It's not just the thesis he wrote eight years ago; there is no evidence that Bob McDonnell has given up the religious-right positions that he sharpened at Pat Robertson's Regent University.

Do you know who runs Regent? Pat Robertson is both president and chancellor--it's his school. Do you know who uses that university to produce young, attractive religious right-wingers like McDonnell, since he couldn't get elected himself? Pat Robertson. Do you think Pat Robertson is an "ordinary educator" who promotes America's Four Freedoms? If you say yes, are you ready to buy land in Virginia's Dismal Swamp?

Pat Robertson believes he is called by God to run America, and he's now seeking to fulfill that mission through surrogates like Bob McDonnell.

Many of America's founding documents were written in large part by Virginians--Jefferson, Madison and Mason spring to mind--but rest assured that Pat Robertson is a different kind of Virginian, one who opposes the main tenets of all of these documents, especially those having to do with freedom from religious control of our government.

Some see Pat Robertson as having an "Ayatollah complex," combining religion and politics in his view of what's best for America. That view is based on Pat's religion and Pat's politics, of course.

McDonnell is a product of Pat's system, and you will never hear him deny that. Perhaps he subscribes to the thesis, "Touch not my beloved," meaning here that Pat is anointed by God, and woe be to anyone who disagrees with him. That view is widely believed at Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network--and at his Regent University.

Thus the question is not about a thesis McDonnell wrote years ago, it's about his right-wing thesis for Virginia today, supported and reinforced by Pat Robertson. We'd better all do our homework. And let us remember the advocacy of pluralism from a non-Virginian, All-American founder, Ben Franklin: "In a world that was then [as, alas, it still is now] bloodied by those who seek to impose theocracies, he [Ben Franklin] helped to create a new type of nation that could draw strength from its religious pluralism" (Walter Isaacson in Ben Franklin: An American Life).

I offer these words in the spirit of the reason of Jefferson and the pluralism of Franklin.

Gerald Cooper

Norfolk, VA

This article unfortunately overlooks an important source of over-incarceration. In "Jailed Without Justice," Amnesty International found that an average of 30,000 individuals are held in immigrant detention every day--up from 10,000 per day in 1996! This has happened because authorities fail to even consider effective, less expensive alternatives to detention. Furthermore, detainees do not even have the opportunity to challenge the grounds of their detention--even if they are legal residents or US citizens. Worse yet, these prisoners are often held in inhumane conditions. (See http://www.amnestyusa.org/uploads/JailedWithoutJustice.pdf).

You can help by calling your representatives and urging them to support the following legislation to address these issues:

HR 1215, The Immigration Oversight and Fairness Act (House)

S. 1549, The Protect Citizens and Residents from Unlawful Detention Act (Senate)

S. 1550, The Strong STANDARDS Act (Senate)

(I am the volunteer Legislative Coordinator for AIUSA in NJ. Thanks to Senator Menendez for introducing S 1549 and S 1550. Thanks also to Congressmen Payne, Holt, Rothman, and Sires for Cosponsoring HR 1215.)

Larry Ladutke
Amnesty International USA

Nutley, NJ

I just read J Street's strong statements about their concern about the Goldstone Report and their support of the bill by several Congressmen to suppress it as harmful to Israel. This well-researched report is by a respected supporter of Israel who found the brutality involved in the inavasion of Gaza broke international and military law.

I wrote to J Street that I was no longer a supporter of their organization, since their head-in-the-sand attitude helped no one, including Israel, nor made it remotely possible to pursue peace in the Middle East.

Other Jewish peace organizations have been very outspoken about Israeli policies toward the Palestinian people over the years, but J Street seems to be a mouthpiece for the AIPAC.

I wonder what the young people quoted in the article think of this kind of censorship and how it correlates with their ideals.

Pearl Volkov

Burlington, Ontario, Canada

What is missing in this forum? Any discussion of what is good for the people of Afghanistan.

It is simply false that there is no way to help the people of Afghanistan. From the 1950s until 1979 the Soviets built schools, roads, hospitals and a secular society with rights for women. Not as occupiers, but as supporters of a progressive Afghan government.

It was US support for the jihadi extremists in 1979 that ended this progress and destroyed Afghanistan.

The debate is not about whether we should send more troops or get out. Or about the most effective strategy to defeat the enemy of the day.

The debate should be about how to help the people of Afghanistan most effectively to rebuild their country. To get back to creating jobs building schools, hospitals, transportation... and a government respecting human rights for all.

We should do this not because it is also what is best for us. It is. We should do it because it is the right thing to do.

Robert Bernstein

Goleta, CA

The word that comes to mind after reading Greider's piece is "delusional." It is as though he went to sleep in 1952, woke up in 2009, and missed everything that happened in between.

If massive government control of the economy was the way to wealth, we would have torn down the Berlin Wall from our side, to get to the worker's paradise on the other.

We will get past this recession. Once we do, we will face significant public-sector debt and a structural deficit of 6 percent to 10 percent of GDP--and that is before we get to the hidden debt represented by the unfunded portions of Social Security and Medicare.

The challenge of our era is finding some way to meet the intergenerational obligations of Medicare and Social Security without raising taxes so high as to throttle economic growth and job creation. In other words, how not to be Europe.

Jim Hemphill

West Chester, PA

Our current federal government debt is a smaller percentage of GDP than at the end of WWII, but that leaves out important facts. First, current OMB projections almost double the government debt again by 2019, during which time our GDP will likely grow very little, since we will long be recuperating from a debt-induced hangover. And we'll be doubling federal debt without a WWII, which was such a herculean effort that we had 10 percent of our total population in uniform!

Second, gross US debt (including private, corporate and state debt, which were virtually nil in 1945) is roughly double our current federal public debt.

Third, FDR's entitlement programs were still young in 1945; people died earlier and there were fewer old people. Moreover, we were at the very onset of a baby boom. The demographic trends are now completely reversed. The boomers are retiring and consuming the entitlement dollars that were originally so far in the future that FDR could have just written "here lie dragons," like on pre-Columbian maps.

Lastly, 1946 found the US the only significant industrialized nation in the world left unscathed by the war. As such, we had an economic boom, being able to sell US products to the rest of the world. We no longer enjoy that advantage, and so can't expect economic growth to forever overmatch runaway borrowing.

A $20 trillion debt (fast approaching) would require $800 billion just to service the interest, if the interest cost were to rise only moderately from today's 1.2 percent to an average cost of 4 percent. In other words, it would take roughly 100 percent of 2009's total federal income tax receipts just to pay the interest. That leaves out paying for all of the functions of government and leaves out un unsustainable social security, Medicare and possibly soon the healthcare "public option" costs.

But I'm sure you're right, Greider, we can just keep borrowing will-nilly forever without there ever being any consequences.

Dan Hughes

Minneapolis, MN

William Greider left out a crucial component of the deficit debate. Implementing further radical deficit spending to jump-start our economy does have some macroeconomic credibility, but only if the debt can be financed without restricting our ability to borrow and bringing harm to the USD. At some point, our creditors (namely China) will lose confidence that we can actually repay our monstrous debt. When this happens, creditors will require higher bond yields or will avoid US debt altogether. At that point it will be too late to backtrack. The USD will be extremely devalued and our once unprecedented economic power will evaporate.

Mathew Schmidt, PhD

Santa Barbara, CA

The spirit is there, but these suggestions are pretty lame and scattershot. Don't be a professional snitch? I wonder how many Nation readers are considering that as a profitable sideline (presumably not the same ones who are in a position to hire an ex-con). Pay "at-risk" kids to finish high school by organizing with "your community group"? Much too vague--give people some information! Talk up the trades? Again, too vague--if you actually know a young person considering becoming a drug dealer, saying, "You know, plumbers make a good living and don't end up dead or in prison" is not enough. I have no idea of how to connect a teenager with an apprentice program (vocational school?), and the recommended website gives no relevant info I could find.

As for listening to hip-hop, yeah, that will really change the world. I checked out allhiphop.com, as suggested, and it was just the usual: rappers dissing each other and cursing each other out, boasting in a truly juvenile fashion, marketing themselves and their products. 50 Cent has a new perfume!

How about: support Legal Aid, and organizations like the Bronx Defenders, who not only give quality legal services to the poor but also help them find work, get social services and rebuild their lives?

Katha Pollitt

New York, NY

Years ago, I voted for Lieberman when he ran to unseat incumbent Senator Lowell Weicker; as a young Republican, I was disturbed by what I perceived as Weicker's "liberal" leanings and patrician "arrogance" in his actions as our state Senator. I figured that I was sending a message with my vote for Lieberman; even a Democrat had to be an improvement on a turncoat Republican.

Now more than two decades later, Lieberman is still one of Connecticut's Senators. I have grown older, and with age has come a greater wisdom and a refinement of my political views. I have two big regrets in my voting history, with one being the vote I cast for Lieberman.

Upon his rather self-centered and cynical Independent Senate race after losing the Democratic nomination, I realize that Lieberman is only looking out for one person--Joe Lieberman. He has shown no political courage during his tenure, only a remarkable knack for self-preservation and self-importance that has frustrated many Connecticut voters. The Republican Party coyly threw their own sentorial candidate under the bus and quietly backed Lieberman's campaign; I am sure that Lieberman realizees that his two-faced actions have won him no support from state Democrats, so he certainly must be taking this pro-business and anti-working-class move in order to maintain his support from the right.

Weicker went on to become a one-term governor. Although I did not vote for him, I began to understand how his actions in office were demonstrative of a political courage to do the right thing despite the risk of becoming a political pariah. His controversial tax policies were instrumental in bringing sanity to Connecticut government. He was a consistent leader with a consistent--if unpopular--message. Although I am sure his political career is over, I greatly admire the man.

Lieberman, on the other hand, continues to demonstrate not political courage, but a self-importance bordering on arrogance while continuing to sell out middle- and working-class families in favor of those who would keep him in his comfy Washington seat. I can only hope that--like Weicker's--his political career will soon be over.

William Wallberg

Southington, CT

I am self-employed, so the complete burden of healthcare insurance for my family is paid by me. Although I intensely hate paying my insurance premium, which has gone up another 10 percent this year without any explanation--just a form letter--I feel the average American is not getting enough information about healthcare reform to formulate a rational opinion. If the insurance companies are making so much profit, how come their profit margins are so low?

Does anyone truly believe the government could operate at less than 6 percent profit margin? If the federal government is so efficient, how come there is so much waste in the Medicare/Medicaid health system? I wonder if the demonizing of the insurance industry is stopping our public officials from looking deeper to where the waste is in the healthcare system. Is it in the delivery system? What about tort and malpractice reform? The process seems to be moving too quickly, just like the stimulus program. Everything I read states that these programs wouldn't be implemented until 2012 or 2013, what's the rush? I'm afraid that we "the people" wouldn't understand how this bill will affects us until months after its passage. That's just plain scary.

M.E. Gillin

Charlotte, NC

Have Americans been hoodwinked into believing that the public option is the remedy and ultimate panacea for all things healthcare in this nation? This is clearly a subterfuge, and has gained critical mass through corporate media and the pandering of politicians led by Max Baucus ($3 million plus from the insurance industry).With the so-called public option, we have nothing more than the preservation of the status quo. The insurance industry will continue to make obscene profits, raise premiums and exercise no restraint in the denial of coverage; all underwritten by legislative mandate.

The only real solution to this country’s healthcare nightmare is an expansion of an already proven model: Medicare. In a single-payer arrangement like that of Medicare, we would have guaranteed comprehensive universal coverage for all residents, from birth to death; 95 percent of all Americans would pay less for healthcare, with no co-pays, deductibles or premiums. The myth that patients would have no choice in physicians, providers and hospitals is simply not true. Cost of single-payer when compared to the public option would be a savings of $400 billion, primarily by reducing administrative waste, negotiating budgets for hospitals and purchasing prescription drugs in bulk. Medicare’s track record is a proven one; and with some modifications to infrastructure, single-payer would create a high-quality, universal healthcare system.

The moral and ethical ramifications of the healthcare issue truly define America’s resolve to live up to its promise and creed of justice and equality for all. The task of reform must not be entrusted to Senators or Representatives whose treasury has been underwritten by the very people who stand to gain the most if the single-payer option fails. The failures of deregulation have long and venomous tentacles that have paralyzed and placed a stranglehold on the consumer and fair play in the market place. The concept of the free market is moribund, the victim of greed and derugulation. The benefactors of this laissez-faire regulatory arrangement have cashed in at every turn and exploited labor and plotted the demise of unions in this post-antitrust environment.

The complexities of our current economic collapse are not in isolation or separate from the healthcare issue but in fact are compounded by it. Foreclosures and bankruptcies blend neatly into this caldron of toxic economic stew. It is time to reign in those whose selfish interests have resulted in such great burdens for the majority.

bob washburn

Huson, MT

Unfortunately, the use of a family as cute and supposedly accessible analogy to communicate the banking bailout succeeds in obscuring a key point, viz., the bailout of the banks versus the bailout of the bankers and unsecured creditors. I suspect that most Americans believe that the vast sums of money were needed to keep the banks functioning (that is, making loans) and that the oligarchs and unsecured creditors are forseeable but unintended beneficiaries. But as Willem Buiter (LSE and Financial Times) has pointed out, a special resolution regime could have been established (as with the S&Ls). The good assets would have been transferred to new, good banks and the toxic assets left in the old banks. The new banks could then get on with the business of making loans (their social value), while the old banks would be left to dispose of the toxic assets as best they could--then disappear. The fact that the federal government is still handing out money to the too-well-connected banks at near zero percent and that credit is contracting proves what the money was intended for. Of course, we know who will pay. Isn't it wonderful to live in the world's greatest democracy?

Tom Shillock

Portland, OR

The Taliban are a force that will not go away if we turn tail and run as the writer implies with his doom-and-gloom defeatist article. The brand of Islam pushed by the Taliban requires the death of the Western way of life. It is spreading like a plague in the Muslim world. These people think God says it is okay to murder any person, Muslim or not, who doesn't agree with them. If they capture Pakistan, they will have nuclear arms and a means to deliver them anywhere in the world. Chamberlain thought just like the writer that the way to live with the Nazis was to give in, but Munich did not work. It literally comes down to "pay the price or die." We cannot run.

Fortunately, the problem is not the cost; swearing off hard liquor and cigarettes will generate $65 billion. The problem is that the strategy to defeat the Taliban beliefs is wrong. We cannot kill every would-be Taliban with American arms. We need to empower the Afghanis and Pakistanis to deal with Taliban beliefs in their houses of worship, in the ideas they hold in their hearts and in what their children learn in school.

The Saudis provide the money for the Taliban schools that teach jihad and to buy arms. The drug trade is a tool of the Taliban to raise more money to fight this war. We can reduce both money sources with the right policy and actions. In Afghanistan we can easily train and equip an army big enough to win the military fight. The cost forecast is only high because our military wants to do this by itself and appears resistant to training foreign forces, as proved by its actions in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. We trained 4,000,000 men from nothing in twenty-four months in WWII, we only need to train 400,000 in Afghanistan. Many non-US sources of arms and training are available at a fraction of US costs, so it won't cost $65 billion a year. For example, Chinese AK47s cost a tenth the cost of a M4, a fact the writer knows but ignores to make his case for defeat. We can win this fight, but we cannot think business as usual will do the job.

michael fellion

Carmichael, CA

I can appreciate that people on the left want to hold Israel to a reasonable standard with respect to disproportionate use of force. I can further appreciate that Israel, because it feels itself to be under siege, has indeed developed a kind of siege mentality, and that what comes with a siege mentality is often a willingness to overlook common standards about the disproportionate use of force. Israel ought to be held accountable for the disproportionate use of force, like any other country.

But this article is one of many articles on this subject that I routinely tune out. You want to know why?

Because nowhere in the article do the identified "American Jews" who are "increasingly critical of Israel" state unambiguously that they differ from other critics of Israel in that they actually believe in the concept of human rights.

If you want someone like me to tune back in, all you need is a paragraph saying, "Of course the UN Human Rights Commission is a ludicrous grouping of major world offenders against the concept of human rights, and whatever they have to say about Israel is going to be biased by their hostile worldview--but here's some things that are true about Israel's behavior in Lebanon, the Gaza war, etc., despite the fact that Israel's opponents are not even remotely credible defenders of human rights."

It might help if you also dropped in a couple lines about how "Hamas wants to bring back the Caliphate and treat Jews in the Middle East as dhimmis rather than equal citizens."

Failing that, I've got my hand on the tuning dial.

Zachary Klaas

New Britain, CT

The end of the article left me troubled about the statement "the Jews need a state," because it sounds just like AIPAC rhetoric. What kind of a "state" does J Street dream of? A current state like that of Israel, which maintains apartheid and continues to ethnically cleanse itself of the Palestinian population?

The one thing that always gets overlooked when there is a discourse about the conflict is the mantra of Zionism that started this entire conflict. No one ever touches up on the racist and hateful ideologies of Zionism and how it applies to the current problems.

I know for a fact that one of the reasons many Jews are shifting sides is because they have learned what Zionism is really about and how it started in the Social Darwinistic cesspool with the other hateful ideologies of the last century. They are realizing that Zionism is completely counter to the Jewish religion. They are realizing that the concept is no different from the ideologies that put their ancestors in concentration camps. They have also realized that Jews have always had a home in Palestine, living in peace among Christians and Muslims.

The discourse needs to circle around to the topic Zionism and the evils it entails. The ideology is taking on new fervor in Israel and is becoming a danger to everyone in the region. Its extremism is what fuels other extremist groups and puts our security at risk.

If the hateful and racist concept of Aionism is abolished, it may give a chance for a real peace--the kind of peace Palestine experienced for nearly 1,000 years among Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Ramsey Judah

Chicago, IL