The Sage of Mount Airy

A Counsel of Fear

2012-02-26T22:04:00.000-05:00

I've said it before, in this very blog in fact: I like Mona Charen.

BUT (you knew it was coming) her counsel in her most recent NRO post is fundamentally a counsel of fear. It's useful, however, because as such, it serves to highlight that which is wrong with the GOP as well. The Republican Party not only lacks the courage of the convictions that describe it, it also lacks courage, plain and simple. It is afraid and it operates almost invariably from a posture of fear.

Charen's piece is titled "Don't Pick Rick" and while she lists many quite sound reasons why Rick Santorum would make a poor candidate against Barack Obama this fall, the problem with her reasoning is that it springs in the first instance from this consideration:

Because he has phrased his socially conservative views in vivid terms, he is precisely the sort of candidate who will evoke a Pavlovian response from the press. Just as they were driven mad by Sarah Palin, they will be outraged by Rick Santorum.

To my mind, this very point serves more, much more in fact, to recommend rather than disqualify Santorum.

When, oh when, will too many conservative pundits to count and virtually every professional Republican ever learn? The "press" has not been for some very long time, is not now, and will not be in any foreseeable future, an ally of conservatism. Nor, so long, that is, as any conservative remnant continues to reside chiefly in the GOP, will it ever be an ally of the party either.

Appeasing the press is a fool's errand and would be even if it were attempted from a position of confidence. But coming as it does from a posture of fear, it not only fails to inspire undecided voters, it disgusts the party's conservative base as well.

Short Memory

2012-02-26T16:44:00.000-05:00

For the record...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today defended President Obama's apology to President Karzai and the Afghan people after GOP presidential candidates Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney each criticized him for making it:

"I find it somewhat troubling that our politics would inflame such a dangerous situation in Afghanistan."

But then Senator Clinton had these words for General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker during their Senate Committee Hearing appearance in September 2007:

"I want to thank both of you, General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, for your long and distinguished service to our nation. Nobody believes that your jobs or the jobs of the thousands of American forces and civilian personnel in Iraq are anything but incredibly difficult."

"But today you are testifying about the current status of our policy in Iraq and the prospects of that policy. It is a policy that you have been ordered to implement by the president. And you have been made the de facto spokesmen for what many of us believe to be a failed policy."

"Despite what I view as your rather extraordinary efforts in your testimony both yesterday and today, I think that the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief."

Only in Liberal America

2012-02-25T15:19:00.004-05:00

This is one of those stories where you simply have to shake your head and say, "You can't make this stuff up."

Apparently, in or somewhere near Boston, three lesbians beat up a gay man and for it are being charged with committing a hate crime. An ACLU staff lawyer (who else?) helpfully explained: "Someone who is Jewish can be anti-Semitic. The mere fact that someone is a member of the same class doesn’t mean they could not be motivated by hatred for their very own group.”

I guess now we'll have to add the new category of the self-loathing homosexual alongside the old trope about the self-loathing Jew.

But wait, now that I think of it, maybe you can make it up.

I rarely watch it, but some time back my son told me of a very funny skit on comedian Dave Chappelle's show in which Chappelle (I think it was him) played a blind black guy who not only didn't know he was black, but was a racist bigot to boot. When he finally realized that he was in fact black, he divorced his wife. Why? Because, as he explained, he "wouldn't have a woman who would sleep with a n*****."

Chappelle played the absurdity of it all for a laugh. And while I'm tempted to chuckle at the story from Boston like I did the skit, there's really nothing funny at all about the crazy country the Left is slowly but surely creating.

Right About Rights

2012-02-25T13:26:00.002-05:00

Mark Steyn again. God love him. I've said it before, but I swear he and Jonah Goldberg bring more sanity to the written page than any two other men currently scribbling. So, one more time: God lov'em.

Anyway, this week's NRO piece is about how we've turned our understanding of rights entirely on its head. Rights have ceased to be mostly about constraining the government and have somehow become in this topsy-turvy world of ours about empowering it, empowering it to compel.

As always, he's worth the read.

Chinese Checkers

2012-02-25T08:09:00.002-05:00

Language checkers, that is.

It seems the Asian American Journalists Association (no, really, there is one) has produced language guidelines for reporters and commentators informing them of what is and is not acceptable when referring to Asian Americans either in print or on the air. (My title is no doubt unacceptable.) This, of course, comes in the wake of the sudden celebrity of New York Knick point guard and Chinese-American Jeremy Lin, who, by all accounts is not only a good basketball player, but a great guy to boot.

Anyway, back to the AAJA, something tells me these guys are liberals and it highlights yet another signal of genuine conservatism. No conservative would waste one minute of his life's precious time worrying about what words and phrases should and should not insult him. Sticks and stones...

Left-wingers who slip up from time to time and say stupid things like the ESPN reporter did last week should be mocked for their hypocrisy. It's important that we do so. But no one should become the object of language police, not in this country.

Lighten up America!

Did I Hear Him Right?

2012-02-24T16:30:00.001-05:00

Speaking of defending various tax proposals, Mitt Romney had this to say the other day in defense of his own:

"In order to limit any impact on the deficit, because I do not want to add to the deficit, and also to make sure we continue to have progressivity in our tax code, I’m going to limit the deductions and exemptions, particularly for high-income folks."

Make sure we continue to have progressivity in our tax code?

Look, I'll vote for him. I may have no choice but to vote for him.

But please, don't insult me, nor embarrass yourself, by continuing to insist that Mitt Romney's a conservative.

"The Privilege of Being an American"

2012-02-24T15:36:00.000-05:00

Thus said Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

Why does this formulation grate so?

First, the larger context of the comment is one in which the Secretary is defending increased taxation. As if, one had to purchase one's birthright.

Second, in this particular Secretary's case, it comes from one who could not himself pay his taxes honestly.

Third, coming from any representative of this most liberal of administrations, the even larger context is more than a bit ironic. What, pray tell, could possibly be the "privilege" of membership in a country so seriously flawed? A country that needs to be "transformed" after all?

Fourth, coming, again, from any representative of this most liberal of administrations, one is entitled to wonder if they are not confusing "nation" with "state". "America" is a nation--"We the people"-- that formed a state, a government, in order to secure individual rights, chief among them life, liberty, and property. For liberals, however, "America" is principally a state that dispenses, via redistribution, entitlements from one group to another.

Fifth, one more time, according to this most liberal of administrations, native-born citizens enjoy only the "privilege" of citizenship, a privilege for which they must pay through taxation. Illegal immigrants, by contrast, have rights, to include the right to the fruit of said redistribution, not to mention the right to a smooth and easy path to citizenship.

Sixth, had the Secretary said "the blessing of being an American" instead, it might have grated less, but only for a moment. Soon we would have remembered that liberals don't believe in God and that he was only playing us for suckers.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

2012-02-22T14:52:00.004-05:00

And causes you to forget that in 2005, Newsweek falsely reported that US interrogators at Guantanamo, as part of their "torture" regimen, were flushing copies of the Koran down the toilet. On cue, the liberal wing of the chattering class said, once again, but ever more loudly, "See, we told you so. If this is not a Bush policy, it's at least being done with the Administration's tacit approval."

This time there's nothing false about the reports from Afghanistan of our burning copies of the Koran. We've even apologized for it.

And I'm still waiting for the outrage from the left wing of the chattering class.

Clintonesque

2012-02-21T17:02:00.002-05:00

I'm guessing that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney watched and took inspiration from the first episode of the PBS Clinton documentary which aired just last night.

With a "I-dare-you-to-contradict-me" look on his face, he disciplined his focus on the gathering of reporters in front of him today and said, "I did not have sex with that woman...."

Oops, sorry. He did it so well, I'm getting confused.

I'll get it right this time. What he did say was: "In terms of Keystone, as you all know, the history here is pretty clear. And the fact is because Republicans decided to play political with Keystone, their action essentially forced the administration to deny the permit process because they insisted on a time frame in which it was impossible to completely approve the pipeline."

Waiting to Exhale

2012-02-21T08:01:00.000-05:00

This review of a Netflix-released Norwegian black comedy television series called Lilyhammer intrigued me. The reviewer, Lars Walker, sets it up well enough:

Imagine a television comedy about an American who moves to an exotic foreign country. He utterly refuses to assimilate, flouts the local laws, beats up people who offend him (including, in a scene that shocked even me, a Muslim who simply refused to shake a woman's hand), acts in pretty much every way as the stereotypical Ugly American, and yet comes out as a sort of a hero? And imagine that this series was produced, not by some jingoistic American company, but by people from that very foreign land?And what if most of their countrymen loved it? That's the peculiar phenomenon we contemplate in Netflix's maiden exclusive series, Lilyhammer, which set viewing records on Norwegian state television, and whose full first season of eight episodes is now available to subscribers.

So, why do they love it?   Walker wonders, but never quite answers. He even ends the piece with the lingering question: "Were they really trying to say what they seem to be saying?"

I'll hazard a guess. Yes, they really were trying to say what they seem to be saying and, what's even more telling, the Norwegian viewers really liked what they heard.

And what they heard was this:  We Norwegians, we proud heirs of the Western tradition, are oh so sick and tired of political correctness. We may not be quite ready to stand up and fight against it just yet, but we do enjoy mocking its pretensions from time to time.

Hear me well: Exactly the same underlying sentiment is alive and well in the United States--even more so I'd say--and the politician (slouching toward Bethlehem to be born?) who can tap into it and give voice to it will, if he or she wants it, be our President one day.

Crime Wave

2012-02-21T06:19:00.001-05:00

Check out this Washington Times headline and story: "Violent Crime Surges in DC in 2012"

Imagine the statistics had they included what happened inside the Capitol building last year.

Sorry, that was just too easy, wasn't it? But it was sitting there all big and fat and juicy, so.... Forgive me. Won't happen again.

What Bismark Said

2012-02-20T23:05:00.001-05:00

To extend and successfully communicate even the slightest measure of dignity to anything associated with the Clinton Administration is quite an accomplishment. PBS managed to do just that this evening (all evidence to the contrary) and the network should be congratulated for it. I have no reason to believe Episode Two will be any less successful.

But please recall that Bill Clinton in 1992 was a transparent fraud when first he ran and later was elected our president. Only an extreme partisan or a fool could vote for him then. Four years later, only a fool could do so. Nevertheless, he was re-elected with 49% of the vote in 1996.

May God forever bless, and protect, the United States of America.

ESPN on the Couch

2012-02-20T13:26:00.000-05:00

I'm guessing that by now most of you have at heard of New York Knick phenom Jeremy Lin. I haven't watched an NBA basketball game in I don't know how long and even I tuned in to see the young Asian-American (first in the league of Chinese descent) point guard score 28 points, 14 assists, and lead the Knicks to a 7-point victory over the league's defending champion Dallas Mavericks. I must admit, it was very exciting.

I'm also guessing that at least a few of you have heard of the controversy stirred this weekend when an ESPN headline writer lead a column about the Knicks loss on Friday night to the New Orleans Hornets, their first loss since Lin became a starter, with "Chink in the Armor."

The reporter who wrote the headline was fired and the one who read it on the air was suspended. Lin, for his part, has just shrugged the whole thing off.

But even before the "headline" episode exploded over the weekend, I was intrigued by the sport media's treatment of Jeremy Lin, more particularly in its treatment of him vice that of Tim Tebow in the just completed NFL season. If you didn't already know it, Tebow and Lin have in common a very devout Christian faith, a faith they're not shy about talking about publicly.

One more thing you need to know if you don't already, but elite sports media is no less liberal than elite news media. If you listen to Rush Limbaugh at all, he makes the point quite often. But even if you don't, just watch a few minutes of any game or contest on any of the major sports networks. I have always found them more than a bit embarrassing and usually cringe when their reporters and announcers strive to demonstrate how, one, serious they are, and, two, how seriously "progressive" they are, about racism, about sexism, about almost any left-wing "ism" that comes to mind.

So, I wondered, why were they treating outspoken Christian Lin, when his star rose, with so much respect, while when outspoken Christian Tebow's rose, they missed few if any opportunities to dismiss his success altogether, as well as to predict his ultimate failure?

They're Lefties, or their institution is Leftist anyway, so successful, outspoken Christians must be silenced, or diminished at least. But then, they're Lefties, so all races, other than Caucasian of course, must be respected, elevated even.

As a result, I feel a measure of sympathy for the ESPN reporter. He was conflicted; he wasn't sure which was the appropriate dogma to to follow. But, in a pinch, he chose to denigrate the Christian. Usually the safer course.

Exegete-in-Chief

2012-02-20T11:30:00.001-05:00

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum certainly caused a kerfuffle by questioning the other day President Obama's interpretation of the Christian faith. Santorum called it "some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology."

The elite media is, of course, shocked and outraged.

Give me a break.

Didn't the president just a mere two weeks ago lecture (sermonize?) us all, at the National Prayer Breakfast no less, about how his proposed tax policy was more consistent with genuine Christianity than that of his detractors?: "For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus' teaching that 'for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.'"

BCP at 350

2012-02-20T09:40:00.004-05:00

Hmm.  I just learned from The American Spectator's Jonathan Aitken that this year, only a year after the King James Bible celebrated its 400th anniversary, the Book of Common Prayer is celebrating its 350th. Actually, it's a little older than that, but the 1662 edition was the edition for a very long time. Anyway, do give Aitken's piece a look.

I don't know about you, but I've always preferred my religion (if I may, for just a moment, distinguish it from my faith) grand.  I wanted that what I, along with others, actually do in church, and especially on Sundays, be something altogether different (otherworldly?) from what I do outside the building and on other days. I longed for robes and rhythmic ritual. I wanted the moment to be solemnized and sacralized.

I noticed this attraction in myself even as a kid. While I was reared in informal protestant evangelicalism, I was always drawn, through film and television mostly, to Roman Catholic and Anglican/Episcopalian trappings and pageantry. Those people, I thought, may not have their theology quite right, but man do they know how to do church.

I knew full well the dangers of compartmentalizing my religion and my faith, one at the expense of the other. But, as I saw it then, and still do now, serious ceremony is just as likely to reinforce one's faith as it is to dilute it.

At any rate, I remain securely within informal protestant evangelicalism--can't get over the theological hurdles--but am nevertheless heartened when our pastor includes in our church bulletin/order of worship from time to time the "General Confession" from the Book of Common Prayer. (Although, alas, it's usually the more contemporary version.)   From the 1928 version, consider (pray?), these words and then tell me they're not sublime.

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou those, O God, who confess their faults. Restore thou those who are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind In Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

So Many More To Lie To

2012-02-19T01:57:00.000-05:00

I always thought the title chosen by the late Christopher Hitchens for his book about the Clintons hands down the most apropos: No One Left To Lie To. (Although R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s Boy Clinton is a very good second place.) But the years have flown by, hence the title of this post.

Anyway, on the eve of a four-hour PBS documentary about our 42nd president that from what I gather will ignore more than a few inconvenient facts, The Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson is to be congratulated for reminding us once again what a truly "Big Creep" Bill Clinton was and remains. Please take a few minutes to refresh your memory, would you?

My only problem with the piece is that it fails to remind us as well of the pivotal role played in Bill's countless crimes and cover-ups by his serial enabler and long-suffering spouse, Hillary Clinton née Rodham. Her one-plus term as the Senator from New York, coupled with her current position as Secretary of State have served to launder successfully her once equally sordid reputation. But then, had it not been for Bill, the world would never have heard of Hillary.

Oh that we'd never heard of either of them.

Gay Like Me...again

2012-02-18T18:22:00.000-05:00

It seems that Pinal County Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu is a homosexual. You know him. He's the always uniformed, very lean, bald guy who appears on FOX News alot loudly complaining about how the Obama Administration is not doing enough to combat illegal immigration or secure the borders, the same guy who's also currently running as a Republican for the 4th Congressional District seat in Arizona. Yea, him.

Well, he's gay after all and he admits it. Of course he had to after an expose was published just last week by the good government types at the The Phoenix New Times, along with an accompanying story about how he threatened his illegal immigrant former lover with deportation for refusing to promise never to discuss publicly their relationship.

If you're a liberal Democrat, this story has to seem almost too good to be true. (Seems that way to me too.) It's already got David Catanese over at POLITICO furrowing his brow: "The entire episode will likely raise larger questions about closeted Republican candidates and officeholders and the political risks of remaining in the closet."

Hmm. I think I know what's going on here.

I've recommended this course of action before and it always makes my wife uncomfortable when I bring it up again. What the hell, here goes:

Like Sheriff Babeu, I'm gay too.

C'mon Sage, you can't be gay. You're married, got kids. There's no evidence that you're gay.

I'm repressed.

Repressed?

Yep, so repressed in fact that I'm opposed to the whole militant homosexual agenda to include same-sex marriage. So stridently opposed am I to all of it that I simply must be a homophobe. And, as the left-wing media keeps telling us, homophobia is the surest sign of latent homosexuality. You've seen American Beauty, haven't you? Won an Oscar.

So, you heard me right, like Sheriff Babeu, I'm gay too. I have to be.

Illinois, You're Killing Me

2012-02-18T15:50:00.001-05:00

This is no joke. In liberal Illinois, necrophilia will soon be officially illegal as Democrats move to close a loophole that currently make the practice unprosecutable.

While the trend in progressive states seems to be in the direction of expanding the right to sexual relations between any and all adults, the fact that dead people were unable to demonstrate their consent moved lawmakers to make it against the law nevertheless.
Of course, dead people voting in the Land of Lincoln is another matter altogether, a time-honored tradition in fact, so there's no parallel movement ongoing to proscribe it. Legal scholars helpfully point out the important distinction between having it done to you and doing it to others.

Operators are Standing By

2012-02-16T15:17:00.001-05:00

I don't do this very often, but I want to recommend to you a new book:  "Rush to Judgment" by Stephen F. Knott, professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College.

With a little over three years distance from the Bush presidency (seems like more, doesn't it?), the time is just now becoming ripe enough for a more sober assessment of his administration, and more particularly, his conduct of the War on Terror. Certainly most of that assessment during his time in office was anything but sober, and I'm not referring here to the harsh treatment Bush received at the hand of partisans.  That's their job after all and to be expected. Instead, I'm referring to the often way-over-the-top criticism that came from far too many within academe and the elite media, institutions that retain, or should retain, an enduring professional obligation toward the honest pursuit of objectivity. As we know, when it came to George W. Bush, they lost it--literally--and Knott calls them on it.

He calls them on it because they know, because it's their business to know, otherwise. To my mind, Knott's book is most important not so much as a defense of Bush's wartime policies, about which men and women of good will could and still do disagree. But rather, it's important because it is a careful explanation of how those policies were formulated and implemented from well within the boundaries drawn by our Constitution, as well as the now long tradition that makes those lines clear.

Tolle lege. (Look it up)

Palin for President?

2012-02-15T18:48:00.001-05:00

I'm sure I'm not the first one to think this, but I just watched Sarah Palin make a surprise appearance on the FOX News show, "The Five", and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that she planning a run for the presidency.

First, while her conservative rhetoric remains the same, confrontational and reliably so, I think her public image has softened a great deal nevertheless. Through her considerable media exposure everyone in America now knows who Sarah Palin is. As a result, it's no longer possible for the Left and their allies in the elite press to sustain the same caricature they created in 2008. Moreover, it'll be much more difficult for them to manufacture a new one. Most importantly, I think she knows all of this as well.

Next, whether you agree with her views or not, it's plain that over the past four years she's very deliberately educated herself about national and international issues. She now speaks and writes of them with more fluency and more authority than she did when she first became a national figure.

Third, she very publicly encouraged a vote for Newt in the South Carolina party for the explicit purpose of lengthening the GOP culling process. Now, she consistently, and I think coyly, argues that it's better for the party and for the country that the process continue, through the summer if necessary.

All of which suggests to me that she's banking on a brokered convention in Tampa from which she'll emerge the Republican nominee by acclamation.

Stay tuned!

A Mother's Love

2012-02-15T17:27:00.005-05:00

Without comment: "Deputies: Marine's mom stole $4,000 from him while he was deployed"

Got Milk? Then Get Your Hands Up!

2012-02-14T09:21:00.000-05:00

It's probably not fair to associate this story with the Obama Administration...alone.

Don't know for sure, but I suspect BIG MILK is involved as well. You know, altruistically lobbying the Congress to protect us from ourselves. The fact that by doing so they're also keeping the competition at bay is merely a coincidence, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, people still stubbornly persist in thinking that business interests are allied with the GOP only.

A Right to "Privacy" My A**

2012-02-13T11:39:00.000-05:00

The Left insists on an imagined constitutional right to "privacy" and then, with a straight face, demands that you pay for everyone else's "contraceptives", Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) research and treatment thereof, not to mention the whole host of social services necessary for the rearing of the ever-growing number of children victimized by our sexually incontinent age.

Tell me, what the hell is "private" about that?

For a less, um, emotional outburst--but only a little less--see George Weigel's latest piece on the Left's real goal at NRO.

Too Damn Big...PERIOD!

2012-02-13T10:51:00.000-05:00

A friend sent along this piece by Matthew J. Franck who, with many others, found serious fault with the Administration's announcement last Friday of a "compromise" with religious leaders over their objections to the contraception insurance mandate currently included in Obamacare. He argues that not only politically powerful religious institutions, but also individuals who have moral objections to the mandate, religiously informed or not, should be accommodated as well.

Overall, I'm sympathetic to Franck's argument. Moreoever, I applaud him for highlighting as well a very important distinction:

This is not, by the way, anything like the argument sometimes heard that “I should be able to withhold the share of my tax dollars that goes to” some purpose the speaker strongly disapproves on some moral ground. Our representative government collects taxes, and spends the public fisc, on those purposes that are deemed, by the processes of majoritarian democracy and the rule of law, to be part of the common good. When Caesar spends his coin, even though much of it is raised by taxing the faithful, the taxpayers are not individually ensnared in the commission of any wrongful acts from which they may claim a right to disengage themselves. Their responsibility as citizens, in such a case, is to try to turn Caesar toward doing right instead of wrong. This is the principle involved in consistent federal refusals to fund abortion directly (the Hyde Amendment) or to fund the destruction of embryos for research (the Dickey-Wicker Amendment).

But in the present circumstances we have something different—not taxing and spending on an evil, but bureaucratically coerced personal and institutional involvement in the commission of an evil. This is an affront to every American, religious or non-religious, pro-life or pro-choice.

However, as important as this distinction is, I doubt it will hold up under scrutiny. Our legislators quite routinely through "the processes of majoritarian democracy and the rule of law, [as] part of the common good", empower all the bureaucracies and their chiefs to rule and regulate as they see fit. This practice has been the bane of conservatives since the New Deal at least and our record of success for objecting to it has been spotty at best.

I'm afraid the real problem is even more fundamental than this current affront to religious liberty or individual conscience, that is, the national government is just too damn big and over-reaching, PERIOD! The point of constitutionally limited government is to constrain its grasp and keep it as far away as possible from the individual, his conscience, his family, his more local communities and free associations, thereby avoiding, or at least minimizing occassions for this kind of conflict in the first place.

A relevant analogy can be found in how we conservatives fret over the size of the capital gains tax rate, or agitate for a flatter, less progressive income tax rate. While both of these are important battles to wage, we should be careful about doing so if it means losing sight of the real issue. And the real issue is not so much HOW the government taxes us, but rather HOW MUCH it taxes us.

Anyway, despite my qualifications, if this issue, even as its being argued, serves to galvanize the Right, I'll take it.

Pulp Faction

2012-02-12T14:49:00.001-05:00

Film star Samuel L. Jackson admits that he voted for President Obama for one reason only: Because he's black like Jackson. Jackson explains:

I voted for Barack because he was black. 'Cuz that's why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them ... That's American politics, pure and simple. [Obama's] message didn't mean [bleep] to me.

Um, then why did so many white people vote for him too?

Better to just read the script Sam.

The Appeal and the Abuse

2012-02-11T10:13:00.001-05:00

Of power, that is. Some things never change.

I've held off commenting on the revelations via book and book tour of Mimi Alford, the then 19-year old White House intern who had an affair with JFK while he was president. Although, from what I've seen and read, I wouldn't exactly describe their relationship as an affair. According to her, they never kissed. For him, she was a very young, pretty, adoring, vulnerable, and easily available sexual release. For her, he was an older, experienced, handsome, and very powerful man.  If the potential for mutual attraction in that sounds like the stuff of a fairly familiar story, it's because it is. And in John Kennedy's case, as we have come to know, the story is almost tediously familiar.

I grew up admiring JFK along with just about everyone else because we were supposed to, right? But as I came of age, I noticed that neither my mother nor my father shared in the general public adulation.  And they weren't right-wing Kennedy haters either.  In fact, neither ever showed much interest in politics at all. It's just that they weren't into hero worship. In my mother's case, it came mostly from her Christian faith, "All have sinned...."  My father, on the other hand, was just a natural cynic.

Anyway, as a teenager I once asked my dad what he thought of the Kennedy presidency and he just shrugged his shoulders and said he couldn't say because he wasn't the president long enough to make a serious judgment. (Historians could learn an important thing or two from that.)

But JFK is the less interesting part of this story. Why, fifty tears after the fact, is Ms. Alford telling us all of this now?

Is she trying to make a buck? Is she starved for attention? Is she trying to atone? Settle scores? If so, with whom?

I'm afraid none of these reasons are good enough for me. What about her own family, aren't some things best kept to yourself?

Truly we live in a tawdry age.

The Real Cost

2012-02-10T14:14:00.001-05:00

Let's be honest, the "foreclosure abuse" settlement announced yesterday was basically the product of a shakedown of five of the country's largest banks by the Obama Administration.  While the agreement comes with a big price tag, the dollar amount is the least of its costs.

But first folks, please understand that no bank will ever pay any part of the $25 billion settlement. Basic economics:  It's their customers who will pay; it's only their customers who can pay.

And who are these customers? Why, they're the paying customers of course, exactly the same people who borrowed only what they could afford in the first place, and who, despite the hard times, continue to pony up to their obligations routinely.

Which brings us to the real costs, two of'em, of the agreement, as well as of every bailout that preceded it.

First, it encourages precisely the same irresponsible behavior it's supposed to rectify. Rescued once, and in a big way, from suffering the consequences of risky action, you can be sure it will occur again...and again...and again...and again, unless and until those consequences are in fact suffered.

Second, to the injury of making the very people who acted responsibly underwrite the recklessness of those who did not, it adds this insult: "You fools!  You stupid fools!  Look at us, we had our cake and ate it too. You acted the adult, you played by the rules, and what did it get you? Will you ever learn?"

Will we?

The Way Evil Creeps

2012-02-07T19:47:00.000-05:00

I was watching FOX News tonight and was struck by the report that PETA was filing suing over the "slavery" of performing whales. They're arguing that not only people, but whales too are protected by the Constitution from just such, uh, arrangements.

What struck me was not the craziness of PETA, nothing new in that, but the way in which FOX News anchorman Bret Baier reported the story. It was obvious that he was struggling gamely to keep a straight face as he spoke. And he did. Why?

Such a story deserves being reported with derision and mockery. If, that is, it deserves being reported at all. If now even the editors at FOX News think they have to at least pretend to seriousness over something like this, then, mark my words, in fairly short order it'll be before the courts and soon thereafter on the ballot as well.

Don't believe me. Pause for just a moment and think of some other issue that only a few years ago would have been quickly dismissed as ridiculously over the top. "Homosexual "marriage", for one, comes to mind.

This is what evil does, it creeps. It rarely slaps you in the face. If it did, you'd strike back immediately, or better yet, you'd scoff.

Third and Very Long

2012-02-06T14:47:00.001-05:00

Did you watch the Super Bowl yesterday? Great game. Well, not so much if you're a Patriot fan.

Anyway, if you did watch it, did you catch the Clint Eastwood "It's halftime in America" commercial? Well, with this current lineup, I can believe we have only 30 minutes left.

Clint Eastwood!? God help us.

Low Eye Cue

2012-02-04T08:58:00.002-05:00

Check out this headline and story: "Intelligence Study Links Low I.Q. To Prejudice, Racism, Conservatism"

It's not my fault then, correct?

So where do I go to get my subsidy started? Who do I see about my government grant? Does this mean they'll forgive my mortgage? Shouldn't there be a tax break? Where's the block on this form to mark "Low I.Q."? How much more time will I get to take the exam? The "passing" score's lower, right? Ain't I entitled to a parking space? When will the first check arrive? Huh? When? I got my rights you know?

Why Does the Left Hate Vigilante Films?

2012-02-03T18:26:00.000-05:00

Anthony Paletta tackles the question for us and it's worth a quick read. (Remember, I'm a movie buff.)

Actually, it's an old question that arose most prominently in the early 1970s when liberal (what else?) film critics uniformly disparaged two of the most famous of the genre, Death Wish and Dirty Harry. But I'd suggest asking the question the other way. That is, why do most people love vigilante films?

The answer is easy. The appeal is justice itself.

Justice denied for any reason, even for the sound reason of a decent society taking great care to afford the accused due process, a jury trial, and an opportunity for appeal is still justice denied and justice denied wounds the body politic. When people know it's being denied, but then witness it being delivered, even, or perhaps especially, in the form of a well-crafted movie melodrama, they almost reflexively cheer.

There is absolutely nothing unusual about that.

What is unusual, perverse actually, is an ideological posture so rigid that one disciplines oneself to not only sit on one's hands, but even to hiss and boo when the bad guy finally gets it.

BY THE WAY....

Paletta arrives here as well, but I would also say that, among many other things, that perverse informing ideology can be defined by an insistence that all or most crime can be explained and excused by poverty or some other "root cause", along with a stubborn refusal to accept anything like the notion that evil may actually exist.

Which put me in mind of a telling exchange from another great film, The Dark Knight, the second in the most recent Batman series, the one with Heath Ledger as the "Joker". The conversation is between Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne (Batman) and Michael Caine as Alfred, Wayne's butler.

Wayne: Targeting me won't get their money back. I knew the mob wouldn't go down without a fight, but this is different. They crossed the line.

Alfred: You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man (the Joker) they didn't fully understand.

Wayne: Criminals aren't complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out what he's after.

Alfred: With respect, sir, perhaps this is a man that you don't fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in three months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.

Wayne: So why steal them?

Alfred: Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn. (my italics)

The ONLY Case for Romney

2012-02-03T12:39:00.000-05:00

If you've read this blog for very long at all, you'll know that I'm a big fan of National Review's Jonah Goldberg. I respect very much his opinions about subjects serious and silly and even when we disagree, which is not often, I still have no doubt about which side ultimately he's on. (I wish I could say the same about a host of other "conservative" commentators.) Anyway, today's he's to be congratulated for struggling mightily to make "The Case for Romney."   His argument is captured in his subtitle: "A president who owes you is better than one who owns you".

In a nutshell, if we conservatives swallow hard and vote for Romney despite our many reservations and objections, then he'll owe us, he'll know that he owes us, and as such we'll own him.

I'm afraid, however, that the truth, and the evidence to support it, is just the opposite.

In 1988, George H. W. Bush was forced by GOP conservatives who were leery of him to swear publicly, "Read my lips, no new taxes."   We voted for him and he owed us, right? How'd that deal turn out for us?

Son George's similar departures this past decade from conservative orthodoxy in domestic policy left us holding the bag yet again, both feeling and looking ridiculous as we were forced to defend or at least pretend we didn't notice the obscene growth in government that occurred during his watch.

And, as I learned just yesterday, if Romney is elected we may well find ourselves defending among other things routine cost-of-living-adjustments (COLA) to the minimum wage.

No, this kind of Faustian bargain, or "transaction" as Goldberg calls it, i.e., my vote for your promise, invariably redounds to the benefit of the candidate.  Once elected, he can always take back his promises, and often does, but we can never take back our votes.

It seems to me that the only reasonable case that can be made to a conservative for the Romney candidacy is an outright appeal to patriotism. (And I'm not sure that'll work either.) It goes something like this: It's true, Romney is not a conservative, never has been, and has even bragged about that fact. Nevertheless, in an imperfect world of imperfect choices, Romney is clearly the lesser evil.  While the damage he'll do to the party and to the party label may well be irreparable, at least, maybe, we hope, please God, the damage he'll do to the country will be less than is currently being done, and much less than will be done with another Obama term.

*Goldberg defines, quite cleverly, an "establishment" Republican as "someone who has made peace with his disappointment prematurely." While I use "establishment" Republican like most everyone else, I prefer "professional" Republican. No matter. What I think might be a better definition of either is someone who can look you square in the face and say without blinking or winking that Mitt Romney is a conservative.

Novel Experiences

2012-02-02T13:03:00.001-05:00

The American Spectator's Christopher Orlet wonders why it is that he no longer reads novels. As I read his piece, I remembered that when I was an undergraduate I once heard that JFK never, or rarely, read them himself, preferring instead biographies and non-fiction generally.  At the time, I thought that sounded wise and all grown up, so for a while I tried to pretend that I preferred non-fiction as well.

I say "pretend" because I still read novels anyway, quite often finding non-fiction tedious, a piling on of fact after fact in order to make a point that could have been made in a single page or two.  Later I was relieved to learn that really smart people, you know, the kind of people I longed to be lumped with, read fiction after all, almost exclusively in fact, to include novels and short stories, even poetry.  The result for me was that I had to learn to affect a whole other persona. Being young and insecure can be oh such a burden (and a bore) at times.

Now, largely as a result of writing this blog I must confess, I find that I read less and less, fiction and non-fiction alike. Instead, I spend far too much of my idle time mining the Internet, cable TV news, and talk radio for small nuggets (fool's gold?) about which to make some timely and cogent remarks. (You're the judge.)

Anyway, I worry about that. I'm old enough to know that my time is increasingly limited and so I don't want to waste it on ephemera, from whichever genre it comes.  But I do still want to read, especially those works that have stood the test of the passage of at least some descent interval of time. In other words, I want mostly to read the classics and quasi-classics.

Among the latter, I would without hesitation include Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. So, it gives me pause when I read that Mr. Orlet couldn't quite make it through the book.

I introduced my children to McCarthy a few years back and they were hooked at once. But they noticed an important distinction between those who immediately appreciated McCarthy as they did and those who did not. Such was the distinction thast now my son (mid-twenties) uses people's reaction to Blood Meridian as a test of their relative intelligence. If they are not at least engaged by the novel, well, then they must be a little bit slow.

If I just insulted you, too bad. Being old and fairly secure can be oh so liberating.

"Groundhog Day"?

2012-02-02T08:31:00.001-05:00

Imagine some foreign visitor to America struggling not only with the English, but also, and most especially, with our uncountable idiomatic words and phrases like, "Whatever", "back seat driver", "New York minute", "Groundhog Day".

"Groundhog Day"?

Yep, "Groundhog Day": a description of a day, or a situation, which seems exactly, in a dull, monotonous way, as the day before. I suspect that now almost all Americans use the phrase in just that fashion.

But we didn't do so before 1993 when the eponymous film starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell was first aired. That we do now is testimony to the enduring appeal and power of the movie. If you haven't seen it, you really should make time for it. It's underlying conceit is cute, it's reliably funny, it's romantic, and, if you're so inclined, it's quite provocative intellectually as well.

Whether you've seen it or not, do read this short essay about the film by National Review's Jonah Goldberg. It was first published in 2005 and now is reissued each year, on the 2nd day of February, without fail, again, and again, and again....

The Little Engine that Could

2012-02-01T18:22:00.000-05:00

I had to shake my head after I read this piece yesterday or the day before about the California Controller's letter to his state's lawmakers informing them that they would run out of cash in March instead of June as previously expected.

I say I had to shake my head because despite that news, Democrat Governor Jerry Brown along with the Democrat-controlled state legislature seem determined nevertheless to continue with plans to build a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed rail system. A system many think incapable of paying its way once completed, even if the state were not so, uh, let us say, cash-strapped.

But I turned from shaking my head to grinning from ear to ear when I read this smart-alecky riff by National Review's James Lilek. Smart alecky? No, I take that back. Actually, this could pass for cutting-edge analysis. Enjoy:

Trains are romantic: We have a vision of sleek streamlined steel machines slicing through the night, the mournful whistle wafting through the farmer's dreams. But we do not wear fedoras or listen to Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio or exhibit other traits of the bygone era. We drive or we fly. Nevertheless, California is keen on a hypersonic choo-choo, as you've no doubt heard--and while locals are starting to question the wisdom of spending a tenth of a trillion on the project, it staggers on. The government is behind it. The unions are behind it. People who believe there is a direct relationship between the number of cars that drive to Sacramento and a polar bear drowning in 2027 A.D. are behind it. The only thing that could stop the train is the discovery that it endangers gay brine shrimp, but even then they'd just go 30 miles around the pond and call the route the Diversity Bend. Like many ideas from the first few decades of the previous century, trains are perfectly progressive. There's no individual decision on direction or duration, no competition, no penalty for poor performance, and the money to run the thing is exacted from the unwilling by the force of the state. If that's not enlightenment, what is?

Breaking the Code

2012-01-31T13:50:00.004-05:00

After first transgressing at NPR, and then multiplying his sins by taking a job at FOX News, I guess we shouldn't be surprised to learn that Juan Williams is trying hard to reestablish his liberal bona fides.

Writing for The Hill, Williams accuses the GOP of using racial "code" words:

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.

The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants, as people seeking “amnesty” and taking jobs from Americans.

Good grief.

It seems to me that when used by a liberal the word "code" is code for "I'm about to play the race card."

End of the "Split the Difference Scenario"

2012-01-30T18:08:00.002-05:00

When even a left-wing outlet like POLITICO says as much, you know things have changed. And to my mind, the change is all for the better.

The scenario they're describing is of course the old Washington way of getting to the deal by splitting the difference between either the branches of government or, more significantly, between the governing parties and the ideologies that describe them. (You really can't say define them, or at least you can't in the GOP's case.)

For conservatives this difference splitting has always come at a much greater cost to them than it has to liberals and you had to be a fool not to know it.

When the Right stands on the principle of constitutionally limited government and the Left does not, for the Right to split the difference, or even to concede the smallest point, it is by definition a victory for the Left. In such a transaction, the Left has violated no principle at all. The Right, by contrast, has sold a little or a lot of its very soul.

Moreover, even if you leave principle aside, if history demonstrates anything it demonstrates that even the smallest concession to the growth of government invariably results in something bigger, usually something much bigger than was originally planned. It's typically not only bigger, but altogether different as well.

Slowly (oh so very slowly), but steadily, the description of the Republican Party has changed from one with a ruling majority of accommodationists (difference splitters) to one with a ruling majority of much more principled conservatives.

The immediate consequence of that change is of course gridlock in DC. But, as even the reporters at POLITICO have noticed, it also means that we're finally in for a real fight.

Let's Roll!

Brrrrr!

2012-01-30T08:28:00.001-05:00

I realize the season's over, but how did that old tune go again?

"Baby it's cold outside..."

"Community" Does NOT Equal Government

2012-01-29T22:34:00.002-05:00

As long as Ross Douthat stays away from contemporary politics and tries to make larger, more philosophical points (or reviews books and movies), he's OK.

But, in this article, even his contemporary political point is OK.

Driving in the Left Lane

2012-01-28T12:24:00.000-05:00

With this latest self-imposed mandate, the once Golden State has moved from the death watch to the suicide watch.

When the Political is Personal

2012-01-28T08:52:00.002-05:00

OK, so contrary to my earlier post, maybe Jeffrey Lord doesn't know after all.

At least that's what NRO's Rich Lowry asserts as he responds to Lord's response to Elliott Abrams' response to Newt Gingrich's claim to be a genuine Reaganite. (Confused yet?) Actually, Lowry's response is more than just a correction to the record as he accuses Lord of "smearing" Abrams and "misrepresenting" Gingrich.

Look, there are plenty of sound reasons to prefer Mitt to Newt. But this anti-Gingrich crusade is beginning to smell more and more like the settling of personal scores than it does a sincere concern over winning this fall's election.

If the Newt Gingrich of the 1980s and early 90s was not only a non-Reagan, but in fact an anti-Reagan crazy man, and this was known at the time, then how on earth did he rise to such prominence and get himself elected Speaker of the House by his fellow Republicans?

A Bucket of Cold Water

2012-01-28T06:43:00.000-05:00

Using the Obama's SOTU address, along with Mitt's platitudes and Newt's pandering, as a launching pad, Mark Steyn, again, brings us back to earth. The money quote is from the last paragraph:

There are times for dreaming big dreams, and there are times to wake up. This country will not be going to the moon, any more than the British or French do. Because, in decline, the horizons shrivel. The only thing that’s going to be on the moon is the debt ceiling. Before we can make any more giant leaps for mankind, we have to make one small, dull, prosaic, earthbound step here at home — and stop. Stop the massive expansion of micro-regulatory government, and then reverse it. Obama has vowed to press on. If Romney and Gingrich can’t get serious about it, he’ll get his way.

Lord Knows

2012-01-27T13:41:00.003-05:00

It appears that The American Spectator's Jeffrey Lord has, reluctantly I think, been thrust into the role of being one of Newt Gingrich's chief defenders. The truth's defender is perhaps more accurate. For all we know, Lord may well be a Romney man.

The last few days I've posted both for and against the former Speaker. Full disclosure: My inclinations are mostly in the latter camp. But even so, I think this long week of the long knives for Newt has been a bit much. We do have a real foe in this contest after all, a clear and present danger to the country in fact, and he ain't Newt Gingrich.

Anyway, among the more serious stabs at Newt came from Elliott Abrams in the pages of NRO. Abrams not only challenged Gingrich's claim to be a legitimate political heir to Ronald Reagan, but also charged him with being even at the time a caustic critic of the Reagan and his Administration.

Lord, a former Reagan White House insider himself who just the other day was moved to challenge this surprising anti-Gingrich blitzkrieg, has risen again to challenge specifically Abrams' account of Gingrich's role in the 1980s. And from what I read, he seems to have the facts on his side.

Alas. Makes you want to throw your hands up in the air, pronounce a pox on each of their houses, then turn away and walk off in disgust, doesn't it?

You can't. The stakes are to high.

Look, virtually all of the players here, pols, pundits, and wannabes alike, have huge egos the care and feeding of which the rest of us would find off putting if we had to witness it up close and personal every day. But please know that thus has it ever been.

Keep your eye on the ball. No matter how flawed or how wounded our eventual nominee ends up being, replacing Obama is the game.

Abu Ghraib Again?, cont.

2012-01-26T17:16:00.000-05:00

While I'm on the subject of selective outrage, heard anything more about the scandal of the Afghanistan "pissing contest"?

Still nothing, huh?

I'm detecting a pretty strong pattern here, so this'll be my last update.

The prosecution rests.

One Little, Two Little...Indians

2012-01-26T17:06:00.002-05:00

Does VP Joe Biden have something against Indians? 'Cause here he goes again.

No surprise there. As they say, just Joe bein' Joe.

But what's that noise? Listen for just a minute...imagine the dark side of the moon...yea, that noise...it's the sound of sanctimonious outrage being expressed by all the usual liberal grievance mongers along with their allies in the elite media.

Listen hard, I swear it's there. Try holding your breath.

OK, We Heard You!

2012-01-26T08:56:00.001-05:00

Just in case you've been stranded on some deserted island for the past few weeks and hadn't heard the news: Elite conservative punditry and professional Republicans alike don't much care for Newt Gingrich or his candicacy. Now, even the left-wing POLITICO has noticed as much.

So, Newt's full of himself, erratic, virtue-challenged, and most importantly, not a conservative?

Got it.

But stop there, would you? Don't insult me by insisting that Romney's the real deal.

Enough!

2012-01-26T08:29:00.000-05:00

"Increasingly one gets the impression that he is living in a third-world country."

So begins Christopher Orlet's cautionary tale from his experience with the Missouri DMV, a tale I suspect is repeated daily not just in Missouri, but across the fruited plane.

Please pause to connect the dots from Orlet's story to looming Obamacare, not to mention the thousand other government regulations and regulators in between.

In Mexico they call it la mordida, the "bite", the unofficial "tax" that attends successfully complying with virtually all government regulations or receiving any government service. It's kind of a joke, but it's not funny.

The cost of such a tax is not just the "cost", the $50 bucks Orlet could have slipped the inspector in order to "fix" the problem with his car. There are many other costs as well, costs that typically fall most heavily on the poor as Orlet points out. But the real cost is a loss of respect for the the law, the entire law, even the laws that proscribe theft, battery, even murder.

Both parties and all politicians are guilty of multiplying just such nuisance rules and regulations. But one party and the politicians that represent it is more guilty, much more guilty. Remember that when you vote.

And You Know What I Think of Clinton

2012-01-25T18:30:00.001-05:00

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. let's us know what he thinks of Newt Gingrich.

Safer for Whom?

2012-01-24T15:09:00.001-05:00

Consider this Reuters headline and story: "Abortion Safer than Giving Birth"

Seriously, does this mean that we can expect in the not so distant future for an OB doctor, after first informing a young woman that, yes, she is expecting after all, in his next sentence to be obligated by some code of medical ethics to inform her as well that all things considered, her tears of joy aside, it would be better to terminate the pregnancy sooner rather than later?

God have mercy on us.

Money Mouth

2012-01-24T14:26:00.001-05:00

Even as Mitt Romney apologizes, or doesn't, for the money he's made as a "vulture" capitalist, or hard-working businessman, CNN reports that the genuine Man of the People, our former Prez Bill Clinton, has now passed the $75 million mark in fees for delivering speeches across the globe.

Why anyone would pay this charlatan good money to speak remains beyond me?

Now, toss him a buck or two to shut up? Well, I just might pony up for that.

A Small Point

2012-01-24T13:39:00.001-05:00

Dennis Prager, a solid ally in the American Campaign (my new title for what is often called the "culture war"), makes a fair enough case about how Mitt Romney's Mormonism should have no place in our deciding either for or against his candidacy..

Frankly, I think his and other's worry about this is overdrawn, but, as I say, fair enough.

Anyway, along the way of making the point, he makes also "three observations" about what he, as a Jew, notices about the relationship between Mormons and evangelicals. While his second observation is correct, his analogue is flawed.

Observation #2: I may be mistaken, but I believe that what most annoys evangelicals (and some other Christians) about Mormonism is that Mormons call themselves Christians. In order for Jews to better understand evangelicals — and for evangelicals to better understand Jews — I think there is a parallel here. The vast majority of Jews understand that in a free society, people convert to other religions. Therefore, some Christians convert to Judaism, and some Jews convert to Christianity. What particularly annoys Jews is not the existence of converts but the existence of “Jews for Jesus.” To most Jews, this is a misleading label, because people who come to believe in Christ should call themselves Christians, not Jews. (my italics)

I'm afraid the parallel does not hold. One cannot honestly call oneself a Christian, or a Mormon either for that matter, if one does not claim allegiance to and identification with the explicitly religious practices and beliefs of that faith. However, one may in all honesty identify as a Jew without practicing or believing any of the tenets of Judaism. There is such a thing as an ethnic Jew. There is no such thing, properly, as an ethnic Christian. Hence, a Jew for Jesus is no less valid than an atheist Jew.

A small point.

Equal Time

2012-01-24T12:52:00.002-05:00

Now that you've read the Pruden piece I mentioned in my previous post, be sure to complicate your consideration of Newt by reading as well this one by The American Spectator's Jeffrey Lord.

What's Wrong with this Non-Romney?

2012-01-24T11:25:00.001-05:00

Who'd of thunk Newt Gingrich of all people would become the darling of the evangelical right?

Actually, I don't think he has. Instead, I think he's merely reaping the rewards of being the currently most plausible non-Romney. And contrary to the apparently willful ignorance of much of elite conservative punditry and far too many professional Republicans alike, there's plenty to recommend the non-Romney, whomever he/she happens to be. In fact, one of the chief recommendations is that the base of the GOP is screaming for him to emerge.

Anyway, lest you think I, a card-carrying member of the evangelical right, am similarly willfully ignorant, but in reverse, to the faults and failures of this particular non-Romney, consider this piece by The Washington Times' Wesley Pruden. I'd say he does more than a pretty good job of making you wince for even thinking about voting for Newt.

Fair and balanced?

What's Wrong with Romney?

2012-01-23T08:15:00.000-05:00

Even as elite conservative punditry and many members of the GOP "establishment" begin to sweat over the increasingly real possibility of a Gingrich nomination, Mark Steyn reminds them and us that the problem is neither with Newt nor the voters, the problem is, as it has been from the beginning, with Romney himself.

As for the quality of Romney's campaign, Steyn writes: "The finely calibrated inoffensiveness is kind of offensive."

The Anti-Mormon Dodge

2012-01-21T20:42:00.002-05:00

I'm watching the returns from the South Carolina Republican Primary, which it appears Gingrich will win handily, and I've noticed something peculiar about the reporting and the responses from "Establishment" Republican talking heads.

Out of nowhere, the "Do you think Romney's Mormonism was a factor?" question has come up from some of the reporters. And from "Establishment" Republicans has come the dodge, "Oh, I hope not."

Both the question and the answer are of course intended to suggest just the opposite. That is, too many of the GOP rank and file are anti-Mormon bigots and, therefore, Gingrich's Palmetto State victory is illegitimate, or at least questionable.

If, despite the SC loss, Mitt Romney goes on to win the Republican nomination and faces President Obama in the general election this fall, and then trails the president in the polls, you can be sure you'll never hear this question or anything like it from anyone in the elite media. Or, if you do, you can be even surer that the talking head who answers the question will effectively feign shock, shock I'm telling you, that anyone would even suggest such a thing.

As they say, politics ain't beanbag.

Women and Children, First and Last

2012-01-21T10:14:00.001-05:00

Mark Steyn is only partly right in his mining for meaning the events surrounding the sinking of the Costa Concordia.

It's true that "women and children first" was once a normative phrase that captured a code of conduct, a code that is fast becoming passé in the West.

What he leaves out is that it's become instead, and sadly so, an increasingly accurate descriptive phrase that captures perfectly a class of people who do go first, whether they should or not. (If, that is, it's even possible to use words like should or ought in a properly multicultural society.) "Women and children" is now descriptive of, well, descriptive of almost everyone, male and female, young and old, able and infirm, etc.. We're all equal after all and that's exactly as it should be. (Here's one place where should is not only allowed, but demanded.)

Out to Lunch

2012-01-21T08:46:00.003-05:00

Yet another story in an apparently inexhaustible list to convincingly capture the pretentious, overly centralized, excessively bureaucratized, we-know-better-than-you, it's-other-peoples'-money-anyway, progressive/liberal mindset, as well as the kind of policies that invariably follow from it. The results of which were altogether predictable, but not for that reason altered in any fashion.

Small stuff, you say.

Monstrous because it's petty, I say.

Meanwhile, the same people with the same mindset continue their Long March to control your health care as well...with similarly predictable results

Can You Name One Thing...?

2012-01-17T15:25:00.000-05:00

...for which President Obama deserves credit, that is?

Well, William McGurn points out one, and it's a big one. It speaks for itself.

The Message of "The Iron Lady"

2012-01-17T14:01:00.000-05:00

I've not yet seen The Iron Lady, the new film about the life of Margaret Thatcher, but Virginia Postrel has and in it she detects what for her is an annoying moral, a moral which I think is a commonplace:

Contrary to the critics, framing Thatcher’s story with her current dementia, which her daughter has written about, is not intrinsically disrespectful. Nor does it necessarily undercut her accomplishments.

The problem, rather, is that grafted on to what could be an affecting story of greatness and decline is an invidious, and gratuitous, moral. Call it the Gospel According to Anna Quindlen, the writer and columnist who enshrined its maxims in a commencement speech she wrote in 1999 and eventually turned into the best-selling book “A Short Guide to a Happy Life.” “No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in the office,” she instructed. “Don’t ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year: ‘If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.’”

The film presents Thatcher as just such a rat -- a woman who too zealously pursued public achievement and spent way too much time at the office. Rather than universal loss, the loneliness of her old age represents a kind of karmic payback for her hubris in seeking to leave something more to history than her genes.

...No wonder she wound up lonely and demented. The Iron Lady was just out for herself, a self-centered rat who missed the important things in life. At least that’s what a viewer who knew only the movie might suppose.

While Postrel ends her review by focusing on its feminist (or anti-feminist?) implications, I think she was more on the mark with where she began.

That we all, perhaps most especially women, have to make choices in our otherwise circumscribed lives, and that those choices have consequences, some good, some not so good, that involve paying costs, some quite dear, and that we must be prepared to live, and die, with those consequences and costs is an abiding and inescapable truth. It is for that reason also, as I say, a commonplace moral. I don't fault Hollywood for tackling, once again, this tragic aspect of life.

My issue with this film, at least from what I can gather without actually seeing it, simply is that I cannot imagine Hollywood making a similar point in such a powerful and compelling a fashion about any woman who happened to be a liberal icon.

Just Their Imagination

2012-01-16T18:22:00.001-05:00

A while back I posted on why I didn't "believe" in evolution. One of my objections was the theory's heavy reliance on a "back in the mists of time" argument, or on the necessity of the passing of untold billions and billions of years for anything to actually evolve. Well, it seems even ole Charles Darwin himself was aware of this problem and addressed it in On the Origin of the Species.

After "Rereading Darwin" , Robert Dorit tackles the subject for us in the American Scientist. As I said, he first notes that Darwin was sensitive to the objection.

What Darwin realized was that a youthful Earth was appealing not only because it adhered to the biblical time line, but also because it was simply easier to imagine. He knew that his own argument for natural selection depended on vast conceptions of time, and he also understood that the time spans required would be nearly impossible to comprehend. In a section of the Origin entitled “On the Lapse of Time,” he wrote:
It is hardly possible for me even to recall to the reader, who may not be a practical geologist, the facts leading the mind feebly to comprehend the lapse of time. He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology … yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume.

Darwin feared that his readers would be unable to understand the deep time over which natural selection acts, and that their failure would be problematic for his argument. Those with limited imaginations might as well put away his book at once. (my italics)

I giggled when I read that last sentence.

First, I've got no problem with criticising those with "limited imaginations", I was just surprised to discover that scientists put any stock in its use, limited or not. Facts, empirical evidence, matter and the void and nothing in between, that's the stuff of science, right?

But of course Dorit's piece isn't really about Darwin, or the lapse of time problem, or really anything remotely scientific. It's a hit piece directed at mouth breathers like me...and maybe you too. Although I honestly don't think he meant to, Dorit finally gives this all away:

Still, when I recently reread the Origin, I was struck by a subtler blow the book delivers to human hubris. The Origin remains, even in the 21st century, a radical work, which argues that the fundamental forces driving life on this planet occur on timescales that render the span of a human life insignificant. Furthermore, although the effects of natural selection are there for all to see, its daily operation is almost completely hidden from view. Both our life spans and our five senses are inadequate to the task of comprehension: The most powerful mechanism of organic change lies well beyond our everyday experience.

While the Origin may be a blow to ordinary human hubris, it seems not to be similarly successful when it comes to the hubris of scientists. As Dorit contends, the most powerful mechanism of organic change may well lie beyond our everyday experience, but it most certainly is not beyond the experience, the comprehension, or the unlimited imaginations of our enlightened scientists.

Abu Ghraib Again?, cont.

2012-01-16T17:06:00.001-05:00

Heard anything more about the Afghanistan "pissing contest"?

Didn't think so.

Got a Question for You

2012-01-16T15:30:00.000-05:00

For you GOP professionals and conservative elite media pundits most particularly, but any of you can jump in.

Now that Jon Huntsman has quit the Republican race, why was his candidacy ever any more serious, any less quixotic, or less self-serving than the candidacy of Herman Cain? To make the question more pointed, I'm talking about the Cain candidacy before the "bimbo" eruptions.

If the answer is that it was essentially no different, then why was it that Hunstman's campaign was only very rarely disparaged, and then never to the same degree as Cain's? Or, conversely, why was it that Cain's was never afforded the same level of respect?

The answers just might reveal the already obvious.

MLK, Jr. and Me

2012-01-16T10:31:00.000-05:00

I posted this a year ago on the same occasion and was encouraged by a friend to do so again. I tried to polish it up a bit (one often winces when reading something one wrote even an hour ago), but you'll have to be the judge.

********************************************************************

My relationship with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is complicated. Not that I ever met the man. His too-short life ended while I was still a boy, taken from him by an assassin's bullet in Memphis in 1968. I grew up thereafter with the notion, solidly inculcated by the public schools and the elite media, that he was indeed a great American, a great man. Although I am white and from the South, my parents were not political in any sense and it never occurred to me to challenge the prevailing view.

But by the early 1980s, when the controversy arose over establishing a national holiday recognizing King's birthday and thereby celebrating his life, I was a young man and by then also a confirmed conservative. As most of the opposition to establishing the new holiday came from my side of the aisle, I was forced to reevaluate.

My initial conclusion was that he was not deserving. First, I thought we simply could not afford yet another paid day off. While I never did the math myself, I accepted the conclusions of those who did and there were many who argued this way. Second, as significant as King may have been, his importance to the country could never equal that of any of the Founders, most conspicuously Thomas Jefferson, for whom we had never established a formal national day of recognition. Finally, by then King's public biography was less sanitized than it had been previously and we could no longer pretend not to know about his, ahem, "woman" problem.

Nevertheless, Congress passed and President Reagan signed into law the bill establishing the third Monday of each January, close to his actual birthday of 15 January, as "Martin Luther King, Jr. Day". We've enjoyed the day off ever since.

Later, I changed my mind about all this. It seemed we could afford the holiday after all. Moreover, the ending of Jim Crow was an undeniably proud and watershed moment in our country's history and King was absolutely indispensable to its legal termination. Finally, at a personal level, I found the grace to forgive him his sexual indiscretions. I recognized that he was a flawed man just like all the other national heroes we celebrate and, more importantly, I recognized that he was also a flawed man just like me. Importantly, his moral lapses were chiefly private in nature and never resulted, so far as I'm aware, of any instances of public corruption

Still later I was to change my mind yet again, but not about the holiday or King's deserving of it. As I learned more and thought about it more, it occurred to me that what complicated King's legacy the most, as well as the entire Civil Rights Movement for which he was the single most important public face, was that after the passage of the famous Civil Rights Acts of the mid-1960s, he and the Movement he represented somehow morphed into becoming identified as well with the anti-Vietnam War effort, replete with its far-too-often inexcusably anti-American rhetoric.

In his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" , King wrote movingly of "bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence." But later, after taking up the anti-war mantle, he once said in a speech that the US was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." Sadly, language such as that sullied for many Americans, myself included, the otherwise wholly noble cause we had come to associate chiefly with the person of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the struggle he lead to secure equal rights for all Americans. Regrettably, this continues to complicate his legacy.

But even after acknowledging and weighing that complication, I still think he deserves his due and his day. On balance, America would be a much poorer place without him and his sacrifice and because of that I can say, without hesitation, Happy Birthday Dr. King!

The Enemy of My Enemy

2012-01-15T16:16:00.000-05:00

In a most condescending fashion, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scolds the GOP, admonishing it to, among other things, abandon its Tea Party "extremism".

Unfortunately, many in the Republican "establishment", along with a good number of elite media conservatives as well, agree with him.

Which, ironically, explains the existence of the Tea Party in the first place.

Sunday Mornin' Coming Down

2012-01-15T08:06:00.000-05:00

Because it's early Sunday morning as I post this, that's why.

The American Spectator's David Catron paints a bleak picture as he compares the current fate of the GOP to that iconic last scene from the film Thelma & Louise:

Witnessing the GOP contests in Iowa and New Hampshire has been much like watching Louise stomp on the accelerator of that beautiful car. It's so easy to foresee the slow-motion descent into the electoral abyss and so seemingly impossible to prevent what should be an unnecessary tragedy.

Barack Obama should be facing, as he himself phrased it, "a one-term proposition." His incompetence has reached depths that render the feckless Jimmy Carter positively Washingtonian by comparison, the sheer lawlessness of his administration evokes nostalgia for the merely corrupt Clinton years, and the state of the nation is worse by any objective measure than it was in on the day he took office. The GOP should be well positioned to send the President into retirement. Instead, the party's nomination process has become a bloody battle in which the candidates are viciously attacking one another rather than Obama, denouncing core conservative principles rather than the failures of big-government, and seems to be on the verge of producing a "winner" who has no prayer of defeating the incumbent.

I'm going back to bed.

Conservative: More or Less

2012-01-14T09:41:00.002-05:00

Yet another poll confirms what the poll before it confirmed: Americans self-identify as conservative over liberal by a margin of 2-to-1. Meanwhile, moderates, the group the elites of every ideological flavor trumpet as the truest source of political wisdom and the real deciders of the political course the country will actually take, continues to shrink.

The fact that the numbers of self-described moderates continues to shrink rings true. Our politics do seem more and more polarized. But that conservatives outnumber liberals 2-to-1 warrants skepticism. If that were actually so, then how on earth did we elelct this president, this Senate, and even the House until just a year and a half ago?

Unfortunately, for pollsters anyway, to ask someone if they are conservative has become something like asking them if they enjoy and follow the NFL. The answer is very likely to be "Yes." But that answer tells us very little to almost nothing about whether or not they support an active or restrained federal government.

Abu Ghraib Again?, cont.

2012-01-13T16:41:00.000-05:00

Rep. Allen West, (R-FL), a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, offers his own thoughts about the "pissing contest" in Afghanistan:

I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.

Evil or Not?

2012-01-13T11:12:00.001-05:00

NRO's Kevin Williamson writes a provocative piece, "Obama: Incompetent or Evil?". I urge you to read it, but then be sure to read at least a sampling of some of the thoughtful responses it, well, responses it provokes.

As you probably guessed, it provoked me as well, but I'll limit myself here to just a few of those provocations. (Tired of the word "provoke" yet?)

First, it presents a false dilemma. Obama can be both incompetent and evil.

Second, I resent the implication that if one strongly disagrees with Barack Obama, then one necessarily thinks him evil.

Third, I resent even more the implication that to think him merely incompetent is somehow reasonable, while disagreeing with him passionately is a sure sign of certifiable derangement.

Fourth, I'm not sure if this was original with Bill Buckley, but I do know that I heard him repeat it at least once. He said that if one is not in principle a conservative, then one will inexorably drift, if not not march, toward liberalism. I agree with that and think that it suggests a corollary: If one cannot, or will not, see the evil, yes, evil, that invariably attends socialism, especially after a more than 100-year record of serial failures and atrocities, then one will, necessarily, accommodate it. Which means, just in case you got lost in that last sentence, accommodating evil.

Fifth (five's enough), even if it could be demonstrated that socialism, pure and simple, or any variant thereof, was the system of economics/government most consistent with the Platonic Ideal of economics/government, it would still be inconsistent with our founding principles. For that reason alone, it would merit our resistance. Or at least it would until such a time when our founding constitution were amended suitably to accommodate it.

Sixth,..wait! I said five was enough, didn't I?

Abu Ghraib Again?

2012-01-13T08:56:00.001-05:00

So, will the reports and video of US soldiers urinating on three dead Taliban fighters provoke the same national and global firestorm as did the behavior of US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq several years ago?

Not likely. This outrage occurred on President Obama's watch. Hence, the American Left's response will be muted, if, that is, we hear anything from them at all.

In any event, you can be sure the elite media will strive for balanced reporting, regularly pointing out that this kind of behavior is neither US policy, nor implicitly condoned by the authorities, and that the perpetrators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

You know, everything they didn't do during the Bush Administration.

CLINTON: The Movie

2012-01-12T15:43:00.003-05:00

Like his presidency, it'll doubtless be rated "R".

POLITICO reports of PBS's "coming soon" four-hour documentary that chronicles the life and times of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, apparently warts and all.

Genital warts and all? The jury's out. We're talking about PBS after all.

And we're also talking about POLITICO.

Remember that old TV program that would show B-movie horror/sci-fi flicks through the silhouettes of three aliens who would made sarcastic comments throughout? One could imagine usefully employing much the same technique while reading the POLITICO piece. Consider, for example, this comment from the report:

The film covers Clinton’s life in its entirety — from his childhood in Arkansas to his first runs for office to his election as governor of Arkansas to his presidency — but almost a full hour of the documentary focuses on Clinton’s personal struggles with fidelity, coupled with harsh, blunt language from many of his colleagues and chroniclers. (my italics)

As if Clinton's serial womanizing was more or less like his passion for fast and fatty foods. Poor guy.

Or this comment from Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich:

“I’ve asked myself a number of times why he put himself and his presidency in jeopardy in such a careless way. … Maybe Bill Clinton, who so much needed and wanted to be loved, couldn’t say no to someone who was going to give him affection and wanted affection back.”

He wasn't a lecher actually, but rather a man who couldn't resist the desperate advances of adoring women. Good grief.

Like I say, we'll see.

Or maybe we won't. Given the content, it can't be aired until after prime time and I just can't stay up that late anymore.

"Masters of Passive Virtue"

2012-01-12T09:17:00.000-05:00

Love that.

It's Christopher Orlet's and you really need to enjoy him poking fun at city-dwelling multiculti preeners who only rarely practice what they preach.

Romney Reservations

2012-01-11T17:23:00.001-05:00

With his convincing Granite State primary victory yesterday, it's looking more and more like Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for this fall's election. If so, he'll win or lose while engendering the least amount of excitement among the party faithful since the candidacy of, well, I guess since the candidacy of John McCain just four years ago. But before that...oh...W wasn't exactly a barn-burner either, was he? Bob Dole? ZZzz George the First? zzzz

OK, since Reagan, the GOP hasn't exactly nominated any leg-tingling standard bearers, has it?

BUT, and this is VERY important, that slate of candidate's inability to produce enthusiastic supporters had in every case less, MUCH less, to do with their lack of rhetorical skill than it had to do with their various departures from conservative orthodoxy.

In Romney's case, those departures have been serious and all-too-public, which makes pretending they're not what they are, or never happened at all, difficult, if not impossible.

As a result, with a Romney nomination, the best hope for Republicans this fall will be that the Democrats will suffer from a similar absence of ardor.

What's a "Zionist"?

2012-01-11T16:38:00.003-05:00

NRO's Jay Nordlinger tries to pin down the meaning of the elusive word.

Along the way, he writes this sentence: "Few academics, artists, and cool teens would want to be known as Zionists."

Academics, artists, and cool teens.

Can you think of a more natural and expressive a grouping? Beautiful.

Duh!

2012-01-11T15:07:00.002-05:00

This just in from POLITICO: "Newt Gingrich signaled Wednesday that he believes his criticism of Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital is a mistake — and that he’s created an impression that he was echoing Democratic rhetoric."

Now, if Governor Perry would have the same epiphany.

Tim vs. Tom

2012-01-09T14:36:00.000-05:00

That's next week's matchup and what, pray tell, is at least one thing the two quarterbacks have in common?

The "experts" didn't think either were good enough for the NFL. (Tom was drafted in the 6th round, 199th overall.)

If Tim hangs in there like Tom did and eventually enjoys anything like his level of success (Tom's set the bar pretty high), you can be sure those same "experts" will be patting themselves on the back for knowing it all along. Uh, upon further review....

More Than Just Math

2012-01-07T21:48:00.001-05:00

If you thought it was in the main good that the GOP seemed finally to be coalescing around the candidacy of Mitt Romney, consider this sobering post by Michale Walsh over the NRO's The Corner blog. He titles the post "Simple Arithmetic", but the way he ends it says something more than that:

As I said on the most recent NR cruise, if Romney is the nominee, he will lose. He has no idea what Axelrod & Co. are capable of, nor of the depths to which they will stoop to destroy him. They will attack him as a flip-flopper, as a panderer, as a rapacious and heartless one percenter, and, yes, as a Mormon. They will damn him with faint praise as a liberal accomodationist, as the spiritual father of Obamacare. He’s a gentleman in a mug’s game, and this is no time for gentlemen.

How Much Ruin Is Left?

2012-01-07T20:16:00.003-05:00

That's the question to Adam Smith's (yep, that Adam Smith) answer to a young correspondent worried about the direction of Great Britain. Smith: "There's a great deal of ruin in a nation."

Many thanks to Ken Thomas at NLT blog for directing us to this piece by Charles Murray in The New Criterion
.
The anecdote about Smith comes at the end of the article which is adapted from Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. After taking in its less than sanguine argument about the future of American society, especially its divergence into something of a class system, one is tempted to say something on the order of, "Well, duh!"

But I'm guessing liberals, not conservatives are his target audience and let's hope he somehow manages to convince the otherwise un-convincible.

Guns or Butter?

2012-01-07T13:46:00.001-05:00

After President Obama announced his plans for big cuts in the nation's armed forces, Rush Limbaugh asked why it is that cuts in the military, even huge cuts, are good, OK, or at least fiscally necessary, while even the smallest cuts in a whole host of otherwise non-essential bureaucracies is so devastating.

Yet another of the Left's uncountable hypocrisies.

Evil with a Capital "E"

2012-01-07T08:25:00.001-05:00

Many thanks to Mark Steyn for highlighting the Left's decided lack of empathy (you know, the trait they pride themselves for having a monopoly of) in the case of the newly prominent GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum. I'm referring to their shameless use of the details of the birth and very short life in 1996 of the Santorum's son Gabriel and, more to the point, of how Santorum and his wife decided to deal with their grief.

I was watching FOX News the other day when I first heard both the story and the mocking of it by the very liberal talking head Alan Colmes. I was speechless, but thankfully National Review's Rich Lowry, who was appearing alongside Colmes at the time, was not and he quickly and forcefully expressed disgust with Colmes for bringing it up.

While I was speechless, my mind was still working just fine and my first thought was to wonder, of all the things with which and for which they could attack Rick Santorum, why this? It was just too obscure an anecdote to be anything other than a very calculated talking point. They were somehow ready for this, even waiting for it. Which made me ask myself once again, why?  The answer came just as quickly: This is about abortion, the "right" to a dead baby. It is now clear that Santorum is perceived by the Left as a potential threat to this "right" and as a result he must, at all costs, be stopped, stopped even before he gets started.

Just in case it wasn't already obvious, abortion is the defining issue of contemporary liberalism. As others have described it, it is the sacrament of the church of the Left. Think about it, among Leftists almost any departure from strict liberal orthodoxy is tolerated...save one.

But even knowing that beforehand, I was still amazed in this case at the raw speed with which the Left responded. As we know, Santorum didn't even win Iowa. Nevertheless, the Left's spokesmen were already armed with information intended to discredit him with voters, make him too "weird" for the presidency, as columnist Eugene Robinson said while appearing on MSNBC (where else?) to continue the attack.

As I said, this is disgusting to me, but it's more than that as well.  My sense is that it's bigger than Alan Colmes, Eugene Robinson, and even Rachel Maddow, who was effectively high-fiving Robinson when he made his comments on her show. How big is it? See my title.

I remember that when Mother Teresa won her Noble Prize she used her moment in the sun of an already bright and shining life to bring attention to the evil that is abortion. Among the many things she said about and against the practice, one of the most important and profound was this (forgive me as I'm paraphrasing from memory): "If a mother can take the life of her own child, then you can kill me and I can kill you."

Let me unpack that for you. If the social bond that exists between a mother and child, the most natural and reflexive, and therefore the strongest, of all social bonds can be broken because it has come to seem inconvenient, then no other social bond of any kind can ever be expected to hold, not the bond between brother and sister, between husband and wife, between fellow countrymen, and certainly not the bond between generic human beings. When we find any of those relationships inconvenient, we will break them, by any means necessary, to include murder.  What is worse, we will not only excuse, we will actually justify ourselves in the breaking of them.

This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is unalloyed Evil and it ought very much to frighten you. It does me. But it also frightens me for people who on occasions like the current success of the Santorum campaign reveal themselves to be so zealously Pro-Choice.  My hope and prayer for them is that they really don't know what they are doing.

I'm reminded of two scenes from two famous films, both, as it happens, by British Director David Lean: The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia. In the latter, in order to forestall a severe complication to his military plan, Peter O'Toole as Lawrence kills in cold blood a man he had earlier very heroically risked his own life to save. Later, in the scene I'm thinking of, he is very disturbed by what he has done because, as he confesses, he realizes that he actually enjoyed killing the man.

The second scene I have in mind is from The Bridge on the River Kwai and is the film's very last. Alec Guinness as Colonel Nicholson is confronted by the dying presence of William Holden who has returned to blow up the eponymous bridge. Nicholson finally realizes that his otherwise inspiring effort to raise the morale of his men through the construction of the bridge has in fact resulted in his unwittingly assisting the enemy in their prosecution of the war.  Just before collapsing in death on the detonator that triggers the destruction of the bridge, he memorably intones, "What have I done?"

As I say, my hope and prayer is that one day the Left will awaken to the truth that is the Evil of abortion. That, like Lawrence and Nicholson in the films, they will one day achieve a similar self-awareness and, who knows, perhapos begin their journey to redemption with the very same question: "What have I done?"

ID Check

2012-01-07T06:45:00.002-05:00

This from Chicago: "New Law Requires Photo ID to Buy Drain Cleaner"

Voting requirements in the Windy City, however, will remain as, uh, liberal, as necessary.

Is it OK?

2012-01-06T19:21:00.001-05:00

I'm guessing that by now you've heard about the young mother in rural Oklahoma who, armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, saved herself and her three-month old baby from two intruders by killing one and thereby persuading the other to flee.

Hooray for her, but do note the question she had for the 911 operator she called before actually pulling the trigger: “I’ve got two guns in my hand...Is it OK to shoot him if he comes in the door?”

"Is it OK?"?

As it happened, the dispatcher told her to do what she had to in order to protect herself and the baby. But what if the operator had demurred, or worse, had told her to wait until "competent authority" arrived?

If you recall, there were a spate of stories this past summer about the authorities in various communities fining kids for operating street-side lemonade stands without first obtaining the appropriate permits.

If we've come to place in this country where our reflex is to ask for permission first in even the most extreme circumstances, circumstances that demand immediate action, or to wish we would have done so for the most petty of practices, then I submit that in any meaningful sense, we are no longer a free people.

How Do You Handle a Hungry Man?

2012-01-06T17:45:00.000-05:00

This Washingtonian headline made me giggle: "Former White House Pastry Chef Recalls Bill Clinton's 'Scary' Appetite"

And he was only talking about food.

Lawless, cont.

2012-01-05T14:00:00.001-05:00

President Obama yesterday to a crowd in Shaker Heights, Ohio:

But when Congress refuses to act, and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them. I’ve got an obligation to act on behalf of the American people. And I’m not going to stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people that we were elected to serve. Not with so much at stake, not at this make-or-break moment for middle-class Americans. We’re not going to let that happen.

Reluctant hero or megalomaniac?

Lawless

2012-01-05T13:07:00.001-05:00

By now you've heard at least something about President Obama ignoring both the Constitution and tradition by making a "recess" appointment while the Congress is not yet in recess. The details can get arcane, which is exactly what the White House is counting on lest you become curious and upset. But it doesn't matter very much anyway.

If there's a law on the books in your community that prohibits the parking of a car along the curb and the sheriff doesn't enforce it, is it really a law? Similarly, if the Republican members of Congress choose to do nothing more about this violation of the Constitution than whine a little bit here at outset, is the President really in violation?

I, for one, will be more than a little surprised if the current GOP leadership does anything more than whine a bit here at the outset?

The Courage of One's Convictions

2012-01-05T09:53:00.003-05:00

Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic's literary editor, begins his review of Alex Rosenberg's The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions with a list of very serious questions followed by smug, quite unserious answers that derive from the same book:

Is there a god? No. What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is. What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is the meaning of life? Ditto. Why am I here? Just dumb luck. Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding? Is there free will? Not a chance! What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them. Why should I be moral? Because it makes you feel better than being immoral. Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? Anything goes. What is love, and how can I find it? Love is the solution to a strategic interaction problem. Don’t look for it; it will find you when you need it. Does history have any meaning or purpose? It’s full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing.

He continues:

I take this cutting-edge wisdom from the worst book of the year, a shallow and supercilious thing...The book is a catechism for people who believe they have emancipated themselves from catechisms. The faith that it dogmatically expounds is scientism. It is a fine example of how the religion of science can turn an intelligent man into a fool.

After this, you read on thinking perhaps you've found an ally in the ongoing struggle against the Left's stubborn secularism. Not so:

Not long ago the prestige of science was nastily contested by American politics, as conservatism’s war on evolution, environmental science, and other forms of empirical research threatened to confound the American sense of reality. It was George W. Bush against Francis Bacon. Against this obscurantism—which has long held sway over significant portions of the American electorate—it was necessary to offer a ferocious defense of the premises, and the blessings, of scientific inquiry. Unfortunately, the defense of science became corrupted in certain quarters into a defense of scientism, which is the expansion of scientific methods and concepts into realms of human life in which they do not belong.

First, I'm sorry, but skepticism about "evolution, environmental science, and other forms of empirical research", all of which from the Left's point of view have profound political consequences, does not make one an "obscurantist." (I didn't think the Left used that old charge anymore, preferring instead the more contemporary and loaded "fundamentalist.")

Nevertheless, Wieseltier is right to censure Rosenberg for writing a "shabby book" as he senses that something is very wrong about its simplistic endorsement of what the author calls "nice nihilism."

Nihilism, Rosenberg seems to think, is tame after all. By embracing it, one can finally enjoy the frisson that is genuine liberty. (How many times have we heard that before?) He pretends that he has faced the questions Wieseltier poses at the beginning of his review and the glib answers he offers are sufficient. But those answers are not sufficient as they beg, scream actually, yet another question: Can a human live under such conditions? That is, is it really possible to live a human life without some sense of meaning, if not before or after, at least during one's existence?

Wieseltier's problem is that his review may be almost as smug as Rosenberg's book. Before harrumphing too loudly and confidently, I think he might do well to read some Hume and especially Nietzsche, both of whom stuck their noses out over the nihilistic abyss about as far as anyone can without actually taking the next step.

Wieseltier, like so many others on the Left, imagines he can successfully weave a Third Way, a via media, between theism and thoroughgoing materialistic atheism. But I'm afraid his secularism will inevitably lead him to the same place it does Rosenberg. I suspect, however, that once there, his moral seriousness at least will save him.

Hawks' Eye View

2012-01-04T09:41:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Rick Santorum for doggedly hanging in and hanging on for an oh-so-close second-place finish in the Iowa Caucuses behind the GOP's national frontrunner Mitt Romney.

A thought: Did Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty fold too early? He had more money, a bigger staff, and paw-lenty of elite media (left and right) goodwill to start. Some complain that his early departure demonstrates how the caucus system is flawed. Might it show how Tim Pawlenty is flawed instead?

Too...Accommodating

2012-01-04T08:18:00.000-05:00

OK, I just heard another otherwise conservative pundit cut NBC's Andrea Mitchell some slack for her unfortunate Iowa is "too white, too evangelical, and too rural" comment of the other day.

For the record, I think it unlikely that Andrea Mitchell is a self-loathing reverse bigot. (Wait, I'm not so sure about that "self-loathing" part.) What is undeniable, however, is that she is an extremely biased liberal reporter. Can you imagine her, or anyone else from the elite media, ever saying of, oh I don't know, Dearborn, Michigan, for example, that it's too black, too Muslim, and too urban?

You can't.

It's in the Cards

2012-01-04T05:48:00.004-05:00

Even amidst reports that US officials are "pressuring rank-and-file officers to rubber-stamp immigrants’ visa applications, sometimes against the officers’ will", you can be sure the Democrats won't be championing amnesty for this Mexican any time soon.

Is there a GOP "Establishment"?

2012-01-03T20:20:00.001-05:00

I like Mona Charen. I've even confessed in this very blog that I had a "thing" for her. That hasn't changed. (Shucks, as long as I'm confessing, I have a "thing" for almost all conservative women who are more or less my age.) But I'm afraid in this piece about what she calls the "myth" of a "Republican Establishment" she's just wrong.

Look, no one imagines that there is anything like a secret GOP cabal that meets each morning via conference call to decide who will run, on what issues, taking which positions, etc. Establishments don't work that way if for no other reason than they are made up of people who like all people are susceptible to personal and professional jealousies that often keep them at odds with one another.

As far as I can determine, that which best describes, if not defines, membership in the GOP "Establishment" are three things: (1) An elite-school education, preferably Ivy League, (2) money, enough anyway, and (3) an insular, at time almost incestuous "inside-the-beltway" or "DC-to-NY axis" worldview. While an insularity borne of too much time in and around the nation's capital appears the most obviously definitive of the three traits, I'm not so sure that the undeniable "snobbish" quality of the Establishment springs first from its members' common scholastic pedigree and is the truest source of their cliquishness. (It is also what sometimes leads its members to make common cause with liberal Democrats with whom they would otherwise disagree.)

At any rate, almost all of these people are at best extremely uncomfortable with, for lack of a better term, Tea Party conservatism. So uncomfortable are they with it that even if it were inarguably clear that Tea Party conservatism were the surest path to electoral victory, they would still find some reason to argue against it, and would only begrudgingly acknowledge, much less accept its successes.

Finally, while I readily concede that there is no such thing as a formal Republican Establishment, it is not for that reason any less real or consequential than, for example, the "Main Stream Media", about which, I'm quite sure, Mona Charen has railed against very effectively through the years. Which, by the way, is something I find very attractive in a woman. But I repeat myself.

FINALLY!

2012-01-03T13:20:00.000-05:00

Watch Texas Governor Rick Perry respond to an anonymously-sourced charge/question from a POLITICO reporter about criticisms of his campaign from within.

That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the way to do it. I only hope the rest of the current field, along with the many more to come, learn the lesson as well.

2012: A "Happy" New Year, or The Same As It Ever Was?

2011-12-31T11:37:00.001-05:00

I was mulling over a few ideas for either an end-of-year "Auld Lang Syne" post or a "Happy New Year" one when I fell upon these three pieces appearing in NRO at the same time

First, for some wry commentary about the "phoniness" of 2011, enjoy Jonah Goldberg's recollections here: "2011: You Can't Win for Losing".

Next, for dry witticisms about our penchant for denying the same, try Mark Steyn's "Happy New Year?"

Flowing from the pens of Goldberg and Steyn, both pieces are reliably amusing. But in this instance, they're a bit depressing as well.

So, finally, for an important call to action of sorts, turn then to Charles Krauthammer's "Are We Alone in the Universe?"

At the end of an otherwise sobering article, Krauthammer digresses with this:

Rather than despair, however, let’s put the most hopeful face on the cosmic silence and on humanity’s own short, already baleful history with its new Promethean powers: Intelligence is a capacity so godlike, so protean that it must be contained and disciplined. This is the work of politics — understood as the ordering of society and the regulation of power to permit human flourishing while simultaneously restraining the most Hobbesian human instincts.

There could be no greater irony: For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics, and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics (and its most exacting subspecialty — statecraft). Because if we don’t get politics right, everything else risks extinction.

We grow justly weary of our politics. But we must remember this: Politics — in all its grubby, grasping, corrupt, contemptible manifestations — is sovereign in human affairs. Everything ultimately rests upon it.

Fairly or not, politics is the driver of history. It will determine whether we will live long enough to be heard one day. Out there. By them, the few — the only — who got it right.

You're probably familiar with the old adage, usually attributed to Edmund Burke, that "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." I have a theory that the good men of America, the best men, are only very rarely motivated to become actively engaged in politics. When our society is functioning properly, that is, when it's operating according to the original plan, the stuff that makes for day-to-day politics is for the most part minimized and marginalized. During such times, good men and women are preoccupied with minding their own business, i.e., making a buck, inventing a better mouse trap, raising a family, volunteering to coach Little League or lead a Girl Scout Troop, etc. It's only when confronted with genuine crises that such people are roused to action. Regrettably, we now live in a time of genuine crises and all that is necessary for evil to triumph is, well, you know the rest.

Therefore, good men and women of America, if you're not already politically involved, in 2012 resolve to become so. At the very least, resolve to encourage, to press even, the good men and women whom you know to become so. The normally "silent majority" of good Americans has not yet been heard. When they finally are, I remain confident that things will change...and for the better.

Happy New Year everyone!

Cracking Up

2011-12-30T22:57:00.003-05:00

Health authorities in Vancouver, British Columbia have introduced the distribution of free (i.e., tax payer funded) crack cocaine pipes in their determination to improve their city's public health. This latest health-care initiative, a product of the most advanced progressive thought, joins ongoing efforts that already include the distribution of "free" hypodermic syringes and "free" condoms in cities across both Canada and the US.

Above and Beyond

2011-12-30T07:56:00.000-05:00

Or should that be aloof and remote? The New York Time's Helene Cooper profiles President Obama's apparent distaste for the "glad-handing, ego-stroking" aspects of the political art and while her piece is clearly sympathetic, she does point out the potential costs to a politician who eschews politics.

I argue about this often with my wife and with many friends as well, but I actually think I could like Barack Obama personally, the un-Bill Clinton, if it weren't for his unalloyed Leftism. At the risk of indicting myself for the same crime, Obama doesn't like playing politics for the same reason I don't: He knows he's right and he knows you're wrong.

As it happens, my positions are consistent with the Founding, with maximal liberty, with keeping alive the distinction between the personal and the political, and are buttressed by a mountain of empirical evidence about delivering the goods the Left can never, ever, hope to match. His positions are the exact opposite in each particular and as for supporting evidence, well, there's little to none.

Charge each of us with arrogance if you like, but who would you rather trust? The guy who wants your liberty along with your property or the guy who doesn't?

Giving Thanks for the Incarnation

2011-12-23T15:37:00.003-05:00

My last post was a little heavy for the Christmas season. Probably should have saved it for the New Year, an encouragement to a resolution of sorts.

Anyway, like many of you I'm on my way home just now, full of anticipation over the repatriation of my children, eager to enjoy their company along with that of my larger family in the days to follow. I am truly blessed and truly thankful for it.

So blessed and thankful and eager for it in fact, that I fear this Christmas Day may pass as so many others have without my considering seriously, as they say, the reason for the season, the Incarnation of the Holy One.

I don't know abou you, but as a Christian, I've always thought the doctrine of the Trinity, as difficult as it is to grasp, intellectual child's play when compared to that of the Incarnation. That the Messiah, the Christ, the long-awaited Savior could be, as the church testifies, fully man and fully God, is beyond comprehension. In fact, if you are not a believer, I suspect it smacks of certifiable nonsense.

But if you are a believer, it not so much makes sense as it is received, like a gift, like the very gift it is described as in the scriptures: "For God so loved the world, that he gave..."

If we can never unwrap the mystery of the Incarnation, may we at least unwrap anew the gift that it is this Christmas morning and for it pause to praise the God from Whom all blessings flow.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Vicarious Victimhood

2011-12-23T12:19:00.003-05:00

Robert Zaretsky, a professor of history, has forsworn his former role as a "Holocaust expert" and in this piece he explains why. He writes that, as a Jew, it appealed to his sense of "self-dramatization":

It appealed to me for all sorts of awful reasons. First of all, it satisfied my desire as an acculturated and agnostic Jew for identification with the religion of my ancestors. In his intellectual memoir, The Imaginary Jew, Alain Finkielkraut, born after World War II and ignorant of anti-Semitism, described how he happily shouldered the Holocaust as a cheap yet effective form of self-identity in France, one that carried all of the metaphysical weight with none of the historical experience. Finkielkraut wrote that, thanks to the all too real tragedy of the war, he eagerly assumes the heroic leading role in his own make-believe tragedy. “The interminable list of all of these deaths,” he noted, “was my passport to nobility.”

Vicarious victimhood as a "passport to nobility."

I'm afraid this describes far too accurately much of Western culture for the past 50 years or so. Oh to be a person of color, any color, to be a woman, to be disabled, to be a Jew, to be successfully associated with any identifiable minority.

And before you think me a bigot, please note that able-bodied white males are not free from this temptation. My father used to joke about how every big-time country singer would wax about being reared in a log cabin, now a trailer. Or consider for a moment how many of our politicians strive to strike an up-from-something, up-from-anything pose even if they actually come from, and obviously so, privilege.

What does it get you? Well, in the first instance, it's an effective shield against serious criticism of any kind. But it's also a weapon, a trump card one can play in order to win whatever is at stake in any game one is playing. Or worse, it's a bludgeon one can wield to harm another unjustly.

Those aspects of vicarious victimhood are bad enough, but it's as a "passport to nobility" that it is most twisted. Why? Because it does not, because it cannot deliver.

If an under-nourished soul of nobility is present, it always ends where it ended for Professor Zaretsy: "Dissolution", as he titles his piece. But if such a soul is not present, it feeds instead many if not all of the pathologies that currently afflict our culture.

No Mas! No Mas!

2011-12-22T19:20:00.001-05:00

As the politics of the issue were increasingly on the Democrats' side, Speaker Boehner and the House Republicans, after a stubborn, what, one-week struggle, were finally forced to wave the white flag and agree to the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut previously agreed upon in the Senate and insisted upon by the Obama White House. (Just in case you didn't catch it, that was sarcasm.)

At this point, the details of this issue matter not at all. What matters is this: Why pick a battle you don't intend to fight? Not win necessarily, or probably, or even potentially, but just fight?

The issue is fast becoming the competence of the GOP congressional leadership...and it should.

"The poor you will have with you always"

2011-12-20T12:35:00.000-05:00

Thus saith the Lord, and the American Left, in the name of eradicating it, ironically, wants to make damn sure it remains so forever.

And what, exactly, do we mean by "poor" in America today? As has often been pointed out, obesity has come to be one of its surest signs. So, to use in this country the word "poor", as in material poverty, is an insult to genuinely poor people across the globe. Actually, the poor of whom the Left are referring are the politically poor, that is, those who have less than others and can therby be used for and to political purpose and advantage.

That purpose is of course to discredit the legacy of this great country, along with those who want to conserve that legacy, a legacy of liberty and opportunity. Their lastest strategem toward this end is to highlight rising income inequality. But, as the Washington Post's Charles Lane points out, their view of it is "simplistic." He invokes the work of an otherwise obscure economist, Arthur Okun, who while sympathetic to their goal of eliminating poverty, also understood something about the effort they seem unable, or unwilling to grasp:

Okun saw free markets as a source of unparalleled human progress — and of big gaps between rich and poor. Indeed, he argued, markets are efficient partly because they distribute economic rewards unevenly. Government should try to smooth out income stratification, but such efforts risk undermining incentives to work and invest.

Hence the “big trade-off”: channeling income from rich to poor, Okun wrote, was like trying to carry water in a leaky bucket. He wanted to move money from rich to poor without “leaking” so much economic growth that the whole process became self-defeating.

I, for one, don't think the Left's nor the Obama Administration's view is simplistic at all. They know exactly what they are trying to do. Radical equality is their Great White Whale and they do not care if, like Captain Ahab, they and the country along with them sinks in the mad pursuit.

To Endorse or Not?, cont.

2011-12-17T22:09:00.003-05:00

Andrew McCarthy was also surprised by National Review's anti-endorsement of Newt Gingrich and can give you more than one good reason why they shouldn't have done so.

By the way, I admire the editors of NR for allowing him to have his say. He doesn't pull any punches.

Christopher Hitchens, R.I.P.

2011-12-16T21:38:00.000-05:00

While I expected this, doomed with cancer as he was, I found I was surprised nonetheless. Maybe because he was closer to my own age than I thought. (He was 62, I'm 54.) A man I never knew nor even met, what captivated me, what I admired, what I envied about Christopher Hitchens was his facility with the English language, both written and spoken. The only other person to have a similar effect on me was William F. Buckley, Jr., and I was similarly saddened when he passed away almost four years ago. (I'm heartened, literally, that my son finds WFB, Jr., through video on the Internet, as captivating as I did.)

I won't try to improve--because I'm not capable--on the numerous memorials already penned and published by so many from both the political left and right. (please see aldaily.com) I will only say that I will miss him. R.I.P.

The "Quarter-life Crisis"

2011-12-16T07:44:00.000-05:00

I like the phrase. Don't mistake it for the "mid-life crisis", only earlier. The classic mid-life crisis comes in one's 40s or 50s and is about wearying of the duties of adulthood, of wishing life had been different, of sometimes acting on that wish, of acting foolishly and irresponsibly.  The quarter-life crisis, by contrast, is about never shouldering the duties of adulthood in the first place.

The phrase works for me, first, because it captures something timeless about human nature. As David Bass, its coiner, reminds us at the beginning of the piece: "Never underestimate the human proclivity for wanting more, and wanting it for free." Truer words could not be written.  It also works because, consistent with those words, it describes something unique about our age, at least our age in the West, that is, not only the presence of, but the encouragement toward and even celebration of perpetual adolescence. It's now OK to want more and to want it for free.

It begins as early as age 12 and ends, well, maybe never. Like the mid-life crisis, it affects men chiefly and then women through men. And it has consequences for our society, most of'em bad.