Correction

This had been a post noting that AEI appeared to have pulled an anti-FMA op-ed by James Glassman, but a commenter points out that it's still up here, though they don't seem to be going out of their way to advertise it.

Update: Aaaand now it's on the list. What happened? Your guess is as good as mine…

Comments

[JimBob]

Glassman writes:

'He wants to throw red meat in the direction of radical religionists, who have made the issue their number-one priority."

So the Pope is a radical religionists? Nice touch there James. I bet he's standing in line to get his tickets to see the Passion on Ash Wednesday. LOL

[Will]

Man... Julian Sanchez sure sounds pissed off today.

[garym]

My experience is that the majority of "not found" errors are due to technical reasons (e.g., typos), rather than people doing about faces on whether they want the article seen or not.

[Geotech]

Waiting for Joe and S.M. Koppelman to start screaming like banshees about Glassman being an industry shill.

[Julian Sanchez]

Maybe if it were just the link to the particular article, but it's mysteriously not listed on the recent commentary either.

[Dan]

Wouldn't want to jeopardize another Cheney appearance at next year's gala dinner, would we?

The problem with your little paranoid conspiracy theory is that the Lieber/Lowery article is *also* strongly critical of Bush, and on a topic where he's a lot more politically vulnerable: runaway spending.

[Julian Sanchez]

Maybe the fear is of alienating donors rather than the administration, but it seems almost unbelievably naive not to look at the piece's content as the most likely reason it was pulled. But I don't see how this is either "paranoid" or constitutes a "conspiracy theory" (a conspiracy of who? AEI people and their webmaster?).

[tim]

what I think most interesting in all of this is that we now know that W has acknowledged the truth. taht is, that the US constitution, as it is written, will not allow discrimination against gays & lesbians. by insisting that he must amend the constitution to enforce his version of morality, he admits that he has lost the argument on its merits and therefore must now change the rules of engagement. sounds like unilateral pre-emptive war to me. are the american people supposed to fall for it again?

[Dan]

Maybe the fear is of alienating donors rather than the administration

That doesn't hold water, either. If they thought the article would offend donors, and thought that was enough reason to withhold it, why did they mention it on their website in the first place? Are you seriously arguing that AEI donors suddenly shifted from "willing to tolerate anti-amendment articles" to "intolerant of anti-amendment articles" just because Bush finally got around to doing something everyone but Andrew Sullivan expected -- endorsing the amendment? Or that AEI thought opposing the amendment was a safe thing for a conservative think-tank to do... until *Bush* came out against it? As if conservatives take their cues from Bush?

it seems almost unbelievably naive not to look at the piece's content as the most likely reason it was pulled.

Perhaps that *would* have been unbelievably naive, if I'd said it, which I didn't. I was just shooting down your notion that they canned the article in order to suck up to the Administration.

You're also overlooking the possibility that they (a) pulled the article to avoid personal embarassment (if, say, it had predicted -- on the very day Bush announced support for the marriage amendment -- that Bush wouldn't support the amendment) or (b) pulled the article at the author's request so that he could address these most recent developments. Or any of numerous other possibilities, including "someone deleted the article by mistake and they need to find another copy of it". 🙂

[Stephen Fetchet]

Way to go Julian! How to piss on one of the few largely libertarian groups that actually has pull with the administration. I know they are mostly weak-kneed Hayekians/Friedmanites/Chicago Schoolers, but still...

Next up: Why CATO isn't Rothbardian enough for us...

[joe]

Yes, Jim Bob, the Pope counts as a radical. Have you ever actually paid attention to his political and social commentary? He's farther out there than Nader, Sharpton, Bauer, or Buchanan.

[chairm]

I very much doubt that AEI is sucking up to its donors. But the site and Glassman (a research fellow, not a scholar) may have wanted to take into account Bush's recent statement and the response to it. That's a more reasonable speculation. But still, we can only speculate.

>>>by insisting that he must amend the constitution to enforce his version of morality, he admits that he has lost the argument on its merits and therefore must now change the rules of engagement.

[chairm]

I don't know if this is the best thread to enter into a general discussion of the FMA. I'm new here so I'll follow the lead of the moderators. Please point me in the right direction.

For the record, I don't think that conserving marriage is bigoted nor fanatical. And an FMA is an expression of federalism -- provided that it basically constitutionalizes DOMA. As for the question in the previous post about why any branch of government ought to conserve marriage, it seems to me that freedom is rooted in the institution of marriage. That is, across society, and across generations, marriage is a common good. We protect the environment and we have public health laws. Marriage is as important as the air that we breath. And I mean this in a societal sense, not in a strictly individualized basis.

[Andrew]

Well. I finally got a chance to see the article, and I have developed a theory of my own:

It is a dumb article. Not much more profound than the average post on H&R...and perhaps rather less. It centers on an entirely unsourced (and improbable) assertion that the President, rather than responding to recent court decisions, has "timed" his supprt for FMA on the election cycle. It says little more than that, and supplies nothing-- absolutely nothing-- to support the assertion.

Little wonder that this piece of cheap and subjective journalism is not a post AEI was proud of.

[T Bone]

Chairm,

I don't get any of your logic. Even if the FMA constitutionalizes the DOMA, how is that federalist? Can you better explain how "freedom is rooted in the institution of marriage"?

"Marriage is as important as the air we breathe." I hardly find this to be true, but certainly marriage is a fundamental part of our society. However, the conditions that marriage arose in - where women were basically property - are dramatically different than those today. Women becoming free seriously altered marriage already - in my opinion far more than homosexual marriages have the potential to do. Ditto for the enormous increase in wealth over the centuries.

[chairm]

>>>Letting the debate proceed at its own pace in each of the 50 states might be defusing the kind of nasty polarization we see surrounding abortion issue precisely because it defines issues as local, and not national, issues.>>That's some interesting circular logic you've got going there. Pass a constitutional amendment in order to retroactively constitutionalize a law passed several years ago? And this will accomplish...?>>there are some people who believe that individuals should make their own choices, not have choices made for them by the state.

[Grumpy Bob]

Chairm --

Thanks so much for defining the "common good" for me. We should all take note and make sure we are careful that our personal choices are okay with the "soveriegn people."

Yes, of course judges shouldn't legislate from the bench. If Mass. judges do that, then that is indeed a problem--for MASSACHUSSETS. Now of course there will be a lot of debate and plenty of opportunity to stop passage of the amendment. But why?? Why not leave it to the states?? Why would it bother a married hetero couple in Georgia if a gay couple in Mass. were able to get legally married?? Why can't the Bushites just live and let live??

[KJ]

This FMA is by no means an expression of federalism -- it's a complete renunciation of federalism, and a pretty unprincipled at that. Talk about "fair-weather federalists" who resort to central authority the moment it serves their purpose!

What the proposed FMA would do is to say that there is a "right" (and, therefore, by necessary implication, a "wrong") answer to the question at hand, and that same-sex marriage is no longer a subject on which reasonable people could, or would be allowed, to disagree -- pretty much what Roe did to the abortion debate. And sure enough, that debate has become completely unreasonable, on both sides, with otherwise sensible and decent people heaping contempt and hate upon those on the other side. The public debate on this question is ugly and gets uglier all the time, and I think the Supreme Court bears at least partial responsibility for that ugliness.

Letting the debate proceed at its own pace in each of the 50 states might be defusing the kind of nasty polarization we see surrounding abortion issue precisely because it defines issues as local, and not national, issues.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Julian, get out of Washington for a few days. You're starting to get a fevered brain like Andrew Sullivan.

[David]

The reason why it is "paranoid" to say that a busted link results from the desire to suck up to Dick Cheney is because they could easily have not mentioned the piece at all. Or is there further evidence of the AEI conspiracy in the fact that there are hundreds of anti-Bush pieces on the web which they suspiciously fail to even mention, let alone link to properly? I'm feeling embarassed for you now.

[chairm]

Why do you think state-approval of same-sex households is about personal choice alone?

>>>Why would it bother a married hetero couple in Georgia if a gay couple in Mass. were able to get legally married?? >>But why?? Why not leave it to the states?? ... Why can't the Bushites just live and let live??

[tim]

all this talk of conserving marriage, and of how W is really trying to protect the rights of gays by denying them. it's a little disengenuous isn't it?

marriage isn't a finite commodity that need to be conserved. if more people marry today it doesn't follow that less people can marry tomorrow. of course if W had his way (or perhaps his handlers and contributers had their way) then the Texas sodomy laws would still be on the books.

those opposed to gay marriage should at least embrace intellectual honesty and admit that they find homosexuality repugnant and unworthy of recognition. continued arguments that claim to "hate the sin but love the sinner" are just so much drivel.

make a reasoned argument that doesn't rely on "thousands of years of one man, one woman" or some other such nonsense and then progress can be made.

[joe]

...and go to war much less often, and abolish the death penalty. Totally a radical.

[Grumpy Bob]

Chairm - That's some interesting circular logic you've got going there. Pass a constitutional amendment in order to retroactively constitutionalize a law passed several years ago? And this will accomplish...? Apparently you think it's okay for a highly centralized national authority to define by fiat what the "common good" is for everyone else. This may come as a shock to you, but there are some people who believe that individuals should make their own choices, not have choices made for them by the state.

I have to agree with KJ--why can't CA and Mass. and all the other states be allowed to just sort this issue out for themselves, on their own terms?

Seems to me that Bush & Co. have no faith in marriage. Otherwise why would they try to force their own concept of marriage on to every individual in this country?

What really cracks me up though is that this could all be just much ado about semantics. I'll bet dollars to donuts that if the FMA passes and dependng on how it is worded, states that want to allow gay marriage will just call it by a different name to get around the Federal law. All this blather and fuming on this issue could be moot. But it sure is doing a good job of distracting everyone, isn't it?

[Michael]

It is an error. Go here.

[David]

I followed the new link and the article is prominently placed, listed fourth. If you want to just delete this posting to prevent further embarassing me and yourself, I promise not to tell anyone.

[chairm]

>>>all this talk of conserving marriage, and of how W is really trying to protect the rights of gays by denying them. it's a little disengenuous isn't it?>>marriage isn't a finite commodity that need to be conserved. if more people marry today it doesn't follow that less people can marry tomorrow.>>those opposed to gay marriage should at least embrace intellectual honesty and admit that they find homosexuality repugnant and unworthy of recognition. continued arguments that claim to "hate the sin but love the sinner" are just so much drivel.

[David]

I support gay marriage and also support some variety of the FMA. Why is it difficult for a libertarian who supports free speech without necessarily supporting everything said to understand arguments against judicial usurpation and the distortion of the constitution? Is there any policy you support which you don't believe should be implemented nationwide by dubious 4-3 rulings of the Massachusetts supreme court?

[Abe Kaho]

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DATE: 05/20/2004 06:37:22
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