The Complexity of American Ideology

Some folks might have caught the generally flawed discussion at Forbes this week on "The 25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media."

Since the Democrats are in power with a new administration, and much of the governing conservative philosophy has been abandoned (by Republicans) or repudiated (by Democrats), it's certainly a worthy effort to pin down not just the top liberal thinkers, but to lay out some kind of liberal philosophy as well.

There's a lot of problems here, however. The first is that no one in American politics really agrees on what liberalism is any more. The second is that Forbes' top 25 is wholly arbitrary and plainly unserious in its effort to really identify a core set of writers and public intellectuals who'd best represent what it means today to be "liberal." According to Forbes:

Broadly, a "liberal" subscribes to some or all of the following: progressive income taxation; universal health care of some kind; opposition to the war in Iraq, and a certain queasiness about the war on terror; an instinctive preference for international diplomacy; the right to gay marriage; a woman's right to an abortion; environmentalism in some Kyoto Protocol-friendly form; and a rejection of the McCain-Palin ticket.

That's fair enough, except the authors needed some kind of qualification for the use of "liberal" in the American context. In history and political philosophy, liberalism has a significantly different foundation than that implied by the welfare-state liberalism that defined the Democratic Party throughout most of the 2oth century.

Traditional liberalism is best referred to as classical liberalism. It's foundations are found in the natural rights and social contract theories of the 17th and 18th centuries, best represented by John Locke and Thomas Jefferson. These thinkers stressed the innate God-given rights of the individual in the state of nature. Key concerns here are life, liberty, and property/happiness, and classical liberals evinced supreme skepticism of governmental power, and thus sought to proscribe the authority of the state, whose ultimate authority was to preserve and protect the natural rights of the individual. Ron Chusid, whose blog is "Liberal Values," discusses the problems of liberal nomenclature:

When I use liberal in the name of this blog, I am referring to liberalism in both its broad historical sense and with consideration of the variations in meaning internationally, as opposed to indicating support for any narrow partisan views. Some have suggested that I use the term classical liberalism instead, but I have preferred to leave this open, not wanting to be concerned about whether any specific views I hold fit into this label. Recent events have also forced me to tolerate more government activity in the economy than I would have previously supported. I have given homage to the birth of classical liberalism, and its stress on both personal and economic liberty, during the enlightenment in the subheading of the blog title.

American liberalism, which precedes even the bastardized liberalism in the Forbes authors' framework, stresses a substantial role for government and the state in promoting civil and political equality and in guaranteeing relative outcomes in economic activity. The Democratic Party through the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson sought to expand government's role in society at the expense of personal liberty, yet maintained national security commitments that would hardly characterize the Democratic political establishment today. Since the Vietnam War, contemporary liberals have sought to rein-in military spending and have resisted the use of force in foreign hostilities. Liberalism today is marked by unlimited "choice" in reproductive health (roughly abortion-on-demand), total separation of church and state, and aggressive affirmative action to promote underqualified minorities. Contemporary liberal are "tax-and-spend" on the economy, and they promote a "root cause" approach to criminal justice that seeks to soften victims' rights in favor of expansive protections for the accused.

The second problem for the Forbes piece is its extremely imprecise selection of the "top 25 liberals." The list positions Paul Krugman and Arianna Huffington at numbers 1 and 2 (and we could quibble with that as mischaracterization, although they're both classic "establishment"). But after that we see a number of personalities we'd normally consider center-left or moderate, such as Fred Hiatt, Hendrik Hertzberg, Thomas Friedman, and Fareed Zakaria.

Most problematic is the inclusion of a number of bloggers on the extreme left of the ideological spectrum. These include Glenn Greenwald, Josh Marshall, Markos Moulitsas, Andrew Sullivan, and Matthew Yglesias (and less so Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein, although the difference compared to the aforementioned is slight). The inclusion of these seven bloggers can be interpreted a number of ways, but for the most part we'd more appropriately refer to them as far-left radicals or secular progressives. Either way, this bunch represents the demands on the contemporary ideological left for extreme change in society's policies, processes, and institutions.

The extreme left goes beyond traditional 20th century Democratic liberalism to call for the repudiation of the hierarchies of the establishment and the overthrow of the most cherished traditional values and assumptions of the people. The radical secular push on gay marriage extremism is a key case in point, as is the tremendous backlash against the aggressive use of state power to combat terrorism domestically and overseas.

In contrast to the Forbes definition, we're not talking here about a "certain queasiness" with the war on terror or the "instinctive preference" for international diplomacy. Today's secular progressives are screaming antiwar absolutists who are now seeking war crimes prosecutions for former GOP leaders who launched wars at home and abroad amid tremendous bipartisan cooperation of the two major parties.

What is more, today's radicals finesse and hide their true ideological project. Andrew Sullivan still clings to the conservative label while pushing the most aggressive (and literally unhinged) attacks on people like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin. On gay marriage particularly - what I've identified as the signal policy of today's progressive nihilism - Sullivan excoriates anyone who disagrees with his position, bitterly denouncing them as "Christianist" - a meaningless term of derision used to attack traditionalists and Republican moralists. As R. Andrew Newman has written:

If you refrain from punching your fist in the air exuberantly over the holiness, the exaltedness, the eye-spinning splendiferousness of same-sex marriage, if you fail to demand this very nanosecond that courts make it the law of the land, Andrew Sullivan knows what you are: a bigot, a hatemonger, a torture-supporter, even a Bush-backer ... You're a "Christianist."

Glenn Greenwald's just as bad on civil liberties, attacking anyone as "Beltway blowhards" or some such epithet of totalizing excoriation (Greenwald has routinely compared former Bush administration officials to Nazi German war criminals prosecuted at Nuremberg). Matthew Yglesias is essentially a Marxist pacificist anti-American who adopts the most extreme-leftist line possible on any of the major issues of the day. Of course, none of these people are identified for the genuine radicalism they represent, which in itself is an indication of how far the American political spectrum has evolved to a solidily leftist orientation. As far-left blogger Steve Benen noted today, in a satirical comment on the increase in Democratic Party identification in 2008:

Obviously, the only appropriate conclusion one should draw from this is that the United States is a center-right nation, and Democrats have to govern in a more conservative fashion if they expect to stay in office.

Actually, Benen confuses America's traditional conservative political culture of individualism and political liberty for ideological orientation. But his sarcasm points to how today's left conceives and advocates a radical secular progressivism as the defining ideological orientation for American politics. This is not John F. Kennedy's Cold War liberalism. This is the totalizing quasi-Marxist project of New Left revolutionaries of the 1960s.

All of this suggests that the term "liberal" is actually not so useful to describe leftist orthodoxy in the age of Obama. The president himself has long been associated with progressive causes and post-structural academic theories. His reincarnation as "pragmatic" is politically expedient and disingenuous. The back and forth cooperative relationship between Barack Obama and today's progressive radicals (Moultisas' anti-Semitic Daily Kos led the Obama campaign's public release of the president's certificate of live birth) is an indication of how established secular progressivism is in the mainstream Democratic Party hierarchy.

Some on the left will naturally dismiss this discussion as "wingnuttery" (they absurdly think they are "the center"), but even top liberal-centrists like Senator Joseph Lieberman have identified today's Democratic Party as hijacked by the hard-left partisans of the netroots fever swamps. Radical progressives are hardly "liberals" according to the traditional conceptions of the term. Folks pushing for what might be identified as a democratic-socialist model (note the small "d") would possess greater analytical clarity, as well as ideological integrity, by coming out as radical secularists rather than some incoherent mix of the leftist-libertarian-progressive labels now regularly used to disguise their repudiation of establishment traditions and moral exceptionalism.

Implications of the Left's Ugly Inauguration

From Sherman Frederick, of the Las Vegas Review Journal, "The Ugly Side of the Inauguration: Obamamania's Mean Streak":

There is a growing faction of the American left that seeks revenge more than righteousness.

Intolerant of dissenting views, this faction thinks as comedian Janeane Garofalo does that some members of the opposing political party should be "jailed." Terrorist acts (such as mailing envelopes of white power to Mormon temples because the gay marriage vote in California went the church's way) are seen by this faction as understandable and acts of legitimate political expression ...

... in light of the things we saw at the inauguration, it may be time to revisit the dangers of intolerance and hate - no matter the color of the person who makes them - and nip this ugly mean streak in the bud.

Note something about the conclusion, where we should "nip it in the bud."

To do that we'd have to restrict freedom of speech and political liberty. So as bad as leftist intolerance is, the solution's worse than the disease. It's better for folks of common sense and good moral standing to continue writing and highlighting the simple ubiquity of leftist intolerance and the Democratic-authoritarian hero-worship in Obamania.

It's not far-fetched to start thinking about a GOP comeback as early as 2010. James Pethokoukis says "Obama Looks Like a One Termer." Conservatives will be able to make the case against the Democratic Party without restricting liberty. The party's hardline base will pull the Obama administration to the left, and the president's own delusions and megalomania, amid his calls for the largest expansion of government in American history, will also wear thin on the great silent majority of folks who wanted change, not slavery.

Gay Community is Losing Friends

I think Debra Saunders is a little late to California's gay marriage debate with her essay today, "The Gay Community is Losing Friends," at RealClearPolitics and the San Francisco Chronicle. Or, she might be early to the next big round, since the California Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of Proposition 8 sometime in early-March.

Saunders doesn't add to much that is new to the discussion. What I found interesting, though, is the comment thread at the Chronicle's page, where the responses are running about 25-to-1 against the writer - no surprise given San Francisco's ideological milieu.

She's being attacked as a "bigot" who's spouting "typical putrid swill." At least one comment has been deleted for violating terms of service, which was quite possibly a death threat (recall that fellow Chronicle columinst Cinnamon Stillwell has written about her experiences with hate mail).

I did find one sympathetic comment among the many attacks, which really sums up things:

Debra Saunders' final words of her fine piece say it all --- "The gay community's failure to show tolerance is costing it friends." And California Justice Marvin Baxter's dissenting opinion, in slapping the majority court's reasoning, also says it all --- "The court does not have the right to erase, then recast, the age-old definition of marriage ... in order to satisfy its own contemporary notions of equality and justice." This is a no-brainer for the majority of people of a Christian nation who understand that our creator brought Sodom and Gomorrah to ruin for a similar homosexual lifestyle. Gavin Newsom and the Devil would make a delightful gruesome twosome, most probably with the Cal Supreme Court's blessing.

As noted, we'll be seeing a rekindling of left's attacks on California's marriage traditionalism in a few weeks. The response to Saunders' essay is just a glimpse of how nasty things are going to get.

Black American Life Chances Under Obama

I heard it multiple times this last week amid the euphoria of President Barack Obama's inauguration and first days in power: Black children now have a role model in the world's most powerful office. Obama has fulfilled the dream of every American, but especially African-Americans, who can rightly claim that "anyone can be president of the United States."

Well, expectations are high, and certainly not unwarranted. But let's get real: President Obama takes office at at time of existential crisis for many in the black community. Charles Blow, at the New York Times, wrote last week that if we really want "change," it's going to take a revolution in personal responsiblity as well as a public commitment to lift the black underclass from the depths of poverty and social pathology. Check out these numbers:

• According to Child Trends, a Washington research group, 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Also, black children are the most likely to live in unsafe neighborhoods. And, black teenagers, both male and female, were more likely to report having been raped.

• According to reports last year from the National Center for Children in Poverty, 60 percent of black children live in low-income families and a third live in poor families, a higher percentage than any other race.

• A 2006 report from National Center for Juvenile Justice said that black children are twice as likely as white and Hispanic children to be the victims of “maltreatment.” The report defines maltreatment as anything ranging from neglect to physical and sexual abuse.

There was a big controversy in 1965 when Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was then Assistant Secretary of Labor, delivered his report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." One of the most controversial public policy documents in American history, the Moynihan report declared that the breakdown of the traditional black was the basis for the crisis of dependency, poverty, and social disintegration for that community.

Today, it's practically taboo to focus on the tangle of issues underlying the report's conclusions, especially the problems of teen pregnancy, out of wedlock births, and the scrouge of family abandonment by the black male. On top of this, we've seen develop over the last couple of decades an oppositional culture among blacks which finds large numbers of youths adopting attitudes that reject the norms of educational attainment and traditionalism, attitudes that instead facilitate a culture of victimology.

How do we get out of this mess? More "social" spending? More "aid" to education, or more "qualified teachers" in our inner-city schools?

I was reading the Vegas Guy's blog the other day, and he's teaching at a school this semester that features a student-body demographic that is "98 or 99 percent" black. This passage was especially striking, where he discusses his class assignment of Martin Luther King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail":

I've been working on a new unit dealing with Dr. King's "Letter From A Birmingham Jail,"which I think is his most impressive work, including his speeches. Despite the fact that most of my students are black, very few know that he wrote a letter from jail, much less the content or even what prompted him to write it in the first place.

The Vegas Guy also spoke of a school assembly, which the principal had called because he had "been hearing our students call each other nigger (or is it nigga?) while in the halls ..."

I'll be discussing these issues in more detail as we get deeper into the Obama era, and I want to recommend to readers Juan Williams' essential book on the black crisis, Enough.

For now just note that there's some research that says that Obama's presidency itself can help black student performance, and thus the president's role modeling will improve black life chances in the United States.

The New York Times had a piece Thursday discussing a research variant of the "stereotype vulnerability" hypothesis, which holds that "racial and gender stereotypes interfere with the intellectual functioning of those taking the tests." According to the Times story, "Study Sees an Obama Effect as Lifting Black Test-Takers," education researchers have found that "a performance gap between African-Americans and whites on a 20-question test administered before Mr. Obama’s nomination all but disappeared when the exam was administered after his acceptance speech and again after the presidential election."

Apparently, the research sample wasn't large, and the paper has just been submitted for peer review, but the authors were "surprised" to find a statistically significant "Obama effect" on black testing performance.

I don't doubt there could have been such an effect, but the notion that President Obama's accession to the White House is going to magically lift generations of black youths to the heights of educational and socio-economic success is a bit too optimistic for me. Like the Vegas Guy, I work in a "disadvantaged demographic." While Latinos are the largest ethnic group at my college, I teach large numbers of traditional inner-city blacks. After ten years at the college, I can recount only a handful of students from that population that I'd subjectively label "Harvard material." And that's sad, too, from a personal level of having been brought up in an educated household and culturally-rich living environment.

What is happening today in the black family is one of the most important social challenge facing the nation. Well before Barack Obama was even close to winning his party's nomination, a saw a sense of the tremendous promise for black America that an Obama presidency might hold.

That promise will not be realized if researchers, teachers, and the progressive education establishment push worn-out models of relativist pedagogy and touchy-feely learning paradigms that lift the responsibility for learning off the shoulders of today's youths and their families.

I'll have more on this in future essays.

"A Breath of Fresh Air": A Reader Writes

Here's a snippet of the e-mail Rusty Walker sent me yesterday, by permission:

Hi Donald Douglas,

You are a breath of fresh air. A California professor that is not leftist! Wow. Good for you. I thoroughly enjoy your Blog. I am 62 and a Republican. I was an artist for 16 years in San Francisco surrounded by the bleeding heart left; then, in the private college sector in Arizona for 20 years, now I am a full time artist ....

I appreciate having you out there in the school system with those young impressionable minds. They are unreasonably stirred by his good looks and charm, listen to his lofty platitudes, rather than the lack of substance in his speeches.

It's always nice to get letters from readers. They are few and far between, and that makes them all the more appreciated.

A lot of the appeal of blogging is community, and it's reassuring to know that when we write there's an audience out there that's moved and energized.

Keep the e-mails coming, and be sure to check out Rusty's excellent homepage.

Obama Breaks From Bush's Divisiveness?

It's hard to take the mainstream press seriously these days, especially when the bulk of "leading" political news stories are nothing more than hopped-up op-eds. This afternoon's case in point? Liz Sidoti at the Associated Press, "Obama Breaks From Bush, Avoids Divisive Stands" (double links, here and here, for posterity):

Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush's unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government.

"What an opportunity we have to change this country," the Democrat told his senior staff after his inauguration. "The American people are really counting on us now. Let's make sure we take advantage of it."

In the highly scripted first days of his administration, Obama overturned a slew of Bush policies with great fanfare. He largely avoided cultural issues; the exception was reversing one abortion-related policy, a predictable move done in a very low-profile way.

The flurry of activity was intended to show that Obama was making good on his promise to bring change. Yet domestic and international challenges continue to pile up, and it's doubtful that life will be dramatically different for much of the ailing country anytime soon.

RTWT, at the link.

I rarely write about AP's journalism, but this one cries out for some deconstruction.

Bush policies, on Afghanistan, anti-terror law enforcement, Iraq, as well as domestic programs like tax relief, were not "divisive" upon initiation, and even programs like warrantless wiretapping - which generated tremendous backlash among extreme-left partisans - enjoyed majority support across the general public. And on the war, as I noted some time back, "since 2003 there's never been a majority in public opinion that supported an IMMEDIATE withrawal of all U.S. combat forces from Iraq (see Polling Report).

Sure, Bush governed firmly and held steadfast to his beliefs, which was in fact a blessing for our nation and the Iraqi people, as I noted in my recent Pajamas Media essay, "George W. Bush’s Legacy: Moral Vision."

In contrast, Barack Obama's starting out explicitly partisan, with his repudiation of 25 years of pro-life family planning programs in rejecting the Reagan administration's "Mexico City policy," which banned taxpayer funding for international abortion providers.

Note too that Gallup reported Wednesday that "Americans Lean Against Closing Guantanamo." But Obama's frozen the military commissions there as the first step in closing up shop, apparently unmindful that the American states in the federal system and our international allies do not want dangerous terrorists as guests at their prisons (for more on this, see "Obama Gives Terrorists A License to Kill").

So, tell me ... what's so un-divisive about that? Indeed, President Obama himself must be worried about some partisan division, or he would't be trying to shut up his political opponents.

The Associated Press story is just part of that huge media-propaganda chatter that some pass off as "journalism."

Ain't it a crying shame?

Should You Pay the Nanny Tax?

Caroline Kennedy is the last person I'd have thought who'd fail to pay taxes on domestic help, considering how big an issue this has been in the last couple of decades of national politics. The New York Times offers some explanatory perspective on why we're still seeing these scandals popping up and derailing promising political opportunites:

The nanny tax issue simply won’t go away.

Ever since Zoë Baird, President Bill Clinton’s first nominee for attorney general, withdrew her name from consideration because she had broken rules relating to household employees, the issue has tripped up public figures every couple of years.

This week, it became part of the chatter around Caroline Kennedy’s decision to pull out of contention for New York’s vacant United States Senate seat. This month, Timothy F. Geithner’s nomination for Treasury secretary hit a snag over, among other mistakes, an issue relating to a housekeeper.

Every time this happens, it leaves a little pit in the stomach of hundreds of thousands of people who are breaking the law themselves. Various estimates put the tax cheat rate at 80 to 95 percent of people who employ baby sitters, housekeepers and home health aides. In 1997, taxpayers filed 310,367 household employee tax payment forms with the Internal Revenue Service. By 2006, the latest year for which data are available, the number was down to 225,441.

Given the unease, why don’t household employers pay the taxes and other costs that other larger employers do as a matter of course?

“The chances of getting caught are slim,” said Arthur U. Ellis, president of the Nanny Tax Company in Chicago, which helps clients pay on time. “And why should I pay for something when the vast majority of people are not paying it?”

Some employers don’t want to pay the extra 10 percent or so on top of the employee’s salary to cover the taxes and other costs. The employees often balk, too, because they don’t want taxes withheld from their paychecks. They may demand higher wages to make up for money that an employer takes out, raising employer costs even more.

Perhaps the most daunting part of all of this, however, is how much effort and paperwork it takes to do the right thing. Just how complicated is it to comply? Let us count the ways in the list below, which I derived in part from I.R.S. Publication 926, the “Household Employer’s Tax Guide.” What follows should serve as a good starting guide for anyone who’s finally been scared straight by the news this month ...

Check the link for the rest.

Remarks of President Barack Obama, Via YouTube

Well, we know President Barack Obama refused to give up his CrackBerry, and now he'll certainly cement his reputation as the hippest tech-generation president yet, with his first YouTube national address today on his administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan:

President Obama admits, toward the end of the talk, "I know that some are skeptical about the size and scale of this recovery plan."

I'll say. Man, that's one gargantuan expansion of government Obama's peddling, and there's debate whether the recovery package itself will stimulate the economy (Keynesian multipliers, and what not), rather than the natural recuperative powers of American hard work and initiative at the aggregate level, facilitated by incentives to produce, save, and invest through lower marginal tax rates.

On Thursday, Robert Barro, a Harvard University economist, labeled all of this leftist stimulus talk "Democratic voodoo economics."

Obama Seeks to Supress Dissent, Consolidate Cult

I spoke of the Obama presidential cult last night, and I specifically questioned whether Obama himself hasn't consciously built it himself. Well in thinking about that question, keep in mind that the president has admonished his critics on the right for not getting on board The One's propaganda express.

Brian Maloney has more:

To the 58 million American voters who've refused to join Barack Obama's creepy cult, these are difficult times. With the mainstream media eagerly awaiting their Dear Leader's orders, independent-minded citizens are left with few places to turn as they race to save the country they love.

Adding to the discomfort is the way some GOP moderates have seemingly jumped on board Obama's ship, oblivious to the likelihood that it will soon sink as his political bubble bursts, dot.com-style.

One non-believing medium their Messiah has yet to dismantle is talk radio, where Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been pounding away at Obama's hollow rhetoric and empty promises. During the course of the campaign, the King Of All Egos went after the FOX News Channel host by name, but now he's aiming squarely at his most outspoken foe: El Rushbo himself.

Maloney cites the New York Post's report on this, then continues:

Beyond the absurdity of a Democrat barking orders at his political opposition, he's especially foolish to air his fear of Limbaugh and talk radio in a public setting. Now, what was long suspected by conservatives has been verified by the man himself.

The timing was no coincidence: after a rocky first week in office, the Obamists are also faced with a resurgent Fox News Channel, where ratings have been climbing since the moment he took office.

In particular, Hannity's Limbaugh interview, which took place in the latter's Florida studios, scored fantastic audience figures for the former's network. In overall viewers, Thursday's Hannity nearly trebled his MSNBC competition and almost doubled CNN's Larry King.And after a wildly successful fall ratings survey, talk radio is looking forward to record numbers with the installation of the Obamists.

One of the central characteristics of political authoritarianism is systematic state suppression of dissenting opinion. That Obama has taken such a direct swipe at his critics provides more information and support for the hypothesis of a self-promoted personality cult in the office of the presidency.

By the way, Fox News was covered in a piece last week at the New York Times which signaled the growth of the networks rebirth in political opposition: "Fox News Primes Itself for a Shift."

Fear and Imbalance! Fox News is the Enemy!

You know Jon Stewart can be very funny, but frankly I rarely watch his show or similar folks like Bill Maher, et al., as they have no sense of proportion (not to mention taste), and frankly they serve as the shock-troops of the mainstream establishment's cultural commissars.

Personally, I don't rely on Fox for all of my news and information, and I'm no big fan of people like Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. But let's take a breath here as we read Captain Fogg, who's sounded the tocsin against Fox News as "the enemy":

The people who watch Fox usually don't watch anything else. They have no idea that the lies and distortions they've been hearing are often repudiated and disproved by all the other news services. They haven't a clue that one of the largest anti-American campaigns, indeed the most organized program of treason against truth, justice and democracy is broadcasting 24 hours a day. Fox is using and will use everything they can find to undermine confidence in our government and anything it does and as you can see is hoping our country will fall and our hopes will fail. To me, it constitutes as great a danger to our future as any foreign enemy or global economic collapse. Traitors, saboteurs, liars and purveyors of irrational hate, Fox News is the enemy and anyone who hopes not just for our survival, but our improvement owes it to the world to use every opportunity to expose them.

That's really strong (and this is not satire), but don't even get me going about the liberal press, where reports from even left-leaning organizations have confirmed a large and systemic bias throughout 2008 against John McCain and the GOP, and in favor of Barack Obama and the Democrats. Not only that, the public is not fooled by any leftist allegations of "traitors, saboteurs, and liars" at Fox News. Indeed, 7 out of 10 Americans agreed in October that most journalists wanted to see Obama become president in 2008.

It's natural for partisans of both left and right to attack and discredit their opponents. It helps, though, to have the facts - not to mention moral integrity - on your side. That, I'm afraid is not the case concerning the ravings of comedy talking heads like Jon Stewart or his unhinged followers who dwell in the bottom muck of the nihilist fever swamps of the progressive left.

Where Are the Obama Anti-War Protests?

Obama is taking a firm stand on counter-terror policies in South Asia, as evidenced by U.S. military operations against terrorist sanctuaries in the Pakistani hinterland.

Here's the Washington Post's article, "2 U.S. Airstrikes Offer a Concrete Sign of Obama's Pakistan Policy":

Two remote U.S. missile strikes that killed at least 20 people at suspected terrorist hideouts in northwestern Pakistan yesterday offered the first tangible sign of President Obama's commitment to sustained military pressure on the terrorist groups there, even though Pakistanis broadly oppose such unilateral U.S. actions.

The shaky Pakistani government of Asif Ali Zardari has expressed hopes for warm relations with Obama, but members of Obama's new national security team have already telegraphed their intention to make firmer demands of Islamabad than the Bush administration, and to back up those demands with a threatened curtailment of the plentiful military aid that has been at the heart of U.S.-Pakistani ties for the past three decades.

The separate strikes on two compounds, coming three hours apart and involving five missiles fired from Afghanistan-based Predator drone aircraft, were the first high-profile hostile military actions taken under Obama's four-day-old presidency. A Pakistani security official said in Islamabad that the strikes appeared to have killed at least 10 insurgents, including five foreign nationals and possibly even "a high-value target" such as a senior al-Qaeda or Taliban official.

It remained unclear yesterday whether Obama personally authorized the strike or was involved in its final planning, but military officials have previously said the White House is routinely briefed about such attacks in advance.

Readers of this blog know that I called for exactly this response in November and December after terrorists laid siege to Mumbai. I'd actually like to see cross-border commando raids as well, but there's hope.

Now, anyone even remotely familiar with U.S. military command and control knows that U.S. airstrikes cannot proceed without approval from the top. But that doesn't stop antiwar airheads from blaming the loss of "innocents" and "children" on the Bush administration:

The airstrikes were part of a program begun by the Bush administration and authorized to continue by President Obama, but he himself does not personally authorize each strike.

It does no good to blame Bush at this point. Obama could stop the drone attacks at a moment's notice. For all the tortured reasoning from the left, the Obama administration has no choice but to play hardball with hard military power against the foes of America and the West. The U.S. raids will send the possible signal of U.S. posture and intentions. The Obama adminisration is letting it be known to hostile audiences worldwide that American policy will display continuity and even escalation of pressure in the face of radicals who are committing acts of violent mayhem around the world.

So where are the Obama administration antiwar protests? As we can see, those on the left so far will only blame Bush - they're irked that Obama's "continuning Bush's policy" of military force.

World Can't Wait has decided they'll protest the "evil BushCo":

... when such promises of continued wars of terror are being made it is a time to continue the resistance that is needed in the face of this. And a group of activists who recognized this moment gathered at D.C.’s Union Station and brought into sharp focus the disconnect between what the people of this country and the world hope for and what Obama has promised. For a solid hour a dramatic action was led by World Can’t Wait and joined by members from Arrest Bush, and Code Pink ...

Yeah, Code Pink, the folks who received tickets to the inauguration from the inside Democratic connections in Congress. World Can't Wait has said they're going to "stand up to this" no matter who the president is, but there's no announcement of planned protests at the page.

There's no mention of Obama at After Downing Street either, amid all the ads for t-shirts and posters exhorting folks to "Arrest Bush and Cheney."

And ANSWER's got an announcement up for a "Palestine Public Forum & Teach-In" in Los Angeles, where activists can learn "the real aims" behind the media's lies on "The U.S./Israeli War on Gaza." And the group's national page features a poster promoting a "March on the Pentagon" to end the "occupation" of Afghanistan and Iraq that features President Bush's mug - in March 2009! By God, Bush will have been gone for two whole months, and they'll still throwing shoes at the vile "BusHitler"!

The hypocrisy is exquiste, but consistent of the hard left, in any case.

Obama an Evil and Dangerous Man?

So far this blog has been generally fair and balanced in commenting on President Barack Obama. While I'm not kidding when I suggest that Obama's social agenda, especially his abortion extremism, will tear this country's soul apart, my posts have been measured and respectful.

So, compare my approach with MacRanger's, "Forget Obama Being the Anti-Christ, He’s the Devil Incarnate. MacRanger cites Dick Morris' essay yesterday, "The Obama Presidency: Here Comes Socialism" (which is a familiar meme from the campaign), and adds this:

None of this is news, you’ve heard it here. In three days he’s already greatly weakened our national security, signed orders to set the terrorists free and signed over more babies to their death through unfettered abortion.

This is an evil and very dangerous man and we’ve only begun to see just how much that is true. So now is the time to begin to act. Now is the time to begin to wrest - through peaceful and legal means - this Country back from those who are about to destroy it.

When MacRanger suggests Obama will "destroy this country," this is precisely the argument I've made all along - that by training, ideology, and inclination, President Obama is not commited to upholding the Anglo-Protestant exceptionalism that has always been the basis for our national strength and the font of our international mission of expansive liberty. Nor is Obama committed to the kind of economic freedom that is the essence of the dramatic tax rollbacks of 2001 and 2003, which were the capstone of 25 years of prosperity dating to the first Reagan administration's tax cuts of 1983. We'll see now under the Obama Democratic-left, as Morris suggests in his piece, the biggest government and non-defense spending regime in the history of this nation.

Obama's executive order on halting trails for Guantanamo detainees gives me deep pause as well. The Washington Post went so far as to announce, upon news of Obama's action, that "Bush's 'War' On Terror Comes to a Sudden End."

There is so much explicit partisanship - no, anti-Americanism - in that title, it's depressing, that with such ease and haste, and the coming of the Obama era, the Bush "war" on terrorism can be jettisoned for the "law and order" approach favored by the appeasement hawks of the pre-9/11 Democratic Party. The Obama mindset is well-represented in leftist foreign policy circles, where the notion that the deployment of Army and Marine infantry units for any land-based military missions, even counter-insurgency, is archaic, and that the U.S. must simply wind down the defense budget and abjure robust ground forces in favor of "cheaper and generally more effective" means.

I can assure readers that these moves are precisely why I opposed Obama's candidacy so vociferously thoughout 2008. No one can say that we didn't know this was coming, or that the leftist media and punditocracy had long been ready to turn the U.S. into a second-rate power, to abandon a vigorous forward posture, in favor of literally coddling dictators, by way of global moral equivalence, and by standing aside where no other great power can act in the face of global danger and injustice.

And of course, more is in store.

This blog reported that in 1996 Obama had declared in writing a comprehensive agenda for the roll back of traditional marriage in favor of the radical same-sex marriage absolutism. Recall too that last July, Obama declared his opposition to the proposed gay marriage ban going on the ballot in California, which was Proposition 8, passed by a majority of the state's voters on November 4th. Prior to that vote, Obama had announced to San Francisco's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club that he opposed "the divisive and discriminatory efforts" to affirm traditional marriage institutions in California and other states.

I am not convinced President Obama will affirm his position announced to Pastor Rick Warren that marriage consists as between one man and one woman. No, as we can see in just three days of governance, the Demcrats in power are not anywhere inclined to bipartisanship or pragmatism. The ascent to power must be truly intoxicated, and it's no doubt corrupting, given the burst of impropriety we've already seen in the Democratic camp, not to mention the leftist media's refusal to report on it effectively.

So, while no, Barack Obama is not an "evil man," his designs for the total oblitertion of Bush administration rules and practices, and his early signals on the push for the most radical social agenda in decades, proves for all to see that the deepest fears on the conservative right were by no means unwarranted.

The Cult Icon as President

There are two outstanding pieces today on the cult of personality surrounding President Barack Obama.

Candace de Russy, in "The Obama Cult of Personality," suggests some elements of the classic personality cult:

The key point about personality cults, as summarized at Wikipedia (italics mine), is that in modern times they occur “when a country’s leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise.” Moreover:

• A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship, except that it is created specifically for political leaders. Generally, personality cults are most common in regimes with totalitarian systems of government, that seek to radically alter or transform society according to (supposedly) revolutionary new ideas. Often, a single leader becomes associated with this revolutionary transformation, and comes to be treated as a benevolent “guide” for the nation, without whom the transformation to a better future cannot occur. This has been generally the justification for personality cults that arose in totalitarian societies of the 20th century, such as those of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.
• Although more uncommon, democratic societies also have examples of political figures who have been noted to have some traits of a cult of personality [for instance, President John F. Kennedy and Argentina's Juan Perón and his wife Eva].

Here’s hoping and sincerely trusting that Obama will prove not to be an overbearing state-builder, not to have a “tsar” complex. Hopefully the feelings of grandeur that he surely has felt and will feel, as a result of the often unbridled adulation he has received, will not lead him into attempting to institute a personality cult.

Actually, it's an important question as to whether he hasn't already instituted the cult. As Peter Wehner points out, the Obama presidency is already a "phenomenon":

We are in the midst of a political phenomenon. It is fairly extraordinary, and perhaps beyond anything we have seen in our lifetime. Our new president, Barack Obama, is not only the head of government; he has become a cultural symbol with rock-star appeal. I know people - lifelong Republican voters - who at one point viewed Obama with something close to contempt, who began to warm to him a bit during the presidential debates, and who now wish they had cast their vote for Obama. He takes office with his popularity near 80 percent and the political winds at his back.

Wehner continues by noting that one progressive pundit called forth images of Jesus in describing Obama's inaugural address as the moment when the "Word became flesh," an echo of the Gospel of St. John.

As one who is surrounded daily by college students, I can attest that the younger generation - at least my sample of it from the greater Long Beach area - is fully invested in the Obama cult of personality. I heard students this week, while discussing the inauguration crowds, chanting "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey-ey, goodbye ... " That was kind of creepy, actually.

Wehner warns against outsized expectations, and of the likely fall to earth for Obama, the mere mortal that he is - a point I've made repeatedly during classroom discussions.

The Netherlands at the Crucible of Liberty or Slavery

The decision by the Netherland's Court of Appeal in Amsterdam to prosecute filmmaker and legislator Geert Wilders for "incitement to hatred and discrimination" is a blow to Western ideals of liberty and tolerance. Wilders is being silenced for speaking the truth in his short film, "Fitna." Here's this from Melanie Philipps, "A Defining Moment":

This is a defining moment for Europe. It is when people have to decide what side they are on. All those ‘human rights’ supporters who tell us endlessly that we can only defend our society against terror if we remain true to its values now must decide whether they are going to defend Geert Wilders against the attempt to criminalise him for exercising his freedom to speak in defence of life, liberty and western liberalism - or whether they are going to run up the white flag in the face of Islamist totalitarianism enforced by its already enslaved western dupes.

Kirsten Gillibrand Caves to Left's Gay Rights Extremism

What does it say about queer-rights political correctness and the Democratic Party that TPM is reporting that Kirsten Gillibrand has already flipped her position on same-sex marriage? Apparently Gillibrand spoke with Empire State Pride Agenda, a New York homosexual rights lobby, and has indicated that she now supports full marriage equality:

Last night likely Senate pick Kirsten Gillibrand spoke to Empire State Pride Agenda Executive Director Alan Van Capelle about issues important to New York’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

“After talking to Kirsten Gillibrand, I am very happy to say that New York is poised to have its first U.S. Senator who supports marriage equality for same-sex couples,” said Van Capelle. “She also supports the full repeal of the federal DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) law, repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) and passage of legislation outlawing discrimination against transgender people.

As I noted this morning, the likely nomination of Gillibrand created a firestorm yesterday and this morning among 5th column netroots activists and extreme-left members of Congress. Now with her appointment, and the expected primary challenge in 2010, we'll see Gillibrand further kowtow to the extremist agenda of today's hardline Democratic Party base.

As I've said many time, the No on H8 ayatollahs and International ANSWER cadres have hijacked the Democratic Party's platform, pulling the party ever closer to the statist secular progressivism that is the de facto ideology in power today.

Abortion Politics and the Soul of the Nation

President Barack Obama is expected to issue an executive order overturning the "global gag rule" on U.S. funding for international abortion groups. With this move, shortly after the 36th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, this administration will position itself as the arbiter of abortion extremism worldwide, and it will guarantee that its domestic and international social policies will polarize the nation and complete the destruction of the moral fabric of this country.

As Robert George notes, in "Our Struggle for the Soul of our Nation," the ungodly legacy of the American left over the past 36 years is the 50 million victims of a national feticide of genocidal proportions. The United States, with the Democratic administration in power, faces a moral reckoning today that is a potential breaker of nations:

Abortion and embryo-destructive research are at the heart of the divide between the nation’s major political parties ....

The Republican Party’s support for the unborn has brought into its ranks many disaffected rank-and-file Democrats, including a large number of Catholics and Evangelicals. I am one. Indeed, it overstates the matter only a bit to say that, as a result of the conflict of worldviews that began with abortion, the Republicans have become the party of the religiously engaged, while the Democrats have become the party of liberal secularists. Barack Obama is trying to win over religiously serious Catholics and Evangelicals, without altering in the slightest his support for abortion, including late-term and partial-birth abortions, the funding of abortion and embryo-destructive research with taxpayer dollars, the elimination of informed consent and parental notification laws, and the revocation of conscience and religious liberty protections for pro-life doctors and other healthcare workers and pharmacists. He will ultimately fail. We must see to it that he fails.

In this project, Obama is being served and abetted by a small number of Catholic and Evangelical intellectuals and activists who have been peddling the claim that Obama, despite his pro-abortion extremism, is effectively pro-life because of his allegedly enlightened economic and social policies will reduce the number of abortions. This is delusional. The truth is that Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to serve in the United States Senate or seek the Office of President of the United States. The revocation of the Hyde Amendment, the Mexico City Policy, funding limitations on embryo-destructive research, informed consent laws, parental notification statutes—all of which Obama has promised to his pro-abortion base—will dramatically increase the number of abortions, and will do so for reasons that have been articulated by the abortion lobby itself. It is the pro-abortion side that tells us that the Hyde Amendment alone has resulted in 300,000 fewer abortions each year than would otherwise be performed—and that is why they so desperately want it to be repealed. Yet the putatively pro-life Obama apologists claim that the man who pledges to repeal it is going to reduce the number of abortions. Let me say it again: this is delusional.

Reflecting that the left's abandonment of the Constitution's call that all shall be guaranteed the equal protection of the laws, Professor George concludes:

We are called to account for the national sin of abortion. Like Thomas Jefferson reflecting on the evil of slavery—an evil in which he was personally complicit—we must “tremble for our country when we consider that God is just.” Like Abraham Lincoln, whom President Obama invokes but does not emulate, we must pray that God, in His mercy, will not abandon us, but will rather restore us to the true and lofty moral ideals of our founding. Even at this dark hour for our movement, let us here highly resolve to hasten the day when this nation, under God, will be truly and fully and finally dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal.

Closing Gitmo: "There's Something Not Right With That"

Here's an i Report, "Closing Gitmo," from CNN:

Predictable video comment-thread is here.

Kirsten Gillibrand is Left's Blue Dog Nightmare

The news that New York Governor David Paterson will appoint Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand to Hillary Clinton's seat in the U.S. Senate has generated the usual outrage on the hard left.

The New York Post indicates that the Gillibrand pick has Democrats "howling" in disgust.

The Gillibrand appointment is one more indicator that secular progressives couldn't care less about political moderation and pragmatic policy responses to national crisis. We have a radical litmus test in place for the new administration, and, again, the leftist pull in Congress and the netroots fever swamps will raise one of the most important political challenges to Barack Obama's leadership.

The Village Voice reports that Gillibrand boasts a 100 percent rating from the NRA and:

Gillibrand has described her own voting record as "one of the most conservative in the state." She opposes any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, supports renewing the Bush tax cuts for individuals earning up to $1 million annually, and voted for the Bush-backed FISA bill that permits wiretapping of international calls. She was one of four Democratic freshmen in the country, and the only Democrat in the New York delegation, to vote for the Bush administration's bill to extend funding for the Iraq war shortly after she entered congress in 2007. While she now contends that she's always opposed the war and has voted for bills to end it, one upstate paper reported when she first ran for the seat: "She said she supports the war in Iraq." In addition to her vote to extend funding, she also missed a key vote to override a Bush veto of a Democratic bill with Iraq timetables.

Gillibrand's record naturally inflames Allison Kilkenny at the Huffington Post:

Gillibrand is a Blue Dog Democrat, which is the name moderate Democrats gave themselves so people stopped confusing them with Republicans. Gillibrand is a pro-gun, fiscally conservative "Democrat." Blue Dog Democrats are the people who cower at the word "liberal," and fail to acknowledge that the only gains we - as a country - have made regarding civil rights were because of those dreaded, damn liberals.

And considering that gay marriage extremism has become a marquee cause of secular progressives since the November election, expect Gillibrand to come under fire on homosexual rights (via the Politicker):

On the issue of gay rights, Gillibrand received an 80 out of a 100 rating from the LGBT advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign. That was the lowest score out of New York’s Democratic representatives. According to the Human Rights Campaign, she voted against the repealing of “Don’ Ask, Don’t Tell” legislation, opposed legislation that would grant equal tax treatment for employer-provided health coverage for domestic partners, opposed legislation to grant same-sex partners of U.S. citizens and permanent residents the same immigration benefits of married couples and opposed legislation to permit state Medicaid programs to cover low-income, HIV-positive Americans before they develop AIDS.

Dose of Reality on Guantanamo Detainees

Listen to this from the New York Times:

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by an American counterterrorism official.

“They’re one and the same guy,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was discussing an intelligence analysis. “He returned to Saudi Arabia in 2007, but his movements to Yemen remain unclear.”

The development came as Republican legislators criticized the plan to close the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp in the absence of any measures for dealing with current detainees. But it also helps explain why the new administration wants to move cautiously, taking time to work out a plan to cope with the complications.

Almost half the camp’s remaining detainees are Yemenis, and efforts to repatriate them depend in part on the creation of a Yemeni rehabilitation program — partly financed by the United States — similar to the Saudi one. Saudi Arabia has claimed that no graduate of its program has returned to terrorism.

“The lesson here is, whoever receives former Guantánamo detainees needs to keep a close eye on them,” the American official said.

You think?

But check out the Wall Street Journal's lead editorial today, in any case, "Obama and Guantanamo":

Campaign promises are so much easier to adhere to when they're strictly hypothetical, as Barack Obama is discovering. The then-President-elect said 10 days ago on ABC that while he still plans to close Guantanamo, "it is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize" and that "many" of the enemy combatants are "very dangerous."

Merely for gesturing at this reality, Mr. Obama suffered the blunt-force trauma of his left-wing allies, and the panicked transition leaked new details on the Administration's intentions last week. On Tuesday the Pentagon halted military commissions at Guantanamo for 120 days, and reports as we went to press yesterday said Mr. Obama would sign an executive order today that the base be closed within a year. This was after he told the Washington Post that closure might take even longer. Isn't responsibility fun?

The first practical question is where to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the 245 or so other remaining Gitmo prisoners. Dangerous enemy combatants can't simply be released into the streets. The Obama camp says that after reviewing the classified files, it will try to repatriate as many as safely possible. But 60 already cleared for release remain because they may be persecuted by their home countries. And even Mr. Obama's vaunted diplomacy is unlikely to convince rights-protecting countries to resettle people he believes are too dangerous to release in the U.S. -- and the more willing Mr. Obama is to release prisoners, the more difficult this problem will become.

One suggestion is moving the remaining prisoners to Kansas's Fort Leavenworth, but state politicians are already sounding a red alert. The military base is integrated into the community and, lacking Guantanamo's isolation and defense capacities, would instantly become a potential terror target. Expect similar protests from other states that are involuntarily entered in this sweepstakes.

In any event, this option merely relocates Guantanamo to American soil under another name. The core challenge is not a matter of geography but ensuring a stable legal framework for detaining and punishing fighters engaged in unconventional warfare against the U.S.

There's more at the link.

The Journal makes the interesting point that now that Obama's in office, he's the one dealing with the brainless leftists who have no clue as to the next steps on Guantanamo detainees. This includes even hysterical "experts" like Glenn Greenwald, who's been harping about the "criminal" anti-terror policies of the Bush military commissions all week, while alternating between praise and poised-condemnation of Obama's "promising" actions on the "corrosive" lawlessness of the Bush administation's policies on Guantanamo, military commissions, "black sites," and who knows what else.

Sometimes the right thing to do (the Bush program) is so intuitively obvious that the warped opposition of the netroots hordes signifies nothing less than abject Bush derangement and the pursuit of raw nihilist power.

Another Democrat Skips Out on Taxes

I haven't written about Tim Geithner's "mistake" of failing to pay payroll taxes, and my sense is this issue should disqualify him as Treasury Secretary. But the Democratic-controlled Senate Finance Committee approved him for the post anyway, so he'll soon be joining President Obama to work on the White House's economic recovery program.

When he gets there he'll join Chief of Staff Rahm "The Knife" Emanuel, who was alleged earlier to have skipped out on property taxes at his Chicago home (and then perhaps even used his political muscle to harrass the free-speech rights of the blogger who pulled the scoop from Cook County records). Of course, Emanuel, as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, failed to disclose their official roles on the boards of family charities in violation of congressional ethics laws. That's interesting, since some have suggested that Emanuel's personal charity, the Rahm Emanuel and Amy Rule Charitable Foundation, was apparently listed as a primary residence to avoid paying property taxes (although, again, these tax allegations were denounced on the left as "smears").

The Democrats and taxes? What is it with these folks?

No one should be surprised, it seems, that the child of Camelot, that tireless public advocate, Caroline Kennedy, has withdrawn her name from Senate consideration because of tax and nanny issues?

Nope, not at all:

Problems involving taxes and a household employee surfaced during the vetting of Caroline Kennedy and derailed her candidacy for the Senate, a person close to Gov. David A. Paterson said on Thursday, in an account at odds with Ms. Kennedy’s own description of her reasons for withdrawing ...

Boy, it hasn't even been two full days and the Democratic "culture of corruption" is picking up a new head of steam. And just think: This is a Kennedy we're talking about here! Who would've thought the daughter of JFK would be just another two-bit Democratic tax-cheat?

This really is something.

Middle East Studies and Israel's Gaza Incursion

Here's a sample from Cinnamon Stillwell's essay today, at FrontPage Magazine:

Strip away the clichés and the vacuous newspeak blaring out across the servile media and its pathetic corps of voluntary state servants in the Western world and what you will find is the naked desire for hegemony; for power over the weak and dominion over the world’s wealth.

This quote is from Jennifer Loewenstein of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Cinnamon Stillwell links to Lowenstein's essay, "If Hamas Did Not Exist: Israel Has No Intention of Granting a Palestinian State," published at the extreme left-wing and anti-Semitic newsletter Counterpunch.

See the full article at FrontPage Magazine, "Hamas’s Academic Cheerleaders."

President Obama's First Day

A new chief executive's not going to solve the world's problems on "day one," but President Barack Obama seemed somewhat undistinguished on his initial day in office.

Just hours after a long day of inaugural ceremony and celebration ended, President Barack Obama took up a pressing schedule on Wednesday, his first full day in office.

From retaking the oath of office, to reining-in Vice President "Loose Lips" Biden, President Obama looks to be ironing out some move-in kinks over the first couple of weeks. Perhaps that's natural, although Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush, had spent lots of time around the White House during the presidency of G.H.W. Bush, and in some sense he seemed especially "fit" for the job.

I noticed also that Obama is returning some informality to the Oval Office. Unlike President George W. Bush, who steadfastly maintained a coat-and-tie rule for visitors to the oval office, and who himself always wore a suit when working there, President Obama took off his jacket while sitting at the president's desk yesterday, in essence rollling back the button-down mannerism of his predecessor.

When I started at LBCC, I always wore a coat and tie for lectures. For various reasons I am dressing more casuallly now, although I miss dressing up, and I'll be going back to more formal dress at some point (I need some new clothes mostly, but also my mood and teaching style has been more casual).

There's something to that professionalism that is meaningful. Dress signifies seriousness and decorum. When Bush came in with his crisp White House style, a corporate élan, it was a stark difference from the Bill Clinton years, where it was reported that early in that term, young White House staffers would address senior U.S. military commanders visiting the president with a "What's happening, bro?" or some other casual greeting to that effect.

We'll see how things turn out, and change is good and refreshing, but that's another thing that I always admired about President Bush. His style and graciousness is something that I'll never forget.

Socialist Hopes for the Obama Presidency

Today's Wall Street Journal features a roundup of commentary from folks like Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and ex-con junk bond-king turned philanthropist Michael Milken.

But Katrina vanden Heuvel's opening essay is a socialist eye-opener:

Mr. Obama has a mandate for change. People support reconstruction of America's crumbling physical infrastructure, and of our society. Here are a few steps I hope Mr. Obama will take: Reverse our deepening economic inequality by using this country's still immense wealth to assure that all Americans have the health care, housing and education they need; re-engage the world with wisdom and humility about the limits of military power; cut billions from wasteful defense budgets that empty our treasury without making us more secure; tackle the deep corruption in a financial system that consistently favors corporations over workers; respond with urgency to the climate crisis with an Apollo-like project to make America a clean-energy innovator; restore our tattered Constitution; protect a worker's right to organize; define a new spirit of sacrifice and service; clean up our elections; and reaffirm his campaign-trail commitment to end not just the war in Iraq but also "end the mindset that took us into" that war. Do not endanger the promise of this administration by escalating militarily in Afghanistan, further draining resources that are vital for rebuilding here at home.

Obama Retakes Oath of Office

President Obama has retaken his oath of office after the flubbed delivery seen at the video:

Obama and Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts had both seemingly stumbled over the 35-word oath during Obama's swearing-in as president on Tuesday, leading some to question whether he had properly committed the Constitutionally-mandated speech act that made him president of the United States.

A president is required by the Constitution to say: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

At the inaugural, Roberts had mixed up the words, saying instead: "...that I will execute the office to President of the United States faithfully..."

And so, at 7:35 p.m. today, according to the White House pool report, Roberts re-administered the oath in the Map Room of the White House.

"We decided it was so much fun -- " the first time, Obama joked while sitting on a couch.

Obama stood and walked over to make small talk with a reporter as Roberts donned his black robe.

"Are you ready to take the oath?" Roberts asked.

"I am, and we're going to do it very slowly," Obama replied.

Obama raised his right hand, leaving his left at his side.

The private swearing-in ceremony, sans Bible, took 25 seconds.

After a flawless recitation, Roberts smiled and said, "Congratulations,
again."

"Thank you, sir," Obama replied, to a smattering of applause.

Now, who messed up the oath? Watching the video it looks like Obama was pre-ejaculatory.

Initial reports have Obama jumping ahead of Roberts, for example:

Separated by a Bible used by Abraham Lincoln at his first inaugural, Roberts asked Obama: "Are you prepared to take the oath senator?"Obama indicated he was, and Roberts started reciting - and Obama repeating - the 35-word oath that is prescribed by the Constitution.

But at one point early on, Obama paused, as if grasping for the next words. Roberts helped him over the brief awkward moment, repeating a few words to get Obama back on track.

Later news stories reported Justice Roberts as having flubbed, for example, "Obama, Chief Justice Roberts Stumble in Recitation of Presidential Oath."

In watching the video above - which is provided by the secular-left news outlet and Obama propaganda organ - it's looks like Obama jumped the gun. Roberts did misstate the "faithfully execute" portion, but the iteration could have begun with Obama's halting first attempt to recite "I so solemly swear..."?

Obama's Un-Lincolnesque Inaugural Address

Barack Obama's inaugural address was far below expectations, as I noted briefly in this morning's post. So I find in interesting that William Safire, the great American expert on language and former Nixon speechwriter, has given Obama's address a mediocre review:

Our 44th president’s Inaugural Address was solid, respectable, uplifting, suitably short, superbly delivered, but — in light of the towering expectations whipped up that his speech might belong in the company of those by Lincoln, F.D.R. and Kennedy — fell short of the anticipated immortality.

It’s for others to cover the majesty of this inaugural moment, the happiness and pride that swept through the unprecedented throng, and the impact of being present in person or through television of a genuinely historic moment. My assignment is to consider the speech itself.

After the first stumbling presidential oath-taking I can recall — as much the fault of the Chief Justice as the incoming president, but it’s not something they can rehearse — President Barack Obama properly reminded us at the start that he was taking office in the midst of a crisis. He used the phrase “this generation of Americans,” reminding some of J.F.K.’s “torch has been passed” line or Roosevelt’s following phrase “has a rendezvous with destiny,” but today’s speaker showed no sign of its resonance. Late in the speech, he said that “the spirit of service” was “a moment that will define a generation,” but the two thoughts were unconnected.

Obama was wise not to blame only the capitalists for the sinking economy, as F.D.R. angrily had done; instead, he called it a “consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices.” That was an unexpectedly tolerant note, but which he stepped on with an imperious, lecturing pointer phrase about meeting challenges: “Know this, America.” That get-this tone is better directed to the Russians.

He got into a good rhythm with a cheer-up paragraph, reminding us of America’s productive workers and inventive minds, our capacity undiminished, setting up his warning against “standing pat.” (I once wrote a line for Nixon, “America cannot stand pat,” which got a glare from the First Lady — we never used that phrase again.) Obama topped that passage with a warmly familiar metaphor: “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” That worked.

He was not above using the old straw man “those-who” device, scorning “some who question the scale of our ambitions” and “what the cynics fail to understand.” He skirted the controversy about harsh interrogations with a facile “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals” — when there are times when that painful choice cannot be “rejected.” Obama followed that soon enough with a paragraph appealing to hardliners, promising to “responsibly leave Iraq to its people” — hawks can hope the operative word is “responsibly” — and “forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan,” which is a dovish way of saying he may have to risk the doves’ charge of “Obama’s war.” A soundbite that will echo is “We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense” followed by a tough message to terrorists: “You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

To his oratorical credit, the president did not strain for quotable quotes. “A nation cannot prosper when it favors only the prosperous” was a nice insertion with an eye toward Bartlett’s, and I liked “the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve,” though it is not in the league with “the mystic chords of memory.” Obama’s “know that you are on the wrong side of history” message to Muslim extremists concluded with “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist”; that is quotable if it is original, but I think I’ve seen it before. His “this winter of our hardship” is a well-turned phrase about discontent, even if not as Shakespeare punned it, “made glorious summer by this sun of York.”

I've been thinking about this "quotable quotes" meme all day. As noted, I watched the speech in full early this morning and thought it impressive. Yet, at this rate, Abraham Lincoln's under no threat of being knocked off the pinnacle of American presidential oratory.

Obama's a campaigner. If his actually governing reach rises to half the level we saw in his near-Biblical campaign speeches - ALL HAIL THE GREAT OBAMA! - we'll be practically born-again as a people.

The jury's still out for now though.