Mexican Immigrants Prove Slow to Assimilate

Before comprehensive immigration reform died last summer, I wrote on migration issues almost as much as Iraq.

I frequently cite Samuel Huntington's important article, "The Hispanic Challenge," which argues that massive Hispanic immigration threatens American political culture, identity, and national values.

It's a controversial argument, no doubt, especially among partisans of the open-borders lobby. This group, interestingly, includes the editors at the Wall Street Journal, who advocate "free markets, free peoples, no barriers." Jason Riley, for example, in a piece last week, argued in favor of substantial Hispanic assimilation to society's norms and language:

The media offers up a steady diet of data about current immigration from Mexico, and much of it consists of "averages" regarding English-language skills, income, home-ownership rates, education and so forth. But while digesting these figures, it's important to keep in mind that Latino immigration is ongoing. These averages are snapshots of a moving stream and therefore of little use in measuring assimilation. To properly gauge assimilation, we need to find out how immigrants in the U.S. are faring over time. Only longitudinal studies that track individuals can provide that information.

Just looking at averages can give you a very distorted view of who's learning English or dropping out of school or climbing out of poverty....

The reality, however, is that the longitudinal studies show real socio-economic progress by Latinos. Progress is slower in some areas, such as the education level of adult immigrants, and faster in others, such as income and homeownership rates. But there is no doubt that both assimilation and upward mobility are occurring over time.
With respect to linguistic assimilation, which is one of the more important measures because it amounts to a job skill that can increase earnings, the historical pattern is as follows: The first generation learns enough English to get by but prefers the mother tongue. The children of immigrants born here grow up in homes where they understand the mother tongue to some extent and may speak it, but they prefer English. When those children become adults, they establish homes where English is the dominant language.

There's every indication that Latinos are following this pattern. According to 2005 Census data, just one-third of Latino immigrants in the country for less than a decade speak English well. But that proportion climbs to 75% for those here 30 years or more. There may be more bilingualism today among their children, but there's no evidence that Spanish is the dominant language in the second generation. The 2000 Census found that 91% of the children of immigrants, and 97% of the grandchildren, spoke English well.

Actually, it might be more complicated than this. As U.S. News relates in its article, "Mexican Immigrants Prove Slow to Fit In":

In the heart of California's iconic Orange County—home to Disneyland and the bourgeois teens of MTV's Laguna Beach—is troubled Santa Ana. The county seat of 353,000, where nearly 6out of every 10 adults over age 25 lack a high school diploma, suffers from crippling poverty and an explosion in crime. In 2004, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government placed Santa Ana at the very top of its Urban Hardship Index—officially dubbing it worse off than Miami, Detroit, Cleveland, and Newark, N.J. With 76 percent of its population Hispanic, mostly Mexican immigrants, Santa Ana is the poster child for the troubles of the country's immigration policies and of Mexican immigrants in particular.

Now, a new study lays bare what sociologists and others have long argued: Mexican immigrants are assimilating to life in the United States less successfully than other immigrants. Sponsored by the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, "Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United States" by Jacob Vigdor, a professor of public policy studies and economics at Duke University, introduces a novel assimilation index that uses census and other survey data to measure how similar select immigrant groups are to native-born Americans. Using such factors as intermarriage, English ability, military service, homeownership, citizenship, and earnings, Vigdor assembled a 100-point assimilation index. The closer to 100, the more assimilated an immigrant group. Overall, the report shows immigrants are weaving into the American fabric at a remarkable clip, despite arriving poorer and knowing less English than immigrants of a century ago. And they are gaining speed, with new arrivals assimilating faster than those who came more than 20 years ago. With a score of 53, Canadians are the most assimilated, followed closely by Filipinos, Cubans, and Vietnamese. The main outlier: Mexicans, with a score of 13—followed by Salvadorans.

Why Mexicans are faring so poorly in the United States is complicated, experts say. But the root of the problem is no surprise: Many Mexicans are here illegally, depriving them of rungs on the economic ladder and the opportunity to gain citizenship. "There are certain jobs or certain services you just can't get [as an illegal immigrant]," Vigdor says. "There are plenty of indications here that for those Mexican immigrants who are interested in making a more permanent attachment to the United States, their legal status puts very severe barriers in that path."

Since the 1990s, Mexicans' immigrant story has differed from that of their peers. When comparing Mexicans and Asians, "Asians show up with a lot more money, oftentimes," notes Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California. "They have a higher education to begin with, and many of them are entrepreneurs." Past decades saw influxes of refugees from countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines. Today's Asian immigrants are some of the best and brightest, which puts them on a faster track to assimilation via economic success.

The Asian experience recalls a general rule of today's immigrants. The farther you have to migrate, the wealthier you probably were in your country of origin. "Poor people can't afford a plane trip across the ocean, but poor people can walk across the border," Myers says. "Poor Africans and poor Chinese can't do it." Because of their proximity to the United States, poor Mexicans can make the trip. Indeed, their poverty impels them to risk the border crossing. But when they arrive, they arrive significantly disadvantaged, and they often qualify for jobs that offer little opportunity for social advancement. Other factors may also contribute but are more difficult to quantify: The leading contender is that the sheer number of Latinos in the United States has created a subculture that slows assimilation.

Indeed, in a unique multigenerational study spanning four decades, Generations of Exclusion, sociologists Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz found that many immigrants and their children had made slow progress assimilating for cultural and economic reasons. A large community means a large dating pool: Only 17 percent of third-generation Mexicans studied had married non-Hispanics. The authors found adult Mexican-Americans in the third and fourth generations lived in more segregated neighborhoods than they did as youths, largely because of the many new immigrant arrivals. Educational levels, meanwhile, lagged behind the national average. However, English ability was nearly universal, even among first-generation immigrants, which should ease the concerns of some lawmakers who want to make English the natural language. Significantly, though, 36 percent of fourth-generation Mexican-Americans studied could still speak Spanish.

Perhaps most telling: Of the approximately 1,500 surveyed in two distinct immigrant communities—Los Angeles and San Antonio—most identified as "Mexican" or "Mexican-American" even into the fourth generation. It's that kind of cultural signifier that has so many white Americans concerned that this is a group not interested in becoming American.

I love the introduction to this piece, because Santa Ana's right next door to my home town, and the city's population is 76 percent Hispanic with 53 percent foreign born - the city's literally a classic microcosm of the phenomenal sub-national trends in demographic diversity giving way to ethnic homegeneous-hegemonic dominance.

But just talking about this stuff routinely gets folks branded as racist.

Lou Dobbs is not my favorite. He's a political opportunist and grandstander on immigration, and his "war on the middle class" segments are unhinged on issues of economic mobility and trade. But some of his reports on immigration are indeniably accurate in detailing the problems of local commuities around the country in tackling out of control immigration.

And because of reports like these, the nihilist left-wing of the open borders operation is up in arms about the media's "fanning" of anti-immigration racial tensions:

This criticism's not compelling, considering the radical left's open-borders movement, with its recent May Day protesters in Los Angeles, for example, hoisting Che Guevara banners and Mexican flags in a sea of green and red.

(See also, Heather MacDonald, "The Immigrant Gang Plague").

What happened to the American flag? Must not be too popular for the La Raza set.

Here's a hometown rebuttal:

This idea of America being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Americans, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language, and our own lifestyle. This culture has been developed over centuries of struggles, trials, and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. We speak ENGLISH, not Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become a part of our society, learn the language!

See also, Business Week, "Hispanic Nation: Hispanics are an immigrant group like no other. Their huge numbers are challenging old assumptions about assimilation. Is America ready?"

Photo Credit: U.S. News

Polly Wants to Go Home: Lost Parrot tells Veterinarian His Address

You've got to love this story, about a lost parrot in Japan who knew his address:

When Yosuke the parrot flew out of his cage and got lost, he did exactly what he had been taught - recite his name and address to a stranger willing to help.

Police rescued the African grey parrot two weeks ago from a neighbor's roof in the city of Nagareyama, near Tokyo. After spending a night at the station, he was transferred to a nearby veterinary hospital while police searched for clues, local policeman Shinjiro Uemura said.

He kept mum with the cops, but began chatting after a few days with the vet.

"I'm Mr. Yosuke Nakamura," the bird told the veterinarian, according to Uemura. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs.

"We checked the address, and what do you know, a Nakamura family really lived there. So we told them we've found Yosuke," Uemura said.

The Nakamura family told police they had been teaching the bird its name and address for about two years.

But Yosuke apparently wasn't keen on opening up to police officials.

"I tried to be friendly and talked to him, but he completely ignored me," Uemura said.

Maybe a couple of saltines would have loosened Yosuke's lips, ahh, beak a little!

Linda Douglass, Top-Tier Journalist, Joins Obama Campaign

Linda Douglass, a contributing editor for National Journal, and a former Capital Hill correspondent for ABC News, has joined the Barack Obama presidential campaign as a senior campaign spokesperson.

Marc Ambinder spoke with Douglass to confirm her appointment, and she explained her move to partisan politics like this:

"I see this as a moment of transformational change in the country and I have spent my lifetime sitting on the sidelines watching people attempt to make change. I just decided that I can't sit on the sidelines anymore."

Sure, and a possible gig as press secretary in an Obama administration might have been an attractive prospect as well.

I'm just amazed at all of this talk of "transformation." I've always admired Douglass, especially back when she was with ABC News, years ago, when Peter Jennings anchored, if I recall. She seemed to be a powerful embodiment of journalistic integrity and professionalism.

Now I'm wondering if she's not only crassly opportunistic, but bamboozled by this Obama-messiah cult of personality that's enveloped the campaign.

I shouldn't begrudge her too much, actually. I'll have a bit more respect for the Illinois Senator if additional personalities like Douglass join his campaign.

Today's Democrats: Peace at Any Price

Senator Joseph Lieberman's essay today reveals the true nature of today's Democratic Party. Abandoning the legacy of Presidents Harry Truman and John Kennedy, the party today, torn by its antiwar base, demands peace at any price, endangering America's relations in the world:

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.

Of course that leftward lurch by the Democrats did not go unchallenged. Democratic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson fought against the tide. But despite their principled efforts, the Democratic Party through the 1970s and 1980s became prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.

Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party's lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.

This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate – Vice President Gore – championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent – and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Lieberman, next to John McCain, is the most important spokesman on American foreign policy in the U.S. Senate. This is why he's attacked mercilessly by the very groups he identifies in his essay, the hardline surrenderist left.

In fact, my foreign policy nemesis says it's Lieberman who's become extreme:

...the things he's saying today were conventional wisdom among center-left elites five years ago and as recently as three years ago Peter Beinart could be found getting a respectful hearing for the idea that MoveOn members should be analogized to Communist Fifth Columnists and purged from progressive politics. It's just that most people who used to hold those views have abandoned them, often sotto voce, leaving Lieberman as an unexpected outlier.

So, basically, advocacy of a robust foreign policy, once championed by the heroic Democratic presidents of the post-war era, now places proponents as extreme outliers on the ideological continuum.

Things are just getting going in this election, too.

I'll have more ... but see also Jules Crittenden.

"Mainstream" of the Democratic Party? Daily Kos and the Death of Israel

Is this the future of the Democratic Party, announcing the inevitable destruction of the state of Israel?

Apparently, that's what Daily Kos suggests, in a post that's tantamount to a death warrant for the Jewish state:

This insuperably hateful anti-Semitic screed has been denounced by Little Green Footballs as "The Protocols of the Daily Kos":

How low can Daily Kos go? Perhaps the most sickening, hate-filled antisemitic diary ever at Daily Kos: Daily Kos: Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel.

Readers should please recognize that LGF does a phenemonal service in monitoring Daily Kos for demonstrations of the nihilist culture of death that it propagates.

Recall also, that Markos Moulitsas, the publisher of Daily Kos, claims that his blog represents the "center" of the Democratic Party's contemporary ideological platform - Moulitsas' anti-Semitism is the "mainstream" of the progressive community.

This is why I left the Democratic Party.

But don't take it from me. Get it straight from the Kos "eulogy":

[The] State of Israel as the homeland for the "persecuted Jews" was envisioned by one man of Austria-Hungary origin, Theodor Herzl. He promulgated "If you will it, it is no dream." This will was achieved with the founding of the artificially created state under the mandate of the United Nations....

Note the scare quotes around "persecuted."

But check the post. It gets more deathly evil futher down, for example, in implicitly blaming Israel for September 11:

Israel embody [sic] the vessel of boiling blood of horror and perfidy in demonic vileness for its pattern of terrorism and murder in the name of Zionist ideology.

A photo of the Twin Towers exploding in flames precedes this passage. But note further:

This is the bidding of a farewell formed in the extension of a middle finger by the militantly atheistic Luciferian Ashkenazic Jewish sect that - resolved they be - believe in - by genetic predisposition and/or indoctrination from birth - supremacism of the Master Race, because they have accomplished the goal of procreating State of Israel to dominate in hegemony by the art of seduction, after centuries of persecution and expulsion on charge of treason by subversion of host nations, blood rituals in human sacrifice of Gentile children, corruption and ravishing of women, conspiracy to injure and murder esteemed officers & rulers and usurious & fraudulent deed in union with the spiritual descendants of the wicked Jews of the extinct Sadducee sect, the persecutor and abetted executioner of Jesus Christ, propagating fruition of the species as the "Chosen One" and bringing the world to its knees without mercy for subservience and obedience by slavery (brainwash) and tyranny....

As Israel reach [sic] the milestone of the 60th anniversary commemoration, its legacy will be showered not with peace and goodwill but revulsion of conscience and damnation.

Israel is "Lucifer"? Israel be damned?

That's all I care to cite, as this is sickening. It's almost unbelievable that one should see this posted at what's considered the most important left-wing blog on the web.

As noted at the Kos post, we are at a time of the 60th commemoration of the founding of the Jewish homeland, and given views such as these, the nation's prosperity and survival is an even greater phenomenon.

Mortimer Zuckerman, in his essay, "Israel's Historic Achievement," notes this:

This is a story without parallel, of a love of a people for the land of Israel. In this land in ancient times, the Jewish people were born. In this land in modern times, the Jewish people were reborn. They have never left Israel voluntarily and returned when they could, from more than a hundred countries speaking more than 80 languages, a modern-day gathering of the exiles. More than 3,000 years earlier, Moses had prophesied, "Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back." And so it was.

But Zuckerman also reminds us:

The refusal to accept the existence of Jews in a separate state of Israel is worse than anti-Semitism. It is, as former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler described it, "a genocidal anti-Semitism, the public calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people," wherever they may be. Listen to the state-sanctioned genocidal anti-Semitism in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran, made clear by the publicly avowed intent to acquire nuclear weapons for this purpose. It is in the language of the covenants, charters, platforms, and policies of the terrorist movements and militias of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda, which call not only for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews but also for acts of terrorism in furtherance of that objective, supported by religious fatwas in which these genocidal calls are held out as religious obligations. All this comes from a culture that greets brutal deeds of terrorism with glee and celebrates martyrs and their families.

And genocidal anti-Semitism is also found on the pages of Daily Kos.

This is why I blog.

Please distribute this post widely, and consider supporting John McCain in the fall.

See also my earlier entry, where I provide a reminder of the importance of historical memory today, "Nazi Germany's Years of Extermination, 1939-1945."

Close Combat: Helmand Province, Afghanistan

While everyday Americans are cocooned at home, shopping at the mall, watching the latest Blake Lively video on their laptop, or even protesting the evil Bush/Cheney cabal in Washington, our brave U.S. Marines are busy fighting in Helmand Province, Afghanistan:

See more at the Daily Mail:

A Marine just millimetres from death as a bullet whistled past his head had the moment of his miraculous survival caught in a dramatic series of pictures.

Under fire from Taliban fighters on the Afghan frontline, the American solider shelters in a muddy trench baked dry in the Helmand province's searing heat.

Hat tip: The Drawn Cutlass

David Horowitz: Premiere Pro-Victory Public Intellectual

I was a little too hasty in writing about Foreign Policy's survey of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals."

I forgot to mention David Horowitz.

If a former 60s-era radical activist turned neoconservative agitator can be considered a "public intellectual," Horowitz is in the top tier of my rankings. He's the premiere pro-victory polemicist of the neocon right, and his writings are showcased most recently in the new book, Party of Defeat: How Democrats and Radicals Undermined America's War on Terror Before and After 9/11.

I'm currently about a quarter of the way through the volume, but Horowitz provides a quick synopsis in his talk at the National Press Club last month:

You can read the introduction to the book here.

Jane Novak: "Another Good Day of Infuriating the Yemeni Authorities..."

I know a lot of us "9th tier" bloggers could use a little more exposure, so pick your Third World dictatorship, and start hammering away with those critical blog posts!

It turns out that Jane Novak, a citizen-blogger from New Jersey (who's blogging for journalistic freedom in Yemen), is covered in the New York Times today, and the article includes a link to her page.

I guess it's not the first time:

OMG the New York Times article is too funny. The fact that there is a Times article is funny enough, but its a killeh becasue its all true....

Well, its another good day of infuriating the Yemeni authorities...

I like it!

Novak's picture is here.

Appeasing Iran Defining Feature of Obama Campaign and Persona

Caroline Glick's analysis of the Democratic response to President Bush's Knesset speech is devastating in its brutal honesty, and it's an absolutely essential message now that the Illinois Senator's being discussed in the media as the presumptive nominee:

Spin doctors were relabeled "strategists" in the early 1990s. And as Mark Steyn wrote last week in National Review, "Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies."

The latest attitude to be flouted as policy is indignation. Specifically, Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama's furious indignation at President George W. Bush's address before the Knesset last week where he celebrated Israel's 60th anniversary and extolled the US's alliance with Israel. Beyond praising the Jewish people's 4,000 year-old devotion to the Land of Israel and to liberty, Bush used the speech to warn against those who think that Iran and its terror proxies can simply be wished away through appeasement.

As the president put it, "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided. We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

To Israeli ears, Bush's words were uncontroversial. Israel is beset by enemies who daily call for its physical annihilation and while doing so, build and support terror forces who attack Israel. For most Israelis, the notion that these enemies can be appeased is absurd and deeply offensive.

The only strong reaction that Bush's remarks provoked in Israel was relief. In spite of the Bush administration's own participation in the six-party talks with North Korea, its support for the EU-3's feckless discussions with the mullahs, its paralysis in the face of Hizbullah's takeover of Lebanon, and its support for the establishment of a Palestinian state run by Fatah terrorists dedicated to Israel's destruction, at the very least, standing before the Knesset, Bush effectively pledged not to allow Iran to acquire the means to conduct a new Holocaust.

From an Israeli vantage point then, it was shocking to see that immediately after Bush stepped down from the rostrum, Obama and his Democratic supporters began pillorying him for his remarks. Most distressing is what Obama's reaction said about the Democratic presidential hopeful.

OBAMA'S RESPONSE to Bush's speech was an effective acknowledgement that appeasing Iran and other terror sponsors is a defining feature of his campaign and of his political persona. As far as he is concerned, an attack against appeasement is an attack against Obama.

Obama and his supporters argue that seeking to ease Iranian belligerence by conducting negotiations and offering military, technological, military and financial concessions to the likes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who refers to Israel as pestilence, daily threatens the Jewish state with destruction, and calls for the eradication of the US while claiming to be divinely instructed by a seven-year-old imam who went missing 1100 years ago is not appeasement. Indeed, Obama claims that conducting direct face-to-face negotiations with the likes of Ahmadinejad is the right way to be "tough."

But is this true? Obama recalls that US presidents have often conducted negotiations with their country's enemies and done so to the US's advantage. And this is true enough. President John F. Kennedy essentially appeased the Soviet Union during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when he offered to remove US nuclear warheads from Turkey in exchange for the removal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba.

But there are many differences between what Kennedy did and what Obama is proposing. Kennedy's offer to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was made secretly. And the terms of the deal stipulated that if its existence was revealed, the US offer would be cancelled. More importantly, Khrushchev was open to a deal and was ready to give up the Cuban nuclear program. And - most importantly of all - Kennedy deployed military forces and went to the brink of war to make the alternatives to negotiation credible.

Obama has repeatedly stated that unlike Kennedy, if he is elected president, he will not openly threaten war while being open to private talks. Instead, Obama intends to surrender the war option while conducting direct, public negotiations with the mullahs. So from the very beginning, he wants to undermine US credibility while giving Ahmadinejad and his murderous ilk the legitimacy that Kennedy refused to give Khrushchev.

Far from exerting force to strengthen his diplomatic position, Obama has pledged to withdraw US forces from Iraq where they are fighting Iranian proxies, cut military spending and shrink the size of the US nuclear arsenal.

SINCE THE definition of appeasement is to reward others for their bad behavior, and since the US has refused for 29 years to reward the Iranians for their bad behavior by having presidential summits with Iranian leaders, Obama's pledge represents a massive act of appeasement. And since it is Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program that would bring a President Barack Obama to the table, his policy would invite nuclear blackmail by other countries by signaling to them that the US rewards nuclear proliferators.

Foreign policy's going to loom large this election (despite the economic priorities), and for all the significance of Obama's cult of personality, the American public may in the end decide that dangerous diplomacy is a bad recipe for American foreign relations.

See also, Gateway Pundit, "John Bolton: "Bush Hit the Nail on the Head-- Now the Nails Are Complaining" (Video)."

Barack Obama and the Political Psychology of Race

John Judis has a great new piece on the political psychology of racial resentment, as it relates to Barack Obama's presidential bid, at the New Republic:

The issue of race is the longest-lasting cleavage in American politics. It is also perhaps the least understood. The open exploitation of racist sentiment by vote-hungry politicians was for centuries a durable American tradition. More recently, race has assumed a subtle, often unspoken form during campaign season, as Republicans have sought white votes by slyly associating their Democratic opponents with controversial black figures like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, or with topics--welfare, crime, federal funding for "midnight basketball"--that many voters identify with African Americans.

Now, with Barack Obama inching closer to the Democratic nomination, race looms yet again as a central factor in American politics. Already, race has played a key part in the Democratic primary, almost certainly hurting Obama among swaths of voters in states like New Jersey, Ohio, and, most recently, Pennsylvania. If he manages to win the nomination anyway--and it appears he will--race seems likely to play an even larger role in the general election.

What role, exactly, will that be? No one knows for sure, but the field of political psychology offers some clues. In recent years, scholars have been combining experimental findings with survey data to explain how race has remained a factor in American elections--even when politicians earnestly deny that it plays any part at all. In 2001, Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg summarized this research in a pathbreaking book, The Race Card. Her provocative analysis is hotly debated and far from conclusive; political psychology, after all, is not a hard science. Still, her ideas and those of other academics help to shed light on what has happened so far in the primaries and what might unfold once Obama wraps up the nomination. Their findings suggest that racism remains deeply embedded within the psyche of the American electorate--so deep that many voters may not even be aware of their own feelings on the subject. Yet, while political psychology offers a sobering sense of the difficulties that lie ahead for Obama, it also offers something else: lessons for how the country's first viable black presidential candidate might overcome the obstacles he faces.

Judis writes from the left of the spectrum, but he's even-handed.

I studied racial politics and psychology in some detail in the 1990s (prior to teaching an upper-division course on Black Politics).

I'm a conservative on these issues, but I never underestimate lingering racial bigotry in the country.

I may have mentioned previously that I pumped gas at the local Chevron station when I was at Fresno State (a great job, frankly, for the study time, even if it didn't pay well). When I moved to Santa Barbara I worked for a time at the Chevron filling station downtown, on the weekends, for less than a year while I started my graduate program.

I'll never forget one Saturday morning in Santa Barbara, when my boss - the owner - was working around the station with a couple of his handymen, and three stereotypical poor black women drove up in a really old, beat-up station-wagon. They looked like prostitutes: Lots of makeup, loose, low-cut blouses, with long fingernails and smoking cigarettes. They were lost and asked to see a city map. The boss helped them to a map posted at the window, and they lingered a little before heading down the road, the exhaust spewing out the back of their thrasher of a wagon. I stood near the boss and his buddies while they watched the women drive off. They were laughing, and the boss says, "I love black women. I wish we could still own a few." The other two guys thought this was the funniest thing since blackface, and they were all slapping themselves on their knees in hilarity.

I couldn't help thinking how damned stupid these men were, frankly, given my own background. I wondered if they had any clue as to issues of, say, the politics of "high yellow" racial mixing! I walked away, and talked it over with my wife (then fiancee) later that day. We agreed, you're always going to have some ignorant crackers, but views like these - in my own experience - are an extreme minority. That's not to say that bigotry and discrimination are not a prolbem, or that they're unhurtful. But as a long-time student who worked his way up from community college to a Ph.D. from the University of California, I can attest personally to how committed are those in the educational system to upward racial mobility. In industry, sure, we see lingering patterns of discrimination, but affirmative outreach programs in the corporate sector are extremely advanced, the norm even. It's too bad, really, that we now often focus on racial access to the exclusion of excellence (with some added racial hate-mongering, but more on that in later posts).

As for racial resentment in politics today, I'm thinking back to one of the readings I assigned when I taught my class back in 1999: Earl Black and Merle Black, Politics and Society in the South. The book's a classic in the study of black politics and civil rights. Black and Black offer a very perceptive model of progressive racial intergration, operationalized as black movement through three "belts" of the traditional white society "color line":

Black Americans have confronted massive discrimination in each of three broad categories. Controversies in the outer color line have concerned the "segregated position of Negroes in the public arena"; disputes in the intermediate color line have focused on "economic subordination and opportunity restriction"; and tensions in the innermost ring have involved white acceptance of blacks in intimate friendships and private associations.

Black and Black draw here on the research of Herbert Blumer, and his early essay, "The Future of the Color Line," which is discussed more recently in Lawrence Bobo's research essay, "Prejudice as Group Position: Microfoundations of a Sociological Approach to Racism and Race Relations."

In election '08, Americans - who this week in the Democratic primaries are turning out to see Barack Obama in record numbers - are close to breaking the highest barrier to the outer ring of blacks in the political system, if Obama's elected in November. Moreover, blacks have made incredible strides in all sectors of the American economy since the civil rights movement, so much so that the most important but under-discussed fact of black life in America today is the expansive black American middle class.

Even on the "innermost ring" of the color line, blacks today are integrating into "intimate friendships" as never before, and public opinion is more open to the interracial marriages than at any time in American history.

As I've noted before, one of the great benefits of Obama's presidential campaign is that it provides the country the greatest opportunity in the post-civil rights era to really openly discuss race, and for Americans to vote their greatest hopes and fears concerning the nation's most longstanding division.

More research will sort out the fine points of this year's voting patterns, but Judis notes that economic class - not racial animus - is most likely the biggest impediment to electing a black president this year:

What, then, can the political psychology of race tell us about the current primaries and the coming general election...?

One indication is the exit polls. The percentage of voters who backed Hillary Clinton (or, earlier, John Edwards) while saying that the "race of the candidates" was "important" in deciding their vote is a fair proxy for the percentage of primary voters who were disinclined to support Obama because he is black. That number topped 9 percent in New Jersey; in Ohio and Pennsylvania, two crucial swing states, it was more than 11 percent. And that's among Democratic primary voters, who are, on average, more liberal than the Democrats who vote in general elections.

Obama's connection with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, which exploded into the news after the Ohio primary, may do lasting damage to his candidacy by undermining his attempt to transcend race. Wright's words tie Obama to the stereotype of the angry, hostile--and also unpatriotic--black who is seen as hating both whites and white America. Wright turns Obama into a "black candidate" like Jackson or Sharpton. And, as a black candidate, Obama falls prey to a set of stereotypes about black politicians.

Some of these have to do with abilities. A 1995 study found that voters believe black politicians "lack competence on major issues." Other stereotypes relate to ideology. Several studies have shown that if subjects compare a black and white candidate with roughly equal political positions, they will nevertheless see the black candidate as more liberal. Obama is already vulnerable to charges of inexperience, and, after Wright surfaced, he fell prey to an ideological stereotype as well. Whereas he benefited in the initial primaries and caucuses from being seen as middleof-the-road or even conservative, his strongest support has recently come from more liberal voters. In Pennsylvania, he defeated Clinton among voters who classified themselves as "very liberal" by 55 to 45 percent, but he lost "somewhat conservative" voters by 53 to 47 percent and moderates by 60 to 40 percent. In a national Pew poll, Obama's support among "very liberal" voters jumped seven points between January and May, while his support among "moderates" dropped by two points....

If Obama wins the Democratic nomination, he should be able to inherit the white women who backed Hillary Clinton. As political psychologists have shown, these voters should be largely amenable to his candidacy. He should also continue to enjoy an advantage among white professionals. But Obama is likely to continue having trouble with white working-class voters in the Midwest--voters who tend to score high on racial resentment and implicit association tests and who, arguably, decided the 2004 election with their votes in Ohio.

So, there is some racial resentment there, but overall, given the cult-like phenomenon that's already emerged around the Illinois Senator, the question's not likely whether the country's ready to elect a black president. The question is whether people want this black man.

The fall campaign will put that question to the test.

More later!

The Democrats and Muslim Terrorists

Malise Ruthven's got a new review essay on Islamic radicalism, "The Rise of the Muslim Terrorists."

Ruthven's well worth reading. Tough on both sides of the political spectrum, he makes some interesting observations on the Democrats and the threat of Islamist terrorism, with reference to Roy Gutman's, How We Missed the Story: Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and the Hijacking of Afghanistan:

A searing critique of US policy in Afghanistan after the departure of Soviet troops in 1989, it traces the policy shifts in Washington and especially the loss of focus that assisted the rise of the Taliban. Gutman's central claim, that the inability of the US to prevent the September 11 attacks was not so much an intelligence or military failure as a strategic foreign policy failure, will not make comfortable reading for Hillary Clinton's advisers.

Foremost among the errors that he documents in detail was the failure of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright to give adequate support to Ahmed Shah Massoud, the most able of Afghanistan's mujahideen commanders, in the face of pro-Taliban pressure from the Pakistan military. Massoud, the Tajik leader, headed a multiethnic coalition and practiced a moderate version of Islamism that contrasted starkly with Taliban extremism. His troops were much more disposed to observe the rules of war than their opponents.

Because of the Lewinsky scandal and complications arising from Pakistan's nuclear policies, Clinton was distracted, with ultimately devastating consequences.

David Horowitz makes some similar points in his book Party of Defeat: How Democrats and Radicals Undermined America's War on Terror Before and After 9/11.

More Women in the Sciences and Engineering? Nah, Maybe Later...

Why aren't there more women in science and engineering? Elaine McArdle over at the Boston Globe's got some ideas:

WHEN IT COMES to the huge and persistent gender gap in science and technology jobs, the finger of blame has pointed in many directions: sexist companies, boy-friendly science and math classes, differences in aptitude.

Women make up almost half of today's workforce, yet hold just a fraction of the jobs in certain high-earning, high-qualification fields. They constitute 20 percent of the nation's engineers, fewer than one-third of chemists, and only about a quarter of computer and math professionals.

Over the past decade and more, scores of conferences, studies, and government hearings have been directed at understanding the gap. It has stayed in the media spotlight thanks in part to the high-profile misstep of then-Harvard president Larry Summers, whose loose comment at a Harvard conference on the topic in 2005 ultimately cost him his job.

Now two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling conclusion: An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women - highly qualified for the work - stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else.

One study of information-technology workers found that women's own preferences are the single most important factor in that field's dramatic gender imbalance. Another study followed 5,000 mathematically gifted students and found that qualified women are significantly more likely to avoid physics and the other "hard" sciences in favor of work in medicine and biosciences.

It's important to note that these findings involve averages and do not apply to all women or men; indeed, there is wide variety within each gender. The researchers are not suggesting that sexism and cultural pressures on women don't play a role, and they don't yet know why women choose the way they do. One forthcoming paper in the Harvard Business Review, for instance, found that women often leave technical jobs because of rampant sexism in the workplace.

But if these researchers are right, then a certain amount of gender gap might be a natural artifact of a free society, where men and women finally can forge their own vocational paths. And understanding how individual choices shape the gender balance of some of the most important, financially rewarding careers will be critical in fashioning effective solutions for a problem that has vexed people for more than a generation.

Oh boy! A "certain amount of gender gap might be a natural artifact of a free society"?

Don't tell that to the feminist lobby at Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences!

Obama and the Iranian Threat

Jennifer Rubin's got a great post up on Barack Obama and Iran, "Not A Serious Threat:

This remarkable bit of footage from Barack Obama’s appearance in Oregon last night is now floating around on YouTube. It might be useful as an undergraduate course exam: how many errors can you spot? Obama apparently believes that Iran and other rogues states (he lists Iran, Cuba and Venezuela) “don’t pose a serious threat to the U.S.” Iran, specifically, he tells us spends so little on defense relative to us that if Iran “tried to pose a serious threat to us they wouldn’t . . . they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

So, taken literally, he seems not much concerned about Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, its sponsorship of terrorist organizations, its commitment to eradicate Israel, its current actions in supplying weapons that have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq, and its role in eroding Lebanon’s sovereignty through its client Hezbollah.

And then there is is unbridled faith in diplomacy, unaffected by the lessons of history. Was it presidential visits with the Soviet Union that brought down the Berlin Wall? Or was it the 40 year history of bipartisan military deterrence, the willingness of Ronald Reagan to walk away from Reykjavik summit, the resulting bankruptcy of the Soviet Empire, the support of dissidents and freedom fighters in the war against tyranny, and the willingness to identify Communism as a center of evil in the late 20th century?

You can understand why every attempt by John McCain to discuss global threats is labeled “fear-mongering” by Obama. In his world this is all a fantasy and we are not at risk. All perfectly logical . . . if you divorce yourself from reality.

John Bolton's also got some skin in the game:

President Bush's speech to Israel's Knesset, where he equated "negotiat[ing] with the terrorists and radicals" to "the false comfort of appeasement," drew harsh criticism from Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders. They apparently thought the president was talking about them, and perhaps he was.

Wittingly or not, the president may well have created a defining moment in the 2008 campaign. And Mr. Obama stepped right into the vortex by saying he was willing to debate John McCain on national security "any time, any place." Mr. McCain should accept that challenge today.

Foreign policy may end up being the great neutralizer this fall. Obama's far ahead in the fundraising race (and in youth support), but in the battle over Iran, McCain'll put Obama up on his knee.

Will the Real Manly Candidate Please Stand Up!

Via Ann Althouse, here's a blogger who's looking for the most manly candidate:

I'm working on a mini-project here to track mainstream media and politicians calling Obama a faggot, directly or indirectly. This will become a dominant narrative this fall as McCain is a real manly man and Obama can't bowl over 37. We all know who the GOP and the corporate media are going to back.

I was thinking about this during Pansy-gate, that it doesn't really matter if the word pansy was meant as an anti-gay insult or an anti-weak-and-feminine insult - saying that being a pansy is bad is homophobic. Feminine, prissy, anti-gay, sissy, weak, and non-gender conforming insults all come from the same place: that there's only one way to be masculine and one has to be that type of masculine to properly lead an organization, be competent at his or her job, or be a worthy human being. That concept is inherently sexist and homophobic, no matter whether or not someone uses the word "faggot" itself....

What I'm looking for here are comments in the mainstream media (talk radio doesn't count) that call Obama some form of "faggot."

Althouse throws down her able best John Houseman law prof reprise (gender-neutral allusion, of course):

As long as we're obsessing about whether criticism of Hillary Clinton is a manifestation of sexism, why not get some balance and obsess over whether criticism of Barack Obama is homophobic? Well, for one thing, Hillary Clinton is, plainly, a woman, but talking about Obama in these terms floats a rumor. You could also have a mini-project tracking insinuations that Obama is a Muslim. Are you criticizing the insinuations or propagating them?

Ouch!

But hey, I thought Obama was tougher than Indiana Jones on Good Morning America today: Hey, "Lay Off My Wife!"

More fun at Memeorandum!

American Power: Member in Good Standing of Right-Wing Blogosphere!

Readers may recall how I routinely joke about my limited impact on the web, happily toiling away in the "9th tier" of the blogosphere.

Of course, some of my readers have indulged me, suggesting that I underestimate the influence of American Power - but modesty is the best policy! So I'm intrigued, frankly, to be included in the second installment of the "The Official Village Voice Election-Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere."

But you've got to love the picture! Here's the stereotypical right-winger, according to the Village Voice mandarins:

I look nothing like that guy, LOL!

Yo, calling Captain Ed!

Here's this, though, from the post:

"Did [the California Supreme Court] just hand the state to McCain?" asked Instapundit. Ten points is a big spread to cover, but rightbloggers hope the shlockwaves will be felt nationwide — even though Obama has himself said he believes "marriage is between a man and woman." Ed Driscoll called Obama's position a "smoke-but-didn't-inhale nuanced all-bases-covered position" because the Senator otherwise favors civil rights for gay people, in Driscoll's view a fatal weakness. Power Line concurred: "There is good reason to believe that McCain's judicial appointees would approach the issue quite differently from a legal standpoint than Obama's would." That won't fit on a bumper sticker, so Ann Althouse suggested Republicans work their anti-gay magic in a whispering campaign: "McCain only needs to stimulate feelings that things are changing too fast, that courts are taking over too aggressively, and that unknown, worrisome things might happen — unless stable, restrained judges are put in place... Obama's message has been change. He's committed to that message, and it can be turned against him." So, what scares Americans more: four more years of Republican rule, or homosexuals? We wait breathlessly for Clio's judgment.

Well, well ... what company! Glenn Reynolds, Ann Althouse, and Power Line, among others!

I'm stylin'!!

Michelle Malkin's got a link at the post too - I hope I'm not getting that far right-wing!

Now, if I could just get some link love from Newshoggers - then I could truly say goodbye to the lower 9th ward, ehh, I mean tier, lower 9th tier!!

Democratic Activists Will Push Obama Toward Trade Protection

Support for free trade has been declining among partisans of both parties this election season.

Yet as this morning's Wall Street Journal reports, the Democratic Party in the last couple of decades has become the party of trade protection, and intense pressure from the party's restrictionist wing will likely prevent Barack Obama from adopting international economic openness should he take the White House next January:

Since at least John F. Kennedy, presidential candidates have campaigned as tough on trade and then governed as free traders. Some business leaders are expecting the same if Barack Obama makes it to the White House.

Don't count on it.

Sen. Obama, the Democratic party frontrunner, and his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, have expressed some support for trade liberalization during their careers, as public opinion and congressional politics have shifted markedly against free trade. A coalition of anti-free trade activists and labor unions also has used the long primary season to wring commitments from the two candidates on an astonishingly detailed list of trade issues, making it hard for them to reverse course.

The two Democrats are on record saying they would rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico -- if not pull out of the deal -- remake Nafta arbitration panels, oppose trade pacts that President Bush wants to push through Congress, designate China as a currency manipulator and examine whether World Trade Organization commitments impinge on issues as diverse as local-content rules and subsidies for colleges.

While only Sen. Clinton has said she would take a formal "time-out" on new trade deals, a President Obama would likely do the same thing, given the commitments he has made.

Sen. Obama "wants the right kinds of trade policies," says his chief international economic adviser, Daniel Tarullo, a former Clinton White House economic aide. "We need to address shortcomings of past trade agreements and the international environment," especially Chinese foreign-exchange policy, he says.

The Illinois lawmaker stresses that any trade deal must include provisions to protect unions' rights to organize and bargain collectively. Violations could be enforced through trade sanctions.

That's significantly different from current practice. Few trade deals cover labor; Nafta does, but the chances of assessing damages under the accord are remote.

The provisions "can help put pressure on countries to keep improving worker conditions," Sen. Obama argued in his book, "The Audacity of Hope," a view he repeats regularly on the campaign trail. But his stump speeches don't include the doubts he expressed in his book. The changes "won't eliminate the enormous gap in hourly wages between U.S. workers and workers in Honduras, Indonesia, Mozambique or Bangladesh," he wrote.

Rising protectionism is a worldwide phenemenon, but it's been boosted as a political issue by hard-left anti-globalization activists, many of whom have hammered the Democrats on import competition and labor standards.

Of all the principles of economics, there are few that have been more powerfully demonstrated than the notion of comparative advantage. In the post-World War II period, the trends in the U.S.-led international economy have been toward increasing prosperity, and those nations with the most liberalized trade regimes have been best at expanding GDP growth and reducing poverty.

Trade protection has become a knee-jerk issue among those freaked out by growing transnational interdependence, but the benefits are real, and a shift to protectionism today would curtail American export success and harm job growth in highly integrated U.S. job sectors. Note, further, what former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills has said about the patterns of trade expansion in the postwar era:

The U.S. experience since World War II proves that increased economic interdependence boosts economic growth and encourages political stability. For more than 50 years, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States has led the world in opening markets. To that end, the United States worked to establish a series of international organizations, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO)....

The results to date have been spectacular. World trade has exploded and standards of living have soared at home and abroad. Economist Gary Hufbauer, in a comprehensive study published this year by the Institute of International Economics, calculates that 50 years of globalization has made the United States richer by $1 trillion per year (measured in 2003 dollars), or about $9,000 added wealth per year for the average U.S. household. Developing countries have also gained from globalization. On average, poor countries that have opened their markets to trade and investment have grown five times faster than those that kept their markets closed. Studies conducted by World Bank economist David Dollar show that globalization has raised 375 million people out of extreme poverty over the past 20 years.

And the benefits have not been only economic. As governments liberalize their trade regimes, they often liberalize their political regimes. Adherence to a set of trade rules encourages transparency, the rule of law, and a respect for property that contribute to increased stability. Without U.S. leadership...the world would look very different today.

In today's political environment, in which just 10 percent of Americans say the ecomomy's getting better, the case for expanding free trade may be a hard sell.

The challenge for the candidates will be to convince their constituencies of the continued benefits of trade openness.

For more on the dangers of growing protection, and trends in labor market dynamics, see Purple Nation, "Frank Gets it Wrong Again," which offers a powerful criticism of Thomas Frank's recent article, "Our Great Economic U-Turn."

Nazi Germany's Years of Extermination, 1939-1945

I imagine it's just a coincidence, but I picked up Saul Freidlander's new book, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945, just a couple of day prior to President Bush's recent statements on appeasement, delivered during his visit to Israel.

I commented on the controversy in an earlier entry, "Bush's Knesset Address: Revisiting the Lessons of Appeasement."

The Years of Extermination's a massive tome, roughly 700 pages, not counting another 100 pagers of footnotes on documentary sources.

I'm not going to rush though it, in any case. I've got a couple of books going currently, although I've commited to reading Friedlander in his entirety.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a passage from the introduction, on the nature of German anti-Semitism in the 1930s. We talk so much about racism and oppression in all the current debates over political correctness, foreign policy, the abomination of the American project, etc., but what people don't often do is bear themselves straight up, and pay respect to historical memory.

Here's Friedlander:

The peculiar aspects of the National Socialist anti-Jewish course derived from Hitler's own brand of anti-Semitism, from the bond between Hitler and all levels of German society, mainly after the mid-thirties, from the political-institutional instrumentalization of anti-Semitism by the Nazi regime and, of course, after September 1939, from the evolving war situation. In The Years of Persecution, I defined Hitler's brand of anti-Jewish hatred as "redemptive anti-Semitism"; in other words, beyond the immediate ideological confrontation with liberalism and communism, which in the Nazi leader's eyes were worldviews invented by Jews and for Jewish interests, Hitler perceived his mission as a kind of crusade to redeem the world by eliminating Jews. The Nazi leader saw "the Jew" as the principle evil in Western history and society. Without a victorious redeeming struggle, the Jew would ultimately dominate the world. This overall metahistorical axiom let to Hitler's more concrete ideological-political corollaries.

On a biological, political, and cultural level, the Jew strove to destroy the nations by spreading racial pollution, undermining the structures of the state, and, more generally, by heading the main ideological scourges of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Bolshevism, plutocracy, democracy, internationalism, pacifism, and sundry other dangers. By using this vast array of means and methods, the Jew aimed at achieving the disintegration of the vital core of all nations in which he lived - and particularly that of the German Volk - in order to accede to world domination. Since the establishment of the National Socialist regime in Germany, the Jew, aware of the danger represented by the awakening Reich, was ready to unleash a new world war to destroy this challenge to his own progress toward his ultimate aim.

These different levels of anti-Jewish ideology could be formulated and summed up in the tersest way: The Jew was a lethal and active threat to all nations, to the Aryan race and to the German Volk. The emphasis is not only on "lethal" but also - and mainly - on "active." While all other groups targeted by the Nazi regime (the mentally ill, "asocials" and homosexuals, "inferior" racial groups including Gypsies and Slavs) were essentially passive threats (as long as Slavs, for example, were not led by Jews), the Jews were the only group that, since its appearance in history, relentlessly plotted and manuevered to subdue all of humanity.

This anti-Jewish frenzy at the top of the Nazi system was not hurled into a void. From the fall of 1941, Hitler often designated the Jew as the "world arsonist." In fact the flames that the Nazi leader set alight and fanned burned as widely and intensely as they did only because, throughout Europe and beyond, for the reasons previously mentioned, a dense underbrush of ideological and cultural elements was ready to catch fire. Without the arsonist the fire would not have started; without the underbrush it would not have spread as far as it did and destroyed the entire world. It is this constant interaction between Hitler and the system within which he ranted and acted that will be analyzed and interpreted, as it was in Years of Persecution. Here, however, the system is not limited to its German components but penetrates all the nooks and crannies of European space.

When I read Years of Persecution, I was particularly disturbed by the growing segregation of Jews in Germany, leading up to the breakthrough event, Kristallnacht. I've read numerous works on Nazi history, starting back years ago with William Shirer, and then through graduate training with scholars like Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Ian Kershaw, and Michael Burleigh. Each interpretation, each different historiographical thesis ... this history, frankly, is among the most important developments of modern times, for it requires one to consider the ultimate nature of supreme evil, and how each one of us can realize a personal philosophy of personal justice and right.

I'll have more on Friedlander as I move along in the book.

In the meanwhile check out Richard Evans' review of Years of Extermination at the New York Times.

Photo Image: Auschwitz

Obama Draws Record Crowd in Portland

Barack Obama drew the largest crowd of his campaign today in Portland, Oregon, the New York Time reports:

Senator Barack Obama drew one of the largest crowds of his campaign so far on Sunday, addressing an estimated 75,000 people who had gathered here on the banks of the Willamette River.

“Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river on an unseasonably hot day in Oregon.

It is “fair to say this is the most spectacular setting for the most spectacular crowd” of his campaign, he told the audience. His wife and daughters, who have been with him most of the weekend, joined him on the stage at the beginning of the event but left as he was about to speak.

Mr. Obama has been campaigning extensively in Oregon, a state he hopes to win in Tuesday’s primary, as the Democratic presidential nominating race ticks down to its last handful of contests. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has been on a four-day swing through Kentucky, which also holds its primary on Tuesday and where she appears likely to draw the most votes.

Mr. Obama stopped earlier at an ice cream parlor, Lew’s Dari-Freeze and Drive In, in Milwaukie, a suburb of Portland. There, answering questions from reporters, he edged closer to declaring victory in the Democratic battle than has been his habit. He said he was returning to Iowa to await the results of the primaries on Tuesday night because “we thought it was a terrific way to bring things full circle.”

Portland has got to be ground zero of Obama support. Either that, or that river-side burg's emblematic of the Obama phenom in "progressive" cities nationwide.

Check out this video of the event, from the Huffington Post:

See also, the Portland Tribune, "Poll: Obama Trouncing Clinton in Oregon."

Also, don't miss my earlier entry, "Barack Obama's Cult of Personality."