National Review Sees Decline in Respectability

Here's an interesting piece on the decline of the high-minded ethic at National Review:

In a span of 252 days, the National Review lost two Buckleys — one to death, another to resignation — and an election.

Now, thanks to the coarsening effect of the Internet on political discourse, the magazine may have lost something else: its reputation as the cradle for conservative intellectuals and home for erudite and well-mannered debate prized by its founder, the late William F. Buckley Jr.

In the general conservative blogosphere and in The Corner, National Review’s popular blog, the tenor of debate — particularly as it related to the fitness of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska to be vice president — devolved into open nastiness during the campaign season, laying bare debates among conservatives that in a pre-Internet age may have been kept behind closed doors.

National Review, as the most pedigreed voice of conservatives, has often been tainted — unfairly and by association, some argue — by the tone of blogs, reader comments and e-mail messages. “Bill was always very concerned about having a high-minded and thoughtful discourse,” Rich Lowry, the magazine’s editor, said. “If you read the magazine, that’s what it was and that’s what it is.”

In October came the resignation of Mr. Buckley’s son, the writer and satirist Christopher Buckley, after he endorsed Barack Obama for president. He did so on Tina Brown’s blog, The Daily Beast, to avoid any backlash on The Corner.

Now David Frum, a prominent conservative writer who enmeshed himself in a minor dustup during the campaign by turning negative on Governor Palin, is leaving, too. In an interview, he said he planned to leave the magazine, where he writes a popular blog, to strike out on his own on the Web.

“The answers to the Republican dilemma are not obvious and we need a vibrant discussion,” he said. “I think a little more distance can help everybody do a better job of keeping their temper.”

Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor at National Review and probably has a bigger store of institutional knowledge than anyone, having written his first article, in 1970. “I think the tone of what we do, I’m certainly proud of,” he said. “You can’t be responsible for the world.”

The magazine faces the twin challenges of re-energizing the conservative movement while trying to stay relevant itself amid a shifting media landscape that is challenging the authority of all old-line media institutions.

“There’s a lot of thinking to be done,” said Mr. Lowry, in the magazine’s mostly empty New York offices two days after Mr. Obama won the presidency. Nearly all the staff was getting ready to go to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for a postelection fund-raising cruise in which readers, editors and guest speakers mix for a week of conservative conversation, but Mr. Lowry stayed behind to put out the new issue.

“We’ve always had rigorous internal debates,” he said. “But the advent of the blogosphere and e-mail and the rest of it have made it easier to blast out their impassioned instant reactions.

I have to be honest: National Review's not my favorite source of conservative opinion (and neither is David Frum, with all due respect). As a neoconservative, I'd much rather read Commentary or the Weekly Standard.

Still, I don't think any policy journal in today's day-and-age can escape the impact of the Internet to structure of debate across the mass media and punditocracy. For Rich Lowry and Richard Brookhiser to try to hermetically seal the turbulence at the Corner from what's happening with the flagship publication is folly.

Just look at the Atlantic, for example. I've always enjoyed reading that magazine, given its engaging topics and the high-quality writing.

But I can never look at the publication the same way now that the brand has been demon-stained by Andrew Sullivan (and previously, Matthew Yglesias). Indeed, I can't imagine why Ross Douthat continues to work there as long as Sullivan's the marquee blogger headlining their web presence. What a disaster in terms respectability on that side of the media world.

There's more on this topic at Memeorandum.

Gay Extremists Attack Christian Group in San Francisco

California's cultural confrontation over gay marriage escalated Friday night in San Francisco's Castro District, as a group Christian missionaries were attacked by a homosexual mob.

KTVU has the story:

In San Francisco's Castro District, people on both sides of the same-sex marriage controversy confronted each other on Friday night, as police tried to keep the peace. Proposition 8 passed in a close vote and eliminated the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Members of the gay community said that almost every Friday night, a Christian group meets at the corner of Castro and 18th Streets. They try to convert gays and lesbians into a straight lifestyle.

This Friday night, the message didn't go over well. Some gays and lesbians reacted by trying to chase the group out of the Castro.

"Their rights were respected," said Joe Schmitz, an opponent of Prop 8. "They got a chance to go ahead and pray on the sidewalk and I had the opportunity to express my freedom of speech which is telling them to get out of my neighborhood."

San Francisco Police officers in riot gear formed a line and escorted the religious group into a van to safely get them out of the area.

Members of the gay community insisted that their reaction to the Christian group was spontaneous. "It was not an organized thing. We're tired of it. It's not religious. It's not a racial thing. It's about hate. We're trying to send a message across the world that we're standing up and we don't want this to go on anymore," said Adam Quintero.

This is exactly the kind escalation I've been predicting in my commentaries on the Yes on 8 protests. The activist backlash will be marked by increasing belligerence, until otherise sympathetic heterosexual communities say, "enough is enough ... you people are freaking Stalinists!"

Gay marriage bloggers are noticing, for example, this guy:

I'm really worried about where this is heading. Somebody is going to get killed and we're all going to lose. I'm pissed, we're all f**king pissed, but this is going to a bad place. And I say that knowing that if I had been in the Castro on Friday night, I probably would have been right there in it. We've got the moral upper hand in this fight and every day more and more people see that. Be we have GOT to keep these things peaceful. Yell, fuck yeah, YELL. But don't touch. Don't hit. Don't throw. Please.

Pam Spaulding's also warning about the increasing mob rule of the movement, which is funny, because her blog is one of the biggest instigators of the unrest.

Stop the H8 = NKVD

The Economist notes that "the backlash against Prop. 8 is bigger than almost any American suspected."

Not quite: I've been blogging the gay marriage backlash to Proposition 8 since election day, because, frankly, folks really need to cut through all the rainbow feel-goodism and to see the radicalism of this movement for what's it's worth.

The Los Angeles Times reports this morning on how the protests are affecting the Mormon Church (apparently the left's campaign of intimidation has indeed taken a toll).

But to really get a sense of Stop the H8's chilling intolerance, check out Diana West's post on El Coyote Restaurant's Marjorie Christoffersen, who gave $100 to the Yes on 8 campaign:

The mainstream media have so far failed to get across the intensity of the ordeal that supporters of Prop 8 may now be subject to - something I realized on coming across this extraordinary blog account of a meeting at the legendary restaurant El Coyote in Hollywood, not far from where I grew up in Laurel Canyon. The meeting was between the elderly Mormon owner, who donated $100 to support Prop 8, and Prop 8 opponents, who are threatening a boycott, and it is as soul-grinding as something out of Soviet show trial history....

The tall, frail Christoffersen stood in the center of the group. She appeared to be shaking during her prepared remarks which lasted about 3 minutes. Two young female family members flanked her to prevent her from fainting, according to a restaurant employee. At several points during her speech, Christoffersen simply became too emotional to continue.

Christoffersen later fled town for fear of her life.

The Economist suggests that the No on H8 campaign may affect the willingness of people to support defense of marriage initiatives in the future, a deeply authortarian outcome resulting from the Stalinist tactics of gay-marriage NKVD-style apparatchiks.

Gay Rights Activists: Black Voters Are Dumb

We know one of the biggest initial controversies surrounding the Yes on 8 vote in California was the gay activist backlash against black voters, who turned out 70 percent in favor of the initiative.

At some of the first protest demonstrations, black passers-by - and even black gay marriage activists - were verbally assaulted with the "n-word." Jasmyne Cannick, a black-lesbian civil rights activist, even argued that an affluent white gay constituency, in pushing its same-sex marriage agenda, couldn't care less about the economic dislocation and lingering (and real) racial discrimination against inner-city African Americans.

Well, the hits keep coming: It turns out that Kathryn Kolbert, president of People for the American way, in an essay deceptively entitled, "Blaming Black Voters for Prop 8 Loss is Wrong and Destructive," identified black focus group participants as dumb, as they couldn't "sort out" the difference between civil unions and religious marriage:

People For the American Way Foundation conducted focus groups among African American churchgoers in California in September. Among men and women, and among younger and older groups, we found strong opposition to discrimination against LGBT people in employment and housing. And we found widespread support for legal protections for committed couples. Among all groups there was generally a live-and-let-live attitude toward gay people in their communities and congregations, and a recognition that couples deserve some basic legal protections. People For the American Way Foundation produced and ran three radio ads designed to tap that instinct for fairness and encouraging African Americans to oppose anti-gay discrimination.

But our focus groups also showed us that marriage equality faces a higher hurdle. Many people in our focus groups had difficulty sorting out the difference between civil marriage and marriage as a religious institution. Even some of the most eloquent opponents of discrimination argued that marriage was somehow different because they saw it as an inherently religious act that God had designed to be between a man and a woman [bold italics added].

You know, maybe we should give Kolbert some credit?

Perhaps this is simply a misstatement. She can't possibly mean that blacks are, well, thick!

They just don't, in the immortal words of Al Campanis, have the "necessities" to discern the difference between civil and religious institutions, and that ends up making them, well, bigots. I mean, for Kolbert, it couldn't possibly be that blacks, because of their deep spiritual upbringing in the values of the traditional African American church, might believe - as a matter of faith - that homosexual marriage is an abomination in the eyes of God.

Nope, they must be just stupid: Apparently, blacks simply can't reason through abstract or spiritural notions, such that, for example, we must "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God’s."

Nope, we have to get these people the civil religion of progressive totalitarianism, which obliterates moral distinctions in the agenda of decimating the soul!

One would think that the gay rights backlash against the black voting constituency would be enough of an insult in itself. Yet, on top of that, we see one of the country's most prominent equal opportunity interest groups essentially consigning these black focus-group participants to the back of the bus of intellectual capacity.

This whole Proposition 8 aftermath has been unsettling. But the demonizing condescension to people of faith - and of all colors - really takes the cake.

The GOP and the Latino Vote

Robert Stacy McCain minces no words with regard to the "archictect" of the GOP's presidential victories in 2000 and 2004: "To Hell With Karl Rove."

Why send Rove to the fiery depths? The "architect" says the GOP needs to get right with Latino voters. Here's Robert's reply to Rove's suggestion that we need comprehensive immigration reform:

Transparent pandering on the wrong side of an issue is not a politically viable strategy for Republicans, since liberal Democrats can always outpander the GOP. If a majority Hispanic voters are not supporting the Republican Party, the reasons have more to do with socioeconomic factors than with a monomaniacal support for amnesty among Hispanics. If the only way to get more Hispanic votes is to endorse subversive policies, then the GOP ought to be happy with the support of whatever minority of Hispanic voters oppose subversion.

Rove doesn't specifically mention amnesty in the passages Robert cites, although just to mention the word "comprehensive" must throw base-conservatives into fits.

Beyond that, Robert's addtional comments border on stereotypical ignorance of Latinos.

As I point out in my essay today at Pajamas Media, at least 20 percent of Latino voters are traditional conservatives with deep religious affiliations. The GOP blows off this constituency at its peril, and that's not even in the context of immigration issues.

But note the interesting point raised by Duncan Currie in his piece, "Hispanic Panic":

Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American Republican from the Miami area, puts it bluntly: "We have a very, very serious problem." He is referring to the GOP's lack of support among Hispanics, which could derail the party's future presidential hopes.

In a September 2007 Washington Post column, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson noted that "a substantial shift of Hispanic voters toward the Democrats" in five states - Florida, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico - "could make the national political map unwinnable for Republicans." All five of those states went for George W. Bush in 2004, and all but Arizona went for Barack Obama in 2008. Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi of Bendixen & Associates, which specializes in Hispanic public opinion, says that "the Hispanic vote played a crucial role, if not the determinant role" in helping Obama carry Florida, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.

The numbers in Florida were especially striking. According to the exit polls, Bush won Florida Hispanics by 12 percentage points (56-44) in 2004, while John McCain lost Florida Hispanics by 15 percentage points (57-42) in 2008. In other words, between 2004 and 2008, the Hispanic presidential vote in Florida swung by 27 percentage points.

What explains that? Among other things, a decline in the relative strength of the Cuban vote, which remains heavily Republican. An increasingly large share of Florida's Hispanic population is made up of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Colombians, -Venezuelans, Argentines, and other non-Cubans. Indeed, according to Bendixen & Associates, non-Cubans now account for a majority of Latino voters in the Sunshine State. (Just 20 years ago, says Amandi, Cubans represented around 90 percent of Florida's Hispanic voters.) It appears that Obama also did noticeably better among Florida Cubans than John Kerry did four years ago, thanks to the younger generation of Cuban Americans, though McCain still received a huge majority of the Cuban vote.

What about Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico? In each of these states, Latinos made up a significantly bigger portion of the electorate in 2008 than they did in 2004. The Pew Hispanic Center reports that the increase was 5 percentage points in Colorado, 5 percentage points in Nevada, and 9 percentage points in New Mexico. In 2008, Latinos accounted for 13 percent of the electorate in Colorado, 15 percent in Nevada, and 41 percent in New Mexico.

According to the exit polls, Obama ran 16 percentage points ahead of Kerry among Nevada Hispanics and 13 percentage points ahead of Kerry among New Mexico Hispanics. In Colorado, Obama actually ran 7 percentage points behind Kerry among Hispanics, but he still won 61 percent of the Latino vote and ran 8 percentage points ahead of Kerry among white voters.

Even in McCain's home state of Arizona, Obama won Hispanics by 15 percentage points (56-41). In Texas, Obama won Hispanics by 28 percentage points (63-35). James Gimpel, an immigration expert at the University of Maryland, predicts that Arizona and even Texas will soon become "blue" states thanks to their large and rapidly growing Hispanic populations. (In 2008, Hispanics were 16 percent of the electorate in Arizona and 20 percent of the electorate in Texas.)

There's more at the link.

Nationally, 67 percent of Latino voters turned out for the Democratic ticket on November 4th.

Frankly, no one was talking about immigration in 2008. It was all economy, all the time. Once Wall Street crashed, the GOP's strengths on character and national security went down the drainpipes. Thus, a good number of Latinos shifted to the Democrats this year on the basis of cyclical, even ephemeral, issues (not the least of which was the ethereal campaign of "The One"), and it's simply not good politics to write off the fastest growing demographic in American politics.

I'll certainly have more on this topic going forward.

In the meantime, the Politco's got a new piece up on the Latino vote, "GOP Back to Square One With Hispanics."

Cases in Lieberman Derangement

The Democratic leadership is on the verge of stripping Senator Joseph Lieberman of his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. There's a big uproar on this around the leftosphere today, focusing on Senator Byron Dorgan's interview this morning on Fox News Sunday, where the North Dakota Democrat denounced his Senate colleague.

Next to President Bush and John McCain, Lieberman's probably the most reviled member of the hated BushCo pro-war cabal in Washington.

Check the links for yourself, here.

I just thought this would be a good time to share this reaction to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's cartoon of Lieberman above:

Mike Luckovich’s cartoon showing the Democratic donkey with a knife driven into its back by Sen. Joe Lieberman may be the most disgusting and perverse I have seen from his pen... I could remind Luckovich it was Lieberman’s own party (the Democrats) who abandoned him for supporting the war in Iraq and ran a picked rival against him in the primary.

Lieberman “betrayed” them by winning the general election and returning to his Senate seat. Once there, he has caucused and voted with the Democrats and has not transferred his allegiance to the Republican Party (where he would be more than welcome). Apparently, for Luckovich, dissent from the Democratic Party line and holding to one’s principles constitute “a knife in the back.”

RON BUTLER

Powder Springs

Lieberman's situation is one more example of the left's jihad against any and all remants of conservative power in America?

Recall Barack Obama's call for transcending partisanship? Here's a good opportunity for Democrats to make good on the theme, although I'm not holding my breath.

Hope, Change, and the Legitimation of Terrorism

Via Allahpundit, here's Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn discussing the global implications of the election of Barack Obama to the presidency:

While the video's from a Democracy Now! telecast, Ayers appeared on Good Morning America earlier this week to promote the updated version of his 2001 memoir, "Fugitive Days."

Ron Radosh suggests that Ayers scored a major coup by simply securing an interview on a nationally-broadcast news program:

Speaking in a soft and calm voice, viewers could not help but wonder how this seemingly rational, calm and soft-spoken man could have been accused of terrorism. Indeed, Ayers painted himself as a valiant and militant anti-war activist who joined thousands of other Americans in protesting an unjust war. When asked about his own group’s terrorism, he tried to turn the tables by reiterating that the United States had been engaged in a war of terror against the citizens of Vietnam, killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process of waging the fight. Thus, without answering the question of whether he had indeed engaged in terrorism, Ayers laid the moral culpability for terror on the United States, which he obviously believes has still not answered for its own war crimes.

But be sure to watch the video - it's creepy to see these two unrepentent terrorists (but now capitalist hustlers) riff on how Obama's victory signaled an end to the "politics of fear."

Please tell that to the everday American families who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001.

Gay Marriage Protesters Strain Concept of Equality

Same-sex marriage protests were held nationwide yesterday.

This picture showing demonstrators in Los Angeles illustrates the intellectual bankruptcy of the movement. There simply isn't much analytical substance to the claim that gays are forced to sit at the "back of the bus," which is the attempt by the gay rights movement to capture the moral legitimacy of America's historic black freedom struggle from themselves.

It's a pitiful effort, however, since gays enjoy full civil rights under the law today, and even black Americans see the homosexual push to coopt the African American legacy as an affront (as we saw with the 70 percent of black Californians voting Yes on 8).

Jeff Jacoby has more:

The civil rights once denied to black Americans included the right to register as a voter, the right to cast a ballot, the right to use numerous public facilities, the right to get a fair hearing in court, the right to send their children to an integrated public school, and the right to equal opportunity in housing and employment. Have gay people been denied any of these rights? Have they been forced to sit in the back of buses? Confined to segregated neighborhoods? Barred from serving on juries? Subjected to systematic economic exploitation?

Plainly, declining to change the timeless definition of marriage deprives no one of "the civil rights once denied" to blacks, and it is an absurdity to claim otherwise. It is also a poisonous slur: For if opposing same-sex marriage is like opposing civil rights, then voters who backed Proposition 8 are no better than racists, the moral equivalent of those who turned the fire hoses on blacks in Birmingham in 1963 ....

If black voters overwhelmingly reject the claim that marriage amendments like Proposition 8 are nothing more than bigotry-fueled assaults on civil rights, perhaps it is because they know only too well what real bigotry looks like. Perhaps it is because they resent the assertion that adhering to the ageless meaning of marriage is tantamount to supporting the pervasive humiliation and cruelty of Jim Crow. Perhaps it is because they are not impressed by strident condemnations of "intolerance" and "hate" by people who traffic in rank anti-Mormon hatemongering.

Or perhaps it is because they understand that a fundamental gulf separates the civil rights movement from the demand for same-sex marriage. One was a fight for genuine equality, for the right of black Americans to live on the same terms, and under the same restrictions, as whites. The other is a demand to change the terms on which marriage has always been available by giving it a meaning it has never before had. That isn't civil rights - and playing the race card doesn't change that fact.

What we will continue to see, frankly, is more of the in-your-face authoritarianism that's been the norm so far.

What's somewhat depressing, of course, is that we've seen few political leaders in California speak out in defense of the majority's vote on November 4.

Since when did it become shameful to live in a system that governs on the basis of majority rule?

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

California Fires: Yorba Linda in Orange County

It happens every year with the onset of the hot Santa Ana winds:

This photo depicts a firefighter dousing a home engulfed by flames, on Big Horn Mountain Way in Yorba Linda.

Today was such a beautiful day. I was taking my oldest son to his math tutoring this morning, and we were getting on the onramp near my home when we saw the crystal-clear view of Saddleback Mountain looking southeast. But just as I noted the striking blue clear skies, I saw the smoke rising over the foothills to the north.

That's when I said: "This happens every year ... I hope it wasn't arson."

Some readers might recall last year's post ("California Burning") about a local arson fire in Irvine that forced schools to keep kids indoors for a couple of days.

My wife and kids are all fine presently, but we always feel so deeply, and pray, for those who end up in harm's way.

Marriage and Procreation: Bodily Union of Spouses

"Gay Marriage is Not a Civil Right," my earlier essay, generated quite a comment thread. As is always the case, the radical leftists visiting advanced a secular authoritarianism bereft of intelligence, nuance or reason. Sometimes they just spew hatred.

One comment was particularly noteworthy, in response to the notion that marriage is an institution historically founded in the human pairing for procreation:

In America, marriage is not solely for reproduction. If it were, people who couldn't or didn't want to have children, wouldn't be allowed to get married.

In rebuttal, note Michael Novak's 2004 essay, which makes the unimpeachable case on the foundation of marriage in the togetherness of one man and one woman in an inseparable biological union, with the birth of a child from that unity the flesh-and-blood blessing of the couple's fertility:

Before male and female mate, they are two. But when they mate they become a biological unity, performing the only type of act that can result in the coming to be of a child, as a gift that flows from mutual self-giving by a man and a woman in the sexual expression of their marital oneness. The male and female who were two become a reproductive unit. He alone cannot reproduce; she alone cannot reproduce; when the two become one flesh, they can. This bodily union of spouses is the foundation of the multi-level sharing of life that constitutes marriage ....

It is true that, quite often, children are the fruit of marital union. But not always. Compared to the number of individual acts of marital union, the number of children has always been proportionately smaller, even when families were typically much larger than today. But the purpose of marriage is the act of marital unity even if children do not result from it. That is why even those marriages that for one reason or another do not result in children - do not share in the blessings of fertility, the gift of God that children in fact are - may still fulfill the purpose of marriage through the consummation of the marital act. They exhibit the fulfillment of the natural, created order. They are honored for fulfilling the laws of nature and nature's God, and for exemplifying family love - even if, through no fault of their own, it is in their particular case fruitless. The biological-sexual unity that is the foundation of marriage has its meaning, value, and significance not simply as a means to procreation or any other good, but as an end in itself. By fulfilling the behavioral conditions of procreation - by becoming one flesh - spouses actualize the great good of marriage even in circumstances in which the nonbehavioral conditions of procreation cannot obtain, or happen not to. Homosexual conduct, no matter how loving, cannot aspire to the same.

Read the whole thing, "What Marriage Is."

Gay Rights Movement Seeks to Crush its Enemies

Gay marriage activists saw a substantial turnout of protesters for today's demonstrations against California's Proposition 8.

According to the Los Angeles Times, approximately 10,000 to 12,000 demonstrators marched in protest in downtown L.A.

"Tens of thousands" marched in San Francisco, according to this San Francisco Chronicle report.

In San Diego, roughly 20,000 showed up for that city's events, which moved TBogg to write, "This is not going to go away."

Well, I couldn't agree more: The gay marriage ayatollahs never had any intention of accepting the will of the voters. The motivation driving the movement is apparently based in an extreme grievance at perceived injustice, which is resulting in a campaign of rage and recrimination, seeking not just marriage equality, but to brutalize those who stand in the way as well.

As Rod Dreher writes, with reference to the legal controversies surrounding Proposition 8:

Eugene Volokh, the UCLA law prof who supports gay marriage, once wrote that one of the key goals of the gay rights movement is to punish and marginalize people who in private life hold views they see as anti-gay.

This point seems unimpeachible, considering that gay activists have published the names of contributors to Proposition 8 at the website "Anti-Gay Blacklist," with the goal of boycotting and blacklisting regular citizens who exercized their democratic rights in the political process.

Pam Spaulding, who's been leading the leftosphere's backlash to Proposition 8, said this in response to the Mormon Church's political support of the initiative:

The factions of hate are now ready to take their well-oiled machine and work it on the rest of the country.

There's much more of this tone all over the blog, which is currently dedicated to the national campaign to overturn the will of a California majority.

The left's authoritarianism is evident in Jane Hamsher's post on the Mormon Church, which has a "they-had-it-coming" tone to it that confirms Dreher's thesis about crushing enemies:

It was awful enough that the Mormons (and Catholics) saw fit to fund an all-out blitz to amend the California constitution to outlaw gay marriage - but now, after breaking the hearts of millions of gay couples in California and across the country, they have the f**king nerve to act outraged when they face protests ....

Can someone show me where in the Constitution or Bill Of Rights it says that "people of faith" are somehow exempt from facing protests? That their "democratic right to express their views in the public square" trumps everyone else's?

The Mormons want to use the First Amendment as a one-way shield to protect their own right to free speech at the expense of everyone else's, while still reserving the right to cross the boundary between church and state whenever they see fit.

In a political battle like this, both sides will be outraged by the tactics of the other. But there's something about the No on 8 campaign that's downright anti-democratic. As Rick Moran says about the left's intimidation campaign against Yes on 8 backers:

Rather than trying to change [public] opinion, they are making these people enemies for life. And carrying out pogroms like this against people who oppose gay marriage based on their religious beliefs borders on bigotry.

There are other means of protest to make your displeasure known than targeting individuals. All the gay marriage advocates are doing is sealing their fate the next time such a measure goes before the [voters].

"Enemies List" Seeks Intimidation of Yes on 8 Backers

I can't reiterate this strongly enough: The left's intense political reaction to the majority vote approving California's Proposition 8 demonstrates the markers that have been laid down in the battle for America's soul.

Not only have gay marriage activists taken to the streets in record numbers to protest the popular vote, the movement's campaign of intimidation is a classic case of cultural and political authoritarianism. As Time reports, the left is using an "enemies list" to indiscriminately target those who have used conventional means of legitimate participation to affect the democratic political process:

In addition to protests, gay activists have begun publishing lists online exposing individuals and organizations who have donated money in support of Proposition 8. On AntiGayBlacklist.com, individuals who gave money toward Proposition 8 are publicized, with readers urged not to patronize their businesses or services. The list of donors was culled from data on ElectionTrack.com, which follows all contributions of over $1,000 and all contributions of over $100 given before October 17. Dentists, accountants, veterinarians and the like who gave a few thousand dollars to the cause are listed alongside major donors like the Container Supply Co., Inc. of Garden Grove, Calif., which gave $250,000.

The next stage of the fight over gay marriage will be the California Supreme Court.

Four groups have filed legal briefs seeking to overturn the initiative: the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund

As this morning's Los Angeles Times reports, the Court is hesitant to strike down Prop 8 because members of the judiciary in California are elected after initial appointment to office:

Television and radio media cornered Chief Justice Ronald M. George [at a Berkeley judicial roundtable this week], who wrote the marriage ruling, and repeatedly tried to get him to discuss Proposition 8. He explained over and over again that judges were not permitted to comment on pending cases.

While the justices lunched with panelists and the audience, Ohio Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer warned that special interest groups were increasingly threatening the independence of the judiciary. Six state Supreme Court justices were ousted by voters this year after nasty campaigns by special interests, he said.

Opponents of same-sex marriages have talked of recalling members of the state high court if they overturn Proposition 8. Although George did not refer to those threats, he complained of the "increasingly partisan nature of judicial elections."

"We are keenly aware that we share with other state courts a vulnerability to forces that focus not on impartiality but on whether judges, like officeholders in our sister branches of government, should be responsive to majoritarian, political or special-interest preferences," he said.

With this in mind, Yes on 8 forces should recall that in 1986, California's ultra-liberal Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird was removed from office in a stunning repudiation of her judicial record.

Justice Bird, a staunch opponent of the death penalty, never upheld an execution, voting to overturn death penalty sentences 61 times. As the New York Times wrote in a 1999 obituary, "To this day, Ms. Bird's name remains a kind of reflexive shorthand in California for ''soft-on-crime liberal.'''

Thus, the Yes on 8 majority is not without means to beat back the authoritarian hordes now taking to the streets in a campaign of intimidation and violence.

Direct Action Cells Organize Nationwide Prop 8 Protests

International ANSWER and the Independent Media Center, two radical organizations at the center of the global anti-American network, are key sponsors of the nationwide protests against California's Proposition 8 scheduled for tomorrow.

Another direct action group, Bash Back, advocates throwing Molotov Cocktails until "we get real hope and change..."

A number of radical left-wing bloggers are also organizing for tomorrow's demonstrations, including Pam Spaulding, Firedoglake, and Whiskey Fire.

Hat tip: Jawa Report.

Related: Daily Kos announces "Seven Weeks to Equality":

... a 7 week campaign to demand legislators and President-elect Obama write and submit to Congress a comprehensive civil rights act protecting the full and equal rights of all LGBT Americans.

This is all a part of the new culture war that's been unleashed by the left following the election of Barack Obama to the presidency - and we haven't seen anything yet.

See also, "Protests to Be a Key Test for Proposition 8 Opponents."

Gay Marriage Activists Escalate Campaign of Intimidation

Gay marriage protesters have escalated their boycott of business concerns who contributed to the passage of Proposition 8. The left's backlash is now a full-on campaign of intimidation and vengeance.

The photo above show hundreds of activists protesting at the El Coyote restaurant on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. Marjorie Christoffersen, a daughter of El Coyote's owner, gave $100 to the Yes on 8 campaign.

Christofferson is Mormon. She met with protesters Wednesday night to explain her contribution to the ballot measure, but was brought to tears by the angry recriminations against her, and she left town to avoid further attention and controversy.

The No on 8 forces also targeted Robert Hoehn, among others, a vice-president at Hoehn Motors in Carlsbad, after he gave $25,000 of his own money to the Yes on 8 campaign.

Hoehn was identified on the "dishonor roll" Californians Against Hate, clearly an Orwellian attack outfit, considering that the group seeks to intimidate those who have exercized their constitutional rights to support a political campaign of their choice.

For some of the additional groups targeted, check the story at the Los Angeles Times.

NEA Lame-Duck Congressional Spending Request

In my inbox this afternoon, from the National Education Association:

Tell Congress: Help Struggling Families

The Senate will return to Washington, DC on November 17 for a short "lame duck" session. It is critical that the Senate use this opportunity to pass an economic recovery bill that helps families in need. Across the nation, people are losing their homes, and finding it increasingly harder to buy even basic necessities such as food and fuel. At the same time, a majority of states are facing significant budget deficits and will likely cut funding for education, health care, and other priorities.

The votes of 60 Senators will be needed to prevent millions of people from losing their jobs, exhausting unemployment benefits, going without food, and becoming homeless.Call your Senators TODAY!!. You can call toll-free at 800-473-6711 to be connected to the Capitol Switchboard. Ask to speak to one of your Senators. (Don't know their names? Find out at http://www.senate.gov/. Relay the message below. Then call back and ask to speak to your state's other Senator.

Message:

• I'm a constituent and an educator, and I want Senator ___ to know that our state desperately needs an economic recovery package that includes help for people being hurt now.
• People are struggling. In schools, we are seeing record numbers of homeless students and students poor enough to qualify for free school meals.
• We need unemployment benefits and food stamps for struggling families.
• We also need investments in school construction to create immediate jobs and help boost our local economy.
• And, we need state aid to prevent health care and other cuts.
  This is not the time for partisanship or for further delays. We need your vote now for recovery that works - for our people and for the economy!

Peter Beinart was right: this really is "new liberal order," and we've still got two months until "The One" takes office.

For more on Democratic big government interest group follies, see Kimberley Strassel, "Nancy Pelosi's Motown Juggling Act."

Scary as Ever: Liberalism and the New Culture War

Most folks probably wouldn't quibble with Peter Beinart's argument in new his piece at Time, "The New Liberal Order." Public demands for activist goverment - a new liberal order - are high, and the public is optimistic that the coming Barack Obama administration will achieve great things in the years ahead.

But Beinart offers a flawed analysis of the cultural trends likely to shape the emerging era of American politics. Specifically, Beinart claims the culture wars are over and liberalism's won, for example:

Culturally, liberalism isn't that scary anymore. Younger Americans — who voted overwhelmingly for Obama — largely embrace the legacy of the '60s, and yet they constitute one of the most obedient, least rebellious generations in memory. The culture war is ending because cultural freedom and cultural order — the two forces that faced off in Chicago in 1968 — have turned out to be reconcilable after all.

The disorder that panics Americans now is not cultural but economic. If liberalism collapsed in the 1960s because its bid for cultural freedom became associated with cultural disorder, conservatism has collapsed today because its bid for economic freedom has become associated with economic disorder ....

Starting in the 1990s, average Americans began deciding that the conservative economic agenda was a bit like the liberal cultural agenda of the 1960s: less liberating than frightening. When the Gingrich Republicans tried to slash Medicare, the public turned on them en masse. A decade later, when George W. Bush tried to partially privatize Social Security, Americans rebelled once again. In 2005 a Pew Research Center survey identified a new group of voters that it called "pro-government conservatives." They were culturally conservative and hawkish on foreign policy, and they overwhelmingly supported Bush in 2004. But by large majorities, they endorsed government regulation and government spending. They didn't want to unleash the free market; they wanted to rein it in.

Perhaps Beinart thought he could develop a nice thesis using neatly contrasting poles of culture and economics in making the case for a comprehensive left-wing ascendency. But even his own citation of Pew survey data undermines the argument: These "pro-government conservatives" are not abandoning the political firmament of traditional culture. They are recognizing that "privatizing" conservativism indeed exposes families to the raw instabilities of markets, and this is at a time when the economic autonomy of the American state has grown uncertain in an age of both the globalization of markets abroad and the unrestrained growth of entitlement spending at home. With the imprudent monetary policies of the Greenspan Fed, combined with the Democratic Party's Fannie and Freddie interest-group liberalism, it's no surprise that market conservative have become frustrated with the lost promise of laissez-faire capitalist economics.

Perhaps many traditionalists simply want to slow down the aggregation of risk that's inherent in the current turmoil of the American economy.

To be sure, Beinart even concedes further down that in contrast to economic concerns, Republicans are "more unified on cultural issues."

You think?

As noted previously, one of the most important outcomes of the November 4th elections was the cultural brick wall erected to preserve traditional marriage in the states as between one man and one woman. Voters in California, Arizona, and Florida all approved gay marriage bans by wide margins, and in California some the most intense anti-establishment protests on record have erupted across the state.

Indeed, it turns out now that militant same-sex marriage factions are alleged to have declared "open season" on Mormons, and not just in California. The news this morning indicates that a suspicious white powdered substance has been found in letters sent to Mormon temples in Utah and California. The investigation is ongoing, but it appears that gay rights activists are escalating from threats of violence to actual terrorist attacks.

Recall that Yes on 8 backers have been savagely beaten, and a mob attacked an elderly woman carrying a cross at a pre-election campaign rally. Moreover, activists are targeting for censure the Yes on 8 supporters employed at majority-gay businesses and secular art institutions, forcing people off the job for excercising their rights to participate in the electoral process. As Melanie Morgan notes:

I guess it's time for Christians, Jews and African-Americans to prepare for the lions and jackbooted leftist thugs who plan to disembowel the Constitution and anybody who votes contrary to their beliefs.

But today's culture war goes far behind the totalitarianism of the No on 8 forces.

There have been a number of reports, for example, of violence directed against conservatives by supporters of Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, college student Annie Grossmann was beaten for wearing her McCain-Palin campaign button to a post-election gathering. In Illinois, 8th grader Catherine Vogt was told to just "go die" - that she "should be killed" - when she wore a "McCain Girl" shirt as part of a class experiment on political tolerance.

Across the country, we see reports of a society that's turned its back on decency and basic values: We have a news report this morning indicating that a judge in Portland, Oregon, has ruled that cycling naked is a form of "symbolic protest." On Wednesday, an hours-old infant was abandondoned in the restroom of a McDonald's restaurant, a not so infrequent occurence. We have transgendered men who keep their feminine organs bearing children who will grow up confused and bewildered by the total obliteration of traditional defininitions of a man and woman. And we have a crisis in the urban schools, where, for example, a majority of high school students drop out before graduation (often because they are pregnant), and where the education of many disadvantaged students is shortchanged by a militant Afro-Centric curriculum.

The list goes on, but a final word is needed on the left's challenge to the sanctity of life in America.

The Democratic Party's 2008 abortion plank stated "we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine" the right for a woman to obtain an abortion on demand. President-Elect Obama has pledged to pass the Freedom of Choice Act upon taking office. Of course, Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion president-elect in American history. To date, Obama has fudged the issue, hoping to join pro-choice and pro-life forces in a deathly marriage of political convenience. But as we will see, nothing more illustrates the left's hostility to moral righteousness than its campaign to abandon the inalienable rights of the unborn.

On questions of political culture, Peter Beinart's "new liberalism" is as scary as ever. His cookie-cutter thesis of a Democratic realignment omits the crucial place of moral values in politics. If America abandons its tradition of moral truths and cultural exceptionalism, there won't be much point to having a two-party system anymore: The Orwellian new age will have arrived.

Self-Sacrifice of the Conservative Pro-Life Tradition

Michael Barone spoke this week at a meeting of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. A number of those in attendence walked out when he made an offhand yet politically incorrect comment on the feminist reaction to Sarah Palin:

A roomful of academics erupted in angry boos Tuesday morning after political analyst Michael Barone said journalists trashed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republicans' vice presidential nominee, because "she did not abort her Down syndrome baby" ....

"They wanted her to kill that child. ... I'm talking about my media colleagues with whom I've worked for 35 years.”

Barone, a popular speaker on the paid lecture circuit, is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and principal coauthor of “The Almanac of American Politics."

About 500 people were in the room, and some walked out.

Of course they walked out.

No leftist wants to be confronted by someone who's more than willing to call out extreme left-wing pro-choice fundamentalism and liberal intolerance of difference.

As I was thinking about this, I came across this article on a series of letters that Camille Paglia's readers sent her about the ideological and spirtual suffocation of modern feminism.

This letter, from Cindi Tanner, is simply inspirational:

I am stunned by your sensitivity to what a conservative pro-life traditional woman feels about old-school feminism and our rude exclusion from it -- until now. Sarah Palin does indeed give women like me a voice at last.

I am a 51-year-old, devout Latter-day Saint. I have been married 32 years and have five children and one grandson with a granddaughter on the way. My two sons are both Eagle Scouts. I am a published fine artist. My work with the Arizona State Game and Fish Department has been distributed to universities, schools and libraries throughout the state for many years. I have been a working mom as well as a stay-at-home mom.

I, like millions of women, have volunteered countless hours to church, school and community service. In addition to that, I have donated my time to many world-relief efforts through the humanitarian service arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On a more local level, I have taken meals to the invalid, packed relief boxes, sewed humanitarian kits, tied quilts for Kosovo, and organized collections for local charities, and I babysit for neighbors in a pinch. As an avid animal lover, I am known to rescue dogs and stray birds.

Women who deem themselves "liberated" have always grossly minimized women like me who feel great, genuine joy in being a wife and mother. In the workplace, I was brutally criticized by other women who felt my large family reflected poor planning and a drain on national resources. It didn't matter that my children could cook, sew, excel scholastically at school, perform community service, teach younger siblings music lessons and complete long chore lists while I was at work.

The work ethic of my very functional and social children then prompted my female co-workers to criticize me for being too harsh on them when I brought the Nintendo controllers with me to work (so the boys at home would read a book instead). They said I should let my children "have fun." If I mentioned a fun Sunday school lesson craft we did, I was criticized for being "religious." But later, the office manager asked me to draw visual aides for her church nursery class. She also asked me to teach her how to sew after I gave the office girls homemade Christmas gifts. The liberal women I worked with seemed uncomfortable with someone like me who cheerfully ignored their personal attacks and shared my talents with them when asked. I was never fully accepted. I didn't see them as obstacles to me being me; yet that is how they regarded me.

It seems many feminists talk large about the world family and our accountability to it, yet do little to personally follow through on that ideal. As a conservative woman, and especially as a conservative LDS woman, I invest quite a bit of myself in the world as a lifestyle choice. My family is no different. My oldest daughter spent a semester abroad as a literacy employee of the Mexican government, living at the base of an active volcano in a one dirt-road village. She voluntarily served an 18-month mission to Brazil. Later, she used her Portuguese language skills again in Mozambique, working with families directly affected by TB, malaria and AIDS. My husband and two sons all were volunteer missionaries for two years, serving the people of Japan, Ukraine and Mexico. The missionaries pay their own way and love the people and cultures that they serve for the rest of their lives.

Ours is hardly a myopic, sheltered or uninvolved view of our neighbors, our countrymen, and our world family. Our contribution to the larger society is unsung but quite alive and well. Thank you very much for your remarkable articulation of a force that should have been invited into a more flexible "sisterhood" a long time ago.

Respectfully yours,
Cindi Tanner

Read Paglia's response - she was deeply moved.

Great Expectations for Obama ... and the GOP

CNN reports new polling data finding two-thirds of Americans indicating that President-Elect Barack Obama "will make major accomplishments as president of the United States":

The public thinks it's likely that Obama will improve race relations, improve economic conditions, bring stability to the financial markets, make the U.S. safer from terrorism, reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil, reduce global warming, win the war in Afghanistan and remove U.S. troops from Iraq without causing a major upheaval in that country.

Whoa! No wonder some Obama staffers have been lowering expections for the Obamessiah!

Here's Gaius with more on that:

Soaring campaign rhetoric gets sucked into the intake of the jet engine of harsh political reality. This is one of the reasons I have been telling folks not to panic, not to start up a circular firing squad. Obama’s aides are clearly facing the harsh reality that Obama simply can not possibly deliver all that he promised. If the Republican party spends the next two years diligently building a strong, modern message based solidly in the bedrock principles of conservativism and runs very, very hard at the state levels, a huge turnaround can be made.

It is utterly certain that the Pelosi-Reid-Obama triumvirate will overreach - badly - and provoke a backlash. It is also utterly certain that Obama’s policies in the next two years will badly disillusion his true believers.

The next two years, concentrate at the state levels (this includes House and Senate), the two after that, aim higher. But first, get that message put together. And pull together as a group. I’m betting we’ll have plenty of disillusioned former Obama supporters hoping for a change real soon.

Sounds good, but that "pulling together as a group" part's going to be tricky.

County-Level Vote Data on Proposition 8

Here's the vote breakdown on Proposition 8 for Orange County, my home:

For other counties across the state, click here.

Look at the Orange County vote above. Notice how opposition to Proposition 8 - in lavender - is concentrated in South County liberal bastions, especially the Laguna Beach gay enclave and Aliso Viejo, as well as the Irvine area, with the University of California within that territory. Other than that, some of the more economically-challenged parts of the county to the north showed tremendous support for the Yes on 8 side.

Indeed, the city-by-city results show huge traditional majorities in towns like Santa Ana and Westminster (61.82 and 65.74 percent, respectively), which are ethically diverse communities, with a Latino majority in Santa Ana and a large conservative, anti-communist Vietnamese community in Westminster.

On the no side, only Laguna Beach recorded a larger majority, at 68 percent, and only three other cities recorded a bare majority vote in oppostion of the amendment (Costa Mesa, in addition to Irvine and Aliso Viejo, as note above).

What's striking, really, is that Orange County's more traditional working-class and minority communities reflected the larger trends across the state, for exampe, which included 70 percent of black voters supporting the Yes on 8 campaign.

Meanwhile, a huge web-based protest campaign is gearing up for a new round of protests this weekend, and the activists are getting a reputation for in-your face opposition.

At some point, the increasing radicalism of the gay-marriage movement will damage its own cause, and some of the episodes of activists calling black passers-by the "n-word" certainly presage the kind of racist totalitarianism that's inherent in the overwhelming affluent white gay constituency supporting same-sex marriage in California, with radical fringe groups like International ANSWER providing the organizational cells at the grassroots.

McCain Girl Told to Just "Go Die"

As readers know, many of the Obama cult shock troops are out surfing the web as PC commissars dictating demands of utopian post-partisan allegiance to "The One." Meanwhile, any diversion from political conformity is greeted with threats of violence. Here's an example from the eve of the election: "Tolerance Fails T-shirt Test":

As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we're all united now, let's consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.

Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.

She noticed that fellow students at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for president. His campaign kept preaching "inclusion," and she decided to see how included she could be.

So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

"McCain Girl."

"I was just really curious how they'd react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters," Catherine told us. "I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be."

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain's name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

"People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn't be wearing it," Catherine said.

Then it got worse.

"One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed," Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

But students weren't the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.

"In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain," Catherine said.

If Catherine was shocked by such passive-aggressive threats from instructors, just wait until she goes to college.

"Later, that teacher found out about the experiment and said she was embarrassed because she knew I was writing down what she said," Catherine said.

One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.

"He said, 'You should be crucifixed.' It was kind of funny because, I was like, don't you mean 'crucified?' " Catherine said.

Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be "burned with her shirt on" for "being a filthy-rich Republican."

Some said that because she supported McCain, by extension she supported a plan by deranged skinheads to kill Obama before the election. And I thought such politicized logic was confined to American newsrooms. Yet Catherine refused to argue with her peers. She didn't want to jeopardize her experiment.

"I couldn't show people really what it was for. I really kind of wanted to laugh because they had no idea what I was doing," she said.

Only a few times did anyone say anything remotely positive about her McCain shirt. One girl pulled her aside in a corner, out of earshot of other students, and whispered, "I really like your shirt."

There's more at the link.

This is some of the "positive progressive change" we're going to be dealing with for the next for years, at least.