Pakistan's Jihad

Reuel Marc Gerecht, at the Weekly Standard, warns that Palistan's holy warriors could be the world's most dangerous:

Pakistani militant groups have grown up in a philosophically sophisticated environment of Islamic militancy. Where once Lashkar was, more or less, a region-specific terrorist organization (focused on Jammu and Kashmir), its appetite for action is growing. All Islamic fundamentalist organizations, if they turn toward jihad, have the potential for a global mission. (Western-imposed borders on the historic Islamic community, the umma, are an insult to God; the enemy, the Judeo-Christian West, is everywhere and thus can be struck everywhere.)

It's a good bet that Lashkar and other Pakistani holy-warrior organizations will in the not too distant future operationally reach beyond the Indian subcontinent. With al Qaeda now permanently headquartered in Pakistan, it's not hard to imagine the organization and its Arab Sunni core being absorbed by a group like Lashkar. Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5, which is America's best frontline defense against Pakistani jihadists who carry British passports--and tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis, at home and abroad, carry such passports, which make travel to the United States easy--gives the impression that we may have already reached the absorption point. These Pakistani jihadist groups are larger than al Qaeda ever was, and their size is a distinct intelligence vulnerability, especially if the Pakistani intelligence agency is ever willing to move aggressively against them and the larger religious movements that they feed on.

Nonetheless, it seems that al Qaeda may be on the verge of a big growth spurt in the subcontinent. In the Arab world, the birthplace of modern Islamic holy war, al Qaeda's prospects have dimmed. Odds are Osama bin Laden has lost the "decisive battle" in Mesopotamia, and with it, eventually, the battle for hearts and minds among Arabs.

Operations inevitably follow philosophy. As the jihadist philosophy expands in Pakistan and likely into India's 150 million-strong Muslim population, so will operations. Hezbollah became an extremely deadly organization precisely because it drank so deeply from revolutionary Iran's global call to rally the world's Muslims against the United States. The Egyptian Islamic Jihad Organization of Ayman al-Zawahiri became something to fear when its objectives transcended the Nile valley. Operational competence goes up as Islamic holy warriors look over the horizon. Global missions draw global talent. Even without weapons of mass destruction, these terrorists could bring on a terrible clash between India and Pakistan.

We will have to wait anxiously to discover whether Pakistan's Islamist intellectuals and holy warriors can go where an Arab-run al Qaeda has been unable to reach - into the laboratories and minds of men with sky-high IQs. European and American intelligence and security services ought to be increasingly attentive to the possibility that the Pakistani jihadist call will have more appeal and try to monitor those Pakistanis who could make all the difference in the acquisition of nuclear and chemical weapons.

Still, Pakistan may follow the examples of Iraq, Egypt, and Algeria, where all the Islamist savagery finally undid the sympathy of large parts of the population for holy warriors. Jihadists inevitably become infatuated with killing, making their understanding of God's wrath just a bit too much to swallow, even for Muslims who loathe the West. Until that happens, though, we will have to strengthen our intelligence capacities and continue to act preemptively against terrorist plots, and to hope that the Pakistani military, a forceful, proud, and hierarchical institution, will itself act against men who don't recognize its authority - and who blow up women and children.

Be sure to check out Gerecht's recent piece on the likihood that the Obama adiministration will revive the outsourcing of extrajudicial rendition of terrorist suspects to countries not shy about enhanced interrogation techniques.

If the left is angy now, over the Warren invocation, wait until the Obama Justice Department sends a few captured Pakistani militants to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan.

Paul Weyrich Dies, Gay Activists Ecstatic

Paul Weyrich, a central figure in the modern conservative movement, passed away yesterday in northern Virginia.

This morning's Los Angeles Times features a thoughtful obituary, "Paul Weyrich, Religious Conservative and Ex-President of Heritage Foundation, Dies at 66."

It turns out that Weyrich, who suffered from multiple illnesses, and who lost both his legs to amputation in 2005, continued to write commentaries up to the time of his death. He published an essay yesterday at Townhall, "The Next Conservatism, A Serious Agenda for the Future." In 1979, Weyrich coined the notion of the "moral majority" during a discussion with the Rev. Jerry Falwell:

Falwell "turned to his people and said, 'That's the name of our organization,' " Weyrich recalled in an interview last year with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel."

One can see why Weyrich's passing would be a cause for celebration on the left.

It happens whenever a conservative icon passes away. Yesterday, at Pam's House Blend, gay activists cheered the death of Weyrich in classic fashion:

- "Good Riddance ... At least Falwell won't be lonely in hell."

- "I know it's poor taste to speak ill of the dead, but I truly believe that the world has lost nothing with Weyrich's passing and probably experienced a net gain. Hopefully, if there is a hereafter, he gets judged the way he so harshly judged others."

- "You're only supposed to say good things about the dead? Okay. He'd dead. Good."

- "He shall not be missed ... A truly evil, hateful wingnut."

- "YAY ... And the world is a tiny bit better today."

- "Young too ... He was only 66 y.o."

- "He died too late, ... Like 65 years too late, IMO."

- "I was always taught to respect the dead, but ... Seriously, I'm not shedding any tears over this scumbag. Good riddance, ya toad."

The thread reveals a couple of commenters trying to be respectful, and the remarks here are mild compares to the left's demonization of Jesse Helms when he passed away earlier this year.

If you missed it earlier, check out Ben Johnson's essay on the left's secular demonology, where he writes:

Leftists lack the religious grounding to recognize everyone as a divine soul and a tradition that teaches them to “hate the sin but love the sinner.

Rewriting Josef Stalin's Legacy

The Chicago Tribune offers a great account of Russian historical revisionism on the legacy of Joseph Stalin, perhaps the modern world's most brutal tyrant:

Stalin, the brutal Soviet dictator responsible for the deaths of millions of his citizens, has been undergoing a makeover of sorts in recent years. Russian authorities have reshaped the Georgia-born dictator's image into that of a misunderstood, demonized leader who did what he had to do to mold the Soviet Union into the superpower it became.

In Russian classrooms, history teachers are guided by a new, government-approved textbook, Alexander Filippov's "Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006," which hails Stalin as an efficient manager who had to resort to extreme measures to modernize the lumbering Soviet agrarian economy.

There were, writes Filippov, "rational reasons behind the use of violence in order to ensure maximum efficiency."

A museum commemorating Stalin as a national hero opened in 2006 in the southern city of Volgograd. The following year, a 40-episode television drama broadcast on a state-controlled network whitewashed Stalin's crimes and portrayed him as Russia's savior.

When he was president, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sought to shift the nation's focus away from Stalin's legacy of brutality. Meeting with history teachers in 2007, Putin acknowledged that Russian history "did contain some problematic pages. But so did other states' histories.

"We have fewer of them than other countries, and they were less terrible than in other nations," Putin continued. "We can't allow anyone to impose a sense of guilt on us."

The battle over how Stalin should be remembered remains one of Russia's most divisive topics of debate. For many Russians, Stalin's achievements far outweigh his crimes. He is seen as the wartime leader who saved the Motherland from Nazi Germany in World War II and engineered the country's ascent as a global powerhouse.

For many others, that ascent was made using millions of Russians' lives as grist. Historians estimate that Stalin's decrees led to the deaths of as many as 20 million people, either from famine, execution, incarceration in labor camps or during mass deportations.

In reading this I'm reminded of one of the most memorable essays I read as an undergraduate, during my training in Soviet poltics and foreign policy: Nina Andreyeva's, "I Cannot Forego My Principles." Andreyeva was a schoolteacher in Leningrad who emerged as a spokeswoman for great Russian nationalism during the Gorbachev reforms of the late-1980s. Her essay is remarkable especially for its shaming incredulity and unabashed nationalism. I've looked unsuccessfully for a copy of the essay online, although this passage from Philip Boobbyer's, Conscience, Dissent and Reform, captures the essence of Stalinist rehabilitation.

Gay Radicalism Key to Left's Agenda Under Obama

As regular readers know, the next stage of the left's agenda emerged on November 5th, the day after the election when Democrats saw the historic victory of the country's first black president. Obama's win was nevertheless regarded as "bittersweet" for many, as voters in California also passed Proposition 8, which restored marriage traditionalism to the state's constitution.

Since then, we've seen a non-stop campaign of intimidation and show trials against the "bigots" and "homophobes" who exercised their rights by contributing to and voting on the passage of the initiative. We've already seen a lot of grumbling on the left during the Obama transition, of course. Leftists have been boiling with resentment over the "lack of representation" by "progressives" in the cabinet, as we've seen according to story after story in the press. But Barack Obama's selection of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver an invocation at the inaugural is probably the best indicator of the all-or-nothing battle the left has begun to wage even before the new Democratic regime is installed.

For the second day in a row, Memeorandum has been flooded with blog posts and essays decrying the Warren pick. Sarah Posner, at the Nation, gets right to the nub of the matter:

Now it has officially gone too far: Democrats, in their zeal to appear friendly to evangelical voters, have chosen celebrity preacher and best-selling author Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration.

There was no doubt that Obama, like every president before him, would pick a Christian minister to perform this sacred duty. But Obama had thousands of clergy to choose from, and the choice of Warren is not only a slap in the face to progressive ministers toiling on the front lines of advocacy and service but a bow to the continuing influence of the religious right in American politics. Warren vocally opposes gay marriage, does not believe in evolution, has compared abortion to the Holocaust and backed the assassination of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Warren has done a masterful job at marketing himself as a "new" kind of evangelical with a "broader agenda" than just fighting abortion rights and gay marriage. He dispatches members of his congregation to Africa to perform AIDS relief and has positioned himself as a great crusader for bringing his "purpose-driven" pabulum to the world.

Faith in Public Life, a nonprofit cultivated by the Center for American Progress, was so wowed by Warren that it co-sponsored a presidential forum in August at Warren's Saddleback Church. There, his "broader agenda" included asking Obama whether he believed that life began at conception (which Warren believes, he says, based on the Bible, not science) and to ruminate on the nature of evil. (As for Pastor Rick, he believes the Bible dictates that the US government "punish evildoers," as in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) ....

Warren protests that he's not a homophobe; it's just that two dudes marrying, in his mind, is indistinguishable from an adult marrying a child, a brother marrying his sister, or polygamy. He thinks his AIDS relief efforts represent an elevated form of Christianity over those non-evangelical do-gooders whom he compares to "Marxists" because they're more interested in good works than salvation. The rejection of the "social justice" gospel in favor of the salvation-focused evangelicalism that has come to dominate the definition of "Christian" lies at the heart of the religious right agenda to marginalize liberalism and harness its political power.

Warren represents the absolute worst of the Democrats' religious outreach, a right-winger masquerading as a do-gooder anointed as the arbiter of what it means to be faithful. Obama's religious outreach was intended, supposedly, to make religious voters more comfortable with him and feel included in the Democratic Party. But that outreach now has come at the expense of other people's comfort and inclusion, at an event meant to mark a turning point away from divisive politics.

Everyone from the lowest of the 9th tier bloggers to the biggest headliners on the web has weighed in on the debate.

And while it's probably too late for gay activists and their radical backers to get Obama to change his mind on Warren, the episode will be used as a stepping stone to an even higher stage of secular radicalism under the coming political order: the total eradication of religion in public life. Steve Benen sponsors that meme:

This is the wrong fight: The real problem isn't with who will give the invocation, but rather, the fact that there's going to be an invocation in the first place. We had 144 years of presidential inaugurations, dating back to George Washington, in which there was no invocation and no benediction. This shouldn't be a fight over which pastor delivers the prayer; this should be a fight over the official prayer itself.

This is the face of our enemies, folks, that's right ... the enemy of American traditionalism and values of faith and decency. The gay activists and their nihilist proponents are positioning for a battle of the highest stakes, and they'll take no prisoners. Where once this country was considered "one nation under God," now were a people divided between those who may find guidance from above and those who would hand down retribution on people who dare even seek such spiritual solace.

Caroline Kennedy and the Family Dynasty

The recent media attention to Caroline Kennedy, who is lobbying for an appointment to the U.S. Senate, is not that big of a deal to me. She's certainly under-qualified, but I'm one of those who remains fascinated by the Kennedy mystique, and seeing Caroline in power in Washington will likely give many Americans a warm sense of nostalgia in a period of tumultuous socioeconomic change.

Caroline's by no means assured an appointment, of course, despite all her glamour and name recognition. As John Fund reports, New York Governor David Paterson, himself recently appointed to office upon the fall of Eliot Spitzer, has a powerful incentive to appoint New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to replace Hillary Clinton. By sending Cuomo to Washington, Paterson would remove one of his top rivals in home state politics.

Today's Los Angeles Times offers an interesting take on all of this, focusing on New York's dynasty politics. Recall, for example, that Cuomo is a former in-law to Caroline, having once been married to Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, Caroline's late uncle.

In any case, I like this section from the Times article:

The joke in the U.S. Capitol this week is that a primal scream echoing through the hallways is from the senior senator from New York, Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat with a voracious appetite for attention even by the self-promotional standards of Washington. He was first overshadowed when the former president's wife waltzed in to New York to win her Senate seat in 2000. And now he may again be eclipsed by the supernova of the 51-year-old Kennedy, even though it's unclear, as one graybeard of New York politics put it, whether "she can cut the mustard."

This is a woman who long avoided the public -- a seemingly shy princess of Camelot who moved with her reclusive mother, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, and younger brother, John Jr., to Manhattan's Upper East Side a year after her father, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated. She later graduated from Radcliffe College at Harvard University and Columbia Law School; she married Edwin Schlossberg but never officially changed her name. She wrote and edited books and became a fixture not only at the openings of the American Ballet Theatre but also on the walk to school with her daughters and at her son's basketball scrimmages in sweaty public school gyms.

Kennedy has always been close to Uncle Ted, the iconic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy from Massachusetts, who walked her down the aisle and whom she reportedly speaks to several times a week.

But she only began stepping out as a high-profile political surrogate earlier this year after delivering a timely endorsement of Obama over Clinton.

"She always asked campaign staff on the ground how she could make the most out of her appearances, and apparently she did," said Joel Benenson, a former New York political writer and the lead pollster for the Obama campaign.

Robert Shrum, a Democratic strategist close to the Kennedy family for decades, said Caroline Kennedy needed to get her children launched (two of the three are in college) before she was ready to move into a more public chapter of her life.

Citing her inherent intelligence and leadership at the Harvard University Institute of Politics and John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, Shrum said: "She'd be a terrific senator. Caroline has always been interested in politics and public life."

Still, it is one thing for Kennedy to be treated as an admired flower under glass and quite another to be the target of pesky political observers and covetous rivals.

Despite the collective swooning over Kennedy this week, it's far from certain that she is a shoo-in to become the next senator from New York. (More back story: Her uncle Bobby, who was also assassinated, once had the same job.)

See more analysis at Memeorandum (here and here).

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Making Teen Pregnancy Easy

Here's a troubling story on girls having babies, "Too Young for This: They're Having Babies. Are We Helping?:

Teenage pregnancy has been bright on American radar screens for the past year: TV teen starlet Jamie Lynn Spears's pregnancy caused a minor media storm last December. The pregnant-teen movie "Juno" won Oscar nods. And there was Bristol Palin, daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, bringing the issue front and center during the recent presidential campaign. But I've been observing the phenomenon up close for a couple of years now, and the picture I see is more troubling than any of those high-profile pregnancies make it seem.

The somber statistics about teen motherhood are the reason the day-care center, run by the local nonprofit Campagna Center, was opened in T.C. Williams two years ago. The idea is to keep the girls in school, let them get their diplomas and help them avoid the kind of fate described earlier. I've been a teacher for more than 30 years, and I want the best for my students and to help them succeed in every way possible. I know that these girls need support. But I can't help thinking we're going at this all wrong.

On the surface, Alexandria seems to be striving to stem teen pregnancy. Every high school student is required to take a "family life" course that teaches about birth control, sexually transmitted disease and teen pregnancy. The Adolescent Health Center, a clinic providing birth control, was built a few blocks from the school. The city-run Campaign on Adolescent Pregnancy sponsors workshops for parents and teens. But none of this coalesces to hit the teens with the message that getting pregnant is a disaster. And within the school, apart from the family life class, the attitude is laissez-faire, as if teachers and administrators are afraid to address the issue for fear of offending the students who have children.

Once a girl gets pregnant, though, the school leaps in to do everything for her. But I wonder: Is it possible that all this assistance -- with little or no comment about the kids' actions -- has the unintended effect of actually encouraging them to get pregnant? Are we making it easier for girls to make a bad choice and helping them avoid the truth about the consequences?

And for many, it does seem to be a choice. "There's a myth that these pregnancies are accidental," says school nurse Nancy Runton. "But many of them aren't. I've known girls who've made 'I'll get pregnant if you get pregnant' pacts. It's a status thing. These girls go around school telling each other how beautiful they look pregnant, how cute their tummies look."

Read the whole thing, here.

Local health agencies provide birth control shots ("DMPA/Depo-Provera every three months") ...and the parents of the girls are cool with it:

The fact is, says Robert Wolverton, medical director of the teen health clinic, most of these girls and their families see no problem with being unmarried and having a child at 16 or 17."

Gay Activists Go Ballistic on Warren Invocation

Barack Obama has asked Pastor Rick Warren to deliver a religious invocation at the presidential inauguration. Perhaps this is an effort by Obama to "transcend partisanship" and end "the politics of division," or some other mushy sentiment to that effect.

I'm a little disappointed in Warren, actually. In the end Obama will satisfy the radical gay rights constituency by pushing all the big homosexual demands, eventually caving on gay marriage as well; in turn, getting chummy with folks like Warren won't help much on the conservative side, especially as Obama's administration proceeds to dismantle the right's substantial achievements on the pro-life agenda over the past three decades.

Already, as the Politico reports, gay rights groups are flipping their wigs over the announcement:

Barack Obama’s choice of a prominent evangelical minister to perform the invocation at his inauguration is a conciliatory gesture toward social conservatives who opposed him in November, but it is drawing fierce challenges from a gay rights movement that – in the wake of a gay marriage ban in California – is looking for a fight.

Rick Warren, the senior pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California, opposes abortion rights but has taken more liberal stances on the government role in fighting poverty, and backed away from other evangelicals’ staunch support for economic conservatism. But it’s his support for the California constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage that drew the most heated criticism from Democrats Wednesday.

“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans,” the president of Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solomonese, wrote Obama Wednesday. “[W]e feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination.”

The rapid, angry reaction from a range of gay activists comes as the gay rights movement looks for an opportunity to flex its political muscle. Last summer gay groups complained, but were rebuffed by Obama, when an “ex-gay” singer led Obama’s rallies in South Carolina. And many were shocked last month when voters approved the California ban.

Folks should read some of the full responses themselves, for example, the Human Rights Campaign, which states:

Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years. And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.

There's lots more unhinged gay outrage at Memeorandum.

This is the next battle of the renewed culture war unleashed by Yes on 8 in California. Gay rights groups will not rest until they browbeat and intimidate all sides, ultimately forcing Obama to capitulate on homosexual marriage and God only knows what else.

I don't see the upside for anyone here, neither Obama in the short run nor Rick Warren altogether; but there's no doubt the gay-haters are thrilled by another chance to launch a new wave of intolerance against mainstream Americans.

American Military Power is Not Going Away

Robert Kaplan offers an excellent response to the renewed debate on American relative international decline, "A Gentler Hegemony":

Near the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy had almost 600 ships; it is down to 280. But in aggregate tonnage that is still more than the next 17 navies combined. Our military secures the global commons to the benefit of all nations. Without the U.S. Navy, the seas would be unsafe for merchant shipping, which, in an era of globalization, accounts for 90 percent of world trade. We may not be able to control events on land in the Middle East, but our Navy and Air Force control all entry and exit points to the region. The multinational anti-piracy patrols that have taken shape in the Strait of Malacca and the Gulf of Aden have done so under the aegis of the U.S. Navy. Sure the economic crisis will affect shipbuilding, meaning the decline in the number of our ships will continue, and there will come a point where quantity affects quality. But this will be an exceedingly gradual transition, which we will assuage by leveraging naval allies such as India and Japan.

Then there are the dozens of training deployments around the world that the U.S. military, particularly Army Special Forces, conducts in any given week. We are all over Africa, Asia and Latin America with these small missions that increase America's diplomatic throw-weight without running the risk of getting us bogged down. Aside from Iraq and Afghanistan, our military posture around the world is generally light, lethal and highly mobile. We have been quietly reducing land forces in South Korea while compensating with a more effective air and naval presence. In Colombia, platoon-size numbers of Green Berets have been instrumental in fighting narco-terrorists; in Algeria, such training teams have helped improve our relationship with that formerly radical Arab country. Such stripped-down American military deployments garner no headlines, but they are a formula that works.

The Marines, after becoming virtually desert forces since 2001, will return to their expeditionary roots aboard amphibious ships in the Greater Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. American military power is not going away. But instead of being in-your-face, it will lurk just over the horizon. And that will make all the difference.

In sum, we may no longer be at Charles Krauthammer's "Unipolar Moment," but neither have we become Sweden. Declinism of the sort being preached will go immediately out of fashion at the world's next humanitarian catastrophe, when the very people enraged at the U.S. military because of Iraq will demand that it lead a coalition to save lives. We might have intervened in Darfur had we not been bogged down in Iraq; after Cyclone Nargis, our ships would have provided large-scale relief, had Burma's military government allowed them to proceed. As world population rises, and with vast urban areas with tottering infrastructures in the most environmentally and seismically fragile zones, the opportunities for U.S. military-led disaster relief will be legion. The American military remains a force for good, a fact that will become self-evident in the crises to come.

Democrats Prepare for Abortion Bonanza

Today's Wall Street Journal looks a number of Bush-era abortion regulations that may be repealed under the Obama administration, for example:

On abortion and related matters, action is expected early on executive, regulatory, budgetary and legislative fronts.

Decisions that the new administration will weigh include: whether to cut funding for sexual abstinence programs; whether to increase funding for comprehensive sex education programs that include discussion of birth control; whether to allow federal health plans to pay for abortions; and whether to overturn regulations such as one that makes fetuses eligible for health-care coverage under the Children's Health Insurance Program.

You see the last part about fetus eligibility for health coverage under CHIPs? If Obama reverses the "fetus eligibility," the policy direction would be to continue to remove governmental protection from the unborn, shifting the focus to women's "right" to terminate than the unborn's right to life.

Steve Benen has a generic post on the WSJ article, but the comment thread is reveals the nature of the coming ideological shift we'll see under Obama:

Change the word "fetuses" to "pregnant women", and what's the argument for reversing it? Or does the word substitution have a significant effect?

*****

Using "fetuses" endows a child in the womb with healthcare rights. Makes for a slippery slope that ends up criminalizing any damage done to a fetus in utero. Basically, not only does abortion become illegal, but it makes it illegal for a mother to smoke or drink while pregnant.

Is there a slippery slope regarding the right to life?

If we refer to "pregnant women" rather than "fetuses" does that mean we can check moral obligation at the door of the abortion clinic?

This seems more about sanitizing death than anything else. Yeah, word substitution does have a significant effect.

Barack Obama is Person of the Year 2008

Barack Obama is Time's Person of the Year.

I don't normally pay attention to Time's annual accolade, but it's impossible to deny: If there was ever a person of the year for 2008, it's indeed "The One." In my twenty-five years of studying politics, I've never seen a personality cult like this. Here's a bit from Time's "Why We Chose Obama":

David Von Drehle's masterly story on our Person of the Year not only sketches out what's on Obama's mind but also reveals new details about how and when he realized that his first 100 days had to start on Nov. 5, the day after voters elected him to become the 44th President of the United States and the first African American to hold the office. Von Drehle also tells us — with Obama's help — how we should hold the new President accountable. Beyond his mastery of the issues, Obama revealed a more personal note: a slightly rueful sense that the world was tightening around him, that he would no longer be able to take a walk or shop for groceries. He seemed to be girding himself for the loss of being simply a regular citizen [emphasis added].

It seems like an incredible concept, but just the assumption that a new administration takes over the day after the election is utterly mind-boggling.

It's bad enough the we now have an America where a millions of people look to our new president as a "Lightworker," but on top of that, Barack Obama appears to believe it of himself.

This is going to be a long four years.

Photo Credit: Anne Savage, "Dare to Hope: Faces from 2008 Obama Rallies":

Everytime I photographed a Barack Obama rally the size and diversity of the crowds moved and amazed me. I spoke to so many people who all spoke of unity and inclusion. Barack Obama said at his acceptance speech, "This election has never been about me. It's been about you." His message has inspired so many to be involved and to dare to hope.

These are their faces. This is their voice.

More photos at "Barack Obama on Flickr."

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

Iraq and American Culture

It's almost a sure bet that Muntadar al-Zaidi had no anticipation of how successful his shoe attack on President Bush would be in mobilizing all sides of the partisan divide over Iraq, both at home and abroad.

On the other hand, it's worth noting, that as an Iraqi journalist, Muntadar must have surely known that his actions would be met with a swift response by U.S. and Iraqi authorities. There are conflicting reports, but Muntadar is said to have been roughed up. Some are even alleging that he's been tortured (which is completely unconfirmed at this point). He may face prosecution under Iraqi law for assaulting a foreign dignitary, and perhaps, as many are suggesting, President Bush might use his good offices and win mercy for the shoe-attacker. As it is, no doubt many Americans are thinking, hey, if only I could get my hands on him.

But the deeper issue here is how the shoe attack is serving as an antiwar coda on U.S. policy in Iraq - and not the Bush administration's policy mind you, but America's. The U.S. went into Iraq with the full support of Congress and the American people. The policy of regime change preceded the Bush administration (recall the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998). On the eve of war in 2003, Saddam Hussein was in non-compliance with 16 armistice resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council following the Gulf War of 1991, and Resolution 1441 of 2002 was a war ultimatum that Iraq failed to meet, finally triggering the response of the U.S. and its allies to carry out the will of the world community under international law.

Within a few short months of the war top Democrats defected from the domestic political coalition supporting the U.S. deployment and American troops in harm's way. For the past five years we've seen an unprecedented stab-in-the-back not only by top congressional Democrats but also by the morally-bankrupt antiwar activists on the streets. Online, we have groups like MoveOn.org calling military American commanders "traitors" and nihilist bloggers have called for President Bush's execution at the Hague.

The election of Barack Obama in November may have even given a new push to the left's antiwar derangement. Triumph at the polls has fostered something of a vindicationist mindset, and should Obama veer from the antiwar line, he may well face the unholy wrath of these same leftist hordes. We saw calls earlier, for example, for President Bush to resign ahead of time, to allow Barack Obama's transition team to govern by congressional proxy. The uproar over the Iraqi shoe attack is the next level of Bush condemnation. Antiwar Americans can say, "Look, the Iraqi street is with us on this ... hey ho, the occupation's got to go!"

Nothing captures this ideology better than today's post by Matthew Yglesias. He's attacking Dave Dilegge at Small Wars Journal, who was insulted by the applause the attack on President Bush received. Yyglesias argues that Dilegge's response "reflects some dangerous trends in American culture":

Americans love and respect the men and women who volunteer for military service under our flag. And those of us who’ve had friends serve in Iraq, and especially those who’ve personally served in Iraq and watched friends be killed or maimed, think only the best of the people who’ve been doing dangerous jobs in difficult circumstances. But I think it’s crucially important not to allow these positive sentiments about soldiers and marines to deteriorate into sentimentality about the mission they were undertaking in Iraq. The Iraqi people didn’t ask to be liberarted conquered and occupied by a foreign power that destroyed their country and then immediately set about meddling in Iraqi politics and until just a month or so ago was struggling mightily for the right to permanently station military forces on Iraqi soil contrary to the will of the Iraqi public. Not only did Iraqis not ask for such services, but nobody anywhere has ever asked for them.

The harsh reality is that this was not a noble undertaking done for good reasons. It was a criminal enterprise launched by madmen cheered on by a chorus of fools and cowards. And it’s seen as such by virtually everyone all around the world — including but by no means limited to the Arab world. But it’s impolitic to point this out in the United States, and it’s clear that even a president-elect who had the wisdom not to be suckered in by the War Fever of 2002 has no intention of really acting to marginalize the bad actors. Which, I think, makes sense for his political objectives. But if Americans want to play a constructive role in world affairs, it’s vitally important for us to get in touch with the reality of what the past eight years of US foreign policy have been and how they’re seen and understood by people who aren’t stirred by the shibboleths of American patriotism.

This is something I have written about many times. There's a change in American culture alright, but not in the sense Yglesias implies.

First, it's a lie that people like Yglesias "love and respect" America's fighting men and women. By attacking their mission from the get go, and by applauding any and all displays of disrespect at their commander-in-chief, the American left does a grave disservice to the country. Indeed, folks like this, at antiwar marches and protests, routinely wear paraphernalia exhorting war opponents to "SUPPORT THE IRAQI RESISTANCE!" Yglesias himself has written an entire book attacking the deployment, the administration, and the Democrats who "enabled" the mission in the first place. These people embrace anti-Americanism as a badge of honor, and they denounce love of country as some radiactive "shibboleth," and in so doing, they work to destroy the institutions and values to which patriotism directs its loyalty.

This is the culture that we live in today, a culture that glorifies a demented Iraqi journalist with ties to the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It is a culture that privileges international solidarity over American power and legitimacy. It's not just at the fringe of the left's blogging fever swamps. We see as well that Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman's endorsed Yglesias' BDS with a post of his own, snarling:

The fact is that an American president deliberately misled the nation into war, probably for political gain — and most of the country’s elite went cheerfully along with the scam.

Well, no, that's not "the fact."

Indeed, the Yglesias/Krugman line is as far from the facts as one can get. These people are motivated by a theology of anti-Bush hatred. It's a blind faith that's devoid of honor, principle, integrity, or reason. The antiwar theology is so unthinkingly pervasive, it's almost an embarrassment to call these people my countrymen.

A month or so back the publicist for Arthur Borden sent me a copy of Borden's book, A Better Country: Why America Was Right To Confront Iraq. I was asked to write a book review here at the bog, and I still may do so. But upon first being contacted I questioned the utility of a book like this. Sure, it's a short, concise book, and rigorously argued, but I still wondered who would actually be persuaded by it. The left's twin-mantra of "Bush lied, people died," and "No WMD" has become so ingrained in the popular Democratic demonology that frankly only die-hard GOP stalwarts or pro-victory military families would even care to skim the first few pages of the book.

We have come to a point in American culture that image is everything. A shoe thrown at a president is immediately representative of world antiwar public opinion. The absence of weapons of mass destruction is seen as confirming a perceived campaign of deceit and intimidation, rather than in fact verifying Iraqi disarmament and the actual elimination of the Iraqi nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons threat (which would not have been possible absent intervention). A war to preserve the integrity of the international system from the revisionism and evasion of one of the most brutal tyrants in modern history, is demonized as an American project toward neo-fascist empire.

People should take a good look around them. Today' veterans are no longer heroes to the bulk of Democratic-leftists who have elevated the likes of Barack Obama as the font and protector of a new millennial order of universal "rights" and global governance. The President-Elect may still disappoint those who hail him as the today's "Lightworker." But the fact is that this man - who prior to this year attacked the war in Iraq more vociferously than any other member of the Senate - serves as the validation of all that the antiwar left hates about this country. The coming administration signifies that America's ethos of honoring the "greatest generations," those who have fougth for goodness and justice in the world, is an artifact of a previous time, of long ago, unlikely to return.

Majority Opposes Detroit Bailout

A new Washington Post poll finds a majority of Americans against the auto industry bailout:

Most Americans continue to oppose a government-backed rescue plan for Detroit's Big Three automakers as majorities blame the industry for its own problems and are unconvinced failure would hurt the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Overall, 55 percent of those polled oppose the latest plan that Chrysler, Ford and General Motors executives pitched to Congress last week, on par with public opposition to earlier, pricier efforts. But with 42 percent support, the new request for up to $14 billion in emergency loans has more backers than previous proposals to secure up to $34 billion in loan guarantees.

But as with the earlier bids, those who strongly oppose the measure greatly outnumber those who are strongly supportive.

Opposition to the automaker bailout is fueled by the widespread perception that the companies themselves are responsible for their predicament, not the faltering economy. In the new poll, three-quarters of Americans said Detroit's woes are mainly the fault of its own management decisions, and a sizable majority of those who blame the front office object to government help.

Nor have Detroit's Big Three made significant progress persuading the public that bankruptcy proceedings would deepen the broader economic slowdown. Sixty percent said it would make no difference or would be good for the economy if one or more of the companies were forced to restructure under the protection of bankruptcy laws.

Democrats are among the most wary of the economic impact of failure, with 42 percent saying it would hurt the economy. They are more apt to advocate federal aid -- 52 percent support it, up from 42 percent support for previous versions of the rescue bill. But they, too, are deeply critical of company managers -- 72 percent fault Detroit's strategies, not the overall economy.

Republican opposition has grown stronger, with 69 percent now against the bailout, an increase of 12 points since chief executives from General Motors, Chrysler and Ford last appeared on Capitol Hill to plead their case. Half of all Republicans polled now strongly oppose the plan.

Overall, independents continue to lean against the plan, with 57 percent opposing it and 41 percent supporting it.

What do you think would happen if the Big Three were to go bankrupt?

Todd Zywicki suggests Washington would lose clout (forget "green" automotives). Or, perhaps unions might be more careful about their sky-high demands.

The Psychology of Redistribution

I'm glad I'm not the only one who notices this stuff.

Julian Sanchez points us to an interesting piece example of the left's psychology of redistribution, perfectly displayed at Firedoglake, "Republicans: “Take Away the Car Keys”":

Conservative ideologues looking to punish workers and the American middle class for auto industry failures are driven by an authoritarian worldview George Lakoff calls the strict parent model.

Senate Republicans see their opposition to the rescue of Detroit as whipping the children. They are not that different from the failed father who thinks his follies can be overcome by beating the wife and kids. Politically, they seek to avoid responsibility for the nation's economic woes. It's not the strict authority who's at fault. It's the misbehaving children. Conservatives think they must take away the keys to the car.

The strict parent worldview is not now and never has been compatible with democracy or economic egalitarianism. But it's always been part of American culture, and most of us carry at least some residual consequence of its cognitive gene. We may be committed democrats, but we laugh along when a boss at work quips, "This is not a democracy." Or we raise our children in a traditional strict model fashion. Lakoff calls this "biconceptualism." We use the strict model in some parts of our lives, and it's opposite, the nurturant or shared responsibility model, in others.

The authoritarian model has been culturally conserved by shrewd neo-Calvinist religious manipulators and free market extremists who recognize that wealth and power trickle up. Both models go way back. According to Hannah Arendt, Jan Patocka and other philosopher/historians, it was with the emergence of the polis from the household and the birth of Greek democracy that family organizational models were metaphorically mapped onto larger social and political groupings. (It's also true that the influence is reciprocal, as feminist theorists correctly point out. Patriarchal social organization leads to patriarchal families, and vise versa.) ....

The automobile industry is a shared, collective endeavor. What do we, the American family, want to make of it? We want affordable, safe, fuel-efficient, environmentally sound cars built by committed workers who are rewarded for undertaking this task on our behalf.

Framed this way, the financial rescue of Detroit can be seen as the moral endeavor of citizens taking responsibility for ourselves. Blame and punishment become less relevant. Current auto industry leadership might or might not need replacing. Certainly, punishing workers is insane. If we must lend our tax dollars to the effort, so be it. In return, the industry must agree to morally sound practices.

Read Sanchez's response here, although I really like this from the comments:

Leftists always try to psychoanalyze their opponents when they can’t answer their argument. It goes all the way back to Marx. Its easier to try to cast the argument against unions in terms of irrational emotion than it is to refute the actual points under debate.

Enough said ...

The Quarterback Problem and Great Teachers

Malcolm Gladwell begins his story on teacher accredition and classroom performance with the football quarterback analogy.

Remember Ryan Leaf? Bombed out of the NFL in abject disgrace? Who would have predicted it? That's the quaterback problem, according to Gladwell, and he suggests that schools and unions - if they want great teachers - should want less teacher credentialing and more in-class opportunity. That is, the current gatekeeping system - backed by unions to maintain "quality control" - likely results in lousier teachers:

This is the quarterback problem. There are certain jobs where almost nothing you can learn about candidates before they start predicts how they’ll do once they’re hired. So how do we know whom to choose in cases like that? In recent years, a number of fields have begun to wrestle with this problem, but none with such profound social consequences as the profession of teaching.

Folks who are big labor types can't stand a powerful argument like this if it means weakening the dead grip of union mediocrity on teaching (or in this case, these types just don't know when a powerful arugment hits them upside the head anyway).

A note that Gladwell overlooks, however: The academic skills level is so low in some cases - especially among black and Hispanic students, unfortunately - that lowering certification requirements might actually grant apprenticeships to young people who literally can't read.

Other than that, I love the idea of finding the stars. Teaching is extremely personality driven. All the training and credentials in the world sometimes don't mean squat when the instructor can't reach through and pull a teachable moment from hat when necessary.

See Joanne Jacobs for an intelligent discussion of Gladwell's article, "Finding the Best Teachers."

Shoe Thrown at President Bush

The New York Times has a roundup of Iraqi opinion on the shoe thrown at President Bush yesterday by an Iraqi journalist. Opinion is running about 9-to-1 in favor of Muntader al-Zaidi, who tried to bean the president with a "size 10", although I'm sure a great many Iraqis can identify with this:

"I spent five years in Saddam’s jails," said Saman Qadir, a 51-year-old mechanic. "This journalist has to throw flowers on Bush, not a shoe, because Bush saved the Iraqi people from a bloody regime. Malaki has to raise a case against this journalist."

Here's how Dave Dilegge at Small Wars Journal sees things:

Ain't this just dandy and a pisser to boot - those who have strived - and died - to ensure Iraq's freedom and future place as a responsible partner on the world scene are brushed aside for the latest bash Bush melodrama and a 'real hero' is on the scene - Iraqi who threw shoes at George Bush hailed as hero via The Times. Plenty on this elsewhere, on the dailies and wires - most likely more tomorrow - meanwhile back in the real word ... People care, they die or suffer serious wounds, and their contributions are tossed aside for this. A damn shame it is, indeed.

Nothing follows.

President Bush was reelected in 2004, and is the representative of the American people; and while no one, really, should have a shoe thrown at them in disagreement, it's particularly disrespectful when directed at a sitting head of state who is the guest of the Iraqi government and people.

As always, the American left has erupted in righteous vindication. Take a look around at some of the radical blogs at Memeorandum. It's kind of sickening, really.

See also, "Leftwing Blogosphere Cheers Iraqi Shoe Thrower."

**********

UPDATE: I published too soon! I should've checked over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, where the brainless ones have not one but two posts up (here and here), plus this from one of their more typically cultured regulars:

You know what? I approve of throwing shoes at (some) people. I think this was the bees knees in political commentary. And I'm really not ashamed to say it ... Throwing a shoe at the tyrant who is singlehandedly responsible for the destruction of your country, the slaughter of a helpless civilian population, the razing of an entire city, the flight of a million or so men, women, and children into refugee status, penury, and prostitution?, its *literally the least protest you could make.* It is not to be deplored, it is to be applauded. I'm ashamed of my countrymen and our representative journalists that none of them has had the courage to at least turn their backs and fart on Bush. Let alone throw some footwear.

Yep, that's the kind of incisive analysis we'd expect from a couple of wanking professors who take $1000 to write book reviews while simultaneously twiddling their Johnson and sipping a few whiskey sours, and from those who really do need to work on their historical methods!

Democratic-Left Prepares to Abandon Afghanistan

Michael Yon, in his update from Afghanistan, says that when journalists covering the war there see signs translated into English directing villagers to humanitarian clinics they often "wax cynical" that it's all "propaganda" to hide the brutality of the "occupation." Then Yon continues:

Not that it matters what language signs are printed in Afghanistan: most people in Zabul Province cannot read any language. The government estimates that the literacy rate is, more or less, 15%. Not that they have any real way of measuring. It could be lower. And that is why the schools that are being built by foreigners are the most important thing happening in the country. For Afghanistan to have any hope of basic material progress in coming decades, it’s important to make sure that girls can attend those schools without fear of having acid thrown on their faces by Taliban members. Boys, for that matter, need access to education unlike the fundamentalist brainwashing provided by the Taliban-run madrassas.

As for the clinics, they are just a small start to meeting the nation’s vast health care needs. The sad truth is that for the majority of Afghan peasants, the pathetically small amount of medical care that they received over the war years when they languished in the refugee camps of Pakistan — occasional inoculations, rehydration salts to prevent deaths to children and infants from diarrhea, antibiotics that we Westerners take for granted, a modicum of hygienic assistance with childbirth — were the first instances of modern medicine available to them. These clinics, which are pretty basic by our standards, represent a huge leap forward across most of this poor, war-torn nation.

Read the whole thing, here. Yon continues by noting that war and poverty are all the Afghans have known for decades. Americans are in Afghanistan to continue the work begun in 2001-2002, after the Taliban regime was toppled.

I've noted previously (see, "Cut and Run in Afghanistan?") that the war in Afghanistan will be the central front in the wider war on global terror that the Barack Obama administration will inherit on January 20th. The next administration still has over a month to go before taking office, yet the Democratic-left is already preparing a lobbying push to abandon the Afghans to their fate.

As I wrote a week or so back:

Cernig, writing at the terrorist-enabling left-wing blog, Newshoggers, seeks to deligitimize the continuing U.S. and multinational presence in Afghanistan ...

Well, Cernig's got a new post asking, "Will Afghanistan Be Obama's Downfall?":

The truth ... is that Afghanistan is wondering where it's going and why it is in a handbasket. Bush had to fly from Bagram airbase to Kabul - the military couldn't have guaranteed his safety by road. Rampant corruption among the Afghan government and police force, along with heavy-handed aggressiveness from allied troops, have largely made the cities and military bases islands in a Taliban sea. "The Americans and the Afghan army control the highway, and five meters on each side. The rest is our territory," one Taliban commander told the Guardian's Ghaith Abdul Ahad. The Taliban are the only form of order in many rural areas ....

Counter-insurgency doctrine says that no amount of military force or even bribery can remove an insurgency from an area where it is supported by the general populace. But it would also pave the way for a negotiated settlement with Taliban who were willing to stop fighting, instead becoming a relatively non-oppressive local government. The UK and other allies have become convinced that this is the only path to "success" and eventual withdrawal left open and have already had some successes in that regard.

However, the Taliban are even more widely supported in Pakistan's border areas - and have the support/direction of at least large chunks of the military and ISI intelligence agency to boot. They've already proven they can hit Western supply lines with impunity, at a cost of millions of dollars, and can strangle the Western military presence in Afghanistan should they wish to.

We're back to the thorny problem of nuke-armed Pakistan, from which 75% of the world's terror plots emanate. A general invasion is not an option and it's highly unlikely that anything less than an invasion will have an appreciable effect. Thus it seems that all Pakistan and the Taliban have to do is out-wait the inevitable Western collapse as the occupation loses support and authority. Canada has said it doesn't wish to still be involved after 2011, the mainland Europeans are clearly reluctant to get sucked in to a treasure and blood draining quagmire, and even British politicians are saying staying in the hope of half-assed 'success" isn't worth it.

If you go back and check Cernig's archives, you'll find nearly the exact same Cassandra warnings about an inevitable failure in Iraq, about how sectarian tribes would strangle the American presence in a bloodbath of primordial violence.

Now, though, the Bush administration's preparing to leave office with a sucessful Iraqi military that's confident it will keep the peace and secure the new democracy, especially since full sovereignty after 2011 means indigenious forces can battle terrorist dead-enders without concern for Western human rights groups tying the hands of American and Iraqi fighters.

The truth is that the Demcratic-left wants an American pullout from Afghanistan. These folks despise the forward projection of American power, and the prospect of a long deployment in South Asia is raising very uncomfortable questions now that an ostensibly antiwar Democrat prepares to come to power in Washington. In response, Steve Clemons has come out to repudiate the notion that Aghanistan is the only "legitimate" American deployment in post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy:

I am increasingly worried about the framing that America's next President and his team are applying to Iraq and Afghanistan.

To be blunt, they have been arguing that "Iraq was the bad war and Afghanistan is the good war," not in those precise words -- but close enough.

A mutual friend of Katrina vanden Heuvel and mine wrote this to her (and then me) in an email:

"Afghanistan. The place where the dreams and hopes of the Obama Presidency are buried."

We have to be careful of who we think we are fighting in Afghanistan. What army exactly is America trying to squelch? If we are now in a full on war with the Taliban, then this country will see its global leverage deteriorate to even lower levels than what is the case today.

More later - but we shouldn't allow corruption scandals and other silly posturing on Sunday morning shows to distract us from the reality that we are on a quite negative trajectory in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) right now - and we need whopping game-changing moves there that are as significant, if not more, than challenges about America's auto sector.

Don't miss the title of Clemons' post, "Afghanistan is NOT the Good War."

No war is a good war, of course, and even Studs Terkel would remind us that any war requires domestic support if we are to be successful.

Barack Obama, with the weight of reality bearing down on him, has chosen a foreign policy team that knows what to do. The U.S. will build up our forces and fight along the mountain redoubts more vigorously than before. In diplomacy, the U.S. will push Pakistan to clean it up - and sweep out terror sanctuaries - or risk the loss of U.S. military and economic support. Americans, most of all, will continue to support countries like India who bear the brunt of terrorist barbarism.

This might not be a "good war," but it's one that is just and one the West will win. From the beaches to the landing grounds, we will never surrender.

Barack Obama Will Save the World!

One of the ideas currently floating around is the notion that current international problems necessitate institutions of global scope to solve them, that is, we need world government to fix the world's problems.

Gideon Rachman, for example, makes the case for supranational governance in his piece, "And Now For a World Government."

Arguments for world government are almost always based in utopianism: If there were a single human purpose with a single center of power, the multitudes of the planet might unite as one to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and end warfare. At various times in international relations global reformers have been motivated by the need to transcend narrow national interests for the good of humankind. Perhaps most recently, the establishment of the United Nations reenergized idealists that the aftermath of the world's most devastating conflict would create the consensus among world leaders to unite in a single body of international scope with enough power and resources to govern the globe (the Wikipedia entry on this notes that current enthusiasm for the International Criminal Court and similar supranational authorities is based in the ideology of world governmental power over nation-states).

In his piece, Rachman waxes longingly for a world body and makes reference to Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, where the President-Elect has written, "When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following."

But check out Harold Meyerson, at the American Prospect, who places all of his hopes of world socialist utopianism in the hands of "The One":

At the end of the Civil War, Americans lived within local economies. Then railroads, steel and oil companies, meatpackers, and eventually automakers, with the considerable assistance of the nation's largest banks, began functioning on a national level, bending state and local governments to their will. Largely unregulated and in the absence of national countervailing powers, these institutions were unassailable until the crash of 1929 and the ensuing depression stripped them of much of their clout. Only then did Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal create national regulations on their conduct, and the agencies to enforce them. Only then did genuinely national unions arise that won national contracts from employers.

Taking government from the state to the national level was necessary to save the economy and build American prosperity. During the waning days of the Hoover administration, for instance, the governors of a number of states ordered bank closings to forestall depositors' runs on the banks. What the governors could not do, however, was restore depositor confidence. That is precisely what Roosevelt did, by coupling an order to close all banks so their books could be checked with the establishment of a federal deposit insurance agency -- a solution beyond capabilities and resources of the nation's insolvent state houses. Similarly, though individual states had enacted wage and hour laws before the Depression, creating the prosperity and stability of the post?World War II economy required the New Deal federal standards.

Today, Obama faces a similar challenge to Roosevelt's - and has a similar opportunity. Over the past several decades, the same asymmetry of power that characterized America between 1865 and 1932 reappeared - but on a larger scale. Finance and corporations have become global, outstripping the regulatory and bargaining powers of merely national governments and unions. Now, as in 1933, it is suddenly possible to globalize at least some standards and regulations, just as Roosevelt once nationalized them. The changes will come more haltingly and piecemeal than they did in Roosevelt's New Deal, because the leap from nation-state to global order is far greater than that from state capitols to Pennsylvania Avenue. But as in Roosevelt's time, the changes will come because the asymmetry of power led to an unregulated economy that collapsed of its own weight and folly - and because the only way out of the collapse may be to regulate that power on the global scale where, until recently, it was unchallenged.

How broad the changes are, how sturdy or rickety the new global architecture that emerges is, depends on a multitude of variables. Financial institutions may well oppose the formation of transnational agencies that, say, restrict the amount of leverage they're allowed to carry; multinational corporations will surely resist anything resembling global labor laws. Nations that disproportionately rely on the financial sector will oppose financial restrictions; nations at different stages of economic development will take different positions on wage and environmental standards. The very idea of a global New Deal would be altogether preposterous but for the fact that the return of prosperity may depend upon it. But then, the same once could have been said of a national New Deal, too. Finally, just as the creation of the national New Deal depended upon Roosevelt, the creation of a global one will depend upon Obama -- a figure who seems uniquely suited to voice not just the nation's but the planet's aspirations. The world - its citizens and its economy - awaits him.

Note the assumption here that many, if not most, of the "financial institutions" and "multinational corporations" will be American. And that's what talk of world government is all about: the establishment of a world regime to regulate American power and the agents of American influence, in this case U.S. transnational enterprises that are, for all intents and purposes, in the left's paradigm, the masters of the universe.

Nevermind that, in fact, some for largest corporations in the world are headquartered in places like Tokyo or Stuttgart. America remains the world's hegemon, and if U.S. and global activists have their way, they'll tie down U.S. global supremacy like a modern-day Gulliver.

What Happened to Buy American?

I leased a new Honda Civic last weekend. That's the model in the photo below:

It's a 2009 sedan, black, with a GPS navigation system. This is the fourth Honda my wife and I've either bought or leased. We also drive a Honda family van, which at the time of purchase was one of the first vehicles available with a DVD movie entertainment system, the perfect accessory for our boys when we take long family trips.

One of the things I always used to hear was "buy American." This, of course, was back in the 1980s and early-1990s, when U.S. automobile manufacturers were facing super-stiff competition from Japan. There were all kind of protectionist demands from Detroit, and Washington placed all kinds of tariffs and import quotas on Japanese vehicles to protect the American market. Japanese manufacturers imposed "voluntary export resraints" as well, which were tacit agreements not to export additional cars (and thus forestall more formal U.S. import barriers). When Washington placed limits on imports of smaller passenger cars, Japan built Lexuses and other luxury vehicles, and the Japanese eventually took over those sectors in quality and customer satisfaction. More recently, Toyota has been sellling full-size pickup trucks (after a long period of formal exclusion from the big truck sales here), which have cut into the market share of one of the last profititable product lines of American manufacturers. If I was in the market for a new truck, I'd probably get a Tundra.

It's not that I don't like American cars. If I had the money, or the leisure time, I'd get a Corvette. Some of the U.S.-built trucks are absolutely fabulous, and I'd feel even more all-American than I already do driving one. The question for me has always been quality. In 1980, friends drove American cars - I remember Camaros, especially - and they were always breaking down or being recalled for manufacturing defects. When dealing with the distributors, customer satisfaction took a back seat. A buddy's car was in the shop a number of times on warranty, and he had to practically bleed Chevy to pay for the repairs.

This is all off of memory, but I think those early experiences shaped my car-buying habits. I want a dependable vehicle that's not going to break down; a vehicle that gets good mielage, and a car that's hip, frankly. Hondas are cool. Lots of people drive them, and along with the Scion brand, the import sports-market and Friday-night cruising scene is dominated by them.

Perhaps this is why I haven't blogged too much about the Detroit bailout. Actually, I'm tired of bailout politics. I supported the administration's first $700 billion Wall Street bailout in September, and what did it do? Markets kept dropping and more firms and industries stuck out their hands for help from government. Unlike free-market purists, I see a real public interest in preventing a full-blown market crash. It's unknown what might have happened to the economy in the absence of government support, but the corruption we're seeing from top bailout executives, in slush funds, golden parachutes, travel expenses, etc., doesn't engender a lot of confidence that taxpayer money is being well invested. Maybe we need some genuine creative destruction in housing, finance, insurance, and other sectors of the economy before we really know what's to become of American capitalism (if we can really call it that anymore).

In any case, that brings me back to cars. The GM bailout last week collapsed over union issues, for the most part. What's fascinating is how the debate over GM has generated the classic partisan debate between Democrats and Republicans over support for the middle- and working-classes, as well as the question of whether the auto sector is as deserving of a bailout as Wall Street.

The Wall Street Journal, in fact, puts its finger on this moment in the "Crash of '08" as a chance for the GOP to stand up for its values:

Thursday's showdown marked an important political moment for the Republican Party. By refusing to write a blank check to Detroit, Senate Republicans have started to reclaim some credibility on fiscal policy and the role of government in the economy. They did so standing up to a Republican President who doesn't want any more bad headlines, as well as to Democrats who will blame the GOP if the auto makers collapse.

They also stood up for the right reasons. No bailout will ever restore the car companies to profitability without a restructuring. Yet an explicit UAW goal is to use the bailout to avoid any such thing. The union and their Democratic protectors want to avoid the discipline that a bankruptcy could impose under Chapter 11. A government-directed salvation would also give environmentalists huge leverage over the cars Detroit builds, a power they and Democrats have wanted for decades.

That does really get to the political nub of it. But if you look around the leftosphere, conservatives and the GOP are being tarred as the new "Hooverites." Chris Bowers attacks conservative ideology directly, arguing that conservatives don't care about "workplace democracy" and the concerns of "the middle-class":

The Senate Republicans who voted against the bridge loan are not acting as ideologues. Instead, they are acting rationally according to the dictates of their values system, aka ideology. They want to destroy the Great Lakes. They want to destroy the UAW. They don't care how many people get hurt or lose their jobs in bringing about those goals. They do not view these outcomes as catastrophic, and they know this will happen if the bridge loan fails. They are aware of these outcomes, and view them as desirable.

Read the whole thing to get the context (basically, leftist ideology is benevolent and conservative ideology is evil, blah, blah...).

I'm not an expert on the whole union-management debate. The big auto companies, in my opinion, have failed for a long time to offer a product that people woudn't hesitate to buy. Big labor, on the other hand, has been like a cancer on the car companies.

A couple of years back I was shaking my head when I read a story in the Wall Street Journal, "Idle Hands: Detroit's Symbol of Dysfunction: Paying Employees Not to Work." At the time, the big auto companies were paying about $2 billion a year for laid off workers to sit around all day - that is, the car companies, at union demand, paid people not to work. The piece demonstrates how UAW was essentially helped to kill its own companies.

So for me, it's both sides: The corporate bosses have failed to adapt to a changing American car culture and business environment (see, for example, "GM: Death of An American Dream"), and the unions have failed to develop a spirit of cooperation that puts company viability ahead of worker entitlement.

Meanwhile, across the American south, foreign automobile manufacturers are thriving, with higher productivity, lower costs, and greater consumer satisfaction. Look to Dixie for the future of the car business in the United States.

Knee-Jerk Reactions to Terror?

With reference to December 7th, 1941, and September 11, 2001, here's a boggling blame-America-first post on how the U.S. should surrender to clear and present dangers to our national security:

Our country cannot afford to go around responding to perceived threats with knee jerk reactions based in hatred and ignorance. In the end, we will do more harm than good and we will be no safer than we are now ....

And I want to remind my fellow Americans that what we do and what we say still counts in the world. Many look to us as a beacon of light and so we have a great responsibility to the world to light the way. I don't want to leave my grandchildren a legacy of hate and war. I want them to know we lived, we learned and we changed...

Yes, of course, September 11 was a "perceived" threat.

But I like the "my fellow Americans" part ... that's almost, well, presidential.

If that were a speech from a president taking this position (a Democrat, of course), it might say, "My fellow Americans, prepare your final effects, we are about to die. Our government shall remain paralyzed as the blackness descends on our nation and we submit to the ultimate, existential evil. Good night, and God Bless America, for the last time."

Somewhere, Deepak Chopra is nodding approvingly.