Obama: Community Colleges Can Boost Economy

From CNN, "Obama: Community Colleges Can Help Boost Ailing Economy":

Community colleges are only two-year institutions, but the Obama administration says they could play a key role in helping boost the ailing economy for years to come.

To underscore that contention Tuesday, the president unveiled the American Graduation Initiative, a 10-year, $12 billion plan to invest in community colleges.

During his announcement at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, Obama noted that the economic recession and a changing U.S. economy have reduced the number of automotive industry jobs, a mainstay in Michigan.

The "hard truth is that some of the jobs that have been lost in the auto industry and elsewhere won't be coming back. They are casualties of a changing economy," Obama said, adding that "even before this recession hit, we were faced with an economy that was simply not creating or sustaining enough new, well-paying jobs."

Also, see Dana Pico's related essay at Common Sense Political Thought, "Donald Douglas and the Community College System (with links to my recent essays on blogging and teaching at the two-year college level).

Republicans: Leading America's 2nd Emancipation

From RagingElephants.org, "Urgent: “MLK, Jr. Billboard Project”":

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard good conservatives and Republicans ask the question, “How can we begin sharing with the African-American community the true history of the GOP? We’re the party that freed the slaves!” For many, maybe even you, it’s a concern that so many in the Black community don’t know the history of the party and we’re always looking for a way to get the truth to them. The party that always wanted to keep them down was the Democratic Party. The party that really shares their values is the Republican Party.

We suffer from frustration because it appears that many of our party leaders are at a loss for how to get the message to the communities of color that we have always been the party of equality, prosperity, and individual liberty. Sometimes it appears we are just feeling around in the dark trying to grasp for an answer and we keep coming up empty handed.

The team of RagingElephants.org feels we have a plan that will be effective. Our mission is to focus on “messaging”, to engage the communities of colors with truth, and compel them to learn more about the party of Lincoln and reassess their political affiliations.

Our messaging has to rely heavily on “old media” — radio, TV, periodicals, and billboards. Although the rise of new media has been fast and furious, the facts are it’s still a relatively small number of people that enjoy Facebook, Twitter, and all the other social networking sites. Everyone has a radio, a TV, or passes by billboards most everyday.

Our next big messaging project is a massive billboard in the African-American neighborhood of 3rd Ward/Sunnyside, in Houston.

A few weeks ago when this revelation came to me, this billboard was not available and was being leased. Just a few weeks later, on my way to my church that’s in this neighborhood, what do I notice? — it’s available. I think this is divine intervention and we have to take advantage of this opportunity, NOW!

What’s so special about this billboard? It sits at the Martin Luther King, Jr. exit of the 610 South Loop in Houston. And we want to lease the billboard with the phase, “Martin Luther King, Jr. Was a Republican” to greet everyone that intends to travel on MLK, Jr. Blvd.

We think this is the type of messaging — psychological warfare, if you will — that will go a long way to achieving our goal of compelling voters from minority communities to become aware of the political history of their community, and take a fresh look at the GOP and conservative principles.

See also, KRIV FOX 26 Houston, "MLK Billboard SparksHeated Debate":

Also, see Common Sense Political Thought, "What would Dr King say?"

Full Metal Saturday: Bar Refaeli

It's been busy blogging around here the last few days. In fact, I hope readers send viral my first hand report from yesterday, "Pasadena "May Day! May Day!" Anti-Socialism Rally."

And I'm going to busy today as well, running my boys around to art classes and math tutoring. So I'd better started with my "Full Metal Reach Around" and "Rule 5" action. Check out Bar Rafaeli and "The 2009 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition Cover":

Those just tuning in to my Saturday "Reach Around" tradition might check out how it's done at No Sheeples Here!: "Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around." Plus, TrogloPundit's got, "A little early Rule #2 action." And the guys at Maggie's Farm get hot with some linky love of their own!

"Rule 5" is key to the genre, so I'm happy to find David at Thunder Run doing some hot Rule 5-ing! And don't forget to check out Wellywanger!

I'm checking over at Monique Stuart's, and she's branching out into "hotness" analysis. Suzanna Logan's on the case as well. And as Fausta Wertz illustrates, even German Chancellor Angela Merkel's good for a little Saturday fun! And more at Pat in Shreveport's, "Saturday Linkage with Russell Crowe."

See also:

* Astute Bloggers, "MAY 2ND 1989: THE IRON CURTAIN OVER HUNGARY COMES DOWN."

* AubreyJ, "Short note from AubreyJ ..."

* The Blog Prof, "NY Gov Patterson Settles Racial Discrimination Suit."

* Common Sense Political Thought, "Just give us the dirt."

* Crush Liberalism, "Photo of the week, “Barney Frank” edition."

* Gayle's Place, "Let Me Become an Illegal Alien, PLEEEAAASE!"

* Hummers and Cigarettes, "Progressives: Finding Humor In Their Hypocrisy."

* Instapundit, "CONCORD MONITOR: The More Restraints On Earmarks The Better."

* Legal Insurrection, "Why Is Deval Patrick On Anyone's List?"

* Little Miss Attila, "Stacy McCain Tries to Annoy Feminists ..."

* Michelle Malkin, "Obama’s choices: Gird your loins," on David Souter's retirement.

* Midnight Blue, "@FollowFriday," on Sarah Palin on Twitter.

* Moe Lane, "Joe Sestak not making way for Arlen Specter?"

* PFB Blog, "Sexist Beyonce Says Michelle Obama is her “hero”."

* Pundit & Pundette, "Creating demand for bigger government."

* The Real World, "LIE: TAX CUT FOR 95% OF AMERICANS."

* The Rhetorican, "Clash of the Enlightened Beings Continues!"

* Riehl World View, "He Who Judges."

* Right Wing Sparkle, "Kathleen Parker Finally Gets Something Right."

* Robert Stacy McCain, "Video: Gay gynephobia."

* Snooper Report, "The changing World."

* Sparks From the Anvil, "Waterboarding Pales in Comparison to the Comfy Chair."

* Sundries Shack, "Souter’s Gone. Let the Democratic Carnage Begin!"

Tea Parties Spark Conservative Insurgency Online

Via Glenn Reynolds, check out this Fox News report, "Move Over, MoveOn: Tea Parties Spark Conservative Insurgency Online":

Conservatives may be catching up with their liberal counterparts in building a Web-driven, grassroots campaign to push their agenda.

The online insurgency-in-the-making revolves around the so-called tea parties, the anti-tax protests popping up around the country that they expect to culminate Wednesday -- tax day -- with hundreds of rallies nationwide.

The movement, which expanded over the last two months via the Web, is now relying heavily on independent media Web sites to track and cover the campaign.

The digital evolution of conservative activists comes too late to help John McCain, whose new media arm was left in the dust by President Obama's campaign. But organizers are holding out hope that this movement has juice.

"It's thoroughly viral," said Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit.com blogger who hosts an online news show for the Web site Pajamas TV.

Pajamas TV is on the frontlines of new media coverage for the tea parties. The Web site already has covered some protests and is pledging to recruit an army of citizen journalists, working without pay, to cover the hundreds of protests on April 15.

Roger L. Simon, co-founder of the blog network Pajamas Media, which includes Pajamas TV, said the site went after tea party coverage because the mainstream media didn't.

He said Pajamas TV has more than 200 people registered to report on Wednesday's tea parties. He said they'll send in text reports, as well as videos and photos, to drive what he expects to be about 12 straight hours of online coverage.

"They'll be across the country essentially," he said, calling the operation a "big experiment."

"What will the quality of these reports be? Variable of course," Simon said. "But that's the nature of the beast."

The Web site currently features extensive footage of Tea Party protests, including interviews with activists and roundtable discussions.

From here, Simon wants to use the network of volunteer reporters for future assignments. Reynolds, who is also a law professor at the University of Tennessee, said he'll cover the protest in Knoxville and then return to co-anchor an online broadcast from his home.

There's more at the link.

See also:

* Common Sense Political Thought, "Mob Populism."

* Moe Lane, "I’d just like to note for the record ..."

* Nice Deb, "The Confused Critics of the Tax Day Tea Parties."

* Robert Stacy McCain, "Sully and the Tea Party Truthers."

* Paco Enterprises, "Protest is not a Leftwing Monopoly."

* Valley of the Shadow, "The Story of Icarus and the Democrats."

Full Metal Saturday: Kristin Cavallari

Well folks, it's been a busy week blogging the culture wars, but I'm taking time out here for a little double-duty on babe-blogging. Readers might have missed my regular midweek "Rule 5 Rescue," so I'm going double-barrel with some hot Kristin Cavallari action! Ms. Cavallari's a local Laguna Beach hottie who was the leading personality during Season 2 of Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County:

Readers will recall that Full Metal Saturday owes its origins to Robert Stacy McCain's pathbreaking post, "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year." I call Robert "The Hustler," not only for his recognition as one of the hardest working bloggers in the blogosphere, but for the growing influence of his program of shameless blog whoring! Today's case in point is Michael van der Galien of PoliGazette, who's introducing a new feature at his site called "Link Mess." But I should note that Steven Givler, who was featured here last week, is also a reader of The Other McCain. Now, note something else: When my friend Carol at No Sheeples Here! expressed some reservations about "Rule 5" blogging, Robert put up an interesting post on the subject, where he noted:

Conservatives must rid themselves of the Dean Vernon Wormer mindset ("No more fun of any kind!") and instead try to put the "party" back into the Republican Party. Stop trying to be the uptight, respectable Omegas. Let's bring a hell-raising, fun-loving Delta House mentality to the task at hand ...

Well, I'll tell ya: It looks like a number of conservative bloggers have taken the hint, especially the ladies! Fausta Wertz puts out some classic Rule 5 blogging this week with a couple of entries, "Captain Underpants" (featuring a "hirsute" Tom Selleck) and "About those hairless chests ..." Fausta links to Neo-Neocon, who not only offers a lengthy analysis of "men waxing their chests," but the post sports a shot of some pretty hunky beefcake! Plus, Monique Stuart's playing both sides of the fence with some hot Katy Perry Rule 5 action! Now that's what I'm talking about! And don't miss Pundette & Pundette, who's got her weekend link-fest up today, with some hot buns in there to boot! If I'm omitting any entries from the ladies, just send me an e-mail and I'll add your post to this entry. And with that, on to the guys! I've got to get a couple of my blog buddies fired up for some Rule 5 revelry! Dana at Common Sense Political Thought might post an update his hot Helen Mirren entry, and Stogie at Saberpoint might well be afflicted by the Dean Vernor Wormer mindset! Let's also put some pressure on my friends Dave in Boca and William Jacobson. Come on guys, break loose with some babe blogging! And check out Lance Burri to see how it's done, "Of Rule #5, YouTube, and commercials indeterminate, persuasive, and unpleasant." Dude, it's getting hot in here! And don't even get me going about John Althouse Cohen! But wait! This just in: "The Hustler's" got breaking news on Lindsay Lohan: "EX-DISNEY STARLET LINDSAY LOHAN REPORTEDLY DUMPED BY LESBIAN GF SAMANTHA RONSON . . ." Okay, switching gears a bit, don't forget that a number of our good friends have no time for breast blogging. They're busy doing even more important work: Tea Party blogging! Moe Lane's got a great post on the 12 whole anti-capitalist protesters - that's right just 12 - who turned out for the left's epic-fail copycat protest in Washington, D.C., one of the "New Way Forward" demonstrations that are modeled after the conservative movement's emerging "Second American Revolution." Conservatives are getting fired up on this, of course. Check out Point of a Gun, with some coverage of Maryland's Tea Party protests. Little Miss Attila is gearing up for her events, but check out Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit with all kinds of links to Tea Party action nationwide. As always, if I've missed anyone just send me a quick note and I'll add your post here in an update. Otherwise, keep up the Rule 5 hotness!

Rule 5 Rescue: Katy Perry

Well, it's time for American Power's midweek Rule 5 Rescue. The series, if you recall, is inspired by Robert Stacy McCain's landmark post, "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year."

Katy Perry is this week's featured hottie for a couple of reasons: (1) My son likes her music, and we often watch VH1 videos together on the weekend. Katy Perry's actually bouncy, wholesome, and fun, much more so than the attractive but a bit raunchy Lady Gaga; and (2) John Hawkins had posted links to Katy Perry - IN A BIKINI - the other day at Conservative Grapevine, which pretty much clinched the deal.

And that reminds me of something while we're on the topic of blogging hotties.

Some folks might be thinking babe-blogging is "un-conservative." When Dana at Common Sense Political Thought put up a respectable post on Helen Mirren - IN A BIKINI - one of his commenters threw cold water on the essay at the thread: "Oh dear. I hope this won’t become a regular happening. Your quality writing is more than enough! While Mirren is mighty and marvelous, no more please." And this wasn't satirical ribbing.

But think about it? What better way to build a blog community and have a little fun? Only an uptight feminist would decry babe-blogging for the "objectification" and "exploitation" of women. But forget about that: Remember what Little Miss Attila says, "There is a marked tendency for heterosexual men to be interested in women." Plus, conservative woman are masters at the genre, for example, in Monique Stewart's post on health care affordability topped off with a HOT PHOTO OF A BURSTING PAMELA ANDERSON!

Really, I think most folks on the right would rather read bloggers who regularly link to the nightly bedtime totties at Theo Spark's than wind up like Ross Douthat, who while in college, rebuffed the dorm-room sexual importunings of a Reese Witherspoon-lookalike who was "drunkenly masticating" his "neck and cheeks."

As the old Schlitz beer advertisment used to say,''You only go around once in life, so you have to grab for all the gusto you can get!"

Besides, if you're jonesing for content in a down cycle of interesting news content, you can always say, "When in doubt . . . blog about Britney. Or Scarlett Johansson. Or Natalie Portman. Or Anne Hathaway. Or Lindsay Lohan."

**********

Previously: "Rule 5 Rescue: Paulina Porizkova."

Rule 5 Rescue: Helen Mirren

Well, I wasn't planning a "Rule 5 Rescue" entry this week, but I'm pleased to see Dana Pico's put up a fabulous picture of Helen Mirren as his introductory contribution to the genre (see, "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year").

I've enjoyed Helen Mirren's movies a for a long time. I took my mom to see Calendar Girls when it was in theaters in 2004, and I saw The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover back in 1989 or so, and that was an interesting but unusual movie.

I'll tell you though, seeing Helen Mirren in a bikini has engendered a newfound appreciation of Ms. Mirren's skills.

Don't miss Dana Pico's blog, Common Sense Political Thought, for some hard-hitting conservative commentary (and now apparently some hot chicks!).

Collectivized Rights

I mentioned previously that some of the commenters on the "going Galt" phenomenon had not actually read Atlas Shrugged. On the other hand, I noticed that a couple of entries into the debate have explained what "going Galt" is. For example, Dana at Common Sense Political Thought has "The Rationale for “Going Galt”. And Laura at Pursuing Holiness has "On Going Galt," which she defines as, "a conscious decision to produce less as a form of protest."

And boy has that idea enraged a lot of people on the left!

I read Atlas Shrugged a couple of years ago, but this week I've been skimming through my copy of The Virtue of Selfishness. Especially good is the chapter on "collectivized rights," which is available at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights:

The notion of “collective rights” (the notion that rights belong to groups, not to individuals) means that “rights” belong to some men, but not to others—that some men have the “right” to dispose of others in any manner they please—and that the criterion of such privileged position consists of numerical superiority.

Nothing can ever justify or validate such a doctrine—and no one ever has. Like the altruist morality from which it is derived, this doctrine rests on mysticism: either on the old-fashioned mysticism of faith in supernatural edicts, like “The Divine Right of Kings”—or on the social mystique of modern collectivists who see society as a super-organism, as some supernatural entity apart from and superior to the sum of its individual members.

The amorality of that collectivist mystique is particularly obvious today in the issue of national rights.

A nation, like any other group, is only a number of individuals and can have no rights other than the rights of its individual citizens. A free nation—a nation that recognizes, respects and protects the individual rights of its citizens—has a right to its territorial integrity, its social system and its form of government. The government of such a nation is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of its citizens and has no rights other than the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific, delimited task (the task of protecting them from physical force, derived from their right of self-defense).

The citizens of a free nation may disagree about the specific legal procedures or methods of implementing their rights (which is a complex problem, the province of political science and of the philosophy of law), but they agree on the basic principle to be implemented: the principle of individual rights. When a country’s constitution places individual rights outside the reach of public authorities, the sphere of political power is severely delimited—and thus the citizens may, safely and properly, agree to abide by the decisions of a majority vote in this delimited sphere. The lives and property of minorities or dissenters are not at stake, are not subject to vote and are not endangered by any majority decision; no man or group holds a blank check on power over others.

Such a nation has a right to its sovereignty (derived from the rights of its citizens) and a right to demand that its sovereignty be respected by all other nations.

But this right cannot be claimed by dictatorships, by savage tribes or by any form of absolutist tyranny. A nation that violates the rights of its own citizens cannot claim any rights whatsoever. In the issue of rights, as in all moral issues, there can be no double standard. A nation ruled by brute physical force is not a nation, but a horde—whether it is led by Attila, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Khrushchev or Castro. What rights could Attila claim and on what grounds?

Read the whole thing at the link.

Doug at Below the Beltway has a cool post from last year on the The Virtue of Selfishness, Obama Shrugged."

But see also Dr. Helen's post from this week, where she notes that Clemson University is hosting a summer conference on Atlas Shrugged.

Plus, Brian at Liberty Pundit has "Liberals Love To Assume." Brian's making a comeback to the blogosphere, so head on over there and say hello!

The War on High Earners

Things are getting very interesting!

Dr. Hussein Birdbrain has provided the link to Daniel Gross' piece over at Slate, "War on the Rich?" The basic meme here is that there's in fact no such thing as a war on wealth - it's a GOP sham.

To make that case, of course, leftists have to demonize conservative and "John Galters" as "stupid," or worse. Check out Jesse Taylor, for example:

I one day hope to earn enough money to consider acting like an irrational asshole and having it become national news ...

Steve Benen has a wrapup of why this is economically stupid, but what I wanted to talk about is this bizarre idea that going John Galt is in any way intelligent or feasible. John Galt is an expression of narcissistic self-destruction, the central character in a novel that expresses undeveloped adolescent frustration with being so fucking great that the world can’t even handle your greatness. Going John Galt requires you to be simultaneously so successful that it matters whether or not you do it, and so dumb that you’d consider making yourself worse off than you’d ever be under the terrible plan you’re avoiding. You imagine these lawyers, dentists and others, incapable of doing basic math yet possessed of sets of specialized skills, shuddering in the face of adversity as simple as having to mail in a rebate form while simultaneously rubbing their fingers over their tax returns, their top 2% Adjusted Gross Income proof positive that they’re smarter and of more use to society than the mechanic they screamed at because sparkplugs are fucking made up bullshit and everyone knows it.

What's interesting about this is not just Mr. Taylor's profane excoriation of market conservatives who might not want the state taking MORE of their money (on principle that they would rather reduce their own productivity than feed the freedom-crushing the beast of the state), but also that as evidenced by his link to Wikipedia, I'm betting Mr. Taylor's never read the book.

Of course, Matthew Yglesias hasn't read it, but that didn't stop him from attacking the "nightmare scenarios" of the revolt of the "titans of high finance."

The non-book reading collectivists are like that though: Kick, cuss, and then confiscate, and then let the commissariats sort out the rest

Man it's going to be a long four years...

Hat Tip: Common Sense Political Thought.

Redefining Individualism

One of the reasons that I've hammered the folks at Ordinary Gentlemen so much is not just because of their fundamental cowardice and dishonesty, but because they're extremely easy targets as well. It makes for interesting blogging, in any case, and the much-needed clarification of ideas.

E.D. Kain provides us with another opportunity this afternoon, in "Redefining Prosperity." E.D. is of course defending the dramatic Democratic expansion of government under Obama's fiscal policy, but he's also trying to justify this power grab by offering a new model of public purpose, an all-American revisionist philosophy of statism that's offered as if it's so self-evident that we should look upon those clinging to "archaic" conceptions of individualism and liberty as literally less biologically-evolved.

Check this out:

Individualism ties in well with the Republican Party’s superficial promise of small government through lower taxation. Democrats, on the other hand, believe that to some degree the State needs to intervene, to provide social safety nets in a society that obviously merits them. They have more faith in the power and beneficence of the government. Republicans are equally bound to the State, but believe in a broader partnership between it and private institutions. Both place an enormous amount of faith and emphasis on the individual. The irony, of course, is that individualism and the size of the State are bound inextricably, the one to the other. The more Americans become boxed into their “liberating” roles as individuals, the more detached we become from our communities and families. These antiquated institutions become accidentally irrelevant. Once upon a time, our family was our social safety net, and the community an even broader one. Yet, as we’ve been increasingly driven into our roles as individuals - through political and economic policies as well as through rapid technological development - and as our faith in community and family has dwindled, we have become ever more reliant on the State to provide for our needs.

Read the whole thing, here.

But let's note right away that E.D. might have set his essay up with some kind of definition of "individualism." Most scholars working in political culture don't use the necessarily popularized version of "rugged individualism," for the manifest reason that it's a term that easily abused, "John Wayned" into some kind of caricature of a phenomenon that should really be thought of as a more complex ideational identity of self-reliance and freedom from interference by the state (lower case for "state," as it's not a proper noun).

When we refer to "individualism" we're not latching onto some snazzy catch-word that's hip with the inside-the-Beltway conservative class - although certainly Rush Limbaugh and others take advantage of the powerful imagery associated with the historically-undeniable notion that people are better off to grow and prosper when LEFT ALONE. Indeed, the development of the democracy in many respects has been driven by individualism. The sense here is of a classically liberal orientation between the citizen and the state, WITHIN a constitutionally-limited polity based on respect for freedom of conscience and property rights.

Note something here as well: We think of individualism as a central component of our American ETHNIC identity, and especially as a psychology of values encompassing our mythic ideals as an immigration society. Over the centuries the immigrants to our shores who helped build and grow this nation have been glued together by a shared dream of acceptance, egalitarianism, and opportunity. And by egalitarianism I mean specifically equality of opportunity, the chance for average people prosper in the absence of hierarchical categories of aristicratic or ecclesiastic privilege. To read works like Gordon Wood's, Radicalism of the American Revolution, and Louis Hartz's, The Liberal Tradition in America, is to be regaled in the powerful moving force of an anti-feudal culture that has been unmatched as a developmental model in the history of the world.

Notice what Robert Bellah says about the power of this classic American political culture in today's day and age:

I believe I can safely borrow terminology from Habits of the Heart and say that a dominant element of the common culture is what we called utilitarian individualism. In terms of historical roots this orientation can be traced to a powerful Anglo-American utilitarian tradition going back at least as far as Hobbes and Locke, although it operates today quite autonomously, without any necessary reference to intellectual history. Utilitarian individualism has always been moderated by what we called expressive individualism, which has its roots in Anglo-American Romanticism, but which has picked up many influences along the way from European ethnic, African-American, Hispanic and Asian influences.

What's interesting in Bellah's piece is how he agrees with E.D. Kain's basic point on the power of the state, but the RESULT of the power is not to create greater DEPENDENCY on government, as E.D. avers (and desires). No, the state works to reinforce, with a world-historical enmority, the power of markets. And markets in turn unleash the productive capacity of individuals to create and produce and innovate, which advances society through wealth creation and the consolidation of entrepreneurial social capital.

Note that Bellah's writing twenty years ago. He's lamenting at that time the shift toward radical muliticultualism, which we know now is even more pronounced today. Bellah sees individualism and robust civic identity as the bulwarks against the more fissiparous tendencies of multiculturalism; the individualistic and civic levels form the social glue of communities that E.D. Kain has written off as "irrelevant."

This is to say that people are not "boxed in" by our historically individualistic culture. Our overwhelming norms and practices as a people are DRIVEN and SHAPED by it. Individualism is what creates a natural aversion to the power of the state. And this is not new. It's not as if the state itself is coterminous with large welfare-policy provision, as E.D. implies. The ORIGINAL state was the medieval actor that arose following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Modern democratic societies emerges as a specific reaction to the absolutism of the national monarchies in Europe. Does it really make any sense in the American context that people today are abandoning "communities" and families" in favor of hegemonic state structures that are alleged to be atomizing them out of their natural social elements?

Indeed, the argument's absurd. One of the most talked about phenomena in the last couple of decades has been an extreme form of suburbanization found in "gate-guarded" master-planned communities. California's well known for this form of hyper-individualism. People who are successul in their businesses or professional careers need very little from the state other than a system of legal order of rights and contracts, and the public goods of community safety (police). Following the race-riots and social welfare liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s, increasing numbers of middle class Americans withdrew from the macrosociety to affluent enclaves away from the danger and decay of the inner cities. These communities of choice allowed for the preservation of a radical individualism that finds not a greater reliance of the state but an increasing flight from it.

Perhaps this is the version of contemporary self-sufficiency that E.D. should be excoriating. While it may be true, as E.D. says, that this type of individualism works at cross-purposes to community, it's of the larger macrosocial community, not that of the family and family-neighborhood enclaves. In turn, it's fundamentally illogical that growing the state will work to solve whatever "crisis of individualism" E.D.'s trying to elucidate. Big goverment kills liberty. If people feel threatened by creeping socialism and unescapable high taxes to pay for the entitlements of the ever-increasing left-wing hordes, they'll flee to where freedom's to be found. It's no wonder that many radical nihilists today are mocking and demonizing those like Glenn Beck or Glenn Reynolds for offering scenarios of American anarchy or of an emerging "John Galt" revolt of the productive classes.

E.D. Kain's groping for some ideological-philosophical justifcation for a left-libertarian consensus. But as Matt Welch noted the other day, this left-classical liberal alliance is dead on arrival. E.D. and his allies keep hammering the point because they want to be "progressive" without being hammered for their ideological capriciousness (if not outright cowardice). So far, these guys are striking out badly.

Janeane Garofalo on Conservatives

I just visited John Hitchcock's post at Common Sense Political Thought, "Liberals Are Racists." Our good friend dove into the fever swamps of the left and came up a bit mucked. I know how it works, as I've crossed over to the nihilist zone many times.

In any case, it seems the creepiness never ends when it comes to leftists "psychoanalyizing" conservatives, as we have here with this video of Janeane Garofalo, on Keith Olbermann's show, talking about Rush Limbaugh and the GOP:

Others Blogging:

Rhymes With Right, "The Arrogance of the White Liberal."

Democrat = Socialist, "Our Country is Founded on a Sham ..."

The Great Illuminator, "Please Janine Garofalo, Tell Me What You Think ... I am Dying To Know!"

Olbermann Watch, "Red Eye Reams Olbermann, Garafalo for Racist Comments!"

Populism and the Peace Movement

Dana at Common Sense Political Thought has responded with a thoughtful essay to my earlier post, "Long Beach ANSWER Cell Mobilizes for March 21st Protest."

In "American Power Versus Populism," Dana notes that, " Dr. Douglas tends to post a lot about the behavior of our enemies in the Islamic world ... [but in his comments on the antiwar movement] it seems to me that he may have overthought the problem ..."

I may have, depending how we look at it. But let's review a bit more of Dana's essay, where he responds to my suggestion that the hardline leftist rallies and demonstrations against the "occupation" can't really be all about ending the wars abroad:

Why can’t it be all about “bringing the troops home now?” That President Obama has set a combat troops withdrawal date eighteen months into the future doesn’t mean that our friends on the left will somehow be satisfied with that; they want the troops home now!

Nor do I think that the anti-war movement has taken what he has called it’s “latest direction.” Rather, the anti-war movement, even in the 1960s, was very much a movement against the notions of power, very opposed to the idea that some people have more mower — and money — than others. From this came the simplistic notion that, in any conflict, the side perceived to have the most power is invariably the “bad guy” ....

Domestically, our friends on the left, and, unfortunately, too many people in the middle as well, see the wealthy and “corporations” as the enemy, as people and institutions which have to be brought to heel and made to pay more and more, this even though most Americans who have jobs are employed by, you guessed it, corporations!

It’s really as simple as the notions of populism, a discourse which supports “the people” versus “the elites.” Scholars have attempted all sorts of explanations concerning the origins, philosophy and strength of populism, but it seems to me to be less a philosophy than a catchall for simply envy and resentment; “He has more money than we do, so he must have cheated us somehow.”

The populist notion, which we can date back at least as far as the legends of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, has not always led to the best of results. Due to a constant e-mail group dispute with a lady whom I considered to be an out-and-out anti-Semite — Art and Yorkshire know to whom I refer — I decided to read Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf last year. People expect the book to be filled with anti-Semitism and racism, and it is, but through much of the book der Führer uses a populist methodology: not only are the Germans the greatest people and greatest culture in the world, but they have been unfairly cheated of their birthright and oppressed by the undeserving elites, the democratic powers of England and France, and, of course, by the Jews. Even the supposedly Jewish notion of the equality of man is but a lie by people temporarily in advantage to keep down those who really ought to be the leaders of mankind.

The problem with populism is that it is a know-nothing philosophy, assuming it could be dignified with the name philosophy. It is an us-against-them demagoguery, and the kinds or rational and realistic arguments Dr Douglas brings to the table concerning the attitudes and behavior of, say, the Palestinians really mean little or nothing: the populist both supports and identifies with the oppressed little guy, the side with less power, because he is the little guy, the guy with less power, and that is a feeling which occurs on a simplistic and emotional level.

This is an excellent discussion, and the truth is Dana and I don't really disagree all that much about the ultimate agenda of today's hardline leftist coalition.

I'd only add a couple of points, especially on populism as it relates to ideology.

Populism in the United States has never really been revolutionary. Some of the greatest outbursts of populism have resulted from a breakdown of effective governmental performance and popular disgust at the absence of clear choices between the parties. Teddy Roosevelt's probably the most important populist in the sense of rousing enough voters to nearly shatter the two-party consensus in 1912. More recently, Ross Perot very well could have won the White House had he not badly miscalculated by withdrawing prematurely from the presidential race in 1992. Other populists, of course, have tapped into some of the more irrationalist or racist strains of American politics (Ron Paul).

I'm pushing fifty, so I was still a kid during the Vietnam-era protest movement. But my understanding of it has primarily been one of antiwar activism within a period of social-cultural revolutionary change, for example, with the civil rights and women's liberation movements. To the extent that some groups at the time were genuinely radical, in the politics of the New Left and campus radicalism, much of this stuff literally died out by the time I was in high school. In the 1990s there was very little going for traditional "antiwar" groups, and in fact there was hardly any anti-government agitation during the Clinton years.

I was at UCSB throughout the period, and the idea of protests against things like the airwar over Kosovo was practically unheard of. People on the left were generally pleased with the Democrats in power, and to the extent that there were demands for a more "progressive" agenda, it was more of nuisance multiculturalism and political correctness. Indeed, today's radical left is pretty much a direct response to the Bush adminstration's policies and the ascent of conservative power in Washington. International ANSWER, the neo-Stalinist protest organization, formed just three days after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

So, from my own perspective, while it's true that there's certainly much "anti-establishment" politics to the radicalism of the Vietnam generation, the changes in culture, environmentalism, academics, and "free-and-easy" lifestyles are a largely a function of the activism of the 1960s protest generation.

I've been on a college campus, as a student or a professor, continuously since 1986. With the exception of some anti-nuclear activity in the late-1980s (some of my friends were going to the nuclear ranges in New Mexico to protest, as well as the Gulf War demonstrations), my sense is that this past few years has seen the emergence of a critical mass of anarchist-revolutionary activity on the scale of world-historical importance. Perhaps the "Battle of Seattle" anti-globalization protest in 1999 was the harbinger, but today's protest generation is more than just "bring the troops home." This is an anti-Semitic kill-the-Jews culture that seems unprecedented, and even unreal to me.

So, I'm not so much disagreeing with Dana than elaborating a bit more as to where I'm coming from and why I see a qualitative change to the type of radical-left activism at home and around the world today.

By the way, be sure to read John Tierney's essay along these lines, making the case for a new stage of the "peace" movement, "The Politics of Peace: What’s Behind the Anti-War Movement?"

The irony of the modern “peace” movement is that it has very little to do with peace— either as a moral concept or as a political ideal. Peace is a tactical ideal for movement organizers: it serves as political leverage against U.S. policymakers, and it is an ideological response to the perceived failures of American society. The leaders of anti-war groups are modern-day Leninists.

This last notion of today's activists as neo-Lenists (or neo-Stalinists, as I refer to them, given their totalitarianism), is particularly troubling to me, since as a professor on a campus that boasts a local cell of the ANSWER network, I see the world communist movement up close and personal. Rather than educating students into the dominant traditions of Anglo-Protestantism and the American political culture of egalitarianism and individualism, today's leftist academics glorify tyrants and murderers while privileging an ideology of anti-Americanism. Students are shortchanged, and the political, cultural, and economic destruction of this nation continues apace.

Today's Democratic-leftists love it, although they don't always admit what their real agenda is. Indeed, they often align themselves with the extremist anti-Israel factions of today's antiwar right.

If in that sense these folks are "populists," perhaps Dana's approach to all of this is pretty close to mine after all.

Anti-Rule 5 Blogging

Well, "Rule 5" blogging has been picking up some steam around the blogosophere (including Fausta Wertz!). But there's a counter-trend afoot in "anti-Rule 5 blogging."

Private Pigg's got the goods:

There is not, and never will be, any pictures of Rosie O’Donnell nude (or in anything revealing, for that matter) on this blog.

Hat Tip: Common Sense Political Thought.

The Ayers-Dohrn Paradox

Once again Zombie, with his photo-essay on William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, demonstrates the future of journalism. I particularly like the explanation of the the Ayers-Dohrn Paradox:

It was quite clear that every single person there (except me) idolized these two unapologetic violent revolutionaries. The entire store was packed full of people.

But we ran smack dab into what I call the Ayers-Dohrn Paradox, which is:

Ayers and Dohrn gained fame as violent revolutionaries willing to commit murder and other terrorist acts in order to overthrow the United States. For that, they were greatly worshipped by the far left. Now, in their sunset years, they’re trying to re-cast themselves as “respectable” left-wing professors with “reasonable” opinions, who have long ago sworn off violence. And so, at these events, neither of them ever mentions their violent heyday, except rarely in passing. Instead, they focus exclusively on their current obsessions: Introducing Marxist thought into schools, and closing down the prison system. However, almost no one who goes to see Ayers and Dohrn gives a damn about hearing monotonous lectures on these particular topics: instead, their fans idolize them because of their violent revolutionary past. So at these events, the audience (as in this case) is full of far-far-far-left radicals who came in order to hear overheated revolutionary rhetoric. But instead, what they get is a boring professorial monologue. If Ayers and Dohrn were nothing more than your run-of-the-mill leftist professors, no one would go to their appearances. They’re coasting on their violent reputation, while at the same time trying to distance themselves from it. And that is the Ayers-Dohrn Paradox.

Another paradox is how leftists think people like Ayers and Dohrn are "great" instructors. One of the most common attacks I get is how leftists are horrified that I might actually be teaching students from a traditional perspective, abjuring indoctrination, and demanding clarity of thought and excellence in work product.

One of my students, who transferred to Berkeley some time back, noted in an e-mail how professors there caved to students' culture of entitlement, essentially dumbing-down the curriculum:

It's funny that you write to me now ... [I was] just reflecting today on how your classes provided such an excellent foundation for the political science courses ... taken so far. I'm actually in my second semester in Berkeley so I still have about a year and a half left until I graduate and go to law school ... Academically I think Berkeley is overrated; they hardly require critical thinking or analysis and make us rely heavily on readings and honing the skill of regurgitating them. I wish the grading was more difficult and we weren't babied so much here but I guess the demographics of these students give them more of a sense of entitlement to an A grade than the students in Long Beach.

Wouldn't want too much "critical thinking," you know ... students might figure out that folks like William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn - and many of their ideological comrades at "elite" campuses around the country - are intellectual frauds indoctrinating students into a morally bankrupt ideology of moral relativist death and destruction.

A Post-Auto-Industrial Society

This morning's Wall Street Journal features a front-page report on the progress with the General Motors automotive bailout: "GM to Offer Two Choices: Bankruptcy or More Aid" (the full essay is available here).

GM's basically demanding more money, billions more. The Detroit car manufacturer is "too big to fail," as some argued late last year as the firm headed into possible bankruptcy. The prognosis heading into GM's March 31 deadline for a viable restructuring plan doesn't look good, and those working on various contingencies "say progress has been slowed by the fact the Obama administration has yet to appoint a 'car czar,' as envisioned by the bailout program."

I haven't followed the auto bailout all that closely, just enough to note that I leased a new Honda Civic in December, where I asked, "What Happened to Buy American?" But the latest New York Review has a thought-provoking essay that's worth a look, especially for its intellectual honesty regarding the purposes and rationales for government intervention in the American automobile sector: "Can We Transform the Auto-Industrial Society?"

The author is Emma Rothschild, who is the Director of the Joint Centre for History and Economics at King's College, Cambridge, and the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard University.

Here's this from the essay:

The present and impending disorder of the automobile companies is a reminder, even more than the decline of the housing and banking industries, of the desolation of the Great Depression. It is a reminder, too, of economic history, or of the rise and decline of industrial destinies. When the listing of the "Fortune 500" began in 1955, General Motors was the largest American corporation, and it was one of the three largest, measured in revenues, every year until 2007. GM was the "largest industrial corporation in the world," in its own description of 1989, and it was engaged, at the time, in "the most massive reindustrialization program ever attempted." It was an incarnation of American economic change, as a GM vice-president suggested during the earlier automotive crisis of 1973: "To say that a company that has successfully grown over a period of 65 years—a period marked by two world wars and a major economic depression—will suddenly be unable to adapt to the changing challenge...flies in the face of common sense"; it "denies history."

This next section is particularly interesting for me, having grown up in Southern California, the car-culture capital of the world:

The automobile industry has been one of the losers in the new American economy. US consumers spent less on new automobiles in 2007 than they spent on "brokerage charges and investment counselling"; in 1979, they had spent ten times as much. In 1979, the share of the auto industry in US GDP was more than twice that of the securities and information services industries together; in 2007, it had been reduced to less than a quarter of their share ....

But the auto-industrial society, with its distinctive organization of American space, cities, highways, social entitlement, and energy use, has continued to flourish. Some 90 percent of Americans drove to work in 2007, 76 percent of them alone. Less than 5 percent went to work by public transportation. The people who used public transportation were much more likely than other Americans to be black or poor; they were more likely to be women than men; most of them lived in New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. The states in which population has increased most rapidly—Utah, Arizona, Texas, Nevada —have low population densities, and low rates of public transportation use.

The relative decline of public transport has been attributed to the very long-term preferences of Americans for being alone in cars, or for being free to go anywhere and at any time, or for living without other people in close proximity; to investments in the interstate highway system; and to the enduring patterns of American zoning and land use. But 80 percent of the US population still lives in metropolitan areas, and some 30 percent in the densely populated city centers. The pattern of land use in the expanding cities of the South and West—which have had the most rapid population growth, with very few people per square kilometer—was itself established over the period that has elapsed since the energy crisis of the 1970s. It is a consequence of prices as well as preferences, and of the changing distribution of public expenditure, or public partiality.

I've had my own car since I was 17 years-old. My home is just a couple-of-minutes walking distance from the local Metrolink station, although there's currently no commuter route directly to my college in Long Beach. If there was, I likely would opt for public transportation at least some of the time, but I would always be a car owner, as would the overwhelming number of people I know. So, any shift toward a "post-auto-industrial" society has to be not just predicated on economic and environal considerations and justifications, but on normative-cultural ones as well.

And this is what's interesting about Rothchild's essay. She comes out explicity in favor of a broader social-cultural transformation to a new transportation-infrastructural public order:

An enduring bailout, or a new deal for Detroit ... would be an investment in ending the auto-industrial society of the late twentieth century. This would involve innovation in public transportation, and in the infrastructure that would enable people to work at home or close to home. It would engage the information industries in making public transport more convenient, more enticing, and more secure. It would be open to the sorts of improvements that have been suggested in the expansion of rail and bus transportation in China, Japan, and France, for example, and in India by the information technology services companies. It would be an investment, even, in the old promise of "automotive" freedom, of owning a car but not having to use it, and of being able to go anywhere at any time, in Asia as in America. The improved public transport would be used for routine travel, such as the "work, school, and medical/dental trips" on which public transit use is already concentrated, according to the National Household Travel Survey. The new hybrid vehicles, in a post-auto-industrial society, would be available for the other trips that the survey describes as "family, personal," or "social, recreation, eat meal."

So, the question for us to think about is now that the Democrats have passed the largest economic bailout in American history, what's next?

Rothschild notes that the Obama-Biden campaign's initial energy plan adopted catastrophic language on climate change and energy dependence. But it's increasingly clear that the more dire warnings on anthropomorphic climate change have been hoaxes. Interestingly, Rothschild focuses on the transformation to a post-auto-industrial society as a program that is in essence predicated on the expansion of civil rights and economic equality, as seen above in the discussion of the proportion of black Americans and the poor who rely on public transportation.

And this brings me back to the issue of honesty and integrity.

The Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress, within a month of the accession of the new regime in Washington, have demonstrated that democratic deliberation on the direction of public policy is out. The Obama-Democratic-left wants a redistribution of society's resources but they're not willing to justify it on pragmatic political grounds. The case can be made, easily, for bailing out the states and providing more money for education, health care, unemployment, and other areas hard hit by the deepening recession, and Americans will support that. But the left wants a general transformation of society to a European social-welfare state (if not a Brezhnevite-Soviet command model), and the increasing nationalization of industry - way beyond anything we've seen in the last year's bipartisan financial bailouts - can be seen intuitively as right around the corner. The administration has already included funding for high-speed rail in the "stimulus" boondoggle - and of course transportation enhancement is infrastructure - but so little of the administration's advocacy for greater public spending has been sold in such a way.

The Republicans have an opportunity here. A real stimulus of the economy would be energy deregulation - from Alaska and off-shore drilling to the discovery and exploitation of new supplies, perhaps in the 800 billion barrels of proven shale oil reserves in the Rockies - as well as public-spirited transportation infrastructure-spending focused on explicity non-pork-barrel expenditures that serve to increase economic competitiveness AND facilitate economic opportunity among the traditionally disadvantaged. This is something that GOP partisans should consider, in some variation of public-private balance, using the overarching umbrella-rationale of honesty and transparency in moving this country forward to the next generation of post-industrial society.

Liberaltarianism and Intellectual Dishonesty

Robert Stacy McCain has proved once again that he's one of the most important conservative writers working today.

In "The Luxury of 'Liberaltarianism'," Robert mercilessly pulls the mask off the alliance between leftists and libertarians, which I've long thought has been one of the most intellectually bankrupt and ideologically decrepit marriages in recent political history. Here's the key passage attacking "liberaltarianism":

The problem with this concept was never really on the part of liberals, except insofar as they either (a) misunderstood libertarianism, or (b) simply lied about their openness to libertarian ideas. Confusion and deceit among liberals is a given. But the liberals always knew what they wanted from such a transaction: Elect more Democrats.

What did the libertarians want from the transaction? It is here that the ridiculous folly of the enterprise is found. Most of the Will Wilkinson types are intellectuals who are embarrassed by what Hunter S. Thompson called the "Rotarian" instincts of the Republican Party. That flag-waving God-mom-and-apple-pie stuff just doesn't light a fire under the American intellectual class, which is not now, nor has it ever been, enamored of religion, patriotism and "family values."

As a political impulse, the sort of libertarianism that scoffs at creationism and traditional marriage wields limited influence, because it appeals chiefly to a dissenting sect of the intelligentsia. It's a sort of free-market heresy of progressivism, with no significant popular following nor any real prospect of gaining one, because most Ordinary Americans who strongly believe in economic freedom are deeply traditionalist. And most anti-traditionalists - the feminists, the gay militants, the "world peace" utopians - are deeply committed to the statist economic vision of the Democratic Party.

There's much more at the link, and I can't provide much value-added to the essay. My point here is to flesh out a little more the fundamental pathology of liberaltarianism, which is intellectual dishonesty.

My point of departure, as readers might have guessed, is Mark Thompson and his blogging buddies at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. Thompson's a self-proclaimed libertarian, and his cohorts at the blog are all over each other with intellectual glad-handing and backslapping on their bright ideas on atheism, gay marriage, humanitarian intervention, neoconservativism, and God knows what else. This cabal might well be aspiring to develop some newfangled "postmodern conservatism," but it's really all the same, as far as I can see.

An animating force for the paradigm seems to be the resistance to tradition and universal morality. This can be seen in the excursions on atheism at the blog, where we see commentary suggesting that since there's no possibility for the falsification of God's existence, those of religoius faith are essentially "lunatics" for proposing an alternative theory of evolution in Intelligent Design. Or we can see this in the virtually unhinged attacks on neoconservatives and the war in Iraq, where E.D. Kain excoriates the Bush administration for "invading countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan in order to democratize them ..." Never mind that the origins of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq emerged out of vastly different contexts - with varying methodologies of strategic justification - the overall animus toward the forward use of state power places this "libertarian-progressive" agenda firmly in the nihilist camp of the "world peace" utopians Robert Stacy McCain mentions above.

But what's especially bothersome about these folks is the confused intellectualism on questions of moral right. It's almost stomach-churning to read E.D. Kain's comments on Israel following this week's election: "Israel, once lively with the dream of the original idealists who founded it, has over the years become increasingly militarized, entrenched, and anti-Democratic." This is not much different from the commentary on Israel one finds at the neo-Stalinist Firedoglake. E.D. Kain, of course, has problems with intellectual integrity, as I've already noted, and he joins Mark Thompson in a left-libertarian hall of shame on that score.

It should be no surprise that these folks find inspiration in the ravings of Andrew Sullivan, whose recent libertarian strain led him to suggest that, "Yes, Michael Phelps took a few hits from a bong at a party ... does anyone think that smoking pot would give him an unfair advantage in the pool? Please. When on earth are we going to grow up as a culture?" I guess "growing up" as a culture would mean that the majority of Americans would have to kowtow to the radical libertarian demands for same-sex marriage, which is a big agenda for the "young turks" of the right for whom "the real respectability of a solid argument is preferable to the worthless respectability one gets" by advocating for "more humane" positions on some of the most hot-button social issues of the day.

There is, in sum, a pure cowardice to liberaltarianism that's frankly revolting. But more than that, there's a fundamental ideological incoherence, if not outright stupidity. Scott Payne writes that he's moved "to question the overall usefulness of political labels ... Is anyone ever really “conservative” or “liberal” or “libertarian” all the time, ad infinitum?" Perhaps it never occurred to Scott that to be ideological is by definition to evince a consistent or coherent pattern of beliefs across a range of political issues. If one is not coherent in such a way, it makes little sense to make the case for a new ideological paradigm, for at any time when inconvenient facts or uncomfortable moral truths intrude upon the groundings of a particulary ideological framework, one could simply jettison any pretension of intellectual consistenty, not to mention moral right.

And in fact, that's pretty much what these folks are doing. As Victor Davis Hanson argued last week with reference to the hysterical ideological jockeying of Andrew Sullivan:

I am absolutely baffled how and why someone like this can continue to be taken seriously: for weeks he peddled vicious, absolutely false rumors that Sarah Palin did not deliver her recent child. On the eve of Iraq, (he now seems to suggest that he was brainwashed by, yes, those sneaky neo-cons), he blathered on with blood and guts rhetoric, mixed with fawning references to Bush, and embraced apocalyptic threats, including the advocacy of using nuclear weapons against Saddam should the anthrax attacks be connected to him. He seems not merely to support any incumbent President, but to deify them, and can go from encomia about the rightwing Bush to praise of leftwing Obama without thought of contradiction. In the summer before 9/11 he was in the major news outlets, trying to save his career after accused (accurately as he confirmed) of trafficking anonymously in the sexual want ads as an HIV-positive would-be participant in the unmentionable. (In other words, someone who was caught in a well-publicized scandal about which he confirmed its main details, without much sensitivity to human fraility, helped to spread false information about a potential VP designed to ruin her reputation.) At some point, one would think such a suspect individual would have been ostracized by sane people—or indeed perhaps he already has.

This seems to be common among liberaltarians, or postmodern conservatives, however we might identify them. E.D. Kain gave the finger to a deep-bench of neoconservative writers whom he'd asked for analytical contributions - at no charge - when he deleted his online magazine, "NeoConstant," without the decency of a courtesy notification. Mark Thompson has the gall to applaud the strategic rationality of Hamas (with an obligatory attack on Israeli's actions as "self-defeating"), and then when questioned about his argument, he cowardly throws his hands up and pleads that "I honestly don't know - or pretend to know - the answer to the situation ..."

There are a lot more issues here to be hashed out (and certainly genuine libertarian ideology may have multiple strains). But in my view, it's frankly inconceivable in terms of developing a coherent ideology to see libertarian thinkers align with nihilist antiwar leftists in opposition to a forward-based and morally-robust American foreign policy, and then watch these same wannabe ideologues align with the neo-Stalinist forces of International ANSWER in protesting - whether on the street or online - the political and moral preferences of a majority of Californians who exercized their basic political rights to protect marriage traditionalism through the interest group-system and the ballot box.

Observing and monitoring the program of this unholy alliance of left-libertarianism has truly been one of the most eye-opening, and deeply troubling, experiences of my political lifetime.