FROM THE CHEAP SEATS

Today is International Women’s Day. If you did not notice that fact on your daily calendar, perhaps you are in the United States, where – unlike China, Russia, Armenia, Macedonia, Vietnam and a host of other countries – it is not an official holiday. Apparently, the patriarchally-motivated conventional wisdom in this country is that, if you ignore the contention that half of the people of this planet are, in varying degrees, enslaved by the other half, you have somehow disproved it.

Yet, almost a century after women agreed in Copenhagen to promulgate the idea of an International Women’s Day, the notion of showering gratitude, respect and admiration on the women who are our mothers, sisters and daughters is only marginally advanced in the intervening decades.

Last year I called upon our government to end our national shame as one of the few holdouts by ratifying in the U.S. Senate the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) – a document adopted 30 years ago and endorsed by every civilized nation on the planet, except us. One would hope (no irony intended) that, with the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States (and a man who has unabashedly credited his mother and his grandmother with making him the man he is today) and a solid Democratic majority in Congress, ratification by the United States of CEDAW would have been almost a formality in the first few months of the new administrations. Sadly, more than a year has passed since Obama’s inauguration and CEDAW is being afforded the same meaningless lip-service that has insulted every woman on the earth for the last three decades.

Some in the United States decry the plight of women elsewhere in the world as if women in this country are cherished as nowhere else. Yet an active, vocal – and occasionally deadly violent – faction would rob women in this country of control of their very bodies by first, outlawing abortions and second, by limiting or eliminating access to scientifically-based sexuality education and contraception. The deprivation of reproductive choice in women harkens back to the darkest, primitive days of our species when women were enslaved by their role in the reproductive process. And that is exactly what patriarchally-motivated neo-slavers want today.

In the minds of these self-appointed arbiters (and would-be rulers) of feminine propriety and expression, procreation and the attendant duties of caring for children and mates are considered the only appropriate roles for women. That this is true can be seen in the way that women are systematically limited (if not outright excluded) from vital, non-reproductive roles in our society. They continue to be paid a fraction of what their male counterparts are paid in the workplace. And they are woefully underrepresented in leadership roles in the workplace, as they are underrepresented in almost every other institution in America, including government.

More tragically, women are far more subject to violence – especially sexual violence. In our “civilized” country, almost three-out-of-four women have been victimized by some form of sexual violence in their lifetimes. When considered together with the emotional abuse against women that is epidemic in our country, it is perhaps easier to understand why CEDAW languishes in our Senate.

An effort years ago to amend our constitution with the so-called “Equal Rights Amendment,” outlawing any form of discrimination based on gender, went down to defeat. Why, then, should we be surprised that, as a nation, we cannot join almost every other country on this planet in agreeing to end such discrimination.

On this International Women’s Day, let us dedicate ourselves to the absolute truth that the core mission is not equal rights for women, but equality itself. Freeing women from reproductive slavery, educational limitations, workplace discrimination, emotional abuse and physical violence should be the desire of every conscious being. To (slightly) paraphrase Abraham Lincoln: “In giving freedom to (women), we assure freedom for the free – honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.”

Around 9:30 this evening, eastern standard time, it already will be the morning of Dec. 29 in the Xinjiang Province of China. And a British citizen – Akmal Shaikh – will be led outside his prison, forced to kneel on the ground and open his mouth. A bullet will be fired into the base of his neck by his executioner and exit his open mouth, thus preserving his face and the usability of his corneas for transplant.

Mr. Shaikh, of Pakistani descent, was convicted two years ago of drug trafficking in a 30-minute trial and sentenced to death under China’s zero-tolerance policy. He was told of his impending execution only a day before the sentence was scheduled to be carried out.

The British government has been trying diligently to obtain clemency for Shaikh, including a direct appeal by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The human-rights organization Reprieve also has been quite involved in working for the sparing of Shaikh’s life by the Chinese government, maintaining that they have psychological evidence of the mental disability of the condemned man – evidence that apparently was ignored by the Chinese courts. All appeals have fallen on deaf ears in the Chinese government, which asserts that all of the rights of the accused were fully protected.

Despite the involvement of the British government, the European Union and international human rights organizations, there is a very simple reason why China probably will execute Akmal Shaikh at the appointed hour – his body will be stripped of its organs to fuel China’s ghoulish but thriving business in black-market organ transplantation.

China executes more people in a single year than all other countries on this planet combined. While they reportedly carried out 1,700 executions last year, human rights groups place the figure much higher – possibly more than 7,000. And it has become well known that China harvests the organs of executed prisoners, with earliest reports appearing in Western newspapers as far back as 1992.

There is intense cultural resistance to voluntary organ donation upon death by rank-and-file Chinese. Yet, incredibly, there are tens of thousands of transplant operations carried out in China each year and some published wait times for a new organ are stated in weeks or even days – this compared to wait times in the West of months or years. In addition, underground Web sites advertise the availability of human organs for transplant in China, quoting prices in U.S. dollars.

In the case of Mr. Shaikh, the earnest protestations by the Chinese government that they are only doing what they must to reduce crime and that the condemned man’s rights were given due process ring hollow when one considers just how valuable his lifeless corpse will be to China’s organ transplant business, which will find ready recipients for his eyes, skin, lungs, heart, liver and kidneys.

It appears that China deserves little distinction from the atrocities attributed to the Nazis during World War II, as they demonstrate an equivalent and appalling contempt for the value of human life.

Special note: For more information on the ghastly practices of the Chinese government with regard to executed prisoners, read this special report by Human Rights Watch, one of the most dedicated and well-known human rights organizations in the world: ORGAN PROCUREMENT AND JUDICIAL EXECUTION IN CHINA

Epilogue: It is 0600 GMT on 29 Dec. Akmal Shaikh is dead, murdered by a barbarous government that kills people for such “capital” crimes as embezzlement and tax fraud. So if you have any sympathy for their claim that drug smuggling is a serious offense, consider that it would be a bullet in your head for that extra deduction you took on your tax return to which you were not really entitled; it would be your body thrown into a furnace after your organs and skin had been harvested to provide transplants for those who take advantage of China’s plentiful “donor pool.”

The Radical Religious Right, that amalgamation of mouth-breathing malcontents and malingerers who, apparently content in their misery, seem Hell-bent on inflicting that misery on the rest of us, waged successful campaigns in California and Florida in 2008 to, in their words, “preserve the sanctity of marriage” by outlawing marriage between anyone other than one man and one woman. They managed to enshrine in those states’ constitutions a degree of discrimination that is grossly inappropriate in a document that defines the foundations of government. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered citizens were constitutionally relegated to a “second class” status which has occurred in American constitutional history only once before – when slavery was a legal and accepted practice in this country.

That, of course, begs the question of just how much “sanctity” actually exists in the institution of marriage when half of all marriages in this country end in divorce. The RRR is curiously silent on this issue, perhaps because their social engineering was never intended to limit the ability of heterosexual couples to flit, willy-nilly, from one marriage to another whenever one or both of the parties grew bored with the arrangement – or tired of the philandering by either.

Merriam-Webster defines hypocrisy as “a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially: the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.” So, by that definition, the RRR is hypocritical: It pretends to believe in the sanctity of marriage, which, in every major Christian denomination, commands the participants to remain together as husband and wife until the death of one separates them. No Christian form of the marriage ceremony includes any exception for divorce. Yet, the RRR has no problem with divorce. In fact, many of the leaders of the collective Radical Religious Right have been divorced and/or caught in adulterous scandals.

That would lead one to assume that, to be fair, the RRR should be held to the full measure of their beloved “sanctity of marriage” standard and denied the option of exiting from marriage without dying first (which, for the rest of us, accomplishes the happy consequence of reducing their ranks).

Fortunately, there is a man of courage and conviction in California – John Marcotte – who believes the hypocrites should be held to account. He has instituted a petition drive to gather sufficient signatures to have a ballot initiative in California to ban divorce. His Web site for the 2010 California Marriage Protection Act is the epicenter of this effort to bring logical consistency to the illogical pesterings of these fomenting arbiters of “moral decency.”

According to news accounts, Marcotte faces an uphill battle in his effort to garner the almost 700,000 signatures required by the state to have an initiative considered by the electorate. Still, he seems undaunted – and thankfully so. He deserves our support in his effort to ensure that, if heterosexuals want to vote to ban everyone else from the institution of marriage, they should be enjoined legally from exiting their own.

Marcotte has coined some pithy sayings, to wit:

“You said ‘Til death do us part.’ You’re not dead yet. FACT: Every divorce starts with the death of a traditional marriage.”

“Jesus still loves you if you get divorced — just not as much as before. Hell is eternal — just like your marriage was supposed to be.”

Humor aside, he makes a great point. Jesus, according to the “inerrant” Gospel accounts, never once mentions homosexuality – and certainly never condemns it. He does condemn a lot of other things, though – including adultery and divorce.

The notion that there is any such thing as “the sanctity of marriage” is a fatuous joke. The statistics on adultery and divorce pretty much prove that. So that leaves us with the only remaining reason for these constitutional initiatives to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples: the exclusion of everyone else. Such wholesale discrimination in the denial of basic civil rights runs contrary to a half-century of public policy intent on eradicating discrimination.

The denial of marriage to the LGBT community – at least in its government-sanctioned form – clearly is a civil rights issue. It is time for the federal courts to exercise their constitutional duty to protect the “minority rights” of those disenfranchised by the misguided majority in these states and strike down these abhorrent monuments to hate and intolerance.

In the aftermath of yesterday’s off-year elections, which saw gubernatorial victories for Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey, GOP spinmeisters are trying to “jump the shark” in their effort to twist the results into some kind of mandate for the Republican Party going into next year’s mid-term elections. They claim it is a clear sign of voter disaffection with President Obama and the Democrats who control Congress. And they are flat wrong.

To paraphrase a popular legal maxim: “Bad candidates make bad politics.” New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine was about as popular in his state as the undeserved reputation of the Garden State as smelling like an open sewer. Obama’s valiant efforts to – in Election 2008 parlance – put “lipstick on this pig” of a candidate was doomed from the outset. Corzine’s negatives simply were too great. And his opponent, Republican Chris Christie, is no “Joe Wilson Republican” (i.e. – a cretinous, knee-jerk ideologue who follows in nose-deep lockstep with the Republican Axis of Evil – Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck). So what is the moral of the New Jersey gubernatorial race for the White House? That popular candidates beat unpopular candidates, despite political affiliation and despite outside influence (the same dynamic that carried Obama to victory in New Jersey in 2008).

As for Virginia, their conservative bona fides are well-established and well-known. Obama’s victory there was the first for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. And, once again, Bob McDonnell was more articulate and more charismatic than his pedantic opponent (rather like how Obama was viewed by Virginians when they chose him over John McCain the year before). Sure, there are more conservatives in Virginia than liberals, but some of those conservatives sided with the liberals to give Obama a victory. Once again, the “take home” is that Virginia did what Virginia usually does – elect a Republican – and that portends nothing of import for 2010.

The real race that defines the political fallout from yesterday’s results is the special election held in the 23rd congressional district in upstate New York. The incumbent, moderate Republican John McHugh, was picked by President Obama to serve as Secretary of the Army. The Republican Party in the district, with guidance from the National Republican Congressional Committee, selected Dede Scozzafava, another moderate (as in pro-choice) to run in the special election against Democrat Bill Owens. Everything seemed on track for another Republican victory in this GOP stronghold until the Axis of Evil got involved. You see, there also was a candidate from the Conservative Party (Motto: “We hate blacks, gays, immigrants, poor people, Obama, Republicans and their pinko fellow-travelers.”). Apparently, conservative Doug Hoffman’s true-to-the-Reich views got the Axis of Evil all misty-eyed and hopeful for a victory by a “true believer” (i.e.-mindless radical-right apparatchik).

The Axis of Evil and their tea-bagging minions poured a million dollars into the effort to elect Herr Hoffman. They filled the airwaves with their frantic, hyperbolic condemnations of candidate Scozzafava and the “back-room party bosses” who selected her. They brought so much pressure to bear that Scozzafava bowed to pressure from her local party officials and pulled out of the race. The Republican party immediately endorsed Conservative Party candidate Herr Hoffman and the Axis of Evil gleefully rubbed their collective hands together in anticipation of a victory in the Sudetenland … I mean, upstate New York.

Guess what? The voters in the 23rd congressional district of New York are not automatons in the thrall of the Radical Right. Herr Hoffman’s draconian ideology was not representative of their political views. The result? Most voters cast their ballots for Bill Owens, the Democrat. Bearing in mind that this is an historically Republican district, quite a few could not bring themselves to vote for a Democrat, so they voted for Scozzafava, despite the fact that she had exited the race. They certainly were not going to vote for the Axis of Evil candidate.

The mouthpieces for the Axis of Evil have been in spin overdrive following this result, proclaiming that they achieved a victory in New York’s 23rd because the voters had rejected the candidate selected by the “back-room party bosses” – known by everyone else as local Republican officials selected by local Republican voters. Only the tortured logic of intellectually-challenged mouth-breathers such as Palin, Limbaugh and Beck could demonize local officials as some sinister anti-voter cabal.

Certainly, there is a degree of discontent among voters who supported Obama in 2008. However, most of that is frustration with the slow pace of the change everyone had hoped for. Obama’s persistent but futile efforts at bipartisanship are only diminishing prospects for achieving his ambitious agenda. Most of his supporters were expecting a more “whip cracking” mien in his dealings with Congress. There still is time.

What the 2009 election tells us is that Republicans are a party divided, with de facto control claimed by the Axis of Evil. And those who oppose them are subjected to their “scorched earth” policy of vicious, prevaricative rhetoric. Further, as demonstrated in New York’s 23rd congressional district, the voters aren’t buying it. Apparently, they’re still clinging to that audacious hope that Obama will bend Congress to his will and bring about real health insurance reform, accountability for rapacious Wall Street bandits, a return to fiscal stability, meaningful efforts to affect climate change, and a prompt withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

If he pulls it off, you can forget the Republicans. Instead, expect a serious, grass-roots effort to repeal the 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Today marks an auspicious moment – exactly one year from now every seat in the U.S. House of Representatives will be up for election. And while the usual metric for success by either party is the net seats gained or lost, the upcoming congressional election really comes down to one pivotal race – the 8th congressional district in Florida, currently represented by Democrat Alan Grayson. His reelection is the lynchpin of continued progress in creating a more secure, inclusive America and dismantling the draconian excesses of the administration of George W. Bush.

Grayson, in only 11 months, has established himself as an unabashedly vocal advocate for the sick, the downtrodden, the environment and peace. As a result, he is not especially beloved by his timorous Democratic colleagues in Congress, who shrink from conflict despite being challenged to ardent advocacy by their supporting constituencies. And he is reviled by his Republican adversaries, who have identified him as the most important Democratic congressman to defeat in the 2010 mid-term elections.

If Diogenes was wandering the halls of our Capitol, it is likely he would be despairing of his quest until he encountered Alan Grayson, that rarity among politicians – an honest man. Like Harry Truman before him, Grayson does not shrink from plainspokenness. And it is that candor that has the Democrats trembling and the Republicans foaming at the mouth.

Grayson is unapologetically dedicated to ensuring the current health care reform initiatives in Congress actually achieve reform – including the controversial public option. He excoriates his Republican colleagues for their demagoguery in opposing almost every proposal, despite offering no real alternative of their own. He claims the Republicans actually do have a plan: “Don’t get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly.”

He is equally quick to take the Republicans to task for their knee-jerk devotion to the rich and entrenched corporate interests over the welfare of the American middle class. From opposing the Bush administration’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout (”burdening every man, woman and child with over $2,000 to pay back”) to calling on the Senate to delay the confirmation of Ben Bernanke to another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve until details of his actions in the last year are provided to the Congress, Grayson has sought to bring transparency to government efforts to stimulate our moribund economy, including spearheading efforts to audit the Federal Reserve.

In a forum on The Washington Post’s Web site, Grayson said, “The closest thing that we have to a king in this country is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He handed over $500 billion of our money to foreigners, without even discussing it with the President or any member of Congress. That … is a problem.”

Grayson also does not mince words when it comes to the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. In that same Washington Post forum, he pointed out, “There is chaos right now in Somalia … and we managed to find our way out of there. What’s next, occupation of Burkina Faso?”

There are those who warn that Grayson’s bombastic style will be polarizing and marginalize him in Congress. Yet, according to GovTrack.com, a Web site that tracks congressional activity, Grayson was ranked as the 30th most effective member in the entire Congress (both House and Senate). While only a freshman, he has demonstrated de facto leadership in the House of Representatives with the large number of bills he has sponsored that are supported by more senior colleagues.

It would seem that losing such an ardent and articulate advocate in Congress would be a great blow to his larger constituency – the American middle class. Which is why the Republicans deem his defeat to be so critical to their continued campaign to stripmine the pocketbooks of most Americans for the enrichment of their corporate overlords.

There is an old saying: “We get the government we deserve.” Let us hope that we continue to do all in our power to deserve the continued efforts of the gentleman from Florida, both now and in the years to come.

There are those among you who have wondered where I’ve been for the past two months. Why had I stopped writing incendiary prose about the goings-on in our country? Well, my mother always said that if I could not say something nice about someone, I should say nothing.

Adhering to that maxim amounted to an exile to stygian silence. It has been painful to hold my tongue … I mean, pen … uhm, keyboard. But then I went to a Higher Authority – Jesus – who said that “…[T]he truth will make you free.” That seemed encouraging – truth trumps manners. Then I remembered Kris Kristofferson said that “Freedom’s just another word for ‘nothing left to lose.’” So I thought to myself, “What have I got to lose by telling the truth?”

So, here I am, baby – full of pith and vinegar! Stay tuned to this space for some, as Steven Colbert terms it, truthiness. And if you’re one of those right-wing freaks who’s been foaming at the mouth about efforts to right so many long-standing wrongs, now might be a great time to catch up on all of your back issues of Reader’s Digest.

In the waning days of George W. Bush’s presidency, there was another political entity with even lower approval ratings than his: the United States Congress. Since the inauguration of President Barack Obama, and the installation of solid Democrat majorities in both chambers, the approval ratings for Congress have continued to languish (this despite the initially stratospheric ratings of the new president).

Unfortunately, the approval ratings for President Obama have begun to slip in recent weeks. The American people apparently feel less optimistic about his effecting the change that was so anticipated with his election. Even more unfortunate is the proximal cause of any delay or diminution of his efforts or intent: the United States Congress.

Our founding fathers crafted a constitutional republic which relied significantly on legislative power for the enactment of laws and the transacting of the people’s business. The executive and judicial branches were seen as having their respective importance, but in addition to serving as a check on the power of the legislative branch.

What our founding fathers did not anticipate is the degree to which the Congress would become a virtual cesspool of unchecked corruption, rendering it, at best, an ineffectual squanderer of the people’s – and nation’s – resources and, at worst, a suppurating abscess on the buttocks of the body politic, which threatens to destroy the entire organism.

In 1887, Britain’s Lord Acton famously wrote that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Let’s forget for the moment his stark warning about absolute power. Although attempted at various times in our national history – most notably in the last eight years – such a state of total control has never been achieved. Instead, let us deal with the equally sinister admonition about the negative effect of power – to corrupt.

During the earliest days of our republic, those serving in the Congress often found themselves there by fiat populi: The people approached those of high reputation and esteem and encouraged – sometimes demanded – their service on behalf of a willing constituency. This is not to say there was no one for whom political ambition was a principle motivation. However, many begrudgingly accepted the mantle of public service, aspiring to discharge their duty and, as quickly as practicable, return to private life. Few, if any, of the drafters of our constitution could have anticipated how an entire class of self-serving, ethically-challenged malefactors would strive to become the dominant element of our legislative branch of government.

Abraham Lincoln, arguably our greatest president, said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” By the time of the Civil War, the Congress already was well along the road of wretched excess in furtherance of wildly disparate ends on behalf of a heterogeneous population. We might assume, therefore, that Lincoln was alluding to a part of the government that was as vexing for him as secessionist states.

The first article of our constitution, which created the legislative branch and defined its scope and powers, has weathered the intervening years far more poorly than any other part of that hallowed document. To say that curruption and self-interest is rampant in our Congress is to state the obvious. And because the Congress has become a self-perpetuating club of symbiotic ass-coverers, any expectation of ethical self-governance is fatuous. Those occasions when lapses of personal integrity or even outright malfeasance wind their way into the public consciousness are the proverbial tip of the iceberg. How much more despicable behavior might be obscured from the public eye when the Congress self-protectively closes its collective ranks?

There is a solution to this execrable state of affairs, of course – a return to the earliest form of solicitation to public service. In short, if someone wants to become a member of Congress, he or she should be cast aside as one of suspect motives. Instead, the people must once again approach those in their midst who are of the highest reputation and esteem, unassailable in their modeling of integrity and ethics to others, and encourage them to shoulder the burden of public service.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.” Sadly, honesty is in short supply in our nation’s capital. It is incumbent upon each and every one of us to demand that virtue of our elected officials. Otherwise, we are doomed to continue in our national degeneration as a result of a citizenry in servitude to its own elected servants.

In the Doors’ song “Riders On The Storm,” Jim Morrison sings, “There’s a killer on the road; his brain is squirming like a toad.” How aptly that describes the derangement of one who takes the life of another in slavish devotion to the purveyors of fanaticism and hate.

In this country, we fear Islamic radicals who strap bombs to their bodies and offer themselves for the destruction of innocents. Yet, domestic terrorists who are radicalized by the extremist anti-abortion forces and motivated to commit murder in the name of such heinous intolerance are just as much a threat and, worse, a blight on the national conscience by virtue of their origins within our midst.

In a grotesque act of inestimable cowardice, one such demented follower of these terrorists apparently has gunned down a physician who ran an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas, while the victim was serving as an usher at his church! Two other church-goers were threatened by the gunman when they attempted to intervene. The slain physician’s wife was in the church’s choir at the time of his killing.

Dr. George Tiller was no stranger to the violent opposition of the radical anti-abortion movement. His clinic was bombed in 1985. Then, 8 years later, he was shot in both arms by a fanatic who had succumbed to the brutal rhetoric of Operation Rescue and other organizations which tacitly incite their followers to such depraved acts with hyperbolic – and intellectually bankrupt – positions such as equating abortion and genocide. Perhaps the reason more medical providers have not met similar fates is the result of these terrorists coercing physicians to abandon their practices in fear for their lives and those of their families.

In an act of appalling hypocrisy, the current president of Operation Rescue condemned Tiller’s murder as “vigilantism,” despite the fact that the organization had persecuted Tiller for years and indirectly encouraged just this sort of violence. Never one to be accused of hypocrisy, however, is Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry – America’s ayatollah of terrorism – who was quoted in media accounts as calling Tiller “a mass murderer” and “an evil man” whose “hands were covered with blood.” Sadly, the blood on his hands was his own, as he felt his life drain from his body, slain by one of Randall Terry’s crazed disciples.

That there seems to be less outrage on the part of the public at the slaughter of an innocent physician in his church than at the attack on the World Trade Centers by similarly warped fanatics is the shame of our nation. That fomenters of active rebellion against the tranquility of a civil society are allowed to disseminate their putrescent vitriol behind the shelter of the First Amendment – rather than appropriately being viewed as far worse than the proverbial criers of “Fire!” in a crowded theater – stands in direct conflict to all reason and sense of order.

I will be the first to concede that many who are opposed to abortion do not advocate or condone violence against those who support a woman’s right to choose, or against medical providers who offer abortions. However, the tragic truth is that no person opposed to abortion has ever been killed by supporters of abortion rights. Only the anti-abortion movement can claim that ignominious distinction.

For their halfhearted protestations against their militant fellow travelers, blood truly is on the hands of those anti-choice activists who disingenuously claim to abhor killing. If they desire redemption for their complicity, let their voices be the first and loudest to call on the federal government to enact strict anti-terrorist protections to shield us from the insane acts of those in the thrall of violent, hate-mongering radical elements in our society.

A bill hurtling – at least by legislative standards – through the North Carolina General Assembly would prohibit reading or writing text messages on one’s cell phone while driving. Quick passage is expected and Gov. Beverly Perdue has indicated she will sign it, allowing the state to join Alaska, California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey and Washington, who already have banned the practice. Which begs the question: “Why is this law necessary?”

Well, in all frankness, we know why it is necessary – because there are those who believe that actually being consciously involved in the operation of one’s motor vehicle is incidental to the act of driving, subordinated to a host of more “important” tasks ranging from applying eye makeup to working crossword puzzles to, yes, texting others.

On a recent drive on a six-lane interstate highway, I observed a car ahead of me in the middle lane which kept veering erratically into either the left or right lane, then cutting back. I was about to call the Highway Patrol to alert them to an intoxicated driver when, as I overtook the vehicle, I could see the occupant clearly focused intently on their right hand, which was keying letters into a cell phone. They only returned their attention to the highway when they sensed their vehicle was swerving out of control. As an apparent concession to their distracting activity – albeit a minor one – they were driving about 10 mph below the posted speed limit.

About three years ago, filmmaker Mike Judge wrote and directed a motion picture titled “Idiocracy.” It dealt with a not-too-bright soldier who, as part of a military experiment, was put into hibernation and then forgotten for five centuries when the program’s funding was cut. When he awoke, he found himself in a dystopian world that had suffered from progressively lax standards in what constituted an education, to the end that he was, far and away, the most intelligent man on the planet. I’ve seen “1984,” “Children of Men,” the “Terminator” series and other forbidding visions of the future, but “Idiocracy” was the most terrifying. In that world, texting while driving would have seemed like a normal thing to do.

The fact that state assemblies must enact laws that ban such a flagrantly dangerous practice conjures up the specter that we already are flirting with a degree of intellectual ineptitude envisioned in Judge’s dark fantasy. Which does not bode well for a country where many already turn to a morbidly obese windbag on the radio to tell them what to think.