Faith is Road Back for GOP

Five weeks after the election and we're still seeing essays like this one warning the Repubican Party against embracing social conservatism at the risk eternal banishment from political power:

I’ve noted several times how the religious right has become an anchor which is making it hard for the Republican Party to move on from their recent defeats and revise their positions to ones which voters outside of the deep south might accept. In the past when political parties have suffered defeats they have recovered as new ideas took hold. I’m not sure if this is possible for the Republicans. At present they have lost too many voters to win without the religious right and the religious right appears unwilling to moderate their views ....

Maybe over time enough people in the religious right will moderate their views to the point where people like [James] Dobson lose their influence. Otherwise I see no choice for the GOP other than to bite the bullet and separate itself from the religious right and be willing to endure a period as a minority party while they attempt to rebuild. s long as they are tied to the current views of the religious right the Republican Party will have a tough time surviving as a meaningful party of the 21st century.

I've been thinking about the GOP's road back all month, and since reading folks like Ross Douthat (God bless him) will drive you crazy with mind-numbing policy-wonkishness, I'm more prone to map out a comeback in terms of basic ideology and values. Besides, beyond tax policy, deregulation, and peace through strength, what do Republicans really have that's all their own? Why, social conservatism, of course, and they'd be entirely brainless - not to mention morally bankrupt - to let it go.

Not only that, there's a culture war going on, and the left's agenda to drive religion and decency from the public sphere is much worse than reading conservative policy papers. Take Michelle Goldberg, for example, and her smear of Newt Gingrich:

I've been reporting for a long time on the central role of the religious fundamentalism and sacralized nationalism in the Republican Party--that's how I've ended up on the kind of calling lists used by groups like the National Committee for Faith and Family. Still, I'd have expected some attempt to modulate the message of perpetual kulturkampf in the wake of the election results, the public disaffection of so many prominent conservative intellectuals, and the cascading economic disasters threatening millions of Americans. Perhaps, though, people like Gingrich can't imagine any other way. And so, with the defeat of Republican moderates rendering the rump GOP more right-wing than ever, he apparently sees a path to power in challenging Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee for leadership of the Elmer Gantry wing of his beaten party. Maybe he's clueless about the future of Republicanism, but if he's right about it, it's hard to see what kind of future Republicanism has.

I mean really, first of all, does anyone outside of the nihilist left use meaningless jumbo phrases like "sacralized nationalism"? What's up with that?

Maybe that's just more inside lefty-lingo to delegitimize people who think human life is more important than "convenience" and that sometimes making decisions requires not only agreeing that something is wrong, but in fact embracing the opposite, that which is morally right and eternally just.

Yep, that's what this is all about. I just can't get it out of my head that if the GOP does what all the secular ayatollahs want, well, we'd be handing them the greatest inauguration present since Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in on a New Deal platform. I mean, let's just give away the store, you know, the game's just not it worth anymore. Those few traditionalists still left after The Lightworker takes office can move up to a cabin in Colorado or some other former red state and just wait it out until the collectivist state withers away.

Seriously, of all the proposals for the GOP comeback, Richard Land's was best: "Stay Faithful to Core Values." The number one plank on the agenda is to promote life, that is, conservatives must stay true to the preservation and promotion of life, from birth to natural death; and that requires refusing to cut corners with moral equivalence and acceptable talk of abortion, gay marriage and the capitulation to Islamist evil whose terror rose once again in Mumbai, and whose plague of violence we'll see in the months and years ahead unless America stands tall in our heritage of exceptionalism and greatness of right.

There are no shortcuts, and all this talk of "sacralized nationalism" and the need for Republican "moderation" is, frankly, insulting it its combination of electoral hubris and sheer stupidity. Of course, the Democrats haven't even taken power in D.C. yet, and Obama's Chicago model of machine corruption is already promising to make traditional moral values the hottest game in town.

Rationalizing Abortion: Paper, Plastic, or Death?

We've come to the point in society where, for some, there is no right and wrong. Or, perhaps we've come to the point in postmodern society where the moral power of universal reason has become so diminished that objective standards of how to live a life of divine goodness have absolutely no implications for personal ethics.

Think about what is really good in the world - or should be good - as you read this account of the throwaway choice for an abortion, which doesn't sound any more ethically-challenging than deciding whether you want cream with your coffee at the drive-through at McDonald's:

I had a long conversation today with my best college friend's younger sister, who has just found herself unexpectedly pregnant at 21. She wanted to talk to me about making a decision about keeping it, but by the time I finally got her on the phone she was pretty much settled on an abortion. So we talked through logistics, when she could get an appointment, whom she had to go with her. We talked about how it feels to confront and unplanned pregnancy, particularly when you were raised, as she and I both were, with a very black and white view on abortion; that view being, It Is Wrong. She was at the point, which I remember very well from both of my unplanned pregnancies, of just barely believing this had happened to her and dealing with the strangeness she felt at recognizing herself as someone who could chose to end a pregnancy. It just was not a choice she ever imagined she would make, not a situation she ever imagined herself in. She was realizing that she was totally wrong in her sense of who she was; or who she was the last time she actively checked in on it, at any rate.

This should be shocking to read but it's not, sadly - the idea that moral choices have consequences is totally alien to a culture that's abandoned any inkling of a life of universal good. Folks like this probably put more effort in deciding "paper or plastic" at the supermarket checkout line: "Um, let's see, should I save some trees or reduce carbon emissions?"

Both of these characters agreed that "abortion is wrong." For me, though, when something's wrong, one should look to do what's right. You don't cave to the path of least resistance, which in this case is to murder the unborn by excercising "freedom of choice."

Can it ever be denied - when such callousness is before our eyes - that contemporary liberalism is in essence a culture of death?

Look at this rationalizing: She "was realizing that she was totally wrong in the sense of who she was ..." Well, you think?

Where in this discussion is the normal human response of ... "Wow! awesome! You're having a baby! I can't believe it! I'm thrilled! This is the most important thing you will ever do with your life! This is the most important responsiblity you will ever have in your life! This is why we are alive, to fulfill God's plan to be fertile and multiply and do good for others, that is to live life! How can I help you bring this miracle into the world?

Nope, none of that. Instead we see the 21 year-old's story bringing forth memories of previous abortions (or so it seems). How utterly bankrupt. God, that is depressing (and objectively offensive)

The title of the post is "Doing As One Likes." It should have been titled "Doing What is Right," and that would have been to refuse to toss around meaningless words about "abortion is wrong," and to instead just suck oneself up to the mountain of ethical reason and choose life.

No Surprises: Obama Lied to the American People

Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's selection as White House chief of staff, was in contact with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich regarding the appointment of Obama's replacement to the Senate.

The Swamp has the details:

Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama's pick to be White House chief of staff, had conversations with Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration about who would replace Obama in the U.S. Senate, the Chicago Tribune has learned.

The revelation does not suggest Obama's new gatekeeper was involved in any talk of dealmaking involving the seat. But it does help fill in the gaps surrounding a question that Obama was unable or unwilling to answer this week: Did anyone on his staff have contact with Blagojevich about his choice for the Senate seat?

Blagojevich and John Harris, his former chief of staff, face federal charges in an alleged shakedown involving the vacant Senate seat, which Illinois law grants the governor sole authority to fill.

Obama said Thursday he had never spoken to Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy and was "confident that no representatives" of his had engaged in any dealmaking over the seat with the governor or his team. He also pledged Thursday that in the "next few days" he would explain what contacts his staff may have had with the governor's office about the Senate vacancy.
Emanuel, who has long been close to both Blagojevich and Obama, has refused to respond to questions about any involvement he may have had with the Blagojevich camp over the Senate pick. A spokeswoman for Emanuel also declined to comment Friday.

A.J. Strata puts the incoming administration's deceit in context:

The big dominos seem to be falling already, less than a week from the news breaking. I simply cannot fathom the damage Barack Obama and Rahm Emmanuel have done to their incoming administration, a month before it takes office. But I do know they dealt hit a critical blow this week. Barack Obama has just been exposed as a liar to the American people. He lied to us in a manner that puts him in the same league as Bill Clinton, Senator Ted Stevens, Senator Robert Torricelli, Rep Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Rep William Jefferson. We have yet to know what, if any, crimes Obama has committed. But the fact is this week he went out and lied straight to the American people. He tried to cover his tracks ....

Obama won the election by gaining the trust of the majority of the voters. He was preparing to take office with the added trust of many like me who were willing to give him a chance to prove us wrong. There are no perfect politicians. I was more than willing to give Obama a shot. But his followers were living a dream come true - or so they thought.

I will not be lied to and right now my view of Obama is totally shattered. But my blowback on Obama is going to be mild compared to all those true believers who voted for ‘change we can believe in’. The entire Obama administration is now in a shambles because it’s load bearing characteristic has failed in a devastating manner. Obama is not only just like all other pols, he is inexperienced klutz as well.

Obama could not trust the American people to simply tell them he exchanged information with Blagojevich on the matter of the vacant senate seat. All of us would have been shocked at his ineptitude if he hadn’t been pre-planning his transition. But Obama failed America by failing to trust us with obvious details. So he lied and tried sell the idea his ‘office’ had nothing to do with ‘the issue’ (his office of course being his senate office, not his transition team).

Actually, I'm not surprised at all.

Throughout the campaign, a few writers, especially Stanley Kurtz, examined in detail Barack Obama's long acculturation and political grooming in Chicago's corrupt Democratic Party machine. Further, in response to Ryan Lizza's New Yorker essay, with the famous cover cartoon of the radical Islamist fist-bump from heaven, I wrote this:

If Barack Obama's elected in November, we'll see the accession of a machine-style party boss to the Oval Office ...

Well, we're seeing it now, the dark side of Obama's machine-style politics, and his administration's not even taken office yet. Obama's scale of corruption's going to put Richard Nixon and Watergate in the shade.

David Hoogland Noon, Abominable Academic Wretch

UPDATE: Some in the comments are taking exception to my reference to "Lesbian, Gays and Marriage." My bad. The blog is Lawyers, Guns and Money, and the homosexual reference to "LGM" is an inside joke in the context of a comment at this post. At issue here is David Noon's historical imcompetence. I have no clue as to his sexual orientation, and that's his business if he's some postmodern bum jockey.

**********

One of the more amazing things about blogging is that hopelessly obtuse left-wing buffoons can be found in both the depths of the online fever swamps and in what we'd presume to be the refined halls of academe.

It turns out that Dave Noon, of Lesbians, Gays and Marriage (aka LGM) and the University of Alaska Southeast, resides in both places, moving back and forth between each in a manner not unlike a three-toed sloth.

Both Dave Noon and Robert Farley, his similarly dull blogging cohort at LGM, have written poorly-formed essays attacking David Horowitz and Ben Johnson's Party of Defeat. As I've shown in a series of posts at this blog, these two struck out wildly in their attempts to take down Horowitz and Johnson, and in fact their efforts were so bad as to raise serious - even disqualifying - questions of academic competence (and of moral grace as well, for example here).

Noon in particular has had a weird obssession with American Power, and he's gotten to calling me unflattering names like "AmericaneoClown," a perverted version of my online handle. Yet, his tune's changing a bit, in that he's now feigning a faux-elitist detachment in his more recent attempts to smear my reputation. This turn is evident in Noon's latest response to one my recent essays, "Continuing Partisan Debate on Iraq." In that entry I noted Noon's scandalous dishonesty in making historical assertions completely divorced from reality - I mean really, I was literally was shaking my head in a kind of abject disbelief that this man would make such hare-brained claims.

Well, he's done it again. And, frankly, after a while it seems Noon's cluelessness just kind of blurs together into a supreme concerto of imbecilic accomplishment.

In the comments to the post above, Noon writes, "Weber's book, for example, makes nothing close to the argument you claim it does ..."

The reference is to Eugen Weber's, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s, and my description suggesting that it ...

... examines the collapse of national morale in interwar France that contributed to the country's utter collapse in the face of German power in 1940 (not unlike the evaporation of outrage and resolve among the American left since 9/11).

While Noon asserts the book "makes nothing close to the argument you claim it does," he also alleges that I'm "dishonest" (clearly a tit-for-tat play, since I've proved how well the adjective describes his own pseudo-historical project), and then asks with indignation, "Have you even read these book [sic]?", while admitting he has not!

Okay, let's think about this for a minute: I suggested that Weber's book on interwar France "examines the collapse of national morale" that contributed to the "country's utter collapse" in the face of Nazi expansionism in 1940.

Now, looking at my personal copy (which I did not have in front of me when I wrote the original post), the book jacket describes interwar French culture as follows:

Caught between the memory of a brutal war won at frightful cost and fear of another cataclysm, France in the 1930s suffered a failure of nerve...

Turning to page 6 in the introduction, we have this passage:

In rueful retrospect, the 1920s were l'après-guerre, lively and optimistic. The 1930s are distinctly l'avant-guerre: increasingly morose and ill at ease. Contemporaries varied in their perceptions. A few clear-sighted ones seem to have seen war coming since the negotiations at Versailles. More sensed it in the middle thirties, when German rearmament kicked off in deadly earnest and Hitler began to break with treaties that his country had freely signed. By 1936, when the French stood by while German troops reoccupied the Rhineland, France, in some French eyes, began to lose the next war. Internal peace was also badly troubled when the exaltations and anxieties of the Popular Front spurred talk of civil war that might outmatch the bloody war in Spain.

So, we can see, now that I've gone to the source to support my previous comments on the book in a blog post, Dave Noon doesn't know WTF he's talking about. Not only that, the passage above explicitly rebuts Noon's unhinged claim - in the narrow sense, at least - that there's never been a book based on the thesis that a minority party (or coalition of minor parties, as in the French case) that "bears responsibility for taking the country to the brink of ruin" (again, I stress the narrow sense, as to give Noon room to breathe).

But that's not all. Looking further at Weber's book, we see the following passage on page 244, from chapter 9, "The Nightmare of Fear":

Through most of the 1920s the French talked softly and carried a small stick. Their army was understaffed, undermanned, underpaid, and overrated. Their foreign policy pretended first that Germany could be forced to execute the provisions of Versailles, then that it didn't matter if they didn't. One thing no one bothered to pretend was that force existed to be used. As a Communist deputy eager to cut military expenditure asserted, "You don't want any more victgories. It follows that you're building an army to prevent defeat." Renaud Jean was right: The conquering, offensive doctrines that caused so many deaths between 1914 and 1918 had been discarded. Soldiers had learned that enemy fire kills. They distrusted the offensive doctrines of the prewar Staff College, the emphasis on vitalism and will, the prediliction for charges with the bayonet. The dominant doctrine was now that "the power of the defensive constitutes the most important and least questionable lesson of the war." Prudence, protection, avoidance of risk: The army would be ready, but to do nothing much. Was that why, in February 1932, the former Ministry of War became the Ministry of Defense?

Anyone with the slightest inkling of 20th century French history knows that the fall of France to Hitler's armies, in less than three weeks from the start of the German invasion on May 10, 1940, is one of the most ignominious military defeats in modern history.

Unfortunately, Dave Noon, an historian by formal training, does not know this history, and he's admitted to not even reading Weber's research.

If the fall of France, and the comprehensive social decay that led to it, is not a "moral collapse," I don't know what is. Recall too, that the comparison to the American left following the September 11 attacks is completely appropriate. The political and ideological base of today's Democratic Party can only be described as rooting for America's enemies over these last few years. Blinded by an insane hatred for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the entire administrative apparatus - from the Defense Department, to State, Justice, and beyond, the left's done everything that a political opposition possibly could do - short of blowing up Capitol Hill (knock on wood, Bill Ayers, yo!) - to stab American foreign and defense policy in the back. In the case of top Democratic Party officials, the partisan war on American foreign policy began within months after Congress approved a resolution authorizing the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime. For the antiwar hordes in the streets and online, opposition to a forward response to aggression against the U.S. began almost as soon as bodies were being recovered at Ground Zero. " MoveOn.org opposed Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the campaign to rout the Taliban from power. And in 2003, Columbia University professor Nicholas De Genova, before a crowd of 3,000 students and faculty, called for "a million Mogadishus" when announcing his opposition to the Bush administration's build-up to Iraq. The examples go on and on, ad infinitum.

Dave Noon, and not to mention Robert Farley and the rest of the whacked nihilist crew at LGM, cheers such ignorant anti-Americanism as some cool postmodernist philosophy of righteous repudiation of this country's culture, tradition, and strength.

Noon, ostensibly a professional academic historian, gives his field of training a bad name; and the rest of his allied dunderheaded intellectual poseurs should refrain from commenting on the scholarly issues of the day, as those with genuine professional acumen haven't the time to sweep up after their all too frequent unhinged (and not unembarrassing) pseudo-academic implosions.

For President Bush, No Regrets on Iraq

Butan Amedi, writing at World Meets America, argues that President Bush should have no regrets on his decision in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein's regime:

Perhaps one of the Bush Administration's most courageous decisions was the removal of Saddam Hussein. Despite opposition from the United Nations, the U.S. freed a terrorized country from the grips of one of the most dangerous men in the world. In a matter of weeks, the U.S. Army was able to remove Saddam from power, an operation that sent a clear signal to other dictators in the region that they, too, could face a similar fate. The intelligence was wrong, and Saddam didn't have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But nevertheless, Saddam's regime needed to be removed. He was an oppressive and brutal dictator, unwilling to cooperate with the international community and a threat to the free world.

While for President Bush, the failure of the war on Iraq seems hinged to the intelligence on WMDs, the real setback was post-war management, not a lack of WMDs. When U.S.-led forces entered Baghdad, the Iraqi government collapsed without anything to be put in its place. The lack of a proper authority created anarchy and internal disorder. Unsealed borders with Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia invited the infiltration of a huge influx of al-Qaeda-minded terrorists who carried out attacks on Coalition Forces and Iraqi citizens to further destabilize the country. The United States established the Coalition Provisional Authority led by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, which not only proved incapable of leading Iraq, but it stamped the word “invader” on Washington, despite the fact that the CPA delivered to its promise to hand sovereignty back to Iraqis in June 2004. The CPA established a Governing Council which proved ineffective and involved a number of undemocratic opposition parties from the past to participate on the process of rebuilding the state. In 2005, the people of Iraq were provided an opportunity to elect a national government, and the majority of Iraqis voted for an Islamist, pro-Iran government to take power in Baghdad.

Those mistakes were costly, weakened America's image around the world and comforted regional dictators. While Saddam's regime was successfully removed, the Bush Administration's failed post-war management handed power to theocratic, tribal, and dictatorial parties that sponsor militia armies - some which are ideologically unfriendly to the West.

Prior to the American intervention, we continuously heard speeches about efforts to transform Iraq into a model democracy at the heart of the Middle East. Without doubt, the Bush Administration worked sincerely to democratize Iraq and its efforts cost U.S. tax-payers trillions of dollars. But the Bush government's methods of state-building were unsuitable for this region. Five years have elapsed since the end of major combat operations, and yet there is precious little stability and democracy in the country.

America's post-war management could have been more effective and cost much less. The United States should have trained and immediately brought in a team of independent technocrats to fill the gap created after the collapse of Saddam's regime. A cabinet, representative in its make-up, could have led the country far more effectively than Ambassador Bremer - and even the undemocratic parties currently in power. They would undoubtedly have prioritized building state institutions before holding elections and would have paved the way for a democratic, civil and secular government. Unfortunately, the decisions made after the war are irreversible and can't be done over - even by President-elect Obama. Meanwhile, contrary to pre-war speeches by Bush Administration officials, Iraq is shifting closer toward theocracy every day.

According to the SOFA agreement, the United States must leave Iraq in 2011. The world is doubtlessly safer without Saddam Hussein, but Iraq has no effective government. President-elect Obama must ensure that Iraq's parties tackle the real challenges confronting the country, like corruption, militia armies, a new oil law, disputed Arabized areas [parts of Kurdistan populated by Arabs under Saddam] and regional interference. Before the United States completely leaves, Iraq must have an effective government.

The Real Foreign Policy Debate

Here's a reader's letter to Ross Douthat:

I think you're creating all sorts of divisions where none really exist. There is NO substantive division between Democratic realists and Democratic internationalists and not much between them and their likeminded Republican brethren. The predominant strain of thought in American foreign policy since WW 2 has been liberal/internationalist/realist. It was conceived by Acheson/Marshall/Kennan/Harriman et al. and pursued by every administration, Republican or Democrat, from then until 2000. Separate this from domestic political posturing, and apart from minor shading the policy differences of Acheson, Dulles, Rusk, Kissinger, Shultz and Albright are indiscernible. Essentially, it consisted of enlightened self interest pursued through containment of adversaries; operating through international institutions wherever possible; and the fostering of alliance systems. On the whole it was a fairly respectable endeavor although there was dirty dealing from time to time. Occasionally, the bus would come off the road of course, notably over Vietnam, and Jingoism or the military lobby would get the upper hand, but it seldom lasted long.

In 2001 there really was a quantum shift in policy to one of overt interventionism; rejection of traditional international institutions as a problem solving mechanism; disinterest in the views of major allies; open support of the most extreme Israeli positions in the middle east; and the embrace of attempts to export democracy, even if in a somewhat ham handed way. This whole approach was increasingly dominated by domestic political considerations, perhaps that was its original genesis, and it has proved fairly disastrous in almost every respect ...

Now with the election of Democratic administration the inevitable reaction has set in and the Republican internationalist/realists are anxious to get back in their traditional groove alongside the folks who think the same way in the Democratic party ... you and Yglesias are quite wrong, this state of affairs is sustainable for a very long time. Any fault lines that appear are far more likely to be between a Lugar and a Cheney than between a Lugar and a Clinton. There are no fault lines between a Daschle and a Clinton. I use these names, but this is not really a matter of personalities despite the media's obsession with people rather than substance.

Here's Douthat's first paragraph in response:

I think [this] is rather like Robert Kagan's suggestion last year that we are all neocons of some sort or another: It emphasizes important commonalities - in this case, among post-WWII internationalists of various sorts, especially during the Cold War - but elides extremely important differences in order to make its case. Saying "the predominant strain of thought in American foreign policy since WW 2 has been liberal/internationalist/realist" is like saying that "the predominant strain of thought in American domestic policy since WW 2 has been liberal/neoliberal/neoconservative." It gets at the important point that policymaking has operated within a more constrained range than many people think, but it obscures the fact that there are very important differences between domestic-policy neoconservatism and domestic-policy liberalism - or between, say, the realist internationalism of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the liberal hawkery of John F. Kennedy. (Just compare this speech to this speech ...) The latter set of differences manifested themselves most notably in our policy toward Indochina - and if your case that the Iraq War represents a unique break with five decades of unbroken foreign-policy consensus requires dismissing the years America spent embroiled in Vietnam as a case where the bus went "off the road" modestly but not for long, you're probably overselling your argument a bit.

Actually, it's not just overselling your argument. It's getting it all wrong. Douthat's right that the left/right consensus has long driven American foreign policy, but he needs to indicate that it's the Democratic Party's radical left base that has made an epochal departure from America's traditional internationalism, not the Bush administration.

Fred Baumann, writing in the Public Interest in 2004, pegged the real issues facing American foreign policy since Vietnam:

THREE decades after the Vietnam War, American politicians are still making foreign policy decisions in its shadow. In fact, on one level, debates such as those over the recent war in Iraq can be viewed as hinging on how one interprets the American experience in Vietnam ....

This particular strand in our politics is directly attributable to what, for lack of a better label, I will call the "Vietnam paradigm." It describes not simply a constellation of isolationist policy directives but, more importantly, a general attitude of political suspicion and moral condemnation of nearly any use of American military might. Such post- Vietnam skittishness has affected America's domestic politics in enormous and largely pernicious ways. Most significantly, it has made popular consent for any large-scale foreign intervention--and thus the credibility of any such threat--perennially fragile. This has led conservatives when in power to fight wars on tiptoe ....

If the Vietnam mentality poses both direct and indirect dangers in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, it poses an even more troubling domestic danger in its tendency toward ever greater rhetorical excess and emotional rancor ....

To be sure, there is a strand of rational criticism of the administration's conduct of the war on terror. It can be found in the serious policy journals and with columnists like Anne Applebaum in the mainstream media. But it does not much characterize the antiwar movement's overall tone and style. That movement encompasses a large range, from distinguished intellectuals like Susan Sontag and veteran foreign policy experts writing popular books, like Chalmers Johnson, down through the mainstream of the New York Times and the Washington Post and respectable Internet "bloggers" like Josh Marshall, descending to popular entertainers like Tim Robbins and Michael Moore, and to ever more abusive fringe journals and blogs, all the way down to LaRouche websites. Still, from high to low, there are some strikingly common themes.

Conspiracy theory, in particular, has found its way into the mainstream. The missing weapons of mass destruction are a case in point. Practically everyone, including President Clinton, Senator Ted Kennedy, and the French and German intelligence services, was convinced that Iraq had them. Yet "Bush lied; people died" (now available on bumper stickers and T-shirts) immediately became the slogan of the antiwar movement. Similarly, the case that this was an "illegal war" because a second resolution had not been forthcoming from the United Nations is a staple of antiwar argument ... Then there is the much-touted discovery of a group of Zionist "neoconservative" foreign policy advisers of the second and third rank who have allegedly hijacked U.S. foreign policy for sinister reasons. A long-time commonplace for the LaRouche set, this too is now a part of the mainstream political discourse. Finally, there is the vitriolic personal assault on the leaders of the administration, culminating most recently in Whoopi Goldberg's obscene punning on President Bush's surname in front of Senator John Kerry himself. Perhaps the historians who say it was this bad in Jefferson's day are correct, but that doesn't make the current incivility any less remarkable ....

This dynamic became all too obvious in the case of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In view of the indefensible character of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein from the point of view of "progressive" sentiment, it became crucial to keep the focus on American overreaching and on "anti-imperialism" as an abstraction. That way, the antiwar side did not quite have to say that it would rather Hussein had stayed around to murder people and the Taliban to keep women from medical care than to have had the United States kick them out.

Thus much of the simplicity and heat of the antiwar position has its root in the difficulties of its own situation. But those difficulties do not lead it to moderation. On the contrary, they encourage psychological projection, demonization, and a constant stoking of righteous indignation. This in turn explains why the liberal mainstream has opened itself up to what had previously been judged the paranoid conspiracy theories of the political fringe. Vulgar polemicists like Michael Moore, or the old University of Chicago types who hated Leo Strauss, are always with us. But U.S. senators don't usually lionize the former or Harper's give space to the fantasies of the latter. When that begins to happen, we come to that mysterious point where quantitative change begins to become qualitative. What drives the change, above all, is the need for self-justification. And here the Bush administration has been a stick in the liberal eye.

Realist conservatives with their tough-minded rhetoric are easy for liberal idealists to live with. Tough-mindedness is openly selfish and can be deplored without posing much of a moral challenge. But a frankly idealistic conservatism that doesn't just speak democratization but actually tries to undertake it has to be unmasked, since it poses a moral threat to the good conscience of its opponents. Unmasking measures--that is, vilification and attack on motives--have a double function. They discredit the other side publicly; more importantly they reassure the idealists about their own goodness.

It isn't that the antiwar side would hate to see a democratic Middle East any more than it hated to see the gulag abolished. Rather, the success of the war on terror would mean the triumph of an unreflective, brassy, self-justifying, and morally repulsive patriotism, which could, horribly, sit in judgment of its betters. Of course, Katha Pollitt understood why her daughter wanted, with all of New York, to fly that flag after September 11. But she also thought she understood what her daughter was too naive to grasp, namely that flying that flag would inevitably lead to horrors like Abu Ghraib. Again, for Susan Sontag, it was the most natural thing to conclude in the New York Times Magazine that Abu Ghraib really did represent what the United States has become. For if that were not the case, the utopian idealism of those like Sontag would have to confront the fact that it had defended much that was worse.

Read Baumann's entire piece at the link (it's the best explanation of antiwar sentiment and BushCo demonization you'll find).

Douthat's reader buys into the post-Vietnam mindset by declaring that the traditional liberal internationalist consensus was destroyed in 2001 (recall, apparently, U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam just went "off the road" temporarily). It wasn't. What we saw in the Bush administration was a willingness to put power to prinicples, the same moral principles that drove the liberal utopianism of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policies.

The issue for the country now - our real foreign policy debate - is to resist the abandonment of America's renewed paradigm of power and purpose in international affairs. To that effect, the coming Barack Obama administration is making attempts at international reassurance (the nuclear guarantee to Israel, for example). Desite all of our current economic problems, the U.S. will remain primus inter pares in world politics. American leadership in the Middle East, and increasingly South Asia, will remain central to the agenda of global peace and prosperity for decades to come.

Jesse Jackson Jr. for Senate, Blagojevich Style

Jesse Jackson, Jr., is "Senate candidate number 5," from the federal government's investigation into the Rod Blagojevich pay-for-play scandal (the "Jackson 5").

Well it turns out that a number of Illinois money men talked of a Jackson-backed fundraiser for Blagojevich's (gubernatorial?) campaign. Reading this, things don't sound so good for Representative Jackson:

As Gov. Rod Blagojevich was trying to pick Illinois' next U.S. senator, businessmen with ties to both the governor and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. discussed raising at least $1 million for Blagojevich's campaign as a way to encourage him to pick Jackson for the job, the Tribune has learned.

Blagojevich made an appearance at an Oct. 31 luncheon meeting at the India House restaurant in Schaumburg sponsored by Oak Brook businessman Raghuveer Nayak, a major Blagojevich supporter who also has fundraising and business ties to the Jackson family, according to several attendees and public records.

Two businessmen who attended the meeting and spoke to the Tribune on the condition of anonymity said that Nayak and Blagojevich aide Rajinder Bedi privately told many of the more than two dozen attendees the fundraising effort was aimed at supporting Jackson's bid for the Senate.

Among the attendees was a Blagojevich fundraiser already under scrutiny by federal investigators, Joliet pharmacist Harish Bhatt.

That meeting led to a Blagojevich fundraiser Saturday in Elmhurst, co-sponsored by Nayak and attended by Jesse Jackson Jr.'s brother, Jonathan, as well as Blagojevich, according to several people who were there. Nayak and Jonathan Jackson go back years and the two even went into business together years ago as part of a land purchase on the South Side.

Blagojevich and the congressman met to discuss the Senate seat on Monday, one day before federal prosecutors arrested Blagojevich and charged him with trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. As part of the charges, prosecutors alleged that Blagojevich was considering awarding the seat to a politician identified as "Senate Candidate 5" because emissaries for that candidate were promising to raise as much as $1.5 million for Blagojevich's campaign fund.

U.S. Extended Deterrence to Israel

According to Fox News and Haaretz, the coming Barack Obama administration may offer Israel a nuclear guarantee vis-à-vis Iran. The proposal amounts to the offer of "extended deterrence" to Tel Aviv, and a key problem with such guarantees is the credibility of commitment: Would the U.S. go to war over an Iranian first-strike nuclear attack on Israel? If so, the outbreak of hostilities in a localized Middle East conflict would turn into a global one. Other nuclear powers, such as Russia and China, would move to full battle readiness, particularly Moscow which may see its vital national interests threatened by the real-time extension of U.S. strategic power in his geopolitical backyard.

Richard Fernandez offers an interesting analysis as to rational motivations behind a potential U.S.-Israel nuclear allliance:

From a certain point of view the only thing worse than an Iran with nuclear weapons is the prospect of an Israeli retaliation to an attack, which however justified, could only create eternal enmity with its neighbors. But if the retaliation could be left to America, that might have the virtue of preventing Israel from retaliating, thereby preventing other regional nuclear powers (who presumably emerge in response to a nuclear Iran) from explaining to their outraged populations why they ought not punish the Jews for using atomic bombs. Maybe there is the belief that an American retaliation to an Iranian strike would be more politically acceptable than an Israeli one. With an American deterrent in play Israel could be cut out of the deterrent process — and this would be desirable from a political point of view.

But does it make strategic sense? The downside to this reported proposal is that America undertakes to automatically involve itself in a regional nuclear exchange between atomic powers; thereby creating the risk of going straight from a regional nuclear war to a global one. If an attack on Israel is automatically followed by retaliation from America, what role do Israeli nukes play? From a certain point of view the proposal may actually increase the risk of nuclear war in the Middle East. A combination of tacitly accepting an nuclear-armed Iran and reposing deterrence in Washington could make the Ayatollahs more willing to run the risk. What are the odds that the West can bring itself to enter into a nuclear exchange with Iran if it could not muster the will to prevent Teheran’s acquisition of those weapons in the first place? The Ayatollahs may interpret this proposal as meaning that the West will be a party to any Israeli decision to retaliate for an nuclear attack on its soil, undertaking to attack in lieu or veto the retaliation. It adds one more step in the process of pulling the retaliatory trigger. That can only reduce the certainty of retribution in Teheran’s eyes.

It is far from clear that this proposed policy — acquiescing to a nuclear Iran while reducing the certainty of retaliation — helps anybody. It may hurt everybody.

That's a fascinating discussion.

To some extent, the issue seems kind of moot. At the height of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, the U.S. moved to DEFCON 3 (near-crisis stage of military-strategic readiness) in anticipation of a possible Soviet deployment of troops to Egypt to assist Cairo. I doubt the U.S. government, with a presidential administration of either party, would refuse to come to Israel's assistance in the event of an impending or actual nuclear exchange. For the Obama administration, perhaps this all about clarifying the new administration's credibility of commitment, as well as establishing a reputation for firmness in the face of Tehran's international revisionism.

In any case, while we're on the topic, the Wikipedia page for ICBM's has some interesting related information, for example:

To comply with the START II most U.S. multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs, have been eliminated and replaced with single warhead missiles. However, since the abandonment of the START II treaty, the U.S. is said to be considering retaining 800 warheads on 450 missiles.

MIRVed land-based ICBMs are considered destabilizing because they tend to put a premium on striking first. If we assume that each side has 100 missiles, with 5 warheads each, and further that each side has a 95 percent chance of neutralizing the opponent's missiles in their silos by firing 2 warheads at each silo, then the side that strikes first can reduce the enemy ICBM force from 100 missiles to about 5 by firing 40 missiles at the enemy silos and using the remaining 60 for other targets. This first-strike strategy increases the chance of a nuclear war, so the MIRV weapon system was banned under the START II agreement.

See also, Abe Greenwald's discussion, "Obama’s Nuclear Pledge to Israel."

Gay Pestilence Should Be Destroyed?

I've probably written two dozens essays on same-sex marriage since the November 4th election. As readers know, the key issue in the debate over gay marriage is the preservation of traditional values, with marriage defined as the intitutionalized union of one man and one woman for the central purpose of procreation and regeneration of society (even couples who do not and cannot have children are still united in an institution that has its social construction in the biological union of man and woman - bearing children is not something same-sex couples can do).

Particularly bothersome, as we have seen, has been the anti-democratic backlash against the initiative by radical gay activists, which has incuding blacklists and intimidation so vile that even mainstream supporters of same-sex marriage rights have recoiled in disgust.

Gay rights activists have attacked supporters of Proposition 8 as "bigots," "Christianists," and "haters."

In my writing on this I have seen conservatives make principled arguments based on superior facts and logic. Indeed, those on the No on H8 side can't seem to make up their minds: Is gay marraige a civil institution? Or, is it a religious institution after all? Since there's no firmly established case for gay marriage other than the spurious claim to "equal rights" for homosexual behavior, gays have had to threaten and browbeat conservatives who have exercized their basic rights to influence policy through the electoral process. As I've noted, in "The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage," the hegemonic anti-democratic element is likely to create a backlash to the gay agenda, and could even cause a decline of popular support for existing and legitimate protections, such as same-sex adoptions.

That said, it's disturbing to find some bloggers on the right who not only confirm the left's stereotypes of right-wing knuckledragging bigots, but that these same extremist faux conservatives give the movement to protect traditional institutions a bad name.

BushwacKKK at American and Proud provides a good example, with his post on the "call in gay" sickout, "Faggots Called in Sick, Straight Only Work Day Went Well":

So now maybe we should call in straight? Across the nation, every heterosexual person in America call in sick, then all the faggots can run around shaking their hands and prancing on their tip toes screaming “Oh my Gosh”…

Personally, if I was a business owner, (other than a damn starbucks or showtune radio station) I’d fire the pipe smokers tomorrow morning. This would be called “Fire a GAY DAY” or better yet “Pink slips for the PINK FLIPS” Either way, there would be some more unemployed faggots that can protest all over the state, all day everyday.

The only thing this accomplished was to show those of us that voted FOR PROP 8 that we did the right thing.. Bunch of fucking queers, They should be banished to a damn Island somewhere and used for target practice ...

BushwacKKK is a member of Basti's Butchers blog-ring of hate, and he's best buddies with Texas Fred and his racist Anti-Wetback Coalition. These scumbags are beneath dirt, and apparently they glorify in their bigotry and hatred. Jenn at Screw Liberals sponsors the hate, seen here for example:

Dear Faggots: The world DID NOT end because you stayed home baking brownies and puffing peckers, it didn't even slow down...

Stay home more often, maybe you'll ALL aquire AIDS sooner, thus ridding the rest of us of your perversion!

Yes libtards, I am a REDNECK, not a homophobe, phobe indicates phobia, fear of, and I am not afraid of queers, I just believe them to be a pestilence that should be destoryed [sic]... Sicks bastards!

These views are fascist, not conservative, and BushwacKKK's ring of hate makes the job of conserving traditional values all the more difficult for the rest of us who fight the good fight, with honor and respect.

Blagojevich and Obama: No Contact?

Captain Ed raises some interesting questions:

Barack Obama has gone out of his way to make his incoming administration Clintonesque. Not only has he built 63% of his transition team from Clinton administration officials, he even picked Hillary Clinton for a Cabinet post. Now Obama appears to have restored another Clinton tradition — in word parsing. Ace has this picture from the December 2nd meeting with the National Governors Association ....

That image belies Obama’s statement from Tuesday, following the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich:

“I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening.”

Is this anything like parsing the meaning of the word “is”? Obviously, Obama made contact with Blagojevich a week before the statement at the December 2nd NGA conference. Did they discuss the Senate succession? Probably not, but it’s not necessarily out of the question, either.

Barack Obama had better learn precision in the future

More post-election Blago/Obama photos at the link.

Recall my post from last night, "Browner Proves It: The Second Clinton Administration!" That essay concluded by noting that Obama's administrative appointments suggest we won't have "a 'team of rivals' but a team of cronies from the previous Democratic era of Whitewater, Troopergate, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, and the last presidential impeachment."

It looks like Obama's "parsing" is providing some confirmation of the point.

Newsweek to Cut Staff, Reporting in Magazine Makeover

Newsweek is facing dire straits as the magazine's revenue base shrinks in a changing media market, the Wall Street Journal reports. To adapt, the publishers will reduce circulation and cull the magazine's hard news reporting, in a sense shifting the publication to a journal of opinion:

As it continues its shift away from news gathering toward a more provocative, idea-driven editorial approach, Newsweek is also considering other dramatic changes, including significantly reducing its rate base - the number of weekly copies it promises advertisers it will deliver ...

Recently, Newsweek has emphasized commentary on hot-button issues, such as gay marriage, by big-name journalists like editor Jon Meacham and international editor Fareed Zakaria, as well as contributions from political operatives and academics like Michael Beschloss and Sean Wilentz.

Newsweek is seeking in part to mirror publications like the Economist, which has thrived in a tough market by focusing less on costly news gathering than on driving discussion of the day's issues.

If this week's cover story is any indcation, the shift to opinion over rigorous reporting will likely mean more nails in the magazine's coffin. The article, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage," was a poster-essay in journalistic malpractice on a number of levels. Factually innacurate and morally repulsive, some religious conservatives responded by pledging to cancel their subscriptions.

Interestingly, apparently in tandem with the case for gay marriage, Newsweek's editors have positioned the magazine as a bulwark against religious fundamentalism:

We saw it coming. This week's cover story, written by Lisa Miller, our religion editor, lays out the religious case for gay marriage. As Jon Meacham says in his weekly Editor's Letter, "The reaction to this cover is not difficult to predict. Religious conservatives will say that the liberal media are once again seeking to impose their values (or their "agenda,"a favorite term to describe the views of those who disagree with you) on a God-fearing nation. Let the letters and e-mails come."

At times, Jon Meacham has himself written some of the best journalism around, but he's jumped the shark now. He says this at his editors' note:

No matter what one thinks about gay rights—for, against or somewhere in between — this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism.

He then backs up this assertion with the same kind of falsehoods that mar the magazine's cover story.

It's interesting that the Wall Street Journal compares Newsweek's developing model to the Economist. That magazine, probably the most rigorous newsweekly currently available, stands head-and-shoulders over Newsweek, as its editorial standards are based on a careful rationalism found in the same economic logic from which the publication is named.

Newsweek, in shifting its focus to publishing Bush-bashers like Sean Wilentz and moral relativists like Fareed Zakaria, has essentially sold out to the Democratic zeitgeist of the times, a sort of journalistic Obamania. It's a disastrous short-term tack, as well as a disturbing reflection on the decline of moral clarity and objective reason in contemporary American journalism.

See, also, John at Powerline, who says "Goodbye to Newsweek."

Conservative Republicans Still Love Bush

A new Gallup poll finds that conservative Repubicans remain firmly in support of President George W. Bush:

George W. Bush remains popular among conservative Republicans (72% approve of him) despite his low overall approval rating. Meanwhile, moderate and liberal Republicans are as likely to disapprove as to approve of the job he is doing, and Democrats of all political orientations hold Bush in low regard ....

Those from just about every other partisan and ideological perspective give Bush low marks on public support. Bush is currently standing at 29 percent in job approval:

With such a low approval rating, it is hard to find many population subgroups that are favorable to Bush. A look at the groups giving Bush the 10 highest average approval ratings clearly shows how much one's opinion of the president is driven by political attitudes as opposed to demographic characteristics. Only four groups give Bush ratings in excess of 40% approval, and all are defined by political points of view. But because membership in these four groups overlaps (e.g., Republicans and conservative Republicans), when they are subdivided into mutually exclusive groups (as in the first graph), it really is only Americans who are both Republicans and conservatives who hold Bush in high esteem.

People in this category are likely to see President Bush in terms of moral clarity, as a president who's willing to stand up to our enemies, and one who's not likely to cave to pacifist public opinion.

History will record that this administration stood firm in America's fight against a fanatical ideology hellbent on the destruction of the West. The costs have been high, but Bush's commitment to victory in Iraq and the broader war on terror will place him in the category of great foreign policy presidents as the immediacy and partisanship of the moment fade over time.

Bill Ayers Keeps Weathermen Above Ground

The rehabilitation of William Ayers, the '60s terrorist who wishes he'd done more, reflects one of the most fundamental shifts in American culture toward relativism and the rejection of moral truth. Ayers' essay last weekend at the New York Times, an otherworldy parody of reason, certainly confirmed a turning point in society in which no deed - no matter how diabolical - will forever remain unacceptable, and no unrepentant perpetrator of violence against Americans will remain outside the boundaries of polite, upstanding society.

Charles Lane at the Washington Post discusses Ayers in an article with a long but beautifully apt title, "The Unreal Bill Ayers: Three Decades After the Weather Underground's End, He's Still Justifying Its Means":

In a Dec. 6 New York Times op-ed -- headlined "The Real Bill Ayers" -- Ayers cast himself as the victim of a "profoundly dishonest drama" in which he was branded an "unrepentant terrorist." He cops to "posturing" and "blind sectarianism" -- but insists that he never killed or hurt anyone and never intended to. His Weather Underground committed "symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed against monuments to war and racism" -- not terrorism. Its bombings were surgical strikes "meant to respect human life."

Some people might buy this, but not if they know the actual history -- as opposed to Ayers's selective version. Ayers omits the 1969 "Days of Rage" riot in Chicago, spearheaded by his Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society. He kicked it off by helping to blow up a downtown police monument the night of Oct. 6, 1969; the blast showered rubble on a nearby expressway and shattered more than 100 windows.

If a warning to the public preceded this strike, Ayers doesn't mention it in his 2001 memoir, "Fugitive Days" -- nor does contemporaneous media coverage. In fact, a bus driver told police that his vehicle stalled near the statue a half-hour before the blast; he would have been a sitting duck 30 minutes later. Days afterward, Ayers and other club-wielding leftists fought and injured police officers and smashed storefronts and cars. A government attorney tried to tackle one of them and wound up paralyzed.

In his Times column, Ayers's chronology focuses on 1970, the year he co-founded the Weather Underground "after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village." But this wasn't some especially radicalizing furnace mishap. On March 6, 1970, three members of a Weatherman cell died when a bomb they were making blew up in their faces. Packed with nails for maximum lethality, it had been intended for a noncommissioned officers' dance at Fort Dix, N.J.

Only then did the Weatherman faction mutate into the Weather Underground -- and begin issuing pre-detonation warnings. Even so, it was still a matter of luck that there were no casualties.

As Todd Gitlin, a former '60s leftist and a historian of the period, put it: "They planned on being terrorists. Then their bomb blew up and killed several of them and they thought better of it. They were failed terrorists."

Ayers told me this week that he did not know about the nail bomb in advance -- and condemned it afterward. I take him at his word. So why obfuscate in the Times? Editors cut the article, he protested -- before conceding that his original version left it out, too.

His refutation of the "terrorist" charge relies, ironically, on the U.S. government's definition: "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents." "We did not do that," Ayers insisted.

To some, the U.S. Capitol, a Weather Underground target, might qualify as "non-combatant." But Ayers said it was fair game: The U.S. invasion of Laos and Cambodia made it "a symbol of empire."

Ayers has been singing this tune for years. In a 1976 tract, he called for "revolutionary violence," as long as it was "humane." By then the war was over, and his goal was "to build communist organization toward the stage where armed struggle becomes a mass phenomenon led by a Marxist-Leninist party: a revolutionary stage." His crazy means were dictating even crazier ends.

Hardly the worst crimes of that turbulent era, the Weather Underground's deeds were nevertheless immoral. They put innocents at risk and sowed fear. Ultimately, they achieved nothing except to undermine the peaceful antiwar movement. Bill Ayers should cut the sophistry and admit it.

Also, check out Allahpundit's post on Chris Matthews' recent interview with Ayers.

Unreal...

Browner Proves It: The Second Clinton Administration!

Carol Browner, who was head of the Environmental Protection Agency for both terms of the Clinton administration (1993-2001), is expected to be tapped as "energy and environmental czar" for the incoming Barack Obama administration.

Well, that does it. I'm putting my foot down, finally. I've held off on criticizing Obama for his oppressively stale administrative appointments. But, I mean let's be honest, this is a de facto Second Clinton Administration, with a token black chief executive who'll be sitting in the Oval Office. This is not just a disaster for the Democratic Party, but for Barack Obama's personal claim to embody hope and change, not to mention post-partisan transformation.

Recall what we've seen so far: Obama picked the profane Illinois political operative Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff. Emmanuel, prior to being elected to Illinois' 5th conressional district in 2002, was Bill Clinton's campaign finance director in 1992, and later served in the Clinton White House as a personal advisor to the president.

Then, of course, we have Senator Hillary Clinton who has accepted her nomination to be secretary of state in the new administration. The Clinton pick raises more questions than anything we've seen so far. Tapping Clinton, above all, is a sign of Obama's dire weaknesses. Did Obama need to shore up his credibility with the PUMAs? Probably not, as he won a decisive 52.5 percent majority on November 4th (apparently showing that the pre-convention fears of party disunity were overblown). No, Obama selected Clinton to neutralize his own woeful inexperience, and not just in foreign policy, which Hillary had targeted so effectively during the primaries (don't forget the "3 am phone call"). After running perhaps the most successful presidential campaign in history, Obama put on the retroburners. Frozen by the fact that he's going to have to actually govern, he tossed his utopian calls for transformation and hewed to the tried and true of old-news party hacks. We'll have not just have Hillary, but Bill Clinton too, as an in-house deputy secretary of state, with tremendous influence on his wife (and not to mention his estimable connections, which at any other time in history would raise vigorous questions of conflict of interest).

Then you've got New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, the most qualified failed presidential candidate in American history. Richardson was Bill Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of energy. Having been snubbed for state, Richardson will preside over private-sector ribbon-cutting at one of the smallest cabinet departments in Washington. What a letdown, but it's a perfect signature for Obama's already-failing style of bureaucratic leadership.

Of special note is attorney general-nominee Eric Holder. As assitant attorney general in the second Clinton administration, Holder endorsed Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, which soon became a culminating symbol of the moral vacuum of the Clinton presidency.

With the appointment of Carol Browner as a top staffer on Obama's energy and environmental policy, we'll see another top Clinton administration official coming back to D.C. for a second turn on the Democratic-insider merry-go-round (revolving door?). An undistinguished bureaucrat, Browner apparently stepped on toes during her tenure as the administration's enforcer on bone-crushing anti-business environmental mandates. This time around she'll have the added capital of global warming hysteria to really dampen entrepreneurial enthusiasm.

More announcements are on the way (including the possible appointment of Anthony Lake, a former national security advisor to Bill Clinton, as CIA director - no "change" there, again!).

Note that Obama's selection of physicist Steven Chu as secretary of energy should have been the model. This man has no inside Washington experience, and he boasts impeccable credentials as a winner of the Nobel Prize. Chu is a big thinker on the cutting-edge of alternative fuels and is thus exactly the kind of pick that Obama should be making across-the-board.

The progressive left has been deeply disappointed with Obama's appointments so far (not enough "genuine" Democratic leftists). But it's the American public who should really be disappointed, now that they're disabused of the campaign's lofty - even ethereal - promises of national healing, unity, and restoration of American values abroad. The fact is American government will largely return to the status quo ante, circa 1999. The difference is the country's got pent-up and deep-seated problems, and the man in driver's seat (or the figurehead, depending on how incompetent Barack Hussein ends up being) will have not a "team of rivals" but a team of cronies from the previous Democratic era of Whitewater, Troopergate, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, and the last presidential impeachment.

I can't see how this constitutes the kind of "change" Americans hoped for when they pulled their levers last month. But this year's been a black-magic tour of corruption and radicalism on the Democratic side, from Jeremiah Wright to Bill Ayers, and now to Rod Blogojevich.

I'll be relieved, though, if Obama breaks with Bill Clinton's record and loses in 2012, ending up as a failed one-term president with his first-term agenda of big-government liberalism repudiated at the polls next time around.

Gay Marriage Disinformation and Intimidation

There's a little debate online this afternoon over Mike Huckabee's appearance on Jon Stewart's show. Apparenlty, Stewart's a big liberal PC master, and he peppered Huck with the standard leftists questions and false equivalencies.

Think Progress has the video, but note this transcripted portion and the response:

Huckabee tried to insist that “60 percent of the American population” opposes gay marriage. Stewart interrupted him, calling it a “travesty” that gay Americans have to plead for their civil rights:

HUCKABEE: If the American people are not convinced that we should overturn the definition of marriage, then I would say that those who support the idea of same-sex marriage have a lot of work to do to convince the rest of us. And as I said, 60 percent of the American population has made the decision–

STEWART: You know, you talk about the pro-life movement [abortion] being one of the great shames of our nation. I think if you want number two, I think it’s that: It’s a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to have to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights as someone else.

Watch the whole interview ....

It is true that 30 states have banned gay marriage. However, Huckabee — like other conservatives who make similar claims — is wrong to suggest that American public opinion is on his side. A recent poll found that a full 75 percent of Americans favor either gay marriage or civil unions, with nearly 50 percent favoring gay marriage itself. More importantly, the next generation is much more open to gay rights: According to CNN exit polls, an overwhelming majority — 67 percent — of 18-29 year-olds voted against stripping gay couples of their right to marry in California.

Note that Think Progress, to make its case, cites a bogus poll plus the views of young people, who are more liberal on the issue but don't vote in near the proportion to older and more conservative voters.

Just this week Newsweek published the results of its poll on gay marriage, and just 31 percent of those surveyed said they backed full-blown same-sex marriage rights. Huckabee's not only correct, but he's citing conservative estimates on support for traditional family structures.

But that doesn't matter to the radical leftists, who have launched a campaign of intimidation to overturn a decisive majority around the country in favor of retaining traditional heterosexual unions. As the New York Times reports today, in "Gay Marriage Ban Inspires New Wave of Activists," homosexual activists are launching anti-democratic campaigns seeking to browbeat and intimidate people over their agenda:

The ban [Prop 8], which passed with 52 percent of the vote, overturned a decision by the California Supreme Court in May legalizing same-sex marriage. The same court is currently considering a challenge to Proposition 8.

But many activists seem unwilling to wait for a legal solution and have planned a series of events to keep the issue in the public eye, including a nationwide candlelight vigil later this month, a Million Gay March in Washington next spring and continued protests at county clerks’ offices throughout California.

“We’re doing an end run around the mainstream organizations that run our causes,” said David Craig, a movie producer who is an organizer of Wednesday’s “call in gay” protest. “And the Internet has given us the tool to create these events.”

Recall that gay radicals frequently invoke the black civil rights movement in hopes of finding moral authority for their position. But blacks were disinfranchised prior to 1964 and 1965. They really were on the back of the bus.

Today, gay Americans enjoy full equal protection under the law (and recall that gay marriage is not considered as under the civil rights umbrella according to the federal Defense of Marriage Act). What they don't have - and they'll berate, lie, stomp, and whine until they get their way - is the right to impose their will on a majority of voters who have legitimately and peacefully sought to protect their interests through the ballot box.

New Down Syndrome Tests May Increase Abortions

A couple of years back I had a young woman with Down syndrome in my American government class.

She was the sweetest young woman you'd ever want to meet. Her condition was mild, and she had a wonderful way about herself and her abilities. She would often stay after class and ask me to look over her lecture notes to see if she got everything down. She wrote a perfectly fine news analysis notebook - the term-paper assignmnent for the course - and she wound up doing better in the class than a number of the coolsters and hip-hoppers who would drag their tails to class every day 20 minutes past the hour.

I never really thought much of it. My young student was more conscientious and polite than most young people I meet. It was my pleasure to have her in the class.

Thus, I was very disturbed to read this story on the new screening tests available for expecting mothers, tests that have pro-life adocates worried that even more Downs syndrome babies will be terminated:

Beth Allard was recovering from labor, waiting for a hospital photographer to capture her newborn son's first day in the world, when a pediatrician walked into her room and told Allard her life was ruined. Allard might have expected as much from a doctor, given what she'd already heard from others in the previous few months: little Ben, who had tested positive in utero for Down syndrome, would be mute and illiterate, they said; he would spend his life hanging off her, drooling. The pediatrician was harsher: "You should consider putting him up for adoption," she said. "You're going to end up divorced. Don't even bother having any other children. Didn't you have the option to terminate?" Finally, the pediatrician left, and Allard resumed her wait for the photographer. He never came.

Ben Allard is now 9, and it's hard to understand why doctors were convinced he would be such a burden. He's a friendly, witty kid who's happily enrolled in third grade at a regular school. He does, says Beth, "all the things they told us he wouldn't be doing, and more." She shudders when she thinks about how wrong the doctors turned out to be: she almost took their advice and ended her pregnancy.

Read the whole thing, here.

I have to confess I get a little emotional reading stories like this, which seem to be way too frequent amid this growing culture of death that's taken over today's Democratic left. The article cites a 2000 survey of pediatricians that found 1-of-4 doctors encouraging their patients to abort their pregnancies. This reminds me of Michael Barone's comments on why the media attacked Governor Sarah Palin so viciously: "The liberal media attacked Sarah Palin because she did not abort her Down syndrome baby ... They wanted her to kill that child ... "

One of my very best blogging buddies sent this website along, theupsideofdowns.org. Please take a moment to think more about families with this kind of love. I do not know the difficulties parents face raising a child with Downs syndrome. I do know that they should not be coerced into killing their babies.

The Democrats' "Phony Scandal"

It's the nature of partisan politics to defend your side when a scandal emerges, but frankly, the Chicago pay-for-play allegations are likely to be just the tip of the iceberg for a presidential administration rooted in the corrupt Chicago patronage-machine cesspool.

Here's Digby blowing it off as a right-wing witchhunt:

I don't know if this environment is conducive to phony scandal. There's just so much going on. But if it is, this is one of the ways they do it. Guilt by association, drip-drip-drip of vague allegations and ongoing "questions." The key to really hammering it home, of course, would be for the Republicans to win back a majority in the congress in 2010, which I think is unlikely. The Republicans were growing in strength during that earlier era and are now in retreat, at least temporarily.

But keep this in the back of your mind. If there is room for scandal and the wingnuts can get traction, this is one of their tried and true methods of getting it "out there."

Of course, resort to comic relief is a sure sign that the scandal is damaging to Democratic power prospects next year. Check out this from Josh Marshall's reader:

I think you guys should do a Most Corrupt State smackdown. Maybe get CREW, POGO, ProPublica, and whoever else wants to help to cooperate. I think it's pretty clear that the only three serious contenders are Illinois, Louisiana, and Alaska. My money would be on the young upstart, Alaska, over the grizzled corruption veterans of Illinois and Louisiana, but who knows. Statistics should play a part in the contest, but style points are important, too. Cash in the freezer is pretty impressive, as is trying to shake down the President-Elect.

Now, back to reality: It turns out that Andy Stern, the new-age Big Labor roughneck, may have acted as a go-between for Blogojevich and the Obama tranistion team:

Among the revelations contained in the complaint brought against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich yesterday was the description of an official with the Service Employees International Union acting as an apparent intermediary between the governor and Barack Obama's camp in discussions over Obama's Senate seat.

The alleged role of the SEIU official was surprising, given that the union had not figured publicly in the investigation into Blagojevich (D). But on another level, the SEIU's apparent involvement is an indication of the extent to which it has, under the leadership of its ambitious and controversial president, Andrew L. Stern, become an omnipresent force in Democratic politics.

With organized labor holding such high expectations for the Obama administration -- notably, hopes for legislation fiercely opposed by business leaders that would make it easier to form unions -- officials of other unions were hoping yesterday that the SEIU's apparent involvement in the Illinois scandal would not undermine their cause in Washington.

The U.S. attorney's complaint states that Blagojevich mused aloud with his advisers about the possibility that he could seek a high-paying job with Change to Win, the coalition of seven unions -- dominated by SEIU -- that broke away from the AFL-CIO in 2005. Blagojevich and his chief of staff wondered aloud about a "three-way deal" in which he would appoint Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago businesswoman believed to be the woman identified in the complaint as "Candidate 1," to Obama's Senate seat; Blagojevich in return would become Change to Win's executive director; and Obama would reward Change to Win with pro-labor policies.

The complaint also states that on Nov. 12, Blagojevich spoke by phone with an "SEIU official" who was in Washington and with whom Blagojevich had met a week before on the understanding that the official was an emissary to discuss Jarrett's interest in the Senate seat. In the conversation, the SEIU official is alleged to have said that Obama now wanted Blagojevich to consider candidates other than Jarrett.

It's no surprise that big union bosses are in the middle of all of this. We're seeing a culture of corruption with no equal in American politics:

Democrats and the media can no longer rest on the old rationalization that Blago is an exception to the "we're cleaner than thou" rule. 2008 was the year of Democratic Reps. William "Cold Cash" Jefferson, Charlie "Sweetheart Deals" Rangel, and former Detroit Mayor Kwame "Text Me" Kilpatrick. It was the year Democratic Massachusetts State Senator Dianne Wilkerson got caught stuffing bribes from an FBI informant down her shirt. It was the year 12 Democratic leaders and staffers in Pennsylvania's state Capitol were stung in a massive corruption scandal involving cash, sex and abuse of public office. And it was the year of multimillion-dollar embezzlement scandals at Democratic satellite offices of ACORN and the SEIU.

The Democrats have met the culture of corruption, and it looks like it ain't just elephants among the jackasses soiling public office.