Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
A former student of mine dropped off one of these International ANSWER flyers announcing a March 21 protest rally in Los Angeles, "Bring the Troops Home NOW!"
I'm really intrigued with the latest direction of the antiwar movement.
It can't really be all about "bringing the troops home now." The Obama administration's now committed to winding down the war in Iraq (and many Republicans are on board), and Afghanistan was considered a just war everywhere except the most extreme bastions of hardline anti-Americanism (and the American footprint there has hardly been "hegemonic" for that matter). No, the fact is that ANSWER's committed to the violent overthrow of the world capitalist, imperialist classes and the establishment of a new-age utopian state of multi-culti statism and post-hierarchical ontology. Even more interesting is how far the administration's obliging this agenda. What's to protest?
What's really interesting to me is that not only are these flyers routinely plastered all over my campus, but little green pocket-size leaflets are posted outside the offices of the history faculty in the hallway in my department. My college frankly hosts an ANSWER cellthat is the local community contact-point for the international socialist movement. At least two of my colleagues are faculty sponsors of the group (one of whom I've debated). They have a bulletin board on my floor with photographs of previous bus-trips to downtown pro-terror rallies. These are the uncollegial folks who nihilist Dave Noon defended as regular-old professors, people who couldn't possibly ostractize conservative faculy members on the grounds of alleged neo-fascist androcentric patriarchy. Nope, it's a figment of the conservative imagination.
It's an upside-down world out there folks (and there's more along these lines at "The Ayers-Dohrn Paradox").
Once again Zombie, with his photo-essayon William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, demonstrates the future of journalism. I particularly like the explanation of the the Ayers-Dohrn Paradox:
It was quite clear that every single person there (except me) idolized these two unapologetic violent revolutionaries. The entire store was packed full of people.
But we ran smack dab into what I call the Ayers-Dohrn Paradox, which is:
Ayers and Dohrn gained fame as violent revolutionaries willing to commit murder and other terrorist acts in order to overthrow the United States. For that, they were greatly worshipped by the far left. Now, in their sunset years, they’re trying to re-cast themselves as “respectable” left-wing professors with “reasonable” opinions, who have long ago sworn off violence. And so, at these events, neither of them ever mentions their violent heyday, except rarely in passing. Instead, they focus exclusively on their current obsessions: Introducing Marxist thought into schools, and closing down the prison system. However, almost no one who goes to see Ayers and Dohrn gives a damn about hearing monotonous lectures on these particular topics: instead, their fans idolize them because of their violent revolutionary past. So at these events, the audience (as in this case) is full of far-far-far-left radicals who came in order to hear overheated revolutionary rhetoric. But instead, what they get is a boring professorial monologue. If Ayers and Dohrn were nothing more than your run-of-the-mill leftist professors, no one would go to their appearances. They’re coasting on their violent reputation, while at the same time trying to distance themselves from it. And that is the Ayers-Dohrn Paradox.
Another paradox is how leftists think people like Ayers and Dohrn are "great" instructors. One of the most common attacks I get is how leftists are horrified that I might actually be teaching students from a traditional perspective, abjuring indoctrination, and demanding clarity of thought and excellence in work product.
One of my students, who transferred to Berkeley some time back, noted in an e-mail how professors there caved to students' culture of entitlement, essentially dumbing-down the curriculum:
It's funny that you write to me now ... [I was] just reflecting today on how your classes provided such an excellent foundation for the political science courses ... taken so far. I'm actually in my second semester in Berkeley so I still have about a year and a half left until I graduate and go to law school ... Academically I think Berkeley is overrated; they hardly require critical thinking or analysis and make us rely heavily on readings and honing the skill of regurgitating them. I wish the grading was more difficult and we weren't babied so much here but I guess the demographics of these students give them more of a sense of entitlement to an A grade than the students in Long Beach.
Wouldn't want too much "critical thinking," you know ... students might figure out that folks like William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn - and many of their ideological comrades at "elite" campuses around the country - are intellectual frauds indoctrinating students into a morally bankrupt ideology of moral relativist death and destruction.
One of the hallmarks of this blog has been the free and open discussions in the comments section. Unfortunately, due to a number of generally abusive people who have been commenting here - and in particular, one fruity yet obssessed moral relativist who's got an unhealthy addiction to trolling for "gotchas" - I've had to enable comment moderation for the first time at American Power.
I know folks don't like comment moderation, because they've told me. This is just a temporary thing, however, and I'll be returning to regular commenting tomorrow or the next day. Respectable exchange of ideas and links is how bloggers create a virtual community, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I even appreciate interacting occasionally with some of whom I don't agree, as long as they stay within the bounds of decency.
This week, though, I will say that it's gotten to the point where my patience and tolerance were stretched thin - it's been quite an experience.
I remember reading Ann Althouse's page some time back, and she had gone to moderation. That's generally not like her, as Althouse has a reputation as having some the most vigorous comment threads in the blogosphere. One of the commenters at the thread pretty much summed up what it's like to have a tsumami of idiots flooding your blog:
Unfortunately, when moderation is off during a siege like this, some of us have seen how it is possible for one person to create havoc by posting dozens of irrelevant, highly personal, and often harrassing posts to various threads within the space of minutes.
I guess it is the blogger equivalent of a sustained denial of service attack.
Denial of service. That's really what it's all about. Folks should read over the Pam Spaulding's thread, as well as at Pandagon, where a lot of these crazed trolls originated.
I don't need to go on too much about these depraved vermin.
One of the most interesting things about all of this was not just Pam Spaulding's unhinged lies, but how the meme went from my alleged deceit and ignorance of conservative allegations of gay bestiality, to implicit allegations that conservatives engage in bestiality (here). That was followed, I kid you not, by an essay on "Donald the buffalo-humping moose," and then by a concavus chest-thumping victory dance for "for the nihilist, troll forces."
Seriously.
In any case, that's enough troll-feeding. As noted, comment moderation will be disabled soon, but I'll be deleting abusive comments and obssessive "gotchas" as they come in. If folks have a problem with American Power, they should start a blog and have a blast proving their godlessness to the world.
What better indicator of President Barack Obama's true ideological agenda than his announcement today that his administration will seek more taxes on the wealthy to pay for his redistributionist agenda:
President Obama will propose further tax increases on the affluent to help pay for his promise to make health care more accessible and affordable, calling for stricter limits on the benefits of itemized deductions taken by the wealthiest households, administration officials said Wednesday.
The tax proposal, coming after recent years in which wealth has become more concentrated at the top of the income scale, introduces a politically volatile edge to the Congressional debate over Mr. Obama’s domestic priorities.
The president will also propose, in the 10-year budget he is to release Thursday, to use revenues from the centerpiece of his environmental policy — a plan under which companies must buy permits to exceed pollution emission caps — to pay for an extension of a two-year tax credit that benefits low-wage and middle-income people.
The combined effect of the two revenue-raising proposals, on top of Mr. Obama’s existing plan to roll back the Bush-era income tax reductions on households with income exceeding $250,000 a year, would be a pronounced move to redistribute wealth by reimposing a larger share of the tax burden on corporations and the most affluent taxpayers.
Remember all those right-wing attacks from last year on Obama as being the most liberal presidential nominee ever? Well, conservatives were right all along, and it shouldn't be any surprise.
Barack Obama ran for President on a "spread the wealth around" platform, and we're now seeing that this was no empty campaign promise. The Obama administration proposes to expand the wealth and power of the federal government beyond anything heretofore imagined. When he asked how he will finance his grandiose plans, Obama's only non-magical answer is that he will increase taxes on "the rich."
This is a common Democratic Party mantra, of course. In truth, however, there are very few people who are actually rich, and those who are prosperous (what the Democrats mean by "rich") are already overtaxed. In today's Wall Street Journal, the editors do the math: even if Obama were to steal every penny, the people he calls "rich" don't make enough money to finance the federal government ...
See also Mike at Flopping Aces, "The week before the 2008 election I asked what happens when you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? We may be about to find out."
I'm not sure why Think Progress is attending and reporting on CPAC, other than to denounce and destroy conservatives, although they certainly have found some ammunition in the comments of Cliff Kincaid of the conservative Accuracy in Media:
Back during the 1980's, we had a president who was anti-Communist," Kincaid said. "Back during hate 1980's, at least we knew that our president was born in the United States.
CPAC attendees apparently got a kick out of that, although suggesting that Barack Obama is foreign born is less a good punch line than a feverish right-wing conspiracy meme.
In any case, Rick Moran reports from the convention:
The speakers and panels so far have been making all the right noises about having learned their lessons from the 2006 and 2008 electoral debacles. Political defeat, like the prospect of being hung, concentrates the mind wonderfully. And there seems to be a grim determination underpinning the talk of reform and change — as if the movement has taken the defeats to heart and is truly chastened by the experience.
Of this I have no doubt. But talking about reform while failing to address some fundamental problems with the conservative movement itself may see any real effort at change an exercise in wishful thinking.
Classic conservative principles are timeless; immutable tenets that have inspired great changes in government over the last 400 years and spoken passionately and plainly to the needs and hopes of ordinary people. Since the end of World War II, those classical principles have informed a devastating critique of the welfare state, presenting a reasoned and logical alternative to statism and dependency. Conservatism has stood for human liberty based on the fundamental idea of natural law; that from his first breath, man is born free.
But conservatism has gone off the rails, becoming in some respects a parody of itself. A philosophy that is all about honoring and conserving tradition while allowing for change that buttresses and supports important aspects of the past, has been hijacked by ideologues who brook no deviation from a dogma that limits rather than expands human freedom. Conservatism has become loud, obnoxious, closed minded, and puerile while its classical tradition of tolerance and hard-headed rationalism has been abandoned in favor of emotional jags and a vicious parochialism that eschews debate for “litmus tests” on ideological purity.
Moran suggests that the party's facing a struggle between (what some might call) stale ideology versus the need for more diversity, inclusion, and tolernance.
As readers know, I'm not inclined to compromise on the conservative forte of strong cultural traditionalism, but slurring Barack Obama as a foreigner is no way to move in the direction Moran would like.
As readers know, I frequently rely on Memeorandum to help advertise this blog and get my essays out to allies and adversaries in the blogosphere. Especially cool are Memeorandum's "Featured Posts" links, which normally appear about halfway down at the right of the aggregator.
But "Featured Posts" has disappeared. A quick Google search turns up nothing on the change. I don't see anything about "Featured Posts" at Techmeme News, the blog of Techmeme. I also don't see any reports on changes to Memeorandum's formatting at TechCrunch or Wikipedia. There's also nothing yet at Real Clear Politic's "Best of the Blogs."
Given the financial losses through the news industry, with the potential collapse of the San Francisco Chronicle and today's announcement of the demise of the Rocky Mountain News, my best guess is that Memeorandum's going to a more lucrative revenue-generating model with its aggregator. Notice how the "Sponsor memeorandum" section has replaced "Featured Posts" on the sidebar. The going rate looks to be $6000 monthly, and while there's just one link up right now, Techmeme's got six advertisers listed.
In any case, I'll update when I find more information, but if the change is permanent, Memeorandum's impact on the blogosphere's going to be substantially less democratic, as the lowest of the 9th-tier bloggers will lose one of most inclusive opportunities for aggregation at a major portal for web publishing.
If you want to get a sense of how unserious and ungrounded most Americans think the Republican Party is, look no further than how conservatives elevate Joe the Plumber as a spokesman. The movement has become so gimmick-driven that Wurzelbacher will be a conservative hero long after people have forgotten what his legitimate policy beef with Obama was.
Ruffini notes that the GOP has created a defensive dedoubt in a "politics of identity" that needs cultural heroes like Joe Wurzelbacher in an absurd flinching-crouch against left-wing institutional hegemony:
This is so different than the psychology of the left. The left assumes that it is culturally superior and the natural party of government and fights aggressively to frame any conservative incursion on that turf as somehow alien and unnatural. (The "Oh God..." whisper being the perfect illustration.) They dominate Hollywood not by actively branding liberalism in their movies, but by cooly associating liberal policy ideas with sentiments everyone feels, like love (gay marriage) or fairness (the little guy vs. some evil corporate stiff). Though I think Andrew Breitbart is spot on in raising a red flag on the threat we face in Hollywood, I fear that the conservative movement of today would only produce a response as agitprop and sarcastic as the Joe the Plumber phenomenon. In other words, some amusing slapstick comedies but not sweeping cultural epics that will be remembered 50 years from now. When you assume liberals are dominant culturally, you tend toward sarcasm or one-off gimmicks to knock the majority of its game - but never an all encompassing argument for conservative cultural and political relevance - something we have lacked for a long time, since Buckley was in his prime.
Conservatives should not need Joe the Plumber to prove their middle class bona fides. We are naturally the party of the middle, and we don't need gimmicks to prove it. Demographically, Democrats rely on being the party of the upper sixth and the lower third, while Republicans tend to do better with everyone in between. When we start losing the middle class and the suburbs, we lose big like we did in 2008.
All of this is true, and the rest of the essay is worth a read. Ruffini makes the case for a new Republican Party of ideas. According to this meme, folks on the right can't just go around resurrecting the legacy of Ronald Reagan and hoisting Joe the Plumbers up as confirmation of the "great silent majority." Conseratives need ideas.
I would add that there is a pendulum to politics, and the pendulum has swung toward the Democrats right now, in a time of crisis and repudiation of government incompetence. I don't think Americans have abandoned traditional classically liberal foundations. People are currently willing to support activist government until things get back on track. In normal times, most middle class Americans need very little from government beyond public order and the sense of a secure retirement safety-net. Republicans now need to restore the idea that they are the party of pragmatic clarity and effective administrative stewardship. Anti-corruption and targeted intervention are keywords. Pork-busting campaigns against stimulus boondoggles should be front and center. A new movement toward deregulation in energy and technology has to be at the forefront of GOP leadership on American international independence from oil-producing regimes in the Middle East. Robust ideas about reforming schools and restoring families as vehicles for a new middle class prosperity have to motivate the domestic agenda. An explicit campaign against the popularization of leftist anti-religion and nihilism must be advanced, but with a compelling rationale that doesn't frighten moderates and secularists with church-state sponsorship. Overall, conservatives have to be willing to talk basic culture and values to Americans as the key to the preservation of the American dream
Unfortunately, a lot of these ideas won't gain traction until the economy returns to economic growth and stablity. In the meantime, the Democrats are enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to consolidate their big-government ideology through fear-mongering and stealth. And this is the key problem, not Joe the Plumber. The Democrats are inherently corrupt and ideologically devious, and as Ruffini notes, the media and educational establishments enable a politics-of-postmodernism as the reigning regime of social values, when in truth elite priorities have little in commom with the averge man on the street. The left ridicules regular people - folks who really do like religion and guns - as "survivalist," while the schools tell us that religion in the public sphere, or the celebration of traditional rituals like childrens' Thanksgiving parades, are "racist discourses of patriarchical dominance."
It's going to be a combination of things that get conservatives back on track. But if the right concedes the socio-cultural realm to the left - and ignores demands for government accountability and competence - all this talk about targeting a few congressional seats here and there in competitive districts while searching for a new Ronald Reagan as the party's standard-bearer in 2012 or 2016 will be worthless and ultimately for naught.
Conservative need to fight on our issues of strength, which are the high ground of moral good and the proven efficacy of free people and free markets. Republicans lost that battle long ago. It's certainly understandable why some people like Joe the Plumber as a spokesman for the conservative case. Maybe not too many Republicans in power have that much credibility with real people on the ground, people who are hurting amid real problems that demand real answers pitched at a level comprehensible to folks on Main Street.
Well, since Pam Spaulding lied about American Power, I've gotten more than my fair share of hits from Pandagon. So, checking my Sitemeter right now turns up this nugget from Amanda Marcotte on "wingnut psychology":
Conservatives have a major issue. The reason they feel under attack is that the dominant values of the country are officially liberal - it’s bad to be racist, sexist, or homophobic, it’s bad to suggest poor people are subhuman, etc. Couple that with the perception, often correct, that the actual dominant values of the country are sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-poor, etc. (Though less so all the time.) People don’t like to be thought of as sexist or racist, but they want to hang onto their beliefs, and Republicans need to communicate with those people.
Yeah, right.
There's a lot here, but I'll just make a few points: Yes, the dominant values in America are liberal, but classically liberal in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (more on this stuff, here). The classical liberal perspective wants limits on governmental power and respect for the rights of the minority within a constitutional regime of delegated powers. Classical liberals prefer markets to states, and they have faith in the capacity of human reason and reverence for the God-given natural rights of humankind.
Flowing from classical liberalism is a belief that the individual should be left alone by the state, and that the distribution of society's opportunities and resources should be determined by ability and merit. When government intervenes to "level the playing field" negative externalities result. If taxes are raised beyond a bare minimum required for adequate public goods provision, people will not work and invest for fear of confiscatory power and minimal returns to entrepreneurial activity. Society's overall product will reach a less optimal level as the state "disincentivizes" individual dynamism.
All advanced democratic states have passed through a developmental process of modernization of the regime, where elitist, racist, and sexist hierarchies were challenged and then overturned through extended democratization. In the United States, the process was long and violent, but throughout the twentieth-century the expansion of rights - through the suffrage and workplace democracy - has been extended to the point of widely acknowledged equality of opportunity across the land. The 2008 Democratic primaries marked the legitimation of the norm of political equality, when a black man and a white women - two members of a "previously disadvantaged group" - vied for the mantle of the Democratic presidential nomination, and thus the practically-assumed accession to the presidency.
For women and minorities today, a classically liberal ideological orientation predicts increasing integration and upward mobility into the great institutions of economic and political power in American life. Most women today feel themselves restrained only by their own aspirations and choices, not prejudicial structural barriers to entry into educational, economic, and leadership occupations.
So Ms. Marcotte's not really talking about "liberal" ideology, but secular progressive "rights" and radical "feminist" ontological constructions of "androcentric" patriarchical sex/submissive regimes of dominations. In this frame, American society is irreparably racist and sexist, and right activists are motivated by a Marxian-progressivism of activist "praxis." Under that model, reigning patterns of natural and meritocratic differences are inherently "hegemonic," and "unequal power structures" systematically subordinate gender and racial "minorities" to disparate treatment in law, politics, society, and the home.
Thus, we can see the problem for Ms. Marcotte: It can't logically be the situation that society is both "officially liberal" while the "actual" patterns of social interaction in "the country are sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-poor."
Hence, we have an inherent contradiction in Ms. Marcotte's meme of societal bigotry and hegemonism. And that brings us to what we're really seeing here: Rank demonization of traditional sectors of society as part of a perpetual campaign of victimology and grievance-mongering shakedown. If conservatives criticize "big government," with its unending entitlements and welfare handouts to the truly idle and brain-addled poor, they must be "sexist or racist." And since the left has reprogrammed the institutions of education and communications, it's "politically incorrect" to even make an off-color joke or to mention homosexuality and murder in the same breath: That's "hate speech," and demands censure by the thought mandarins of the progressive media-police.
All the while, people like Ms. Marcotte claim "the high moral ground," which is of course a little hard to do when people like this have been fired from a major Democratic presidential campaigns for anti-Catholic bigotry. Of course, leftists are so dumb, that their discourse swirls the drain of extreme secular inanity, and if it weren't for the lowest-common denominator media-culture of "up-is-down" socialistic relativism, conservatives in turn wouldn't be batting an eye one way of the other.
The problem is our dumbed-down anything goes culture - which makes celebrities out of terrorists like Che Guevara and William Ayers. We see a prevailing order whereby anyone gets a pass by the left's nihilist hordes in the name of "tolerance" and "enlightened" thought. Princeton economic socialists who are technically experts in international trade are reborn as Nobel-winning progressive rockstars, and snarky HBO cable-comedy airheads can call God silly on national and international awards shows with nary an outcry - indeed, all of this is considered profound and forward-looking.
In any case, that's the world we live into today, not one of "racist, homophobic, anti-poor" hierarchies, which are in fact manufactured crises in the minds of the dishonest Democrati-leftists who working feverishly to undermine this great nation from within.
After Tuesday night, no one should doubt Barack Obama's ambition. His silent dismissal of the efforts of his immediate predecessors -- he mentioned none of them -- is only one indication of the extent to which he intends to be a new president breaking new ground in a new era.
George W. Bush defined his presidency by his response to the terror attacks. Obama didn't discuss Sept. 11. And by relegating foreign policy to the status of a virtual afterthought, Obama indicated that he doesn't think his presidency will rise or fall by the success or failure of his diplomatic or military endeavors. Bill Clinton told Congress in 1996 that the era of big government was over. Obama withdrew that concession to conservatives and conservatism. George H.W. Bush worried in 1989 that we have more will than wallet. Obama has no such worries.
Obama's speech reminds of Ronald Reagan's in 1981 in its intention to reshape the American political landscape. But of course Obama wishes to undo the Reagan agenda. "For decades," he claimed, we haven't addressed the challenges of energy, health care and education. We have lived through "an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity." Difficult decisions were put off. But now "that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here." The phrase "day of reckoning" may seem a little ominous coming from a candidate of hope and change. But it's appropriate, because it's certainly a day of reckoning for conservatives and Republicans.
For Obama's aim is not merely to "revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity." Obama outlined much of this new foundation in the most unabashedly liberal and big-government speech a president has delivered to Congress since Lyndon Baines Johnson. Obama intends to use his big three issues, energy, health care and education, to transform the role of the U.S. federal government as fundamentally as did the New Deal and the Great Society.
Conservatives and Republicans will disapprove of this effort. They will oppose it. Can they do so effectively?
Well, Republicans will need a plan, which may incude hammering the Democratic agenda mercilessly, offering extreme policy skepticism as shrewd political hardball.
I have to note, though, that when Kristol compares Obama to Reagan, I'm reminded of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's discussion of the Reagan adminstration's "revolution" of the early 1980s:
Drawing gleefully on the confessions of David Stockman, a former Federal budget director and guru of supply-side economics, Mr. Moynihan advances the case that the Administration intentionally created an enormous budget deficit as a way of forcing big reductions of social programs.
That is, starve the beast and kill big government. It worked, for a time.
With President Obama, it's the opposite: Not just the restoration of big government, but the starvation of free markets. And hence, the GOP cannot simply bank on the administration's policies failing to revive the economy, for hopes of a short-term pick-up of congressional seats in 2010 (as nice as that would be). Republicans have to develop an alternative altogether. The Obama administration's ideological agenda - now justified as "stabilizing markets" - is intentially vague on the (stealth) doctrines seeking to drive the U.S. toward the European social-welfare state model.
As Kristol notes, Republicans "need fresh thinking in a host of areas of domestic policy, thinking that builds on previous conservative achievements but that deals with the new economic and social realities.
Ronald Reagan began his political career as an FDR supporter. Beginning in the 1960s, he took to using FDR’s iconic “Rendezvous with Destiny” phrase in many of his most important speeches. But these days, it’s looking like the next few years—maybe even a big chunk of the next decade—could very well be a rendezvous with scarcity.
I never had an ounce of doubt about Obama’s true ideology. He is so far to the left that he has passed liberalism and is speeding toward totalitarianism. He tried posturing centrist during his campaign, but to me it never rang true.
And lo, how he proved it immediately upon taking office. Every word he utters is disengenous. He spouts double meaning and opposing statements that end up nullifying each other. In the end, everything he says is meaningless.
I can’t help shaking my head in puzzlement at the faithful followers who can’t or won’t hear this man’s true persona.
When Michelle Obama said that she was finally proud of her country (upon Obama’s nomination), I knew something wicked this way was coming.
Unlike the hapless residents of Hogwarts, I am more than happy to name the Evil One: Obama. I can only hope the opposing party snaps out of their shock in time to undo the mess he is making.
I have to confess I'm actually astounded at what's happening to this country. This is more "change" than foretold by even the most dire warnings of conservatives last year.
Now that Rick Santelli has become the darling of the right wing, he has, with the help of the usual cast of Malkins, organized "The Chicago Tea Party". Where the conservative swells can gather and proclaim that those "losers" who are in foreclosure can suck it. Because next to de-winging flies and de-legging daddy longlegs what do they enjoy more than laughing and mocking the unfortunate?
Commenting on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's GOP rebuttal to the President Obama's State of the Union Address last night, Greg Veis offers some grist for the "epic fail" meme: "Americans are scared enough these days to prefer policy solutions to partisan sniping. But, holy crap, did Jindal blow it."
I haven't paid that much attention to Jindal, mainly because I don't see him as an attractive presidential candidate. He's got a fabulous resume, but some of his separation-of-church-and-state issues are way more aggressive than the GOP should go - and I'm saying that as a fairly hardline social conservative.
If your favorite candidate is on record favoring creationism as science to be taught in government schools, he or she has sunk already himself on the national political scene whether you like it or not. Better find another candidate.
I've been reading Ezra Klein's recent essays on health reform and Social Security. He's got press credentials to the White House (or something), and it looks like he's getting e-mails or policy memos from West Wing staffers. I'll have more on Klein's stuff in a later post on entitlement reform (note for now that the left wants to increase benefits and raise taxes to "reform" the system).
In any case, Edward Glaeser, at the New York Times, is making the case for the elimination of the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners. This deduction has been a staple of homeownership in the United States for nearly a hundred years. Owning one's home is generally considered the single most important means for the average family to accrue wealth. It's part of the American dream and a crucial element of the American political culture of individualism (think of the 19th century rugged individualism of the American Frontier). The tax benefits of owning a home encourage and sustain personal liberty. Perhaps for these very reasons we're seeing Ezra Klein (who is joined by Duncan Black) literally jumping for joy at the serious discussion and mere possibility of the mortgage interest deduction. (You can check the link to Klein's post, but for an uproarious diversion, see this one on the outing of Duncan Black as a homosexual, with funny pictures!)
So, more later on this, but the meantime, here's Neptunus Lex with more on the political culture of homeownership:
I’m one of those hundreds of millions of Americans who bought a house, continues to pay my mortgage on time - in an exceptionally high cost area - and has no intention of walking away from an obligation I made in good faith. Knowing, as my parents’ generation taught us, that home ownership was the principal path towards middle class wealth generation. That home is - generally - the best investment the average schmoe can make. It’s a chance to have a slice of the American dream, take a little out to send your kids to college, and maybe leave a bit behind when you walk into the clearing at the end of the path. When you’ve paid it off free and clear it’s your very own. No landlords to pay wrack rates to. No permanent ruling class ....
If there’s no tax advantage to participating in the dream, many more folks might choose to rent rather than own. In an economy that is suffering because housing values are worth less than the debt obligated, many millions more would choose to walk away. The financial crisis generated by trillions of un-anchored debt will multiply manifold times. Wealth will aggregate in the pockets of those who are already wealthy, and the rest of us will leave nothing much behind us when we leave than cost of cleaning the flat they find our corpses in.
Which will leave our children as perfect wards of an all-powerful, beneficent state. A state that knows what’s best for you. A state that makes your choices for you. A state that will take from those, according to their ability, in order to provide to those, according to their need.
I'm guessing a bunch of depressing, doom-mongering comments about the economy, an over-polished sound bite that was written by another committee and shoe-horned into the "Not State of The Union" address, and a hell of a lot of ums and errs if he dares to speak extemporaneously.
Neo-Neocon live-blogged as well, and wasn't impressed at all:
Just how does this speech differ from a State of the Union message? I thought it was supposed to be about the economy. It’s all over the place, and loaded with cliches. I wonder why that surprises me.
That "conservative" would be me, and of course, the allegation - while provocative - is not true. As I said at the post, " I can't recall the word ever being used by conservatives, or anything close to it."
Of course, since leftists can't actually defend themselves in an actual debate, they simply lie and scurry for cover. Note, for example, Ms. Spaulding's snarky query:
Someone please show conservative Donald Douglas how to use "the Google"?
Only the blogosphere, perhaps, has room for Pam Spaulding - a black lesbian who lives in North Carolina, the only state in the South that has not banned same-sex marriage ....
Pam's House Blend is an influential voice in the gay political blogosphere, must-reads that include the Bilerico Project, Towleroad and AMERICAblog, each attracting a few hundred to a few thousand hits a day. Just as the liberal Net-roots and the conservative "rightroots" movements have affected traditional party structures, the still relatively small gay political presence online is rebooting the gay rights movement in a decentralized, spontaneous, bottom-up way.
Now, note something else. Ms. Spaulding did not initially link to American Power. A bit cowardly, no (which is perhaps why she's linking now)? She did, naturally, decide to throw a link to Repsac3's post, "Donald Douglas & Conservative Bestiality," from where I've been getting traffic all day.
So let's be clear about all of this. I'm not being "schooled" on anything here. This is a cheap smear, with added allegations of "conservative bestiality" (I mean really, is it now the conservatives who are allegedly "bestial"?).
As I noted above, I've been blogging on these issues for months, and I've yet to see conservative attacks on gay activists in such terms. Repsac3, provides no examples of such attacks in the CURRENT DEBATE post-Proposition 8, none. There is, though, the obligatory link to some obscure Jerry Falwell, Jr., audiotape that no one's ever seen, and I'm sure he'll be back trolling the comments (as usual) after doing another exhaustive round of googling.
I've hammered Pam Spaulding repeatedly on the left's neo-Stalinist "No on H8" demonizations, and we've seen not one word in response until today. Wow, now that's some "influential voice"! Smear, slur, but never defend yourself.
Frankly, folks like this can't win the debate on the merits. Rather, we see attacks on "the fundievangelical movement" as an "evil, Bible-beating, anti-gay organization." Or these idiots resort to the same ugly slurs on conservatives that they themselves purportedly decry:
Repsac, it's not that wingnuts don't enjoy rogering the occasional sheep, mule, etc.; it's just that the illicit quality of the relationship leads to a heightened state of arousal. If you make bestiality legal, then the thrill is gone. Surely you've heard that in wingnut circles, the men are men and the sheep are nervous.
Isn't all of this interesting. Not only are leftists completely bankrupt in argumentation, they've got double standards as well! Who knew?
Honestly, I don't not think Pam Spaulding enjoys "rogering the occasional sheep, mule, etc...," and I have never said so much about any homosexual gay-marriage backer. I have identified them in terms of postmodern nihilism, which is used as ideological nomenclature, not personal attacks. No doubt the truth hurts, in any case.
As always, I'm open to debating all of this on the issues. But as we've seen so many times already, leftists will not only lie but they'll berate, besmirch, and bully their way to the redefinition of marriage if it's the last thing they do.
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UPDATE: Check this out Repsac3's comment at Pandagon:
American Power is an addictive, guilty pleasure. It’s just too easy...
Too easy to make a hypocritical idiot of himself, one can only assume.
Here's Daniel Pipes discussing the honor killing of Aasiya Hassan at the Jerusalem Post:
A GREAT BATTLE looms ahead on how to interpret this crime, whether as domestic violence or honor killing. Supna Zaidi of Islamist Watch defines the latter as "the murder of a girl or woman who has allegedly committed an act that has shamed and embarrassed her family." Deeply alien to Westerners, this motive has paramount importance in traditional Muslim life.
Brigitte Gabriel, who appeared on last weekend's Real Time with Bill Maher, has no doubts on the correct interpretation, "here's a guy who did it in the name of honor" (at about 3 minutes):
But as Pipes notes, the forces of political correctness are "bearing down" to deny "an Islamic dimension to the murder" (here and here, for example).
With that in mind, I have to admit considerable surprise at Andrew Sullivan's commentson the left's denialism surrounding Mrs. Hassan's beheading:
Attempts to deny any connection between this kind of behavior and the brutal misogyny of much Islamic culture seem bizarre to me. Obviously, the abuse of women is no community's or religion's exclusive sin ... But the cultural and religious norms that facilitate brutal and often violent patriarchy in Islam make it easier for men to abuse and harder for women to resist.
Of course, Sullivan's opinions are subject to revision at anytime, but the fact the left's most important contemporary blogger (and Sullivan's now a confirmed leftist) is making no bones about the inherent Islamic roots of this beheading will no doubt cause fits to nihilist denialists everywhere.
See also, "Moderate Beheading, " at FrontPage Magazine, where Abul Kasem notes:
According to Islam, if a woman disobeys her husband she is disgraced. Therefore, when Aasiya Zubair, the wife of Hassan, resorted to the Western justice system to seek protection from her menacing husband, she had certainly broken the Islamic tenet of complete surrender to the wishes of her husband. Thus, she had dishonoured her husband, his reputation and, most importantly, the Islamic code of conduct for an obedient wife. Therefore, it is not surprising that the killer had to end her life Islamically, to restore his pride, honor and religious conviction.
Kasem cites Koranic scripture, but no doubt crazed lefties will dig down deeper to the wallow of moral confusion.
The Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of an eight-foot-tall cross in the Mojave National Preserve, which was erected as a spiritual monument to honor our fallen soldiers. The Los Angeles Times reports:
In a case that could reshape the doctrine of separation of church and state, the Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether a cross to honor fallen soldiers can stand in a national preserve in California.
The case will give the Roberts court its first chance to rule directly on the 1st Amendment's ban on "an establishment of religion."
In the last two decades, the justices have been closely divided on whether religious symbols, such as the Ten Commandments or a depiction of Christ's birth, can be displayed on public property.
Four years ago, then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor cast a fifth and deciding vote against the display of the Ten Commandments in a Kentucky courthouse. She said such a public display of a religious message violated the 1st Amendment because it amounted to a government endorsement of religion.
In dissent, the court's conservatives said religious displays on public land generally do not violate the 1st Amendment, since no one is forced to listen to a religious message or participate in a religious event.
A year later, O'Connor retired and was replaced by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's second appointee, who could form a new majority on religion.
At issue is an eight-foot-tall cross in the Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County. A smaller wooden cross was first erected by the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1934 and was originally maintained as a war memorial by the National Park Service.
The American Civil Liberties Union objected to the cross and filed a suit on behalf of Frank Buono, a Catholic and former Park Service employee. The suit noted that the government had denied a request to have a Buddhist shrine erected near the cross.
Two years ago, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the ACLU and declared the cross an "impermissible governmental endorsement of religion."
Congress had intervened to save the cross. It ordered the Interior Department to transfer to the VFW one acre of land where the cross stood. The 9th Circuit judges were unswayed, however.
Bush administration lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court last fall and said the "seriously misguided decision" would require the government "to tear down a cross that has stood without incident for 70 years as a memorial to fallen service members."
The government also questioned Buono's standing to challenge the cross, since he lives in Oregon and suffers no obvious harm because of the Mojave cross.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, the VFW, American Legion and other veterans groups said the 9th Circuit's ruling, if allowed to stand, could trigger legal challenges to the display of crosses at Arlington National Cemetery and elsewhere.
The court said it had voted to hear the case, now relabeled Salazar vs. Buono. Arguments will be heard in October, and Obama administration lawyers will be in charge of defending the presence of the cross.
You cannot escape the dangers of ideologies that are out to destroy you. America might be the last man standing. And you might lose Europe as an ally … European leaders are giving in, giving up, selling out our values. We need your support.
I just watched this phenomenal video, " The American Form of Government," via Next Right. Do yourself a favor and spend ten minutes watching and enjoying this marvel of clarity in elementary political theory:
During the video's discussion of the founding of our nation, the narrator says, "the Founders chose to give us the rule of a republic, not the rule of the majority in a democracy."
The reason is obvious, of course, as pure democracy is synonymous with mob rule, and in the absence of legal and institutional checks on majority power, tyranny results - and as the video indicates, mob rule devolves into rule by oligarchy in the name of the "people," the result itself of popular demands for the collectivization of society's product and redistribution of society's wealth; this then creates mass impoverishment, followed in turn by anarchy in the streets and then a popular outcry to "restore order." The popular democratic government metastasizes into an oligarchic dictatorship, and individual liberty and personal security become a thing of the past.
And seriously, think about this as the current ACORN civil disobedience mob takes over homes in Baltimore, with impicit encouragement via the Barack Obama administration's mortgage entitlement program. It's not all abstract theory, folks.
When I go over there nowadays I get confused. Last year LGF was doing some of the best pushback-blogging against leftist crazies like Markos Moulitsas. But now it seems Johnson's done an about face against conservatives, especially people of faith. I'm not a "creationist," but I've noted that Stephen Jay Gould's "doctrine of nonoverlapping magisteria" suggests a compatibility between Christian beliefs and scientific evolutionary theory.
There's not going to be any mass anarchy, and there's not going to be any sedition. Glenn Beck isn't going to bring about the End Times, or a financial crash.
But what he IS doing is encouraging and inciting the real nutjobs out there to do violence. One on one violence, stoked by paranoid fantasies.
It's crazy, and it's wrong, and it's irresponsible.
It's crazy? I'm sure many said the same thing about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, despite the warnings of the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.
I have no personal quarrel with Johnson, although I'd just note here his tremendous inconsistency. On the one hand he attacks radical Islamists for practices such as child killing, and then on the other he attacks people like Geert Wilders for attacking, well, the exact same thing.
For some related matters, see Dr. Pat Santy's comments on the controversies Johnson's had with folks on questions of Islam and terror (see, "My Response to Blackmail Threats").
I rarely read the blog "Little Green Footballs" any more. I have discovered that, as time goes by, I have less and less in common with its owner, Charles Johnson. Frankly, he acts like someone who is developing a brain chemistry imbalance. If so, he should consider a psychotropic medication like Prozac or Paxil. Personally I prefer Zoloft. Since I started taking it, I notice the ax murders are fewer and further between. Yes, we don't see that much of Mr. Hyde anymore.
Charley's latest gambit is to trash Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and to oppose Geert Wilders. Seems Charley is very adamant about the right of individuals to freedom of religion, apparently any religion, regardless of their practices, e.g. honor killings, genital mutilation, wife beating, polygamy, jihad, insistence on Sharia rather than democracy. No doubt Aztecs performing human sacrifices of virgins would be just fine with him. You can't oppose "freedom of religion" after all. Charley is so open-minded and tolerant that he would probably accept an invitation to dinner by a tribe of cannibals, and never notice when they shove an apple in his mouth and push him into a big pot of boiling water.
Another of Charley's annoying habits is that he has become a fanatical supporter of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. That's fine if that's your bag, but every other post is an ideological screed in support of this pseudo-science. Who cares?
Evolution, says Charley is absolutely true and beyond criticism. Today he was running an article entitled "Transitional Fossils Do Exist."
At lot of folks are focusing on electoral schisms within the GOP, but some of the more overarching issues of foreign affairs and moral authority are going to be increasingly important to the emergence of the next right-wing governing coalition.
Methinks ole Charlie might need to go back to playin' Jazz and leave the world of bloggin'. Seems he is turning into a control freak and might be the one going off of the deep end.
The Los Angeles Times has all the photos and hot talk about last night's Academy Awards, "Best & Worst: Oscars 2009."
I noted to a friend of mine last night, who said she wasn't even watching the broadcast, that the Oscars is the one awards show I watch all year, and since I'm something of a movie buff, I try to get fired up about it. I started discounting the wild left-wing politics of some of Hollywood's greatest actors long ago - like Sean Penn, for example, who has given some powerful perfomances in recent years, in flicks like Mystic River.
On Sunday night at the Kodak Theater, where Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama debated each other in front of the same prideful crowd a year earlier, the political left convened to celebrate its progressive political agenda. The Oscars communicate post-modern, post-American liberal values more effectively than elected Democratic officials themselves. The liberal establishment understands this and uses the glamorous Hollywood elite and its incessant stream of left-leaning product and promotional vehicles as its proxy messenger.
This year's cause celebre was not the ailing American work force or the heroic and underappreciated U.S. military, but an attack on California's just passed traditional marriage amendment - as represented by the white ribbon worn by pliant celebrity throngs. Dissenters in the midst dare not wear their contrarian ribbons for fear of more punitive Proposition 8 backlash.
This year Gus Van Sant and his gay marriage public service announcement "Milk," garnered eight nominations while Clint Eastwood and his objectively conservative box office titan "Gran Torino" got completely shut out. Except for the expected (and deserved) posthumous Heath Ledger best supporting actor nomination, the good-vs.-evil international sensation "The Dark Knight," also was passed over by the Academy.
Last year, 31 million American voters watched. Perhaps a few million less will tune in this off-year in cinema .... In Charlton Heston´s last years, the Academy paid tribute not to his legendary cinematic achievements but to a Michael Moore documentary that portrayed the screen legend as a doddering fool. Alzheimer's is known to have that effect. Have you no sense of decency, Oscar? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
God, isn't that just awful.
As I was watching last night, I kept thinking, "where're the nominations for Defiance, which should have been Best Picture, at least out of the movies I saw last year (and no offense to Slum Dog Millionaire, as I've yet to see it).
Anyway, Breitbart's comparing last night's leftist enclave of the Hollywood elite to this week's CPAC conference in Washington. He notes that the right needs to shift gears in the culture wars, and engage the left's entertainment-establishment in the arena:
My biggest fear is that later this week I will be among the legions at CPAC rearranging the furniture. Instead, the conservative movement needs to think in revolutionary terms.
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