“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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New York Times Editorial Board: United in Outrage
The solidarity march of more than one million people in Paris on Sunday was rich in placards and symbols but appropriately devoid of speeches. Like many in the vast throng that filled the broad boulevards between Place de la République and Place de la Nation, the world leaders who marched a portion of the route with President François Hollande locked arms and embraced. But there was no podium, no pulpit, only ubiquitous signs reading “Je suis Charlie.” For the moment, that said it all. [..]
Perhaps the greatest danger in the wake of the massacres is that more Europeans will come to the conclusion that all Muslim immigrants on the Continent are carriers of a great and mortal threat. Anti-immigrant sentiments were already at a dangerous level, making it essential for national and pan-European leaders in coming days to underscore that extremism is not inherent to the Muslim faith, and that the Islamists themselves are hardly a single entity.
That point was searingly made by the brother of Ahmed Merabet, a French police officer who was one of the people gunned down in the Charlie Hebdo attack. “My brother was Muslim,” said Malek Merabet, “and he was killed by two terrorists, by two false Muslims.”
Charles M. Blow: Tamir Rice and the Value of Life
An extended video released last week of the shooting death of Tamir Rice in Cleveland appears to show an unconscionable level of human depravity on the part of the officer who shot him, a stunning disregard for the value of his life and a callousness toward the people who loved him.
His black life didn’t seem to matter. But it does. [..]
It is hard to think of the gravely injured boy and the aloof officers who’d done the deed but withheld their help, and not reach a white-hot level of righteous indignation.
Tamir was a human being, a child – who could have been any of our children, and who was robbed of his life and therefore his future. Twelve years old. That’s just a baby, a baby with a hole in his belly. This wrong must be made right.
There is a basic respect for life that should have governed that day, and which seems, in the video, shockingly absent from it.
Not only is the shooting itself disturbing, but the failure to render aid is unconscionable. And this didn’t just happen in Tamir’s case. The same apathy about the immediate administration of care is echoed in other cases where black boys and men lay dying.
As politicians drape themselves in the flag of free speech and freedom of the press in response to the tragic murder of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, they’ve also quickly moved to stifle the same rights they claim to love. Government officials on both sides of the Atlantic are now renewing their efforts to stop NSA reform as they support free speech-chilling surveillance laws that will affect millions of citizens that have never been accused of terrorism.
This is an entirely predictable response – as civil liberties advocates noted shortly after Wednesday’s tragic attack, the threat of terrorism has led to draconian laws all over the world over the last decade – but this time around, the speed and breadth by which politicians praised free speech out of one side of their mouths, while moving to curtail rights out of the other, has been quite breathtaking.
Richard (RJ) ESkow: Populism Rises — And the ‘Center’ Strikes Back
“Americans don’t want angry, defensive figures running for president,” Democratic operative Will Marshall told McClatchy’s David Lightman this week. But who, precisely, is angry and defensive? As the pushback to Wall Street’s influence on government grows stronger, it is the banking industry’s supporters who sound enraged. And as economic populism gains traction in Democratic circles, it is corporate Democrats like Marshall who find themselves increasingly on the defensive. [..]
Why are right-leaning Democrats like Marshall so worried? The answer may lie in the shifting internal dynamics of the Democratic Party itself. The financial crisis of 2008, the long-term economic issues which continue to plague the nation, and a growing public awareness of wealth inequality have all contributed to the consolidation of public opinion along economically populist lines.
Robert Kuttner: Make No Little Plans
I recently got an email invitation from a Democratic congressional office to come to a “watch party” to view President Obama’s State of the Union address. His “fourth-quarter priorities,” according to the White House-inspired talking points of the message, are “home ownership, free community college, and high-paying jobs.”
That sounds pretty good. But if you unpack the specifics, the president is offering pretty weak tea. [..]
In other words, Obama is bold when it doesn’t require taking on corporate America or Wall Street.
This president is also an incrementalist by temperament. Politically, he has always viewed incremental reform as a way of building consensus.
We should be grateful, I suppose, that at the beginning of his seventh year Obama has belatedly realized that there is no consensus to be had; that he is moving boldly in at least some areas, whether the Republicans like it or not.
But given that Congress is going to pass just about nothing that he proposes (with the exception of odious trade legislation designed by and for multi-national corporations), and given that his little plans, in Burnham’s famous phrase, “will not be realized,” Obama might as well think even bigger.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Hunt Terrorists, Don’t Scapegoat Muslims
The instant the horrific news hit that yet another pack of seemingly deranged nut cases debased Islam by shooting up the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish grocery store, nearly every Muslim organization, diplomat, and head of state, no matter their political views, roundly condemned the attacks. All were careful to point out that heinous murders, indeed any killing of innocent civilians, under the pretense of defending Islam, does just the opposite. It distorts it, mocks it, and fuels anti-Muslim hysteria. [..]
The maniacal terror attacks in France were clearly hate driven acts perpetrated by loose-hinged individuals. But they are just that, individuals. The swift condemnation of the mass carnage they wreaked by countless Muslim groups proved that. The harsh reality, though, is that it didn’t and won’t stop the anti-Muslim haters from twisting the murders to fuel their anti-immigrant hate campaigns. This makes it even more crucial for governments to hunt terrorists, and not scapegoat Muslims.
On this day in 1932,
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