Carter C, Carter D, Chadwick, Choudhary, Clark, Cosgrove, Coddington, Cullen, Cunliffe, Dalziel, Donald, Donnelly, Duncan, Dunne, Eckhoff, Ewen-Street, Fairbrother, Fitzsimons, Gallagher, Goff, Gosche, Hartley, Hawkins, Hereora, Hide, Hobbs, Hodgson, Horomia, Hughes, Hunt, Hutchison, Kedgley, King, Laban, Locke, Mackey J, Mackey M, Maharey, Mahuta, Mallard, Newman, O'Connor, Okeroa, Parker, Peck, Pettis, Pillay, Prebble, Ririnui, Robertson, Robson, Roy, Samuels, Shirley, Simich, Sowry, Stewart, Sutton, Swain, Tamihere, Tanczos, te Heuheu, Tizard, Turei, Ward, Wilson, Woolerton, Yates.

Apart from the usual suspects from United Future, National, and NZFirst (who really are a bunch of moral neanderthals), there's also two Labour MPS: Harry Duynhoven and Taito Phillip Field. I'm not sure that they're really in the right party. And judging by Tariana Turia's vote, Labour is well rid of her.

(Refreshingly, this was a morally authoritarian motion that was not backed by a single ACT MP. Maybe they're remembering that "liberal" word they claim to be so proud of...)

Two amendments were suggested by National's Judith Collins for a milder regime which still required the notification of a parent or judge. The first vote attempted to insert two clauses.

Ayes (45): Adams, Alexander, Ardern, Awatere Huata, Baldock, Brash, Brown, Brownlee, Carter D, Carter J, Catchpole, Collins, Connell, Copeland, Dunne, Duynhoven, English, Field, Franks, Goudie, Gudgeon, Heatley, Jones, Key, Mapp, Mark, McCully, McNair, Ogilvy, Paraone, Perry, Peters J, Peters W, Power, Rich, Ryall, Scott, Smith L, Smith M, Smith N, Tisch, Turner, Williamson, Wong, Worth.

Noes (75): Anderton, Barker, Barnett, Benson-Pope, Beyer, Bradford, Burton, Carter C, Chadwick, Choudhary, Clark, Coddington, Cosgrove, Cullen, Cunliffe, Dalziel, Donald, Donnelly, Duncan, Dyson, Eckhoff, Ewen-Street, Fairbrother, Fitzsimons, Gallagher, Goff, Gosche, Hartley, Hawkins, Hereora, Hide, Hobbs, Hodgson, Horomia, Hughes, Hunt, Hutchison, Kedgley, King, Laban, Locke, Mackey J, Mackey M, Maharey, Mahuta, Mallard, Newman, O'Connor, Okeroa, Parker, Peck, Pettis, Pillay, Prebble, Ririnui, Robertson, Robson, Roy, Samuels, Shirley, Simich, Sowry, Stewart, Sutton, Swain, Tamihere, Tanczos, te Heuheu, Tizard, Turei, Turia, Ward, Wilson, Woolerton, Yates.

The second vote, on Supplementary Order Paper 293, was almost identical, with Bill English and Hutchison switching positions (so English voted against, and Hutchinson for).

Stephen Franks betrays himself as numbering among the moral conservatives. here the dichotomy between Labour and National couldn't be any more stark, with only the same two labour MPs voting for this, while it was backed by around 80% of National MPs.

There was also a fourth vote, on an amendment proposed by NZFirst's Dail Jones, which was defeated 97 - 22. Unfortunately, I don't know what it was, so I'll hold back on the voting record on that one until I find out whether it is relevant.

Update (06/11/2004): Added links to amendments.

It's the center, stupid

SageNZ loks at the NBR's poll showing that more Kiwis consider themselves right than left, and asks So why the hell are helengrad in power?. The answer is in the part of the spectrum he doesn't talk about: the center. It's the largest group, and Labour dominates it - and rather than fighting for this centre ground (or trying to shift it significantly), National under Brash are going harder and harder right.

There's also the fact that in New Zealand, support for public services and the welfare state is not simply a left wing position, but stretches a long way up the spectrum. But by saying essentially that they want to repeat the failed policies of the 90's, which actively threatened these core components of New Zealand society (remember the hospital reforms, anyone?), National are cutting themselves off from the bulk of New Zealanders. Which frankly suits me just fine.

So, to put it bluntly: Labour are still in power because their policies are far more acceptable to the majority of New Zealanders than those offered as an "alternative". And as long as National looks as if it is stealing its policies from ACT or the Business Round Table, it is likely to remain that way.

Victory on abortion notification

Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to defeat two amendments to the Care of Children Bill which would have required doctors to notify the parents of teenagers requesting an abortion. Judith Collins' amendment proposing that either parents or a family court judge be informed was defeated 75 - 45. Murry Smith's proposal to prevent any teenager from having any abortion without written confirmation that parents had been advised (in effect, to use notification as a barrier) was defeated 94 - 25. This represents a victory for the status-quo, and a defeat for the relgious wingnuts.

I'll post voting records when I receive them. This is the sort of vote where we want to know who voted how, because it will affect our judgements of MPs regardless of which side we are on.

Update: Forgot the link, dammit.

Dichotomies

Crooked Timber's Chris Bertram points out that the inheritors of the American dream are the Democrats. All the things that people admire about the US, and which Americans quite rightly point to as national achievements, came from states which backed John Kerry:

- The thirteen original states that brought us the Constitution voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry.
- The states that didn’t secede and which fought against slavery voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry.
- Black America which brought us in Martin Luther King, one of the greatest moral exemplars of modern times as well as the blues, jazz and soul voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry.
- California, home of the modern motion picture industry, voted for Kerry.

What'd the "red states" give us, by contrast?

• The states which seceeded from the Union to protect the "right" of men to own other men voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush.
• The states which opposed civil rights and gave us the Ku Klux Klan voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush.
• The states which voted for bigotry and rejected any legal recognition of gay couples voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush.

In short: slavery, bigotry, and hate. The contrast couldn't be any greater.

Also on Crooked Timber: Kieran Healy has some interesting maps of voter distribution. While by counties, it looks as if you can see the red/blue split from space (basically coming down to urban cosmpolitans vs rural hicks), a continuous distribution which colours counties with a mix of red and blue depending on the proportions of Republicans and Democrats shows that the picture isn't quite that clear-cut...

Paying the price

Tony Blair sent a British unit to Baghdad to cover for the Americans. Now, three of them are dead, and more look likely to follow. Take a big bow, Tony!

The British should never have sent their troops into an area where the security situation had been defined by American stupidity and ignorance. They are now paying the price for the Americans' treatment of Iraqis, for the fundamental lack of respect which saw every "hajji" as the enemy and placed no value on Iraqi lives.

Tinfoil hats indeed

The Sock Thief points to a post on Crooked Timber entitled "MASSIVE VOTING MACHINE FRAUD!" and calls them

Desperate, pathetic, counter-productive.

I suspected that's what they were like.

But perhaps he should actually read the article rather than unthinkingly reacting to the headline or its author. For a start, it's about Venezuela, not the recent US election. Secondly, it's in part a commentary about how the dispute has been conducted honestly and respectfully, rather than (for example) in the manner Sock Thief so obviously prefers. But why let what people have actually written get in the way of what Sock Thief thinks they have written? Easier simply to label them tinfoil-hat wearers, while continuing to see Bush-hating anti-Americanism everywhere. Tinfoil hats indeed...

Endorsements

The White House has been quick to label yesterday's results as a strong endorsement of the President, and there's really no other way to see it. The American people have endorsed Bush - and by doing so endorsed Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, disappearances and torture, lies about WMDs, and an imperialistic attitude towards the rest of the world. They saw the photos of the hooded and wired Iraqi standing on his box, and of Lynndie England dragging her helpless and naked victim around on a leash, and they voted for it.

Like the Dred Scott decision, this endorsement is going to be a permanent stain on the US's record, and take a long, long time to live down.

Foreshore and seabed: reporting back

The Fisheries and Other Sea-related Legislation committee has reported back - or rather, failed to report back - on the Foreshore and Seabed Bill. Their reports can be found here.

The Labour-Progressive section centres on the ability to create "Maori Reservations" under the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993, and suggests that this is a form of trusteeship solution. I'll need to look at the law a little more closely before making any judgement on that.

National's section is predictable, calling the bill "divisive" and expressing the opinion that Parliament had not intended the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 to apply to the foreshore and seabed. Which misses the point that Maori claims do not rest on that act, but on the long-standing common-law doctrine of aboriginal title. They also oppose customary rights as they encourage "rent seeking behaviour", while insisting that the rights of existing property owners (including, presumably, their right to charge or impose conditions on those wanting to impinge on their property) be protected. Their overall thrust is one of property rights for all - except brown people.

ACT opposes the bill as an infringement on private property rights - but also on the basis that government should not be attempting to define Tikanga Maori with respect to coastal land ownership. Of course, if the government doesn't define it, the courts will - but I suspect that they'd object to that too (and have in the case of the Wanganui headwaters case). So their "respect for private property" essentially boils down to a denial of any recognition of the basis of that property, no different from the racism of Justice Prendergast.

ACT also opposes customary usage rights, on the contradictory grounds that they "fail to provide the holder with any meaningful or clear property right" while at the same time "invite application as instruments of leverage for obtaining blackmail payments". But the ability to make such side deals (or "blackmail payments" as ACT calls them) was one of the chief purposes of the RMA - it freed people up to decide for themselves the value of their property rights, without involving the state. ACT's real complaint, as with all of their whining about the RMA, is about the distribution of property rights, not with the ability to make deals. And in this case, they're objecting to the thought that anyone brown (or rather, anyone other than a developer?) might posses such rights.

The Greens have a constructive report which favours the crown granting only inalienable title, negotiated co-management, and protection of public rights of access. They seem to favour a trusteeship model, with the sole difference of which party the underlying title is vested in. Frankly, if public access and recreational use is guaranteed, it doesn't matter who owns it, and if this sort of solution is acceptable to Maori, the government should adjust the bill to suit.

United Future is also constructive, and suggest both further consultation and a number of technical amendments. One interesting one (which is also supported by the Greens) is a requirement for a supermajority to alienate any foreshore or seabed in the future. While I sympathise with the sentiment, such a clause would (for example) prevent any grant of foreshore or seabed as part of a Treaty settlement. Given the desire of right-wing parties to play politics over righting the injustices of the past, I think that this would be a bad idea.

The independent specialist advisor's report has a lot of interesting material about customary rights and aboriginal title and integrating these with the common law. The ISA favours ancestral connection as a "given", requiring proof only for its boundaries, and given the cultural context of maori as tangata whenua, this is fair enough. However, they separate this sort of ancestral connection (granting a general right to participate in the planning process) from guardianship or co-management, which should still require some form of court order.

The ISA also calls for the redress provision (which currently calls for negotiations) to be modified to state that redress will consist of the recognition of some form of qualified title, to be exercised subject to certain conditions: in other words, co-management or trusteeship. Which again is a solution I can support. The core problem with the bill is that it threatens to rob Maori of aboriginal title; specifying redress in this fashion makes it clear that aboriginal title is being codified and protected, rather than extinguished.

So, there's a lot of good stuff in the report, and far more agreement than you'd get simply from reading the press releases. There's probably a way forward here, and I look forward to seeing the government's proposed amendments.

Beacons of hope

DPF seems to think that my comment about the Soviet Union having once been a beacon of hope was some sort of endorsement. Hardly - like DPF, I think that it was a murderous totalitarian despotism whose passing should not be mourned for an instant. At the same time, I recognise the fact that, in the 1920's and 30's, it really did seem to hold out the hope of a better society to a great many people in the west, and was looked to as a model to be emulated. Stalin finished that, though the seeds of its downfall were present right from the beginning, both in the bloody manner in which it came about, and in an ideology which followed Rousseau in thinking that people could - or should - be "forced to be free".

But I guess that sort of recognition of historical fact is just a little too nuanced for those who can't go beyond "communism = bad"...

As for the US, Just Left lays out why the United States was a beacon of hope: the values espoused in the US Declaration of Independence, and its constitution, of freedom, equality, and tolerance, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". As Jordan says:

The real reason America fires so many hearts in praise and anger is that the values it claims to stand for speak to everyone, and usually to the better part of people.

Unfortunately, a majority of voting Americans no longer seem to believe in those values anymore. Quite apart from the election of Bush and endorsement of his policies (more on that later), they also voted to ban gay marriage in eleven states. The US is no longer a beacon of hope or freedom - it is a nation of theocratic bigots.