ClearCommentary.com

The Virtues of a War President

2008-07-24T12:54:06-06:00

One of the perennial mysteries of modern liberalism is its apparent indifference to the virtues of sacrifice for a greater good, in particular when it comes to victory in war. Many contemporary commentators have pondered under what circumstances liberals generally, and Senator Obama specifically, would risk their lives for a profoundly vital goal, and their list is rather short.

Add to this conundrum Jeffrey Klein, writing in today's Huffington Post, who goes to great length to demonstrate that McCain is a war president, which is only to say, a commander-in-chief determined to complete a war that the vast majority of Democrats supported just a few years ago. Leave it to a liberal to craft an argument that provides a cynical justification for voters to vote for McCain:

McCain's entire war strategy relies upon Nixonian political logic: Americans will vote for the candidate who won't countenance defeat not because they're attached to the country we're liberating, but because they can't accept that many American lives may have been lost without purpose.

In their world of distorted logic, the goal of victory in Iraq, with the indisputable by-product of a less inflammatory, more stable Middle East, is not something Americans can hang their vote for McCain on. What Klein and his ilk seem incapable of grasping is that the cause in Iraq was just and remains so, and therefore, the lives that have been lost weren't in vain. Indeed, that's why Obama's military and foreign policy credentials are being questioned by mainstream Americans--he seems to glibly wend his way through flash-points such as Iran, convinced that his approach will be successful where all others for the past 30 years have failed.

Perhaps most despicable is Klein's argument that McCain's endorsement of American exceptionalism is tantamount to the zeal the terrorists bring to their own cause:

McCain calls withdrawal from Iraq a "morally reprehensible abandonment of our responsibilities." His faith in America's transcendent moral destiny is a mirror image of the terrorists' paranoid nihilism, and hence a boon to their cause.

This is at once an abhorrent assertion and a dark glimpse into the bleak moral soul of liberalism, a polity that so thoroughly disdains America's unique moral standing in history that it is compelled to liken it to the savages that slaughtered 3,000 innocents on 9/11.

The deeper gloss on this contorted piece is that it conveniently overlooks or implicitly denies the existence of the scourge of radical Islam, a plague that's infecting susceptible nations worldwide. Indeed, he smugly ends his piece with the left's horror scenario:

If he's elected president, he'll surely find no shortage of wars he is dying to win.

It's a prospective irony lost on liberals that the "aggressive diplomacy" that Obama champions for Iran will never produce the advances he is apparently convinced it will. In light of the fact that Iran is likely to obtain a nuclear weapon within twenty-four months, Americans are correct in asking exactly what this eminently untested man would do?

In that regard, having a "war president" at the helm is positively virtuous, especially when compared with a half-term senator with a checkered history as a community activist.

America & The Battle of Ideas

2008-07-23T13:13:56-06:00

It's easy to forget that within the substrata of all wars rages another battle, that of ideas. Although the adversaries are typically seen as champions of good or evil, the rationale for going to war is usually far more mundane. Recall that a prime cause of the Franco-Prussian war was a memorandum that Otto von Bismarck altered to appear insulting to the French. His motivation was to establish the German Empire, a goal he realized, along with picking up the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.

Indeed, whether it's trade routes and economic hegemony, as was the case in the Punic Wars, or seething ethnic hatreds, as in the recent case of the Balkans, ideas predicated on the proper role of the state, of the measured application of power, as well as the rights of man, are in constant battle.

Writing in the New York Sun, James K. Glassman, under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, provides a persuasive argument that real power projection can only be successful when case-hardened by a cogent assault in the arena of ideas. He outlines the framework for the battle, its tactics and tools, and then states its goal:

A world in which the use of violence to achieve political, religious, or social objectives is no longer considered acceptable; efforts to radicalize and recruit new members are no longer successful; and the perpetrators of violent extremism are condemned and isolated.

He uses recent successes in Iraq to illustrate the ways in which raw violence can be marginalized, indeed, stigmatized. He notes Lawrence Wright's recent piece in The New Yorker which describes how Dr. Fadil's erstwhile radical Islamic beliefs ultimately gave way to a deeper understanding of his faith, which has materially advanced the cause of non-violence among mainstream Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Among other weapons in this war are the "credible Muslim voices" that Glassman argues are crucial to sanitizing the noxious influences of radicalism in the Islamic world. At the local level, the truth and efficacy of this methodology is evident in numerous examples, from public service announcements that encourage desired behavior and inhibit undesirable behavior to the positive influences of movies that portray morally uplifting values.

If there's anything in this formulation that gives pause it's the element of idealism, one steeped in the notion that people are instinctively drawn to goodness, which, in a world of radical Islamic hatreds seems quixotic indeed. Yet, as Glassman notes, violence as an answer to our problems inevitably depends upon a decision, a choice, and it's equally idealistic to believe that human nature is deterministic and therefore immune to reason and entreaty.

But it's also true that this initiative is dependent upon the confidence that our ideas are superior, and therein lies a serious problem: To wit, although we all agree that freedom is a universal, self-evident right, the consensus begins to fray when notions of American exceptionalism are included, because they have the taint of imperialism and economic hegemony, as propagated by liberals uncomfortable with America's global pre-eminence.

The truth, of course, is that we have no choice but to attempt to win the proverbial hearts and minds of those willing to listen, and despite the fact that some Americans are inconstant allies in the war of ideas, it's a wholly worthy cause and a vital tool to inhibit violence and encourage peace.

The Problem of Obama in Europe

2008-07-22T13:04:15-06:00

There is ample anecdotal evidence that clearly points to a history deficit for many on the left, and Arianna Huffington drives the point home with a remarkably ill-informed piece wherein she appears astounded that Americans aren't entirely comfortable with the adulation Sen. Obama is receiving on his campaign tour of Europe.

We'll stipulate that Obama has performed well thus far, but since his appearances are in the same vein as a Beatles tour in the 60s, it's hardly surprising. Huffington draws on quotes from a variety of Americans, and seems sincere in asking why many of her fellow countrymen might be uncomfortable with the praise that's being lavished upon Obama in Europe. We can begin with the fact that, to many, Obama appears to be running for president of the world, not America. Indeed, with policy recommendations that range from health care mandates to higher taxes and regulations and, which smack of a soft version of socialism, he's much more in tune with citizens of France or Germany than those of America.

Another pet preoccupation of Huffington and her leftist colleagues is the charge that America's reputation suffered under President Bush. What they conveniently omit is the fact that 29 Democratic senators voted to support military action in Iraq and, when the war became challenging they headed for the tall grass. History has recorded the pathetic fact that many Western European countries failed to stand with America because the war became unpopular at home. Well, if toppling Saddam Hussein and standing up Iraq as a fledgling democracy was the right thing to do in 2003, what's changed?

The change begins with the saturation of the Western hemisphere with a liberalism that loathes authority and power projection, that stigmatizes success, that is instinctively drawn to arguments concerning the moral equivalence of all nations, and that is most comfortable with transnational agencies such as the International Criminal Court, the World Bank, and the United Nations. Although it's ignorant of the history that informs its misguided thinking, it champions the Westphalian notion of absolute sovereignty, which China exploits to defend its horrific human rights record, and, a version of that defense is used to refute arguments for demanding that Iran cease its nuclear weapons program.

It's only in the bell jar of liberalism, where evil has been written out of the script and where America's foibles loom far larger than the good it's done for the world, that Obama traipsing across Europe to be lionized by foreigners has the ring of electoral ecstasy. He's everything George W. Bush isn't: He's charming, cool, hip, glib, culturally tuned-up, and on the right side of all the important issues, from being against the war in Iraq to the redistribution of wealth to on-demand abortion to an abhorrence of guns.

Well, perhaps that's why his campaign tour of Europe makes mainstream Americans queasy. But we can't expect the likes of Arianna Huffington to understand that.

Manufacturing Rights in Colorado

2008-07-21T13:21:02-06:00

One of the more loathsome hallmarks of political correctness is its insidious ability to work its way into our civic fabric at the local level. Because its adherents depend upon the concomitant of pre-emptive capitulation for its success, they have advanced their curious cause in ways never suspected just a decade ago.

Here in Colorado, in response to the Western Colorado Atheists' charge of breaching the Establishment clause of the First Amendment, the Grand Junction city council has conceded it may be breaking the law by not featuring a nearly limitless multiplicity of prayers in advance of their meetings.

In Colorado Springs, despite the fact that the city council has historically brought in a variety of ministers, as well as rabbis, and priests, it won't satisfy the likes of Becky Hale, a founding member of Freethinkers of Colorado Springs, who complained it's not "all-inclusive," noting that her organization hasn't been included in such efforts because "we're too controversial."

Not surprising, if they were included, she said they wouldn't call it a prayer--God forbid--but rather "a call for people to be their best human selves," a wonderfully secularized and effete assertion that would pointlessly expand the scope (and definition) well beyond the traditions of inter-denominational faiths. But, more critically, it's yet another example of the minority imposing itself on the majority, demanding equal accommodation regardless of whether they're 5 percent of the population or a tenth of one percent.

It also reflects a dim understanding of the First Amendment, which has suffered at the hands of the courts in recent decades, which provides such would-be challenges a wholly undeserved legitimacy. Indeed, inherent in all our rights is a presumption of reasonableness with respect to their interpretation and application. As such, inviting a variety of faiths to lead the prayer before a city council meeting ought to satisfy the clause's demand. Being forced, either by a de facto legal challenge, or the threat thereof, to include secular agencies would constitute a perversion of the process since they aren't truly praying.

However, that's the next logical step, and it would include everything from animal rights zealots to global warming extremists to champions of polygamy, exploiting their hour upon the stage for purely political reasons. None of this should surprise anyone who follows the aggrieved rights and victimhood pathologies that are rampant in America today, where the threat of lawsuits brings down traditions and reinterprets statutes in a conflagration of idiocy.

There's a silent but broad majority of Americans who are both tired and angry as they see their rights ignored and abused, as courts defend presumed victims and those feel their rights have been compromised. Thanks to the liberal establishment, which has seeded our public education system with its offspring and which has put our sensitivities on hair-trigger, we've become a nation of people who take offense at the slightest provocation, whether real or imagined.

It's transformed our civic landscape into a litigious place where trial lawyers and class actions propagate like fruit flies. Beyond the needless expense, this can't be healthy for our collective well-being because it creates challenges to our traditions based on an extremist view of our Constitution and statutes. But because our judges are reliable champions of creating legislation from the bench, they manufacture new law and rights on a daily basis, which only advances these ill-begotten causes and provides them with an unwarranted credibility.

Obama: Taking Fire From the Left

2008-07-18T12:59:05-06:00

As these columns have periodically lamented, old-style Democrats are an endangered lot these days. Indeed, when a life-long stalwart Democrat such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman is compelled to change his party affiliation to "Democrat-Independent," it's tantamount to a diagnosis of political pathology.

There's a piece on today's Huffington Post by Roberto Lovato, which is yet another dyspeptic reminder of how far to the left the party has migrated. The quote below is emblematic of precisely how distorted the lens of liberalism has become:

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney deserve much of the blame for the militaristic depredations that threaten the country and planet alike. But we ignore at our own risk the vast and well-rooted networks of political, military and economic interests that have long benefited from and enabled the machinations of empire. Our failure to push Obama to attack rather than promote U.S. militarism and empire will most certainly leave us vulnerable to a new era of "change," an era driven by the hydra-headed global dragon of free trade and militarism.

Makes you want to reach for a drink. We could adduce the fact that after the thorough-going failure of President Clinton's Agreed Framework with North Korea, that manifest threat to civilization has been effectively defanged by 6-party talks (not the unilateral talks Clinton championed); we could celebrate the fact that Saddam Hussein is deposed and dead, along with his two henchmen sons, and that the hundreds of thousands of innocents he murdered have been avenged, not to mention the fact that Iraq is on track towards a government of incipient self-determination; we could discuss the stunning fact that in the seven years since 9/11 America has not been attacked again, something on 9/12 that no one would have believed.

But since one of the hallmarks--symptoms?--of modern liberalism is its imperviousness to reason, none of this matters, because their policy goals always trump facts. Lovato and his "machinations of empire" is stuff right out of Noam Chompsky's active imagination and is a curious observation since, according to The Freedom House, more people worldwide live in some degree of freedom than ever before. Moreover, it's an irrefutable fact that the United States, with its remarkable ability to project soft and hard power, economically and militarily, is responsible for a large measure of those successes.

So, why do the Lovatos of the world seem so eager to excoriate President Bush, whose foreign policy has so positively impacted the world? Why, indeed, do they lament globalization and free trade that has lifted places like Eastern Europe from the depths of despair into the civilized world of economic vitality? Simply stated, they are convinced that capitalism is hostile to the common good, because, among other sins, it's not perfect. They are also in league with the European vision of a robust Statist influence in our lives, which is curious because their infatuation is out of sync with France and Germany, who are moving aggressively to inhibit public sector influence, embracing everything from pension reform to changing the culture that gave birth to the strangling 35-hour work week.

Coupled with their anachronistic polity that denies the existence of evil and insists that despots are on a par with leaders of free nations--because, as you know, the former are merely the by-products of America's imperialist, hegemonic depredations--the unavoidable result is that everything that was historically lionized about America is now fundamentally flawed. Indeed, in the post-modern universe Lovato inhabits there are no absolutes, moral or civic, which places democracy in supreme jeopardy.

But, as the election moves into full swing, it's encouraging to know that the neolithic left will be nipping at Obama's heels, sleepless in its pursuit of a socialist America, which can only leverage moderate Democrats and Independents into McCain's camp, which, of course, we welcome.

Bush: Economic Truths & Falsehoods

2008-07-17T13:44:01-06:00

A letter in today's Colorado Springs Gazette prompted this reply from ClearCommentary.com:

Perpetuating the left’s pet myth that President Bush’s economic policies have been disastrous, letter writer Charles Merritt darkly warns that Sen. McCain has pledged to continue the Bush legacy (“Public, McCain mimic Bush in profligate spending habits,” July 17).

As President Reagan correctly observed, the president can’t spend a dime.  Indeed, all appropriations bills originate with members of Congress and only they have the power of the purse.  Therefore, if Congress is legislating a diet rich in pork it must be because their constituents support it, which is their craven way of ensuring re-election.

A second fabrication, compliments of liberals and their foot soldiers in the mainstream media, is that the Bush tax cuts favored the so-called ‘rich. During the much-vaunted Clinton years a single income earner at $30,000 paid $3,157 in federal taxes, while under Bush that figure is $2,756; a married couple with $50,000 in income paid $5,085 and $4,012, respectively.  You can view the rest of the rates at The Tax Foundation, but the conclusion is unavoidable: Low to moderate income earners have faired much better under Bush than Clinton, and Bush even removed millions of low wager-earners from the tax rolls entirely.

Unlike Sen. Obama, who has pledged to increase income and capital gains taxes, and who plans to hobble the research and development efforts of petroleum producers with a so-called windfall tax, Sen. McCain understands that lower taxes and regulation lead to economic growth for all income earners.

Another specious argument is that low income earners are permanently mired in poverty.  A Treasury Department study last year demonstrated that nearly 58% of filers who were in the poorest income group in 1996 had moved into a higher income category by 2005, and that nearly 25% jumped into the middle or upper-middle income groups, with 5.3% having made it all the way to the highest quintile.

So, if you want higher taxes and lower growth, by all means support Obama; but if you want lower taxes and greater opportunity for economic success, McCain is the clear choice.

After Obama: Hope for a Return to Truman, Jackson & Kennedy

2008-07-16T13:05:23-06:00

In January of 2007, Barack Obama introduced legislation in the senate that would mandate the removal of all U.S. troops by March 2008. Since then he has revised his views on Iraq to neatly comport with changes on the ground, all the while denying progress has been made. Now that fifteen of the eighteen benchmarks have been met and Iraq is gearing up for its fall elections, Obama has again re-scripted his policy recommendations.

When circumstances change it's a sign that we understand the inner mechanisms of the issue at hand when we adjust our thinking. However, it's important to gauge to degree to which politics plays a role in these exercises, which means reverse engineering Obama's thinking and divining his contemporaneous motivations.

With respect to Iraq, the unavoidable conclusion is that his policy modifications were the equivalent of a gallows conversion and were therefore motivated by political realities and expedience, not merely a revision at the edges of an otherwise unchanged policy. Indeed, Obama's early positions reveal a deep and abiding ignorance of warfare and the dovetailed way in which a loss in Iraq would tarnish America's honor and vilify the sacrifice our military personnel made who perished there.

More broadly, Obama's insistence early in his campaign that we must leave Iraq belies the reality that Iran and al-Qaeda would decimate innocents while transforming it into a terrorist stronghold. It's that kind of unadultlike thinking that has led to the unnecessary loss of millions throughout history. Obama and his leftist acolytes seem determined to remain in their intellectual bell jar which is impervious to the lessons of war, of tyrants, and how best to defeat them.

Now Obama appears poised to bring the same misguided thinking on Iraq to Iran, where he would employ "aggressive diplomacy." It's quintessential State Department reasoning that lacks any hint of intellectual humility to suggest that his Harvard education will outwit the likes of Ahmadinejad, someone who has demonstrated his willingness to lay waste to Israel. Although diplomacy is an important component of our approach to Iran, it's only a stop on the way to serious threats, because that is the only language they understand.

In his most recent remarks about leaving Iraq, Obama continued to criticize our efforts there while continuing to insist that or resources should have been focused on Afghanistan. First, his thinking might be more credible if he had spent any time in either country, but instead his 'fact-finding' has consisted of discussions with aids and advisors. And, despite his serial revisions, the word "win" remains absent from his lexicon.

It taxes the imagination to think that millions of Americans will vote for this man, someone whose resume wouldn't even qualify him for a cabinet position, much less the presidency. It's a sign of collective desperation among Democrats, of the pathological way in which their hatred of President Bush has marred their judgment, and of their dim understanding of history.

If Obama represents the best the left has to offer, his candidacy may be an early warning that the decrepit and decayed policies of modern liberalism might finally be headed for extinction. In which case, we ight see a new generation of Democrats, one in the vein of Truman, Jackson, and Kennedy. That would be healthy for both parties.

Tony Snow: A Life Well Lived, An Example for All

2008-07-14T13:06:12-06:00

As we wend our way through life we all instinctively look for examples of the right way to behave. We look to moral exemplars whose lives seem informed by a more adroit touch in areas that matter most. Those include the consistent application of principle to our behavior, how we treat our fellow man, grappling with complex moral decisions, issues of God and faith, and, finally, how we deal with our own mortality.

The death of Tony Snow last Saturday provides the opportunity to explore those crucial elements because his was a life worthy of emulation. First, read the commencement address he gave last year at Catholic University, which contains pithy insights into this conundrum called life, and, for a man who was dying of cancer, the kind of faithful resilience that is as commendable as it is rare.

His speech contains many glimpses into the timeless treasure of human thought, its paradoxes, its yearnings, and it parses for those who require it, the uniquely unhelpful way in which culture can vitiate our thinking. Indeed, moral choices, when viewed in the context of our secularized culture, become opaque and vexing, which can lead to dark decisions that might haunt us for years.

Snow's advice takes us back to our childhood observations of the world:

We know in our hearts, intuitively, from our first years as children, that the universe unfolds with a discernible order and that moral laws, far from being convenient social conventions, are firm and unalterable. They predate us, they will survive us.

That's not the romanticized or psychologized gloss on our human condition that provides more comfort than direction that we're used to getting. That segues us to the special human yearning for something greater than ourselves, faith. Quoting St. Paul, Snow tell us:

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

He moves into the world of love, which is easily the most abused word in our modern world. It's not the stuff of romance novels or adolescent expressions of unconditional devotion, but rather the desire to build, through work and sacrifice, through deeds not words, and to create in the process, the bonds that are at the core of our shared humanity. Whether it's the love between a man and a woman through holy matrimony or the selfless acts of charity for someone in need, it's what takes us away from ourselves and draws us nearer to God.

According to friends and colleagues Snow exemplified all of these virtues, and, remarkably, they shone brightly through the obvious pain and daunting challenges he faced as he fought cancer, which he beat once but which returned, more vicious than ever.

None of us can know whether we would have the conviction and the perseverance to maintain the sunny disposition Snow did, to tell us, as his death approached, that he wouldn't trade the last year for anything, because the love and support he received strengthened his faith in ways he could neve have imagined.

May God bless and keep you Mr. Snow, and may He bless your family.

Phil Gramm is Right: We're a Nation of Whiners

2008-07-13T14:20:43-06:00

One of the profound problems with American culture is its blinkered collectivism, which instinctively looks to a tacit consensus for every problem, from challenges at work to the cost of gas. When problems that are rightfully the charge of individuals become immersed in a culture of whiners, the spur that historically sparked personal and professional innovation is extinguished.

Former Senator Phil Gramm was pilloried last week for stating the obvious, which is that our nation has become a sea of complainers who seem to relish moaning about their fate, fully confident in their inability to do anything about it.

Indeed, we're encouraged to compare and hold culpable those more successful than ourselves, with CEOs, who, in the court of cultural opinion, receive 'obscene salaires,' we reflexively vilify corporations, paradoxically, those that are most successful, because, according to the mainstream media and all cultural signposts, they must have achieved it through duplicity or illicit activities. In truth, barring putative illegalities, the worst sin a corporation can commit is to fail to make a profit, which, of course many do. America's auto industries are a sorry case in point, a study in gross mismanagement and myopia, yet they seem immune from criticism that can be legitimately laid at their doorstep.

Instead, we drag pharmaceutical and oil companies to the edge of town and put them in stocks, companies that spend the vast majority of their profits on research and development, which save lives and power our automobiles respectively. We excoriate financial lenders for merely pursuing a Congressionally authorized new market--customers with sub-optimal credit--because our elected officials recalibrated the definition of credit-worthiness, for the laudable, if wholly misinformed goal of home-ownership.

We further collectivize our consensual economic angst by blaming others for the fact that we may not be fully prepared to meet the challenges of a global economy, that our job doesn't pay 'enough,' or that the costs of raising a family are prohibitive. Our national savings rate has plummeted in the past two decades with people spending more, as a percentage of their income, on cars, dining out, and vacations, than ever before--and complaining (read, whining) to anyone who will listen.

It's a pathetic thing to see adults acting like children, but that's precisely what we're witnessing. Of course, no one likes the fact that gas prices have doubled in two years, that people who make imprudent mortgage decisions are in pain, but what ever happened to that sense of American resolve, the virtue of individual responsibility, which sustained previous generations through the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Depression and two World Wars?

Why have we become habituated complainers who externalize the source of our individual problems and who look to collectivist solutions from politicians and bureaucrats, the people least capable of providing real and lasting improvements in our lives?

Americans across the political spectrum ought to agree with the fundamental premise that we must own our challenges, our missteps, our setbacks, which means the rewards we realize, be they meager or great, are of our own creation, not the product of the blunt hand of government, printing 'stimulus' checks, drafting Draconian regulations to punish the stigmatized industry du jour, or protracting unemployment checks, all of which diminish individual initiative and reinforce the utterly false notion that we're owed something.

It's unquestionably too much to ask McCain, much less Obama, to speak the truth to us about this, because whether it's reforming Social Security or Medicare, or reducing the deficit, we've apparently convinced ourselves that it's just not a message we want to hear. At least that's what we're continually told through our mainstream media, our entertainment outlets, public school system and academia.

So, if our politicians seem desperate to federalize every problem, regardless of its magnitude or rightful ownership, it's because every signal we've telegraphed reaffirms that we don't want to hear the truth.

It's apparently much easier to whine.

Alec Baldwin, Obama, and the Hip Left

2008-07-11T13:05:32-06:00

For reasons that can only be parsed by psychiatrists or anthropologists, Americans sit up and listen when an artist, in particular, an actor, speaks. Or, in the case of Alec Baldwin, one who writes, in this instance, on the Huffingtonpost web site. It's curious that a man who earns money pretending he's someone else, regardless of how convincing he might be, should command our attention, much less our respect in areas so obviously outside his scope of expertise.

Yet here is Baldwin, in a quote that mangles and abuses the English language, making the case that Senator McCain just isn't up to the job of president:

The problem with John McCain is not his age, it's his condition. McCain's true lack of the abundant energy required to function as president, even performing the job on the most basic level, is what must be questioned.

If it weren't nonsensical, this would absurd, because there's simply no evidence that McCain lacks the energy required to perform as president. Moreover, it reflects the intellectually effete arguments that emanate from the left, which seem frozen in a kind of adolescent level of sophistication. Baldwin takes it to the next level of self-embarrassment:

McCain's ideas are too old, not the Senator himself. McCain's view of this country, his view of the world, are too old.

Whether it's Baldwin or Penn or any number of other actors who strut and fret their hour upon the stage, when they venture into politics, we're treated to the full gamut of their acting skills, which are long on emotional appeal and short on evidence. McCain is a man whose values are traditional, which is to say, they're instinctively conservative. His many ventures down the maverick path notwithstanding, he is a fiscal conservative and is pro-military. If those are 'old ideas,' we wish they could be cloned to his ninety-nine colleagues in the senate.

What Bladwin is referring to, of course, is that McCain isn't hip, he lacks that upper-West-side cultural panache, that cutting edge smartness that the academics and artists share. It's just not hip to be against the destruction of innocent life in the womb, to believe, as have millions of Americans over the past two centuries, that we have the right to bear arms, and that the best way to provide economic opportunity is through lower taxes and regulation. For Baldwin, Obama, and their liberal legions, those are 'old ideas' that reflect an 'old' view of the world.

That takes us to the American exceptionalism that is the bane of the left, which, in their view, is most obnoxiously expressed by our redoubtable ability to project power, economically and militarily. In their post-modern world, where Castro is on the same moral and political plane as Reagan, where America's alleged foibles far outweigh the good it has done, McCain's ideas and world view are out-of-step. It's Obama who is hip when he says he'll sit down with the leaders of Syria, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, without conditions--now that's the chaos theory level of diplomacy that's way ahead of the curve.

What's disturbing is that because so many Americans are so deeply embedded in a culture that rewards ignorance and punishes wisdom, and, that is convinced that everything vital to life exists in the cultural petri dish they inhabit, they enthusiastically soak up this palaver from Baldwin and other leftists.

Arguing against it makes you seem, in the eyes of the cognoscenti, well, 'old,' and that's just not cool.

The FISA Fix: Horrors for the Left

2008-07-10T13:16:00-06:00

The denial of history has always been a threat to humans, in large part because it consigns them to repeating it. The latest disease in this genus of cultural pathologies is less a matter of denial than ignorance. A prime example is the left's response to the senate's approval of the revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) law, which governs the communication intercepts known as warrantless wiretaps.

Most Americans correctly understand that when faced with asymmetrical warfare in the form of Islamic extremists, a shadowy, omnipresent enemy sans uniforms, special measures must be taken to safeguard the nation. Stipulating that there are checks and balances in the law, we can be reasonably assured that the measures will enhance our protection while not compromising the rights of innocents. Yet the left has become apoplectic over this, confident as they are that civil rights are being routinely abridged. Writing in Salon, Glenn Greenwald characterizes the Democrats who supported the bill as cowards and turncoats.

For those who have waded through these tiresome diatribes, one theme is always apparent: Without so much as a scintilla of evidence they make sweeping and politically self-serving accusations and smugly conclude that the president is exceeding his authority, and that our government is compromising our rights. He then excavates the Church hearings back in the early 70s which the left predictably trots out to showcase an example of government abuse.

For Greenwald and his liberal soul-mates evidence of wrongdoing, no matter how slight or incidental define the norm which progressively recalibrates their regulatory reflex such that it's on permanent hair-trigger. Since the scent of conspiracy is congenital, they smell it everywhere which blunts their judgment and therefore their credibility.

It's a fascinating study in paradoxes when these people become exercised over non-issues such as warrantless wiretaps and celebrate habeas corpus rights for alien combatants on foreign soil, but sleep-walk their way through the fact that then nation hasn't been attacked in seven years. Credit, you see, is filtered through their refined political bias which is on autopilot, relieving them of the burden of making informed decisions concerning public policy.

Excoriating President Bush is a facile exercise, a parlor game to entertain like-minded liberals. That it's an intellectually hermetic process is conveniently ignored, because the goal trumps the truth. There's a reason a number of moderate Democrats voted for this bill and that's because they understand this threat is real and that modest concessions that include measures to obviate encroachment into the lives of innocent citizens is reasonable and, indeed, necessary.

Would that the Greenwalds of the world had the common sense to grasp this, but that's yet another virtue that's rapidly moving from endangered to extinction.

Rep. Robert Wexler: Naive, Ignorant, or Both?

2008-07-09T13:32:13-06:00

Although living in an information vacuum would be a novelty, for a member of the House of Representatives it's hardly a badge of honor. Yet, when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), writing in the Huffington Post, is a textbook example of someone who appears hopelessly naive, ignorant, or both. Like so many of his colleagues on the left, and their minions in the media, they seem to have forgotten that for the past two plus decades, the U.S. and its allies have made numerous attempts to leverage Iranian cooperation, using every tool at their disposal.

Indeed, Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of State, is a seasoned diplomat and a tough negotiator, yet for years his efforts have yielded no measurable progress. Now Wexler is apoplectic about House Concurrent Resolution 362, which he fears might put the U.S. on a track to war with Iran because it "expresses the sense of Congress regarding the threat Iran's nuclear pursuit poses to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital national security interests of the United States." Talk about going out on a limb.

He prefers his plan, which is to "...urge the Bush administration to pursue a policy to place additional economic, political and diplomatic pressure on Iran as part of an international endeavor to prevent Tehran from moving forward on its nuclear program." He quotes New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the adroit and inveterate dove, who argues, "When you have leverage, talk. When you don't have leverage, get some -- by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-à-vis Iran."

Policy differences aside, how can otherwise intelligent people argue that the U.S. hasn't aggressively worked to create incentives for Iran, dating, in fact, to the Clinton years. The problem, as anyone with a modicum of knowledge about this conundrum understands, is that Iran has never demonstrated a susceptibility to incentives, regardless of whether they're "too tempting or frightening to ignore." Indeed, the opacity of their thinking, immunity to commonly understood incentives and disincentives, and indifference to traditional forms of dialog, renders the normal mechanisms of diplomacy and sanctions effectively useless.

It's Wexler's kind of anemic strategic thinking that, if followed, will lead to a protracted and unproductive process which will allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. We've seen what dilatory measures produced in the twelve years of Hussein's flouting of the 17 U.N. Resolutions and Wexler and his liberal brethren appear poised to reprise that dark chapter in our history.

It may astonish you, but many liberals are convinced that the world is less safe without Saddam Hussein lording over Iraq. You see, the appeasement gene is hard-wired in liberals and so the thought that a free Iraq might be a stabilizing influence in the region, that it might actually make Iran easier to deal with, is undermined by their demonstrable love of laissez-faire policies. In their view, it's best to just let dictators be dictators, which is why so many in the State Department are enamored of Castro.

We can only hope that the hard left continues its march into political oblivion, because it's clear that most Americans understand Iran is a pernicious threat, and that given Europe's uniquely unhelpful behavior vis a vis sanctions, the only language Ahmadinejad understands is the kind backed my the threat of military action.

Obama's Awkward Race to the Center

2008-07-08T12:53:08-06:00

One of the prequalifying conditions for the presidency is the desire to distinguish one's ideas from the field, to outline a uniquely visionary platform to capture the electorate's imagination. There are defined thresholds in this process, beginning with securing the nomination and the transition to the general election, which betrays either a deft or a daft touch. Inevitably, however, the candidate is obliged to tame his ambition, and most, if not all, end up with a boldly uninspired platform.

Senator Obama is hewing closely to this well-rehearsed script, and early evidence is materializing that he's irritating his base as he finds his footing in the general election cycle. To wit, the reliably liberal Bob Herbert of the New York Times fires the first mainstream salvo over Obama's political bow, complaining that the candidate is stumbling over himself as he races to the center.

Herbert's accusations are not without merit, beginning with Obama's "pandering to evangelicals" by promising to expand funding for religious-based initiatives, his support for the death penalty in child rape cases, and, of course, the left's most stridently misunderstood issue, guns. Add to that litany of horrors his ominous pledge to "continue to refine" his policy on the war in Iraq and you have the picture of a liberal apostate.

However, Herbert's conclusions are rather prosaic, noting that Obama is taking his base for granted, is searching for centrist votes, and the like. Although correct, they're the conventional explanations that have the banal ring of truth but shed little light on this particular candidate. A hint of that is contained in this quote from his editorial:

But Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most.

You would be able to listen to him without worrying about what the meaning of “is” is.

The less than oblique reference to Bill Clinton provides the key to the significance of Obama's radical shift to the center. Obama correctly understands that he must re-create Mr. Clinton's appeal as a "new kind of Democrat," because the party has become a stronghold for neolithic liberals. He also understands that language matters and so will emulate Clinton, the master of doublespeak and political artifice.

The problem with his game plan, which is already expressing itself in his occasional drift from the centrist script, is that it's a political bridge too far. Indeed, Obama's post-political, transitional politics is manifestly at odds with his record, and, crucially, as he begins his shift to the center, he periodically stumbles because his obvious intelligence aside, his unguarded comments about the war in Iraq or the 2nd Amendment aren't sufficiently well coded in liberal-speak to pass muster with his base, which is to say they don't know when he's being truthful or merely padding his arguments for votes--the wink and nod routine.

But perhaps more profoundly, it belies the notion that his policies are based on inviolable principles, that he won't merely be another politician who will jettison historically hallowed positions when their utility ceases to produce the desired results. That's a wholly legitimate concern for the Herberts of the world because what each voter yearns for, quite regardless of party, is someone in whom they can rely to carry the banner of their values, if not all of them, at least the core values.

At this moment, there appears to be evidence that Obama's core values are more malleable than most liberals, perhaps even Democrats would like. He's clearly testing the edge of envelope, and if Herbert is correct, he's already found it. The question is whether he's moved enough to the center to capture the votes necessary to win, and in doing so, whether his final platform looks anything like the one he ran on at the outset.

The Cost of Independence

2008-07-04T09:46:39-06:00

An unfortunate by-product of the freedoms that are so deeply rooted in American culture is that for many of us the real meaning of Independence Day has been lost amid the omnipresent flag icons, parades, and barbecues. Cast a retrospective eye to the post-Soviet states that for the past two decades have struggled to gain their footing as autonomous members of the free world and you have a fledgling glimpse of what it's like to live under the iron hand of ruthless totalitarianism.

Or consider the civic anguish transpiring before our eyes in Zimbabwe as a dictator desperately fights to cling to the reins of his self-imposed power. Given our collective assumption that the democratic paradigm of governance has its roots in an unassailable universality, there are far too many examples of regimes that are obviously taking a course hostile to the common good.

It's against that backdrop that the American experiment, whose roots are so deeply embedded in a civic framework that guarantees our freedoms, that many of us seem to have forgotten that our unprecedented advancements weren't achieved in a vacuum. Indeed, from Bunker Hill to Gettysburg to Iwo Jima, the lives of untold Americans who fought for those timeless freedoms should never be forgotten.

Independence should always be viewed within the informed historical context of what America might have become had our leaders and people capitulated when those who would challenge our freedoms were at our doorstep. Today we have a different kind of challenge, not a uniformed enemy on a conventional battlefield, but a foe with a radical, extremist ideology that seeks to destroy our very way of life. To compound the challenge, many among us don't recognize this enemy since a predicate of contemporary culture is that multiculturalism masks both good and evil and our reticence to judge permits every form of pestilence to grow among us with absolute impunity.

So as we watch the parades that celebrate our nation's independence or enjoy food with family and friends, let's not loose sight of the fact that every generation faces what appears to be unique challenges, and that the failure of any one of them to rise to the occasion might prove perilous, if not to our great Republic, to the values and principles that underwrite it.

It's the slow degradation of those principles that are arguably the most insidious threat we face, and it's clear our enemy understands this. It's because we have always understood that independence and all it means exacts a special cost that we have always prevailed. The question today is whether that cost is still deemed worthy of our blood and treasure.

May God bless you and yours on this Independence Day.

Prof. Bacevich's Platform for Obama

2008-07-01T13:30:27-06:00

Writing in today's Boston Globe, Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international affairs at Boston University, presents the left's case against the Bush Administration's legacy. It's a lengthy piece you're welcome to wade through, but the result faithfully mirrors liberalism's curioiusly scripted view of the past seven years. Absent from his condemnation is any hint of understanding that President Bush was heir to his predecessor's missteps and outright failures.

Bacevich begins with a writ of charges against Mr. Bush, which range from his declaration that this is an 'age of terror,' to instituting a policy of pre-emption against radical Islam, to supporting 'power projection' as the most reliable foil against would-be foes, all of which clarifies that every action Bush has taken was not only logical in terms of safeguarding America, but was the direct result of the willful indifference President Clinton demonstrated in dealing with this nascent enemy.

Charging Mr. Bush with "Enhancing the prerogatives of the imperial presidency on all matters pertaining to national security" has the catchy populist ring of an executive out of control. Until you consider his alleged sins, among which are warrantless wiretaps for suspected or known al-Qaeda operatives, which a sizeable majority of Americans support. Moreover, the charge of "expanding the national security state" would be laughable were it not palpably naive. What, pray tell, would the professor have us do when three percent of Muslims worldwide (or 1.4 million) have sworn the destruction of the United States?

The only true statement in his paean to liberalism is that his litany of criticism "has yet to garner mainstream attraction," and it won't because Bush's strategic blunders in Iraq aside, most Americans want him to aggressively protect the nation against radical Islamists and, unlike liberal academic elites such as Bacevich, they understand the threat is real.

For Bacevich, the 90s might well not have existed, since he seems to be conveniently overlooking the incubational process in those years leading up to 9/11. It's that historical vacuum and denial of unequivocal patterns that proved, for those not predisposed to filter them out, that the West generally, and the U.S. specifically, is in the crosshairs of a pernicious and savage foe, the Islamic extremists.

Sometime during the liberals' rush to eviscerate our core traditional values from the civic landscape, the novel idea that a president is obligated to protect the nation became vilified. Along with stigmatizing authority and judgment, the left has successfully undermined the Truman-Kennedy-Reagan strategy of facing our enemies rather than appeasing them.

It's a view of the world that fictionalizes evil and leads the likes of Bacevich to assert that Obama can advance his candidacy by stating such banalities as "Bush has put the country on a path pointing to permanent war...". Imagine the response in early 1944, when the outcome of the war was still uncertain, had either party staked out a position with a charge such as that against President Roosevelt.

Bacevich leaves us with this final recommendation for Obama:

By articulating a set of principles that will safeguard the country's vital interests, both today and in the long run, at a price we can afford while preserving rather than distorting the Constitution, Obama can persuade Americans to repudiate the Bush legacy and to choose another course.

Unburdened with the responsibility of defining that set of principles is just in a day's work for a history professor who lives in a consequence-free world. Indeed, rather than being obligated to define precisely how President Bush has "distorted the Constitution," Bacevich is free to merely assert it, which confirms that for the left, how one feels about a policy supersedes its merits.

Our nation's political system is predicated on two strong, opposing parties with clearly articulated and credible policy positions. But when one party's ideas have failed to keep intellectual pace with the world, in particular in the area of foreign affairs, it's not only unhealthy for the electorate, it's probable that it will be denied the reigns of power.