Me & Mr. Boortz

I was perusing the pages of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution last weekend—following my usual routine of obsessive reading about the Braves (most of the news concerning which I had already read via various internet sources, but which didn’t stop from me re-reading it all again, of course) in the Sports section, followed by a skim/spot read through the front page, metro, and business sections—when I made the mistake of glancing at the editorial section.

When I can bring myself to do it, my usual method of reviewing the editorial section of the AJC involves taking a few seconds to see what everybody is talking about, scanning the first couple of sentences of each column to see if I already know what the “liberal” or “conservative” is going to say, and then, the rare instances I don’t, moving to Stage Two. Stage Two involves probing a bit further with a brief skim over the internal paragraphs of the column and then reading the thing itself if it seems interesting.

I frame this in terms of reluctance, incidentally, because the stupidity and spin that litters editorial pages, the AJC included, usually pisses me off or disgusts me, which is not how I like begin a day.

Anyway, I carried out that strategy once more last Saturday and found nothing worthy of Stage Two, until I ran across Neal Boortz’s column. It was an opinion piece that was kind of a general diatribe—no single issue was addressed. Accordingly, it whizzed by Stages One and Two as a result of its skipping around of topics—there was no real theme, just a kind of yammering. It went like this:

* Stage One: Hmmm, what is this about? Can’t tell from the initial sensationalist intro.

* Stage Two: What does that have to do with the other stuff? What? Are you SERIOUS?

Then commenced the reading, the irritation, and actually enough outrage to pound out the following email to the editors of the editorial section at the AJC:

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Dear AJC Editors:

I know you gave Neal Boortz a column, but just because you give him a weekly column, does that mean that you completely cede editorial control? I’ve read and listened to Mr. Boortz off and on for years, and though I usually disagree with him, he makes the occasional good point. Today’s article, however, was like reading propaganda from crazy town. I would list the multiple factual inaccuracies, but I know you wouldn’t publish such a lengthy response. Instead, it’s YOUR JOB as the editors to filter out extreme rhetoric (and, frankly, poorly written material) from the pages of your newspaper. If Mr. Boortz chooses to “mail one in” you should excise it and simply note that Mr. Boortz’s column is not appearing today. And tell him to work harder.

Dan Wright

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For those who do not know, Neal Boortz is a locally / regionally famous conservative talk-show radio host. He’s been on the Atlanta scene for years. He projects as a kind of rugged libertarian-minded sort, but he’s really more a conservative with libertarian leanings.

(The original column by Neal Boortz appears here.)

That was, I thought, the end of it. Then, however, I received the following email last Wednesday evening while I was at a Braves game:

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Mr. Wright, I spoke with Mr. Boortz's editor and he would like for you to point out what you believe is inaccurate in the column if it is not too much of an inconvenience for you. As a columnist, Mr. Boortz gets wide latitude, but there should not be clear factual inaccuracies in his column.

Kind regards,

Shawn McIntosh

AJC Public editor

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Okay, I admit it, I was proud. I had gotten their attention. The single voice was standing up to the wide river of ideological blather and had actually been acknowledged for once. However, this also meant that I had to write a response.

Guys, I’m pretty busy these days. I’ve got two kiddos and (with my wife) am running my own business, among other things. While I try to crank out a blog post every now and again, my free time went from marginal to near-non-existent the last couple of years, and when I’ve got it, I’m usually not aiming to write about politics, frankly; rather, I’m looking for activities mostly involving beer.

Additionally, responding to conservative blather is harder than one might think. It’s not a simple matter of demonstrating, “hey, you said 2 + 2 = 5; it’s really 4.” Even though there are clear and obvious problems with the premises of most facially conservative or “libertarian” thought, it takes a little bit of time to break it down and show it for what it is.

I went ahead and did it, though. (I know, those of you who know me well are thinking, “enough with the lead-ins, Dan, we knew you were going to respond, what did you say?”-- that is, those of you who are still reading this thing.) It’s an okay response in my estimation. It’s one of those deals where you could just go on and on, but… In any case, my response follows:

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Shawn:

Thank you for responding.

These are the portions of Mr. Boortz’s column that I found to be factually inaccurate and not deserving of publication in a wide-circulation newspaper:

* Mr. Boortz’s reference to Obama as “a man with so little understanding of what it means to be an American”: It’s fine to attack the man’s politics, but the repetitive effort to frame Obama as some kind of foreigner (and what seems to be a veiled reference to the never-ending and shifting claims that he really wasn’t born in the U.S. or is a Muslim) crosses a line between serious political opining and propaganda.

* “World history is full of dynasties, monarchies, dictatorships and theocracies; but representative democracies — republics, if you will — are few and far between, and history shows they usually die a violent death. The life expectancies of governments such as ours is just a bit over 200 years, and we’re there.” I have heard this 200-year-average-lifespan claim a number of times—in fact, I heard it over lunch today and had to inwardly cringe. Hard right conservatives seem to break it out when they want to scare people. It’s usually a lead-in to making radical arguments for backward change.

So, what’s the source here? Most often, people like to make the romantic comparison of the “decay” of the United States with the “fall and decline” (to borrow the title of a famous historian’s masterwork about the Roman Empire) of the Roman Empire. There are quite a few problems with this comparison, however. First, the government was hardly a representative democracy or republic in a modern sense. There were counsels of prominent citizens and a senate, but it was more rule by oligarchy or aristocracy for most of the life of the Roman “republic.” Another problem—it lasted a whole lot longer than 200 years. Try 550 or so. Yet another problem: most historians consider the apex of Roman power and prestige to have occurred during the Roman Empire, 200 or so years after the republic faltered (in approx. 120 A.D.).

What other sources are there to make this bold statement? Well, we have another favorite topic of the right, the rise of the Nazi regime. However, the Nazis took power only 15 or so years after the formation of the Weimar Republic. That’s nowhere near 200 years! (Incidentally, I always find it somewhat odd that the right uses the example of the Nazi party when trying to criticize liberals. The Nazis were, after all, a fascist group… an extreme hard right group, that is.) The true lesson of the fall of German democracy in the 1930s is that democracies can fail if they are systematically attacked and undermined from within. That is a lesson that we should take a hard look at when we view our own current collection of oddballs in Congress. We should be very sensitive, it seems to me, to those who want to “tear it all down” (I’m looking at you, Tea Partiers), because it can be torn down; these institutions are not, as many folks seem to assume, indestructible.

Another problem with Mr. Boortz’s statement is that representative democracies are, in fact, not “few and far between” in modern history. Virtually every nation in Europe is currently a representative democracy of some kind or another. That was certainly not the case only a couple of hundred years ago at the foundation of our country. The Arab Spring shows a movement towards democracy. Many nations in Asia are democracies or trending that way. Facts belie this statement. If there is a trend, it’s towards democratic forms of government, not away.

I really weary of these oft-repeated phrases, so oft-repeated that no one really thinks to question them anymore. But we should; accepting these kinds of statements sets the stage for irrational arguments and confrontations. Sure, if our democracy is about to “expire” and be blown away by the winds of history, perhaps we should go ahead and give up—dismantle it, “kill the beast.” Social Security? Well, it’s just a matter of time anyway. Medicare? Forget it, a luxury our broken and dying civilization can no longer afford.

But it’s just not true.

* “The slide to the ultimate end seems to be when the people have figured out that they can use the ballot box to claim someone else’s property; and we’re there as well.” Where is the authority for this statement? What is he talking about? I mean, this really baffles me. Is he talking about Communist Russia or China? Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall the citizens of those countries voting to install that kind of governmental system. They had it imposed on them.

Now, there are many socialist democracies in Northern Europe that have voted for things like universal medical care and pensions and the higher taxes to support them, but they seem to be doing just fine. England, also, has universal health care, and I don’t see that country falling to its “ultimate end.”

Like I said in my original email, this is talk from crazy town. Maybe in Crazyland, they all voted to lower the retirement age to 25, and the country vaporized into anarchy.

It’s fantasy.

* “There is, after all, no constitutional right to vote in a presidential election.” There actually is a constitutional right to vote in a presidential election, but the voting is technically not for president, but for electors who will vote for the nominee of their party. I include this statement in the category of inaccurate facts, because (i) in practice, you go to the ballot box and vote for president, and your vote counts—simple as that. To suggest otherwise is being a bit intellectually dishonest; and (ii) he links this statement with “culling the voter registration lists.” The oddity of voting for electors in a presidential election as opposed to directly for the people running for that office does not support jettisoning names off of the voter registration lists because of a perceived lack of a constitutional right to vote. There’s no logical connection there. There also would be pretty obvious due process rights involved here; that would be the 14th Amendment, which is, in fact, part of the Constitution.

My other objection to the column was that it was a shallow treatment undeserving of inclusion in the AJC. For example, Mr. Boortz’s shallow concept of “rights” and how they are addressed under the Constitution. Well, he did say that the concept of rights was “hard.” I do agree with that.

This sort of rhetoric is distinctly unhelpful… it sets out certain facts in an authoritative and general way (no specifics allowed) and then leaps to illogical but connected conclusions. E.g., the example cited above about not having a right to vote in a presidential election. Let’s cull the voter registration lists, because there’s no constitutional right to vote! I’m pretty sure Mr. Boortz is aware that he is doing this, but sometimes I wonder. Either way, it’s unfit to be in your newspaper.

Sincerely,

Dan Wright

P.S. There are no doubt other factual inaccuracies in Mr. Boortz’s column. Those were just the ones that popped out to me upon reading it. Having read some accounts of the Founding Fathers, I question his blanket statements about what they thought or did, but I don’t really have the time or, frankly, inclination to look them all up. As I always tell my friends and relatives, don’t accept things just because you hear them; analyze and research them.

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Your turn, Mr. Boortz.