john maddente | midwestern clarity

A fter a national catastrophe like Katrina, some voices are bellowing about indifference to the poor and racism, while a grieving nation fumbles to make sense of it all.  Some criticism is out of control.   Let's decry an inept response to a natural disaster, hold accountable and prosecute decision-makers who controlled resources that could have helped more of our southern citizens. We can blame those who could have executed a more efficient evacuation from what Columnist David Brooks described as, “the most anticipated natural disaster in American history.”  Let us do all this but in the process let us also reject empty political charges that amplify the harm of the hurricane. Contributors on the editorial pages of my local newspaper ( Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ) could not resist the temptation to tar the Bush administration's actions with a recent piece entitled, “ A racial rift sadly revealed ” (Sept. 9, 2005).  Reactionary rap singers have cal...

Published July 12, 1996, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Perhaps it's just too much to ask, because few prominent journalists will publicly break ranks when asked to comment on the "B" word. The issue of media "bias" surfaced again. And once again, it was drowned by the voices of the renowned. At a recent National Press Club luncheon in Washington, NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw's responses to hard questions about the Fourth Estate did little to foil skeptics. Public television's Jim Lehrer's rejoinders to the same questions were entirely different. You had to believe one man or the other. The fodder at this event was a well-publicized survey suggesting that 89% of U.S. journalists voted for Clinton in 1992. Asked to comment on the survey, Brokaw dismissed the familiar charge of industry bias by providing an equally tired reason why he feels it just is not so. Echoing most of his colleagues from print to broadcast and sea to shining sea, he mused, ...

C ivil liberties, including the right to privacy, are critically necessary in a truly free society.  On the other hand, civil liberties should not automatically supersede national security concerns without the application of rigorous and transparent reasoning by parties operating in the collective interests of the people. By using the term "civil liberties" in this post, I am writing primarily about the right to privacy guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment. National security only trumps the right to privacy when the party imposing security measures (e.g. the U.S. Government) is truly functioning in the interest of the people it is imposing such measures upon, to protect them from those who would do them harm (e.g. Terrorists).   That is the circumstance we are faced with today.  Some of the current clamor on domestic surveillance ignores the greater risks and evils we face. For example, with enactment of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act i...

Published: Nov. 20, 2004, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel More than 12 years ago, Patrick J. Buchanan spoke these prophetic words during his speech at the Republican National Convention in Houston: “My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.” Immediately afterward, Buchanan was roundly denounced as a polemicist and even scorned by members of his own party. Some called it a hate speech; others groused about the political fallout and later blamed him for George H. W. Bush’s failure to win re-election in 1992. Whether or not you agree with his politics, Buchanan had the foresight and fortitude to call attention to philosophical warfare that was real then and remains so today. Since Nov. 2, anal...