Political liberalism refers to the respective political traditions of the liberal parties around the world. The same phrase is also used to refer to the later political philosophy of John Rawls.

Liberal traditions vary but are usually a blend of aspects of social democracy, though of a moderate reformist kind as opposed to revolutionary socialism, and selected aspects of classical liberalism, especially an attachment to a sphere of individual liberties, though without any strong principle in circumscribing government intervention. Liberals usually think of themselves as progressive rather than conservative, and as moderate and reformist rather than radical or revolutionary. They will defend a democratic constitution that guarantees civil rights, as opposed to monarchies, aristocracies, or otherwise non-democratic systems.

The specifics of liberal agendas vary considerably from country to country and over time, as social standards, and cultural attitudes deal directly with some issues regarding personal freedom.

As in all political battles, what is apparent does not resemble the underlying political mechanics, and all political issues should be taken with a grain of salt. Thus, many attempts by liberals and conservatives to characterize each other, are more akin to a public stage-play based on symbolic idealisms than on the real workings of compromise in government. Compromises and the personal interest of politicians mean that political discourse are taylored to pander to expected voters and fit their common prejudice, whereas promises are forgotten once the party holds power.

This distinction of political liberalism carries a caveat, which is that in the absence of strong principles characteristic of successful power-seeking endeavours, there is no possible strong definition liberty, and liberalism will refer to the vague common prejudices of the day. The countries where liberals have stronger principles are those where they are farther removed from any contention of holding power.

Great Britain

Originally known as Whigs, from the Seventeenth Century up to the mid Nineteenth Century, the British liberals were reformists who would stand against the privileges of the King and the landed aristocracy. They alternated with the conservative Tories between government and opposition, up to World War I. After the War, their influence was undermined by the social democrat Labour Party, who took over as the main reformist/popular party as opposed to the Conservatives. The doctrine of the party evolved a lot throughout history, matching concerns of the day. For historical details, see the article about Whiggism.

Nowadays, the party is generally regarded as being on the centre-left, combining support for free trade and civil liberties with an endorsement of the Welfare State and social democracy. Officially, they are known today as Liberal Democrats.

United States

In recent decades the most common use of the term liberal in the USA is greatly at variance from the use of the term in the rest of the world, and with the historical meaning of the word in the USA through the mid 20th century.

Some think that conservatives have been successful in undermining progressives as ‘liberals’, by deliberate public relations campaigns, through repeated use of the word, ‘liberal’, in ways that associate it with irresponsibility.

Some independent leftists and libertarians who dislike the USA’s two leading parties allege that since liberal means being in favor of liberty, both parties are telling the truth when they deny that they are liberals.

In the United States, the label of liberal is sometimes used as derogatory or politically undermining label. It can imply a overly free-spirited, unaccountable, and compromised character, or someone in favor of vast and needless government intrusion into peoples lives.

USA Conservatives in recent years, often those of the Republican Party, sometimes use liberal as an subversive adjective for anyone who is a member of or supports any policy of the Democratic Party.

Consequently, while far right wing politics often are debated and voiced in the political world, liberalism has been associated with far-left politics, whose agendas are often voided.

Twentieth century American political liberalism traditionally held many of the following views:

* Support for the rights of women and minorities, particularly racial and religious minorities, the disabled, and homosexuals. Some further support such programs as affirmative action and multi-lingual education.

* Support for abortion rights.

* Support for government social programs such as welfare, medical care, unemployment benefits, and retirement programs.

* Support for strong environmental regulations.

* Support for trade unions and strong regulation of business.

* Support for animal rights.

* Support for gun control.

* Opposition to the death penalty.

This resembled what in other countries was sometimes referred to as social democracy. However, unlike European social democrats, American liberals never widely endorsed nationalization of industry. In addition, in recent years the term has become somewhat confused,as the term has been applied to a broad spectrum of viewpoints.As the United States Democratic Party, the standard bearer of American liberals, adopted of the more centrist outlook of the Democratic Leadership Council,the term “liberal” has become associated with more centrist candidates and issues who, for example, support the death penalty or take pro-business positions. For this reason, many Americans on the left of the political spectrum prefer to use the term progressive to describe their views, disassociating themselves from contemporary mainstream liberalism.

Some people define liberals as those who support the use of government power to promote equality, but generally not to promote order. They also support more government intervention than conservatives. For example, liberals are more likely to promote affirmative action than to ban homosexual marriage. This definition is generally true, especially considering the main supporting points given above. However, this definition can be incorrect in some cases; for example, most liberals support gun control.

Liberalism

Liberalism may be used to describe one of several ideologies that claims individual liberty to dissent from orthodox tenets or established authorities in political or religious matters, in contrast to conservatism.

1. One usage of the term is for a tradition of thought, that tries to circumscribe the limits of political power, and to define inalienable individual rights. This usage is more common in continental Europe.

See: classical liberalism or libertarianism.

2. Another, less common usage, is to denote the tradition of various liberal parties. However, though said liberal parties were originally founded on the tradition above, they significantly diverged from it since they came to power in the 19th century, and liberal parties around the world are now based on a variety of unrelated ideologies, so the ideological content of the word depends on the geographical context.

See: political liberalism.

3. Another, common usage, denotes the ideology of social-democracy, as defended by the liberal party in UK since the early 20th century, under the influence of Fabianism. It is with this background that Keynes claimed to be liberal in the 1930s, and that many American leftists claimed to be liberal. This usage is very popular in the United States.

See: new liberalism.

4. A limited usage is to denote the tradition shared by authors like John Locke or John Stuart Mill, up to the mid 19th century.

5. Some commentators try to distinguish in the “liberal philosophy” (which meaning between 1, 3, or 4 remaining unspecified) a “political liberalism” from an “economical liberalism”. These dichotomies reflect more about the ideology of those who make such a dichotomy, than about the ideology of anyone else.

6. In addition to the political usages above, the term “liberal” is also used in theology to refer to people who hold to views which depart from their religion’s traditional beliefs.

See: liberal theology.

The common meaning of terms evolve: whereas the word “liberal” was clearly associated to meaning 1 (classical liberalism) in the 19th century, it has come to commonly have meaning 3 (new liberalism) in the US after World-War II, and particularly as McCarthyism made the word socialism difficult to bear, and left-wingers massively adopted the name “liberal”. For this reason, US classical liberals adopted the name “libertarian”, which leads to other confusion with European connotations of the term. Recently, the word “liberal” has been so much used as a derogatory term by US conservatives that many US liberals (meaning 3) prefer to shun the word “liberal” and call themselves “progressive”. In the UK, meanings 1, 2, 3 coexist, since liberalism as an ideology will be understood by scholars as classical liberalism, whereas there is an active political party named the Liberal Democrat Party, and meaning 3 is imported from the US, including the derogatory usage by conservatives. However, the derogatory connotation is weak, and social liberals from both the left- and right-wing continue to use “liberal” and “illiberal” to describe themselves and their opponents.

Progressivism

Progressive is a term often used by those on the political left to describe their beliefs. This term is preferred by many over the more traditional label in American politics, liberal, because of the association of ‘liberal’ with the centrist politics of many Democratic Party politicians (such as Al Gore) in recent years. The term “progressive” is thus used to avoid confusion between the politicized term “liberal” and genuine philosophical views focused on social change.

“Progressive” is used in place of liberal to best describe philosophical ideals that are opposite and contrasted to those held by conservatives. Political ideas that advocate rapid social change, are likely to be progressive, while conservative ideas tend to reflect an adherence to established norms and support for (or furtherance of) status quo interests. Continuing logically, by this spectrum, a philosophy that advocated reversing course to previous standards would be regressive, though this term is rarely used. Instead, the term reactionary is more frequently used to describe those who wish to adhere to established convention.

This is particularly useful when dealing with philosophical positions, since the liberal tradition has very particular and fixed Enlightenment connotations that may not necessarily have any useful meaning in the Left political scene.

The term has its origin in American politics in the early part of the twentieth century. During this period, known as the Progressive Era, many reforms were enacted. Some third-party presidential candidates ran for office during this time under the Progressive Party label, notably Robert M. La Follette, Sr.. The Progressive Party of Canada also briefly rose to prominence in the 1920s.

This term is also used in Canada, since many liberals are not Liberals, i.e. do not support the centrist Liberal Party of Canada. Not to be confused with the Progressive Conservatives.

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Jihad on Campus: The controversy over a Harvard commencement speaker (NRO, 020606)

Over the past year, Harvard University has been strongly criticized for several questionable decisions relating to the war on terror. Specifically, the school continues to ban ROTC, has allowed terrorist front groups to raise funds on campus, and has named as its undergraduate-commencement speaker a supporter of a Hamas front group who refuses to categorically condemn terrorism.

All of these decisions have one thing in common: They are all highly unrepresentative of the broader Harvard community. All three decisions were made by only one Harvard constituency — sometimes by only a single committee or individual. Having this many scandalous actions taken in a single year indicates a governance problem at the university.

In general, Harvard has given its faculty and individual administrators so much power that other voices, particularly those of students and alumni, are shut out. Worse, those that are empowered have often pursued aggressive political agendas that would be considered fairly extreme in mainstream American society.

For example, most Americans unconditionally support the military, but Harvard continues to ban ROTC. Harvard’s faculty alone is empowered to decide whether and how the university supports this program. The faculty voted to remove ROTC from campus in 1969 to protest the Vietnam War, and to defund the exiled program in 1994 to protest the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

In 1999, however, Harvard’s Undergraduate Council voted to ask the school to bring the program back. This year, after September 11, the Council passed another resolution supporting ROTC in an effort to make their voices heard. There is also widespread alumni support for the program. And now, even Harvard’s president, Lawrence Summers, is believed to desire a significant change in ROTC policy. Nonetheless, Harvard’s anti-military faculty is able to impose its views on the rest of the Harvard community.

Similarly, a committee of only five professors and one administrator was responsible for selecting Zayed Yasin as the school’s undergraduate-commencement speaker. Unlike at other universities, students had no input. Mr. Yasin vocally supports and raised funds for the Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas front group whose assets have been frozen by the Treasury Department. He also publicly supports sending funds to the families of suicide bombers — which the U.S. government considers tantamount to encouraging and supporting terrorism itself.

Not surprisingly, some committee members harbor fairly extreme political views similar to those of Mr. Yasin. The chair of the committee, Richard Thomas, is an active supporter of the effort to divest Harvard’s assets from Israel, such as the school’s equity holdings in IBM, General Electric, and McDonald’s. Another committee member, Dean Michael Shinagel, has said that “it is not a black and white issue that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Hamas has done more good for the people of Palestine than their own government.” Moreover, committee member and university marshal Richard Hunt took the unusual step of encouraging Mr. Yasin to submit his speech — which calls into question the fairness of the process by which Mr. Yasin was chosen over 65 other applicants.

The pattern continues with Harvard’s decision to allow terror-linked groups, which have not had their assets frozen, to fundraise on campus. The dean of extracurricular life, David Illingworth, is empowered to make this decision on his own. In November 2000, the Harvard Islamic Society and the Society of Arab Students sponsored a well-publicized fundraising dinner on campus to support the Holy Land Foundation and the Palestinian Red Crescent. While both groups are linked to terrorism, the Holy Land Foundation — which at that time had not had its assets frozen — was known as a particularly onerous Hamas front group. Though funds were eventually only given to the Red Crescent, after a public outcry, the fundraiser was held for both groups with the acquiescence of the university.

Clearly, Harvard needs to reform how important decisions such as these are made. President Summers should seek ways to implement more inclusive and representative means for deciding issues that affect the whole Harvard community. He should also work to rehabilitate Harvard’s image and distance the school from extremism. We cannot afford to have our most prestigious and visible educational institution appear to be anti-military, or to be accommodating Islamic extremists, in this time of war. This image is not representative of the broader Harvard community and unfairly taints all those in that community. And, given Harvard’s importance in American society and visibility throughout the world, it also sends a damaging mixed signal to our enemies by calling into question our commitment to the war on terror.

For this reason, it is also essential that the media cover these events at Harvard honestly. Unfortunately, they have not been up to the task. Two days ago, for instance, Nightline devoted an entire show to the controversy over the selection of Mr. Yasin as Harvard’s undergraduate-commencement speaker. They made no reference to Mr. Yasin’s ties to and continued support for extremist groups — despite indications to opponents of Mr. Yasin’s selection that they would. Nightline also failed to mention the problems with the process by which he was chosen.

Similarly, the Washington Post, in its coverage of the commencement controversy, noted only that students have criticized Mr. Yasin’s defense of the “humanitarian efforts” of the Holy Land Foundation. This is a shameful whitewashing of the students’ primary complaint: Yasin supports the foundation’s policy of sending funds to the families of suicide bombers. Both Nightline and the Washington Post — along with the New York Times, CNN, and just about every other “mainstream” media outlet — have brazenly ignored the true objections of Mr. Yasin’s opponents, claiming that their objections were based primarily on an emotional response to the word “jihad” rather than on his ties to extremist groups.

As a nation, we need to honestly address and confront the threat of terrorism. We are told by our government that future attacks, on a scale dwarfing Sept. 11, are inevitable. But, in fact, these attacks are being made from within our borders by those living among us. They are only inevitable if we, as a society, fail to understand, condemn, and confront those that — tacitly or explicitly — support terror and violence. The failure of our schools and media institutions to do this will only make the task of defending against terrorism all the more difficult.

— Pat Collins is a second-year student at the Harvard Business School and co-head of the student petition drive protesting the selection of Zayed Yasin as Harvard’s undergraduate-commencement speaker. You can sign the petition at www.harvardpetition.com.

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Welcome Voice? Harvard invites academic who wants Jews “shot dead.” (NRO, 021012)

Harvard University’s English department has invited Tom Paulin — the Oxford poet who has called for the slaughter of U.S. Jews on the West Bank — to deliver “The Morris Gray Lecture” this Thursday (November 14). The invitation was sent to other faculty heads last week, encouraging them to have their students attend, and an announcement was made on the English department’s web page.

Earlier this year Paulin, who lectures in 19th- and 20th-century English literature at Oxford University, told the influential Egyptian paper al-Ahram Weekly that what he described as “Brooklyn-born” Jewish settlers should be “shot dead.” He said: “They should be shot dead. I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them.” He added: “I can understand how suicide bombers feel. . . . I think attacks on civilians in fact boost morale.”

Paulin, who has regularly declared that Israel has no right to exist, and recently resigned from Britain’s ruling Labour party on the grounds that Tony Blair was heading a “Zionist government,” is no doubt entitled to his opinion. But that Harvard University’s English department, whose faculty members include such luminaries as Nobel-prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, has decided to single Paulin out for honor and provide him with a platform from which to influence the young, is another matter altogether. While in general, formal boycotts (even of those who espouse hatred and murder) are undesirable, this invitation is not appropriate. As one dissenting faculty member told me yesterday “We don’t have to invite the Ku Klux Klan to tea either.”

THE ZIONIST SS?

However, this is not just the equivalent of, for example, Harvard inviting a mathematician who happens to belong to the Ku Klux Klan, to give a lecture on mathematics. In Paulin’s case his political and racial views are integral to his work. He has written poems demonizing Jews, such as “Killed in Crossfire,” which was published by The Observer, the highly regarded British Sunday sister paper of the Guardian as their poem of the week in February 2001. (In the poem, Paulin suggested that the Israeli army, whom he refers to as the “Zionist SS,” deliberately gunned down “little Palestinian boys.”)

Like many bigots, if we take Paulin at face value, he seems to genuinely be in denial about his own prejudice. “I am a philo-semite,” he declared in an interview with the Daily Telegraph earlier this year.

Yet even the Guardian — certainly no friend of Israel — has run editorials accusing Paulin of anti-Semitism. In a piece titled “Can Tom Paulin be serious?” (Guardian, April 17, 2002) Rod Liddle implies he is referring to Paulin when he uses the Arabic description for a “naive, deluded, self-righteous, egregious bigot.”

Liddle adds: “The Paulin business shook me out of my Wasp-ish complacency. I’d been inclined to dismiss as paranoid repeated complaints from British Jews that there was a new mood of anti-Semitism abroad: I was wrong. Paulin will undoubtedly claim that his remarks are not anti-Semitic, but merely anti-Zionist. He may even believe that himself. So might the others, generally from the left, who, when cross-examined about their opposition to what they call Zionism, reveal a dark and visceral loathing of Jews.”

In fact Liddle is almost alone on the left in denouncing this form of anti-Semitism, and only a few brave commentators from the right and center, such as Michael Gove at the Times of London (“Darkness encroaches,” May 3, 2002) have spoken out in a similar vein.

SILENT WHEN HEBREW UNIVERSITY WAS BOMBED

British and other academics have been conspicuous by their lack of criticism of Paulin, just as they were conspicuous by their lack of condemnation when the cafeteria at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University — the leading institute of higher education in the Middle East — was blown up in July, and several students and academics killed.

As the Daily Telegraph reported “Several Oxford fellows said yesterday that they had received emails from an American academic urging the English Faculty to replace Mr. Paulin, but they said they had deleted the message seconds later.”

It is highly unlikely that Paulin’s colleagues would have remained so silent had he incited people to murder blacks, homosexuals, or anybody else other than Americans and Jews. Now Oxford will no doubt welcome Harvard’s stamp of endorsement of him.

But whereas a number of academics (including some Jewish ones) have jumped to Paulin’s defense, some non-Jewish students at Oxford have criticized their own university authorities. For example, Sarah Monroe, president of the student union at Balliol College, Oxford, explained to the Guardian on May 7, 2002, that on behalf of Balliol students she had written to the vice chancellor of Oxford, the master of Hertford College (Paulin’s college at Oxford), and to the faculty of English and urged them to “rethink Oxford University’s response.”

“Such public advocation of violence against particular ethnic or political groups is not acceptable and the university should not pussy-foot around saying so,” wrote Monroe.

Oxford University has taken no action against Paulin, however, not even a reprimand, even though Paulin is actually in violation of British law. The Terrorism Act 2000, section 59, states: “A person commits an offence if he incites another person to commit an act of terrorism wholly or partly outside the United Kingdom.” The first such “act of terrorism” cited is murder. Moreover, the act states that “it is immaterial whether or not the person incited is in the United Kingdom at the time of the incitement.”

STAR BILLING

Indeed, despite Paulin’s views, his “star billing” continues to rise. So enamored of the “trendy” British poet and academic are the members of one reasonably successful British rock band (from the northern town of Blackburn), that they have called themselves “Tompaulin.”

BBC television continues to invite Paulin as one of its regular commentators on the arts. (One can only guess at the BBC’s reaction if his remarks had been directed at British Pakistanis rather than at American Jews.)

To al-Ahram, Paulin is that “rare thing in contemporary British culture, ‘the writer as conscience.’” Some Europeans apparently agree. A. N. Wilson, a novelist and columnist for the Daily Telegraph and (London) Evening Standard, has leaped to Paulin’s defense, and noted that “many in this country and throughout the world would echo his views on the tragic events in the Middle East.”

Wilson, who also recently said he had “reluctantly” concluded Israel no longer had a right to exist, argued that Jews escaping Hitler (who Wilson says were lucky to have been allowed into a free country like Britain) should not be so “un-British” as to suppress Paulin’s views or to “pretend that they are criminal merely because some people find them offensive.”

The president of Harvard, Larry Summers, who less than two months ago denounced the spread of anti-Semitism in the guise of anti-Zionism at American universities, is said in private to be “horrified” by the invitation to Paulin, but has made no public comment. But a minority of members of the English faculty is preparing a statement distancing themselves from the invitation to Paulin, which they hope to publish today or tomorrow.

A STRANGE CHOICE BY HARVARD

The Harvard English Department’s choice of Paulin — at a time when Israeli Jews, men, women, and children, American-born or otherwise, are being shot dead almost daily — is truly remarkable. Can they have been completely unaware, for instance, of the well-publicized criticism of Paulin earlier this year by a British judge, who accused him of “lamentable” behavior in bringing an unfounded racial harassment case against another academic?

Judge Playford, QC, ruled that Paulin had made baseless claims of racism against a fellow don, Fred Zimmermann. In a scandal involving Nadeem Ahmed, a Muslim student at Oxford who failed a qualifying exam and then alleged racial discrimination against the university, Paulin’s claim that Zimmerman, one of the examiners, had been “bunged off to Israel to get out of the way” was completely untrue.

The judge found that Paulin and Ahmed had been “mischievous” in their groundless claims of racism. It was “lamentable,” he said, that Paulin had left “cryptic phone messages” with the university authorities and made many insinuations about Zimmermann, who, as it turned out, is neither Jewish nor Israeli, but German.

The previous president of Harvard, Neil Rudenstine, introduced what have come to be known as the Rudenstine rules, whereby students are entitled to study in an environment free of racism and hostility. On Monday some students at Harvard were letting it be known to those academics who invited Paulin how deeply hurtful Paulin’s brand of hatred is to them.

— Tom Gross is former Middle East reporter for the London Sunday Telegraph and New York Daily News. He recently wrote for NRO on the media and “Jeningrad.”

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Student Senate ‘Diversity Seats’ Exclude Conservatives (Foxnews, 021122)

BOSTON — These days, defining diversity seems to be the big issue on campus.

But at Amherst College in Massachusetts, they’re doing more than talking about it. They’re adding “diversity seats” to the 32-member Student Senate for groups that have been “historically silenced.”

Five candidates representing different minority groups applied for the seats, including an international student, a homosexual, a conservative, a Latino and an Asian. All except one were chosen — the conservative candidate.

Ted Hertzberg, the conservative student, says he deserved the seat for the same reasons the others did.

“Conservative students on the Amherst campus are a minority,” he said. “Their views are suppressed. They’re the subject of ridicule and sometimes violence.”

Amherst, which has 1,600 students, has repeatedly been voted the top liberal arts college in the country by U.S. News and World Report, beating out both Harvard and Yale. It’s considered one of the most liberal of the liberal arts schools in the country.

Hertzberg said he never thought he could actually win on a campus where only two out of 160 professors are registered Republicans.

“What the Student Senate has done is symptomatic of the way diversity is defined on campus,” he said. “People see diversity as a matter of race, as a matter of sexual preference, as a matter of origin. Students need to be recognized as individual people and judged on their merit.”

Chris Sorrentino won the seat representing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. He doesn’t see the need for a conservative seat.

“I know conservative students on campus and they talk politically with me and other people,” said Sorrentino. “And I’ve never sensed tension or anything that would be considered a silencing of that voice.”

But Hertzberg has won some allies like Student Senator Ali Hassan, who calls diversity seats undemocratic.

“I also find it kind of offensive because it assumes that here at Amherst people will not vote for someone if they’re part of a minority,” Hassan said.

He’s started a petition and collected enough signatures to force a referendum in January on whether to do away with the seats entirely.

Regardless of the outcome, Amherst students say the debate has been good for campus. It’s become a lesson in the definition of diversity and whether it’s more than just skin deep.

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No More Idealism on the Left (Weekly Standard, 021205)

One of the stranger phenomena of today’s politics: The Left wallows in cynicism, while the Right is full of starry-eyed dreamers.

RECENT EVENTS—September 11, the war in Afghanistan, and the coming war in Iraq—have rigorously tested one of the perennial cliches of politics: that the Left is for idealists. Dreamers. People longing to change the world—and make it better. It’s no longer true. Idealism has become a property of the Right, while the Left has been taken over by low partisan enmity.

Last week, Britain’s Foreign Office released a brief report on human rights in Iraq. Drawing heavily on Amnesty International research, the report told of the estimated 100,000 Kurds Saddam Hussein killed in 1987-88; the estimated 5,000 killed and 10,000 injured by chemical weapons used against the Kurd town of Halabja; the systematic torture and mass killings of many thousands of prisoners; and the widespread torture and rape of women in government custody. Saddam’s regime, the report said, shows a “cruel and callous regard for human life and suffering.” One would think such a report would receive standing ovations from human rights groups. Wrong. Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International, called the report “a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists.”

Given a choice between Saddam Hussein and his enemies, why in the world wouldn’t Amnesty International prefer Saddam’s enemies? Amnesty is, after all, a human rights organization. It is not a question of the honesty of the Foreign Office’s report. Khan alleged no misreporting of Amnesty’s research. The British government didn’t make up the stories of torture, rape, and execution. What is it then? Well, to be of the Left is to be anti-American and to oppose America’s allies. So it appears that Amnesty International cherishes its leftist credentials more than it does human rights.

One need only surf the antiwar websites to find example after example of such moral absenteeism (definition: vigilance when it comes to the alleged misdeeds of George Bush, but for some reason not in class the day Saddam’s crimes against humanity are described). In its Bush-bashing “statement of conscience,” the antiwar organization Not in Our Name says it opposes war against Iraq because “We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers.” Yet apparently they don’t believe in the Iraqi people’s right to determine their own destiny free from the endless repression of Saddam Hussein.

Clearly, the Left has given up principled opposition for the sake of mere opposition—or something that amounts to the same. “Let us find a way to resist fundamentalism that leads to violence,” Hollywood actor Tim Robbins told an antiwar crowd in Central Park at a recent rally, “fundamentalism of all kinds, in al Qaeda and within our government .” Yes, you heard him right. Robbins equated the Islamist terrorists responsible for the deaths of thousands to (need it even be said?) democratically elected officials of the freest country in history.

This moral absenteeism apparently slows rational processes. For example, the Left seems to be unaware that to oppose terrorist violence is to generally support efforts to stop terrorist organizations. (Maybe you don’t have to sign off on every last action taken under the banner of a war on terror, but one can hardly subscribe to the principle of anti-terrorism while opposing the actions to which it necessarily leads.) Similarly, to support the principle of self-determination is to support the administration’s efforts in Iraq. And memo to Amnesty International: To support human rights is to oppose Saddam. To attempt otherwise is to abandon the ideals of anti-terrorism, self-determination, and human rights. Thus has the Left adopted conservatism’s most debilitating and cynical inhibitions against trying to make things better for our fellow man. The formerly internationalist Left has thus become morally constipated and isolationist.

It’s no wonder several ideal-bearing liberals have chosen to flee the movement in recent months. Christopher Hitchens departed The Nation in despair over the absence of principled opposition to the Iraqi regime. In the Washington Post, he then nailed the problem: “Some peaceniks clear their throats by saying that, of course, they oppose Saddam Hussein as much as anybody, though not enough to support doing anything about him.” The always dazzling Ron Rosenbaum of the New York Observer also recently said goodbye to all that, furious over the marked stupidity of a Left that offers cheap, snide remarks on George W. Bush when it should be reexamining the moral blind spot that allowed it to apologize for Stalin, and which now makes it possible for leftists to believe, in Hitchens’s words, “that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden.”

Indeed, why can’t a Left that built its domestic agenda on equal rights for women and minorities oppose a dictator who licenses the procedural rape of dissident females and kills minorities? Why can’t a Left that supports an absolute separation of church and state find the strength to oppose religious dictatorships abroad? Ditto for economic opportunity, the freedom of speech, and the right to vote. Why can’t the Left be passionate about these ideals when it comes to the most pressing political events of the day?

The accompanying cliche to the idealist liberal was the cynical conservative. Conservatives were cautious and suspicious of action. But the Right today is alive with hopes and energized by a sense of possibility: Reaganites, neo-Wilsonians, realists, all of them taking part in a war against the world’s most despicable aggressors. Unlike leftists, they can claim they are doing quite a lot to achieve that most cherished of ideals, peace.

David Skinner is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard.

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Affirmative Action Insults Immigrant Contributions (Foxnews, 021210)

The crossfire of commentary about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to review affirmative action makes one thing clear: The Left thinks it owns the concepts of “justice,” “equality” and “freedom.”

Those who oppose affirmative action are dismissed as “just not getting it.” The truth is, we understand these concepts too well.

The case concerns the University of Michigan’s policy of giving bonus admission points to black, Hispanic and Native American applicants solely because they are minorities. Whites, because of their skin color, must meet a higher standard. (The case has immediate implications for gender.)

This is discrimination. The question becomes “is it proper discrimination?” Or, more broadly, is it ever proper for a tax-funded institution to systematically privilege one class of people at the expense of another?

Martin Luther King, leader of the ‘60s civil rights movement, didn’t think so. In his justly renowned speech “I Have a Dream” King declared, “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Contemporary “civil rights” leaders are demanding King’s grandchildren be judged on the basis of skin color. More than this: They advocate lowering the bar for minorities, presumably because they believe minorities cannot compete on an equal footing with whites (or white males), despite decades of leveling policies such as affirmative action.

Advocates of affirmative action use skin color or gender to create class privileges by harking back to historical inequities. Because some classes were once legally oppressed, it is argued that they must be privileged today. Class privilege becomes good or bad depending on who receives it.

Just one of the problems with this position is the fact that the individuals being privileged today were not the ones oppressed in the past. Moreover, the individuals being legally oppressed today have committed no offense.

My Irish ancestors are an example of the latter. In the 19th century, Americans viewed the half-starved Irish immigrant as less than human. Indeed, plantation owners used the Irish to do perilous work, like clearing swamps, because they were considered less valuable than slaves. The push behind public school and juvenile delinquent legislation was largely a desire to “Christianize the Catholics” — the Irish immigrants.

Such immigrants had nothing to do with slavery, the theft of land from Indians or any of the historical inequities being wielded like invoices by a bill-collector. The European immigrants of the 19th century fled from societies that legally oppressed them and privileged others. They fled to a place where backbreaking work could offer a better life to their children. And they prospered despite a system that brutally discriminated against them. They prospered because, for most practical purposes, they were equal under the law.

North America was seen as a classless society. It did not live up to that description, but it came closer than anywhere else in the world. For many immigrants, even an approximation of the ideal gleamed like a beacon: A society in which all people — especially their children — were equal under the law. And, through the 19th and 20th centuries, America moved closer toward this ideal by recognizing the equal rights of minorities and women.

Affirmative action ignores the immigrants’ dreams and sacrifices for their children. Instead, it asks the state to become a remedial historian who searches through centuries of injustices picking and choosing which race and what events are to be placed as burdens on the backs of today’s taxpayers and children. The descendants of European immigrants are to be legally disadvantaged because they are white or, even worse, white males.

And, if anyone objects, the first counter-arguments hurled are ad hominems such as “racist” or “sexist.”

A system that says the bar must be lowered for me, because I’m a woman, or for my husband, because he’s Hispanic, is an insult to us both. I don’t need Big Brother or Big Sister to protect me from being judged on my merits. Be my guest and call these beliefs racist and sexist.

They will also be called “elitist.”

The Left has accomplished a political sleight-of-hand par excellence . Arguing for a legal system and tax-supported institutions that are color and gender blind is now called elitist. Equality is now defined as privileges based on color and gender.

Throughout history, freedom has grown by collapsing legal privileges that exalt some and leave others in servitude. In England, the Magna Carta deprived the king of exclusive rights and extended them to nobles; the breakdown of feudalism extended property rights from nobles to peasants. In the United States, the demise of slavery extended “property in one’s own person” from whites to blacks; the woman’s movement extended full legal recognition from men to women.

Freedom means recognizing that every human being possesses every human right in equal measure.

The travesties of the past occurred precisely because this principle was ignored. The solution then was to remove privileges from the law. The solution remains the same.

Those who argue against affirmative action “get” the concepts of “justice,” “equality” and “freedom.” That is precisely why we say: eliminate affirmative action.

Wendy McElroy is the editor of ifeminists.com and a research fellow for The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. She is the author and editor of many books and articles, including the new book, Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the 21st Century (Ivan R. Dee/Independent Institute, 2002). She lives with her husband in Canada.

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Don’t call Christmas Christmas: Gap (Ottawa Citizen, 021211)

It’s just one more sign that a Merry Christmas is turning into a happy holiday.

Gap Inc., the global clothing retailer with annual sales of nearly $14 billion from its Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy stores, is encouraging its workers to wish customers “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

Jane Shaw, a spokeswoman for Gap stores in Canada, said the company encourages its employees to be inclusive and sensitive in dealing with customers at this time of year.

“It’s not a written policy, and I think the important thing to note is we simply suggest and encourage our sales associates and all our employees to recognize that not everyone celebrates Christmas,” she said.

“So being sensitive to that, wishing people a happy holiday season, or happy holidays, is more inclusive.”

Leigh Bridger, a teacher at Hillcrest High School, is concerned that overly sensitive merchants are smothering the spirit of Christmas — and the true meaning of tolerance.

Some students who work part-time at the Gap told her about the policy.

“I think tolerance is a two-way street. If the policy was like, ‘Use sensitivity, guys,’ that’s fine.”

Ms. Bridger added, “If there’s someone who’s obviously Muslim — and there’s certain indicators in terms of dress for women — you’re not necessarily going to say Merry Christmas. But if somebody comes with a list and they say they’re buying Christmas gifts, why shouldn’t that student be allowed to say, ‘Well, have a Merry Christmas?’ “ she said.

“I don’t see how avoiding or not saying Merry Christmas is going to take anything away from another culture, or another religion. If you choose to live in this country, and you accept that the majority of Canadians celebrate Christian holidays — we even have Christmas lights on Parliament Hill — then you accept that.”

Are retailers being Grinches or smart marketers? If political correctness wipes out “Merry Christmas,” the argument goes, soon malls will be blaring songs such as “I’m dreaming of a white Season’s Greetings” and “It’s beginning to look a lot like Happy Holidays.”

Just two weeks ago, the Royal Canadian Mint stood firm in its decision to replace the word “Christmas” with “giving” in a television jingle based on the song The Twelve Days of Christmas.

At the same time, Toronto council passed a unanimous resolution officially renaming Toronto City Hall’s fir tree a Christmas tree after city staff referred to it as a “holiday tree.”

Mayor Mel Lastman, who is Jewish, described the “holiday tree” name as political correctness gone too far.

Many nominal Christians would argue that “Merry Christmas” is not solely a religious greeting, just because it contains “Christ.” More significantly, they say, it contains Christ’s message of peace and goodwill and, implicitly, his exhortation to love one another.

Though Mrs. Bridger is not Jewish, people often assume she is because her husband’s first name is Ira.

“People are constantly saying Happy Hanukkah to me. I’m not offended.”

But in his book Please Don’t Wish Me A Merry Christmas, law professor Stephen M. Feldman argues that Christians, as the dominant religious group in North America, subvert the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state.

Mr. Feldman says he wrote the book in part because of “a growing sense of alienation as an American Jew” particularly living in Oklahoma over the past decade.

The title comes from the last line of the book.

“I had settled on this phrase as an apt concluding line when I first started working on the manuscript. It captures how I often feel during the Holiday season (which Holiday is that?) after I had been wished a Merry Christmas for the 500th time (and it’s still November!).”

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Call Christmas what it is (Ottawa Citizen, 021212)

(Example: how Christians knowingly give up their rights and help atheists in kicking God out of our society!!)

There’s nothing wrong with wishing someone a “Merry Christmas” — even if they are not Christian, several religious leaders said yesterday.

“When someone is having a birthday, you don’t say Happy Anniversary,” said Rabbi Reuven Bulka. “It’s about elementary respect. You respect their holiday on their turf, not on your turf.”

Rabbi Bulka said holiday correctness has become an issue because “in our penchant to being sensitive to the minorities, we have become insensitive to majorities.”

How to phrase holiday greetings became a hot topic after Toronto dubbed its giant evergreen a “holiday tree” and the Gap urged salespeople to wish customers a “happy holiday” instead of “merry Christmas.”

Gamal Solaiman, imam of the majority of Muslims in Ottawa, said the spirit of Christmas is what matters most, not the name of the holiday.

“People take that day to mark His birth, I don’t argue with that,” he said. “If the people just try to manifest and reflect what Jesus put forth in their life, that is what’s important.”

“But to my Christian friends, I will just say Happy Christmas,” said Imam Solaiman.

“Jesus is the reason for the season,” added Rector Desiree Stedman, an Anglican.

However, the view is not held unanimously.

“What’s wrong with being politically correct?” asked Ray Blessin, former publisher of the Canadian Atheist Newsletter.

Mr. Blessin says the current state of affairs is discriminatory. “Muslims shop at the Gap, and they don’t celebrate Christmas, so why not wish them a Happy Holiday? It’s just an idea that’s trying to include everyone, what’s wrong with that?”

Not much, agrees Guy Levac, the spokesman for Marcel Gervais, the archbishop of Ottawa’s Roman Catholic diocese. He said yesterday the archbishop has made it a matter of public record that he has no problems with the “Happy Holidays logic.”

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with freedom of religion or freedom to worship for Christians.”

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When Is Terrorism Justified? When the intellectual elite tell you it is, stupid! (NRO, 030225)

Our message … is clear,” Attorney General Ashcroft said last Thursday. “We make no distinction between those who carry out terror attacks and those who finance and manage [them].”

Eight days earlier, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet delivered a similar message: “The days when we made distinctions between terrorist groups are over,” he said.

Based on poll results, it appears that the lessons of 9/11 are continuing to sink in also with the general public: An increasing number of Americans have come to the conclusion that terrorism — intentional acts of violence directed at non-combatants for political purposes — is wrong, always wrong, no matter the grievance, no matter the complaint.

There are, however, those who reject this principle, who are fighting tooth-and-nail to preserve the idea that murdering other people’s children may be no crime, or may be at most only a misdemeanor — if it’s in the name of a cause they approve, or if it’s against a national or ethnic group they disfavor.

Last week, Sami Al-Arian and seven other men were arrested on charges of conspiracy, extortion, perjury, fraud, obstruction of justice, and other acts in support of terrorism carried out by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

On his Washington radio program less than 24 hours later, commentator Bill Press defended Al-Arian — not on the basis that he has been wrongly accused, but on the basis that the murders that Al-Arian has been charged with abetting were on behalf of the Palestinian cause (which he approves) and that those murdered were Israelis (whom he generally disfavors).

Explaining his thinking, Press reverted to the old saw: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Somewhat defensively, he noted that this view is shared by such commentators as Bob Novak and Pat Buchanan, men not of the Left but rather of the Isolationist Right.

A caller with a Middle Eastern accent phoned in to voice his support of Press’s position. “We shouldn’t be doing Israel’s dirty work,” he said. In other words, it is “dirty work” to arrest those who murder women and children — if those women and children are merely Israelis, and those who associate with Israelis, for example, American Jews, American Christians and Israeli Arabs.

Consider this: If Mr. Press is consistent in his beliefs, he also will have to say that he would endorse the same hands-off-it’s-none-of-our-business position regarding, say, Corsican terrorists/freedom fighters who use the U.S. as a base only to murder French people, or Basque terrorists/freedom fighters who use the U.S. as a base only to murder Spanish people, or Pakistani terrorists/freedom fighters who use the U.S. as a base only to kill Indians.

And if France or Germany were to say: “We’re not going to arrest terrorists — or freedom fighters, who are we to judge? — if they only target Americans,” Mr. Press would have to say that’s fine with him, too.

I strongly doubt he would say any of that.

So the question arises: Why the exception when the target is Israelis — or, let’s not euphemize, when the victims are mainly Jews? I know Bill Press, not well but well enough to say that I don’t think the answer is that he harbors any ethnic-specific hatred or phobia.

The late Balint Vazsonyi, a Hungarian immigrant who established himself as a great champion of America’s founding principles (and a long-time friend and mentor to me) might have suggested this answer: Somewhere along the line, people like Mr. Press — and Messrs Buchanan and Novak, as well — discarded the Anglo-American principle of the rule of law in favor of the Franco-German concept of “social justice.”

That is to say, Press & Co. believe there should be no hard-and-fast rules — rather it should be left to intellectual elites to decide which causes justify which actions against which groups.

Michael Kinsley, one of the leading lights of the Left intellectual elite, has stated this principle fairly explicitly: “An illegitimate tactic used in a legitimate cause, as part of a conflict with legitimate and illegitimate tactics and aspirations on both sides, is different from an illegitimate tactic used for purposes that are utterly crazed and malevolent.”

As noted, Left intellectuals like Mr. Kinsley believe they should be entrusted to instruct us — the benighted masses — regarding which purposes are “legitimate” and which are “utterly crazed and malevolent.”

For various reasons, both the Left and the Isolationist Right view “the Palestinian cause” as legitimate, more legitimate than the “Kashmiri cause,” or the “Corsican cause,” or the “Basque cause” — or the “Kurdish cause” for that matter.

So murdering men, women and children on behalf of the “Palestinian cause” (though a breach of the rule of law) does not offend their sense of justice. It is on that basis, I believe, that they arrive at the troubling conclusion that Jew-killers should not be too harshly judged, that they should perhaps be left alone when they fund and manage Jew-killing from their offices on American campuses.

(The fact that some non-Jewish Americans and Israeli Arabs are also killed in these terrorists incidents, they view as regrettable but unavoidable. The fact that PLO leader Yasser Arafat turned down the Israeli offer of statehood at Camp David, they ignore. The fact that groups like the ones Mr. Al-Arian supports seek the extermination of Israel, they dismiss as merely a negotiating posture.)

By contrast, the Left/Right Isolationist coalition would decree that it is “utterly crazed and malevolent” to murder American civilians in reprisal for U.S. sanctions on Iraq — sanctions which, Osama bin Laden charges, have resulted in the deaths of Iraqi children. (Never mind that Press, Buchanan et al. agree with bin Laden about the lethal impact of U.S. sanctions.)

If I’m misrepresenting Mr. Press’s views, if Mr. Press actually does subscribe to the principle of the rule of law, he could prove that by publishing a list of the grievances that, in his view, do justify the intentional slaughter of civilians. For example, like many on the Left, he might want to say that people who believe their land is “occupied” have a right to murder those they view as “occupiers.”

Of course, that view might be of interest to American Indians, some of whom may harbor “legitimate grievances” over what they regard as “occupation” of their lands by European Americans — Mr. Press among them.

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign and Washington correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a think tank on terrorism created just after Sept. 11, 2001.

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Bitter Taste of Academia: Citrus College incident acidic, but not vicious (NRO, 030311)

The setting, Glendora, California, in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains, is picturesque, the name of the school, Citrus College, is downright cheerful, and the title of the course, Speech 106, seems innocuous enough, but Rosalyn Kahn, the professor, found herself at the center of a political firestorm last week after she told her students that they could earn extra credit by writing letters to President Bush protesting the war with Iraq; when several students requested they be allowed to write letters to Bush supporting the war, Kahn informed them that such letters wouldn’t be acceptable for extra credit.

One of the dissenting students, Chris Stevens, contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a campus watchdog group, which brought the matter to the attention of the college’s president, Louis Zellers; President Zellers immediately ordered Professor Kahn to cancel the assignment, apologized on behalf of the school to the students and then dashed off a personal letter of apology to President Bush.

The intriguing question, especially in light of the quick and honorable response of Citrus College to the episode, is whether disciplinary action will now be taken against Kahn. She is, to be sure, an intellectual fascist. But if that were the criterion for punishing humanities professors, half the membership of the Modern Language Association would currently be on suspension. What the issue boils down to is this: Did Kahn know she was doing something wrong?

Since I’ve never met the woman, I cannot be certain, but — as counterintuitive as this will sound to non-academics — I suspect the answer is no. In coercing letters of protest against Bush’s Iraqi policy, Kahn likely believed she was enlisting her students not in the cause of left-wing politics but in the cause of Enlightenment. Tragically, this is the dominant mindset at campuses nationwide . . . as a casual stroll down the corridors of virtually any liberal-arts college will confirm, with their walls lined with antiwar posters, rally announcements and activist petitions.

I’ve taught college English for two decades, and I’ve known many Professor Kahns; I teach with several of them now. They are fine people, generous with their time, solicitous of their students needs; their failures, in other words, are not moral but conceptual. In the case of Professor Kahn, she could not conceive that an educated person might favor the Bush’s policies, and since her job was to educate, she had no qualms about ruling out letters of support; crediting a letter that supported Bush, in her mind, would be like crediting an ungrammatical essay, or a math problem with the wrong answer.

The Kahns of the world are not thinkers; they are true believers.

Or, as a colleague said to me recently, “I consider myself a good judge of character. So I know you’re not stupid. And I like you. Yet you actually support Bush. It makes no sense.”

That’s the problem in a nutshell. It’s not that a majority of humanities professors oppose Bush’s policies. It’s that, in their minds, the possibility that an intelligent, well-meaning person might judge his policies sound doesn’t compute. At colleges across the country, support of Bush’s policies equates directly with evil, with right wing extremism. You might just as well wear a swastika to class.

On the one hand, it’s tempting to shrug at the situation: Who really cares what a bunch of academics think? Bush, to his credit, clearly does not. (It’s yet another mark that distinguishes him from his predecessor.) Even students will soon outgrow their teachers’ influence; once they leave college, they’ll encounter opposing points of view and recognize their former mentors for the narrow-minded ideologues they were.

On the other hand, and this returns us to Professor Kahn’s case, it’s easy enough for such ideologues, given the intellectual imprimatur of a college faculty position, to recruit students into activities — like letter writing campaigns — designed to inflate the numbers for their cause-of-the-moment. Credited courses and school-sponsored clubs provide a steady stream of bodies for professors who see indoctrination into leftist thought as a natural function of a good education — and thus don’t see that they’re doing anything wrong.

If you doubt this is happening, take a good look at the crowd at the next peace rally on C-SPAN.

— Mark Goldblatt is author of the novel, Africa Speaks, now available in paperback.

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The War for Liberalism (Weekly Standard, 030407)

From the April 7, 2003 issue: American liberalism is in a dangerous predicament.

by William Kristol

WE’VE LEARNED at least two things in the first nine days of the Second Gulf War. The American people are fine. American liberalism is not.

Here’s the good news about the American people: They’re not affected by the silly mood swings of much of the media. Americans outside newsrooms and TV studios understand that wars are often difficult and usually unpredictable. They know that totalitarian regimes do not fall easily. They grasp the fact that lots of military decisions are judgment calls, and that there’s not much point paying attention to instant second-guessing. And they believe that the events of the war so far—the Baathist war crimes, the care in the use of force by the American military—confirm the depravity of Saddam’s regime, and the justice of America’s cause.

Our pro-war friends who are concerned about the mainstream media’s idiocy can relax. It’s not really doing any damage—except to the media. Every poll shows the American people are resolute, convinced the war is necessary and just, and determined to see it through to the end. As long as the Bush administration continues to focus all its attention on winning the war, it will have the support of the American people.

What of American liberalism? It is in the process of undergoing one of its once-in-a-generation splits. In 1948, the American left divided between Harry Truman’s anti-Communists and Henry Wallace’s fellow travelers. Luckily, the split turned out to be overwhelmingly one-sided, and American liberalism more or less ejected the Henry Wallace faction from its ranks.

Twenty-four years later, a Wallace supporter, George McGovern, captured the Democratic nomination for president. Now, the hawkish Scoop Jackson faction found itself on the losing side. Cold War liberals became an ever smaller minority through the 1970s, eventually departing the Democratic party and the ranks of modern liberalism.

Today, three decades later, after a Clintonian interregnum which papered over ideological differences, American liberalism is in the process of dividing again, into the Dick Gephardt liberals and the Dominique de Villepin left.

The Gephardt liberals are patriots. They supported the president in the run-up to this war, and strongly support the war now that it has begun. It would be misleading to call this group the Joe Lieberman liberals, because he was already too much of a hawk to be representative, but the group certainly includes Lieberman. It also includes Hillary Rodham Clinton, probably a majority of Senate Democrats, less than half of the House Democrats, Democratic foreign policy experts at places like the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, and a smaller number of liberal commentators and opinion leaders—most notably the Washington Post editorial page.

The other group includes the Teddy Kennedy wing of the Senate Democrats, the Nancy Pelosi faction of the House Democrats, a large majority of Democratic grass-roots activists, the bulk of liberal columnists, the New York Times editorial page, and Hollywood. These liberals—better, leftists—hate George W. Bush so much they can barely bring themselves to hope America wins the war to which, in their view, the president has illegitimately committed the nation. They hate Don Rumsfeld so much they can’t bear to see his military strategy vindicated. They hate John Ashcroft so much they relish the thought of his Justice Department flubbing the war on terrorism. They hate conservatives with a passion that seems to burn brighter than their love of America, and so, like M. de Villepin, they can barely bring themselves to call for an American victory.

It would be bad for America if this wing of American liberalism were to prevail. Parts of the Republican party, and of the conservative movement, fell into a similar trap in the late 1990s, hating Bill Clinton more than Slobodan Milosevic. But this wing of the GOP and conservatism lost in an intra-party and intra-movement struggle, and has now been marginalized—Pat Buchanan is no longer a Republican, and his magazine these days makes common cause with Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. The fight over the future of liberalism is not one conservatives can really join. But we can wholeheartedly cheer from the sidelines for the Gephardt liberals against their anti-American leftist rivals, hoping that they succeed in saving the (mostly) good name of liberalism.

—William Kristol

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The former National Organization for Women president takes over the Young Women’s Christian Association (Weekly Standard, 030509)

ON APRIL 30, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of the United States of America announced that former NOW president Patricia Ireland would be its new chief executive officer. And just this past weekend, the 145-year-old YWCA moved its headquarters from New York City to Washington, D.C. Ireland is expected to assume her new post by May 15—an event that has many people asking, “Why?”

Why would the YWCA select Ireland for the job? In a YWCA press release issued on April 30, Audrey Peeples, chair of the YWCA’s National Coordinating Board, said, “There is no better person than Patricia Ireland to help re-ignite our advocacy positions. At a time when local YWCAs struggle with cutbacks in government support for services we have long provided to women and girls, Ms. Ireland will partner with local YWCA leaders to strengthen our voices in the nation’s capital and across the country.”

To be sure, Ireland, 57, has decades of political activism under her belt. She was the longest-serving president of the National Organization for Women (1991-2001). She has fought to preserve abortion rights, led the opposition to Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination, practiced law, and lobbied for equal employment opportunities. And her professional accomplishments aren’t the only things that have gained the spotlight in recent years. An admitted bisexual, Ireland disclosed in a 1991 interview that she has a husband living in Florida, as well as a “female companion” in—you guessed it—Washington, D.C.

Outside of the YWCA’s cheery press release, there are some dark clouds over Ireland’s new gig.

In a May 5 op-ed piece in the Boston Globe, Cathy Young wrote: “Regardless of gender, if Ireland’s ‘companion’ was her lover, she was committing adultery, though apparently with her husband’s knowledge. Should this disqualify someone from a post that entails moral authority? One thing is near-certain: A married man who unrepentantly admitted to having a mistress would not have much of a future in public life. So much for complaints that women are still judged more harshly than men for their sexual behavior.”

And there are troubling ideological ramifications for the YWCA in Ireland’s appointment. The YWCA’s original goal was, according to one women’s history book, “the salvation of young women’s souls.” It started as a prayer society and blossomed into clubs, boardinghouses, and classes for working women. Since its inception in 1858, it has, of course, come to provide much more—child-care services, educational programs, employment training, job placement, and shelter for women and families. The YWCA-USA website states that its programs and locations (which now number 313) have changed many times over the years, “but the basic purpose of the YWCA has not.”

So what is the basic purpose of the YWCA? According to its mission statement, “The Young Women’s Christian Association of the United States of America is a women’s membership movement nourished by its roots in the Christian faith and sustained by the richness of many beliefs and values.”

Whatever richness Ireland brings to the group, she is an odd choice to represent its Christian roots.

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‘Tis a Far, Far Liberal Thing That I Do Now (Foxnews, 030522)

Several months ago, I wrote a column in this space drawing out what I thought were libertarian themes in the terrific HBO series The Sopranos. In it, however, I suggested that the writers of the show instilled plotlines that both ridiculed the excesses of government, but that also reinforced the “classical liberal” traits of rugged individualism and personal responsibility. That phrase — “classical liberal” — ignited a firestorm of angry email. “Rugged individualism” and “personal responsibility” are...liberal?

“Liberalism,” you see, wasn’t always a dirty word. In fact, most all of the political thinkers who laid the foundation for the American experiment were, in their day, proud liberals. The thinkers who influenced the founders — Adam Smith, John Locke, John Stuart Mill — and the founders themselves — Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington — all bore the liberal label with honor.

In fact, in most of the world, “liberalism” still connotes the values and principles all of those men espoused. In Europe, Latin America and Asia, “liberalism” still means belief in political pluralism, freedom of expression, property rights, the rule of law — basically all of the ideas and principles free thinkers here in America hold dear.

So what happened? Why is “liberal” such a bad word here in America that even the liberals don’t want it? Why, today, do political economists offer two definitions of liberalism, one for the likes of Locke and Jefferson, and another for our more modern impression of the word — people like Hillary and Kennedy?

As the Cato Institute’s David Boaz writes in his book Libertarianism: A Primer , “around 1900 the term liberal underwent a change. People who supported big government and wanted to limit and control the free market started calling themselves liberals. The economist Joseph Schumpeter noted, “As a supreme, if unintended, compliment, the enemies of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label.”

So what Smith and Mill called “liberalism” we today call “classical liberalism” or “libertarianism.” Conservatives too sometimes lay claim to old-school liberalism, though I think that in doing so, they underestimate just how much distrust the original liberals had for the state. There are lots of policy proposals put up by conservatives today that would have made the original liberals cringe.

“Conservatism” also implies a reluctance to change, no matter what it is that change is changing from, which is why hard-line communists in the former Soviet Union, religious zealots in Iran and apartheid proponents in South Africa have all been called “conservatives,” and their opponents, generally, “liberals.” In the strictest sense of each word’s meaning, a conservative wants things to stay the same, no matter how things are in their current form, while a liberal advocates liberty, regardless of who’s in charge.

The problem is that “liberal” has been so defiled here in America, true liberals may never be able to reclaim it. In America, “liberalism” has been attached to such miserable public debacles as the welfare system, ever-expanding (and ever-failing) government and Michael Dukakis. Dukakis, you might remember, wore the “liberal” label George H.W. Bush tagged him with proudly — and was promptly trounced in the 1988 election.

It was after that election, in fact, that “liberal” became so tainted; the leftists who stole the word no longer wanted it. They’ve been running from it ever since. Rare (and dumb) is the modern politician who allows his own position to be labeled the “liberal” one.

“Liberal” today sits alone in the pantheon of political ideologies — used, abused and soiled.

Modern leftists still hold the same positions, mind you — massive, socially benevolent government, mistrust of markets, etc. — but they today prefer the term “progressive,” a label every bit as loaded as “liberal.”

I guess the aim here is to associate themselves with the early 20th century progressives, who are often credited with such admirable accomplishments as winning the women’s vote and ending the practice of child labor. But the analogy isn’t perfect. The early progressives were evangelists, and drew inspiration for their public policy goals from faith — not a practice modern leftists look fondly upon. Early progressives were also far from social libertines — most were pro-life, for example, and the movement has largely been credited/blamed for prohibition.

It’s easy to see why the left likes “progressive.” “Progressive,” of course, connotes “progress,” and by calling themselves “progressive,” leftists can then point to their opponents as “regressive” or “opponents of progress.”

But if your measure of “progress” is similar to most people’s — rising standards of living, longer lives, a happier citizenry, general prosperity — the policies embraced by self-described “progressives” haven’t done much to push us in that direction. The welfare state has wrought mass poverty, perverse incentives and a generation of fatherless children. Big government and excessive regulation have put unnecessary restraints on economic growth, innovation and the free market. And there are a growing number of environmentalists who now take the position that “progress” actually means moving backward, that we’ve put too much emphasis on human welfare at the expense of what was here before us.

As someone who subscribes to the limited government, laissez-faire capitalist, live-and-let-live philosophy of Locke, Jefferson and Smith, I say it’s time to pick “liberal” up off the ground, dust her off and reclaim her as our own. It’ll take a while, I realize. But it’s the only word that works, the only word that fits.

I suppose the first step in that process is to stop flattering the modern left with the label. Ralph Nader is not a liberal. He never was. He’s a leftist. Or a collectivist. Even an egalitarian. But he isn’t a liberal. And neither was Michael Dukakis.

So I encourage my fellow free marketers, libertarians and even some of you conservatives to join me in my crusade. Yes, it’ll definitely sting the first few times. But you’ll get used to it. And we owe it to our philosophical forbears.

Say it with me now:

“I’m a liberal.”

Radley Balko is a writer living in Arlington, VA. He also maintains a Weblog at www.theagitator.com.

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Democratic Candidates Court Liberal Activists (Foxnews, 030605)

WASHINGTON — The Democratic presidential candidates courted liberal activists by disowning Republican-leaning policies espoused by others in their party and assailing President Bush’s record on health care, the economy and terrorism.

“I think the Democratic Party has made a fundamental mistake in the last few years thinking we are going to win by being like the Republicans,” former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said. “The way to get elected in this country is not to be like the Republicans, it’s to stand up against them and fight.”

Several of the Democratic candidates appeared at the “Take Back America” conference sponsored by two progressive groups, the Campaign for America’s Future and the Institute for America’s Future, a gathering where booths promoted environmentalism, feminism, vegetarianism, birth control and an end to the drug war.

A bit disconcerting for the many of the Democratic candidates was the first booth many of them saw — one manned by volunteers promoting an effort to draft Al Gore, the 2000 presidential candidate who has said he won’t run in 2004.

Former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun got some of the loudest applause by tapping into the crowd’s lingering anger over the U.S.-led war against Iraq. She criticized the Bush administration for failing to capture terrorist leader Usama bin Laden “all the while pandering to fear to keep us at war until the elections are over.”

“This administration is using our pain out of 9-11 as a smoke screen for an extreme political agenda,” she said.

North Carolina Sen. John Edwards used his speech to announce his proposal to lower the cost of prescription drugs. He assailed Bush for not adequately addressing health care costs, corporate fraud or civil and equal rights.

“The president keeps telling us he wants a debate about values in 2004 — we are going to give him a debate about values,” Edwards said. “Because this president’s values are not the values of the American family.”

Republican National Committee spokesman Jim Dyke dismissed the criticism.

“The best that the Democrats have to put forward to Americans is to hope for the worst for America,” he said. “As an election strategy, we’re not sure that people will appreciate that.”

Among those liberal voters attending the conference was actor-director Peter Horton, best known for his role on thirtysomething, who said he’s been galvanized to get more involved in politics because he’s so opposed to Bush’s foreign policy, among other issues. He said he is considering whether to support Dean, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry or Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt.

“It’s a balancing act between responding to a candidate’s platform or whether they can beat President Bush in the election,” he said. “I still don’t feel like I know which can beat Bush yet.”

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Faculty Tilt: Our Teachers Lean Left By A Sizeable Majority (NRO, 030915)

This is the time of year when millions of parents send their children off to universities. Unfortunately, one price of getting one’s children into a top school these days is that they may be subjected to four years of liberal propaganda.

Those in academia like to call the liberal orientation of most college faculty a red herring. But objective research continually shows that it is not. The latest data appear in the Aug. 29 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. A solid majority of those teaching at both public and private universities described themselves as being either liberal or far left. Less than a third considered themselves middle of the road and just 15% said they were conservative. Not surprisingly, 50% of the general public considers college professors to be more liberal than they are.

Interestingly, this puts most faculty members well to the left of their students. According to the same source, less than 28% of them would be classified as liberal or far left. More than half consider themselves to be middle of the road, and 21% say they are conservative. A new Gallup poll suggests that this may even understate the case. It found that 29% of those age 18 to 24 consider themselves to be conservatives, with just 30% saying they are liberals.

The Chronicle is not the first to document the leftist orientation of most university faculty. A survey by pollster Frank Luntz last year found that just 3% of Ivy League professors called themselves Republicans, with 57% belonging to the Democratic party. Among those voting in the 2000 election, Al Gore captured 84% of their votes. Just 9% voted for George W. Bush, barely more than the 6% who voted for Ralph Nader. Among the population as a whole, the vote for president was almost evenly split between Bush and Gore.

The irony here is that unlike almost all other workers in society, university professors are granted tenure — a lifetime job from which it is almost impossible to be fired — precisely in order to guarantee freedom of expression. But in practice, the tenure process has become the means by which the Left rigorously weeds out conservatives. In many university departments, opposition from a single faculty member is all that is necessary to deny tenure. These days, such a blackball is most likely to be used against a conservative, especially in disciplines such as sociology, history, English, and government.

Prof. Robert Maranto of Villanova discussed this insidious practice in the Baltimore Sun on July 31. “While colleges strive for ethnic diversity,” he wrote, “they actively oppose ideological diversity.” The result is a lack of meaningful debate on campuses that makes corporate boardrooms a model of give-and-take. The reason is that in business, those who keep out new ideas lose market share to competitors. “But within the ivory tower, professors can hold dumb ideas for decades with no accountability,” Maranto notes.

Recently, there has been an effort in Colorado to bring some accountability to the state’s public universities and break the left-wing stranglehold over them. Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, has publicly complained about the lack of political diversity on state campuses: “I think that if you’re in a political science department, we ought to strive to make sure that there are people who understand and who can explain political philosophy from the left as well as from the right.”

According to the Denver Post, of the 78 political science professors at state colleges in Colorado, 45 are registered Democrats and just 9 are Republicans. This means that it is very unlikely that a political science student will ever hear the subject taught by a Republican. In math, science, and many other subjects, this doesn’t matter. But in political science it does. Students are simply not getting a complete education in the field if they only hear one side to every political issue.

Predictably, the universities scream bloody murder at any suggestion of adding conservatives to their faculties in order to improve diversity of opinion. They are all for quotas when it means admitting unqualified minority students, but allowing students to be taught by a conservative would somehow be a violation of everything the university stands for, it seems.

Of course, universities are right when they say that quotas are no answer to the problem of liberal bias on campus — just as they are not the answer to improving minority enrollment. On the other hand, the taxpayers of Colorado are within their rights to demand accountability for the $817 million they will generously give the state’s public universities this year. It is reasonable for them to ask that they be more than subsidiaries of the Democratic National Committee.

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The Liberal Game Made Obvious: Straight to the heart (NRO, 030930)

In his debate with Jonathan Chait, who calls it rational for liberals to express hatred for George W. Bush, Ramesh Ponnuru flushes out into the open the hidden passional life of liberals.

It isn’t pretty.

Chait tries to say Bush is a “phony,” but as compared to Al Gore this claim can’t persuade rational people. Chait tries to say Bush is more “radical” than he let show during his campaign. But as compared with the euphemisms and evasions of the Left — who admit to only “moderates” in their ranks — this rings hollow. The Left always hides its leftward aims. The Left hides behind Sunday-school teachers, southerners, and generals as its national candidates.

Chait tries to say that Bush is an easterner pretending to be a Texan. But the truth is that one of the most admirable things about both Presidents Bush is that, early in their lives, when they could have sheltered back East under their blue-ribbon family trees, both chose the most difficult environment in America for easterners — the Texas oil fields. Texas oilmen love to taunt Yankees. Nonetheless, Bush the elder ended up in Houston, but Bush the younger went back to Midland, Texas. There are no travel agencies in Europe that have brochures on Midland.

Chait says that the younger Bush was handed everything, did nothing meritocratically. Yet no one handed young Bush his thorough drubbing of Ann Richards in the Texas gubernatorial debate. The same with his crushing of Al Gore, supposedly the debater par excellence, in three presidential debates.

Sensing desperation, Chait’s comments about the younger Bush’s accent, posture, and mannerisms come down to ethnic prejudice and intellectual bigotry. None of this is remotely rational.

So then Chait is forced to reveal that the party of hate has one truly important, even sacred, agenda, that Bush has frustrated: high taxes on the rich. Bush has cut the taxes of millions of taxpayers at a proportionate rate, which of course benefits more those who pay more taxes, and benefits most those who pay most taxes, the hated rich. For Chait, that makes Bush worthy of hate.

Now this reason, too, is a little odd. From President Jefferson to President Theodore Roosevelt there was no income tax in America, and it never entered into the heads of the Democratic or any other party that a limited government should confiscate money from some Americans on the pretext of giving it to others. Nor that in so doing government should pry relentlessly into every item of income. (Where are today’s civil libertarians on this massive invasion of privacy? What reasons could possibly justify this massive governmental intrusion into the most basic liberties?)

Chait explains it this way: Only if the “affluent” (his word) pay a lot more in taxes, can government have enough resources to “help the poor.” If Bush does away with progressive taxation, then the middle class will have to pay more taxes, and that will doom government programs. The middle class will rebel. As Chait puts it:

Shifting the federal tax burden downward makes middle-class taxpayers less likely to support future government programs, since they will have to pay for it themselves, rather than having a disproportionate burden picked up by the affluent.

There is the liberal agenda in essence. The liberal secret. The liberal passion.

The rich should be the indispensable heroes of liberals, because the rich are the linchpin of the liberal agenda, the one true hope for liberal success. Liberals need the rich. Take away high taxes from the rich, and the liberal program flounders, Chait suggests. Why, then, do liberals hate the rich? It’s easier to understand why sheep hate to be shorn, than why liberals hate those they shear.

Personally, I like liberals, and am grateful for their contributions to national discourse. A monologue in which only neoconservatives talked (i.e., reformed liberals) would be comparatively boring.

Chait, however, reveals three annoying pretenses of the liberal heart.

(1) The first pretense is that most of all liberals want to help the poor. For self-critical people, this fails the laugh test. It is true that for the elderly, liberal programs have worked very well, and improved the condition of millions — except that these programs (Social Security, Medicare) are so badly designed that they are exorbitantly wasteful, and are now on a course to bankrupt the country, as the numbers of the recipient elderly grow, and those of the paying young shrink.

And consider the state of the young poor, ages 18-34, after our 40-year “war on poverty.” In many ways their condition is worse than it was in 1966. Violent crime batters them three or four times harder than before. Their families are less often fully formed, and many, many more of them are growing up in single parent families than in 1966. The liberal-run public schools are sliding downwards in several dimension — good order, academic seriousness, and knowledge of our country’s history and philosophy.

If the money spent on the war on poverty had been distributed directly to the poor it would have given every poor family (there are about seven million of them) something like $30,000 per year. That would have ended “poverty” as an income category, though perhaps not in its behavioral dimensions.

Do liberal programs help the poor, as Chait assumes? For the young, the evidence runs in the opposite direction.

(2) The second pretense is that the Left consists mainly of intellectuals, activists, and others who are not particularly rich, so that when liberals speak of “the rich” they may speak of them as “others,” as in (with venom in the voice) “tax cuts for the rich!” As it happens, the political campaigns of the Left depend far more on high earners and big givers than the campaigns of the right. Being on the left has deeper cultural than economic roots.

Meanwhile, middle-class liberals disproportionately control the administration of government programs and private philanthropies, again spending the money of others, and not infrequently adding to the increased dependency of those they mean to be helping.

(3) The third pretense is that liberals possess a superior degree of virtue. Assuming this pretense, liberals hold conservatives to be “mean-spirited,” and attribute to GWB the most contemptible vices of “any president in this century.” As Democrats say, “The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans.”

There is plenty of reason for strong differences in public-policy judgments. The law of unintended consequences sets up even the most rational of plans for pratfalls. A sense for “how things work” is therefore of more practical value than mere verbal fluency. Meanwhile, in matters of judgment, good people differ. So, why exactly does the Left always have to claim superior virtue?

And in what exactly does liberal virtue consist? In taxing other people, not oneself, people for whom one has contempt, in order to transfer their money to “the poor and needy.” (Or, rather, only a portion of that money; don’t forget the heavy administrative costs.) Liberal programs, Thomas Sowell has written, are oddly designed, feeding the horses as a way to feed the swallows.

And in what exactly does Bush’s vice consist? In exposing this racket, and in putting an end to it.

Bush has provided a compelling alternative vision: personal and familial independence (through school vouchers, personal Social Security accounts, personal medical accounts, and the like), under which the condition of the poor and the needy is far more likely to improve than under the current ill-designed system, “the liberal plantation,” which keeps as many as possible in dependency.

No wonder some liberals hate Bush. Their hypocrisy is being exposed.

That really hurts.

And renders them almost speechless with fury.

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Democrats Open New Liberal Think Tank (Foxnews, 031029)

WASHINGTON — A new left-wing think tank — the Center for American Progress — unveiled itself Tuesday as the Democratic vaccine to what center supporters say is a plague of conservatism now dominating America.

“We think the debate has been unbalanced in the country,” center president John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Clinton, told Fox News.

“The conservative movement has really built up an infrastructure of not just ideas, but the ability to kind of get out there and do the kind of hard communications work to sell to the American public,” he added.

The center made its debut sponsoring a conference along with the Century Foundation, which has been around since 1919. Among the headliners was Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark.

Clark, who is almost as new to the presidential trail as the center is to Washington, explained why both decided they had to get into the act.

“Going forward, we will need new labels and new ideas. Many of them will be created right here at the Center for American Progress,” Clark said from New Hampshire in a speech beamed into the conference via satellite.

But conservatives say labels won’t stick when they have nothing on which to back themselves up.

Think tanks earn their credibility by being able “to deliver accurate timely information” to policy and lawmakers that will help them “understand where they may be going wrong and hopefully allow them to go in the right directions on a whole range of very important policies,” said Michael Franc of the Heritage Foundation.

“[Credibility] is something that this think tank can’t just assume is going to come its way by some kind of virtue of entitlement. You have to earn that,” Franc said.

Podesta said his group is in the business of “thinking through those new ideas, doing the long-term policy analysis,” but it also plans to focus its attention on explaining to the public through direct communications “where we think conservative policies are taking the country off in the wrong direction.”

Podesta insists that conservative institutions like the Heritage Foundation don’t have better ideas, but are merely better at marketing. He said he is confident his center can take over the marketplace of ideas with notable innovations such as a big media staff that will push the center’s thoughts onto the Internet, television and radio.

“We don’t have a war room, but we do have a communications platform. We’ve got a lot of terrific talented people who’s job it is in the end to get that product, that analysis, that critique — get it out there to the American public,” Podesta said.

But Franc said so far the center has proven to be “all war room and no think tank.

“You don’t start off a think tank with focus groups and a spin team before you figure out what you stand for. You have to. Think tanks begin with an idea, or a set of ideas, with a mission to advance coherent ideas in Washington,” he said.

Many Americans say they believe the media are already skewing left of center, and Washington doesn’t suffer a shortage of liberal-leaning thinkers perched inside established halls of research.

The real challenge for liberals and Democrats, then, may not be getting their voices heard, but getting control of the White House and Congress, which most frequently frame the discussions.

As long as Republicans control both, Democrats say, few places exist in Washington for their ideas or marketing strategy to take hold.

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Walk of Shame: Bill Clinton’s party (NRO, 031030)

“There is nothing this man won’t do. He is immune to shame. Move past all the nice posturing and get really down in there in him, you find absolutely nothing . . . nothing but an appetite.” — Jesse Jackson on Bill Clinton, 1992

Rarely has the intellectual rot of liberalism been more evident. Both at home and abroad, the honorable tradition of liberalism — and there is one — has been hollowed out by its own appetite for power and vengeance. Indeed, it is exceedingly difficult to see how liberalism, at the national level, stands for anything but appetite — undirected, inarticulate, unprincipled, ravenous appetite. Truly it has become Bill Clinton’s party.

Consider two stories of demonstrably unequal importance, which nonetheless have fascinated the chattering classes: The $20 billion request for Iraqi reconstruction, and the effort underway to create a successful liberal think tank.

Let’s start with the more important story. Today the “principled” position of the Democratic party’s leaders is to cavil and equivocate about the “need” to rebuild Iraq. I use quotation marks around “need” not because the necessity to get the job done isn’t there, but because America’s leading political liberals treat the very idea that we have to fix Iraq with winks and smirks.

Whether the war was necessary or not, reasonable people of all political persuasions outside the arena of partisan politics understand that the task of reconstructing Iraq is immensely necessary.

If the United States were to “bring the boys home” now, Iraq would implode, America would be seen as not merely a bully (which is not always bad, but rarely good) but also a bully with a glass jaw — which, as every thinking person must understand, would be an invitation to disaster of precisely the sort that left the World Trade Center in ruins.

Of course, except for the odd character actors at the left end of the screen in the Democratic presidential debates, the leading candidates do not say they are in favor of immediate withdrawal. Rather, they spew clouds of verbiage about why we need to have a “plan” and insist that until we have a “plan” we should not spend money on Iraq. Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, both of whom voted for the war, voted against spending any money on Iraq’s reconstruction because “we don’t have a plan” or because we “need a real plan.” Wesley Clark and Howard Dean — the Democratic frontrunners — also say that they would have voted against the reconstruction funds. Dean is consistent — and consistently wrong — in that his position has always been “if Bush is for it, I’m against it.” Clark, on the other hand, is not only inconsistent on the question whether he supports Bush, but it seems that this inconsistency is his only reliable trait. .

Even the noble exceptions of Gephardt and Lieberman — who voted for the reconstruction funds — often couch their answers in terms that show they want to be seen as close allies of the naysayers.

Of course, the administration does have a plan. And central to that plan is, well, spending money to rebuild Iraq. The Democrats make it sound like all the U.S. Army is doing in Iraq is having one giant-sized Chinese fire drill every day. One can just imagine John Kerry going to the local garage:

Kerry: I won’t pay you to fix my car until you have a plan.

Mechanic: Um, I do have a plan: You pay me. I replace the engine I just took out. Your car works. That’s the plan.

Kerry:How can you say you have a plan? Look at the terrible shape my car is in. It’s worse than before; there isn’t even an engine.

Mechanic: You’re an idiot.

In the current New Republic, Peter Beinart brilliantly excoriates Kerry and others for such arrogant and willful fecklessness, which, he argues, is the byproduct of mindless partisanship as well as the rising influence of political consultants. All of the top Democratic consultants have run polls, convened focus groups, disemboweled goats — and done whatever else constitutes the science of political augury these days — and concluded that Democratic candidates must draw “clear distinctions” between them and Bush. So, since Bush favors the reconstruction of Iraq — which means, as a practical matter, reluctantly favoring the expenditure of blood and treasure — the Democrats must be against it. By this logic, John Edwards should embrace Satan and start drinking heavily, since Bush is a born-again Christian and a teetotaler.

I’m only marginally kidding. For years, or decades, or even a century, we’ve been hearing a host of propositions from liberals. Crime and violence are symptoms of poverty. The United States must do more than simply drop bombs; it must alleviate the “root causes” of terrorism, hopelessness, etc. America must be internationally oriented, looking to engage the world and help the unfortunate. It is in America’s vital interests to come to the aid of the downtrodden. And, most recently and relevantly, America must get into the business of nation building.

All of these principles have been defenestrated by a party leadership who no longer believe what, during the Clinton years, it constantly claimed to believe: that partisanship should end at the water’s edge. Instead, even as we are fighting a guerilla war where the enemy defines victory not in military terms but in its ability to weaken American resolve at home, Democrats are crassly undermining the safety of our troops, the credibility of our nation, and the integrity of their own political philosophy. Every single good thing about liberalism in foreign policy would have the Democrats seeking more money for Iraq. Liberals should be the ones demanding that we send more teachers, more doctors, more librarians, and more troops to protect them. They should be standing on the tarmac helping to load another shipment of soft-ice-cream machines and ping-pong tables bound for Fallujah, Tikrit, and Basra.

And Democratic support for reconstruction isn’t required by liberal altruism alone; the good of the both the country and the liberal cause demand it as well. The only place where I think Beinart is wrong in his column is in his overzealous effort to be bipartisan in his criticisms. He asserts that Republicans opposed nation building in Haiti simply out of anti-Clinton pique. No doubt such animus played a role. But many conservatives simply did not believe that nation building in Haiti was anything more than what Charles Krauthammer calls “foreign policy as social work.” You simply cannot say the same thing about nation building (or state building) in Iraq. There are vital American interests at stake in the effort to make Iraq a stable, peaceful, and prosperous democracy. Offsetting our reliance on Saudi Arabia, advancing the spread of democracy and prosperity in a historically dangerous region, and — of course — quashing the threat of fanatical Islamic terrorism are all on the line here. Obviously these goals have altruistic components, but they can all be justified through hardheaded realism as well (which simply was not the case with Haiti).

But these Democrats want none of it. They see each setback in Iraq as a political opportunity to question whether we should be there at all. Not only do they send a message of weakening American resolve at precisely the wrong moment, not only do they abandon their historical principles, but they underscore their most enduring political handicap — the impression that Democrats are unserious on foreign policy. They are left with no principle to stand on, no plan of their own to promulgate, and no credibility to trade with. In short, they have ritualistically shorn themselves of everything but animus and appetite. Shame on them.

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The War Room, Continued: This time, the Democrats are calling it a ‘think tank’ (NR, 031124)

Byron York

Al Franken was becoming agitated. The comedian and conservative-basher was at a Washington party for the new liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress, when he was asked to say a few words to the crowd. As he often does, Franken began riffing on the subject of the Fox News Channel, and in no time at all had worked himself into a fit of anger.

“Basically, what there is, is there’s a right-wing media in this country,” Franken told the group. He recounted the story of Fox’s lawsuit against him — “a f***ing complaint against me, thank you very F***ING much,” he said, as the audience roared with laughter — and then moved on to the network’s coverage of the war in Iraq, which he said showed “how shameless, how shameless, how SHAMELESS these people on the right can be.”

The crowd, made up mostly of left-leaning activist, political, and media types, loved it. “We have to fight back,” Franken exhorted them. Looking at John Podesta, the former Clinton White House chief of staff who is heading the new think tank, Franken said, “Thank God you’re doing this. We have to fight back.”

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, standing nearby with former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger, applauded and nodded her head in approval. Earlier, she too had lamented the “great void of positive energy” on the left and urged the crowd to fight back in the “idea game and war that we’re engaged in with the other side.”

Fighting back could well be the theme of the Center for American Progress. Supporters of the project seem to sincerely believe that they are up against a pervasive conservative bias in the nation’s media that can only be answered by an aggressive public-relations counter-offensive, which they call “pushback.” And although it bills itself as a traditional think tank — scholarship and all — for now, at least, the Center appears to be all about pushback.

At the opening-night party, Podesta premiered a new movie by Hollywood filmmaker Robert Greenwald, a founder of Artists United to Win Without War. The picture, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, was funded by the Center and the left-wing Internet activist group MoveOn.org. It features high-profile critics of the Bush administration, like former ambassador Joseph Wilson, former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, and former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, accusing the administration of lying about weapons of mass destruction.

A week earlier, the Center made another splash when it held a well-publicized conference on U.S. foreign policy that featured speeches from Mrs. Clinton, Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark, and sometime maverick Republican senator Chuck Hagel. Clinton and Clark, of course, denounced Bush policy, while Hagel greatly pleased the crowd by mocking conservatives who had criticized his decision to speak before the liberal group; he told the audience that his fellow Republicans worried that the “dreaded John Podesta, that tricky, wily fellow that he is, had hoodwinked the flat-footed senator from Nebraska into speaking before you Communists.”

But perhaps the biggest buzz coming from the new Center for American Progress has nothing to do with a party, a conference, or a movie premiere. Recently the Center began sending out a daily e-mail commentary on events known as “Progress Report.” An exhaustive collection of news bits wrapped in stridently anti-Bush rhetoric, the report, which Podesta calls “one of our flagship products,” resembles nothing so much as a collection of the most aggressive, most energetic opposition research in politics.

Some examples: On October 31, after the government announced that the U.S. economy had grown by an impressive 7.2% in the third quarter of this year, “Progress Report” provided talking points for Democrats unwilling to concede that the economy seems to be improving. Headlines included “The Jobs Problem,” “The Wage Problem,” “The Tax Cut Problem,” “The Long Term Problem,” “The Competitiveness Problem,” and ended with “The Credibility Problem,” accusing the president of misleading the nation about the economy.

That day’s report also featured “Condi’s Believe It or Not,” which was a set of talking points to counter national security adviser Condoleezza Rice’s criticism of previous administrations’ responses to terrorism. The report accused the Bush White House of cutting counterterrorism programs prior to September 11, ignoring pre-9/11 intelligence, and underfunding homeland security.

It almost goes without saying that the Center has been regularly blasting the White House over the CIA leak investigation. “Progress Report” calls the matter “Intimigate,” the name given it by David Sirota, the former staffer for Vermont socialist representative Bernie Sanders and Wisconsin Democratic representative David Obey who writes each day’s report. In one instance, Center staffers studied columns by Robert Novak going back to the 1970s, looking for clues to who might have leaked information in the Niger/uranium controversy. Without finding any answers, the Center suggested it was most likely a neoconservative.

In all, “Progress Report” differs little from the material that comes out of the Democratic National Committee on any given day (although it is more polished and professional). Perhaps the most striking thing about that is that the Center bills itself as a “nonpartisan research and educational institute.” Podesta recently told reporters that “we’re not operating on behalf of any party. We’re not engaged in political activities.”

Podesta was undoubtedly speaking in a legal sense. The Center for American Progress is a so-called 501(c)(3) charitable organization and, as such, is allowed to accept tax-deductible contributions but forbidden from engaging in overtly partisan activity. It cannot, for example, advocate passage of a particular bill or the election of a particular candidate.

But by any common-sense standard, Podesta’s group is as partisan as they come. “I’m not sure they are so much a think tank as a spin tank,” says Michael Franc of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative organization that is sometimes cited as a model for the Center. Even a Democratic ally of Podesta’s recently called the Center “a think tank with oppo research.” “The initial buzz about the Podesta group was that it would be basically high-level talking points,” the Democrat says. Despite Podesta’s claims otherwise, that’s what it seems to be.

The Center’s funding also suggests its deeply political orientation. One of the organization’s top donors is the financier George Soros, who this year has devoted his enormous financial resources to defeating George W. Bush in 2004. So far, Soros has contributed $10 million to the new anti-Bush group America Coming Together, which will coordinate voter turnout efforts in key states. [Ed.: See Mr. York’s article “By George” in our last issue.] The Center appears to be another part of Soros’s campaign.

Although Podesta maintains that Soros’s support for the Center is “a kind of separate matter, a separate enterprise” from the billionaire’s support of anti-Bush political groups, he does concede that Soros is highly focused on changing administrations. “I think he [Soros] saw a drift in the country in a radical direction,” Podesta explains, “especially in international affairs, but also in domestic affairs, and I think it troubled him.”

Podesta says the Center’s other major funders include Herb and Marion Sandler, who are co-CEOs of Golden West Financial Corporation, a savings and loan based in Oakland, Calif. Podesta says the Sandlers, who are prominent contributors to Democratic causes, “have a commitment to changing the debate in this country.” Other than the Sandlers and Soros, Podesta will not name any other funders of the Center. All he will say is that “we will provide the information that is required by law.”

The support of the Democratic party’s most anti-Bush donors, combined with all the emphasis on war-rooming and talking points, tends to obscure the idea that the Center for American Progress is supposed to be a think tank. Indeed, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that thinking, at least the hard kind of thinking that goes on in scholarly research, just isn’t on the Center’s agenda.

Podesta seems to see himself less as a facilitator of scholarship than as a salesman for the liberal point of view. As such, he’s looking for the perfect pitch. He likes to tell audiences that conservatives have simple ideas, which are easy to communicate, while liberals have complex, nuanced ideas, which are difficult to communicate. In October, he told the New York Times that “conservatives have their eight words in a bumper sticker: ‘Less government. Lower taxes. Less welfare.’ And so on. Where’s our eight-word bumper sticker? Well, it’s harder for us because we believe in a lot more things.”

The emphasis on salesmanship bothers some Democrats who believe the party faces more fundamental questions over its future direction. “Podesta keeps saying ‘What’s our bumper sticker?’” one Democratic policy expert says. “The problem is not the bumper sticker. The problem is the car.”

Don’t say that too loudly at a Center for American Progress event. Yes, organizers say they are searching for new ideas. They’re just not searching too hard. “We respect the need for debate,” Podesta said at the Center’s coming-out party. “But our goal is to win.”

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The Liberal Hangover: Why they hate Bush so (NRO, 031201)

At a recent news conference in London a reporter asked President Bush, “Why do they hate you, Mr. President? Why do they hate you in such numbers?” It’s a rather embarrassing question to ask anyone, never mind the leader of the free world, and Bush in his reply shed no new light on this peculiar political phenomenon. Every president has his detractors, of course. If he did not there would be reason to wonder whether he was doing his job. But Bush hatred does seem to be sui generis.

Bill Clinton was surely disliked by many conservatives, but even taking into consideration his impeachment, their dislike for him was, in certain respects, restrained. No anti-Clinton political movement or candidate ever emerged, only Dole’s ironic detachment of the 1996 election. Hillary Clinton is certainly despised by the Right for her far-left sensibilities, but that’s largely not the case with her husband, whose policies were relatively moderate and whose rhetoric was nearly always middle of the road. It is true that Ronald Reagan was greatly disliked by the Left, even hated. But it was an antipathy dripping with condescension, and condescension does not easily work itself into the white-hot lather of a Howard Dean — only the patronizing sneer of a Walter Mondale.

So what is it about George W. Bush that drives the Left utterly mad? Liberals have given many justifications for their righteous anger: He “stole” the 2000 election; he’s too Texan, too Christian, just too dumb; he struts and talks like a yokel. Others complain bitterly of his “far-right” policies: His support for a ban on partial-birth abortion, his opposition to human cloning and gay marriage, and his tax cuts and faith-based initiatives. And, of course, there’s the war in Iraq — always the war in Iraq.

These explanations no doubt have something to do with why the Left despises Bush. But there is more to their hatred than is generally understood — something more fundamental is at work. Almost all modern liberal thought begins with the bedrock assumption that humans are basically good. Within this moral horizon something such as terrorism cannot really exist, except as a manifestation of injustice, or unfairness, or lack of decent social services. Whether knowingly or not Bush has directly challenged this core liberal belief — and for this he is not easily forgiven.

The president has in fact acknowledged liberals’ desire “to put that day [of September 11] behind us, as if waking from a dark dream.” But if “the hope that danger has passed is comforting,” it is also, Bush has admonished, “false.” September 11 was no dream; it was, in his view, a portent of what may come. And so Bush has repeatedly urged his audiences to see that “the evil is in plain sight,” and that the democracies must learn to “face these threats with open eyes.”

But what should be clear and obvious is made obscure by liberal ideology. If we are to face the evil in plain sight, we must first properly fit words to facts. Bush calls the terrorists “killers” and “evildoers,” and speaks of an “axis of evil.” He affirms the need for the “violent restraint of violent men,” and argues that military strength is necessary to keep at bay “a chaotic world ruled by force.” He describes life under Hussein’s rule in Iraq as a “Baathist hell.” We live, the president warns, in “a time of danger.”

These are not mere words to Bush, but have given shape to his singular foreign policy. The president went to war in Iraq rather than trust the good faith of Hussein or the diligence of U.N. arms inspectors; he refuses to recognize Arafat as a legitimate leader of the Palestinian people; he has made clear that a lasting peace can come to the Middle East only through democratic reform. The very touchstone of his thinking is the moral and political distinction between democracy and tyranny.

Such analysis does not go down well with liberals. The utopian Left believes that the wolf can be made to dwell with the lamb. Their preferred method of dealing with wolfish dictators is to “dialogue” with them. Surely, they say, dictators want (well, more or less,) what we want: peace and good will towards all men. It is this sort of blindness that allowed Arafat to win the Nobel Peace prize. It is this sort of wishful thinking that led liberals to believe that Hussein could be contained by U.N. resolutions alone. The Left almost as a matter of ideology shuns all such unpleasant realities. The Clinton administration, after all, proposed calling rogue states — nations who starve and torture their own citizens and threaten their neighbors — “states of concern.” Bush simply calls them “evil.”

The Left vilifies Bush because he insists on calling a spade a spade, and in so doing threatens to bring down their entire intellectual edifice. Even after the horrors of the 20th century, the Left has yet to recover from its Rousseau-induced hangover. Liberals still insist on seeing human nature as basically good. Nothing is more offensive to such a mentality, not Hussein’s torture chambers, not al Qaeda’s wanton killing of innocent life, than one who dares to speak so plainly of “evildoers.”

Adam Wolfson is editor of The Public Interest.

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Liberalism And Terrorism: Different Stages Of Same Disease (Ann Coulter, 020703)

THE NEW YORK TIMES editorial page was in a snit with the Supreme Court this week for its first ruling on the Bush administration’s wartime security procedures. Despite the hysteria at the Times for the assault on “constitutional rights” by Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Supreme Court ruled for Ashcroft.

For now, at least, deportation hearings of suspected terrorists will not be open to the public. This, the Times said, was “troubling.” Sadly, the Constitution does not require that national security be compromised.

Like everything liberals oppose but don’t have a good argument for, all reasonable national security measures are called “unconstitutional.” Whenever liberals are losing on substance, they pretend to be upset about process.

Through their enervating dialogues and endless concerns with constitutional process, liberals have made themselves incapable of feeling hate for the enemy. Refusing to take sides in this war, they busy themselves wailing about every security precaution taken by the Bush administration.

Ashcroft has been incessantly attacked on the op-ed page of The New York Times by the same columnists who are now angrily demanding to know why the Bush administration didn’t imprison all Arabs before Sept. 11. He has been compared to the Taliban. (And you’re not a patriot in this war until a liberal has compared you to the Taliban.)

Bill Goodman of the Center for Constitutional Rights called Attorney General John Ashcroft the Constitution’s “main enemy.” (As Andrew Ferguson said, evidently Osama Bin Laden comes in a close second.)

Sen. Patrick Do-Nothing Leahy has complained about Ashcroft’s “disappointing” failure to run all internal guideline changes past the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead, Sen. Do-Nothing said, “we’re presented with a fait accompli reflecting no congressional input whatsoever.”

Ashcroft was probably worried Leahy would take as long with procedures for investigating terrorism as he is with Bush’s judicial nominees. If Speedy Gonzalez Leahy were required to review Justice Department guidelines, America would be an Islamic regime before Leahy got around to it.

No matter what defeatist tack liberals take, real Americans are behind our troops 100%, behind John Ashcroft 100%, behind locking up suspected terrorists 100%, behind surveillance of Arabs 100%. Liberals become indignant when you question their patriotism, but simultaneously work overtime to give terrorists a cushion for the next attack and laugh at dumb Americans who love their country and hate the enemy.

The New York Times ran a Tom Tomorrow cartoon sneering about Americans who believe with “unwavering faith in an invisible omniscient deity who favors those born in the middle of the North American land mass.” This is how liberals conceive of America: an undifferentiated land mass in the middle of North America. Like all cartoons specially featured in the Times, there was nothing remotely funny about the cartoon. Its point was simply to convey all the proper prejudices of elitist liberals against ordinary Americans.

While hooting with laughter at patriotic Americans, liberals prattle on and on about the right to dissent as the true mark of patriotism and claim their unrelenting kvetching is a needed corrective to jingoism. (It’s not jingoism, and the only people who use that word are fifth columnists.)

After Sept. 11, liberals are appalled by patriotism with an edge of anger because that might lead America to defend itself. True patriotism, they believe, should consist of redoubled efforts at attacking George Bush.

Movie director Robert Altman (who won the Golden Globe for best director for “Gosford Park”) said, “When I see an American flag flying, it’s a joke. This present government in America I just find disgusting.”

Columbia professor Eric Foner said: “I’m not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House.” I think I know the answer! Thousands of our fellow countrymen dying in a fiery inferno, I’m pretty sure, is “more frightening” than the rhetoric emanating from the White House.

Liberals are angrier at John Ashcroft for questioning angry Arab immigrants applying for crop duster permits than they are about the terrorists. These people simply do not have an implacable desire to kill those who cheered the slaughter of thousands of American citizens. If you can rise above that, if you can move on from that, you weren’t angry in the first place.

During World War II, George Orwell said of England’s pacifists: “Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively, the pacifist is pro-Nazi.”

To paraphrase Orwell, in this war, those who cannot stay focused on fighting the enemy are objectively pro-terrorist.

==============================

More Slander (Ann Coulter, 020711)

ON THE BASIS of the logic on the New York Times editorial page, maybe Bill Clinton did kill Vince Foster. Evidently President Bush is responsible for Enron because he is from Texas and – it is insinuatingly noted – so is Enron! If the left’s physical proximity argument constitutes evidence, I take it back: There are boatloads of evidence that Clinton killed Foster.

Indeed, the entire Republican Party is evidently responsible for various rich liberal “Friends of Bill” who now stand accused of insider trading, such as Martha Stewart and ImClone chief Sam Waksal. Republicans are responsible on the basis of the fact that liberals have spent 20 years calling Republicans “the party of the rich.”

Liberals are like the monkeys in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” who explain: “We all say so, and so it must be true.” Republicans are responsible for Clinton’s pal Martha Stewart because liberals say so. Again, I note: If hysterical partisan insinuation constitutes proof, then we need to reopen the Vince Foster files.

Liberals have no real arguments – none that the American people would find palatable, anyway. So in lieu of actual argument, they accuse conservatives of every vice that pops into their heads, including their own mind-boggling elitism.

The Democratic Party has basically remade itself into a party of left-wing academics and Park Avenue matrons. And then they attack Republicans for being elitist snobs protecting “corporate interests.” It’s bad enough that these rich snobs want to raise our taxes all the time. Having to endure Malibu Marie Antoinettes calling Republicans “the rich” is more than working Americans should have to bear.

Howell Raines, the former editorial page editor of The New York Times, described Ronald Reagan as “making life harder for citizens who were not born rich, white and healthy.” Striking a manly tone, Raines woefully noted that this “saddened” him.

The idea that Reagan was a privileged overlord swatting down working-class wretches with his polo mallet is more delusional than some of Barbra Streisand’s wackier ideas. This was the same Reagan who cut taxes, bombed Libya, stood up to the left’s beloved Soviet Union, built up the military and restored pride in America. (Yes, that Reagan.) Who were these initiatives supposed to appeal to? Martha Stewart? I think not. Average, middle-class Americans voted Reagan back into office for a second term in the largest electoral landslide in history.

But 20 years of propaganda about Republicans being the party of “the rich” has created pre-programmed reflexes. The fact that propaganda works is demonstrated by the fact that people don’t laugh out loud when Democrats try to pin corporate malfeasance on the Republican Party.

Liberals also have many important and substantive backup arguments such as they hate Republicans.

In December 1998, the New York Post described talk-show host Phil Donahue exploding with rage at a Four Seasons party (where the Party of the People mingles) screaming about how he hated Republicans. His wife, Marlo Thomas, apologetically explained: “I don’t know why he’s saying that. He doesn’t really hate all Republicans.” (He probably likes Jim Jeffords, for example.)

In the alternative, liberals thoughtfully explain that Republicans are bigots. In a 1995 interview, Clinton’s Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders called Sen. Jesse Helms a “typical white, Southern male bigot.” It’s a little difficult to imagine a Republican presidential appointee referring to any congressman as being a “typical” member of his race without inciting a blizzard of protest.

But this is standard political debate for the left. It is simply not possible to disagree with liberals about constitutional interpretation, guns, abortion, immigration, racial quotas – or really, anything. Serious political dialogue becomes the exception when political discourse is littered with ad hominem land mines.

By contrast, when Republicans directly quote their opponents, all hell breaks loose. A Republican actually quoting a Democrat verbatim constitutes a McCarthyite witch hunt.

Thus, for example, in 1988, George Bush (41) pulled the old quote-your-opponent trick on Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. During the primaries, Dukakis had said: “I am a strong liberal Democrat. I am a card-carrying member of ACLU.” Those were Dukakis’ precise words. Bush quoted him during one of the debates.

Ten years later, liberals were still fuming about Bush’s dirty rat trick of quoting Dukakis. On July 4, 1999, CNN reporter Bruce Morton cited Bush’s low blow, saying it was a “echo of the late Joseph McCarthy’s card-carrying member of the Communist Party, but it seemed to help Bush.” They’ll stoop to anything to win, those Republicans, even quote their opponents.

Serious political debate evidently consists of randomly accusing your opponent of being a hateful bigot or having some vague ephemeral association with corporate crooks. Those are good arguments.

==============================

Make Liberals Safe, Legal and Rare (Ann Coulter, 020814)

WHENEVER A LIBERAL begins a peevish complaint with “of course, we all agree ...” your antennae should go up. This is how liberals couch statements they assume all Americans would demand they make, but which they secretly chafe at.

Liberal sophistry requires pretending they support, for example, sexual abstinence (for teenagers) and marriage (between heterosexuals); making abortion and drug use “rare”; America’s winning the war on terrorism — and before that, winning the Cold War. Fascinatingly, their proposals for achieving these goals are invariably the opposite of what any normal person might think would work.

Instead of punishing bad behavior and rewarding good behavior, liberals often feel it is the better part of valor to reward bad behavior and punish good behavior. Of course, we all agree that Fidel Castro is a bad man. That’s why we need to lift travel restrictions and trade with Cuba! Of course, we all agree that abortion should be “rare.” That’s why all reasonable regulations of abortion must be fought against like wild banshees! (One proven method of making something “rare” is to make it illegal.)

Their comically counterintuitive positions are inevitably backed up with long, complicated explanations about the dire risk of encouraging “hard-liners,” the enemy’s “paranoia,” or clever points such as “teenagers will have sex anyway.” The arguments not only make no sense ab initio, but openly contradict one another.

While pretending to oppose drug use, The New York Times has supported programs to give addicts needles, referring in a 1998 editorial to “some interesting new ideas” such as “needle exchanges.” In the case of cigarettes, however, liberals enthusiastically embrace the otherwise mystifying concept of punishing bad behavior.

Thus, the Times has cheered on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s obsessive desire to outlaw smoking, referring to his proposed ban on smoking in bars as an attempt to close “a major loophole in the city’s anti-smoking law.” Aren’t people going to smoke anyway? Why not make smoking “safe, legal and rare” — just like abortion?

The liberal clergy at the Times has criticized sex education programs that purport to discourage sexual activity among teenagers, while unaccountably neglecting to hand out condoms and scented candles.

Times theater critic Frank Rich has rhapsodically supported Joycelyn Elders’ genius idea of teaching children to masturbate: “The more people talk about masturbation, the more fears can be dispelled among those young people.” (Thirteen-year-old boys could probably teach him a few tricks.)

So it was striking that a recent op-ed piece in the Times opposed a Bush administration’s plan to encourage marriage. Needless to say, it included the ritualistic disclaimer: “Of course, none of this is to say that marriage is not a wonderful institution.” It seems that, in this one case, “we don’t need government programs to convince people ... that marriage is good for them.”

We do, however, urgently need government programs to teach them that dying of AIDS is bad for them. (At least we finally have the left on record opposing some federal government program other than national defense and an independent counsel investigating a Democrat.)

Currently, liberals pretend to be rooting for America in the war on terrorism. To show their support, they oppose America doing anything. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said: “We are all prepared to give the men and women in law enforcement the latitude necessary to protect our nation.” Despite what “we all” support, Durbin said using appearance to sort potential terrorists from non-terrorists “reflects not only poor judgment, but poor law enforcement.”

Really? Which law enforcement experts concluded that surveilling angry Middle Eastern men with smoke pouring out of their trousers would be “poor law enforcement”? Seems unlikely. For some reason, liberals think it’s fun to give Arab terrorists a chance.

Democrats claim to support invading Iraq — just not yet! As the AP recently reported, “the Democrats always preface comments on Iraq with a general statement that Saddam must go.” Of course we all agree that Saddam must go. But first — there are many worthless objections to be raised.

Sore loser Al Gore has said that before invading Iraq we need to establish peace in the Mideast, create a perfect Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan, and get the American-hating French and Germans on board. Also invent cold fusion and put a man on Mars. Then will the time be ripe for a pre-emptive attack!

Liberals also carped pointlessly about the war in Afghanistan last fall. Their principal complaint was that we were going to lose. Among many, many other liberals, columnist Maureen Dowd raised the specter of Vietnam and called Afghanistan “another quagmire.” She said that Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem “may be the last to know that Afghanistan is a stubborn and durable place.”

After we routed the Taliban approximately five minutes later, Dowd said, “The liberation of Afghanistan is a wonderful thing, of course.” Of course. And something you said we couldn’t do.

“Of course we all agree” always means liberals don’t agree, but are under no illusions about the popularity of what they really believe.

==============================

Spirit isn’t moving religion’s left wing (Orlando Sentinel, 031231)

Without the old emotional issues, liberals are losing their punch.

Heading into a presidential election year, the Republican Party faithful are already rolling up their sleeves — and passing the collection plate. In church social halls, they are raising money for voter registration, “issue” advertising and “Christian scorecards,” which rate candidates on their positions on key cultural issues such as abortion and homosexuality.

By contrast, there is little activity at the other end of the ideological spectrum. Left-wing religious efforts at political mobilization — where they exist — seem puny, aged and marginalized.

After decades of riding popular social movements such as civil rights, the left splintered and now seems unable to regroup. Conversely, the GOP has co-opted the support of religious voters by focusing their attention on cultural and lifestyle issues — such as gay marriage.

On economic issues, another mainstay of the left, the outlook is no brighter.

Unless they are directly affected, people in the pews seem unwilling to grapple with economic disparity and job losses, which defy simple solutions. Despite the loss of 3 million jobs since 2001 and falling retirement and investment portfolios, they are more likely to object to teaching Darwin in the classroom than to struggling in an economy increasingly based on survival of the fittest.

The poll numbers are ominous for Democratic candidates, who seem to have written off voters with strong religious convictions. A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that nearly two-thirds of Americans who attend religious services at least once a week vote Republican. For those who say they seldom attend a house of worship, that figure is reversed: Two-thirds vote Democratic.

A tradition of activism

Though preachers don’t pick presidents in America, for at least 150 years they have helped set the political agenda.

Thundering from pulpits, mobilizing congregants, religious activists in the 19th and early 20th century helped end slavery; supported women’s suffrage; brought about Prohibition; and supported the rights of workers to organize into trade unions.

More modern inheritors of this social gospel were also vigorous agents of change and resistance, propelling the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. As recently as the 1960s and 1970s, left-wing religion was a force to be reckoned with.

“We had the feeling that we were getting somewhere,” recalls the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, former chaplain at Yale University and one of the patron saints of mainline religious activism. “We criticized American practice in the name of American ideals.”

But today liberal religion is seen as a spent force, says Mark Tooley, a researcher for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank.

The religious left comprised denominational leaders and tended to be elite, as opposed to grass roots, he says. Today’s religious right is younger and more vigorous, drawing its support from growing charismatic and nondenominational churches.

“The religious left was mobilized and excited by the civil- rights movement and by the anti-Vietnam War movement, and has had difficulty finding equally passionate causes to replace those,” he says. “The religious right has abortion, homosexuality and church-state issues that have energized them over the past 25 years. There’s no sign that any of these issues are going to go away anytime soon.”

Evangelicals who previously voted Democratic because of economic issues are trending Republican because of cultural issues, Tooley says. “But at the same time, most of those people are still, by and large, not activists by nature. They are largely middle-class, suburban people who are not drawn to the same kind of economic wedge issues that would excite the religious left or liberal evangelicals.”

Nor are they willing to follow their spiritual leaders on other issues. For instance, opposition to the death penalty, globalization and the Iraq war by Roman Catholic bishops and mainline Protestant leaders has failed to generate grass-roots support.

The Rev. Thomas Wenski, coadjutor bishop for the Catholic Diocese of Orlando, admits to some frustration.

“There are Catholics that don’t pay attention” to the pope and the U.S. bishops on these issues, he acknowledges.

“Our culture is very individualistic,” he says. “That virtue of solidarity for the poor and the powerless that the pope often speaks about needs to be emphasized.”

How the left was lost

There are a variety of explanations for the virtual collapse of the religious left in America.

Some believe its members never recovered from the divisive period of the 1970s, when the movement split into “identity politics.” After working together to break down old barriers, the unified movement headed in diffuse directions: affirmative action, feminism, gay rights and multiculturalism.

Others think the left was simply outmaneuvered and outorganized by the right. Savvy religious conservatives decided it was a mistake to see political involvement as something “unclean” for so many years, conceding the field to liberals by default. And the perceived excesses of the 1960s galvanized conservative Christians into action.

Access to religious television enabled leaders such as the Rev. Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell to build the Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority political movements. The religious left had no comparable figures.

Religious conservatives “plugged into the issues of personal morality as the touchstone for Christian faithfulness,” says the Rev. Fred Morris, executive director of the Florida Council of Churches. That got a good response from Middle America, “who were by that time scared by what they saw as a shifting of values.”

This shift climaxed in the presidential election of 1980. In a show of political sophistication and pragmatism, evangelicals chose Ronald Reagan — who was divorced and rarely attended church — over Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian and Sunday school teacher.

Experts say the eclipse of the religious left by the religious right also may reflect the decline of mainline denominations and the rise of evangelicals in the 1980s — both politically and theologically.

The power failure

For many old activists, this is the winter of their discontent. Skeptics say the cold reality is that you can’t build a mass political movement on nostalgia.

Americans today live in a high-stress, fiercely competitive work environment, which tends to reinforce a certain degree of self-centeredness. No Democratic candidate or liberal religious leader has offered a credible plan for reversing globalization or even ameliorating its impact. Much of the social safety net was eliminated during the boom years of the 1990s. With no simple answers to big problems, there is a pervasive feeling of powerlessness — and frustration.

In November, a group of liberal and moderate religious leaders from mainline denominations announced the formation of a new organization that is trying to fill the gap, calling itself the Clergy Leadership Network.

The group’s goal is to become what some called a Christian Coalition of the left. Founders include Coffin and the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches. They are a Who’s Who of veterans of the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.

The Rev. Albert Pennybacker, a Disciples of Christ minister, heads the new organization. Backers say they want to offer an alternative to the “partisan God” embraced by the GOP, and to turn their loose-knit group into a “coalition of conscience.”

The odds against the new group are long.

“I don’t think it’s going to go very far,” says Tooley. “Its leaders are largely retired, mainline Protestant leaders. It would have better prospects if it had enlisted pastors of large black churches, or a few liberal evangelical pastors or more Catholic clergy and bishops. It just doesn’t seem to have plugged into the more dynamic and growing parts of American religion.”

The long road back

Still, there are faint signs of life — and youth — in the religious left, according to Jim Wallis, of the Washington, D.C.-based Sojourners community. Founded in 1971, the group is a Christian ministry whose mission is “to proclaim and practice the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice.”

Wallis considers himself a theological conservative, pro-life evangelical — and a radical social activist. Unlike many evangelicals, he believes that religious concern for the poor and the powerless should be motivated by justice, not by charity.

Wallis says he has many requests from young evangelicals to join his community, which focuses on economic and social justice. When he and others like him, including Tony Campolo, another radical evangelical, carry their message to heartland churches, the response is positive, he says.

It may be the case that the baton of social justice has passed from liberal, mainline Christianity to evangelicals.

“I agree that liberal religion is in decline, but I don’t agree that social justice is in decline in the church,” says Wallis. The problem with most mainline denominations, he says, is more theological than ideological.

“If you don’t have a real Bible-based, Jesus-centered faith, then all you have is upper-middle-class, affluent Americans who are not going to be your primary constituency for social justice,” he says.

In battles around the country for a “living wage,” mainline ministers make a political mistake when they frame the debate in secular terms, talking about “fairness.” A more effective strategy, Wallis says, is to rally evangelicals with verse from the Bible, especially prophets such as Isaiah, who spoke out forcefully for fair payment for those who labor.

However, there is little evidence so far that even that strategy moves believers.

Earlier this year, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley enlisted the support of the state’s ministers to realign the tax structure to bring it in line with Christian principles. The measure was defeated — decisively.

Nevertheless, Wallis is optimistic about the future of liberal religious activism. The call to social justice, Wallis says, “will — and is — attracting a whole new generation of evangelicals and lots of Catholics, along with mainline Protestants who again want a more vibrant, personal faith.”

William Sloane Coffin, whose collection of speeches and sermons, Credo, has just been published, says he is impressed with Wallis’ brand of evangelical Christianity.

“That’s exactly where it should be,” he says. “The more orthodox the theology, the more radical the politics. There are two great biblical imperatives: to pursue justice and to seek peace.”

Mark I. Pinsky can be reached at mpinsky@orlandosentinel.com

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The War Room, Continued (NR, 031124)

This time, the Democrats are calling it a ‘think tank’

BYRON YORK

The Center’s funding also suggests its deeply political orientation. One of the organization’s top donors is the financier George Soros, who this year has devoted his enormous financial resources to defeating George W. Bush in 2004. So far, Soros has contributed $10 million to the new anti-Bush group America Coming Together, which will coordinate voter turnout efforts in key states. The Center appears to be another part of Soros’s campaign.

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George Crowder’s Liberalism and Value Pluralism (Ethics, 030700)

New York: Continuum Books, 2002. Pp. xii+276. $125.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).

George Crowder has had a change of heart. In an influential 1994 article, Crowder advanced two important and interrelated claims (“Pluralism and Liberalism,” Political Studies 42 [1994]: 293-305). First, in contrast to then-prevailing scholarship, Crowder denied that the recognition of value pluralism issued necessarily in a liberal politics. Although the idea of irreducible and conflicting values was thought to support liberal commitments to toleration, choice, diversity, or autonomy, Crowder showed those interconnections to be more tenuous than we might suppose. Liberalism might be compatible with value pluralism, he argued, but there was nothing natural or inevitable about the relationship between them.

Crowder’s second claim was yet more provocative. “Not only does pluralism provide no support for liberalism,” he insisted, “it positively undermines the liberal case” (p. 304). Although often misunderstood in subsequent commentaries, Crowder’s basic point was sound. The truth of value pluralism, he suggested, would seem deeply at odds with the universalist frameworks in which liberal values are ordinarily defended. First, not all of the values we recognize can be instantiated within liberal polities. Worse, some of those values are differently and intrinsically valuable, with no “common measure or ranking” to settle conflicts when they arise (p. 295). This idea of “incommensurability” implies that our choices cannot have the authoritative rational warrant that universalist liberals expect. Should we find someone disinclined to accept our politics, it was then unclear whether rational argument could bridge our differences. Starting from the same recognition of value pluralism, that person might reasonably arrive at a very different political solution.

Crowder concluded that piece with the regretful recognition that a “partly historicist defence of liberalism” may be our only way out. In the face of value pluralism, we choose liberal values (if at all) for reasons that have more to do with experience and local context than universal principles or foundations (p. 305).

Crowder’s argument received a stern admonition from Isaiah Berlin and Bernard Williams, which for all its criticisms implicitly affirmed the historicist defense that Crowder acknowledged (Isaiah Berlin and Bernard Williams, “Pluralism and Liberalism: A Reply,” Political Studies 42 [1994]: 306-9). More importantly, neither critic took issue with the central question that Crowder raised:

“Why should we accept that the plurality of values available to us is, on the whole, a plurality of liberal values?” (Crowder, “Pluralism and Liberalism,” p. 304). That question, along with the rhetorical answer it enjoins, has always seemed to me both incisive and correct. The moral goods of this world are simply too diverse and conflicting to be contained within anyone political framework.

Unfortunately, Crowder’s most recent book moves in precisely the opposite direction. I say “unfortunately” only because I think Crowder was genuinely on to something in his earlier work. In ways similar to John Gray, Crowder had shown how deeply unsettling and provocative value pluralism can be. But unlike Gray, with his emphasis on radical or “agonistic” choices (John Gray, Isaiah Bcrlin [Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1996], pp. 8-9), Crowder had pointed to just the kind of “partly historicist defence” that might rescue liberal arguments from the shoals of (a historically false and myopic) universalism and (a politically dangerous and unpersuasive) relativism. Crowder could, in other words, have gone the way of David Hume, grounding liberal arguments in the appeal to context and experience. Instead, he has gone the way of Immanuel Kant. Reason is to be our lodestar, and we must understand the workings of the noumenal world in order to live properly in this one. Despite the tremendous accomplishment that this book represents-and it is an accomplishment, for reasons I will explain in a moment-one can’t help wishing that Crowder had stuck to his guns.

Libcralifm and Value Pluralifm aims to show how deeply compatible liberalism and pluralism really are. In fact, Crowder now insists that pluralism, properly understood, positively “generates” a case for liberalism (p. 259). Or as Crowder puts it, “if value pluralism is true, then we ought, so far as practicable or prudent, to endorse a liberal form of politics universally” (p. 1).

The truth of value pluralism proves more demanding than we might suspect. Not only does it stipulate a liberal politics, Crowder argues, but a particular kind of liberalism-one that is perfectionist, redistributive, and “moderately multicultural” in character (pp. 12-13).

Crowder draws five important connections between pluralism and liberalism: First, no matter what politics we adopt, we know that “universal values must be respected in all cases” (p. 12).

Second, the fact that some values are incommensurable encourages compromise and moderation-what Crowder, following Isaiah Berlin, calls “antiutopianism” in politics (pp. 84-100). Third, the truth of value pluralism means that we should promote a diversity of values and ways of life (p. 12). It is here, Crowder insists, that the argument begins to move in a distinctly liberal direction-away from conservative pluralists like John Kekes (pp. 104-15), or pragmatic “modus vivendi” pluralists like John Gray (pp. 115-22).

Fourth, like the political liberals, Crowder believes that “reasonable disagreement” is an ineliminable feature of political and moral life. Unlike Rawls and Larmore, however, he insists that the fact of reasonable disagreement (manifested in Rawls’s “burdens of judgment”) importantly presupposes the truth of value pluralism (pp. 165-71). Thus, whether political liberals realize it or not, they have already accepted Berlin’s thesis. (For Rawls’s rejoinder, see his Political Libcralifm [New York: Columbia University Press, 1996], p. 57, n. 10.) Finally, Crowder argues that we need distinctly liberal virtues in order to choose well under conditions of value pluralism (p. 201). Our moral world demands that we engage in practical reasoning, for which even traditional understandings of au tonomy are ordinarily insufficient (p. 209). We must be “strong evaluators,” capable of engaging in second-order reflections on the evaluative criteria we employ, while fashioning particular lives from a multiplicity of possible goods (pp. 207-11). Here again, Crowder argues, the virtues associated with pluralism (generosity, realism, attentiveness, flexibility) and the virtues associated with liberalism (broad-mindedness, moderation, respect for persons, autonomy) are both consistent and “mutually reinforcing” (pp. 188-201).

Crowder’s argument is elegantly presented. An immediate suspicion, however, is that he has found just the foundations he was looking for. Strangely, for all his sophisticated engagements with political liberals and value pluralists, Crowder spends very little time establishing the truth of value pluralism itself (pp. 64-73). When a particular kind of liberalism is written right into the fabric of our moral world, it seems odd that skeptical utilitarians, Christians, Kantians, and other monists are left out in the cold. When a liberal like Ronald Dworkin will find your liberalism excessively controversial-to say nothing of Rawls or Larmore-yours must be a peculiar liberalism indeed.

Still, a great virtue of this book lies in its careful and patient criticisms of objectors and fellow travelers alike. Despite some reservations, Crowder makes the best case yet for how liberalism and pluralism might in fact be combined. To shore up that connection, Crowder has had to reinterpret value pluralism in distinctly liberal ways. In particular, Crowder’s plurality of values no longer has recognizably liberal and illiberal elements. On the contrary, the values Crowder describes are “universal” in nature. They make our lives “go better,” no matter the particular contexts in which we happen to live (pp. 45-46). It is this idea of “universality” that makes value pluralism a comfortable fit for a liberal politics. For liberal polities are able to capture more of these universal values than other regimes, and in a coherent and deliberate way (pp. 138-39). But this argument, if successful, would seem to reduce the threat of value pluralism chiefly by diminishing its interest. For surely the warmth and humanity of Berlin’s view lay in its encouragement that we consider the values of others with imagination and empathy. Some of those values will seem strange and unfamiliar. Some we would never embrace for ourselves. But until we do the hard work of understanding why other persons have held the values they have, we risk blinding ourselves to the very different ways in which authentically flourishing lives are lived.

I am suspicious, in other words, whether these “universal values” truly exist. Crowder adds any number of caveats, from the different ways these values are understood, to the different ways they are applied in particular contexts (pp. 45-46). Still, what do the virtues of medieval monks have to do with those of pagan warriors? What kind of society captures both the humility of Christ and the glory of Achilles? How do we compromise between them?

More worryingly, what of universal values that make illiberal lives go better? In a characteristic passage, Berlin writes, “I am not blind to what the [ancient] Greeks valued-their values may not be mine, but I can grasp what it would be like to live by their light, I can admire and respect them, and even imagine myself as pursuing them, although I do not-and do not wish to, and perhaps could not if I wished” (Isaiah Berlin, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” in The Proper Study of Mankind, ed. Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer [New York: Farrar, Su-aus, & Giroux, 1998], pp. 9-10).

For Crowder, the presumed universality of values makes one wonder why such imaginative empathy would be necessary. If the most important values have been valued throughout the ages, why even bother looking to past cultures or civilizations?

One wonders, finally, about the motivating question at the heart of this book. At several points, Crowder is keen to insist that liberalism stands in need of justification. History suggests it, contemporary opposition demands it, and liberalism’s own normative principles require it (pp. 25-26). No doubt Crowder is correct. But the real question, it seems to me, is what kind of justification we will offer, and to whom it should be offered. Should our arguments be grounded in reason or experience? Will we appeal to our principles or our practices? Are we trying to stiffen the backbone of our fellow liberals, or find arguments that reasonable nonliberals can accept?

Of course, these criticisms in no way detract from the real merits of Crowder’s argument. Liberalism and Value Pluralism is surely the most sophisticated of recent attempts to marry the two camps. Crowder writes with clarity and generosity. The rigor and care of his analysis, the remarkably systematic presentation, the charity with which he interprets opposing viewpoints-all of these make the book an enjoyable and deeply sympathetic read. Crowder has written a book that many will find compelling and persuasive. It is also, indisputably, an impressive contribution to the literature.

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Democrats’ Doublespeak: Kerry is the perfect spokesman for his party (NRO, 040521)

by Jonah Goldberg

John Kerry is a flip-flopping, U-turning, yes-and-no kind of guy. No serious person I’ve met who follows politics disagrees with this, so let’s save the long list of flip-flops for another column.

Kerry’s defenders describe this trait as an asset. He’s “comfortable with nuance” and “at ease with complexity.” Even others who are less enamored of Kerry’s ability to come to a fork in the road and take it (apologies to Yogi Berra) think that Bush is a flip-flopper, too, and that there are more important issues than the tendency of all politicians to trim their sails to the political currents.

Some say Kerry’s ambiguities are signs of courage. He went to war to fight for his country. And when Kerry came home, they say, he fought the war in support of what he thought was best for his country. Needless to say, many people disagree with this interpretation.

This will all be hashed out repeatedly between now and November. What I find more interesting is how familiar these complaints about Kerry seem to be.

Didn’t we hear the same things about Bill Clinton, the original Democrat Who Wanted to Have it Both Ways?

When asked how he would have voted on the first Gulf War, Clinton said he agreed with minority against the war but would have voted with the majority. He smoked, but didn’t inhale. He boasted about how he “compartmentalized” disparate and often conflicting actions and ideas. He even conjured a whole “New Democrat” philosophy in which anybody who said you had to choose between eating your cake and having it too was presenting America with a “false choice.”

And of course there was Al Gore. Now, Gore wasn’t really accused of holding conflicting ideas simultaneously, so much as constantly “reinventing himself.” He’d been a pro-lifer, a pro-choicer, a social liberal, a social conservative, a hawk, a dove, a wonk, a quasi-hippie, a populist, an elitist, a New Democrat, and an Old Democrat. Even CNN’s middle-of-the-road Bill Schneider wrote a column for National Journal titled, “OK, Al, Who Are You Today?”

Clinton, Gore, and Kerry are all very different men, with different histories. But I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something about the Democratic party or liberalism in general that results in picking these sorts of men as standard-bearers.

By nature, politicians waffle, hem, haw, equivocate, and pander. Even the straight-talkers talk in circles. But when you compare Republican and Democratic candidates over the last 25 years, it’s hard not to notice a major difference.

The pressure within the Republican party has been to promote politicians willing to take strong conservative positions, even if they turn some people off. The pressure in the Democratic party has been to promote candidates who can be all things to all people.

Ronald Reagan, love him or hate him, was a man of strong conviction who stuck to his guns as much as politics allowed. And the current President Bush won the support of Republicans largely because he was the anti-Clinton. He talked poorly, but his meaning was clear. With Clinton — who could talk circles around the meaning of “is” — it was the other way around.

Historically, the Democratic party rarely wins with a majority of the vote, notes the website RasmussenReports.com. “Thirteen of the last 14 Republican Presidential victories before 2000 were won with a majority of the popular vote” — the current president was the exception.

Meanwhile, if you take out FDR (a master at cobbling together coalitions through saying opposite things to different constituencies), only one Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, has won with a significant majority of the popular vote since 1860 (Carter got a spare 50.1% in 1976).

One reason is that the Democrats were the outsider party after the Civil War, picking up electoral scraps where they could. Another closely linked reason is that liberalism these days is by nature coalitional. Why should a blue-collar Catholic Teamster in Ohio be in the same party as a software-designing gay-rights activist in San Francisco? Because Democrats value agreement less than cooperation and loyalty.

Republicans have their coalitions, too. But the party tends to be ideational. Conservatives say, “If you agree with us on, say, seven issues out of ten, you should vote with us.”

Liberals say, “We’ll fight for your cause — abortion, affirmative action, whatever — if you fight for ours.” The Democrats’ problem becomes even more acute because — thanks to its successes and failures — it has no unifying ideas or goals other than holding political power. What unites Democrats today other than defenestrating Bush?

Seen this way, is it so surprising the flip-floppers rise to the top of the Democratic party? If you need to please working-class traditionalists, single-issue feminists, angry parents, and angrier teachers’ unions, you have to speak out of both sides of your mouth. So, in this sense, isn’t Kerry the perfect spokesman for his party?

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Supremely Modern Liberals (Touchstone, 040500)

The Unhappy & Abusive Marriage of Liberalism & Modernism

by James Hitchcock

American politics is now as acrimonious as it has perhaps ever been. This may be puzzling to some as there are seemingly no longer any deep divisions within the polity. Most Americans, after all, are internationalists and free marketers of some kind, who disagree only within those parameters.

But there are deep and growing divisions. What is being played out now, acrimoniously, are the final implications of the agenda of the modernist movement, and of the liberalism it transformed in the 1960s, the final working out of ideas that were present from the beginning in the late 1700s but for a long time remained only half-recognized. This movement has made every political disagreement a dispute over fundamental beliefs, and indeed over the nature of reality: matters over which people will fight with particular ferocity.

Modernism in this sense is not the historical reality of modernization. It is an almost religious commitment to radical change, a fevered sense of the past as oppressive, a determination to move ruthlessly into the future no matter what the cost, an urge to shock traditional sensibilities. (Like all movements, I should note, modernism can be defined in a variety of ways, and not all self-conscious modernists espouse its entire agenda.)

It is inherently nihilistic, at its core nothing less than the systematic negation of every established belief and institution, the denial that any ultimate truth underlies culture, the often demonic conviction that destruction is the necessary preliminary to creation. It has touched deep and sinister springs in the human psyche: the love of negation and annihilation for their own sakes. Gratuitous, anarchical terrorism is in a sense modernism’s ultimate expression.

A Maniacal Urge

Modernism began with the French Revolution, whose maniacal urge to destroy the past even went to the point of abolishing the calendar and attempting to begin history entirely anew. Artists now became conscious of themselves as an “avant-garde” (previously a military term) and defined creativity as requiring a radical break with the art of the past. The new “bohemian” social type carried this ideal into society, defining free and authentic human existence as necessarily at odds with accepted beliefs and behavior. With Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx, atheism for the first time became intellectually respectable, even as “theologians” like Bruno Bauer and David Strauss reinterpreted Christianity so as to require an outright denial of what Christians had believed for 1,800 years.

As Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw, the desire to destroy the past and begin history anew would require, as modernism’s final stage, the “transvaluation of values,” in which everything once thought to be virtuous—piety, family loyalty, personal uprightness, patriotism, self-reliance—would be turned into vices. Throughout history, human values have primarily been centered in family, religion, and country, and those institutions had to be destroyed if a “new humanity” were to be created.

Thus modernism extols every kind of sexual “liberation,” which nullifies the family; a skeptical, “value free,” and “scientific” spirit, which nullifies religion; and universalism, which nullifies loyalty to one’s country. Thus, it portrays the family as the source of pathology and abuse, and condemns both religion and patriotism as either hypocritical or dangerously fanatical. The ideal modernist is a militant religious skeptic who renounces both family ties and loyalty to country and submits instead to an abstract ideal of modernism’s new world.

Modernism sometimes proceeds by frontal attacks on traditional beliefs and institutions, but it can also achieve its goals by appearing to respect them while radically redefining them. Thus, “marriage” can be dissolved at will and can be undertaken by homosexuals; “God” becomes an emanation from the self, and “Scripture” is understood as recording man’s religious aspirations; and “true patriots” condemn their own country as a force for evil in the world. Traditional beliefs and institutions do not have to be annihilated; it is sufficient to drain them of their ancient meanings and fill them with others—particularly if they are reduced to the realm of the subjective and therefore private, of “values” that cannot be “imposed” on others.

At various stages of its development, modernism appeared to create new systems of meaning to supersede the old, but its internal dynamic required that in time the new consensus also be rejected, as merely a new kind of tyranny. Insofar as modernists profess stable values, those values originate outside modernism itself, which of its very nature cannot affirm anything permanent.

For a long time, devotees of Marxism or Freudianism (or both) claimed that they provided new certitudes to replace those modernism had rejected, but both ideologies are now the principal exhibits in modernism’s bankruptcy proceedings. Both were of their very natures destructive of fundamental values, Marxism by its cynical materialism, its reduction of even the most sublime realities to the level of economic interests, and Freudianism by its undermining of the classical Western definition of man as a rational animal and its claim that human action is governed primarily by the unrecognized irrational dynamics of the psyche.

Freudianism ultimately failed both as an understanding of life and as a therapy, even though for many decades it was treated as an unquestionable truth, its critics accused of resisting it precisely because it was true. Simultaneously, Marxism not only failed to achieve its promised utopia, but proved to provide the grossest of tyrannies.

Liberalism Transformed

Liberalism—the experiment of continually increasing the limits of personal freedom—developed almost simultaneously with modernism, but for a long time it balanced openness to change with respect for tradition, and promised an ordered liberty based on transcendent morality. For most of the two centuries since their birth, modernism was hostile to liberalism, insofar as the latter held to an objective moral order and could be dismissed as merely the rationalization of bourgeois privilege. Modernists claimed liberal freedoms for themselves even as they rejected the underlying principles behind those freedoms.

Nevertheless, liberalism contained within itself tendencies that could transform it into an ally or even a form of modernism. For one thing, the spirit of self-criticism is an essential component of liberalism, and at some point that ingrained habit went beyond casting an honest eye on one’s own beliefs and institutions and became a reflexive negativity towards them—as with spouses who find their marriages oppressive by nature, church members who deny the basic doctrines of their faith, and citizens who assume that their country is wrong in every situation.

For another, from the beginning liberalism also harbored certain nihilistic potentialities. The dogma of progress implied that repudiating the past would bring only good to humanity, and (once belief in transcendent morality was lost) liberalism could only affirm the value of freedom without being able to offer substantial guidance as to what it was for and how it was to be used. Liberals insisted that freedom be exercised responsibly, but their sense of what was responsible had to be brought in from sources outside liberalism itself, usually from the moral inheritance from the past, about which they felt deep and steadily increasing ambivalence.

At various stages of its development, liberalism has drawn lines beyond which the exercise of freedom was said to be irresponsible. But inevitably those lines have proven to be unstable, because of an ingrained suspicion of whatever comes down from the past, whatever is “imposed” on the free individual by society. As recently as 1960 it would have seemed preposterous (and gravely unfair) to accuse liberals of failing to honor the duties that men owe to God, family, and nation. By the end of that decade, those obligations had been defined as the obsessions of a benighted conservatism that was the enemy of freedom.

Like modernism, liberalism increasingly defines its task as that of expanding the scope of freedom without limit. Despite whatever misgivings they may have, liberals find it intellectually and emotionally difficult to oppose anything that presents itself as progress.

Liberalism had in its beginning held to the free market, and that idea also conceals a certain nihilism, since the market treats all commodities equally, distinctions among them deriving solely from the law of supply and demand. Any moral restraint imposed on the market—in particular, on what one can make and what one must pay workers—must be imported from the outside.

But since the 1930s, liberalism has nourished an animus against the free market, allegedly on the grounds that it rewards greed. This charge is almost always made against businessmen, seldom against wealthy athletes, entertainers, or authors, and the aspect of the free market that arouses the greatest liberal indignation is the claim that self-reliance and hard work bring deserved rewards. What many liberals detest in that claim is not the injustice it allegedly conceals but the fact that it affirms values that for 175 years modernists have despised as “bourgeois.”

Revolutionary Nihilism

Such were the two movements as they had developed since the late 1800s, at best uncomfortable allies. After their coming together in the period imprecisely called “the sixties,” the two have been so synthesized that the word liberal means in all essentials modernist.

The crucial coming together of modernism and liberalism occurred when a seemingly solid middle-class liberal culture proved to be vulnerable, primarily through its young, who combined a real or feigned liberal guilt over social injustice—particularly in the American South and in Vietnam—with a determination to test the limits of liberal tolerance for a variety of “alternative lifestyles.” The counterculture of the sixties was not new in the sense that it offered ideas never heard before. It had ample pedigree in various artistic and intellectual sources, and modernist ideas had long been propagated in the universities, at least as academic studies.

What was revolutionary was that the nihilism of socially marginal modernists finally spread to the great middle class, primarily through the actions of the privileged children of that class, who had grasped the implications of modernism and now demanded to enjoy the unrestrained “freedom” that it placed at the center of existence. Ironically, in view of its traditional contempt for the free market, modernism achieved this new mass base partly by becoming commercialized, with magazines like Rolling Stone sold on small-town newsstands and carrying expensive ads for rock groups whose music appeared on major commercial labels.

The youth culture effected a transvaluation of values in numerous ways, not least by forbidding learning from the past (“Don’t trust anyone over thirty”) and declaring rebellion against social norms to be true authenticity (“It is forbidden to forbid”). The counterculture was in essence a sometimes violent assertion of the “imperial self”: the claim that the free individual alone is the final arbiter of truth and righteousness, that self-expression is the highest good, that everything external to the self is tyranny. The counterculture talked compulsively of “community,” precisely because its ideologies undermined all existing communities, destroying even the possibility of such a thing.

The status of marginalization was now taken as a condemnatory judgment on society itself, the behavior of the marginalized (drug use and promiscuous sex most notably) turned into the new normality. This was most revealingly manifest with respect to pornography and crime. Traditionally, liberals had defended the civil rights of those whose views they despised, so that they opposed the suppression of pornography as a violation of due process and insisted that the rights even of criminals be respected, while they condemned the transgressions themselves.

But during the sixties, under the influence of modernism, they began to validate pornography as psychologically liberating and artistically significant, while defining criminals as victims of oppression and even as martyrs for liberty. Liberals who could not accept this, nonetheless could not easily oppose it, since the liberal idea of freedom had merged almost seamlessly with the modernist claim that every assertion of personal autonomy, every assault on established values, is truly liberating. (Those who, in the name of traditional liberalism, did oppose this movement found themselves denounced as “conservatives” and cast out from the major institutions of liberal culture.)

The modernist identity derives almost entirely from self-assertion, and it must search compulsively for restraints to throw off. Its continuous demand, which liberals were willing to meet, is, at a minimum, to “understand” behavior that is plainly evil, such as gratuitous killings and acts of terrorism, and as far as possible to lay it at the door of “society,” thereby reversing the roles of transgressors and responsible citizens.

Modernity’s Acids

Inevitably, modernism undermined the authority even of the institution that had sheltered it for so long: the university. Rigorous cultural and intellectual standards are among the chief victims of the modernist culture of nihilism, and here as elsewhere, liberals who struggled to maintain objective standards in the face of radical assaults were necessarily fighting a rear-guard action and condemned as reactionaries.

The intellectual vogue of “deconstructionism”—the claim that no text has a fixed and authoritative meaning, that all texts should be understood as willed efforts to exercise power—is usually considered “postmodern,” a term coined to acknowledge that the acids of modernism, once they had penetrated deeply enough, undermined modernism itself, discrediting all its certitudes, including those of liberalism. But “postmodernism” is a misleading term if it is taken to imply the repudiation of modernist ideas. It is simply modernism’s inevitable and logical next stage.

According to deconstructionism, a group’s beliefs are merely the values it has adopted to advance its own interests and to suppress every other group. The characteristic beliefs of Western civilization—which most liberals themselves held until the sixties—are merely those of “dead white (heterosexual) males” and an effective mechanism for oppressing women and racial and sexual minorities. What had been considered the Great Works, the works by which the civilized mind and character should be formed, must now be read so as to reveal this.

The related movement of multiculturalism tends to define society in terms of “oppressors” and “victims,” another manifestation of the nihilistic impulse, which reduces reality to group conflicts in which “truth” is on the side of those who most effectively claim victimhood for themselves and who put forward their demands in such a way as to silence even the possibility of discussion. For example, terrorism is “explained” on the grounds that terrorists feel oppressed, without regard for the legitimacy of those feelings.

Until only a few decades ago most liberals would have been resistant to deconstructionism and multiculturalism, to the extent that both denied the truth of Western liberal values, including individual freedom and tolerance for diversity. But belief in the moral superiority of the non-Western world has become almost a staple of the Western educational system at all levels, and exalting other cultures at the expense of one’s own is taken as a sign of enlightenment, a test of political and personal authenticity.

It is a fundamentally incoherent position, since the imperative of systematic self-criticism itself seems to be a product of Western civilization. It is also a fundamentally illiberal position, since it requires, in the name of liberalism, the support of societies that deny the liberal values of freedom and tolerance. Liberals compulsively turn the weapons of self-criticism against their own culture, even as they extol other cultures that deny that imperative, and those liberals who defend their own culture often do so with troubled consciences, with many qualifying caveats.

Anti-Humanists

To the extent that modernism could be said to have escaped the trap of nihilism throughout its earlier history, it escaped by affirming a vague kind of humanism, particularly by claiming that the destruction of old beliefs and institutions and the expansion of freedom were pursued for the sake of human dignity and “human flourishing.” (Liberalism had escaped by holding to an objective moral order, which it held with decreasing commitment until, in coming together with modernism, it abandoned that belief entirely.)

But humanism, in its exaltation of the human species and its pride in civilization, was always problematical for modernism, and now the movement’s cutting edge is precisely a repudiation of humanism. With modernism having undermined traditional beliefs, including the belief in truths securely inherited from the past, post-modernism now acknowledges that there is also no philosophical basis for modernism itself, no compelling way in which human dignity can be affirmed. Deconstruction possesses the power to deconstruct anything, precluding even the possibility of an authoritative text, including those texts (the Declaration of Independence) by whose authority liberalism traditionally justified itself.

The “animal rights” movement is the overt denial of humanism, thereby reducing liberalism to nothing beyond an unlimited acceptance of change, the anti-humanistic theories of Peter Singer currently serving as the principal test of liberal “open-mindedness.” (Singer has suggested that unborn children have less of a right to life than some of the higher primates.) On the other side, having dealt humanism a fatal blow, liberalism is also unable to mount a strong defense against a technological utopianism in which the role of man in the universe is steadily surrendered to machines.

According to current modernist-liberal dogma, man’s proclaimed superiority over other animals is the ultimate arrogance, while on the other hand there is nothing distinctively human that cannot be ceded to technology. The fact that some liberals condemn technology as the rape of nature and at the same time favor human cloning and other advanced technologies is another manifestation of the blind openness to change that modernism enforces. Familiar kinds of technology are condemned; radical new kinds are endorsed.

Issues of sexual behavior are now foremost in the liberal program because, no longer able to affirm an exalted view of human dignity, liberals are reduced to defining freedom in terms of personal desires.

Liberalism Modernized

With the coming together of modernism and liberalism, the meaning of the latter has undergone a significant change. Properly understood, the New Left of the 1960s was not a political movement at all but a cultural one, asserting claims to “freedom” that no ordered society could accommodate. Thus, as liberalism assimilated the modernist outlook, primarily through the agency of the New Left, it also ceased to be primarily political.

Although battles are still fought over familiar issues—war and peace, economic policies—those battles are increasingly cultural in nature, calling into play passions that often seem disproportionate to the issues themselves and demanding symbolic victories that extend well beyond any measurable political effects. (For example, critics of earlier American wars would never have thought that the “right” to burn the flag was a properly liberal issue.) There are no liberals who resist the liberal-modernist synthesis for the simple reason that those who do are excommunicated from the movement and redefined as conservatives. For that reason, I will hereafter refer to that synthesis as “liberalism” by itself.

This liberalism explains much of the animosity in contemporary politics, because it transforms every political disagreement into a dispute over fundamental beliefs and attempts to put the coercive power and economic force of the state behind its policies. The sexual behavior of President Clinton became the bitterest of political battles because both sides understood that the battle was, in effect, a national referendum over the very possibility of sexual morality. Some people detested Clinton as the embodiment of irresponsible hedonism, while others detested Kenneth Starr as the embodiment of an outmoded and oppressive notion of moral objectivity. President Bush is hated by liberals not primarily because he promotes specific policies but because of who he is: a symbol of virtues that modernism long ago rejected.

For much of the twentieth century, conventional enlightened opinion predicted that traditional beliefs, especially (in the West) orthodox Christianity, would dissipate under the irresistible pressures of modernity. Instead, those pressures have inspired a strong revival of religion in the United States, a resurgence frightening and incomprehensible to liberals, who (therefore?) denounce religious movements with particular ferocity. It might even be said that now the primary agenda of liberalism is to deny moral traditionalism every kind of public respectability.

Allegedly, this alarm stems from the fear that religious believers aim to establish some kind of theocracy, but strong religion is mainly detested because it constitutes the ultimate public affirmation of objective meaning, a continuous counterfoil to modernist nihilism. Liberals take particular alarm at the religious claim that there are sources of value beyond the liberal society itself, and some liberals now insist that full rights of citizenship can be granted only to those who accept modernist agnosticism. The worst condemnation liberals can hurl at religious believers is, “They claim to possess the truth!”

Thus, some liberals identify the “religious right” as the greatest single danger facing the country, not merely because of its specific political program (particularly its opposition to abortion and the sexual revolution) but because religion ought not even to have a program. Some would exclude religious believers from any meaningful participation in public life. (For a survey of this liberal hostility, see my “The Enemies of Religious Liberty,” in the February 2004 issue of First Things.)

Debatable Issues

In principle, the “social issues” should not be matters of political debate at all, since the political expression of those issues ought to manifest the values of the citizenry, values that originate from independent, indeed superior, sources. The reason liberals can make matters of fundamental meaning matters of public debate is that the welfare state, in its claim of responsibility for people’s lives in the fullest sense, inevitably turns questions of value into political issues.

If, for example, through the public schools and other agencies, the state undertakes to foster people’s “welfare” in ways that go beyond mere economic need, should it not also change “repressive” attitudes towards sexual behavior, relations between men and women, or respect for authority? If healthy family life is shown to be the best protection against poverty, should the state encourage stable marriages between any two people willing to enter into that state?

In an only half-conscious way, political battles are now often conflicts over fundamental meaning or, more precisely, conflicts between those who believe that there are such meanings and those who deny them. Thus, the advance guard of liberalism does not seek concrete political achievements so much as symbolic victories, the use of the public forum to undermine existing certitudes. Debates over particular issues—abortion, homosexuality, pornography—are only secondarily about the specific practices themselves. Instead, they represent the liberal demand that all such questions be kept perpetually open, that no one be permitted to affirm objective moral standards, that each self-defined “oppressed” group be permitted to throw off its shackles in the terms it chooses. Remember, for example, General Wesley Clark’s remarkable claim, during his failed bid for the presidency, that the child becomes a human being only “when the mother chooses.”

Similarly, the push for homosexual “marriage” is really a demand for the deconstruction of marriage, a denial of its real existence, its demotion to the status of an arbitrary legal category. Despite all the publicity about American homosexuals now attempting to “marry,” experience in the Scandinavian countries shows that relatively few homosexuals took advantage of this opportunity when it was offered to them. Many homosexuals regard the institution of marriage as itself the root of all repression and claim to offer society a better model of sexual relationships.

At first unnoticed by the general public, various American elites—educators, clergy, journalists, attorneys, government officials, even some businessmen, the very people whom modernists had always despised as philistines—over time became deeply infected with liberalism. The same process of liberalism being transformed by modernism that occurred in the universities also occurred in the mainline Protestant and the Catholic churches, in social agencies, and in the major media. As a result, never before in history has there been a society in which the institutions that embody its values—schools, social agencies, many of the churches—now work to undermine those values.

In contemporary America most elites appear to be at least complacent towards nihilistic currents—few are heard to object to the misogynist and racist lyrics of rappers, for example, presumably because the rappers are considered “marginalized” and are protesting “society”—and it is primarily the masses who retain some tenuous commitment to traditional beliefs. The famous division between “red” and “blue” on the electoral map of 2000 roughly corresponds to the division within the country between those who believe in traditional values and those who do not. According to liberal dogma, the tradition-minded masses are by definition incapable of embracing necessary changes and must be prodded or coerced into doing so.

Soft Totalitarians

This popular resistance has led modernism to adopt a kind of “soft totalitarianism” implicit in its philosophy. This is seen in the philosophy of existentialism following World War II, which held that existence was “absurd,” and in doing so announced that the final negation had at last been reached, that the modern quest had exhausted itself.

Logically, it should have led to political quiescence. But its most famous spokesman, Jean-Paul Sartre, was a dogmatic Marxist who placed his ideology beyond the reach of rational criticism by making an uncritical commitment to the “progressive” forces of history. He offered a confirmation of the fact that nihilism ends in totalitarian politics, because the denial of intellectual objectivity unleashes (and justifies) Nietzsche’s “will to power,” which leaves people free to assert their wills in whatever ways they are able.

Both communism and fascism were modernist movements that mounted lawless radical assaults on traditional beliefs and institutions and proclaimed that civilization was at bottom merely the fruit of the imposition of power. Some modernists were attracted to fascism, but many more chose communism. (And many, George Bernard Shaw for example, chose both, till the Nazis discredited fascism.) Although a concern for the oppressed was the alleged reason for this, communism’s fanatical hatred of bourgeois values made it attractive, along with its claim to command the future.

Communism had little appeal for the working classes, who were its supposed beneficiaries. Its most passionate devotees were educated people, often from privileged backgrounds, who showed little real sympathy for the poor. As George Orwell, Lionel Trilling, and others recognized at the time, sympathy for communism was finally a mere intellectual fashion. Some Western liberals made a special effort to overcome their squeamishness about communism because it was for them the very embodiment of the modernist imperative.

Liberalism now moves towards a soft totalitarianism, a view of political authority in which citizens are conceded less and less ability to govern their own lives. The omnicompetent welfare state is already in place as the vehicle for this totalitarianism, and the imperial judiciary now decides questions of meaning, an inevitable development once religion was defined as an “intrusion” into the public sphere. Moral questions (such as whether homosexuals should be allowed to marry) sometimes require political decisions, and the courts are the only available agencies to resolve them. It is only one of the many ironies of the situation that judges thus must function as repositories of transcendent wisdom, even as liberalism denies that such wisdom is even possible.

Despite this skepticism, liberalism now moves relentlessly to impose its dogmas on a reluctant citizenry. Education is used as an instrument for changing young people’s fundamental beliefs, even to the point of weaning children away from the beliefs of their “reactionary” parents. In other liberal Western countries (Canada among them) freedom of expression has been significantly curtailed to forbid any public criticism of favored groups, especially homosexuals, and in the United States liberals have tried, with varying degrees of success, to enforce “speech codes” on college campuses.

Zeno’s Paradox

Abortion still stands as the premier liberal issue, since it involves the ultimate assertion of the untrammeled will of the individual. But the rhetoric of “choice” is only invoked in support of women who choose to abort. Liberals have been reluctant to condemn the policy of forced abortions in China, since they regard a woman’s decision to bear a child as often irresponsible, demonstrating that the mother is insufficiently enlightened to make a correct choice.

Beyond abortion, environmentalism will, for the indefinite future, be the crucial issue. In the name of the good of the earth, some liberals have already announced their willingness to use coercive measures, even to the point of restricting people’s right to bring children into the world.

This soft totalitarianism is nihilistic in that it systematically nullifies traditional beliefs and customs and replaces them with rules that are purely external, without any deep roots in the culture. They are imposed from without in the name of progress, an imposition of precisely the kind of soulless conformity that liberals claim to be characteristic of traditional societies. A thoroughly “modern” society leaves people with a sense of emptiness, because they cannot relate its imposed forms to family, religion, and other perennial organic realities.

“Speech codes” and other measures restrictive of civil liberties are now part of the liberal agenda because liberalism defines traditional beliefs, and those who hold them, as inherent threats to freedom. In Canada and parts of Western Europe, civil liberties have moved from being the very essence of liberalism to being severely curtailed under the rubric of preventing “hate crimes” by preventing “hate speech,” and the attempts to impose this censorship in American universities serve notice that liberals intend the same for the whole society.

Beginning with the French Revolution, modernism has also required authoritarian government as the only antidote to the anarchy it spawns. As traditional laws and customs are discarded, whatever order exists must be imposed. The nihilism now spreading through bourgeois culture can still be concealed in various ways, prosperity often serving as a kind of anesthetic against nihilism’s depredations. But the culture of poverty in its most extreme manifestations displays the results of liberal negation in their starkest forms: naked lust, greed, hatred, and violence, a war of all against all without even a pretext of redeeming features, a condition in which poor people trying to live ordered lives are the principal victims.

Liberal orthodoxy requires that such pathologies be explained as the effects of an unjust society, caused solely by material deprivation. Few liberals can acknowledge the depth of those pathologies or the extent to which they have been exacerbated by decades of liberal ideology and policies. In reducing the problem entirely to one of poverty, liberals effectively deny the moral nature of poor people, who are treated merely as economic beings. Liberal opposition to “faith-based initiatives” is a denial of the claim that religion can or should play a central role in overcoming social pathologies.

Modernism is an exemplar of Zeno’s Paradox, whereby it is impossible to arrive at a goal because it is necessary repeatedly to traverse half the remaining distance to the goal. The angry hysteria now characteristic of so much liberal politics is perhaps partly triggered by a panicky awareness that the point of ultimate denial is fast being approached. How many more “breakthroughs” can society celebrate, how many more obstacles to freedom can be assaulted and toppled, before there is nothing left?

But if liberals sometimes have an inkling that the process of “liberation” has gone too far, they have no way of turning back. Thus, as the goal of absolutely untrammeled freedom is approached, liberals proclaim all the more loudly that society is oppressive and demand a redoubled push towards liberation.

Weakened Egos

Ironically, the very assault on established values that modernism mounted in the name of personal freedom, its reduction of social reality essentially to an emanation from the self, actually weakens the ego, which is thereby made to experience its own fragility, the fact that it is bereft of substantial support and is thrown back on its own resources. Much of liberal politics is therefore a demand for public affirmations of worth—for women, racial minorities, homosexuals—made necessary in part by the liberal negation of the traditional communities that once clothed the naked self.

The concept of “affirmative action” follows from this and is itself nihilistic, because the categories into which it places people are empty ones—sex, race, ethnicity—which have no necessary connection to the moral identity of the individuals placed in them. “Conservative” women and blacks represent a threat because they affirm meanings that are more than mere expressions of group identity.

The politics of meaning is not conveniently reduced to partisan divisions. Some Republicans are modernist liberals, or at least can see nothing radically wrong with the modernist-liberal agenda. Many others are uncomfortable with issues they think do not belong in politics at all, and still others seem largely oblivious to those issues. But after 1968, the Democratic party made itself increasingly hospitable to the ideologies of modernistic liberalism. Symbolically, abortion, far more than any strictly political or economic question, is the one issue on which, at the highest levels of the party, there can be no compromise.

It is not coincidental that, while self-proclaimed religious skeptics are a small minority of the citizenry, they are overwhelmingly Democratic in their politics. While the party still includes many sincere believers, nonbelievers correctly sense that they have there a comfortable home. It is primarily Democrats, beginning with John F. Kennedy, who have banished religious principles from public life, on the grounds that those principles are purely “private,” hence, purely subjective.

It is also not coincidental that a large majority of those who profess some kind of “New Age” religiosity (reincarnation, goddess worship) also announce themselves as Democrats, since New Age religiosity is a purely self-created form of belief, validated solely by the subjective demands of the self.

James Hitchcock is a senior editor of Touchstone.

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A New Attack on Rush: David Brock doesn’t want American soldiers to hear Limbaugh (NRO, 040528)

by Byron York

David Brock, the former self-described “right-wing hit man” turned “progressive” activist, is escalating his campaign against conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Brock runs a new organization called Media Matters for America, which, according to Brock, was created to fight “conservative misinformation” in the media (see “David Brock is Buzzing Again,” NR, June 14, 2004). Earlier this month, Brock and Media Matters produced a television commercial attacking Limbaugh for comments about the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal. Brock, who has raised more than $2 million for his new venture, spent $100,000 to air the spot on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox, and ESPN.

Now, Brock has written a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asking that the Pentagon remove Limbaugh’s program from the American Forces Radio and Television Service, formerly known as Armed Forces Radio. Arguing that Limbaugh has condoned the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Brock wrote, “It is abhorrent that the American taxpayer is paying to broadcast what is in effect pro-torture propaganda to American troops.” Brock asked Rumsfeld to consider removing the Limbaugh program to “protect” American troops from Limbaugh’s “reckless and dangerous messages.” Brock also expressed concern that Limbaugh “continually uses prejudiced rhetoric that divides rather than unites Americans.”

Brock based his letter in large part on a story that appeared Wednesday in the anti-Bush online magazine Salon. That article, “Rush’s Forced Conscripts,” in turn relied on Brock and other critics, like Limbaugh competitor Al Franken of the new liberal talk-radio network Air America, to accuse American Forces Radio of a “rightward tilt” and of airing a generous portion of Limbaugh while not allowing liberal voices to be heard. Limbaugh, according to Franken, provides “a bad message for troops to be hearing.”

Salon editor David Talbot followed up, in “Turn Off Rush, Turn On Salon,” by denouncing military broadcasters who, he said, give soldiers “a daily dose of poison from Rush Limbaugh.” Talbot wrote that American Forces Radio “bombard[s]” military men and women with “Limbaugh’s incendiary tirades, to the exclusion of all other voices.”

“Rush’s Forced Conscripts” discounted the argument of American Forces Radio chief Melvin Russell, who told Salon that his service included Limbaugh on the basis of Limbaugh’s popularity, and that American Forces also provides programming from National Public Radio. That’s not the same thing, Franken explained: “Rush’s message is that liberals hate America, while NPR is straight-ahead reporting and journalism.”

But American Forces Radio provides not only NPR programs like Morning Edition and All Things Considered but NPR commentary, as well. American military men and women abroad have access, for example, to the talk show of liberal host Diane Rehm. Indeed, Rehm’s biographical sketch on the NPR website says her program is “heard on U.S. military instillations around the world via Armed Forces Radio.” (For a schedule of NPR programs provided to American Forces Radio, click here.)

Military listeners can also hear NPR’s Tavis Smiley Show, Talk of the Nation, and Fresh Air programs. Beyond NPR, listeners can also hear brief commentaries by former talk-show host Jim Hightower and CBS News anchorman Dan Rather. Viewed as a whole, the list of names suggests that military listeners, if they want to hear a variety of views, can do so on American Forces Radio.

But according to those who design its programming, the point of American Forces Radio is not to provide some sort of perfect ideological balance but rather to give military men and women a representative sample of the programming they could hear at home. To that end, American Forces Radio provides about 1,200 different programs to military radio stations around the world, which then make up their own schedules. “We try to provide a cross-section of programming that they would have available to [soldiers] were they stateside,” says Melvin Russell. “We feel that the variety, the 1,200 programs that we offer each week, gives us that balance that we’re looking for.”

Most of those programs are music shows, but there is a significant news and talk lineup as well. If you liked to listen to Dr. Laura Schlessinger at home, and you’re stationed in South Korea, you can listen to her there, too (the first hour of her program is included in American Forces Radio, just as the first hour of Limbaugh’s program is provided). If you liked NPR’s Car Talk at home, you can listen overseas, too. If you preferred Dan Patrick’s ESPN Radio show, that’s there, too.

Given that, it would be odd if American Forces Radio attempted to replicate the menu of radio choices available in the United States and decided not to include Limbaugh, who produces one of the most popular programs in America.

The reality is that the talk-radio market in the United States is not balanced; conservatives have been far more successful than liberals in making a product that people want to hear. That fact is the premise for the creation of the Air America network. Maybe that network will grow into a significant force, but for now, there is no dominant, single liberal voice on national radio today whose inclusion would be mandatory if one were making up a representative sample of American radio programming. Liberals have said as much many times as they (unsuccessfully) searched for that very thing.

As for Air America itself, it has been on the air less than two months, is heard on only a handful of stations, and faces an uncertain financial future. If it succeeds, portions of its programming might well be included in the American Forces lineup. For now, people on military bases with access to the Internet can listen to Air America on the web — just like they would at home.

The critics’ real argument, it seems, is not so much with American Forces Radio, and the way it makes its programming decisions, as it is with Limbaugh himself. And that is nothing new.

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Michael Moore, MoveOn, and Fahrenheit 9/11: A political campaign disguised as a movie (NRO, 040629)

The left-wing activist group MoveOn.org, which last week launched a campaign to encourage members to see Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 during its premiere weekend, is now taking partial credit for the early success of the anti-Bush documentary.

“Due in part to your efforts, Fahrenheit 9/11 was the number one movie in the nation this weekend,” Eli Pariser, head of the MoveOn Political Action Committee, told supporters during a nationwide conference call Monday night. “Now we’re going to talk about how to turn that enormous momentum into action to beat Bush.”

Last week, MoveOn asked members to sign a pledge to see Fahrenheit 9/11 during its first showings Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. Announcing the plan, Pariser praised the movie, but said the real reason MoveOn wanted members to turn out during the film’s first days in theaters was to create the impression that a wave of anti-Bush anger was sweeping the country. “We launched this campaign around Fahrenheit 9/11 because to the media, the pundits, and the politicians in power, the movie’s success will be seen as a cultural referendum on the Bush administration and the Iraq war,” Pariser told MoveOn members. “Together, we have an opportunity to knock this ball out of the park.”

Fahrenheit 9/11 took in $21.8 million at the box office during its first few days in theaters, making it the most popular movie of the weekend.

Moore himself joined the MoveOn conference call Monday night, which organizers say included 55,000 listeners. The filmmaker thanked MoveOn members for helping make Fahrenheit 9/11 a quick success. But more than success, Moore told MoveOn, he wanted the movie to help defeat President George W. Bush in November. “None of us want this just to be a movie, where people just eat some popcorn and go home,” Moore said. Instead, Moore explained, he wanted the movie to become the inspiration for thousands of new anti-Bush voters.

“I’ve actually put up a little pledge sheet on my website,” Moore said, referring to a list of get-out-the-vote strategies he is endorsing for the presidential election. The first thing Moore is asking people to do is to take off work on November 2, so they can spend part of the day helping others get to the polls. The second thing is “to take one weekend in October and drive to a swing state” to work for Democratic candidate John Kerry. Finally, Moore is “asking everyone to identify five non-voters that they know and adopt them,” to convince them to vote.

The MoveOn meetings underscored the overtly political nature of Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 promotional campaign.

Last week, MoveOn set a goal of persuading 100,000 members to take the pledge to see Fahrenheit 9/11 as early as possible. In fact, according to MoveOn, 116,649 MoveOn members signed up. While that number seems like a relatively small part of the movie’s total audience, Pariser says MoveOn’s influence is far larger than the official number suggests. “When I went to Waterville, Maine and asked how many people from MoveOn were there, probably three-quarters of the people there said yes,” Pariser told Variety on Monday.

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Weapons of Mass Distortion: The coming meltdown of the liberal media (NRO, 040708)

By L. Brent Bozell III

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an excerpt from the introduction of L. Brent Bozell III’s new book, Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media, released today. Bozell is founder and president of the Media Research Center.

In an April 10, 2002, appearance on CNN’s Larry King Live, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings gave a remarkable answer when he was asked about media bias.

“Historically in the media, it has been more of a liberal persuasion for many years,” Jennings said. “It has taken us a long time, too long in my view, to have vigorous conservative voices heard as widely in the media as they now are. And so I think, yes, on occasion there is a liberal instinct in the media which we need to keep our eye on, if you will.”

It was an astonishing statement. For years, media analysts had been pointing out the pervasive liberal bias found in mainstream news coverage. In fact, in 1987 I founded an organization called the Media Research Center specifically to bring balance and responsibility to the news media, and for some fifteen years the center had been carefully and systematically documenting the extent of media bias. But despite all those efforts, news leaders had vigorously denied any charge of bias, no matter how thoroughly documented. Actually, for the most part the Jenningses, Brokaws, and Rathers refused even to acknowledge the charges, which they could get away with at a time when the American public was less attuned to the leftward slant in the press.

But that time had passed. Now, here was Peter Jennings, one of the most important journalists in the country, acknowledging on national television that, yes, the charge of liberal bias was true.

Then again, was the statement really all that astonishing? Well, yes, simply because no one of his stature had ever come close to admitting that liberal bias existed. (Though Walter Cronkite had acknowledged the leftist bias permeating the airwaves, he did so long after he had retired from CBS News.) But if one looks closely at Jennings’s answer, it becomes clear that, to the distinguished anchor of ABC News, media bias really isn’t much of a problem at all. It’s just an “instinct” that is evidenced only “on occasion.” Like a slow leak in a tire, it’s not something that demands an immediate repair. It’s just something “we need to keep our eye on.”

Jennings also betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of why media bias is a problem. For “too long,” he said, “conservative voices” were not “heard as widely in the media as they now are.” Quite true, but that statement is slippery on two counts. First, who does Jennings mean by “conservative voices” — journalists or their guests? There is no empirical evidence I’ve seen that there has been any marked increase of conservatives in the newsrooms — note that we’re talking about newsrooms, not the pundits’ roundtables — of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and PBS. Second, if by “conservative voices” Jennings is referencing the opinions of conservatives within news stories, even if journalists are giving more airtime to conservatives, it doesn’t follow that the coverage of those “conservative voices” is any more positive. The implication of his statement is that conservatives now are getting a fair shot in the media, which, as we’ll see in this book, is patently untrue. Even more important, having more conservative voices heard in the mainstream media is just one small step toward balanced news coverage. Liberal bias affects much more than simply how certain political figures are covered and how certain news stories are reported. The media’s pervasive bias determines precisely which stories are (and are not) covered, and in how much detail. Indeed, the media elite deliberately attempt to set the national agenda through their coverage of the news.

I have learned this firsthand in a career spent closely analyzing the news media, but the point was driven home to me several years ago at a meeting with a Los Angeles newspaper. The Media Research Center had just released an exhaustive study regarding liberal bias in the news media, and I was scheduled to meet with the editorial board of the (now-defunct) Los Angeles Herald-Examiner to discuss the report’s findings. When I arrived, however, I was ushered into the conference room and met by a solitary figure, a member of the editorial board obviously pegged with the unsavory assignment of listening to this pesky conservative. The ponytailed hair and the cold body language — he silently pointed me to a chair — hinted that this would be anything but a productive meeting. I made an opening statement, then passed him the voluminous report we were to discuss. Without bothering to open it, the editor shoved it back at me and unleashed a vitriolic harangue against conservatives. Niceties flew out the window as he snarled, “All you conservatives care about is making money!” Clearly we weren’t going to discuss the report, so I asked him what liberals like him cared about. Without bothering to deny my description of his ideological persuasion, he quickly shot back, “You just don’t get it: We are the social conscience of this country and we have an obligation to use the media.”

At least this editor had the decency to admit what so many others steadfastly deny. Yes, the mainstream news media’s view of conservatives is less than flattering — the liberal media see conservatives as “the great unwashed,” as Republican congressman Henry Hyde aptly put it — and that is a big problem. But just as important, and too often overlooked, is the problem of how the media view themselves. The media elites feel they must be the “social conscience of this country”; they seem to have a higher calling beyond objectively reporting what happens on a day-to-day basis. Reporters, editors, and producers routinely display an arrogance driven by an inflated sense of self-worth. They are the enlightened, the elite. This attitude cannot help but distort the way the news is covered.

Media bias is more than just something “we need to keep our eye on.” It is an endemic problem, and even now, when the media have actually come under some scrutiny, the problem is not being seriously addressed. Although media bias has become the subject of debate in this country, the terms of that debate are far too narrow. Usually it is focused on a small subtopic, like the number of conservative commentators on television, when news commentary isn’t even the issue — it is in news reporting that the journalist must strive for objectivity. Or it is focused on a particular statement that galls — say, CNN boss Ted Turner’s insulting Christians — but examining such a statement, while instructive, doesn’t begin to plumb the depths of the problem of liberal media bias.

Peter Jennings might think that the problem of media bias is pretty much solved, but as this book will show, liberal media bias is alive and well. The evidence of such bias is simply staggering.

The Liberal Counterattack

Although overwhelming evidence indicates that liberal bias in the mainstream news media continues unchecked, something important has changed in recent years. It is not just that news leaders like Peter Jennings have been forced for the first time to answer questions about media bias. No, the Left has come to believe that a battle is on and has begun to attack those dreaded conservatives who dare to challenge the authority and legitimacy of the “mainstream” news media. But the liberal counterattack has been bizarre. Some on the Left, refusing to admit to the longtime liberal dominance over the mainstream news media, go so far as to claim that there is actually a conservative media bias. According to a series of books released in 2002 and 2003, the vast right-wing conspiracy has somehow managed to conquer the news media as well. It is important, and won’t take long, to demolish this mythology.

First out of the gate was The Nation’s Eric Alterman with the book What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News, a response to the number one bestseller from former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. (In his book Alterman condemns me for praising the media’s powerful, if short-lived, patriotism in the days following the September 11 horror.) The New York Observer’s Joe Conason followed with Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, in which he tries to “debunk conservative mythology,” devoting a whole chapter to the “palpably ridiculous argument” that “liberals control the media.” (It’s instructive that Conason says of this writer that the “belligerent, red-bearded Bozell, a nephew of William F. Buckley Jr., scarcely pretends to be anything more than an instrument of the Republican Party’s conservative leadership,” an extraordinary accomplishment given that I’m not even a Republican.) Finally we got comedian Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. A quick review of Franken’s book begs the question: Is this man serious? And a related question: Just how serious is a movement that relies on this man as its spokesman? We will spend more time with Mr. Franken later in the book.

The Conason/Alterman/Franken argument that the media are conservative revolves around four major points, all of them fallacious:

1. Liberal bias? Just look at all those conservatives in the media! By far the most common trick of the Left is to focus on the “media,” not the “news media.” How many times do we hear liberals cite Rush Limbaugh, William F. Buckley, Robert Novak, Cal Thomas, Sean Hannity, and so on, as evidence of the conservative “dominance” of the media? What these liberals know full well is that all of these conservatives are commentators, not reporters; their work appears in opinion columns and on TV or radio talk shows — not in news stories in our newspapers or on radio or television news programs. None reports news, but rather they all react to it analytically and, by necessity, with prejudice. More: No conservative on talk radio denies his conservative stance, which puts every one of them in almost perfect juxtaposition with the liberals in the news media, almost all of whom deny their own bias. It is impossible to contend that conservatives dominate the news media — which is why liberals play with the terminology.

2. Who cares about liberal reporters? It’s all about those dastardly conservative media owners. Alterman has a chapter titled “You’re Only As Liberal As the Man Who Owns You.” This is the stuff of Berkeley coffee klatches. Contrary to the Marxist stick-figure caricature, corporate CEOs cannot be automatically stereotyped as supply-side right-wingers dressed in three-piece Armani suits smoking oversized stogies and swigging martinis at the Knickerbocker Club. And if you don’t believe me, ask Michael Eisner or Ted Turner.

Even if we suspend our disbelief for a moment and go along with Alterman that the owners of media corporations are all right-wingers, what does that really tell us? Nothing, as CNN’s Tucker Carlson rightly pointed out when Alterman tried to claim that right-wing media owners control “what gets on the news.” On the February 5, 2003, edition of Crossfire, Carlson swiftly rebutted Alterman’s argument: “Actually, having worked in media corporations all my adult life, I can tell you, as I think you already know, most reporters don’t take orders from the owners of their companies. Most reporters don’t know who the owners of their companies are and have zero contact with them. So that’s not a plausible claim.”

The corporate ownership argument is closely linked to point #1. Liberals like to point out that a majority of newspaper editorial pages normally endorse Republicans in presidential campaigns, as if somehow this validates their theory that the owners are calling the shots. But these are editorial writers — not owners, and not reporters — making this call. Moreover, theirs is a one-day story in the editorial page; this tells us nothing about a paper’s slant 365 days per year in the news section, which is all that matters.

3. Don’t believe us liberals; just listen to what some conservatives say about this silly “liberal media” accusation. Conason quotes former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed mouthing this analysis of the press: “My sense is that it’s probably never as good as you think and it’s never as bad as you think.” But what does that mean? It is not content analysis; it’s conjecture. And yet Conason believes that in saying this, Reed “acknowledged” that “the media have turned to the right.”

Alterman misuses Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol in the same way. Kristol once told The New Yorker that “the liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures,” a point with which most conservatives would disagree, but also a point focusing on the impact of liberal media bias, not its existence, which Alterman seems not to realize is a given for Kristol. Alterman also quotes Pat Buchanan suggesting that the media had been fair to him on the presidential campaign trail, but in no way was Buchanan denying the existence of a liberal media bias. In fact, over the years Buchanan has denounced the liberal media probably hundreds of times, but Alterman has somehow missed all of these quotes. I wonder if he also missed Buchanan’s dismissal of What Liberal Media? In a column in June 2003, Buchanan called Alterman a poor judge of bias and averred that there is indeed a “liberal press,” which includes “all three major networks, PBS, NPR and virtually all major U.S. papers — Boston Globe, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, Atlanta Constitution, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Los Angeles Times. . . . Not only are the editorial pages of most major papers liberal, the news staffs are overwhelmingly so.” Buchanan concluded that “Big Media remains a fortress of liberalism,” which is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Alterman’s thesis.

Franken, meanwhile, relies on an ex-conservative to guide him through the world of conspiratorial conservative media politics. But the ex-conservative in question, David Brock, is a highly suspect source, to say the least, for he is an accomplished liar. (Incidentally, Franken, he who condemns “liars” in his book, was forced to confess that he lied in writing the book. In July 2003 he wrote a letter of apology to Attorney General John Ashcroft, admitting that he had not been truthful when he had earlier asked for Ashcroft’s views on abstinence for what he had claimed, falsely, was a book on the subject.)

4. Gore had the election stolen from him and this proves the media’s conservative bias. Conason finds a conspiracy here: “For eight years, the nation’s largest mainstream news organizations devoted substantial resources to bringing down a Democratic administration. Investigative units at ABC News and NBC News chased scandal stories so zealously that they became virtual adjuncts of the prosecutors and conservative groups attacking the White House. . . . That same enmity infected the coverage of Democratic nominee Al Gore during the 2000 presidential election. False stories designed to ruin Gore’s reputation, including phony and distorted quotes, found their way from the Republican National Committee to the conservative media and seeped into the mainstream press.”

That accusation packs quite a wallop — except Conason doesn’t offer a single example to support his case.

Franken devotes an entire chapter to the 2000 presidential election, claiming that it “disproved” the argument that the media display a liberal bias. This thirteen-page study in incoherent ramblings offers no serious content analysis and beats to death one or two utterly irrelevant anecdotes (the media’s handling of Al Gore and the Love Canal issue — stop the presses!).

Alterman devotes a chapter to the 2000 election and another entire chapter to the postelection standoff in Florida. Most of it is a rather hysterical tirade against George W. Bush’s camp for being evil and Al Gore’s camp for not being as clever as the evil Bush camp. Here and there, however, he slips in a quote or factoid as “evidence” of this conservative, anti-Gore bias. For example, he cites The Press Effect, a study by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman which found that “in the five Sunday shows aired by the three networks [on December 3], the word ‘concede’ appeared in twenty-three questions.” In twenty of them, Alterman points out, “the hypothetical conceder was Al Gore.” Somehow he finds this to be rather damning evidence, but he does not consider that perhaps this was so because recount after recount continued to validate Bush’s victory while Gore’s attempts to overturn the election results were rebuffed time and again.

Since all three of these authors seize on the 2000 presidential election as “evidence” of their wacky claims, this book will address the topic in depth, in Chapter 11.

Strangely, even when denying a liberal bias in the media, these writers don’t deny that most reporters are liberal. Alterman admits, “I concur that the overall flavor of the elite media reporting favors gun control, campaign finance reform, gay rights, and the environmental movement” — and he could have easily added abortion, tax hikes, big government, and a host of other liberal policies — though he does feebly submit, “I do not find this bias as overwhelming as some conservatives do.” Franken spends a chapter ridiculing Bernard Goldberg and Bias but also writes, “I think Goldberg’s most valid point is that reporters tend to have more liberal views than the public on social issues.” His argument is reduced to this: Okay, so the media are liberal on social issues, but they’re conservative on economic issues, which are what really matter. But even that is not true. To prove his point that “journalists are economically conservative,” Franken cites a 1998 survey of Washington-area reporters by Virginia Commonwealth University professor David Croteau, who often performs studies for the Far Left (and misnamed) group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Yet Franken omits the most important numbers from Croteau’s survey — because these numbers contradict his conclusion: When asked to characterize their political orientation on social issues, only 9% of the journalists said “right” while 87% said “left” or “center”; on economic issues, only 19% said “right” while 75% said “left” or “center.” Despite what Al Franken would have us believe, few reporters are conservative on either social or economic issues. Interestingly, Joe Conason cites the same Croteau survey, but even he does not try to make the bogus Franken claim that it reveals journalists to be economically conservative.

The Coming Meltdown

The liberal argument about a conservative media bias is so flimsy as to be amusing. But the Left’s counterattack is serious, and calculated.

Several times during the Clinton years, when some in the media threatened to depart from liberal orthodoxy by focusing on Clinton scandals — Gennifer Flowers, Troopergate, and Monica Lewinsky come to mind — Team Clinton lashed out at the media for being mouthpieces of the vast right-wing conspiracy. The charge was always preposterous, and deliberately so: It was a preemptive strike designed to intimidate the press into compliance. And it worked every time, as the mainstream media responded by either turning their guns on Republicans (the Lewinsky scandal) or dropping the story altogether (Flowers, Troopergate) to prove their liberal bona fides.

No serious liberal believes that a conservative bias dominates the news media. Liberals know what this book will prove: Like the old Outer Limits television series, the Left still controls the transmission, still controls “all that you see and hear.” Television is not the only domain of the liberal news media: The Left still dominates with the printing presses, and yes, still dominates the “news” programming on radio.

So why the hysterical claims of conservative domination of the media? Because liberals fear that their monopoly on news coverage is in jeopardy. For decades, the liberal hegemony over the news media has provided the political Left with the ability not only to slant news coverage portside but actually to control the public conversation, both political and cultural, in America. Being the “social conscience” of the nation — having the ability to direct the national agenda — is quite a power. Liberals don’t want to lose that.

In fact, they are right to be scared. The liberal news media are headed for a meltdown. To be sure, even today the vast power of the liberal media cannot be underestimated. But the days of liberal spin always prevailing are coming to an end. This has nothing to do with some sinister right-wing conspiracy. Rather, the problem lies with those in the liberal news media themselves. So dismissive are they of any claim of liberal bias, no matter how well documented, that they regularly allow this bias to seep into news stories. Even when poll after poll reveals that Americans have lost confidence in the news media, the liberal media elites do not deign to cleanse their industry of the bias that plagues it.

Something else is changing that will speed the collapse of the liberal media’s monopoly on news coverage in this country. Conservatives have traditionally accepted liberal bias in the mainstream news media as a fact of life; it has been a given that the Left controls the news industry just as it holds sway over academia and the arts. But this has bred a certain complacency toward the press that has spelled disaster for one conservative initiative after another. Remember the Contract with America?

But conservatives are learning. No longer do we merely have to accept the liberal agenda of the so-called objective news media. Nothing made this point more clearly than a startling statement by President George W. Bush in October 2003. Fed up with the way the national media were covering the rebuilding efforts in Iraq, Bush stated in a Hearst-Argyle interview that he was going to bypass them. “I’m mindful of the filter through which some news travels,” the president said, “and sometimes you just have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people and that’s what we will continue to do.” The liberal press, predictably, fainted in disbelief. As John Roberts of CBS News put it, “It was the public relations equivalent of a declaration of war aimed at the national media.” Many who read this book will have an altogether different perspective. They’ll wonder why it took the Bush administration so long.

==============================

Newly Formed Faith-Based Groups Lean Left (FN, 040713)

NEW YORK — Concerned over the growing influence of the religious right in the political realm, several groups have recently formed to cast a different light on the faithful’s ability to mix religion with politics.

Some of these newly established organizations claim to be non-partisan while others stake out territory on the political left. But they all say they share a desire to offer a more progressive view about the role of faith in politics than the conservative voice of the religious right.

Among their latest efforts — last month, the left-leaning Center for American Progress hosted its inaugural conference of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative in Washington, D.C., aiming to join together clergy and scholars of several faiths with political leaders and policymakers. That followed the first national meeting of the Clergy Leadership Network in Cleveland, Ohio, in May.

Additionally, the online advocacy group FaithfulAmerica.org has entered the political front line by addressing social justice issues. It began airing advertisements on June 15 on Arabic television stations apologizing for the Abu Ghraib prison abuses.

“What we’ve seen is a resurgence of a social justice ethic, a desire to match faith with action,” said Tom Perriello, co-director of FaithfulAmerica.org, which raised about $175,000 through the Internet to pay for the ads that they say were needed after the “moral failure” of the United States on the prison abuse scandal.

Perriello said the group is not concerned with partisan politics, but rather intends to act in the “prophetic tradition” to “unite faith communities across the divide on issues of global justice that are receiving insufficient attention.”

The Center for American Progress’ Faith and Policy conference included more than 350 political and religious leaders who reflected on the progressive spirit of the civil rights movement to come up with its vision of social justice. Melody Barnes, a senior fellow at the center, said the conference agenda aimed to “give voice to people who are religious and spiritual and also progressive who feel their views are neglected in the public dialogue.

“We wanted to remind the public and the press of the spirit of a more progressive time. This is not something new,” Barnes said.

Officials at the Clergy Leadership Network said the group was formed in November 2003 as a non-profit, political advocacy organization to counter the influence of “religious right” groups like the Christian Coalition, the Traditional Values Coalition and the Family Research Council.

CLN claims it does not take specific issue stances, but under the leadership of the Rev. Albert M. Pennybacker, a Disciples of Christ minister from Lexington, Ky., and the group’s president and CEO, CLN is promoting a national change in leadership.

“Having new leadership is at a critical stage for the U.S. Without an administration change, the country will continue to digress on domestic issues and internationally with our relationship to other countries,” the Rev. Nathan Wilson, a CLN founder, told FOXNews.com.

Wilson said CLN hopes to appeal to those who value the common good, things like equality, fairness and concern about neighbors. Those qualities, he argues, are lacking in the current administration.

“No one questions the personal faith of the president, but the problem I see is how the faith is being translated into policy,” Wilson said.

Religious groups in recent years have rarely taken on a partisan, left-leaning political role, but instead have formed as conservative, evangelical missions with greater visibility and influence on the right. Exit polls have confirmed that those who attend church frequently vote Republican by a 2-to-1 ratio.

Representatives of those right-leaning religious groups say they don’t believe groups that appeal to the left will have much of an impact.

“The liberal religious group calling for action doesn’t work because it doesn’t have a broad appeal. Unlike the religious right whose political involvement is born out of the scripture, it’s the reverse process for the left,” said Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

Perkins said he believes groups like CLN are motivated more by politics than faith.

“It doesn’t concern me that they’ve formed a group,” he said.

Dr. Charles Kimball, (liberal) professor and chairman of Wake Forest University’s Department of Religion, said he believes a great religious divide exists in America today.

“What I observe going on is a deeply divided religious group both theologically and politically,” he said.

Kimball, the author of “When Religion Becomes Evil,” explained that the rise of the influential political right mirrors the changes in religion in America.

“What we’ve seen is decline in the membership of mainline churches and a rise in the evangelical churches,” he said. What’s more, “this segment of the American Christian community is very politically active.”

Despite the prominence of the religious right, Kimball said he believes groups like CLN “will have a widespread appeal.”

CLN has already appealed to the Rev. Dr. George Hunter, professor of Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary in Lexington, Ky. Hunter calls himself an evangelist and conservative theologically, but said he feels he is progressive on social issues. In a recent essay, Hunter made the case for evangelicals to not remain in the “pocket” of one party.

“For too long, the Republican Party has been able to take the support of Evangelical Christians for granted, and has advanced little of our agenda in return,” Hunter wrote in the essay entitled: “Why Evangelical Leaders Should Be Involved With Both Major Parties.”

He added that both major parties need more people who are “ambassadors for Christ” first and who “know better” than to be co-opted by the ideological wing of either party.

While the two religious sides continue to differ in their beliefs, they do have one thing in common, Kimball said.

“What both sides have in common is that it’s appropriate to bring faith into the public policy arena,” he said.

==============================

Shoot to Sell: Knopf’s tangos with presidential assassination (nro, 040715)

When I was eight years old, school was let out early. The teachers were inexplicably upset, several were crying. But we students weren’t. We were happy to be suddenly released. I didn’t begin to be troubled until I got home and saw that my mother was crying too.

“Honey, I have to tell you something,” she said. “The president’s been shot.”

“Dead?”

She nodded.

An hour later, my father came home, looking terrible. This I did not quite understand. My father loved to laugh at mean things he would read about the president in columns written by someone named Buckley. My father often said that Kennedy was too busy being a “playboy” (whatever that was) to stand up to Khrushchev. Oddly enough, though, my busy father had come home early too, just as upset as my mother.

He fixed himself a Scotch and downed it all just before the phone rang in late afternoon. My mother answered it and told my father who it was, a family friend. I couldn’t hear what my father was told, but I witnessed his reaction. He got all red in the face, and starting barking harsh, angry words. He hung up on his friend, slamming the phone down. A long time would go by before he ever talked to that man again.

When I was older, I learned what the family friend had said to my father. The man, a Republican Kennedy-hater, had said, “Well, they finally got the son of a bitch.”

Forty-one years later, something terrible has reemerged in the soul of America, something immoral. A major publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf, which once published H.L Mencken, D.H. Lawrence, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka — and, most recently, former president Bill Clinton’s My Life — has decided that it is now acceptable to sell, as edgy entertainment, Checkpoint, a novella by Nicholson Baker that explores explicit fantasies about killing President George W. Bush. With saws. With boulders. With bullets. A British newspaper reveals that a main character runs through various outrages over Iraq and concludes, “I’m going to kill that bastard.”

The author and publisher, no doubt, will argue that they are expressing an emotion, not an intention (which would be illegal). The problem is, intentions emerge out of emotions. A powerful enough emotion, validated and popularized by a prominent book by a seemingly respectable publisher, can be taken as an incitement. Checkpoint, whatever its literary conceits, will be an act of linguistic terrorism. “He is beyond the beyond,” the Washington Post reports the main character saying of Bush. “What he’s done with this war. The murder of the innocent. And now the prisons. It makes me so angry. And it’s a new kind of anger, too.”

It is, indeed, a new kind of anger. It is one that takes me aback, even though I am no stranger to partisan rancor. Like many conservatives, I have been willing to risk being considered outré for questioning the Clintons’ ethics, motives, and how they explain their personal life. I have written unkind things about them, as people often do about their leaders in a democracy. There are times when I see Bill Clinton on TV that I want to throw something at the screen.

But I never would throw anything at him. I’d rather break my TV. Nor would I nod in agreement with lunatics who believe that Hillary murdered Vince Foster and dumped his body in a park. I am frightened of people who hate so much, because hate rests on fanatical certitude — an inability to grasp the idea that they might actually be wrong. I could well be wrong about the Clintons. Maybe there is something great about them that I just cannot see. Millions of Americans do.

There was a time when most partisans had such an internalized reality check, and a larger concern for the well-being of the country. On the day President Reagan was shot, I saw reporters and editors — almost all liberal Democrats — with tears welling up in their eyes. They were crying because they realized that a hole had been shot through our Constitution.

Today’s Left has lost its way. The season’s most-talked-about film portrays President Bush as willing to send Americans soldiers to their deaths in order, somehow, to enrich himself and his buddies. Entertainment figures turn fundraisers turn into hate rallies. And such events are embraced by the Democratic establishment as acceptable.

Now I have to wonder — God forbid — what the reaction would be if someone called a senior editor at Knopf and said, “Well, they finally got the son of a bitch.” Would he hang up?

— Mark W. Davis was a White House speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush.

==============================

Al Franken and Air America: Who’s Listening? (NRO, 040719)

New ratings show a small audience for liberal talk radio.

Just six weeks ago, Al Franken boasted that the new liberal radio network, Air America, was beating conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh in the ratings in the nation’s largest media market, New York City. “We beat him,” the host of The Al Franken Show told CNBC’s Tina Brown in early June. “The period we’re opposite Rush, we — we beat WABC, so we think we beat Rush.”

Franken based his statement on calculations done by Air America executives analyzing early and incomplete ratings for the demographic group of listeners between the ages of 25 and 54. Now, however, Arbitron, the audience-research firm, has released final ratings for Spring 2004 — the April/May/June time period that coincides precisely with Air America’s first months on the air. And the news is not nearly as good for Air America as Franken and others had led the public to believe.

In New York, Air America’s programming is heard on WLIB, a station which until the end of March provided listeners with Caribbean-oriented music and talk. In January, February, and March, the quarter before WLIB switched to Air America, the old format earned a 1.3-percent share of the New York audience in the period from 10 A.M. until 3 P.M. That placed WLIB 25th among New York radio stations.

During that same time, WABC, which broadcasts Limbaugh, earned a 4.4-percent share of the audience, putting it in fourth place in the New York market. (The ratings figures, provided by Arbitron, are for all listeners over 12 years old; the company does not release its detailed demographic breakdowns of audiences in each market.)

According to new figures released Friday by Arbitron, Air America has slightly improved WLIB’s ratings in the 10 A.M. to 3 P.M. period but has not managed to gain ground on Limbaugh and WABC. In the April/May/June period, WLIB earned a 1.7-percent share of the New York audience in the late morning and early afternoon, putting it in 23rd place in the overall market. For its part, WABC earned a 4.8 share of the audience, making it tied for second place in the market.

It is possible that the ratings might be somewhat different for specific demographic groups, but it seems reasonable to conclude that, Air America’s early claims aside, Limbaugh’s dominance is safe for now.

In addition, Air America claimed victory, however fleeting, only in the New York City market. Arbitron has not yet released ratings for most other cities. But much of that will be irrelevant for Air America. Even after the extensive publicity that accompanied its launch, the network’s programming is still heard in just 17 of the nation’s 287 radio markets. It is available on the air in just one of the nation’s top-ten markets — New York. Miami, where Air America programming was only recently made available, and Minneapolis, where only part of the network’s programs are available, are the only other cities in the top 20 markets where Air America is heard on the air.

None of that would be terribly newsworthy if Air America had billed itself as a modest startup venture. But Franken and others at the network openly challenged Limbaugh and the entire conservative talk-radio establishment. They even said they were winning. But the new numbers show they have a long, long way to go.

==============================

The Dead Zone: Krugman is squashed in a debate with O’Reilly (National Review Online, 040809)

There could only have been two possible outcomes when the arch-shockpundits of the Left and Right, Paul Krugman and Bill O’Reilly, met on Tim Russert’s CNBC show for a televised showdown. It was either going to be The Beatles, or Quentin Tarantino — “Paul is dead,” or “Kill Bill.”

I’m happy to report it was the former. Bill O’Reilly didn’t just win the debate. He cut out Paul Krugman’s heart and stomped on it. Welcome, Bill O’Reilly, to the Krugman Truth Squad.

This marks the first time that anyone has really stood up to America’s most dangerous liberal pundit on television. And Krugman simply didn’t know how to handle it. At several points in the show Krugman was practically in shock, with hands visibly trembling.

O’Reilly was masterful. He didn’t for one moment grant Krugman the undeserved respect that everyone else grants him, thanks to the prestigious aura of his Princeton professorship and his New York Times column. And O’Reilly didn’t let Krugman get away with any of his usual stunts.

O’Reilly uncompromisingly held Krugman to account for some of the outrageous (and outrageously wrong) things Krugman’s written in his Times columns. In one case, when Krugman denied what O’Reilly accused him of having said, O’Reilly jabbed his index finger toward Krugman’s face and shouted, “Don’t call me a liar, pal. That’s what you do all the time, and I’m not going to sit here and take it.”

O’Reilly had reminded Krugman of his repeated predictions of economic catastrophe as the result of President Bush’s tax cuts — a catastrophe that, obviously, hasn’t materialized, and which Krugman now denies having predicted. Here’s part of the exchange:

O’Reilly: ... Mr. Krugman was dead 100% wrong in his columns, uh, two years ago when he said the Bush tax cuts would lead to a deeper recession. You can read his book and see how wrong he was.

Krugman: Actually, you can read it. I never said that. I said it would lead to lousy job creation.

O’Reilly: Column after column after column. You made the point, in your book, okay, that these cuts, these tax cuts were going to be disastrous for the economy.

Krugman: Nope ...

O’Reilly: They haven’t been.

Krugman: Uh, uh, I’m sorry. That’s a lie. Let me just say, that’s a lie.

O’Reilly: It’s not a lie.

Krugman: It’s a lie.

Krugman’s the liar, not O’Reilly. It’s just too bad O’Reilly didn’t have a quotation at hand to prove it. Among dozens of possible examples, Krugman wrote in his April 22, 2003, New York Times column that

Aside from their cruelty and their adverse effect on the quality of life, these cuts will be a major drag on the national economy. … it’s clear that the administration’s tax-cut obsession isn’t just busting the budget; it’s also indirectly destroying jobs by preventing any rational response to a weak economy.

O’Reilly followed up by cleverly asking Krugman — since Krugman was claiming not to have predicted a deeper recession after the tax cuts — whether he instead predicted the economic growth of the last year? Krugman was so flustered — no doubt knowing he was checkmated — that he stammered out this remarkable confession:

Compare me … compare me, uh, with anyone else, and I think you’ll see that my forecasting record is not great.

You can be sure we’ll be quoting that one again and again! On this one matter, we most heartily agree.

What was most impressive about O’Reilly’s performance in the debate is that he was genuinely not partisan. In fact, he often took positions that were conciliatory to Krugman with respect to heated partisan issues. As but one example among several, he offered freely that “the Iraq war was a big screw-up.” But over and over, he shamed Krugman by rubbing his face in the exaggerated and partisan way that he and others in the liberal press handle these issues.

Faced with an opponent who was on the one hand so conciliatory, and on the other hand so aggressive, Krugman could do little more than throw out feeble ripostes or roll over and change the subject. At one point O’Reilly faulted Krugman for appearing in public with the likes of Al Franken:

O’Reilly: The war on terror may not have been best served by the Iraq adventure. That’s a legitimate debate. What I object to is the lying charges, the slander and defamation that comes out of the Krugman wing — if you want to call it — of the social landscape. [Krugman shakes his head and smiles.] Don’t give me that! Who are you appearing with today, in your book signing? You’re appearing with Stewart Smalley [the Saturday Night Live role played by Franken], the biggest character assassinator in the country.

Krugman: The guy you compared to Goebbels?

O’Reilly: You are in with the most vile form of defamation in this country. You are pandering to it. And I resent it, sir.

Krugman: We resent you, too.

O’Reilly: Yeah, I know you do. And you know what you’ll do about the resentment? You’ll lie about me and attack me personally. That’s what you’ll do.

Krugman: Let’s watch that, okay?

When O’Reilly blasted Krugman for the New York Times’s excessive and repetitious coverage of the horrors of Abu Ghraib — and the absence of stories on the United Nations oil-for-food scandal — Krugman couldn’t even manage to mouth his usual brown-nosing platitudes about how bend-over-backwards even-handed the Times is:

I think if you look, well … I’m, I’m not gonna, you know … I’m not here to, to defend the New York Times, which has nothing to do with what I write in the column. Alright? So I don’t want to get into this one.

Starting the last segment of the show, Krugman tried to take the offensive what was clearly a prepared “gotcha,” relying on written notes he’d held in front of him during the whole program. Having discussed Michael Moore and his film, Fahrenheit 9-11, in the previous segment, Krugman looked furtively at Russert like a little boy about to play a nasty prank, and said,

Actually I just want to say a word about Fahrenheit 9-11, uh, just to talk a little bit about Bill O’Reilly’s credibility on this. Uh, uh, Bill has said on-air that, uh, Michael Moore believes we are an evil country, and if you saw the film you know that’s not true. And, uh, actually, he denied in the same program that you said what you just said, but anyways … I just think that’s a little something to look at in terms of the credibility.

If the sheer feebleness and inarticulateness of that attack leaves you wondering what Krugman was trying to accomplish, let me explain. As hard as it is to believe, apparently Krugman’s admiration for Moore and his film is so deep that, in his mind, O’Reilly’s saying Moore called America “evil” is enough to impugn O’Reilly’s credibility. Krugman says, “I think there were a lot of things in that film that showed that this is a guy who really does love his country. And he loves the working people of America.”

Whatever you may think of the film, all O’Reilly had done on his radio show was accurately quote Moore speaking of “this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe.” That statement was first reported in a fawningly pro-Moore article in The New Yorker last February, and was repeated two days before O’Reilly’s show by conservative New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks.

Not exactly Watergate, is it? But it was the best the flustered Krugman could do, though it ended up leading him into an O’Reilly trap. The trap revealed what I consider to be Krugman’s worst vice — the way he recycles propaganda and rumors from leftist gossip sites, giving them the imprimatur of the New York Times. In this case, it was Media Matters, the website run by confessed liar David Brock (and backed by millionaire George Soros).

O’Reilly: And where did you get that little “evil” quote, by the way. You don’t listen to The Radio Factor [O’Reilly’s radio show.]

Krugman: No, but they have video clips. They have, they have the clips.

O’Reilly: Well who gave it to you?

Krugman: Yeah, it was Media Matters.

O’Reilly: [Booming] Media Matters! Oh, I see! A real objective website.

Krugman: Hey, wait a second, sir …

O’Reilly: Hey, Mr. Propaganda, you ought to take and do your own research, pal, and stop taking that left-wing garbage, throwing it out there for the folks.

Krugman: What have I said that was false?

O’Reilly: Do your own research!

Krugman: It helps me …

Looks to me like America’s most dangerous liberal pundit learned a couple valuable lessons this past Saturday. For one thing, he learned that it’s a lot easier to call people liars, lie about your own past statements, and spread partisan innuendo from the secure redoubt of the op-ed page of the New York Times, where the only feedback you get is the hand-picked atta-boys published on the Times’s letters page. Maybe he learned that you can’t get away with that stuff when there’s a living, breathing opponent across the table from you — someone like Bill O’Reilly, who’s not afraid to fight back.

And could it be, just possibly, that Krugman has finally learned a little something about humility?

— Donald Luskin is chief investment officer of Trend Macrolytics LLC, an independent economics and investment-research firm. He welcomes your comments at don@trendmacro.com.

==============================

The Fall: A bankrupt generation is fading away (National Review Online, 040924)

Dan Rather’s initial, furious street-side defense of an amateurish forgery — smug, huffy, self-righteous — brings to mind one of those bad movies about the Paris barricades, especially the grainy, black-and-white shots of powdered and wigged aristocrats on their way to the Guillotine, yelling out of their carriages at pitchfork-carrying peasants.

Worse than being duped, worse than cobbling together a highly politicized hit-piece during a war and in the waning days of an election, worse than the shady nature of the “unimpeachable” sources and the likely sordid origins of the story, and worse even than the pathetic nature of CBS’s “expert” witnesses — worse than all that was Rather’s ten-day denial of reality, culminating in the surreal half-admission that the phony documents could not be verified as accurate. That’s the equivalent of saying that a corpse cannot be proven to be alive.

Commentators have envisioned Rather’s fall as symbolic of a “paradigm shift” and the “end of the era” — an event that has crystallized the much larger and ongoing demise of the old establishment media. Allegories from the French Revolution and the emperor without any clothes to the curtain scene in The Wizard of Oz have been evoked to illustrate Rather’s dilemma and the hypocrisy of all that went before. We have come a long way since the 1960s: The once-revolutionary pigs taking over the manor are now bloated and strutting on two legs as they feast on silver inside the farmhouse.

First CBS went into denial; then it tried to smear its critics; next it emulated the Nixonian two-step; and finally it stonewalled altogether, hoping that the 24-hour news buzz would fade before it ultimately did. Meanwhile, more and more Americans yawn and have already switched the channel to cable news. We keep waiting for Mike Wallace on Sunday’s 60 Minutes to stare down Dan Rather on the set of Tuesday’s 60 Minutes, sticking his mike in Dan’s face, springing on him a long list of his previously unknown sins, capped off with the zoom shot on a fidgety, sweating Rather, as the tick, tick, tick fades into a primetime commercial.

The Big Three may deride the newsreaders at Fox as blond bimbos, but millions of Americans learned long ago that there are probably more liberals on Fox than conservatives on PBS, NPR, CBS, ABC, and NBC combined — and the former are honest about politics in a way the latter are not.

The New York Times talks about standards and “journalistic integrity,” but given its recent public record no one was surprised by the existence of a Jayson Blair, or by the fact that under Howell Raines a once-grand paper became a caricature of 19th-century yellow journalism, with possibly fewer daily readers than Matt Drudge. Elites may lament that someone who did not go to the Columbia School of Journalism can affect more readers than the Times, but instead of the usual aristocratic snarls they should ask themselves how and why that came about — and why, for example, watching a PBS documentary by Bill Moyers or listening to Garrison Keillor on NPR is now to endure a publicly subsidized extension of their silly rants at lectures and in op-eds.

It has taken a lot to end the credibility of the liberal dynasty, inasmuch as there were many prior provocations — Peter Arnett airing a blatantly dishonest 1998 mythodrama on CNN about Americans using Sarin gas in Laos; Dan Rather giving a flawed 1988 account of American grotesqueries in Vietnam (The Wall Within), replete with phony veterans spinning lies about horrific war crimes. But then we have not quite seen anything like the shamelessness of airing forged documents backed by unhinged witnesses and verified by suspect “experts” — all in a time of war and with the intent of smearing a sitting conservative president.

True, given his history and influence, Dan Rather was the most logical person to pull all that off — and so now he is the right person to take the collective fall for the sins of his brethren. How strange that bloggers are far more representative of democratic culture than Rather; that dittoheads are grassroots in a way that NPR is not; and that cable news is more honest in its politicking than Peter Jennings. No wonder CBS has gone from being controversial to annoying, and soon irrelevant — the ultimate sin given the corporate bottom line.

Hypocrisy and aristocratic smugness are drawing the ancient regime to its death. Rather’s now-ossified generation came of age in the heady Vietnam era, on the apparent premise that Main Street, USA, and the Kiwanis had given us Vietnam, Watergate, racism, and the other isms and phobias — and that only hip, swashbuckling 60s-types could tell the American people the “truth” about what the “establishment” was up to.

Ever so incrementally along this inevitable road to Rathergate, John Kerry’s searing Cambodia-patrol story, and Kitty Kelley’s Reagan and Bush pseudographies, many Americans began to worry about the ends-justifying-the-means culture of the sanctimonious Left. The counterculture was defended on the dubious premise that the activists needed to fight fire with fire as they exposed everything from Nixon’s lies to the embarrassing Pentagon Papers.

But in the process there also began a professional devolution, as questionable legal and ethical methods were excused in the name of the greater good. We got the Ellsberg pilfered documents, the blank check of “unnamed sources,” trips to Hanoi and Paris to meet the enemy, Peter Arnett broadcasting gloom and doom live from Baghdad — all culminating in the two-bit forgeries used for the “higher” cause of unseating George Bush. Daniel Ellsberg, Jane Fonda, and CBS may have done things that were legally wrong (like the latter’s promulgating fraudulent government documents to defame a government official), but in postmodern logic they were morally “right” given their superior knowledge, character, and progressive intentions.

We do not expect any more citations of sources in Bob Woodward’s “inside” history, even when he uncovers thought processes buried deep inside someone’s brain; after all, he discovered Deep Throat and broke Watergate. The list of plagiarist historians is long and growing, yet mitigating circumstances are advanced since such mendacity is useful in exposing the bad gun and bomb lobbies or praising the good Kennedys.

Wasn’t it wrong that Jimmy Carter campaigned for a Peace Prize by venomous criticism of his country on the eve of war — and was praised for it by the Nobel committee, which gave him the medal at that precise time? No problem, he builds houses for the poor and loves the U.N. Who cares that Teresa Heinz-Kerry and John Edwards rant on about those who are “un-American”? They, of all people, can’t be employing McCarthyesque invective, can they?

But the regime is crumbling on campuses as well. Too many university professors in the humanities dropped long ago their allegiance to the disinterested search for truth, or to teaching students facts and methods. How could one be so constrained and parochial when a war was raging on, and millions of youth needed to be prepared as ideological warriors in the struggle to remake our culture? Meanwhile, teaching loads decreased, annual tuition soared higher than the rate of inflation, and the baccalaureate no longer reflected much erudition. Surely, progressive academics, of all people, would not stand by while their curriculum was politicized, free speech suppressed, their part-time lecturers systematically exploited, their working-class students priced out of the market, and their research tainted with bias?

The U.N. also seems to be going the way of CBS. Only a little over a quarter of our citizenry feels that the organization reflects American values. Kofi Annan was blind to the greatest financial scandal of our time, one that contributed to the deaths of thousands in Iraq and enriched cronies, including perhaps his own son. He survives only because a biased media has judged that his progressivism warrants shielding him from the type of scrutiny afforded Halliburton.

Under Mr. Annan, the U.N. won’t say a word about Tibet or do anything about the thousands butchered in Africa — how can it when murdering states such as Cuba, Algeria, and Iran are on its committees overseeing human rights? Kofi Annan’s U.N. has lost its ideals, become counterfeit, and thus is now mostly irrelevant.

Those who profess to be Democrats are reaching historically low numbers. Many prominent Democrats are hypocrites: Feminists Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton were uncouth womanizers; the principled war critic Senator Byrd cut his teeth in the Klan; and the self-proclaimed moralists Senators Harkin and Kennedy have both been caught in postmodern problems with the truth. Being rich and a lawyer helps too. Most prominent Democrats and their enablers are either lawyers or multimillionaires, and now often both. Running a hardware store may explain your Republicanism; inheriting the profits from a chain of 1,000 hardware franchises will likely make you a new Democrat.

If we wonder why CBS is in trouble, why no one trusts the universities or the U.N., or why the Democrats may soon lose the Senate, the House, the presidency, and the Supreme Court, the answer has a lot to do with arrogant hypocrisy — the idea that how one lives need have nothing to do with what one professes, that idealistic rhetoric can provide psychological cover for privilege and preference, and that rules need not apply for those self-proclaimed as smarter and nicer than the rest of us. But none of us — none — get a pass simply because we claim that we are more moral, educated, or sophisticated than most.

In the meantime, as this unclean tale slowly reaches it end — and it will — CBS soon may have to decide between having Dan Rather and having an audience. Dan Rather, in his abject non-professionalism and in his overweening arrogance, has become the symbol of all that has gone so terribly wrong with our once-romantic but now confused, compromised, and aging generation of change. Such are the wages for those who destroy timeless rules and proven protocols for short-term expediency and thus find no sanctuary in their own hour of need.

Mr. Rather would do well to remember Leo Amery’s famous evocation of Cromwell, when he once bade Neville Chamberlain to get out:

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”

So, Dan, go, and let us have done with you — in the name of God, go now.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a visiting professor for the month of September and a fellow of Hillsdale College.

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The Bumper Sticker Proof (Washington Dispatch, 040920)

Commentary by Patrick Rooney

Have you ever noticed as you drive the roads and highways how many “Kerry for President” bumper stickers there are in comparison to “Bush for President” stickers?

I have. And we all know why that is.

Let’s face it, everyone—liberal and conservative alike—understands the reason why. It’s the same reason that conservative newspapers on college campuses are much more likely to be stolen than are liberal papers.

It’s the same reason conservative yard signs are more likely to be uprooted from the ground than are liberal signs. A young girl can have a conservative placard ripped out of her hands and torn to shreds, where I doubt if we’d see the same happen to a young girl carrying a liberal sign.

It’s also the same reason conservatives are more likely to be vilified, castigated, ridiculed, and even have their lives threatened much more often than are liberals.

The reason we see all these “Kerry for President” stickers in far greater numbers is obvious—liberals know, that for all their “conservatives want to poison the water and kill grandma” rhetoric, they actually feel quite safe around conservatives.

On the other hand, conservatives complain how dangerous many liberals are, and they’re right. Conservatives know that when they make the decision to slap that bumper sticker on their car, there’s a reasonable chance they may be the victim of some good old-fashioned vandalism or worse.

And what about actually speaking out? Conservatives have long been aware of the physical danger often associated with speaking out to “peace and love” liberals.

You see, it’s not that we never speak about this elephant—or donkey as the case may be—in the middle of the room. It’s just that we accept his behavior as normal. And the perpetrator accepts the behavior as normal too.

But here’s the kicker—many liberals then go out and call conservatives “mean spirited”, “Hitler”, and “racist”, knowing it’s all a lie. But amazingly in some people’s minds the lie sticks!

Communists are known for a “means justifies the ends” mentality. In other words, their ends are so “glorious” that the means—which we know includes torture and mass murder—are considered acceptable and often necessary.

We are seeing that Islamic terrorists think the same way.

Unfortunately, too many liberals have adopted a “means justifies the ends” mentality too. While the vast majority don’t go to the limits of Communists and Islamo-Fascists, it is clear that going beyond the constraints of conscience is often considered no problem in their quest for the ends they seek.

The religion of these liberals is hatred. Their glorious vision is really not some kind of utopia; instead their highest happiness is to see the downfall of those who remind them of their own lack of character.

The current president is a man of character. His very presence reminds his enemies of their moral ugliness and weakness. He has become the focal point of their fury, and as we know, fury unleashed knows no bounds.

There is a misnomer bandied about, often by well meaning conservatives, that liberals are “good people”; that in the words of singer Dave Mason, “There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys, there’s only you and me and we just disagree.”

Nice try, Dave. The real truth is that while there are decent, well-meaning liberals, the average liberal is not a good person. Liberals are typically angry people underneath their peace and love and “anything goes” exterior. “Anything goes except truth” should be their motto.

Don’t get me wrong—not all conservatives are angels—far from it. But there’s nowhere near the level of hate in the conservative movement as there is in the world of liberalism.

Conservatives must resist the temptation to allow the threats of liberals—overt or implied—to intimidate them into silence of word or deed. We all must stand, using wisdom and courage as our guide.

And the bumper sticker proof should be used to quickly end future liberal attempts to portray conservatives as neo-Hitlers. The American people are beginning to figure out just who the real haters are. And that gives me hope for our future.

Patrick Rooney is the Director of Development at BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, a nonprofit organization dedicated to “Rebuilding the Family By Rebuilding the Man.” (a black person)

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Back to Nature: We shouldn’t forget about the natural basis of national security (National Review Online, 041013)

The most important recent articulation of what distinguishes the Republican party today has been offered by one of our most brilliant and astute political scientists, James Ceaser of the University of Virginia. In the lead article of the fall issue of neoconservative journal The Public Interest, Ceaser writes (with Daniel DiSalvo) that there is at least one sense in which the upcoming election “presents us with a choice, not an echo.” The Republican party is a “‘radical’ or ‘revolutionary’ party, with a political project grounded on a clear foundation,” and it “is perhaps the last remaining party in a major democratic country with such an underpinning.” This revolutionary project is seen, in practice, in the assertiveness of President Bush’s foreign policy of “preventive war and regime transformation,” which was “not simply a minimal response to events, but represented a new and highly controversial strategy.”

The policy’s theoretical radicalism is seen in the president’s justification of that policy through “appealing to the universality of democracy and human rights.” The president’s view that “there is a structure or order to human things and their affairs, and standards can be both known and used to guide political action” is not properly termed “neoconservative,” according to Ceaser and DiSalvo, but rather “neo-natural right.” The Democrats, in opposing both this practical and this theoretical innovation, are now the true conservatives. They want to return to our old caution about using American principles to change the world, and they see Bush’s theoretical and practical go-it-alone American assertiveness as dangerous chauvinism. They, Ceaser and DiSalvo observe, oppose natural-rights foundationalism with global consensualism. While the Democrats see no alternative than looking to our allies for guidance, President Bush looks to nature itself.

Ceaser and DiSalvo make the troubling observation that there is now no other way to justify the Iraq war. Its “justification...on primary defensive grounds has evaporated with the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.” That fact, together with the very messy and fairly bloody reconstruction, has, in fact, eroded public support for the war. Most Americans, the authors imply, think that as a merely defensive measure the war was misconceived and more trouble than it was worth. Thought about in that way, the war could easily lead to the president’s defeat. So it can only be justified now “as a first step in a strategic plan to change the political culture of the Middle East and reduce the terrorist threat.” The election should be viewed as a referendum on the Iraq war, conceived as part of the president’s larger “neo-natural-right” policy vision. If the president wins, he would have “the sanction of the majority” for that “vision for the Republican party.”

My first objection to this sharp and provocative line of analysis is that there is no evidence that, however the election turns out, the majority would be sanctioning any such thing. How many Americans really believe that we are now going to end up doing all that much to change the political culture of Iraq, much less any other Middle Eastern country? A majority of Americans may well still be with the president in his resolve to stay the course in Iraq — I know I am — but our expectations have been chastened somewhat by harsh experience.

Polls show that Americans have some genuine reservations — fair or unfair — about the president’s prudence concerning Iraq, and if the election turned on the outcome of that war alone — however conceived — he might not be reelected. But the voters still give him very high marks — especially in comparison to Kerry — on the war on terror. They understand that broader war more in terms of national defense than in terms of regime change. What they mean, primarily, is that Americans will be safer led by Bush than by Kerry; like Zell Miller, they wouldn’t put the safety of their families in the Democrats’ hands. People accept that some preventive military action might be necessary to defend this country effectively, and that we should of course promote regimes friendly to our principles and interests. But I see little evidence of a popular desire for more wars based on natural-right transformationalism.

I also think that Ceaser and DiSalvo exaggerate when they say Bush’s foreign policy is “the decisive issue of the 2004 election.” If Bush wins, I tend to think his margin will come from his ability to animate the enthusiasm of cultural or religious conservatives, even as he has aroused the unprecedented hatred of sophisticated American secularists around cultural issues that have little to do with Iraq. Here, too, we can see that the division between our two parties might be evaluated according to natural-right standards.

A nation lives contrary to nature, surely, if it is unable to perpetuate itself by bringing new citizens into the world. So the European nations, everyone knows, are endangered by their strangely unnatural dearth of births. We Americans still replace ourselves in sufficient numbers. But a closer look at the data, Phillip Longman explains in the September 2 Washington Post, makes clear that even our fertility rate is dropping or just remaining low among all our ethnic groups. Immigrant groups, it seems, can’t be relied upon to have lots of kids for more than a generation or two.

“Fertility rates,” Longman goes on, “correlate strongly with religious conviction. In the United States, fully 47% of people who attend church weekly say that their ideal family size is three or more children. By contrast, only 27% of those who seldom attend church want that many kids.” If Americans weren’t more religious — especially more evangelical and more Mormon — than the Europeans, our demographic facts would also be dangerously contrary to nature.

“High fertility rates,” Longman continues, “correlate strongly with support for George W. Bush.” Looking back to 2000, “if the Gore states seceded from the Bush states and formed a new nation, it would have the same fertility rate, and the same rapidly aging population, as France.” Our religious conservatives are the reason we are not fading away like France. That fact is as important as any other for our national security. Surely there is some deep connection between our nation’s singular acceptance of its global military responsibilities, our singular acceptance of our familial responsibilities, and our singularly strong religious belief. The nation that can, for good reason, argue for the natural superiority of its principles and practices in the world today understands itself, at its best, as seeing no conflict between its natural duties and its duties to its Creator. The conservative view of the complex distinctiveness of the American idea of liberty is that it allows for the flourishing of all the goods that constitute lives that are free, rational, familial, social, political, and religious by nature. Liberals, conservatives believe, endanger those goods by understanding liberty too readily as freedom from the responsibilities that we are given with our natural purposes.

In this important respect, the Republican party remains genuinely conservative. It wants to preserve lives oriented around home, family, God, country, and personal achievement from the abstract, theoretical innovations associated with Democratic elitism. Those innovations, as Ceaser and DiSalvo say, are characteristically imposed upon us by the courts, and our judiciary now “serves as the de facto legislative branch of the Democratic party.” So maybe the key issue for most Republicans is — or should be — democratic opposition to what amounts to radical, revolutionary judicial activism. Such activism is a threat to the natural goods that make most American lives worth living.

— Peter Augustine Lawler is Dana Professor of Government at Berry College. He is author of Aliens in America: The Strange Truth About Our Souls.

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An Army of One (Weekly Standard, 041025)

From the October 25, 2004 issue: What it’s like to be the only Republican in your high school.

I GO TO AMITY SR. HIGH SCHOOL in Woodbridge, Connecticut—a liberal public school in a liberal state. Conservatives are scarce around here and outspoken ones are scarcer. I am so “unusual” that people (friends and even some I don’t know) call me “Dan, Dan, Republican,” which is a good-natured joke, sort of.

These days, I never go to school without my Election 2004 battle kit—a hefty red folder that I carry in my backpack titled (on account of my infinite humility) “Proving People Wrong.” This folder holds everything from IRS tax return figures to a comparison of Bush versus Gore in terms of college grades (Bush wins). I always have my folder with me, so that when I get into a political discussion (which might happen a dozen times a day and is likely to happen even more often as Election Day approaches), I can confront my opponents with the facts. They hate facts. They prefer to take refuge behind a slogan: Bush is Dumb.

The teachers are predictable liberals; the students are more worrying. In the white-painted low-ceilinged cafeteria with noise echoing off the brick and cinderblock walls, I eat lunch at a table of eight friends among 400 noisy kids. Politics is usually on the menu. Most lunch-table liberals say that they do not love America, and would not defend it. One boy says he’d just as soon live in Canada. They can’t understand why I should be so enthusiastic about our country. Isn’t it more or less interchangeable with a few dozen other rich western democracies?

As I was writing this article, I chatted online with one of my best friends, a liberal who spent part of his summer working in Washington as a page in the House of Representatives. He asked what my article was about. To put it briefly, I said, “It’s about kids who don’t love their country.” He answered: “Do they have to love their country? Is that a requirement?”

The most striking feature of my political debates is the utter ignorance of traditional values—whether American or Christian or Jewish—shown even by intelligent students. The typical student thinks that morality is a simple matter of doing what is “good for people,” and that the way to do this is to vote for Democrats, since the Democratic party stands for “making things better.”

Why do students talk and think this way? As computer geeks used to say, garbage in, garbage out.

We are taught U.S. history out of politically correct textbooks. The books are boring and tedious and, what’s worse, extremely misleading. The pages are carefully measured to spend equal time on the accomplishments of men and women, whites and nonwhites. They take care not to offend America’s past enemies, but don’t seem to worry about offending Americans.

My textbook last year, for example, was the 12th edition of The American Pageant by David Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, and the late Thomas Bailey. Its chapter on World War II has more than a page on the relocation and internment of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor and one sentence on the Bataan Death March. (What does one infer from this about the value of an American life?) It spends no time at all on the American GI, but gives a comprehensive discussion of the number of women who served, and where. (It carefully refers to “the 15 million men and women in uniform.”) The discussion, in short, is warped, incompetent, anachronistic.

Worst of all are The American Pageant’s blatantly biased discussions of modern politics. Compare the chapters on Carter and Reagan. Carter’s actions are often described as “courageous.” For instance: Carter’s “popularity remained exceptionally high during his first few months in office, even when he courted public disfavor by courageously keeping his campaign promise to pardon some ten thousand draft evaders of the Vietnam War era.” Or: “Carter courageously risked humiliating failure by inviting President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel to a summit conference at Camp David.”

The book dramatically describes how Carter, in the summer of 1979, “like a royal potentate of old, summoning the wise men of the realm for their counsel in a time of crisis,” went up to Camp David (“the mountaintop”) while his people awaited “the results of these extraordinary deliberations.” Then he made a “remarkable television address” in which he “chided his fellow citizens for falling into a ‘moral and spiritual crisis’ and for being too concerned with ‘material goods.’” (Everyone else remembers this event as Carter’s pathetic “malaise” speech.) The authors sum Carter up as “an unusually intelligent, articulate, and well-meaning president,” but one who was “badly buffeted by events beyond his control, such as the soaring price of oil, runaway inflation, and the galling insult of the continuing hostage crisis in Iran.” In other words: He did a great job, and the awful things that happened during his administration weren’t his fault.

The Reagan chapter starts by describing Reagan’s high hopes and goals, but quickly deteriorates: “At first, ‘supply-side’ economics seemed to be a beautiful theory mugged by a gang of brutal facts” as the economy went downhill. Then there was a “healthy” recovery. But “for the first time in the twentieth century, income gaps widened between the richest and poorest Americans. The poor got poorer and the very rich grew fabulously richer, while middle-class incomes largely stagnated.”

This is how the authors describe the largest peacetime economic boom of the 20th century, a period in which the average income of all quintiles from poorest to richest increased. The book then quickly moves on to discuss the deficit: “The staggering deficits of the Reagan administration constituted a great economic failure. . . . The deficits virtually guaranteed that future generations of Americans would either have to work harder than their parents, lower their standard of living, or both, to pay their foreign creditors when the bills came due.”

Reagan’s most important achievement, ending the Cold War, is never mentioned in the Reagan section. The authors imply that the credit for ending the Cold War goes to none other than Mikhail Gorbachev. My classmates swallow it all. They believe that Gorbachev suddenly decided one day that it was time for his country to lose the Cold War. My history teacher thought it incredible that I refused to credit Gorbachev with “allowing us to win.”

Perhaps needless to add, there are no lessons on the virtue of patriotism. Like the textbooks, my teachers are extremely charitable when discussing American enemies; from the Soviet Union to the Vietnamese Communists, they all get the benefit of the doubt. I would like to believe that this is only a temporary situation, perhaps one that a few well-placed educational reformers could begin to correct. But my fear is that it will take a long time to repair our public schools. Meanwhile, what will become of a country whose youngest citizens have been taught to have so little affection for it?

Daniel Gelernter publishes the Republican Dan blog at republicandan.blogspot.com.

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The End of the Left’s History: The world has moved on (National Review Online, 041202)

The hysterical reaction of the Western Left to the reelection of President George W. Bush is not just a primal scream from politicians and intellectuals deprived of political power. The violent language, numerous acts of violence, and demonization of Bush and his electorate — the same as that directed against Tony Blair in Britain, Jose Maria Aznar in Spain, and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy — portend a more fundamental event: the death rattle of the traditional Left, both as a dominant political force and as an intellectual vision.

For the most part, the Left only wins elections nowadays when their candidates run on their opponents’ platform (Clinton and Blair) or when panic overwhelms the political process (Zapatero and Schroeder). Under normal circumstances, leftists running as leftists rarely win, proving that their ideology — the ideology that dominated political and intellectual debate for most of the last century — is spent. When their ideas were in vogue, leftist advocates took electoral defeat in stride, as they were confident that their vision was far more popular — because far more accurate — than their opponents’ view of the world. History and logic were on their side. But no more. Incoherent rage and unbridled personal attacks on the winners are sure signs of a failed vision.

Ironically, the Left’s view of history provides us with part of the explanation for its death. Marx and Hegel both understood that the world constantly changes, and ideas change along with it. The world they knew — and successfully transformed — was a class-bound society dominated by royalty and aristocracy. They hurled themselves into class struggle, believing it to be the engine of human history, and they fought for liberty for all. Successive generations of leftists preached and organized democratic revolution at home and abroad, from the overthrow of tyrants to the abolition of class privileges and the redistribution of both political power and material wealth.

In true dialectical fashion, they were doomed by their own success. As once-impoverished workers became wealthier, the concept of the proletariat became outdated, along with the very idea of class struggle. Then the manifest failure and odious tyranny of the 20th-century leftist revolutions carried out in the name of the working class — notably in Russia, China, and Cuba — undermined the appeal of the old revolutionary doctrines, no matter how desperately the Left argued that Communist tyrannies were an aberration, or a distortion of their vision.

Thus the ideology of the Left became anachronistic, even in western Europe, its birthplace and the source of its historical model. But the biggest change was the emergence of the United States as the most powerful, productive, and creative country in the world. It was always very hard for the Left to understand America, whose history, ideology, and sociology never fit the Left’s schemas. Even those who argued that there were class divisions in America had to admit that the “American proletariat” had no class consciousness. The political corollary was that there was never a Marxist mass movement in the United States. Every European country had big socialist parties and some had substantial Communist parties; the United States had neither. Indeed, most American trade unions were anti-Communist. As Seymour Martin Lipset and others have demonstrated, the central ideals of European socialism — which inspired many American leftist intellectuals — were contained in and moderated by the American Dream. America had very little of the class hatred that dominated Europe for so long; American workers wanted to get rich, and believed they could. Leftist Europeans — and the bulk of the American intellectual elite — believed that only state control by a radical party could set their societies on the road to equality.

The success of America was thus a devastating blow to the Left. It wasn’t supposed to happen. And American success was particularly galling because it came at the expense of Europe itself, and of the embodiment of the Left’s most utopian dream: the Soviet Union. Even those Leftists who had been outspokenly critical of Stalin’s “excesses” could not forgive America for bringing down the Soviet Empire, and becoming the world’s hyperpower. As Marx and Hegel would have understood, the first signs of hysterical anti-Americanism on the Left accompanied the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The resurgence of American economic power and the defeat of the Soviets exposed the failure of the Left to keep pace with the transformation of the world. The New York intellectual who proclaimed her astonishment at Reagan’s election by saying, “I don’t know a single person who voted for him,” well described the dialectical process by which an entire set of ideas was passing into history.

The slow death of the Left was not limited to its failure to comprehend how profoundly the world had changed, but included elements that had been there all along, outside the purview of leftist thought. Marx was famously unable to comprehend the importance of religion, which he dismissively characterized as the “opiate of the masses,” and the Left had long fought against organized religion. But America had remained a religious society, which both baffled and enraged the leftists. On the eve of the 2004 elections, some 40% of the electorate consisted of born-again Christians, and the world at large was in the grips of a massive religious revival, yet the increasingly isolated politicians and intellectuals of the Left had little contact and even less understanding of people of faith.

Unable to either understand or transform the world, the Left predictably lost its bearings. It was entirely predictable that they would seek to explain their repeated defeats by claiming fraud, or dissing their own candidates, or blaming the stupidity of the electorate. Their cries of pain and rage echo those of past elites who looked forward and saw the abyss. There is no more dramatic proof of the death of the Left than the passage of its central vision — global democratic revolution — into the hands of those who call themselves conservatives.

History has certainly not ended, but it has added a new layer to its rich compost heap.

— Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Deal with it, Hollywood (Washington Times, 041108)

When I titled my book “Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco,” I could just as easily have pointed out that liberals are from Hollywood. It really is a different planet from the one most of us live on.

To begin with, it is populated with high school drop-outs and drama majors making millions of dollars a year, convinced they should decide how the rest of us think, live and vote. What you must never forget about these pampered pets is that the first lesson they learned in acting class was to get in touch with their feelings. Those self-absorbing exercises only served to diminish whatever thought processes they might have possessed. The end result is that, at their best, they can mimic emotions and action, but have an impossible time trying to suggest they are thinking about anything at all serious.

Never forget that the things we see on the screen are shadows. The real articles are people who spend their lives wearing other people’s clothes, mouthing other people’s lines, and being told how to walk and talk by directors. They should come with warning labels stating that, for all their fame and fortune, they are as bright as department store mannequins.

This past election was the most bitterly fought in memory, but nowhere was it waged more vituperatively than in Hollywood. In recent months, lifelong friendships have been torn asunder. Just this morning, I heard about a poker game involving writers and producers that had weathered 20 years of trials and tribulations but could not survive George W. Bush’s re-election.

One thing you have to give Hollywood celebrities credit for is their monumental gall. I mean, Barbra Streisand insults conservatives more often than she bathes, knowing full well it won’t harm her CD sales. Julia Roberts announces that if you look up Republican in the dictionary, you’ll find it right after reptiles, and yet she continues selling movie tickets, even though 52% of the electorate recently cast their ballots for Mr. Bush.

You’ll notice that show biz liberals are very outspoken, just so long as they’re addressing the choir. But you rarely see them placing themselves in a situation where they have to debate the issues. Have you ever once seen Michael Moore addressing any groups that didn’t consist of either American college students or French film snobs? No, neither have I.

Some years ago, long before Alzheimers set in, Charlton Heston offered to debate Miss Streisand on the subject of gun ownership, all the money collected to go to the charity of her choice. Naturally, the debate never took place.

If you do not live in L.A., you cannot imagine the grief that descended upon this community on Nov. 3. How could Hollywood’s glitterati not take Mr. Kerry’s defeat personally? After all, for the past year, people like Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and the rest of the usual suspects, had taken time out of their busy, privileged lives to help elect Mr. Kerry. Like children anticipating a white Christmas, they were imaging themselves speed-dialing the White House for the next four, maybe eight, years, inviting John and Teresa to movie premieres and weekends at the Springs. How dare those “folks we fly over” spoil their plans?

These people live in such a cocoon that they, quite literally, do not have dealings with people who are not in lockstep with them. A few years ago, a friend of mine and his wife were invited to a cocktail party. Several other guests had already arrived before they got there. As they entered a fairly crowded den, a very successful TV producer was telling the group that he, personally, did not know anyone who had voted for Mr. Bush. My friend, with perfect timing, said, “Well, you do now.”

These Hollywood people are more likely to question the deaths of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley than they are to question a single plank of the Democratic platform. And, being the self-righteous ignoramuses they are, they never see any contradiction between the populist pap they parrot and the way they actually live their lives.

For my part, the election results provided me with a euphoria the Hollywood crowd only gets to experience when one of their movies cracks the $100 million barrier at the box office, when someone else’s movie doesn’t, or when they get their hands on — and their noses into — some really primo cocaine. And when the high threatens to wear off, I merely have to think of yet another Hollywood pinhead who must really be in the dumps these days. Just the other day, I thought about Bill Maher and chuckled for the next half-hour.

Before this last election, as with every election for at least the past 40 years, we all had to listen to the liberals vow that if the Republicans won, they were moving en masse to New Zealand. Well, I’m taking this occasion to announce that I stand ready to shuttle them, one and all, to LAX for the next flight to Wellington.

Burt Prelutsky is the author of “Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco” and an award-winning TV writer.

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Bigotry and its defenders (Washington Times, 041120)

In modern memory, there are few prominent figures in American government who have been relentessly caricatured in a more vulgar way than Condoleezza Rice. Apparently, when it comes to President Bush’s national security adviser — a conservative who would become the first black female secretary of state if confirmed by the Senate — no racist stereotype is out of bounds for such syndicated cartoonists as Garry Trudeau, Pat Oliphant or Jeff Danziger.

Mr. Trudeau published a cartoon that showed Mr. Bush referring to Miss Rice as “Brown Sugar.” Mr. Oliphant published two cartoons this week depicting Miss Rice as a parrot with extremely large lips. In July, Ted Rall (whose comic strip was dropped by The Washington Post earlier this month), ran a cartoon depicting Miss Rice boasting about her role as “Bush’s Beard” and his “House N—. Another character demands that she “hand over your hair straightener,” and Mr. Rall adds that Miss Rice is being sent to an “inner-city racial re-education camp.”

Last month, Mr. Danziger, whose work is syndicated by the New York Times, drew Miss Rice as a barefoot woman sitting in a rocking chair holding a baby bottle. In one Danziger cartoon, she is depicted as the mindless Prissy in “Gone With The Wind.”

What is particularly disturbing is the length to which some liberals are willing to go in order to defend the use of such crude, condescending racial stereotypes when the target is a political conservative. Yesterday, when we asked Richard Prince of the National Association of Black Journalists about his views of the cartoons, he referred us to an Oct. 25 column he wrote, in which he appears to minimize the ugly nature of the Danziger cartoon. Although Mr. Prince quotes Mr. Danziger as acknowledging that the cartoon was “stupid,” the overall thrust of his column was that conservatives are making a mountain out of a molehill because: 1) the cartoon appears in less than 50 newspapers; and 2) the Iraq war is becoming another Vietnam, anyway, so administration spokesmen presumably have rude treatment coming. And, as Mr. Danziger indelicately put it to Mr. Prince in explaining his use of racist stereotying of Miss Rice: “Whenever this administration is in trouble they send out Condi Rice because the press, which is mostly white and male, gives her far easier treatment than it would a white male.”

As the savaging of Miss Rice shows, the political left has no reluctance whatsoever in going after black conservatives when it deems this necessary to put them in their political place.

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Illiterates and Intellectuals (American Spectator, 041130)

Democrats, according to pollsters, receive votes from the least educated and the most educated, from grade school dropouts to college presidents. This suggests parallels between the undereducated and the overeducated that most professors don’t wish to entertain. Illiterates and intellectuals form the odd couple of the Democratic Party. How did it happen? One explanation is that both groups are drawn to the party’s emotional demagoguery. Having lost contact with common sense through a skeptical distrust of reason, postmodernist professors more or less decide their politics on raw emotion — the same passions that stir their uneducated fellow Democrats.

In a mid-November piece titled “Republicans Outnumbered in Academia” that attracted the attention of George Will and others, the New York Times’s John Tierney asked a U.C. Berkeley professor why Democrats predominate at universities. “Unlike conservatives,” he replied, “they believe in working for the public good and social justice...” In other words, professors care more and so naturally vote for the Democrats. Apart from its comic presumption, the comment reveals the unintellectual character of modern intellectuals: they speak more loudly about their hearts than their minds even as their compassionate conceits do harm to the people they purport to help.

Tierney collected another revealing quote, but this one from a professor exhausted with academia’s resemblance to a base camp for the Democratic Party. “Our colleges have become less marketplaces of ideas than churches in which you have to be a true believer to get a seat in the pews,” said Stephen Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars. “We’ve drifted to a secular version of 19th-century denominational colleges, in which the university’s mission is to crusade against sin and make the country a morally better place.”

The moral relativism professors teach in the classroom doesn’t shake their confidence in the morality of the Democratic Party. Why isn’t the morality of the Democrats subject to the usual academic contention that morality is unknowable? Because academics are practicing a kind of secular fideism, the idea that reason is irrelevant to faith and even if it contradicts faith, so what? The secular fideists on campus faculties can’t square their customary skepticism and relativism with their fervent faith in the Democratic Party’s policies, but no matter. If reason is irrelevant to academic life — read academic reviews and most professors hesitate to say that man’s reason can give a certain account of anything and more or less say academic life consists of opining and spinning unverifiable theories — why shouldn’t it be irrelevant to political life as well? A feeling for “social justice” is enough for them.

What then appears contradictory — that Kerry commanded support from the least educated and the most educated — isn’t. Academics chose Kerry on the same nonrational criteria Michael Moore’s rabble did — on mere feelings and unreasoning hatred of Bush. Not scholars but activists, professors got so emotionally carried away they gave money to Kerry in embarrassing abundance, according to Tierney.

“Professors at Berkeley and other universities provided unprecedented financial support for the Democratic Party this election. For the first time, universities were at the top of the list of organizations ranked by their employees’ contributions to a presidential candidate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group,” he writes. “In first and second place, ahead of Time Warner, Goldman Sachs and Microsoft, were the University of California system and Harvard, whose employees contributed $602,000 and $340,000 respectively, to Senator John Kerry. At both universities, employees gave about $19 to the Kerry campaign for every dollar for the Bush campaign.”

But unlike Socrates who generated in his students a lively interest in the political order by teaching truths to them, American academics, judging by the anemic youth turnout for Kerry, went to the polls for the Democrats largely alone, apparently unable to inspire their students with the wan and absurd theories they substitute for classical political philosophy. And when the election didn’t turn out as they had hoped, Garry Wills and other intellectuals blamed the uneducated mob for the results, even though the polls indicated that professors hewed to the same voting patterns as the subliterate. “The ratio of Democratic to Republican professors ranged,” writes Tierney, “30 to 1 among anthropologists.” The proponents of unintelligent design voted for Kerry en masse, which may explain Garry Wills’ random pout that Bush’s victory raises the question, “Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened Nation?” The question Wills won’t ask is: Can academics who turn their minds, hearts, and pocketbooks over to the Democratic Party be considered enlightened?

George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.

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Comparing Christians to Terrorists (Foxnews, 041217)

Conservative Christians scare the hell out of Gary Wills.

The columnist and historian wrote a piece for the New York Times after the election comparing conservative Christians to Al Qaeda terrorists. “Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity?” Mr. Wills fears that conservative Christians are on a “jihad” — his word — to lock everything other than Christian beliefs out of the town square.

So why is it that this year we’re hearing one story after another about how town squares are being forced to remove all symbols of Christmas and Christianity?

The most recent example comes from Toledo, Ohio, where Rossford High School officials pulled the plug on a Christian rock band that was due to play during an anti-drug assembly. Students would have had the option of whether or not to attend the band’s performance. Students who chose not to attend the performance would either go to a study hall or view an anti-drug movie in the school auditorium.

Rossford Superintendent Luci Gernot explained why she’s canceling the concert: “We are just shutting the whole thing down. There is some controversy, and I’d rather err on this side.” Ms. Gernot made her decision after consulting with the school’s lawyers, who know all about the ACLU’s campaign against Christian symbols around the country.

There may be a jihad going on in this country, as Gary Wills claims. But it appears to be a jihad against Christian symbols not for them.

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Disrespecting the Office of the Presidency (Foxnews, 041217)

By Bill O’Reilly

Disrespecting the office of the presidency — that is a subject of this evening’s “Talking Points Memo.”

Last Tuesday night, actor Chevy Chase hosted an awards ceremony for a group called People for the American Way. That’s a left-wing outfit funded by Hollywood producer Norman Lear. The event took place at the Kennedy Center here in Washington and honored actors Susan Sarandon and Alec Baldwin, among others.

Now everything was going along according to plan when Mr. Chase decided to throw a few bombs, saying, “President Bush is a dumb F—, and I’m no F’—ing clown but this guy, Bush, started a jihad,” and that’s an unquote.

Chase went on to say, “This guy in office is an uneducated, real lying schmuck. And we still couldn’t beat him with a bore like Kerry.”

Apparently, many in the audience were shocked by these crude comments and organizer Norman Lear quickly distanced himself from Chase.

But there is a bigger story here, and that is that the nutty left continues to alienate everyday Americans, independents as well as conservatives.

There is no question that Whoopi Goldberg’s foolish comments at a John Kerry fundraiser hurt Kerry—who had no idea how to handle the situation. Chevy Chase should have learned from that. Even he has to know that calling the president of the United States an “F” is not going to be accepted by most Americans.

Now you don’t see this kind of thing on the Right. You don’t see prominent conservatives cursing out Democratic members of Congress, for example. Now I know talk radio can get rough but nothing like what these Hollywood nitwits are throwing out there.

The People for the American Way obviously want liberal politicians in power. That’s why the organization exists. But the left will never succeed if it continues to embrace people like Chevy Chase and Whoopi Goldberg.

Chase not only embarrassed himself, but he hurt his own cause, both professionally and politically. “Talking Points” believes the far Left is self-destructing in America.

It knows it can’t win in the voting booth. It knows most Americans want a traditional country, not a progressive situation. There’s no question the far Left has lost the respect of everyday folks, and now it’s acting out.

Most sane Americans respect honest dissent, and we need two strong parties in this country, but we don’t need foolish, demeaning attacks on any president, no matter what party he or she is in.

Chevy Chase should apologize, and the far Left should rethink its bitterness because the way things are going, soon there won’t be much left.

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Liberal bigotry, NYT-style (Washington Times, 041212)

On Friday, the New York Times took Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to task for comments he made last Sunday about future Supreme Court nominations on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” Trouble is, the NYT gave Mr. Reid a pass over his patronizing treatment of Justice Clarence Thomas. The Nevada Democrat belittled Justice Thomas’ record on the court as an “embarrassment,” without providing a single substantive example of his supposed malfeasance. Moderator Tim Russert uncharacteristically let him get away with it.

The NYT had nothing negative to say about Mr. Reid’s demeaning treatment of Justice Thomas, so we presume that it doesn’t bother their editorial-page staff very much. But the newspaper complained that he didn’t try to caricature Justice Antonin Scalia as well. Mr. Reid described Justice Scalia as “one smart guy” that he might be able to support. This was unacceptable to the liberal party-line apparatchiks who run the NYT editorial page, so Mr. Reid needed to be put in his place. By failing to denounce Justice Scalia’s “ultraextreme record,” the paper solemnly intoned, Mr. Reid has “stepped on his first hornet’s nest as leader.” The paper expressed hope that Mr. Reid has been re-educated by orthodox Senate liberals, and that he now realizes “that flashes of brilliance hardly justify Mr. Scalia’s retrogressive record on constitutional law.”

But hope reigns eternal, the NYT opined, because Sen. Charles Schumer is there to save the day and make sure that Mr. Reid sticks to the approved propaganda line, and promises not to support judicial nominees who “are out of the mainstream” like Justice Scalia.

What is most striking about the comments Mr. Reid made about Justice Thomas and the NYT made about Justice Scalia is how glibly they describe their targets as an “embarassment,” or “retrogressive” or “ultraextreme” without providing any evidence to substantiate their attacks. Their attitude is one of supreme arrogance: Mr. Reid and the NYT are liberals, they are smarter than the rest of us, they are morally superior to the rest of us, and they don’t have to lower themselves to explain why conservatives are inferior and backward. Is it any wonder that people who behave this way lose election after election?

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Ailing party diagnosis (Washington Times, 041226)

A centrist-leaning cadre of Democratic intellectual foot soldiers has declared all-out war on its liberal base, saying it needs to be transformed, if not pulled out by the roots, before the party can win again.

In a bitter soul-searching debate over their party’s future, and what needs to be done to halt its decline, no postelection self-analysis has triggered more political buzz among Democrats than a New Republic magazine critique that calls for ending the influence wielded the party’s leftist, antiwar wing in its presidential-selection process.

“[John] Kerry was a flawed candidate, but he was not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem was the party’s liberal base,” said New Republic editor Peter Beinart in a scathing attack on left-wing activists who oppose President Bush’s war on terror. “The challenge for Democrats today is not to find a different kind of presidential candidate. It is to transform the party at its grass roots so that a different kind of presidential candidate can emerge,” Mr. Beinart wrote in the Dec. 13 New Republic.

In a sobering diagnosis of the overriding influence of the radical left in the party’s 2004 campaign, he singled out two as the most powerful of all: “Fahrenheit 9/11” filmmaker Michael Moore and the Internet activist group MoveOn.org, whom he compared with the party’s Henry Wallace wing in the late 1940s “who saw communists as allies in the fight for domestic and international progress.”

But most disturbing of all to establishment party leaders was Mr. Beinart’s proposed cure for the leftist illness that afflicts his party. Its problems cannot be fixed by polite, unifying dialogue and a public relations campaign. The enemy was the antiwar, pacifist left and it would to take a divisive civil war to effectively excommunicate them from the party, he said.

A viable Democratic majority requires “abandoning the unity-at-all-costs ethos that governed American liberalism in 2004. And it requires a sustained battle to wrest the Democratic Party from the heirs of Henry Wallace,” he said.

Mr. Beinart’s blistering broadside urged rank-and-file Democrats to embrace a military call to arms against terrorism and “Islamist totalitarianism” that he said “threatens the United States and the aspirations of millions across the world. And, as long as that threat remains, defeating it must be liberalism’s north star.”

It hasn’t received much media attention, but many Democratic foreign-policy analysts are just as disturbed by the party’s increasingly leftward turn on national-security issues. They are starting to speak out much more forcefully than in the past.

“I agree with Beinart as far as he went. He’s a politics guy and he’s smart. A lot of Democrats know that we are getting our clocks cleaned on national security,” said Michael O’Hanlon, senior defense analyst at the Brookings Institution and a Democratic adviser. “Some Democrats are allergic to the use of force. They still have a powerful influence on the party. That’s certainly a problem,” Mr. O’Hanlon told me.

The Democratic Leadership Council, formed in the 1980s to pull the party away from its leftist orthodoxy, also heavily weighed in on Mr. Beinart’s side in an article in its Blueprint magazine by founder Al From and president Bruce Reed.

“First and foremost, we need to bridge the trust gap on national security by spelling out our own offense against terrorism and clearly rejecting our antiwar wing, so that Republicans can no longer portray us as the antiwar party in the war on terrorism,” they wrote. “We must leave no doubt that Michael Moore neither represents, nor defines our party.”

But if you think the party’s liberal leadership has learned anything from its last defeat, or was persuaded by Mr. Beinart’s cogent analysis, think again.

On the contrary, his critique led to an outpouring of angry counterattacks from liberal antiwar Democrats, some of whom — incredibly — argued he had not proven his point that al Qaeda and other terrorist groups were a serious danger to the United States.

Kevin Drum, writing in the Political Animal blog on washingtonmonthly.com,said “compared to fascism and communism, Islamic totalitarianism seems like pretty thin beer to many. It’s not fundamentally expansionist, and its power to kill people isn’t even remotely in the same league.”

Texas Rep. Martin Frost, who lost his House seat and is now campaigning for the Democratic National Committee chairmanship, flatly rejects Mr. Beinart’s argument that Democrats came across as weak on terrorism, insisting, “The Republican [pre-emptive war] approach is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous.”

Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, also belittled Mr. Beinart’s call for his party’s liberals to be just as tough against terrorism as the liberal Americans for Democratic Action were against communism in the late 1940s, saying “2004 is not 1947.”

But Democrats who reject Mr. Beinart’s plea to his party to embrace and lead “a fighting faith” against the newly resurgent terrorist threat do so at their own peril.

“You don’t have to believe al Qaeda is as grave a threat as the U.S.S.R. to believe it is the greatest threat to U.S. security” today, he said last week in answer to his leftist critics. If the Democrats’ grass-roots base refuses to make this the axiom of their national security beliefs, they are destined to suffer many more election losses to come.

Donald Lambro, chief political correspondent of The Washington Times, is a nationally syndicated columnist.

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While They’re Waiting . . .Thoughts for the Democrats after their recent losses (National Review, 041231)

RAMESH PONNURU

Ever since the election, Democrats have been consoling themselves with the thought that they lost by only 2.5 points nationally, and by only 119,000 votes in Ohio. Forty-eight percent of voters picked John Kerry. It would take only a little bit more support, they tell themselves, to regain power. And this is true. But there’s another way of looking at the same facts: It means that the Democrats still have a long way to fall.

It is understandable that Democrats would concentrate on which bits of red territory they could raid: on how they could win over voters in Colorado or Nevada, in the exurbs or the churches. But it’s not as though Republicans are going to stand in place while the Democrats maneuver. Republicans could gain votes in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, among Catholics and Hispanics. And maybe the most hopeful sign for the Republicans since the election has been the parade of dubious Democratic theories about how to make a comeback.

Leading this parade is the view that the Democrats simply nominated a weak, uncharismatic candidate this time around, and will succeed if they choose better next time. No reasonable observer would deny that there is an element of truth to this explanation. But what were the alternatives? Howard Dean would hardly have improved the Democrats’ standing on national-security or cultural issues. Dick Gephardt looked like a strong candidate on paper, but was unable to ride the labor unions to victory even in the caucuses of his nextdoor neighbor Iowa. Joe Lieberman, if nominated, would have generated a 10% vote for Ralph Nader. A realistic Democrat has to look behind Kerry to ask why his party was unable to come up with strong candidates for 2004.

Another theory, popular just after the election, held that the Democrats had to reach out to “voters of faith.” This way of putting things is probably self-defeating: For many Christians — and nobody is under the impression that Democrats have a pressing need to reach out to Jews, Muslims, or Hindus — the phrase “people of faith” is a tip-off that the speaker is approaching them as an anthropologist rather than as a fellow citizen.

But terminology is the least of it. The base of the Democratic party does not allow its politicians much room to appeal to religious and social conservatives. Kerry tried just about everything that could be done rhetorically to do so. He downplayed his views on abortion — neither Edwards nor he mentioned it at the Democratic convention, a departure from the practice of the previous three elections. Kerry came out against same-sex marriage, even endorsing state initiatives to block it. Nor did he eschew the use of Biblical allusions in his speeches. (He suggested that Bush was a Pharisee.) If rhetoric alone were going to change the impression that traditionally minded Christians have of the Democrats, it would have happened.

Taking different positions, on the other hand, might change that impression. Democrats could nominate for president someone like Evan Bayh, who opposes partial-birth abortion. But feminists (and the Supreme Court) regard partial-birth abortion as part and parcel of Roe, and have blocked Bayh from getting even a vice-presidential nomination. Social-issue liberalism is central to the identity of large numbers of Democratic voters. They are not likely to tolerate any serious turn to the right on social issues.

Some liberals argue that instead of moving right on social issues, the Democrats should move left on economics. On this theory, white working-class voters would not be attracted to the Republicans on cultural issues if Democrats were offering them tangible benefits. These voters have suffered from years of economic decline. If Democrats do not give them hope, they will lash out at gays, blacks, and Hollywood. Howard Dean took up this analysis during the primaries, arguing that national health insurance would trump “guns, God, and gays” among southerners with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.

The flaw in this theory is the possibility that when voters say that their top concern is the country’s moral decline, they may not be expressing a submerged rage at their economic circumstances. It may be that their top concern is moral decline.

Moving left on economics also carries real costs. Hardening Democratic opposition to free trade is already risking a reduction in the party’s support from Wall Street and some business lobbies. If the party loses its reputation for sobriety and respectability on economic issues, it could start losing voters in the suburbs as well as campaign donations.

Those Democrats who want their party to embrace a more muscular foreign policy have a stronger case than the factions considered so far. If they prevail, on-the-fence voters will worry less about the Democrats’ impact on national security. And it is possible to imagine enough liberal voters’ reconciling themselves to hawkishness over the next four years to make this idea practicable. It is, at least, more possible than it is to imagine liberal voters’ moving right on social issues.

Unless, that is, controversial foreign-policy initiatives have become inseparable from the culture wars. During the last nine presidential elections, Democrats have run hawkish candidates three times — in 1992, 1996, and 2000. It cannot be a coincidence that these were the three elections of those nine in which foreign-policy issues were least important, and in which people felt least threatened by foreigners.

This pattern suggests a very dispiriting possibility for Democrats. It may be that when national-security issues become prominent, two things happen. A majority of the public becomes hawkish. And most liberals have an equal and opposite reaction. If that is true, it is bad news for the hawkish Democrats who want their party to commit itself to winning the War on Terror just as Harry Truman committed it to the Cold War. It is bad news because it means that the political reflexes of modern Democrats are those of the second half of the Cold War, during which a relatively dovish party lost four of five presidential elections.

The hawkish Democrats’ best chance of winning, then, is if foreign-policy issues recede in importance. A makeover of the party, in other words, is most likely when it is least needed. The interests of the hawkish Democrats thus turn out to be the same as the wish of the majority of their party: that the war and the terrorists would just go away on their own. Then we could return to a politics in which the top issue is keeping the price of medicine down.

The Democrats’ other great wish is that Republicans will commit some massive political blunder that will allow them to regain power without adjusting their views on anything. It is certainly possible that Republicans will oblige by overreaching on Social Security or tax reform, or fighting one another about immigration, or allowing power to corrupt them. Some Democrats, and even more journalists, have pointed out that second terms are often plagued by damaging scandals.

That is a false comfort for Democrats. The data points used to bolster that theory — Watergate, Iran-contra, impeachment — all unfolded when the president faced a Congress of the other party. That situation does not obtain today. Nor is it likely to obtain after the midterm elections of 2006. Democrats have 18 Senate seats up to the Republicans’ 15. To regain power, they would have to hold all of their seats while winning two-fifths of the Republicans’. It is possible, but it is not the way to bet.

There is a sliver of truth lurking in here, however, that could prove important. With Republicans holding the White House and Congress, the time would appear to be ripe for Democrats to indulge in some anti-Washington populism. Thus far, Democrats have been curiously unwilling to present their complaints about deficits, health care, and other issues as part of “the mess in D.C.” It may be that many of them still see attacking the Beltway as fouling their own nest. Surely by 2008, that will have changed.

On the other hand, the Democrats did not learn much from the last electoral drubbing, in 2002. The polls that November were not ambiguous: Democrats trailed Republicans by 30 points on national security. Yet the Democrats somehow decided that their mistake had been not being sufficiently opposed, or loud in their opposition, to Bush’s foreign policy. House Democrats chose Nancy Pelosi as their leader. Howard Dean set the tone for their presidential field.

In recent months, Democrats have become fond of calling themselves members of “the reality-based community.” The reference is to a comment by an anonymous White House aide in a Bush-bashing New York Times Magazine story. But the liberal bloggers who have adopted this motto have missed the point of the comment. The aide was saying, inartfully, that liberals merely analyzed the world while conservatives were changing it — and liberals would be left simply adjusting to new realities.

Watching the Democrats try out their various theories as to how they will return to power, one is struck above all by the sheer passivity of it all. Democrats are waiting for a charismatic leader to emerge, for Republicans to stumble, for the dollar’s decline to cause an economic crisis, for demographic trends to carry them to victory. Patience, it turns out, is one of the liberal virtues. And the art of losing isn’t hard to master.

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Zell Was Right: Problematic party (National Review Online, 050114)

Last year, then-Sen. Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, wrote a scathing critique of the Democratic Party called A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat. A quick quiz — in the book, Miller said which of the following things:

a) “We have to be more aware that issues like abortion, like guns, like gay rights, have two sides, and that we need to address people who feel deeply about those issues and show a willingness to compromise”;

b) “We gave up on the South. And as Churchill said, ‘Wars are not won by evacuation; they are won by blood and sweat and toil and tears.’ We can make this the majority party of America in the future, but we must talk about our values. We must embrace people of faith in this party”;

c) “We are too coastal. We are too urban. We are too secular. And, most of all, we are too dovish. The public simply doesn’t trust us to keep them safe”;

d) all of the above;

e) none of the above.

The answer is “e.” These statements were made by Democratic consultant Lanny Davis, candidate for Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Roemer and former John Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan, respectively. Many of the things that Miller said in his book have now become nearly conventional wisdom among Democratic loyalists. All the Democrats who now say that the party has foolishly given up on the South, that it is unable to connect with religious voters, that it is too beholden to liberal orthodoxy on social issues, that Americans don’t trust it on national defense, and that it doesn’t speak the language of most Americans should take a deep breath and repeat after me: “Zell Miller was right.”

This turnabout is extraordinary given the kind of criticisms that were lodged at Miller last year, especially after he amplified the arguments in his book in a humdinger of a speech at the Republican National Convention. An AFL-CIO official said Miller had “lost his damn mind.” James Carville said Miller was being “cynically manipulated by people who are greedy to hold on to power at any cost.” Well, Miller appears, in light of events, to have been the shrewdest cynically manipulated lunatic in all of human history.

“In the eyes of Middle America,” Miller wrote of the Democratic party, “it has become a value-neutral party.” That is almost mild compared with what other Democrats are now saying. Even Miller’s battering of the party for being too extreme on abortion has gained a measure of acceptance. Howard Dean of all people — another candidate to lead the DNC — now says, “I have long believed that we ought to make a home for pro-life Democrats.”

It’s not just practical politicians who are sounding Zell-like. On national security, Miller worried how Democrats were getting tarred by their association with the most fervent anti-war elements of their party. The editor of the liberal New Republic has argued since the election for a “purge” — yes, a purge — of those antiwar zealots. Miller complained in his book about the influence of ham-handed consultants on the party. The liberal Washington Monthly just ran an article excoriating “a clique of Washington consultants who, through their insider ties, continue to get rewarded with business after losing continually.” Miller defended gun rights and explained how gun-controllers were out of step with the American public. Liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently declared, “Nothing kills Democratic candidates’ prospects more than guns.”

“What I was telling them was right and correct, if only they had listened to it,” says Miller, who recently retired from the Senate. Democrats are essentially saying these days that they want a party in which someone like Zell Miller can feel comfortable. Alas, they used to have one. But, as someone once put it, today’s Democrats are a national party no more.

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

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The Democratic Dialectic, the Democratic Problem: The future of a once-great party (National Review Online, 050103)

The Democratic dialectic since Nov. 3, 2004, goes something like this: (a) Moral values mattered a lot to Americans, and they said so. Nancy Pelosi, for example, was heard quoting from the Book of Matthew on national television after the Democratic defeat of 2004. (b) Then, we find out moral values really meant a takeover of the country by the far right or evangelical right or fill-in-the epithet. Maureen Dowd, for example, wrote the president “ran a jihad in America.” (c) Then, as some time passed, other journalists weighed in, writing that moral values were not in play in the election because either the polling on the question was not solid (Dick Meyer in the Dec. 5 Washington Post) or because Americans always cared about the issue (Christopher Muste, one week later in the Washington Post). Nice work if you can get it.

Let’s try this novel interpretation of what moral values meant in the 2004 elections: They were important not because one poll said so but because, by my count, at least three polls have said so. Moreover, what the American people meant by moral values was — lo and behold — “moral values.”

With war at a boil in the Middle East, corporate scandals rocking Fortune 500 companies, and the home-state of the Democratic nominee for president declaring gay “marriage” a legal right, it is hard to imagine that so many have tried to claim moral values were not important to voters last November.

The Democrats — and those who have tried to discount the role of moral values in the November election — tried to emphasize two things in this past election: the bad economy and the badly run war. Well, the economy, an honest look demands, was not as bad as the Democrats made it sound; and the war was not being run as badly as the Democrats characterized it. People knew this, which is why the state that lost the most jobs since 2000, Ohio, delivered President Bush his victory and saw black voters turn out for the President in twice the proportion they turned out for him nationwide. It is also why over 50,000 voters registered for the first time there on the issue of gay marriage, and why an amendment to bar gay marriage there passed so overwhelmingly — as it did everywhere it was on the ballot.

People did care about moral values in the November election — whether they always do or not does not change that fact. The war, and the character of the commander-in-chief people want to fight that war, are part of the moral values equation too. And, it is worth keeping in mind that the war — which the Democrats opposed — was a moral issue that goes to the heart of our defense of liberty and the support of our soldiers. War is always a moral issue, and the Democrats got it wrong this time. So are the use of rhetoric and the character of a campaign matters of morality. When the Democrats trotted out labels against the White House and the president with analogies to Lenin or Nazism, and when John Kerry said that the Radio City Music Hall fundraiser that used gutter language spoke to the soul of America, or when Michael Moore was given a seat in a presidential box at the Democratic convention, people took note of those values as well — and voted on them.

In the end, it is not really debatable what happened in this election. Values mattered. And as President Clinton realized long ago, when it comes to national elections, values very well may matter most. He may not have governed by the values we agree on, but he understood how to run a campaign and, at least, speak to values (even if he could not live by them). President Bush knew how to do both, John Kerry did not even know how to speak to them.

In the end, then, if the Democrats and pundits want to discount moral values as a major reason for Bush’s reelection, they are free to do so; people are always free to be wrong in our country. But it will not aid in the understanding of what the Democrats need to do to overcome permanent minority status in this country. Their selection of their next Democratic National Committee chairman will tell the country a great deal: Do they truly believe in the greatness of a once-great party led by people of high honor and character who did not shrink from our nation’s defense, or do they believe that John Kerry’s campaign was thematically correct on the essentials, just not loud or well-financed enough? If the Democrats choose their leader based on the latter choice, we may very well see a new party emerge that puts the current Democratic party out of business. It would be a sad end to a once-great party, but it may be a deserved end.

— William J. Bennett is the host of the nationally syndicated radio show, Bill Bennett’s Morning in America, and the Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute.

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Iraqi ballots and bombs (townhall.com, 050126)

Tony Blankley

It’s a little odd that the most vehement support for President Bush’s proposition that democracy is the best cure for terrorism came from the curling lips of Mr. Abu Musab Zarqawi.

The infidel-beheading terrorist butcher of Baghdad announced, in a post-Inaugural Web site broadcast (not to be confused with American network television’s post-speech commentary and analysis) that “We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology. Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it ... [Iraqi candidates] are demi-idols, and [voters] are infidels.”

With such a hard-hitting critique of the president’s speech, he might well be in line for a political analyst slot at CBS.

Obviously Mr. Zarqawi, recently anointed by bin Laden himself, feels toward democracy much the way the Wicked Witch of the East felt toward water. It seems pretty clear from Zarqawi’s analysis of the Iraqi political scene that he is every bit as opposed to President Bush’s policy as is Barbara Boxer and the rest of Mr. Bush’s political opponents.

His effort at defeating President Bush’s democracy project for Iraq brings a whole new meaning to the phrase negative campaigning. Instead of rude or false charges hurled at a candidate, Zarqawi hurls suicide bombs at both candidates and voters.

His actions, bloody though they are, constitute eloquent testimony to his and President Bush’s shared understanding of Iraq’s future. Zarqawi is fighting democracy for his dear life because he understands, as does President Bush, that an established democracy in Iraq will be the death of terrorism in Iraq — and possibly beyond.

If Barbara Boxer and her fellow deprecators of Iraqi democracy won’t accept President Bush’s insights on the efficacy of democracy, perhaps she might reconsider in light of Zarqawi’s comments. After all, when the leading terrorist and President Bush agree on something, the light of that shared vision might even penetrate the, until now, impenetrable darkness of the anti-Bush mind.

Something better jog the liberal mind from its obsessive Bush-hatred. The liberals, on both sides of the Atlantic, are in imminent danger of repeating the great shame of many of their ideological grandparents in the middle of the last century, who became unthinking apologists for Stalin’s terror and tyranny.

This coming Sunday, the Iraqi people are holding an election — the first real election in the 5,000-year history of this ancient people. But the cynicism and indifference of liberals to this extraordinary event should shock the conscience of decent people, because the Iraqi people are marching through shot and shell to gain this first chance at self-government.

Despite the worst that Zarqawi and his fellow terrorists can do, there are 7,500 candidates from 111 political parties running for 275 National Assembly seats. Six thousand polling stations have been set up to count the votes. According to the most reliable surveys, 12 of 14 million eligible voters have registered. Turnout could be as high as 80%.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. When given half a chance, people will risk their lives to vote for freedom. They did it in El Salvador in 1984, in the midst of civil war and terrorism. They did it in Cambodia in 1993, under threat from the genocidal Khmer Rouge. They did it in Algeria in 1995, under constant terrorist threat. They did it in Afghanistan last year under the Taliban gun.

There, the story is told by our ambassador, the night before the election, a woman went through her religion’s death rituals. She expected to die trying to vote the next day and wanted to be prepared to meet her god — but she wasn’t going to miss the vote.

And, of course, we Americans fought a long hard revolutionary war so that we might gain the right to govern ourselves through the ballot box.

But the heartless, mindless Bush-haters from Paris to San Francisco to the chamber of the United States Senate would rather see Bush embarrassed than Iraq free.

Of course one election does not constitute a functioning democracy. After the best that the Iraqi people can do this Sunday, years of hard, careful work is ahead of them. (Henry Kissinger and George Shultz published a must-read article in Tuesday’s Washington Post, that shrewdly lays out the risks and challenges that must be surmounted before a functioning, decent government can form.)

But it is not too late for the Bush haters to put that bitter chalice from which they constantly drink to one side and lend a hand to a noble project.

They don’t have to take George Bush’s word for the necessity of democracy in Iraq. They could ask Mr. Zarqawi.

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Self-indulgence (Townhall.com, 050127)

Thomas Sowell

The enraged speeches and street disorders across the country that accompanied the inauguration of President Bush may tell us more than we want to know about what is happening to this country.

The media dignify these outbursts by calling them “protests” but what are they protesting?

That they lost the election? Doesn’t somebody always lose an election? Did the Republicans take to the streets when Bill Clinton was elected?

Are the shouters and the rioters protesting that they disagree with President Bush’s policies? Isn’t that why we hold elections in the first place — because people disagree?

Elections are supposed to be an alternative to other ways of settling political differences, including riots, military coups and dictatorships. But riots have been re-christened “demonstrations” by the mealy-mouth media.

What are these “demonstrations” demonstrating — other than adolescent self-indulgence and contempt for the rights of other people to go about their lives without finding their streets clogged with hooligans and the air filled with obscenities?

The irony is that many of those who are indulging themselves in these strident orgies are the same people who were telling us to “get over it” and “move on” during President Clinton’s scandals. Today the liberal MoveOn.org is the last place where people are willing to move on.

While this is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of the political left, the increasing acceptance of irresponsible behavior — including vandalism and violence — as a normal part of our public discourse says something about what is happening to this country as a whole.

Not only is there a growing class of people for whom indignation is a way of life, their sophomoric slogans are taken seriously by people who should know better. Moreover, their disruptions of the lives of ordinary people are accepted as if such things were nothing more than free speech.

The media even give rioters free air time in exchange for providing them with a spectacle to broadcast and liven up their news programs. The taxpayers who foot the bill for mob control seldom rate a mention. Neither do the police who get injured trying to keep hoodlums in check.

This may be some people’s idea of a healthy democracy but it is more of a sign of a spreading sickness in a society too wimpish to insist that law and order matter and too mushy-minded to see that self-indulgence at other people’s expense is not idealism.

If we were a little more clear-headed, these organized disruptions could be a valuable lesson in what the political left really believes in and what kind of world they would create if they ever get the kind of power they are seeking.

First of all, the left does not accept the proposition that other people have just as many rights as they do. This is obvious not only in the disorder and vandalism they inflict in the streets but also their intolerance on academic campuses across the country, where students who question the party line are hemmed in by speech codes and ridiculed and intimidated by professors who do not hesitate to punish them with low grades.

Ask any environmental extremist if people who don’t care about preserving swamps (“wetlands”) have the same rights under the Constitution that the people in the green movement have. Gay activists who demand tolerance and sensitivity from others do not hesitate to include in their parades insulting skits mocking nuns and others in the Catholic Church.

When pro-life demonstrators tried to hold a peaceful march in San Francisco on January 22, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a pro-abortion crowd not only followed them, shouting to drown them out and hurling insults at them, some sat down in their path to block the march and force them to detour.

We are seeing the ugly face of intolerance under the idealistic pretense of protest. We need to recognize it for what it is, even if the media refuse to do so. Above all, we need to see it as a warning of where our society is headed. Whether at home or abroad, if political conflicts are reduced to contests between the wimps and the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

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Prof praising 9-11 terrorists on school’s chopping block (WorldNetDaily, 050201)

Compared Trade Center victims with Nazis, commended jihadists for ‘gallant sacrifices’

The fate of a tenured University of Colorado professor – who compared victims of the 9-11 World Trade Center terror attacks to Nazis, while praising the suicide hijackers for their “gallant sacrifices” – will be decided at a special meeting of the school’s board of regents Thursday night.

In the meantime, Ward Churchill, who yesterday preemptively stepped down as chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department, remains a professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies at the Colorado school.

The controversy stems from an essay Churchill wrote titled “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” written shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. In it, he describes the thousands of American victims who died in the World Trade Center inferno as “little Eichmanns” (a reference to notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann) who were perpetuating America’s “mighty engine of profit.” They were destroyed, he added, thanks to the “gallant sacrifices” of “combat teams” that successfully targeted the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

The 2001 essay emerged from obscurity onto center stage when Churchill was invited recently to speak at Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., near Syracuse. Hundreds of relatives of Sept. 11 victims are protesting Churchill’s appearance at Hamilton, which is scheduled for Thursday. However, the college’s president, Joan Hinde Stewart, assured the Associated Press that “however repugnant one might find Mr. Churchill’s remarks,” the college would honor his right to free speech and the show would go on.

To accommodate the large audience Hamilton anticipates due to the uproar, Churchill’s appearance has been re-located from the 300-seat-capacity room originally planned to a facility that will seat 2,000.

On Hamilton College’s website, one page is dedicated to the furor over Churchill’s appearance, and features hundreds of e-mailed comments, most of which express outrage. The first letter (out of 327 as of this report), starts like this:

MS. STEWART, I AM THE MOTHER OF A FIREFIGHTER WHO WAS KILLED ON SEPT. 11, 2001 WHILE TRYING TO SAVE THE LIVES OF THE INNOCENT PEOPLE WHO WERE ATTACKED BY THE BARBARIANS THAT INVADED OUR COUNTRY. I HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE INFORMATION OF YOUR COLLEGE ALLOWING PROF. WARD CHURCHILL TO CONDUCT A TALK OF HIS VIEWS ON THE ATTACKS. HOWEVER, HIS VIEWS SEEM TO BE SO OUTRAGEOUS AND FILLED WITH DERANGED VIEWPOINTS, I WONDER HOW YOU COULD ALLOW SUCH AN ILL-ADVISED PERSON ON CAMPUS! ... AS A FAMILY MEMBER I CAN TELL YOU, YOU ARE ALL POURING SALT IN A FESTERING WOUND …

Stewart, in response to the controversy, notes on the college’s website that Hamilton invited Churchill to speak long before becoming aware of his comments about Sept. 11: “However repugnant one may find Mr. Churchill’s remarks, were the College to withdraw the invitation simply on the grounds that he has said offensive things, we would be abandoning a principle on which this College and indeed this republic are founded.”

Meanwhile, in a statement released Sunday, the CU board of regents announced it’s “taking this unusual action” of convening a special meeting of the regents’ board specifically to consider what to do with Churchill.

“Mr. Churchill’s comments regarding the events of Sept. 11, 2001 have resulted in substantial controversy and the Board of Regents intends to consider the concerns of members of the public and the university community at the special meeting,” the statement said.

“While Professor Churchill has the constitutional right to express his political views, his essay on 9/11 has outraged and appalled us and the general public,” interim CU-Boulder Chancellor Phil DiStefano said, according to AP.

Some students on Hamilton’s campus last week protested Churchill’s scheduled appearance. According to the Colorado Daily, Regent Michael Carrigan said he and his fellow regents have been “deluged” with e-mails and messages over the Churchill controversy.

“We are hearing a lot of concern from the public and we share the public’s concern,” Carrigan told the Colorado paper Sunday. “That’s why we called this special meeting; to discuss our options.”

Regent Cindy Carlisle said she is “appalled” by Churchill’s essay and insisted “something needs to be done,” according to the local paper’s report.

Last Friday, Isaiah Lechowit, chairman of CU’s College Republicans, urged his student colleagues to protest Churchill in an e-mail titled “Oust the Auschwitz Lunatic.”

The Republican student organization is holding a protest rally this afternoon, urging students to sign petitions demanding Churchill’s removal.

“Churchill said what he did with confidence because he thinks he can hide under his security blanket of tenure,” Lechowit told the Colorado Daily, “but even tenure has its limits.” While Lechowit said Churchill deserves to be ousted from the university altogether, some students are defending the controversial professor.

Ethnic studies senior Dustin Craun and other students, many from Churchill’s ethnic studies department, liken the controversy to a “witch hunt,” said the paper. “White men trying to get an Indian out of Boulder? That’s nothing new,” said Craun. “That’s how this city was started.” Churchill is reportedly a Cherokee Indian by birth.

In an interview Sunday with the Colorado Daily, Craun said: “I see it as an academic freedom issue.” Describing Churchill’s “Roosting Chickens” essay as a revolutionary scholarly discourse by an expert on genocide, Craun added: “It’s a theory; it shouldn’t have anything to do with fact.”

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Colorado Professor’s Future on the Line (Foxnews, 050201)

DENVER — A panel discussion at Hamilton College in New York featuring a Colorado professor was canceled after hundreds of death threats poured in because of an inflammatory essay he wrote comparing some of the Sept. 11 victims to Nazis and calling President Bush a terrorist.

Hamilton has been on heightened security since the paper by Ward Churchill, published more than two-and-a-half years ago in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, resurfaced.

College spokesman Michael DeBraggio said multiple death threats were made against both school officials and Churchill, who was to be a guest speaker at the panel discussion.

Churchill resigned Monday as chairman of the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the Board of Regents there is holding an emergency meeting Thursday to discuss his future.

In the scathing essay, Churchill called the traders and other businesspeople who worked at the World Trade Center in New York “Eichmanns” — a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate Europe’s Jews.

That’s because he believes American foreign policy and the spread of capitalism around the world for U.S. profit are acts of genocide against Iraqi civilians and others in the same way as the Nazi movement was against the Jews during World War II.

“As to those in the World Trade Center ... true enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire,” Churchill wrote.

In an interview with FOX News, Churchill admitted that his 20-page paper was “a harsh piece” and his views are unpopular. But he stands by his opinion that the attacks were retribution for harmful U.S. foreign policy.

“Bush, at least in symbolic terms, is the world’s leading terrorist,” Churchill told FOX News in an interview. “He absolutely thumbs his nose at the rule of law. He’s the head of a rogue state by definition, and it’s a rogue state which dispenses carnage on people presumed to be inferior in some set of terms.”

The essay attracted little attention until Churchill was invited to speak Thursday at Hamilton College, about 40 miles east of Syracuse, N.Y. Since then, he has gotten several hundred threatening e-mails and some hostile reactions from Sept. 11 victims’ families.

He’s also gotten hundreds of supportive e-mails and said that some of those in his corner are soldiers on the front lines of the war in Iraq.

“There is a substantial sector of the population, including GIs that I’m corresponding with as a result of this in the Gulf right now, who say, your points are very solid and this is not right what we’re doing here,” Churchill told FOX.

Though it’s difficult for tenured professors to lose their jobs, a number of people — including Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and some student Republicans — are up in arms over Churchill and his views and want him fired.

“This guy has to go,” said Isaiah Lechowit, president of the University of Colorado Student Republicans. “He’s been out here just raving about this nonsense and the mindless drones over here are clapping and hooting and hollering for him.

“What sickens me is the people out there clapping for this raving lunatic who applauds these terrorists for killing people on Sept. 11.”

Churchill says he has no intention of quitting, and his students don’t want to see him go. Many are among his staunchest supporters.

“He changes people’s minds,” said Albe Zakes, a University of Colorado junior who is a student of Churchill’s. “He says controversial things. That is not a bad thing.

“If you express your opinion and you have a strong opinion — an opinion that differs from the norm — people are going to try to cut you down and take you out of power. If you don’t exercise your constitutional right and you don’t challenge authority, I think that is being un-American.”

Some of Churchill’s colleagues in the ethnic studies department held a brief press conference at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday to rally around the scholar. They praised Churchill, mentioned numerous writing awards he’s won and chastised the press for twisting his words. Churchill himself wasn’t present at the event.

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Chilling for thee, but not for me (townhall.com, 050211)

Jonah Goldberg

If you’re a liberal who’s still moping like a dog whose food bowl has been moved, thanks to all the conservative victories of late, I have some words of encouragement for you: You guys are still way, way smarter than us about some things.

Consider the current flap about Ward Churchill and the recent one about Harvard President Larry Summers.

Ward Churchill, as you’ve probably heard, is a tenured professor of “ethnic studies” at the University of Colorado. Until recently he was the chairman of the department. When invited to another school to give a talk, it came out that he had written an essay comparing the civilian victims of 9/11 to “little Eichmanns.” This was a reference to Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect of the Holocaust.

Known for making factually unencumbered statements about the evils of America, Churchill recently gave an interview in which he said he wanted the “U.S. off the planet. Out of existence altogether.” He thinks “more 9/11s” are necessary. He holds no Ph.D., and his scholarship - for want of a better word - is under relentless attack. Before the current kerfuffle, he’d attained whatever prominence he had by pretending he was an American Indian radical. He likes to pose with assault rifles. The Rocky Mountain News did a genealogical search of Churchill’s past and found that he’s basically a vanilla white guy playing Indian and enriching himself in the process. The American Indian Movement called Churchill a fraud years ago.

OK, flash back to the hysteria over Larry Summers. By now his auto da fé is old news. But let’s recap. One of the most respected economists in America, president of Harvard University, and the former Secretary of the Treasury, Summers was invited to a closed-door, off-the-record academic conference at which everyone was encouraged to think unconventionally. Warning his audience several times that he was going to be deliberately “provocative,” he suggested that there might be some innate cognitive differences between men and women.

This is not a controversial hypothesis in macroeconomics, and it is losing its taboo status in psychology, genetics and neuroscience. Thousands of peer-reviewed academic papers have been written on the differences between men and woman when it comes to various cognitive functions. Note I said “differences.” Superiority and inferiority don’t play into it, and Summers never said otherwise. Indeed, he ventured this hypothesis, after showing his obeisance to the more politically correct explanations: discrimination, not enough effort to recruit women, etc., etc.

So what was the reaction?

An MIT feminist biologist - who moonlights as a feminist activist - quickly got the vapors and stormed out of the room for fear of fainting. If she stayed any longer, she explained, she’d vomit. Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe compared Summers to people who cavalierly bandy about the N-word or who thoughtlessly wear swastikas. One hundred members of the Harvard faculty drafted a letter demanding that he apologize. The National Organization for Women demanded that he resign.

The dean of engineering at the University of Washington called his comments “an intellectual tsunami.” Since the Asian catastrophe had only just transpired, the tastelessness of the metaphor may not be as apparent now as it was then. Regardless, if his comments were a tsunami, Summers’ critics have certainly cashed in on disaster relief effort.

Forced to apologize over and over, Summers was then bullied into appointing not one but two new “task forces” on gender equity. Staffed with 22 women and five men, the task forces will no doubt discover that much more work needs to be done and that Summers should apologize more.

In the Summers affair, free speech and academic freedom barely came up, except among a few conservative commentators and one or two academics who were already known for their political incorrectness. Instead, Summers was a pinata to be bashed for material rewards and to send the message that some subjects are simply taboo even among serious scholars, no matter what the evidence, in closed-door, off-the-record meetings.

Meanwhile, Ward Churchill, whose scholarship is a joke, whose evidence is tendentious at best, and who called the victims of 9/11 the moral equivalent of a man who sent babies to the gas chambers, is a hero of free speech. He has refused to apologize. Many conservatives are forced to defend free speech and “diversity” in academia while liberals let the NOWers feed on Summers’ flesh.

Liberals may despise what Churchill said, but it’s a matter of principle now. The normally insightful and fair Mort Kondracke declared on Fox News, “I really think it’s useful for universities to have people like this around, to show students and the rest of us just how odious some of the ideas of the far left are.” Would Kondracke punt on a professor who endorsed slavery? I somehow doubt it.

Hopefully - and, I think, probably - someone will find enough academic fraud to fire Churchill for cause. No doubt, we’ll hear from many on the left about the “chilling effect” such a move would have on “academic freedom,” and many conservatives will clear their throats in embarrassment. You really have to marvel how the other side has mastered this game.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online, a Townhall.com member group.

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Is prof under fire really an Indian? (WorldNetDaily, 050203)

Churchill kicked out of AIM 12 years ago as ‘treacherous,’ ‘masquerading’ white man

Following what it described as a 25-year internal investigation of Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor now in the center of a storm of national controversy, the American Indian Movement kicked out the activist the group called “deceitful” and “treacherous” and who it condemned as a white man masquerading as an Indian.

Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies and coordinator of American Indian studies at the Colorado school, came under fire in recent days for an essay he wrote following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which he condemned the 3,000 victims and praised the al-Qaida hijackers.

After years of activism within AIM, Churchill was a ringleader of a breakaway “self-styled radical” faction that associated with extremists such as Noam Chomsky and Winona LaDuke, according to AIM records.

“They use publications like Houghton-Mifflin, Random House Publishers, South End Press and Speak Out Speakers Bureau, who allow Ward Churchill and others to perpetuate their literary, academic and Indian fraud on the unknowing public,” said a 1999 AIM report.

Churchill was first expelled from the International Indian Treaty Council Sept. 23, 1986. Seven years later, on Nov. 24, 1993, he was expelled from AIM. Later, on Nov. 3, 1999, AIM leaders officially called for educators to remove his books from their curricula and libraries.

But AIM didn’t stop there. Even more relevant, perhaps, to the current controversy was this recommendation from the group: “We request that organizations such as the National Indian Education Association and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium create a watchdog-type agency to review what books are being published by these literary, academic, and Indian frauds so that their revisionist writings are not finding their way into our education curriculum. This problem is of epidemic proportions, and must be stopped.”

“If only someone had listened to the Indian folks back then,” wrote blogger Yael (Anne) Lieberman.

Tuesday, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens urged the university to fire Churchill. And the state House passed a non-binding resolution yesterday calling his comments “evil and inflammatory.” A similar measure was awaiting action in the Senate.

The CU regents plan to discuss Churchill’s future at a special meeting today.

As WorldNetDaily reported, the controversy stems from an essay Churchill wrote titled “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” written shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. In it, he describes the thousands of American victims who died in the World Trade Center inferno as “little Eichmanns” (a reference to notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann) who were perpetuating America’s “mighty engine of profit.” They were destroyed, he added, thanks to the “gallant sacrifices” of “combat teams” that successfully targeted the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

Churchill was scheduled to speak at Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., near Syracuse today, but officials at the school canceled the appearance, citing security concerns and death threats they had received.

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SITTING BULL-S*** (Ann Coulter, 050209)

If Ward Churchill loses his job teaching at the University of Colorado, he could end up giving Howard Dean a real run for his money to head the Democratic National Committee.

Churchill already has a phony lineage and phony war record — just like John Kerry! (Someone should also check out Churchill’s claim that he spent Christmas 1968 at Wounded Knee.) In 1983, Churchill met with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and later felt it necessary to announce that his group, the American Indian Movement, “has not requested arms from the Libyan government.” In 1997, he was one of the “witnesses” who spoke at a “Free Mumia” event in Philadelphia on behalf of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Come to think of it, Churchill could give Hillary a run for her money. All that’s left for Churchill to do now is meet with Al Sharpton and kiss Suha Arafat.

Churchill’s claim that he is an Indian isn’t an incidental boast, like John Kerry pretending to be Irish. It is central to his career, his writing, his political activism. Churchill has been the co-director of the American Indian Movement of Colorado, the vice chairperson of the American Indian “Anti-Defamation” Council, and an associate professor and coordinator of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado.

By Churchill’s own account, a crucial factor in his political development was “being an American Indian referred to as ‘chief’ in a combat unit” in Vietnam, which made him sad. This is known to con men everywhere as a “two-fer.”

In addition to an absence of evidence about his Indian heritage, there is an absence of evidence that he was in combat in Vietnam. After the POW Network revealed that Churchill had never seen combat, he countered with this powerful argument: “They can say whatever the hell they want. That’s confidential information, and I’ve never ordered its release from the Department of Defense. End of story.” Maybe we should ask John Kerry to help Churchill fill out a form 180.

In one of his books, “Struggle for the Land,” Churchill advances the argument that one-third of America is the legal property of Indians. And if you believe Churchill is a real Indian, he also happens to be part owner of the Brooklyn Bridge.

In his most famous oeuvre, the famed 9/11 essay calling the 9/11 World Trade Center victims “little Eichmanns,” he said “Arab terrorists” — his quotes — had simply “responded to the massive and sustained American terror bombing of Iraq” by giving Americans “a tiny dose of their own medicine.”

Having blurted out “Iraq” in connection with 9/11 in a moment of pique, Churchill had to backpedal when the anti-war movement needed to argue that Iraq had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Arab terrorism. He later attached an “Addendum” to the essay saying that the 9/11 attack was not only payback for Iraq, but also for various other of this country’s depredations especially against “real Indians” (of which he is not one).

In light of the fact that Churchill’s entire persona, political activism, curriculum vitae, writings and university positions are based on his claim that he’s an Indian, it’s rather churlish of him to complain when people ask if he really is one. But whenever he is questioned about his heritage, Churchill rails that inquiries into his ancestry are “absolutely indefensible.”

Churchill has gone from claiming he is one-eighth Indian “on a good day” to claiming he is “three-sixteenths Cherokee,” to claiming he is one-sixty-fourth Cherokee through a Revolutionary War era ancestor named Joshua Tyner. (At least he’s not posing as a phony Indian math professor.) A recent investigation by The Denver Post revealed that Tyner’s father was indeed married to a Cherokee. But that was only after Joshua’s mother –- and Churchill’s relative -– was scalped by Indians.

By now, all that’s left of Churchill’s claim to Indian ancestry is his assertion: “It is just something that was common knowledge in my family.” (That, and his souvenir foam-rubber “tommyhawk” he bought at Turner Field in Atlanta.)

Over the years, there were other subtle clues the university might have noticed.

Churchill is not in the tribal registries kept since the 1800s by the federal government.

No tribe will enroll him –- a verification process Churchill dismisses as “poodle papers” for Indians.

In 1990, Churchill was forced to stop selling his art as “Indian art” under federal legislation sponsored by then-representative — and actual Indian! — Ben Nighthorse Campbell, that required Indian artists to establish that they are accepted members of a federally recognized tribe. Churchill responded by denouncing the Indian artist who had exposed him. (Hey, does anybody need 200 velvet paintings of Elvis playing poker with Crazy Horse?)

In the early ‘90s, he hoodwinked an impecunious Cherokee tribe into granting him an “associate membership” by telling them he “wrote some books and was a big-time author.” A tribal spokeswoman explained: He “convinced us he could help our people.” They never heard from him again — yet another treaty with the Indians broken by the white man. Soon thereafter, the tribe stopped offering “associate memberships.”

A decade ago, Churchill was written up in an article in News From Indian Country, titled, “Sovereignty and Its Spokesmen: The Making of an Indian.” The article noted that Churchill had claimed membership in a scrolling series of Indian tribes, but over “the course of two years, NFIC hasn’t been able to confirm a single living Indian relative, let alone one real relative that can vouch for his tribal descent claim.”

When real Indians complained to Colorado University in 1994 that a fake Indian was running their Indian Studies program, a spokeswoman for the CU president said the university needed “to determine if the position was designated for a Native American. And I can’t answer that right now.” Apparently it was answered in Churchill’s favor since he’s still teaching.

If he’s not an Indian, it’s not clear what Churchill does have to offer a university. In his book, “A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present,” Churchill denounces Jews for presuming to imagine the Holocaust was unique. In the chapter titled “Lie for Lie: Linkages between Holocaust Deniers and Proponents of the Uniqueness of the Jewish Experience in World War II,” Churchill calls the Third Reich merely “a crystallization” of Christopher Columbus’ ravages of his people (if he were an Indian).

His research apparently consisted of watching the Disney movie “Pocahontas,” which showed that the Indians meant the European settlers no harm. (That’s if you don’t count the frequent scalpings.)

Even the credulous Nation magazine -– always on red alert for tales of government oppression –- dismissed Churchill’s 1988 book “Agents of Repression” about Cointelpro-type operations against the American Indian Movement, saying the book “does not give much new information” and “even a reader who is inclined to believe their allegations will want more evidence than they provide.” If The Nation won’t buy your anti-U.S. government conspiracy theories, Kemosabe, it’s probably time to pack up the old teepee and hit the trail of tears.

In response to the repeated complaints from Indians that a phony Indian was running CU’s Indian Studies program, Churchill imperiously responded: “Guess what that means, guys? I’m not taking anyone’s job, there wouldn’t be an Indian Studies program if I wasn’t coordinating it. ... They won’t give you a job just because you have the paper.” This white man of English and Swiss-German descent apparently believes there are no actual Indians deserving of his position at CU. (No wonder the Indians aren’t crazy about him.)

As long as we’re all agreed that there are some people who don’t deserve jobs at universities, why isn’t Churchill one of them?

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Not Crazy Horse, just crazy (townhall.com, 050217)

Ann Coulter

University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill has written that “unquestionably, America has earned” the attack of 9-11. He calls the attack itself a result of “gallant sacrifices of the combat teams.” That the “combat teams” killed only 3,000 Americans, he says, shows they were not “unreasonable or vindictive.” He says that in order to even the score with America, Muslim terrorists “would, at a minimum, have to blow up about 300,000 more buildings and kill something on the order of 7.5 million people.”

To grasp the current state of higher education in America, consider that if Churchill is at any risk at all of being fired, it is only because he smokes.

Churchill poses as a radical living on the edge, supremely confident that he is protected by tenure from being fired. College professors are the only people in America who assume they can’t be fired for what they say.

Tenure was supposed to create an atmosphere of open debate and inquiry, but instead has created havens for talentless cowards who want to be insulated from life. Rather than fostering a climate of open inquiry, college campuses have become fascist colonies of anti-American hate speech, hypersensitivity, speech codes, banned words and prohibited scientific inquiry.

Even liberals don’t try to defend Churchill on grounds that he is Galileo pursuing an abstract search for the truth. They simply invoke “free speech,” like a deus ex machina to end all discussion. Like the words “diverse” and “tolerance,” “free speech” means nothing but: “Shut up, we win.” It’s free speech (for liberals), diversity (of liberals) and tolerance (toward liberals).

Ironically, it is precisely because Churchill is paid by the taxpayers that “free speech” is implicated at all. The Constitution has nothing to say about the private sector firing employees for their speech. That’s why you don’t see Bill Maher on ABC anymore. Other well-known people who have been punished by their employers for their “free speech” include Al Campanis, Jimmy Breslin, Rush Limbaugh, Jimmy the Greek and Andy Rooney.

In fact, the Constitution says nothing about state governments firing employees for their speech: The First Amendment clearly says, “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.” Firing Ward Churchill is a pseudo-problem caused by modern constitutional law, which willy-nilly applies the Bill of Rights to the states – including the one amendment that clearly refers only to “Congress.” (Liberals love to go around blustering “‘no law’ means ‘no law’!” But apparently “Congress” doesn’t mean “Congress.”)

Even accepting the modern notion that the First Amendment applies to state governments, the Supreme Court has distinguished between the government as sovereign and the government as employer. The government is extremely limited in its ability to regulate the speech of private citizens, but not so limited in regulating the speech of its own employees.

So the First Amendment and “free speech” are really red herrings when it comes to whether Ward Churchill can be fired. Even state universities will not run afoul of the Constitution for firing a professor who is incapable of doing his job because he is a lunatic, an incompetent or an idiot – and those determinations would obviously turn on the professor’s “speech.”

If a math professor’s “speech” consisted of insisting that 2 plus 2 equals 5, or an astrophysicist’s “speech” was to claim that the moon is made of Swiss cheese, or a history professor’s “speech” consisted of rants about the racial inferiority of the n——s, each one of them could be fired by a state university without running afoul of the Constitution.

Just because we don’t have bright lines for determining what speech can constitute a firing offense, doesn’t mean there are no lines at all. If Churchill hasn’t crossed them, we are admitting that almost nothing will debase and disgrace the office of professor (except, you know, suggesting that there might be innate differences in the mathematical abilities of men and women).

In addition to calling Americans murdered on 9-11 “little Eichmanns,” Churchill has said:

* The U.S. Army gave blankets infected with smallpox to the Indians specifically intending to spread the disease.

Not only are the diseased-blanket stories cited by Churchill denied by his alleged sources, but the very idea is contradicted by the facts of scientific discovery. The settlers didn’t understand the mechanism of how disease was transmitted. Until Louis Pasteur’s experiments in the second half of the 19th century, the idea that disease could be caused by living organisms was as scientifically accepted as crystal reading is today. Even after Pasteur, many scientists continued to believe disease was spontaneously generated from within. Churchill is imbuing the settlers with knowledge that in most cases wouldn’t be accepted for another hundred years.

* Indian reservations are the equivalent of Nazi concentration camps.

I forgot Auschwitz had a casino.

If Ward Churchill can be a college professor, what’s David Duke waiting for?

The whole idea behind free speech is that in a marketplace of ideas, the truth will prevail. But liberals believe there is no such thing as truth and no idea can ever be false (unless it makes feminists cry, such as the idea that there are innate differences between men and women). Liberals are so enamored with the process of free speech that they have forgotten about the goal.

Faced with a professor who is a screaming lunatic, they retreat to, “Yes, but academic freedom, tenure, free speech, blah, blah,” and their little liberal minds go into autopilot with all the slogans.

Why is it, again, that we are so committed to never, ever firing professors for their speech? Because we can’t trust state officials to draw any lines at all here? Because ... because ... because they might start with crackpots like Ward Churchill – but soon liberals would be endangered? Liberals don’t think there is any conceivable line between them and Churchill? Ipse dixit.

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‘Academic freedom’? (Townhall.com, 050215)

Thomas Sowell

Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado seems to be enjoying his 15 minutes of infamy for his childish rants against people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks. Others of course resent his cheap shots at the dead, and some are trying to get him fired.

The resulting controversy has wider implications for the understanding — and misunderstanding — of what is meant by “academic freedom.”

However symptomatic Professor Churchill may be of what is wrong with academia today, his situation has nothing to do with academic freedom. His remarks that provoked so much controversy were not made in a classroom or even on campus.

There are no real grounds for firing him under current rules and practices — which tells you what is wrong with those rules and practices. Professor Churchill is protected by tenure rules that are a much bigger problem than this one man or this one episode.

In this era of dumbed-down education, when rhetoric has replaced both logic and evidence for many people, some think the issue is “freedom of speech.” Indeed, some critics of Professor Churchill have been shouted down by his supporters, in the name of freedom of speech.

Too many people — some of them judges — seem to think that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences for what you have said. If you believe that, try insulting your boss when you go to work tomorrow. Better yet, try insulting your spouse before going to bed tonight.

While this column is protected by freedom of speech, that does not stop any editor from getting rid of it if he doesn’t like what I say. But, even if every editor across the length and breadth of the country refused to carry this column, that would be no violation of my freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech does not imply a right to an audience. Otherwise the audience would have no right to its own freedom. Editors, movie producers, speakers’ bureaus and other intermediaries have every right to decide what they will and will not present to their audiences.

Unfortunately, many of those who talk the loudest and longest about “freedom of speech” and “academic freedom” are in fact trying to justify the imposition of propaganda on a captive audience in our schools and colleges.

At one college, some gutsy students start chanting “OT” — for “off topic” — when one of their professors starts making political comments that have nothing to do with the subject of his course.

Should a professor of accounting or chemistry be fired for using up class time to sound off about homelessness or the war in Iraq? Yes!

There is no high moral principle that prevents it. What prevents it are tenure rules that have saddled so many colleges with so many self-indulgent prima donnas who seem to think that they are philosopher kings, when in fact they are often grossly ignorant or misinformed outside the narrow confines of their particular specialty.

Over the years, the notion of academic freedom has expanded beyond autonomy within one’s academic field to faculty governance of colleges and universities in general. Thus professors decide whether the institution’s endowment can be invested in companies or countries that are out of favor among the anointed, or whether students will be allowed to join fraternities or the Reserve Officers Training Corps.

There is nothing in specialized academic expertise which makes professors’ opinions on issues outside their specialty any better than anyone else’s opinions. In no other institution — religious or secular, military or civilian — are people who make decisions that shape the institution unable to be fired when those decisions lead to bad results.

The combination of tenure and academic self-governance is unique — and explains much of the atmosphere of self-indulgence and irresponsibility on campus, of which Professor Ward Churchill is just one extreme example. Re-thinking confused notions of “academic freedom” is far more important than firing Professor Churchill and thereby turning a jackass into a martyr.

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The left is worth nothing (Townhall.com, 050201)

Dennis Prager

“Someone who does not know the difference between good and evil is worth nothing.” — Miecyslaw Kasprzyk, Polish rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust, New York Times, Jan. 30, 2005

It took a Polish rescuer of Jews in the Holocaust, cited this week 60 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and death camp, to best describe those people who cannot or refuse to know the difference between good and evil. They are “worth nothing.”

Since I was an adolescent, I have been preoccupied with evil: specifically, why people engage in it and why other people refuse to acknowledge its existence. As I have gotten older, I often find the latter group more infuriating. Somehow, as much as I don’t want to, I can understand why a Muslim raised in a world permeated with hate-filled lies about America and Israel, and taught from childhood that God loves death, will blow himself up and joyfully maim and murder children. As evil as the Muslim terrorist is, given the Islamic world in which he was raised, he has some excuse.

But the non-Muslims who fail to acknowledge and confront the evil of Muslim terror and the evil of those monsters who cut innocent people’s throats and murder those trying to make a democracy — these people are truly worth nothing. Unlike the Muslims raised in a religious totalitarian society, they have no excuse. And in my lifetime, these people have overwhelmingly congregated on the political Left.

Since the 1960s, with few exceptions, on the greatest questions of good and evil, the Left has either been neutral toward or actively supported evil. The Left could not identify communism as evil; has been neutral toward or actually supported the anti-democratic pro-terrorist Palestinians against the liberal democracy called Israel; and has found it impossible to support the war for democracy and against an Arab/Muslim enemy in Iraq as evil as any fascist the Left ever claimed to hate.

There were intellectually and morally honest arguments against going to war in Iraq. But once the war began, a moral person could not oppose it. No moral person could hope for, let alone act on behalf of, a victory for the Arab/Islamic fascists. Just ask yourself but two questions: If America wins, will there be an increase or decrease in goodness in Iraq and in the world? And then ask what would happen if the Al Qaeda/Zarqawi/Baathists win.

It brings me no pleasure to describe opponents of the Iraqi war as “worth nothing.” I know otherwise fine, decent people who oppose the war. So I sincerely apologize for the insult.

But to the Left in general, as opposed to individually good people who side with the Left, I have no apologies. It is the Left — in America, in Europe and around the world — that should do all the apologizing: to the men, women and children of Iraq and elsewhere for not coming to their support against those who would crush them.

That most Democratic Party leaders, union leaders, gay leaders, feminists, professors, editorial writers and news reporters have called for an American withdrawal and labeled this most moral of wars “immoral” is a permanent stain on their reputations.

About 60% of the Iraqi people went to vote despite the fact that every Iraqi voter risked his or her life and the lives of their children, whose throats the Islamic fascists threatened to slit. Yet, the Left continues to label the war for Iraqi democracy “immoral” while praising the tyrant of Cuba.

Leftists do so for the same reason they admired Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse-tung and condemned American arms as the greatest threat to world peace during and after the Cold War. The Left “does not know the difference between good and evil.” And that is why it is worth nothing.

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Your Right to Say What? (American Spectator, 050208)

By James Bowman

Richard Cohen had a Voltairean moment the other day. Or rather a pseudo-Voltairean movement, since the well-known saying: “I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” seems not to have been said by the French sage after all. He is one of those people, like Lincoln and Mark Twain, who seem to attract credit for witty or pithy sayings the way the remotest corner under the bed attracts dust-bunnies. From his own remote corner of the op-ed page of the Washington Post, Cohen noted the following undisputed facts:

(1) that Hamilton College in upstate New York had invited as a speaker someone who described the victims of the September 11 terror attacks as “little Eichmanns” who deserved what they got;

(2) that there had been a predictable outcry of protest at the invitation from many both inside Hamilton College and outside it, notably including Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel whom Cohen describes as having, “in effect, organized an Internet lynch mob, a collection of cyber- goons — one of whom threatened to bring a gun” and

(3) that, after hanging tough for a while, Hamilton College had caved and rescinded the invitation.

Cohen’s point was that the college should not have done so. Not, of course, that he agrees with that description of those who died. On the contrary, he describes this person, whose name is Ward Churchill, as an “idiot” and his words making the comparison mentioned above, which he quotes at length, “repellent, idiotic” — not surprising, I guess, coming from an idiot — “and badly written.” But still he should have been allowed to have his say, thinks R. Cohen. Here’s his argument, such as it is:

Hamilton should not have invited Churchill in the first place. His ideas are trash, clichés to boot, and the school could have…changed its mind once it found out more about him. But once he had accepted, and once Hamilton had insisted by all that is holy that it would stick to its guns, it could not then collapse because those ideas, as loathsome as they are, might have real consequences. Hire some guards. Frisk the audience. But don’t cave to the mob.

The mob? Was it only a mob because Bill O’Reilly was leading it? Is any large group of people protesting at the granting of a forum to some “idiot” spouting offensive nonsense then a mob? And is it then only necessary for such a person to have acquired such a forum under false pretenses or the cover of his hosts’ ignorance for him to be granted a privilege that many people who might have interesting or profitable things to say are denied?

Yet the popularity of the pseudo-Voltairean quotation suggests that some such idea of what true liberalism involves enjoys a perverse popularity. Carried to its logical conclusion, it could only encourage those who hold stupid and offensive views to make them still more stupid and offensive — enough at least to get the liberals on their side in defending their right to a forum. And the freedom to be stupid and offensive, though an undoubted corollary of liberal principles, carries with it no right to a hearing from those who resent stupidity and offensiveness. There is a limit to what any of us can attend to in a short lifetime, and true liberalism must also afford us the freedom so to organize our lives as to limit the amount of stupid and offensive things we are forced to listen to. God knows enough of them get through in any case, no matter how good our screening system.

Even if no one at Hamilton College would have been forced to listen to Mr. Churchill’s words, the College itself has a responsibility in its putative role as an upholder of civilized discourse not to offer such an incentive to speakers to be even more stupid and offensive than they already are. Responsible scholarship depends on the upholding of intellectual standards, and the abdication of such responsibility in the name of freedom of speech is a bit of sophistry of which I doubt even Voltaire would approve.

And anyway, it’s not as if poor Mr. Churchill, who is a self-described “Indian activist” and a tenured professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has no forum without the Hamilton College gig. In fact, according to a report in the Post of a couple of days later, back in Boulder he was able to deploy his own rent-a-mob shock troops to shout down a disciplinary hearing of which he was the subject. If the forces of liberalism ever allow those deliberations to resume, and they reach the illiberal conclusion that Mr. Churchill should no longer be allowed to impose his stupid and offensive views upon the students of the University of Colorado, he will always have the Internet to fall back on. Out there, you can be as stupid and offensive as you like and somebody will be listening.

James Bowman is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, media essayist for the New Criterion, and The American Spectator’s movie critic.

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Right Read: Michael Medved engages and explains (National Review Online, 050209)

Every week, more than two million Americans tune in to The Michael Medved Show to hear Medved’s thoughts on politics and entertainment. On the show, Medved taps his varied experiences as a liberal political operative, advertising executive, screenwriter, movie critic, synagogue president, and nine-time author to entertain and educate his radio listeners. Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life tells Medved’s story of his political and religious journeys from left to right, as well as his quest for authenticity and his growing appreciation for America’s core traditional values of family, prayer, and self-reliance.

Right Turns is divided into simple lessons, with each chapter mirroring a lesson from a specific moment in Medved’s life that went on to shape his current philosophical outlook. Each chapter’s lesson is summarized in the chapter title, and then repeated in the chapter’s closing paragraph for good measure.

The story begins with “America Isn’t Normal,” in which Medved describes how his family came to understand that poverty and disease were not the endemic problems in America that they were in early 20th-century Europe. For the Medved family, America was a beacon of promise and opportunity in a bitter world. Medved’s grandparents, Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine, had struggled for ten years to unite in America. During that time of separation, the couple lost five of their six children.

Medved went to Yale in 1965, and after graduation continued on at the law school, although he never finished his degree. While at Yale, he met future political stars like Hillary and Bill Clinton, and John Kerry. Medved’s tale of his one meeting with the young John Kerry paints a devastating portrait of the perils of ambition: “[Kerry] droned on in portentous tones and at appalling length about the way the Liberal Party and the [Yale Political Union] would enrich our lives and the possibility — nay, the virtual certainty — that if we worked with single-minded intensity we might one day rise to the unspeakably glorious heights of party chairmanship and union-wide office that he, the Great Kerry, had achieved.” Afterwards, Medved and a classmate would recite a mantra of authenticity that echoed in the background of future life decisions: “We can’t turn out like John Kerry.”

Medved’s staunch opposition to the Vietnam War led him to pour heart and soul into Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign. After Kennedy’s assassination, Medved continued to sweat and toil for liberal candidates, but his quest for authenticity exposed a growing gap between rhetoric and reality, ideology and integrity.

The Kennedy campaign may have been a labor of love for Medved, but he was a reluctant warrior for the McGovern campaign. Medved was uncomfortable with McGovern’s neo-isolationism and lukewarm support for Israel, but he joined because of his personal associations with the McGovernites, as well as McGovern’s opposition to the Vietnam War. Like millions of Americans, Vietnam was the issue that linked Medved to the left. Once that issue receded, Medved became receptive to conservative ideas as he became increasingly uncomfortable with what he saw as the excesses of radical liberalism.

For Medved, the first conscious breaking point was the realization that “Liberal Heroes Aren’t All Heroes.” In 1972, he signed on as campaign manager for Ron Dellums, the fiery African-American congressman from Berkeley California. Medved quickly soured on Dellums and his associates, who acted as though the rule of law, personal ethics, and high standards did not apply to them. Dellums’s people, in turn, viewed Medved as a token Jew — a gambit to attract suburban Jewish voters. The Dellums staff, Medved claims, also used drugs excessively and flamboyantly, and suspiciously ran the campaign as an all-cash operation. Medved felt that the Dellums operation abused white sympathy for African Americans both to obtain power and to avoid responsibility.

As he lost interest in liberal politics, Medved went into book writing, and found he had a knack not just for writing books, but for selling them as well. Medved’s Whatever Happened to the Class of ‘65, a review of his high-school classmates ten years later, became a bestseller, as did his The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. The film book turned out to be the key development in Medved’s career, ultimately leading to his becoming a film critic.

When The Tonight Show invited the Sabbath-observant Medved to discuss his awful movies, he had to beg off because it was scheduled for the night of the second Passover Seder. The producer suggested an alternate date, but that date was on the last days of Passover, which also precluded participation. At this point, the disbelieving producer said that there would be no more alternative dates.

Desperate, Medved read the producer the biblical passage forbidding work at the end of Passover, and the producer relented. Medved’s eventual appearance was viewed by another producer, of Sneak Previews, who offered Medved a spot on the show. Of course, the episode on which Medved appeared was the only time that year the Sneak Previews producer had watched The Tonight Show, making this the 20th-century equivalent of a Hasidic tale, where strict observance begets material success.

Medved’s work on “The Tonight Show,” among other places, led to his becoming a television film critic. In that capacity, he both gained exposure and also became known as a conservative analyst of films, both of which led to his current incarnation as a conservative radio host.

Medved’s description of his travels from the Left to the Right is one that many people can identify with — and which may describe his radio and book-selling popularity. As Medved describes it, his transformation was based on “a belated awakening to economic realities, the embrace of the traditional family, and America’s ongoing and underreported religious revival.” Or, more concisely and alliteratively, “our experiences with paychecks, parenthood, and prayer.” On its own, Right Turns is an engaging memoir and a moving tribute to America. But it is also a very accessible road map for explaining the practical reasons old radicals often become older conservatives.

— Tevi Troy is a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and the author of Intellectuals and the American Presidency.

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The values quagmire (Townhall.com, 050215)

David Limbaugh

The Democratic leadership has a funny way of showing its commitment to “values.” Perhaps it should first decide whether it wants to adopt Christian values, redefine them or just cynically mock them.

When liberals were cockier about their political fortunes, they were quick to demean certain Christians as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command” or the “American Taliban.”

Don’t get me wrong. The Left is still making fun of Christians, but they’ve gotten a little cagier. Now they’re claiming a slice of the pie for themselves, saying they are the true Christians and decrying Republicans for trying to assert a monopoly on Christianity. Well, I guess we’re making some progress.

Ever since the mostly bizarre presidential exit polls signaled the importance of “values” among voters, Democrats have been scrambling to devise a way to work themselves seamlessly into that “demographic.” So far, it doesn’t appear they’ve even convinced themselves, but they’re still working on it. Several recent news items illustrate the point.

Howard Dean has been making a lot of noise since his triumphal ascension to the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). But when it comes to values — at least traditional ones — the poor guy, like the party he represents, is painfully ambivalent at best.

During the DNC meeting on Friday, a lady from the Women’s Caucus asked the irascible governor (don’t call him “Chairman”) why those Republicans keep prattling on about “moral values.” The Dean of Scream responded, “When they don’t have any, is that what you mean?

Mad Howard didn’t stop there. He likened Republicans to “Pharisees and Sadducees” whose hypocrisy Jesus denounced. He also said Jesus’ teachings about the difficulty of a rich man entering the kingdom of God weren’t “part of the Republican platform.”

Apparently wanting to demonstrate he was conversant with the Old Testament as well, Howard snuck in an allusion to Moses’ wilderness wanderings in describing the Republicans’ recently ended minority status. He said, “Republicans wandered around in the political wilderness for 40 years before they took back Congress.” Are we to assume — fittingly — that the new DNC “governor” equates Congress to the Promised Land?

Howard is not the only Democrat protesting the Republicans’ supposed identification with scripture. Alabama state Rep. Alvin Holmes defiantly promised to give $700 (now it’s up to $5,000 I hear) to any person who could show him a biblical passage expressing that marriage is between man and woman. When someone took him up on it, Holmes said, “Anybody could have any interpretation they want of the Bible, and that’s not my interpretation.” I suppose it should not surprise us that in this postmodern era with its full frontal assault on truth, people — even some who call themselves Christians — will say that scripture says anything we want it to say.

Riding to the rescue of these gentlemen is Rev. Jim Wallis, who has written a book, “God’s Politics,” in which he reportedly provides ammunition to the political Left to reclaim the evangelical voter.

I haven’t yet read the book, but according to a Chicago Tribune story on it, Wallis takes conservatives to task for their inattention to poverty and other issues. “How did the faith of Jesus come to be known as pro-rich, pro-war, and only pro-American?” asks Wallis.

Such mischaracterizations, reveal, at the very least the naivete of the politically liberal Christian. Conservative Christians advocate free market and constitutional principles they believe (and history has proven) will do more to eradicate poverty than any other system. That they don’t subscribe to the failed strategies of socialism doesn’t mean they are less compassionate toward the poor.

No conservative Christian I know is pro-war or “only pro-American.” But most of them support “just wars” and wars to protect our national security, which they don’t believe require the permission of other nations. They also reject the liberals’ definition of “unilateral” military actions as those unsupported by the French, Germans and Russians.

The Democratic leadership should understand that it won’t endear itself to many Christian voters by rewriting scripture, embracing relativism, facilitating a culture of death, endorsing homosexuality as a civil right, portraying government-coerced redistributions of other people’s money as acts of compassion toward the poor and preaching class warfare notwithstanding the Commandment against “coveting.”

Far be it from me to assert, on behalf of political conservatives, a monopoly on Christianity. But I would humbly suggest that if Democrats want to avoid digging themselves into a deeper values quagmire, they would be well advised to pursue a different approach, one that doesn’t involve recasting Christian values and rewriting scripture.

David Limbaugh is a syndicated columnist who blogs at DavidLimbaugh.com

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The rise of the bike path left (townhall.com, 050216)

Jonah Goldberg

When Howard Dean was still on top of the world looking down on the Democratic presidential nomination, the indispensable columnist Mark Steyn, writing in the Wall Street Journal, dubbed the good doctor the figurehead of the “bike path left.”

This was a reference to Dean’s decision to leave the Episcopalian Church because his parish had opposed his plan to build a local bike path. As Steyn noted, what made this controversy remarkable, considering the recent dust-ups within the Anglican community, was that this was not in fact a gay bike path, nor a path one biked on the way to a gay marriage. No, this was just an ordinary bike path, and, for all the theological issues involved in the controversy, Dean’s church might just as well have been a McDonald’s or a Jiffy Lube. It was just, in Dean’s words, a “big fight.” “I was fighting to have public access to the waterfront, and we were fighting very hard..”

Steyn contrasted Dean’s readiness to rumble about a bike path with his more leisurely attitude toward war. When Saddam was captured, Dean had said, “I suppose that’s a good thing.” When the butchers Uday and Qusay were killed in a raid, Dean said, “The ends don’t justify the means.” About Osama bin Laden, Dean explained in 2003, “I don’t think it makes a lot of difference” if he’s tried in the Hague or in the place where he orchestrated the murder of thousands of Americans. Asked if the Hague would be good for Saddam, too, Dean airily replied, “Suits me fine.”

In short, about the war on terror Dean was dismissively blase. About bike paths he was a pit bull.

This is all relevant because Howard Dean has emerged from the ashes of John Kerry’s immolation to run the Democratic party.

Interestingly, many elected Democrats insist he will not lead the party. Sen. Joseph Biden, for example, explained: “No party chairman has ever made a bit of difference in the public perception. . He’s not going to have a policy role.”

So, apparently, Dean will be little more than the guy who calls the repairman when the DNC’s Xerox machine is out of toner. So why did the party’s nominal leaders oppose his campaign to be DNC chair? That Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid failed to stop Dean suggests that the base marches to his drum, not theirs.

Perhaps Pelosi and Reid recognized that the party’s best hopes do not reside in rallying left-wingers who use “summer” as a verb. The essential characteristic of the Bike Path Left is its passion for lifestyle issues. Dean was famously the governor of Vermont, where lifestyle has become a religion for its urbane yet fashionably rustic citizenry. The flinty old Vermont of yore has given way to the Vermont of Architectural Digest and wealthy transplants from New York and Boston. Dean represented this transformation perfectly. In the Vermont statehouse, Calvin Coolidge’s sober, thrifty visage gazes from his official portrait to Dean’s. While all the other governors dress like bankers, Dean chose to pose as if for the cover of an L.L. Bean catalog, studiously relaxed on the shore of a pond in an open-collared flannel shirt, khakis and racy hiking boots. Previous governors probably liked the great outdoors, too, but they didn’t think their job was about validating lifestyles.

Simply because the BPL cherishes lifestyle politics doesn’t mean it is always laid-back. Dean is, famously, a man of considerable rage. Just this week he remarked that he “hates Republicans.” (Presumably all of those bumper stickers in Burlington proclaiming that “Hate is not a family value” will have to be scraped off.) And as the original bike path fight demonstrates, his passion about the importance of lifestyle trumps his faith in more traditional arrangements. Dean signed the first same-sex partnership law and is now a vocal advocate for gay marriage. This isn’t a petty issue like a bike path. It’s a very important one to voters on both sides. Indeed, gay marriage might well have won the election for George W. Bush.

Which is why some Democrats fear that Dean will remake their party as the champion of the Burlington state of mind. Defenders call him a “pragmatist” who governed as a “centrist.” They always leave out that a Vermont centrist is someone who cares about the property values of limousine liberals. Nonetheless, Dean and his supporters say they’re serious about reaching out to more traditional voters.

But his bike path passion appears to be elsewhere. In a fascinating report from the DNC’s recent meeting, Tony Carnes of Christianity Today recounts how Dean sees his party’s failings as nothing but a “language” problem. “We learned in the last election that language makes an enormous difference,” he explained dispassionately.

Later, at another gathering, Gloria Nieto, vice chair of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Caucus, broke into sobs, wondering aloud whether the Democrats would remain a welcoming home for lesbians. Dean immediately “leaped off the stage into the audience to hug her,” writes Carnes. “With a sob of his own catching his voice, he brought the audience to standing ovation” when he declared, “That’s why I am a Democrat.”

Well, that and bike paths.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online, a Townhall.com member group.

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Piss Off (Weekly Standard, 050222)

A Belgian novelty shows what the good people of Brussels really think about George W. Bush.

Brussels

WHEN JOHAN VANDE LANOTTE, Belgium’s Vice Prime Minister, goes to the toilets today, he finds the urinals in the offices of his ministry decorated with stickers. They show an American flag and the head of George W. Bush. “Go ahead. Piss on me,” the caption says. Vande Lanotte is one of Bush’s hosts in Brussels. Is peeing on your guest’s head appropriate? In Belgium it is. After all, Brussels’ best known statue is that of “Manneken Pis,” a peeing boy.

The piss stickers, specially made to be used in urinals, can be seen these days in the public toilets of Belgian schools, youth clubs, and pubs. They were designed by Laurent Winnock, president of the Young Socialists, the youth branch of Vande Lanotte’s Socialist party. Winnock did his creative work during his office hours, which would not be worth mentioning if Winnock did not work in the offices of Vice Prime Minister Vande Lanotte, as one of his press spokesmen.

Last Friday, Belgian television asked Robert “Steve” Stevaert, the Socialist party leader, what he thought of the stickers. It had not been his idea, he stressed, but he refused to distance himself from it. He hardly could, seeing as the stickers can be ordered for free through the party’s official website. For Belgian television viewers the message was clear: Bush may be our government’s guest, the ministers will greet him, smile and tell him that he is most welcome, but we all know what they think of the bastard.

For those who missed the “subtlety” of the urinal stickers, Laurette Onkelinx, the Belgian minister of Justice and one of the Socialist party’s most powerful figures, let go during prime time on Sunday evening, as Air Force One was about to land in Brussels. “I would rather have had John Kerry visiting us,” she said on television. When the interviewer asked whether it was not undiplomatic to say so, she answered: “No. That is how I feel about it.”

Meanwhile, however, a citizen of Ghent, where the stickers had also been distributed, has filed a complaint with the Belgian judiciary headed by Onkelinx. “This sticker has nothing to do with freedom of speech,” he says. “If I go to the gents in the pub nowadays, I am forced to pee on Bush and the American flag because it is impossible to miss this sticker.”

I do not know whether the president is aware of the real feelings of his Belgian hosts. Has the American Embassy in Brussels informed him? This question crossed my mind, as he was delivering his speech to a crowd of politicians, journalists, and businessmen in the prestigious halls of Brussels’ Concert Noble on Monday afternoon. There, under a huge painting of Leopold II, Belgium’s late-19th-century king (and the tyrant of the Congo), Bush addressed a few hundred people invited by the U.S. Embassy. I know some of them. They used to be my colleagues.

Fifteen years ago, I was sacked by a Belgian newspaper because I had written an article in the Wall Street Journal which the Belgian politicians did not like. Being a somewhat conservative and pro-American journalist, I was a regular contributor to the Journal in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These articles were not liked by my liberal colleagues, nor by the Belgian regime. On April 6, 1990, I was fired after writing a Journal op-ed piece about how a major story had been ignored by the Belgian media under political pressure from the top political parties.

That day ended my career as a newspaper journalist. None of the Belgian papers has been willing to employ me since. Fifteen years later I am still known by my former colleagues as “that fascist from the Wall Street Journal.” And now I could see those same editors sitting in the audience, listening to a man whom they despise.

Indeed, they think that the world will be saved if America becomes more like Europe, whereas I think that Europe will be saved only if it becomes more like America. But that is an opinion which no one in Europe is allowed to have. Those who do, get peed upon.

Dr. Paul Belien is the author of the forthcoming book A Throne in Brussels on the “Belgianisation” of Europe (Imprint Academic, May 2005).

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End of story for Hunter Thompson (Washington Times, 050222)

Outlaw, druggie, Dunhill-smoking, Chivas Regal-drinking, anti-establishment literary icon Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide after becoming depressed about the United States’ shift toward conservatism, said one longtime friend who spent the weekend at the Aspen, Colo., home of the late “gonzo” journalist.

“He was depressed about the state of society,” said Loren Jenkins, foreign editor for National Public Radio in Washington.

A vehement opponent of President Bush, Mr. Thompson, 67, “was feeling maudlin about the current conservatism sweeping the country,” Mr. Jenkins said. “He felt he’d had a long run, trying to create a freer society in the ‘60s and ‘70s and he felt it had all been closed down.”

Mr. Thompson’s body was discovered Sunday by Juan Thompson, his son by his first wife, Sandra Dawn Thompson. His second wife, Anita, was not home at the time. The family issued a statement asking for privacy.

In recent months, Mr. Thompson had suffered injuries and other health problems. While others expressed shock at Mr. Thompson’s death, close friends “ including Mr. Jenkins “ did not.

“Everyone who knew Hunter knew that he lived by his own rules and that he would end his life by his own rules,” Mr. Jenkins said.

But other friends said yesterday that Mr. Thompson seemed to be in good spirits during the past week.

“I was there Friday evening at his home and left him at midnight,” said longtime friend and neighbor Michael Cleverly.

“We had a lovely evening. He was very upbeat. I’d have been less shocked if he had shot me rather than himself,” said Mr. Cleverly. “He is the last person on the planet Earth I would expect of that.”

Mr. Cleverly, who knew Mr. Thompson for 25 years, said the writer “ who lived at a compound called Owl Farm “ had several assignments in the works, including a book of his photography. “He was in the midst of a productive life. My only speculation was that [the suicide] had to be an impulse, not something he’d been dwelling on.”

Mr. Cleverly also attended Mr. Thompson’s annual Super Bowl party, and said friends were not aware of anything troubling the writer, except he had suffered “a terrible year physically.”

According to Mr. Cleverly, the writer fell in Hawaii and broke his leg. He also had back surgery and pain from an artificial hip.

Yesterday at his favorite haunt, Woody Creek Tavern, patrons and writers gathered to remember Mr. Thompson, perhaps best known for his drug-fueled 1971 narrative “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” which was made into a 1998 movie starring Johnny Depp.

Recently, Mr. Thompson had been a regular columnist for ESPN.com Web site, and his columns had been collected into a book. Passionate about sports, Mr. Thompson gained a loyal following of younger readers who were not yet born when his name, along with Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote, became synonymous with a new style of observational, stream-of-consciousness magazine writing.

He rode with the Hell’s Angels “ the subject of a 1966 book that established him as a leading practitioner of so-called “New Journalism” “ and wrote a widely praised account of the 1972 presidential campaign and, like George Plimpton, became adept at participatory journalism.

“There was an undercurrent of madness to his work,” fellow writer Gay Talese said yesterday. “The story was always inside his head. It wasn’t necessarily what he saw. His power was his disenchantment by just about everything in front of him.”

His last column recounted a 3 a.m. phone call to actor and friend Bill Murray, who portrayed Mr. Thompson in a 1980 movie, “Where the Buffalo Roam.” Mr. Thompson had invented a new, “truly violent leisure sport” he called “shotgun golf,” in which each player attempts to shoot his opponent’s golf ball with a 12-gauge shotgun.

“He was so vital and had endless number of friends,” said Gaylord Guerin, owner of the Woody Creek Tavern. “He was an absolute genius.”

With his aviator sunglasses, cigarette holder and broad-brimmed hat, Mr. Thompson was the inspiration for the “Uncle Duke” character in cartoonist Gary Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” strip.

Known to magazine editors as a prima donna who turned in outlandish expense accounts and demanded high fees, he nevertheless earned respect for his entertaining rants. Mr. Jenkins said Rolling Stone once sent Mr. Thompson on assignment to Vietnam. Rather than cover the war, he spent his entire stay in a Saigon bar getting drunk and arguing on the telephone with editor Jann Wenner, who had canceled the writer’s health insurance.

He inspired a generation of future writers with his vivid first-person accounts of adventures fueled by alcohol and illegal drugs. “I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone ... but they’ve always worked for me,” Mr. Thompson once said.

He later admitted exaggerating his drug consumption, but truth never seemed to get in the way of a good story. Mr. Jenkins described his late friend as “who Mark Twain might have been if Twain had discovered acid.”

Flipped out and freaked out on everything from psilocybin mushrooms to peyote, Mr. Thompson wrote in the same vein as William S. Burroughs and Charles Bukowski. He especially admired the works of “beat” writer Jack Kerouac and Irish novelist J.P. Donleavy.

But Ernest Hemingway was always an influence, and Mr. Jenkins said Mr. Thompson’s death by self-inflicted gunshot reflected that influence.

“There is a bit of the Hemingway thing,” said Mr. Jenkins. “Both writers had their greatest success very early in their careers, and both created a persona built on that.”

While politically an enemy of all things Republican, Mr. Thompson proudly proclaimed himself a life member of the National Rifle Association and was known to keep a small arsenal of firearms at his home.

Born in Louisville, Ky., on July 18, 1937, Hunter Stockton Thompson was a self-described “wild boy.” After high school, he served two years in the Air Force during which he edited the base newsletter and wrote sports stories for a local newspaper. He then worked as a freelance correspondent for several newspapers and magazines before joining Rolling Stone, where he coined the term “gonzo journalism.”

Always worried about finances, Mr. Thompson churned out a series of books, including “The Great Shark Hunt” (1975), “Generation of Swine” (1988) and “Better Than Sex” (1994). A novel he wrote in the early 1960s, “The Rum Diary,” was published in 1998, and he published a collection of short stories in 1991.

“He kept everything,” said Mr. Jenkins, referring to a cache of material “ letters, faxes, memos and old articles “ Mr. Thompson stored in his basement.

One of Mr. Thompson’s more colorful antics occurred in 1970, when he ran unsuccessfully for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colo., on the “Freak Power” ticket. The gonzo candidate “ whose platform included changing the name of Aspen to “Fat City” and decriminalizing drugs “ decided to shave his head, so he could denounce his crew-cut Republican rival as “my long-haired opponent.”

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A PC postscript (Washington Times, 050223)

In the meekest of ways, Harvard President Lawrence Summers has become something of a cause celebre among conservatives for challenging the ultra-liberal orthodoxy dominating American universities. It was meek because that wasn’t what Mr. Summers had in mind when he suggested that genetic differences might help explain why more men pursue careers in the hard sciences and mathematics than women. But that’s also the point: By daring to question the conventional thinking of his profession, however it happened, Mr. Summers committed the ultimate sin.

Click to Visit

For his crimes, Mr. Summers has had to apologize profusely, meet with feminist student and faculty groups, and attend two faculty meetings — the latest one just yesterday — which can more accurately be described as re-education seminars. And yet he still faces termination. To those of us who aren’t part of the Ivory Tower, this all seems both silly and a dangerous assault on free speech, free thought and dissent.

At the same time, it’s educational for the American people to see for themselves every once in a while how degraded our institutions of higher learning have become. Mr. Summers’ critics have chosen to splash their witch hunt on the front pages for all to see. Organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and activists like David Horowitz, who are waging an important struggle against repressive universities, couldn’t have asked for a better marketing tool. Their case has always been “it’s worse than you think.” Now, millions of Americans are beginning to understand that they’re right.

With that in mind, allow us to throw out a suggestion of our own: Should Mr. Summers retain his position as president — and he should — the entire fiasco may have represented the high-water mark of liberal-dominated political correctness. Even if Mr. Summers is forced out, people who had never given a second thought to academia will immediately wonder why their child’s professor or university defended Ward Churchill, but attacked Mr. Summers. The liberal academic’s mind has been revealed to be closed. The end of such a mentality will be a long time in coming, but perhaps we have just witnessed the beginning of the end.

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Ward Churchill, Lawrence Summers, and the hypocrisy of the academics (Townhall.com, 050223)

Ben Shapiro

Quick quiz: which of these two statements do you find more offensive?

(A) About under-representation of women in hard sciences: “In the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong...”

(B) About the victims of September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center: “True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire . . . . To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.”

Statement (A) was made by Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University. Statement (B) was written by Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at University of Colorado. Believe it or not, the university academics are calling Churchill’s statements a textbook case of free speech, and are calling for Summers’ head. That’s the sick state of academia today.

Many Harvard professors are leading an academic insurrection against Summers, lobbying for a vote of no-confidence. On February 15, professors ripped into Summers at a one-sided meeting to discuss his comments. Summers has been forced to largely back down from his statements, writing a letter to the Harvard faculty in which he explains, “if I could turn back the clock, I would have spoken differently on matters so complex . . . . I should have left such speculation to those more expert in the relevant fields.”

Meanwhile, Ward Churchill, who should not only be fired for his statements but expelled from the country, has found the hearts of many in liberal academia. Deans and professors from all over the country have pledged their support. Ignorant college students who cite the First Amendment without ever having read it back Churchill all the way.

So why the difference in treatment? It would be difficult to claim that University of Colorado professors are more open-minded about academic freedom than are professors at Harvard University. No, this question comes down to politics, pure and simple. Ward Churchill said something professors believe should be said; even if they don’t agree with his statements, they feel that his radical, treasonous anti-Americanism belongs in the classroom. Larry Summers said something professors believe should not be given any forum; he challenged the prevailing P.C. notion that women and men are the same in all respects.

Leftist academia is willing to eat its own to prevent the conservative barbarians from entering the gates. To many of these professors, Lawrence Summers looks like Kane from Alien: a good, solid, center-left guy – until that conservative alien pops out of his chest and lands on the table. Much of the professorial anger at Summers has been building up over time. A couple of years ago, Summers offended nutty professor Cornel West, who found time in between making rap CDs and ignoring intellectual pursuits to hop over to Princeton in retaliation. In 2002, Summers made an unpopular speech in which he lambasted rising anti-Semitism in the academic community. Summers has also been active in fighting grade inflation.

Everyone knew who Churchill was from the start. He was hired and promoted because he’s virulently unpatriotic and wishes to see the United States government overthrown. So why should we be surprised when those who hand-picked him defend him from his attackers?

Academic freedom means nothing to Churchill’s defenders and Summers’ attackers. It’s a buzzword they can use or discard at will. Ruth Wisse, one of the few honest professors at Harvard summed up the situation nicely: “These are people frustrated that they can’t unseat President Bush, and [Summers] is the closest thing that they can depose. Since he appears to be somewhat to the right of them, he will suffice as a surrogate . . . I would hope these forces would be exposed: This is a place that wants to deny people free speech.”

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The Ward Churchill money trail (Christian Post, 050224)

Joel Mowbray

To the casual observer, now-infamous University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill—who labeled 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns”—would seem little more than an unfortunate speck on the fringe of the far left.

An investigestion by this journalist, however, uncovered substantial evidence suggesting otherwise.

The media was quick to describe Ward Churchill’s 2002 essay—where he also wrote of the “gallant sacrifices” of the “combat teams” that killed almost 3,000 Americans—as “little noticed.” (USA Today, February 9) It was, however, noticed—and honored—by a liberal organization last year.

Churchill adapted his essay into a book, “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” which earned honorable mention for a human rights award from the Gustavus Myers Center in Boston—the third time the group had so honored the embattled professor.

At first blush, the Gustavus Myers Center could seem like a wacky, far-left ivory tower creation. Receiving honorable mention for its 2003 award, for example, was a picture book of “classic” gay erotica. Witness the group’s own description of the book: “Pencil, ink and chalk drawings claiming an erotic past as extremely important for notions of identity and community.”

Careful examination, however, reveals that the Myers Center is anything but fringe. Listed on its website as “sponsors” (a term that is not defined) are mainstream liberal organizations such as the NAACP, the Urban League, the Center for Democratic Renewal, and the United Church of Christ.

And the foundations that fund the Myers Center’s sponsors are key financial backers of the American left, such as George Soros’ Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the Public Welfare Foundation (which contributed to the anti-Bush America’s Coming Together).

The top funders of the Myers Center’s sponsors, and the amounts they gave in total since 2000, are:

· $650,000 from the Public Welfare Foundation, which has given over $5 million to “reproductive” causes and nearly $1.7 million to various gun control groups. It even gave $100,000 directly to the Blue Mountain abortion clinic in Montana, which has also received $50,000 from the (Ted) Turner Foundation.

· $1.3 million from the Open Society Institute

· almost $5 million from Lilly Endowments, which was founded by heirs of the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune. Though not typically known as a left-wing foundation, it has given, for example, more than $700,000 to Planned Parenthood.

· over $12.1 million from the Ford Foundation, most of which came in the form of $10.4 million in grants to the NAACP

Despite being sponsored by prominent, mainstream liberal organizations, the Myers Center’s honoring of Ward Churchill’s screed does not appear to be out the group’s character.

Taking top honors for 2004, for example, is “Civil Rights in Peril: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims,” which, according to the Myers Center web site, is about the “relationship between accelerated repression of Muslims and Arabs domestically... and U.S. empire building abroad.” Rants from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) aside, there is scant evidence to suggest “accelerated repression of Muslims and Arabs” in America.

The center itself is led by a woman who seems to share a worldview similar to Prof. Churchill’s. The Myers Center’s director, Loretta Williams, wrote in the magazine Response (published by United Methodist Women) in June 2002 that President Bush’s rhetoric on the war on terror was “bloodthirsty and vengeful” and that it “dehumanizes... Muslims, immigrants, and those with darker skin.”

Williams hinted later in the same piece that the United States also perpetrates terrorism: “Terrorism can be used by the weak against the powerful or by the powerful against the weak.” She also opposed military action in Afghanistan after 9/11, praising “the courage” of communist sympathizer Barbara Lee (D-CA), the sole Congressional vote against that war.

Though the statements of Williams and Churchill would likely be patently offensive to most in the American electorate, they don’t seem that outside of a Democratic Party that embraces Michael Moore, the man who compared Iraqi terrorists to the “Minutemen” who helped win America’s independence.

Since news broke that Churchill’s “little Eichmanns” essay was honored by the Gustavus Myers Center, the group does not appear to have lost any of its sponsors. Still listed are all 12 sponsors listed previously, including, oddly enough, B’Nai Brith International. (B’Nai Brith did not immediately return a call seeking comment.)

It is not clear what role “sponsors” play in, or how much they donate to, the Myers Center, and calls seeking comment from the center were not returned. The Myers Center does not appear to file independent tax returns under its name, making it difficult to determine the group’s overall budget or the total amount of grants it has received.

Worth noting is that most of the uproar over Prof. Churchill’s venomous essay has come from family members of 9/11 victims, conservatives, and GOP politicians such as New York Gov. George Pataki and Colorado Gov. Bill Owens.

Perhaps it is not surprising that the party of moveon.org and Michael Moore does not condemn loudly Prof. Churchill’s equating 9/11 victims to Nazis. But why haven’t the groups that sponsor the center that honored him for making that very comparison? And what about the funders who indirectly helped make such an honor possible?

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What’s next for liberalism? (townhall.com, 050228)

John Leo

Question for the day: if liberalism isn’t dead, then why are autopsies performed so regularly? In the latest examination of the much-probed cadaver, the New Republic’s editor-in-chief, Martin Peretz, recalls that John Kenneth Galbraith, in the early 1960s, pronounced American conservatism dead, citing as heavy evidence that conservatism was “bookless” or bereft of new ideas. Peretz writes, “It is liberalism that is now bookless and dying.” Liberals, he says, are not inspired by any vision of the good society; the liberal agenda consists of wanting to spend more, while conservatives want to spend less. And the lack of new ideas and the absence of influential liberal thinkers, he says, are obvious.

Galbraith’s comment contains some comfort for liberals: Conservatism revived with great intellectual ferment and a long burst of new ideas, and liberalism presumably can do the same. But there is no sign that this is happening. No real breakthrough in liberal thought and programs has occurred since the New Deal, giving liberalism its nostalgic, reactionary cast.

Worse, the cultural liberalism that emerged from the convulsions of the 1960s drove the liberal faith out of the mainstream. Its fundamental value is that society should have no fundamental values, except for a pervasive relativism that sees all values as equal. Part of the package was a militant secularism, pitched against religion, the chief source of fundamental values. Complaints about “imposing” values were also popular then, aimed at teachers and parents who worked to socialize children, instead of leaving them alone to construct their own values and celebrate their own autonomy.

Modern liberalism, says Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel, has emptied the national narrative of its civic resources, putting religion outside the public square and creating a value-neutral “procedural republic.” One of the old heroes of liberalism, John Dewey, said in 1897 that the practical problem of modern society is the maintenance of the spiritual values of civilization. Not much room in liberal thought for that now, or for what another liberal icon, Walter Lippmann, called the “public philosophy.” The failure to perceive the importance of community has seriously wounded liberalism and undermined its core principles. So has the strong tendency to convert moral and social questions into issues of individual rights, usually constructed and then massaged by judges to place them beyond the reach of majorities and the normal democratic process.

Liberals have been slow to grasp the mainstream reaction to the no-values culture, usually chalking it up to Karl Rove, sinister fundamentalists, racism, or the stupidity of the American voter. Since November 2, the withering contempt of liberals for ordinary Americans has been astonishing. Voting for Bush gave “quite average Americans a chance to feel superior,” said Andrew Hacker, a prominent liberal professor at Queens College. We are seeing the bitterness of elites who wish to lead, confronted by multitudes who do not wish to follow.

Liberals might one day conclude that while most Americans value autonomy, they do not want a procedural republic in which patriotism, religion, socialization, and traditional values are politically declared out of bounds. Many Americans notice that liberalism nowadays lacks a vocabulary of right and wrong, declines to discuss virtue except in snickering terms, and seems increasingly hostile to prevailing moral sentiments. For a stark vision of what cultural liberalism has come to, consider the breakdown of the universities, the fortresses of the 1960s cultural liberals and their progeny.

Students are taught that objective judgments are impossible. All knowledge is compromised by issues of power and bias. Therefore, there is no way to come to judgment about anything, since judgment itself rests on quicksand. This principle, however, is suspended when the United States and western culture are discussed, because the West is essentially evil and guilty of endless crimes. Better to declare a vague transnational identity and admiration for the U.N. The campuses indulge in heavy coercion and indoctrination. A sign of the times: The University of California’s academic assembly eliminated the distinction between “interested” and “disinterested” scholarship by a 45-to-3 vote. The campuses are politicized, and they don’t care who knows it. Harvard is all atwitter because its president ran afoul of local orthodoxy, suggesting, ever so tentatively, that sexual differences might be a factor in careers in science.

In their current bafflement over rejection of their product, liberals have been lacing their speeches with religious phrases and asking mainstream Americans to vote their economic interests by rejecting Republican fat cats. It will take a bit more than that.

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Students slam pro-Israel speaker But welcome professor with ‘terror ties’ (WorldNetDaily, 050121)

Students at the Rochester Institute of Technology have been protesting an upcoming lecture, mandatory for some seniors, by pro-Israel Middle East expert Daniel Pipes, while public concerns have not been voiced over another speech, part of the same series, by Ali Mazrui, a professor accused of ties to organizations supporting terrorism.

RIT is featuring the Caroline Gerner Gannett Lecture Series, a seminar for seniors open to all students on “Globalization, Human Rights and Citizenship,” that brings to the campus over a dozen guest speakers as well as in-house professors to discuss topics ranging from regional conflict to the conservation of water.

Even though his speech is three months away, students have already written letters to lecture coordinators and the university president demanding Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, a think tank that defines and promotes American interests in the Middle East, be disinvited or appear with a counterpoising speaker, although other Gannett lecturers appear without opposing speakers. An antiwar group has plastered the RIT undergraduate campus with posters protesting Pipes’ speech.

Pipes has in the past drawn some fire from Islamic groups for his support of Israel and for exposing several Islamic extremist organizations operating in the U.S.

In one letter to RIT president Dr. Albert Simone, a student writes Pipes is “an individual who makes broad stereotypical generalizations about people of the Muslim faith, such as ‘15% of Muslims are terrorists,’ as well as supporting the concept that the only road to Middle East peace is ‘Total Israeli victory’ ... How can the Gannett Lecture Series purport to be promoting the academic principles of debate and discussion when it allows his ideas to go without criticism by his peers? If Daniel Pipes does not want to appear with another speaker, then as I see it he doesn’t have to come and get paid.”

Pipes, who once estimated 15% of Muslims are “Islamists” not “terrorists,” has said he would not be interested in speaking with an opposing professor.

“My major purpose in going to universities like RIT is to offer a different point of view from what students usually hear. I dislike the idea of balance because it cuts into my time and it implies that my views need to be wrapped and controlled,” said Pipes.

Dr. Paul Grebinger, professor of Anthropology and coordinator of the Gannett series, agreed.

“It is often valuable to hear from individuals whose ideas we may oppose and whom we may not even like. I expect that Pipes will draw representatives from the Islamic community here on campus and from Rochester. They will no doubt be asking very pointed questions. So, I don’t expect any lack of debate.”

Last week, a poster distributed throughout the campus sponsored by the RIT Antiwar Group headlined “Islam is not the problem” called Pipes a “racist” and declared, “The real problem is the occupation of Iraq and the U.S. support of oppressive regimes in the Middle East. Stop the scapegoating of Arabs and Muslims!”

The group justified their “racist” label by quoting an article in which Pipes wrote, “The outside world should focus not on showering money or other benefits on the Palestinian Arabs, but on pushing them relentlessly to accept Israel’s existence.”

One RIT professor who asked that his name be withheld for fear that he “may lose his job” called the posters “idiotic. There is nothing remotely close to being racist about that statement. Pipes is the only thing approaching a non-leftist perspective on this campus, it wouldn’t kill these students to hear an opposing view. None of the liberal speakers need balancing counterparts.”

Dr. A.J. Cashetta, a professor of language at RIT told WorldNetDaily “I have never heard anyone here complain before that a speaker needed a counterbalanced idea, and now suddenly we have Pipes and people are complaining?”

Meanwhile, another Gannett lecturer, Dr. Ali Mazrui, who has repeatedly made anti-Israel comments, spoke at an Islamic extremist institution and is accused of ties to groups supporting terrorism, has escaped student criticism.

Mazrui, director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University, is on the board of the Association of Muslim Social Services, whose sister organization, the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a Saudi-funded Islamic group, was raided by the FBI in 2003. The executive secretary for the AMSS, Kamran Bokhari, was the North American spokesman for Al-Muhajiroun, a UK-based fundamentalist organization that disbanded in October under intense pressure by the authorities because of the group’s suspected ties to al-Qaida. Al-Muhajiroun members have become suicide bombers for Hamas, fought U.S. troops in Aghanistan, held rallies calling for the “death of America,” and publicly supported the charge of Osama bin Laden.

Mazrui lectured last year at the International Center for the Propagation of Islam in Durban South Africa. According to Militant Islam Monitor, the Center is funded by the bin Laden family and organizations linked to al-Qaida, and its founder and director, Ahmed Deedat, has publicly boasted of meeting bin Laden personally several times.

Mazrui recently wrote a paper, “The State of Israel as Cause for Anti-Semitism,” and presented a lecture at Binghamton that a student called “a 45-minute diatribe against Israel” equating Zionism with fascism, Israel with apartheid South Africa and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with Hitler. Mazrui also expressed support for Sami Al-Arian, a South Florida professor indicted for raising money for the Islamic Jihad terror group, calling him “a victim of prejudice and of popular ill will.”

In an IslamOnline.com Question and Answer series, Mazrui implied Muslims are being isolated from American politics by pro-Israel Jews. “In the case of Hillary Clinton for example she was under pressure from pro-Israeli anti-Muslim New Yorkers. It was vital that American Muslims should not let those forces prevail and should keep on trying to enter the system ...” wrote Mazrui.

Beila Rabinowitz, director of Militant Islam Monitor, told WorldNetDaily, “It is a travesty of the war on terror that we are hearing calls for halting the lecture of Dr. Daniel Pipes, the distinguished Middle East expert, while no one is demanding that the RIT administration scrutinize the scheduled lecturer Ali Mazrui, who plays leading roles in radical Islamist organizations.”

Mazrui, in an interview with WND, countered, “I’m not spying on the AMSS to find out who else is involved with them and whether they are kosher. Also, about the university in South Africa, I have to find out who funded it. But I don’t agree with this guilt by association policy.”

American universities hosting speakers connected to terrorism is nothing new. In December, WND exposed Nova Southeastern University was hosting a fundraising concert for the Islamic Relief, a charity connected to several organizations that support terrorism, is under investigation for accepting a contribution from a front group for al-Qaida, and was founded by the principle fundraiser for Muslim Aid, which according to Spanish police used funds to send mujahadeen to fight U.S. troops overseas and has held events at which speakers have boasted of supporting al-Qaida terror activities.

And in October, Duke University hosted a Palestinian solidarity conference  cleared by the FBI and Homeland Security  in which students were recruited to join the International Solidarity Movement, a terror-supporting group that has harbored terrorists in their Middle East offices and is outlawed in Israel.

David Horowitz, author and editor-in-chief of FrontPage Magazine, told WorldNetDaily the groups protesting Pipes and similar groups at universities throughout the country “are left-wing groups – often self-styled Marxist-Leninist vanguards – who regard the United States as the Great Satan, view the terrorists as ‘liberators’ and want us to lose the war on terror.”

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Last ride of the thought police? (Washington Times, 050121)

The acrimonious controversy Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard University, finds himself in reminds me of something I have suspected for years. The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech is a reactionary blight inimical to all true progressives and certain to be formally eliminated from the Constitution as soon as progressives regain ascendancy.

There have been times when progressives, or liberals as they are often called, championed free speech, for instance, in the early days of the Cold War and during youthful protests in the 1960s. In the early days of the Cold War, progressives favored the right of communists to denounce America as they often did, particularly on college campuses. In the 1960s, progressives favored the right of youthful idealists to use the F-word. At the University of California at Berkeley, something called the Free Speech Movement rose, dedicated to the freest possible use of the F-word. So successful were these idealists that I am told today on college campuses the F-word is employed by professors in their lectures, often as a punctuation mark. I think I learned that from Tom Wolfe’s new book, “I Am Charlotte Simmons.”

Now times have changed and progressives are the most prominent opponents of free speech, especially on campus. This has got Mr. Summers in his present predicament. He is not keeping up with intellectual fashion. Some years ago he created an enormous furor by denouncing anti-Semitism as practiced on campus. Then he made bold to state a Harvard faculty member’s scholarly writing was not very scholarly. Now he has said there are “innate” differences between men and women. He said this at a scholarly meeting. There were progressives there. They were furious.

At a meeting of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass., where the condition of women in academia was the topic, Mr. Summers said the comparative lack of women in the sciences might be explained by a number of things — social practices and genetics were two. It is a fact that though girls score about the same as boys in the median range of standardized math and science tests, girls are less likely to score in the highest ranges. It is also a fact that women scientists are infrequently responsible for major scientific discoveries. Possibly, said Mr. Summers, this is because of their childbearing responsibilities or other cultural norms, but he had to add the possibility the difference in achievement might arise because men and women do not have the same chromosomes. That did it. Mr. Summers moved from being a free-thinker to being a health threat.

Said a biology professor in attendance, Professor Nancy Hopkins, “I felt I was going to be sick.” And she offered grisly details: “My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow. ... I was extremely upset.” As for the issue Mr. Summers raised, Ms. Hopkins said: “That’s the kind of insidious, destructive, unthought-through [?] attitude that causes a lot of harm. ... It’s one thing for an ordinary person to shoot his [not his/her?] mouth like that, but quite another for a top educational leader.”

Well, Mr. Summers probably will not make that mistake again, if he wants to remain a “top educational leader.” From the reports I read of the meeting only about half the women professors were offended by Mr. Summers. One, an economist named Claudia Goldin, actually told The Washington Post, “I left with a sense of elation at his ideas.” She is proud Mr. Summers “retains an inquisitive mind.” How very old-fashioned.

For years now there have been things one simply cannot say in the presence of progressives. The possibility men and women have different aptitudes is one of them. There are others. This means, of course, there are things progressives are unlikely to hear. When they do hear them, they are astonished and, as Professor Hopkins demonstrates, physically convulsed.

That progressives rarely hear ideas displeasing to them I think explains their present dazed condition regarding the drift of American society. It also explains their anger.

What is to be their fate? Allow me a suggestion, unwelcome though it may be. They will go to their graves dazed and angry and thinking they are right. They will cause a great deal of unpleasantness, but they are going to disappear. The First Amendment will outlast them all. They have seen their last ascendancy.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is the founder and editor in chief of the American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute.

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The Dems’ Week from Hell (Weekly Standard, 050214)

From the February 14 / February 21, 2005 issue:They’re in a hole, and they keep digging.

THE DEMOCRATS’ WORST WEEK AND a half since Black Tuesday (November 2, 2004, when the U.S. election returns came in) began on January 18, when Barbara Boxer took on Condi Rice in the Senate, and ended on Black Sunday (January 30, 2005, when Iraq held its first free election). In one comparatively short window of time, the Democrats managed to exhibit all of the class, grace, wisdom, presence, good sense, and strategic and tactical brilliance that had allowed them to move from absolute parity after the 2000 election to the loss of the House, Senate, and White House in the 2004 election, and left them apparently poised to lose even more. You too can turn yourself into a loser if you study and follow their recent behavior, and the cases to look at are these:

(1) Barbara Boxer and allies assault Condi Rice.

For mysterious reasons best known to themselves, a small diehard clique of old-line insurgents hiding out in the depths of the U.S. Senate decided to make confirmation hearings for Condoleezza Rice the venue of a bomb-throwing session, on the basis of two cherished liberal theories: one, that the war in Iraq is an utter catastrophe; and two, that while criticism of liberal nonwhites and women is always racist and sexist in nature, nonwhites and women who are right-wing or centrist are less than “authentic,” and therefore deserve what they get. Thus, Margaret Carlson in the Los Angeles Times found nothing amiss in Boxer’s calling Rice a liar and a lackey, but insisted Boxer’s critics were somehow attacking all women.

This followed by weeks an unprecedented onslaught from liberal cartoonists and columnists, who compared Rice to a parrot, a house slave, Aunt Jemima (with one hell of a weight loss), and Prissy in Gone With the Wind. It did not help that one of Boxer’s main allies was Robert A. Byrd of West Virginia, who in a prior life had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. As a method of expanding the vote of an ever-shrinking minority party, this tactic stunned some observers, who concluded the scheme had been cooked up by Karl Rove.

“I wouldn’t think having a former kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan lead a futile floor fight against the nomination of the first black woman to be secretary of state is a good way to enhance the appeal of the Democratic party to swing voters, but maybe that’s just me,” opined Jack Kelly. No, Jack, it’s not just you. It’s you and Andrew Young, a partisan Democrat and genuine civil rights leader; it’s you and Dorothy Height, head of the National Council of Negro Women; you and C. DeLores Tucker, former chair of the Black Caucus of the Democratic National Committee; you and Ron Lester, a Democratic pollster quoted by the New York Post’s Deborah Orin as saying, “A lot of African Americans are watching this and they’re wondering why [Democrats] are going after her so hard.”

It’s you and Colbert King, the liberal columnist for the Washington Post, who has little use for Bush but even less for the Boxer-Byrd style. King asks us to ponder a key Boxer statement: “I personally believe—this is my personal view—that your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell the war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth.” Writes King, “It’s hard to imagine a more demeaning and offensive caricature of a prospective secretary of state.” What a great tactic! What a keen way to appeal to white moderates, as well as to stop the leakage to Bush of black social conservatives, which at the moment has the left in a panic.

A former kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan berating a cultured black woman, one of whose childhood friends was blown up in Birmingham: This is the image you want to create for your party? Call it strike one.

(2) Ted Kennedy calls Iraq Vietnam.

“Defeat is an orphan,” Ted’s big brother the president once famously said, but this fails to apply when Ted is in the neighborhood. He preemptively embraced failure in Iraq, declaring defeat three days before the election, just in time to demoralize American troops and Iraqi voters (and calling to mind another JFK comment, that his youngest brother was not “terribly quick”). But it wasn’t the first time Ted had stumbled over his feet in his rush to proclaim a defeat for the United States. In 1990, he wanted to leave Kuwait and its oil fields in Saddam’s possession, proclaiming a war would kill 50,000 Americans and become a new Vietnam. But things lately have been confusing for Teddy, what with George W. Bush morphing into JFK, while he himself turns into something rather more like his father, famous in 1940 for saying democracy was finished in England and attempts to save it would lead us into a quagmire—call it FDR’s Vietnam.

Apparently, there are pro-and anti-democracy wings not only in the Democratic party but in the Kennedy family, though those on the pro side are sadly no longer with us. Unlike his late brothers, Ted Kennedy has negative moral authority, and is not the man you put out there to win hearts and minds, abroad or at home. A moral exemplar such as Edward M. Kennedy selling defeat is hardly what you want when you’re trying to grow a political party that’s been shrinking like a wool sweater in a tub of hot water largely because of its shortfalls in moral authority and its weakness in foreign affairs. He is the ideal spokesman to make the argument—from the point of view of the Republican party. Mark this down as strike number two.

(3) Evan Bayh joins the jihad.

On the morning of Thursday, January 27, the Washington Times ran across the top of page one pictures of Democrats Boxer, Byrd, Kerry, Kennedy, and the 9 others who voted against confirming Rice. What was wrong with this string of pictures? It was made up of 12 hacks, has-beens, never-weres, and certified losers—and Evan Bayh, one of the four main sponsors of the Iraq war resolution and until Wednesday a real star in his party, one of the few with a shot at being president, because of the trust he had amassed on the right and in the center, and the chance he could have had to peel off some red states. As of Thursday morning, that trust was gone.

“Say it ain’t so, Evan,” wrote Andrea Neal in the Indianapolis Star a week later. “After six years of building your centrist credentials . . . causing even hard-core skeptics like me to brand you the genuine article, you turn around and vote against a distinguished, conservative nominee for Secretary of State. After backing President Bush in the Iraq war, and presenting persuasive arguments for ousting Saddam Hussein, you take a stand against the only administration official who can seamlessly pick up [President Bush’s] foreign policy. . . . After boasting on your web site to be someone who cares more about doing the right thing than the expedient thing, you become one of 13 senators to vote against President Bush’s nominee.”

Neal quotes a former Bayh backer who calls the senator “self-serving” and says further, “I am appalled.” So are the many who formerly saw Bayh as the one Democrat they could possibly vote for, and right now are changing their minds. This is a vote that will not be forgotten: As we speak, some Republican doubtless is running up spots morphing Bayh into Boxer and Teddy. “In 1991, defense-hawk Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga) caught the presidential bug, abandoned his record, and opposed the first Persian Gulf War—a big mistake,” writes Morton Kondracke in Roll Call. “Has the same thing happened to Sen. Evan Bayh?” Nunn lost his chance for a place on the national ticket when the Gulf War succeeded; just as Bayh may have lost his gamble when the Iraqi election went well. Would he have done this had he known what would happen? The answer is probably “no.”

Bayh tried to recoup on This Week by claiming that he was for war, but not this war, a smart war, a sensitive war, a war backed by both France and Belgium that lasted three days at the outside, and in which no one got hurt.

But Kerry tried that line in 2004, to no effect whatsoever, telling Rolling Stone that when he voted for the war (before, of course, voting against it) he had no idea Bush would f—it up as he did. Bayh should have looked hard at both Nunn and Kerry, and, failing that, he should have bided his time. It is now three years to the Iowa caucus, plenty of time to find other ways to make nice with the base. And time, too, to see if Rice—and Iraq—are a failure. If you vote against someone as the architect of a failed foreign policy, it helps if the policy first fails. Bayh better hope now Iraq becomes a disaster: If it succeeds, he will look worse than ever, having thrown away his name and his future to protest a success. Paris may be worth a mass, and the White House may be worth a boot-licking gesture, but a boot-licking gesture that costs you the White House is something quite different. The only thing worse than an obvious opportunist is an inept opportunist with a bad sense of timing. Say good night, Evan. And mark this down as strike three.

(4) John Kerry goes on Meet the Press.

If Evan Bayh has learned nothing from Kerry and Edwards, it seems clear enough that Kerry has learned nothing either. He isn’t a statesman, but he plays one on TV, and so there he was on Meet the Press the Sunday morning of Iraq’s election, looking properly somber and careworn, saying a great many words to no purpose, and displaying too much of the cluelessness that went far toward helping him lose. In fact, as to losing, he seemed in a state of denial, talking up the (fairly) close race in the state of Ohio, and claiming he came so near to winning that it hardly was losing at all. He won the popular vote in the battleground states, he said proudly. A mere switch of 60,000 votes in Ohio, and he would have been writing the State of the Union. (Never mind that Kerry lost the national popular vote by nearly four million, while Bush was gaining four seats in the Senate; and that if he had managed to pull out Ohio, people now would be saying what a fluke it had been, and wondering how he would govern with a Republican Congress and a public that had so clearly voted for Bush.)

But Kerry was much more enthused about his campaign than about the Iraqi elections, which he grudgingly referred to as barely legitimate, while implying the worst was ahead. He declared us less safe than when the war started, although Saddam’s capture had made us much safer: a perfect example of the kind of coherence he had brought to last year’s campaign. And of his tone-deafness. “Whoever is advising him politically made a terrible mistake,” Democratic strategist Bob Beckel said later on Fox News. “He should have said . . . this is a magnificent outcome, and now that we’ve had this . . . let’s begin the process of getting our troops back home. . . . I don’t get why any Democrat would want to dump on this election when in fact it’s the beginning of the end.” But Kerry seemed perfectly content with himself and his comments, and eager for more in the 2008 cycle. “Bring it on,” doubtless reply the Republicans. Put it down as strike four—this is politics, not baseball.

EVERYTHING THAT HAS BEEN WRONG with the Democrats in the past several years was on vivid display during Hell Week: the teeth-grinding shrillness; the race card, misplayed with such gusto; the self-interest so blatant it defeats its own purpose; the crippling dearth of ideas. With a few brave exceptions (a faction of one named Joe Lieberman), the Democrats split into two major camps: the wingnuts—Dean, Boxer, and Kennedy—who know what they think, which alas sets them at odds with the rest of the country; and the caucus of cowards—Bayh, Edwards, and Kerry—who believe in nothing so much as their own career prospects, and change their minds on the gravest of war and peace issues on the basis of what serves their ends.

For the Democrats, this is not a new problem, and has been with them since the war in Iraq first emerged as an issue. “More than a dozen Democrats, who requested anonymity, have told the Post that many members who oppose the president’s strategy . . . are going to nonetheless support it because they fear a backlash from voters,” the Washington Post reported on September 26, 2002, in the run-up to that year’s midterm elections, which made history when the Democrats lost. Five weeks later, “The Note,” the widely read blog of ABC News, reported: “Voters may not know this explicitly, but if there were a secret ballot vote, Democrats in the House and Senate would vote overwhelmingly to repeal the Bush-Baucus tax cuts, and to stop the president from going to war in Iraq.” From here, it is a straight line to Bayh, Kerry, and Edwards, surfing their way around public opinion, and getting upended by shifts in the wind.

And there you have the real vision gap between the two parties: Republicans want to win wars and spread freedom; Democrats want to save their rear ends. Bush thinks freedom is better than terror and tyranny; Democrats think they themselves are better than Bush. In 2004, Bush made it clear he was willing to lose on the basis of his convictions—and won in spite or more likely because of this. Democrats had no convictions beyond the end goal of winning, and therefore quite properly lost. No party deserved to lose more than the Democrats did in these past two elections, and unless they make changes, they stand to lose many more.

Since Black Tuesday last November, Democrats have spent hours of airtime, gallons of newsprint, and billions of words trying to find out why wonderful people such as they keep on losing. They’d be better off taking a hard look at Hell Week. All of the answers are there.

Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.

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How To Be a Hero of Liberty: You may have to gild the lily . . . (National Review Online, 050225)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article appears in the March 14, 2005, issue of National Review.

When historian Doris Kearns Goodwin was accused of plagiarism, Laurence Tribe rushed to her defense. The Harvard Crimson had published an editorial demanding that Goodwin resign from Harvard’s board. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, wrote a letter to the Crimson criticizing its editorial as “utter nonsense.” His friend Goodwin was guilty of some “sloppy” and “inadequate” footnoting — but of nothing worse. “[U]nlike any number of historians and others who have been caught falsifying as fact what was, in truth, fantasy — either about their own lives or about the events they were chronicling — Goodwin has not been accused, and could not plausibly be accused, of ever purveying false or misleading information, the cardinal sin for any scholar.”

Tribe wrote that letter in March 2002. A more recent plagiarism scandal has hit closer to home. In the fall of 2004, Joseph Bottum made the case, in The Weekly Standard, that Tribe had himself ripped off the words of another scholar. Many passages in his 1985 book God Save This Honorable Court bear strong resemblance to passages in Henry Abraham’s 1974 Justices and Presidents. After Bottum’s article appeared, Tribe admitted his “failure to attribute some . . . material” to Abraham and said, “I personally take full responsibility.” Harvard said it would investigate the matter.

Embarrassing, certainly. But if Tribe’s defense of Goodwin makes sense, then perhaps it could applied to this lapse too: At least Tribe didn’t present “fantasy” as “fact.” Tribe’s colleague Alan Dershowitz came to his defense, just as Tribe himself had defended Goodwin and another colleague charged with plagiarism, law professor Charles Ogletree. (They’re quite a band of brothers there in Cambridge.) “If the Standard were to do the same minuscule analysis of every word in the books written by the paragons of the right, they would find much the same thing,” said Dershowitz.

But in another recent incident, Tribe appears to have committed precisely the offense that he identified as “the cardinal sin for any scholar” — and it’s an incident too weird for anyone to maintain with any plausibility that every scholar does the same.

A “PRIVATE STORY”

In the spring of 2003, The Green Bag, a legal journal, published an essay by Tribe called “Public Rights, Private Rites: Reliving Richmond Newspapers For My Father.” It is a memoir of Tribe’s first argument before the Supreme Court, in 1980. The case grew out of a Virginia murder trial. The judge had closed the trial to the public, including both the victim’s family and reporters. Tribe represented the newspapers for which those reporters worked.

Tribe argued the case just two weeks after his father died. That fact, his essay explains, emboldened him to do something daring: to invoke the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution.

The Ninth Amendment is the one that reads, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In other words: Just because the Constitution lists a bunch of rights doesn’t mean that we don’t have other rights that aren’t listed. Even people who think that’s a fine principle have been a bit puzzled about how the amendment should affect government in practice, and in particular about what judges should do with it.

There are people who think that the courts should strike down a lot of laws restricting people’s conduct because those laws violate “unenumerated rights.” That idea horrifies others, who think that judges would then have a license to invent any right they like and nullify any law they don’t. For much of American history, the courts have in practice sided with the latter camp. They have not used the Ninth Amendment to overthrow laws and vindicate liberties.

Tribe’s essay casts himself as a kind of hero for breathing life into the amendment — and overcoming a lot of resistance to his doing so. His client had decided not to ask the Supreme Court to take the case. Tribe had to get the client to reverse its decision. He did, and then got the Court to review the case. He thought that a First Amendment freedom-of-the-press argument would not suffice to win: He would have to turn to the Ninth Amendment.

“But the Ninth Amendment, I learned as I briefed Richmond Newspapers and as I found myself being lobbied hard by the pillars of the media bar, was barely to be mentioned in polite society, much less was it ready for prime time,” Tribe writes. “Who was I, an utter novice at Supreme Court advocacy, to buck the conventional wisdom on something so basic?”

Tribe then answers his own question:

Well, I was a lawyer who’d taken a case because he believed in it, who’d been teaching and would teach generations more of law students about the kinds of questions the case raised, who’d gone on record a couple of years earlier in a treatise, American Constitutional Law (1st ed. Foundation Press, N.Y. 1978) (now in its third edition as of 2000), on most of the issues the case touched, and who cared a lot more about keeping faith with what he’d feel bound to write and teach in years to come, and with how he thought the Court should be approached, than with what the Pooh-Bahs of the establishment thought of him. That’s who I was. And am. So the Ninth Amendment argument stayed in. And, I’m happy to report, in the end it hit its target.

By early February 1980, Tribe had received the State of Virginia’s brief defending its power to impose secrecy and started working on his reply brief. At his wife’s suggestion, he called his parents a day before their wedding anniversary. The next day he felt “a peculiar numbness,” as though he were “dying” (emphasis Tribe’s). He then heard that his father “had collapsed” and “was in critical condition.” He flew home, and thought he saw a shooting star through the airplane window. “Somehow I knew it was my father. I cried all the way across the country. My father had died before the plane landed in San Francisco.”

Tribe kept working on the case even though he had an “unfocused, disoriented frame of mind.” There was nobody else, he writes, who could have stood in for him. He received “urgent phone calls imploring me, above all else, to forget that ‘crazy Ninth Amendment argument’” — but he soldiered on.

Literally all I recall about writing the reply brief — which ended (I’ve just reread it) with a call upon the Court to vindicate “a tradition . . . demonstrably central to the public awareness and institutional accountability that define our form of government” — is that I refused to use that brief as a vehicle for backing away from the Ninth Amendment, whose affirmation of rights unwritten and unseen I think I was almost beginning to identify, in some then still unconscious way, with the mystery of why I’d fortunately agreed to call my father the night before his anniversary; of why I’d felt the knock of doom before our phone had rung; and, above all, of what I’d seen streaking across the predawn sky out of the airplane window.

Tribe continues, “Reflecting now on my resolute commitment to arguing the case in Ninth Amendment terms . . . I think my grief may have permitted me to see a bit more clearly through the fog of superficial arguments and objections and may have steeled me against the kinds of eleventh-hour distractions and importunings that co-counsel, meaning to be helpful, are prone to inject as a Supreme Court argument nears.”

Tribe’s private loss also helped him to see the importance of the case for murder victims’ families: Just as seeing his father in an open casket had helped him process his grief, so would seeing a trial help them. When he spoke to the Court, Tribe “felt emboldened by the circumstances not to pull my punches.”

When Tribe’s allotted speaking time was over, he recounts in his Green Bag essay, Chief Justice Warren Burger kept him at the podium to ask him about other possible unenumerated rights (“he had quite a litany” of rights “to ask about”). “I imagine — this is pure supposition, not actual memory — that I must have worked at suppressing a huge grin, realizing, as I must have realized by then, that the Chief, not someone I’d tentatively counted in my corner when the day began, was seemingly asking for help in sketching what was to become the analysis in his plurality opinion. . . . Our back-and-forth must have gone on for a couple of minutes.”

Tribe won the case. Chief Justice Burger’s plurality opinion for the Court referred to the Ninth Amendment as one of the reasons to side with Tribe’s client. Tribe notes that the Supreme Court has rarely cited the Ninth Amendment in this fashion. The next time a plurality or majority would do so was in the 1992 Casey decision, when the Court mentioned the Ninth Amendment among several others as reasons to reaffirm its holding that abortion must be legal. Tribe does not quite say that his work in Richmond Newspapers paved the way for Casey. The reason for his essay was to explain how his “private story . . . affected what I had dared to say on that February day” in 1980. “[M]y main reason for deciding to tell the story here was just that it’s too large a part of who I am to leave it permanently submerged.”

WHAT THE RECORD SHOWS

And if that story casts Tribe as a forgotten hero of the Ninth Amendment — and thus, to some people, as a hero of the story of American liberty . . . Well, the essay leaves the impression that Tribe doesn’t mind that too much. The Richmond Newspapers decision, he writes, was a “landmark.”

But the record in front of the Supreme Court does not corroborate important parts of Tribe’s story. He didn’t argue his case in Ninth Amendment terms. Other parties in the case did, but not Tribe.

The Ninth Amendment did not appear in the statement Tribe filed asking the Supreme Court to review the case. There, Tribe said that Virginia had violated the First, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments. At this stage of the litigation, it was the lawyers for the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the American Newspaper Publishers Association who made the Ninth Amendment argument, in their friend-of-the-court brief.

Tribe’s brief on the merits of the case did refer to the Ninth Amendment — but the references hardly justify the billing Tribe gave them two decades later. Tribe opened and closed a seven-page section of his 72-page brief with references to the amendment. But in between he mostly discussed Fourteenth Amendment precedents. There was no discussion of the history of the Ninth Amendment — nothing about how James Madison viewed it, nothing about the Court’s prior treatment of it. The previous case in which the Ninth Amendment had figured most prominently was Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), in which the Court had struck down a law against contraception. Tribe didn’t mention it. The Ninth Amendment was a mere rhetorical flourish in this brief. The State of Virginia felt no need to include any Ninth Amendment analysis in its own brief, since there was nothing much to respond to.

It was outside parties who emphasized the Ninth Amendment arguments at the merits stage. The newspaper editors and publishers weighed in with another friend-of-the-court brief. Their brief discussed Madison and Griswold. Chief Justice Burger’s opinion would later make the same points about Madison’s role in enacting the amendment that this brief made. E. Barrett Prettyman Jr. — certainly a heavyweight establishment lawyer of the era — filed another friend-of-the-court brief favorably mentioning the Ninth Amendment claims of the editors and publishers. Prettyman filed it on behalf of interests including the National Association of Broadcasters, the Associated Press, and the National Press Club. The State of New Jersey filed a brief, too. It had a short discussion of the Ninth Amendment that cited Griswold and a law-review article on how the amendment pertained to the openness of trials.

Tribe, you will recall, says that he refused to use his reply brief to back away from the Ninth Amendment — even though, he says, he was under great pressure to do so. But, again, there wasn’t much to back away from, so it’s hard to see why anyone would have thus importuned him. The reply brief said almost nothing about the Ninth Amendment (perhaps because Virginia had ignored it). Tribe’s reply brief contained only one stray reference to the earlier brief’s comments about it.

When he argued the case in front of the Supreme Court, Tribe didn’t mention the Ninth Amendment even once. (An audio transcript of the case is available online.) Fifteen minutes into it, a justice asked Tribe “just what provision of the Constitution [the Virginia statute] violates as applied in this case.” Tribe replied, “I think that it violates the Sixth Amendment, and the First, and the Fourteenth.” He spent the rest of his opening argument on the First and Sixth Amendments. Virginia’s lawyer, unsurprisingly, didn’t mention the Ninth either. Tribe got to make a rebuttal, in which the words “Ninth Amendment” again did not pass his lips.

The exchange with Chief Justice Burger did not go as Tribe lays it out. Burger asked Tribe, “What provision of the Constitution did the Court draw on to make a presumption of innocence part of our fabric?” Tribe answered that the presumption is implicit in the Constitution because it is central to the legitimacy of the justice system. Burger then asked whether there were any “hints” that this view “was the tradition in 1787 and ‘89 and ‘90 and ‘91.” Tribe said that there were. That was the whole exchange. Burger asked about no “litany” of rights. (Tribe’s Green Bag essay attributes some other comments to Burger, but judging from the audio transcript he appears to be mistaken about who said what.) The idea that Burger was asking for “help” appears to be the professor’s self-serving fantasy. Based on my analysis of the public record, so does the related contention that Tribe is responsible for the Ninth Amendment comments in Burger’s opinion.

If we believed that “the Pooh-Bahs of the establishment” had lobbied Tribe to abandon the Ninth Amendment, we would have to conclude that they had succeeded in their aim. But it certainly looks as though establishment figures were more willing to press forward with Ninth Amendment claims than was Tribe himself. Whether or not Richmond Newspapers really is a Ninth Amendment landmark, it is not one because of Tribe.

Contacted by NR about the discrepancies, Tribe said that he did not remember various details about the case or the essay. He did not recall whether he had reviewed the audiotape before writing his essay or had gone from memory. He said that his essay never stated that his briefs or his oral argument had made an extensive Ninth Amendment pitch — which is true: He didn’t say it in those exact words, but very strongly implied it. Pressed on that point, Tribe said that the essay only implied it “maybe [to] someone who wants to find in [the] essay something that isn’t true.”

Tribe continued, “I certainly wasn’t intending to suggest that I [had] made any argument that I didn’t make. What I was discussing in the essay was my own thinking about why the case was important. If you read anything more into it, that’s your problem.” There were good reasons for not pushing the Ninth Amendment too hard, he said. There was “a pervasive allergy to the Ninth Amendment” that made it “not polite to mention.” But “I do remember very much that it figured very much in my sense of the importance of the case and it figured very much in my arguments with other lawyers.”

There’s a problem with Tribe’s explanation. The Green Bag essay did not say that Tribe thought the case important for Ninth Amendment reasons but considered it imprudent to make that argument to the justices. It said that he had “dared to say” things, with the strong implication that those things concerned the Ninth Amendment, to the Supreme Court. It said that he had resisted the counsel of more timid souls. If he didn’t mean to imply that the amendment played an important role in his briefs and oral argument, then what’s the point of saying that people had told him to back off? Nobody would have warned him to back off from a private thought that he had no intention of expressing to the Court. Nor does it make sense for the professor to congratulate himself for resisting the pressure to back off from this private thought.

Tribe suggested that my article would be an “ambush.” He said, “It’s about my father’s death. I would take that rather personally. . . . I can’t say I look forward to reading [the article] but I look forward to refuting it — in my father’s memory, you can say. I have to say that this [conversation] hasn’t been a pleasure.”

Tribe called back a few hours later. He remembered something. “By the time of the oral argument, I had figured out a way . . . to argue the case orally without invoking the Ninth Amendment, which I knew some people were allergic to.” He again denied that the Green Bag essay had said that he had invoked the amendment. In other words, he stuck to (and elaborated on) the same explanation as in our first conversation.

In the Goodwin controversy, Tribe suggested that presenting fantasy as fact was a terrible offense for an academic — worse, indeed, than plagiarism. In the Green Bag essay, published a year after his defense of Goodwin, he appears to have committed precisely that offense while also taking credit for the achievements of others (Chief Justice Burger and anyone who actually influenced him). It is a sad and curious thing. Laurence Tribe has had an extraordinarily successful career. He has won many cases in the Supreme Court. His influence on the legal academy is deep. No one could reasonably ask for more in the way of fame or honors. Yet he can’t seem to resist gilding the lily.

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“When Good News Strikes”: Glum liberals’ try coping with a changing world (National Review Online, 050308)

If the world that Democrats have been living in lately were made into a reality disaster show, it would be called “When Good News Strikes.”

One of the inconveniences of political debate is that occasionally reality intrudes to invalidate a given position no matter how much its partisans want to believe it. This is what has been happening recently to the argument that the invasion of Iraq produced an irrecoverable mess. Although surely setbacks still await us in Iraq and the Middle East, stunning headlines from the region have left many liberals perversely glum about upbeat news.

Schadenfreude has faded into its happiness-hating opposite, gluckschmerz. Liberal journalist Kurt Andersen has written in New York magazine of the guilty “pleasure liberals took in bad news from Iraq, which seemed sure to hurt the administration.” According to Andersen, the successful Iraqi elections changed the mood. For Bush critics, this inspiring event was “unexpectedly unsettling,” since they so “hat[ed] the idea of a victory presided over by the Bush team.”

The legendary liberal editor Charlie Peters confessed to his own attack of gluckschmerz: “New York Post columnist John Podhoretz asked liberals: ‘Did you momentarily feel a rush of disappointment [at the news of the Jan. 30 Iraq election] because you knew, you just knew, that this was going to redound to the credit of George W. Bush?’ I plead guilty …”

On his show the other night, comedian Jon Stewart — half-jokingly — expressed a feeling of dread at the changes in the Middle East and the credit President Bush will get for them. “Oh my God!” he said. “He’s gonna be a great — pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, ‘Reagan was nothing compared to this guy.’ Like, my kid’s gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.” Stewart is badly in need of the consolation of a yet-to-be-written pop theological tract, “When Good Things Happen to Bad Presidents.”

The Democratic foreign-policy expert who was Stewart’s guest that night, Nancy Soderberg, tried to comfort him, pointing out that the budding democratic revolution in the Middle East still might fail: “There’s always hope that this might not work.” There is historical precedent for that, of course. Liberal revolutions failed in Europe in 1848 and Eastern Europe in 1968. What is an entirely new phenomenon is liberals calling such reverses for human freedom — half-jokingly or not — occasions for “hope.”

Soderberg added: “There’s still Iran and North Korea, don’t forget. There’s hope.” The way Bogart and Bergman “will always have Paris,” liberals now tell themselves they “will always have Iran and North Korea.” No matter the good news anywhere else, these nuke-hungry rogue states will provide grounds for bad-mouthing Bush foreign policy. But these two intractable problems won’t seriously detract from Bush’s world-changing accomplishment should he succeed in transforming the Middle East.

Some liberals are reluctantly giving him his due. The New York Times surveyed the fresh air sweeping the region and concluded, “The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit.” Liberal commentator Daniel Schorr remarked: “During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush said that ‘a liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region.’ He may have had it right.”

Has the administration gotten a few fortunate breaks in the Middle East lately? Well, yes. Asked how he seemed to make so many lucky saves, the great Montreal Canadien goalie Ken Dryden explained that it was his job to be in the right position to get lucky. By toppling Saddam Hussein and insisting on elections in Iraq, while emphasizing the power of freedom, Bush has put the United States in the right position to encourage and take advantage of democratic irruptions in the region.

And so we have created the conditions for being pleasantly surprised by the positive drift of events in the Middle East, or unpleasantly surprised — depending on your politics.

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

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Come back, liberals! (townhall.com, 050310)

Ann Coulter

Liberals have been completely intellectually vanquished. Actually, they lost the war of ideas long ago. It’s just that now their defeat is so obvious, even they’ve noticed. As new DNC Chairman Howard Dean might say, it’s all over but the screaming.

In an editorial last week, the New York Times gave President Bush credit for democracy sweeping through the Middle East or, as the Times put it, “a year of heartening surprises.” Yes, the Middle East’s current democratization would come as quite a surprise to anyone who puts his hands over his ears and hums during the president’s speeches.

Rolling Stone magazine is making fun of “moveon.org” for having no contact with normal Americans. Their Bush-hating cause has become so hopeless that moveon.org is on the verge of actually moving on.

Marking the first time Walter Cronkite and I have agreed on anything, Cronkite is ridiculing Dan Rather, saying he should have retired a long time ago.

No one, not even Chris Matthews, is defending the Italian communist who claims American forces intentionally shot at her in Iraq. (But to be fair, Keith Oberman has been on vacation this week.) She may have lost some credibility when she backed her claim that Americans were targeting her by quoting her kidnappers. She said her kidnappers had warned her to stay away from the Americans because they would only hurt her. And then my rapist said, “Whatever you do, don’t cry out for the police! They won’t help you!”

Consider that less than 20 years ago, ABC’s Peter Jennings and CBS’ Mike Wallace announced at an “Ethics in America” panel that they would not intervene to prevent the slaughter of American troops while on duty as journalists – especially during sweeps. As Wallace said: “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!” It almost makes you wonder if U.S. troops have ever targeted American journalists in the field during wartime. Maybe Eason Jordan would know something about that.

Now liberal journalists are pretending to support the troops. They hardly ever call them “baby killers” anymore, at least to their faces.

Democrats are even pretending to believe in God – you know, as they understand Her.

The only people liberals can find to put up a fight these days are ex-Klanners and other assorted nuts.

There’s former KKK “Kleagle” and Democratic Sen. Bob Byrd, who compared the Republicans to Hitler last week. Byrd having been a charter member of a fascist organization himself, no one was sure if this was intended as a critique or a compliment.

Aspiring first lady Teresa Heinz claims the election was stolen through the machinations of a vast conspiracy involving Republican polling machine manufacturers. We eagerly await a Michael Moore documentary to flesh out the details. It’s only a matter of time before Heinz announces that anti-Bush insurgents control most of the Red States, and that the sooner the U.S. pulls out of those quagmires, the better.

Howard Dean – chairman of the party that supports murder, adultery, lying about adultery, coveting other people’s money, stealing other people’s money, mass-producing human embryos for spare parts like an automotive chop shop and banning God – has called the Republican Party “evil.” One Democrat in the audience, a preschool teacher no less, complained that Dean was soft-pedaling his message.

Teddy Kennedy’s big new idea is to wheel out his 18th proposal to raise the minimum wage. He’s been doing this since wages were paid in Spanish doubloons (which coincidentally are now mostly found underwater). Kennedy refuses to countenance any risky schemes like trying to grow the economy so people making minimum wage get raises because they’ve been promoted. Kennedy’s going down and he’s taking the party with him! (Recognize the pattern?)

I keep expecting the real Democrats to appear and drag these nuts out of the room, saying, Oh sorry, he’s escaped again – don’t worry, he does this all the time, and then Howard Dean will stand up and have no pants on.

So now, the entire country is ignoring liberals. I’m the canary in the coal mine. Twenty-six congressmen have signed a letter denouncing me for a column I wrote two weeks ago; for the past two weeks, I’ve been attacked on MSNBC and CNN, in the Detroit Free-Press and on every known liberal blog and radio show. (I especially want to thank Pacifica Radio in this regard.) I personally have shouted their complaints from the rooftops. Liberals had fallen into my trap!

But there was no point in responding because no one had heard about the liberal denunciations in the first place. It was like explaining a joke: OK, and then they said, “Call me a cab,” and then I said, “You’re a cab! Are you following this? ... Sorry, let me start over again.”

This is like beating Dennis Kucinich in an untelevised presidential debate. That and $8.50 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbuck’s. I’m tired of helping liberals publicize their attacks on me. Liberals are going to have to do better than that if they want a response from me.

It’s not just that we’re a divided nation, with liberals watching only CNN and conservatives watching only Fox News. I’m pretty sure liberals are aware of me, and I haven’t appeared on CNN for months. It’s liberals the country is ignoring. No one knows or cares what they’re carrying on about in their media outlets. Liberals can’t get arrested. They’re even letting Martin Sheen off with a warning now.

I hate to sound selfish at such a great moment for the country, but this is nothing short of calamitous for completely innocent right-wing polemicists. Liberals are too pathetic to write about. I have nothing to do; my life is over. Where have all the flowers gone?

I’m confident they’ll stage a comeback someday. In lieu of common sense, liberals have boundless energy. But I’m getting bored waiting. In the interest of good sportsmanship, I have some proposals for liberals. I think Democrats might want to drop the contract all Democrats apparently have to sign pledging to pretend to believe insane things. Also, if you could just get the base of your party to not participate anymore and maybe be a little less crazy, people might listen to you. Barring that, you’re just going to have to scream a little louder.

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Democrats are out of gas (Townhall.com, 050314)

Michael Barone

What do Democrats want? Many answers, or partial answers, can be found in the 90th anniversary issue of the New Republic, in the post-election issue of the American Prospect and in various other writings by smart Democrats unhappy with the defeat their party suffered in 2004.

These writers avoid the left blogosphere’s wacky claims that the election was stolen. They understand that both parties played to win and tried really hard to win, and both parties made massive efforts to turn out their vote. John Kerry got 16% more votes than Al Gore. George W. Bush got 23% more votes in 2004 than in 2000.

Most of these Democrats focus on domestic policy. New Republic editor Peter Beinart has called for purging those Democrats unwilling to robustly fight the war on terrorism. But that position has not elicited much response, except for calls to show more respect for the military and a certain quietness among vitriolic Bush critics after the Iraqi election.

On domestic policy, the Democrats’ thrust is to expand government to help ordinary people. But few get specific. In the American Prospect, historian Alan Brinkley says Democrats should re-engage “with issues of class and power.” But exactly how, he doesn’t say. In the New Republic, Jonathan Chait argues that, while conservatives are guided by ideology, liberals are guided by facts. Expanding government is a matter of examining facts and doing the sensible, compassionate thing. But he doesn’t have the space to get very specific. Nor does he address David Stockman’s argument that in policymaking, powerful interests tend to trump powerful arguments — a criticism Democrats make, sometimes cogently, of Republican practices.

The New Republic’s Martin Peretz takes a bleak view: Liberalism is “bookless,” without serious intellectual underpinnings, as conservatism was 40 years ago. Back then, the liberal professoriate was churning out new policies, some of which became law. Today, the campuses provide liberals less guidance. The economics departments have become more respectful of markets and more dubious about government intervention. The social sciences have followed the humanities into the swamp of deconstruction. Peretz notices that liberals have no useful ideas about education. That overstates the case, but most reform ideas have come from the right, while most Democrats have focused on throwing more money at the teacher unions.

The bleakest picture of Democrats’ prospects comes from two usually optimistic analysts, Stanley Greenberg and James Carville. In their latest Democracy Corps memo, they lament that, despite what they see as Republican stumbling on Social Security, voters don’t think Democrats have new ideas for addressing the country’s problems. By denying that Social Security has problems, “Democrats seem stuck in concrete.”

In the New Republic, John Judis takes a longer view. Since the 1970s, he notes, Democrats have had little success expanding government. He blames this on international competition, the decline of private-sector unions and stronger business lobbyists. A revival of liberalism, he writes, “would probably require a national upheaval similar to what happened in the ‘30s and ‘60s. That could happen, but doesn’t appear imminent.”

The Democrats’ problem is that they have proceeded for years with a goal of moving America some distance toward a Western European welfare state. Just how far, they have not had to decide. But Judis looks at Europe and sees a failing model: high unemployment, stalled economies and the welfare state in retreat. Nor is raising taxes on the rich a sound strategy: Democrats did that in 1993, and Republicans won control of Congress in 1994.

Democrats in power can make small, quiet moves toward redistribution, like the expansion of the earned income tax credit in the Clinton administration. Out of power, they can focus on policies for which arguments can be made by vivid anecdotes, like prescription drugs for seniors. Or they can obstruct change and wait for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to gobble up larger shares of the economy. But that will take time.

For now, Democrats are facing the fact that general arguments for a larger welfare state just doesn’t seem attractive to most voters.

Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics.

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Moonbats on parade (townhall.com, 050316)

[Kwing Hung: see who those anti-war radicals are!]

Michelle Malkin

With freedom on the move across the Middle East and beyond, aggrieved anti-war protesters here in the United States have nothing better to do this weekend than what they have always done: stand in the way.

The most unhinged of left-wing activists, from breast-exposing pacifists to the conspiracy-mongers of MoveOn.org, will descend on New York, Washington and other major media markets to “mark the two-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq.” They will do so by clogging the streets, tying up police resources and leaving behind a trail of anti-Bush propaganda litter.

Who says the Left doesn’t know how to create jobs?

In New York, the “Troops Out Now Coalition” plans to march on Saturday from Harlem to Central Park to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s home to demonstrate against the “occupation.” Their solution for helping the Iraqi people and demonstrating American leadership: Cut and run. Now!

You can guarantee there will not be a single sign of purple ink solidarity in sight, but the dictator-luvin’ ladies of Code Pink who prance around in pastel underwear will be out in full force.

Along the way, the marchers will stop to harass workers at a local military recruiting station. Yes, these are the supposed peaceniks who derive pleasure from ripping yellow ribbon magnets off of minivans and throwing rocks through ROTC campus offices. These are the acolytes of Michael Moore, who compares Iraqi head-choppers to American Revolutionary war heroes.

“Oppose the war, support the troops”? Bull.

By lunchtime, the protest mob will convene at Central Park to take in stirring sermons from New York City councilman Charles (“You know, some days I get so frustrated I just want to go up to the closest white person and say, ‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing,’ and then slap him, just for my mental health.”) Barron; convicted terrorist conspirator Lynne Stewart; and Saddam Hussein sympathizer and pro bono legal counsel to thugs worldwide, Ramsey Clark.

Organizers will also broadcast a taped message from convicted cop-killer and America-basher, Mumia Abu-Jamal. Death row diatribes are de rigueur.

In New Paltz, N.Y., the weekend anti-war festivities will be capped by a speech from Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y. — the unhinged tin-foil hat wearer who continues to assert that White House adviser Karl Rove planted the bogus National Guard memos that Dan Rather wrapped himself in at CBS News.

In San Diego and Fayetteville, N.C., Code Pink — co-founded by Medea Benjamin, a self-confessed fan of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez — will target military communities at Camp Pendleton and Fort Bragg. The Code Pink web site informs its minions that “Beyond Fort Bragg, North Carolina hosts four other of the nation’s largest military bases, making the state one of the friendliest to the military-industrial complex.”

Code Pink is the same group that champions military deserters and traipsed around the Jordan-Iraq border last year condemning America, praying for the “people of Fallujah,” and doling out $600,000 in aid to what they called “the other side.”

“Oppose the war, support the troops”? Bull.

The Bush-bashers, as always, have impeccable timing. Nothing highlights the bankrupt obstructionism of the anti-war movement more than the inspiring photos of the renaissance of freedom taking place in Lebanon. Contrast the faces of hope and defiance against terrorism pictured at the massive rallies in Beirut’s Martyrs Square this week with the faces of Bush hatred and capitulation to terrorism that you’ll see this weekend. Any question about who’s winning?

Seasoned observers who cover the War on Terror in the “blogosphere” (the increasingly influential world of Internet weblogs) have a useful term for the American Left’s protesters against progress: moonbats. Perry de Havilland of the blog Samizdata (samizdata.net) defined a moonbat as “someone on the extreme edge of whatever their -ism happens to be.”

Surveying this bizarre array of grim-faced parade organizers on the extreme edge of anti-Americanism, it’s clear: The barking Left has been left behind. And it’s driving them batty.

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In praise of honest liberals (townhall.com, 050316)

Paul Greenberg

I almost drove off the road when I heard it, the shock was so great. I really should have known better than to be listening to the “news” on National Propaganda Radio instead of the classical music station. But it’s kind of a duty. Know Your Enemy and all that.

At first nothing seemed amiss. There was the ageless Daniel Schorr going on and on in that soporific way of his that can make five minutes seem an eternity, when suddenly he said something about George W. Bush perhaps having been right. I had to pull over and get my bearings. Too much coffee, I figured. It had to be my caffeinated imagination working overtime, an aural hallucination, a hoax, an April Fool’s joke a little early.

Whatever it was, it couldn’t be real. I resolved to stick to Mozart. But later that day, an e-mail arrived from an equally astonished friend, who not only confirmed what I’d heard but sent along a copy of a piece by Mr. Schorr in the not all that good but very gray Christian Science Monitor, in which he said, well, read it for yourself, in undeniable black and white:

WASHINGTON (CSM) - Something remarkable is happening in the Middle East - a grass-roots movement against autocracy without any significant ‘Great Satan’ anti-American component. . . . The movements for democratic change in Egypt and Lebanon have happened since the successful Iraqi election on Jan. 30. And one can speculate on whether Iraq has served as a beacon for democratic change in the Middle East. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush said that ‘a liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region.’ He may have had it right.

Wow.

The moral of this story: Keep the faith. Even in American liberals. They may be the last to get it, but they’re starting to.

First The New York Times acknowledges the courage and vision of this much-bashed president, and now comes praise from . . . Daniel Schorr! On NPR!

And that wasn’t all. The miracles kept coming.

Here was Kurt Andersen in, of all blue-state publications, New York magazine:

Our heroic and tragic liberal-intellectual capaciousness is facing its sharpest test since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, most of us were forced, against our wills, to give Ronald Reagan a large share of credit for winning the Cold War. Now the people of this Bush-hating city are being forced to grant the merest possibility that Bush, despite his annoying manner and his administration’s awful hubris and dissembling and incompetence concerning Iraq, just might - might, possibly - have been correct to invade, to occupy, and to try to enable a democratically elected government in Iraq. . . .

It won’t do simply to default to our easy predispositions - against Bush, even against war. If partisanship makes us abandon intellectual honesty, if we oppose what our opponents say or do simply because they are the ones saying or doing it, we become mere political short-sellers, hoping for bad news because it’s good for our ideological investment.

Wow. Talk about intellectual honesty. And intellectual courage.

Kurt Andersen has to know that, by saying such things, he risks disappointing his natural audience, the Bush-bashers who look to commentators like him for the strength to shake off any sign of good news out of the Middle East. The guy deserves a salute or, if that is too military a gesture for his tastes, then a respectful nod of the head. At this rate, that over-worked epithet “knee-jerk liberal” is going to lose all meaning.

Kurt Andersen now has contributed the best, shortest description around for those betting against American policy in this war on terror: political short-sellers. Perfect. As perfect as Jeane Kirkpatrick’s phrase back in the Reagan Years for those who saw this country, not our adversaries, as the chief source of danger to the world: the Blame America First crowd.

Speaking of short-sellers, there will always be those who never lose faith in the bright, shining possibility of American defeat. Here is Nancy Soderberg, who served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration and long sleep, as she tried to keep up her spirits during an appearance on the Jon Stewart show:

“It’s scary for Democrats,” she began, “I have to say.” But refusing to give up, she added: “Well, there’s still Iran and North Korea, don’t forget. There’s still hope for the rest of us . . . . There’s always hope that this might not work.”

Later, after her words embarrassed her, Ms. Soderberg said she was just kidding. She could have fooled me. Only after being hard-pressed would she give this Republican administration any credit for these hopeful developments in the Middle East.

But you have to forgive her. It can’t be easy rooting for tyranny these days.

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“Right On, MoveOn!” Senate Democrats join MoveOn to defend the filibuster (National Review Online, 050317)

At times during MoveOn.org’s “Rally for Fair Judges,” held yesterday at the Washington Court Hotel near the Capitol, it was hard to tell if the left-wing organizing group had planned a political rally or a revival meeting.

The purpose of the gathering, attended by several hundred MoveOn supporters, was to denounce Republicans who are considering the “nuclear option” to end the Democratic filibusters of several of President Bush’s nominees to the federal courts of appeals. Several Democratic hardliners, including Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, California Sen. Barbara Boxer, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, and New York Sen. Charles Schumer, addressed the crowd. But the star of the show was the 87-year-old senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, who had been an advocate of the “nuclear option” back in the 1970s, when his party was in the majority. Now, he opposes it with every fiber in his body, and he portrayed stopping the GOP as a religious crusade.

“Praise God!” Byrd yelled as he waved the copy of the Constitution he famously keeps in his coat pocket. “Hallelujah!”

The crowd erupted into hearty cheers. Byrd denounced what he called a Republican plan to “pack the courts” and said that “our Constitution is under attack.” He exhorted everyone to take action.

“Speak out!”

“Tell the people!”

“We can’t let them do it!”

When other speakers came to the podium, Byrd sat in a front-row seat, thrusting a shaking fist in the air and engaging in a church-style call-and-response. As Durbin spoke, for example, Byrd called out during nearly every sentence.

“You started a movement,” Durbin told the crowd.

“Yes!” shouted Byrd.

“When I look at the people assembled here, I’m looking at democracy.”

“Tell it!” shouted Byrd.

“It’s about freedom,” Durbin said.

“Yes!” shouted Byrd.

When Byrd began his performance, some in the audience didn’t quite know what was going on — they were far back in the crowd and couldn’t see who was calling out up front. The speakers didn’t seem to get it, either. When MoveOn organizer Ben Brandzel warmed up the crowd by vowing that he would not surrender to a president trying to “sell out our democracy for right-wing corporate hack judges,” Byrd yelled out, “No!”

“That’s right, Senator Byrd,” Brandzel said, looking a bit surprised.

Other speakers — Byrd’s fellow senators — seemed comfortable with the interruptions of their colleague, but still managed to occasionally mangle the message.

Kennedy, for example, referred to Barbara Boxer as Barbara Mikulski. He referred to William Myers, the Bush judicial nominee, as William Morris. And he kept telling the crowd to “speak truth to justice,” apparently confusing that with the more common liberal exhortation to “speak truth to power.”

Schumer, normally one of the more forceful advocates against the president’s judicial nominees, suffered a terrible case of mixed metaphors when he brought up the Founders’ hope that the Senate would be the “cooling saucer” for political passions. Not anymore, Schumer said, now that Republicans want to turn the saucer into “the rubber stamp of dictatorship” and the country into a “banana republic.”

Even Mrs. Clinton seemed slightly off balance, managing to commingle Marx, the filibuster, and Jimmy Stewart when she charged that Republicans planned “to consign ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’ to the dustbin of history.”

The most substantive comments of the rally came from Boxer, who made a number of notable statements in her brief time at the microphone. First, she appeared to endorse the idea of the Senate creating a super-majority of 60 votes for judicial confirmations. Since federal judges enjoy a lifetime appointment, Boxer told the crowd, their confirmation is simply too important to be decided by a mere majority vote. “For such a super-important position, there ought to be a super vote,” Boxer said.

Next, Boxer expressed a certain fundamental lack of respect for the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter. Referring to Leahy, who is the ranking Democrat on the committee, Boxer said, “I call him my chairman of the Judiciary Committee, because I don’t recognize anyone else” — a remark that seemed to speak volumes about the effectiveness of Specter’s efforts to reach out to Democrats.

Finally, Boxer made a strong effort to address the uncomfortable fact that she once, in 1994, opposed the filibuster, back when Democrats controlled the Senate and were less concerned about minority power. Now, like Byrd — whom she called “the love of my life” — she has had a change of heart and believes the filibuster is vitally important. “I thought I knew everything,” Boxer confessed. “I didn’t get it.”

“I’m here to say I was wrong,” she continued. “I’m here to say I was totally wrong.”

“We forgive you!” someone yelled from the crowd.

The rally might not have presented an entirely coherent message, but it did send the signal that MoveOn has achieved a new level of prominence and influence in Washington, and that the group intends to be closely involved in the battle over judicial nominations. MoveOn officials say the gathering came about after Byrd’s office contacted MoveOn with a proposal to hold a rally; a lunch meeting was held, plans made, and the idea turned into action. And now, it has brought MoveOn new recognition on Capitol Hill.

During the rally, a number of senators paid tribute to MoveOn, none more enthusiastically then Durbin, who began and ended his remarks with a spirited “Right on, MoveOn!” The message — coming after some Democratic moderates had urged the party to separate itself from MoveOn — was clear: from now on, Senate Democrats and MoveOn are a team, no matter what anyone says.

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Liberal Myopia: Getting my groove back (National Review Online, 050310)

Jonah Goldberg

This is a very strange moment, as I am sure liberals and conservatives will agree. Democracy seems to be spreading in the Middle East, albeit pregnant with the possibility of disappointing failure. The Independent, Le Monde and the New York Times — not to mention the likes of Jon Stewart and Daniel Schorr — have been forced to at least ponder whether, in the words of Schorr, “Bush may have had it right.”

The willingness of many of Bush’s — and the war’s — biggest detractors to allow for the possibility that Bush and his “neocon” advisers were correct about the ability of democracy to take root in the Middle East is admirable and should be congratulated. Truth be told, before anyone can call the Bush Doctrine an empirical success there will be a lot more bad news which the same voices will — fairly or not — seize on to say that Bush was wrong all along. That’s simply because such momentous events almost never move in a straight line.

Take the situation in Lebanon. It’s entirely possible to imagine a situation where Hezbollah becomes even more powerful in Lebanon than it is now, if the Syrians leave. No doubt Bush’s detractors — and many of his friends — won’t see the elevation of Hezbollah in Lebanon as a good thing in and of itself. But sometimes a step back is necessary when you take many steps forward. Think of Poland during the Solidarity days. Gen. Jaruzelski’s declaration of martial law was a major setback for the cause of freedom, but in the larger context it was a huge leap in the right direction. Should Syria get out of Lebanon, there might be negative consequences for the Lebanese — though that’s not the way I would bet — but the concepts of national sovereignty and what the Lebanese call “people power” will have been ratified throughout the region.

Or maybe not. This really isn’t a column about foreign policy. Rather, it’s an attempt to back into a gripe I’ve had with liberals for the last few months.

Reality-Based Myopia

Last year anti-Bush reporter Ron Suskind wrote a much-discussed article for the New York Times magazine in which he quoted an unnamed aide who introduced a new phrase which quickly became a term of derision for conservatives: “reality-based community.”

This is the relevant passage:

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore, “ he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Since then liberals have adopted their residence in the “reality-based community” as a badge of honor. Left-wing bloggers prominently affirm that they are a “proud member of the reality-based community” or that theirs is a “reality-based weblog.” Suskind himself continues to proclaim himself a prophet-with-honor(arium) for calling attention to the administration’s “kill-or-be-killed desire to undermine public debate based on fact.” Paul Krugman, Molly Ivins, and the rest of the usual suspects have a grand time bebopping over the Right for its supposed faith in fantasy over facts as if this phrase is a cross every conservative everywhere must bear.

To a certain extent this is all fair game. Whoever the aide was — assuming the quote was accurately and faithfully reported — was at best clumsy in explaining what he was getting at. But there are a couple problems with the ongoing liberal glee over this whole RBC thing. 1) Liberals are not particularly fastidious in their attachment to facts themselves and 2) The Bush aide was largely right.

Take the second point first. Imagine that what the aide really meant by “reality-based community” was in fact “the status-quo community.” The promising developments toward peace and liberalization throughout the Middle East were considered unimaginable to the status-quo community not very long ago. But Bush found them quite imaginable and he acted to make what his opponents considered to be a fantasy into a reality. Well — fingers crossed! — it looks like Bush is finding considerable success in his efforts to, in the words of that aide, “create a new reality.” For good or for ill, who can doubt that Bush is one of “history’s actors” at this point?

I’m hardly the only one to notice this new reality aborning. What got me thinking about it was this comment from blogger Michael Totten in response to the “Was Bush Right?” headline of the Independent: “What I find interesting here is that this shows the foresight of historians like Victor Davis Hanson. He has long argued that we should stop worrying about anti-American and anti-war jackassery and just win the damn war. If things work out in Iraq and the Middle East, he’s been saying, opposition to the U.S. and the war will largely evaporate. I have had my doubts about that since the opposition is often so reactionary and toxic. But this definitely belongs in his evidence column.”

This dynamic is actually something I’ve been interested in for a very long time. I first wrote about it here and here). As you can tell, the first place I read about it was in a phenomenal essay by George Orwell in which he derided the tendency of Western intellectuals and journalists to worship the status quo because that’s where the power was. “Power-worship blurs political judgment because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue,” he wrote in 1946. The power-worship — i.e. status-quo based — community suffers from a failure of imagination to see how fragile contemporary arrangements can be, particularly if they are fond of those arrangements for ideological, political or financial reasons. The idea that Iraq could have a democratic “teaching effect” on the region was most vociferously pooh-poohed by the Islamist voluptuaries in academia and by various journalists who either subscribe to anti-American or, more often, anti-Bush views. Maureen Dowd time and again has referred to the “discredited domino theory” as if all she needs to do is say something is discredited in order for it to be so. She’s really got to stop believing her own press releases.

Recall how Ronald Reagan was at times an amiable dunce and other times a horrific monster to liberals and some “realists” because he refused to accept that we were slaves to the “impersonal forces” of history. Now, of course, we are told that the fall of the Berlin Wall was the inevitable consequence of the Soviet Union’s internal contradictions just as the spin is just starting that Bush really didn’t have much to do with the new buds of democracy growing in Arab sand.

“Act boldly and unseen forces will come to your aid,” proclaimed the writer Dorothea Brande (though the movie Almost Famous attributes the line to Goethe). In the Middle East there had long been unseen forces that are now suddenly visible because the president acted boldly. That doesn’t mean he deserves all of the credit, of course. But it’s impossible to imagine that we’d be seeing this bloom if Bush had not tilled the soil.

As for the first point — that liberals aren’t particularly or especially interested in empirical reality.... Stay tuned for the next Goldberg File.

Meanwhile, Announcements

My apologies for not G-Filing as regularly as I should (those columns you’ve been reading in this space have been my syndicated column — you can tell because they tend to always be under 850 words). As readers of The Corner would know, I’ve been sick, the baby was sick, the wife was sick, and then we all traded sicknesses. Good times.

Another reason is that on Monday I sent 143 pages of my book to my editor. (You mean 30 usable pages, right? — The Couch.) People keep asking when I’m going to be done. After I yank the ballpoint pen from their foreheads, I explain: “When it’s done.”

Corner readers would also know about my Starbucks interview (which is not to be confused with my still pending interview with Dirk Benedict). Some time, starting next month, over one million Starbucks cups will have a quote from me on them.

Corner readers also know that Kathryn Lopez has signed a deal to become a syndicated columnist. She has also worked out a deal with the Timelords so that she can now work 37 hours a day. I figured that out when I heard her humming this. Congrats to Kathryn.

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Their Non-Reality Reality: Understanding the Democrats (National Review Online, 050317)

Jonah Goldberg

The most popular political guru among Democrats today is a guy named George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at Berkeley. Marc Cooper, a contributing editor to The Nation, describes Lakoff’s book, Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, as a “feel-good self-help book for a stratum of despairing liberals who just can’t believe how their commonsense message has been misunderstood by the eternally deceived masses.”

Apparently this stratum includes Howard Dean, the new head of the Democratic party, who calls Lakoff “one of the most influential political thinkers of the progressive movement.” His book was distributed to hundreds of Democratic congressmen.

Lakoff’s argument boils down to this: Facts do not matter. “People think in frames,” he writes. “If the facts do not fit a frame, the frame stays and the facts bounce off.”

By frames, he means ideological blinders or emotional categories or familial roles. Or something. Whatever they are, Lakoff believes that Democrats need to change their language to appeal by exploiting “frames,” not dealing with facts. Much of his analysis stems from his belief that pretty much all conservatives act in bad faith. Conservatives, for example, “are not really pro-life.” No, conservatives see things through the “strict father” frame. Hence, “Pregnant teenagers have violated the commandments of the strict father. Career women challenge the power and authority of the strict father,” and therefore, he writes, “Both should be punished by bearing the child.”

Liberals can succeed not by changing their views, but by changing their words. This should be obvious, since reality doesn’t really matter anyway. All Democrats have to do is successfully change the name for trial lawyers to “public-protection attorneys” and re-label “environmental protection,” as an effort to maintain “poison-free communities.”

FDR, GANNON & LIBERAL MYTHOLOGY

Meanwhile, Democrats have taken the position that Social Security needs no reform whatsoever. Now, before the good-government liberal types scream at me that I’m being unfair, let me add that I understand this is mostly a tactical posture on the Democrats’ part. But in politics, tactics and principles are often confused for each other and for good reason. And that Democrats are acting like they think Social Security is just plain hunky-dory. That’s not my interpretation but James Carville’s, Stanley Greenberg’s, and Harold Ickes’s.

No remotely serious observer of reality believes that Social Security is just fine.

But what concerns liberals more is the supposedly outrageous contention that FDR might have supported private accounts. A quote from FDR offered by Brit Hume and others suggested that this might be the case, and the bloggers as well as Ellen Goodman, Jonathan Alter, and countless others went batty at the very idea.

Now, it’s fair game to object to what you consider misleading quotations read out of context. But the passion of these objections — even after you discount the rabid and irrational Brit Hume hatred — reveals how stuck in the past many liberals are. Conservatives were wrong about the quote, but they were right for thinking respect for FDR’s spirit is what motivates many liberals. But the thing is, who cares if FDR would have supported privatization or not? FDR was a brilliant politician, but very few historians believe he was a particularly brilliant policy maven. He liked to play with his stamp collection in his free time, not master actuarial arcana. The only thing we know for sure that FDR really favored was “bold experimentation,” which is the one thing these same Democrats adamantly oppose.

Meanwhile, Teresa Heinz Kerry thinks the election was “hacked.” Expanding on that theme, Juliet Schor of Boston College wrote in The Nation that Kerry lost the election because of strategic “software breakdowns” and selectively missing voting machines in Democratic precincts. “No amount of cultural repositioning will cure this problem,” she writes and which Cooper, in his excellent Atlantic essay, translates as liberals saying there’s “no need for us to change. The blame is all external.”

Another writer for the same issue of The Nation, a sociologist from NYU argues that liberals can only choose between living “two nightmares.” Nightmare #1: Sixty million Americans “knowingly” ratified Bush’s “right-wing ideology.” Or, nightmare #2: “We have just witnessed a second successive nonviolent coup d’état — a massive voter fraud that produced, among other anomalies, a gap between exit polls and paperless electronic voting tallies.” Oh, and this guy also thinks we shouldn’t discount the possibility we’re in analogous situation to 1930s Germany.

In (slightly) swampier waters, we hear that Jeff Gannon is the second gunman from every painful reality the Left has had a hard time accepting, including the Florida recount and Dan Rather’s downfall. One fellow took the time to pretend he was Gannon in order to send me an e-mail from Annoy.com. When you go to the site, you find a picture of Karl Rove’s head on a buff nude dude’s body with some even more pornographic text about the perfidy of various right-wing “whores.”

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO CHAIT

And at organs that pride themselves on their immunity to feverish impulses, we find instead a haughtiness not often seen outside 17th-century Versailles. Jonathan Chait of The New Republic imagines a hypothetical in which God descends to Earth for the purpose of “settling, once and for all, our disputes over economic policy.” If the Almighty declared conservative empirical claims were correct, the liberals, he writes, would respond:

[no] doubt by rethinking and abandoning nearly all their long-held positions. Liberalism, after all, claims to produce certain outcomes: more prosperity and security, especially for the poor and middle classes; a cleaner environment; safer foods and drugs; and so on. If it were proved beyond a doubt that liberal policies fail to produce those outcomes — or even, as conservatives often claim, that such policies hurt their intended beneficiaries — then their rationale would disappear.

But how would conservatives react if God affirmed liberal economic precepts?

Well, most of us would tell the Big Guy Upstairs to butt out, we know what we’re talking about and He doesn’t. Why, because “Economic conservatism, unlike liberalism, would survive having all its empirical underpinnings knocked out from beneath it,” since liberals are — get this — “fact finders.”

Forgetting all of the profound theological and psychological insults packed into this bizarre hypothetical, what on earth is Chait talking about? He goes on and on about how conservative economists are lacking in respect for empirical data and fact-finding while liberals are the Joe Fridays of economics. I worked in and around the American Enterprise Institute for quite a while. AEI remains the central hive of the sorts of economists Chait despises. I can tell you here and now that most of these guys spent their time talking endlessly about data, “random walks” in the data, the need for more data, the problems with data, and the reliability of that data. You’d think in the comfort of AEI, a few would have dropped the act and I would have heard a few of them say, “Who cares what the data says?” You’d think fewer free-market economists would receive Nobel Prizes since they don’t hand such things out for ideological polemic writing.

Chait’s theory boils down to a very shabby accusation of bad faith. When conservatives are right about reality, it’s by accident. It’s not that “conservatives don’t believe their own empirical arguments,” Chait concedes. And it’s not “that ideologically driven thinking can’t lead to empirically sound outcomes. In many cases — conservative opposition to tariffs, price controls, and farm subsidies — it does.” But the simple fact is that when it comes to conservatives, “empirical reasoning simply does not drive their thinking. What appears to be conservative economic reasoning is actually a kind of backward reasoning. It begins with the conclusion and marches back through the premises.”

“Liberalism,” Chait lectures, “is a more deeply pragmatic governing philosophy — more open to change, more receptive to empiricism, and ultimately better at producing policies that improve the human condition — than conservatism.”

And this is true not just of economics but everything. For example, Clinton was a great Pragmatist who “recognized the failure of welfare, previously a cherished liberal goal, to accomplish its stated purpose, and he enacted a sweeping overhaul.”

And here we can see the great flaw in Chait’s wishful thinking about liberal realism. Clinton agreed to welfare reform — over the objections of most liberals, including his own wife — because the Republicans forced him to and he’d have lost the 1996 election if he didn’t. That was the beginning and the ending of Bill Clinton’s fact-finding. The New York Times’s editorial page — a better representative of elite liberalism’s worldview than The New Republic, alas — called welfare reform “atrocious” and an outrage. “This is not reform, it is punishment” they declared.

Last summer, the Times reported that welfare reform was one of the “acclaimed successes of the past decade” and its renewal is a “no-brainer.” Chait would no doubt salute the newspaper for its empiricism. But how would we have known they were empiricists in 1996? Real empiricists express skepticism toward their own predictions, not moral outrage and — often — charges of racism at those who doubt them.

Indeed, that’s the story writ small of liberalism’s alleged acceptance of “new realities.” It’s not that liberals have maturely adapted to new data, it’s that they’ve been proven wrong so often — either empirically or at the polls — that they’ve had to change, and each time they do it, it’s not with the empiricist’s joy of learning new things, it’s with grumbling through gnashed teeth and amidst much caterwauling about liberal “sellouts” and political opportunism. For more than three decades, liberals swore there was no evidence that there was anything wrong with welfare reform until even the public knew they were lying.

Chait’s version of liberals cheerfully accepting that they were wrong after decades of white-knuckled denial reminds me of that scene from Fletch where Chevy Chase is chatting up the doctor about an alleged mutual friend who died:

Doctor: You know, it’s a shame about Ed.

Fletch: Oh, it was. Yeah, it was really a shame. To go so suddenly like that.

Doctor: He was dying for years.

Fletch: Sure, but... the end was very…very sudden.

Doctor: He was in intensive care for eight weeks.

Fletch: Yeah, but I mean the very end, when he died. That was extremely sudden.

Lastly there’s Chait’s solipsism. His version of reality cannot explain liberals who disagree with him. Are liberals who oppose free trade simply morons who can’t do the math? Was Hillary Clinton less of a liberal because she opposed welfare reform? What about Marian Wright Edelman? Are the Europeans who’ve refused to recognize that the economic rot of their welfare states really conservatives because they can’t face facts? Are liberals in America who envy Europe’s economic model incapable of recognizing its flaws? How does Chait explain anybody to his left — either ideologically or simply in the next office over from him — who disagrees with him? If liberals always go where the facts take them — you in the back, stop laughing — how is it that liberals ever disagree? He might say that only conservatives operate in ideologically blinkered bad faith and God-defying false-consciousness. But I think the real answer is that in Chait’s formulation the facts can only be what he finds them to be. And one senses that he really thinks God should come down and tell everyone that’s the case.

Now, I like Chait and I think he’s a smart guy. But I can only read all of this as the sort of defensive crouch one finds among the smarter campus activists who decide to hide underneath the cafeteria table while the sophomoric would-be revolutionaries tear the place apart. One can almost see Chait, Rain Man-like in a fetal position muttering, “The facts are on my side, the facts are on my side.”

On almost every significant area of public policy the Democrats are atrophied, rusty, and calcified. They’re dependent upon old (condescending) notions about blacks, the patronage of teacher’s unions which care very little for the facts, and feminists who define liberation almost exclusively as the freedom to abort pregnancies despite all of the new, inconvenient facts science is bringing to bear. Liberals are not the “reality-based community,” they are the status-quo based community. They wish to stand athwart history yelling “Stop” — in some rare cases, even when history is advancing liberalism in tyrannical lands. The Buckleyite formulation of standing athwart history yelling “Stop” was aimed at a world where the rise of Communism abroad and soft-liberalism at home were seen as linked trends. Today, liberals yell “Stop” almost entirely because they don’t enjoy being in the backseat. If they cannot drive, no one can.

And — where was I going with this again? Oh yeah — I think this petulance explains the liberal obsession with the phrase “reality-based community.” It’s a form of transference or projection or whatever they call it. We can’t stand the new reality, so we’re going to insist that those who recognize it are the ones in denial.

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Liberals vs. liberals (Washington Times, 050317)

Out here, in Los Angeles, we have recently been treated to a colossal hissy fit that had liberals gunning for other liberals. One would think that any right-thinking conservative would happily sit back and watch the blood run in the gutters. But even in a battle royal that pits lefties against their own kind, a fair-minded person can’t help taking sides.

On one side, you have the knee-jerk liberal editors at the L.A. Times wearing the white trunks or, in this case, at least the white hats. On the other side, you have the idly rich women of the Westside — most of them the wives or ex-wives of multimillionaires like Michael Huffington, Bud Yorkin and Larry David. They’re the sort of ladies who, because they might have undocumented maids, nannies and gardeners from Mexico and Guatemala working for them, not only favor open borders, but believe they’re in line for canonization. These are the knuckleheads who support NOW and the ACLU, and who yammer about fossil fuels and the ozone layer while they gad about in SUVs and private jets.

Perhaps not as wealthy as some of her cohorts, but equally self-deluded is Susan Estrich. Today, she’s a law professor at the University of Southern California; in the past, she was the campaign manager for Michael Dukakis. Somehow, Miss Estrich has turned an annoyingly nasal voice, a painted-on smirk and a ton of attitude into a secondary career as one of TV’s talking heads.

Recently, she declared a jihad against the L.A. Times because she had decided that they don’t publish nearly enough female columnists. She even had the chutzpah to assign her college students to keep track. Apparently — assuming that her law students are able to count — the L.A. Times was publishing men four times as often as they were publishing women.

The editors, fools that they are, took the charge to heart. In their lame defense, they countered the accusation by pointing out that they published women more frequently than did such liberal citadels as the New York Times and The Washington Post. Miss Estrich and her cohorts replied that what other papers do or don’t do is no defense for what the L.A. Times does or doesn’t do.

Then, when she realized that the L.A. Times wasn’t about to knuckle under to the ladies who lunch, she stooped to suggesting that perhaps editor Michael Kinsley’s brain had been adversely affected by his illness. The man suffers from Parkinson’s.

At one fell swoop, Miss Estrich not only struck a new low in debating tactics, but by trying to score points off the man’s illness, proved that in her case at least, it’s compassionate liberal that’s the oxymoron.

The fact is, if anybody should be complaining about being underrepresented on the paper’s op-ed page, it’s not women; it’s conservatives. By way of tokenism, once a week they run something by Max Boot. The rest of the week, they run letters to the editor from readers berating Mr. Boot.

If women get to sound off 20% of the time in the Times, I’d say that’s roughly 10 times as much space as writers from the right receive. Of course I’m only guessing.

Unlike Miss Estrich, I don’t have a cadre of eager coeds to do my counting for me.

The worst thing about Miss Estrich and the other members of her overly pampered platoon is that they’re hypocrites. It’s not really female writers they want to see in the L.A. Times, it’s female left-wing writers. I guarantee that if Ann Coulter, Tammy Bruce and Michelle Malkin started showing up on a regular basis, these wealthy, self-important elitists would be descending on the L.A. Times armed with tar and feathers.

The truth is, with this gaggle of geese, agenda always trumps gender.

Burt Prelutsky, author of “Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco,” is an award-winning TV writer.

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Liberals — wrong, wrong and wrong again (townhall.com, 050317)

Larry Elder

Thirty-five percent of Americans, according to a 2004 Pew Research survey, call themselves conservative, while only 22% call themselves liberal (43% call themselves moderate) — a 3% increase in conservatives since 1992. There is a reason for this — liberals keep getting it wrong.

The war in Iraq: “Week after week after week after week,” said Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., in October 2003, “we were told lie after lie after lie after lie.” Kennedy called Iraq a “quagmire,” predicting it will turn into “Bush’s Vietnam.” Now what?

Eight million Iraqis voted in their election over seven weeks ago. Protesters in Lebanon demanded the withdrawal of Syrian troops and agents. Egypt committed to, and Saudi Arabia conducted, elections, however flawed. Elections in the Palestinian territories produced a new leader who — at least for now — speaks of a peaceful two-state solution. So what does Sen. Kennedy say now?

“This Week’s” George Stephanopoulos asked Kennedy whether President Bush deserves credit for democratic developments in the Middle East. Kennedy replied, “Absolutely, absolutely, and I think . . . what’s taken place in a number of those countries is enormously constructive. It’s a reflection the president has been involved.” Well, well. Oh, sure, Kennedy talked about the number of Americans killed every day in Iraq, and that we need to figure out a way of withdrawing U.S. troops, but nothing about “quagmire.”

Add another notch to the belt of discredited liberal policies. Let’s go to the videotape.

Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts: Critics claimed the Reagan tax cuts would stunt economic growth, while triggering inflation and higher interest rates. Inflation fell from 12.5% in 1980 to 3.9% in 1984, interest rates declined, and economic growth went from minus 0.2% in 1980 to plus 7.3% in 1984.

Race-based preferences: The Detroit News examined seven Michigan colleges and universities. They found that — within six years — blacks graduate at a rate of 40% compared to 61% for whites and 74% for Asians. Lowering admission standards indeed boosted racial diversity, at the expense of a greater possibility of minority students dropping out. “The state’s universities have special programs aimed at helping black students meet financial, social and academic challenges,” wrote the Detroit News, “but graduation rates for blacks haven’t improved consistently. . . . Universities knowingly admit students who have a high chance of failing. . . . The 10 years’ worth of data analyzed by The News shows that the more selective a university is in choosing its students, the more likely its students are to graduate.”

Strategic Defense Initiative: When President Reagan first proposed SDI, the media called it fanciful, dismissing it as “Star Wars.” According to Accuracy in Media, “During one six-month period commencing in December 1991, the [New York] Times ran 17 anti-SDI articles, op-ed pieces and editorials denouncing SDI as, among other things, a ‘bizarre, costly concoction . . . science fiction . . . lunacy . . . sheer fantasy . . . ‘ The Times gave front-page space to Teddy Kennedy’s Senate speech deriding SDI as ‘Star Wars,’ likening the idea to a science fiction movie or a video arcade game, and providing SDI foes their slogan-of-choice.” Yet, of the last six Interceptor Missile tests, five successfully intercepted another missile. Parts of SDI have already been employed in Japan, in a cooperative U.S.-Japan Theater Missile Defense program.

Welfare reform: In 1996, President Clinton signed the Welfare Reform Act, after twice vetoing similarly worded bills. Presidential adviser Dick Morris warned Clinton that his 1996 re-election turned on signing this bill. Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, castigated welfare reform, calling it, “the biggest betrayal of children and the poor since the CDF began.” Congressman John Lewis, D-Ga., said it is “mean, it is base, it is low-down.” In the following years, welfare rolls fell by 50%

Charity: In “The Tragedy of American Compassion,” author Marvin Olasky writes that charity works best when done by people rather than by government, and that government programs foster dependency rather than self-reliance. Olasky writes that unemployed workers often tried seven alternatives, sequentially, before applying for government aid, including private benefits, credit, savings, loans or gifts from friends and family, and so on. As far back as 1766, Ben Franklin said, “I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it . . . the more public provisions were made for the poor the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”

Minimum wage: These laws destroy jobs. Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman says about the minimum wage, “Minimum wage laws cost jobs. Employers cut out, or mechanize, jobs that are not worth the minimum rate to them. Worst affected are the inexperienced young people, those with poor skills, and minorities.”

Of the major domestic and national security issues of the last several decades, liberals consistently got it wrong, wrong and wrong again!

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Double-dealers (Townhall.com, 050321)

John Leo

I spend some of my time brooding about people who seem addicted to double standards - those who take an allegedly principled stand on a Monday, then switch firmly to the opposite principle on Tuesday if it is to their advantage. A lot of this is considered normal today: free-speech hard-liners who support the severe speech limitations of the campaign reform law, people who were outraged by the campaign that bumped CBS’s anti-Reagan made-for-TV movie off the network but not upset by a similar campaign that forced the cancellation of Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s planned television show.

Some Supreme Court justices have become fond of taking guidance from international standards, as in Roper v. Simmons, the recent decision to bar the death penalty for those under age 18. But do not look for the court to condemn cloning, as the United Nations did by a vote of 84 to 34, or to modify abortion policies to bring them into line with the much more restrictive ones of most developed countries. What the justices mean is that we should look to world standards when those standards support their political preferences.

Justice Antonin Scalia, in his Roper dissent, tossed a grenade at the American Psychological Association on grounds of double standards. In an abortion case before the Supreme Court in 1990, the APA said a “rich body of research” showed that by age 14 or 15 people are mature enough to choose abortion because they have “abilities similar to adults in reasoning about moral dilemmas.” But the APA’s certitude of the strong moral grasp of young teens apparently evaporated just in time for Roper, where they told the court that minors just aren’t mature enough to be eligible for the maximum penalty faced by adult killers.

Planned Parenthood adopted a more comic double stance on abortion: Young girls are fully capable of choosing to abort without informing their parents, but they could not enter a Planned Parenthood pro-abortion poster contest without parental approval. The fine print on the contest said, “Children under age 18 must have a parent or legal guardian’s permission to submit designs.” No, you wouldn’t want young teens making drastic poster decisions without input from Mom or Dad.

The Republican threat to invoke “the nuclear option” to break the Democratic filibuster over judicial nominations has brought a mother lode of double standards. For example, law Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky of Duke coauthored a strong antifilibuster law article in 1997 when Republicans were obstructing Democratic court nominees but a strong pro-filibuster argument to meet the current debate.

Many newspapers thundered against the males-only membership policy of Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, which is private, but remained silent about recent discriminatory policies at public institutions, such as a New York City public high school for gays and bisexuals, “Third World” student centers for nonwhites, and women-only lounges like the one at Boalt Hall, the law school of the University of California-Berkeley.

Liberals aren’t the only double-dealers. Conservatives criticize liberals for “playing the race card” and reducing broad issues to narrow ones about race and gender. But conservatives do it too. Liberals opposed appeals-court nominee Miguel Estrada on philosophical grounds and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on grounds that he favored mistreatment of suspected terrorists. But some Republicans tried to sell that opposition as anti-Hispanic bias. Opposing Estrada, said Sen. Charles Grassley, “would be to shut the door on the American dream of Hispanic Americans everywhere.” Not really.

Both left and right play games on federalism and states’ rights. Liberals, generally contemptuous of states’ rights, want to retain state tort and environmental laws, which they think are better than national laws under Republican dominance. Conservatives consider the states “laboratories of democracy,” except when they want to trump a liberal state program. John Ashcroft’s argument that Oregon’s right-to-die law violated federal drug legislation comes under this heading.

Liberals have been severely critical of the Patriot Act and Ashcroft for the policy of seeking library records of suspected terrorists. Librarians were particularly incensed. However, the American Library Association declines to protest the serious mistreatment of librarians in Cuba. Some 75 dissidents, including 10 librarians, are subject to beatings, denied medical help, and kept in “medieval cages,” according to human-rights advocates. The librarians’ silence has to do with the lingering romantic attachment of the American left to communism in general and Fidel Castro in particular. The Motorcycle Diaries, the glowing movie about the young Che Guevara, is the current horrible example. The romantic left would never do a similar film about a young Nazi. Guevara killed a lot of people and dreamed of slaughtering more. How about On the Road With Adolf? Let’s not dwell too much on what came after.

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The Decline of the Liberal Faith (American Spectator, 050323)

LIBERALISM, AMERICAN-STYLE, is dying on the vine. I refer to the faith of liberalism — the belief in “the redemptive transformation of human society through political means,” as William Pfaff puts it in his new book, The Bullet’s Song. Programmatic liberalism — Social Security, Medicare, government schooling, government science, and the like — will continue, and on an expansionist path. But as a faith, liberalism is set to decline in the years ahead. It is already doing so, perhaps more swiftly than we know. What is left of it is filled with darkness and pessimism: sex, abortion, euthanasia, and death.

Like Communism, liberalism was put into practice. Better for the idealists if it had remained a dream. But as anyone who has lived within a mile of a government-housing project will know, real-life liberalism is a menacing thing — anti-utopia. Neighborhoods menaced by young men without fathers, their mothers financed by the state, should by now have disillusioned even the most progressive minded. So should inner-city state schools, where parents play little or no role, and perhaps don’t even know where the school is.

Although its adherents don’t like to discuss the point, the liberal faith has much in common with Communism, including shared roots in the Enlightenment. Human nature, philosophers once believed, could be remade in the classroom. People could be improved by “legislation alone,” to quote the 18th-century philosophe Claude Helvetius. Influenced by John Locke, he was in turn studied by the founder of Russian Marxism, G.V. Plekhanov, who befriended Lenin in Zurich.

Liberalism and Communism both regarded egalitarianism as an ideal and both were godless; Communism openly so, liberalism more obscurely. Democracy admittedly distinguished between them, but the liberal admiration for an ideological judiciary shows that they, too, would like nothing more than a government that is free to impose its will by fiat (provided it is run by the right people).

The liberal faith fell with Communism. Both were based on extravagant optimism — admittedly an unwarranted optimism. Human nature was on the verge of transformation. Nineteenth-century thinkers really believed that people would soon be so good that the boundaries of property would no longer be required. The reversal of attitude today is most conspicuous in the environmentalists, whose rise coincided with the fall of the Soviet Union. Man now is widely perceived as a despoiler and menace to the planet.

AN UNWRITTEN PRINCIPLE OF THE LIBERAL FAITH has been that government must expand to whatever extent is needed to get the job done. No liberal has ever been heard to say that the government has grown too large, or should be reduced. But reality imposes its own discipline. At all levels, federal, state, and local, government now disposes of at least one-third of GDP. In European countries it is closer to half, and even some liberal journalists are beginning to accept that therein lies the explanation for the slow or non-existent growth in countries like Germany.

The costs of further government expansion are slowly sinking in. You might say that we are all capitalists now. More and more voters have retirement accounts that rise and fall with the stock market and the details of public finance are of growing concern to the middle class, not just to actuaries and budget analysts.

The hazard of government overreaching was recognized by President Clinton (“The era of big government is over”), and to give him his due, Clinton took more care to control federal spending than President Bush has done. The great re-education of liberals began early in President Reagan’s first term, when supply-siders publicized the idea that the “price” of government could not be raised indefinitely; in fact, marginal tax rates were already way too high. I will never forget the rage of the liberals at that moment. They had blithely assumed that government finances were immune from the laws of supply and demand, and taxes, no matter how high, would have no effect on behavior.

Today, the freedom to launch new social-engineering schemes — being “generous” with other people’s money — is severely constrained by these realities and will remain so indefinitely.

THE LIBERALS WILL FIGHT to keep their “gains,” of course, and with the major programs they won’t have to fight very hard. The logic of representative government ensures that transfer programs to the elderly will keep right on expanding. FDR boasted in the 1930s that “no damn politician can ever scrap my Social Security program,” and he was right about that. Current and future beneficiaries have the power to decide not merely who their representatives are but how they are expected to vote. This is the great and largely unforeseen toll that a transfer society exacts. Those who receive benefits from the state have more influence with their representatives than the taxpayers themselves.

In fact, the massive transfer programs of the federal government have become millstones for liberals, too, because they are squeezing out every last drop of tax revenue that might otherwise have been available for new programs. With his prescription drug benefit, Bush only intensified the problem.

Those who seek an expanded government in the future will more and more depend on finding or contriving emergencies. Such crises will be said to require an immediate response, with fiscal prudence sacrificed to humanitarianism. Think tsunami-anthrax-AIDS-in-Africa. September 11, although a genuine tragedy, was treated as just such an opportunity by our big-government conservatives, or neoconservatives (ex-liberals, in many cases).

The contrivance of crisis has of course been a speciality of the environmentalists. The air is toxic, the water filled with lead, the globe cooling (or warming), species becoming extinct (even as subspecies multiply). New agencies must be set up without delay. It took the rest of us a generation to figure out that these scares, which continue in a steady stream, were not to be trusted: generated by activists, publicized by journalists with the same agenda, and quickly adopted and made permanent by government.

LIBERALISM IS DYING OF OLD AGE. It has gone on for too long and the world is changing. At its core, it was based on the idea that religious belief would give way to Enlightenment values. Faith would succumb to reason. Shorn of superstition, the human race would make its stately progress toward a brighter future. Well, that hasn’t worked out. (Go back and take a look at one of those inner-city schools or housing projects if you don’t believe me.) Christianity has indeed declined, especially in its self-confidence. Journalists have lost count of the times the Pope has apologized for the history of the Catholic Church. And in see-saw response to the Christian decline, Islam has risen up after a long dormancy.

Islam has been around for a long time, and it is not going to retreat into the Arabian sukhs any time soon. Meanwhile the American goal in Iraq would seem to be nothing less than the introduction of Enlightenment values into the Arab world. Not just elections but freedom of speech and toleration and a reformed education system and a role for women and equality before the law must be transferred to Mesopotamia and beyond. And the result will be?

The world would certainly be a nicer, safer, and more comfortable place if this mission were to succeed. Who knows, maybe it will. There is one thing that can be safely predicted, however. Success, if it is to come, will take a long time. Just guessing, but doesn’t it seem likely that our own domestic politics will drive us out of the neighborhood before those good things can happen?

If it does not succeed, then we will face an energized and inflamed Islam. Enlightenment ideas have not taken root in the Arab world over the last 250 years — a period when the West was more self-confident than it is now. So it may be that we will end up absorbing a lesson or two from them. I recall a line from one of C. Northcote Parkinson’s books, this one about the Muslim world: “The onset of one religion can be resisted only by another.” Perhaps a revival of Christianity is in the cards.

Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator. This article appears in the March issue of The American Spectator.

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Watch the VLWC: Byron York warns against underestimating the Left’s new machinery (National Review Online, 050405)

Today the book — literally — on the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy is unveiled. National Review’s Byron York is author of The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down the President — and Why They’ll Try Even Harder Next Time. As you can imagine, he’s got a lot of George Soros, some Al Franken and Michael Moore, but even more so, the strategic planners behind MoveOn, America Coming Together, and that oh-so-riveting Air America. Don’t let the ZZZZ Factor of Air America fool you. As Byron writes, “Today’s Left is bigger and better funded than conservatives were decades ago, and though Democrats did not win in 2004, this left-wing movement — and the foundation of new institutions on which it rests — seems poised to exert even more influence in coming campaigns.” “[B]y 2008,” he writes, “they will be even better organized — and far stronger.”

NRO Editor Kathryn Lopez asked her colleague a few Matt Lauer-style hard-hitting questions about his new book. Byron York notes, though, that no reading of this Q&A is complete without buying the book.

National Review Online: Byron, are you trying to distract the American people from your husband’s impending impeachment or laying the fundraising groundwork for your run for Senate? Why do you need to demonize the Left with a conspiracy label?

Byron York: While conservatives were perhaps paying too little attention, the phrase “Vast Left Wing Conspiracy” has become a kind of shorthand on the Left for the biggest, richest, and most focused political movement in generations. MoveOn.org, George Soros, the 527 groups, Michael Moore, Al Franken and Air America, John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, and other individuals and organizations are self-consciously building a new political infrastructure — a well-funded message machine which they plan to use to inject new ideas into the national conversation, attack enemies, and spark political action. Unlike the conservative movement, which grew up over decades, they are trying to do it all virtually instantly — and in many ways, they have succeeded. The book is their story.

As for the specific phrase — a variation on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s famous charge that there was a “vast right wing conspiracy” against Bill Clinton — here’s what Franken said last month about his work with Air America radio: “I think it’s a counterpoint to [the Right] and to the administration and to just the whole right-wing echo machine. We’re trying to just be part of this vast left wing conspiracy...” As another example, at last year’s Democratic convention in Boston, a group of young activists put on a program called “Building the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.” And as far back as 2001, the liberal online magazine Slate published an article entitled, “Wanted: A Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.” There are plenty of other examples to show that the Left actually kind of likes the phrase.

That’s not really surprising. Remember back in 1998, when Mrs. Clinton first used “vast right wing conspiracy”? Conservatives loved it. You couldn’t go to a party without someone saying, “Well, it looks like the whole conspiracy is here.” Well, the left-wing variation is being heard more and more these days.

NRO: Is it a problem for the Left that MoveOn basically had no purpose, as you tell their tale, pre-9/11? That so much of the Left’s new organization is based on being antiwar? And some of it, specifically against the war in Afghanistan, which Americans were generally united behind?

York: MoveOn’s problem was that it was founded for a very specific purpose — to oppose the Clinton impeachment — and then it could not move on itself. After Clinton was impeached, MoveOn tried to punish the impeachers, and they hung on to that mission so long that, after the 2000 election, they seemed like the last Japanese soldiers on the island. But then they learned how to transform themselves. After September 11, they suddenly found a new purpose, becoming in essence an antiwar organization. First they opposed the war in Afghanistan, which, as you say, had nearly universal American support, and then they opposed the war in Iraq when they helped create the group Win Without War. Later, they became an anti-Bush campaign ad organization. Now, they’re transforming themselves again, joining the fight to filibuster Bush judicial nominees and oppose Social Security reform. When that no longer works, they’ll do something else.

The thing to remember about MoveOn is that even though it has at times had a large membership — sometimes topping 2.5 million — its essentially radical nature makes it unlikely to expand its appeal beyond the hard-core Democratic base. Remember that nearly 60 million people voted for John Kerry. Some part of that group, perhaps 25%, could be called the truest, bluest, anti-Bush faction. That’s nearly 15 million people. And inside that 15 million people, there was MoveOn. For all the attention it received, and all its claims to represent the “true majority” of the American people, MoveOn simply never expanded beyond the confines of the true believers.

NRO: A related question: America Coming Together and the like were sorta overconfident — their attitude seemed to be, if you said you were the majority, the majority would come. They were speaking to other left-wing activists’ e-mail lists and the like, not reaching out to new people. Are these groups too out there to really drive electoral victories to the Democrats?

York: In the book, I make a distinction between the emotional wing of the movement — MoveOn, Michael Moore, and others — and the professional wing, which includes America Coming Together and the Center for American Progress. The emotional wing is given to outbursts — like MoveOn’s antiwar ads or Moore’s statement that he couldn’t understand why the September 11 terrorists attacked New York City, since so many New Yorkers had voted for Al Gore — that confine them to the margins. But the professionals are more disciplined, and in the future they will be working hard to make their message seem more mainstream. They are smart and extremely well-funded, and, depending on the mistakes made by Republicans in the future, they could well win in years to come — because, as the book shows, the extraordinary infrastructure they have built makes them a political force to be reckoned with.

NRO: What do you expect the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy to look like come 2008? How key is it that the likes of Barack Obama are lending them their creds?

York: What is perhaps most remarkable about the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy is how quickly the activists built their new organizations — in about 18 months. Given more time, they will build more. In the conclusion of the book I discuss a scenario in which the war on terror declines in public urgency, Republicans make mistakes borne of overconfidence and being too long in power, and circumstances begin to favor Democrats. It could certainly happen, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is positioning herself for just such a situation. On the other hand, in the book I also identify a number of problems that kept the Left from winning in 2004 and could haunt them against next time. Any group that counts among its core constituents MoveOn (with whom Obama teamed up recently in the drive to support Democratic filibuster leader Sen. Robert Byrd) and Michael Moore will always be capable of defeating itself, no matter what Republicans do.

NRO: You’ve described the Left’s organizations as angry and desperate during the last election — is that why they lost? If so, can they come to grips with that or do they remain too angry?

York: In the book, I write that the emotional wing of the movement was angry — at the Clinton impeachment, at the Florida recount, and at virtually everything George W. Bush did. The professional wing, on the other hand, became desperate — they found themselves totally out of power after the 2002 elections and facing a post-McCain Feingold world in which their zillionaire donors could no longer give to the Democratic party. Groups like America Coming Together — founded to allow contributors like Soros and a few of his associates to give millions of dollars — were the direct response to that.

But the real reason the new activists on the Left lost in 2004 was that their organizations were essentially closed loops — self-contained groups that spoke mostly to each other. My book details instances in which the activists seemed to believe they were reaching out far beyond their own group — to a new American majority — when in fact they were not. Worse for them, their closed loops overlapped: people who belonged to MoveOn listened to Air America and watched Fahrenheit 9/11 and contributed to America Coming Together. They weren’t really reaching out to anybody.

NRO: Michael Moore’s movie bombed in the heartland? How did he get away with claiming otherwise, basically writing false headlines in news accounts?

York: He got away with it because the press did not question what he was saying. When Fahrenheit 9/11 premiered, Moore said it was “the number-one movie in every single red state in America” and went on, for weeks afterward, to claim that the movie represented a wave of anti-Bush feelings all across the country. His claims went mostly unchallenged in the press. What I found in researching my book — I came across a source in Hollywood with access to the movie industry’s sophisticated audience measurement statistics — was that Moore’s claims were simply not true. Using previously unpublished statistical evidence, I show that in fact, Fahrenheit 9/11 did very well only in a few deep-blue areas — and also in Canada, where ticket sales counted toward the film’s North American gross. Virtually everywhere else, the movie underperformed significantly.

NRO: Does the VLWC consider campaign-finance laws a joke? Will that come back to haunt people like Eliot Spitzer who, as you note, has pretty publicly laughed at them?

York: I think they felt that the laws were really designed to curb the excesses of rich Republicans, and thus really didn’t apply to them. At one point in the 2003-2004 election cycle, George Soros wrote that, even after McCain-Feingold, when the Bush campaign was collecting only legal, limited contributions, corporations continued to “[buy] the same level of access and influence for their corporate interests that they previously obtained” before campaign finance reform. Soros continued: “I don’t seek such influence. My contributions are made in what I believe to be the common interest.” That was what it boiled down to: Soros — who before 2004 was one of the biggest champions of campaign-finance reform — believed his mega-contributions were good because he had good motives, and even legal, limited contributions to Bush were bad because corporations had selfish motives. With that kind of worldview, why would one take the spirit of the campaign-finance laws too seriously?

NRO: How does the Right’s well-oiled machinery components compare to the Left’s now?

York: When it comes to assessing each other’s power and influence, the Right and Left seem to live in parallel universes. The Left points to Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio in general, to Fox News, to the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, to the Scaife Foundation, and other conservative institutions, and sees an all-powerful machine. The Right, on the other hand, is baffled that a group of people with ready access to the New York Times, parts of the big broadcast television networks, the Pew Foundations, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, the Brookings Institution, and virtually all of academia could feel so outgunned. And yet they do. In fact, in creating the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, liberal activists have been quite consciously trying to create their own version of what they see as the right-wing “noise machine” or “attack machine.”

Right now, I would say that while, in some of the big media, conservative ideas are sometimes ignored, or more often treated as phenomenon to be studied like an anthropologist might study the habits of a newly discovered tribe, conservatives are better able to express and explain their ideas than they have ever been. It is hard for conservatives to argue, as they could at times in the past, that they cannot get their ideas before the public. But when it comes to political machinery, the Right needs to pay attention to what the Left is doing. It was the Left, for example, that revolutionized campaigning with 527 groups; Democratic-supporting 527s spent an astonishing $230 million on the last presidential race, which was two-and-a-half times what Republican-supporting 527s spent.

NRO: Were you surprised so many key organizers of the VLWC talked with you as much as they did?

York: No, I wasn’t surprised. Even though the book is quite critical of their work, the one thing I tried to do throughout was to take them and their organizations seriously. I didn’t write the book to trash them or call them names. I wrote it to figure out what they are doing. One of the themes I hope readers will draw from the book is that, whatever the excesses of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, conservatives and Republicans should take it seriously.

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Liberal attitudes (townhall.com, 050405)

Thomas Sowell

Liberals may think of themselves as people who believe in certain principles but, if you observe their actual behavior, you are likely to discover that most liberals have a certain set of attitudes, rather than principles.

Liberals may denounce “greed,” for example, but in practice it all depends on whose greed. Nothing the government does is ever likely to be called “greed” by liberals.

Even when the government confiscated more than half the income of some people in taxes, that was not greed, as far as the left was concerned. Nor is it greed in their eyes when local politicians across the country bulldoze whole working class neighborhoods, destroying homes that people spent a lifetime sacrificing to buy, and paying them less than the market value of those homes through legal chicanery.

Even when the land seized under “eminent domain” laws are turned over to casinos, hotels, or shopping malls — places that will pay more taxes than working class homeowners — liberals can never seem to work up the outrage that they display when denouncing “greed” on the part of businesses whose prices are higher than liberals think they should be.

It is not the principle of sacrificing other people’s economic interests to your own that causes liberals to denounce greed. It is a question of who does it and what the liberals’ attitudes are to those segments of the population.

Politicians who ruin local homeowners, in order to get hold of more tax money to finance programs that will increase the politicians’ chances of being re-elected, are just meeting the “needs” of the community, as far as many liberals are concerned.

Whatever the issue, it is usually not the principle but the attitude which determines where liberals stand. Just rattle off a list of social groups — the police, blacks, environmentalists, multinational corporations — and you will have a pretty good idea of which way liberals are likely to lean, even if you have no idea what particular issue may arise.

Recent liberal denunciations of federal intervention to over-ride Florida law in the Terri Schiavo case were made by the same people who supported recent federal intervention to over-ride the laws of more than a dozen states when the Supreme Court banned the execution of murderers who were not yet 18 years old.

You can count on the same liberals to cheer if the federal courts over-ride both state laws and referenda opposing gay marriage. It is not the principle. It is the attitude.

“Diversity” has become one of the crusades of liberals, especially academic liberals. But, in a country that is pretty closely divided politically, it is not at all uncommon to find a whole academic department — sociology, for example — without a single Republican today or for the past three decades.

Academia is virtually a liberal monopoly but they show no misgivings about the lack of diversity of ideas on campus. It is only physical diversity that arouses the passions of liberals because that engages their attitudes toward particular social groups.

Liberals have often been critical of college fraternities for being exclusive but have seldom been critical of all-black student organizations or even all-black dormitories. Liberals have succeeded in virtually eliminating all-male colleges but applaud the role of women’s colleges.

Again, it is not principles but attitudes.

Among liberals’ most cherished views of themselves is that they are in favor of promoting the well-being of minorities in general and blacks in particular. But here again, it all depends on which segments of the minority community are involved.

Black welfare recipients or even black criminals have received great amounts of liberal political and journalistic support over the years. However, the great majority of blacks, who are neither criminals nor welfare recipients but are in fact their main victims, have their interests subordinated to the interests of their unsavory neighbors who are more in vogue in liberal circles.

Whatever the merits or demerits of liberal principles, those principles are often far less important than the attitudes which have become the hallmarks of contemporary liberalism.

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Going Viral: MoveOn and the Peacenik Crusade (National Review Online, 050407)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece is excerpted from NR White House Correspondent Byron York’s new book, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy. York’s new book details how MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore, 527 groups, Al Franken, and other Democratic activists built the biggest, richest, and best organized political movement in generations. Among other things, the book discusses MoveOn’s origins and how, in the summer of 2004, the group used its Internet organizing power in an attempt to create the impression in the media that there was a wave of anti-Bush anger sweeping the country.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, a young man named David Pickering was at his parents’ home in Brooklyn — he had graduated from the University of Chicago a few months earlier and was looking for a job — when he heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center. He went outside to see what was happening across the East River. Astonished by the sight, Pickering, an aspiring filmmaker, grabbed his video camera and hopped on the subway; unlike the thousands of people struggling to flee Manhattan, he was actually trying to make his way closer to Ground Zero. He got as far as an elevated train platform with a view of the burning towers. And there he stood as the buildings fell.

All day and night, Pickering shot interviews with people on the street, trying to get a sense of what they were feeling. They were stunned, horrified, angry, and confused. Of course, Pickering felt some of the same things himself, but as he reflected on what happened, an idea came to him: September 11 was an opportunity, perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, for peace, if only the U.S. government could be persuaded not to defend itself militarily. “It was this incredible moment in which all doors were opened and the world was seeming to come together,” he told me from Paris, where he was attending La Fémis, the French national film school. “I had this feeling that it would be a shame if that were spoiled by a spirit of vengeance.”

The next day, Pickering put his thoughts into writing. He drafted a petition imploring President George W. Bush and other world leaders to show “moderation and restraint” in responding to the attacks. He asked Bush “to use, wherever possible, international judicial institutions and international human rights law to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks, rather than the instruments of war, violence or destruction.”

That evening, September 12, Pickering sent the petition to about thirty friends, asking that they “sign” the document — electronically, of course — and send it on to others. By the next morning, he told me, there were between 3,000 and 4,000 signatures. Then a friend from the University of Chicago posted the petition on the school’s student server. A couple of days later, there were nearly 30,000 signatures.

One of the people who saw the petition was a young liberal activist named Eli Pariser. A 2000 graduate of Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Pariser was working for More Than Money, a left-leaning Cambridge-based nonprofit educational organization. He, too, opposed military retaliation for the terrorist attacks, and he had set up his own website on September 12 — he called it 9-11peace.org — with a message similar to Pickering’s. Looking for a way to attract attention, Pariser e-mailed Pickering to suggest they combine their efforts. Pickering quickly agreed.

That’s when the project took off. Within a month, about 500,000 people, perhaps half of them in the United States and the rest around the world, had signed the petition. Nearly every day, Pariser came up with new statements, and new petitions, to send out, and each of them managed to attract thousands of signatures. A born political rabble-rouser — the child of Vietnam War protesters, he is said to have started his picketing-and-demonstrating career at the age of seven — Pariser aggressively promoted the cause in ways that hadn’t occurred to the introspective Pickering.

Soon it paid off. Thousands of miles away, in Berkeley, California, Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, the husband-and-wife founders of the left-wing activist website MoveOn.org, were reading 9-11peace.org, and they were impressed by what they saw. A few years later, in September 2004, I asked Blades what it was that had caught her eye. She told me the whole phenomenon reminded her of some of MoveOn’s own petitions, including the calling for restraint after the September 11 attacks. “It was similar in results to the one we had,” Blades said. “It went viral on an international scale.”

MoveOn got in touch with Pariser, offering advice and technical assistance. Pariser was happy to accept, and soon he and MoveOn started working together, not only on the petition but on other issues as well. Not long after, Boyd and Blades offered him a job. For Pariser, it was an opportunity to join the world of big-time Internet organizing. For Boyd and Blades, it was a chance to recruit someone with lots of enthusiasm about both politics and the Internet. And one more thing: Pariser brought with him the e-mail addresses of the thousands of people who had signed the antiwar petition. For MoveOn, the list provided a healthy infusion of new contacts — people who could be asked to send contributions and sign petitions — which are the lifeblood of Internet activism.

Meanwhile, the swirl of events passed David Pickering by. During the Christmas holiday in 2001, he told me, Pariser broke the news that he had decided to join Boyd and Blades. With that, 9-11peace.org was over. Pickering wasn’t really upset; although he had strong political feelings, he wanted to make statements through films, not petitions. I asked whether he had any hard feelings about Pariser getting all the credit for their work. Not at all, Pickering told me. That kind of politics just wasn’t for him: “MoveOn was always Democrat in a way that I wasn’t necessarily interested in.” Not long afterward, he headed to France.

That brief period — the last few months of 2001 — was a critical time not just for Pickering and Pariser but also for MoveOn. In the months before September 11, MoveOn was an organization searching for a purpose. Boyd and Blades had been trying to stir opposition to the policies of the Bush administration — tax cuts, energy, education, just about everything else — but on the eve of the terrorist attacks, MoveOn had no urgent, overarching cause, as it had in 1998, when it opposed the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. The attacks, and the petition, changed that.

After September 11, MoveOn became, in effect, a peace organization — and a radical one at that. In doing so, it threw off the façade of left-leaning moderation that it had carefully maintained during the Clinton years, when a large number of Americans essentially agreed with its views on impeachment. Opposing military retaliation for the terrorist attacks — a position supported by only a tiny portion of the public — shifted MoveOn to the left fringe of American politics. Animated by a new cause, it pioneered new ways of raising money through the Internet, of organizing its members through nationwide meetings, and of attracting attention in the press. But even though MoveOn would recruit a group of dedicated followers and receive much admiring coverage, its pacifist core and strident anti-Bushism — its leaders were peace advocates who loved to produce smashmouth political ads — ensured that MoveOn would remain on the political margins. To this day, Boyd and Blades insist that they represent the views of the “real majority” of Americans. But events proved otherwise.

THE APPEARANCE OF A MAJORITY

[The Vast Wing Conspiracy traces MoveOn’s history from the Clinton years through its work during the race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. And then MoveOn jumped on the bandwagon for Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.]

As the presidential campaign progressed, the most prominent of MoveOn’s projects came in June, when the group joined the promotional effort for Michael Moore’s new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. The week before the film premiered, Pariser asked members to sign a pledge to see it during its first weekend. The point, he explained, was not simply to show support for Moore’s picture. The point was to create the impression in the press that Fahrenheit 9/11 was the leading edge of a wave of anti-Bush anger sweeping the country. “We launched this campaign around Fahrenheit 9/11 because to the media, the pundits, and the politicians in power, the movie’s success will be seen as a cultural referendum on the Bush administration and the Iraq war,” Pariser told MoveOn members. “Together, we have an opportunity to knock this ball out of the park.”

A few days later, on June 28, MoveOn organized “virtual house parties,” featuring a live Internet link with Moore, in homes, coffee shops, and theaters around the country. Before wildly enthusiastic crowds — I attended one such gathering, filled with true believers, at a movie theater in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood — Pariser extolled the success of the new movie. “Due in part to your efforts, Fahrenheit 9/11 was the number-one movie in the nation this weekend,” Pariser told his “virtual” audience. “Now we’re going to talk about how to turn that enormous momentum into action to beat Bush.” Moore then delivered what was pretty much a monologue — the technology of supporters posing questions via the Web didn’t seem to work all that well — and the evening ended with a please-register-to-vote appeal. “None of us want this just to be a movie where people just eat popcorn and go home,” Moore said.

When Fahrenheit 9/11 came under scrutiny from critics, MoveOn rushed to Moore’s defense. Pariser encouraged members to write their local newspapers to praise the movie. And they didn’t even have to write — all they had to do was click on MoveOn’s “easy-to-use letter to the editor tool,” enter a ZIP code, choose from a list of local papers, and then select a “pre-written” letter. “I am shocked that many critics have denounced Michael Moore’s new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, as unpatriotic and anti-soldier,” said one such letter. “I find it interesting that the most fervent critics of the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 seem more obsessed with attacking Michael Moore than in taking on the points he makes in his film,” said another. “Moore’s movie raises extremely difficult questions that deserve our attention as we move towards the November elections,” said a third.

The strategy worked. Scores of newspapers around the country printed the letters as if they had been written by the people who sent them. The “I am shocked” letter, for example, found its way into the Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Arizona Republic, the Fresno Bee, and about a dozen other papers. Much the same was true for the other letters. As they had during the movie’s premiere weekend, Pariser and MoveOn had taken another step forward in the effort to create the image of an energized majority.

As the campaign dragged on, MoveOn spent most of its money and energy on television ads, which had brought it so much publicity in the “Daisy” and “Bush in 30 Seconds” campaigns. The group released a commercial titled “He Knew,” which — shades of 1998 — called on Congress to censure the president for misleading the country on Iraq. Another ad suggested that Bush had deserted — “simply left” — his post with the Texas Air National Guard in the early 1970s. And “Quagmire” showed an American soldier sinking in quicksand in Iraq, his rifle raised above his head in a signal of surrender.

Each attracted some attention — the goal was always to have them played for free on news broadcasts — but there’s no evidence that the ads had any actual effect on the campaign. And some Democrats wondered whether the spots were really intended to help the party in the first place. “I don’t feel it’s been effective impacting the race at all,” one respected Democratic strategist — a former Howard Dean advisor — told me a few weeks before the November election. “I feel like it’s been effective in getting attention and generating hits for their website and generating contributions to MoveOn.”While that was not necessarily a bad thing, the strategist told me, it also was not terribly useful in a tough election. “The campaigns are trying to talk to swing voters,” he said, “who are far more rational and less emotional than the histrionics of MoveOn’s advertising would suggest.”

But the ads — and the money that paid for them — were moving MoveOn back into the center of Democratic activism. And perhaps the surest sign that MoveOn’s fringe politics had merged with the Democratic mainstream came in April 2004, when staffer Zack Exley left MoveOn to join the Kerry campaign as its director of Internet organizing. “As a master of online organizing, he’ll equip the most important presidential campaign in decades with an understanding of the powerful new techniques we’ve helped to pioneer,” Boyd and Blades said in a statement. Republicans protested that Exley’s move represented illegal “coordination” between MoveOn and the Kerry camp — the law forbade campaigns from working with outside groups like MoveOn. But the charge went nowhere, mostly because Exley really didn’t need to coordinate with his old colleagues. They were all doing pretty much the same thing, and he simply switched from one part of the team to another.

That is not to say the people at MoveOn took the anticoordination laws all that seriously. In June 2004, the entire MoveOn crew appeared at a Washington hotel to accept an award given by Campaign for America’s Future. It was a big dinner — George Soros was there, along with lots of movers and shakers in the Democratic 527 world, all mingling with one another. When Pariser — wearing a black T-shirt that said simply NOVEMBER 2 — spoke, he praised the recently departed Exley as someone who was “not on stage with us but who deserves some of the credit. Because of the campaign finance laws, we’re not in touch with Zack personally, so I wanted to use this opportunity to give him a very important message. So Zack, we’re very proud of you, and the important message is: Please win.”

The audience applauded, and the camera for the big-screen TV at the front of the stage zoomed in on none other than...Zack Exley. Sitting in the audience, hanging out with the people he was not supposed to be coordinating with, Exley seemed to be having a fine time.When his image went up on the screen, a person sitting nearby playfully put up his hand to shield Exley’s face from the camera in a gesture that said, “We know he’s not really supposed to be here.” Everyone had a laugh.

As the campaign ran its course, MoveOn’s last, biggest project was the Vote for Change Tour, a series of concerts featuring Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, REM, the Dixie Chicks, James Taylor, and other musicians. Held to benefit the voter turnout group America Coming Together, the tour was advertised as “20 Artists. 28 Cities. 9 Battleground States.” As that suggested, the purpose was not just to raise money; surely that could have been done in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, or San Francisco. But those cities were in safely Democratic states. For that matter, a lot of money could have been raised in Houston and Atlanta, but they were in safely Republican states. Rather, the point was to raise money while attracting lots of local news coverage in places like Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; Clearwater, Florida; and Columbus, Ohio. That way, it was hoped, the stars’ message would reach the maximum number of undecided voters.

The final concert of the tour was held on October 11 at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C. As it usually did with big events,MoveOn asked its members to mark the occasion with a nationwide series of house parties. The concert would air live on the Sundance Channel, and MoveOn members were to gather in homes to watch it unfold.

I attended a party in a modest home in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. The group, about twenty in all, was all white and mostly middle-aged; the boomer-friendly roster of performers seemed perfectly designed to appeal to them. One man wore an Air America Radio T-shirt, another a shirt that advertised the ticket of “Bush-Satan ‘04,” and yet another a shirt that said “Send Bush to Mars.” They were there to do more than just listen to music; their job, as assigned by Eli Pariser, was to write five letters each to undecided voters in Ohio.

They undertook the task with great earnestness. Yes, there were the occasional cracks — no one in the group could really understand how anyone could be undecided at that point, and one man said he wanted to begin his letter with “Dear idiots who can’t decide” — but overall, the partygoers tried their best to finish Pariser’s assignment. Some of the letters relied on clichés, mentioning, for example, how the 2004 election was “the most important of our lifetime.” One woman tried out a line on the group, saying, “How about, ‘It is time to turn this country in the right direction’?” That was a bit much; someone called out, “That’s a little trite, Elaine.”

By the time the concert was over, the letters were finished and duly sent off to MoveOn, and then on to Ohio. Did they persuade any undecided voters? Certainly not enough to put John Kerry over the top. In the end, the project seemed to resemble nothing so much as the campaign by a British newspaper, the Guardian, to encourage its leftist readers to write letters to voters in Clark County, Ohio, urging them to vote against George W. Bush. People in Clark County didn’t at all welcome such advice from outside. Their reaction to the letters from MoveOn in Washington, D.C., might well have been the same.

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Take Back the Word: Liberalism isn’t what it used to be (Weekly Standard, 050412)

IN EDWARD ALBEE’S PLAY The American Dream, Mommy proudly delights in her new beige hat until the moment someone refers to it as wheat colored, at which point she hurries back to the store in a fit of pique. Albee, of course, was being ironical, ridiculing his character’s weak-mindedness before an audience who would surely agree that roses smell good no matter what they’re named, and that insisting the sky is green can’t really change what the eye sees.

So what are we to make of the word “liberal,” whose current meaning is likely beyond the ken of both Albee and Shakespeare? In the not-so-distant past, liberal FDR believed that the enemies of other democracies were, by extension, America’s enemies—and liberals eagerly joined him in taking on the America Firsters here before fighting fascism over there. In his footsteps followed liberal Harry Truman, whose doctrine reflected the view that Soviet expansionism was insidiously anti-democratic and therefore innately illiberal. Then came JFK, the presidential avatar of modern liberalism, which he defined on his first day in office when he announced that America would “pay any price, bear any burden . . . in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” His statement seemed interwoven into the fabric of the burgeoning civil rights movement that was to become liberalism’s high-water mark at home—the one issue that ipso facto determined whether you were indeed a liberal. And it was ennobling to be one, sharing Martin Luther King’s dream that “all of God’s children” would someday be free.

BUT ALAS, somewhere over the last two decades or so, liberalism lost its root as the word liberal was perverted to the point of Orwellian inversion—and therefore rendered meaningless.

For example, rooting against the United States and for “insurgents” who delight in slaughtering innocents is many things (stupid, for one, also sad, evil, and short-sighted), but it is assuredly not liberal.

Decrying the American “religious right” for advocating a “culture of life” while simultaneously praising the neck-slicing Islamofascists is many things (start with pathetic), but it is not liberal.

Calling 3,000 workers who died when the buildings fell “little Eichmanns” is many things (vile, as well as repulsive and morally repugnant), but it is not liberal.

Protesting the painless execution of a sadistic murderer while cheering the removal of a feeding tube from a brain-damaged woman whose parents very much want her alive even if her estranged husband doesn’t, is many things (incomprehensible, indefensible, and unforgivably cruel), but it is not liberal.

Marching against war every time the United States is involved—in fact only when the United States is involved—regardless of the war’s purpose, is many things (reactionary for sure), but it is not liberal.

Crying that you’re being persecuted for exercising your right of free speech, when what happened was that other people less famous than you reacted to your ill-considered and offensive comments by exercising their own First Amendment rights, is many things (solipsistic comes to mind), but it is not liberal.

Pretending that the abuses committed by Americans at Abu Ghraib prison were on a par with the wholesale torture, rape, and murder committed there over decades is many things (overwrought, unenlightened, an insult to intelligence), but it is not liberal.

Depicting Condoleezza Rice in editorial cartoons as a big-lipped mammy who speaks Ebonics to her massa is many things (offensive, sickening), but it is not liberal.

Marching if you’re gay in support of “Palestine”—from which gay Palestinians try to escape to Israel before they’re tortured and murdered for their sexual orientation—is many things (nuts, as well as hilariously ill-informed), but it is far from liberal.

Advocating for murderous regimes such as Syria, Libya, and Saddam’s Iraq to sit on the United Nations Human Right Commission is many things (start with annoyingly ironic), but it is not liberal.

Decrying the human-rights abuses of regimes like Saddam’s Iraq and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, and then protesting against the wars that actually rid these countries of their murdering leaders, is many things (childish and willfully blind), but it is not liberal.

Equating Israeli self-defense measures against bombers who hide among civilians to the murders committed by the bombers who intentionally target civilians is many things (foolish, and probably anti-Semitic), but it is not liberal.

Believing that ethnicity determines identity—and accusing anyone of being “a disgrace to his race” because his views fall outside what’s considered orthodoxy—is many things (primarily racist), but it is definitely not liberal.

Invoking Nazis and/or the Taliban to describe duly-elected officeholders of another party is many things (tiresome, ridiculous), but it is not liberal.

Referring to illegals as “undocumented workers,” and to those who’d like to enforce immigration laws as evil and racist, is many things (self-destructive, short-sighted), but it is not liberal.

Joking about Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s because you

don’t abide his politics is many things (cold-hearted, intolerant, sophomoric), but it is far from liberal.

Calling the then-recently departed Yasser Arafat a “wily” and “enigmatic” “statesman”, as the New York Times did, is many things (nauseatingly PC, for one), but it is not liberal.

Regulating what children can and cannot eat at home so that they don’t become obese, as Hawaiian legislators recently tried to do; or trying to pass legislation which would require that every home be retrofitted for wheelchair access, as Santa Monica legislators did, is many things (repressive, despotic), but it is not liberal.

Shouting down speakers in the name of free speech is many things (fascistic, tyrannical, churlish), but it is not liberal.

Excusing Kofi Annan and the United Nations for the worst palm-greasing scandal in history—one that lengthened the reign of a tyrant and led to the deaths of countless thousands—is many things (inexcusable, also shameful), but it is not liberal.

Sadly, the list goes on (and on and on and on). Which is why those of us who consider ourselves classical liberals—and believe that language has power—ought to take back the word “liberal” from those on the left who debase its meaning. Many of them, I suspect, are like the body surfer who’s surprised to find that the ocean current has carried him half a mile from his towel on the beach. They would do well to get their bearings and gauge how far the political tide has removed them from their core beliefs.

Me, I know where my towel is—in the same place it’s been for 40 years. If that makes me “conservative,” well, a liberal by any other name . . .

Joel Engel is an author and journalist in Southern California. His latest book, By Duty Bound: Survival and Redemption in a Time of War, was just published by Dutton.

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Pie in the Sky Liberals (American Spectator, 050414)

By George Neumayr

In the 1960s, radicals began their march through the institutions of American society. They marched through them, stayed long enough to find the exits, and now end up right back where they started: on the outside, in a state of powerless, clawing anger, hurling pies at “establishment’ figures and wishing death upon congressmen and presidents.

The left’s feelings of impotent 1960s-style rage can be measured in Drudge Report headlines, such as: “Website sells ‘Kill Bush’ T-Shirts,” and in Drudge’s now weekly links to stories about pundits pied by liberals who clearly regard their victims as members of a new establishment. Like children who hurl their baby food as a form of protest, liberals in a state of infantile, frustrated rationality are reduced to tossing sugary and oily products at Bill Kristol and Pat Buchanan and stomping their feet at Ann Coulter.

Underneath the robes, vestments, and suits they collected during their march through the institutions remained the grubby attire of radicalism only now visible as they return to their posture of primitive protesting — a wild, speechless style of protest that throws light on liberalism’s essential hostility to reason and morality. Why do liberals who regard themselves as apostles of Enlightenment reason resort so quickly to intimidation and primitive exertion of will? Because fundamentally liberalism is based not on reason but on force. It is a willfulness writ large that becomes more vivid as liberals lose power and fail to control a people unpersuaded by claims that find no basis in reality and thus cannot be calmly demonstrated by reason.

When ancient radical Anthony Lewis says that liberals “need a new people,” he’s not joking: they need a different people with a different human nature, because the heart, mind, and soul God created will never find lasting satisfaction in their liberalism.

The only part of human nature that liberalism can appeal to is the part God didn’t create — man’s inherited tendency toward irrationality that Western philosophers used to call original sin or concupiscence.

Liberalism is concupiscence intellectualized — think about how often it ends up telling people to take the low road, feel good about being bad, renames raw selfishness and greed “justice,” encourages nihilism and cruelty in one form or another and then calls it self-expression. Because of its basic appeal to an irrational love of self, liberalism can always find an audience eager to hear a justification for letting wayward desires trump reason, but most people know that this will produce too much chaos to sustain a civilization, and so they rush back to conservatism once the yoke of liberalism grows too heavy and they return to their senses.

Liberalism’s revolutions are not brought about by reason — systematically presenting its philosophy to the people over time (that’s the last thing liberals want to do, as it gives the people too much of an opportunity to see its holes) — but by fraud or force. Liberalism can fool the people through sophistry and demagoguery, dressing up falsehoods in rhetoric and crassly appealing to people’s weaknesses, or it can use state power to engineer them. When fraud fails, force follows.

Because liberalism is a sustained violation of human nature, violence as a tool of change is never far from it. Its radicals use violence to get state power, then use state power to commit more of it. As the Enlightenment philosophes noted with pride, the most ruthless revolutions are carried out not against state power but with it.

In possession of state power, liberals can behave more decorously. There is no need to throw pies at conservatives when you can unleash bureaucrats and judges on them. But deprive liberals of that power and they regress rapidly, justifying any animalistic protest in the name of revolution. When Hillary Clinton spoke to feminists at the March for Women’s Lives last year, the feminists, sensing that power was ebbing away from them in Red State America, held aloft signs wishing that George Bush’s mother had aborted him (as well as signs wishing Pope John Paul II’s mom had “choice”).

The pie-throwing and death-to-Delay-and-Bush T-shirts are just the beginning. That and much worse will spread in proportion to liberalism’s loss of state power as the march through America’s institutions begins anew.

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Right Warrior: David Horowitz infuriates the Left (National Review Online, 050415)

“Sometimes I think I’ve been sent as an ex-radical to teach conservatives bad manners,” author and conservative activist David Horowitz likes to say. “Republicans are too polite.” If the tacit message here is that the Left is naturally rude, that was underscored last week when Horowitz was hit with a pie in the face while beginning a speech at Indiana’s Butler University.

Pie-throwing seems to have become almost standard practice now when conservative pundits visit college campuses: Just a week before Horowitz was chocolate-creamed, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol got hit with an ice-cream pie while speaking to students at Earlham College, as it happens also in Indiana.

But Horowitz has a particular talent for sending the opposition into paroxysms of rage, even when he’s being attacked and not on the attack himself. Daily Kos, for instance, called Horowitz a “sissyboy racist” in commenting on the pie-in-the-face incident. Kristol’s incident, by contrast, got the relatively bland Kos description: “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

I once wondered, during an interview at Horowitz’s home in Los Angeles, whether our psychotherapized culture means that people find his typically blunt way of making his points shocking.

“No, no, no,” he responded. “If you’re a conservative and say something blunt, people are shocked. If you’re on the left, people take no notice. Jesse Jackson says racist things every other speech he makes. The idea that black people are locked out in our society — give me a break. One of my notorious Salon columns was called ‘Guns Don’t Kill Blacks, Other Blacks Do.’ Well, it’s true: Ninety percent of black murder victims are killed by blacks, and I wrote the article because the NAACP had announced that it was launching a suit against gun manufacturers because so many young blacks were dying of gun wounds.”

“I think if I say it enough times,” he continued, “hone the edges of my words until they’re razor sharp, it will cut through this nonsense and maybe restore us to some kind of common sense.”

Horowitz’s L.A.-based Center for the Study of Popular Culture is the umbrella organization for his Front Page Magazine, the Individual Rights Foundation, and the Wednesday Morning Club (originally started by screenwriter Lionel Chetwynd), a group of Hollywood conservatives that meets every month or so, and to which I often go to hear speakers. Probably no right-winger can discuss the Left more knowledgably than Horowitz, who’s now in his mid-60s and was an antiwar demonstrator before today’s college students (and even some of their parents) were alive.

He was born the red-diaper baby of two Communist schoolteachers (the old-fashioned card-carrying kind) in New York. The family were such true believers, in fact, that Horowitz remembers his father remarking gloomily, “you’ve broken the mold” at the news he was about to have a third grandchild.

“In the ‘20s, U.S. Communist Party members considered it reactionary to have any children, since they would be obstacles to the revolutionary mission,” Horowitz explains in his autobiography Radical Son. “More than two indicated a lack of political focus.”

Horowitz had helped found the New Left movement that emerged during the late-’50s in Berkeley, and after spending a few years traveling around Europe lecturing about Marxism, he returned in 1968 as an editor of the radical magazine Ramparts. He also became an advisor and confidant to Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, an involvement that led to the first station of his journey from left to right.

In 1974, Horowitz recommended a friend, Betty Van Patter, to the Panthers as a bookkeeper. After Van Patter told Horowitz she was upset about what she’d seen in the Panthers’ records, she disappeared. Two weeks later her body was found, head bashed in, floating in San Francisco Bay. (The case was never solved.)

Horowitz had been aware of the Panthers’ thuggish habits — Newton had already killed a police officer and a young prostitute and beaten up fellow Panther Bobby Seale, who went into hiding — but had avoided facing them. Van Patter’s death sent him into a spiral of guilt, depression, and self-examination that destroyed his marriage, most of his friendships, and eventually his entire worldview.

He took a hard look at the Left’s hypocrisy and anti-Semitism, at its willingness to condemn repression in right-wing regimes like Chile and Nicaragua but never in Communist Cambodia or the Arab world, which the Soviets supported against Israel. He remembered Marx’s reference to the Devil’s motto in Goethe’s Faust — “Everything that lives deserves to perish” — and began to see his former comrades as violent nihilists in dangerous pursuit of an impossible, utopian dream.

“When the left called for ‘liberation,’” he observes in Radical Son, “what it really wanted was to erase the human slate and begin again.” By 1979, Horowitz had burned the last of his bridges with a piece called “A Radical’s Disenchantment” for The Nation.

But old friends have been replaced by new ones. George W. Bush has been a Horowitz fan since happening across his autobiography. “There was just a lot of history I remember from my early 20s come to life,” the president said. “And here was somebody who blew the whistle.” Since Sept. 11, however, Horowitz’s special focus has been defeatist pacifism, particularly that emanating from academia. He sees the contemporary Left as much more dangerous than the one he grew up with.

Horowitz has been attacking the rhetoric of Noam Chomsky et al. by placing ads in student papers advising demonstrators to “Think Twice Before You Bring the War Home” and by distributing brochures to colleges picturing the M.I.T. linguistics professor as “The Ayatollah of Anti-American Hate.” The two are old enemies — Horowitz has been tilting at Chomskyisms like the professor’s claim that the U.S. press is “the mirror image” of the Soviet press for a quarter-century — and Chomsky gets his own chapter, “The Nihilist Left,” in Horowitz’s latest book, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, a typically impolite polemic about what former CIA director James Woolsey has described as “the Hitler-Stalin pact of our time.”

Horowitz has been coming out with at least one new book a year since his 1998 autobiography. He’s now working on an encyclopedia of the Left. “We’ve already identified 82 left-wing foundations, beginning with Pew, Carnegie, and Ford,” he said. “There’s 57 times as much money on the left as on the right. Fortunately, these people are living in cloud cuckooland and don’t always spend their money well.”

This is the sort of extra dig that makes Horowitz particularly infuriating to those whose patriotism he questions. “I have made it my business to call the Left out on its anti-American agenda,” he said with a shrug, when I asked about this. “I refer to it as the Hate-America Left, and they don’t like that because the American Communist party proclaimed that Communism is 20th-century Americanism.”

“My parents, who were Communists, always pretended to be American patriots,” he continued. “You can always convince yourself you are: I love America, I just want it to be perfect, which it will be when it becomes a Soviet Communist state. Like everybody else, I see things that need to be improved. I just am mindful of the fact that they can be made a lot worse.”

— Catherine Seipp is a writer in California who publishes the weblog Cathy’s World. She is an NRO contributor.

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Why the Liberals Can’t Keep Air America From Spiraling In (WorldNetDaily, 050419)

The liberal Air America Radio, just past its first birthday, has probably enjoyed more free publicity than any enterprise in recent history. But don’t believe the hype: Air America’s left-wing answer to conservative talk radio is failing, just as previous efforts to find liberal Rush Limbaughs have failed.

Wait a second, you say, didn’t I read that Air America has expanded to more than 50 markets? That’s true, but let’s put things in perspective: Conservative pundit and former Reagan official William J. Bennett’s morning talk show, launched at the same time as Air America, reaches nearly 124 markets, including 18 of the top 20, joining the growing ranks of successful right-of-center talk programs (Limbaugh is still the ratings leader, drawing more than 15 million listeners a week).

And look at Air America’s ratings: They’re pitifully weak, even in places where you would think they’d be strong. WLIB, its flagship in New York City, has sunk to 24th in the metro area Arbitron ratings — worse than the all-Caribbean format it replaced, notes the Radio Blogger. In the liberal meccas of San Francisco and Los Angeles, Air America is doing lousier still.

So why do liberals fare so poorly on air? Some on the left say it’s because liberals are, well, smarter and can’t convey their sophisticated ideas to the rubes who listen to talk radio. Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, whose own stint as a talk-show host was a ratings disaster, gave canonical expression to this self-serving view. Conservatives “write their messages with crayons,” he maintained. “We use fine-point quills.”

Yet even if we were to grant the premise that conservative talk radio can sometimes be crudely simplistic — a tough charge to make stick against, say, one-time philosophy professor Bennett or Clarence Thomas’ former law clerk Laura Ingraham — how can anyone plausibly believe the right has a monopoly on misleading argument? Moreover, talk-show fans aren’t dummies. Industry surveys show that talk-radio fans vote in greater percentages than the general public, tend to be college-educated and read more magazines and newspapers than the average American.

Successful talk radio is conservative for three reasons:

• Entertainment value. The top conservative hosts put on snazzy, frequently humorous shows. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, observes: “The parody, the asides, the self-effacing humor, the bluster are all part of the packaging that makes the political message palatable.” Besides, the triumph of political correctness on the left makes it hard for on-air liberals to lighten things up without offending anyone.

• Fragmentation of the potential audience. Political consultant Dick Morris explains: “Large percentages of liberals are black and Hispanic, and they now have their own specialized entertainment radio outlets, which they aren’t likely to leave for liberal talk radio.” The potential audience for Air America or similar ventures is thus pretty small — white liberals, basically. And they’ve already got NPR.

• Liberal bias in the old media. That’s what birthed talk radio in the first place. People turn to it to help right the imbalance. Political scientist William Mayer, writing in the Public Interest, recently observed that liberals don’t need talk radio because they’ve got the big three networks, most national and local daily newspapers and NPR.

Unable to prosper in the medium, liberals have taken to denouncing talk radio as a threat to democracy. Liberal political columnist Hendrik Hertzberg, writing in the New Yorker, is typically venomous. Conservative talk radio represents “vicious, untreated political sewage” and “niche entertainment for the spiritually unattractive,” Hertzberg sneers.

If some liberals had their way, Congress would regulate political talk radio out of existence. Their logic is that scrapping Air America would be no loss if it also meant getting Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Bennett off the air.

To accomplish this, New York Democratic Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey has proposed reviving the Fairness Doctrine to protect “diversity of view,” and John Kerry recently sent out some signals that he too thought that might be a good idea.

Under the old Fairness Doctrine, phased out by Ronald Reagan’s FCC in the late ‘80s, any station that broadcast a political opinion had to give equal time to opposing views. A station running, say, Hannity’s show, would also have to broadcast a left-wing competitor, even if it had no listeners.

Pre-Reagan, talk radio in today’s sense simply didn’t exist. What station could risk it? But people listen to conservative talk because they want to, not because the post-Fairness Doctrine regulatory regime forces them to. To claim that “diversity of view” is lacking in the era of blogs and cable news, moreover, is downright silly. Complaints about fairness are really about driving out conservative viewpoints.

Sure, talk radio is partisan, sometimes overheated. But it’s also a source of argument and information. Together with Fox News and the blogosphere, it has given the right a chance to break through the liberal monoculture and be heard. For that, anyone who supports spirited public debate should be grateful.

Brian C. Anderson is senior editor of City Journal and author of “South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias,” newly released from Regnery.

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Scary Stuff: There’s a real venom on the Left against conservative Christians. (National Review Online, 050428)

Stanley Kurtz

Harper’s Magazine’s May cover stories about “The Christian Right’s War On America,” frightened me, although not the way Harper’s meant them to. I fear these stories could mark the beginning of a systematic campaign of hatred directed at traditional Christians. Whether this is what Harper’s intends, I cannot say. But regardless of the intention, the effect seems clear.

The phrase “campaign of hatred” is a strong one, and I worry about amplifying an already dangerous dynamic of recrimination on both sides of the culture wars. I don’t doubt that conservatives, Christian and otherwise, are sometimes guilty of rhetorical excess. Yet despite what we’ve been told, the most extreme political rhetoric of our day is being directed against traditional Christians by the left.

It’s been said that James Dobson overstepped legitimate bounds when he compared activist judges to the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, that was an ill-considered remark. I hope and expect it will not be repeated. But Dobson made that comparison extemporaneously and in passing. If that misstep was such a problem, what are we to make of a cover story in Harper’s that systematically identifies conservative Christianity with fascism? According to Harper’s, conservative Christians are making “war on America.” Can you imagine the reaction to a cover story about a “war on America” by blacks, gays, Hispanics, or Jews? Then there’s Frank Rich’s April 24 New York Times op-ed comparing conservative Christians to George Wallace, segregationists, and lynch mobs.

These comparisons are both inflammatory and mistaken. Made in the name of opposing hatred, they license hatred. It was disturbing enough during the election when even the most respectable spokesmen on the left proudly proclaimed their hatred of president Bush. Out of that hatred flowed pervasive, if low-level, violence. I fear that Bush hatred is now being channeled into hatred of Christian conservatives. The process began after the election and is steadily growing worse. This hatred of conservative Christians isn’t new, but it is being fanned to a fever pitch.

Chris Hedges, who wrote one of the Harper’s cover pieces, is a former reporter for the New York Times and a popular author among those who oppose the Iraq war. Hedges’s article will be noticed on the Left. I fear it will set the tone for a powerful new anti-Christian rhetoric. The article’s entitled “Feeling the Hate with the National Religious Broadcasters.” If you still don’t get it, notice the picture juxtaposing a cross with an attack dog. Of course, reducing America’s most popular Christian broadcasters to a hate group is itself a way of inviting hatred.

Hedges is worried about extreme Christian theocrats called “Dominionists.” He’s got little to say about who these Dominionists are, and he qualifies his vague characterizations by noting in passing that not all Dominionists would accept the label or admit their views publicly. That little move allows Hedges to paint a highly questionable picture of a virtually faceless and nameless “Dominionist” Christian mass. Hedges seems to be worried that the United States is just a few short steps away from having apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and witchcraft declared capital crimes. Compare this liberal fantasy of imminent theocracy to the reality of Lawrence v. Texas and Roper v. Simmons (the Supreme Court decision that appealed to European precedents to overturn capital punishment for juveniles).

Both of these decisions relied on the existence of a supposed national consensus on behalf of social liberalism. In conjuring up that false consensus, the Court treated conservative Christians as effectively nonexistent. That is the reality of where the law is, and where it is headed. It is completely unsurprising that after a long train of such decisions, conservative Christians have decided they’re tired of being trampled on by the courts. The reality we face is judicially imposed same-sex marriage in opposition to the clearly expressed wishes of the American people. Yet to cover its imperial judicial agenda, the Left is now concocting nonsensical fantasies of theocratically imposed capital punishment for witchcraft. Yes, witchcraft is back. Only now traditional Christians have been cast in the role of devious enemies who need to be ferreted out by society’s defenders.

Hedges invokes the warnings of his old Harvard professor against “Christian fascists.” Supposedly, Christians carrying crosses and chanting the Pledge of Allegiance are the new Hitlers. The Left is loathe to treat Islamic terrorists as moral reprobates, but when it comes to conservative Christians, Hedges calls on his fellow liberals to renounce their relativist scruples and acknowledge “the power and allure of evil.”

Hedges needn’t worry. For a very long time now, secular liberals have treated conservative Christians as the modern embodiment of evil, the one group you’re allowed to openly hate. Although barely noticed by the rest of us, this poison has been floating through our political system for decades. Traditional Christians are tired of it, and I don’t blame them. That doesn’t justify rhetorical excess from either side. But the fact of the matter is that the Left’s rhetorical attacks on conservative Christians have long been more extreme, more widely disseminated, and more politically effective than whatever the Christians have been hurling back. And now that their long ostracism by the media has finally forced conservative Christians to demand redress, the Left has abandoned all rhetorical restraint.

Of course, Harper’s has every right to accuse conservative Christians of making war on America, to treat them as a hate group, to warn us that conservative Christians are the new fascists, and to invite us to battle their supposedly Hitler-like evil. Certainly it would be folly to try to control this kind of anti-religious rhetoric legislatively. But I do believe the Harper’s attack on traditional Christians is dangerous, unfair, and extreme — far more so than Dobson’s rhetorical slip. The way to handle the Harper’s matter is to expose it and condemn it. Or is that sort of public complaint reserved for Dobson alone?

Meanwhile, as Harper’s levels vicious attacks on conservative Christians, the California assembly has passed a bill designed to prevent politicians from using “anti-gay rhetoric” in their political campaigns. Opposition to same-sex marriage itself is considered by many to be “anti-gay.” So has public opposition to same-sex marriage been legislatively banned? As a secular American, I don’t personally see homosexuality as sinful. Like many Americans, I welcome the increased social tolerance for homosexuality we’ve seen since the 1950s. Yet it’s outrageous to ban political speech by Christians who do sincerely understand homosexuality to be a sin.

Along with the move toward same-sex marriage in Scandinavia and Canada, we’ve seen systematic efforts to criminalize and silence expressions of the traditional Christian understanding of homosexuality. We’ve been told that the American tradition of free speech will prevent that sort of abuse here. Yet now, California’s battle for same-sex marriage is calling forth legislation that takes us way too far down the path toward banning the expression of traditional Christian views. While Harper’s is spinning out fantasies of a Christian theocracy, the California state legislature gives us the reality of a secular autocracy.

The companion piece to the Hedges article in Harper’s is a long report by Jeffrey Sharlet on Christian conservatives in Colorado. Sharlet notes the conviction of these Christians that they’re being turned into “outcasts in their own land.” He treats the notion that traditional Christians need to flee the urban centers of Blue America as a paranoid fantasy. Well, California’s latest attempt to control political speech shows the fears are real. And what happens to traditional Christians who refuse to flee the cities? King’s College, a quality Christian school that’s decided to move from the countryside to the heart of New York City, is about to be destroyed by the New York State Board of Regents. It’s hard to see in this move anything other than anti-Christian bias.

Conservative Christians have good reason to fear cultural ostracism. The mere expression of their core religious views is being legislated against. The courts have banned traditional morality as a basis for law and have turned instead to secular Europe for guidance. Traditional Christians can’t even set up a college in New York City. And now Harper’s is calling them evil fascists. Yes, conservative Christians have the ear of the president and of the Republican leadership — you bet they do. Given the way they’re being treated in the culture at large, they’d be fools not to protect themselves by turning to politics.

Yet traditional Christians are playing defense, not offense. Harper’s speaks of a “new militant Christianity.” But if Christians are increasingly bold and political, they’ve been forced into that mode by 40 years of revolutionary social reforms. David Brooks has already explained how Roe v. Wade unnecessarily polarized the country, making it impossible for religious conservatives to have a voice in ordinary political give and take. We’re still paying the price for that liberal judicial arrogance.

Now judicial imposition of same-sex marriage has poured fuel on the fire. When Frank Rich compares conservative Christians to segregationist bigots, when Chris Hedges compares conservative Christians to evil fascist supporters of Hitler, its the Christian understanding of homosexuality that’s driving the wild rhetoric. None of the American Founders would have approved of same-sex marriage, yet suddenly we’re expected to equate opposition to gay marriage with Hitler’s genocidal persecutions.

Last Sunday’s New York Times gave us a clear explanation of the Catholic Church’s understanding of sexuality. The Catholic position rests on the idea that there is a special tie between marriage, motherhood, and sexuality. Now there’s room to differ on the nature and extent of the links between parenthood, marriage, and sexuality. Traditional Catholics will see the matter differently from traditional Protestants, who in turn will see things differently from secular social conservatives. Whatever your view on how marriage, sexuality, and parenthood ought to be related, there can be little doubt that important social consequences will follow — and have followed — from how we handle these issues. We can argue about whether same-sex marriage will strengthen or weaken the family, but the debate itself is, or ought to be, necessary and legitimate.

Yet to much of the mainstream media, the complicated question of how society should structure the relationship between sexuality and the family has been reduced to an all-or-nothing choice between bigotry and freedom. The overreach of this sort of intolerant secular liberalism is the real source of our cultural battles. The drive for same-sex marriage has been every bit as much of a political disaster for this country as the ill-conceived conflict over abortion. The mistake was to frame the debate as a fight against bigotry instead of as a tough decision about how to structure our most fundamental social institution. On same-sex marriage, the Left took the easy way out — not only using the courts to make an end-run around the public, but deliberately framing the issue in a way designed to silence and stigmatize all opposition.

Now we see the results of this terrible decision. Traditional Christians are openly excoriated in the mainstream press as evil, fascist, segregationist bigots. Their political speech is placed under legislative threat. Their institutions of higher education are attacked and destroyed. Naturally, America’s traditional Christians are fighting back. They’ve turned to the political process in hopes of securing for themselves a space in which to exist. Weary of being the butt of hatred by those who proclaim tolerance, conservative Christians are complaining, with justice, about the all-too-successful attempts to exclude them from society.

If “Dominionists” try to force all Americans to pay church tithes, or call for the execution of blasphemers and witches, I will oppose them. But that is not the danger we face. The real danger is that a growing campaign of hatred against traditional Christians by secular liberals will deepen an already dangerous conflict. The solution is to continue our debates, but to change their framing. Conservative Christians cannot stop complaining of exclusion and prejudice until cultural liberals pare back their own excesses. Let’s stop treating honest differences on same-sex marriage as simple bigotry. Let’s stop using the courts as a way around democratic decision-making. Let’s stop trying to criminalize religious expression. Let’s allow Christians to establish their own institutions of higher learning. And let’s stop calling traditional Christians fascists. It would be nice if the folks complaining about “Justice Sunday” addressed these issues as well.

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Supping at the children’s table (townhall.com, 050428)

Suzanne Fields

It’s a cliche of punditry that Republicans are the Daddy Party and the Democrats are the Mommy Party. The metaphors are out of date. We must look at the Republicans as the Adult Party and the Democrats as naughty children sent to sup at the children’s table.

Republicans lead, Democrats rebel. George W. nominates serious judges and the Democrats throw tantrums. Conservatives, dominant in the Adult Party, who try to conserve traditional ideals are, ironically, in the vanguard. Conservatives have come to the majority by expressing new ideas with passion and the liberals at the children’s table throw tantrums: “Look at me, look at me.” The betting here is that the new liberal radio and television talk shows and celebrity blogs won’t catch Rush Limbaugh, Fox News or Matt Drudge any time soon.

Matt Drudge, who celebrates ten years of blogging, is about to be challenged by Arianna Huffington, who was a liberal who became a conservative who lately has been a liberal, was last seen in public knocking over the microphones in her panic to get a little attention at Arnold Schwarzenegger’s announcement for governor. She’s gathered a coterie of celebrities for her blog, mostly cut from Hollywood and Manhattan, the likes of Norman Mailer, Warren Beatty and Walter Cronkite.

“In the Fox era,” Nora Ephron, the novelist and screenwriter, told the New York Times, “everything we can do on our side to even things out, now that the media is either controlled by Rupert Murdoch or is so afraid of Rupert Murdoch that they behave as if they were controlled by him, is great. But sometimes, I may merely have a cake recipe.” (She’s unlikely to give Drudge heartburn.)

Nothing reflects the adult-children’s table phenomenon like the campus. Liberal students, egged on by aging counterculture professors, throw pies in the faces of Pat Buchanan, Bill Kristol and David Horowitz to stop any talk about tolerance and academic freedom. Pies in the face suggest the throwers have nothing to say. Nora Ephron might blog one of her pie recipes.

Conservatives were in the embattled minority for a long time; it was only yesterday that National Review was the only conservative magazine on the racks, and anyone looking for a conservative radio or television commentator would have to drive deep into the boonies to find one on a lonely 250-watt station. Conservatives are still a small minority in the faculty lounges of the universities, and as lonely as this was for conservatives, the experience taught them to sharpen their arguments. Defending themselves was a full-time job, and on many campuses it still is.

It’s the liberals, not the conservatives, who reveal sloppy and cliched thinking now. They hang out with like-minded politically correct dogmatists, rarely bumping against anyone who doesn’t look and sound just like themselves. Politically incorrect professors and students can’t indulge the luxury of glibness. Throwing lemon-custard pies may be more fun but throwing out ideas is more persuasive. Food nourishes bodies and food for thought nourishes minds.

George W. beat John Kerry by almost 20%age points among married adults with children. These are the adults who insist on ethical standards for their children, who yearn for a culture that appeals to values derived from faith and morality. They’re fed up with Hollywood and the entertainment industry that pushes a prurient pop culture.

Some adult Democrats, fed up with the fare at the children’s table, understand this. A new study by the Progressive Policy Institute, the policy arm of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, describes a “parents gap.” Many Democrats who might have voted for a Democrat didn’t vote for John Kerry because they liked what George W. was saying about the way the entertainment culture makes it difficult for parents “to protect their kids from morally corrosive images and messages.” Many of these parents were liberal when they were younger, but have discovered “lifestage conservatism.” They’re impatient with Democrats who refuse to put away childish things.

As parents, they connect with the adult community, develop religious affiliations and are more likely to vote for candidates who show respect for right and wrong. “Parenthood is a life-transforming experience,” writes Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, author of the report. “Democrats cannot be a party of the future if they lose their connection to the very people who are creating the future by rearing the next generation.”

What these Democrats want is a grown-up meal that sticks to the ribs. They’re tired of Cap’n Crunch and the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the children’s table.

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Dominionist Domination: The Left runs with a wild theory. (National Review Online, 050502)

What is the real agenda of the religious far Right? I’ll tell you what it is. These nuts want to take over the federal government and suppress other religions through genocide and mass murder, rather than through proselytizing. They want to reestablish slavery. They want to reduce women to near-slavery by making them property, first of their fathers, and then of their husbands. They want to execute anyone found guilty of pre-martial, extramaritial, or homosexual sex. They want to bring back the death penalty for witchcraft.

But aren’t extremists like this far from political power? On the contrary, the political and religious movement called “Dominionism” has gained control of the Republican party, and taken over Congress and the White House as well. Once they take over the judiciary, the conversion of America to a theocracy will be sealed. The Dominionists are very close to achieving their goal. Once they have the courts in their hands, a willing Dominionist Republican-controlled Congress can simply extend the death penalty to witchcraft, adultery, homosexuality, and heresy. The courts will uphold all this once conservatives are in control, since Scalia himself appears to be a Dominionist.

Shocking as it seems, Dominionists have gained extensive control of the Republican party, and the apparatus of government throughout the United States. Yet Dominionists continue to operate in secrecy. It is estimated that 35 million Americans who call themselves Christian adhere to Dominionism, although most of them are unaware of the true nature of their own beliefs and goals. Dominionism has met its timetable for the complete takeover of the American government. It would be a mistake, by the way, to think of Dominionists as fundamentalist Protestants alone. Dominionism has stealthily swept over America, incorporating conservative Roman Catholics and Episcopalians within its ranks. And of course, Dominionists are allied with the neoconservative followers of the political philosopher, Leo Strauss. The quest of these neoconservatives for power and world domination is a self-conscious program of pure, unmitigated evil.

You don’t believe me? Well, consider the fact that on December 24, 2001, Pat Robertson resigned his position as president of the Christian Coalition. Religious conservatives understood very well that Robertson had stepped aside to allow the new president of the United States to take his rightful place as the head of the true American Holy Christian Church. Robertson openly revealed at least a portion of his Dominionist plans on The 700 Club on May 13, 1986, when he clearly stated: “We can change the government, we can change the court systems, we can change the poverty problem, we can change education...We can make a difference.”

For Dominionists, possibly the single-most-important event of the last half of the 20th century occurred when Jim Jones proved that religious people would follow a leader, even to their deaths. Lest we all end up like the followers of Jim Jones, it’s time for Americans to take a leaf from those rare, brave souls, like George Soros. Following Soros, we’ve got to stand up to the Dominionist menace. There is an infection, a religious and political pathology that has corrupted our churches. Those we have trusted have embraced evil. Let us pray that Americans will go to the voting booth and finally free this country from the Republican Dominionist menace.

But They’re Serious

O.K., it’s me again. I’m back from the fever swamps of the Left, which I’ve been exploring ever since I discovered a wild conspiracy theory about conservative Christians in the latest cover story of Harper’s Magazine. You want political paranoia? You want guilt by association? You want flat-out looniness? Well, Joe McCarthy’s got nothing on the good liberal folks who are warning us about a takeover by “Dominionist” Christians. What you’ve just read is a composite I’ve created (often word for word) by drawing on a couple of web-sites I’ll link you to in a moment. The disturbing thing is that this sort of conspiratorial nonsense is being taken seriously by real media and political players.

There is, in fact, a fringe Christian group of “Dominionists” or “Reconstructionists,” who really would like to see an American theocracy, and a return to the death penalty for blasphemy, adultery, sodomy, and witchcraft. The dystopian political program of this utterly marginal, extremist sect has absolutely no traction with anyone of significance. But that hasn’t stopped conspiracy mongers on the Left from imagining a murderous Christian plot to destroy America. I’ve found a number of Lefty sites that link to the following description of Dominionism at religioustolerance.org. This description includes the claim that Dominionists “advocate genocide for followers of minority groups and non-conforming members of their own religion.” I’m not sure this is accurate, even for the minuscule number of actual Dominionists. But the disturbing thing is the way this and other Left-leaning sites use logical sleight-of-hand to tar ordinary evangelicals with the madcap musings of a few fevered “Dominionists.”

You can see the basic technique of the conspiracy mongers in this 1994 report on the Dominionists for Public Eye Magazine. All you have to do is quote a fringe Dominionist desperate to prove that his radical ideas are catching on. Dominionists have a long-term political strategy to establish a full-blown American theocracy based on Old Testament law. And look! Some other Christians want to participate in the political process, too. They even believe in developing a long-term political strategy! Ah ha! That must mean that, even though they are “unaware of the original source of their ideas,” conservative Christians are in fact under the influence of authentic Dominionists. Voila. By quoting a pathetic Dominionist extremist’s desperate efforts to prove his own influence, clever liberals can now argue that the ultimate goal of all conservative Christians is the re-institution of slavery, and execution for blasphemers and witches.

This theory reminds me of the poor kid who thought he’d caused the great New York City blackout of 1965 because he happened to throw a rock at a transformer the moment the lights went out. Conservative Christians didn’t turn to politics because they were egged on by wild-eyed Dominionists. They were goaded into defensive action by the post-sixties secularist challenge to their way of life. Christians would have taken up politics whether a silly Dominionist fringe existed or not. In fact, Dominionism itself is nothing but a hapless and hopeless response to the secular social changes of the past forty years. But the Left has decided that it’s in their interest to buy into the Dominionists’ own bogus and pathetic claims of influence — and to exaggerate even those bogus claims beyond recognition.

The champion of this approach appears to be Kathryn Yurica, whose piece, “The Despoiling of America,” was the source for much of the account at the beginning of this piece. (Unlike religoustolerance.org, Yurica does not use the word “genocide” and does not talk about re-instituting slavery. She speaks only of extending the death penalty to things like adultery, rebelliousness, homosexuality, witchcraft, effeminateness, and heresy.) Yurica’s article is so wild-eyed and strange that it would barely be worth mentioning, were Yurica not a featured speaker at a recent conference called, “Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right.” That conference, held this past weekend, was supported by the National Council of Churches, People for the American Way, The Nation, The Village Voice, and United Americans for Separation of Church and State. (You can read a Washington Times report on the conference here.) [Kwing Hung: all liberal organization; and not amazingly include NCC.]

I noted last week that Dominionist conspiracy theory broke into the mainstream with the latest cover story of Harper’s Magazine. (Yurica herself now supplements her own account of the Dominionist conspiracy with a link to one of those Harper’s articles.)

The notion that conservative Christians want to reinstitute slavery and rule by genocide is not just crazy, it’s downright dangerous. The most disturbing part of the Harper’s cover story (the one by Chris Hedges) was the attempt to link Christian conservatives with Hitler and fascism. Once we acknowledge the similarity between conservative Christians and fascists, Hedges appears to suggest, we can confront Christian evil by setting aside “the old polite rules of democracy.” So wild conspiracy theories and visions of genocide are really excuses for the Left to disregard the rules of democracy and defeat conservative Christians — by any means necessary.

In the wake of their big New York City conference, we’ll see what, if anything, The Nation, The Village Voice, and People for the American Way actually do with this newly fashionable Dominionist conspiracy theory. I hope a little sunlight suffices to put a stop to these ill-advised attack on conservative Christians. I guess we’ll soon enough learn what the real agenda of the irreligious far Left actually is.

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Exposing liberal pieties (Washington Times, 050503)

Russell Kirk once famously predicted that liberalism would collapse because of its failure of imagination, that is, its inability to create a world that inspired affection and loyalty. Instead, liberalism relied on a merely utilitarian calculus or the endless assertion of limitless rights. But Mr. Kirk likely would not have anticipated the messengers of liberalism’s end: the South Park conservatives, who have entered the picture as a growing political and social force.

Who are the South Park conservatives? They are devotees of “South Park,” a wildly successful cartoon TV series revolving around a group of schoolchildren and their dysfunctional elders. The show is crass, filthy and most definitely a cartoon for adults only. But as Brian Anderson shows in this provocative new book, “South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias” is in some respects also a deeply conservative program. It also may be a harbinger of a major rightward shift in the popular culture in America.

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Mr. Anderson, an editor of the prestigious City Journal published by the Manhattan Institute, uses the South Park conservatives as a wedge to introduce a host of new cultural indicators that show that the hegemony of liberalism in the nation’s cultural life may be ending. In a series of short, pointed chapters, he analyzes the rise of conservative talk radio, the Internet, mainstream media and, of course, “South Park” itself.

As he notes, “Almost overnight, conservatives have mastered the proliferating new media of talk radio, cable television and the Internet, and they have benefited from a big shift in book publishing.” This shift has had significant repercussions already. Recognizing the explosion of a right-leaning audiences, mainstream publishers have established imprints to find and sell conservative books, and mainstream networks (such as MSNBC) have hired right-wing hosts.

More importantly, the new conservative media has scored some effective points against the old establishment. In particular, Mr. Anderson notes that the controversy over CBS News’ use of forged documents in an anti-Bush piece was spurred at first almost entirely by conservative Internet sites. Mr. Anderson even credits President Bush’s 2004 election to the rise of conservative media; right-wing talk shows and Web sites plugged books critical of John Kerry and forced the media — and the Kerry campaign — to belatedly respond to charges that in a different era would have been ignored.

“South Park” itself, as the author explains in a chapter on the show, mercilessly exposes liberal pieties about politics and society with an intensity and wit that has perhaps never before been seen on television. Mr. Anderson ties its humor to a long tradition of anti-elitist humor and sarcasm, which has been a staple of American social criticism but which seemed out of place in the liberal consensus.

Mr. Anderson concludes that while it is too early to dismiss liberalism’s still-dominant presence in media, entertainment and education, he is hopeful that the tide has turned. Interviewing college students, for example, showed him how impatient they were with liberal pieties.

The author identifies several reasons for the change, including the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the “Left’s broader intellectual and political failure.” College students, who grew up after Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War, and for whom segregation and the economic stagnation of the 1970s are just a dim memory, simply do not accept the liberal worldview, and they have equal impatience with the permissive individual values that students of a previous generation believed were “liberating.”

It is perhaps a slight exaggeration to call the groups Mr. Anderson profiles all conservative. They are more precisely anti-liberal. Whether these rejections of liberal groupthink will blossom into a more substantive conservatism remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the cultural trends Mr. Anderson has discovered are only likely to increase over the next decade or so. “South Park Conservatives” is an important guide to the first major cultural shift of the 21st century.

Gerald J. Russello is working on a book on the ideas of Russell Kirk.

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A bankruptcy of values and ideas (townhall.com, 050503)

David Limbaugh

Two recent news items, both involving Democrat senators, underscore the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the modern Democratic Party.

CNS News focuses on Senator Hillary Clinton’s lurch to the right in anticipation of her imminent presidential run. Of course, this is nothing new; Hillary has been plotting and implementing her move for some time.

Despite being a feminist icon and a favorite of the antiwar, anti-Christian Left, Hillary has been laying the groundwork for what would appear to be a complete break with those constituencies.

She has pretended to be of the Michelle Malkin school on illegal immigration, has begun wearing religion on her sleeve, has been General Patton on national defense, and has seemed to vacillate on abortion — a blasphemy that by rights should earn her enduring enmity from Liberaldom.

During a speech to the New York State Family Planning Providers (NYSFPP) in January, Hillary said, “I, for one, respect those who believe with all their hearts and conscience that that there are no circumstances under which any abortion should ever be available.”

I, for one, seriously doubt Hillary’s sincerity, based on her past position on abortion, other statements she made during her speech and her present incentive to transform her image. Even if Hillary has cultivated a new tolerance for pro-lifers (dream on), it’s highly unlikely her position has changed on abortion, no matter what rhetorical bones she throws to the right.

As CNS reminds us, it was Hillary, in 1994, while in Beijing, who coined the phrase “Women’s rights are human rights.” Janice Crouse, a Christian activist, observed that Hillary wasn’t referring merely to the right of women “to earn the same salary, the right to have opportunity and so forth.” She was talking about “the whole women’s rights agenda, which includes abortion, acknowledgment and mainstreaming lesbianism and the whole range of gender issues.” Exactly.

Even during her speech to the NYSFPP, Hillary said that Roe v. Wade (the infamous 1973 Supreme Court abortion case) was “a landmark decision that struck a blow for freedom and equality for women.” She told the audience she looked forward “to working with all of you as we fight to defend it in the coming years.”

While Hillary said she hoped those on opposite sides of the abortion issue could find “common ground,” it’s obvious that what she is really looking for is common ground between herself and a sufficient number of voters.

Do you honestly think it’s conceivable that Hillary would appear before a militantly pro-abortion group and say nice things about pro-lifers were she not running for the presidency?

Regardless of what Hillary’s purportedly changed attitudes show about her, they speak greater volumes about the political party she seeks to lead. The fact is that Hillary remains a darling of the Left and all its fringe constituency groups despite her increasingly heretical declarations.

Just as when John Kerry masqueraded as a hawk on national defense and the Michael Moore/Howard Dean wing of the party stayed right on board with him, Hillary has virtual immunity for any such apostasies. Why? Because they know she’ll always be a card-carrying, hardcore liberal no matter how much she pretends otherwise.

Democrats tell us the American people share their vision, yet many of their leaders won’t be honest about who they are and what they believe. Please tell me how it’s possible that Hillary Clinton could be the odds-on favorite among committed liberals if she truly believes in the center-to-right positions she’s been mouthing lately? She doesn’t, and her base knows it. It’s a conspiratorial deceit of staggering proportions. The party is morally bankrupt, lacking the integrity to be square with the people about its core principles.

But moral bankruptcy is only half the story. The party is also intellectually bankrupt, standing for little more than obstructing the Republican majority. For a seminar on the party’s intellectual vacuousness, read the transcript of Chris Wallace’s interview of Sen. Patrick Leahy on “Fox News Sunday” concerning the Democrats’ ideas on Social Security. Wallace repeatedly implored Leahy to provide just one idea the Democrats had on Social Security, and all he could say is that President Bush is unwilling to negotiate — which is both patently false and annoyingly nonresponsive.

Democrat leaders are counting on the American people to be too dense to see through their games, such as pretending to be something they’re not (Hillary), and pretending to be part of the solution instead of the problem (Leahy).

Given this poverty of values and character in the Democratic hierarchy, it’s all the more frustrating that Republicans can’t seem to get their act together.

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Democratic Suicide: When will the Dems start winning again? When they start living and speaking like normal folks. (National Review Online, 050506)

We are in unsure times amid a controversial war. Yet the American people are not swayed by the universities, the major networks, the New York Times, Hollywood, the major foundations, and NPR. All these bastions of doctrinaire liberal thinking have done their best to convince America that George W. Bush, captive to right-wing nuts and Christian fanatics, is leading the country into an abyss. In fact, a close look at a map of red/blue counties nationwide suggests that the Democrats are in deepening trouble.

Why? In a word, Democratic ideology and rhetoric have not evolved from the 1960s, although the vast majority of Americans has — and an astute Republican leadership knows it.

Class

The old class warfare was effective for two reasons: Americans did not have unemployment insurance, disability protection, minimum wages, social security, or health coverage. Much less were they awash in cheap material goods from China that offer the less well off the semblance of consumer parity with those far wealthier. Second, the advocates of such rights looked authentic, like they came off the docks, the union hall, the farm, or the shop, primed to battle those in pin-stripes and coiffed hair.

Today entitlement is far more complicated. Poverty is not so much absolute as relative: “I have a nice Kia, but he has a Mercedes,” or “I have a student loan to go to Stanislaus State, but her parents sent her to Yale.” Unfortunately for the Democrats, Kias and going to Stanislaus State aren’t too bad, especially compared to the alternatives in the 1950s.

A Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, George Soros, or Al Gore looks — no, acts — like he either came out of a hairstylist’s salon or got off a Gulfstream. Those who show up at a Moveon.org rally and belong to ANSWER don’t seem to have spent much time in Bakersfield or Logan, but lots in Seattle and Westwood. When most Americans have the semblance of wealth — televisions, cell phones, cars, laptops, and iPods as well as benefits on the job — it is hard to keep saying that “children are starving.” Obesity not emaciation is the great plague of the poorer.

So the Democrats need a little more humility, a notion that the country is not so much an us/them dichotomy, but rather all of us together under siege to maintain our privileges in a tough global world — and at least one spokesman who either didn’t go to prep school or isn’t a lawyer.

Race

The Democrats, at least in the north, were right on the great civil-rights debate of 1960s. Yet ever since, they have lost credibility as they turned to the harder task of trying to legislate an equality of result — something that transcends government prejudice and guarantying a fair playing field, and hinges on contemporary culture, behavior, values, and disciple.

The country is also no longer white and black, but brown, yellow, black, white, and mixed. When a liberal UC Berkeley chancellor remonstrates about “diversity” and “multiculturalism,” lamenting that his merit-based entrance requirements have sadly resulted in too few “Hispanics” and “African-Americans” (he ignores that whites at Berkeley also enroll in numbers less than their percentages in the state population), what he really means — but won’t say — is that there are apparently too many Asians, about 45% enrolled in Berkeley versus about 12% in the state population.

What will he do? Praise a hard-working minority that overcame historic prejudice against them? Hardly. We suspect instead the typical liberal solution is on the horizon: some clever, but secretive administrative fix that contravenes Proposition 209, and then denies that compensatory action is aimed against the Asians it is aimed at.

In short, race-based thinking beyond protection of equal opportunity is fraught with public suspicion, especially when so many loud spokesmen for minorities — Jesse Jackson or Kweisi Mfume — either are elites themselves or do not practice the morality they preach. An Alberto Gonzales or Condoleezza Rice comes across as proud, competent, and an expert rather than a tribalist, while those in the Black Caucus or La Raza industry appear often the opposite. Would you want a sober Colin Powell or an often unhinged Harry Belafonte and surly Julian Bond in your party? Did Condoleezza Rice, answering acerbic senators without notes, or Barbara Boxer, droning off a prepared script, appear the more impressive in recent confirmation hearings? A Democratic “minority” appointment to a cabinet post at education or housing is one thing; a Republican belief that the best candidates for secretary of state, national security advisor, and attorney general are incidentally minorities is quite another.

Age

The Democrats won on the Social Security issue years ago. Annual cost-of-living increases and vast expansions to the program helped to ensure that we no longer witness — as I did in rural California in the early 1960s — elderly with outhouses and without teeth and proper glasses. In fact, despite the rhetoric of Washington lobbying groups, those over 65 are now the most affluent and secure in our society, and are on the verge of appearing grasping rather than indigent. They bought homes before the great leap in prices; they went to college when it was cheap; and they often have generous pensions in addition to fat social security checks. So ossified rhetoric about the “aged” in the social security debate — increasingly now not so much the Greatest Generation of WWII and the Depression as the first cohort of the self-absorbed baby boomers — is self-defeating.

George Bush is appealing to a new group that really is threatened — the under-35’s who cannot afford a house, have student loans, high car and health insurance, and are concerned that their poor therapeutic education will leave them impoverished as China and the rest of Asia race ahead.

Defense

The problem with Democrats is that Americans are not convinced that they will ever act in any consistent manner. We can argue about Afghanistan, but if one were to go back and read accounts in October 2001 about hitting back, the news reflected liberals’ doubt about both the wisdom and efficacy of taking out the Taliban.

Would Al Gore have invaded Afghanistan less than a month after 9/11? If John Kerry were President and China invaded Taiwan, what would he do?

What would an administration advised by Madeline Albright, Barbara Boxer, Joe Biden, Jamie Rubin, Nancy Pelosi, or Jimmy Carter do if Iran sent a nuke into Israel, or North Korea fired a series of missiles over the top of Japan?

Or, if al Qaeda, operating from a sanctuary in Iran or Syria, took out the Sears Tower, how would a Kennedy, Kerry, or Gore respond? Six cruise missiles? A police matter? Proper work for the DA? Better “intelligence”? Let’s work with our allies? Get the U.N. involved?

Whatever we think of George Bush, we know he would do something real — and just what that something might be frightens into hesitation — and yes, fear — many of those who would otherwise like to try something pretty awful.

Will they ever learn?

Until Democrats promote someone who barks out something like, “We can and will win in Iraq,” or, “Let the word go out: An attack on the United States originating from a rogue state is synonymous with its own destruction,” or some such unguarded and perhaps slightly over-the-top statement, I don’t think that the American people will entrust their safety to the party. John Kerry, to be frank, is no Harry Truman, and time is running out for Hillary Clinton to morph into Scoop Jackson.

Philosophically, two grand themes explain the Democratic dilemma. One, the United States does not suffer from the sort of oppression, poverty, or Vietnam nightmares of the 1950s and 1960s that created the present Democratic ideology. Thus calcified solutions of big government entitlements, race-based largess, and knee-jerk suspicion of U.S. power abroad come off as either impractical or hysterical.

Second, there is the widening gulf between word and deed — and Americans hate hypocrites most of all. When you meet a guy from the Chamber of Commerce or insurance association, you pretty much know that what you see is what you get: comfort with American culture and values, an upscale lifestyle that reflects his ideology and work, and no apologies for success or excuses for lack of same.

But if you listen to Dr. Dean and his class venom, it hardly seems comparable with how he lives or how he was brought up. John Kerry’s super power boat, Teresa Kerry’s numerous mansions, Arianna Huffington’s gated estate, George Soros’s jet, Ted Turner’s ranches, Sean Penn’s digs — all this and more, whether fairly or unfairly, suggest hypocrisy and insincerity: Something like, “High taxes, government regulation, racial quotas, and more entitlements won’t hurt me since I have so much money at my own disposal anyway, but will at least make me feel good that we are transferring capital to the less fortunate.”

Worse yet, such easy largess and the cost of caring often translate into contempt for the small businessman, entrepreneur, and salesperson who is supposedly illiberal because he worries that he has less disposable income and is less secure. And when you add in cracks about Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and the “Christian Right” — all the things the more cultured avoid — then the architects of a supposedly populist party seem to be ignorant of their own constituencies.

When will Democrats return to power? Three of the most influential legislators in the Democrat party — Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, and Nancy Pelosi — reside in and came out of the San Francisco Bay area, which for all its undeniable beauty has created a culture still at odds with most of America. John and Teresa Kerry would have been the nation’s first billionaire presidential couple. The head of the Democratic party is a New England condescending liberal, with a vicious tongue, who ran and lost on a platform far to the left of an unsuccessful liberal.

In contrast the only two men elected president from the Democratic party in 30 years were southerners, hammed up their rural and common-man roots — the son of a single mother in Arkansas and a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia — and were narrowly elected largely due to national scandals like Watergate or third-party conservative populists like Ross Perot. The aristocratic media — CSB News, the New York Times, NPR — is often liberal and yet talks of its degrees and pedigree; the firebrand populist bloggers, cable news pros, and talk-radio pundits are mostly conservative and survive on proven merit rather than image.

When we see Democrats speaking and living like normal folks — expressing worry that the United States must return to basic education and values to ensure its shaky preeminence in a cutthroat world, talking of one multiracial society united by a rare exceptional culture of the West rather than a salad bowl of competing races and tribes, and apprising the world that we are principled abroad in our support of democratic nations and quite dangerous when attacked — they will be competitive again.

Since they will not do that, they will keep losing — no matter how much the economy worries, the war frightens, and the elite media scares the American people.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.

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Liberals and class (Townhall.com, 050607)

Thomas Sowell

The new trinity among liberal intellectuals is race, class and gender. Defining any of these terms is not easy, but it is also not difficult for liberals, because they seldom bother to define them at all.

The oldest, and perhaps still the most compelling, of these concerns is class. In the vision of the left, we are born, live, and die in a particular class — unless, of course, we give power to the left to change all that.

The latest statistics seized upon to support this class-ridden view of America and other Western societies show that most people in a given part of the income distribution are the children of other people born into that same part of the income distribution.

Among men born in families in the bottom 25% of income earners only 32% end up in the top half of the income distribution. And among men born to families in the top 25% in income earners, only 34% end up down in the bottom half.

How startling is that?

More to the point, does this show that people are trapped in poverty or can coast through life on their parents’ wealth? Does it show that “society” denies “access” to the poor?

Could it just possibly show that the kind of values and behavior which lead a family to succeed or fail are also likely to be passed on to their children and lead them to succeed or fail as well? If so, how much can government policy — liberal or conservative — change that in any fundamental way?

One recent story attempting to show that upward mobility is a “myth” in America today nevertheless noted in passing that many recent immigrants and their children have had “extraordinary upward mobility.”

If this is a class-ridden society denying “access” to upward mobility to those at the bottom, why is it that immigrants can come here at the bottom and then rise to the top?

One obvious reason is that many poor immigrants come here with very different ambitions and values from that of poor Americans born into our welfare state and imbued with notions growing out of attitudes of dependency and resentments of other people’s success.

The fundamental reason that many people do not rise is not that class barriers prevent it but that they do not develop the skills, values and attitudes which cause people to rise.

The liberal welfare state means they don’t have to and liberal multiculturalism says they don’t need to change their values because one culture is just as good as another. In other words, liberalism is not part of the solution, but part of the problem.

Racism is supposed to put insuperable barriers in the path of non-whites anyway, so why knock yourself out trying? This is another deadly message, especially for the young.

But if immigrants from Korea or India, Vietnamese refugees, and others can come here and move right on up the ladder, despite not being white, why are black and white Americans at the bottom more likely to stay at the bottom?

The same counterproductive and self-destructive attitudes toward education, work and ordinary civility found in many of America’s ghettos can also be found in lower-class British communities. Anyone who doubts it should read British doctor Theodore Dalrymple’s book “Life at the Bottom,” about the white lower class communities in which he has worked.

These chaotic and violence-prone communities in Britain do not have the excuse of racism or a legacy of slavery. What they do have in common with similar communities in the United States is a similar reliance on the welfare state and a similar set of intellectuals making excuses for their behavior and denouncing anyone who wants them to change their ways.

The latest round of statistics emboldens more intellectuals to blame “society” for the failure of many people at the bottom to rise to the top. Realistically, if nearly a third of people born to families in the bottom quarter of income earners rise into the top half, that is not a bad record.

If more were doing so in the past, that does not necessarily mean that “society” is holding them down more today. It may easily mean that the welfare state and liberal ideology both make it less necessary today for them to change their own behavior.

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Liberals and class: Part II (Townhall.com, 050609)

Thomas Sowell

Someone once defined a social problem as a situation in which the real world differs from the theories of intellectuals. To the intelligentsia, it follows, as the night follows the day, that it is the real world that is wrong and which needs to change.

Having imagined a world in which each individual has the same probability of success as anyone else, intellectuals have been shocked and outraged that the real world is nowhere close to that ideal. Vast amounts of time and resources have been devoted to trying to figure out what is stopping this ideal from being realized — as if there was ever any reason to expect it to be.

Despite all the words and numbers thrown around when discussing this situation, the terms used are so sloppy that it is hard even to know what the issues are, much less how to resolve them.

Back in mid-May, both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal had front-page stories about class differences and class mobility. The Times’ article was the first in a long series that is still going on a month later. Both papers reached similar conclusions, based on a similar sloppy use of the word “mobility.”

The Times referred to “the chance of moving up from one class to another” and the Wall Street Journal referred to “the odds that a child born in poverty will climb to wealth.” But the odds or probabilities against something happening are no measure of whether opportunity exists.

Anyone who saw me play basketball and saw Michael Jordan play basketball when we were youngsters would have given odds of a zillion to one that he was more likely to make the NBA than I was. Does that mean I was denied opportunity or access, that there were barriers put up against me, that the playing field was not level?

Or did it mean that Michael Jordan — and virtually everyone else — played basketball a lot better than I did?

A huge literature on social mobility often pays little or no attention to the fact that different individuals and groups have different skills, desires, attitudes and numerous other factors, including luck. If mobility is defined as being free to move, then we can all have the same mobility, even if some end up moving faster than others and some of the others do not move at all.

A car capable of going 100 miles an hour can sit in a garage all year long without moving. But that does not mean that it has no mobility.

When each individual and each group trails the long shadow of their cultural history, they are unlikely even to want to do the same things, much less be willing to put out the same efforts and make the same sacrifices to achieve the same goals. Many are like the car that is sitting still in the garage, even though it is capable of going 100 mph.

So long as each generation raises its own children, people from different backgrounds are going to be raised with different values and habits. Even in a world with zero barriers to upward mobility, they would move at different speeds and in different directions.

If there is less upward movement today than in the past, that is by no means proof that external barriers are responsible. The welfare state and multiculturalism both reduce the incentives of the poor to adopt new ways of life that would help them rise up the economic ladder. The last thing the poor need is another dose of such counterproductive liberal medicine.

Many comparisons of “classes” are in fact comparisons of people in different income brackets — but most Americans move up from the lowest 20% to the highest 20% over time.

Yet those who are obsessed with classes treat people in different brackets as if they were classes permanently stuck in those brackets.

The New York Times series even makes a big deal about disparities in income and lifestyle between the rich and the super-rich. But it is hard to get worked up over the fact that some poor devil has to make do flying his old propeller-driven plane, while someone further up the income scale flies around a mile or two higher in his twin-engine luxury jet.

Only if you have overdosed on disparities are you likely to wax indignant over things like that.

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Liberals and class: part III (Townhall.com, 050612)

Thomas Sowell

Sometimes it seems as if liberals have a genius for producing an unending stream of ideas that are counterproductive for the poor, whom they claim to be helping. Few of these notions are more counterproductive than the idea of “menial work” or “dead-end jobs.”

Think about it: Why do employers pay people to do “menial” work? Because the work has to be done. What useful purpose is served by stigmatizing work that someone is going to have to do anyway?

Is emptying bed pans in a hospital menial work? What would happen if bed pans didn’t get emptied? Let people stop emptying bed pans for a month and there would be bigger problems than if sociologists stopped working for a year.

Having someone who can come into a home to clean and cook and do minor chores around the house can be a godsend to someone who is an invalid or who is suffering the infirmities of age — and who does not want to be put into an institution. Someone who can be trusted to take care of small children is likewise a treasure.

Many people who do these kinds of jobs do not have the education, skills or experience to do more complex kinds of work. Yet they can make a real contribution to society while earning money that keeps them off welfare.

Many low-level jobs are called “dead-end jobs” by liberal intellectuals because these jobs have no promotions ladder. But it is superficial beyond words to say that this means that people in such jobs have no prospect of rising economically.

Many people at all levels of society, including the richest, have at some point or other worked at jobs that had no promotions ladder, so-called “dead-end jobs.” The founder of the NBC network began work as a teenager hawking newspapers on the streets. Billionaire Ross Perot began with a paper route.

You don’t get promoted from such jobs. You use the experience, initiative, and discipline that you develop in such work to move on to something else that may be wholly different. People who start out flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s seldom stay there for a full year, much less for life.

Dead-end jobs are the kinds of jobs I have had all my life. But, even though I started out delivering groceries in Harlem, I don’t deliver groceries there any more. I moved on to other jobs — most of which have not had any promotions ladders.

My only official promotion in more than half a century of working was from associate professor to full professor at UCLA. But that was really just a pay increase, rather than a real promotion, because associate professors and full professors do the same work.

Notions of menial jobs and dead-end jobs may be just shallow misconceptions among the intelligentsia but they are a deadly counterproductive message to the poor. Refusing to get on the bottom rung of the ladder usually means losing your chance to move up the ladder.

Welfare can give you money but it cannot give you job experience that will move you ahead economically. Selling drugs on the streets can get you more money than welfare but it cannot give you experience that you can put on a job application. And if you decide to sell drugs all your life, that life can be very short.

Back around the time of the First World War, a young black man named Paul Williams studied architecture and then accepted a job as an office boy at an architectural firm. He agreed to work for no pay, though after he showed up the company decided to pay him something, after all.

What they paid him would probably be dismissed today as “chump change.” But what Paul Williams wanted from that company was knowledge and experience, more so than money.

He went on to create his own architectural company, designing everything from churches and banks to mansions for movie stars — and contributing to the design of the theme building at Los Angeles International Airport.

The real chumps are those who refuse to start at the bottom for “chump change.” Liberals who encourage such attitudes may think of themselves as friends of the poor but they do more harm than enemies.

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Benedict 1, Europe 0 (American Spectator, 050615)

The liberals of Europe — those champions of free-ranging Voltairean speech and scourges of fanatical religion — are dragging journalist and author Oriana Fallaci into court for writing a book critical of militant Islam. Fallaci, who now lives in Manhattan, has been ordered to stand trial in her native Italy for The Force of Reason, a 2004 book which a mau-mauing Muslim activist has managed to convince an Italian judge skates too close to a law prohibiting “outrages against religion.”

Can Catholic activists in Italy invoke this law too? If so, the critics of Fallaci would find themselves in court next to her, as they denounce the Catholic religion in the very abusive terms they scold her for using against Islam.

Pope Benedict XVI’s contribution this week to the defeat of an Italian referendum targeting embryos for research and destruction has Europe’s secularists in another anti-Catholic tizzy. Having grown accustomed to a feckless post-Vatican II Catholic Church, they were surprised and upset that Pope Benedict encouraged Italy’s bishops to torpedo the referendum by telling their flock to boycott it. What “unwarranted interference in Italian affairs,” they pouted. Monica Bellucci interrupted her theatrical career to blast the Church. “What do politicians and priests know about my ovaries?” she said.

The dominant American press, scenting a worrisome but perhaps defeatable challenge to European secularism, took a keen interest in the Italian referendum until it flopped. The Washington Post did an ambitious, A01, story on the referendum last weekend, full of Brave New World bias and secularist probing into the Church’s opposition to it. But on Tuesday after the referendum resoundingly failed (only 25.9% of Italians went to the polls, rendering a referendum requiring 50% turnout invalid) the Washington Post buried its story about the outcome on A18, and suddenly the Church’s influence wasn’t all that decisive in its analysis. “It remained unclear what effect the church’s [opposition] had on the turnout,” hedged the Post. Had the referendum succeeded, the Post’s tone would have been: secular Europe 1, Pope Benedict 0. (The Los Angeles Times’s interest in the referendum also flagged in its follow-up story.)

Italian secularists, busy opening their public squares to imams, now more than ever want it closed to priests. They fear, reported the European press after the referendum failed, a “victorious Vatican.” Stefania Prestigiacomo, Italy’s Minister for Equal Opportunities and a member of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, sputtered in anger about the “fundamentalist and intolerant” opposition and said, “The Church has never intervened in such an overwhelming and determined way.”

Italy’s civilizational stirrings — the referendum failed in part because Italians are still put off by the “granny births” and other moral anomalies a 1990s culture of embryo tinkering produced in the country — are not going unnoticed by the political class. Massimo Cacciari, the Mayor of Venice, commented to the press that Italy’s “liberal secular culture” is decelerating.

As secularists regroup, what can be expected? One certainty is that the “outrages against religion” Europe’s liberals are not permitting Oriana Fallaci will multiply against the Church. Terms they can’t bring themselves to use against militant Islam — dangerous, fanatical, irrational — will fall easily from their mouths on Pope Benedict as they try desperately to consolidate secularist gains. Though the liberals of Europe would never dare call Islam illiberal, they speak of the religion that gave birth to civilized Europe in that language, and wouldn’t even permit a direct historical mention of it in the European Union Constitution (also failing to impress weary Europeans in referendums).

Fallaci is known as a liberal but of a vanishing species, one who sees that fellow liberals are playing dupes to the most alien and illiberal ideology in Europe. This rebuke cannot be abided, and so Europe’s liberals, who are far more wildly authoritarian than the conservative authorities they displaced, are putting her on trial, once again exposing their rhetoric of liberty as a sham. And they can even drum up another charge against her: she sided with the odious Catholic Church in Italy’s referendum fight.

“Behind this referendum is a project to reinvent man in the laboratory, to transform him into a product to sell like steak or a bomb. Here we return to Nazism,” she wrote. The children of Voltaire won’t fight to the death for her free speech. Under a death wish of another sort, now they prosecute it.

George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.

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The Ultimate End of Progressive Thought: Injustice (Christian Post, 050627)

Joseph Addison in The Guardian once said, “There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.” But today the great question is: How is justice defined?

Progressives or liberals have essentially identified justice with material equality. Thus, a “just” society is one where wealth is equally distributed and everyone has access to life’s basic needs. This approach, however desirable it may be, cannot possibly be defined as justice. It is at best unrealistically utopian. Material equality can never be achieved, not even in the basics of life, and efforts to produce it only result in the worst forms of injustice, where eventually private property is seized and distributed through acts of tyranny.

This philosophical approach to a “just” culture is exactly what has produced a multi-trillion dollar debt and a crushing tax burden on our nation. Moreover, government assistance has an insatiable appetite for more that can never be satisfied. There’s always a call for stimulating the economy in order to generate a stronger tax base for providing health care, housing, education, etc.

Last week, in a sharply divided 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrated how a “progressive” understanding of “justice” currently prevails in American culture. In the case of Kelo v. the City of New London, four liberal justices (Bader-Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter, Breyer) and one moderate justice (Kennedy) ruled that state and local governments can seize private property to make room for development as long as it creates economic benefits and increases the government’s tax receipts.

Make no mistake about it: the High Court’s ruling was an act of tyranny — a form of legal plunder! Stephen Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Association’s Center for Law & Policy said: “In effect, the Supreme Court has written over City Hall: ‘The government giveth, and the government taketh away.’” (See related story) What Cramption said was right, and without question, the ultimate end of “progressive” politics.

This must change! But it won’t unless Americans once again discover what the Bible says about the proper role of government. Does the Holy Scripture authorize the government to take by force private property in support of something it believes is good? Absolutely not! For example, the state has no more right to take money through taxes to give to those who are poor than I have to hold a gun to my neighbor’s head and demand he relieve that poverty. Does God ordain government with the sovereign right to target private property to give to those who will pay higher taxes for it? Quite the contrary, God commands governments as well as individuals, “Thou shalt not steal.”

According to the Bible, government has a limited responsibility. The apostle Paul says the state “is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil. Wherefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.” (Rom.13: 4-6) In other words, it is the government’s role, more than anything else, if not to the exclusion of everything else, to bear the sword in suppressing evil doers. Government is to secure justice by protecting the life, liberty and property of its citizenry. It may tax for these reasons, but when it goes beyond such parameters it has the potential to create more problems than it solves.

Today government has grown out of control. As we have given it responsibility for more and more, it has become huge and powerful, supplanting God-given rights with rights granted only by the state. No longer do the people or the Constitution rule, but an unelected “super-Congress” — the U.S. Supreme Court. Those with more “progressive” leanings dominate the Court, not conservatives who would interpret the Constitution according to the framer’s original intent, which was strictly Judeo-Christian. Moreover, addicted to the opiate of public assistance, we have become bond slaves of the state and unwilling to do anything about our plight.

Don’t think me to be too melodramatic, but we have not made real progress. Instead we have returned to the dark days when a lord took your land and gave it to someone he thought more deserving. The government can now take your castle for what it perceives to be an opportunity for economic development and to strengthen its hand. It can also confiscate churches, temples, synagogues and mosques, arguing “eminent domain” because they don’t generate tax revenues and it deems the property could be better used to that end. Nothing is safe anymore!

Justice? Whose justice?

Progressive thought ultimately ends with injustice.

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Rev. Mark H. Creech (calact@aol.com) is the executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, Inc.

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Our Wars Over the War: “The fault is not in our stars.” (National Review Online, 050715)

Ever since September 11, there has been an alternative narrative about this war embraced by the Left. In this mythology, the attack on September 11 had in some vague way something to do with American culpability.

Either we were unfairly tilting toward Israel, or had been unkind to Muslims. Perhaps, as Sen. Patty Murray intoned, we needed to match the good works of bin Laden to capture the hearts and minds of Muslim peoples.

The fable continues that the United States itself was united after the attack even during its preparations to retaliate in Afghanistan. But then George Bush took his eye off the ball. He let bin Laden escape, and worst of all, unilaterally and preemptively, went into secular Iraq — an unnecessary war for oil, hegemony, Israel, or Halliburton, something in Ted Kennedy’s words “cooked up in Texas.”

In any case, there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam, and thus terrorists only arrived in Iraq after we did.

That tale goes on. The Iraqi fiasco is now a hopeless quagmire. The terrorists are paying us back for it in places like London and Madrid.

Still worse, here at home we have lost many of our civil liberties to the Patriot Act and forsaken our values at Guantanamo Bay under the pretext of war. Nancy Pelosi could not understand the continued detentions in Guantanamo since the war in Afghanistan is in her eyes completely finished.

In this fable, we are not safer as a nation. George Bush’s policies have increased the terror threat as we saw recently in the London bombing. We have now been at war longer than World War II. We still have no plan to defeat our enemies, and thus must set a timetable to withdraw from Iraq.

Islamic terrorism cannot be defeated militarily nor can democracy be “implanted by force.” So it is time to return to seeing the terrorist killing as a criminal justice matter — a tolerable nuisance addressed by writs and indictments, while we give more money to the Middle East and begin paying attention to the “root causes” of terror.

That is the dominant narrative of the Western Left and at times it finds its way into mainstream Democratic-party thinking. Yet every element of it is false.

Prior to 9/11, the United States had given an aggregate of over $50 billion to Egypt, and had allotted about the same amount of aid to Israel as to its frontline enemies. We had helped to save Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, and received little if any thanks for bombing Christian Europeans to finish in a matter of weeks what all the crack-pot jihadists had not done by flocking to the Balkans in a decade.

Long before Afghanistan and Iraq, bin Laden declared war on America in 1998, citing the U.N. embargo of Iraq and troops in Saudi Arabia; when those were no longer issues, he did not cease, but continued his murdering. He harbored a deep-seated contempt for Western values, even though he was eaten within by uncontrolled envy and felt empowered by years of appeasement after a series of attacks on our embassies, bases, ships, and buildings, both here and abroad.

Iraqi intelligence was involved with the first World Trade Center bombing, and its operatives met on occasion with those who were involved in al Qaeda operations. Every terrorist from Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal to Abdul Yasin and Abu al-Zarqawi found Baghdad the most hospitable place in the Middle East, which explains why a plan to assassinate George Bush Sr. was hatched from such a miasma.

Neither bin Laden nor his lieutenants are poor, but like the Hamas suicide bombers, Mohammed Atta, or the murderer of Daniel Pearl they are usually middle class and educated — and are more likely to hate the West, it seems, the more they wanted to be part of it. The profile of the London bombers, when known, will prove the same.

The poor in South America or Africa are not murdering civilians in North America or Europe. The jihadists are not bombing Chinese for either their godless secularism or suppression of Muslim minorities. Indeed, bin Laden harbored more hatred for an America that stopped the Balkan holocaust of Muslims than for Slobodan Milosevic who started it.

There was only unity in this country between September 11 and October 6, when a large minority of Americans felt our victim status gave us for a golden moment the high ground. We forget now the furor over hitting back in Afghanistan — a quagmire in the words of New York Times columnists R. W. Apple and Maureen Dowd; a “terrorist campaign” against Muslims according to Representative Cynthia McKinney; “a silent genocide” in Noam Chomsky’s ranting.

Two thirds of al Qaeda’s command is now captured or dead; bases in Afghanistan are lost. Saddam’s intelligence will not be lending expertise to anyone and the Baghdad government won’t welcome in terrorist masterminds.

In fact, thousands of brave Iraqi Muslims are now in a shooting war with wahhabi jihadists who, despite their carnage, are dying in droves as they flock to the Iraq.

A constitution is in place in Iraq; reform is spreading to Lebanon, the Gulf, and Egypt; and autocracies in Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Pakistan are apprehensive over a strange new American democratic zeal. Petroleum was returned to control of the Iraqi people, and the price has skyrocketed to the chagrin of American corporations.

There has been no repeat of September 11 so far. Killing jihadists abroad while arresting their sympathizers here at home has made it hard to replicate another 9/11-like attack.

The Patriot Act was far less intrusive than what Abraham Lincoln (suspension of habeas corpus), Woodrow Wilson (cf. the Espionage and Sedition Acts), or Franklin Roosevelt (forced internment) resorted to during past wars. So far America has suffered in Iraq .006% of the combat dead it lost in World War II, while not facing a conventional enemy against which it might turn its traditional technological and logistical advantages.

Unlike Gulf War I and the decade-long Iraqi cold war of embargos, stand-off bombing, and no-fly-zones, the United States has a comprehensive strategy both in the war against terror and to end a decade and a half of Iraqi strife: Kill terrorists abroad, depose theocratic and autocratic regimes that have either warred with the United States or harbored terrorists, and promote democracy to take away grievances that can be manipulated and turned against us.

Why does this false narrative, then, persist — other than that it had a certain political utility in the 2002 and 2004 elections?

In a word, this version of events brings spiritual calm for millions of troubled though affluent and blessed Westerners. There are three sacraments to their postmodern thinking, besides the primordial fear that so often leads to appeasement.

Our first hindrance is moral equivalence. For the hard Left there is no absolute right and wrong since amorality is defined arbitrarily and only by those in power.

Taking back Fallujah from beheaders and terrorists is no different from bombing the London subway since civilians may die in either case. The deliberate rather than accidental targeting of noncombatants makes little difference, especially since the underdog in Fallujah is not to be judged by the same standard as the overdogs in London and New York. A half-dozen roughed up prisoners in Guantanamo are the same as the Nazi death camps or the Gulag.

Our second shackle is utopian pacifism — ‘war never solved anything’ and ‘violence only begets violence.’ Thus it makes no sense to resort to violence, since reason and conflict resolution can convince even a bin Laden to come to the table. That most evil has ended tragically and most good has resumed through armed struggle — whether in Germany, Japan, and Italy or Panama, Belgrade, and Kabul — is irrelevant. Apparently on some past day, sophisticated Westerners, in their infinite wisdom and morality, transcended age-old human nature, and as a reward were given a pass from the smelly, dirty old world of the past six millennia.

The third restraint is multiculturalism, or the idea that all social practices are of equal merit. Who are we to generalize that the regimes and fundamentalist sects of the Middle East result in economic backwardness, intolerance of religious and ethnic minorities, gender apartheid, racism, homophobia, and patriarchy? Being different from the West is never being worse.

These tenets in various forms are not merely found in the womb of the universities, but filter down into our popular culture, grade schools, and national political discourse — and make it hard to fight a war against stealthy enemies who proclaim constant and shifting grievances. If at times these doctrines are proven bankrupt by the evidence it matters little, because such beliefs are near religious in nature — a secular creed that will brook no empirical challenge.

These articles of faith apparently fill a deep psychological need for millions of Westerners, guilty over their privilege, free to do anything without constraints or repercussions, and convinced that their own culture has made them spectacularly rich and leisured only at the expense of others.

So it is not true to say that Western civilization is at war against Dark Age Islamism. Properly speaking, only about half of the West is involved, the shrinking segment that still sees human nature as unchanging and history as therefore replete with a rich heritage of tragic lessons.

This is nothing new.

The spectacular inroads of the Ottomans in the16th century to the gates of Vienna and the shores of the Adriatic were not explainable according to Istanbul’s vibrant economy, impressive universities, or widespread scientific dynamism and literacy, or even a technologically superior and richly equipped military. Instead, a beleaguered Europe was trisected by squabbling Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians — as a wealthy northwest, with Atlantic seaports, ignored the besieged Mediterranean and Balkans and turned its attention to getting rich in the New World.

So too we are divided over two antithetical views of the evolving West — Europe at odds with America, red and blue states in intellectual and spiritual divergence, the tragic view resisting the creeping therapeutic mindset.

These interior splits largely explain why creepy killers from the Dark Ages, parasitic on the West from their weapons to communications, are still plaguing us four years after their initial surprise attack.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

— Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.

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Breeding Stupidity: Where does the insistence that the war in Iraq is creating terrorists come from? (Weekly Standard, 050715)

THERE IS A STRANGE PAIRING of positions on the left.

The first is that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were not connected. The work of Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, which is supported by other serious investigative reporters such as Claudia Rosett has already established beyond any reasonable doubt that there was a web of connections, but the combination of the left’s indifference to inconvenient facts and the international version of the soft bigotry of low expectations—an Arab dictator couldn’t have had a sophisticated intelligence service capable of hiding such matters—make it an article of faith among Bush haters that there was no connection.

Exactly the opposite approach to facts and evidence is emerging on the left’s claim that Iraq is a breeding ground for terrorists. “Breeding ground” means something quite different from “killing ground.” The term conveys the belief that had the United States and its allies not invaded Iraq, there would be fewer jihadists in the world today—that the transition of Iraq from brutal dictatorship to struggling democracy has somehow unleashed a terrorist-breeding virus.

The fact that foreign fighters are streaming across Syria into Iraq in the hopes of killing America is not evidence supporting the “breeding ground” theory. “Opportunity” to act is not the same thing as “motive” for acting. There is zero evidence for the proposition that Iraq is motive rather than opportunity, but the “motive” theory is nevertheless put forward again and again. As recently as Wednesday the Washington Post account of the aftermath of the London bombings included the incredible—and unsubstantiated in the article—claim that the “the profile of the suspects suggested by investigators fit long-standing warnings by security experts that the greatest potential threat to Britain could come from second-generation Muslims, born here but alienated from British society and perhaps from their own families, and inflamed by Britain’s participation in the Iraq war.”[emphasis added]

In an interview with the London Times, Prime Minister Tony Blair disputed the idea “that the London terrorist attacks were a direct result of British involvement in the Iraq war. He said Russia had suffered terrorism with the Beslan school massacre, despite its opposition to the war, and that terrorists were planning further attacks on Spain even after the pro-war government was voted out. “September 11 happened before Iraq, before Afghanistan, before any of these issues and that was the worst terrorist atrocity of all,” he said.

While it is theoretically possible that some jihadists were forged as a result of the invasion of Iraq, no specific instance of such a terrorist has yet been produced. Reports in the aftermath of the London bombings indicated that the British intelligence service estimates more than 3,000 residents of Great Britain had trained in the Afghanistan terrorist camps prior to the invasion of Afghanistan—which suggests that the probability is very high that most of the jihadists in England date their hatred of the West to some point prior to the invasion of Iraq. And though two of the London bombers appear to have traveled to Pakistan for religious instruction post-March 2003, there is not the slightest bit of evidence that it was Iraq which “turned” the cricket-loving young men into killers. In fact, it is transparently absurd for anyone to claim such a thing.

So why is the claim being made, and not just post-London, but in all of the contexts where the “breeding ground” rhetoric surfaces?

Of course it’s a convenient stick with which to beat the Bush administration. But it has a far more powerful lure than that.

As the bloody toll of the Islamist movement grows and its record of horrors lengthens from Bali to Beslan to Madrid to London, the incredible cost that can only be attributed to the Afghanistan metastasis that went unchecked from the time of bin Laden’s return there in 1996 until the American-led invasion of 2001 becomes ever more clear. That was the true “breeding ground” of the world’s menace, not the Sunni triangle, where jihadists are continually under pressure and increasingly desperate. The long years ahead in the global war on terrorism will be spent trying to undo the damage done by allowing the Islamist radicals a safe haven from which to export their ideology and to train and deploy their converts.

The realization of the price of inaction through the ‘90s has a huge political cost attached to it, one that the Democrats will bear if a full accounting is ever compiled. Thus the “breeding ground” rhetoric—empty and absurd as it is—is a convenient and even necessary bit of smoke. There’s no fire underneath that smoke. Just a desperate hope that noise will drown out voices pointing to the real history of the rise of the Islamist threat.

In an exchange with Ron Reagan on MSNBC this week, Christopher Hitchens sharply rebuked the “motive” school of terrorist psychologists: “I thought I heard you making just before we came on the air, of attributing rationality or a motive to this, and to say that it’s about anything but itself, you make a great mistake, and you end up where you ended up, saying that the cause of terrorism is fighting against it, the root cause, I mean.” [emphasis added]

Hitchens’s point, which must be made again and again, is Blair’s point: The killers are killers because they want to kill, not because the coalition invaded Iraq, or Afghanistan, or because there are bases in Saudi Arabia, or because Israel will not retreat to the 1967 borders.

Until and unless the left gets this point, and abandons the idea that “breeding” of terrorists is something the West triggers, they cannot be trusted with the conduct of the war.

Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, and author most recently of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That is Changing Your World. His daily blog can be found at HughHewitt.com.

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Two Competing Religions—The Legacy of the 1960s (Christian Post, 050718)

Today’s culture wars can be directly traced to the cultural transformations of the 1960’s. As a matter of fact, that critical decade represented nothing less than a cultural revolution of sorts—a revolution Stanley Kurtz describes as “both a fulfillment and a repudiation of the vision of America’s founders.”

Kurtz makes his case in “Culture and Values in the 1960’s,” a fascinating essay published in Never a Matter of Indifference: Sustaining Virtue in a Free Republic, recently released by the Hoover Institution Press. Edited by Peter Berkowitz, Never a Matter of Indifference is a thought-provoking collection of essays on moral character and democratic responsibility. Kurtz’s essay adds historical context to the book’s central thesis—that moral virtue is an absolute necessity in order for political liberty to flourish.

When Kurtz argues that the 1960’s represented “both a fulfillment and a repudiation” of America’s founding vision, he offers an important corrective both to those who would celebrate the 1960’s as a time of unfettered liberation and to those who would curse the same decade as a time of absolute moral collapse. Kurtz, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, points to the Civil Rights Movement and the end of legal segregation as great gains for the society. The impetus toward racial equality was an example of what Kurtz labels “classic liberalism,” based in respect for both human dignity and moral structure.

Nevertheless, the legacy of the 1960’s is mixed precisely because “classic liberalism” devolved into something very different—an ideology that celebrates liberty without an accompanying respect for moral character. Kurtz wants to understand this exchange of classical liberalism for something far more radical. “If the movements that began in the 1960’s have in some significant measure departed from classic liberalism, how are we to understand their inner rationale?,” Kurtz asks. “What connects the ecology movement, for example, with movements for Civil Rights? And if classic liberalism suffices for many Americans, what has prompted them to set it aside?”

Very quickly, Kurtz moves to answer his own question. “I argue that the sixties ethos, and the transformation of liberalism it has produced, is best understood as a secular religion, and in many respects an illiberal religion.” An illiberal liberalism? Kurtz argues that this new liberalism is no longer based in the concern for ordered liberty that framed the nation’s founding.

The children of the 1960’s betrayed the American vision by “becoming an illiberal religion,” Kurtz asserts. This happened because “liberalism stopped being a mere political perspective for many people and turned into a religion.”

Is Kurtz using the word “religion” merely as a point of exaggerated argument? “I do not speak metaphorically,” Kurtz insists. “A certain form of liberalism now functions for substantial numbers of its adherents as a religion: an encompassing world-view that answers the big questions about life, dignifies daily exertions with higher significance, and provides a rationale for meaningful collective action.”

Classic liberalism was primarily concerned with individual liberty, understood to be both protected and limited by an ordered structure of moral obligation. This view of liberty produced the American concern for freedom of speech, freedom of association, and religious liberty that has stood at the heart of the American experiment. True liberalism is not intimidated by the presence of competing voices, public debate, and different perspectives. That no longer characterizes today’s illiberal liberalism, as best demonstrated in the ethos of political correctness.

As Kurtz explains, “The central mechanism of political correctness is the stigmatization of perspectives, many of them classically liberal, that run afoul of left-liberalism—a condemnation disproportionate to what might be expected in matters of mere policy disagreement.” As the worldview of left-liberalism is turned into a functional religion for so many people, they now treat any disagreement as heresy to be eradicated. “This shift to ostracism in place of intellectual engagement in so many of our cultural debates cannot be explained as a mere conscious tactical maneuver,” Kurtz explains. “The stigmatization of traditional perspectives can only be effective because so many are primed to respond to it in the first place.”

Why do today’s liberals respond to conservative arguments with condescension and a dismissal? Kurtz argues that the new liberalism has demonized conservatives and conservative arguments. As a religion, liberalism is “in need of demons,” Kurtz observes. “Traditional liberalism emphasized the ground rules for reasoned debate and the peaceful adjudication of political differences. One of the main reasons that politics in a liberal society could be peaceful was that people sought direction about life’s ultimate purpose outside of politics itself. Once traditional religion ceased to provide many moderns with either an ultimate life-purpose or a pattern of virtue, liberalism itself was the only belief system remaining that could supply these essential elements of life.”

In sum, support of left-liberal causes is now a religious passion for many Americans whose worldviews were shaped by the 1960’s. Every political debate becomes “a dire, almost revolutionary, struggle for the very principles of liberalism itself.”

Without commitment to a traditional faith, the children of the 1960’s sought ultimate meaning in the secular sphere. For many, the Holocaust became the “moral touchstone” for life, Kurtz argues. As such, the Holocaust becomes both a symbol and a moral anchor. Thus, “little Holocausts” are now seen everywhere. These exaggerated conflicts range from Betty Friedan’s description of the suburban home as a “comfortable concentration camp,” to the radical environmentalists’ outrage at “holocausts” such as commercial chicken farming and the lumber industry.

The children of the sixties were, in the main, children of privilege and material prosperity. As such, they had a hard time claiming to be oppressed or disadvantaged. They dealt with this by associating themselves with the real or perceived oppression of others.

As Kurtz explains, “Weighed down by a sense of the banality of their existence, the baby boomer stewards were given a life of material comfort but longed instead for a life of exertion in the service of some larger purpose, or at least for the appearance of such a life. The solution hit upon by many was to identify with struggling groups—however temporarily, however superficially, however counterproductively.”

Stripped of its moral context and obligations, this new form of liberalism functions as a political religion that sees oppression—real or imaginary—as the only important form of sin. In this contorted worldview, meaning is found in associating oneself with the oppressed—whether other human beings, or animals, or even inanimate objects. Kurtz points to the “Lawn Liberation Front,” which in 2001 distributed leaflets in Pittsburgh claiming that 12-inch spikes may have been driven into area lawns to prevent the cutting of grass. “Grass is a living entity that deserves as much respect as humans,” the group claimed. In so doing, the “LLF” was merely following the liturgy of the new secular religion.

All this is the inevitable result of a shared communal worldview. Beyond that, the very loss of a shared moral worldview can be directly traced to secularism and the eroding influence of the Christian worldview within the culture.

Where does this lead? For Kurtz, it means, “for the foreseeable future, we are in for a long and inconclusive culture war.” That much seems abundantly clear and irrefutable. The further value of Kurtz’s argument is his insistence that this war is “best understood as a conflict not only between religion and secularism, but between two competing religions.”

Those who know the Bible understand this reality all too well. The choice we face is not between religion and secularism, but between Biblical faith and the various paganisms. These are indeed two competing religions. As the Lord instructed Israel, “Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve.”

[Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on May 26, 2004.

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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The Drudgery Report: It’s the ideas, silly (National Review Online, 050525)

Democrats like to call themselves the party of ideas. But what they don’t usually tell you is that since taking their place on the Endangered Species List of political parties (how’s that for irony?) Democrats seem to be stealing an awful lot of their new ideas from…the Republicans! Take, for example, Arianna Huffington’s new Huffington Post, which started landing with a thud on our virtual front porches a couple of weeks ago bearing a striking resemblance to its conceptual father “The Drudge Report.” (And this wasn’t even the first idea Arianna has stolen from a Republican: On August 7, 2003, she became the second foreign-born California celebrity with an indecipherable accent to announce her candidacy for governor, and I think we all remember how that went.)

To be fair, Arianna deserves credit for making conservative scribes feel welcome at her new venture, and partner in crime Andrew Breitbart so far has done an admirable job of rounding up worthwhile columns from the likes of Danielle Crittenden, John Fund, David Frum, and Byron York. That said, like most Democrat efforts of late to get their message out “The Huffington Post” seems born of the resentment that the other side had the idea first combined with the hope that they could do it better. Well, good luck. In addition to laying the foundation for the blogosphere “The Drudge Report” receives over ten million hits a day, came this close to bringing down a corrupt U.S. president, and…oh yeah, regularly sets the agenda for the mainstream media. That is, when the mainstream media isn’t busy denouncing it as biased or inaccurate. I seem to recall Dan Rather of CBS News being particularly hard on “The Drudge Report.”

Liberal Hollywood’s favorite Greek’s forum offered few surprises during its first few weeks other than a resounding silence from no-shows like David Geffen and Warren Beatty, both of whom Arianna repeatedly claimed were “on board” while promoting her new liblog’s debut to potential readers and, more importantly, investors. Sadly, Larry Gelbart has participated, and the TV legend’s desperately unfunny, pun-laden offerings to date have incited at least one former admirer to declare, “This guy wrote M*A*S*H*?”

So how’s “The Huffington Post” doing so far? Reviews of Arianna’s Drudge homage have been decidedly mixed, ranging from, “Boy, does that thing stink”, to, “The what?” After weeks of earnest hype and bold predictions of a new direction in the national conversation “The Huffington Post”‘s debut was widely regarded, to put it mildly, as something of a let-down.

Which, given the Post’s genesis, isn’t particularly surprising. Arianna pitched this latest elaborate ploy to write off her cocktail parties as a business expense in terms of it being a “group blog,” which is another way of calling it a personal journal-by-committee with all the charm, originality and integrity that that implies. Others describe it as a virtual think tank, although judging from what “The Huffington Post” has trotted out so far it feels mostly like a groupthink tank.

Apart from its larcenous origins and hit-or-miss content the other glaring weakness of “The Huffington Post” is that it’s pretty much what sources like N.P.R., the A.P., and most TV networks already offer: a conventional left-of-center perspective with a few conservative voices tossed in for window dressing. Contributors of note so far include Walter Cronkite (who helpfully declared the Vietnam War un-winnable in 1969, thus spoiling the ending for millions who thought that still to be determined), Gary Hart (who’s been reduced to offering his written insights at no charge), and someone named Laurie David, who I gather is married to a famous person. We’re still waiting for that first, promised posting from Maggie Gyllenhaal, who recently became the latest Hollywood figure to blame the United States for the 9/11 attacks.

Let’s hope for their sake “The Huffington Post” works out better for Democrats than Air America Radio has so far. Launched with great fanfare a little over a year ago, Air America’s modest goal was to replicate the success (and political influence, naturally) of conservative talk radio. This would be a neat trick, as talk radio started out an essentially new medium and now attracts tens of millions of once disenfranchised listeners every single day while providing the play-by-play for a cultural revolution. Not the kind of Cultural Revolution where millions of Chinese people starve to death; the kind of cultural revolution where millions of Americans finally get a voice in the mainstream media.

As opposed to Air America, whose Al Franken-hosted morning show currently draws fewer listeners in New York City than its predecessor on the dial: a veritable ratings juggernaut of all-Caribbean music and chit-chat. As to Franken’s on-air appeal, remember what it was like to have to sit through a three-minute sketch on Saturday Night Live starring him? OK, now imagine three hours of that. Every morning. Before you’ve even had your coffee. Any questions? Meanwhile, Air America’s Los Angeles affiliate currently draws a whopping three-tenths of one percent of listeners in that bluest part of our bluest state, but at least they didn’t have to kick an all-black radio station off the air first like Al Franken did in New York.

In addition to Franken the Air America line-up includes Randi Rhodes, a conspiracy-theorist harpy from Brooklyn with the on-air demeanor of an involuntarily retired stripper. Rhodes is the sort of erudite commentator whose afternoon excursions into political nuance are punctuated by zany sound effects and songs about bouncing boobies. When she’s not telling listeners how smart and educated she is Rhodes is the sort of spellbinding broadcaster who gets words like “assert” and “insert” confused. Rhodes’ most recent contribution to civil discourse was a skit during which sound effects were used to graphically simulate the assassination of President Bush — funny, funny stuff. The good news for Randi was that this revolting segment has actually increased her average daily listening audience by about three Secret Service agents.

After Al Franken signed on most people assumed that Air America would be where washed-up Saturday Night Live stars go to die, which is terribly unfair: Janeanne Garofalo never achieved star status during her years at SNL. As a talk-radio host Janeanne’s grim, on-air personal unraveling is nothing less than a daily promo for the “How To Throw Away A Show Business Career” course she seems destined to teach at the Learning Annex. Anybody remember when Janeanne Garofalo was bright, engaging, and very funny? To my great sadness, I do.

Here’s how shallow the Air America talent pool is: Eighties retread Stephanie Miller has now been enlisted to repurpose her stale, cowbell-and-air-horn morning-zoo hackery as “political satire — with an edge!” After a full year plus on the air, and untold millions in free publicity, Air America is still “finding its voice” — and if I know anything about anatomy it might try looking up its own backside. And considering how much they love irony you’d think somebody at Air America would have noticed that a radio “network” with only 50 affiliates is in no position to belittle a wartime Coalition with 63 member states. Besides, I’m pretty sure that when your network boasts more wealthy patrons on its masthead than actual listeners, it’s not technically a network anymore. As of today Air America is on their second set of millionaire benefactors and their latest can’t-miss scheme to boost ratings was adding TV’s Jerry Springer to their line-up. Whose reputation stands to be more damaged by this latest development- Jerry Springer’s or Air America’s — is anybody’s guess.

Meanwhile in the television world Democrats are plenty steamed about all the viewers (and voters) they’re losing to FOX News. They’ve decided to start their own liberal cable TV news network and the man they want to run it is…Al Gore. Well, at least now he can be president of something. And it’s not like Al’s ever let them down before. Gore’s proposed cable-TV network (“Currents”) seems poised to revolutionize television the way his other invention — the Internet — revolutionized the dissemination of hardcore porn and unsolicited mortgage offers. Instead of conventional TV shows Currents will feature “pods”: programming snippets ranging from 15 seconds to about five minutes long. (Great, somebody is finally doing something to rein in the burgeoning attention spans of America’s youth.) Current’s “pods,” some of which will be provided by viewers (which I suppose would make them “pod people”) will cover issues ranging from spirituality and jobs to fashion and the environment.

And you thought Al Gore couldn’t get any more boring or irrelevant.

But why choose Al Gore to head up your new TV network? Maybe so that when the ratings come in and they’re really low you can demand a viewer recount. Like “The Huffington Report” and Air America Radio, Currents TV promises to offer as much cutting-edge alternative media as its wealthy leftist patrons can afford.

Imitation was once said to be the sincerest form of flattery, then of television. And with Democrats co-opting the power of the web, talk radio, and cable TV from their GOP counterparts, imitation may already have become the sincerest form of politics. But these ham-fisted Democratic attempts to hijack the new media share a common flaw: the false premise that what’s held Democrats back the last few Election Days was their inability to “get their message out.” Attention Democrats: the American people have heard your message loud and clear, and the more they hear of it the less they like it. You can launch all the feeble new media ventures you like (“Hey, how about a liberal ‘zine? That’ll turn this thing around!”). You can spend as much of George Soros’s fortune as he’s stupid enough to part with. You can even get Margaret Cho to come back out of the closet and denounce President Bush again — or did she do that already? Thing is, until you advance a political philosophy that has some sort of connection with mainstream America you might just as well get used to being the minority party no matter how many New Media outlets you horn in on. And as for “The Huffington Post,” I’m predicting it’ll be at least as successful as Arianna’s last campaign for governor and you can quote me on that.

— Ned Rice is a staff writer on the new and improved CBS talk show The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Rice is also an NRO contributor.

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Why the FBI watches the Left (Townhall.com, 050720)

Michelle Malkin

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Civil liberties activists, anti-war organizers, eco-militants and animal rights operatives are in a fright over news that the nefarious FBI is watching them. Why on earth would the government be worried about harmless liberal grannies, innocent vegetarians, unassuming rainforest lovers and other “peaceful groups” simply exercising their First Amendment rights?

Let me remind you of some very good reasons.

In March 2003, I reported on a manifesto disseminated across the Internet by infamous eco-radical Craig Rosebraugh — former spokesman for the violent Earth Liberation Front — who called on fellow leftists to take “direct actions” against American military establishments, urban centers, corporations, government buildings and media outlets. His instructions included:

1) Attack the financial centers of the country. Using covert or black block techniques . . . physically shut down financial centers which regulate and assist the functioning of U.S. economy. This can be done in a variety of ways from massive property destruction, to online sabotage, to physical occupation of buildings.

2) Large scale urban rioting. With massive unrest and even state of emergencies declared in major cities across the country, the U.S. government will be forced to send U.S. troops into the domestic arena thereby taking resources and political focus away from the war.

3) Attack the media centers of the country. . . . Using any means necessary, shut down the national networks of NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc. . . .

4) Spread the battle to the individuals responsible for the war and destruction of life — the very heads of government and U.S. corporations. No longer should these people be able to hide behind their occupations, living their lives in peace while they simultaneously slaughter countless people. Hit them in their personal lives, visit their homes, and make them feel personally responsible for committing massive atrocities.

5) Make it known publicly that this movement DOES NOT support U.S. troops as long as they are serving an unjust and horrifying political regime. Create an atmosphere lacking of support to assist U.S. troops at home and abroad in losing their morale and will to fight . . .

6) Actively target U.S. military establishments within the United States . . . use any means necessary to slow down the functioning of the murdering body.

In April 2003, I reported on a mob of “peace” activists from an outfit called Direct Action to Stop the War that coordinated a seditious blockade of an Oakland port in shipping military supplies. The antiwar mob’s primary target at the Port of Oakland was American President Lines, a longtime carrier of military cargo. For Operation Iraqi Freedom, the carrier made nine of its vessels available to the Defense Department in order to move ammunition and sustainment cargo to support U.S. military forces.

The anti-war obstructionists weren’t simply exercising their “free speech.” They blocked trucks, employees, entryways and streets in order to stop the shipment of things like bullets, rations, lubricants, medical supplies, repair parts and chemical defense equipment to our troops. They also targeted Stevedoring Services of America, which handled some 3 million tons of humanitarian aid.

In August 2004, radical guerrilla activists from the “Black Bloc” group publicized plans to disrupt the GOP convention by attempting to distract police dogs, halt trains in New York City and spur the evacuation of Madison Square Garden.

In January 2005, the anti-war extremists of Code Pink traveled to the Jordan-Iraq border and doled out $600,000 in aid to “the other side.”

In February 2005, civil rights attorney and left-wing darling Lynne Stewart was convicted on five counts of conspiring to aid murderous Islamic terrorists and lying to the government about smuggling messages from her jailed client, terrorist mastermind Shiekh Omar Abdel Rahman, to his followers in Egypt.

In June 2005, moonbat celebrity professor Ward Churchill suggested to a Portland audience that killing military officers with explosive devices was a more effective anti-war tactic than conscientious objection. “Fragging an officer has a much more impactful effect,” Churchill advised.

The FBI’s job is to take threats to our domestic security seriously and act on them before catastrophe strikes. Given the suspect words and actions of left-wing groups over the last several years, “dissent is patriotic” is a bromide no responsible agent can swallow blindly. Tolerating the unfettered free speech of saboteurs has threatened enough lives already.

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Searching for the Definition of ‘Mainstream’ (Foxnews, 050620)

WASHINGTON — Political candidates hoping to get elected or judicial nominees vying for the federal bench would do well to be in the “mainstream” these days, though the media may try to distance themselves from the designation.

That’s because the “mainstream media” is a club increasingly loathed by the both the political right and left while “mainstream America” is regarded as the group that engenders today’s values.

But the determination of what is mainstream and where it is located has been so overplayed or misstated lately that several political experts agree the term “mainstream” has become the latest casualty of political language that was once sharp and appropriate but is now devoid of clear meaning for anyone.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and so is the meaning of ‘mainstream’ these days,” Chuck Muth, president of the Washington, D.C, think tank Citizen Outreach, said.

“I think years ago, [‘in the mainstream’] may have been a more substantive comment, but I think it’s evolved into a more trite comment today,” Republican pollster Dave Winston said, adding that the mainstream is as muddy as it is popular.

Entering the phrase “in the mainstream” into a Google Web search yields an estimated 811,000 results in the last three months, with 818 hits appearing in news reports during that time.

“If you could get 10 people together to try and agree on the definition of mainstream, I bet you would have considerable trouble doing it,” Terry Madonna, professor of public affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, said.

On Capitol Hill, where it is important to be considered in the mainstream, most experts who spoke to FOXNews.com described it loosely — as being “moderate” or having views that appeal to both Republican and Democratic sensibilities. As a result, those in the mainstream are able to bring about bipartisan support on a given issue.

Mainstream is also used to describe a lawmakers’ appeal to a wide swath of voters. Mainstream America is the political equivalent of the socially and economically attractive “Main Street U.S.A.”

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia said the mainstream is a desirable place because it represents commonality or normalcy.

“Usually people are attracted to ‘mainstream.’ Virtually everyone wants to think they are within the mainstream,” Sabato said.

“It’s a way to try and center yourself in hopes that it will give you some appeal,” Bruce Gronbeck, professor of communications at the University of Iowa, said.

Gronbeck credits former President Clinton with making the mainstream popular political real estate in the 1990s.

“Bill Clinton: Here you had a social liberal and [an] economic conservative,” Gronbeck said. “He didn’t fit the political definitions and it drove both parties crazy. We began there to talk about the mainstream.”

Since the Clinton era, both parties are trying to claim the political mainstream for partisan advantage. Recently, Democrats accused President Bush’s nominees for federal judgeships of being outside the mainstream, which meant painting those at the center of the recent filibuster debate as too extreme in their beliefs to be effective on the bench.

The day the Senate voted to confirm Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called Brown “so far out of the mainstream that she makes [conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin] Scalia look like a liberal.”

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., also attempted to toss Brown out of the mainstream, saying he hoped the California Supreme Court judge wasn’t getting “a pass” because she is a black woman.

“I hope we’ve arrived at a point in our country’s history where black folks can be criticized when they hold views that are out of the mainstream,” Obama said.

Despite the outcry against the judicial nominees, in a deal arranged by the “Gang of 14,” made up mostly of moderate senators from both sides of the aisle, Brown, Justices Priscilla Owen and William Pryor were all deemed mainstream enough and were confirmed by the Senate for the federal bench. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., considered one of the more conservative members of the chamber, threw the Democrats’ words back at them, hailing the confirmation of Brown as a victory for the mainstream.

“If some in the minority were as insightful as they claim to be about ‘mainstream America’ they would not be in the minority. The fact is, many of these three nominees’ fiercest critics neither understand nor agree with mainstream America on many issues,” Coburn said in a release.

“Mainstream Americans are sick and tired of judicial activism, which is why President Bush will continue to nominate diverse judges who will interpret the law, not invent new laws and precedents from the bench,” he added.

Declaring ownership of the term mainstream will ultimately lead most voters to translate it in a way favorable to the owner, Winston said: “Obviously I’m right, they’re wrong and therefore they aren’t in the mainstream.”

But the dilution of the expression through overuse like other “in vogue” terms will only lessen the meaning with every usage, Madonna said.

“I tend to use ‘moderate’ rather than mainstream. ... To me, it has some meaning,” Madonna said. “It may be someone who is pro-choice on abortion, but against partial birth abortion.”

Unlike the political middle, being mainstream is an unpopular place when applied to the media. Originally coined by conservatives as MSM, the mainstream media is maligned by both ends of the political spectrum as biased, lazy and agenda-driven. The reference invariably includes major newspapers and broadcast media.

“The media has become an object of derision,” Sabato said. “MSM has become an acronym that is widely recognized. It would be difficult to change.”

With such a handy target, lawmakers in both parties have taken to kicking the mainstream media at frequent intervals.

In a May interview with the Washington Post, Eric Ueland, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., spoke of the senator’s efforts to try to do the right thing in the face of a “ferocious mainstream media onslaught.”

On Rep. John Conyers’ Web log, the Michigan Democrat said it was about time the “MSM finally is getting it” by focusing on the recently leaked British cabinet memos that suggest President’s Bush had his mind set on war as early as the summer of 2002.

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A tough year for the AFL-CIO (Townhall.com, 050720)

Linda Chavez

The AFL-CIO is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, but don’t expect any champagne to be flowing at the organization’s annual convention next week. It’s been a lousy year — indeed a miserable several decades — for Big Labor. With union membership falling to historic lows and the unions’ political clout on the wane, even while unions pour, literally, hundreds of millions of dollars into politics, the coup de grace for the AFL-CIO may come at the convention itself. Five unions, including the federation’s biggest, have announced they will pull out of the group unless the AFL-CIO changes its focus to organizing new members. But even these dissident unions seem clueless when it comes to what really ails the shrinking labor movement.

Less than 8% of private sector workers belonged to a union in 2004, and, overall, only 12.5% of American workers carry a union card — down from about one-third of workers in labor’s heydays in the 1950s. If it weren’t for compulsory union membership laws in 27 states, the number would no doubt be even lower.

The unions claim the deck is stacked against them when it comes to labor laws, but the truth is many private and public sector workers are forced to pay union dues as a condition of their employment, yet they have little say in how the unions spend their money. Despite court rulings that grant union members the right to withhold that portion of their dues that goes beyond negotiating and administering the union contract, most union members — 78% according to one poll — are in the dark about their rights, and the unions themselves want to keep it that way. Nor has the National Labor Relations Board, the federal government’s chief enforcement agency, done much to force unions to inform their workers of their rights.

So how did unions spend their members’ money last year? The 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the largest union in the AFL-CIO and the one spearheading the threats to pull out of the federation next week, spent $65 million not organizing new members but trying to defeat President Bush and Republicans in Congress. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees spent $48 million in the same, failing effort. The AFL-CIO spent $44 million trying to defeat Bush, and the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) spent another $8 million in the same quest.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. These unions also gave millions to so-called 527 organizations, which can collect and spend unlimited amounts trying to elect or defeat candidates. According to its own press releases, the SEIU alone gave $26 million to America Coming Together, an anti-Bush 527, while the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) gave $1 million to the Media Fund to run ads against the president and Republicans. All of this money came from union dues, not from the voluntary contributions unions collect through their Political Action Committees, which spent an additional $52 million in the 2004 election cycle, 86% of it going to Democrats.

Some 43% of voters in union households voted for President Bush in 2004, according to exit poll data. But these union members have virtually no say in how their unions spend their hard-earned money. Next week’s vote among AFL-CIO union leaders won’t change that one whit. The president of the SEIU, Andy Stern, claims he wants the AFL-CIO to spend more on organizing new members and brags that his own union spends half its budget on signing up new members, a boast that is impossible to verify given the arcane methods unions use to hide their finances. But the AFL-CIO dissidents are among the worst offenders when it comes to wasting their members’ dues on politics. Enforcing union members’ right to withhold that portion of their dues that goes to politics would do more to reform the labor movement than any phony bolt from the AFL-CIO.

Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a Townhall.com member organization.

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Your Turn (townhall.com, 050812)

Rich Tucker

Sometimes it’s unfair to be a columnist. I get all this space every week to share my views, and readers are limited in their ability to respond. That’s the only reason I can think of for a recent missive, whose entire text consisted of, “[expletive] idiot.”

So: Your turn. All comments are actual e-mails, recreated here with spelling, grammatical and typographical errors faithfully retained.

In a recent column I noted, “By the time you read this, the author may be out of a job. You see, I’m writing this while wearing an Atlanta Braves cap. And not just any cap. One with the smiling Indian logo.”

Several readers took exception.

“The Braves have never had a smiling Indian logo. So you must be lying about the supposed cap you were wearing while writing your column,” one wrote. “It is a small detail, I know. But facts are inportant (sic), and lies hurt the credibility of all your details, small or not. Once again you have exhibited the disturbingly common conservative tendency to simply make up facts to support the worldview you so desperately cling to. You shouldn’t lie.”

Strong words. Lying? Hardly. I think I know what’s on my lucky Braves hat. It features this logo. In my original piece, the hyperlink was removed. Yes, it’s not the hat the Braves wear on the field. But it is an Atlanta Braves hat.

This reader also attacks what he calls a conservative tendency to “make up facts.” However, it’s really liberals who tend to be guilty of making stuff up. These days, all the ideas are on the right and all the facts seem to support the conservative viewpoint. So liberals seldom bother to attempt to marshal arguments. Instead they resort to launching personal attacks and changing the subject. Sometimes both in the same e-mail.

One shining example is a liberal thinker who was angry about my column on liberal framing. That’s the hot new idea on the left: using words to block ideas. As I wrote recently, “On the left, the rhetoric actually creates the policy. And since the rhetoric is designed to do nothing, the policy is to do nothing. No wonder they have no solutions to offer.”

“Dick, I was just wondering,” one response began, “when you say that cons like yourself have a plan while liberals (or more acuratly (sic), 49% of the nation) can only offer empty framing, then how do you account for the utter lack of planing (sic) for Iraq? Or is that the fault of the 49 also?”

Just to make sure there wasn’t any understanding, I let the writer know I prefer not to be called Dick. It’s my Dad’s name. I also pointed out that the F7 key was a useful tool for catching spelling errors. “Interesting that you can’t seem to look past the unfortunate name your parents gave you or spelling errors,” he replied. “But this is typical bait and switch tactics that cons like yourself use to squirm out of answering uncomfortable questions.”

Ah, what a lovely little game. When a liberal is reminded that his side has no plan to reform Social Security, he launches insults and changes the subject. And then accuses the conservative of having done those exact things.

Of course, the conservative plan for Iraq was — and is — to export democracy. A free and democratic Iraq will help transform the Middle East. But this letter writer isn’t interested in the plan. He’s just interested in changing the subject. If one were to lay out the conservative plan for Iraq, he’d claim, “but you’ve got no plan for reforming the space program,” or “you’ve got no plan to eradicate ants in Texas,” until, eventually, he’d hit on something for which conservatives actually don’t have a plan. There must be something out there we haven’t thought of.

Finally, on July 8 I wrote that the previous day’s attacks on the London subway showed the weakness of Islamic terrorists, not their strength. “The West is winning, and will win. It’s merely a matter of time,” I wrote.

But one writer questioned which religion the attackers really followed. “I have a small suspicion that the recent bombings in London may have been done by Israel citizens (sic) or other Jews that may be doing what they consider ‘helping fellow Jews’ by blowing up what are normally Muslim dominated mass transit points,” he wrote.

When events proved him wrong, he wasn’t ready to back down. “I do not actually care to learn who did the bombings,” he later responded. “I have opened the minds of many people. Try to close them, you bigot.”

Will do. Oh, and please, keep those e-mails coming.

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New ideas? (townhall.com, 050815)

Star Parker

A group of wealthy Democratic Party partisans has announced a new partnership called the Democratic Alliance, through which millions of dollars will be funneled to a network of new and existing liberal think tanks to compete with conservative organizations. Reported commitments are $80 million over the next five years, with a goal of reaching $200 million.

According to press reports, these investors are frustrated at recent Democratic setbacks, most recently John Kerry’s loss to President Bush last November. Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg calls conservative think tanks that have emerged over recent years an “information-age Tammany Hall” with which Democrats have not been adequately equipped to compete.

Maybe liberal strategists have been reading my column. I wrote last February that Democratic leaders “seem to have little appreciation of the extent to which Sen. Kerry’s defeat in November reflected the total absence of ideas in the party.”

So I applaud any new initiative by Democrats to enter into the world of thought and ideas. However, from what I’m reading, it seems questionable that this is really what is happening.

Although the stated objective of this effort is generating “new ideas,” there is little hint what these ideas might be.

I surfed over to the Web site of one of these new think tanks, the Center for American Progress, set up a few years ago by Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, John Podesta, to get a sense of what this new agenda looks like. Here’s the stated mission: “developing a long-term vision of a progressive America; providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals; responding effectively and rapidly to conservative proposals and rhetoric ...”

This sounds less like a think tank than a new, politically motivated forum for delivering old liberal ideas. Maybe what is new is calling high taxes and intrusive big government “progressive” instead of “liberal.” A rose is a rose.

The great alleged insight on the left a few years ago was that conservative talk radio has been the conservative silver bullet to the hearts and minds of America. Again, not the conservative agenda, but conservative radio.

So Democratic deep-pocket types reached in to pull out the cash to create Air America to put Al Franken on the radio waves.

The most recent numbers that I’ve seen is that Air America ratings have done nothing but decline since it launched in 2004. National Review’s Byron York reports that in New York City, WABC, which carries Rush Limbaugh, has been consistently beating Franken and Air America.

Americans are not deprived of the liberal _ now called “progressive” _ point of view. It’s been with us since FDR. We are surrounded by it, from our public schools, to our universities (where 72% of faculty members identify themselves as liberals) to the media (where 7% of the national press identifies itself as conservative and 88% as moderate to liberal).

Certainly in the black community, support for the Democratic Party has been eroding because increasing numbers of blacks understand what “progressive ideas” have done to our community over the last 50 years.

The new Democratic strategists should take a close look at the results of a study just produced by Democratic pollsters Karl Agne and Stan Greenberg, based on focus groups done with rural voters in Wisconsin and Arkansas. The study concludes that cultural issues _ “gay marriage, abortion, the importance of the traditional family unit and the role of religion in public life” _ trump and swing these voters in favor of the Republican Party.

It is ironic that Democratic strategists cannot seem to grasp that the big-government themes and moral relativism that define their party disproportionately hurt lower-income groups. Reconciliation with the truth that traditional values and ownership are the best ticket into the American middle class will open the door to fresh thinking and new ideas in the Democratic Party and build new bridges to traditional Democratic constituencies.

From what I see, this new Democratic think tank initiative amounts to rich liberal elitists looking for new marketing techniques for their same old ideas.

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Democrat Disbelief (American Spectator, 050811)

The liberal polling firm Democracy Corps has released the results of its latest research project. Titled, “The Culture Divide & the Challenge of Winning Back Rural & Red State Voters,” the memo encapsulating the results of a series of focus groups paints a grim picture for Democrats. “Most [focus group participants] referred to Democrats as ‘liberal’ on issues of morality, but some even go so far as to label them ‘immoral,’ ‘morally bankrupt,’ or even ‘anti-religious,’” report Karl Agne and Stan Greenberg from Democracy Corps.

Go figure. The same day Democracy Corps released its study, NARAL Pro-Choice America began airing a television ad that implies Supreme Court nominee Judge John G. Roberts supports abortion clinic bombers. Whether you call it “the God gap,” “the values gap,” or “the culture gap,” it has never been wider than it is now.

It’s been almost ten months since Democrats promised to take “moral values” voters seriously after the drubbing this important voting bloc gave them in the 2004 election. Back then, it seemed every aspiring Democrat politician in America was ready to enroll in the Rites of Catholic Initiation for Adults or start attending an Evangelical Megachurch. “Our moral values are closer to the American people than the Republicans’ are,” Howard Dean preached in his campaign to become the new chairman of the Democrat National Committee. Dean’s opponent Don Fowler went a step further saying, “I am a Democrat because I am a Christian, not in spite of it.”

It all came off as a bit solicitous and, frankly, futile. It’s hard to imagine anyone uttering the word “values” more frequently than altar boy John Kerry did during the 2004 campaign. And it’s not as if Americans of faith were a swing group. President George W. Bush beat Kerry among both Protestants (59%-40%) and Catholics (52%-47%). He won among those who attend church monthly, weekly, and more than once a week, which is to say people who enter a church for reasons other than to ask for directions (though Kerry slaughtered Bush among voters who never attend church). White Evangelicals supported Bush over Kerry by a greater margin than gays, lesbians, and bisexuals favored Kerry.

But then came the backlash. Despite exit polls showing a plurality of voters said “moral values” was their number one issue of concern on Election Day, liberals, libertarians, and even neocons managed to cover their ears and chant “there’s no such thing as a ‘moral values’ voter” long enough to convince themselves they were right.

It got worse. When her estranged husband and Florida state courts decided it was time for Terri Schiavo to go, Christian conservatives and some Republican politicians protested. Loudly. Congress passed a measure to grant the Supreme Court review of her case. President Bush signed it. All involved were accused of placating the Religious Right. Republicans left, right, and center were accused of being “theocrats.” Some polls apparently said people had turned on the Religious Right as if the “moral values” movement was as dead as that poor girl in Florida.

It soon became so gauche to be a “moral values” American, Howard Dean called Republicans a “white, Christian party.” And he meant it as an epithet.

Except that someone forgot to tell Americans.

According to the Democracy Corps memo:

President Bush and Republicans in Congress were faulted for their lack of effective leadership on these issues and their failure to offer new ideas. Furthermore, there was strong support for some specific progressive initiatives and a belief among many that Democrats would be more willing to tackle these issues and to offer new ideas in the face of current policies that are clearly failing. However, as powerful as the concern over these issues is, the introduction of cultural themes — specifically gay marriage, abortion, the importance of the traditional family unit, and the role of religion in public life — quickly renders them almost irrelevant in terms of electoral politics at the national level.

In short, “moral values” issues still trump everything else. And what’s more, “moral value” voters still resent the Democrats’ derision of their worldview. In the memo’s words:

...these attitudes were most powerfully captured in symbolic issues such as display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, removing God from the Pledge of Allegiance, or outlawing public manger displays at Christmastime. On each of these symbolic cases in point, there was a broad perception that Republicans would be on the side of American tradition, Judeo-Christian values, and the forgotten majority while Democrats would stand up and fight for a subversive minority seeking to erode the moral foundation of our country.

The voters are right, of course, just as they were in 2004. But Americans should expect another round of insincere Democrat yawps of piety and “our values are better than your values” talk. And then when the next “moral value” issue strikes (the entire John Roberts confirmation applies) liberals will blame those damn Christians for anything they can imagine. Then they’ll lose some more elections until they say, Okay this time, we’re really going to pay attention to Americans of faith.

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The Great Right Hope (townhall.com, 050819)

Rich Tucker

There’s little doubt today’s Democratic party is destroying itself. It seems unable to come up with any ideas or solutions, so it spends its time filibustering conservative judges and blocking Republican proposals. However, for a two-party system to work you need — well — two parties. So in the spirit of encouraging competition, here’s what the Democratic party needs to save itself: its own George W. Bush.

The left’s problems today oddly mirror the right’s problems 10 years ago.

Back then, conservatives thought their opposition to President Clinton would be enough. We didn’t like him, we didn’t trust him, and we expected the rest of the country w