Glenn Greenwald is Wrong About Iraq Public Opinion

Glenn Greenwald's mounted a hack and smear attack against David Kuhn and his piece today at the Politico, "Support for War Effort Highest Since 2006."

Here's Greenwald:

The Politico today published one of the most blatantly one-sided, journalistically flawed "news" articles on the Iraq War in quite some time and promoted it as its featured story, filled with dramatic proclamations certain to attract (by design) significant attention. The central theme is one which the political establishment is most desperate to believe -- that Americans are now supporting the Iraq War again and this will drastically re-shape the presidential race in favor of the pro-war McCain....

It repeats this pro-GOP assertion over and over. "The repercussions will be most acutely felt in the presidential contest." And: "Democrats' resolute support for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces may soon position them at odds with independent voters, in particular, a constituency they need to retake the White House." And: "The uptick in public support is a promising sign for Republican candidates who have been bludgeoned over the Bush administration's war policies. But no candidate stands to gain more than McCain."

You'll want to read the whole thing.

As I noted in my last post, I've been doing a lot of recent writing on public opinion trends, and the record shows that the Politico piece is not so outlandish as Greenwald alleges.

What's the beef here?

Greenwald essentially has a problem with the article's wording, where Kuhn suggests that "American public support for the military effort in Iraq has reached a high point unseen since the summer of 2006." That may be a poor choice of words (and the article's mistitled as well).

Why?

Kuhn's actually stressing a different issue, that a majority of Americans now believes that the U.S. will succeed in Iraq. The findings are from a late-February Pew survey, which I discussed in an earlier post.

So it's not so much that Americans "support" the war as it's that they see that we're making progress. When Kuhn's article is framed correctly as such, the analysis is uncontroversial. Kuhn notes, for example:

Democrats’ resolute support for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces may soon position them at odds with independent voters, in particular, a constituency they need to retake the White House.

Half of self-identified independents polled now believe the United States should “keep troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized,” according to polling data assembled by Pew at Politico’s request.

These claims are in line with other recent surveys (which show very little support for an immediate withdrawal), so in that sense the perception of progress in Iraq can indeed hold implications for this fall's election, which is a major argument in the piece.

Now, you can see more to Greenwald's outrage in his comments about Michael O'Hanlon:

The whole article cites only one on-the-record source: the media's favorite all-purpose war cheerleader Michael O'Hanlon, who warns -- yet again -- that the public will soon come to see McCain's pro-war views as the "correct narrative."

Liberal bloggers have sought to discredit O'Hanlon for alleged apostasies (he's with Brookings, which is supposedly a left-of-center think tank, and he's recently been trumpeting U.S. military success in Iraq with his periodic progress reports).

But, while Greenwald is certainly entitled to criticize the Kuhn article for lack of balance, he's not in the right to dismiss the data presented there.

Greenwald goes to a lot of trouble to cite polling statistics indicating that a majority of the public thinks the war was a mistake, or that the Pew survey's an "outlier" contradicted by more recent findings. For example, Greenwald notes that:

A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted after the Politico's poll found that Americans believe we are "not making significant progress" in Iraq, by a 51-43 margin.

All of this is true, but incomplete.

Polls certainly indicate that Americans think the war's a mistake (check Greenwald's link). That's understandable: Iraq's been expensive, in material and human terms, and it's been less than a year that we've been able to show substantial progress. Americans like results, and sentiment on Iraq has followed public opinion trends in earlier conflicts, such as Vietnam, whereby support for the war fell as the level of casualites increased.

But what Greenwald refuses to acknowledge is the dramatic improvement in public perceptions of the war, which is what Kuhn's really addressing.

If you look at Greenwald's own polling data, the number of respondents indicating that the U.S. "is not making significant progress toward restoring civil order in Iraq" has fallen 15 percent since December 2006, which was a month before the initiation of President Bush's new surge strategy.

Moreover, Greenwald makes it sound as if the public wants to head for the exits, for example, when he says:

Polls - all ignored by the Politico - have continuously shown that even when American perceive that the "surge" has decreased violence, they still are against the war as much as ever before and support withdrawal.

But again, that's not complete.

American's don't support withdrawal. Particularly, only 17 percent of those polled in a recent Gallup survey indicated they'd like to remove "all U.S. troops from Iraq as rapidly as possible, beginning now."

To put this differently, a large majority of Americans opposes an unconditional retreat from Iraq. This is significant, because both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been pandering to the hardline retreatists in the Democratic Party base, even though that's a fringe position.

Frankly, those who are calling for an immediate withdrawal - which apparently includes Greenwald himself - are the outliers.

Note more from Greenwald:

How could a war that is so deeply unpopular - and that remains so regardless of claims of "progress" - possibly benefit the candidate and party perceived as being responsible for that war?...

What is the point of writing a big feature article claiming that Americans are moving towards support for the Iraq War again and this is dramatically re-shaping the political landscape in McCain's favor while purposely ignoring the mountain of extremely recent empirical data completely negating that claim?

Actually the war's not as deeply unpopular as Greenwald indicates. In fact, while
Gallup recently showed a moderate majority saying the war was a mistake, the data found a huge partisan split on public perceptions:

Attitudes about the war are strongly related to one's political point of view, ranging from 91% opposition among liberal Democrats to 80% support among conservative Republicans. Thus, while the war will be a major issue during the fall presidential campaign, its impact is less clear, since war supporters (largely Republicans) will most likely support the GOP candidate and war opponents (largely Democrats) will probably back the Democrat.

Overall, the problem for Greenwald is he's unprincipled in his analysis.

True, the war's not wildly popular.

It's not true, however, that American perceptions have not improved. As security in Iraq has increased - and as casualites have declined - there's been dramatic improvement in the number of people indicating that the U.S. is making progress (Washington Post) and of those saying that the U.S. is now likely to prevail (Pew).

Thus, Kuhn's piece in the Politico is not so off target after all. Democrats indeed may be at odds with trends in public opinion. If Clinton and Obama continue to push for a strategic retreat - at precisely the same time that public opinion acknowledges dramatic successes - the political advantage will fall to GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain. The Dems will be vulnerable to merciless attacks as hopelessly out of touch with the facts on the ground and in public sentiment.

Finally, Greenwald jumped the gun in attacking Kuhn, falsely claiming that the author relied on no other data than the Pew survey. He's now posted a retraction, but further down Greenwall offers methodologically flawed conclusions surrounding the Democratic pickup of Dennis Hastert's congressional seat last week:

Less than a week ago, Democrat Bill Foster was elected to Congress in Denny Hastert's long-time, bright red district in Illinois. The centerpiece of his campaign was opposition to the Iraq war, and he defeated a pro-war candidate whose policies mirrored those of John McCain. Might that development have merited a mention by the Politico in this piece? Public opinion on the Iraq War is "re-shaping the political landscape" alright -- just in exactly the opposition direction as Kuhn claimed here.

Greenwald's essentially committed a variation of the "ecological fallacy" in statistical research, which is the error of making individual inferences derived from aggregate-level data.

Actually, in Greenwald's case, he's extrapolating from a single-seat special election to a national level problem, victory in the general election. While it's certainly the case that this year looks to be a Democratic year, it's incorrect to say that John McCain won't be competitive nationally on the basis of the election results in one congressional election.

In sum, Greenwald's wrong about Iraq and public opinion.

Public opinion indicates that the war remains unpopular. The data also support the notion that we're winning. These are facts that are hard for the nihilist leftists like Greenwald to recognize, much less accept.

Public Support for Iraq at Highest Since 2006

As regular readers know, I've pumped up the volume on my writing output this year, with the presidential primaries and everything.

One topic on which I've posted quite a bit is on public opinion trends on the campaign trail, especially on Iraq.

Thus it's fairly satisfying that some of my commentary and reporting turns out to be ahead of the media curve, as evidenced by this morning's story at Politico, "Support for War Effort Highest Since 2006." According to the article:

American public support for the military effort in Iraq has reached a high point unseen since the summer of 2006, a development that promises to reshape the political landscape.

According to late February polling conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 53 percent of Americans — a slim majority — now believe “the U.S. will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals” in Iraq. That figure is up from 42 percent in September 2007.

The percentage of those who believe the war in Iraq is going “very well” or “fairly well” is also up, from 30 percent in February 2007 to 48 percent today.

The situation in Iraq remains fluid, of course. A surge in violence or in troop deaths could lead to rapid fluctuations in public opinion. But as the war nears its fifth year, the steady upturn in the public mood stands to alter the dynamics of races up and down the ballot.

I agree.

Indeed, I reported on the Pew survey February 28, in my entry, "U.S. Will Succeed in Iraq, Poll Finds."

It's also true that the situation on the ground is fluid, subject to changing operational fortunes. But as even the major liberal newspaper editorial pages have acknowledged, security gains have contributed to political gains, so much so that victory appears increasingly likely.

The recent spate of bombings in Iraq goes to show that challenges remain, but they are not signs that the surge has failed, despite the claims of antiwar commentators implacable hostile to the mission (for example, here and here).

There's also the problem of media bias. It's just recently that the big national papers have offered regularly upbeat reporting on Iraq (see, the New York Times, "Ending Impasse, Iraq Parliament Backs Measures").

But as Jules Crittenden notes in discussing David Kuhn, from the Politico, the media's afflicted with a "yeah, but" complex in its war coverage:

Kuhn notes that a surge in violence could reverse perceptions and reactions in the notoriously fickle and easily swayed electorate. What Kuhn doesn’t note is that over the past week, with several violent incidents, the “Yeah, But” narrative is being fired up again. Yeah, violence is still way down. But despite the military’s insistence of dramatic progress, some bombs just went off. High successful military campaigns and the turning of the Sunni tribes against al-Qaeda took months to gain any recognition. Al-Qaeda, by all accounts still very much on the ropes, gets off a handful of attacks, and the terrorism amplifier kicks in:

AP: Iraqis Fear Return to Violent Days....

AP: Iraq Violence Sees Spike....

AP: 3 US soldiers die.....

NYT: Stalemate....

The bizarre dynamic of American reporting in this war is that terrorists, no matter how hamstrung they may be, will always applauded for their resilience. The United States military and its allies, no matter how much progress they make in hamstringing terrorists, will always be fighting a rearguard action. The dramatic developments of the past year are typically dispensed with in boilerplate, often presented in a manner to indicate the U.S. military’s role was incidental. Sunni tribes turned, Shiite militias stood down. The U.S. military’s role in encouraging them to do that is rarely noted. The most critical measure of success or failure that the military is constantly required to address remains the strategically least relevant: the tragic tally of isolated incidents and death.

Least relevant, except that in the hands of al-Qaeda’s amplification service, when that is the narrative and measure that is presented to the American public and American politicians, it can and will influence the political debate. The sense of unease AP describes in Baghdad is precisely what al-Qaeda wants to create … in the American electorate.

Crittenden's a journalist, so his inside perspective is particulary important.

But as I concluded in my earlier post, "This meme on the "demand" for withdrawal will continue, and I'll continue to debunk it."

The "meme," of course, is the endless denial on the left that the U.S. is making progress in the war, and as Crittenden points out, it's not just radical left bloggers who perpetuate it.

Supporting the Troops

Well, it's not new for the hard left to renounce support for the troops. Daily Kos usually has a post now and then demonizing American soldiers as the jackboots in the Bush administration's new thousand-year reich.

Recall "Lurxt" at Kos a while back:

Supporting the troops essentially means supporting the illegal war. It seems that us anti-war types have been doing all sorts of mental and philisophical gymnastics to try and work around this. What has emerged is a sort of low impact, mealy-mouthed common wisdom that is palatable to everyone but is ultimately going to allow us to stay in Iraq for years to come.

So, with all of the recent nihilist antiwar activity (attacks on recruiters in Berkeley and New York), it's par for the course to see more forceful statements against the administration, the troops, and the war.

Here's the latest to that effect, from Kenneth Thiesen:

In the recent political battle around the Marine recruiting station in Berkeley there has been much confusion around the concept or slogan of “supporting the troops,” but opposing the unjust wars of the Bush regime. Many who oppose the Bush regime wars also say they “support the troops.” Let me say it straight out—I do not support the troops and neither should you. It is objectively impossible to support the troops of the imperialist military forces of the U.S. and at the same time oppose the wars in which they fight.

The United States has over 700 military bases or sites located in over 130 foreign countries. The hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in these countries are not there to preserve or foster freedom and democracy as the Bush regime would like to claim, but to maintain U.S. imperialist domination of the world. The United States now spends more on its military than all the other nations of the world combined.

If you “support the troops” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other more than 100 countries in which they are located, you also objectively support U.S. hegemony in the world. I believe that the vast majority of people who say they support the troops do not wish to support U.S. imperialism, but that is what they are really doing by putting forth the slogan of “support the troops.”

We need to oppose the recruitment of men and women into the military. We need to support resisters within the military who have realized what they are doing and now choose to resist the role of the U.S. military....

We need to expose that those in the U.S. military are trained to be part of a “killing machine.” While not every member of the military is an individual murderer, they are all part of a system that commits war crimes, including aggressive wars, massacres, rape, and other crimes against humanity, all in the service of U.S. imperialism. The bottom line is that even if these people are relatives or friends, you can not support the troops without also supporting the objective role that these troops play in the imperialist system.

United States troops are acting as destructive and murderous forces of invasion and occupation. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan see this on a daily basis. Hundreds of thousands have died as a direct result of the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions are either internal or external refugees. Tens of thousands have been detained in prisons, with thousands of these tortured and scores murdered. Haditha, Iraq where 24 Iraqis were massacred is just the best known of the massacres. Women and children are routinely described as “collateral damage” by military spokespersons when they are murdered in military operations.

“Support for the troops” has become political cover to support the wars. In Congress, many of those who claim they oppose the wars, use “support of the troops” to vote for hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the wars. These politicians are political opportunists, but there are also people who genuinely oppose the war, but who also say “I support the troops.”

But to decide whether U.S. troops deserve support you must analyze what they actually do in countries occupied by the U.S. The wars these troops are engaged in have the goal of maintaining and extending U.S. hegemony throughout the world. They are unjust, illegal, and immoral wars. Can you support the troops in these wars? Why is this any different from a German in World War II saying, “I oppose the wars launched by Hitler, but I support the troops of the German army which are making these wars possible.” When the Marines in Haditha massacred Iraqis, including women and children, would it have been correct to say I supported the Marines who killed those people, but not the massacre? This would be ridiculous, but no more so than supporting the troops engaged in the war that made the Haditha massacre possible in the first place.

In 1933 Marine Major General Smedley Butler clarified the role of the U.S. military. He stated, “War is just a racket…It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses…I spent 33 years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps…In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism...”

Like Butler, Watada, and Mejia, those in the military today must take responsibility for what the military does. Just like the German soldiers of World War 2 could not hide behind the “I was just following orders” excuse, military personnel today also can not hide behind it. Those of us who oppose the unjust wars of the Bush regime must struggle with those in the military and those that support them to expose what role the troops objectively play. Supporting the troops engaged in making war against other nations and people on behalf of U.S. imperialism is not acceptable.

Well, there you have it: One should hate American troops because they're "just like German soldiers" in World War II, stormtroopers for the evil "Bush regime." All of this is standard fare for the anti-American left.

There's nothing I could write here to persuade Theisen or his backers that the U.S. is a force for good in the world. For all the voluminous academic research on U.S. imperialism, the truth remains that America is not an empire.

That being the case, the rest of the resistance to the war is just boilerplate hatred for all things military, or conservative and traditional, for that matter (the military's one of the most conservative institutions of modern democracy, without which freedom would not survive).

Why do I do this, then? Why give attention and exposure to what some might say are marginal ideological fringe elements?

Frankly, I don't think these people are "fringe elements." The military today is increasingly isolated from the broader society. With an all volunteer force, service under arms is reserved to a very narrow demographic, and the national elan that is part of the ethic of duty to country is not built in today's generation of youth.

Instead, young people today are constantly bombarded with school curricula teaching oppositional multiculturalism and moral relativism. Kids are taught that fighting - and killing - for a way of life is inherently evil. These are the same kids who wear Che Guevara gear, illustrating they have no idea what freedom really means.

When attacks on recruiters go beyond dissent, to intimidation and bombing, and when the leftist candidates on the presidential trail fall all over themselves pandering to the antiwar hordes, the matter is no longer an issue of marginal importance.

The case for American goodness and power - in support of our military and operations overseas - is the great issue of the day. The economy will get better, and society will find ways to insure everyone in health markets.

But if we dismantle our military the world's forces of dictatorship and death will be at our doorstep. We have to protect the homeland, as we always have.

That's why I support the troops.

Prostitution, Biology, Morality, and the Law

Eliot Spitzer's resigned the office of Governor of New York.

I'll no doubt be posting on the political implications of the decline and fall of the "Enforcer," but for now I'm increasingly intrigued by the partisan and gender-based splits on the ethics and legality of sex-for-trade (recall last night's rebuke of Jane Hamsher for refusing to call for Spitzer's resignation and endorsing prostitution).

At today's Los Angeles Times, David Barash, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington, essentially justified Spitzer's ethical behavior on biological grounds:

One of the most important insights of modern evolutionary biology has been an enhanced understanding of male-female differences, deriving especially from the production of sperm versus eggs. Because sperm are produced in vast numbers, with little if any required parental follow-through, males of most species are aggressive sexual adventurers, inclined to engage in sex with multiple partners when they can. Males who succeed in doing so leave more descendants....

Around the world, high-ranking men have long enjoyed sexual access to comparatively large numbers of women, typically young and attractive. Moreover, women have by and large found such men appealing beyond what may be predicted from their immediate physical traits. "Power," wrote Henry Kissinger, "is the ultimate aphrodisiac"....

Part of being successful, moreover, is a tendency to feel entitled and often to be uninhibited -- in part because one outcome of our species-wide polygamous history is that successful men have been those who took risks, which paid off....

Some readers may bridle at this characterization ... but the evidence is overwhelming. That doesn't justify adultery, by either sex, especially because human beings -- even those burdened by a Y chromosome and suffering from testosterone poisoning -- are presumed capable of exercising control over their impulses....

But even a smidgen of evolutionary insight suggests that maleness plus money plus political power isn't likely to add up to the kind of sexual restraint that the public expects.

Well, despite the obligatory nod to human will, Barash appears to give Spitzer a pass: Genetics and power overdetermined his promiscuity.

I'm not buying it, sorry. Man is not enslaved to his biological needs, and as Spitzer was married - to a fabulously beautiful woman, no less - the ethical impropriety of his own sexual wanderings are all the more inexcusable.

Now, to continue along a slightly different avenue, if we accept that men have a physical need to spread their essence, should this incline us to make distinctions (gender-based, for example) on the propriety and legality of prostitution?

Check what Megan McArdle's talking about on the politcal libertarianism of sex-trading:

Revulsion against sex work isn't unique to female prostitutes. We're also repulsed by men who sell themselves to women, even though there's a general cultural assumption that a healthy man wants to have sex with nearly every female he sees. Something about sex work violates a deep belief--whether cultural or hard wired I don't know--that sex should only be traded for affection.

But if the only prostitutes were men selling themselves to women, no one would want to make it illegal. Supporting yourself that way might bring social opprobrium, like becoming a Morris dancer or eating live chickens--can't you find something better to do? But we wouldn't criminalize it in the name of protecting them from violence, criminals, or the untold horrors of multiple anonymous sexual encounters. A bizarre "We must destroy the village in order to save it" mentality permeates the discussions about legalization on both left and right.

Ross Douthat responds:

Um ... I would still want to make it illegal. I wouldn't want to make it illegal in the name of protecting gigolos from violence or unprotected sex, but then again, that's not fundamentally why I think female prostitution should be illegal either. I think the "protecting vulnerable women" case against legalizing sex work is a perfectly reasonable supplemental argument for keeping the ban in place, but ultimately the case for the ban stands or falls on one's view of morals legislation: First, whether it's appropriate for the law to restrain people from activities that are freely chosen but ultimately self-abusive and morally degrading, and second, whether prostitution, female and male alike, is sufficiently self-abusive and degrading to warrant legal sanction.

You'll have to read the rest of Douthat's post.

I frankly haven't thought about the ethics and legality of prostitution from such a deeply philosophical perspective. I can appreciate a libertarian regime of legalized prostitution, from the point of view of consenting adults entering into rational exchange to satisfy some set of mutually agreed interests.

The problem is that life doesn't follow a strictly non-personal logic of idealized rational decision-making. Power, venality, immaturity, poverty - among just a few factors - intrude into the mutual choice transaction framework surrounding prostitution. The unpredictability of life messes up the model.

Frankly, prostitution's not something that seems clean and respectabe. Even if it was legal, I'd guess most self-esteeming people would have qualms about sex-trading simply on the basis of Judeo-Christain ethics.

The morality of right is what allows us to overcome the biological urges that Barash uses to excuse the polygamous behavior of men in power. That morality doesn't disappear if society - on libertarian grounds - legalizes an activity likely to reflect inequalities of power in income, gender, race, and social status.

In any case, as promised, I'll have more on the fall of Spitzer as things develop.

See Memeorandum in the meanwhile.

No Pride: The Left's Patriotism Gap

I noted previously, after the Texas primary, how Barack Obama claimed that young Americans today, traveling abroad, can't hold their heads high and proclaim: "I Am an American."

Obama's sentiments - which echo his wife's own anti-Americanism - should not be considered some peripheral issue bound to get lost in all the talk of health care and national security. No, the question of pride in nation goes beyond specifics to the fundamental qualities of what we want in our president, an American president.

Obama's a powerful speaker, but his elegant, lofty words cannot hide the considerable specificity to his unpatriotism.

Jonah Goldberg reminds us to attend to the essence of Obama's spoken prose, and how his ideas reflect on the contemporary left:

'Unity is the great need of the hour. ... Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it's the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country. I'm not talking about a budget deficit. ... I'm talking about a moral deficit. I'm talking about an empathy deficit. I'm taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother's keeper; we are our sister's keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny."

So quoth Barack Obama in Atlanta on Jan. 20, but it might as well have been last week, so central is unity to his presidential campaign. And then there's Michelle Obama. "We have lost the understanding that, in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another," the would-be first lady told a rally last month. "That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done."

What is fascinating here is not the sentiment, but what's missing from it. The P-word.
To invoke patriotism seriously is to brand yourself either an old fogy or a right-wing bully. If Obama spoke about patriotism with the sort of passion he expends on unity, many would take him for some sort of demagogue.

But what on Earth could he mean by unity other than a kind of patriotic esprit de corps for the good of his country? Indeed, patriotism is far, far preferable to mere unity. (Mafia syndicates and terrorist cells are unified, after all.) Patriotism is a species of unity that has some moral and philosophical substance to it. In America, patriotism -- as opposed to, say, nationalism -- is a love for a creed, a dedication to what is best about the "American way." Nationalism, a romantic sensibility, says "my country is always right." Patriots hope that their nation will make the right choice.

If you read the speeches of leading Democrats before the Vietnam War, it's amazing how comfortable they were with patriotic rhetoric. "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country," stands foursquare against so much of our entitlement culture.

Vietnam, of course, changed that. "The tragedy of the left," wrote Todd Gitlin in his 2006 book, "Intellectuals and the Flag," "is that, having achieved an unprecedented victory in helping stop an appalling war, it then proceeded to commit suicide."

Suicide might be strong, but the left certainly amputated itself from full-throated patriotic sentiment. Most Democrats speak mellifluously about unity but get tongue-tied or sound as if they're just delivering words plucked from a political consultant's memo when they turn to patriotism. (Virginia Sen. Jim Webb being a major exception.) Sen. John Kerry, who made his name vilifying the Vietnam War, suddenly wanted patriotic credit for the same service when he ran for president in 2004. His line at the Democratic convention -- "I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty" -- was cringe-inducing. The words came out as ironic, almost kitschy. The message seemed to be, "I can play this game better than that chickenhawk, George W. Bush."

When Democrats do speak of patriotism, it is usually as a means of finding fault with Republicans, corporations or America itself. Hence the irony that questioning the patriotism of liberals is a grievous sin, but doing likewise to conservatives is fine. That's how then-candidate Howard Dean could with a straight face insist that then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft "is no patriot. He's a direct descendant of Joseph McCarthy."

See also, Mona Charen, "Obama's Self-Portrait."

American Nihilism: The Escalating War on Military Recruiters

I deeply disagree with Michelle Malkin on immigration reform, and I've obviously not been pleased with her attacks on Senator John McCain.

But no one in the media or the right blogosphere is doing more to publicize the nihilist left's unending campaign of destruction against U.S. military recruitment programs, attacks which demonstrate the pure hatred of America and its martial institutions among many (if not most) in the antiwar cadres.

Malkin has published a new report on the dangerously escalating war on America's armed services at home. The report should be a read widely as a wake-up call in the aftermath of last week's Times Square bombing, :

Ideas have consequences. Inaction has consequences. For the past several years, I've chronicled the left's escalating war on military recruiters -- and the apathetic, weak-kneed response to it. The anti-recruiter thugs on college campuses and in liberal enclaves have thrived thanks to a combination of public indifference, law enforcement fecklessness and left-wing ideological apologism.

It has now been a week since the Times Square military recruitment center bombing. The investigation continues -- and so does the left's denial of the ongoing campaign against military recruiters. At a national conference of anarchists in Washington, D.C., last weekend, a "solidarity sticker" glorifying the biker bomber made the rounds. On the Internet, "peace" activists threatened the Gathering of Eagles, a national military support group that organized a rally at Times Square last weekend. From Pittsburgh to Berkeley, anti-war extremists have smeared recruiters as "death pimps" and "child predators." The militant Code Pink group continues to organize in-your-face protests to drive recruiters from major metropolitan areas.

The Times Square bombing was not an isolated incident, but an all-too-predictable symptom of reckless tolerance for dangerous "peace" peddlers skating on the edge of sedition. Lone nuts? Here is a brief history of the anti-military recruitment movement's mounting acts of vandalism and violence.

Malkin lists over two dozen incidents of intimidation and violence against recruiter in the last few years, for example:

January 20, 2005: At Seattle Central Community College, Army recruiter Sgt. Jeff Due and his colleague Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Washington were hounded by an angry mob of 500 anti-war students. The recruiters' table was destroyed; their handouts, torn apart. Protesters threw water bottles and newspapers at the soldiers. The far-left Students Against War had been agitating to kick the recruiters off campus. The college administration refused to punish the radicals.

The most recent incidents include Code Pink's violent campaign against recruiters in Berkeley, and the Times Square recruiting center bombing.

I wrote on the Times Square case, here, here, and here.

Malkin sees no end in sight to the antiwar mayhem:

When will this escalating war end? There will be no end in sight until lawmakers, law enforcement, the media and the public open their eyes to the hate, connect the dots, and stop coddling the increasingly crazed and emboldened anti-military militants before more bombs go off -- and innocents get harmed -- in the name of "peace."

Her concern is not unwarranted.

As Gayle at Dragon Lady's Den reports, in the wake of the New York bombing, there are new threats against the pro-victory support organization, Gathering of Eagles, which is planning a series of demonstrations this weekend.

Clearly deranged, the activist making the threats has now called on all "imams" to issue a fatwah ordering the assassination of Michelle Malkin.

Just a crazy extemist, right? An isolated case, which is nothing compared to Republican fear-mongering, some might argue.

I don't think so.

Terrorists Deliver Severed Fingers to Washington

If you check Memeorandum, there's not one post up on the news of the delivery to Washington of the severed fingers of five hostages in Iraq. This is a very grisly story, and given the increasing desperation of Iraq's terrorist groups, we might as well expect the delivery of decapitated heads.

McClatchy has the story:

U.S. authorities in Baghdad have received five severed fingers belonging to four Americans and an Austrian who were taken hostage more than a year ago in Iraq, officials here said today.

The FBI is investigating the grisly development, and the families of the five kidnapped contractors have been notified, American officials said on condition of anonymity because only Washington officials are permitted to publicly discuss the matter.

Authorities have confirmed that the fingers belonged to hostages Jonathan Cote, of Gainesville, Fla., Joshua Munns, of Redding, Calif., Paul Reuben, of Buffalo, Minn., Bert Nussbaumer of Vienna, Austria, and Ronald J. Withrow, of Lubbock, Texas.

My hope and prayers go out to the hostages and their families (and I indeed prayer for my fellow Americans before I lay down to sleep).

The depravity of our enemies is unlimited, although left-wing blog coverage of their deeds is defeaningly the opposite.

See more news and anaysis at the Washington Post and Jawa Report.

Organized Labor Mounts McCain Smear Campaign

Labor organizations have launched a smear campaign against GOP nominee John McCain. The atttacks paint the Arizona Senator as a "100-Year-in-Iraq" Bush clone, for example, in this "McSame as Bush" ad, from the Campaign to Defend America (via YouTube):

Here's more from the Los Angeles Times:

With two celebrity-class candidates, Democrats have seen their presidential contest draw record voter turnout and an influx of Latinos and younger Americans to the party. But some are becoming concerned that the party now risks losing its hold on a more established set of needed supporters: blue-collar workers.

The fears are strong enough that the AFL-CIO today will announce a multimillion-dollar campaign to discredit Republican candidate John McCain among union households and link him to President Bush's unpopular economic policies.

A separate labor-backed group, the Campaign to Defend America, has launched a television ad portraying McCain as "McSame as Bush" on issues including the Iraq war, economics and energy policy. The spot ends with a picture of the two men embracing.

What explains organized labor's unhinged attacks?

Sheer desperation, as recent election data suggest that McCain has a huge opportunity with moderate Reagan Democrats, folks who are obviously not too thrilled about all of the gender and race politics taking over the Democratic primaries, not to mention the calls for a relentlessly retreatist foreign policy among the antiwar left:

The AFL-CIO became concerned after polls and focus groups found considerable willingness among union members to consider supporting McCain, regardless of which Democrat won the nomination.

Republicans have signaled that they have the Reagan Democrats at the top of their target list. Ken Mehlman, a former GOP national chairman who is informally advising McCain, said the campaign's blue-collar outreach would attract Reagan Democrats for the same reason the former president did: McCain is seen as frank, a good leader, strong on defense and opposed to tax increases.

Some analysts say the threat of defections to McCain will be particularly acute if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee. In many of this year's caucuses and primaries, Obama has lost working-class white voters to rival Hillary Rodham Clinton. Holding on to those voters in swing states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania will be one key to the party's efforts in November against McCain, the presumed GOP nominee.

Look for organized labor and the radical left to become increasingly fanatical in their efforts to discredit McCain.

The Arizona Senator continues to match-up competitively in trial-run dead-heats against either potential Democratic opponent in public opinion surveys.

Media Enablers in Spitzer Scandal

Eliot Spitzer's rise to power was facilitated by a fawning press that abandoned its responsibility as the public's watchdog. Spitzer's now disgraced. Kimberly Strassel argues the press should share his ignominy:

The fall of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer holds many lessons, and the press will surely be examining them in coming months. But don't expect the press corps to delve into the biggest lesson of all -- its own role as his enabler.

Journalists have spent the past two days asking how a man of Mr. Spitzer's stature would allow himself to get involved in a prostitution ring. The answer, in my mind, is clear. The former New York attorney general never believed normal rules applied to him, and his view was validated time and again by an adoring press. "You play hard, you play rough, and hopefully you don't get caught," said Mr. Spitzer two years ago. He never did get caught, because most reporters were his accomplices.

Journalism has many functions, but perhaps the most important is keeping tabs on public officials. That duty is even more vital concerning government positions that are subject to few other checks and balances. Chief among those is the prosecutor, who can use his awesome state power to punish, even destroy, private citizens.

Yet from the start, the press corps acted as an adjunct of Spitzer power, rather than a skeptic of it. Many journalists get into this business because they want to see wrongs righted. Mr. Spitzer portrayed himself as the moral avenger. He was the slayer of the big guy, the fat cat, the Wall Street titan -- all allegedly on behalf of the little guy. The press ate it up, and came back for more.

Time magazine bestowed upon Mr. Spitzer the title "Crusader of the Year," and likened him to Moses. Fortune dubbed him the "Enforcer." A fawning article in the Atlantic Monthly in 2004 explained he was "a rock star," and "the Democratic Party's future." In an uncritical 2006 biography, then Washington Post reporter Brooke Masters compared the attorney general to no less than Teddy Roosevelt.

What the media never acknowledged is that somewhere along the line (say, his first day in public office) Mr. Spitzer became the big guy, the titan. He had the power to trample lives and bend the rules, while also burnishing his own political fortune. He was the one who deserved as much, if not more, scrutiny as onetime New York Stock Exchange chief Dick Grasso or former American International Group CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.

What makes this more embarrassing for any self-respecting journalist is that Mr. Spitzer knew all this, and played the media like a Stradivarius. He knew what sort of storyline they'd be sympathetic to, and spun it. He knew, too, that as financial journalism has become more competitive, breaking news can make a career. He doled out scoops to favored reporters, who repaid him with allegiance. News organizations that dared to criticize him were cut off. After a time, few criticized anymore.

Strassel notes how media boosters continued their fawning Monday night, suggesting a tragedy in Spitzer's fall, to which Strassel concludes:

There's little that's tragic about Mr. Spitzer, unless you consider his victims (which would appear to include his own family). The press would do well to meditate on that, and consider how many violations they winked at and validated over the years. Politicians don't exist to be idolized by the press, at least not by any press corps doing its job.

See also the conflicting reports on the governor's tenure, "Spitzer Resists Calls to Resign," and "Spitzer Aides Say Governor Will Resign Today."

How Could Silda Stand By Her Man?

Silda Wall Spitzer, the troubled wife of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, stood queitly at his side on Monday afternoon as her sex-trading husband apologized publically for his unethical escapades.

How could she do it? Why would she? Why reprise the role of standing-by-her-man at a time when many felt the man in question was hardly deserving? Haven't we all been through this too many times before?

The Los Angeles Times tackles the issue:

It was the way she stood there, enduring.

Silda Wall Spitzer did not say a word as her husband, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, brusquely apologized to his family and the public after he was allegedly caught on a wiretap doing business with a high-priced prostitution ring. Her face was drawn. But she took her husband's hand as they left the room.

This scandal has many salacious details, but it was the image of Silda Wall Spitzer at her man's side that dominated conversations across the country Tuesday.

That moment of public humiliation stayed with people -- men and women, Democrats and Republicans. At a beauty salon in Brooklyn Heights, at the Mellow Mushroom pizzeria in midtown Atlanta, at a Denver office building, at a bar in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the same questions came up:

How could she?

Why did she?

Haven't we seen this play one too many times?

Why do we go through this ritual of public shame and repentance, with the political wife standing mutely before the TV cameras as her husband admits his sexual indiscretion?

"I find it nauseating . . . phony and awful," said Leah Schanzer, 38, a doctoral student who stopped for coffee at a Starbucks in New York City. She gave an exaggerated shudder.

"It makes it seem like she's Susie Homemaker," said her friend Leslie Heller, 47. "She shouldn't be standing there, next to him"....

Newspaper websites have been swamped with thousands of comments on the case; gleeful barbs are being tossed around the blogosphere.

But to many -- especially women -- the tawdry details added up to more than another generic scandal. When they looked at Silda Wall Spitzer's weary face, it felt personal.

"She should've said, 'This is your fight. This is your battle. You stand there and get yourself out of it,' " said Linda Walters, 61.

I have to admit, when I saw Silda Spitzer up there I had mixed feelings. Indeed, I did see her stance as signifying the loyal and forgiving wife, ready to move forward as a couple, perhaps even sacrificing her own dignity for her husband's.

But I also thought of her is a beautiful, apparently capable woman, of whom Spitzer's lucky to be with. The governor had it all: A fabulous wife, three loving daughters, a powerful political position, and a future.

Why blow that? What could be worth throwing it all away, especially in the ultimate, even evil, hypocrisy of the sex-trading sin.

It's hard to understand, but obviously stories like this are the most fascinating: They combine sex, power, and plain old hurt. Unfortunately, much of the pain is on display in the visage of Silda Wall Spitzer.

See also:

* The Public Ordeal of a Private Person.

* Spitzer Aides Say Governor Will Resign Today.

* Silda Spitzer, the Wife Who Gave Up Career to Back Politics and Ambition.

* Spitzer's Wife Kinda Hot When Not Weeping or Whatever.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Hamsher Rejects Spitzer Resignation, Endorses Legal Prostitution

Well, the partisans are lining up around the Spitzer Client 9 scandal, but frankly at least one of the hard-lefty positions is implacably over the top.

Jane Hamsher not only thinks Spitzer's transgressions don't rate resignation from office, she advocates full-blown legal prostitution, arguing that sexual solicitation laws seek to "make the lives of prostitutes worse":

And for the record, as someone who thinks prostitution should be legal - and that most laws restricting it are written to make the lives of prostitutes worse, not better - I don't plan to be calling for Spitzer's resignation any time soon.

Hamsher's touting the left's culture of death precisely as ABC News reports that a 22 year-old call girl has identified Spitzer as one of her best customers:

A 22-year-old escort found on another call-girl Web site claimed to ABC News in a phone interview that Gov. Eliot Spitzer had been one of her customers two years ago when he was New York attorney general and that he was a nice guy who tipped well.

"He didn't do anything that wasn't clean," she said, adding that she knew who he was because he had made calls from the attorney general's office in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Federal investigators say there is no evidence Spitzer used state money or campaign funds to pay the prostitutes, but that the way he moved an estimated $40,000 through various accounts violated federal money laundering laws.

"These are serious laws and laws that given the amount of money involved here could mean a prison term of 10 to 18 months," Sean O'Shea, a former federal prosecutor specializing in financial crimes, said.

A prison term is one of the issues holding up the governor's resignation as well as whether or not he pleads guilty to criminal charges.

Other than that, lawyers close to the case say New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is prepared to resign and has his letter written.

Obviously it's in Spitzer's interest to work out a plea deal eliminating possible imprisonment, and thus it's at least reasonable to see him holding off on the resignation until he's got a deal.

This process can't be prolonged, however. In the meanwhile, keep your eyes peeled for pro-prostitution heel-digging among the Hamsherite screeching nihilists on the far left-wing fringe.

Note too: If Spitzer was a Republican governor I'd be calling for his resignation just as loudly - he needs to go, irrespective of partisan loyalties. There's no room for that behavior, especially while in the public's trust. I can't justify it, and neither should the America-bashing left.

Obama Takes Mississippi

Wow, my first post writing M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I!

I'm excited, but not so much for Barack Obama, who won the Mississippi primary tonight.

Frankly, I'd say the shady socialist's got the nomination in the tank, and for all of my ribbing of Hillary Clinton, I'd rather see her as the nominee - mainly because I expect she'd be more likely to moderate back to a traditional liberal internationalist foreign policy than is Obama.

(I don't love some of the antiwar elements of such a foreign policy orientation, but it is internationalist, free-trading, and - in the right hands - recognizes the primacy of power in world politics, which is preferable to an international policy of cozying up with dictators).

But check the New York Times background on Obama in Mississippi:

Senator Barack Obama won Mississippi’s Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, building his delegate lead over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the final contest before the nominating fight heads to Pennsylvania for a six-week showdown.

Mr. Obama’s victory was built on a wave of support among blacks, who made up half of those who turned out to vote, according to exit polls conducted by television networks and The Associated Press. The polls found that roughly 90 percent of black voters supported Mr. Obama, but only a third of white voters did.

With 92 percent of precincts reporting across Mississippi, Mr. Obama led Mrs. Clinton 59 percent to 39 percent.

“It’s just another win in our column, and we are getting more delegates,” Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said in declaring victory in an interview on CNN from Chicago, where he arrived Tuesday evening after spending the day in Mississippi and Pennsylvania. “I am grateful to the people of Mississippi for the wonderful support. What we’ve tried to do is steadily make sure that in each state we are making the case about the need for change in this country.”

Hillary Clinton's obviously still solidly in the race, and it's not out of the question for her to win the nomination via the "nuclear option," i.e., by leveraging the superdelegate vote, which she'll be able to do more credibly if she can win a couple more of the remaining primaries on the Democratic calendar.

No matter what happens, Clinton's aggressive policy of taking the nomination to the convention's going to harken to 1968, particulary if she indeed secures the party's nod, alienating the left's hardline antiwar base.

Stay tuned for more updates on these developments.

Democrats Deny Iraq

Michael O'Hanlon, over at USA Today, argues that the Democrats badly underestimate - even deny - our continued progress in Iraq, a point I've been making here for quite some time.

Here's O'Hanlon:

Most Democrats — in fact, most Americans — believe that the Iraq war has been a huge mistake for this country. Accordingly, it's no real surprise that Democrats will nominate a presidential candidate who sees Iraq as they see it: anguished by the loss of life, deeply upset by the damage done to America's reputation, and angered by the unilateralism and poor war planning of the Bush administration.

These viewpoints are sincere, legitimate and defensible. But they sometimes fail to fold in the reality of how far Iraq has come in the past 12 months under the new surge-based strategy of Gen. David Petraeus. Most Democrats seem to belittle or even deny the progress, despite a 75% reduction in violence and the beginnings of Iraqi political compromise.

To be sure, it is understandably hard for Democrats and other administration critics to believe that a war fought so badly at first could take a turn for the better. We are not used to such things in the modern era. Arguably, one has to go back to the American Civil War to find a parallel, and even that is a poor analogy because President Lincoln's performance in that war was clearly far better than President Bush's has been in this one, to put it mildly. That said, if Democrats cannot get beyond their viewpoint, they could suffer badly in the fall as a result. Even more important, the nation could suffer as we waste an election campaign refighting the debates of 2002 and 2003 rather than looking to the future.

The Democratic position — embraced particularly by Sen. Barack Obama but also by Sen. Hillary Clinton — is that we need to make haste for the exits. Obama rigidly calls for pulling nearly all combat forces out of Iraq within about a year of Inauguration Day. Clinton's position leaves room for some flexibility, though her words on the campaign trail are generally similar to Obama's. But neither candidate's approach would be supported by most leaders — American or Iraqi — on the ground in Iraq. Only those who have concluded that the war is already lost tend to back such a position. And that latter viewpoint is far less common today than it was a year ago, or even months ago.

Read the whole thing.

O'Hanlon does a good job bringing together the various angles of the Democrats' Iraq dilemma. I would argue that he sometimes tries too hard to stick to the middle, for example, with his jab that McCain's "open-ended" commitment is over the top.

Still, O'Hanlon's right to point out the Democratic Party's nihilist opposition to American success in Iraq. What he could have added is that Clinton, Obama, and the surrender advocates up on Capital Hill are scared to death of alientating the anti-American base of the party's netroots contingent.

Nothing can happen on the ground in Iraq - no amount of military progress, no amount of political progress, or no amount of outside intervention from terror sponsors like Iran - to deflect the antiwar forces from their single-minder dertermination to backstab the American mission.

O'Hanlon's obviously responding to the regular attacks he gets from the kiddie-Kos-Kool-Aid types who routinely savage his reputation.

He does a good job. But even O'Hanlon has to realize that whatever persuasivness his arguments enjoy will be lost on America's enemies here at home.

Client 9 Solicited for 6 Years, Report Suggests

The New York Post reports that Governor Eliot Spitzer used prostitution services for 6 years (via Memeorandum):

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been soliciting high-priced hookers for at least six years and possibly for more than a decade, sources tell The Post.

The revelation yesterday that the crusading governor was in fact "Client 9" named in a federal prostitution indictment did not shock insiders in the city's sex industry.

Sources tell The Post that Spitzer had frequented high-priced hookers as far back as 2002 and possibly earlier.

Spitzer, who as attorney general lead investigations into prostitution, was among an elite group of powerbrokers and high-powered attorneys that regularly paid for dates at top escort agencies, sources said.

IRS investigators inadvertently stumbled upon Spitzer's secret life as a prostitute patron when his bank referred them to questionable wire transfers in his commercial bank account.

Allahpundit yesterday cautioned against schadenfreude. Apparently Wall Street missed that post.

Obama's Lucky to Be Black!

Hey, I don't mind taking pride in one's race, but when a major Clinton operative starts arguing Barack Obama's "lucky to be black" - which presumably gives him an edge this season - we've come a long way in race politics!

Here's CNN:

Barack Obama’s chief strategist said Tuesday that a comment by one of Hillary Clinton’s top fundraisers that Barack Obama would not be a major presidential contender if he were not black – coupled with Clinton’s “own inexplicable unwillingness" to deny that he was a Muslim during a recent interview – indicated “an insidious pattern that needs to be addressed."

David Axelrod called on the New York senator to drop former New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro from her finance committee. "When you wink and nod at offensive statements you're really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes," said Axelrod.

Ferraro, the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee in 1984, told the (Torrance, California) Daily Breeze that "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Ferraro said the New York senator had suffered because the press "has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign."

Well there's more of the "invisible woman misogyny."

I thought I'd seen it all!

Sure must be rough running against the new messiah. First Obama wasn't black enough. Now he's the fortunate one!

Obama's Second Coming

My wife's been getting Rolling Stone delivered to our home.

I'm not sure why, since she's not some tattoed alternative rocker or some wild-eyed antiwar counter-culture provocateur. Actually, she's gets a lot of mags like Ladies Home Journal and Redbook, and maybe some subscription renewal incentive had a side deal for the left-wing music magazine.

No matter, I've been reading some of the articles.

It turns out Rolling Stone endorsed Barack Obama with this week's edition.

Why now? That's the first thought that comes to mind. If the mag's got any pull in the rockin' electorate, you'd think they might have laid down an endorsement, say, around the time of the New Hampshire primary. For all of their political reporting, maybe the editors really don't understand the imperatives of frontloading.

But what was really on my mind is the meat in the endorsement itself. Rolling Stone's apparently an alternative media tribune for the idealistic, if not the radical set. Their piece is a classic example of messiah-building on the left (more on that here and here). I mean, take a look at this yourself:

Throughout the primaries, and during a visit he paid to our offices, we have come to know Barack Obama, his toughness and his grace. He would not be intimidated, and he declined to back down, when Senator Clinton called him "frankly, naive" for his willingness to meet leaders of hostile nations. When one of her top campaign officials tried to smear him for his earlier drug use, he did not equivocate or backtrack. On the matter of experience and capability, he has run an impressive, nearly flawless campaign — one that whupped America's most hard-boiled political infighters. Indeed, Obama was far more prepared to run a presidential campaign — from Day One — than Senator Clinton. And at no point did he go negative with personal attacks or character assassination; as much as they might have been justified, they didn't even seem tempting to him.

Obama has emerged by displaying precisely the kind of character and judgment we need in a president: renouncing the politics of fear, speaking frankly on the most pressing issues facing the country and sticking to his principles. He recognizes that running for president is an opportunity to inspire an entire nation.

Obama was far more prepared for "Day One"?

Does that include things like feeding the multitude? Let's give Hillary Clinton some credit here for raising the issue.

Certainly, all this hard-left Obama-worship is exceptionally light on analysis. If Obama's divine, you'd think he'd a least hold his own during press conferences, as Michael Barone points out in comparison to John McCain:

McCain takes questions until the last reporter runs out of things to ask. Obama terminated a probing press conference last week after eight questions with the lame excuse that he was running late. Obama's oratory has been compared to John Kennedy's. But he doesn't have Kennedy's gift for gracefully parrying hostile questions.

Not so miraculous after all, it seems. At least Christ attended to the questions from the high priests.
But not only that. The Rolling Stone endorsement goes further, to rehash all the left-wing demonized talking-points against the last seven years. Speaking of Obama:

Obama ... [has] denounced the Republican campaign of fear. Early in the campaign, John Edwards took the lead, calling the War on Terror a campaign slogan, not a policy. Obama rejected the subtle imagery of false patriotism by not wearing a flag pin in his lapel, and he dismissed the broader notion that the Democratic Party had to find a way to buy into this entire load of fear-mongering War on Terror bullshit — to out-Republican the Republicans — and thus become, in his description of Hillary Clinton's macho posturing on foreign policy, little more than "Bush-Cheney lite."

We have a deeply divided nation, driven apart by economic policies that have deliberately created the largest income disparities in our history, with stunning tax breaks for the wealthiest and subsidies for giant industries. The income of the average citizen is stagnant, and his quality of life continues to slowly erode from inflation.

We are embittered and hobbled by the unnecessary and failed war in Iraq. We have been worn down by long years of fear- and hate-filled political strategies, assaults on constitutional freedoms, and levels of greed and cynicism, that — once seen for what they are — no people of moral values or ethics can tolerate.

A new president must heal these divides, must at long last face the hypocrisy and inequity of unprecedented government handouts to oil giants, hedge-fund barons, agriculture combines and drug companies. At the same time, the new president must transform our lethal energy economy — replacing oil and coal and the ethanol fraud with green alternatives and strict rain-forest preservation and tough international standards — before the planet becomes inhospitable for most human life....

We need to recover the spiritual and moral direction that should describe our country and ourselves. We see this in Obama, and we see the promise he represents to bring factions together, to achieve again the unity that drives great change and faces difficult, and inconvenient, truths and peril.

Whoa!

That's a lot, apocalyptic even. No wonder Obama's nomination is seen as no less than the second coming - he's our savior!

In Search of the American Mind

I saw an ad last week for Susan Jacoby's new book, The Age of American Unreason (as I was skimming my new issue of the New York Review of Books).

I was hanging out at Borders with my oldest son, where I was also reading the Atlantic Monthly - a store copy, as I'm not a subscriber (the edition had the best piece on public education I've seen in a long time, Sandra Tsing Loh's, "Tales Out of School," which is a must read).

I walked around the store see if they had a copy of the Jacoby volume, but no luck.

My son wanted to shop for a new hip sweatshirt jacket for school over at Tilly's, so I gathered up the books I did find, and headed to the checkout. Russell Kirk's, The Conservative Mind, Jim Mann's, The Rise of the Vulcans, and John McCain's Faith of My Fathers, put me back about 50 bucks.

I'm about a quarter of the way through McCain's book, which I thought I'd better read sooner rather than later, as I've pretty much been the Arizona Senator's biggest neocon blogging buddy on the web!

In any case, back to Jacoby's book. The New York Times has a review of it, and you're going to love this:

There are few subjects more timely than the one tackled by Susan Jacoby in her new book, “The Age of American Unreason,” in which she asserts that “America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism.”

For more than a decade there have been growing symptoms of this affliction, from fundamentalist assaults on the teaching of evolution to the Bush administration’s willful disavowal of expert opinion on global warming and strategies for prosecuting the war in Iraq. Conservatives have turned the term “intellectual,” like the term “ liberal,” into a dirty word in politics (even though neo-conservative intellectuals played a formative role in making the case for war against Iraq); policy positions tend to get less attention than personality and tactics in the current presidential campaign; and the democratizing influence of the Internet is working to banish expertise altogether, making everyone an authority on everything. Traditional policy channels involving careful analysis and debate have been circumvented by the Bush White House in favor of bold, gut-level calls, and reasoned public discussions have increasingly given way to noisy partisan warfare among politicians, commentators and bloggers alike.

Noisy partisan warfare? I'll say!

Not only that, when everyone's an authority, nobody is. There goes that Ph.D. in political science!

Seriously, the reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, argues that Jacoby's book is excellent, even if it treads less-than-originally over familiar educational-literary ground. Here's more:

As Ms. Jacoby sees it, there are several key reasons for “the resurgent American anti-intellectualism of the past 20 years.” To begin with, television, video games and the Internet have created a “culture of distraction” that has shortened attention spans and left people with “less time and desire” for “two human activities critical to a fruitful and demanding intellectual life: reading and conversation.”

The eclipse of print culture by video culture began in the 1960s, Ms. Jacoby argues, adding that the ascendance of youth culture in that decade also promoted an attitude denigrating the importance of tradition, history and knowledge.

By the ’80s, she goes on, self-education was giving way to self-improvement, core curriculums were giving way to classes intended to boost self-esteem, and old-fashioned striving after achievement was giving way to a rabid pursuit of celebrity and fame. The old middlebrow culture, which prized information and aspiration — and which manifested itself, during the post-World War II years, in a growing number of museums and symphony orchestras, and a Book-of-the-Month club avidity for reading — was replaced by a mass culture that revolved around television and blockbuster movies and rock music.

Reminds me a little here of Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind, which I bought right when it came out in 1987, but didn't read until I started my current position as a professor of political science.

Jacoby's topic, anti-intellectualism, is a big one for me, as I sometimes just can't get a handle on the intense oppostion to books, learning, and anything having to do with a life of the mind among many students today.

Of course, I'm at community college, so I've got kids often with so many disadvantages that it's little wonder that many haven't been acculturated in a home environment of books and ideas. But as the passages here illustrate, it's more than that, from TV and electronic entertainment, to the entitlement culture the denigrates the hard work that is the essence of academic excellence.

Will things get better?

I'm not optimistic. I was a young punk skateboarder in my teens, but I loved to read at the same time. Robert Ludlum was my favorite, but I'd read a classic here and there. In college I couldn't get enough, and often took classes - like French History Since 1789 and Shakespeare - that were not necessary for my personal graduation curriculum. I just loved school.

And I think that's what it's going to take, some kind of home-based, personal avocation toward learning. We have no national standards, outside of NCLB, which is watered down and violates federalism for many conservatives anyway. So the burden of acculturation has to reside at the level of the family. Parents must engage in a home environment of "concerted cultivation," even if such a program is not exactly deliberate or explicit.

What does this mean? Well, there's got to be a rich language environment of kids at home, with ample opportunity and resources to engage in intellectual pursuits crucial for early human development. Everyone seems to know this, with all the talk in recent years of childhood brain development and the need for intellectual stimulation of infants.

But it's more than that: It seems that home environments need to have a sense of simple rigor, as well as the granting of individual autonomy of growth to the child. How are parenting styles situated in the context of the need to cultivate children's development and independence of thought? Reading is key, certainly, but it's the effort to pull all things together, art, politics, sports into a whole of daily life that creates the concerted family stimulation necessary for building accumulated advantages of learning and mobility.

Governments can't do this, so while I've yet to read Jacoby or other recent pedagogical tracts, educational policies that seek to turn this around have got to change the culture of the home.

Whether that's by setting tougher standards at school or by creating greater incentives for parents and kids to experience the benefits of learning and growth, such an agenda must be a large part of social and educational policy moving forward. Unfortunately, I doubt the emphasis on greater family and personal responsibility will go over all that well with progressive educators. But until it does, expect more ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism.

I've got to hang it up here for the night.

My youngest son picked out a book at Ralphs, Thimbletack's Mission, and we need to get a bit of it finished before my we brush teeth and hit the sack.

It's a special occasion tonight as well, for my oldest boy's away this week at his school's "science camp" in San Bernardino Mountains - which in a way, is another element of the concerted cultivation that my oldest's been lucky enough to have.

I feel blessed sometimes with the opportunities I've had to learn, and it's natural to pass along the love of ideas and achievement to my offspring. Can we pass along these ethics to our people and our nation as a whole?

Feminist Hat Trick: It Doesn't Get Any Better!

Well, by now you've seen my post on Hillary Clinton's "invisible woman" campaign, as well as the follow up on the Charlotte Allen uproar at the Washington Post.

Well, it turns out that the feminist Torquemadas are just starting to roll. Linda Hirshman's been axed from her writing gig over at Talking Points Memo, apparently for not toeing the Obama line this last week during WaPo's "Allen affair."

But hey, without further ado, here's the first person account:

Hi there. Linda Hirshman here. I just got the boot from TPM Café, where I have been blogging for more than a year. Back story: I published a piece on the cover of the Outlook section of the Washington Post last Sunday, March 2, on the class divide in Hillary Clinton's female supporters. Since I criticized the scribbling females of the blogosphere, the article elicited the predictable onslaught of response from them. But when I sent Andrew Golis, my normal contact at TPM Café, my response to post, I got an email telling me TPM had pulled my posting privileges (I don't normally publish email exchanges, but I have no personal relationship with any of the people at TPM, including Golis, and this seems like a fairly straightforward public business communication with no personal material involved.): "For the time being, we're cycling our regular contributers [sic] at the Coffee house and trying to cut down the number of folks with at will posting privileges. If you occasionally have a piece I'd of course love to check it out. But unfortunately we're limiting the number of people who post regularly."

I must admit I was a little surprised. I have not been fired in a long time (decades, really), and I think I'm having a pretty good run in the crowded precincts of political commentary. True, my last few postings at TPM Café were not in keeping with the overwhelming majority of their articles, making and making the case for Senator Barack Obama. I questioned the value of an Idaho caucus victory. I criticized Maureen Dowd's column suggesting that when a perfect female candidate came along, the media would be delighted to support her. I suggested that "Josh" might have waited to get more survey results before he posted his video embracing the ultimately erroneous Zogby predictions for the California primary the afternoon before the primary. But I thought that the new media of the blogosphere was actually established in part to offset what they considered the tendency of the MSM to cut its coverage to suit its preexisting, largely establishment, predilections. So I was blithely oblivious to the possibility that my dissenting views on the inevitability and divinity of the Obama candidacy might cause a problem. Never bashful, I thought I'd press the messenger.

Now this is a woman for my heart!

Questioning poll findings favoring an Obama win? Oh, the audacity!!

If you check the post Hirshman's got some of the e-mail from TPM, and don't miss the closing:

They do not appear to have deacquisitioned Ruth Rosen, who is one of the Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama!™ which of course only supports my most paranoid thoughts.

"Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama," eh?

That's a mouthful, at the least (and check some of Hirshman's links, where you'll see some insight to the feminist divide, not to mention Kathryn Jean Lopez at the National Review).