Core Cultural Values

Jason at The Western Experience discusses the nihilistic program of gay rights extremism in his essay, "The Culture War is Real: Pick a Side."

Jason lays out the stakes clearly, suggesting:

This isn’t a conservative or liberal debate. This is about traditional America vs. a counter cultural post modernist America. It is both necessary and required that Americans stand to defend the institution of marriage in order save our society.

Well, Jason's singing to the choir over here!

I do think it's indeed about conservatism, actually. But what really struck me is Jason's link to this letter, at Brussels Journal, from November 2007, by Bruce Bawer at Little Green Footballs:

Hi Charles,

Your concerns about Vlaams Belang/Blok and the Sverigedemokraterna are totally justified.

In May, Paul Belien wrote as follows in the Washington Times: "Europe is in the middle of a three-way culture war between the defenders of traditional Judeo-Christian morality, the proponents of secular hedonism and the forces of Islamic Jihadism."

”Secular hedonism” is plainly his term for secular liberalism. Plainly he identifies with what he calls ”traditional Judeo-Christian morality.” And the structure of his sentence suggests that for him both ”secular hedonism” and ”Islamic Jihadism” are equal enemies.

And what about those of us who foolishly think this is a war for INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY? Are we just supposed to sit back and shut up and take orders from a bunch of little Euro-fascists?

As we say in Norway, stå på! (Stick to your guns!)

All best,
Bruce

So, my comments here are not so much a defense of traditional culture (Lord knows I've had a go of it lately), but instead are directed to disabusing folks of the possibility that the kind of atheistic libertarianism endlessly promoted at Little Green Footballs even remotely resembles a positive ideological paradigm shift for the coming era of post-Bush American politics.

I don't know of Paul Beliën. I can say that the Bruce Bawer's quote of Beliën above doesn't sound particularly fascist to me, especially since genuine fascist ideology is at best neutral toward religion, or more doctrinally atheist or "post-Christian." Interwar fascism as it emerged in Italy, and in Germany's racist National Socialism, subsumed religion under the ideology of the state; fascism was flexible or pragmatic (opportunistic) in terms of building social coalitions geared to power. While Beliën may have developed a "fascist enigma" for his controversial positions in Belgian politics, the entire passage above says more about Bruce Bawer's apparent secular libertarian extremism than it does about anything relating to "Euro-fascism."

In an earlier post, I noted how Charles Johnson has been attacking "Creationism" and "Intelligent Design" like his life depended on it. LGF's new secular-totalitarian agenda is frankly turning off a good many conservatives looking to preserve traditionalism as a key foundation of a revingorated right.

Now, I'm also throwing this out there in light of the friendly exchange I've been having with Dan Riehl, whose latest essay response is here. Dan notes that on principle he would tend to place himself somewhere between the folks at The American Conservative and my "seemingly over aggressive" neoconservatism - especially as its evinced in my Godwater-esque foreign policy. Perhaps Dan might want to respond one more time, to my argument here, although he's been kindly indulgent of my digressions thus far, and I mean no importuning. I do hope that Dan might at least take a look around, reading Jason's post at The Western Experience, and then think about how he might position himself between the orientation found there and the excoriations of "Judeo-Christian" ethics evinced in Bruce Bawer's comments at Little Green Footballs.

(And note that Bawer's comments were orignally sent via e-mail to Charles Johnson, which he subsequently published in his thread by permission. At the least, we can see this as an endorsement of Bawer's views, and the notion that Johnson might see those supportive of Judeo-Christian values as "fascist" is not at odds with his program of demonizing neoconservatives who privilege Western culture over the creeping Islamization of Europe.)

But let me be clear: I'm not instigating a flame war with Charles Johnson or anyone else. I'm interested in fleshing out what we stand for on the right. This discussion is primarily of academic interest, and its' important so far as Dan Riehl previously noted how he had little use for ideological labels. In response, I noted that:

I'm neoconservative, but the label's not as important to me as is a pro-life, pro-family, and pro-victory ideological paradigm that takes moral traditionalism seriously and doesn't skimp on standing up for what's right, both home and abroad.

I'll conclude here, then, by just adding that there's an internal logic to the neoconservative perspective that aderes to a moral consistency on questions of life, liberty, and culture. An extreme libertarianism, espoused in brief by Bruce Bawer's comments above, and endorsed by Charles Johnson at his blog, would use the very Judeo-Christian legacies of rights and liberties to in fact weaken the social conservatism that is tied to a politics of faith and reason in God. Knowing that the same kind of groups that push gay culture licentiousness at home are now a key component of the leftist coaltion that is enabling the merchants of Islamic death abroad, it might pay for some of those who are hoping to stick with a principled small-government orientation to spread their sights a bit to perhaps recognize that the sustainability of small government culture and freedom at home depends on security from external enemies. There's no doubt paleolibertarians are in bed with secular progressives intent to tear down America's alleged "imperialist" power grab. We should be equally aware that the extreme secular libertarianism found at Little Green Footballs is not far behind.

If this is conservatism, it's not the kind paradigm that's going to preserve what's best of this nation, contrary to what its adherent may otherwise believe.

Photo Credit: The Brussels Journal, "Is This What it is All About?"

Natasha Richardson

It was just this last weekend: I watched The Parent Trap with my boys on Disney Channel. It wasn't the first time, but I couldn't help noticing Natasha Richardson's genuine beauty - and I mean beauty in the fullness of the person, the way someone carries themselves, how they radiate charm, confidence, caring, and humility.

It's thus sad news to hear that Ms. Richardson's under medical care for a possible life-ending head injury. I first learned yesterday, but Fox News reports that Ms. Richardson may have suffered "talk and die" syndrome, which is an injury whereby a person appears fine at first, communicating normally, but then loses consciousness after blood accumulates between the skull and brain. People Magazine reports that "Natasha Richardson's Family Gathers for Vigil."

My thoughts and prayers go out to friends and family of Natasha Richardson.

Video Credit: Natasha Richard interviewed by Charlie Rose in 1998 (link).

Bogus AIG Outrage

Jim VandeHei pulls the mask off the bogus outrage in official Washington over the AIG bonuses now roiling the political system.

The video's a kicker as well, which features President Obama saying how he's "all choked up" about these bonuses. But Martha Zoller at Pajamas Media offers a concise analysis of what's going on after two months of Democratic power:

The Obama administration may once have had solid ground to stand on in its criticism of the Bush financial policies, but no longer. The problem that got us into this mess is still there. The fundamental problems with the housing markets, the credit markets, and the banking system have not been addressed. The administration dealt with what they thought were the easy fixes first, like AIG, and haven’t dealt with the underlying issues. And if you don’t pour the foundation first, the house will not stand.

See also, William Jacobson, "The Wheels Are Falling Off the Obama Administration."

Declining Public Support for Afghanistan

USA Today reports on the erosion of public support for the U.S. deployment in Afghanistan.

It turns out that 42 percent of Americans now say the decision to send American forces to Afghanistan in 2001 was "a mistake," and that figure is up 12 percentage points since last month. While a majority of 52 percent continues to hold the Afghan war as the right decision, a look at the graphic shows just how much public backing has declined since the Bush administration sent troops to topple the Taliban regime in November 2001. The erosion of support is due to war fatigue and the perception of declining military fortunes in the conflict. And much of what happens next will depend on the direction of foreign policy under the Obama administration.

Bret Stephens, at the Wall Street Journal, elaborates on this last point, placing declining support in Afghanistan in partisan context:

It was probably inevitable that the American left would turn sharply against the war in Afghanistan the moment it was politically opportune. Still, the speed with which it has done so has been breathtaking.

Time was when the received bipartisan and trans-Atlantic wisdom about Afghanistan was that it was the necessary war, the good war, the no-choice-but-to-fight and can't-afford-to-lose war, and that not least of everything that made the invasion and occupation of Iraq such arrant folly was that it distracted us from "finishing the job" in the place where the attacks of 9/11 were conceived and planned.

This was the wisdom candidate Barack Obama was merely regurgitating when, in an August 2007 speech, he promised that his priority as president would be "getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan." True to his word, he has now ordered the deployment of 17,000 additional soldiers to that battlefield.

So why are the people who cheered Mr. Obama then (or offered no objection) now running for the exit signs? Why, for example, is New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, the paper's reliably liberal tribune, calling Afghanistan a "quagmire" - after denouncing the Bush administration in 2006 for "taking its eye off the real enemy in Afghanistan"?

Call it another instance of that old logic, reductio ad Vietnam. That's the view that every U.S. military action lasting more than the flight time of a cruise missile is likely to descend into a bloody, stalemated, morally and politically intolerable Sartrean nightmare.

Read Stephens' piece in full, at the link.

See also, Tom Maguire, "Closing In On Defeat."

Uncluttered Conservatism

I've been working and running my kids around today, so I'm just now sitting down to respond to Dan Riehl's commentary on my earlier essay, "Core Values and Foreign Policy.

Dan and I don't differ too much on the basics of our conservative beliefs. I see that Dan's working to clear the clutter from what we want to do on the right, for example:

Personally, I'm for the least powerful government we can afford while being able to retain order on our streets, efficient commerce and project power abroad on a case by case basis as some need might warrant. I call that conservative, you may not. Beyond that, I've no strong desire to lock myself into some preconceived concept of a psuedo-ideology that might only constrict my good judgment, or give political opponents another term of art they will try to use to mis-characterize me and misrepresent my thinking.

Frankly, in some ways the Right seems to be becoming as pre-occupied with labels and hyphens as is today's Left. My instincts tell me that can't be good. But I'm not going to dwell on it as my primary interest remains what's small d democratic and most common denominator forms of communication aimed at the average Jane or Joe.

In the spirit of Barry Goldwater, I can advocate the "least powerful government we can afford"; although following both Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, I place stress on the exigencies of national power in a world of predatory states and totalitarian ideologies, so there are both values to weigh and liberties to preserve in designing a robust conservatism for the 21st century.

But note Dan's rejection of the "preoccupation with labels." This is something Robert Stacy McCain mentioned as well in his recent discussion, "Meghan and 'Progressive Republicans'." McCain, for example, rejects the (erstwhile) neoconservative David Brooks because, "Whatever label you slap on Brooks, he is a first-class peddler of 'noble lies', who labors tirelessly to create a myth of American political history that exactly suits his purpose." But rather than jettisoning labels, McCain proposes his own: "I believe that "libertarian populism" offers a winning antidote to the nonsense of 'national greatness' and 'compassionate conservatism' that have led the GOP astray."

The truth is, each one of us, Dan, Stacy, and myself, wants a winning conservatism that promotes freedom and protects life. Perhaps we could all come together under the banner of "uncluttered conservatism," which is just another way for me to say, "Okay, screw the labels and let's get down to some real ideas." What do we want? As I noted at my essay, "Core Values Conservatism," partisans of the right cannot abandon a poltics of human dignity and social traditionalism. We must put families first, through a pro-life agenda that affirms child-rearing and the historic understanding of marriage. We must also support economic policies that are both pro-family and pro-growth (cut taxes, support children), and we mustn't ignore educational reforms that empower families, engender competition, and procure value in learning.

But we must also be populist, and I want to stress this point for Dan in particular. I'm a professor, but I'm not an Ivy League stuffed-shirt academic. When you teach community college, you're in the trenches of the life-challenges of everday people. Two-year college professors are by definition the un-elite. I chose a career in community college teaching because that's where I started my training; and I identify personally with the recent immigrants from all over the world, the students from working-class families who have deep roots in Long Beach, the inner-city students escaping crime and poverty (the great many of whom cannot read), and the Iraq war veterans who are returning from the conflict. This is the real America. These are the "non-traditionals" people forget about when talking about the freshman application "admissions game" that's the rage of the college-ranking crowd. These are the "Wal-Mart" voters who Ross Douthat talks about but with whom he has no contact, ensconsed in the offices of the Atlantic or the New York Times.

So yeah, I can relate to "populist libertarianism" and the "average Jane and Joe."

But let's get some resolve on those cluttering labels. Well, it's interesting that all three of us, Dan, Stacy, and I, are former Democrats. I don't know what exactly caused Dan and Stacy to reject the ideology of the left, but with me it was foreign policy first and foremost, and especially Iraq in 2003. I simply cannot abide antiwar, anti-American ideologies, and that includes those of the left or the faux right. Sure, it's easy to eviscerate the Democratic-left as nihilistic and anti-military, but we have those who are ostensibly conservative who have made common cause with the Firedoglake-Keith Olbermann-MoveOn.org consitutuencies on the collectivist left. In response to last night's post, Daniel Larison at the American Conservative attacked my "so-called core values conservatism" as some empty pro-war immoralism. That's got to be rich, coming from Patrick Buchanan's flagship, the home of "unpatriotic conservatives" in bed with antiwar libertarians and Washington Independent paleo-postmodernists. No doubt we'll soon see Larison hanging out with Justin Raimondo and Cindy Sheehan (but not Sean Penn) at a Bay Area "peace vigil" once the Afghanistan surge kicks into high gear. These people are not conservative. And that's one reason I really admire Robert Stacy McCain's blogging - he's just not worried about the impolitics of calling the AmCon freaks out, and saying "Fuck you, Glenn Greenwald."

In any case, I'm neoconservative, but the label's not as important to me as is a pro-life, pro-family, and pro-victory ideological paradigm that takes moral traditionalism seriously and doesn't skimp on standing up for what's right, both home and abroad. On that score, I'm thinking Dan Riehl's down with the crew, and I'm ready to hang with him, uncluttered, conservative, and cool.

Democratic Culture Advances in Iraq

The new ABC News poll of citizens in Iraq holds some of the most important findings on the long-term implications for American intervention in that nation, and on the some of the questions of U.S. foreign policy in the years ahead. The survey notes that the poll findings "represent a stunning reversal of the spiral of despair caused by Iraq's sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007. The sweeping rebound, extending initial improvements first seen a year ago, marks no less than the opportunity for a new future for Iraq and its people."

Read the whole thing at the link. The article includes a lengthy analysis of the prospect in Iraq for instititution building and the growth of democratic culture.

But let me share Sister Toldjah's brief comments as well, which are perfectly stated:

Thanks to President Bush, McCain, and others for hanging tough and not bowing to the political will of the cut and run lefties in Congress. And millions of thanks to our men and women in uniform who have played a large role in making all of this possible. The surge has produced fruitful results that even the average Iraqi is noticing, results that would not have been possible had it been for the defeatists in Congress like then-Senator-now-President Barack Obama.

"Not bowing to the political will" is in fact one of the most substantial political victories of the conservative right for these last 6 years, and I'd like to reiterate the thanks to America's valiant service personnel and their families for their sacrifice and élan amid a domestic political environment eminently less supportive than our forces deserve (see, for example, David Horowitz and Ben Johnson's, Party of Defeat).

(Note: The findings are not all positive. A majority of Iraqis disapprove of the U.S. decision to send troops to their country. Perhaps lefties will pick up on that angle in their rebuttals to the polls findings. But no one, not even Steve at the nihilist Newshoggers, can rightly attack the neoconservative vision of democracy promotion in the face of stunning poll results such as these).

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QUICK UPDATE: I just checked for broken links and it turns out that Newshoggers is indeed up with a response to the poll, "Another Year, Another Iraqi Attitudes Poll":

Maybe Iraqis are right to feel so optimistic, given how much less violent their lives have become compared with the last three years. But the last time their trust was misplaced and this time the looming spectre of violence hangs just around the corner again. No, there's been no American "victory" worth the name in Iraq.

Yeah. Right. This is sour defeatist grapes and postmodern denialism, pure and simple.

As the poll notes, "a substantial number of Iraqis, 42 percent, are concerned that security may in fact worsen after U.S. forces leave. But few are "very" concerned. Most Iraqis appear eager to move ahead under their own steam."

That's right, on their own steam, which means with their own freedom. Security is central to the development of a democratic society. In just six years since the toppling of Saddam Hussein a majority in the country "support a unified Iraq with its central government in Baghdad, up 12 points from its low in March 2007."

These are the indicators of nation-building. The Iraqis are under no illusions that sectarian violence has been permanently eliminated, but the results at the poll are simply stunning in the type of transformation in outlook we've seen in the country. As always, the global collective left will excoriate alleged American imperialism, but the antiwar types are looking more stupid all the time in simultaneously repudiating the war on the one hand and in taking credit for the pending troop redeployment out of the country on the other (as previously noted, in "Majority Says Iraq War a Success, Poll Finds ").

The war in Iraq has been won. I reported the news in late 2007. Americans should be celebrating with parades for the historic significance of the U.S. victory there.

Confessions of a Subversive Journalist

Bill Steigerwald, of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, is retiring from day-to-day newspaper journalism. He'll still be writing in other venues, and he's planning on writing a memior (with a catchy title), but you'll love his last column for the paper:

As a reporter, I've tried my best to be accurate, fair and truthful. I've always been aware of the difference between news and opinion, between balance and bias, and between being a government watchdog and a government lapdog. And I have always known that every journalist and every editor I have ever worked with was helplessly subjective in their politics and in their definition of what news and bias were and were not.

Trust me, big-city daily newspapers don't go out of their way to achieve ideological diversity. About 90 percent of my work mates over the years were either avowed liberal Democrats or didn't know it. Reagan Republicans were virtually nonexistent. Until I got to the Trib, I was always the staff's lonely libertarian.

Read the whole thing at the link.

Classroom Indoctrination's Indefensible Defense

Jacob Laksin, at FrontPage Magazine, writes about the emerging backlash to his new book, published with David Horowitz, One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy.

It turns out that John K. Wilson, the editor of Illinois Academe, has written a review of the book. Laksin notes that Wilson has unburdened "himself of a barrage of ad hominem invective against David Horowitz," and that "he has either misunderstood the book entirely or else deliberately misrepresented its arguments." Laksin then goes on to show precisely how Wilson avoids and misrepresents the main points in One-Party Classroom.

Read the rest of Laksin's essay here.

One-Party Classroom is on my list of "books to read," although I've written previously a lengthy post outlining some of my thoughts on all of this. So I want to respond to a couple of points specific to Wilson's essay. He writes, for example:

One-Party Classroom is a perfect example of why uneducated outsiders such as Horowitz and his allies on Boards of Trustees and legislative bodies should not be able to decide what courses qualify as academic.

That's an odd thing to write about Horowitz, and breathtaking in its hubris; it's also a weak empirical claim about the broader administrative structures of the university, as well an outright dismissal of the legitimacy of legislatures to pass policies and oversee educational institutions.

It's problematic in the sense that Horowitz himself comes from a family of teachers, and he earned a master's degree in English literature. Of course, Horowitz is perhaps uniquely positioned as a former '60s radical and graduate student at UC Berkeley to comment on the left's hardline academic agenda in America's colleges today. Wilson's broadside against "Boards of Trustees" and legislative bodies is itself a ringing endorsement of the left's educational ideology which seeks to delegitimize fundamentally legitimate authority structures. It's akin to the notion in progressive education that students can "create their own knowledge." That is to say, screw authoritative institutions and guiding structures of learning. We'll do it our way, you totalitarian bureaucratic geeks, damn the consequences to order and excellence in society.

Here's another attack by Wilson on Horowitz's "outsider" status:

Horowitz never bothers to talk to any students ... or attend any classes, yet he evinces a magnificent psychic power to determine precisely that a long list of abuses are certain to occur.

I'll let Horowitz and Laksin defend themselves on how many students they talked to or how many classes they attended.

I talk to hundred of students every semester, and I'm in the classroom every day. One-Party Classroom provides an accurate depiction of the ideological foundations of the bulk of the postmodern curriculum on today's college campuses in the humanities and social sciences.

I remember some time back, after I wrote about my campus' local ANSWER cell, Professor David Noon went to town crowing about my deployment of "so many anecdotes" in my rejection of the haze of indoctrination on my department floor. I recall finding a crumpled sociology reading list stuffed inside a podium in one of my classrooms. On it, among the normal "white power" and "structural racism" canon, was C. Wright Mills' Power Elite. Noon thought it hilarious that I'd ridicule the assignment of the major work of "one of the 20th century's greatest American sociologists." Of course, that's a pernicious evasion of the larger point, which is that the sociology discipline is all about attacking class, gender, and racial hierarchies as part of the radical pedogogy of overthrowing the system of capitalist oppression. Where Mills wrote in 1957 of the Power Elite, subsequent generations of academics decry the lingering and archaic "white, male, and Christian makeup of the leading members of America's political, military, and business institutions."

In the introduction to One-Party Classroom, published at FrontPage Magazine last week, Horowitz and Laksin discuss Bettina Aptheker of UC Santa Cruz's Department of Feminist Studies. Professor Aptheker is the daugher of the late-Communist Party member Herbert Aptheker, the "internationally known American Marxist historian and political activist." It's interesting, then, that while out shopping this weekend at a used bookstore, I found a copy of a 1969 U.S. News publication, Communism and the New Left. I'm getting a kick reading it. For example, on page 17, amid the discussion of the violent guerrilla program of the New Left's revolutionary movement, the book features a picture SDS's Bernadine Dohrn and Mike Klonsky at the group's 1969 convention in Chicago. These pages go on to discuss the central role of Bettina Aptheker in the "so-called Free Speech Movement" at Berkeley in 1964, where "Ms. Aptheker denounced universities as tools of 'those who control the system of state monopoly capitalism'." Dohrn and her life-partner, William Ayers, and the likes of Professor Aptheker, are now ensconsed in the halls of America's institutions of higher education, but I better be careful here of trivializing things with "so many anecdotes."

In any case, I would find the remonstrations of folks like John K. Wilson and David Hoogland Noon to be humorous if these people weren't representative of the utter ideological bankruptcy of contemporary academe. One-Party Classroom has obviously touched a nerve inside the embankments the academy's poststructuralist ramparts. It'll be interesting to see the upcoming iterations of the academic left's ad hominem assaults on the integrity and qualifications of David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin.

Core Values and Foreign Policy

I've been reading Dan Riehl's posts the last couple of days. Dan's fleshing out what it means to be conservative in our new age, and in the context of Ross Douthat's appointment to the New York Times, he's got some particularly pointed words for neoconservatism, and he laments more broadly the disgraced ideological fragmentation on the right:

Any real voice of conservatism today, and it hardly exists, has been all but relegated to radio talk where it's often too easily marginalized as a sort of carnival bark, even in cases when it is not.

Truth be told and in what I hope is a passing mood, I'm mostly sick of it and hard-pressed to find good reason for good conservatives not to simply go off the grid. If the day ever comes for conservatives to have a serious voice again, I'm unconvinced it will be through the GOP and I know for a fact, it'll never be through the New York Times. And the events that would have to take place for conservatives to have a meaningful voice again are so profound, I can't bring myself to entertain the thought just now.

I actually touched on this a bit in my post yesterday, "Core Values Conservatism."

I was writing primarily about domestic policy in that post, however. Recall in particular the point Peter Berkowitiz made the other day, when he suggested the path forward for partisans of the right is to grapple with the realities of big government and to accommodate the sexual revolution. I have some issues with Berkowitz's argument, as I noted at my post, but here I need to reiterate Berkowitz's assumption that the future direction of conservatism includes a robust, forward-looking foreign policy orientation as given. The U.S. is certainly in for some retrenchment in foreign affairs, but much of America's difficulties in foreign policy will be found more so in the economic realm than the strategic. As the news this week showed, for example, for all the talk that China might dump its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities, "Beijing has not given indications of any major shift in its current investments or future buying plans." Moreover, at the level of the international system, for all the talk of American decline, there's no viable challenger to U.S. preponderance, and recent poll findings suggest that U.S. public support for the United Nations is at an all-time low. When the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. That is, our economic and political fortunes have dramatic implications for the well-being of the world community. The primacy of America's outward orientation is here to stay, and folks who identify as paleoconservatives, who call for a "come home America" isolationism, are not only near-sighted to America's strategic interests, but unpatriotic as well.

Recall yesterday, in "Soft on Our Enemies," I mentioned Barry Goldwater's libertarian nationalism in foreign policy. Goldwater, whose 1964 campaign is often seen as the beginning of the modern conservative movement, evinced an intense clarity on the nature of the Soviet threat during the early Cold War. His theme? Liberty at home depends on security abroad. This verity is no less appropriate in the age of Islamist terrorism than it was during the era of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary expansionism.

So, let me shift here to a brief discussion of neoconservatism. I want to suggest that not only has neonservatism been wrongly and unnecessarily identified as an exclusive theory of foreign policy, there's also a natural affinity between classically-liberal conservatism and the neoconservative orientation. Indeed, the future of the right will depend on some sort of strategic alliance between "hard classical-liberals"and socially-traditional neoconservatives.

As Robert Stacy McCain recently pointed out, neoconservatives are former liberals who were mugged by reality. While Irving Kristol is usually held up as the central example, I like Norman Podhoretz and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Their writings on race (Podhoretz, "My Negro Problem - and Ours") and social welfare policy (Moynihan, "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action") are among the best in public intellectualism in the last 50 years. Not only that, the policy successes of the neoconservative paradigm were achieved in the Reagan administration's righteous assault on big-government handouts to "welfare queens," for example, and Charles Murray's argument that public-assistance makes poverty worse was validated by the GOP's 1996 welfare reform legislation. Whereas some have suggested that neocons are indifferent to the right's pro-life agenda, this is more a function of individual policy priorities - and a faltering devotion to the neoconservative moral vision - than an explicity hostility to pro-life politics.

Keep in mind that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin - who is the darling of social conservatives - is doctrinally neoconservative in her robust embrace of inalienable rights worldwide, and in her vision of American's exceptionalism in both the domestic and international realms.

All of this might remain controversial for some traditionalists, perhaps Dan Riehl and others. But folks must keep in mind that erstwhile (neo)conservatives such as David Brooks, David Frum, Richard Perle are soft-and-squishy self-promoters who have abandoned the populist persuasion that's necessary for the rejuvenation of the political right. These people are cancers on the cause. They'll push a fluffy electoral centrism over the clarity and vision of ethical rationalism.

As I noted previously, the way forward for the GOP is to build an alliance between between hard classical-liberals and socially-traditional neoconservatives. If the "neocon" label is essential "toxic" for many on the right, that's fine. Neoconservatism preceded the Bush doctrine and "compassionate conservatism." Its clarity of moral purpose will remain, and for building a victory coalition going forward, I'll simply be advocating a "core values conservatism," one that combines the primacy of the pro-life movement for total human dignity with moral clarity in international politics - a combination that Barry Goldwater advanced for a strong and successul ideological right in earlier decades.

Anti-Zionism

This morning's Los Angeles Times op-ed section features an exchange on the question, "Is Anti-Zionism Hate?"

The first piece is from Judea Pearl, "Is Anti-Zionism hate? Yes. It is More Dangerous Than Anti-Semitism, Threatening Lives and Peace in the Middle East."

Pearl's introduction discusses a UCLA forum in January featuring speakers who "criminalized Israel's existence, distorted its motives and maligned its character, its birth, even its conception. At one point, the excited audience reportedly chanted "Zionism is Nazism" and worse."

But Pearl's conclusion is especially worth noting:

... anti-Zionism is in many ways more dangerous than anti-Semitism.

First, anti-Zionism targets the most vulnerable part of the Jewish people, namely, the Jewish population of Israel, whose physical safety and personal dignity depend crucially on maintaining Israel's sovereignty. Put bluntly, the anti-Zionist plan to do away with Israel condemns 5 1/2 million human beings, mostly refugees or children of refugees, to eternal defenselessness in a region where genocidal designs are not uncommon.

Secondly, modern society has developed antibodies against anti-Semitism but not against anti-Zionism. Today, anti-Semitic stereotypes evoke revulsion in most people of conscience, while anti-Zionist rhetoric has become a mark of academic sophistication and social acceptance in certain extreme yet vocal circles of U.S. academia and media elite. Anti-Zionism disguises itself in the cloak of political debate, exempt from sensitivities and rules of civility that govern inter-religious discourse, to attack the most cherished symbol of Jewish identity.

Finally, anti-Zionist rhetoric is a stab in the back to the Israeli peace camp, which overwhelmingly stands for a two-state solution. It also gives credence to enemies of coexistence who claim that the eventual elimination of Israel is the hidden agenda of every Palestinian.

It is anti-Zionism, then, not anti-Semitism that poses a more dangerous threat to lives, historical justice and the prospects of peace in the Middle East.

The rebuttal to Pearl is offered by Ben Erhenreich, "Zionism is the Problem," an essay that frankly, and perniciously, proves Pearl's point.

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UPDATE: Israel Matsav offers a critical and detailed analysis of Pearl's essay, "Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism Are Two Sides of the Same Coin (via Memeorandum):

Judea Pearl argues that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are unique and that anti-Zionism is more dangerous. I disagree with Pearl, and believe that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism, albeit one that allows its followers to hide behind the supposed sins of the State of Israel in perpetuating the world's oldest prejudice. I believe that arguments like Pearl's allow rank anti-Semites to mask their true nature by hiding behind their objections to Israeli policy ....

Anti-Zionism is just a form of politically correct anti-Semitism. Deep down maybe Pearl (whom I have taken to task before for this kind of argument) sees that ... Anti-Zionism is a way for anti-Semites to hate Jews without incurring the social revulsion that anti-Semitism still carries in polite circles in countries like the United States, Canada and Australia. So why does Pearl continue to make an illogical argument that tries to divorce anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism?

Barack Obama, Marlboro Man

Folks have been talking about Ross Douthat's quick ascension up the journalistic ranks, but what about Monique Stewart's meteoritic debut in the blogosphere?

Monique's been blogging for just a couple of weeks, and she's already got a featured heading at Memeorandum, "Start Smoking: It Just May Save a Child’s Life!":

As every smoker knows ... you never truly quit. You will always have one more cigarette, whether it’s at a funeral, or at the bar. You never truly quit, there will always be another cigarette, another drag.

President Obama gets that. He’s a Marlboro Man, the only reason I have left to like him.

What I don’t like, though, is that he has placed the burden of middleclass children’s healthcare upon my shoulders.

Can someone, anyone, please, explain to me why I should be responsible for the healthcare of middleclass children just because I smoke? I’m not really getting the connection.

For convenience, I'm citing the same passage as Robert Stacy McCain, although he's falling down on the job in Rule 3 promotion, by a look at that Memeorandum link!

In any case, congratulations to Monique!

Mexico's Insurgency

I'm not exactly sure why, but I haven't written much about the political instablity in Mexico. Maybe it's the familiarity of it, actually. I've traveled extensively in Mexico, and the Mexican case is a staple of my comparative government course at my college. But this morning's story on Mexico's drug gangs at the Los Angeles Times overlaps with Sam Quinones' recent piece at Foreign Policy, "State of War." So, I thought I'd share all of this with readers.

Here's this from Quinones' essay:

When I lived in Mexico, its cartels were content with assault rifles and large-caliber pistols, mostly bought at American gun shops. Now, Mexican authorities are finding arsenals that would have been incomprehensible in the Mexico I knew. The former U.S. drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, was in Mexico not long ago, and this is what he found:

The outgunned Mexican law enforcement authorities face armed criminal attacks from platoon-sized units employing night vision goggles, electronic intercept collection, encrypted communications, fairly sophisticated information operations, sea-going submersibles, helicopters and modern transport aviation, automatic weapons, RPG’s, Anti-Tank 66 mm rockets, mines and booby traps, heavy machine guns, 50 [caliber] sniper rifles, massive use of military hand grenades, and the most modern models of 40mm grenade machine guns.

These are the weapons the drug gangs are now turning against the Mexican government as Calderón escalates the war against the cartels.

Mexico’s surge in gang violence has been accompanied by a similar spike in kidnapping. This old problem, once confined to certain unstable regions, is now a nationwide crisis. While I was in Monterrey, the supervisor of the city’s office of the AFI—Mexico’s FBI—was charged with running a kidnapping ring. The son of a Mexico City sporting-goods magnate was recently kidnapped and killed. Newspapers reported that women in San Pedro, once one of Mexico’s safest cities, now take classes in surviving abductions.

All of this is taking a toll on Mexicans who had been insulated from the country’s drug violence. Elites are retreating to bunkered lives behind video cameras and security gates. Others are fleeing for places like San Antonio and McAllen, Texas. Among them is the president of Mexico’s prominent Grupo Reforma chain of newspapers. My week in Mexico last August ended with countrywide marches of people dressed in white, holding candles and demanding an end to the violence.

Be sure to check out the article at the Times as well, "Drug Cartels' New Weaponry Means War," and especially the stunning graphic illustrations, "Asymmentical Arms" and "Traffickers' Advantage in Arms."

Dan Collins Hits the Pub

Dan Collins has an interesting post on the linguistic relativism of intentionalism, at Protein Wisdom. But what caught my eye is Dan's conclusion:

I am as proud as anybody, and with as little reason. And I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been doing here. I’ve decided that I’m going to move back over to the Pub. Increasingly, my presence in these pages, Jeff’s pages, has become a distraction, not just to some of the commenters and posters, but to me. I sometimes sit and wait greedily for comments, for praise, for what I’ve posted, compulsive and addicted as a chain smoker. I have cluttered up my life with this, and it’s Lent, and I’m trying to look out for my own spirituality. More, there are other voices whom I would like to hear, and I can’t let them impress me if I’m always looking to express myself. But the greatest reason is that I agree 100% with Jeff when he says that he misses the way this forum used to be, and I’m hoping that delivering this space back to Jeff and some other, probably better, certainly less effusive and more considered writers will bring yet another welcome change to these pages.

Dan's reference to "The Pub" is the Protein Wisdom community's backup blog.

Here's wishing Dan success, and thanks for all the links!

Michelle Malkin: Conscience of the Conservative Movement

Michelle Malkin is featured at this morning's DC Examiner, "Michelle Malkin: Making War With Words":

Read the whole thing at the link.

Michelle Malkin's brand of citizen's journalism is the (awe-inspiring) wave of the future, and Malkin, along with Rush Limbaugh, is the conscience of the conservative movement. What's most impressing about Malkin is simply her success. There's also luscious schadenfreude in how well she pissess off the left. As the article notes, Malkin gets "a daily barrage of hate e-mails from liberals, often racist and sexually explicit in nature." There's almost nothing that reveals the brain-addled anti-intellectualism on the left better than hate mail. Here's this attack on Malkin from "someone with a broken shift key":

YOU FUCKING NEOCON, AUTHORITARIAN, LYING BITCH. ALEX JONES EXPOSED YOU. HE MADE YOU LOOK LIKE A GUM SMACKING HIGH SCHOOL CUNT. YOU COULDNT COPE WITH ANYTHING HE SAID...ALL YOU COULD DO WAS SMACK YOUR GUM AND TRY THE LAME “TALK TO THE HAND” GESTURE. GO SUCK SEAN HANNITY’S DICK. YOU LOOK LIKE AN ASIAN WHORE FROM SOME TITTY BAR IN MANILA. GREAT SHTICK YOU HAVE…THE “MINORITY” UNCLE TOM WHO THROWS RED MEAT TO THE FOX NEWS IDIOTS! GO COVER UP MORE ANIMAL CRUELTY! GO CALL FOR MORE INTERNMENT CAMPS YOU FILTHY PIECE OF SHIT! GO CALL FOR MORE ISRAELI SLAUGHTER AGAINST CHILDREN! FUCK YOU!

JASMINE BENITEZ
NYC

I'm pleased to report that Malkin linked to American Power in a post last week, "Letter of the day: Disgusted in Diamond Bar."

That was some "Malkin-a-lanche"!

Photo Credit: DC Examiner.

The Same Old Theme Since 1916...

Today's Wall Street Journal features a background analysis on this week's bloodshed in Ulster, "'The Troubles' Return: In Northern Ireland, Killings Expose Lingering Rifts Between Catholics and Protestants." While reading the piece, some might appreciate as background The Cranberries, "Zombie":

I was deeply and immediately impressed with this song and video as representing the best in modern, post-'60s protest music. I was especially captivated by lead singer Dolores O'Riordan, naturally. I remember anticipating, and then watching, The Cranberries perform on Saturday Night Live at the time.

My love and prayers go out to all those in Ulster who have lost loved one's this week.

Soft on Our Enemies

I mentioned earlier that I've been reading Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative. His last chapter on "The Soviet Menace" is the longest in the book. It starts with an existential warning that the U.S. was losing the Cold War (at the time, 1960): "Our enemies have understood the nature of the conflict, and we have not. They are determined to win the conflict, and we are not." Goldwater explains this as a largely a function of the unseriousness among many in the American elite who incompletely perceived the mortal nature of Moscow's threat to American security and world order.

In any case, much is different today, but there are eerie echoes between Goldwater's tocsin and the West's approach to the global Islamist challenge, especially among the global collectivist-left (many of whom are literally in bed with our enemies).

I'll have more on the U.S. homefront in upcoming posts. For example, I want to share my thoughts on Jamie Glazov's new book, United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror.

In the meanwhile, Con Coughlin has a chilling report out of Britain at the London Telegraph, "Britain is Fighting a War – And We Are Too Soft on Our Enemies":

It's not just soldiers who win wars. Governments also have a crucial role to play – and to judge by the response of most Western governments to the threat we face from radical Islamism, we are simply not competing on equal terms with the enemy.

No one can claim that we in Britain don't understand the nature of the threat we face. In recent months, there has been a succession of reports highlighting the increasingly pernicious influence British Islamists are having on the Nato-led campaign to bring stability to Afghanistan.

After senior officers confirmed last year that British Muslims were fighting with the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, it was revealed that RAF Nimrod surveillance planes monitoring Taliban radio stations were surprised to hear insurgents speaking in strong Yorkshire or Midlands accents.

More recently, officers based at the main military base at Lashkar Gah revealed that they had found British-made components in roadside bombs used to attack coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, sent to Helmand by Muslim sympathisers in Britain. This week three British Muslims, part of a terrorist cell whose leader was convicted of plotting to kidnap and behead a British soldier on video, were jailed at the Old Bailey for supplying equipment to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The active involvement of radical British Muslims in the Afghan insurgency has led senior officers to claim that they are engaged in a "surreal mini-civil war" in Afghanistan. And yet, for all the compelling evidence that British-based Islamist radicals are actively participating in a jihad against Britain and its coalition allies, the Government, together with those who have opposed our involvement in the War on Terror from the start, seems determined to give the Islamist radicals the benefit of the doubt.

Read the whole thing, here.

I'm reminded of Snooper's warnings for today's domestic enemies. And I'm not reassured by the new administration in Washington, which seems not unlike many of those back in the '50s, identified by Goldwater, who "never believed deeply that the Communists" were in earnest.

A Morality of Rational Self-Interest

The left's pushback against the "going Galt" phenomenon seems to have peaked, but the fact is, we're likely just now seeing the beginning of a larger philosophical debate on morality, rationalism, and self-interest.

Today's Wall Street Journal features a piece by Yaron Brooks, the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, who notes, that the "fight for a morality of rational self-interest" explains the rising popularity of Ayn Rand's books and ideas.

But I particularly like Edward Cline's piece this afternoon, "On The Left-Wing Reaction to John Galt, Ayn Rand, and Tea Parties":

The world seems to be emerging from a moral and intellectual coma, perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently. It is discovering that other ideas have other consequences, as well, ideas that promote life, promote prosperity, promote ambition and personal success, and that they are possible only in political freedom, and that this freedom has been violated, abridged, and nullified by the first set of ideas. True, politics is the last thing to be affected by a philosophical revolution. But one cannot help but be pleased with how startled the collectivists and altruists are now by the knowledge that they have not successfully pulled a fast one on Americans. These Americans have come knocking on the doors of elitists or leaning over the café railings or invading their legislated smoke-free bars and restaurants to ask: What in hell do you think you are doing?

Meghan McCain: "Quit Making Fun of My Weight, Laura Ingraham"

Look, I'm too heavy right now. I've gained at least 20 pounds in the last couple of years from blogging and drinking more, and exercizing less. It's as simple as that. As a former top competitive skateboarder, and more recently a fitness junky, I know exactly what I have to do to get back in shape. I may have mentioned it here before, but I'll be 50 in a couple of years, and at some point I'd like to do some serious training. I'm getting a lot of fulfillment from blogging right now, though, and I'm healthy, so I try not to kid myself about turning into the next Jack LaLanne.

In any case, I mention this so readers know that I'm not making fun of Meghan McCain (and so the lefties know I'm not a "sizist"). It's that I just couldn't stop laughing now when I checked Hot Air's headlines and found "Meghan McCain: Quit Making Fun of My Weight, Laura Ingraham," which is Allah's mocking title to Ms. McCain's new post up at The Daily Beast:

I have been teased about my weight and body figure since I was in middle school, and I decided a very long time ago to embrace what God gave me and live my life positively, attempting to set an example for other girls who may suffer with body image issues. I have nothing to hide: I am a size eight and fluctuated up to a size ten during the campaign. It’s ridiculous to even have this conversation because I am not overweight in the least and have a natural body weight.

But even if I were overweight, it would be ridiculous. I expected substantive criticism from conservative pundits for my views, particularly my recent criticism of Ann Coulter. That is the nature of political discourse, and my intent was to generate discussion about the current problems facing the Republican party. Unfortunately, even though Ms. Ingraham is more than twenty years older than I and has been a political pundit for longer, almost, than I have been alive, she responded in a form that was embarrassing to herself and to any woman listening to her radio program who was not a size zero.

Read the whole thing at the link.

I noted previously how I thought Ms. McCain looked great the other morning, when I saw her on Fox & Friends. But she's complaining about "image-oriented bullying" in her essay, and it's hard not to see this as mostly a whiney rant from someone less experienced at political hardball than her main critics, especially Laura Ingraham. I sympathize, in any case. I'd be kidding if I said that some of the nasty attacks around here didn't get under my skin once in a while.

That said, I did get a good snicker out of Allahpundit's ribbing of Ms. McCain.

**********

P.S. I also wanted to get a post up on this before "The Other McCain." He's been hammering his "kissin' cousin" for her "progressive Republicanism," so folks might want to check over there for a post that (five-will-get-you-ten) will not be as politically correct as this one!

Core Values Conservatism

I've been meaning to get back to the topic of the (bleak?) future of conservatism.

Robert Stacy McCain responded to some of my recent essays in his post, "Meghan and 'Progressive Republicans'." And now Ross Douthout's new essay is discussing "The Case For Small Government," which is a commentary on Charles Murray's recent lecture to the American Enterprise Institutute, "The Happiness of the People." Douthat disagrees with Murray's economistic foundations for conservatism's future. That is to say, Douthat suggests we look past a "costs and benefits" approach to ideological rejuvenation on the right. There should be, for example, more to the debate than questions of "how big the American welfare state should be overall, and whether we should copy Western Europe or disdain it."

I'm simplifying here, so be sure to check out both Douthat and Murray, but I think the question of "how big should the welfare state be" is a good one for elaborating some of the issues I've raised, and for addressing the direction that Robert Stacy McCain's been taking the discussion.

Now, McCain's taking on the earlier advocacy on the right for a "national greatness conservatism," and in particular he's hammering David Brooks, who's been in the news lately as an Obama administration lackey. McCain's right, of course, and the Brookes and Meghan McCains of the party might as well join up with the Democrats, for if we adopt the "moderate" programs these folks are pushing, we might as well have a one-party Democratic state.

But I want to return to my earlier discussion of "Constitutional Conservatism," which draws on the recent essay by Peter Berkowitz at Policy Review. Recall the two key themes Berkowitz offered as a way to move conservatism foward: (1) big government is here to stay, and the right needs to vigorously advocate limiting the growth of government, rather than speaking of a rollback to a "small" state, and (2) the sexual revolution is permanent, and the folks on the right need to recognize the reality and accommodate themselves to the facts.

Robert Stacy McCain has focused on the economic dimensions of the Obama administration's neo-socialist program, and McCain's privileged "economic liberty and limited government" at the expense of an activist program on the right for social conservatism (or so it seems to me).

Now, that's fine, and McCain makes a powerful and moral case for a political economy of liberty. Part of this theme, however, is that George W. Bush was not conservative, and while that's true (as the administration expanded big government in the domestic realm with the Medicare prescription drug benefit, among other things), the Bush administration's attempt to promote an "opportunity society" has either been forgotten by those disgusted with the last eight years of GOP power, or simply not taken as seriously as it should be as a way to get back on track. So, I think folks on the right need to be more clear about what they're saying: Are we just saying "no" to the Obama administration's power grab - a good thing in itself - or are we offering a realistic limited government agenda that is principled but pragmatic - and by pragmatism, I don't mean the David Brooks spineless variety.

So, in my estimation, we need more specifics: The discussion above should not be construed to rule out actually reducing the size of government in some areas. How about returning to calls to eliminate whole cabinet departments? Commerce and Education can go, as far as I'm concerned, and whatever regulatory or policy programs and institutions in place in those agencies can be downsized - especially in the education realm - and transferred to other departments. I'm sure a few other cabinets might be eliminated, say, Homeland Security, which was simply the creation of a war-on-terrorism bureaucratic gargantuan that fared poorly in its biggest test on the Gulf Coast in 2005. Thus, by all means, let's think about not only better economic policies that preserve liberty (low taxes), but we should also return to the ideas of Barry Goldwater, who in fact offered a plan to downsize the federal state in his classic manifesto, Conscience of a Conservative. So yes, limit governmental power, and reduce bureaucracy where we can, but be specific and not ideologically dogmatic. Perhaps 50 years ago we could have reduced the size of government by 10 percent annually, in the process of shifting to state-centered federalism. But I'm not confident that such a program is likely today. Again, conservatives might achieve some key reductions as outlined above, but on the whole we need to be stressing liminting government, and especially restraining the continued growth of government as that being promised by the political logic and program of today's secular collectivists.

I'm neoconservative, of course, and McCain's right to remind us that popular excoriations of the neoconservative agenda are mostly, in fact, demonic caricatures of the paradigm. Such demonization is popular with the America-bashing left, and the attacks have actually been successful in delegitimizing the neoconservative movement as a (perceived) viable foundation for moving forward on the right. That's regrettable, naturally, since much of the conservative successes during the Reagan years were in the social realm of families and values, and such traditionalist policies have their ideational foundations in the hot-house fermentation of neoconservatism's attacks on the left's social degenerations.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, in a recent op-ed at the Wall Street Journal, provided a needed reminder that the "neocons" have been the leaders in promoting personal responsibility and social traditionalism. I think Schoenfeld's naive to suggest that President Obama will return to his earlier intimations of "New Democrat" policy sensibilities. The fact is that the GOP's the right home for an agenda that takes personal responsiblity and morals seriously, and it's frankly not at all difficult to meld a new conservative ideological agenda that combines economic liberty with social values (see, for example, Richard Land's recent piece on this, "Stay Faithful to Core Values").

Thus, let me be clear: I do not discount the need for an economic agenda promoting liberty. Lord knows the Obama administration's going to use every opportunity it gets to expand government, and the "economic crisis" has worked wonders for both progressive fortunes and the left's destruction of freedom. What I do affirm is that conservatives will be better off seeking to limit government's expansion by acknowledging, as Berkowitz does, that "the era of big government is here to stay," and the folks on the right "should retire talk of small government and concentrate on limiting government."

I do not fully agree with Berkowitz on his social policy recommendations, however. He suggests, for example, that the right "should refrain from using government to enforce the traditional understanding" of society's norms and institutions. While we ought not expand government to "enforce" traditionalism, conservative politics and the conservative policy agenda must advocate for the restoration of values as the basis for a good social order.

One of the most important messages in Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative is that man is not simply an "economic creature." That is to say, liberty is not just a matter of limiting the state for the preservation of economic freedom. Full measure of human liberty is both economic and spiritual, and hence to talk of constitutional originalism, as does Robert Stacy McCain at his post, is to recognize that the Founders' limitations on state power were designed to preserve the inherent natural rights of man, and these include life, liberty, and property; and the notion of life is considered here in the most robust sense as not just the preservation of the body itself, but further in the fullfillment of God's capacity in man as a spiritual being. As Goldwater notes, conservatives have "learned that economic and spiritual aspects of man's nature are inextricably entwined." We cannot separate one from the other, so while I do not disagree with Robert Stacy McCain, I'm looking for a conservatism that takes social values as essential to the premise of limited government and constitutional liberalism (that is, "hard classical liberalism," in the libertarian sense).

All of this is to say that we need to advance virtue without "paternalistic assistance from government laws, rules, and regulations," to borrow directly from the thoughts of Jason Pappas. We will need some version of this model if the GOP is to remain a conservative party. How all the various factions can work things out to form a viable electoral coalition remains to be seen, but I'm convinced that both classically liberal conservatives and social traditionalists will combine to make the core alliance that will drive the Republicans back to power.