Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Military

Counterinsurgency Theory

Ann Marlowe's short essay on the birth of counterinsurgency theory is worth a read. Note the emphasis on altering the perception of the population; the creation of reality, as it were, and why this should be relatively easy for Americans.
Categories > Military

Elections

Scozzafava Out in NY 23rd

Dede Scozzafava, the Republican and Independence parties candidate, announced that she is suspending her campaign for the 23rd Congressional District and releasing all her supporters.  The latest Siena Poll shows Bill Owens, the Democrats' candidate and Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate, in a statistical dead heat.  Owens has support from 36 percent of likely voters, with Hoffman garnering 35 percent support. Scozzafava has support from 20 percent of those polled.
Categories > Elections

Politics

French Incivilities

The Velib was meant to civilize city travel in Paris.  But these bicycles, each costing circa $3,500, are being stolen, destroyed, etc.  It is estimated that about 20,000 of them (about 80%) have been damaged or destroyed.  A sociologist says that there "was social revolt behind Vélib' vandalism, especially for suburban residents, many of them poor immigrants who feel excluded from the glamorous side of Paris."

"It's a very clever initiative to improve people's lives, but it's not a complete success," a user of the bikes said.   "For a regular user like me, it generates a lot of frustration," she said. "It's a reflection of the violence of our society and it's outrageous: the Vélib' is a public good but there is no civic feeling related to it."




Categories > Politics

Foreign Affairs

Raw Determination Needed

This David Brooks op-ed has it about right: "The experts I spoke with describe a vacuum at the heart of the war effort -- a determination vacuum. And if these experts do not know the state of President Obama's resolve, neither do the Afghan villagers. They are now hedging their bets, refusing to inform on Taliban force movements because they are aware that these Taliban fighters would be their masters if the U.S. withdraws. Nor does President Hamid Karzai know. He's cutting deals with the Afghan warlords he would need if NATO leaves his country."  Read the whole sensible thing.


Categories > Foreign Affairs

Political Parties

Old-Fashioned Democrats Hopelessly Out of Style

Daniel Henninger writes a biting and inspired column today in the WSJ.  Oh, the irony!  Democrats caught hopelessly in the out-moded and tired ways of the past?  In an age of iPhone apps and de-centralizing trends, Dems are pushing a miserable model of government that should have been left in the 1930s where it originated.  Obama rides on a false reputation as a hipster.  He's actually a crusty throw-back.  As Henninger puts it, it appears irrefutable.  
Categories > Political Parties

Politics

California: Object Lesson in What Happens When Wish Becomes Father of Thought

It's not for nothing that most Ohioans (and much of the rest of the country) are prone to joke that California is the land of "fruits and nuts."  Yes, we do grow 'em out here; both literally and figuratively.  The typical Californian response to such insults, however, has been to brush them off as a kind of jealousy.  (Call me when you're snowed in this winter and I'm out picking oranges in my backyard paradise or surfing at the beach . . .)  There's been a kind of amazing will--not to power, exactly, but more to seek out golden dreams--and that has always pushed this state to the forefront of the American imagination.  It's also not for nothing that California is called the "golden state" . . . and it's not only because of our beautiful sunsets or the 1849 gold rush.  The optimism that has driven us is characteristically American.  Inspiring.  Energizing.  Youthful.  Oh . . . and, sometimes, terribly naive.

Our own Bill Voegeli (like me, a California transplant . . . though that hardly distinguishes us out here) gives this buoyant approach to California's current prospects a sober and thoughtful assessment in the most recent edition of The City Journal.   He, like many other observers of our troubles, does not see many reasons for optimism.  Time magazine, however, clings to the hopes and wishes of a former era without, apparently, grasping that hope has to be backed by effort.  A wish is not a thought.  Hope is not a plan.  In ignoring the facts before us, California may be more than an object lesson in what happens when a state allows hope to engulf it in the place of effort.  It may be--as it always has been--an early indicator of where we are heading as a nation. 

Let us do more than hope not.  As Winston Churchill famously said at the close of his masterful work The Gathering Storm, "Facts are better than dreams." 
Categories > Politics

Conservatism

Good Fun

Good for a conservative belly-laugh.

Categories > Conservatism

Foreign Affairs

Another Podcast with Tucker

I did another podcast with David Tucker about all the complications of the Northwest Frontier (i.e. Afghanistan, Pakistan).  Needless to say, the situation is getting worse and our choices aren't getting any better.  If this keeps up, my next conversation with Tucker will be even less optimistic.
Categories > Foreign Affairs

Men and Women

The Eternal Questions: Laundry, Basketball, Yawns and Lawns

Two amusing articles today, this one by Kathleen Parker and this one by Ruth Marcus, take on the big questions surrounding the eternal inequalities faced by women with respect to basketball and laundry.  Feminists, of course, would argue that basketball (particularly when it's an all-male game with the President) represents "access" to power and laundry is but a metaphor for the continuing oppression of women within their own domiciles. 

Marcus is right to note that women will "smile" when they read that the winner of the Nobel Laureate for Medicine was folding laundry when she discovered that she had won the prize for medicine at 5 a.m. one morning.  And they will smile more when they hear that this now famous doctor noted that she did not expect the same could be said about what our President was doing when he got notice of his award.  I did smile, broadly, and with knowing recognition of the sentiment.

But Marcus is probably right about another thing:  women are reluctant to share these domestic burdens with their spouses for a variety of reasons.  I think she gives too much credence to the power of generational habit, but she rightly notes the issue of control:  female confidence in the fact that men will screw things up if they take charge of things that, traditionally, have been our domain.  There is, certainly, some of that.  And, with notable exceptions, it is entirely rational.  I might mention a couple more.  One is that shared burdens usually go two ways in a marriage.  If I expect hubby to do laundry, then maybe he'll expect me to mow the lawn or, worse, change the oil.  (Fill in your own blanks for these jobs . . . I understand that these things vary from marriage to marriage and this is the variety that we used to call the "spice" of life.)  The point is, we all get comfortable with our own forms of drudgery and we also get comfortable about the right to complain about them.  They amount, in a sense, to a kind of guilt power.  It's not a very noble kind of power, I'll admit, but it has its uses.  And, no doubt, it flows two ways.  It is the kind of thing that people used to develop a sense of humor about and, today, people instead have to write long-winded editorials about in order to explain it to a denatured population.

Parker rightly notes this last phenomenon with a pronounced, "Yawn."  It is boring to have to explain the obvious.  And yet, here we are.  One wonders how the likes of Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress will continue to find interested audiences for reports like the hackneyed, warmed-over, feminist pablum she served up in her report, ""A Woman's Nation Changes Everything" when people wake up to fact that we've been talking with relentless obtuseness about the same alleged "problems" for decades.  Perhaps there is no feminist end of the rainbow . . . perhaps this is just, well, life.  And the smart money is with our grandmothers and great-grandmothers who, when faced with life, learned how to laugh instead of whine.  There's an awful lot of power in laughter too.  
Categories > Men and Women

Presidency

Bill McGurn on Obama's Uninspiring Blame Game

Even supposing--for a fanciful moment--that everything the Obama Administration says about George W. Bush and his share of the blame for the problems Obama faces were the 100% absolute truth, Bill McGurn wisely cautions that the track the President's rhetorical cart is headed down leads to a cliff.  The unmistakable conclusion to be drawn from so much of what Obama and his various spokesmen in the Administration are saying is, "We are not up to the job."  A "master rhetorician" ought, it seems to me, to know better.  
Categories > Presidency

Health Care

Too Much Fat in the Pork May Explain Swine Flu Shot Shortage

This doctor and former deputy commissioner to the FDA argues in today's Wall Street Journal that much of the delay surrounding the supplying to states with sufficient numbers of swine flu vaccines has to do with antiquated and and overbearing regulation at the FDA.  Thus, even as President Obama has rightly approached the flu emergency with as much prudent executive action as he could, the limitations on the effectiveness of this approach are pronounced as big government bureaucracy, the rampant litigious nature of American culture, and obsequious bowing to special interest groups make it very difficult for private manufacturers to do their jobs.  Dr. Gottlieb notes that in their more scientific and rational approach to regulation of this industry, this is one area where European nations have outpaced America. 

I have mixed feelings about all of this.  On the one hand, while I appreciate President Obama's efforts to encourage the distribution of the H1N1 vaccine and his commonsensical approach to it, I also appreciate the fact that he cannot summarily order it.  Even if his is a rational mind, I don't want it governing mine, yours and everyone's in between.  I wouldn't want to see that kind of power in the Presidency.  It is good to know that he is not the law and that he is not above it.  But on the other hand, who or what is the law in this situation?  Is it the unelected bureaucracy within the FDA?  Is it Congress?  Is it the trial lawyers?  Is it some maddening combination of all of these factors?  That last is, certainly, what appears to be the case and it explains some of the mind-boggling inefficiencies that abound within the health industry.

If this episode is anything like a dry run for what an expanded role for government in health care might look like, we should take a pause.  Adding more layers to the icing on this mess of a cake is not likely to make it look any less lopsided.  In fact, too much icing can sometimes destroy an otherwise tasty cake. Perhaps we would be better served by an effort to begin fresh--with better ingredients and better cookware?  Or, perhaps, we'd be even better served by a commonsensical approach that recognizes even lopsided cakes can taste pretty darn good.
Categories > Health Care

Elections

New Jersey

According to the latest Quinnipiac University poll Corzine pulled ahead of Republican challenger Christie for the first time: 43-38% (with Daggett at 13%).  Corzine has spent $23.6 on the race so far.

Categories > Elections

Political Parties

Democratic Defections

Less than 24hrs after Senator Reid rolled the dice for public option and appealed for party unity, the defections begin: Liberman, Carper, Lincoln, Nelson....that's enough.  A certain level of clarity about what some Democrats want, will help move even more moderate Dems is this from Barney Frank:  "We are trying on every front to increase the role of government."
Categories > Political Parties

Presidency

Hail, Caesar/Obama!

No, such praise is not sarcasm from a birther, Teapartier, or other such anti-intellectual dregs--it comes from the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman.  (See my earlier post on Mr. Broadway Bombast.)  Scott at Powerline quotes his boast: 

This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.

Scott deftly dispatches this error-plagued nonsense.  I would add:  In praising Bacon, Locke, and Newton as his greatest heroes, Thomas Jefferson claimed that his rival Alexander Hamilton had named Julius Caesar as his.  This attribution was intended to underline Hamilton's reputation as a "monocrat"--no friend of the principles of 1776.  Praises of Caesar and of Mao, obeisance to dictators, despots, and Nobel committees, assaults on an aggressive press-- what more does this Administration need to do to separate itself from the principles of 1776?

Categories > Presidency

Political Parties

McConnell Lead Grows in Virginia

The WaPo reports that McConnell's lead over Deeds has grown to 55-44% among likely voters.  Of course, this is not a referendum on Obama, the article hastens to point out. It also looks  as if the GOP will pick up a number of seats in the House of Delegates, perhaps even enough for a majority.  President Obama is in Norfolk today, by the way, campaigning for Deeds.

Categories > Political Parties

Politics

Reid's Re-election Insurance

Dana Milbank has it about right.  Reid announces yesterday (and I happened to see the press conference) that there will be a public option in the Senate bill (which the states could decline) and yet refuses to respond to questions (not from Fox News) about whether or not he has the votes.  Well, he doesn't have the Democratic votes necessary (and has no GOP ones), so what is he up to?  Milbank: "For Reid, it was an admission of the formidable power of liberal interest groups. He had been the target of a petition drive and other forms of pressure to bring the public option to the floor, and Monday's move made him an instant hero on the left. Americans United for Change hailed him for refusing 'to buckle in the face of withering pressure from the big insurance companies.' MoveOn.org admired his 'leadership in standing up to the special interests.'"

"Reid, facing a difficult reelection contest next year at home in Nevada, will need such groups to bring Democrats to the polls if he is to survive. But there were a few problems with the leader's solo move. He shifted the public pressure from himself to half a dozen moderates in his caucus."  Milbank has it right.  And this will not work; the bill will not be passed with a public option (do you think the four or so moderate Senate Dems are amused by this tactic?) and Reid will continue to have re-election problems.

Categories > Politics

Politics

Self-Parody From the Luv Guv

This is just too good: Gov. Mark Sanford (Is he still governor? -Ed.  I guess so--he does seem to have disappeared from the pages of the National Enquirer, though), writing in the current issue of Newsweek, on why he likes Ayn Rand.  I've always found her books too heavy to lug in my pack while hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Categories > Politics

Politics

Worth a Couple Grins

  • A growing 40 percent of all Americans self-identify as conservatives, about 36 percent as moderates, about 20 as liberal, according to Gallup.  I wonder whether they factored in the reluctance of Republicans/conservatives to speak to pollsters. 
  • All politics is local: Local Chinese officials make school kids salute all cars on the road (as a safety measure).  (I can imagine the compelled salutes American kids might give.)  But the other examples of Chinese local tyranny are far less petty--killing dogs, compulsory liquor and cigarette purchases, licenses for harvesting one's own corn, and prohibiting women from being secretaries.
  • Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is #15 on the NY Times trade paperback bestseller list and rising.  I'm not sure what this Zombie business means--it's all over comics strips, and kids talk about it.  Something to do with the "end of history," but there may be other meanings of brain-eating.
Categories > Politics

Religion

The Strategy behind Pope Benedict's Blitzkrieg

Ross Douthat sees that the Pope understands the world stakes in his opening to the Anglicans:  It's about standing up to Islam.

Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam's compatibility with the Western way of reason -- and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.

By contrast, the Church of England's leadership has opted for conciliation (some would say appeasement), with the Archbishop of Canterbury going so far as to speculate about the inevitability of some kind of sharia law in Britain.

There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict's approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.

Categories > Religion

Elections

Obama Hangover

The Los Angeles Times considers how "Obama Hangover" (or Fatigue).  It is not possible to get Dems very excited this year, after the loud party last year.  It will be a low Dem turnout in state and local elections, and this almost certainly means they will lose Virginia, and possibly even New Jersey.   And Obama can't help here, even though, as CNN admits, that this is a referendum on him; he is not wildly popular.  Yet, he is gamely going back to Virginia on Tuesday to campaign for Deeds, but note that Romney is there the next day to campaign for McConnell.  Perhaps a foreshadow of 2012.
Categories > Elections

Political Parties

Michelle Bachmann

George Will's portrait of Rep. Michelle Bachmann reminds me that some very good politicians come about their virtues naturally, while others spend their time constructing them.  Here is the New York Times portrait of her from a few weeks ago.  Surprise, it's not as favorable.

Categories > Political Parties

Presidency

"He's Got a Bullhorn in his Hand Everyday . . ."

. . . but he doesn't seem to understand that he owns the rubble.  Recalling the moment when it became clear that President George W. Bush owned his presidency--September 14, 2001 when he stood amidst the rubble of the World Trade Center with bullhorn in hand telling the terrorists that they'd soon hear from us--Peggy Noonan today argues that Obama's problem is that he won't take on the rubble and he won't put down the bullhorn. 

The tell, she suggests, is in his defensive posture amidst the rubble of crumbling poll numbers and waning support from independents who--she notes--now look more like Republicans than Democrats in their stated political concerns.  But Obama is a man used to playing the long game (something I'd suggest too many Republicans seem to forget about him).  Further, he is a man who, "seems in general to stick to a course once he's chosen it, though arguably especially when he's wrong."  As with most striking aspects of a man's character, Obama's virtue can be his vice.  He claims to represent the vanguard of the political scene . . . to be the man with "vision" and the courage to take us to broad sunlit uplands of hope with the change necessary to get there.  But does he really "see" or does he merely hope?  Is he really a man gifted with "vision" or does he simply cling to "dreams" (whether they are his or his fathers?) in the way that he might suggest a Pennsylvania farmer clings to his God and his guns?  Shifting tactics with a single-minded purpose is one thing.  Intransigent disregard for the will of the people is quite another.

Noonan seems to think that the truth is that Obama is a poor reader of the political landscape--and, more particularly, of his fellow Americans.  (Her line on his "g" dropping is spot on.)  Obama is trying to force a template to fit the current political atmosphere in a way that just doesn't apply.  Key graph:

The problem isn't his personality, it's his policies. His problem isn't what George W. Bush left but what he himself has done. It is a problem of political judgment, of putting forward bills that were deeply flawed or off-point. Bailouts, the stimulus package, cap-and-trade; turning to health care at the exact moment in history when his countrymen were turning their concerns to the economy, joblessness, debt and deficits--all of these reflect a misreading of the political terrain. They are matters of political judgment, not personality. (Republicans would best heed this as they gear up for 2010: Don't hit him, hit his policies. That's where the break with the people is occurring.)

Very well said, indeed.

 
Categories > Presidency

Journalism

Fox in the Chickencoop?

As I rarely parse an Obama speech and I never watch Fox news (not getting it and other cable news in my basic cable package, so I have no idea who Glen Beck is), maybe I can offer some unprejudiced insight into the recent contretemps.  Krauthammer attempts a principled objection--though he misses the point about Madisonian factions:  Factions are not "legitimate"; they are by definition unjust groups, who misuse the fundamental commitment to liberty.  So the real objection to Obama's shunning of Fox (he spent a couple hours before a group of leftist journalists dismissing it as "talk radio") is his assault on liberty--his misunderstanding of the freedom of the press.

For all their leftist inclinations, a significant number of journalists don't want to be known as anyone's stooge.  The Fox infection will spread quicker than the swine flu.

As evidence see the NY Times on Fox's effect on the MSM:

White House officials said [...] they noticed a column by Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The Times, in which [leftist Clarence Thomas hater] Jill Abramson, one of the paper's two managing editors, described her newsroom's "insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio." The Washington Post's executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, had already expressed similar concerns about his newsroom....

"This is a discussion that probably had to be had about their approach to things," [Obama political strategist David] Axelrod said. "Our concern is other media not follow their lead."

In fact, perhaps the most effective media purveyor of conservatism (next to Rush and Fox) is C-Span radio and news.  (Have I let the cat out of the bag?)  For without its coverage of otherwise obscure think-tank speakers and panels, many eminent conservative voices would get no significant hearing at all.  And their book programs may be the best thing on tv (save the excellent baseball playoffs this year).

Categories > Journalism

Elections

Virginia Lost for Dems?

Just in case anyone is in doubt about the outcome of the Virginia governor's race, note this article from the Washington Post.  It begins: "Sensing that victory in the race for Virginia governor is slipping away, Democrats at the national level are laying the groundwork to blame a loss in a key swing state on a weak candidate who ran a poor campaign that failed to fully embrace President Obama until days before the election."
Perhaps even more significant, note that in this poll 31% of blacks support the Republican McDonnell.


Categories > Elections

Politics

Are There Any "Right" Lights in the Big Cities?

Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis have a smart and compelling conversation with Michael Anton, former speechwriter to many Republican politicians (for these purposes, most notably including former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani), about what it might take to see viable Republican candidates in coastal big city politics.  Anton's answer, in short, is to be careful what you wish for.  Things would have to be very bad indeed, for Republicans to fare well in most coastal urban settings.  His long answer, however, is both more satisfying and more illuminating.  He spans a broad spectrum of issues from the nature and purpose of the Republican party and the direction in which it is now heading to the more practical questions of how Republican politicians might gain both rhetorical and strategic headway in an atmosphere that seems so intransigently stacked against them; a useful thing to contemplate, I'd suggest, for the broader national political scene as well.  In it, I think, there may be something to learn for purposes of contrast and comparison between . . . oh, I don't know . . . a Sarah Palin type of candidate  v. a Liz Cheney figure?  Not that either of them could ever win a race for dog catcher in NYC . . . but there are broader principles offered up for your consideration in this discussion that might certainly apply.

Then, too, there's a bonus bit offered at the end for those of you contemplating the nation's declining sartorial situation.   Could the election of Obama really mean the end of the tie?  Previous recessions have at least had the benefit of suggesting to people the notion of taking greater care in their attire.  But despite the current recession, the tie seems to be losing ground.  Anton, means to do what he can (which, despite the publication of this fine work, appears not to be much) to stand athwart the tailor's table shouting, "NO!"
Categories > Politics

Economy

Please Don't Stimulate Me!

This table shows that since passing the stimulus package--which, you will remember, was promised and supposed to "save or create" millions of jobs--49 out of 50 states have actually LOST jobs.  Some states have lost quite a number of them.  
Categories > Economy

Education

Schools of Education

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is criticizing schools of education, although it's not perfectly clear why.
Categories > Education

Elections

Bob McDonnell as "conservative pragmatist"

Rich Lowry thinks well of Bob McDonnell (if polls hold up, the next governor of Virginia) and he explains why.  He compares him to Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, and thinks the two should be watched; they could re-invigorate a kind of Republicanism much needed by the GOP and the country.  I agree, but don't much like the label.
Categories > Elections

Education

Georgetown Student Seeks Personal Assistant

Fellow students are giving the Georgetown sophomore grief for advertising a $10 an hour job to drive him around, schedule him, wash and fold his laundry, etc.:  He's "just full of himself."  But isn't this the logical conclusion of what David Brooks wrote eight years ago, in his "Organization Kid"--that undergraduate students schedule virtually everything and as a result devote no time for many of the most important things a bright student should be doing?   A sample from Brooks:

There are a lot of things these future leaders no longer have time for. I was on [the Princeton] campus at the height of the election season, and I saw not even one Bush or Gore poster. I asked around about this and was told that most students have no time to read newspapers, follow national politics, or get involved in crusades:

As silly as the Georgetown kid may appear, he appears to be following out student logic. 

Categories > Education

Pop Culture

Broadway Comes to Washington

And Washington sends the National Endowment for the Arts Chairman, a former Broadway producer, on a six-months listening tour--exiled to watching theater in Idaho, etc. He'll make sure his $50 million in stimulus money is well-spent.  "It is very important for us to get out of Washington and hear what people are thinking,"  Watch his mouth--he won't watch his.
Categories > Pop Culture

Foreign Affairs

Biological Terrorism

USA Today reports: "The Obama administration is working hard to curb nuclear threats but failing to address the more urgent and immediate threat of biological terrorism, a bipartisan commission created by Congress is reporting today.


The report obtained by USA TODAY cites failures on biosecurity policy by the White House  which the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction says has left the country vulnerable. The commission, created last year to address concerns raised by post-9/11 investigations, warns that anthrax spores released by a crop-duster could "kill more Americans than died in World War II" and the economic impact could exceed $1.8 trillion in cleanup and other costs."

Categories > Foreign Affairs

Health Care

Polls Showing Support for the "Public Option" Questioned

Ed Morrissey finds something fishy in recent polls suggesting overwhelming public support for the so-called "public option" in health care.
Categories > Health Care

Politics

Tough Broads

Noemie Emery writes an interesting column today considering the vitriol on the left for Liz Cheney and her project, Keep America Safe.  With a notable twist of an irony coated blade, Emery advises the purveyors of hate on the left to "get over" their fear of strong women--particularly when the objects of their fear are attractive, young, center-right mothers of more children than the priests on the left believe it to be rational to birth in these ecologically-challenged times.  But Emery also argues that for all her similarities to Sarah Palin, Cheney is capable of drawing out a special and a harder sort of hatred from the left than Palin ever could.  Why?  Precisely because Cheney, while sharing most of Sarah Palin's substantive ideas and an equal share of ambition, is not vulnerable on the superficial grounds where lefties drew blood from Palin.  "Saturday Night Live would have a hard time getting her number," Emery says. Further, "Moms from McLean could be her constituents."  And therein, lies the root of the problem for lefties. 

Their friends and neighbors--if they aren't already committed lefties--would be hard-pressed to discover something vicious or dangerous in Liz Cheney; in part because they could not even begin with an assumption that there is anything particularly weird or different about her.   She is the citified answer to the Western/Midwestern voter's love affair with Sarah Palin.  You cannot attribute Cheney's politics to the culture of moose-hunting or dog-sledding.  She shows that it is possible to arrive at these views via routes more familiar to the typical urban/suburban voter. 

As to the question of possible misogyny . . . I wouldn't lose any sleep about it if I were Liz Cheney (or Sarah Palin, for that matter).  No doubt there is a certain element of it here (just as there undoubtedly is with Mrs. Clinton coming from our side) but it only serves to show the amusing and uncomfortable way that the shoe fits when on the other foot.  I would suggest that this episode demonstrates--beyond question--that if there is an instinct to be inclined to dislike strong and powerful women, it is very much a part of the human condition and not anything particular to the left or to the right in politics.  And, I'd also add, that it is nothing that need be addressed by those who imagine they can even the great scales of sexual justice in the sky.  Tough broads in politics (like Cheney, Palin, and Clinton--to say nothing of Thatcher and her generation) have always demonstrated that they can handle the slings and arrows of political fortune and misfortune without the intervention of the gender crusaders.  As for their more timid sisters . . . well, this is no more the game for them than it is for the men who most fear these tough women.      
Categories > Politics

Presidency

Franck Stones Obama Pot Policy

Matt Franck takes a whack not only at Obama's decriminalization policy but at some conservative defenders of it who see a respect for federalism: 

By announcing the non-prosecution of marijuana cases only in those 14 states that legalize some use of the drug for medical purposes, the administration has effectively proclaimed that federal law means one thing in those 14 states, and something else in the other 36.  That could readily give rise to equal protection claims in the 36 states where the federal government still considers itself free to prosecute.

Moreover:  "Worse, by conditioning the prospect of prosecution on the presence or absence of state laws that contradict a nationwide federal prohibition, the Justice Department has effectively subjected the validity of federal law to the will of state legislators."  As a prelude to relaxing drug prosecution generally, "This way evinces Professor Obama's usual respect for the Constitution: he rolls his own."

Categories > Presidency

Politics

Art, Capitalism, the AP and the Obama "Brand"

I notice today this story regarding the rumpus between the artist now famous for his "iconic" (as people are pleased to call it) portrait of Barack Obama striped in red, white and blue and the Associated Press.  It seems that this artist is now forced to admit that he used a photo copyrighted by the AP in the production of the thing and that he did, in fact, derive some personal profit from his work.  Naturally, there are some legal ramifications because "Obama" is as much a brand as he is anything else.

As to the information contained in the story that the artist in question profited, primarily, as a result of his line of clothing with Obama's image and that this line is dubbed, "Obey"--I will not comment beyond the obvious point of noting that it is an interesting name, indeed . . . and to say that artists are known, sometimes, to make unconscious but brilliant observations.
Categories > Politics

Political Philosophy

Character and Cross-situational Stability

I amused myself this morning by spending a couple of hours with Aristotle's Ethics (and Politics), partly out of duty to my freshman class but also because my imperfect soul needed a bit more purpose than that revealed in my recent reading of Plato.  A good few hours.  Then I glanced at the morning news (on my Kindle, of course) and came across two op-eds talking essentially about the soul, character, and purpose, one about "Where the Wild Things Are" and the other an HBO movie about about Barack Obama.  Richard Cohen considers whether Obama is his own worst enemy, as in the perfection being the enemy of the good, while David Brooks, using "Wild Things", considers what he calls the psychologists view that "people don't have one permanent thing called character. We each have a multiplicity of tendencies inside, which are activated by this or that context."  I'll leave it to you whether or not the word character has chnaged it's meaning, as Brooks implies.  Back to Aristotle.
 

Education

Higher Ed Stuff

At a college meeting a couple of days ago the "diversity" made an appearance and my colleagues started clicking their heels and saluting, just-like the old days.  Some wag asked what was meant by diversity, and no one really was perfectly sure, but they were sure that they were in favor of the thing.  I was a bit surprised by this, haven't seen it in while, thought we had passed through all this stuff; I guess not just yet.  Then today I noticed the U.S. News reporting this:

"A recent study of the applicants to seven elite colleges in 1997 found that Asian students were much more likely to be rejected than seemingly similar students of other races. Also, athletes and students from top high schools had admissions edges, as did low-income African-Americans and Hispanics."

"Translating the advantages into SAT scores, study author Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist, calculated that African-Americans who achieved 1150 scores on the two original SAT tests had the same chances of getting accepted to top private colleges in 1997 as whites who scored 1460s and Asians who scored perfect 1600s."

I also noticed that in the current issue of Newsweek, devoted to higher education, Sen. Lamar Alexander argues that colleges should adopt something like a year-around schedule, and students take their degree within three years, and thereby save 25% in tuition.
Categories > Education

The Founding

Re-Founding America: Natural Rights as Natural Choice

David Bobb has a sound and perceptive commentary on President Obama's refounding of the nation's political principles.  Whether it be health care or eroticism for autos, Obama's refrain has been for a "new foundation."  Bobb, Director of Hillsdale College's Washington, DC Kirby Center, documents this reckless audacity and commends the real founding and the discipline it demands and the freedom it protects.

Do we recognize the threat and have the resources and spirit to resist it?  Do we know what we will have lost?

Categories > The Founding

Foreign Affairs

Keep America Safe

I just came across this site, Keep America Safe, put out by Liz Cheney, Debra Burlingame, and Bill Kristol.  Have a look at it, it seems good and useful.  I especially liked the links to be found (under six different categories) in "Resources."

Categories > Foreign Affairs

Environment

Russian Weather Man

Barack Obama may have some competition for reversing the rise of the oceans . . . then again, perhaps this guy will make his job even harder.
Categories > Environment

Journalism

Connoisseurs of the Obvious Department

In an afterword to an old edition of Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury wrote of things that were so obviously banal it "wouldn't make a sub-moron's mouth twitch."  The headline writers at New York Times are doing their best this week to live up to Bradbury's sneer.

First on Wednesday, the Times informed us: "Biggest Obstacle to Global Climate Deal May Be How to Pay For It."  No?  You don't say?  What next: "Biggest Obstacle to Human Flight May Be Gravity."  "Biggest Obstacle to Redskins' Super Bowl Title May Be Other Teams."  

Then today (Saturday), the Times delivers another stop-the-presses headline: "$1.4 Trillion Deficit Complicates Stimulus Plans."  Wow.  I'm sure this will get a Pultizer Prize.  (Why not: they give away Nobel Peace Prizes these days just for general awesomeness.)

With this in mind, don't miss the Daily Show's takedown of the antediluvian character of the Times ("Like a walking Colonial Williamsburg. . .  Charming, but not profitable. . .  Why is aged news better than today's news?. . .   To editor Bill Keller: "What's black and white and red all over?"  Keller: "A newspaper."  DS reporter: "No.  Your balance sheet.")

I prefer the headlines of the New York Post, which contain more news value, such as their classic: "Headless Body in Topless Bar."  Now that's news you can use!
Categories > Journalism

Foreign Affairs

Podcast with David Tucker on the War

I had a forty-five minute conversation with David Tucker (prof of Defense Analysis, and director of the Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare, Naval Postgraduate School) on the current problem in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the war on terror, on what Tucker calls "this high drama".  We know that the president is in a tough place and decisions have to be made.  We might end up criticizing him for the decision, but that's another issue.  Tucker notes that each possible decision in front of him is charged with bad outcomes; no matter what we do it is possible that the outcome will be bad, and, we can't even talk about probabilities, according to David.  "This is what it means to be president," Tucker says.  How does anyone make this decision?  This is why presidents are prematurely gray, I say.  Questions we considered in this conversation: Should we get out of Afghanistan?  What is the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan, terrorists use of WMD's, and so on.  I think this is a very good conversation, Tucker knows much and is thoughtful and I thank him for doing it.  He has agreed to future conversations, and, because of the pace of events, I think these conversations will take place each week for the next few weeks.  You can listen to it by clicking here
Categories > Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs

Bringing Down Pakistan

This morning brings another attack in Pakistan.  This Jane Perlez article in today's New York Times is worth reading.  It is now clear that the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other groups are working closely--and effectively--to bring down the Pakistani state.  That would be a catastrophe, and not only for the region.  Now read this Dexter Filkins long piece in the NY Times Mag (in print Sunday) on Gen. McChrystal's plan, and why it is not a slight Iraq-Surge-like change of strategy, but rather "is a blueprint for an extensive American commitment to build a modern state in Afghanistan, where one has never existed, and to bring order to a place famous for the empires it has exhausted. Even under the best of circumstances, this effort would most likely last many more years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and entail the deaths of many more American women and men. And that's if it succeeds."

Categories > Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs

Pakistan

The bad guys have killed about 40 people in Pakistan.  Note that the attacks are on the government, police stations, etc.  Not good. And note that Britain has decided to send 500 more troops to Afghanistan, as Sen. Feinstein comes out in support of another 40,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Categories > Foreign Affairs

Political Parties

Do the Wave--2010 Edition

George Will writes about Republican prospects in the 2010 election--particularly in the Senate and beginning with Delaware--and speculates that the potential consequences for Democrats help to explain Obama's seemingly mad dash to remake the world in less than a year.  Does he understand that the window of opportunity is closing?  Or is he in the impossible position of cranking the lever shut even as he wedges himself in the opening?  Will says to keep an eye on unemployment figures--the "most politically salient thing"--and a thing that (given Obama's policies) is unlikely to change.  
Categories > Political Parties

Foreign Affairs

Chinese Army

If looks could kill....or, this silent war of lilies and of roses....or, these boots are made for walking...or, beauty is a witch.

Categories > Foreign Affairs

Education

Kindle Versus Printed Book

The NY Times presents a symposium on reading on a Kindle/computer versus reading a printed book.  Each participant offers something worthwhile considering.  (David Gelernter is the one identifiable conservative.)   My question, which the academics consider more or less, is whether students read any more.  At the beginning of a course I ask students to note books they have read that have influenced the way they think and act.  The list is thin--maybe someone will list the Bible or an Obama book.  You never see a book from political science.  Now, more than when Aristotle questioned whether the youth are fit to study politics, the inclination of the young to indulge their passions meets the least intellectual resistance.  Given our technology, books or rather reading (books are too long and require too much effort) becomes just another way to fulfil desires:  the ideal reading is the cookbook* (with lots of pictures).  It is a rare education that shows students another way of looking at books.

*There are variants on such how-to books, but this is a family-friendly site.

Categories > Education

Politics

Morbid World

In Poitiers, "in what police described as an organized attack, the band shattered store windows, damaged the facades of several banks and spray-painted anarchist slogans on government buildings. Aiming even at the historical heritage of this comfortable provincial town 200 miles southwest of Paris, they fractured a plaque commemorating Joan of Arc's interrogation here in 1429 and -- in Latin -- scrawled  'Everything belongs to everybody' on a stone baptistery that is one of the oldest monuments in Christendom."  The folks who did this--between 150 and 300-- ("we will destroy your morbid world" was spray-painted on a wall) are called ultra-leftists in the piece.
Categories > Politics

Pop Culture

Big Aspirations Shot Down by Small Thinking

This story is about some students from a high school in Pomona, California who--taking several cues from their President and mentors--produced, directed and were featured in a movie about what life is like for the "economically disadvantaged" during a bad economy.  It may demonstrate what happens to us when we find ourselves beyond any ability to grasp irony.  Note this part of the story:

Before being involved with the video Jennifer Gil's only goal was to get through high school, get a job and make money.

"I had no big plans, no big aspirations," Jennifer said. "Making the video, and seeing everything that's happened since then because of it, has changed me. Now more things matter to me."

Jennifer has a simple message for the symposium.

"If people want to make change they have to act," said Jennifer, who hopes to be the first Latin American president. "Gandhi said, `Be the change you want to see in the world.' That's how I want to live."

She also wants to address education.

"Everybody wants us to go to college, but with all the cuts, how are we supposed to do that?" Jennifer asked.  [Emphasis mine]

Who can refrain from applauding the self-starting sentiment Ms. Gil seems to advocate and the trajectory of her story seems to vindicate?  If you want big things in your life, make them.  Do them.  Find them.  Just so.  Bravo for her.   But doesn't the second part of her comments (i.e., the whiny part about budget cuts making college impossible) seem to undercut everything her experience and her noble philosophy ought to have taught her?

To be fair, Ms. Gil is a very young woman and this kind of intellectual inconsistency is not at all surprising in the young.  But it appears to be something that is encouraged by their mentors, those now offering them accolades (including the President) and by the very content of the film that they produced.  Another student involved in the production of the film told members of the California Assembly, "We are not the same. We want to do things that make a difference and we will not just sit by and watch while this whole economy thing gets worse."  No.  They won't sit by.  But why not, instead of agitating on behalf policies that will get other people to do something about the poverty they face, simply work and produce and strive (as, clearly they have demonstrated an amazing capacity to do).  Why not "be the change you want to see" in your own world?   I'm just sayin' . . .

Categories > Pop Culture

Politics

Poetry and Artistry in Politics

Last week, our own Ken Thomas suggested that Obama was, at heart, an artist--albeit a "postmodern" sort of artist.  In the same vein, Jonah Goldberg today suggests that Obama is a kind of postmodern poet (which as he argues, is but another way of saying a "bad" poet).  This is to say that Obama's work is all about self-creation or self-invention.  His is not a work of discovery, explication and wonder.  It does not partake in the sort of humility that inspires wonder--let alone an ode.  It is more about his earnest and heartfelt feelings--the strength and sincerity (or, as they say, the "authenticity") of his own internal passions.  His art is not intended to smooth over the edges of the gaps between the known and the unknown in order to make the whole congeal in a meaningful and insightful way for our simple human brains.  Rather, it creates wholes altogether their own--complete and precise from top to bottom--with no room for fudging or fuzziness because, well, they are so sincere.  And how do you argue with a feeling unless you are, well, unfeeling?  It is, as Obama himself asserts, audacious.  Indeed.  And, perhaps, it is audacious for the sake of audacity itself. 

I would suggest, however, that if Obama is an artist and if his art sells, he will be the "last artist."  And this may explain both his audacity and his growing sense of urgency in the face of even half-hearted push-backs from Republicans.  If Obama succeeds there will be no room for any genuine poetry in politics because there will be no room for any genuine discovery or wonder.  There is already very little room for humility--leave alone citizenship.  Experts will be consulted and experts will testify.  Experts will then create the best regime and leave the cynics (and the citizens) who will not embrace their expertise behind.  His poetry will become our dogma because it will come from that source which is, above all others, beyond question in this post-modern world:  the heart.  It will be an affirmation and a testament to victory of passion over reason--even as it wears a mask that it calls "science."  The argument against any future competing art will be that it is heartless.  And, with that standard as the yardstick, the argument will be fair and opponents, speechless.  

On the other hand, the success of the last artist will unleash an age where everything is art and everyone imagines himself to be an artist.  Of course, when everything is art, the truth is that nothing is.  When everyone is an artist, no one is.  All "art" will be but pallid imitation--which, of course is what even the best of real art, ultimately, always is.  The difference will be in the degree of brilliancy that is the source of the art.  In this case, we will have but a copy of a copy . . . and, I'm afraid, a poor copy, at that.    
Categories > Politics

Congress

Is Political Science a Science?

Not according to Dr. No, aka Senator Tom Coburn, md, who seeks to kill National Science Foundation funding for the eclectic discipline.  Political scientists banged their begging bowls to save their fed funding.

The latest Nobel Economics Prize winner, political scientist Elinor Ostrom, might note the disappearance of a free rider:  No "tragedy of the commons" here, just the comedy of con-artists.  Ostrom, former President of the American Political Science Association, presented this paper on her approach to the study of politics, known as public or rational choice, a school of thought that often supports conservative policy objectives.  A President who earned her Nobel!

UPDATE:  I hadn't noticed that Ostrom's paper is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation.  More on the limits of rat choice later.

Categories > Congress

Politics

More Random Observations

1. I appreciate Carl's observation in the thread below that spirited conservatives should direct their anger and contempt on the Nobel front not at the president but at the selection committee.  But in my opinion, the most magnanimous dissing is to show the committee is beneath contempt through silence.  I also agree that there shouldn't be a PEACE prize, but a LIBERTY prize, if only because studies show that attempts to keep the peace at the expense of liberty almost always fail.  Occasionally, those Nobel people pick someone who knows this well, such as Solzhenitsyn, but not in the appropriate category or for that reason.  The president, as some have said, can say what he wants in his acceptance speech, except:  It would be most undignified to say anything bad or apologetic about his country or President Bush or to say anything flattering about Europeans or even hint that he craves their love or respect.  It would be even classier to say as little as possible about being grateful or deserving the prize.

2.  From a review by Rob Jeffrey in the Fall INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW:  "Today's professor is often only 'tricky smart'; someday real smartness will come back into fashion."

3. From an article by David Schaefer in the same issue of the IR:  "Criticism of judicial activism on behalf of a supposedly 'living' constitution is necessary but not sufficient to remedy these [imperialistic] tendencies [of the Court].  We must also challenge the authority of 'moral theorists' in philosophy departments and law faculties who equip our judges with their sense of supreme righteousness."


Categories > Politics

Religion

Quote of the Day

"The fact that the prophets knew less about physics than we do does not imply that we know more than the prophets about the meaning of existence and the nature of man."  Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1956
Categories > Religion

Pop Culture

Fascism in the Funnies

"Pearls Before Swine" (Oct. 11) channels Mussolini, through an odd source, which I guess may lead some to argue that Family Circus's Dolly is a Straussian.
Categories > Pop Culture

Ashbrook Center

No Left Turns Mug Drawing for September

Congratulations to this month's winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows:

Jeffrey Valladolid
Michael Wallace
Amy Marie Taylor
Charles Hanks
Susan Banton

Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn't win this month, enter October's drawing.

Categories > Ashbrook Center

Economy

Nobel Prize in Economics

Samuel Gregg has a good short note over at NRO on Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, the recipients of the Nobel in economics, and their achievements. They "have deepened our understanding of economic governance. More specifically, Ostrom and Williamson have shown how it is possible for firms and other communities to facilitate economic efficiency from 'within.' In this sense, they follow in the footsteps of another Nobel laureate, Ronald Coase, whose groundbreaking 1937 article, 'The Nature of the Firm,' did so much to establish the idea that businesses reduce transaction costs."

Categories > Economy

Bioethics

The High Costs of Modern Day Human Reproduction

The New York Times brings us a disturbing story today about the high costs--they emphasize the financial and emotional costs, but much could also be said about the high moral costs--of our modern (or is it post-modern?) ways of making babies.  I will leave it to you to wonder whether there is much in this story to make the effort sound appealing to you and yours . . . but I do rather wish that more couples with baby lust and considering the supposed wonders of IVF and other such procedures had girded themselves first with the facts presented in this piece.  There may be nothing more precious and worthy of esteem than the love and affection between parents and children.  But I do think it is legitimate to wonder whether the gift of a child ought to be so actively and fiercely solicited when it is not freely given.  And I also wonder whether, when it is so solicited and demanded, it is possible to remember that the result is still a gift.  The potential consequences of forcing nature in this way ought to give more people than it seems to do a reason for pause and reflection.  And it makes one wonder, too, if more ought not to be said about the many virtues and the pleasures of  the amazing gift of adoption.
Categories > Bioethics

Presidency

Obama in Oslo--Strength Abroad and Clarity at Home

Picking up on Peter Schramm's post below, it seems to me that Peggy Noonan's instincts as a Presidential speechwriter always have some merit.  In fairness to Obama, however, the speech he delivered on Friday seemed to be coming from someplace close to the vicinity Noonan recommended.  Though I do not, of course, heartily endorse every line of Obama's speech (nor do I applaud the general policy direction in which the movement of the thing would have us go), there is something noble and right thinking about the way he deflected attention to himself and instead suggested that attention is (and always was) due to America.  If he understood the award, as he certainly should have understood it, as a kind of play by European elites to pat him on the back for being "their kind of American" (i.e., not like George W. Bush) Obama also took the opportunity to remind them that for all that, "don't make the mistake of forgetting that I'm still an American." 

That is to say, he affirmed America's role as a beacon and an example to the world.    In terms different from those I would use but, nevertheless, still certain of our place in the world he made it clear that America will not--even as it moves closer to a form of democracy and a series of policy proposals that a European socialist might find palatable--readily relinquish the role as leader of the free world.  We are not a nation to be trifled with by those who think we have already seen our best days.  Obama does not appear to believe that America is, or that it ought to be (in some sort of  cosmic "fairness" to the rest of the world), entering upon its twilight. 

This is good for America on the international scene.  It is a kind of stepping up to the plate with an "I dare you," look on our face.  For as long as we seem to be backing up the look with an effective swing, they will not dare. 

But Obama's speech was also useful as a kind of clarifying moment for our present partisan struggles.  Americans ought to remind themselves that when it comes to the question of America's greatness, the best of liberals and the best of conservatives really do not and really have not disagreed.  As I said in a previous post . . . nevermind the idiots (whether conservative or liberal). In the last century, we fought side by side in two major world conflicts.  Together (though not always in harmony) we defeated an evil empire and we ended a long cold war that threatened to eclipse us.   Together, we built a nation that was capable of all of these achievements and, as Noonan pointed out in her article, a country that has blessed the world with its innovation and freedom-loving spirit.  We all ought to believe that America is great.  We all ought to believe that it should continue to be great.  And we should praise our political adversaries and trust in their good faith when they show themselves to be open to at least that much of the argument. 

And yet, we cannot and we should not lull ourselves into believing that a broad and basic agreement on ends represents anything other than what it is--it is a starting point for conversation not its conclusion.  All Americans, not just those who take an oath to the Constitution, have a duty to see that its principles and its purposes are upheld in public life.  If we all want America to be great this, of course, is something to be lauded.  But how best to accomplish this greatness will ever be a matter of vigorous dispute.  Disagreements about the efficacy of particular policies and general political dispositions toward the Constitution are serious matters that require a full and open and honest public airing.  These are also, as it happens, political questions.  Which means that they can only be be answered (and even here only temporarily) in the court of public opinion.  Too often,  the shouting (to say nothing of the clever subterfuges and uncharitable mis-characterizations) surrounding this process obfuscate rather than draw out our differences.  

Taken with charity, Obama's speech on Friday ought to yield much fodder for a civil, intelligent and clarifying debate about America's purposes--both abroad and at home.  May the best argument win.  
Categories > Presidency

Pop Culture

Poker

This James McManus essay, "What Poker Can teach Us," is worth a read.  Maybe we should also look at his book, out next month.  Hard to resist.

Categories > Pop Culture

Presidency

More on the Unearned Accolade

Ross Douthat elegantly explains why President Obama should have turned down Nobel Peace Prize.  In some ways the most perplexing thing about all this is that there was no one in the White House who could see this exactly ten minutes after they learned of the announcement and then be able to persuade Obama. But Peggy Noonan has an idea on how to redeem this "wicked and ignorant award":

"How to redeem this? That is a hard question, but here is one idea. The president will deliver a big speech in Oslo Dec. 10: white tie and tails, a formal, bound statement. The world, as they say, will be watching. He should deflect the limelight. (Can he?) He should make his subject bigger than himself. (Is there a subject bigger than himself?) He has been accused of traveling through the world on an extended apology tour. That isn't fair, but the tag is there. How about an unapologetic address, a speech, with the world's elites leaning forward and listening, about the meaning of America? A speech that shows a grounded and sophisticated love for his country and its great traditions and history. Not a nationalistic speech, not a prideful one, but a loving one."

Categories > Presidency

Pop Culture

A Better Peace Prize Idea

Ben of Ben's Chili Bowl, major DC eatery, RIP.   A great American story about a provider of great American food.
Categories > Pop Culture

Environment

The Tide Is Turning

I've been predicting for a while now that in the fullness of time--meaning 15 or 20 years down the road from now--climate change would come to resemble the population bomb of the late 1960s: a real phenomenon whose extent was vastly overestimated, and whose proposed coercive political remedies were completely wrongheaded and disproportionate to the matter.  One signpost along the way is that the media would grow bored with the subject.  When was the last time you saw a "population bomb" cover on one of the major news magazines?  Probably about the time of Michael Jackson's last hit record.  

That's what makes this BBC story, "What Happened to Global Warming?", an important signpost of the turn I expect will become more pronounced (especially if more baseball playoff games keep getting snowed out).  This story is significant because the BBC has been more in the bag for climate alarmism than practically any other media organization (though the competition for that is fierce, I admit).  Eventually I expect the media will grow increasingly bored with climate alarmism, and start passing up the breathy press releases from the climate campaigners.  In political terms, there is now a race on to see whether our global political class can gain a stranglehold over the energy sector before the already minimal public support for this policy nonsense collapses completely.
Categories > Environment

Race

Now Here's a Senior Thesis/Local History Project

University of Maryland students take up their school President's challenge and write a local history of slavery and its role in its founding.  This is a serious work (only 48 pp, rtwt), with wonderful graphics, full of information and sober insights:  The Declaration did have a great influence on freeing slaves.  Did you know, though, that free blacks could not own dogs, but that they did own slaves? 

The students conclude that their University had antebellum roots in both slavery and free labor policies.  After the Civil War state segregation policies thwarted national policy, which was color-blind:

By the end of the 19th century, the Maryland Agricultural College had become the University of Maryland, a federal land-grant college. In 1890, new congressional legislation, the second Morrill Act [the first was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln], stipulated that there be no "distinction of race or color" in the use of funds the federal government supplied. However, the school's trustees, deeply committed to maintaining a racially exclusive institution, refused to accept black students at the College Park campus. Instead, they allocated one-fifth of the Morrill funds to the Princess Anne Academy on the Eastern Shore for the education of black students. Black students were no longer excluded from higher education in Maryland, but they were segregated and barred from the College Park campus.

Given the bad stuff we have seen coming out of the University, it is a relief to see some good work.

Categories > Race

Politics

Random Observations

1. Several people have written fearing or hoping that I might be near death because I haven't been posting lately.  I appreciate the concern, I guess.  But we postmodern conservatives or 21st century Thomists don't believe that the doctrine "I blog, therefore I am" is realistic.  All is well and I'm at a nice conference in Savannath, maybe the most beautiful city in America.

2. This conference is rife with young conservatives.  And, naturally, they were all grousing with disbelief at breakfast over Obama's big Nobel win.  The African American lady who was serving breakfast was glaring at them, thinking, I'm sure, that these people won't pass up any opportunity to let our president have it.  She may, properly understood, have a point.  Who cares who gets that fairly silly prize?  It's not like Obama ran for it, as far as I can tell.  No good president could possibly get it.  And if they want to give it for pretty words that signify almost nothing, it doesn't pick my pocket or break my leg. 

3. Whether the Republicans make big gains in Congress in 2010 will depend mostly on the state of the economy unless there's the reality or perception of dangerous foreign policy weakness.  It would be better if the Republicans had either big brains or an effective leader or two, but that probably won't be the key.  Anxiety is trumping ideology with the swing voters these days.  No two economists agree on what things will be like a year from now, and it's difficult for we Republicans to know what to hope for.

Categories > Politics

Politics

Motivational Posters, Churchill Edition

From Jonah's Odd-Links gal Debbie, Churchill motivational posters.  Looks like the site is worth bookmarking.  Is Mansfield secretly behind it?
Categories > Politics

Pop Culture

Ignoble Nobel Thoughts

Brutal murderers on death row or imprisoned politicians get themselves nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in order to prove their continued worth to humanity.  To see how this is done, check the process for nomination, and the qualifications for nominators.  Peter Schramm should nominate the Ashbrook Center--for something.  He and many of his academic colleagues are qualified to do so.

A better nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize would have been this Romanian (try to ignore the frightening photo) who writes mostly in German about life under Communism.  Herta Mueller snagged the Nobel Prize in Literature instead.

Categories > Pop Culture

Foreign Affairs

Let Peace Begin with "the One?"

Not even Peter Beinart is buying this one.  Key thought: 

The Nobel Prize Committee should be in the business of conferring celebrity on unknown human-rights and peace activists toiling in the most god-forsaken parts of the world; the people who really need the attention (and even the money). It should be in the business of angering powerful tyrants by giving their victims a moment in the sun. Choosing Barack Obama, who practically orbits the sun already, accomplishes the exact opposite of that.

This is the way small "l" liberals worth their salt (which ought to include, by the way, all respectable American "conservatives") used to think and talk and distinguish themselves from the pettiness and puerile servitude that marks the behavior of great manipulators and the great boot-lickers of the world.  The conferring of this award to Barack Obama seems to be of a piece--as its opposite and equal reaction--with the rejection of Chicago for the Olympics.  It begins to appear that the world believes we can be played. 
Categories > Foreign Affairs

Elections

Endangered Senators 2010

Politico identifies some of the more interesting Senate contests, including Nevada, Connecticut, California, Pennsylvania, and Colorado.  A useful list.
Categories > Elections

Foreign Affairs

The Nobel Prize for Political Gestures

Let us keep in mind the thinking the Nobel Committee expressed when it awarded the Peace Prize to Jimmy Carter in 2002:  The chairman of the Nobel Prize committee, a leftist Norwegian politician named Gunnar Berge, told the media in announcing Carter's prize that "it should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current [Bush] administration has taken" in the war on terrorism, and particularly Iraq.  "It's a kick in the leg to all that follow the same line as the United States."  The Nobel Committee's official commendation for Carter used more subtle language to make Berge's point: "In a situation currently marked by threats of the use of power, Carter has stood by the principles that conflicts must as far as possible be resolved through mediation and international cooperation based on international law, respect for human rights and international development."   Message to Obama: Stop the Israelis from defending themselves, don't send more troops to Afghanistan, pull out of Iraq.

UPDATE: John Podhoretz makes a compelling case for why Obama is the perfect Nobel Prize winner.  I take it all back!
Categories > Foreign Affairs

Politics

The Nobel Peace Prize

I woke up to this stunning decision (as the WaPo calls it) this morning.  (We should be prepared to be surprised in politics, right?  And we never are, are we?) The problem is that everyone understands that he doesn't deserve it (and I mean no disrespect to the President Obama).  One wag said on CNN this morning that the lefties in Oslo are attempting to tie Obama's hands on foreign policy, especially regarding decision on troop levels in Afghanistan.  Maybe.  But this does give Obama a great opportunity: Mickey Kaus suggests that he turn it down.  I agree.  It would be magnanimous-like act, offered by a statesman who understands that the world does move, or should move, on merit.  If he accepts it, there will be a political backlash  for some will start arguing that his future war decisions will be taken for the wrong reasons.  He cannot afford that opinion settling in on the public.  The decisions on Afghanistan, just to cite the most obvious example, are tough enough to figure out without such calculations.  He should turn it down.
Categories > Politics

Conservatism

Refining and Enlarging the Public Views

I want to bring to your attention (just briefly and in case you missed it) to something that was said in the comment section under my Conservative Malaise? post.  It seems to me that it is something that merits more thought and consideration than it appears to be getting--even in the best of the critiques of this so-called "brain-death" looming in conservatism.

The commenter "SjB" writes: 

"I am one of the 'great unwashed masses' (despised by purists) who is struggling with the steep learning curve in American politics. I am also one who has read some of the articles complaining about us with revulsion . . . Recognize that we are not stupid, you aren't the only ones who would like to stuff a napkin in Beck's mouth at times.  [On the other hand] [r]ealize that Beck treats us with respect, as do all of the Fox hosts and guests. What do you offer us? Stop griping, start sharing your knowledge, and help us get up to speed or please duct tape your keyboard."

Rush always likes to parody those on the left who seem to believe that his audience consists entirely of "mind-numbed-robots"--giving evidence that these leftists have no respect for the autonomy and intelligence of the public.  Are there some slack-jawed yokels who hoot and holler and pant with fever after every word some particular host may say?  Uhhh, sure.  But I'm afraid that it's also true that some "intellectuals"  imitate these performances when it comes to their own versions of "rock stars" too . . .  The point is that the default assumption ought not to be that any one commentator or intellectual has a monopoly on the truth and, similarly, no one should assume that whenever any given intellectual or commentator makes a misstep or is guilty of an inconsistency, that he and his friends "in the know" are the only ones who see it. 

Back when I was a young graduate student and I began to do some teaching on the side, wise professors of mine used to caution me to remember "that guy in the back of the room."  The "guy in the back of the room" is the guy who, though quiet and unobtrusive, may know more than you do (and certainly much more than you think he does).  When it comes to the occasional (o.k., maybe even the regular) outrageous outbursts of some radio and television personalities, I'd venture to guess that there are a lot more "guys in the back of the room"  in the watching and listening public than either side of this debate has been willing to recognize.

The goal of smart conservatives ought to be to draw them in.   

Categories > Conservatism

Conservatism

Brain-Dead Conservatism?

"Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?" Steve Hayward asks in the Washington Post. His diagnosis is that the patient is, at least, on the critical list: "The brain waves of the American right continue to be erratic, when they are not flat-lining."

The source of the ailment is the unhappy and unbalanced relationship between conservative intellectuals and activists. There used to be, in the golden "Age of Reagan" from 1964 to 1989, a sustainable division of labor between them. The activists relied on the intellectuals for ideas and rhetoric, and the intellectuals were happy for the activists to mobilize voters and constituencies. "Today, however, the conservative movement has been thrown off balance," says Hayward, "with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas."

Perhaps, says Hayward, conservative intellectuals are "simply out of interesting ideas," the kind that would provide "compelling alternatives to Obama's economic or foreign policy." Nature abhors a vacuum. If the National Honor Society types have stopped saying illuminating and useful things, the sarcastic kids who jeer from the back of the classroom at Right Wing High will speak up more often, setting a different tone.

Important as it was to conservatism's political strength, the old division of labor between intellectuals and activists will be hard to restore. John Derbyshire laments the absence of "middlebrow conservatism." The lowbrow conservatism of talk radio is "energizing and fun," he says, but routinely caters to "reflex rather than thought." Talk radio reassures down-the-line conservatives that there's no need for them to reassess and modify their old ideas, investigate new ones, or doubt their own intellectual and moral superiority to liberals. What it doesn't do, according to Derbyshire, is "speak to that vast segment of the American middle class that lives sensibly - indeed, conservatively - wishes to be thought generous and good, finds everyday politics boring, and has a horror of strong opinions."

Winning a hearing and votes from that vast and electorally crucial segment is partly a matter of tone. Derbyshire laments that conservatives can't or won't express themselves with the "studied gentility" and "affectless voices" of National Public Radio, relying too often on "bullying bluster" rather than "bringing a sportsman's respect for his opponents to the debate."

Even if a new, pitch-perfect conservatism gets all that right, however, there's still the problem of substance. As Ramesh Ponnuru writes in the current National Review, ""The principal sources of the Left's revival are not difficult to identify: the years of denial that our strategy in Iraq was failing; stagnant wages; Republican corruption; the financial meltdown.... Republicans must... present plausible solutions to voters' concerns about health care, wages, and so forth--particularly if the results of Democratic policies are not unambiguously disastrous."

David Frum makes the same point: "We lost in 2008 in large part because we had not governed successfully over the previous eight years. More than political tactics, more even than media, what matters in politics is results. If national incomes had grown by 1% a year under George Bush instead of stagnating, Al Franken would have lost [Minnesota's Senate election] in a landslide."

Wonky inventiveness will be a necessary condition for discharging this political duty, but not a sufficient one. Conservatives still have to resolve, or at least manage, the tensions within their coalition. In a huge, diverse country with a strong historical and structural bias toward a two-party system, large, strange and tense coalitions will be a permanent problem for both parties. Some of the strains within the liberal coalition were made clear during the 2008 contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. (They were voiced memorably by the national president of the machinists' union.)

John Derbyshire outlined one of the fault lines in the conservative coalition six years ago when he discussed 'metropolitan conservatives," an issue he revisits in We Are Doomed. Metro-cons, to take a couple of particulars, believe in evolution and oppose laws outlawing homosexual acts between consenting adults. According to a fair amount of polling data, these positions put the metro-cons to the left of more than 40% of the America population, which means it probably puts them to the left of at least 80% of the people who voted for McCain/Palin. Derbyshire describes the metro-con's anomalous situation concisely: "I dislike modern American liberalism very much, and believe it to be poisonous and destructive; yet I am at ease in a roomful of New York liberals in a way that, to be truthful about it, I am not in a gathering of red-state evangelicals. Setting aside our actual opinions about this, that or the other, I am aware that in the first gathering I am among people with whom I have, at some level, a shared outlook; and in the second gathering, not."

His resolution of this tension in 2003 was unpersuasive. Admitting that it would be "the legions of real, authentic conservatives out there in the provinces" who would keep conservatism politically potent Derbyshire says, "God bless them all for keeping America strong, free, and true to her founding principles. If the price to be paid is a sodomy law here, a high-school Creationism class there, well, far as I am concerned, that's a small price indeed."

This doesn't sound like a sufficient basis on which to hold together a political movement. Rather than indulging ideological preoccupations they cannot endorse, conservative intellectuals need to emphasize a posteriori reasoning in their thinking and writing. The best way to make conservatism viable is to focus relentlessly on the tangible, the particular and totally legitimate preoccupations of their fellow-citizens. In a speech at the outset of his New York mayoral campaign in 1965 William Buckley said, "The purpose of politics is to do, to the limited extent it is possible to do anything by government action, something for the people of New York, to whom is owed, by good government, the security of their liberties: to work without harassment, to live without a crushing fiscal overhead, to educate their children with minimum interference from extrinsic distractions, to walk confidently in the streets, and sleep quietly at night. Public action is needed to secure these private ends."

Ronald Reagan employed the same idiom to great effect, such as when he asked Americans, in his debate with Jimmy Carter, "Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the store than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was four years ago? Do you feel your security is safe, that we're as strong as we were four years ago?" One of the reasons those questions helped elect Reagan president was the subtle and powerful way they drew wider and wider circles, starting from private and mundane concerns, then connecting them to ones about the nation's economic vigor and its strength and reputation in the world. The rediscovery of those habits of thought and speech will be necessary to restore the intellectual and political health of American conservatism.

Categories > Conservatism

Politics

Could 2010 be 1994?

Asks Gerald Seib.  In getting to an answer he lays out many interesting facts, figures, and possibilities.  Worth a read, even though the answer is "no", the GOP doesn't have a chance.  Yet...if they hold tough on health care, get a few Dems to come with them....and note this, according to Gallup: "Americans' approval of the job Congress is doing is at 21% this month, down significantly from last month's 31% and from the recent high of 39% in March."
Categories > Politics

Conservatism

More Posts on the Post Business

If you're a glutton for more punishment, I did an "live chat" online at the Washington Post yesterday about the Sunday outlook article (which turned out to be the top hit on the Post's website for three days in a row).  The Post Book Review page also asked me to submit a blog about what Obama could learn from Reagan (if he were so inclined, which I doubt).
Categories > Conservatism

Politics

Moderation

H/T: Rush's show

This study suggests that both Alcoholics and Teetotallers are more inclined toward depression.  Makes a lot of sense to me.    
Categories > Politics

Conservatism

How to Argue with Potential Friends (Nevermind the Idiots)

This is nicely demonstrated in this exchange between actual friends, Charles Murray and Jonah Goldberg (both of whom, again, weigh in on Steve's Washington Post article).  Jonah also weighs in, with much candor, about the pros and cons surrounding the "what if" scenario of his book being released under a kinder, gentler title. 


Categories > Conservatism

Politics

A Party of "Doers"?

David Harsanyi of the Denver Post--although too cynical in the end and guilty, perhaps, of a fair bit of over-simplifying--writes a clear and clever column today about the nature of the political differences and choices now facing us.  He calls it, "The Doers vs. The 'Thinkers'" (and do note that the "Thinkers" are the only ones who get quotation marks).   It is a nice expression of conservative populism at its best--which is not to say, of course, that it is perfect.  It is something that, I believe, resonates with a healthy majority of the conservative/Republican base and, for that reason, it is something that smart conservatives would do well to contemplate, ponder, tease out, and (if they can) they should build and improve upon it. 
Categories > Politics

Congress

Czar Wars

NYT quotes at length Matt Spalding's Senate testimony on ever-expanding government and the Czar controversy:

And I conclude by noting that we have a dilemma between the current Congress that tends to give away large amounts of authority -- for instance, in the TARP bill, which gave the secretary of the Treasury extensive delegation of power, $700 billion to purchase troubled assets; low [sic.: that's "lo"--where is the proofreader!  :-).  UPDATE:  The NYT goofed; my apologies] and behold we now own General Motors and we have a "car czar." Setting aside the policy, was that Congress's intention?

Matt's full statement to Senator Feingold's subcommittee is here.

Categories > Congress

Conservatism

Conservative Malaise?

Not since Jimmah' donned the sweater has there been so much apparent anguish over a made-for-TV crisis of confidence.  Now, it would be putting it much too strongly to say that I think this question of the "de-intellectualization" of the conservative movement is much ado about nothing.  It would be putting it too strongly to suggest that I think all worries about excessive populism on our side are nothing more than intellectual snobbery and foppishness masquerading as genuine concern about the truth of the matter.  It's not only that.  There is real and legitimate concern for the direction of the movement--most especially because it does not appear (at least for the moment) to be moving anywhere.  It does not seem to be dynamic or persuasive . . .  at least not to groups not already inclined to be persuaded.  So it is perfectly natural and certainly healthy to ask questions about why we seem to be up against a wall. 

But it is still fair to say that a good bit of this existential questioning is less a crisis and more a bit of preening self-indulgent, narcissistic and . . . dare I say, cowardly exhibitionism?  (And no, a cowardly exhibitionist is not an oxymoron.)  In addition to some precious and sentimental nostalgia about conservatism's so-called "Glory Days" (you know, back when there were only three or four national publications with a conservative bent), I'd also add that there's an unseemly amount of whining coming from some quarters in the conservative intellectual class about not getting the "recognition" that they deserve . . . especially when it comes to cash.  Well, duh!?  It seems rarely to occur to many a would-be philosophic soul that he ought to be content when he's not offered a cocktail laced with hemlock.  And when he's lucky enough to be at all gainfully employed in the "occupation" of  public philosophizing, perhaps he should content himself with the possibility that one of his more marketable students might popularize a few of his ideas and, thereby, score for himself some of the lucre, fame, and "recognition" this teacher thinks that he, himself, deserves.  Perhaps that famous student might also throw the teacher a bone of thanks.  But then, perhaps not.  No matter.  If and when those thanks are offered, a good number in this bunch will not be satisfied . . . they will find some fault in the work of their proteges and continue their lament about the stupidity of the world.  Philosophers like that will never rule--however much the world needs their wisdom.  Reagan was no philosopher, maybe.  But he waxed philosophic when he noted that it was amazing how much one can accomplish when he's not concerned about who gets the credit.

In that spirit, I find very little with which to quibble today in this fine post from Jonah Goldberg--though I'd heap even more praise on Steve Hayward's measured and thoughtful piece in last Friday's Washington Post.  I'd also note that Steve was very clever to give the thing the title he gave it . . . and that Peter Schramm is right to note that the Huffington Post was not clever enough to read beyond it (much less into it).  No Straussians there, I guess . . . but you'd think they'd find a few to hire . . . if for no other reason than translation purposes.  But . . . let it go.

(See also Jonah's USA Today column on Glenn Beck and I will repeat my admonition not to miss the podcast with Steve Hayward over at Infinite Monkeys.)

It seems to me, however, that apart from the most obviously annoying aspects of  this complaint about the "crassness" of the conservative movement (which I admit strikes me mainly out of a sentiment of disgust with its lack of charity for ordinary well-meaning people doing the best they can with limited political leadership and busy lives that are not--gasp!--dedicated to the study of politics) there also seems to be an amazing amount of missing the point.  Which is funny, considering that so much of the criticism stems from a concern for a supposed lack of reflection on the Right. 

If conservatism has hit a wall or if it has maxed out as a movement and is incapable of persuading anyone other than the masses it's already garnered to itself, is the fault with the natural inclinations of sentiment that lead so many to conservatism or, rather, is the fault with some aspect of its argument that remains unpersuasive (or unknown) to the yet unpersuaded?  The sense of so many people that conservatism had been taking it in the shorts until talk radio (and a host of other popularizers) came around and made it cool to be conservative again is not simply wrong.  Tired as the argument may be, it is true that conservatives have long been in the minority in the media, in the arts, in the corridors of most leading universities and even in the classrooms of the minor league ones (to say nothing of the elementary and secondary education systems).  People were not simply wrong to suggest that "if only" conservatism could "get its message out there" the support would follow.  Political movements, after all, are not (or, rather, ought not to be) fraternities or sports teams that pride themselves on their exclusivity.  Conservatism certainly did need a PR campaign of sorts.  And beginning in the early to mid-1990s, it began to get one.  It was built . . . and they did come--at least they came to listen or to watch and even, sometimes, to read.  The lament now seems to be that those who came did not, in that listening and watching, learn properly to play the game from watching the commercial. 

For there are some people who have a way of turning up their noses at PR campaigns.  This stuff is beneath them, don'tcha know?  It's rather vulgar and tasteless . . . and, besides, it's short on subtlety and substance.  Yeah . . . it is.  And so . . . what's your point?  It brought conservatism an audience . . . this is where the intellectuals are supposed to enter, stage right.  And to their credit, many did.  In the twenty plus years I've been at this stuff, I don't recall a time before now when I'd meet with as many folks in day-to-day ordinary life who could rattle off  names that I recognize from what I had previously considered to be only scholarly or obscure reading.  I don't recall a time when my unwillingness to purchase cable television seemed to put me at a disadvantage in recounting arguments from leading thinkers when accosted by my parents or their friends or people I run into at my kids' school or in the grocery store.  I don't recall them ever suggesting that I go get a book or check out an article in a conservative journal before the advent of FOX News.  But now it happens with a regularity that I ought to find humbling . . . that is, I would, if I weren't already so humble.  ;-)

So why are the priests in the temple now complaining that the masses now have the printing press and are learning to read?  My suggestion to them is to learn to offer a coherent political argument and then learn to make a persuasive political case for it.  Yes, this is difficult work--much harder than communing with your peers.  It's wonderful that you've enjoyed your years in the intellectual wilderness and that you've made good use of your time at the monastery communing your intellectual equals.  But now you are called upon to edify the huddled masses . . . show us.  Where's the beef?

The beef . . . or, rather, my beef with too many conservative intellectuals is that a good number of them seem to lack an understanding of the nature of the thing they seek to combat.  What is today's liberalism?  While they obsess and fret about liberalism's or (more accurately) progressivism's  victories, not enough of them are asking the obvious questions they ought to be asking about why progressivism is still fighting the battles that it began more than 70 years ago.  After 70 plus years, why hasn't progressivism been as utterly successful in transforming American politics and the American character as they seek to be?  Why does every success of progressivism come wrapped up with in a paper that looks, amazingly, like our very own Constitution?  Why are so many Americans still inclined to be conservatives (in the American rather than in the British sense of the term)?  And why, given all of that, does conservatism seem to have such a rebellious sort of energy to it these days? 

Jonah hints at it when he suggests that this is a "moment" (though only a "moment") for conservatives to gird their loins and shout "NO!"  That's true, though incomplete.  It's not just that we like to oppose change for opposition's sake.  And it's not just that we're in a re-grouping mode after the defeats of the last election and the stunning audacity of the White House's current occupant.  It's that the nature of the changes proposed is decidedly contrary to SOMETHING.  Hmmm . . . what could that be?  What is it that conservatives, in their bones and in their hearts (if not always so clearly in their heads) want to conserve? 

I will leave it on this note:  if conservatism these days looks a little rebellious, a little loud and a little uncouth, it ought to be remembered that the Constitution and laws our intellectuals love to revere came after the Revolution . . . that is to say, only after the principle of government with the consent of the governed was secured could we move on to a rational debate about the best ways of securing it in perpetuity.  I don't suggest that we need the equivalent of a revolution before we can get on with more rational political discourse at this time.  We've already had our revolution and, God willing, I pray we never need another one.  We've already put into place an instrument designed to preserve the principles of that Revolution.  For more than 230 years, it has done that job with an amazing amount of efficiency; even in spite of the head-on efforts of three-generations of progressives.  But the Constitution, though not "living" as the Progressives would have it, is neither a dead nor mechanical thing.  It will not work in perpetuity without a citizenry firmly dedicated to the principles that caused us to create it.  We do not need another revolution, but we do have to rescue the principle of government by consent (and all that it implies) before we can expect to see a turning down of the political volume.  As long as that principle is under assault by a significant portion of the political class, Americans will do what Americans have always done best.  We are an ornery people at heart.  It takes ornery people to do something so audacious as to declare that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with unalienable rights . . . It takes an ornery people to imagine that self-government is a possibility in a world that is much more familiar with despotism. 

Yes, we'll need reflection and choice to shepherd us through this rescue mission.  But we're also going to need to rally the troops around the right ideas before we can begin, in earnest, to rein them in.

Categories > Conservatism

Military

In Defense of General McChrystal

Comes liberal Democrat Bill Galston, former adviser to Mondale and the Clintons, writing in the New Republic.  In sum, generals may (and should!) contribute to public debate before a decision is made; they may not dispute a decision once made by civilian authorities. 
Categories > Military

Pop Culture

Go, Rousseau, 'gainst the Artsy Faux

Polansky and Letterman may approach Jean-Jacques Rousseau's depravity, but they could surely not withstand his withering criticism of the terpitude of actors and other artists.  That is the tension Richard Reeb explores, at that Rocky Mountain mainstay, Backbone America, founded by the redoubtable John Andrews.  Artists regard themselves as "creative" gods, when in fact they are typically puerile reflections of their times. That postmodernism lies at the heart of Obama's writings, too, for he is at heart an artist. 

Categories > Pop Culture

Conservatism

Hayward and The Conservative Brain

I will have more to say about this whole thing later on (when my kids' soccer and baseball schedule permits!) but, in the meantime, I didn't want anyone to miss this lively interchange between Steve Hayward, Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis over at Infinite Monkeys.  
Categories > Conservatism

Pop Culture

Steyn on Law, Morality, and the Possibility of Art

Mark Steyn writes a very smart column today about the case of Roman Polanski.  He ends by suggesting that Polanski cannot have it both ways.  Polanski cannot be both a great artist and also expect to live beyond the realm of the moral universe.  A great artist seeks to glorify and affirm morality or, if not, his work can be said to be beautiful because of its marked and tragic struggles against it.  Yet, one way or another, the authority of the moral universe always wins.

Polanski and his friends suggest that the moral universe is passe and that they and their work ought to be regarded as transcending it.  As Steyn puts it, they cannot "transgress" because they "transcend."  The problem for them is that if we take them at their word, Polanski cannot be great.  He must be milquetoast--for greatness does not exist.  As Steyn notes, Polanski is not even a great rogue . . . a real rogue needs to function within a moral universe--he needs the tension and the drama to make his work great.  But in the view of Polanski's supporters, we cannot judge people (and certainly not their friends) according to these old standards.  Real freedom, real art, and real courage is doing whatever it is that strikes us at any given moment--being true to oneself and one's inner passions.  Well, Polanski certainly did that.  Even so, as Steyn says . . . Bitter Moon?  Seriously?

Categories > Pop Culture

Health Care

A PSA for Big Government

Hilarity from some former University of Dallas students.
Categories > Health Care

Literature, Poetry, and Books

For Anne Gregory

A little Yeats for a lovely morning:

Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'

'But I can get a hair-dye
And set such colour there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair.'

'I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'

Conservatism

Huffington notes Hayward

Huffington Post (I think Steve calls it the Puffington Host) notes Hayward's Is Conservatism Brain-Dead op-ed in Saturday's WaPo without comment other than to refer to the "glory days" of conservatism, with glee, no doubt.  They may have only read the headline.

Categories > Conservatism

Military

Generals and Politics

You can tell that civil-military relations are getting complicated when a general, appointed by this President to carry out his new strategy, is being criticized for speaking in favor of the strategy. In the meantime, McChrystal's superior, General Petraeus--one who had an especially close relation to Bush--is said to be (maybe) interested in running for president. I am betting that this isn't coming from his supporters. Expect a major shakeup, justified by a brand new strategy for Afghanistan/Pakistan/al Qaeda.
Categories > Military

Economy

Do as I say, not as I do . . .

Apparently Michael Moore is less of a union man than he claims to be:

The porcine provocateur is promoting his anti-Wall Street jeremiad by giving free tickets to unions, but the American Federation of Teachers has turned them down because Moore didn't hire any members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

And I thought he stayed out of the gym because someone told him it was a sweat shop!

Categories > Economy

Political Philosophy

Straussophobia

A good counter to what has been said in recent Comments about Leo Strauss and his view of America can be found in Peter Minowitz's Straussophobia.  Minowitz responds to questions in this recent Harper's on-line interview.  Neocons, fascism, rule of law, etc. all come in for clarification.  As I have in various posts on NLT, I would argue some of these points rather differently, but Peter does restore some reason against wild accusation.

Pop Culture

The House of (Greeting) Cards

In case you missed this, Christine Rosen reviews this memoir of life in the greeting-card writing industry.  The author becomes an atheist and flees to pursue a Ph.D. in literature.  The book would appear to make a great parallel with Matt Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft.
Categories > Pop Culture

Politics

Breaking It Down on the Kudlow Report

Went on CNBC's Kudlow Report on short notice last night to discuss Obama's Olympic misadventure in Copenhagen, which is now available online here.
Key thought from me: It was the worst Olympic performance since the Jamaican bobsled team back in the 1980s.
Categories > Politics

Politics

Conservatism, Dead or Alive? Or Just Old and Lame?

First off, let me apologize for not blogging lately.  After 1,208 entries, I, as the self-help people say, "felt the need" to pause and reflect.  The Brooks vs. Hayward "dispute" is actually evidence to me that we conservatives all need to do that.

I was ask to serve as a referee:  Who's more right--Brooks or Hayward?  My own view is neither is all that right, but they both make some good points.

I've never liked either Beck or Limbaugh.  But I certainly agree that they both fail more than ever in being stylish or contemporary, which is certainly the job of political entertainers.  They reflect more than cause a conservatism that's grown old and lame.  Their demographic is old and white and male, like Brooks and Hayward and me.  Young conservatives--and there are some--view their shows with contempt.  So I'm not for shutting them down, simply because I'm all for mobilizing those they're capable of mobilizing   But their influence will continue to become increasingly marginal.

In ordinary politics, the Republicans have no leaders because they have no leaders.  Enlightened statesmen, I read somewhere, will not always be at the helm, and they sure as hell aren't now.  One reason, of course, is that two consecutive thumpings meant that virtually no new Republican blood was introduced into Congress.  With a couple of noble exceptions, the Republicans in Congress are or act old and lame

There are, in fact, good conservative intellectuals around; they just aren't writing best sellers or gaining air time.  First among these is probably Yuval Levin, who's quite an original thinker unreducible to an ordinary Straussian or an ordinary Kassian.  And he knows his public policy stuff better than anyone. His journal NATIONAL AFFAIRS shows a lot of promise, although the first issue wasn't off the charts on the freshness-meter.  We have to admit that the "Front Porchers" under the leadership of "Dr. Pat" Deneen have a lot to offer, although no one has mocked their excesses more than ME.  And there's our own Ivan the K and "postmodern conservatives" like him.  Jim Ceaser is far from young and beautiful, but he remains stylish and contemporary.  I could go on.

In general, I wonder whether the Founders=Locke=good and the Progressives=Germans=bad narrative has run its course or needs a lot of supplementing at this point.  A lot of younger conservatives see that part of our problem today is our promiscuous libertinism, and that it might be caused by our inability to keep Locke (or the spirit of calculation, contract, and consent) in a "Locke box."  Increasingly, all of life is being turned over to a self-indulgent view of "autonomy," and that really does erode both a proper understanding of love and a manly spirit of self-government.  I agree with Steve that markets and "liberty" aren't enough, which means we have to engage in a criticism of the "progressivism" that understands being human or being free as an endless movement away from nature toward nothing in particular.  

"Progressivism" isn't an alien to "classical liberalism" as we sometimes want to say, and there is a proto-historicist dimension to Locke (as Michael Zuckert shows). I could go on and probably will later.  But my view is our problem is that our popularizing conservatives, such as Beck, are too infused with the spirit of Tom Paine and not enough with the Tocquevillian moderation of, say, Irving Kristol or Bill Buckley or even "classic" George Will.  Now I already know that someone's going to object against Tocqueville that we don't need the aid from some foreigner who doesn't even understand the Declaration of Independence.  So I'll remind you that so many of the intellectuals Steve and David admire were influenced by Leo Strauss (a German!), who said very little about the Declaration and even about America.
Categories > Politics

Politics

Olympics

Chicago is eliminated on the first ballot.  I said to the Freshmen yesterday that whoever was advising Obama to go to Denmark and plead is an idiot.  I would fire him, if I were Obama.  This is another proof that he is human, fallible, and even foolish.  Not to his advantage, big-time.  Rio de Janeiro will win, of course.
Categories > Politics

Politics

Conservatism, Dead or Alive?

I know that David Brooks is a good and thoughtful guy.  I know that he says and writes interesting and mostly true things.  And I know that smart folks should read him.  But, this article--the first thing I read this morning after crawling out of bed--is superficial, and, unfortunately, revealing of a tendency of his to play to the media created myths more than to the reality of things (which is, ironically, what he claims to be not doing).  Whether Beck, Limbaugh, et al, have "real power" or not is the wrong question to ask.  It is in the realm of made up imaginary-media stuff.  It doesn't get to the heart of the matter, having to do with elites and populism, and the decline of the conservative mind, and then, asking whether any of these guys having anything interesting or good to say to our confused body-politic.  He writes: "The Republican Party is unpopular because it's more interested in pleasing Rush's ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity. The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer's niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician's coalition-building strategy."  That is not why the party is leaderless.  There would be an easy solution, if that were true.  You get my drift.  And let's not talk about coalition building until we have something to build around; unless, of course, you just want to replicate politics as nothing more the build-on-factionalism of Andy Jackson and his friends, which Brooks seems willing to do.

Steve Hayward, on the other hand, (in Sunady's Washington Post) asks the right question: Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?  Thank God this was the second article I read this morning for saved the rest of an otherwise ill-humored day!  At the risk of oversimplification, I ask you to compare the two pieces, playing with the same or similar theme, and ask yourself which one does it better, and with verve, with insight. Which one leads the reader to a thought or two?  It is in fact Hayward's masterful piece because Steve doesn't confuse the nature of the problem for its symptoms. Elementary, Mr. Brooks.  Hayward: "The single largest defect of modern conservatism, in my mind, is its insufficient ability to challenge liberalism at the intellectual level, in particular over the meaning and nature of progress. To the left's belief in political solutions for everything, the right must do better than merely invoking 'markets' and 'liberty.'"  A fine piece Mr. Hayward!  Thank you.

Update: I just realized the man himself brought this to your attention.  Sorry.  Should have looked.  No matter.  Great piece that merits serious conversation.

Categories > Politics

Politics

Brain Waves

I can see it's going to be a long weekend.  My Washington Post Outlook piece running this Sunday is on the topic, "Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?"  But the Post has put it up early on their website right here, and a few early links to it in the blogosphere have already generated an avalanche of e-mail, some supportive, but many very very angry.  I reply to one particular criticism (my omission of Mark Levin) on The Corner this morning.  Surely more to come.

UPDATE:  I see David Brooks takes up some of the same territory in his NY Times column today.  Oh boy: I think his e-mail will be worse than mine.
Categories > Politics

Economy

Capitalist Fool

Poor boy made good, Michael Moore says "capitalism did nothing for me, starting with my first film."  In fact, he says, " I had to pretty much beg, borrow and steal," he said. "The system is not set up to help somebody from the working class make a movie like this and get the truth out there."

Hard work, individual initiative, and compeition, isn't that what capitalism is about? 

Moore's comments remind me of this essay on "Capitalism After the Crisis," by Luigi Zingales, who writes that:

In a recent study, Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch showed that public support for capitalism in any given country is positively associated with the perception that hard work, not luck, determines success, and is negatively correlated with the perception of corruption. These correlations go a long way toward explaining public support for ​­America's capitalist system. According to one recent study, only 40% of Americans think that luck rather than hard work plays a major role in income differences. Compare that with the 75% of Brazilians who think that income disparities are mostly a matter of luck, or the 66% of Danes and 54% of Germans who do, and you begin to get a sense of why American attitudes toward the free-market system stand out.

Moreover, ZIngales notes that:

When the government is small and relatively weak, the way to make money is to start a successful private-sector business. But the larger the size and scope of government spending, the easier it is to make money by diverting public resources. Starting a business is difficult and involves a lot of risk -- but getting a government favor or contract is easier, and a much safer bet. And so in nations with large and powerful governments, the state tends to find itself at the heart of the economic system, even if that system is relatively capitalist. . . .

The situation is very different in nations that developed capitalist economies after World War II. These countries (in non-Soviet-bloc continental Europe, parts of Asia, and much of Latin America) industrialized under the giant shadow of American power. In this development process, the local elites felt threatened by the prospect of economic colonization by American companies that were far more efficient and better capitalized. To protect themselves, they purposely built a ­non-transparent system in which local connections were important, because this gave them an inherent advantage. These structures have proven resilient in the decades since: Once economic and political systems are built to reward relationships instead of efficiency, it is very difficult to reform them, since the people in power are the ones who would lose most in the change.

Finally, and this is the point that gets us back to Moore:

The United States was able to develop a pro-market agenda distinct from a pro-business agenda because it was largely spared the direct influence of Marxism. It is possible that the type of capitalism the United States developed is the cause, as much as the effect, of the absence of strong Marxist movements in this country. But either way, this distinction from other Western regimes was significant in the development of American attitudes toward economics.

Moore doesn't recognize that distinction between supporting the free market and supporting businesses.  The danger, of course, is that the more government does, the more conncetions, rather than talent, hard work, and intelligence matter.

Categories > Economy

Politics

47% Pay no Income Tax

According to this CNN story, "In 2009, roughly 47% of households, or 71 million, will not owe any federal income tax, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Some in that group will even get additional money from the government because they qualify for refundable tax breaks. The ranks of those whose major federal tax burdens net out at zero -- or less -- is on the rise. The center's original 2009 estimate was 38%. That was before enactment in February of the $787 billion economic recovery package, which included a host of new or expanded tax breaks."  Only some of the implications of this are touched on in the story.  Interesting, no?



Categories > Politics

Politics

Toward the Health Care Precipice

Andrew Busch makes a powerful argument about why the Democrats insist that passing a health care bill, any bill, is a good thing: They have learned the wrong lesson from 1994.  They continue to think (Bill Clinton is explicit about it) that Democrats were punished in November 1994 by voters who were angered by the failure of Congress to act on a matter of crucial national concern. Liberal voters were dispirited and moderates soured on Clinton's promise of "change." Andy maintains that this is not true.  "The 1994 Clinton health care bill died because it was a bad bill, the public knew it, and Congress knew the public knew it. The same conditions apply today..."  But they don't get it.  Good piece.

Categories > Politics