It was a beautiful North Carolina spring day in 2000 at the governor’s mansion in Raleigh, and Governor Jim Hunt was sprinting down the giant ruby-red stairs. I was his then-young press aide, and we were running late because he had been on the phone with President Bill Clinton.

Naively, I noted something about their discussing a state issue. Without missing a beat, the governor said of Clinton, his fellow Democrat, “I was telling him what he was doing wrong with the country and how to fix it!”

So began my real education in politics, which I was quickly learning had even more to do with human interactions than I realized.

Last week, Hunt died at 88, a historic figure in North Carolina politics who served 16 years as governor. Appointed governors from the Colonial Era served longer, but no one has yet matched Hunt’s tenure as governor from 1977 to 1985 and again from 1993 to 2001.

The obituaries are full of his accomplishments and his most notable defeat, a 1984 bid to unseat U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. Hunt once told me his TV ads were “all wrong,” which may be true, but that was a bad year to be a Democrat, especially in the South. Ronald Reagan carried the state with almost 62 percent of the vote. Helms got 51 percent.

But I’m drawn to the dynamic between Hunt and Clinton, southern Democratic moderate governors who had to find a policy and political path forward as the South became increasingly Republican in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. They weren’t alone. Democratic southern governors like Ray Mabus in Mississippi, Richard Riley in South Carolina, Roy Barnes in Georgia, and Reubin Askew in Florida had similar dilemmas. They had a common goal, but they were all rivals in a way, too.

Clinton had real indebtedness to Hunt, nine years his senior. Hunt’s advocacy led to him serving as chair of the Democratic Governors Association. Clinton recalled “[I]t was the first significant national position of any kind I had.”

Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory aligned with Hunt’s return to the governor’s seat. Together, they used their bully pulpits in Washington and Raleigh to advance policies that could push the progressive envelope in a conservative era.

In 1997, when Clinton spoke before a joint session of the North Carolina legislature, as part of his crusade for national education standards and a testing plan, he called Hunt a “mentor and friend,” whose work was influenced by Hunt’s labors to create national teaching standards. Indeed, Hunt’s wilderness years outside elective office were spent as founding chair of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which to date has certified over 141,000 teachers with the profession’s highest credential.

Hunt never missed an opportunity to promote this cause to Clinton, even if it meant being aggressive. A White House staffer once told me that Clinton always insisted on understanding how the federally supported teaching certification program was progressing because Hunt was sure to grill him about it.

Photos of Hunt and Clinton are like a time capsule from a bygone era. For instance, there was a joint announcement of a public-private partnership to bring Internet access to the state (and a bit of a tug-of-war over who should get credit).

There were their combined efforts to pass a “global settlement agreement” between tobacco companies and the feds, which faltered, and later a “master settlement agreement” with the states that was sealed. There was their mutual understanding that education had to start before kindergarten and that it was a winning issue with voters—something New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani latched onto over 30 years after Hunt.

The Clinton-Hunt friendship is a testament to the ideals of intergovernmental relations—that federal and state leaders should cooperate. One area that’s particularly telling about how things have changed is disaster funding. The Clinton years allowed Hunt to boast about securing federal dollars for North Carolina after devastating hurricanes; one wonders how Hunt would navigate President Donald Trump’s truculent withholding of disaster relief.

Just because both men were Democrats didn’t guarantee success. Hunt served as governor during Jimmy Carter’s administration, but that relationship was fraught, with fights over college funding and tobacco, the state’s cash crop.

January will mark a quarter-century since Clinton and Hunt last held elective office. North Carolinians should remember that their bond produced outcomes that benefited the Tar Heel State. So should the rest of us. Their relationship continues to serve as a national model during these divisive times.

The post What Bill Clinton Learned from Jim Hunt and Why It Still Matters appeared first on Washington Monthly.

In an attempt to pressure universities into divesting from companies tied to the Israeli military—and, in some cases, severing all financial and academic relationships with anything Israeli —student protestors and their allies are establishing encampments and occupying buildings on university campuses at a brisk clip. Mother Jones identified active protests on 13 campuses. With the arrest of more than 100 Columbia University students last week drawing national media attention, expect the number to grow.

By those metrics—number of participants, amount of media attention—the protests are a success.

But the focus on divestment is strategically weak. What’s more, the loose-knit nature of the protest is attracting advocates of anti-Israel violence, undercutting demands for a ceasefire, diverting attention from the Israeli Defense Force’s Gaza campaign, and decreasing the value of all that earned media attention.

In some ways, the encampment strategy is irresistible. University endowments are natural, proximate targets for student activists. Plus, the divestment of yore has been romanticized after the anti-apartheid campaigns of the 1980s were followed by the demise of whites-only rule in South Africa in the 1990s.

The biggest flaw in the divestment strategy was succinctly articulated two years ago in the Harvard Business Review by Tom Johansmeyer: “Selling an asset requires someone to buy it … for you to divest, someone else needs to invest,” he wrote.

That’s why such boycotts generally don’t work. As William MacAskill of the University of Oxford wrote in The New Yorker, “Studies of divestment campaigns in other industries, such as weapons, gambling, pornography, and tobacco, suggest that they have little or no direct impact on share prices. For example, the author of a study on divestment from oil companies in Sudan wrote, ‘Thanks to China and a trio of Asian national oil companies, oil still flows in Sudan.’ The divestment campaign served to benefit certain unethical shareholders while failing to alter the price of the stock.”

Moreover, like other entities with endowments, such as foundations or union pension funds, universities have moved away from investing in specific companies and toward complicated financial vehicles. They’re not necessarily buying shares of McDonald’s or HP, two multinationals attacked by the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement. As Kian Braulik, a Brown University student sympathetic toward divestment strategies, explained for the Boston Review, “Students in the 1970s and 1980s could identify and directly target companies operating in South Africa.” But now, “endowments’ portfolio managers rely on the caprices of finance capital, particularly the performance of hedge funds and private equity firms. The nature of these complex financial institutions makes it impossible to put pressure on the university to disinvest from single companies. An index fund, for instance, is a financial instrument that tracks the market’s performance in given sectors. Buying stock in one means betting on many companies, rather than investing in one.”

So, to divest in every company remotely connected to the Israeli military would require a wholesale overhaul of an endowment’s entire investment strategy and a return to mere stock picking—potentially weakening the endowment’s health and all that flows from it such as student financial aid—without actually depriving those companies of economic resources because the assets in question would be sold to other people or institutions.

The potential value of a divestment strategy is more indirect. Conflict on college campuses attracts media coverage. Most reporters are college graduates who assume great importance in the political happenings among students. Many media consumers lap up such stories, either to feel exuberant about the prospect of youth-led change or to doomscroll about the radicalization of the next generation.

To activists, any media coverage raises the profile of the targeted sin, which can theoretically be leveraged into more potent political action. For example, as university divestments accelerated in the mid-1980s, alongside a wide range of anti-apartheid organizing activity, Congress in 1986 was prompted to pass economic sanctions on South Africa in such overwhelming bipartisan numbers it overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto.

To generate public pressure on Congress required possessing an indisputable moral high ground that could neutralize craven arguments.

Even the notorious right-wing Republican Senator Jesse Helms conceded, “Nobody is for apartheid.” All he could do, in a failed attempt to filibuster the sanctions bill, was argue, “Who are we to be so pious about the efforts of the South African government to stop the riots, the looting, the shooting, and the mayhem that’s going on over there?” He also tried to fan fears of a country led by then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela and his socialist African National Congress: “South Africa, and consequently, all of Africa [would] fall under the control of the Soviet Union.” Intense media coverage shed light on those flimsy arguments on behalf of indefensible racist oppression.

Still, not even government-imposed sanctions, along with university divestments, had all that much economic impact on South Africa. A 1999 academic study published in the Journal of Business found “no support for the common perception … that the anti-apartheid shareholder and legislative boycotts affected the financial sector adversely.”

Nevertheless, those actions, promoted by a wide swath of governments and institutions, were interpreted ominously by F. W. de Klerk, who became South Africa’s president in 1990. South Africa’s economy wasn’t being hit hard yet, but de Klerk figured it might be in the future. Years later, he reflected, “If we had not changed the manner we did, South Africa would be completely isolated. The majority of people in the world would be intent on overthrowing the government. Our economy would be non-existent—we would not be exporting a single case of wine and South African planes would not be allowed to land anywhere. Internally, we would have the equivalent of civil war.” Sanctions, divestments, and a growing global sense of moral outrage forced de Klerk’s hand.

No doubt today’s student activists wish to replicate such global pressure. And Israel’s gruesome response to October 7 has unwittingly helped that cause. But the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is far more complicated than South African apartheid and always has been.

Arguing that the Israeli government’s military response to the savage October 7 attack by Hamas on civilians was indiscriminate, resulting in thousands of needless non-combatant deaths and near-famine conditions across Gaza, is simple enough. But without any parallel condemnation of the civilian deaths and hostage-taking by Hamas, such arguments do not promote peaceful settlement but promote one side’s victory in war. More importantly, from the standpoint of the protestors, they’re unlikely to snowball into actions that could damage the Israeli government.

It may be that the video of small groups outside Columbia chanting “burn Tel Aviv to the ground” or one protestor telling Jewish students, “The 7th of October is going to be every day for you,” is not representative of student protestors. But without firm leadership from the activists, setting broadly shared political goals and rejecting violent antisemitic threats, the comments from the worst people will shape the media coverage, raising questions about the ultimate goals of those behind the encampments.

The endgame of the protestors is unclear. Do most want the peaceful coexistence of a two-state solution? The elimination of Israel by any means? We don’t know. The unsettling possibilities sap the potential for a student-led divestment strategy to produce international pressure on a scale emulating what happened four decades ago to South Africa.

European colonists ruled South Africa, whereas Israeli and Palestinian peoples have ancestral claims to disputed lands. Both have been subject to abhorrent violence and bigotry. Media coverage doesn’t simplify the matter. It magnifies the tragic complexity.

Divestment strategies are inherently weak tools. Many universities, such as Columbia, have already divested from fossil fuel companies, tobacco producers, and anything connected to Sudan to almost no effect. They are even weaker when they are deployed to solve problems plagued by moral quandaries.

The post The Divestment Encampments Don’t Make Any Sense appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Vermont’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, who is transgender, said Tuesday she’s been getting a steady stream of death threats and other personal attacks since her candidacy began to draw attention from across the country and the world.

Christine Hallquist, who won Vermont’s Democratic gubernatorial primary last week, said most of the threats, which began before she won the nomination, have been coming from outside of Vermont, although during her primary campaign it was not unusual for people to yell insults at her during parades and other public appearances.

‘‘Early on when our team assembled I said ‘the more successful we are, the more vitriol and threats we are going to receive,’’’ Hallquist said Tuesday. ‘‘It’s kind of a natural outcome of our divided country.’’

Hallquist is incorrect; these death threats are the natural outcome of Trumpism. The Donald’s devotees don’t even want Hallquist to use a public bathroom, much less be a public servant. Their loathing is limitless.

Hallquist, who is now running against incumbent Republican Gov. Phil Scott in the November election, is the first openly transgender political candidate to have won a major party nomination for governor.

Scott said Tuesday he was saddened to hear Hallquist had been threatened and he would not tolerate hate speech or violence against anyone.

Scott is an obvious liar. Clearly, tolerates hate speech and violence by virtue of his affiliation with the Republican Party, which has been hurling hate speech against members of the LGBTQ community for decades—and which opposes efforts to protect all vulnerable Americans from the scourge of gun violence. If Scott were serious about his opposition to right-wing recklessness, he would pull a Jim Jeffords and leave the GOP.

One wonders what goes through the minds of LGBTQ Republicans when they see a story like this. Do they dismiss such stories as “fake news”? Do they turn a blind eye because it’s happening to a Democrat? Do they assume that it’s some sort of false-flag operation launched by George Soros to generate sympathy for Hallquist? Aren’t they troubled at all by this right-wing hate? They can’t be that hungry for a tax cut, can they?

I still remember the shock in Massachusetts political circles back in 1996, when Boston Magazine outed the late Republican political consultant Arthur J. Finkelstein, who was notorious for his campaign work on behalf of such vehemently anti-LGBTQ politicians as the late Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC). Then as now, people were shocked that Finkelstein could place his ideology above his identity, and align himself with people who believed his life and his marriage didn’t matter.

Don’t LGBTQ Republicans–and any Republican who isn’t a straight white Christian male–realize the profound perfidy of their politics? What values are they fighting for, exactly? What are they trying to conserve? When will they realize–will they ever realize–that they will inevitably be targeted for torment by the same bigots they have aligned themselves with?

The post The Right’s Lethal Loathing of the LGBTQ Community appeared first on Washington Monthly.

I’m looking for a miracle
I expect the impossible
I feel the intangible
I see the invisible

The sky is the limit
To what I can have
The sky is the limit
To what I can have…

“Expect Your Miracle” would make a great theme song for Doug Jones’s US Senate campaign. Actually, the old Laura Nyro/Deniece Williams tune “It’s Gonna Take a Miracle” might be an even more appropriate song—because that may well be what it will take for Jones to defeat the alleged sex fiend who is his opponent.

Only the most naive among us were surprised to learn that Roy Moore—the man who allegedly liked to use the nearest high school as his Tinder—has recaptured his lead over Jones in some recent polls. (A new Washington Post poll has Jones up by three points, but let’s be honest: if you’re ahead of a reputed pervert by only three points nine days before an election, that’s not a good position.) Moore, Donald Trump and the far-right media machine have apparently brainwashed a critical mass of Alabama voters into believing that the allegations of amorous amorality against Moore are nothing more than a Satanic conspiracy. Lord have mercy.

Moore has effectively won this election even if he loses it. If Jones pulls off the greatest US Senate special-election upset since Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley seven years ago, Moore and his minions will simply allege fraud and theft, declaring that under no circumstances would the people of Alabama vote in good conscience for a baby-killing, God-denying, gun-grabbing, wealth-redistributing, Schumer-loving, Pelosi-obeying Democrat. The right-wing media machine will assault Jones as though he were a male Elizabeth Warren. The level of hatred directed towards Jones could well rival, in terms of its intensity, the opprobrium directed towards Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Of course, it’s quite likely that things will never get to that point. On December 12, there will be plenty of Alabama voters who, in effect, only see Moore’s name on the ballot. Those voters view the Democratic Party the same way Democrats view the Green Party—as a fringe outfit not worth the time of day. The evidence against Moore means nothing to them. Ex-evangelical Frank Schaeffer explained the thought process of this sort of voter in a 2009 appearance on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show:

…[T]he mainstream–not just media, but culture—doesn’t sufficiently take stock of the fact that within our culture we have a subculture which is literally a fifth column of insanity that is bred from birth, through home school, Christian school, evangelical college, whatever, to reject facts as a matter of faith…There is no end to this stuff. Why? Because this subculture has as its fundamentalist faith that they distrust facts per se…And the Republican Party is totally enthralled to this subculture to the extent that there is no Republican Party. There is [only] a fundamentalist subculture which has become a cult.

How ironic that a man with the last name of Jones is running against a cult leader. Like Trump, who has convinced his cheerleaders that the Michael Flynn scandal is a nothingburger, Roy Moore has handed out cups of Flavor-Aid laced with the cyanide of cynicism—and his eager followers have swallowed it down in one gulp.

Imagine, for one moment, Roy Moore in the US Senate. Imagine him demonizing those he regarded as domestic enemies of the United States with McCarthyesque fervor. Imagine him denying climate science and attacking climate scientists with a rage even Jim Inhofe couldn’t muster. Imagine him doing to Kamala Harris what Jesse Helms did to Carol Moseley Braun.

If enough Alabama voters take to the polls on December 12 with grievance in their hearts and Fox News talking points in their heads, we won’t have to imagine it. Sadly, we will all live it.

The post Is Doug Jones Doomed? appeared first on Washington Monthly.

It seemingly still has not dawned upon rational and logical Americans just how deep the rabbit hole of irrationality and illogic really is in this country. There is still this Pollyannish belief out there that finally, the levees of right-wing epistemic closure will be breached, and the seriousness of the allegations against Alabama US Senate candidate Roy Moore will cause even the most conservative of conservatives to wake up.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

Rational America sees Roy Moore for what he is: a repulsive bigot who likely preyed on young children. Irrational America–Republican America –sees Moore far differently: as a warrior against “political correctness,” as a crusader against “baby-killers,” as a scold of “sodomites.” They want him. They love him. He is their man.

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle declared on Monday that Moore’s continued support in Alabama was “perverse.” Of course, voting Republican as a whole is perverse, yet millions of Americans, in Alabama and elsewhere, continue to do it.

That same day, Newt Gingrich told Sean Hannity that there is a “lynch mob” after Moore. How many Republicans think the exact same way? How many Republicans, in Alabama and elsewhere, view the Washington Post and all of Moore’s Democratic and Republican critics as allies of the “deep state” devoted to stopping an iconoclast determined to “shake things up” in Washington?

Does anyone seriously believe that Moore won’t win? Does anyone seriously believe that once he wins, the Senate will expel him? It’s impossible to envision Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and “establishment” GOP Senators being willing to risk the wrath of the right-wing media colossus by actually expelling Moore in the event the alleged pervert defeats Democratic opponent Doug Jones on December 12.

If Moore wins, it won’t be long before he cements his place in history as the single worst US Senator of the post-WWII era—worse than even Jesse Helms or James Inhofe. Moore would be Steve Bannon and Pat Buchanan combined into one, a man of the highest self-regard and the lowest character. What slurs would he hurl towards Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker (and, if he crosses Moore, even fellow Republican Tim Scott)? What crude misogynistic insults will he spew at Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Maria Cantwell? What level of demagoguery towards the press will he stoop to?

In all likelihood, we’ll find the answers to those questions soon enough. Yes, it’s a bit cynical to assume Jones is ultimately doomed, but only just a bit. This is, after all, the state that sent Jeff Sessions to the US Senate ten years after he was deemed too racist to be a federal judge–and kept him in the Senate for three subsequent terms.

One wants to believe that somewhere, there’s a conscience inside Alabama Republicans who are considering voting for Moore. One wants to believe that there is an internal voice of sanity urging them not to support the alleged pedophile, not to back the bigot, not to hug the homophobe. One wants to believe that they will be touched by the better angels of their nature. However, that belief is, within the context of modern American politics, profoundly naive. The hatred among Alabama Republicans for people they regard as undesirables simply runs too damn deep. Doug Jones is certainly a noble and well-qualified public servant who’s doing quite well in polls close to a special US Senate election. So was Martha Coakley, and we all saw how that one turned out.

The post Moore’s the Pity: The Moral Horror of Alabama’s GOP Senate Nominee appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Hey, Donnie, you’re not fooling anyone today.

The man who questioned Barack Obama’s legitimacy as a United States citizen, and who incited all manner and manifestation of hatred before and during his presidential campaign, has no standing to call for unity. It was his supporters who are responsible for this weekend’s viciousness in Virginia:

After a morning of violent clashes between white nationalists and counterprotesters, police ordered hundreds of people out of a downtown park, putting an end to a noon rally before it even began.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency shortly before 11 a.m., blaming the violence on “mostly out-of-state protesters.”

“I am disgusted by the hatred, bigotry and violence these protesters have brought to our state over the past 24 hours,” McAuliffe (D) said.

Other elected leaders in Virginia and elsewhere also urged peace, blasting the white supremacist views on display in Charlottesville as ugly. U.S. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called their display “repugnant.”

Repugnant, Paul? Was it any more repugnant than when your hero, Ronald Reagan, held his own hate rally in Philadelphia, Mississippi, 37 years ago this month, where he proclaimed his belief in “state’s rights?” Was it any more repugnant than when George H. W. Bush shamelessly stoked racial fears in his 1988 presidential campaign? Was it any more repugnant than when Jesse Helms convinced white voters in North Carolina that nonwhites were taking all the good jobs in 1990? Was it any more repugnant than when Rush Limbaugh proclaimed in 2010 that the Affordable Care Act was a form of reparations?

No wonder Republicans like Ryan are embarrassed by the chaos in Charlottesville. Their party stoked this hatred for decades, going all the way back to Barry Goldwater’s resistance to the Civil Rights Act 53 years ago. The madness in Virginia is the natural consequence of decades of GOP normalization of hate and rationalization of racism. This is your legacy, Republicans. As you sow, you shall surely reap.

UPDATE: Trump’s truly pathetic remarks about today’s deadly act of terrorism in Virginia.

The post The GOP Bears Full Responsibility for the Havoc in Virginia appeared first on Washington Monthly.

A year and a half ago, I observed that President Obama “has brought us through the worst financial heartache since the Depression. He has brought us through incidents of shocking gun violence. He has brought us through racial discord sparked by those who so obviously killed Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner because they saw these men, subconsciously, as proxies for the President.”

Perhaps we should add the names of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile to that list: I’m not quite sure what else would motivate a man to, in essence, give someone the death penalty for selling CDs in a parking lot, or to blow away a cafeteria employee in front of his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter. Hate is the only logical explanation for the deaths of Sterling and Castile, as well as the deaths of Dallas police officers Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, and Lorne Ahrens at the hands of a violent vigilante.

Sadly, our national healing won’t begin anytime soon, as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump continues with a campaign that would make George Wallace envious. (Don’t be fooled by his response to Dallas.) Earlier this year, I noted that Trump had obviously inspired an incident of intolerance in suburban Massachusetts that generated national headlines. Several months later, it’s apparent that Trump’s mendacity towards minorities still motivates the malevolent:

A Freetown [Massachusetts] firefighter has been removed from the force after the fire chief was alerted to a racist comment he made about an Assonet house, owned by a black family, where a house party drew more than 1,000 guests earlier this month.

“I can see the next fire call will be this house on fire and I’ll make sure I can’t find the hydrant lol,” Kyle Grenier, a volunteer, paid-by-call firefighter for the Freetown Fire Department for the past five years, posted in a June 22 Facebook conversation.

“Lol wait in fear the water might come out too fast,” a Facebook friend replied to Grenier’s reference to the June 18 house party at 18 Leonard Avenue that neighbors complained was out of control. After town police declined to shut down the party, which lasted until 4 a.m, Freetown selectmen and public safety officials held a special public discussion earlier this week.

“Nope just make sure no water so no more house [parties] with black Boston people,” Grenier wrote back.

Fire Chief Gary Silvia said he was alarmed by the comments and said that kind of behavior has no place in his department.

Well, thanks to Trump, “that kind of behavior” is America’s new normal.  

Remember when former First Lady Rosalynn Carter said that President Reagan “makes us comfortable with our prejudices“? Trump has convinced far too many Americans that their prejudices aren’t really prejudices, that it’s normal and necessary to scorn African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, women, veterans and those with disabilities. He is Jesse Helms back from the grave.

Even if he loses in a landslide on November 8, Trump will have left our country in grave condition. He has already made us meaner, coarser, nastier, less tolerant, less civil, less American.

Remember when Trump said he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any of his supporters? I fear that when he takes the stage at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland one week from now, we will see Trump at his most repellent, his most repulsive, his most repugnant–and he will still be revered by his fanbase. The question is, will the sight of Trump at his absolute worst finally awaken the moral conscience of the “moderate” Republican voters who still think Trump and Hillary Clinton are equally lacking in ethics, and who plan to abstain from voting on Election Day?

I hope that the “moderate” Republicans who believe there isn’t any real difference between Trump and Clinton consider the words of the late Elie Wiesel:

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

Do the “moderate” Republicans who say they’ll remain neutral on November 8 realize their children and grandchildren will judge them harshly for doing so?

UPDATE: More from MSNBC and the White House.

The post The Closing of the American Mind appeared first on Washington Monthly.