GOP Will Appeal to Craven Prejudices, Essayist Alleges

I've already noted how lefty bloggers are smearing as racist conservatives who highlight the pathologies of black culture (see here, here, and here).

In addition to that, we've now got Paul Waldman, over at the American Prospect, alleging that the GOP's fully gearing up for a campaign of racial prejudice:

For months, I've been predicting that conservatives would delicately prompt voters to see Barack Obama through the lens of race. They'd drop hints, they'd make roundabout arguments, they'd find a hundred subtle ways to encourage people to vote their prejudices, while denying vociferously that they were doing anything of the sort.

It turns out I was wrong. Not about whether they'd try to exploit racial prejudice (that was about as easy to predict as the rising of the sun), but about how they would do it. After some hesitation and baby steps, the conservative campaign against Barack Obama has finally begun. And there's nothing subtle about it.

When the controversy over Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright reached critical mass last week, it was the political equivalent of the green flag at a NASCAR race. The conservative strategists and talkers had been slowly circling the track, feet itchy on the accelerator, just waiting for the signal to floor it. But now, as The Politico reported in a story titled "GOP sees Rev. Wright as path to victory," the Republican strategists know exactly what must be done, starting with famed ad man Alex Castellanos:

"All the sudden you've got two dots, and two dots make a line," said Castellanos. "You start getting some sense of who he is, and it's not the Obama you thought. He's not the Tiger Woods of politics."

As Castellanos knows well, these kinds of attacks have their greatest power when they tap into pre-existing archetypes voters already carry with them, and the deeper they reside in our lizard brains the better. So they will make sure white Americans know that Obama is not Tiger Woods. He's not the unthreatening black man, he's the scary black man. He's Al Sharpton, he's Malcom X, he's Huey Newton. He'll throw grievance in your face, make you feel guilty, and who knows, maybe kill you and rape your wife. Castellanos knows what he's talking about -- when it comes to painting frightening pictures for the voters, he's the Rembrandt of racial resentment. Among other accomplishments, Castellanos was responsible for a series of ugly ads on behalf of Jesse Helms' 1990 Senate re-election race against Harvey Gantt, probably the most explicitly race-baiting campaign American politics has seen since the retirement of George Wallace. The story continues:

"It's harder for people to say it's taken out of context because these are Wright's own words," noted Chris LaCivita, the Republican strategist who helped craft the Swift Boat commercials against Kerry that employed the use of their target's own language when he returned from Vietnam and returned his medals. "You let people draw their own conclusions."

"You don't have to say that he's unpatriotic; you don't question his patriotism," he added. "Because I guaran-damn-tee you that, with that footage, you don't have to say it."

The Republicans are certainly setting down their marker: they intend, as they have so many times before, to wage a campaign appealing to the ugliest prejudices, the most craven fears, the most vile hatreds. It's not that people should vote against Obama just because he's black, they're saying, but you know, he's that kind of black. As Rush Limbaugh said on Friday, "It is clear that Senator Obama has disowned his white half, that he's decided he's got to go all in on the black side." Ladies and gentlemen, your "moral values" party.

Not saying it, as LaCivita noted -- whether "it" is that Obama hates America, or that he's just too black to be trusted -- is actually crucial to making the argument effectively. As Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg argued in her 2001 book The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality, appeals to racism only work when they are implicit:

When a society has repudiated racism, yet racial conflict persists, candidates can win by playing the race card only through implicit racial appeals. The implicit nature of these appeals allows them to prime racial stereotypes, fears, and resentments while appearing not to do so. When an implicit appeal is rendered explicit -- when other elites bring the racial meaning of the appeal to voters' attention -- it appears to violate the norm of racial equality. It then loses its ability to prime white voters' racial predispositions.

In other words, voters presented with racial appeals have two competing forces tugging them in opposite directions: the feelings they carry with them on at least a subconscious level, and their more conscious belief in equality and desire to not think of themselves as racist. In order to convince them to vote their racial fears and animosities, you have to give them a story they can tell themselves that acquits them of any accusation of racism.

By that logic, someone who focuses on the nihilist propensity for criminal behavior among large numbers of urban underclass blacks will be automatically identified as racist.

That's not to mention all of the other pathologies holding down blacks, today, like the crisis of illegitimacy that's destroying the black American family, nor the culture of witness intimidation in the inner cities that's hindering the ability of law enforcement to prosecute black thugs (see, "Witness Intimidation: An Urban Crisis").

But hey, we can't mention these things in the campaign. We wouldn't want to appeal to craven race prejudices.

Happy Blog Anniversary to Great Satan's Girlfriend!

GrEaT sAtAn'S gIrLfRiEnD's having a one-year birthday bash, so head on over to check out some of her posts!

Here's the anniversary post, but also check out some choice GSGF analysis on American power:

It is inconceivable that the United States, after having conquered Afghanistan and Iraq and driven al Qaeda into hiding, will give up with the job half done.

In Afghanistan we must establish order.

In Iraq we must prevent the Shiites from setting up an Iranian-style tyranny, the Sunnis from reimposing a dictatorship, and both from oppressing the Kurds.

Beyond Iraq, we must track down and kill terrorists wherever they exist. We must keep Iran from building an atomic bomb. We must force North Korea to give up its nuclear program. We must stop these and any other rogue states from selling weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

These are black-and-white issues for the vast majority of Americans, notwithstanding complaints from the far left. Just as America has gotten it right throughout our history, our government is getting it right today.

The leftist critics have got it wrong—because what they are hoping for, peace without a price, will never come to pass on this earth.

Yeah GSGF!! You go girl!

So come on readers, head on over to GrEaT sAtAn'S gIrLfRiEnD and wish her a Happy Anniversary!

Photo Credit: New York Times

The Culture of Black Out of Wedlock Births

Via Memorandum, check out the Weekly Standard's discussion of the culture of illegitimate birth in the black community:

SAY THIS FOR Barack Obama's big speech: It is still being analyzed this week, and it will be analyzed more in the weeks and months ahead. Senator Obama went beyond the controversy over his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and delivered a sweeping address on the recent history of U.S. race relations. But he gave short shrift to an issue that is inseparable from racial inequality: the issue of out-of-wedlock births.

"So many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow," Obama said. He did acknowledge that welfare policies "may" have hurt black families. But he affirmed with certainty that "a lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families."

That's true. But it's also true that African-American families were much more intact in the decades before the Civil Rights Act than they were in the decades after it. In 1963, according to the famous Department of Labor report issued by Daniel Patrick Moynihan two years later, the out-of-wedlock birth rate among blacks was 23.6 percent while the rate among whites was only 3.07 percent. By 2005, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the out-of-wedlock birth rate among non-Hispanic whites had jumped to 25.3 percent and the rate among non-Hispanic blacks stood at nearly 70 percent.

In other words, the black out-of-wedlock birth rate was lower in 1963--on the eve of the Civil Rights Act, when Jim Crow policies were still an ugly reality in the American South and white racism was far more widespread than it is today--than the non-Hispanic white rate was in 2005. While Moynihan was right to raise the alarm, the numbers show that African-American families proved remarkably durable through decades of repression and racism following Reconstruction. The most severe "erosion of black families" in the 20th century occurred in the years after the civil rights movement reached its apotheosis, when black economic opportunities were expanding rapidly. What explains that?

Broadly speaking, American society underwent a cultural revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since then, out-of-wedlock birth rates among both blacks and whites have shot upward. But blacks were starting from a much higher base, and the spike among blacks was more precipitous than the spike among whites. As Heritage Foundation scholar Robert Rector has noted, the black out-of-wedlock birth rate ballooned from less than 25 percent in the early 1960s to 49 percent in 1975 and to 70 percent in 1995. The white rate increased from less than 5 percent in the early 1960s to 25 percent in 2005.

The connection between family breakdown and child poverty is well established. In a 1991 American Sociological Review article, David J. Eggebeen and Daniel T. Lichter estimated that if black family composition had remained constant from 1960 to 1988, the black child poverty rate in 1988 would have been 28.4 percent instead of 45.6 percent. If black family composition had remained constant from 1980 to 1988, Eggebeen and Lichter said, the black child poverty rate in 1988 would have been 40 percent instead of 45.6 percent.

"This implies that changing black family structure in the 1980s accounted for roughly 65 percent of the increase in official poverty among black children," they noted. "Black family shifts in the 1980s also accounted for 51 percent of the increase in deep poverty, and about 90 percent of the growth in relative child poverty." Family breakdown also had an intensifying effect on the child poverty rates of whites, but it "had a much greater effect on the child poverty rates of blacks."

In 1960, according to the Eggebeen-Lichter analysis, racial disparities in child poverty "had very little to do with racial differences in family structure." Yet by 1988, this was no longer true. "Racial differences in child poverty cannot be explained by racial differences in family structure alone," they wrote. "At the same time, the changing family structure among black and white children has clearly exacerbated long-standing racial differences in child poverty. Indeed, in the absence of widening racial differences in family structure, the 1960-1988 period would have brought substantial convergence in racial differences in official, deep, and relative child poverty."

More recently, a 2002 study by Rector and two of his Heritage colleagues concluded that "if marriage were restored to 1960 levels," the black child poverty rate "would fall by nearly a third." A separate 2002 study by Urban Institute economist Robert Lerman, which relied on data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, found that "married couple households were much more likely to avoid poverty than all other types of households," and that "the apparent gains from marriage are particularly high among black households."

Due to America's racial history, blacks were uniquely vulnerable to the debilitating cultural trends of the post-1960s era and to the perverse incentives created by the federal welfare system. And indeed, today it is culture--not racism or a dearth of economic opportunities--that poses the biggest threat to black family structures, and thus to black progress. Any serious discussion of race must address that reality.

This is exactly what I've been saying!

Thank you Weekly Standard!

See my posts on race and culture, for example, "The Culture of Black Funeral Parlor Violence," and " Race Still Matters, Obviously: Or, Talking About Black Bitches and Whores."

Youth Cohort Creates Viral Explosion in Online News

The New York Times reports that young Americans have creating a viral explosion of online news:

Senator Barack Obama’s videotaped response to President Bush’s final State of the Union address — almost five minutes of Mr. Obama’s talking directly to the camera — elicited little attention from newspaper and television reporters in January.

But on the medium it was made for, the Internet, the video caught fire. Quickly after it was posted on YouTube, it appeared on the video-sharing site’s most popular list and Google’s most blogged list. It has been viewed more than 1.3 million times, been linked by more than 500 blogs and distributed widely on social networking sites like Facebook.

It is not news that young politically minded viewers are turning to alternative sources like YouTube, Facebook and late-night comedy shows like “The Daily Show.” But that is only the beginning of how they process information.

According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one.

“There are lots of times where I’ll read an interesting story online and send the U.R.L. to 10 friends,” said Lauren Wolfe, 25, the president of College Democrats of America. “I’d rather read an e-mail from a friend with an attached story than search through a newspaper to find the story.”

In one sense, this social filter is simply a technological version of the oldest tool in politics: word of mouth. Jane Buckingham, the founder of the Intelligence Group, a market research company, said the “social media generation” was comfortable being in constant communication with others, so recommendations from friends or text messages from a campaign — information that is shared, but not sought — were perceived as natural.

Ms. Buckingham recalled conducting a focus group where one of her subjects, a college student, said, “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

A December survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press looked broadly at how media were being consumed this campaign. In the most striking finding, half of respondents over the age of 50 and 39 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds reported watching local television news regularly for campaign news, while only 25 percent of people under 30 said they did.

Fully two-thirds of Web users under 30 say they use social networking sites, while fewer than 20 percent of older users do. MySpace and Facebook create a sense of connection to the candidates. Between the two sites, Mr. Obama has about one million “friends,” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination, has roughly 330,000, and Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, has more than 140,000. Four out of 10 young people have watched candidate speeches, interviews, commercials or debates online, according to Pew, substantially more than people 30 and older.

Young people also identify online discussions with friends and videos as important sources of election information. The habits suggest that younger readers find themselves going straight to the source, bypassing the context and analysis that seasoned journalists provide.

In the days after Mr. Obama’s speech on race last week, for example, links to the transcript and the video were the most popular items posted on Facebook. On The New York Times’s Web site, the transcript of the speech ranked consistently higher on the most e-mailed list than the articles written about the speech.

The way consumers filter their news is being highlighted now that a generation of Americans is coming of age in the midst of a campaign that has generated intense interest and voter involvement. Exit polls in 22 states estimate that more than three million voters under the age of 30 participated in Democratic primaries this year, up from about one million four years ago.

In three of the most populous states — California, Texas and Ohio — the share of voters under 30 who turned out for Democratic primaries increased to 16 percent, up from less than 10 percent in 2004, according to exit polls by Edison/Mitofsky. In the Republican primaries, the increases in most states have been less striking but still visible.

“Young people are particularly galvanized in this campaign, and they have a new set of tools that make it look different from the enthusiasm that greeted other politicians 30 years ago,” said Lee Rainie, director for the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “They read a news story and then blog about it, or they see a YouTube video and then link to it, or they go to a campaign Web site, download some phone numbers, and make calls on behalf of a candidate.”

This is great news.

I'd be interested to see some of this data on the youth viral explosion broken down into demographic indices, for example, socioeconomic status.

I teach young people, and I assign active particiption in news consumption as part of class assignments, but there's the old digital divide thing (an economic gap in online access and efficacy), and it does seem to be having an effect in depressing the power of the new media in terms of economic class standing.

These are just ruminations, totally unscientific. But of course, there's some evidence for them.

No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama

I've been having a debate with Repsac 3, a far-left partisan who blogs over at Wingnuts & Moonbats, over the degree of radical support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Sure, I no doubt throw out terms like nihilist and Stalinist quite frequently, perhaps imprecisely. But one point I suggest has been that folks like this - however defined - are prominent members of the Obama coalition. In response, Repsac 3 claims that there's no evidence that hardline activists of this sort back Obama (for the debate thread see, "Where's the Revolution? Wait Until November").

I generally know what I'm talking about, so radical support for Obama's presidential bid's really just a matter of common sense to me. But Repsac's one to demand concrete evidence for claims (as are others, no doubt), and that's fine, so in that spirit I'll be documenting the degree of hardline radical support for the Obama campaign in my writing, beginning with this post.

First, let me be specific in what I'm referring to when I say "hardline left-wing radicals." A good definition is found in Leon Baradat's Political Ideologies, where he notes:

...a radical may defined as a person who is extremely dissastified with the society as it is and therefore is impatient with less than extreme proposals for changing it. Hence, all radicals favor an immediate and fundamental change in the society. In other words, all radicals favor revolutionary change.

Baradat also notes that the criteria to distinuish one type of radical from another is by examining the methods they advocate to bring about transformation.

Also, a good brief definition is also available from Wikipedia:

The Radical Left, an umbrella term to describe those who adhere explicitly and openly to revolutionary socialism, communism or anarchism — the "radical" qualifier tends in this case to denote a revolutionary fervor, and is a subset of, but should not be confused with, the far left.

Note Wikipedia's reference to the "far left," which is a term used more commonly with reference to political competition in European parliamentary democracies (with the extreme left being represented by neo-Stalinism), but is still valid in U.S. political discourse when discussing extreme left-wing partisans.

Now, it's frankly not common in mainstream media commentary to note how substantial is radical left influence on today's Democratic Party. Yet there's considerable evidence that after the Clinton years of DLC centrism, a far-left wing version of Democratic Party liberalism has definitely made a comeback (a good case can be made that Ned Lamont's defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman in the 2006 Connecticut Senate primary was based in the radical politics of the online netroots faction).

It's hard to deny the degree of essentially radical mobilization taking place today in American electoral politics, especially in the netroots, which I contend is replacing more traditional street mobilization as the main channel for fundamental change.

In any case, Tom Hayden, a prominent social and political activist and politician, who's still known for radical advocacy, has issued a major statement of far-left political support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, "Progressives for Obama":

This call has been drafted for immediate circulation, discussion, and action.

All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama. We descend from the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country. We believe that the movement today supporting Barack Obama continues this great tradition of grass-roots participation drawing millions of people out of apathy and into participation in the decisions that affect all our lives. We believe that Barack Obama's very biography reflects the positive potential of the globalization process that also contains such grave threats to our democracy when shaped only by the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace. We should instead be globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle down economics or charitable billionaires. By its very existence, the Obama campaign will stimulate a vision of globalization from below.

As progressives we believe this sudden and unexpected new movement is just what America needs. The future has arrived. The alternative would mean a return to the dismal status quo party politics that have failed so far to deliver peace, health care, full employment and effective answers to crises like global warming.

During past progressive peaks in our political history - the late Thirties, the early Sixties - social movements have provided the relentless pressure and innovative ideas that allowed centrist leaders to embrace visionary solutions. We find ourselves in just such a situation today.

We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama's unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined.

Now some might argue that Hayden's mellowed from his prominent 1960-era radicalism - for example, when he was a member of the Chicago Seven - and, well, he may have to some degree.

But he maintains today, on his personal website, the full-text version of "The Port Huron Statement," which is widely considered the most important political document of new left revolutionary socialism of the 1960s era, and Hayden was the statement's primary author.

The document's worth a good read, especially for people wondering what the progressive movement would do today, should they gain power (the term "progressive" has been appropriated by far-left activists in order to make their radical policies appear more mainstream, and hence politically acceptable).

But note this passage, near the conclusion of The Port Huron Statement outlining an agenda for dramatic social transformation:

A new left must transform modern complexity into issues that can be understood and felt close-up by every human being. It must give form to the feelings of helplessness and indifference, so that people may see the political, social and economic sources of their private troubles and organize to change society. In a time of supposed prosperity, moral complacency and political manipulation, a new left cannot rely on only aching stomachs to be the engine force of social reform. The case for change, for alternatives that will involve uncomfortable personal efforts, must be argued as never before. The university is a relevant place for all of these activities.

We see striking similarities when comparing Hayden's positions in his current essay, "Progressives for Obama," to those in "The Port Huron Statement."

Of course, Hayden's not a spokesman for any major political advocacy group or political party, but his essay is going out as a general call to action among all left-wing progressive forces. Indeed, the language of his essay seeks complete mobilization, which we can infer as including the various left-wing factions that would normally be considered under the notion of the "radical left" as identified by Baradat.

So, whereas while some progressives would abjure revolutionary violence (and I assume Hayden's does), some would not. Indeed, some of the most prominent antiwar progressive organizations today, like World Can't Wait, are indeed revolutionary hard-left organzations, implacably committed to "driving out the Bush regime."

The World Can't Wait list of endorsers includes everyone from prominent left-wing actors like Susan Sarandon and Marin Sheen to neo-Stalinist organizations such as International ANSWER (a review of the listing gives some credence to the notion of "no enemies on the left").

So, while the exact degree and nature of Obama's support among the various hardline organizations is uncertain, we know without a doubt, from Hayden's essay, that many on the contemporary left see the Obama campaign as the electoral vehicle to operationalize their program for radical, revolutionary change.

I'll have more on this in upcoming posts.

**********

Also see the follow-up entries in the "No Enemies on the Left" series," starting with the most recent:

* "Left-Wing Establishment Cheers Wright's "Brilliance."

* "Responsible Plan? Antiwar Groups Endorse Unconditional Iraq Surrender."

* "Ecoterrorism and the Democrats: More on the Radical Left."

* "Democrats Hijacked by Hard-Left Base, Lieberman Says."

* "Muslim Students Association Seeks U.S. Destruction."

* "Imagine, Obama a Liberal: It's Easy If You Try."

* "Barack Obama's Antiwar Coalition."

* "What's a Radical?"

* "Palestinians See Obama as Close Ally."

* "Anti-McCain Mobilization Rooted in Hardline Anti-Iraq Constituencies."

* "Obama's Circle of Friends: The America-Hating Left."

* "Code Pink Bundling Contributions for Obama."

The Culture of Black Funeral Parlor Violence

I've written recently on race and culture, topics arising presently out of Barack Obama's Wright controversy (see here and here).

My basic point has been, obviously, race still matters quite a bit in American politics, and despite Obama's strenuous efforts to rise of above it, he's being ineluctably pulled back into the mire of racial identity.

A key point I've raised is that many of the problems of contemporary black America are rooted in an oppositional, anti-intellectual, and anti-achievement culture. This point is well discussed in Academic literature and conservative commentary, but for addressing this I've naturally been labeled racist by left-wing grievance-mongering bloggers (here and here).

Thus I read with great interest today's Wall Street Journal story on black-on-black funeral parlor violence, "Violence Roils Black Funeral Parlors":

Across the country, black morticians are changing the way they operate. The reason: a spike in African-American murders -- and the violence that sometimes follows victims to the grave. In an echo of more volatile parts of the world, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, African-American morticians report seeing an increase in violent behavior, and occasional killings, at funerals.

The violation of the once-sacrosanct funeral is one byproduct of a little-noticed upswing in the murder rate of African-Americans. The number of blacks killed in America, mostly by other blacks, has been edging up at a time when the rate for other groups has been flat or falling.

As a result, the black murder-victim toll exceeds that of the far larger white population....
African-Americans, who make up 13% of the population, have long had a higher homicide rate than other groups. And the total number of black murders is still significantly lower than in the early 1990s, when the U.S. was hit by a wave of drug-related killings. At that time, though, "funeral homes used to be the most respected places you could walk into beside the church," says Jeff Gardner, a co-owner of A.D. Porter & Sons in Louisville, Ky., and a third-generation undertaker. "Nobody respects life and the young folks nowadays don't mind dying."

What worries law enforcement, criminologists and sociologists is that there's no unifying theme to explain today's increase. Some killings are drug related. Researchers trace others to a glut of ex-felons re-entering society. Others correlate the rise in murders to the lack of a proper education.

As one can see, it's a complicated multi-causal phenomon, but I particularly find the anti-intellectual strain - acting like "whitey" - as an important variable for discussion. This passage from the article, on Carl Swann Jr.'s experience, is particularly revealing:

Mr. Swann, of Cincinnati, says his family has been burying the dead since the early 1900s. "I caught the school bus in front of the funeral home and I got off the bus in front of the funeral home," he says. Now, at age 37, he's thinking of getting out of the business.

One particularly harrowing experience was the funeral of Raeshaun Hand Jr. The ex-convict had continued to deal drugs after being released from prison, according to police, and was wanted at the time of his murder. Mr. Hand, 27, was found shot inside his car in February 2005.

Mr. Hand's father tried to keep the service private, but word got out. The father stood guard at the church door, trying to limit access. Some mourners made it in, drinking and smoking in the church bathroom, Mr. Swann says. Later as he prepared to close the casket, a large group rushed inside, pinning the undertaker.

"One dude punched me in front of the casket. The dead man's son was there and he got punched and his father was punched. My professionalism went out the window," Mr. Swann says. "I started fighting back, throwing punches. This wasn't in the job description and it doesn't come with the job."

Drinking and smoking in the church bathroom? Pinning the undertaker to the wall because it was time to close the casket, as part of the memorial service?

No wonder he wants to quit the business.

The article reveals the situation among many blacks where there's little attention to the normal civilities and courtesies of a polite society.

Such norms are traditionally transmitted in the home, and today, as was true when the issue burst on the scene as a major social problem in the 19060s, the divergence from traditional cultural norms in the American urban black family presents one of the greatest impediments to realizing the tremendous opportunies of the post-civil rights era.

Again, this is a difficult topic to discuss, and to just raise such issues opens one up to the most rank denunciations and repudiations - one will be "unfairly pilloried," to use Bill Kristol's term.

But the discussion's worth having, nevertheless (although the Journal's piece is not currently getting play on Memeorandum).

Iraq War Protests: From Ugly Remarks to Violence

Skye over at Midnight Blue's one of our many great pro-victory counter-demonstrators who are unflinching in their support for our nation and troops under arms.

Skye was active in counter-demonstrations last week marking the 5th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. Antiwar protesters apparently went well beyond non-violent resistance: Here's how Skye relates events:

A beautiful day for a rally that turned ugly when a peace protester crossed the line from ugly remarks to violence....

Snarky retorts, name calling and mis-characterizations ... are commonplace events in my 7 month documentary of this rally. Yesterday crossed the line, when I was struck twice by a peace protester. I can deal with all the above, but will NOT tolerate any form of violence against my person. I am consulting legal advice on this matter.

Remember, these are "peace" activists.

Photo Credit: New York Times:

Protesters gathered in rallies across the country Wednesday to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Demonstrators converged in front of the White House, left, wearing placards bearing the names of troops and civilians who died in the war.

See also Sniper's blog, where he's got all kinds of information on how to counter the nihilism and violence of the antiwar movement.

McCain On the Use of Force

USA Today's got a big piece on John McCain's disposition on the use of force, "McCain: Life Shaped Judgment on Use of Force."

Check the whole thing, but here's an excerpt from the graph of McCain's military decision-making in Congress:

Republican John McCain says his experience in national security and foreign policy makes him the best candidate for president. That experience includes his education at the U.S. Naval Academy, his work as a Navy pilot in combat during the Vietnam War and his entire military career, and service on key committees in Congress. Since entering Congress in 1983, McCain has been confronted with several decisions of when to use military force.

The trend over McCain's career in Congress has been his tendency to move from a position of realist restraint, carefully assessing the costs and benefits of military action in terms of rational national interest maximization, to more of a foreign policy exceptionalism, seeing moral clarity in America's international challenges.

In this shift McCain appears to be more open to the robust exertion of American military power to achieve national security objectives.

This is especially true after September 11, 2001.

McCain's expected to give a major foreign policy address today in Los Angeles.

Fighting Erupts in Basra

McClatchy's headline on the outbreak of violence in Basra suggests the collapse of the surge: "Battles Wrack Basra, Threatening Success of U.S. Surge."

Here's the lede:

With Iraq's top leaders directing the battle, Iraq's army and national police pressed a major operation Tuesday to wrest control of the southern port city of Basra from the Shiite Mahdi Army militia. Fighting between government forces and the militia quickly spread through Iraq's south and into Baghdad.

Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and his defense and interior ministers took charge of the 15,000 Iraqi army troops and police units, which were deployed for what aides said was to be a three-day operation against militias in the city.

The battle at the oil-rich port began before dawn Tuesday and lasted into the early evening before subsiding slightly as the Mahdi Army, headed by firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr, defended positions in several neighborhoods. In the dead of night, residents reported artillery shelling, mortar rounds and guns being fired outside their homes.

In the al Timimiyah neighborhood, government forces surrounded a Mahdi Army stronghold and the home of the Rwaymi family, who residents said are well-known oil smugglers and supporters of the militia.

There's no mention of a threat to the long-term success of the surge strategy, which is not surprising, given McClathy's style of tabloid reporting.

Here's how the New York Times describes the turn of events:

Even before the crackdown on militias began on Tuesday, Pentagon statistics on the frequency of militia and insurgent attacks suggested that after major security gains last fall, the conflict had drifted into something of a stalemate. Over all, violence has remained fairly steady over the past several months, but the streets have become tense and much more dangerous again after a period of calm.

It is not clear how responsible the restive Mahdi militia commanders are for stalling progress in the effort to reduce violence. In recent weeks, commanders have protested continuing American and Iraqi raids and detentions of militia members.

If the cease-fire were to unravel, there is little doubt about the mayhem that could be stirred up by Mr. Sadr, who forced the United States military to mount two bloody offensives against his fighters in 2004 as much of the country exploded in violence.

What's explains Mahdi's return to violence? Here's Captain Ed:

The Iraqi Army has moved to establish central-government control of the southern city of Basra after the British pullout ignited a turf war between the Badr Brigades and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. The Mahdis have resisted with force despite orders from Sadr to stand down....

Sadr’s organization already has issued a statement asking for a negotiated peace. They know that they cannot defeat the Iraqi Army, even if Sadr decided to fight all out in Basra. The Mahdis have never really represented a military threat to either the US or trained Iraqi forces; their only victories came against green IA units in the first days of their reconstitution, four years ago. The Mahdis are nothing but a gang with military pretensions, and Sadr knows that better than anyone else.

The Sadrists want to blame this clash on the Iraqi central government, but Nouri al-Maliki had little choice. The Mahdis and the Badr Brigades have been fighting a gang war for control of southern Iraq, and the central government had to put an end to it to demonstrate that their writ runs in all of Iraq. Sadr should have gotten a clue when Maliki quarterbacked a political deal between the central government, the Kurds, and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council that runs the Badr Brigade last summer. The writing was on the wall, but Sadr apparently didn’t bother to read it.

See also, the Los Angeles Times, "Iraqi Leader Issues Ultimatum as Clashes Continue in Basra."

Blogging Foreign Policy: Bereft of Credentials, Left Strains to Shift Debate

I argued in a recent post, "Diminishing International Relations: Left Bloggers and Foreign Policy," that most of the left's hardcore antiwar bloggers possess little knowledge of international relations theory.

While I would not say netroots antiwar types can't debate foreign policy, I would suggest that their arguments are mostly unhinged rants driven by post-Vietnam knee-jerk reactions to any and all considerations of U.S. military force deployment. As such, there's little that the antiwar netroots can add to the serious analysis of America's international relations.

For example, I recently took down Josh Marshall, the publisher of Talking Points Memo, for his disastrously shallow attempt at foreign policy analysis (see "Uninformed Comment: Josh Marshall on American Military Power"). Not only that, I've discredited Glenn Greenwald numerous times, although I must admit he does try hard.

To be fair, I do see some skills in Spencer Ackerman and his journalism, although he's so over the top in his blogging (which largely discredits his otherwise mainstream reporting), that he's a card-carrying member of the megalomanical blogging-fringe cohort under consideration here.

A good example of the substantive and theoretical shallowness among hard-left foreign policy bloggers can be found in this entry from Cernig at Newshoggers, "Hyping The Chinese Threat."

Cernig fancies himself as some modern Edward Murrow of the blogosphere, but there's little to sustain a self-appreciation of any such sort.

In "Hyping The Chinese Threat," Cernig uses recent debates over China's international standing to argue that "China's threat to American global military superiority has been greatly exaggerated by Pentagon planners," and thus fails to justify increased defense spending.

I'm not quibbling with Cernig's attacks on the Defense Department, variations of which are the staple of Chomskyite America-bashers going back decades. No, my point is just to indicate his total lack of credibility as a serious analyst of foreign affairs.

Cernig's "evidence" for his claim that the Pentagon is "desperate to justify billions on big-ticket development of new warplanes, ships and weapon systems" is a Newsweek commentary essay by esteemed Princeton University political scientist Andrew Moravcsik.

Moravscik's a leading scholar of European integration and theories of liberal internationalism in world politics. Prior to his Princeton appointment, Moravcsik was a Professor of Government at Harvard.

This biographical point is not insignificant, although one would have no any idea of the importance of Moravcsik's backgound in the Newshoggers post. In citing him, Cernig writes, "Newsweek's Andrew Moravcsik breaks down the figures," on China's great power status. It appears as though Moravcsik's just another journalist to Newshoggers, but he's obviously much more than that.

If you'd like, check the Newsweek piece for Moravcsik's argument against the China threat, for Cernig quotes him at length.

But what's really noteworthy about the Newshogger entry is its conclusion:

Admitted, China has done some amazingly reprehesible stuff [sic] - such as the recent crackdown in Tibet - but it's all part of a mainly domestic and entirely regional focus on preserving its own status as the biggest fish in the local pond rather than a threat to American national security. Hyping the threat is partly about a "need to justify R&D and procurement" and thus just yet another example of propaganda in support of corporate welfare schemes. Of course, it's also about a conservative need to keep fearmongering, both for political purposes and to assuage their own psychologically disturbed sense of "threatened tribalism".

This link to the right's "psychologically disturbed" sense of "threatened tribalism" is a reference to Glenn Greenwald's recent allegations of racist fearmongering against Glenn Reynolds.

The problem here?

Well, if Cernig knew a little bit more about whom he was writing he'd realize that Moravicsik's married to Anne-Marie Slaughter (who is Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, where Moravcsik's appointed), who Greenwald himself mercilessly attacked in his recent post on academe's liberal war enablers. I can't resist quoting Greenwald's screed against liberal academics who "enabled" the Bush/Cheney war in Iraq:

Slaughter in particular has been an establishment pioneer in voicing this nakedly self-interested demand [in a long-term Iraq deployment]. Last July, she wrote an Op-Ed for The Washington Post praising the Bush administration for "reaching across the aisle" - seriously - and said that, as a result, "some sanity may actually be returning to American politics." By sad contrast, she complained, elements in the blogosphere - those "on the left" - have "responded to the foreign policy failures of the Bush administration by trying to purge their fellow liberals" - meaning those, like her, who supported the Iraq War and who constantly enabled the worst aspects of the Bush presidency. Everything would be perfect if all the mean partisan people stopped harping so negatively on their war cheerleading and started treating them again as the Wise and Serious Experts that they are.

Now, I'm not - I repeat - I am not engaging in any guilt by association, so lefty critics on this post can forget about that line of attack. Moravcsik and Slaughter are obviously distinct individuals, and the opinions of one cannot be used to impugn the views of the other (although there are always questions of associational judgment, for example, as is found in Barack Obama's Wright controversy, but not in this case).

What I am arguing is that I find it odd that Cernig at Newswhoggers would cite Moravcsik as evidence for his claims on Pentagon threat inflation, while in the very same post conclude with a post by Glenn Greenwald, who regularly attacks "fellow liberals" for war mongering, one of whom comes from the same left-wing foreign policy milieu as does Moravcsik. (Such relationships should at least be identified, so that Cernig might be able to deflect criticism that he's daft.)

For example, Moravcsik, who is a regular contributor to Newsweek International, is a proponent of the thesis that the Bush administration's war policies have badly damaged trans-Atlantic relations.

So, citing Moravcsik is good for bolstering a case for Pentagon war mongering, yet citing Greenwald in the same post at the least opens up Cernig to charges of analytical schizophrenia in his online posting.

But look more carefully: Cernig's got a conflict of interest in Newshogger's reporting. On the one hand, Cernig supports root and branch Glenn Greenwald's antiwar opinions on politics and the war (for example, here, here, and here), yet on the other hand it turns out that Moravcsik is exactly the kind of "liberal academic war enabler" Greenwald excoriates. Indeed, Moravcsik, back in 2003, argued for a stronger European defense so as to "complement" U.S. military power during the Iraq war build-up and deployment. Wouldn't this be enabling "the worst aspects of the Bush presidency?" Cernig, of course, has no clue.

This is just one example of Cernig's pure online expediency and hypocrisy, and, frankly, in my view such practice destroys Newshoggers' credibility. Cernig's an implacable foe of the Bush administration, and if he'd have known that Moravcsik's a liberal interationalist who supported "complementing" the Iraq war, the last thing he'd do is boost the circulation of a scholar whose views could be seen enabling that which he hates the most.

In any case, I question the expertise of all these guys, Cernig, Gleen Greenwald, Josh Marshall, Spencer Ackerman, and also Matthew Yglesias of the Atlantic.

Yglesias is a beer-addled Flophouse antiwar blogger who's feted around the left blogosphere like some wise man of left-wing foreign policy circles.

He's got a book forthcoming, "Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats," due out in April.

I normally don't tarry with "light" reading of this sort, but apparently the left's antiwar commentariat's eating it up, which might mean I've got some work upcoming in rebutting more of the left's foreign policy retreatism:

" A very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care."
—Ezra Klein, staff writer at The American Prospect.

"Matt Yglesias is one of the smartest voices in the blogosphere. He knows a lot about politics, a lot about foreign policy, and, crucially, is unusually shrewd in understanding how they interact. Here's hoping that his new book will introduce him to an even wider audience. Once you discover him, you'll be hooked."
—E. J. Dionne, author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right and Why Americans Hate Politics.

"Matthew Yglesias is one of a handful of bloggers that I make a point of reading every day. Heads in the Sandis a smart, vital book that urges Democrats to stop evading the foreign-policy debate and to embrace the old principles of international liberalism—to be right and also to win."
—Fred Kaplan, author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power.

"Reading foreign policy tomes is seldom included among life's pleasures, but Yglesias has concocted a startling exception. Heads in the Sand is not just a razor-sharp analysis cum narrative of the politics of national security in general and the Iraq war in particular, it's also an enthralling and often very funny piece of writing. Though he administers strong antidotes to the haplessness of his fellow Democrats and liberals, there's more than a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down."
—Hendrik Hertzberg, Senior Editor, The New Yorker, and author of Politics: Observations and Arguments.

Well, ahem ... that's some impressive testimonial ... one of "the smartest voices in the blogosphere." Oh, yeah, I'm sure.

I certainly hope something's worthwhile in the book, because Yglesias' blog posts aren't worth a damn.

As always, I'll have more rebuttals and take downs of the antiwar left in future posts.

Democrats Plan McCain "100-Year" Attack Campaign

This entry updates my earlier post, "100 Years in Iraq? The Left Takes Aim at McCain."

That entry discussed a liberal veterans' group attack advertisement against John McCain's so-called unending deployment to Iraq.

It turns out the Democrats plan their own smear campaign against McCain's statement on being in Iraq for 100 years, which was not a concrete committment of the U.S. for a century, but a projection of a minimal presence in Iraq for some duration, along the lines of America's commitment to Germany and Japan following World War II.

This distinction apparently doesn't matter to Democratic attack planners, as the Politico reports:

John McCain is scheduled to deliver a major foreign policy speech Wednesday in Los Angeles, one with a heavy Iraq focus, but chances are Democrats won’t be listening. They’ve already distilled his views into an easy to remember formulation: 100 years of war.

It is a reference to an offhand remark made by McCain in January about the possible duration of the U.S. presence in Iraq, a comment that Democrats now portray as the equivalent of the McCain Doctrine.

Though it’s not exactly an accurate representation of McCain’s views, Democratic strategists view the “100 years” remark as the linchpin of an effort to turn McCain's national security credentials against him by framing the Vietnam War hero as a warmonger who envisions an American presence in Iraq without end.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama began citing McCain’s remark in Democratic debates not long after he made it and their campaigns have stepped up the focus in recent weeks.

On a recent conference call with reporters, Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s bulldog operative, mentioned four times in two minutes that John McCain “wants to be in Iraq for 100 years.”

“Instead of offering an exit strategy for Iraq, he’s offering us a 100 year occupation,” said Obama last week, in a speech marking the 5-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

It's hard to see how the Democrats can possibly make a winning issue out of this.

Just yesterday Spencer Ackerman, at the American Prospect, argued that the power of Barack Obama's foreign policy message is that it transcends "the politics of fear" that has gripped Democrats in recent years, for example, with John Kerry's inability to break with the establishment foreign policy line in his 2004 campaign.

But what is this Democratic "100 years of war" formulation other than the latest iteration of the paralizing politics of fear that's immobilized the party and made it totally out of touch with foreign policy realities?

The Democratic Party needs to read the talking points of their most committed antiwar bloggers and journalists, who at least have a better idea on how to market an otherwise retreatist foreign policy agenda.

As always, check Memorandum for additional analysis.

Ducking Sniper Fire? Actually, Clinton "Misspoke"

Here's the YouTube of Hillary Clinton's visit to Bosnia, the same stop where she recently claimed to have ducked sniper fire:

Clinton claims she "misspoke," but boy, this one's looking like a real whopper of a misstatement!

A number of bloggers are hammering Clinton's dishonesty and political opportunism:

* Common Sense Political Thought: "Hillary Clinton: A Pathological Liar."
* Hot Air: "Walking Back the Tuzla Sniper-Fire Run."
* Sundries Shack: "Holy Crapweasel! Someone Call the Language Police!"

See also the New York Times, "Clinton ‘Misspoke’ About Bosnia Trip, Campaign Says."

Antiwar Left Ecstatic as Surge is Called Into Question

Recall Jennifer Rubin's point about the Democrats and the Iraq war:

Why haven't the Democrats declared victory in Iraq and suggested now is the time to go home? The answer is that they have become obsessed with fighting the last war - the last political war against George W. Bush.

We can of expand "the Democrats" to include the party's fanatical antiwar base, and presto, the notion of the last war against President Bush fits like a glove.

The latest evidence for this is the burst of radical glee at McClatchy's latest hit piece claiming recent gains in Iraq are just a mirage:

A cease-fire critical to the improved security situation in Iraq appeared to unravel Monday when a militia loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr began shutting down neighborhoods in west Baghdad and issuing demands of the central government.

Simultaneously, in the strategic southern port city of Basra, where Sadr's Mahdi militia is in control, the Iraqi government launched a crackdown in the face of warnings by Sadr's followers that they'll fight government forces if any Sadrists are detained. By 1 a.m. Arab satellite news channels reported clashes between the Mahdi Army and police in Basra.

The freeze on offensive activity by Sadr's Mahdi Army has been a major factor behind the recent drop in violence in Iraq, and there were fears that the confrontation that's erupted in Baghdad and Basra could end the lull in attacks, assassinations, kidnappings and bombings.

As the U.S. military recorded its 4,000th death in Iraq, U.S. officials in Baghdad warned again Monday that drawing down troops too quickly could collapse Iraq's fragile security situation.

Could any lede be more perfect for launching a feeding frenzy of the war-bashing fringe?

Unfortunately, the eruption of violence is in fact found in one of last key areas of remaining national political and strategic consolidation. Far from signalling the collapse of the surge, the Sadrists revolt illustrates a burst of holdout opposition to the increasing scope of central governmental control over all of Iraq.

It shows, as well, that Iran and its antiwar backers (for example, here, here, here, here, and here), are betting on the wrong political faction in this war.

See also, Jules Crittenden, "Surge of Opportunity."

Democrats Still Rooting for Defeat in Iraq

Jennifer Rubin identifies the political bind for the Democrats on Iraq: As progress on the ground continues, the party's increasingly out of touch with political and strategic realities:

Many observers, left and right, have begun to take note of the gap between the Democrats' defeatist rhetoric on Iraq and the reality on the ground. Karl Rove observed in the Wall Street Journal last week that the Democrats' stubborn insistence that the surge has failed makes them look out of touch and, worse, as if they were rooting for America's defeat.

Rove threw in a canny piece of advice: "They'd be better off arguing success allows America to accelerate the return of our troops rather than appear to deny the progress those troops are making."

Why haven't the Democrats declared victory in Iraq and suggested now is the time to go home? The answer is that they have become obsessed with fighting the last war -- the last political war against George W. Bush.

In fact, they are so obsessed with proving Bush's malfeasance and mendacity that they cannot accept that he was right on the surge or that Iraq in any sense can be determined a success.

The reduction in U.S. causalities has deprived Democrats of the most obvious objection to the war. So they have shifted to complaining about the cost of the war. "For the cost of the war we could..." they begin, and then fill in the blank with the social program on which they would most have liked to have spent the money.

Their political dilemma is further complicated by the fact that Republicans have nominated the man who put all of his political chips on the surge and championed the policy that is now succeeding. Admitting "success" is a recognition of the wisdom and tenacity of not only the current president's policy, but also of their current opponent in the fight for the White House.

If they declared "victory" they would be declaring "John McCain's victory," and they certainly will not do that. Ever. The Democrats are left to hope against hope, and their country's interests, that things worsen again in Iraq and the surge proves not so successful after all.

BARRING THAT catastrophe, they are left to argue that the surge's success is really a "trap," obligating us to continue our troop commitment indefinitely. Thus, their obvious delight over (and willingness to twist the meaning of) McCain's remark about a potential "100 year" military presence in Iraq.

But if Americans are willing to listen for a paragraph or two, rather than a soundbite, they will understand that the "trap" is no more a trap than any of our other military commitments, so long as the level of violence in Iraq subsides.

As McCain has pointed out, Americans are mature enough to accept and in fact support our many ongoing military obligations around the world. What they were unwilling to support was a high level of American casualties and an absence of any strategy for reducing them.

So the Democrats have boxed themselves into rooting against victory in a war that their arch enemy Bush began and that their new opponent vows to win. Hillary Clinton promises to "win the war in Afghanistan and end the one in Iraq." The inconvenient truth is that the reasons for prevailing in Afghanistan apply equally in Iraq and the consequences of losing in Iraq would be just as dire as a defeat in Afghanistan.

For now she and the other Democrats have no other position they can advocate. To change course would mean that Bush and McCain were right and they were wrong about the surge's success. They therefore continue to tell us that all is lost and nothing has changed.

They have every right do so, of course. And voters have every right to pick a president who does not live in a political fantasyland.

See also, "Debating the Invasion of Iraq," and "The Lessons of Iraq."

Hezbollah Calls to "Wipe Israel Out of Existence"

Eric Trager, at Commentary, argues that Hezbollah's statement calling to "wipe Israel out of existence" puts Iran's call to wipe Israel off the map in a new light:

In a fiery speech marking forty days since the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah declared that “The Zionist entity can be wiped out of existence!” Of course, by evoking the image of “wiping,” Nasrallah is adopting the rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who famously called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” at the 2005 “World Without Zionism” conference in Tehran.

Or did he? Just as Ahmadinejad’s “wipe” statement was drawing widespread international condemnation, Juan Cole insisted that Ahmadinejad had been mistranslated. According to Cole, Ahmadinejad’s quotation had come from a Khomeini speech, which stated that, “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.” Cole viewed this distinction as significant, writing that the media’s translation gave the false “impression that [Ahmadinejad] wants to play Hitler to Israel’s Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people.” Cole repeated his revisionist claim in a recent Washington Post article, saying that Ahmadinejad was not calling for the “Nazi-style extermination of a people,” but rather expressing his wish that the Israeli government would disappear.

Nasrallah’s speech demonstrates the complete irrelevance of Cole’s argument. Indeed, the Arabic phrase that Nasrallah employs is unambiguous in supporting the utter destruction of Israel, both as a state and a people. Nasrallah begins this section of his speech by declaring that the 2006 Lebanon war exposed Israelis’ weakness: whereas the Lebanese and Palestinians have endured 60 years of displacement, “the Israelis could not endure displacement or living in shelters for 33 days.” Israel’s “loss,” Nasrallah continues, has created “the possibility of a new answer” to the question “can Israel be wiped from existence?” Na’am, wa’alf na’am yumkin an tazul Isra’il min al-wujud (”Yes, and one thousand yeses, it is possible to wipe Israel from existence!”) says Nasrallah.

If Cole objects to my translation of “tazul . . min al-wujud” as “wipe . . . from existence”–”tazul” generally means “cease”–he will first have to correct Hezbollah’s own al-Manar English website. The satellite news channel similarly embraced the terminology of “wiping” in its own translation of Nasrallah’s speech.

When Cole first disputed the translation of Ahmadinejad’s speech back in 2005, he accused “powerful political forces in Washington” of cooking up the “wipe” quotation as a pretext for war on Iran. Nasrallah’s speech should force him to rethink this conspiracy theory. After all, whether or not Ahmadinejad’s speech can be translated as having called for “wiping” Israel off the map, Hezbollah–which has already called for an “open war” on Israel and serves as Iran’s Lebanese appendage–has taken liberties to interpret it as such.

Trager shouldn't hold his breath. Cole and all the academic backers of Israel's enemies will just find some new spin or translation to excuse Hezbollah's campaign to destroy the Jewish state.

Racial Progress for Idiots (or Racists)

Race still matters in American society, especially for those on the left, as they can use it to bludgeon any conservative who suggests that black Americans today have made real progress.

I made this point yesterday, with some examples, in my entry, "Race Still Matters, Obviously: Or, Talking About Black Bitches and Whores."

I cited Bill Kristol at the post, who argued that we didn't need a national conservsation on race, and that America has done "pretty well" in overcoming its national divisions since the eras of slavery and Jim Crow. Kristol indicated, though, that whenever commentators ask society to look within - to stress that civil rights progress has to begin at home, with personal achievement and family culture - they are "unfairly pilloried."

Well, now it's Kristol's turn.

Ari Berman throws out the racism card against Kristol at the Nation:

Preeminent neocon and newly-minted New York Times columnist Bill Kristol embarrassed himself last week by incorrectly stating that Barack Obama was present for one of Jeremiah Wright's fiery sermons and for neglecting to mention that his information came from the notoriously untrustworthy right-wing tabloid, Newsmax.com.

Now Kristol has embarrassed himself again this week by stating, in the wake of Obama's speech on race, that racism is not really a problem in America. "The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race," Kristol writes. "Racial progress has in fact continued in America. A new national conversation about race isn't necessary to end what Obama calls the 'racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years' -- because we're not stuck in such a stalemate."

Kristol provides no empirical evidence to back up such an ignorant claim. He fails to mention, for instance, that 50 percent of African-American men in New York City were unemployed as of 2004; or that 1 in 10 black men in their 20s are behind bars; or that more than half of all black men in inner cities do not finish high school; or that the subprime lending crisis is considered to be "the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in modern US history," according to United for a Fair Economy.

Of course we've made racial progress in America--and Obama is a testament to that. But only an idiot (or a racist) would allege that racism does not remain a major problem in our country, and that we don't need to do a lot more to address it. Kristol is not an idiot, he just plays one on the Times op-ed page.

His spectacularly bad judgment on the war in Iraq was reason enough to oppose Kristol's appointment as a Times columnist. The Times' own ombudsman called the hiring of Kristol a "mistake." It's worse than that. His basic disregard for facts of any kind is well beneath the Times--or any self-respecting paper of record.

So, Kristol's called "ignorant," "an idiot (or a racist)," and he's pilloried for his "spectacularly bad judgment," with Iraq, no less, used as evidence (Kristol's judgement on that score's looking almost prescient, considering our success today)

Notice how Berman just rolls out the racial victimization shibboleths without any data of his own.

Nope, it's pretty much name-calling and rehashing the attacks on the Times for hiring Kristol in the first place. Just suggesting that we've made progress on civil rights - that blacks have done pretty well in the post-civil rights era - subjects one to such abuse and ridicule.

There's plenty of data available on black progress. Problems remain, of course, but it's undeniable that we've moved so far from the American Dilemma in a little over fifty years ago - at the time of Brown v. Board of Education - that it's journalist malpractice not to cite our gains.

We have a large and growing black middle class (here , here, and here), educational opportunities for blacks are more widely available than at any time in American history, and the number of black public officials at all levels of government has grown dramatical since the passage of the voting rights act in 1965. Barack Obama's own success, and his initial calls to transcend race, signify how far we've come as a people, one people committed to progress on racial equality.

This does not discount continuing poverty and problems of criminalization among the black lower third. But no matter how far we come, racial recrimination activists will refuse to see racial progress, they'll never suggest that the glass is half full. Instead, they'll brand those who do as idiots (or racists).