n ’80, Pat Robertson referred to Jews as “spiritually blind” and “spiritually deaf.” In ’98, the Reverend Jerry Falwell said that the Antichrist was walking the Earth as a male Jew.

More recently, in 2002, the Zionist Organization of America awarded Robertson “The State of Israel Friendship Award” while the Israeli embassy hosts Falwell and other right wing Christian leaders at a prayer breakfast.

What changed?

Really, less than one might think. Many Christians throughout the ages-among them Locke and Rousseau-have subscribed to “dispensationalism,” a theory asserting that come Armageddon, the Messiah’s Second Coming hinges on the conversion of Jews to Christianity. This can only happen if Jews are in possession of the lands given to them by God. In the‘00s, it developed into “restorationism”, a theology that links biblical prophecy to the creation of a modern Jewish state. Thus, modern Christian Zionism came into the world.

Despite their belief in a “special relationship” between Christians and Jews, Christian Zionists do not love Jews. Jonathan Edwards, eighteenth century revivalist preacher, proclaimed that “the Jews in all their dispersions shall cast away their old infidelity, and shall have their hearts wonderfully changed, and abhor themselves for their past unbelief and obstinacy. They shall flow together to a blessed Jesus.” More recently, the Christian Right has professed strong support for Israel even while harboring the rankest forms of anti-Semitism among the likes of the John Birch Society and Falwell.

Since the ’70s, under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israeli governments have actively wooed the Christian Right. A wide spectrum of leaders has been involved with evangelical Christians supportive of a Jewish state. Binyamin Netanyahu drew Bill Clinton’s ire when Netanyahu met privately with Falwell and other Christian conservative leaders in Washington during the ’98 impasse in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

These dynamics are not new. What has changed more recently is a resurgence in active Christian Zionist support for the Israeli Right. Conversely, there has also been tacit support that American Jews now give to this pact, and Christian Zionists’ ability to translate their beliefs into action via new alliances with neo-conservatives in Washington.

Today, the Christian Zionism of the Christian Broadcasting Network and the Trinity Broadcasting Network-call it neo-Christian Zionism, if you will-is a movement with serious political and economic leverage. Neo-CZ advocates Israeli expansion to the Mediterranean and Jordan River; transfer of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to other Arab states; the destruction of mosques in the Old City of Jerusalem and rebuilding a Jewish temple there.

While it is easy to overemphasize the now stock explanatory value of September 11, revitalized neo-CZ does draw its impetus from the attacks. A shared sense of beleaguerment and political opportunism sent religious-conservatives, neo-cons, and the Israeli Likud government circling their wagons against the common enemy of terrorism-code in many circles for Islam. Since Reagan, sharing the GOP umbrella has forced religious- and neo-conservatives to work together, although relationships are sometimes uncomfortable. Yet despite some obvious ideological differences between Christian- and neo-conservatives, their worldviews are not so different. Both see the world in stark, absolutist terms, as “us” versus “them.” September 11 cemented the identity of “evil” on Islamic terrorists-and in doing so, positioned American Christians, Israel, and its supporters as the “good” that opposed it. Christian- and neo-conservatives could agree that they were now pitted against their Mahound: the enemies of Israel, Christ, and America.

According to Rose Schneiderman of Jewish Women Watching (JWW), the tacit support of the Christian/ Israeli Right alliance may have begun with the Second Intifada in 2000. JWW is an organization that runs ad campaigns reminiscent ofThe Onion challenging sexism and other discrimination among American Jews. “The Jewish community became increasingly anxious about American support for Israel and more willing to create coalitions unimaginable five years ago,” says Schneiderman.

Whatever the precise turning point, 9/11 did exacerbate this polarization. In this environment, the Israeli government stepped up its efforts at “outreach.” As Rani Levy, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s adviser on world Jewish and Christian affairs told Minnesotans United Against Terrorism last year, “Wherever they burn the flags of America around the world, they burn the flags of Israel as well. Wherever you see a doll of President Bush go up in flames, you see a doll of Prime Minister Sharon go up in flames right next to it. It’s not a coincidence. There is a reason the world, especially the Arab world and the Islamic world, views Israel and the United States as one. There is a calling of the people of our nations to know each other, to work together, and to work toward mutual goals.”

Neo-Christian Zionism

Neo-CZ makes its case on two levels: Christian conservatives reference the Bible to justify the Christian / Jewish “special relationship,” while neo-conservatives see a special relationship between the U.S. and Israel.

“The Jewish state was born in the mind of God. God created Israel and God defends Israel. Is it not logical to say that those who fight with Israel fight with God?” reasoned dispensationalist John Hagee, the televangelist pastor at San Antonio’s Cornerstone Church, during a BBC interview. Hagee claims that his relationship to the Sharon government is so intimate that “If I phone Israel I can get in contact with pretty much anyone I want to.” Indeed, many high profile Israeli politicians have addressed Hagee’s congregation, and Hagee met with Netanyahu during his ’98 visit.

Neo-CZs, like those at Cornerstone Church, are thus actively “returning Jews to their homeland” from all over the world, sponsoring immigrants through its “Exodus II” program. They find Biblical support in Genesis, where they say God promises to bless those who support Israel, curse those who oppose it, and give Abraham and his descendants the Holy Land forever. Neo-CZs also point to Romans, where Paul tells Gentiles they owe Jews material aid in return for shared spiritual roots.

This may not sound like a bad deal for Jews-but many are understandably skeptical about CZ’s conversion plan. Christians “don’t love the real Jewish people. They love us as characters … in their play, and that’s not who we are. If you listen to the drama that they are describing, essentially it’s a five-act play in which the Jews disappear in the fourth act,” Journalist Gershom Gorenberg told 60 Minutes.

But some Jewish leaders seem willing to overlook the fine print in the interests of more immediate political gain. “I’m going to take the support because Israel needs it,” Rabbi Jerome Epstein, vice-president of the conservative US United Synagogue, told the London Guardian. But “[t]heir theology is in a different world. We can cope with it. If I convince them not to support Israel, are they going to give up their attempt to convert Jews? No.”

Where Christian conservatives focus on a special relationship between Christians and Jews, the neo-conservative backers of neo-CZ focus on a special U.S-Israeli relationship.

Neo-cons$mdash;who in the 60s and 70s defected from the Democratic Party because of its “soft” stance on Soviet Communists and anti-Semitism$mdash;maintain there is no difference between U.S. and Israeli national interests. Hegemony in the Middle East is the only way to achiev
e security. In ’96, for instance, then Pentagon Defense Policy Board chair Richard Perle, co-authored the paper “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” advising Netanyahu on how missile defense technology can advance right wing Zionism.

Not surprisingly, neo-cons are quite friendly with the defense industry. In fact, they are the defense industry. Its top brass includes a host of retired Admirals and Lieutenants who worked for Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Technology Strategies & Alliances Corporation-just to name a few. These companies have lucrative deals to supply Israel with everything from ships and planes, to rocket systems and rubber bullets.

Within the current administration in particular, a small, but influential group of neo-conservatives wields tremendous power, holding key cabinet posts and exerting influence through organizations like the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). Founded in ’76 by neo-conservatives who wanted to ensure U.S. backing of the Israeli military, JINSA’s ties to the current administration are robust. Until the beginning of the Bush presidency, JINSA’s board of advisors included Dick Cheney, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton, and top Pentagon official Douglas Feith. JINSA advisor Richard Perle is among the most influential of the lot, chairing the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board until March 2003, when he resigned amidst disclosures of shady business dealings.

Most of JINSA’s budget goes towards sending retired US generals and admirals to Israel, reports The Nation magazine. There, it arranges meetings between Israeli officials and the “still-influential US flag officers who, upon their return to the States, happily write op-eds and sign letters and advertisements championing the Likudnik line.” With the backing of these influential members of the Bush administration, neo-CZs are able to transpose their once mostly domestic efforts onto the international stage but to devastating effects.

Repercussions

The impacts of combining revivalist fervor with neo-conservative calculation are already evident both abroad and at home.

On the international front, these forces changed Bush’s stance on Israeli incursions into the occupied territories. In April 2002, he initially demanded that Sharon withdraw tanks from the West Bank during an incursion that killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians and obliterated infrastructure. But after a torrent of outrage from neo-CZs, he changed his mind, eventually praising Sharon as “a man of peace.” The President also famously espoused Christian Zionism’s Manicheistic view of the world in his warning to the world after September 11 that “you are either with us or against us.”

In the buildup to the recent Iraq war, Perle and other neo-cons led the charge, while his Defense Policy Board last year outlined a “Grand Strategy for the Middle East,” focusing on “Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot, [and] Egypt as the prize.” In other words, if neo-conservatives have their way, Iraq is only the beginning. If nothing else, these sentiments are pushing the boundaries of discourse ever further right. As the center of debate shifts, what seems outrageous today could seem far more reasonable tomorrow$mdash;especially if dissent from the left continues to be conspicuously feeble.

Post-war, the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia have laid out a peace plan calling for an independent Palestinian State. This seems promising, but these plans delay until 2005 (after the Presidential election) the substantive questions on borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements. These are the same difficult issues that killed Oslo. Postponement gives neo-CZs and their cohorts time to mount a campaign in Congress to undermine the process. “The evangelical Christian Right and AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a warmongering lobby with legendary influence], are already mounting a campaign in Congress to undermine the road map and any other proposal that would make even demands on Israel,” reports the The Nation.

This “us” vs. “them” approach to foreign policy$mdash;rather than traditional diplomacy’s fluid coalitions$mdash;is dangerous because it reinforces the perception of many around the world that Americans hate Arabs. It fixes identities of “good” and “evil,” making redemption (short of conversion) impossible.

At home, conservative Christian support for the Israeli Right has become the GOP cause du jour. Evangelical Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe produced this nugget of wisdom on the Senate floor last March, explaining why Israel should keep the West Bank: “Because God said so.” House Majority Whip and über-Christian conservative Tom Delay told AIPAC last May that the West Bank and Golan Heights were not occupied territories but parts of Israel. And at a Pentagon “town meeting” last August, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld intimated that Israeli enclaves in the “so-called occupied territories” were no big deal because Israel had “won” all its wars with Arab countries. The stance won him praise from the Christian Coalition.

Among Jews, these uncomfortable alliances have widened the divide between leaders and the mainstream, threatening the community’s tradition of discourse. JWW’s Schneiderman emphasizes that Jewish Americans are still “what would be understood as liberal,” overwhelmingly supporting abortion rights, affirmative action, and especially the separation of church and state. “It is the leadership of the Jewish community that has shifted right and formed alliances with Christian conservatives.” Nowadays, these leaders are “quashing dissent … When American Jews publicly criticize what the Sharon government is doing, they are excoriated as being anti-Israel.”

Progressive Jewish groups are doing their best to battle these trends. JWW’s “practice safe politics” campaign, for instance, warns of strange bedfellows among Christian conservatives, distributing more than 10,000 condoms nationwide with the caption: “WARNING: this condom will NOT protect you from the real intentions of the Christian right wing. Abstinence from strange bedfellows is advised.”

But in many ways, policy changes may not hinge on advocacy in this community. Jews do not shape Republican Middle East policy; Christian conservatives do. And for all their talk about abstinence, it is clear that Christian Zionists are too happily in bed with the Sharon government and its neo-conservative advocates to leave anytime soon.

ecause the American people have utterly rejected it, liberalism has been forced underground… Liberalism is over,” chortles right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh on his website. Didn’t you know? The Republican Party is the party of ‘the people.’

In the aftermath of last fall’s midterm elections, conservative commentators were inclined to agree. Even the more evenhanded among them, those who recognized that the election did not reflect a seismic shift towards the Republican Party, often could not resist drawing dramatic conclusions. White House advisers boasted that the 2002 election confirmed a new political truth: the existence of a popular mandate for Bush and his conservative agenda.

Has populism really deserted the progressive Left and eloped with the conservative Right?

Limbaugh’s prattle aside, it does seem that the romance between leftist and mass populist movements has chilled somewhat. The early years of the marriage, when agrarian-based popular mass movements of the late‘00s swept the country, saw populism and progressivism happily sharing the same bed. Within the past several years, grassroots populism has grown to be far less identifiably a movement of the left. “Right-wing populist movements, disturbingly moralistic, intensely nationalistic and narrowly parochial, mark contemporary politics not only in the United States but abroad as well,” writes Thomas Bender in The Nation.

Indeed, in the last twenty-five years the Christian Right has grown into the most formidable mass movement on the domestic political scene, with the Christian Coalition alone claiming more than a million members. Since ’89 the Coalition has built 1,700 local chapters in fifty states, implementing well-organized voter outreach programs. Also on the Right, the National Rifle Association added one million new members from ’99 to 2000, now totaling 3.6 million. Neighborhood NRA chapters in California hold monthly meetings where members come together to plan letter writing and phone banking campaigns, and target candidates during election years.

At the same time, membership in progressive labor groups like AFL-CIO unions has not risen significantly, and in some sectors has actually declined. After losing 200,000 members in 2000, the U.S. labor movement gained 17,000 in 2001, leaving membership hovering around 16.3 million. The percentage of wage and salary workers who are union members remains at about 13.5 percent.

Right-wing populism is not an unprecedented phenomenon. Populism, like all social movements, swings with the time. It leaned Right during the ’50s Red Scare when the fear-mongering Senator Joe McCarthy called liberals “traitorous elitists,” and in ’69 when segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace won nearly ten-million mostly low-income white votes during his Presidential bid. Populism leaned Left during the farm worker and CIO campaigns of the ’30s and Vietnam War protests of the ’60s.

If populism is no longer the Leftist bosom buddy that it has been at other historical moments, the foundations for the shift to the Right can be better understood when we examine the nature of populism itself. Populist movements have always involved two elements: an exaltation of and appeal to ‘the people’ and a sense of anti-elitism. Populist movements have challenged capitalist excess, with workers standing up to large corporations and banks. They have also, however, drawn from other currents, including anti-intellectualism, majoritarianism, moralism and Americanism. These tendencies sometimes result in a disregard for rational debate in favor of demagoguery, and tendencies towards sacrificing minority rights, theocracy, ethnocentrism and xenophobia, notes Political Research Associates, a think tank that monitors right wing movements.

The causes for the present divergence between populism and the Left are two-fold. Illiberal elements of populism that were always present have gained greater prominence, while the Left has $mdash; both justifiably and unjustifiably $mdash; become associated with insular academic elitism. Liberal elitism has, in part, driven populism’s loss of identity as a worker’s movement and allowed the Right to redefine it around social issues.

Liberal elitism and distrust of democracy is both real and imagined. The Left of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century exhibits a strain of snobbery, giving rise to the stereotype of Ivory Tower liberals who romanticize “the Proletariat” but have no real understanding of it. Right-friendly Richard Ellis criticizes Leftist intellectuals for their abstract love of the masses, but actual contempt for ordinary lives in his book The Dark Side of the Left. Middle and upper class liberals often do hold an “Archie Bunker stereotype” of working class Americans as bigoted or ignorant. Few of us would say we were prejudiced against working class or low-income people, of course, writes Betsy Wright of United for a Fair Economy. Our prejudices are easily disguised as a disdain for Southerners, Midwesterners, country music fans, gun users, and all sorts of religious, patriotic, fat, or military people. These prejudices may manifest themselves in something as innocuous as a tendency to socialize only with other college-educated people. “By huddling, we are missing some opportunities, including a chance to build a more powerful movement,” notes Wright.

As an avatar of the Left, the Democratic Party has done its share to alienate working class Americans. Many Americans regarded the Clinton administration’s embrace of the principle of meritocracy as elitist, for instance—a perception that Franklin Foer of The New Republic believes is not without validity. Clinton’s government was not, like previous hierarchies, comprised of boarding school elites, but of brainy, Ivy League meritocrats who seemed far removed from, and foreign to, most Americans. The administration’s perceived insularity caused “one of the most ferocious right-wing populist backlashes in modern American history” with Newt Gingrich’s ’94 “revolution,” Foer hypothesizes.

In contrast, the George W. Bush administration embodies a kind of “return to country-club elitism in the guise of cowboy-boot populism.” It is devoid of intellectuals, comprised instead of “organization men” who worked their way up through government bureaucracies, corporations, the military, and the Republican Party. Foer’s argument is that through their incremental ascension through the ranks, these organization men learned to value loyalty, hard work, and caution, making them more disciplined and humble, and less arrogant than the Clintonites. Bush’s idea of merit is based not on intelligence but “character.” In fact, he shares a deep suspicion of intellectualism with some strains of populism, denouncing those who think “they’re all of a sudden smarter than the average person because they happen to have an Ivy League degree.” This may seem intuitively appealing for many Americans who regard character as being far more accessible than intellect: one may not be able to become smarter, but one can become a better person.

Chip Berlet, author of Right-Wing Populism in America, believes that the value placed on character and humility is just a front. “That’s who they [the Bush administration] put on television as their spokespeople, but really, they’re overridden by the fanatics in the background, the Karl Roves and Donald Rumsfelds, the vicious political insiders.” Even so, the illusion appears to be effective.

As importantly, populism itself has changed. Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin writes in The Populist Persuasion: An American History that it is not business that earns the resentment of modern-day populists; it is the government. Kazin makes th
e interesting observation that the CIO campaigns marked the last time a general reform movement used the language of “the worker.” In contrast, populism today purports to speak for “the people” $mdash; especially tax-paying people, who share an identity as consumers rather than workers.

As part of this identity shift, voters are focusing far less on labor-related economic issues and more on social ones. Polls show that non-college-educated members of the working class tend to vote progressive on economic issues but conservative on social and military issues, an inclination that Republicans have skillfully exploited. As a party, they have manipulated splits on social issues—including abortion, the death penalty, gun control, and an ambiguously-defined, ongoing “war on terrorism”—and translated them into political power to impose economic policies that most Americans do not support.

Unlike many Democrats, Republicans seem to understand that real power lies not only in building an ideologically cohesive elitist class—something Republicans are also better at doing than Democrats—but in affecting opinions on a grassroots level. Republicans spend money on ideology, funding well-known think tanks like the CATO Institute and Heritage Foundation, but they have not neglected the bottom-up approach.

The Left has made the mistake of failing to regard ideologically uncommitted Americans as a resource in the same way the Right does. While field researching the impacts of devolution on public education in Texas last summer, I was dumbstruck at the near total hegemony of the Right $mdash; and particularly the Christian Right $mdash; in low-level political arenas that some observers write off as insignificant. The Texas State Board of Education offers a particularly chilling example of the influence the Right can wield behind the scenes.

In ’96, Christian conservative board members challenged history textbooks for going “overboard” in their inclusion of pictures of minorities in history texts and demanded that publishers print a Caucasian family next to a discussion on the “American Family.” They opposed including a picture of a woman carrying a briefcase because it undermined traditional family values and complained that the textbooks contained an “overkill of emphasis on cruelty to slaves and civil rights.” They called for pictures of families to include both the mother and father, and for eliminating discussions of social issues like homelessness, drug use prevention, endangered species and the environment. In ’95, right-wing members pushed the board to reject an environmental science textbook. This influence is especially significant given that Texas, as the second largest textbook consumer in the nation, also has significant sway over what books are used in the rest of the country. Publishers often only publish one or two editions and use books tested in the “big three” markets, Texas, California or Florida, nationally.

The religious Right was able to demand these changes as it steadily increased its presence on the state board. They ran and won in often unnoticed elections that even local newspapers did not cover, says Sam Smoot, Executive Director of Texas Freedom Network, a watchdog group for the state’s religious Right. From ’93-1994, there were two religious Right members on the fifteen-member board. In 2001-2002, there were six.

The overall message for Leftists is this: we must, if we are to remain a party of working class Americans, learn humility and develop functional unity. Rather than condemn voters for voting conservative, Leftists must realize we have the burden of proof to convince and educate voters. Elitist academics cannot continue to tell poor voters they are too uneducated to understand anything so complicated as policy and economics—and to not bother even trying. If that were true, voters would have only social issues or personality to vote on.

Under these circumstances, voters become prey for well-packaged conservatives who hide the bloody knife of reverse-Robin Hood legislation, designed to rob the poor and give to the rich, under the white lace tablecloth of “character” and “integrity” of George W. Bush’s “good men.” Rather than working on an abstract, removed level for policies that we imagine are good for the people, we must help citizens empower themselves through building permanent, grassroots structures that can translate experiential knowledge into electoral action.

Liberals must learn how to talk the talk and walk the walk—and most importantly of all, listen to the individuals we purport to champion. If we are not from a working class background, we need to understand our own ignorance in the face of the experiential knowledge of those who experience the brunt of economic downturn firsthand. We need not be ashamed of being Ivory Tower educated elites if that is, indeed, what we are but we cannot conflate our purchased education with superior intellect or knowledge.

While homophobic, sexist and racist elements do exist among working class Americans, as they do in all sectors of society, they are in the minority. The problem is more often our lack of respect than theirs—and we do not need to weaken our movement’s unity by catering to these fears.

have not in the past been a staunch defender of single-sex Greek houses. So it shouldn’t come as a shock that I do not wish to defend them now. Yet I would like to point out that single-sex organizations are not evil by virtue of their exclusivity alone; if they are evil it is a result of how and why they exclude. To assume that single-sex Greek houses are necessarily evil because they are exclusionary is to vastly oversimplify the issue.

I write in reaction to Professor Susan Ackerman’s statement before the faculty on May 14, 2000 in which she speaks about “problems inherent in the privilege fraternities and sororities have to exclude, in particular the problem of ‘othering’.” She describes a process whereby the othering that from the right to exclude translates into a stronger form that transforms others into “objects of scorn and derision, and even objects of abuse, harassment, and attack.” In an example Ackerman gives, members of one fraternity regard members of other fraternities and gays as inferior.

Certainly, this kind of destructive othering happens. I do not take issue with whether or not it takes place nor with whether or not any of the effects of othering that Ackerman identifies exist; they do. I do take issue with the unsupported leap she takes from the organization’s right of closure, or right to exclude, to its tendency to exclude outsiders destructively.

Exclusion is not in and of itself evil. If you define othering in this manner, as the sense of recognizing differences between you and not-you or we and they, it is not intrinsically wrong. Dartmouth College, after all, has the right to exclude based on academic achievement. Academic departments differentiate between honor students and non-honor students. Each of us informally excludes those we do not consider our friends from those we do consider our friends. In fact, there is no membership-neutral term in English. It is either “me” and “you/he/she/it”; or “we” and “all of you”; or “us” and “them.” Exclusion is built into our very language and into our psyches from the moment we become aware of the “self.” Are all of these forms of exclusion unjustified and wrong? I think most of us would say they are not.

Exclusion is not the same thing as destructive othering, nor does it necessarily lead to othering. The real problem with single-sex Greek organizations lies in how they exclude: by sex, formally, and by race and affluence, informally. These criterion are not morally justifiable for what these organizations claim to be.

The students who comprise these organizations were selected to attend this College (and others were excluded). Therefore, to remain part of the College, each individual and the organizations that these individuals comprise must conform (at least in action) to College rules and principles. These principles include, as Ackerman pointed out, a commitment to diversity of thought $mdash; within, of course, the College-defined game of tolerating diversity of thought. It’s a paradox of sorts, but one that pervades most, if not all, liberal democratic societies. The problem with single-sex Greek organizations, then, is not that they exclude, but that they exclude in ways that contradict the bigger, College-sanctioned rule of exclusion: the exclusion of intolerance.

The distinction between exclusion and destructive othering is an important one to make, I think, because simply condemning exclusion leaves the case against single-sex Greek organizations and their harmful effects, far too open to refutation. Rather, we should clarify what, precisely, is wrong with these organizations. I believe it is intolerance, on both an institutional and individual level, that lies at the heart of many harms attributed to the single-sex Greek system. And this realization leaves single-sex houses with some wiggle room: it is not their existence that is threatened, but the existence of institutionalized and morally arbitrary exclusion and what that perpetrates, that the College seems to be attempting to eradicate.

I, personally, can live with this kind of exclusion.

t reminds me of the people news magazines and talk shows love to interview. Did you know your next-door neighbor was a serial killer? "Oh no. But he was such a nice young man. Who would’ve thought?"

And really: who would’ve thought? Who would have thought that our neighbors and classmates at Zeta Psi fraternity would include in their weekly sex newsletter pieces about women, referred to by name, with "loose cunts"; pictures of women published without their consent and with accompanying commentary about their "tits;" and the promise, as Mark Bubriski reported for the first time in The Dartmouth, to print "Next week: [Brother X]’s patented date rape techniques!"

What is disturbing for many of us, especially women, is that we know Zete brothers and they do not seem like the disgusting human beings that these newsletters seem to reveal them to be. Zete is not, according to conventional wisdom, an especially misogynistic house, unlike some other Greek organizations on our campus. Yet if these frat brothers seem so respectful in everyday interactions and they can still write or condone the writing of such denigrating words – what does this mean? What could they possibly be thinking?

Possibly, they do not know it’s wrong. Possibly, part of them knows these comments are base and offensive, but believe it is funny, so consider it excusable. Or perhaps, they realize their harms, they don’t think it’s funny – but they didn’t do anything to stop it.

On the first point, the reasoning may look something like this: we are frat brothers and frat brothers are men. Real men fuck a lot of women; a lot of women want to fuck real men. And if a woman fucks a lot of men, then it’s her own damn fault if we say she has a loose cunt. It’s her own fault she’s a whore.

What this points to is that Zete culture, and very likely fraternity culture in general, has institutionalized the denigration of women as a method of male bonding. It’s cool to be a man who is so independent of women (because he can get them whenever he wants) that he can speak about them as objects – be they girlfriend, casual hook-up or sister. It’s cool to be a pimp and have bitches and hoes. The Dartmouth reported that a caption accompanying a picture of a topless woman reads, "No it’s not [Brother X]’s girlfriend ([Female student]’s tits are too small), [Brother Y]’s sister (too round) or even [Brother Z]’s Cancun hookup (not old enough to have tits). Yup, it’s just another Cancun chick faced with the easy choice of either flashing hundreds of strangers or spending the night with [Brother A]."

Or perhaps, the second possibility is more likely. How can you not laugh at comments about date rape, underage sex, and your sister’s breasts?

But for some, perhaps the problem isn’t recognition of the problem or a truly warped sense of humor, but that they are too weak to stand up to their brothers. "Who wants to be a party pooper? Let them have their fun. They don’t mean any harm by it."

Somehow part of me is a little dubious about how harmful and offensive many of these brothers realize their newsletters to be. After all, these same conversations are very likely carried out behind closed-doors every Wednesday night in most if not all fraternities. But Zete got caught. Zete wrote it down on paper and instead of fucking women this time, they got fucked by a woman. Like Psi Upsilon, Zete was just unlucky – not wrong.

Those who believe this: I believe that you are able to think and see. Do you know how many women are date-raped and subjected to other acts of sexual violence every day? Do you know how painful, harmful and degrading this is for women and also men who are subjected to the same? Do you know that by speaking the language of violence and misogyny you are perpetrating these crimes?

Who would’ve thought? Maybe we all should have.

Racism is a serious problem at Dartmouth, and racially motivated incidents will continue to occur until the Dartmouth community challenges that racism. Usually, those racist attitudes are difficult to see because they occur primarily as an undercurrent beneath our everyday interactions. But when they manifest as concrete incidents, these events are an opportunity for us to see more clearly the prejudices that we still subscribe to- and to do something about them.

The Psi Upsilon fraternity incident in late February was one of these events. What happened at Psi U is important not just for the actual incident, but also for what it reveals about some of the underlying attitudes on our campus. It has sparked a great deal of discussion in many quarters about Dartmouth’s problems with racial, cultural, and sexual insensitivity.

A common response among students, and one that the community has not adequately addressed, is a lack of understanding about why the incident is racially and culturally insensitive. Many believe that yelling "Scalp ‘em!" is not necessarily a racial and cultural slur. The harm of doing so is not immediately evident to them and they are too embarrassed to ask why it is offensive.

For many, "Scalp ‘em" is just an innocuous old football cheer. It is a matter of school pride, not of wanting to offend someone. Some also claim that naming the Dartmouth mascot the "Indian" is a compliment, arguing that Indians are courageous warriors and should feel honored. The fact that other sports teams have Indian-esque mascots (like the Atlanta Braves, the Cleveland Indians, and yes, the Washington Redskins) shows us that these beliefs are widely accepted and harmless. Unfortunately, this is a case in which conventional wisdom does not quite have it right.

Conventional wisdom is, to put it mildly, fallible. For anyone who needs convincing, fifty-five years ago, it was widely accepted in the United States that minorities should sit separately from whites on buses and for them to attend separate schools. The seats and schools were supposedly just as good, and it was considered a matter of comfort for all involved – so what was the harm?

Today, even though most of us acknowledge that segregation is wrong and harmful, it is apparently far less clear what, exactly, is harmful about the cheer and ultimately about the Indian mascot. The short answer is that they are caricatures and misrepresentations that many of us do not fully understand as such. There are two specific ways in which racial caricatures (or stereotypes) can be harmful. One is when the image itself is negativeÓfor instance the stereotype of the "greedy Jew." The second is intrinsic to caricature and the way it distorts how individuals are viewed. The Dartmouth Indian mascot, perhaps meant to be complimentary, is harmful because it still creates a view of Native Americans that simply is not. Yet many of us take this ideal to be in some way accurate because we do not have enough real-life interaction with Native American students to know better.

Mascot supporters often argue that the mascot is a symbol of respect when used in a "dignified" manner. They argue that it is symbol of heritage. But how can it be respectful for one group of people to use another group of people as a mascot without their consent? Dartmouth’s Native American students have always spoken out strongly against the mascot. Is it really respectful or dignified to continue (albeit unofficially) forcing the mascot upon them?

Of course all of us could support a truly dignified symbol that was representative of Native Americans as they really wish to portray themselves. But it is questionable whether there is such a thing as a dignified caricature. Is a white male dressed in a headdress with painted cheeks, a bared chest, bare feet and riding a horse really a "dignified" representation? There is a distinction to be made between Native American students dressing in traditional costume and performing an act of heritage and non-Indian students masquerading as Indians. The latter uncomfortably recalls white actors’ use of blackface to caricature blacks in Vaudeville theatre.

Consent is crucially important. Notre Dame University uses the Fighting Irish mascot because the school was founded by Irish priests, and the subject of their mascot – the Irish – was chosen by Irish administrators and students. There are schools in Native American communities that use the "Braves" or the "Warriors" as their mascots – but those are used based on the consent of the school’s Native American students.

There is a clear qualitative distinction between a school, comprised primarily of Native American students, choosing for itself a "Warriors" mascot and a school, comprised primarily of non-Native American students, choosing an "Indian" mascot over the protests of its Native American students.

Aside from the problem of consent, there are other reasons why the Indian mascot is neither respectful nor dignified. For example, even if, as supporters of the Indian mascot consistently claim, Dartmouth used the Indian symbol in a dignified and respectful way, its use makes Native Americans targets of disrespectful and racist treatment from outside the Dartmouth community. The repulsive image on the cover of this issue originated from the football rivalry between Dartmouth and Harvard. Is it less hurtful because Dartmouth was only indirectly responsible for the attack? Such abuse is bound to occur when a cultural symbol enters the competitive arena.

Outside of that arena, use of the mascot creates distortion in the way we ultimately view Native Americans as individuals and in how Native Americans view themselves. This example may help clarify. People assume that I know karate, I am smart and I am talented at math because I am Asian American.

What is the harm in all this? These representations are not necessarily negative and they are not usually invoked out of desire to hurt. Yet there is harm in them. I am not a karate expert, I do not have slanted eyes, I do not like math just because I am Asian American. I may do or have all of these things, but if I did, it would not be solely because of my ethnicity or culture. In the same way, when we look at the Dartmouth Indian mascot, what we see is no more Indian than a picture of someone with slanted eyes is necessarily Asian or an Amos and Andy doll is black. If a Native American is courageous or strong or can ride a horse, that is a function of who she is as an individual rather than of her being Native American. In these ways, the mascot, the slogan and the faulty perceptions they perpetuate devalue the humanity and uniqueness of individuals within a given group.

Given the harms of the Dartmouth mascot, it is clear that the "Indian" should be retired not just from official use, but also from unofficial use. Dartmouth students with Native American backgrounds do, overwhelmingly, continue to disapprove of the Indian mascot. Why do so many of us continue to doubt their word that the mascot really is offensive? Why do we continue to insist that the mascot and Indian cheers are "dignified," "respectful" and "harmless?"

Democrats really hate to lose. But what really gets their goat is losing ? and then finding out that they didn’t really.

New numbers trickling in from the Florida media recounts are surely rubbing salt in Democratic wounds. They are revealing a consistent trend: net gains in votes for Al Gore even in strongly Republican areas.

The Orlando Sentinel, the South Florida Sentinel and the Chicago Tribune recently reported the results of reexamining 15,596 under- and over-votes in 15 different counties. Fourteen out of the fifteen were Republican, and all used both paper ballots and optical-scan readers. The three-publication study found 1700 ballots "on which a voter’s choice for president could be easily determined," including "hundreds that were thrown out even though it was clear which candidates those voters wanted." More than half of these ballots were rejected because the voter selected Bush and Gore and also wrote in the candidate’s name. Some voters used pen rather than pencil or made marks outside the designated oval. Among these, Gore had a 366-vote lead. The Gore campaign had not pushed for recounts in any of these counties-which represent 4.6 percent of the total ballots cast in the state.

To a certain extent, the figures will vary with different standards for considering voter intent. The strongest criticism of recounts ? both those conducted by election officials and by media ? is that the standards for determining whom the voter chose vary immensely. At one end of the spectrum there are counts that only examine those instances when the voter had filled in the oval for a candidate correctly ? but used pencil or a pen other than the one provided, or filled in the oval and written in the name ? and thus rendered the ballot unreadable to the machine. At the other end, there are counts that also attribute "dimpled" ballots, ballots that were punched enough to let light through the paper, but not enough to be machine legible, to a candidate. And somewhere perhaps off the spectrum, there are the instances where voters in Miami-Dade had punched out the chad one spot below the chad for either Bush or Gore for fairly inscrutable if consistent reasons-and that if counted, would have given Gore 300 votes than Bush.

Yet even by the most conservative of methods, the recounts have so far resulted in a significant net gain in votes for Gore ? "significant" being several hundred of votes. Bush won Florida by the paltry margin of 537 votes.

Given the high stakes, perhaps it isn’t surprising that many Republican leaders have been making a concerted effort to delegitimize the vote recounts. Some Senate Republicans have criticized recount supporters of wanting to "revise" history. But that is not what the recounts seek to achieve at all: they are an attempt to find out what history really was. Republican leaders are against a recount because they fear that their version of history may not stand up under factual scrutiny.

The standard Republican line is that Democrats are just bad losers and should move on and forget about it, because dwelling on the election weakens our democracy. Never mind that it is the suppression of information from public dissemination that is the most threatening to democratic values. If the Bush administration really is a legitimate administration, it should be open to rational challenge.

The media recounts will probably continue for several more months. They are a painstakingly slow process. As the election recedes further into the past, more people may question why recounts are taking place at all: whether they are merely an attempt to dwell in the past and deny the reality of George W. Bush’s presidency. But the media recounts are not about denial. They are about the public’s right to know and the sense of responsibility to that basic democratic tenet. They are about finding our electoral system’s major flaws and figuring out how to correct them.

So, while it could just be because they’re crotchety losers that Democrats are still grumbling about Bush carrying Florida’s Electoral College votes in the last election, it appears increasingly likely that they’re grumbling because they never lost the state in the first place. For now, they can only hope that the media recounts can help make future elections a little more just.

When Bill Clinton nominated Bill Lann Lee to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department, then Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri opposed Lee on the grounds that Lee’s advocacy of affirmative action might "limit his capacity" to enforce the laws. Ashcroft said Lee’s pledge to uphold the laws was not enough. In large part because of Ashcroft’s opposition, Lee was not confirmed by the Senate.

How ironic it is then that conservatives often defend George W. Bush’s choice of John Ashcroft as Attorney General by claiming that liberals are against him for ideological reasons. Ashcroft’s defenders say that the only question should be whether he would enforce the laws of the United States.

And the larger question is why George W. Bush – a self-proclaimed "uniter," not a "divider" – would nominate such a rabid right-winger to his cabinet, especially for the sensitive position of Attorney General?

It is not clear why we should believe Ashcroft’s pledge to enforce the laws as written. Ashcroft opposed James Hormel when Clinton nominated him for the position of Ambassador to Luxembourg. Why? Hormel was gay. With all this in mind, can we really trust Ashcroft to enforce all hate-crime laws?

As Senator, Ashcroft engaged in a smear campaign to block the appointment of Ronnie L. White, an African American sitting on the Missouri Supreme Court, to the federal bench. Although publicly Ashcroft says he opposed White because of White’s "pro-criminal" views and his serious bias against … the death penalty," critics suspect other motivations played a role in the decision.

Consider the fact that White’s record for supporting the death penalty in the death sentences he reviewed was actually more stringent than that of his predecessor, who was appointed by then Governor John Ashcroft. White upheld 70 percent of the cases he reviewed, while his predecessor Elwood Thomas only upheld 53 percent.

Ashcroft’s record on race leaves much to be desired. Ashcroft came under fire for accepting an honorary degree from Bob Jones University, the South Carolina institution that gained notoriety for its teaching that Catholicism is a cult and its then enforced policy against interracial dating.

In addition, Ashcroft seems to have an affinity for Confederate pride and the glorification of Confederate history. In a ’98 interview with the Southern Partisan, Ashcroft said: "Your magazine helps set the record straight. You’ve got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I’ve got to do more. We’ve all got to stand up and speak in this respect or else we’ll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda." Two years earlier, in ’96, an article in the magazine asserted, "Slave owners … did not have a practice of breaking up slave families – If anything they encouraged strong slave families to further the slaves’ peace and happiness."

An appearance at Bob Jones and an interview with Southern Partisan would not necessarily be enough to disqualify Ashcroft. After all, George W. Bush visited the school in order to appeal to conservatives in the South Carolina primary (though Bush apologized after the political threat of John McCain had receded).

But Ashcroft has exhibited a pattern throughout his career. He opposed voluntary desegregation plans in his earlier days as Missouri Attorney General, on the basis that it would cost the state too much money. As if this was not enough, Ashcroft has also opposed legislation that would have outlawed discrimination against gays and he has favored policies that would limit the ability of women to have abortions and access to contraceptives. Abortion rights supporters fear that Ashcroft may be lax on enforcing laws such as the ones that guarantee safe passage for women to and from abortion clinics.

Given his apparent desire to grant interviews to racist publications, speeches at racist universities, and a willingness to pervert the truth about minority judicial candidates simply for political gain, is John Ashcroft really qualified to defend our civil rights?

So why would George W. Bush nominate Ashcroft? There are two possibilities.

First, the nomination quiets agitation among the right-wing that Bush is a little too mushy and compassionate of a conservative and that his Cabinet nominations have been party sellouts.

If Bush does not himself agree with Ashcroft’s policies, he has to at least make a token effort to show his more conservative party members he is trying to swing things their way and that he has not forgotten their support during the election. Ashcroft’s nomination would be Bush’s way of saying "See? I really am a good conservative at heart … and if those bleedin’ heart liberals in Congress shoot down this nomination, it isn’t my fault."

The second possibility is that Bush really is a good conservative at heart. It could be that Bush does share Ashcroft’s intolerant anti-gay, anti-abortion values. In that case, the revelation is even more frightening. His earlier attempts at playing the moderate were then nothing more than a campaign ruse.

Even if Ashcroft is not an outright racist, questions about his racial intolerance and his lack of respect for women’s rights should be enough to disqualify him from becoming the nation’s foremost defender of its laws. Furthermore, if Bush’s ideology is in fact similar to John Ashcroft’s, this country has reason to worry about the future of civil rights.