Moral-Economy and the Housing Bailout

David Brooks makes a fundamental point concerning the current rage for bailout politics:

Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility. It’s based on the idea that people have to live with the consequences of their decisions. This makes them more careful deciders. This means that society tends toward justice — people get what they deserve as much as possible ...

That pretty much sums up my own feelings, and I'm facing some potentially wrenching personal economic change later this year, when I look to negotiate new terms with my mortgage banker, or failing that, to sell my home. Whatever I do, I'm not asking for any "bailout," and I'll accept the consequences of my own financial decisions regarding the purchase of my house.

In any case, the Los Angeles Times has a good piece on folks on both side of the debate, in Long Beach, where I teach: "Housing Relief Becomes a Fence Between Neighbors":

Ledeen Halloran and Harry Snegg live a few houses apart on Claiborne Drive in Long Beach. They both have good jobs, they both voted for John McCain -- and they both have seen their home values fall more than 40%.

But when it comes to their views on mortgage relief, these two neighbors are on different sides of the street.

Halloran, 50, is a fan of President Obama's new plan to stave off foreclosures and thinks it could provide the cushion she needs to stay in her home.

"These bad mortgages started this whole recession, and if they don't do something about it we can't turn things around," she said.

Snegg, 62, thinks the $75-billion plan amounts to a taxpayer-funded bailout for people who either couldn't manage their money or took a gamble to score easy winnings in the real estate boom.

"People should get some help, but I don't think I should have to pay for it," Snegg said.

Halloran and Snegg represent a debate that is happening across the country, although the two neighbors say they mostly keep their views to themselves.

Snegg, who is divorced, worries that talking too negatively about people who are hurting isn't very neighborly. Halloran, also divorced, said she hadn't told her mother or her friends that she was having trouble with her mortgage.

Halloran moved into the Bixby Knolls neighborhood of 1940s-era homes in 1996. In 2006, she was thinking about selling and moving to the East Coast, to be closer to her son's college. So she refinanced her 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, shifting to an adjustable rate loan and tapping some of her equity to pay for renovations.

A few months later, she borrowed against her house again to pay for more home upgrades and to cover her son's tuition.

There was one hitch, however: Her loan had an option that allowed her to pay the interest only, but when she did, the unpaid principal was added to her balance. Now her mortgage exceeds the value of her home by about $150,000, and her $3,400-a-month payment is more than an entire two-week paycheck.

"I cut out coffee. I cut out movies. I cut out all kinds of things I was buying at the grocery store," Halloran said. "But when my property tax comes due in March, I'm probably not going to be able to pay."

Gone are thoughts of selling the home, and she worries that by this summer she will fall behind on her payments and lose it to the bank.

Halloran blames herself for spending money she did not have, but she also says her mortgage broker and the bank that gave her the loan -- the now failed Downey Savings & Loan in Newport Beach -- promised lower payments. The loan documents she signed show an initial payment of $2,900 a month. Her first bill was for $4,200 a month.

"We shouldn't get help for free," Halloran said. "There should be some penalty to the homeowner, but without some help, there are going to be a lot more people losing their homes."

Officials at U.S. Bancorp, which now owns Downey, said they could not comment on Halloran's loan.

A few houses down, Snegg says he knows full well the pain of foreclosure: He went through it himself in 1995.

At that time, he said, a downturn in the economy forced his advertising firm into bankruptcy. He tried to refinance his loan but, with home values sinking, could not secure a new loan with better terms.

So when he bought his current home in 2001, Snegg said he decided to play it safe. He took out a 30-year mortgage at an interest rate of 6.5% and resisted the urge to refinance at a lower rate, avoiding the associated fees.

"Interest rates are so low I sometimes feel foolish for not refinancing," he said.

He said he doesn't want people like Halloran to be forced out of their homes, but he also doesn't want to see his taxes raised in the future to cover the expanding government debt.

"I feel for people who are having trouble," Snegg said. "I've been there. And when I was in foreclosure, there were no government bailouts."

Snegg thinks that banks that have received taxpayer dollars through the Troubled Asset Relief Plan should use some of that money to help people like Halloranby granting easier payment terms.

But having the government take the extra step of actually giving banks more money to help Halloran cover her payments seems too far, he said.

There's more at the link.

I'll be writing more about this stuff as the months go by, but see my earlier post from this morning, "Perverse Incentives in Obama's Housing Plan."

Also, see Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast, where after noting she scrimped and saved and budgeted to buy a house, we have this:

The larger picture is not "Where's my government handout?", but what the consequences are of letting millions of people be foreclosed out of their houses. What happens to a neighborhood when a third, or half, of your neighbors are forced out of their houses, which then fall into disrepair? What good is your gourmet kitchen going to do you when the house next door is boarded up after vandals come in and strip it of all the copper piping? The reality is that the age of "I got mine and fuck you" is over. The days of looking over one's shoulder to make sure that scapegoat-of-choice doesn't get a piece of the action are over. Like it or not, we are all in this mess together.

So, now we should socialize responsibility? I doubt that's the American way.

Jeffrey Goldberg Eviscerates Glenn Greenwald in One Paragraph

You know, I've been highly critical of Jeffrey Goldberg in the past, but the guy's actually growing on me a bit. Indeed, he wrote some of the most interesting essays during the recent Israel-Gaza war, brutally honest and fully respectable.

His reputation is getting another boost this afternoon with this brief but devastating takedown of Glenn Greenwald, "Glenn Greenwald is Hysterical":

Not funny-hysterical, just hysterical. I think he feels badly about writing for The American Conservative, maybe because he knows that writing for a magazine founded by Pat Buchanan and animated by Buchanan's hostility to Jews and to Israel is a self-marginalizing act for any Jewish person trying to convince other Jews to leave Team AIPAC and support J Street. I don't read Greenwald very much - only when Andrew links to him - but his characterization of my politics means that he's either dishonest or ignorant. If he hasn't read what I've written about, say, the settlements, or about AIPAC, then he's not qualified to comment on my politics. If he has read these articles, then he knows that I'm not a revanchist Zionist, but falsely accuses me of being one anyway. What a putz.

Now that's some decent blogging!

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For reference, see Glenn Greenwald, "Jeffrey Goldberg's Gasping, Dying Smear Tactics" (have doggy bags handy while reading this post).

See also, Robert Stacy McCain, "Glenn Greenwald: 'No Anti-Semite Could Possibly Hate Me Worse Than I Hate Myself'

Perverse Incentives in Obama's Housing Plan

The evidence is coming in immediately for the perverse market effects of President Barack Obama's mortgage-relief plan. Check out the guy below, who's facing foreclosure, and with the announcement of the Obama plan, his mortgage company is "barrreling full-force to take me out of this house":

I wrote about the inherent inequities in the mortgage-bailout plan yesterday (lots of folks "underwater" who continue to pay the bills will get no relief). Not only that, the administration may very well be saving untold numbers of borrowers who were untruthful in their original mortgage applications; and further, the mortgage "cram-down" provisions could "would jeopardize the endangered capital of banks, pension funds and other holders of such securities, including the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."

As regular readers know, I'm interested to see how all of this turns out, so stay tuned ...

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The iReport link is here. It's tough to watch this guy, but be sure to read the comments for a flavor of the social divisions caused by any housing bailout.

Bikini-Clad Women as Objects, or Why I Like Going to the Beach...

You've got to love this CNN story, "Men See Bikini-Clad Women as Objects, Psychologists Say":

It may seem obvious that men perceive women in sexy bathing suits as objects, but now there's science to back it up.

New research shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis.

The research was presented this week by Susan Fiske, professor of psychology at Princeton University, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"This is just the first study which was focused on the idea that men of a certain age view sex as a highly desirable goal, and if you present them with a provocative woman, then that will tend to prime goal-related responses," she told CNN.

Although consistent with conventional wisdom, the way that men may depersonalize sexual images of women is not entirely something they control. In fact, it's a byproduct of human evolution, experts say. The first male humans had an incentive to seek fertile women as the means of spreading their genes.

"They're not fully conscious responses, and so people don't know the extent to which they're being influenced," Fiske said. "It's important to recognize the effects."

Umm, I'm reminded of my breast blogging on Ann Althouse. Cracker asked how do I respond to "questions about the blog author's obsession with another blog author's breasts"?

Well, let's just chaulk it up to evolutionary biology, or as Jimmy Carter once said:

I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times.... This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it.

And don't forget, as Little Miss Attilla has noted , "There is a marked tendency for heterosexual men to be interested in women."

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P.S. I'm forwarding this to my breast-blogging mentor, Robert Stacy McCain, for a vote of approval on some shameless blogwhoring.

Kamran Pasha: "The Greatest Tragedy of Islam"

Kamran Pasha, a Hollywood filmmaker, novelist and Pakistani-born Muslim, argues that for all of Islam's progressive teachings on the equality of women, the blood ritual of honor killings are the "greatest tragedy of Islam" (via Memeorandum):

As one of the first Muslims to succeed as a writer in Hollywood, I have been interviewed several times on BridgesTV and was delighted by the professionalism and media savvy of its staff. I had never met the Hassans, but I had been proud of their accomplishments. They were bringing an Islam of love, compassion and human brotherhood to the world, while countering the horrific images of violence and misogyny that had tainted how my fellow Americans saw my faith. The Hassans were people I admired - educated professionals and patriotic Americans with a commitment to family and community.

And then I heard how Aasiya Hassan died and I wanted to throw up ....

The greatest tragedy for me as a Muslim is that my faith is associated with such horrific actions that run counter to everything that Prophet Muhammad stood for. To those who know little about Islamic history, it may sound laughable to assert that Islam began as a proto-feminist movement. But it's true. Perhaps the way out of this madness for the Muslim community is to look back at the life of Prophet Muhammad and remember his true legacy as a visionary champion of women's rights ....

So if all this is true, where does this idea of "honor killing" come from in the Muslim world? Unfortunately, it is one of the ugly elements of pre-Islamic Arabian culture that continues to reassert itself, despite the Prophet's efforts to eradicate the practice. In fact, Prophet Muhammad nearly lost his own beloved wife to the madness of the crowds screaming about "sexual honor" ... The greatest tragedy of Islam is that some Muslim men continue to uphold these pagan practices that the Prophet outlawed 1,400 years ago ....

The choice that stands before Muslim men is stark. Do we follow ancient and evil practices, creating a cycle of violence and grief, and use culture as an excuse for our sins? Or do we follow our Prophet and create a better world where men and women treat each other with dignity and love? Do we turn life on this Earth into Hell, or into Paradise? The answer will reveal whether we are Muslims, people who have surrendered themselves to the true God of mercy and compassion, or idolaters, people who fashion God according to their own self-serving desires.

Be sure to read the whole post, "Honor Killing" and Islam."

Kamran Pasha sounds like a reasonable man who would fit the definition of an Islamic "moderate." Here he offers a very balanced take on the Muslim faith and laments how medieval traditions - seen in Muzzammil Hassan's beheading of his wife in a religious ritual killing - indeed represents the worst atrocities inherent to the Muslim faith.

As readers know, common sense and reasonable familiarity with Islamic teaching and culture indicate that cases like this are not "isolated" simply because they are few in number. Such horror is a function of lingering primordial passions, as I've shown here, here, and here.

Once again, Repsac3 has attempted to demonize and discredit as racist fearmongers those who would shout from the rooftops the truth about Islamic depravity. We need less of these enabling left-wing apologists for Islamic violence and more of the genuine "reformers" of the faith so that right and good will prevail against the forces of barbarity and evil.

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UPDATE: Kamran Pasha has responded to this post, here:

I am NOT saying that such horrific acts as "honor killings" are Islamic. The whole point of my piece is that they are un-Islamic and were rejected by Prophet Muhammad, who attempted to end these brutal PAGAN PRE-ISLAMIC practices.

My response is here.

Aasiya Hassan's Beheading an "Honor Killing"?

Well, the hyenas are out in the comments to my most recent post on the beheading of Aasiya Hassan, "Islamist Decapitation and Western Apologists." The intensity of the comments, which are not just analytical remarks, but crude ad hominem attacks, raises the question of why? What's at stake for these people, these nihilists who can see no fundamental distinctions in this crime?

Indeed, Repsac3 has distorted the basic issue out of all proportion, for example, on Mark Steyn's remark that, "If Muzzammil Hassan decapitated his [wife] as an Islamic ritual, then his entire professional life — Mister Moderate Muslim — was a lie." Steyn is not asking "if Hassan's beheading was an Islamic ritual killing"? He's indicating the stakes for allegedly "moderate" Muslims and cultural relativists in how the outcome of this Islamic barbarity is framed. Indeed, as the Buffalo News reports:

While Muslim leaders have urged against applying cultural stereotypes to the crime, advocates for women linked the killing to attitudes in Muslim societies.

“This was apparently a terroristic version of honor killing, a murder rooted in cultural notions about women’s subordination to men,” said Marcia Pappas, New York State president of the National Organization for Women.

She decried the scant national media attention paid to the story, which broke the same day as the commuter plane crash that killed 50 people in Clarence.

While domestic violence affects all cultures, Muslim women find it harder to break the silence about it because of a stigma, she said.

As I reported earlier, and citing Timothy Furnish's, "Beheading in the Name of Islam," Muzzammil Hassan's method of killing is rooted in ancient Muslim culture and tradition. Because Mrs. Hassan had just filed for divorce, the overwhelming likelihood is that Muzzammil would lose face among the Islamic communty's business investors if his wife's independence indicated dishonor to a Muslim man.

According to Phyllis Chesler in her update, "Cold, Premeditated, Ritual Murder. The Honor Killing of Aasiya Z. Hassan. Part Two," Aasiya Hassan's sister has spoken to the fact that Mrs. Hassan had been beaten and bruised over a period of 8 years. This violence is being seen as not simply "domestic violence," but Muslim-generated cultural subordination to the male head of household.

Indeed, think about it? Why beheading? Why did Muzzammil resort to the barbarity of beheading in killing his wife? WHY DIDN'T HE JUST SHOOT HER? That would be "American-style" if this man is so moderate and assimilated. No, this killing is not a case of spontaneous patriarchical rage? This is methodical, premeditated religious ritual. An understanding of this is found only within the context of medieval practice. Muzzammil deliberately chose the method of killing known around the world as THE CRIME OF CHOICE among the most extreme aderents to Islamist barbarity and terrorism. This is jihadi justice and honor in the home. Had Muzzammil indeed been so "moderate," he certainly wouldn't have risked the image of the assimmilated, secular Muslim community he cultivated by adopting a method of killing straight out the 8th century.

As one of the readers at Daniel Pipes' blog notes:

The hard question that needs to be asked here is how a supposedly "moderate" Muslim figure like Muzzammil Hassan ended up committing an act (an apparent honor killing) that represents one of the most barbaric attributes found in Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures.

Aasiya Hassan's independent actions brought dishonor upon the family pride of Muzzammil Hassan. While attorneys for Mr. Hassan reject the portrayal of pride and honor as motives for Mrs. Hassan's murder, some women's advocates remain convinced:

Advocates for women — some of them Muslims — have called for the community to acknowledge religious and cultural traditions that stigmatize divorce and heighten the danger of violence in divorce cases.

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UPDATE: Roger Gardner weighs in on this "debate":

Are we seriously going to debate this issue? Have we slipped that far down that slippery slope of multicultural pc nonsense? Have we abandoned all reason, all common sense, merely to show our respect to a bloodthirsty cult that poses as a legitimate religion? Have we learned nothing in all this time? Are we determined to continue our roles as useful idiots? Will we just ignore all that we have learned about the treacherous duplicity of the Muslim world, the evil machinations of its political arms, most noticeably in the recent scandals of that serpent's nest CAIR?

How can we seriously consider such a question? How can we still be this naive, this clueless, as to the nature of the enemy in our midst?

Was it murder? My God! What are we becoming? Are we now going to change our very vocabulary to suit our most recent - and most dangerous - immigrants?

To pose this as an either/or question presumes that there are two possible answers. And to make that preposterous presumption is to denigrate everything we stand for.

Yes, Roger, the leftists denigrate everything we stand for.

Obama Touts Housing Plan as Markets Continue Decline

President Obama laid out his $275 billion federal housing bailout yesterday. The plan seeks to give incentives to lenders to modify mortgages and may give bankruptcy judges more power to force "cram downs" on mortgage balances.

Michelle Malkin has a post, with photos, of yesterday's anti-entitlement protests in Arizona against Obama's "massive housing entitlement."

But check the Wall Street Journal's piece, "Some Americans, Underwater but Ineligible, Are Riled Up":

President Barack Obama's new foreclosure-prevention plan is already sparking outrage from some Americans who won't qualify for federal aid -- and from those who resent having to foot the bill for those who do ....

The housing plan, which President Obama outlined Wednesday in Phoenix, will allow homeowners who have little or no equity to refinance their homes, something that has been nearly impossible to do under current rules. It also establishes standards for government-subsidized loan modifications for borrowers in subprime loans and endorses a provision that would allow bankruptcy judges to reduce the principal on primary residences.

While real-estate professionals applauded the refinance provisions, which the White House says could help four million to five million homeowners, lots of borrowers wouldn't be eligible. For example, the refinance provision is limited to borrowers whose mortgages are owned or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage companies.

That essentially shuts out wealthy borrowers who would like to refinance but can't because they own expensive homes financed with so-called jumbo mortgages, which are too large to be owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Steve Rosenberg, a 44-year-old institutional stock broker in Chicago, has been trying to refinance his $815,000 option adjustable-rate mortgage for months. But his bank is requiring him to put an additional $150,000 of equity into his home, something he is reluctant to do because his income has been cut in half over the past year. For jumbo borrowers, he said, the government's message is, "You're on your own." Mr. Rosenberg saw little consolation in the president's initiative. "The only recourse I will have is a bankruptcy judge."

Congress has endorsed a provision that would allow bankruptcy judges to modify all types of loans. The White House's proposal would limit such write-downs to existing mortgages under Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan limits.

Some borrowers in hard-hit markets say they also are excluded. That is because the foreclosure-mitigation plan allows borrowers with little or no equity to refinance a first mortgage for up to 105% of the property's current market value. For some affluent borrowers heavily underwater in markets like California, that isn't enough. "We can afford to make our payments, so no one is going to help us," said Jill Wong, who has watched the value of her Modesto, Calif., home drop to around $350,000, from the $605,000 she paid four years ago. That wiped out her 20% down payment and has left her with a mortgage that has a 125% loan-to-value ratio.

I'm in the Southern California market, and I'll be looking to refinance next year. We'll see what happens, but today's Los Angeles Times reports that "Southern California Home Prices Fall to 2002 Levels."

More reports from the housing front later, dear readers ...

Far-Left Liberaltarianism

Stephen Green offers a comprehensive analyis of "liberaltarianism" at Pajamas Media.

Recall that I have my problems with this confused ideological position (here and here), for various reasons. But Green offers a good first-cut objection to liberaltariansim for any person of good moral standing:

There’s a wing of libertarianism so completely isolationist, it was against even toppling the Taliban in direct retaliation for 9/11. Those people probably do belong with the Blame America First, Last, and Always crowd on the far left of the Democratic Party.

I started reading about all of this liberaltarian gobbledigook at Mark Thompson's League of Ordinary Gentlemen. It's clear to me that the shift to liberaltarian positions is simply the path of least resistance to those who are embarrassed by their previous conservative advocacy or a sign of a desire to be on the "hip" side of the current popular culture moment. Either way, all of this is intellectually incoherent and morally bankrupt.

It's made for some great blogging, so I shouldn't complain in that sense.

Islamist Decapitation and Western Apologists

The intensity of the leftist attacks on my coverage of the beheading of Aasiya Hassan was heavier than usual (here and here).

The notion that Aasiya Hassan's husband was not in fact a moderate, and that he murdered his wife according to ancient Muslim culture and tradition, puts the lie to left's claims that Islam is just another religion - culturally equivalent - and that conservatives are "racist" by identifying Muslims as a clear and present danger to national security on the basis of their beliefs. This backlash illustrates anti-Americanism through and through, and the left's pushback on this story just makes the entire case that much more significant for the debate over creeping Islamization of the West.

Mark Stein, among the best of commentators on the issue, notes that the American press has refused to cover this story accurately, and only one Canadian reporter was willing to break from the mass-media's standard story line (see the Toronto Star, "Man charged in Beheading").

Steyn cuts to the key issue in this debate on Muzzammil Hassan's Islamic "moderation" and the left's claim that this was patriarchic domestic violence:

Spousal murder is not unusual. Beheading your wife is. If Muzzammil Hassan decapitated his as an Islamic ritual, then his entire professional life — Mister Moderate Muslim — was a lie.

I'm reading right now Timothy Furnish at the Middle East Quarterly, "Beheading in the Name of Islam," where he notes that "Islam is the only major world religion today that is cited by both state and non-state actors to legitimize beheadings."

Knowing this, it's simply impossible to take people like Melissa McEwan or Repsac3 seriously. These are the left's useful idiots of Islamic terror.

Indeed, when we watch an actual Islamic ritual beheading, the notion of comparing Asiya Hassan to case of "routine" domestic violence against women in the U.S. seems frankly evil.

See, for example, "Valentines Day Al Shabab Style (Beheading)," at Jawa Report - and be hereby notified:

EXTREME CONTENT WARNING. DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO ON A FULL STOMACH. NOT FOR THE EASILY UPSET!!!

Note: The beheading is reported as originally taking place last October. See, Jihad Watch, "Muslims Behead Christian Convert From Islam in Somalia."

Also, "Somalia: Christian Aid Worker Beheaded for Converting From Islam," and "Brutal Terror Group Seeks Power in Somalia."

The Catch-All Christianist Smear

Readers certainly know where I stand regarding the political disaster of today's Democratic-left.

It's bad enough to deal with the widespread moral bankruptcy and progressive nihilism of today's leftists, but as well it's the utter intellectual dishonesty of these people that's like a moldering filler of waste on top of the long-fetid ideological corpse below. Sometimes the relativist backlash and evil smears against conservatives are enough to drive people of good moral standing off the web, and if that doesn't do it, threats of intimidation or outright censorship will form the next steps of the left's campaign of death to right and wrong.

What's getting me going is E.D. Kain's de facto endorsement of Andrew Sullivan's all-purpose attack on conservatives as "Christianists." Sullivan, as many know, deploys the "Christianist" attack on traditionalists as an attempt to reclaim the moral high-ground from alleged extremists who have purportedly hijacked the moral debate on the right. As R. Andrew Newman notes, "Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist." As such, Sullivan and others who use the term have a ready wedge of repudiation and marginalization for traditionalists who stand in the way of the postmodern radical agenda, on gay marriage especially, but also any other policy associated with Bush administration backers and cultural conservatives, from coercive interrogations to race relations.

The smear of Christianism is now a catch-all attack on anyone of faith who rejects Sullivan's moral bankruptcy, his policy hysteria, his total hypocrisy on any and all subjects, and frankly, his own assumed universal standard of the acceptable for anyone with whom he disagrees. Yesterday, Sulivan denounced global warming skeptics as "Climate Christianists," as if there's the slightest possibility of such a thing.

This man is a nutcase first and foremost, and as Victor Davis Hanson argued the other day, it's a wonder that people still take this guy seriously. But they do. Time Magazine just included Sulivan's Daily Dish among its list of "Top-25 blogs," although Sullivan rightly ranks up there with Daily Kos as one of the "Most Overrated Blogs" on the web.

In any case, for reasons that I've discussed before, E.D. Kain has sold out to the dark side. He's abandoned the intellectual rigor of neoconservatism to join up in the moral wasteland of "postmodern conservatism" and "liberaltarian" advocacy. In doing so, he's increasingly twisting himself into knots of Gordian scale and slowly but surely reducing his arguments to the most banal pedestrianism of the ideologically confused.

Check out this passage, for example, from E.D.'s post, "Christianism and the Gay Marriage Debate":"

Opponents of gay marriage have adopted faux-conservative positions and adopt religious arguments in place of legal ones, and so within the American legal system any conclusions they draw are false. A better tact for conservatives to take would be to evaluate social harm on a civilizational level - not simply the institution of marriage, but the larger society - and to realize that preserving our civilization, which is by nature one of continued traditions and continuous social progress, entails embracing gays into the mainstream through the institution of marriage. Nothing “normalizes” an outcast sub-culture like the suburbs, two cars, three kids and a mortgage.

The point of conservatism is to preserve the stability of the social order, and the only way to do this is to put out the fires of the culture wars, to take the war out of it altogether, and tackle each issue on a cultural rather than political level. The problem with politicizing the culture wars is that they become self-serving and cyclical–a sort of beaurocracy [sic] of ideas. This is why the GOP is ostensibly the party of cultural conservatism and yet never achieves any of the cultural reforms it promises. This is a political tact, not a religious one, and is ironically as much an affront to religious voters as to anyone else.

Where to begin, as they say?

Well, first of all, be sure to check the whole post, which begins as a really rank attack on Mormons (and even E.D.'s relaxing some of claims in a later post as a result of some pushback).

In any case, this notion that conservatives have mounted religious arguments in place of legal ones is bogus. E.D. provides no links, so it appears he's directing his assualt on truly religious organizations like the Family Research Council, and the like, who naturally advance a political-morality of traditionalism. But on purely political, non-religious grounds we can object to same-sex marriage as a violation of the precepts of conservatism, or classical liberalism, to be precise.

As I have shown in "The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage," marriage is historically substantiated as an institution that is fundamentally and essentially procreative and regenerative. That is, men and women marry in a civil legal regime for the elevation of the basic biological union of spouses. As a particular social practice, marriage has always been about the fertile union that serves for the regeneration of society, even in the situation of marriage among a man and women who have no desire to bear children. The foundation of marriage is a civil principle, not religious exclusively, for the consecration and protection of the family unit as a socially recognized partnership for human generation. Marriage, in this sense, is a civic rite that is not interchangeable with other definitions of marriage, for example, as that between two men or two women, because the historical function of the bounding of purpose and social utility is negated and perverted. As with other civic rites, like funerals, marriage is not something that can be just thown open to any combination of people or groups on demand. If it is, it will then not serve as the norm-bounded regime of goodness that it has in the past.

Indeed, as Susan Shell indicates, in "The Liberal Case Against Gay Marriage:

A similar constraint applies to death. A society could abolish "funerals" as heretofore understood and simply call them "parties," or allow individuals to define them as they wish. Were the "liberationist" exaltation of individual choice pushed to its logical conclusion, would not a public definition of "funeral" as a rite in honor of the dead appear just as invidious as a public definition of "marriage" as an enduring sexual partnership between a man and woman?

But beyond this, E.D.'s not speaking logically or factually when he says a traditional embrace of marriage as between one man and one woman is to elevate "social harm on a civilizational level." In fact, it's precisely the opposite, for if gays - through their increasing campaigns of intimidation and violence - are able to transform society to their definintions and dictates, their wouldn't be much of anything at all about that "civilizational level" that remains. E.D. speaks of conservatism as embracing constant change, as "continuous social progress," but progress can only be an improvement if it builds on the practices and presumptions that the social consensus says need improvement. Any genuine conservative can tell you this, and thus for E.D., his criticism of Christianism is not geunuine. He's ultimately reduced to attacks on marriage traditionalists on religious grounds, and thus his argument's a de facto endorsement of Sullivan's "Christianist" smear, which is to demonize and discredit those with whom he disagrees (E.D.'s effort to distance himself form Sullivan utlimately fails, for as he says, "Used properly, Christianism can be a valid and effective rhetorical weapon").

Lastly, this part about Republicans and cultural conservatives failing to achieve "any of the cultural reforms" they promise is pure hogwash. The most important socio-cultural policy development in the last two-decades is arguably the 1996 welfare reform agenda, which came after years of conservative advocacy for family traditionalism and following the widely-validated attacks on Democratic federal polices that were exacerbating poverty.

We could go into to crime and education as well, as other areas of public policy where conservative ideas and institutions are having a dramatic effect. But the point should be clear by now. E.D. Kain at Ordinary Gentlemen is not only wrong on the facts, but intelletually dishonest. These are slimy, spurious attacks on traditionalists, plain and simple. Wrapping this stuff up in Sullivan-esque anti-Christianism makes all of this even worse, for these attacks by definition endorse a form of argumentation that eschews ideological and prescriptive clarity, but can be rightly regarded as unhinged as well.

As a professor, I would not recommend Andrew Sullivan as one to emulate for intellectual or policy guidance.

On November 7th, a couple days after California erupted in hardline protests against Propostion 8, Sullivan exhorted folks to chill: "I totally understand the anger, hurt and pain now roiling the gay community and our families, especially in California. But it's important to keep our heads ... Calm down. We are not experiencing a massive, permanent backlash." But as this very backlash has indeed started to build, Sullivan has dug in his heels, explicity repudiating his earlier arguments, with a new commentary suggesting that the left's campaign of intimidation has been characterized by "massive peaceful, even joyful, protests."

This, of course, is exactly the modus operandi of the catch-all Christianist smear campaigns.

These attacks are not about seeking truth and justice for the oppressed or disenfranchised. The gay rights community is anything but. These smears are about the delegitimation of a privileged moral community. These attacks take for granted the goodness of heart of traditional communities and seek to coopt conservatives' sense of decency and fairplay in a boomerang effect of inflicted guilt and the repudation of values. That is, if traditionalist are attacked hard enough and long enough they'll cede the moral high ground, and in the wake of this the left can step in and defile these old values - the civil regimes of goodness and human regeneration - with a replacement of gay licentiousness that will work to further breakdown that foundations of American society.

People should have no doubt about the true agenda behind all of this. And as they do, folks of good moral grounding must stand firm. Society will change organically if that's what people want. Revolutionary, violent change is not conservative, but the E.D. Kains and the Andrew Sullivans of this world want to make you believe that they are.

Muzzammil Hassan and Islamic Primordial Violence

Yesterday's entry on the beheading of Asiya Hassan in Orchard Park, New York, brought out the representative trolls of the anti-American left. The meme at the comments, following Melissa McEwan at Shakesville, is that Muzzammil Hassan is a "moderate" Muslim and his wife's murder was a routine case of patriarchical domestic violence against women (can there be such a thing?). This refusal to see the genuine and unique brutality in Islamic culture is found in the inherent anti-Americanism on the radical left.

The truth is that Muzzammil Hassan is no "moderate" Muslim after all. Robert Spencer, at FrontPage Magazine, sets the record straight on this medieval killer (via Jihad Watch):

Last Thursday, a woman named Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37, was founded decapitated in Orchard Park, New York, a village near Buffalo. Her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, was charged, rather oddly, with second-degree murder in the case. But the specter of someone who beheaded his wife being charged only with second-degree murder was the least of the oddities in this case: Aasiya Hassan’s body was found in the offices of the cable channel, Bridges TV. Aasiya Hassan was the inspiration for Bridges TV, and Muzzammil Hassan was its founder.

Muzzammil Hassan founded Bridges TV in 2004 to combat the negative perceptions of Muslims that he thought were dominating the mainstream media. According to a Reuters story at the time, Aasiya “came up with the idea in December 2001 while listening to the radio on a road trip.” Muzzammil Hassan explained: “Some derogatory comments were being made about Muslims that offended her. She was seven months pregnant, and she thought she didn’t want her kids growing up in this environment.”

Bridges TV originally declared that its intention was to “fuse American culture with the values of Islam in a healthy, family-oriented way.” However, there were indications at the outset that it might not have been as moderate as many assumed. Bridges TV from the beginning had ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case, and Islamicity.com, which retails rabid anti-Semitic literature. In 2006 Arab News reported that Hassan was trying to raise money for the network from Saudi investors.

And now comes the clearest, most harrowing indication of all that Bridges TV’s founder was not the moderate he appeared to be, but was rather a man who had imbibed deeply the traditional Islamic understanding that women are possessions of men, to be punished severely when they get out of line. Of course, this singular lesson of the beheading of Aasiya Hassan, who apparently had raised Muzzammil’s ire by filing for divorce, is the one that the mainstream media and the American Muslim community is doing its best to obscure. Immediately after the killing, Khalid J. Qazi of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) chapter of Western New York, declared: “There is no place for domestic violence in our religion — none. Islam would 100 percent condemn it.”

Unfortunately, all too few Muslim men seem to share Qazi’s view. The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences has determined that over ninety percent of Pakistani wives have been struck, beaten, or abused sexually — for offenses on the order of cooking an unsatisfactory meal. Others were punished for failing to give birth to a male child. Dominating their women by violence is a prerogative Muslim men cling to tenaciously. In Spring 2005, when the East African nation of Chad tried to institute a new family law that would outlaw wife beating, Muslim clerics led resistance to the measure as un-Islamic.

Spencer's essay continues with an explanation of the intrinsic brutality among Muslim men, indicating that primordial violence against women is a central component to "Islamic tradition."

See also, "Beheading in New York Appears to Be Honor Killing, Experts Say."

The Left's BushHitler Double Standard

It's just the beginning, no doubt, but readers will shake their heads at the faux uproar against Michelle Malkin and conservatives at the anti-"swindle us" rally yesterday in Colorado:

Michelle Malkin's got the story, "Nutroots Suddenly Hypersensitive About Nazi/President Comparisons."

Malkin posed for a photo yesterday with an activist holding a "No Obama" sign with a large encircled swastika (here). ProgressiveNow Colorado immediately went into the attack mode:

ProgressNow Colorado was at today's presser put on by Colorado Republicans and their Big Oil-funded front groups ....

That's noted right-wing shill Michelle Malkin posing with who we've dubbed "Swastika Guy," owing to the sign he carried right onto the stage with State Senator Josh Penry, Congressman Mike Coffman, Colorado GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams, State Senator Dave Schultheis, former Congressman Tom Tancredo, and Independence Institute president Jon Caldara, among others. None of whom did anything about it, and in fact one person defended the guy to one of our people saying that the swastika is not a Nazi symbol, but an honored Native American symbol.

These folks aren't too bright, and even Media Matters piles on the stupidity with its own spin:

Ohhhh, wait a minute. I get it. The man with the sign isn't professing his affinity for Nazis. He isn't even identifying himself as a Nazi. The swastika in question has a circle around it forming an O and the rest of the sign reads "BAMA". Get it? Obama is a Nazi. That's much better. Sigh.

A quick click through to some of the links at Malkin's finds this from Democratic Underground: "'Bushitler' (George W. Bush Comparable to Adolf Hitler)."

I found this jewel at the link: "The Neocon Pledge to Bushitler":

Those of you who still believe in George W. Bush and his party, please place your right hand over your heart and repeat the following – all eleven of you.

I BELIEVE that President Bush is a good Christian, who is guided by God in all of his decisions – even when God tells him to torture, steal, lie, kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and ignore his own citizens when they are dying in New Orleans ....

I BELIEVE that good Christian values should be part of government – except when it comes to feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and caring for the sick, in which case Christian values have no place in government at all.

In summary, I BELIEVE everything I am told to believe by people who have lied to me, deceived my country, manipulated the government in order to line their own pockets, eroded my rights, destroyed my freedoms, and wave their ability to get away with it in my face at every opportunity.

I BELIEVE – because I am an idiot who will believe anything.

Leftist double standards at work ...

Keep the pressure on, folks.

Kids Having Babies: Let's Be "Realistic"

A few nights ago, my wife and I talked to our oldest son about Alfie Patten, the British 13 year-old who is said to be the country's youngest father.

Our son's also 13, so the shock value of childhood parenting was particularly strong (the pictures of "baby" Alfie with his baby were particularly helpful). Actually, my son and I had the "birds and the bees" chat some time back, but with interest in girls on the rise around here, it never hurts to reiterate the basics.

So, with Bristol Palin's recent remark that abstinence was "not realistic at all," I'm even doubly convinced on the need for early and often parental intervention on these matters.

I'm not the only one. Robert Stacy McCain's taken a little friendly fire for his hasty "judgmentalism" on Ms. Bristol's teenage parenthood, and responds with a little pushback from his own fertile experience:

Look, I have three teenagers myself, a 19-year-old daughter and twin 16-year-old sons. Being judgmental is a full-time occupation, OK? I just put one of my 16-year-old boys onto a plane to visit relatives in Ohio, where he's also got a blonde girlfriend. When I called his cell phone before he boarded the plane, what was the last thing I told him? "Keep it in your britches, son."

Understand that sexy is a hereditary condition, so it's not like the boy won't encounter temptation. But something else is hereditary, too: Extreme fecundity.

My wife is one of seven children in her family, and we've got six kids, so there's really no such thing as "safe sex" with this crew. I've had to have this little talk with my daughter and her boyfriend, much to their embarrassment. It's about 100% certain they're not having sex, because if they were, there's a 99% chance I'd be a grandpa by now.

Well, as the father of two boys, "keep your britches on, son" might get some airtime around these parts in the years ahead.

The Beheading of Aasiya Hassan: Patriarchy-Conferred Privilege?

I just finished my once-per semester lecture on gender-equality (which I deliver to multiple sections), and I'm a little fired up on the topic of discrimination against women at the moment. Plus, I'm reading an extremely fascinating (if somewhat contradictory) scholarly essay on the role of patriarchic systems of dominance in the incidence of interstate wars. (See, "The Heart of the Matter: The Security of Women and the Security of States," available here.)

So, I'm finding great interest (but little sympathy) in Melissa McEwan's essay on the murder of Aasiya Hassan in Orchard Park, New York. Mrs. Hassan was allegedly beheaded by her husband, Muzzamil Hassan, in what appears as a classic case of Islamic ritual murder, a beheading in the fashion of Daniel Pearl's, and an "honor killing" in the fashion of literally thousands of women around the world who have been murdered or who are now at risk of death to this Islamic barbarity. According to Phyllis Chesler, the murder of Mrs. Hassan "is very probably an honor killing, a crime which has little to do with western-style domestic violence."

Well, not according to Ms. McEwan:

Particularly in comment ... threads on posts about this story, there are a lot of jokes about how Hassan sure isn't improving Muslims' reputation by beheading his wife, all predicated, of course, on that most basic foundation of prejudice: The insistence that one member of a group represent the entire group. Certainly, I understand the source of the potential irony, but it's contingent on reducing Hassan to one piece of his identity—his religion—and suggesting that his religion is uniquely (or mostly) responsible for his crime. Which, as it turns out, there are people quite eager to do, too.

The thing is, it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

Now you know the woman who constantly says like a broken record "This shit doesn't happen in a void" isn't about to argue that Hassan was not a product of his environment; I will, however, note that Islam was only one part of his environment. He is also an American resident, which made him the beneficiary of all the patriarchy-conferred privilege inherent to that environment, too. He is a member of a family, which likely granted him a higher status for being male. He is/was a businessperson working in corporate America, which favors and privileges men. Et cetera. In most or all of these overlapping and intersecting environments, violence against women will have been tacitly—and sometimes overtly—condoned via media imagery, advertisements, "jokes," turned blind eyes, public religious admonishments from multiple religions, and possibly intimate example.

So how much sense does it make to blame his religion, exclusively or even primarily?

None.

Which means that anyone who isn't just cynically using the occasion of a woman's gruesome murder by her husband's hand to advance an anti-Islam or anti-religion agenda needs to rethink their argument—because if they really care about the victim at the center of this crime, or any of the millions of women hurt or killed by domestic violence every year, they won't mask the real culprit behind a cheap, and misplaced, shot at a single religion.

The real culprit is undeserved male privilege and the resulting second-class personhood of women.

Folks can see why I'm just not sympathetic to Ms. McEwan's case. You see, there are distinctions between the phenomenon of domestic gender abuse in the United States and the historical subordination of women in Muslin countries, and now in the nations of the West as well where Islamic fundamentalists are increasing their grip.

The U.S. is the international system's leading democracy and few other nations in the history of the world have made as dramatic advances toward civil and poltical rights for women. When I teach this subject in class I'm struck by how agressive the United States has moved to abandon its history of patriarchy and real structures of dominance, and I can certainly understand where continued progress might be expected.

But this isn't the case in Muzzamil Hassan's beheading of his wife. This is not "run-of-the mill" domestic violence, as horrible as such crimes are. Violence against women is never okay. But this is a murder of world-political significance. It illustrates the deeply rooted primordial codes of Islamic culture. "A beheading suggests that the murderer wants to separate his victim’s mind from her body, he does not want to hear what she has to say, he wants her mute, beyond what duct tape can do and he wants her completely severed, disassociated from her ability to flee," as Chesler indicates. Indeed, to read McEwen is revealing of the crass ideological blindness to pure evil in the world today. As a professor who teaches civil rights, and as an advocate for the unlimited advancement of women in politics and society, I'm astounded at the moral bankruptcy of Melissa McEwan and the radical left's cultural relativism.

The logical disjuncture in this kind of thinking among leftists here at home is just too much to fathom sometimes.

Lincoln Tops New Presidential Survey

Abraham Lincoln is ranked America's most important president in a new ranking by C-Span (via CNN and Memeorandum):

It's been 145 years since Abraham Lincoln appeared on a ballot, but admiration for the man who saved the union and sparked the end of slavery is as strong as ever, according to a new survey.

Lincoln finished first in a ranking by historians of the 42 former White House occupants. The survey was released over Presidents Day weekend.

The news wasn't quite as good for the latest addition to the nation's most exclusive fraternity: George W. Bush finished 36th in the survey, narrowly edging out the likes of historical also-rans Millard Fillmore, Warren Harding and Franklin Pierce.

James Buchanan - the man who watched helplessly as the nation lurched toward civil war in the 1850s - finished last.

"As much as is possible, we created a poll that was non-partisan, judicious and fair-minded," said Rice University professor Douglas Brinkley, who helped organize the survey of 65 historians for cable television network C-SPAN.

The survey - which asked participants to rank each president on 10 qualities of leadership ranging from public persuasion and economic management to international relations and moral authority - was the network's second since 2000.

The hero of Springfield, Illinois, finished first nine years ago as well.

"It's fitting that for the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln that he remains at the top of these presidential rankings," Brinkley said.

"Lincoln continues to rank at the top in all categories because he is perceived to embody the nation's avowed core values: integrity, moderation, persistence in the pursuit of honorable goals, respect for human rights, compassion," Howard University's Edna Medford added.

Lincoln embodied "the nation's avowed core values," as do neoconservatives. See, "Abe Lincoln - The First Neoconservative":

Lincoln clearly viewed the success or failure of the American Experiment not only in domestic terms, but as a benchmark, a turning point, in the struggle of all mankind. He wrote on December 1, 1862, in his Annual Message to Congress, the following:

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free —honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.

President Lincoln echoed, in those words, the call to destiny in Thomas Jefferson’s “the last, best hope for mankind”. Let us not forget that all freedom loving people in the world depend upon America’s continued success here and abroad.

I love President Lincoln. My visit to the Lincoln Memorial in 2007 was one of the most important political experiences of my life. I look forward to making that pilgrimage again.

Here's wishing all of my readers a happy holiday evening.

Dismissing Your Unworthy Opponents

One of the things that amazes me is how folks like Ann Althouse, for whom I have great respect, can get along just peachy with folks like Matthew Yglesias, for whom I admire only for his perfunctory ability to put words to a page. Beyond that, this is the kind of guy Snooper would identify as loving "nothing better than to slaughter the Eagle." Perhaps it's that people of Althouse's professional profile - being in her case an occasional columnist at the New York Times, etc., and who appears regularly on Bloggingheads.tv (with these same said people) - might prefer ideational amity rather than ideological enmity.

As for me, I guess I don't do that kind of nuance. If ideas have consequences, I tend to bristle at how some folks put over radical boilerplate as "good policy" or "sophisticated analysis." Perhaps that kind of style deprives antagonists of cul-de-sacs of comfort, which is something Daniel Larison raises in his takedown of Nate Silver's argument today regarding progressives:

For someone inclined to accuse others of dishonesty, Silver is being fairly deceptive in his labeling from the beginning. Naturally, he is going to set up his own position as the rational one and the one he is attacking as implicitly irrational. That isn’t the main point here, but it is typical of the technocratic, anti-populist side in any debate to frame disagreements with their critics as a battle between reason and passion. You can find this with David Brooks’ description of anti-TARP Congressmen as “nihilists” (even though their skepticism and advocacy for alternatives were entirely warranted and correct) or any of the usual pro-war and pro-immigration advocates that seek to impute malicious intent or hatred to their opponents. This is a method used for dismissing, rather than engaging, and for treating opposing arguments as inherently unworthy of attention or serious consideration. Technocratic types prefer practicing this politics of contempt, because it automatically rules out serious objections to certain policies as automatically invalid and invests them or people like them with a certain unchallengeable authority. They tend to make respect for expertise into a debilitating inability to question experts’ assumptions and biases.

Dismissing rather than engaging, ahh, like E.D. Kain, for example, who ridicules George Will's perfectly good argument against global warming hysteria with a kind of stuffy intellectualism:

Essentially, global warming has become just another talking point in a long and growing list of talking points that the conservative movement uses to keep apostates out of their fold (shrinking that big tent) and to berate liberals with, rather than viewing warming as both a real cause for worry, and as an opportunity to demonstrate honest governance. Apparently obstructionism and denial are better tactics.

It seems to me in this case E.D. would be the "technocratic type" who is "practicing a politics of contempt" against more populist folks (or those who identify with populists) like George Will, Scott Johnson, and Michelle Malkin. It gets pretty confusing, or simply, those who accuse others of claiming unchallengeable authority cloak themselves in a sort of, well, unchallengeable authority, and then not too much debate gets accomplished.

Note how Larison dismisses those like Silver, who argues for pragmatic reason over radical ideological passion, as of the same kind of intellectuals who advocate "for starting wars and expanding the role of the security state" and "for policies that are illegal and result in detaining, harming or killing other people."

And that's really it. It's all dismissal of opponents here in the end, while folks like Larison and E.D. Kain pretend to have real "internal" debates with people just like themselves, who while adopting various political labels indicating different ideological persuasions nevertheless express opinions the differ little on substantive merit. Antiwar leftists like those at Open Left obviously have much more in common with paleconservatives at AmCon than they would at Weekly Standard. In the same vein, "liberaltarians" are pretty much the same as Oakshottian postmodern conservatives, particularly in advocating anything-but conservative policies such as same-sex marriage absolutism. Basically, you get a lot of guys under different monikers who get along just peachy, making no need to carve out spacy cul-de-sacs of disagreement, since the point isn't really to debate, but to mislabel and repackage policies that have already been repudiated by traditionalists in the great silent cultural majority.

Maybe nuance is better than pummeling pushback, although I'd rather end up bloodied and unbowed than patted on the bottom by some soft-and-squishy policy mentors after a good day at the faux-debate playground.

Tammy Bruce: Conservative Moral Power

I'm reading Tammy Bruce's, The New American Revolution: Using the Power of the Individual to Save Our Nation from Extremists. I was particularly struck by this passage on the left's devilish program of moral confiscation, which needs no further comment from me:

I was privileged to be a part of a panel at David Horowitz's Restoration Weekend, an annual event that brings together like-minded independent thinkers. After my presentation, two women approached me. They identified themselves as conservatives and confessed they had finally accepted that conservatives should acquiese the moral high ground to liberals and focus on their strong points - economics and limited government.

I was astounded. Here were two smart people, both businesswomen and quite successful, attending a conference that showed they were aware, educated, and in touch with the details and realities of our cultural and political civil war. And yet even they had been so brainwashed by the Left that they not only believed the Left was a moral force, they had lost touch with the power and morality of their own conservative foundation.

Here's what I told these women: It is the conservative who holds the moral high ground. The Left Elite, whether through lies or their own paralyzing groupthink, are the opposite of what they claim. Not only do they lack any sort of moral authority, but also they have desecrated the very idea of decency and values by using those ideals as slogans in their attempts to smash them into oblivion.

You must realize the Left's effort is not to gain the moral high ground, it is only to squat and defile that land once they have tricked you into leaving it. Make no mistake, their intention is not to act morally or enact decent policies or truly help the individual. It is to take the moral high ground from you so you will have no place to stand.

If Leftists can successfully make you feel as though they will take care of the moral needs of this nation (do you realize how absurd that sounds?), then you will stop daring to interfere, they hope. And when you stop interfering, when you retreat, the Left's own hypocritical inaction guarantees this nation will be condemned by their god of nihilism, narcissism, and self-hate.

But they can only do it if they can manage to make you believe the sickening lie that they have morality and decency on their side, while you are sadly lacking. It is imperative for you to know that they are working feverishly to steal your identity. They want you to believe, as the women at the conference did, that you have been usurped by better, more compassionate people.

"Peaceful, Even Joyful, Protests Against Proposition 8"

This picture shows some of the violent-hooligan "No on H8" protesters who targeted Westwood's Mormon temple on November 6th, following passage of the traditional marriage initiative in California. We indeed find peaceful activists here, of course, but see additional photos of gay mayhem at the Los Angeles Times' slideshow, "Proposition 8 Protests":

I'm reposting this stuff to counter Andrew Sullivan's meme that last year's gay-rights demonstrations were "peaceful, even joyful." Oh sure, Sullivan's slurring "Christianists" such as Michelle Malkin, et al., while on the streets gay radicals were peppering black passers-by with the "n-word." See, "N-Word Hurled at Blacks During Westwood Prop 8 Protest":

Not that this wasn't expected. The recent passage of California's Proposition 8 has exposed some of the latent racism of many within the LGBT community—instigated in part by many in the e-telligentsia such as revisionist Andrew Sullivan and sex advisor turned sociologist Dan Savage. Unfortunately the "blame the blacks" meme is being commonly accepted by some so-called "progressive" gay activists. A number of Rod 2.0 and Jasmyne Cannick readers report being subjected to taunts, threats and racist abuse at last night's marriage equality rally in Los Angeles.

Christy Hardin Smith's also getting into the act here, denouncing some new issue advertisement out of West Virginia: "Boogah boogah scary gays ooogah boogah ..."

"Scary gays" is putting it mildly. Lock your doors people. The homosexual hills have eyes.