At least three hundred people were chanting slogans on the walkway that serves as the stage for Occupy Boston’s general assemblies. At least three hundred more were lining both sides of Atlantic Avenue, dancing and singing to the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band. Boston Police officers held one lane open, and trucks earned cheers for blasting their horns as they rolled slowly through.

Uniformed police officers handed out fliers earlier in the evening at the entrance to the camp, informing protesters that anyone in violation of park rules after midnight could face arrest. Mayor Menino announced the deadline to the press. Many within the camp and reporting the news saw the notice as a final warning before an eviction.

A police officer watches Occupy Boston protesters break down a tent shortly before 10:00 p.m. Thursday night.

As the hour neared 12:00, a small group of the more dedicated Occupy protesters gathered in a corner to prepare a human chain for civil disobedience and arrest. A non-active duty Marine was walking around in dress blues with a large cardboard sign featuring most of the First Amendment and “Semper Fidelis.”

By midnight, the ranks of the protesters had swollen from around 150 to over 1,000. The Boston Police Department’s decision to leave the tents alone was a no-brainer. No good would come from an attempt to remove 55 tents and about 150 occupants from Dewey Square in the middle of a street party more than a thousand strong.

Just after 12:45 a.m., with the crowd at its peak, the band launched into “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and about twenty people began bouncing around to the music in the middle of Atlantic Avenue.

“They’re dancing in the streets!” someone exclaimed in the general assembly area. Within seconds, the ranks closed across the last lane of Atlantic, and giddy protesters drowned out the music with chants of “Whose streets? Our streets!”

Minutes later, BPD Superintendent William Evans confirmed that the police would not move to evict the protesters that night.

“I didn’t think we were gonna win this round,” said Farhad, 33, looking out with a bemused smile on a handful of tents placed defiantly in the street well after 1:00 a.m. He said his job prevents him from living in the camp, but he has been active in Occupy Boston since day one. Hours earlier, as campers removed tents and valuables to avoid destruction by the police, he had explained that he was prepared to stay and “hold,” facing arrest if necessary. Instead, Farhad watched the camp’s central statue of Gandhi occupy Atlantic Avenue for a while.

For protesters, the night felt like a victory. The unanticipated turnout exposed Mayor Menino’s threat as a bluff.

Menino probably does not see it that way. The police flier prompted the removal of about 70% of the tents, according to an estimate by a medic associated with Occupy Boston. While the party cavorted in the street Thursday night, a few Occupy residents went busily on cleaning the camp, removing trash at a slow but steady pace for hours.

Non-active duty Marine Sgt. Elijah Collins, 34, of Charlestown, arrived before midnight because he felt the court decision allowing the eviction of protesters was unconstitutional.

There is a core group of Occupy Boston members who seem determined to end their encampment in handcuffs, and as soon as the party dies down, the police will play their final part in the street theater of civil disobedience.

Watching Superintendent Evans’ performance during the street party, the moment of arrest will probably be carried out without incident. Evans personally asked protesters individually to move tents from the middle of Atlantic Avenue back into the park, timing his interventions to have as little inflammatory impact as possible. With light but repeated pressure, he helped turn the group mind against making a stand in the street.

When one Atlantic Avenue occupant refused to leave his tent, Evans quietly cleared the rest of the street first, then slowly pushed the crowd back from the lone tent, eventually making the only prominent arrest of the night.

Menino and the Boston Police Department seem happy to wait for the right moment for the final eviction. Both sides know the script, and when the numbers around Dewey Square are low enough, they will act the scene, avoiding the disruptive influence of a brass band.

Perhaps, now that Boston is one of the highest-profile Occupy encampments nationwide, the recently-evicted campers of New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and elsewhere will hop on a bus to make a final stand in Dewey Square. There were rumors at 3:00 a.m. that a busload from Occupy DC was on its way.

Don’t bet on it. Nationwide, Occupy activists are talking about the elusive next stage of the movement. In Boston, a feeling of finality dominates the camp. Estimates Friday by the Boston Globe put the number of remaining camp residents at only forty. Protesters planning their own arrest may change their minds as the departure of tents and bodies snowballs. Those eager to be arrested alongside fifty others are probably less eager to be arrested alongside only five.

Thursday night was in the low thirties, and windy. The tuba player for the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band kept up a bouncing bass line for hours, audible from anywhere in Dewey Square. At 2:40 a.m., a BPD officer and about a dozen protesters found themselves in an informal and friendly discussion about the use of pepper spray against student protesters at UC Davis.

Occupy Boston could be gone in under twenty-four hours, voluntarily or under arrest. However it ends, the play Thursday night was fantastic, with stellar performances by Occupy and the Boston Police Department alike.

Rise of the Arab Street

Although both 1952 and 2011 saw revolutions in Egypt, the modes, goals, and outcomes of both vary greatly. “It should be ironic that people are carrying posters of Nasser in the crowd,” Joel Gordon, professor of Middle East history at the University of Arkansas told the HPR, “because he put in place the system that Egyptians have been struggling to get out from under.” Indeed, if 2011 echoes 1952, it also repudiates the regime the Free Officers left behind, a military regime that turned into a dictatorship, stable only through suppression and boldfaced electoral manipulation.

From the beginning, then, the 2011 revolutionaries distinguished themselves from the Free Officers by their emphasis on grassroots advocacy rather than top-down motivation. Jeff Goodwin, a professor at New York University, credited the Free Officers as leaders of an “extraordinary coup” that honestly attempted to address real social problems. Still, regime change began in the ranks of the military. Not so in 2011, which saw millions of Egyptians in the street. It is safe to say that the Egyptian government today retains legitimacy and popularity of the sort which predecessors never enjoyed.

Nasser’s Tightrope

Further, many of the ultimate defects of the 1952 revolution were born from historical circumstances now dissipated. When Gamal Nasser gained the presidency, he inherited a complex relationship with the Western states. Egypt’s defeat by Israel in 1948 proved a final discrediting of Farouk’s regime and inculcated in Nasser the eagerness to build a stronger Egyptian military. Once in office, one of the president’s first moves was to seek an arms deal with the United States. Yet Washington’s refusal to sell arms to the Egyptians, followed by tit-for-tat diplomacy, soon pushed Nasser to purchase arms from Soviet suppliers instead.

As his term continued, Nasser attempted to steer a middle path in the Cold War, independent of the two superpowers. Claims Gordon, “this was the great era of nonalignment, but it was not possible in any practical sense at that point in the Cold War.” Stephen Calleya, a professor at the University of Malta, expressed agreement, noting, “In the Cold War context, there was a completely alternative and much more antagonistic international system. You had the two superpowers, you had the patron-client system, and of course the Arab world found itself in the thick of things very quickly.”

Nonetheless, Nasser’s nonalignment does not mean that the 2011 revolution should turn out similarly. “Today, it’s a completely different international system,” argued Calleya, “an international system that offers—or should offer— opportunities of engagement where mutual interests and commonalities can play out and where the Arab street can be direct players.” Where before Egyptian foreign policy could only shuttle from the West to the Soviets, today’s Cairo can hope for full integration into the world community.

It’s Not Always About Us

While the Nasser legacy of nationalism remains, 1952’s slogans of national sovereignty increasingly focus on checks against government rather than opposing foreign powers. “What we’re seeing now is an assertion of democracy,” Goodwin told the HPR, “recognition that there can be no national politics without democracy and that for the nation to speak, you need democratic institutions. You can’t have unelected, unaccountable military leaders claiming to represent the will of the nation.”

Indeed, the conversation about internal sovereignty, at least, leaves the language of anti-colonialism behind. Nada El-Khouny, a college student in Cairo and a participant in eighteen days of protests in Tahrir Square, deflected the HPR’s questions on how protesters felt about the United States’ role in 2011. “Honestly, in comparison to other situations there was hardly a reference to America or what America’s role in this is,” she explained. “It was very much a focus, for the first time in a long time, on internal affairs.” Rather than being defined by foreign influence, Tahrir Square declared an end, on its own terms, to the military regime left behind by the Free Officers.

Game Over, Start Again?

If the Egyptian revolution can consolidate sovereign rule by the people, the new government’s foreign relations will commence in a changed world. To Calleya, 2011 represents not just the end of the anticolonial era but an extraordinary opportunity for Western powers. “If the Arab street have turned the page by standing up against the system that was stifling their aspiration,” says Calleya, “now we should also be honest and respectable enough to say, ‘We also made mistakes and now we want to correct that strategic error.’” Democratic rhetoric on the streets of Cairo shows a readiness for friendly integration into the international system, and Western nations have a great deal to gain by trusting revolutionary aspiration.

Such optimism must be tempered by the recognition that no true democracy to emerge from Tahrir Square will be as hospitable to the interests of the United States as the Mubarak regime, as several old sticking points will be impossible to avoid. “At minimum,” Gordon told the HPR, the U.S. has to “stand back and let Egyptians determine their own political structure.” That could include watching the Muslim Brotherhood organize as a political party and begin entering candidates in elections. Furthermore, most Egyptians wish to challenge the recent status quo in Israel, an area in which Mubarak proved relatively quiescent.

Egyptian democracy won’t be easy. Its first manifestations spooked the Free Officers into establishing a military regime instead. Yet nearly sixty years on, now that the political order of 1952 has been destroyed, the West has no choice but to embrace the Arab street. If fellow nations fail to respect Egypt’s sovereign interests, the world community may lose Egypt as surely as Nasser turned to the Soviets in 1967.

Allan Bradley ‘11 is a Contributing Writer.

What do I stand for?

The headlines responding to McCain highlighted his assertion that torture doesn’t work, but this is selling him short.  True, it takes my breath away to read from a Vietnam POW, “I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering.”  And he counters those who claim the enhanced interrogation led to the successful mission against Osama bin Laden by citing CIA director Leon Panetta, who told him that waterboarding produced false intelligence.  But McCain’s most important point is far simpler: “Ultimately, this is more than a utilitarian debate. This is a moral debate. It is about who we are.”

Stop and read that again.  John McCain doesn’t care whether torture works or not.  It is immoral, and if we want to be the good guys in this world, we must act the part.

Response: Excuses

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey responds with two points: a factual claim that waterboarding did, in fact, help lead to bin Laden, and the observation that it was legal at the time – that is to say, before official policy abandoned waterboarding in 2006.

On the factual claim, it’s impossible to fact-check two people with access to classified information when they make contradictory claims, so let’s just say that the successful mission to Abbottabad was the result of a wide collection of intelligence, and waterboarding probably contributed at least a little bit to the dossier.  Any exaggeration or complete dismissal of waterboarding’s role would be wrong.

Mukasey’s legal claim is more bizarre.  It is tautologically accurate – waterboarding was legal because the Justice Department said it was legal – but entirely irrelevant.  McCain never said the Bush administration broke the law; he said they were committing a moral wrong.  It reflects poorly on the character of our government that the attorney general would respond to an accusation of moral wrongdoing with the simple defense, ‘It was lawful.’

Perhaps Mukasey focuses on legality because he worries that members of the Bush administration will be tried for war crimes of some sort.  If so, he is fighting a straw man.  Though there are leftist Americans who consider George W. Bush a war criminal, they are not mainstream.  No one with influence is interested in taking members of the Bush administration to court over enhanced interrogation, unless new reports of serious misbehavior emerge.

Mukasey’s response, then, ignores McCain’s true message.  This is not about utility or legality.  This is a question of moral identity: Are we the type of nation that uses torture?

Response: Not Good Enough!

Andrew Cohen at the Atlantic has a different response for McCain, and his core argument is valid but unfairly overstated: John McCain may be against torture, but by fudging the definitional limits of the word ‘torture,’ McCain allows ambiguity into his apparently principled stand.

I’m inclined to give McCain far more credit than Cohen does. It seems unfair to call McCain a flip-flopper for a consistent position that allows for gray areas.  Basic incarceration is damaging in some ways, but it is manifestly not torture.  Waterboarding – a simulated execution by drowning – is torture by any reasonable definition.  Solitary confinement is probably not torture, but sensory deprivation looks like it is. What about solitary confinement in a dark, sound-proof room – a mild form of sensory deprivation?  While Cohen would like morality to be absolute, reasonable people will disagree over what is and isn’t torture.

McCain hasn’t drawn the line clearly; Cohen is right.  But McCain is enough of a statesman to respond to fear and vindictiveness with maturity and leadership; he writes, “As we debate how the United States can best influence the course of the Arab Spring, can’t we all agree that the most obvious thing we can do is stand as an example of a nation that holds an individual’s human rights as superior to the will of the majority or the wishes of government?”  Let us be the City on a Hill that we claim to be.

Who are we, America?

Our terrorist enemies are evil, and they commit evil acts against non-combatants. Torture might make America a safer country to live in; I’d rather build a country with moral principles worth dying for. In the past week, that simple moral imperative has been lost amidst the partisan hackery and gotcha fog.  Thank you Senator McCain for clearing the air.

The only question that should concern us is not whether torture works but what constitutes torture.  Like Andrew Cohen, I would like to see Senator McCain make more explicit statements about other “enhanced interrogation” techniques, but in the meantime, McCain’s moral courage far outshines that of his peers.

The education films signify a newfound interest in the country’s education problems, but they still have a tremendous role to play in taking that interest and galvanizing it into action. Films enjoy the potential to take nuanced policy debates to the public level in the way that An Inconvenient Truth, the last film by “Superman” director David Guggenheim, did for the climate change debate. USA Today speculated that the arrival of Michelle Rhee on the national stage brought other education reformers out of their shells. The existence of the documentaries show that the educational reform movement enjoys tremendous potential, but like its filmmakers, the movement’s leaders are still trying to figuring out how to convert the momentum they build into electoral and policy reform at both the local and national level.

Waiting for Change

One signal of the broad attention that education reform enjoys remains the diversity of these filmmakers. Guggenheim is a professional filmmaker, and his film benefits from a highly professional level of production. “Superman” follows much more of a plotline than the other films, centering on the stories of several young children entering lotteries for their charter schools, to make clear that lotteries for charter schools are not the answer to our country’s education problems. The film gives history lessons, using old footage of public schools in the postwar era. The film also explains why unions came to be while suggesting that their original purpose is no longer relevant. Guggenheim also uses heavy-hitting public figures— experts like Geoffrey Canada, Bill Gates, and Michelle Rhee—to give their expert testimony throughout the film; their strongest points are about the difficulty of eliminating bad teachers and administrators, and the need for great ones.

Attacking the Cartel

Bob Bowdon, the director of The Cartel, is a journalist by training, and it shows. His entire documentary has the feel of a prolonged Dateline special. Most notable about Cartel is that it focuses entirely on Bob Bowdon’s home state of New Jersey, though many of the local issues in Camden, Trenton, and Jersey City are identical to those in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., or the Bronx discussed by “Superman”: bloated bureaucracy, unresponsive school boards, and hegemonic teachers’ unions. Unlike Guggenheim, Bowdon remains visible, conducting interviews throughout much of the film, and his frequent appearances should remind the audience that his own political views permeate his investigation. As a result, the film serves both to uncover corruption within New Jersey’s education system and to advance Bowdon’s own agenda, which is anti-union, pro-charter, and pro-voucher. At times he gets carried away with scoring political points, especially against the leader of the New Jersey Education Association union; Randi Weingarten, who appears in “Superman,” proves more adept with her talking points. While Cartel was criticized for its lack of intellectual depth, Bowdon’s film succeeds at debunking one of the most pervasive myths in education: that more money means better results.

Lessons TEACHED?

TEACHED creator Kelly Amis brings her experience as a teacher to her project. In an email to the HPR, she said, “We let teachers talk…instead of mostly talking about them.” Amis is the least political of the three filmmakers and seeks to show as much as tell her viewers. She has already put a series of short films online which will target a wide audience through digital media. The first, “Path to Prison,” features a former convict who taught himself to read at age 17 after being pushed through the Los Angeles school system without so. In five minutes of one man’s experience, we hear about inept teachers, ineffective evaluations, and the socioeconomic consequences of a broken system. Amis’s project “will not necessarily follow the traditional film trajectory,” but the series strives to be both a rallying cry to galvanize those who would fight for change and a source of hope for those who have lost faith in the system.

Galvanizing a Movement

Despite their differences, these three films express a number of common goals: emulating good teachers and effectively replacing bad ones; reassessing the process of school funding and budgeting; and considering the broader consequences of race relations, crime and poverty rates, and economic competitiveness in America. “Superman” and Cartel both argue that the main problem with the education system today is a lack of focus on the children, as opposed to, say, budgets, union contracts, or other institutional regulations. They also point to the contradiction that exists between rewarding and imitating good teachers and reforming the union institutions which protect bad teachers. Finally, they are all convinced that the solutions to the education problem do exist, that these aspirations are not pipe dreams but promising solutions with concrete illustrations already in action, but have not yet been effectively scaled up on a statewide or national level.

These films are a part of a movement. They are both responding and contributing to a growing national discomfort with the state of public education, and their separate investigations are reaching common conclusions. What is also clear from “Superman,” Cartel, and Amis’s comments, though, is that they are not yet in dialogue with one another and that no concrete solutions have yet emerged. These three filmmakers have set up websites to compel their audiences to take action, but for the time being these are disparate branches of what could be—and some day likely will be—a national movement.

Alec Barrett ‘11 is a Senior Writer

Editor’s Note: This article was updated on May 18, 2011 to reflect the fact that TEACHED has evolved from a full-length documentary to a series of short films.

Sarah Palin at the Republican National Convention, 2008

No, she hasn’t made any formal announcement, and she may yet choose to run.  But with the 2010 midterm elections behind us, Sarah Palin has lost her relevance.  Recent polls find her popularity at an all-time low, even among Republicans and right-leaning independents.  Whereas a few months ago she looked like the wild card of the 2012 presidential primaries, today it appears impossible for her to find a viable path to the GOP nomination.

Many on the left (and some on the right) were astonished that people would treat her as a viable candidate in the first place.  Those objections aside, it is little use denying her electric performance during the midterm elections.  She provided energy to the tea party movement and commanded six-figure speaking fees.  Her voice shaped public discourse.  Not all her endorsements produced winners, but Palin sat at the heart of a national swing to the right that netted six Senate seats and sixty-three House seats for resurgent Republicans.

As perhaps the most visible national Republican figure of 2010, she appeared to have a path to the 2012 GOP nomination. Energized conservatives would flock to her campaign whether she announced her candidacy late or early, so while the Tim Pawlentys and Mitt Romneys of the field began the long, methodical approach to a national campaign, Sarah Palin could play to her strengths: sit back, commit as late as possible, and never stop talking.  Perhaps she would have scant hope of taking down Obama in the general election, but the primaries are fought among the voters who love her best.

No longer.  The national swing to the right has finished,  halted in its tracks as newly-minted governors and congressmen begin to govern.  Tea partiers and other conservatives find themselves pacified by victory, and Palin’s role is suddenly obsolete.  As a bold voice for the many Americans who felt disenfranchised by a Democratic Congress and White House, Palin was a provocateur of conservative victimhood.  ”Take our country back,” she said, and voters did.  But with its impressive new majority in the House, the GOP can’t play victim all the way to the White House.

The new dynamic shows in Palin’s poll numbers.  She was a figure of the tea party, a champion of the 2010 conservative push.  As the 2010 movement dissipates, so does her popularity.

Besides the end of midterm season, the turning point for Palin may have been her self-centered response to the Tucson shootings in January.  By spending the majority of her 8-minute video defending herself from critics, she again played victim.  But the nation was riveted by the fate of real victims, and next to President Obama’s moving speech – delivered later the same day – Palin’s squeaky-wheeled refrain struck a glaring sour note.

Suffice to say, her path to the nomination is closed.  Primary voters will not flock to her candidacy if she decides to drop in at the last moment, and she is ill-suited to the kind of methodical campaign necessary to boost her poll numbers.  Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post observes that Palin would have to go on a “major charm offensive” to woo independent voters in the general election.  Increasingly, the same could be said about winning skeptical Republicans in the primary.  But she won popularity by doing the exact opposite – “She sticks it in their faces,” as one tea partier told me on Boston Common last April.  Sarah Palin attempting to charm the centrists would no longer be Sarah Palin.

As other national Republicans build their images and hit the campaign road, they will eclipse Palin, and she will find herself unable to command the media’s attention either as a candidate or a commentator.  2010 was Palin’s moment, and that moment is over.  Count her out for 2012.

The Harvard Crimson today reported that you have begun a petition asking Harvard to allow ROTC, The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, back on campus.  Your petition is misguided, Senator.  The only person who can bring ROTC back to Harvard is you.

Harvard University has a standing non-discrimination policy.  No group that discriminates on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation may receive the full support of the university.

The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps is one casualty of this policy.  The United States military does not allow openly gay men and women to serve, and since this is a clear violation of Harvard’s non-discriminatory policy, it cannot be allowed on campus.

Many critics, like professor Ruth R. Wisse, believe that Harvard’s objection about discrimination is merely a fig leaf hiding a deeper anti-military bias.  After all, ROTC was originally expelled from Harvard amidst anti-war riots in the late 1960s.  Gay rights were not at issue.

Perhaps twenty years ago, those critics would be correct.  Our university remains conflicted about its role as a feeder for a standing army that – according to some – fights and kills for our economic interests rather than for our freedom.  Many would prefer never to see a uniform on campus.

But those days are largely over.  Harvard students and faculty admire the young men and women who risk their lives to serve in the military.  We admire them, and we are thankful for their decision to travel to the other side of the globe to keep us safe at home.  Perhaps Harvard is facing the reality of a post-9/11 world, perhaps it is a simple cultural shift, but whatever the reason, the powerful anti-military sentiment that first banished ROTC from campus is gone.

ROTC is also a career opportunity, and as a university dedicated to opening doors for its students, Harvard recognizes the value of a military training program.  Kennedy School lecturer Tim McCarthy, a strong proponent of gay rights, explained to me that the military has always been a path to advancement for young, working-class families, whether through the GI Bill or ROTC scholarships.

Because military service is honorable, and because military service can be a pathway to a successful career, ROTC should be accessible to everyone, and it should be supported on Harvard’s campus.  Your own words say it best: “All students wishing to serve in ROTC should be allowed to exercise their service on the campus of Harvard.”

But Senator Brown, if you are so deeply committed to allowing “all students” the opportunity to serve, why, on September 21st, did you vote against a repeal of the military’s discriminatory policy?  The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy systematically excludes thousands of American citizens from serving honorably and reaping the just rewards of that dedicated service.  If you truly believe that we “should embrace young people who want to serve their country at a time of war,” your vote should have been an easy decision.  You should have embraced the young people who want to serve their country at a time of war!  But instead of voting for repeal, you joined a minority filibuster and shot down a hundred thousand patriotic dreams.

You can say what you want about partisan Senate procedure and politicking during an election season.  We’re not too happy about the state of the Senate either, Senator, but at the end of the day, if your procedural objections outweigh your commitment to military service, then you are the one with your “priorities upside down,” not Harvard.  As Representative Anthony Weiner of New York said, “You vote in favor of something if you believe it’s the right thing,” and procedure be damned.

You could also pretend, like those who opposed racial desegregation of the armed forces in the 1940s, that allowing gays and lesbians to serve their country would damage military morale and effectiveness.  That argument is as morally bankrupt today as it was in 1945.

Harvard will allow ROTC back on campus when the military’s discriminatory policy is repealed.  We do regret the current absence of ROTC, but our commitment to equality – perhaps the most fundamental of American ideals – cannot be compromised.

Senator Brown, it’s up to you.  If you truly believe that ROTC should be open to “all students,” then vote that way.  Go back to Washington, fix the broken Senate, and repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  In the meantime, don’t go lecturing Harvard that “all students” deserve the opportunity to enlist in ROTC.  We already know that, thank you very much, and we’ve been fighting for those students for decades.

Sincerely,

Allan Bradley, Harvard Class of 2011

Conservatives like Rand Paul are a gift, not a threat, to congressional Democrats.

Voter anger is strong.  Far-right populism, typified by the tea party, is proving its inconsistent but game-changing influence by ousting moderate Republicans from GOP primaries in favor of grass-roots favorites.  See Rand Paul (R) hoping to fill Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R) Kentucky seat after Bunning retires and Sharron Angle (R) taking on Sen. Harry Reid (D) in Nevada.

But neither Rand Paul nor Sharron Angle should worry the Democrats.  Yes, polls show them both winning against the Democrats.  But both, simply by being so far to the right (and, in their case, inexperienced on the national stage), are preferable opponents in a general election.  Angle’s primary win was a gasp of fresh air to an embattled Harry Reid.  Her primary opponents were poised to make mincemeat of the Senate Majority Leader, but against Angle, Reid’s race is winnable, if competitive.

No, Democrats need not worry that the tea party is stealing their base and turning independents and center-leftists into creative-conservatives.  What Democrats need to worry about is that their base will stay home.

Rhodes Cook recently wrote for the Wall Street Journal that Republicans are leading the 2010 “battle of the primary ballots” by nearly 1 million votes.  In other words, in states where a direct comparison is available, nearly 1 million more Republicans than Democrats have turned out to vote in a primary election.

As Cook observes, this is not conclusive evidence that voter turnout in the November general election will favor the Republicans.  But compare the current situation to ’06 and ’08, when the Democrats held a commanding lead in the informal battle of the primary ballots.  Those leads indicated that the Democrats’ base was excited and enthusiastic about going to the polls, and the results were convincing Democratic victories in ’06 and ’08, taking the House, the Senate, and the White House.

It is now 2010, and the shoe is on the other foot.  Instead of George W. Bush drumming up voter enthusiasm among liberals, Barack Obama and his vocal critics are drumming up enthusiasm among conservatives.  Pollsters are finding an enormous enthusiasm gap between right and left.  The Republicans know this, and they are casting every local election as a referendum on Obama.

Such a strategy will work if the Democrats cannot reframe the debate.  Republicans, fired up about Obama’s so-called socialism, will vote in November, and Democrats discovering that Obama is only a good politician, not a great one, will stay home.  Obama has until 2012 to correct his image, but House and Senate Democrats will be headed home early.

The national Democratic strategy, so far, is to dig up dirt and blame Bush.  Tie Republicans to big oil and Wall Street excesses and hope for the best.  It might work in some cases, but overall, that strategy will lose more close races than it wins.

Instead, the Democrats need to generate some voter enthusiasm.  It’s time to fire up the base.  And if the standard campaign rallies and advertisements won’t do it, then it is time to generate headlines where they count: in the Senate and the House.

As former Bill Clinton adviser Mark Penn wrote in Politico 7/7, this election cycle cannot be about the Obama administration’s first two years.  It must become a debate about the next two years.  Do we, as a nation, proceed through the recession to try and reform immigration, energy policy, and a volatile financial landscape?  Or do we stop where we are and trust that smaller government will allow the nation to rise out of the recession?

To reframe the debate along those lines, it is time to provoke a filibuster.  No more tortured legislative success stories that leave everyone weary.  The Democrats should craft comprehensive legislation on energy, immigration, or job creation and unemployment benefits.  If a token Republican lends his name and then backs out, as in the case of the Kerry-Graham climate bill, all the better.  Present it to the Senate to majority approval, and allow it to be stalled indefinitely by a Republican filibuster.  Then hit the campaign trail.

Leftists got their health care reform, but after so many months of debate, the victory quickly soured.  Give the base something new to vote for, something exciting, without the stale taste of health care.  Provoking a filibuster can re-cast the GOP as obstructionists, especially if the fight is over unemployment benefits or an economic recovery bill.

Granted, legislative failures do not engender confidence.  No one wants to see a bill shot down.  But if the legions of centrists, leftists, and first-time voters that powered Obama into the White House in ’08 see a popular progressive agenda point shot down, they may be upset enough to turn out and vote.

All are also Republicans, which is perhaps the greater surprise.

The narrative falls apart when you look at actual numbers, but regardless, the success of GOP women in headline-topping races has motivated some interesting commentary on feminism.

Sam Bennett of the Women’s Campaign Forum (an organization impressively non-partisan in its support of women candidates) wrote for Huffington Post that “Sarah Palin is not a feminist. In fact, the fabricated term ‘conservative feminist’ is an oxymoron.”  She then added, “Sarah Palin calling herself a conservative feminist is like BP calling themselves a corporate environmentalist. You don’t get to just pick up that word and use it the way you want it.”  Barrett’s chief objection: Palin and the GOP’s new alpha women are all, except Whitman, staunchly pro-life.

But is it fair for Bennett to claim the term feminism for her own and say that anyone who disagrees cannot “pick up that word and use it” to advocate a different opinion?  That’s an exclusive definition of a broad term, and it begs the question, can you be a feminist and be pro-life?

Moderate liberal assumptions say that abortion may be morally difficult, but it is not the place of the government to outlaw it. The pro-life position, according to the center-left, is an assault on women’s freedom, and therefore those concerned about women’s equality must be pro-choice.

But does this justify saying, as a matter of definition, that feminism requires a pro-choice stance?  To many, the answer is obviously and passionately yes.  But Sarah Palin and her pro-life message resonate with many American women in a way that liberal feminists find incomprehensible.

Comprehend it.  Internal contradictions aside, conservative feminism is not particularly new, and it is a mistake to call it an oxymoron.  It is deeply religious, of course, and it views the anti-abortion fight as one of female empowerment. The argument is simply that as women – as the motherly and feminine forces guiding our nation’s ethical compass – it is a feminine duty to defend life at its earliest stages.  Women are empowered by the defense itself.  This cultural theory may be out of date in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but it is at the heart of Palin’s sizeable and passionate following. And it is, in its own way, a feminist argument.

It may be a horribly misguided feminist argument.  I don’t mean to advocate that conservative feminists are right or wrong. My point is not at all about which side is right or wrong.

My point is that the logic of conservative feminism is plain and obvious for anyone who cares to try to comprehend.  It’s not new or complicated, and it shouldn’t be baffling.  Therefore, it is a colossal mistake for Bennett to simply dismiss the self-described pro-life feminists as an oxymoron, because that’s no way for her to argue her liberal position.  Conservative feminism cannot be dismissively defined away.

What Bennett should have written was, “We congratulate the women who have won these high-profile primaries in races across the country.  We hope that their obvious and sincere commitment to women’s freedom and equality will force them to re-evaluate their pro-life views.”

It’s not as strong a statement.  The rhetoric doesn’t pop.  And it’s probably not very good for fundraising.  But by dropping the exclusive definition, Bennett could make one small step toward an understanding and a conversation between two hostile camps.

Both sides want to empower women, if in radically different ways.

In the broadest sense, both sides are feminists.

End note: I slipped it in as the hyperlink on “deeply religious,” but the Newsweek Article “Saint Sarah” deserves a second look if you have the time.  Palin herself panned it, but it is an insightful look into her world.

Flagstaff Lake, Maine

Last summer I worked for five weeks as a member of an Appalachian Trail crew, living in tents in Northern Maine while performing maintenance on the trail. Apparently I gave them my mailing address, because yesterday I received “The MAINEtainer,” an eight-page newspaper from the Maine Appalachian Trail Club (MATC). One headline stood out: “MATC opposes Highland Plantation wind energy plan.” The article included a map of the area around the proposed Highland Plantation, and I recognized it as Flagstaff Lake, where I spent a week cutting new trail out of the side of a hill with a mattock. The area is part of the ‘Hundred-Mile Wilderness,’ the longest stretch of the entire Appalachian Trail without a town or store.

MATC opens by summarizing their opposition to the installation of wind turbines two miles from the trail: “The MATC recognizes the need to develop wind power as a renewable energy source.  However, this need must be balanced against the recreational, scenic, natural, and cultural resources of the Appalachian Trail in Maine.”

For decades, environmentalists have taken the wrong approach in their advocacy, and MATC’s opposition to the Highland Plantation project is a prime example. Like Thoreau, who wrote, “All good things are wild and free,” they assume and promote an emotional reverence for nature. The assumption misses the point: the true reason to protect the environment is not for the environment’s sake but for our own. Rather than emphasizing this hard fact, environmental groups have relied on a sentimental argument for the intrinsic value of untamed nature, producing cultural antipathy and misguided environmentalism.

Arguing for a deep reverence for nature immediately evokes the 1960s counterculture, an association which mires the environmental debate deep in the baggage of America’s forty-year-old culture war.Consider any of various news stories detailing the latest extreme tactics of anti-whaling activists.  The general public cares little one way or another about whales, but most have a sense of whether or not their political group supports saving whales.  So all the vitriol of a culturally divided nation springs up before anyone can ask why we should care about whales in the first place.  Some people just like whales and think they’re worth saving; others do not.

The World Wildlife Fund is not a radical nut chained to a harpoon cannon, but its arguments for the natural world are not much more complex than the hippie yell, “Save the whales!”  Their standard advertising campaign is essentially a guilt trip featuring pictures of the fuzziest endangered species they can find.  Their species adoption program allows you to donate in the name of a certain animal like the panda, Amur leopard, polar bear, or tiger.  Never mind that your money goes into a general fund; you can feel good knowing that you have helped save the meerkats.  The entire campaign depends on the assumption that there is inherent moral value in these species.  Save the meerkats because they are cute.  Save the leopards because they look noble in the setting sun.

Similarly, the argument for reducing carbon emissions is often simplistic.  Carbon dioxide produced by industry is disrupting the natural balance, so reduce carbon dioxide.  MATC seems to think that we should preserve the Hundred-Mile Wilderness simply because it is wild and beautiful, without unsightly wind turbines.  Environmentalism of this sort depends on a hippie ethos of secular reverence for nature in its purest form.

Little wonder, then, that vocal skepticism of climate change appears to be growing.  Actual science is irrelevant to the issue, because the argument for environmentalism has been cast by environmentalists themselves as a cultural crusade promoting reverence for nature, and cultural crusaders must expect to find stiff resistance.

The crusader’s approach is a terrible mistake, not just because it motivates opposition along cultural lines, but because it is the wrong way to understand our relationship with the environment.  Thoreau-style environmentalists would claim that our capitalist economy spoils the environment, but the very word ‘spoil’ implies, incorrectly, that there exists an absolute, external definition of what a pristine environment looks like.  Rather, economy and environment are inextricably linked in a circular relationship, each shaping the other.  Just as Native Americans used to burn their forest’s undergrowth to produce a healthy deer population and make it easier to hunt those deer, we must devise a sustainable model for the ongoing interaction between our globalized economy and the natural world on which it depends.

In short, we need to manage our environment for our own long-term benefit, not for the whale’s benefit.  Our long-term interests should include a healthy whale population, but we must remember it is for our own good, not theirs.  Recent emphasis on efficiency and sustainability is the right direction to take, but these movements have not yet managed to shed their association with the ever-more-stale teachings of the counterculture.  It is our job, as a fresh generation, to forcibly recast environmentalism in practical terms.

Yes, Flagstaff Lake has a prehistoric beauty about it, but its wildness is a pretty fiction, not an intrinsic good.  The lake was created by a hydroelectric dam in 1950, deliberately submerging the town of Flagstaff in the process.  Rather than clinging to a cultural reverence for a false wilderness, we should plan for the future and install wind turbines in Northern Maine.  Then, perhaps, with the counterculture behind us, we can move past the culture wars and create a working model for an environmentally sustainable economy.