Barack Obama's Authoritarian Socialist Ties

Via Little Green Footballs, Stanley Kurtz has the lowdown on Barack Obama's ties to another nihilist organization of the radical left:

What if Barack Obama’s most important radical connection has been hiding in plain sight all along? Obama has had an intimate and long-term association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), the largest radical group in America. If I told you Obama had close ties with MoveOn.org or Code Pink, you’d know what I was talking about. Acorn is at least as radical as these better-known groups, arguably more so. Yet because Acorn works locally, in carefully selected urban areas, its national profile is lower. Acorn likes it that way. And so, I’d wager, does Barack Obama.

This is a story we’ve largely missed. While Obama’s Acorn connection has not gone entirely unreported, its depth, extent, and significance have been poorly understood. Typically, media background pieces note that, on behalf of Acorn, Obama and a team of Chicago attorneys won a 1995 suit forcing the state of Illinois to implement the federal “motor-voter” bill. In fact, Obama’s Acorn connection is far more extensive. In the few stories where Obama’s role as an Acorn “leadership trainer” is noted, or his seats on the boards of foundations that may have supported Acorn are discussed, there is little follow-up. Even these more extensive reports miss many aspects of Obama’s ties to Acorn.

Kurtz notes that "Acorn’s radical agenda sometimes shifts toward “undisguised authoritarian socialism," and he also highlights this about Acorn's subterranean subversion:

If Acorn is adept at creating a non-partisan, inside-game veneer for what is in fact an intensely radical, leftist, and politically partisan reality, so is Obama himself.

You don't say?

See also, "Barack Obama: The "Perfect Frontman" for the Radical Left."

Peace Fascists

In the comments to my entry on "pacifascists," my good blog buddy Wordsmith noted that he'd coined the term "peace fascists," and his reference was to "Code Pink":

Code Pink was active on the Memorial Day weekend protesting a John McCain stop in Stockton, California.

I'm still deciding on how to use the "peace fascist" terminology, but let's review a little about these folks:

Unless you travel in Marxist circles or work for the FBI or CIA, the names of the Code Pink moms may not ring a bell with you, though you’ve probably been reading news reports about their collective exploits for years. In the wake of their war against capitalism and self-determination, they’ve left a trail of anarchy and destruction that has cost property owners, corporations and consumers millions of dollars.

Naturally, they’ve toned their Marxist rhetoric down for their stint with Code Pink. Though they’ve taken great pains to differentiate themselves from the other, more radical anti-war protesters, they are one and the same. The leaders of Code Pink didn’t merely take part in the Washington and San Francisco protests that made international headlines – they also organized them. In the process, they’ve provided a rare public glimpse of the faces behind the modern, highly organized American Marxist movement. Needless to say, these women have little in common with the carpool moms of America.

I'm frankly more comfortable in identifying them this way.

But here's more:

Look at the REAL enemies of America. By their own words, they destroy property and target the innocent. These groups and people are TERRORISTS in every sense of the word. The sooner that these people are seen for what they truly are, the better it is for the rest of the world.

And just think, this stuff's hitting close to home: "Code Pink Hits Orange County."

Yikes, Red Dawn!

Back later, I need to batten down the hatches!

Obama on Foreign Policy? Same Old McGovernesque Agenda

Captain Ed cuts to the shallowness of Barack Obama's foreign policy experience, with reference to a Washington Post article up today:

The Washington Post runs a front-page analysis of Barack Obama’s policy positions today, and they find … nothing much. In fact, what little work Obama had done on policy since entering the Senate in 2005 he abandoned in 2006 as he prepared for his presidential campaign. To the extent that he has any policy credentials, Perry Bacon reports that it doesn’t differ at all from the standard platform of the Democratic Party....

Bacon notes that Obama largely goes along with the flow on policy — the Democratic Party flow. He doesn’t have any new ideas but instead aspires to put his face on the same old progressive agenda of big-government solutions that the party appeared to reject during the Clinton era. The DLC faction has all but disappeared, and what remains is a McGovernesque, Mondalesque Democratic Party that wants to expand federal power through massive redistribution of wealth. Instead of leading the party on this agenda, though, Obama cheerfully acquiesces to it, in a certain sense selling his brand as a label.

Quite frankly, this is a portrait of a dilettante. Obama doesn’t really have ideas of his own, not even an overarching governing philosophy as a prism through which policy could get made. He just wants to be President, and figures that he can charm his way to the White House.

I love that "portrait of a dilettante" line!

But to be fair, Obama actually does have some ideas of his own, as noted on the campaign website:

* "Obama has been a consistent, principled and vocal opponent of the war in Iraq."
* "Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq."

* "Obama is the only major candidate who supports ... diplomacy with Iran without preconditions."

* "Obama will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it."

So, while I can dig Captain Ed's descriptive phraseology, Obama's seems a little more specific than one would expect for a "dilettante."

I might even add "Carteresque" to Obama's foreign policy ideological orientation.

The Academic Consensus for Barack Obama

I'm sure David Noon will protest, but you've just got to love Crispin Sartwell's take on the absence of political diversity in the professoriate:

I teach political philosophy. And like most professors I know, I bend over backward to sympathetically teach texts I hate; I try to show my students why people have found Plato and Karl Marx -- both of whom I regard as totalitarians -- compelling. But when I get to the end of "The Communist Manifesto," I'm usually asking things like this: "Marx says that all means of communication should be centralized in the hands of the state. Anyone see any problems with that?"

I don't deceive myself into thinking that I teach these texts as well as, or in the same way as, a professor who found them plausible. And that's fine. What I'm trying to point out is that even as I try to be neutral (well, even if I did try to be neutral), my personal opinions affect every aspect of what I do, and I think that is generally true.

But it can be horrendously true in academia, where everything is affected by the real opinions of real professors, from the configuration of departments to the courses on offer to the texts taught. And because there's a consensus, there is precious little self-examination; a slant that we all share becomes invisible.

Academic consensus is a particularly irritating variety of groupthink. First of all, the fact that everyone agrees and everyone has a doctorate leads to the occasionally explicit idea that all intelligent people think the same thing -- that no one could disagree with, say, Obama-ism, without being an idiot. This attitude is continually expressed, for example, in attacks on presidents Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, not for their political positions but for their grades and IQs.

That the American professoriate is near-unanimous for Barack Obama is a problem on many levels, but certainly pedagogically. Ideological uniformity does a disservice to students and makes a mockery of the pious commitment of these professors simply to convey knowledge. Also, the claims of the professoriate to intellectual independence and academic freedom, supposedly nurtured by tenure, are thrown into question by the unanimity. Professors are as herd-like in their opinions as other groups that demographers like to identify -- "working-class white men," for example. Indeed, surely more so.

That's partly just a result of the charming human tendency to nod along with whomever is sitting next to you. But it's also the predictable result of the fact that a professor has been educated, often for a decade or more, by the very institutions that harbor this unanimity. Every new generation of professors has been steeped in an atmosphere in which the authorities all agree and in which they associate agreement with intelligence -- and with degrees, jobs, tenure and so on. If you've been taught that conservatives are evil idiots, then conservatism itself justifies a decision not to hire or tenure one. Every new leftist minted by graduate programs is an act of self-praise, a confirmation of the intelligence of the professors.

That this smog of consensus is incompatible with the supposedly high-minded educational mission of colleges and universities is obvious. Yet higher education is at least as dedicated to the reproduction of Obama-ism as it is to conveying information. But academics are massively self-deceived about this, which makes it all the more disgusting and effective.

See also, "Requiem For an Academic World of Inquiry," on the decline of objective pedogogy in academe.

Troop Retention is Key Issue in G.I. Bill of Rights

John McCain's being smeared for his position on the new G.I. Bill of Rights, but the law, if enacted as currently proposed, would hinder troop retention, according to Political Perceptions:

Twice, maybe three times a year, the people you send to Washington go out of their way to show how much they care about those in uniform.

Democrats in charge or Republicans in charge, the cycle is the same.

Right before Memorial Day, July Fourth and Veterans Day, the calendar prods the politicians to do something before they go home to march in parades, visit VA hospitals or speak at commemorations for the local war dead.

Whether there’s anything fresh for them to talk about depends entirely on whether the party in power schedules votes in time to give them patriotic talking points.

Before this Memorial Day recess week, the Democrats set up votes that could demonstrate that when they’re in charge, they line up behind the veterans.

To an appropriation needed to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they added what amounts to the G.I. Bill on steroids, offering a lot more government-paid college tuition to veterans. The bill is a legislative combo platter that Democrats hope will fortify their down-ballot candidates while giving Republican presidential candidate John McCain indigestion.

Sen. McCain prefers a different version, arguing that incentives to join the volunteer military should be designed with troop retention in mind. As it stands, the Democrats’ bill would reward three months of active duty with 40% funding for in-state colleges and universities. That would go up to 50% for those with six months of active duty, and full tuition for those with 36 months of active duty. The version Sen. McCain favors would offer maximum college benefits of $2,000 a month for those who have served at least 12 years.

The Arizona senator’s own war service doesn’t exempt him from criticism on this one. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called him “one of the few senators of either party who oppose this bill because he thinks it’s too generous” — a characterization that just barely stands up to fact-checking.

The McCain camp's hitting hit back against Obama, pointing to the Illinois Senator's own votes against funding for military veterans:

Responding to Sen. Barack Obama’s assertions that he is shortchanging veterans by opposing a Democratic plan to expand education aid, Sen. John McCain’s camp is depicting the Illinois senator as a lawmaker who has already voted against a key war funding measure that would have improved health services for veterans.

On May 12, 2008, McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds singled out Obama’s May 24, 2007 vote against a fiscal 2007 emergency war spending measure to support ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying it violated Obama’s oft-stated dictum that it would be irresponsible to vote against funding troops in the field.

“It is absurd for Barack Obama to question John McCain’s commitment to America’s veterans when Obama himself voted against our nation’s veterans and troops in the field during a time of war,” Bounds said.

How's that for far left-wing hypocrisy on veterans benefits.

Will Obama Visit Iraq, Meet Petraeus? War Veterans Want to Know

Allahpundit's got the new Vets for Freedom ad on Barack Obama''s commitment to Iraq:

Allah predicts Obama will cave: "If he doesn’t have the stones to stand by his flag-pin boycott, he’s surely not going to let the GOP chip away at him on this."

Blind Hatred: President Bush and the American Left

The Conservative Voice has an interesting essay up today on the left's hatred of President Bush and his administration. Much of it is not new, but the piece reiterates a couple of points I've stressed lately.

Here's the introduction:

Liberals have blindly hated president Bush so much that they cross the line into anti-Americanism while dressing it up as criticism of America or criticism of President Bush. They even have the nerve to compare President Bush to Adolf Hitler and president Bush's America to Adolf Hitler's Germany.Liberals have for a long time been trying to bring out the worst of our great nation America, even portraying Americans as fat idiots who eat at fast foods way too much. Especially those who disagree with liberal nonsense are especially portrayed as that. Europe is becoming the new model for liberals. So to liberals, it's the horrible America verses the wonderful heavenly Europe.

Okay, this passage on the European model's significant. Why? Look at the continental democracies, like France and Germany, as well as the Scandanavian states, for their social welfare systems. The American left wants to dramatically expand domestic spending programs, on health and the environment, paid for by a far-reaching redistribution of wealth from the highest incomes brackets to the lower quintiles. Further, the left wants the U.S. to emulate the advanced postmodern ideology in European states, where, for example, it's not unusual to hear stories of women foregoing children to "save" the earth.

Finally, the left loves the European model of national security, where the weakening national commitment to large armed forces, amid continued utopianism regarding a "common European security," has shifted these societies to a near-permanent state of strategic unpreparedness. The American left would be in socialist heaven if its radical agenda in foreign policy results in a massive dismantling of the military-industrial sector, implemented in tandem with a dramatic reliance on international institutions for peace, such as the United Nations. Under this posture, the use of force, particularly unilaterally, is virtually out of the question.

But note another interesting blip in the Conservative Voice's essay, on the propensity for advocating nihilist violence among prominent far-left spokesmen:

Liberals, who favored the trying and any punishment on Pinochet for his human rights violations, whitewash Fidel Castro and favored the Sandinistas, both of whom were far worse than Pinochet.

Cuban-Americans, who flee Cuba on a raft out of desperation to get out of that poverty-stricken island, are bashed and shunned by liberals including the political correct guys.

Extreme leftist Alexander Cockburn, who is a contributor to the anti-American and anti-Israel extreme leftist Counterpunch Newsletter and a syndicated columnist said, 'There is a sound case to be made for dropping a tactical nuclear weapon on the Cuban section of Miami. The move would be applauded heartily by most Americans. Alas, Operation Good Riddance would require the sort of mature political courage sadly lacking in Washington, D.C., these days.' Gees, does that sound like the "tolerant left," who are bashing the Cuban-American community, which is one of the most patriotic and pro-American communities in this great nation America. Cockburn was not condemned for making that bigoted horrible remark [emphasis added].

Of course he wasn't condemned. The hard left cheers noxious statements such as Cockburn's - such sentiments are pretty much SOP over on the dark side of the political spectrum.

Hats off to the Conservative Voice!

Bush Invokes World War II in Air Force Commencement

In his address today to graduates of the Air Force Academy, President Bush invoked America's obligations to lasting peace after the defeat of Germany and Japan in World War II. MSNBC has the video:

President George W. Bush said Wednesday that rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan as the wars rage on is proving difficult and "we're learning as we go."

The president harkened back to the patriotic sacrifice of World War II, the deadliest conflict in history, in again suggesting the country must hold firm and not lose its nerve.

"After World War II, we helped Germany and Japan build free societies and strong economies," Bush said. "These efforts took time and patience, and as a result, Germany and Japan grew in freedom and prosperity. Germany and Japan, once mortal enemies, are now allies of the United States. And people across the world have reaped the benefits...."

At a cold, drizzly football-stadium ceremony, Bush said the United States has an obligation to stick with Iraq and Afghanistan. He said the lesson is rooted in history.

The president acknowledged one of the many differences between the global conflict six decades ago and the ones that began under his watch: Today's wars are not over.

"In Germany and Japan, the work of rebuilding took place in relative quiet," Bush said. "Today we're helping emerging democracies rebuild under fire from terrorist networks and state sponsors of terror. This is a difficult and unprecedented task, and we're learning as we go."

For example, he said, the U.S. learned the hard way that the newly liberated people in Iraq could not make progress unless they felt reasonably secure.

Bush said his own country must not lose resolve. He said terrorist enemies, using the media and the never-ending news cycle, attack innocent people to weaken American resolve.

"We need to recognize that the only way that America can lose the war on terror is if we defeat ourselves," Bush said.

The article notes that the president's day has been overshadowed by the news surrounding former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's memoirs.

See more at the Washington Post, "'Learning as We Go.'"

About That Other Press Secretary...

Today's big story is Scott McClellan's burn-all memoir, now in pre-release, full-smear circulation around the leftosphere.

I don't pay too much attention to these past-staffers' exposes, mostly because they're opportunistic, undignified, and unenlightening.

The memoir book-tours do tell us a lot about poliltics, however, especially left-wing media hypocrisy. Via Gateway Pundit, it turns out Ari Fleischer, press secretary in the first Bush administration, got little play in the press when his book came out in 2005:

Before Scott McClellan was President Bush’s Press Secretary, there was Ari Fleischer, and when Fleischer left the White House he wrote his own book, “Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House.” Unlike McClellan, Fleischer did not take pot shots at his former employer, but did include some telling examples of the liberal bias of press.

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, while McClellan’s yet-to-be-officially-published book has already become the liberal media’s favorite story of the day, a Nexis search shows that Fleischer’s memoir generated virtually no broadcast or cable news coverage, and no front-page coverage in the nation’s newspapers.

Indeed, TV coverage the week after Fleischer’s book was released was limited to just eight interviews, none given that much prominence: one on NBC’s Today (7:43am), one on CBS’s Early Show (last half-hour), one on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, two on CNN (Lou Dobbs Tonight and Anderson Cooper 360) and three on FNC (Big Story, Special Report, and Hannity & Colmes).

So, what's the big deal now? Attack Bush, damage the GOP, what else?

Fleisher's not a Brutus-like figure, of course, slurring his former boss. He's thus likely to make a big comeback in GOP politics for his upstanding demeanor out of office. The same can't be said for McClellan, which is too bad for him, since the lefties never liked him so much in the first place, and they'll just use this Janus-faced media extravaganza for their own purposes.

Jules Crittenden touches on this a bit:

Ha. Someone else is bitter. The myth sometimes known as Glenn Greenwald indignantly cites McClellan in a bitter denunciation of the myth of the liberal media.

See also Lynn Sweet, "Why Didn't Scott McClellan Quit if He Thought He Was Selling Bush Iraq War Propaganda."

And Captain Ed, "Heckuva job, Scotty: McClellan writes a book; Update: AOL Hot Seat Poll added; Update: McClellan chastised tell-all tomes in 2004."

Bomb, Bomb Iran

Via Stan Rosenthal, here's a mock-up of John McCain's rendition of "Barbara Ann":

For the record, I'm posting this in jest.

If readers would like serious dicussion of the military option against Tehran's nuclear intransigence, see Norman Podhoretz, "The Case for Bombing Iran."

Some responses to the article can be found at Powerline, where Podhoretz is quoted:

In the months since the article was posted on the Internet, I have been described throughout the blogosphere as “pathological scum,” a “morally repugnant cretin,” a “superannuated Zionist hack,” a “war criminal,” “a traitor to the U.S.,” and a “threat to our grandchildren”—not to mention other even more colorful characterizations unfit for quotation in a family magazine.

That vitriol's not surprising, considering the extant hatred for the evil neocons at home and abroad.

For some scholary perspectives on Iran, nuclear weapons, and preemption, see Whitney Raas and Austin Long, "Osirak Redux? Assessing Israeli Capabilities to Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities," International Security (Spring 2007), Colin Dueck and Ray Takeyh, "Iran’s Nuclear Challenge," Political Science Quarterly (Summer 2007), and Ivo Daalder and James Steinberg, "Preventive War," A Useful Tool," Los Angeles Times (December 2005).

Are Conservatives More Implicit in the Egregious Sins of America?

Most conservative bloggers are familiar with the left's standards of moral relativism.

But how about comparative guilt? Should conservatives feel more historically guilty than leftists? Can we measure comparative culpabilities - for injustices like gender oppression, Japanese internment, or slavery most of all - between the two major ideological traditions in American history?

The folks at Daily Kos think so:

White guilt is the natural - and correct - emotion to feel when as a white person - hell as an American - one is confronted by America's original sin. For I, and all my white brethren, are the recipients, the beneficiaries of hegemonic system. My privilege - America's privilege - has been paid for through the blood and oppression of other peoples. This doesn't mean I ought to go flogging myself all the time (shame). It does mean that I ought to be aware and work to change the system as it is now. It means I ought to try to solve the problems that still haunt those on whose backs this country was made great.

When I call myself an American, I don't get to cherry-pick which parts of America's identity I bring along. For slavery is as much a part of America as The Emancipation Proclamation. Japanese Internment as much as the Bill of Rights. Guantanamo Bay as much as The Berlin Airlifts. So, by calling myself American, I give myself to a country that both enables some of the best opportunities for social change and justice in the world and requires deep guilt.

Rosenbaum points out that Conservatives are just as implicit - if not more so (their movement, historically) - in the egregious sins of America, yet they are the ones who reject guilt, and, thus reject awareness of America's sometimes dark past. The modern conservative incarnation has embraced the narrative of American Exceptionalism - America is always right. And, in so doing, have absolved themselves of guilt. In doing so, they have washed away any chance of seeing America for what it is. Great. Imperfect...

Ignoring guilt is only cause for more of the same. Perhaps, Conservatives glorify America, not solely out of patriotism (however warped it may be), but out of a desire to easily absolve themselves of the guilt that liberals must recognize. Guilt isn't a comfortable thing, after all. It's the easy way out, sticking one's head in the sand.

The reference is to Ron Rosembaum, "In Praise of Liberal Guilt: It's Not Wrong to Favor Obama Because of Race," who asks:

Since when has guilt become shameful? Since when is shame shameful when it's shame about a four-centuries-long historical crime? Not one of us is a slave owner today, segregation is no longer enshrined in law, and there are fewer overt racists than before, but if we want to praise America's virtues, we have to concede—and feel guilty about—America's sins, else we praise a false god, a golden calf, a whited sepulcher, a Potemkin village of virtue. (I've run out of metaphors, but you get the picture.)

What to make of all this talk of guilt and complicity?

Rosenbaum wants to make this a partisan question, so it's no surprise the Kos folks take up the banner. Considering how Markos Moulitsas claims his community's the mainstream future of progressive politics and the Democratic Party, I'm not surprised that this meme of liberal superiority on comparative complicity is taking root.

The problem? It's a scam.

When we talk about conservatives today compared to those of earlier era, we're not talking about static categories: We can't just hop in Michael J. Fox's DeLorean and zip back to 1619, to the dockside at the harbor in Virginia, waiting to off-load our fresh human cargo from West Africa. Who was conservative back then? Abolitionism was not a formal movement in the United States until the 18th and 19th centuries, and even those who had moral qualms about racial hierarchies in the 17th century certainly were outliers in a system of cultural acceptance of racial difference.

We can quibble with it, but the folks we venerate today, like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, were slaveowners. Yes, it's been our original sin, but Americans realized at that time - at the time of the founding, in 1787 - the contradictions of the American creed. We cannot have a country established on the principle that all men are created equal while simultaneously maintaining an economic and social system of human chattel bondage. We've sought to overcome this stain throughout the length of our history, and if we want to label one side more guilty than the other, let's be fair: President Lincoln was no abolitionist, but his movement for a national greatness Republican Party did more to restore equality under the law than anything the Democrats did for 100 years following the assassination of the 16th president.

We did see, though, through the late-19th and 20th centuries, the building of a high tide of liberal guilt. Let me count the ways: the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, Guinn v. United States (1915), Executive Order 9981, Brown v. Board of Education, Little Rock, Arkansas (Eishenhower's Executive Order 10730, Desegregation of Central High School, 1957), the 24th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Executive Order 10925, Executive Order 11246, the War on Poverty, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Philadelpha Plan, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ...

I imagine I could go on, but my enumeration of actions toward equality and justice goes back, right there, over a full century in marking the agonizing, fitfull, and violent efforts at actualizing the promise of the American dream for all citizens - and that's the result of the EXPLICIT recognition of our moral failures as a people. And folks want to talk about guilt?

We no longer have slavery, Jim Crow, and the stigma of an American apartheid because we have worked so long and so hard to overcome.

But it's frankly never enough. That's why we have race hustlers arguing that we were all wrong about Martin Luther King: The slain civil rights leader disabused himself of the vision that one day we'd be able to live where all of God's children might realize conditions of mutual equality, love, and respect. Nope, we have to dig down, root out King's insecurities and doubts, the frustrations of a slowing of change, to the impatience of adjusting to the very revolution he, Dr. King, had brought about by his irrepressible reminder that we hadn't live up to our moral requirement. Nope, according the race grievance masters like Michael Eric Dyson, Dr. King became "darker and angrier; he grew more skeptical about the willingness of America to change without great social coercion."

So this is what we get? Instead of standing in awe at the edge of the great racial chasm, where the dawn is about to break on a new era of racial equality, with an eloquent young politician who has lived America's promise of diversity, inclusion, and opportunity, we get racial recrimination?

In response to Rosenbaum we see white conservatives pundits wringing their hands, trying to get out from the sting of opprobruim, by admitting - God help us! - shame for our past injustices.
Well, damn, you'd think a few conservative folks had just murderously beat the teeth out of some black youth whistling at a leggy Southern white housewife!

So, what to think? Are the Kos guilt mongerers right?

Well, no. We can reverse the arrows of discrimination nowadays. The "hegemonic" system that's oppressing society today is the Democratic Party's racial recrimination program, and the conservatives are down home on the plantation, serving remorseful penance for the "accumulated disadvantages" of 400 years of complicity in oppression.

This is not going away either, I'll note, this system of racial recrimination. It's not going away because the president we're very likely to elect does not repudiate the callous, egregious politics of racial resentment.

Despite spurious calls to "end identity politics" (including at Daily Kos, of all places) today's Democratic Party maintains power on the back of that guilt-ridden ideology.

It's time to put that nastiness to bed, and get on with the real job of strengthening traditional values of hard work and strong families, of educational achievement and professional accomplishment. Rather than play the comparative guilt game, let's restore the power of American individualism and pull out of this funk we're having, getting back to the nation's business of living out our dream up on that hill one of of which one of our more optimisitic presidents spoke.

Democrats Confident on November Victory

Gallup reports that 6 in 10 Democrats feel confident on winning in November:

Democrats are much more confident that their party will win the November presidential election than are Republicans.

A new Gallup Panel survey, conducted May 19-21, finds 61% of Democrats saying they are confident their party will win the election, including 35% who are "very confident." Meanwhile, only 39% of Republicans are confident, with only 13% saying they are very confident.

Thus, rank-and-file Republicans are aware the party faces an uphill battle in retaining the White House given the problems in the economy, an ongoing and unpopular war, and an incumbent Republican president with some of the lowest job approval ratings in Gallup Poll history.

While Republicans generally agree that their odds of winning are long, a majority (58%) believe that likely presidential nominee John McCain gives the GOP the best chance of any of this year's Republican candidates of winning the election.

Maybe some of that "conservative loathing of McCain" has died down a bit.

"And You Wonder Why US soldiers Are Being Blown Up on a Daily Basis..."

This is just in, from Little Green Footballs:

In order to stop this war, and any future American Wars of Aggression, those considering enlisting in the armed forces need to be stopped before they sign on the dotted line. They need to be shown that this is a choice with extreme consequences; that they will come home changed for the worse, physically, mentally or both; they need to be shown that patriotism, bravado, the youthful myth of immortality and the promise of $50,000 will not save them; they need to be shown that wars of aggression are NOT noble causes and that those who“give” their lives are not doing so for their country but for the greed of a few men in government and corporations.

Those who have come back from Iraq have learned all of the above the hard way. No one needs to follow in their footsteps. No one, given the chance, would choose to come back forgotten by their government and damaged for life - which is what happens when you fight to defend a lie instead of your country. Those in our government who sent these men and women off under the false banner of patriotism should be held accountable for their thoughtless and selfish actions.

And you wonder why US soldiers are being blown up on a daily basis, justify the means and keep killing innocent Iraqi civilians...

Actually, I don't wonder why Americans are being "blown up on a daily basis," but that's not the purpose of these comments, via the Huffington Post.

Obama Won't Visit Iraq

Barack Obama has rejected John McCain's offer of a joint visit to Iraq, and some have suggested, "Obama Too Scared to Visit Troops in Baghdad".

But here's this from Allahpundit:

If they’re worried about the military giving them a dog-and-pony show, the answer isn’t to decline the trip but to counterpropose a more comprehensive trip than even McCain’s suggesting and turn it into a real fact-finding mission. Don’t spend two hours looking at charts with Petraeus. Take four or five days; go to Basra and Mosul. If they simply can’t suspend campaigning for that long, send a joint team of advisors from both sides. He won’t do it because he’s afraid of what he might hear, which goes back to a point I’ve been making ever since the Jamil Hussein saga: The left would have you believe Iraq hawks can’t admit that any aspect of the war might be going badly, but the opposite has always been more nearly true. For purposes of the Narrative, it’s doves who can’t admit that any aspect of the war might be going better, as if to acknowledge that the surge has helped to improve security or that the Iraqi army is performing better than expected lately or that plenty of Shiites are tired of Sadr’s crap would be to validate neoconservatism or somehow tacitly rubber-stamp an invasion of Iran. So how about it, Barry? Break the mold. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of grim news in the briefings too to help take the sting out of the reports of progress. Exit question: How on earth did we arrive at an election scenario where the hawk is trying to bait the dove into talking about Iraq?

Break the mold? That'll be the day.

In the meanwhile, just ignore the fearmongering.

Requiem For an Academic World of Inquiry

Alan Charles Kors offers a requiem for the university as a world of inquiry and enlightening dissent from orthodoxy, in his essay, "On the Sadness of Higher Education."

This paragraph offers a pause for reflection:

The academic world I so loved revealed itself best in an undergraduate course I'd taken on the history of Europe in the 20th century. When the professor, a distinguished intellectual of the left, returned the midterms to the hundred-plus or so of us who were in his course, he said that we'd saddened and embarrassed him. "I gave you readings that allowed you to reach such diverse conclusions," he explained, "but you all told me what you thought I wanted to hear." He informed us that he would add a major section to the final exam: "I'm going to assign the book I disagree with most about the 20th century. I'm not going to ask you to criticize it, but, instead, to re-create its arguments with intellectual empathy, demonstrating that you understand the perspectives from which he understands and analyzes the world." I was moved by that. The work was Friedrich Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," and it changed the course of my intellectual and moral life.

It also showed me immediately how I wanted to teach as an intellectual historian. Each year, I teach thinkers as diverse as Pascal and Spinoza, Hobbes and Butler, Wesley and Diderot. I offer courses on intellectual history, and the goal of my teaching is to make certain that my students understand the perspectives and rich debates that have shaped the dialogue of the West. I don't want disciples of my worldview. I want students who know how to read deeply, how to analyze, how to locate the essential points of similarity and divergence among thinkers, and, indeed, how to understand, with intellectual empathy, how the world looks from the diverse perspectives that constitute the history of European thought. I know that I am not alone, but I also know, alas, that I am in a distinct minority in my pedagogical goals in the humanities and the so-called social sciences.

I'm like this, as I get so many students who are of the idealistic sort. I try to have them think through issues from both sides, especially in my elective courses in comparative politics and international relations.

But note here too:

There also has been ... a dumbing down of the professoriate that quite numbs the mind—best seen not in the monographs that earn people their degrees, but in the egregious nonsense, crude meta-theorizing, self-indulgence and tendentious special pleading that are not merely tolerated without criticism, but rewarded at the highest levels. Those who want to understand critically the degradations that have occurred should look at, for starters, the stunning works of Daphne Patai and Will H. Corral, editors, "Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent"; John Ellis, "Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities"; and Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science."

I agree, and I noted so much in my entry, "Republicans on the Fringe in Academe."

That entry, by the way, was ridiculed by the author of an academic article entitled, "The Erotic Adventures of Stacy Koon in the ‘Rodney King Affair.’" The same author also wrote a blog post, "How to Write an Editorial about Higher Education," slamming Robert Maranto's essay suggesting that "professors need to re-embrace a culture of reasoned inquiry and debate."

Hey, can't we all just get along?

'Cause I Want to Know...

Sometime back, when I posted George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" as part of my "lightening up" series, one of my oppositional commenters, Fauxmaxbaer, remarked:

"I must say I find it a bit ironic to see his songs featured at a site that has the attitude towards war that this one does."

I imagine these reflections originate in the notion that neoconservatives are "bloodthirsty war lovers."

I'm not, but for perspective I wanted to share my blog buddy Pat's comments on his love of Creedence Clearwater Revival, who he says is his #1 group:

The Number 1 group on my all time list is CCR ... this is their Anti-War protest song Fortunate Son .... Hell, I'm pro-war (against Islamic trash anyway), but I like this one anyway ... let's face it some of these guys played to the mindless kiddie liberals even back then ... John Fogerty was/is talented, he is just another tool when it comes to his political views.

Is it that simple? Can we say that artists of the era just got caught up in the time, in the movement, churning out antiwar anthems like "Fortunate Son" like they were just one more throwaway pop hit for the vinyl industry music machine?

There may have been some of that, but of all people, rockers have been the conscience for the country's comfortable classes, and the sirens for our disadvantaged.

John Fogerty wasn't my generation, really. I love some of CCR's music, though, so please enjoy one of my favorites from the band's collection, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?":

Besides listening to popular radio as a kid, my experiences as a rock-and-roller pretty much date to the late 1970s, when I was in high school - when I went through a dramatic phase of enjoying arena rockers like Boston and Van Halen, and then later to new wave, punk rock, and rockabilly.

I've posted once previously on The Clash, so readers might prepare for some more of that good stuff from the earlier, punky days.

So, what explains it then? How can we can love music that seems at odds with our contemporary ideological and political stands? Well, we were all kids once, and you just don't quit listening to your earlier guitar heroes just because you've learned that the antiwar, environmental, or social idealism is often (if not ultimately) hackneyed, hypocritical, naïve, and misplaced.

The music stays with you ... it's your history, and your lust of life!

Hillary's Endurance: The End of the Line for the Democrats?

Does Hillary Clinton really have a case for staying in the race? It's all about ego now, right? The math and the momentum are now beyond her, and the most compelling news stories this week discuss how diminished she'll be if she returns to the Senate (no power, no platform).

I'm not sure, but as I've said all along, the longer Hillary stays in the race, the better.

Josh Patashnik made an interesting argument the other day:

... what's become clear at the end of this primary season is that neither Democratic candidate's appeal is as wide as Democrats would prefer. It's difficult to project what will happen in November from primary results or even general-election polling at this stage, so any such speculation should be taken with a major grain of salt. I think it's fair to say, though, that in general Obama appears to have a problem with working-class whites east of Illinois, and Clinton appears to have a problem with Westerners and more upscale independent-minded voters. This pattern has been remarkably consistent since the beginning of the primary season. My suspicion is that these weaknesses basically cancel each other out, which is why you see both candidates sporting approximately equal-sized small leads over John McCain in national polls.

But note John Sides, a GWU political scientist and blogger at the Monkey Cage, who suggests that the Democrats won't be all that divided come autumn (via LAT):

Pundits seem to be converging on a new conventional wisdom: that the drawn-out and extraordinarily competitive Democratic presidential primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton has cleaved the party in two.Many voters insist that they will not support any Democratic candidate in the general election except their original favorite, according to exit polls, and that has caused party elders to fret about whether the eventual nominee will be able to unify the party and defeat presumptive GOP nominee John McCain....

Both parties can rest easy. Despite ugly battles and policy differences that sometimes seem intractable, the reality is that presidential campaigns tend to unify each party behind its nominee. Political scientists call this phenomenon the "reinforcement effect." It was described in 1940 in the first major study of a presidential campaign. The study's authors -- Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet -- noted that voters tended to "join the fold to which they belong," with Democrats gravitating to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Republicans to Wendell Willkie. These voters were not blindly following whichever shepherds their parties nominated, the study concluded. Rather, their partisan loyalties reflected their underlying values, and the parties' nominees solidified their support by emphasizing these same values as the campaign unfolded....

But what about those Clinton supporters who say they won't vote for Obama in November...?

What about those white working-class voters Obama has had trouble attracting? Will they rejoin the Democratic fold in November?

They probably will because class differences have not divided Democrats in recent elections. For instance, in the 2004 election, 86% of white Democrats without a college degree voted for Kerry, as did 92% of those with a college degree. White Democratic voters who made less than $50,000 a year were just as loyal to their presidential candidate as those who earned more, according to the National Election Pool's exit poll. Democrats were largely unified across class boundaries despite Republican attempts to portray Kerry as an effete cosmopolitan out of touch with "real" Americans.

But if Obama, an African American, wins the nomination, as is expected, race could make the 2008 election different from previous presidential contests. There are certainly some white Democrats who won't vote for a black for president. An imperfect indicator is those Democratic primary voters who supported Clinton and said race was a factor in their decision. In the Kentucky primary exit poll, this group constituted 17% of all Democratic voters.

Nevertheless, in the voting booth, partisan loyalties may prove more powerful than racial prejudice. Benjamin Highton, a political science professor at UC Davis, studied 357 contested House races in the 1996 and 1998 elections. He found that white voters were no more or less likely to support black candidates than white ones. Prejudice against blacks still exists in many forms, but it does not guarantee that large numbers of Democratic voters will abandon an African American nominee for his white Republican opponent.

Actually, a lot depends on the campaign itself:

The trouble is that Mr Obama's efforts to suppress the race issue are doomed to failure ... The Republican political machine, which demonstrated its mastery of the arts of character assassination in the two Bush presidential contests, will have no compunction in exploiting the Wright relationship and portraying Mr Obama as an anti-American in the general election, even if the Clinton campaign and the media observe a self-denying ordinance on the race and patriotism issues, as they broadly have so far.

The certainty of a no-holds-barred attacks by the Republicans brings us to the potentially most tragic aspect of this election. If ever there was an election the Democrats ought to win this is the one. Yet on the basis of the primary results so far, they are all too likely to lose it. Mr Obama may be marginally ahead of Mrs Clinton in the popular vote but the Democrats seem to have forgotten that all the votes cast so far have been by their own supporters. In the general election their candidate will have to win over Republicans and right-leaning floating voters. Most of the evidence so far suggests that the Repulicans will find it much easier to frighten voters about the prospect of a President Obama than a President Clinton.

In that case, Obama might in fact be better off pushing for an early Hillary exit, before the remaining primaries. This year's going to make '88's Atwater-style politics look like the county fair, by the time the no-holds-barred GOP 527s get into the action.

The way MoveOn's going after the GOP already, I wouldn't blame them.

See also, "The Last Straw? The Netroots' Patience is at An End."

The Left's World War II History Gap

It looks like Barack Obama's disastrous ignorance of European World War II history's turning out to be the big story of the day!

As Allahpundit notes, there are gaffes, and then there are gaffes!!

See it here via YouTube:

Here's more on Obama's Auschwitz magnitude:

In the annals of the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama's Auschwitz moment may yet become the stuff of legend.

For months, the Republican National Committee, grumbling John McCain staffers and an array of conservative bloggers have tried to label Obama as a serial exaggerator and an heir to Al Gore, who Republicans successfully tarred in 2000 as someone who claimed to have discovered Love Canal and invented the Internet.

It just wasn't sticking.

Now, they think they've caught him red handed.

Obama didn't mince words in the story of his uncle yesterday in New Mexico. As he spoke of the need to provide combat veterans better health care, especially better mental health care, Obama let loose a three-Pinocchio doozy:

"I had a uncle who was one of the, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps," Obama said, slowly and methodically. "And the story in my family is that when he came home, he just went into the attic, and he didn't leave the house for six months. Alright? Now, obviously something had affected him deeply, but at the time, there just weren't the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain."

That may be a fact, the RNC noted gleefully - but only if Obama's uncle served in the Red Army of Joseph Stalin, which liberated Auschwitz Jan. 27, 1945.

The Obama campaign says the mistake was not as horrific as it might seem. His uncle was there at the liberation of Buchenwald. Obama just confused the names of the concentration camps.

World War II's giving some less prominent lefties fits as well.

Dr. Biobrain, who's a master-of-disaster debating denialist extraordinaire, noted this about Kevin James's recent appeasement idiocy on the Chris Matthews' show:

This guy's like 45 years old, a lawyer, and a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, and didn't know the first thing about why Neville Chamberlain is infamous. And that's fine. Not everyone is a history buff. Not everyone cares about this stuff. I'm no snob to think that everyone needs to know what I know. But...if you're going to be insisting that somebody is doing "the exact same thing" as Chamberlain, you really should have some sort of fucking clue of what it was that Chamberlain did, beyond "appeasing" Hitler.

...it was obvious that he not only didn't have a clue what Chamberlain did wrong, he didn't even know what the word "appeasement" means. And that's why this is important....

Chris Matthews' point was entirely right, because what Obama is suggesting is NOTHING like what Chamberlain did ... Appeasement means you give in to your enemy's demands in the hope that it satisfies them and they'll be nice.

Isn't that sweet! They'll be nice!

Give Dr. Biobrain a gold star and a happy face sticker! No wait! He even wins the teacher's best-student reward, "Gotcha being good"!!

Maybe old Adolph might like a nice cup of Old Earl Grey! Perhaps a truffle? Maybe then he'll be "nice" and decide not to swallow up Czechoslovakia's industrial heartland and the Sudetenland's strategic buffer zone, the most protected embattlement of all the peripheral powers in all of Eastern Europe!

We're saved! Peace in our time!

Dr. Biobrain (in addition to being a confused, foul-mouthed post-modern subjectivist) is an Obama alternate delegate (last I heard) ... so, hey, perhaps he might land a patronage post at Foggy Bottom next January?

Undersecretary for State for Arms Control? Yo, Mahmoud! About those operational nuclear enrichment or reprocessing facilities ... bro, you can have 'em ... we just want you to be happy! Weehh!!

J-PAC: Debating J-Street, the American Jewish Peacenik Lobby

Jamie Kirchick's got an interesting piece on "J Street," a new American-Jewish lobby that claims to better represent the American Jewish diaspora than does AIPAC:

Consider the plight of the American Jewish peacenik. With Hamas in control of Gaza, Ehud Olmert under investigation, and the West Bank government of Mahmoud Abbas shaky as ever, a negotiated deal between Israelis and Palestinians doesn't exactly appear imminent. Meanwhile, closer to home, the likely Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, has said he won't negotiate with Hamas. Under these grim circumstances, what's a Peace Now type to do?

Enter J Street, a new lobbying group and political action committee that says it will represent the interests of liberal American Jews. The organization derives its name from the fact that Washington's road system, in which horizontal streets are named after letters of the alphabet, contains no J Street--the grid goes directly from I to K. Just as there is no J Street on the city's map, the group's founders maintain that the perspectives of liberal Jews are not adequately represented among Washington's pro-Israel lobbyists. "It is time for the broad, sensible mainstream of pro-Israel American Jews and their allies to challenge those on the extreme right who claim to speak for all American Jews in the national debate about Israel and the Middle East--and who, through the use of fear and intimidation, have cut off reasonable debate on the topic," declared J Street founder and former Clinton administration official Jeremy Ben-Ami in a recent piece for The Forward. The group, according to its website, favors "diplomatic solutions over military ones, including in Iran; multilateral over unilateral approaches to conflict resolution; and dialogue over confrontation with a wide range of countries and actors when conflicts do arise." Perhaps most controversially, its founder favors negotiating with Hamas. "Should there be attempts to engage Hamas and to find dialogue with them? Yes, " Ben-Ami said last month. One of the other brains behind the group, Daniel Levy, a British-born Israeli citizen and former adviser to Knesset member Yossi Beilin of the left-wing Meretz Party, has been a vociferous advocate of negotiating with the terrorist group.

The genesis of J Street lies in the allegedly right-wing agenda of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) - king of pro-Israel lobbies with 100,000 members and an annual operating budget of $60 million. "I'm not with AIPAC; I do not support AIPAC," prominent New York lawyer and J Street Advisory Council member Victor Kovner said in a press conference call last month. (Other members of the council include Robert Malley, a former Clinton administration peace negotiator who has defended Yasser Arafat's rejection of Clinton's 2000 Camp David peace proposal; Moveon.org founder Eli Pariser; and journalist Eric Alterman.)

Note that Robert Malley's the former Barack Obama advisor who recently resigned his post over controversial direct contacts with Hamas, and MoveOn's the radical online advocacy group that compared President Bush to Adolf Hitler and smeared General David Petraeus as a traitor.

Here's more from Kirchick:

The movers and shakers behind the organization allege that American Jews, whose political orientation is overwhelmingly liberal, are not accurately represented by AIPAC and other long-established pro-Israel groups...

Some J Street supporters point to a 2007 survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which found that 58 percent of American Jews identify as Democrats (only 15 percent classify themselves as Republicans) and that Jews overwhelmingly trust Democrats on the Iraq war, terrorism, and the economy. "Within the U.S. Jewish community, there's [a gap between] the hawkish views expressed by leaders and 'pro-Israel' activists and the more dovish opinions of much of the community," Gershom Gorenberg, one of the group's intellectual mavens, recently wrote on The American Prospect's website. But the real gap, it turns out, is between the miniscule group of writers and activists involved with J Street and the majority of American Jews. It's true that American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal on most issues; the problem for J Street is that Israel simply isn't one of those issues. According to the same AJC survey cited by J Street supporters, nearly three-quarters of American Jews do not believe that Israel can "achieve peace with a Hamas-led, Palestinian government," as J Street's founder advocates. What's more, 55 percent believe that negotiations between Olmert and Abbas "cannot lead to peace in the foreseeable future." And a whopping 82 percent agree with the following statement: "The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel."

A perusal of J Street's list of supporters further undermines its pretensions to mainstream credibility. One of the most prominent Israelis involved with the group is Avrum Burg, former speaker of the Knesset. A member of a distinguished Israeli political family, he set off a political scandal last year when, in an interview with Ha'aretz, he claimed that "to define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end"; he has also compared contemporary Israel to pre-Nazi Germany. Naomi Chazan is a former Knesset member from the left-wing Meretz Party, which has just five seats (out of 120) in the Knesset. Henry Siegman, a former Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, accused Israeli leaders of having the U.S. government "in their pockets," and claimed (absurdly) that the 2000 intifada "was not planned by Arafat, but a spontaneous eruption of Palestinian anger."

Hmm, J-Street supporters comparing Israel to South Africa under apartheid? Yo, Jimmy Carter, bro!

No wonder Spencer Ackerman denounces Kirchick as "a talentless neoconservative," refuses to provide a link to Kirchick's TNR piece, and boosts Jeremy Ben-Ami, who flails away with such intellectual piddle as this:

"The 2007 American Jewish Committee survey finds that a plurality (46% - 43%) of American Jews favor establishment of a Palestinian state "in the current situation" using the words of the survey."

Dude, we be singin', I got de' margin-o'-error blues...!!

I can see why Ackerman dogged Kirchick on the link love! Geez, I'd be embarrassed to be pumping up Ben-Ami too.

AIPAC's got no worries! Man!!

American Preponderance in the Muslim World

President Bush, in his speech to a Joint Session of Congress following 9/11, declared:

On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country....

The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics -- a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam. The terrorists' directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans, and make no distinction among military and civilians, including women and children.

These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us, because we stand in their way.

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies....

Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment. Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom -- the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time -- now depends on us. Our nation -- this generation -- will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.

The president's speech engendered a huge academic, political, and religious debate on "why do they hate us?"

Is it truly our values, our way of life, our liberty that causes global Islamic anti-Americanism? It's no doubt some of that, particularly as Western values holding the essential equality of women threaten the foundations of gender apartheid in Muslim authoritarian regimes, and so forth

But Muslim anti-Americanism's more complicated than that. Which is why the new survey data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project on Muslim views of the United States is extremely interesting.

Andrew Kohut and Richard Wike summarize the findings at the National Interest, and this section in particular caught my attention:

To a large extent, America is disliked in the Muslim world because of its power—and especially because of how it is perceived to be using it. Unrivaled since the end of the cold war and on the offensive since the 9/11 attacks, the United States is seen as a menacing giant, using its considerable strength without regard for others.

What's noteworthy is that when opposition to U.S. policy is broached in terms of power - it's not so much the Bush adminstration, but American preponderance that repels.

To take it further, if Americans elect Barack Obama in the fall, will global anti-Americanism decline? Will the Islamic world open its arms to a new president, one whose father was Muslim, and one who has proclaimed the goal of direct talks with our enemies without precondition.

Well, no actually. On religious grounds alone, Obama's seen as a Muslim apostate, and he's thus likely to cause extreme alienation among some Muslims who consider the Illinois Senator heretical for choosing Christianity over Islam. (It's not clear, moreover, for all the bluster and controversy, that Obama would actually enter into talks with our enemies, at least uncondiontionally, given the backlash to the candidate's views.)

But more importantly, U.S. power, for all the renewed talk about America's relative decline, will continue to cause unease among Muslim populations around the world. Sure, other issues are at play, like perceptions of a global religious struggle, the alleged Western threat to Islamic values, and not to mention inequalities in global wealth and economic mobility.

But as the survey shows, American power is key. The Islamic jihad against the U.S. really saw its most successful assault on the United States on September 11. Yet the desire to balance America's hegemonic power in Muslim populations preceded the Bush administration and it will continue long after the 2008 election.

These are some facts that the kumbaya advocates on the liberal internationalist left might do well to think about.