Levi Johnston on Tyra Banks Show

Last night, at People Magazine, I saw Governor Sarah Palin's response to Levi Johnston's interview with Tyra Banks. Now Allahpundit picks up the story, and he links to the video:

Here's this from the Palin family's statement, with no added comment necessary:

"Bristol did not even know Levi was going on the show. We're disappointed that Levi and his family, in a quest for fame, attention, and fortune, are engaging in flat-out lies, gross exaggeration, and even distortion of their relationship," says the statement from the Palin family rep, Meghan Stapleton.

"Bristol's focus will remain on raising Tripp, completing her education, and advocating abstinence," the statement continues. "It is unfortunate that Levi finds it more appealing to exploit his previous relationship with Bristol than to contribute to the well being of the child."

The statement ends, saying, "Bristol realizes now that she made a mistake in her relationship and is the one taking responsibility for their actions."

Defending Traditional Marriage

Okay, as promised, my essay on the implications of the Iowa Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling is published at Pajamas Media: "An Attack on Traditional Marriage in Iowa."

My argument at the piece distills a lot of the commentary I've offered here over the last few months, so readers may see some familiar themes. The push for same-sex marriage is more than about non-traditional wedded partnerships. It's about achieving a social revolution of nihilism and extreme secularization. One of the more interesting debates on the topic this week is the discussions by Rod Dreher, and the attacks on him by Damon Linker and Andrew Sullivan. Conor Friedersdorf jumps on the "pomo-con" bandwagon here.

Actually, Dreher doesn't do justice to the complexity of the issue, and thus he's easily attacked and ridiculed remorselessly as a theocon homophobe. Dreher makes it easy for his antagonists because he sets up opposition to same-sex marriage as opposition to homosexuality in toto. My personal experience in writing about this topic for the past six months, and in discussing it with people of various persuasions, is that people don't hate homosexuals. There's little homophobia per se. What gay hatred we do see, no matter how isolated, is highlighted and enlarged by the gay extremists as respresentative of an alleged hegemonic hetero-dominant dictatorship. Yet, when examining polling data, Americans demonstrate huge support for a type of civil unioin that affords all the legal guarantees of rights and responsibilities of marriage, while at the same time recognizing "marriage" as it's been historically substantiated - normatively and politically - is between one man and one woman for the regeneration of society.

Robert Stacy McCain's been shifting over to social conservatives issues in his writing this week, and he's got a really powerful essay up at the American Spectator that make the case for traditionalism, "Marriage: A Hill to Die On."

Robert notes that "Over and over, we find ourselves fighting what is essentially a defensive battle against the forces of organized radicalism who insist that "social justice" requires that we grant their latest demand." And further, "Such is the remorseless aggression of radicalism that conservatives forever find themselves contemplating the latest "progressive" demand and asking, 'Is this a hill worth dying on?'"

Yes, marriage is a "hill worth dying on." That is to say, there's not a whole lot left in the culture that hasn't been broken down and destroyed by radical individualism. Conservatives, as Mark Levin points out in Liberty and Tyranny, borrowing from Edmund Burker, are not opposed to change. But change absent of prudence is radical and destabilizing.

But let's go back to Robert's essay on why traditionalism is worth the fight:

Some conservatives are wholly persuaded by the arguments of same-sex marriage advocates. Others, however, are merely unprincipled cowards and defeatists. Concerned about maintaining their intellectual prestige, some elitists on the Right do not wish to associate themselves with Bible-thumping evangelicals. Or, disparaging the likelihood of successful opposition, they advocate pre-emptive surrender rather than waging a fight that will put conservatism on the losing side of the issue.

Yet if the defense of traditional marriage - an ancient and honorable institution - is not a "hill worth dying on," what is? In every ballot-box fight to date, voters have supported the one-man, one-woman definition of marriage. As indicated by exit polls in California last fall, this is one issue where the conservative position is widely endorsed by black and Latino voters. Should such a potentially promising political development be abandoned? ....

It is only by the activist rulings of judges and other officials, never at the behest of voters, that the radical crusade for same-sex marriage has advanced this far. We know which side the people are on. Even Barack Obama was shrewd enough to declare his opposition to same-sex marriage during the presidential campaign. We have seen voters in 30 states pass constitutional amendments to defend the "one-man, one-woman" definition of marriage, and conservatives in Iowa are now planning efforts to add their state to the list.

Having been given an inch, the radicals now attempt to take a mile. But this is a hill to die on.

Read the whole essay at the link.

Degrading the U.S. Nuclear Arsenal

This video was swirling around the web early last year. Some of you may remember it. A lot of conservatives bloggers posted it semi-permanently in their sidebars. Candidate Obama called for the denuclearization of U.S. defense policy, with the goal of the complete elimination of nuclear weapons on the planet. Obama's proposal was the worst kind of leftist idealism, the results of which would weaken U.S. security and put Americans at the mercy of sworn enemies of this country.

It turns out President Obama is making good on his campaign promise.

The Wall Street Journal discusses the administration's arms control discussions with the Russians:

The Obama Administration wants to replace the soon-to-expire 1991 START treaty with a new regime that would set a ceiling of 1,000 nuclear warheads apiece for the U.S. and Russia. That would dramatically cut the two countries' existing number of operational weapons, both strategic and nonstrategic, from a current estimated total of about 4,100 for the U.S. and 5,200 for Russia. It would also exceed the terms agreed by the Bush Administration in the 2002 Moscow Treaty, which committed each side to reduce their arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 strategic warheads by 2012.

As we learned in the 1970s, the devil of arms control often lies in the technical arcana of warheads and delivery systems, so we'll await the text before pronouncing judgment. But the devil of arms control also lies in the overall concept, with its implicit assumption that the weapons themselves are inherently more dangerous than the intentions of those who develop and deploy them.

We would have thought this thinking was discredited after the Second Lateran Council outlawed the use of crossbows in 1139, or after the Hague Convention of 1899 banned aerial bombardment, or after the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawed war. Nope. Mr. Obama has set the ultimate goal of eliminating nuclear weapons, and as one of his first official acts he pledged to "stop the development of new nuclear weapons."

What Mr. Obama wants to kill specifically is the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which the Bush Administration supported over Congressional opposition, and which Mr. Obama now opposes despite the support of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the military. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told us this week that "we do need a new warhead." When we asked about Mr. Obama's views on the warhead, the Admiral said, "You would have to ask him."

The RRW is not, in fact, a new weapon; it has been in development for several years and is based on the W89 design tested in the 1980s. It is said to be a remarkably safe and long-lasting warhead, a significant consideration given the gradual physical deterioration of the current U.S. arsenal, particularly the mainstay W76.

The irony is that Mr. Obama's opposition is making substantial reductions in the total U.S. arsenal that much riskier. In the absence of actual testing, which hasn't happened in the U.S. since 1992, the only real hedge against potentially defective weapons is a larger arsenal. Naturally, arms-control theologians are instead urging the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and ban the production of weapons grade uranium and plutonium.

The entire essay is available at the link.

See also, "Obama calls for 'world without' nukes" (via Memeorandum).

The End of Christian Politics in America?

Kathleen Parker's got an interesting piece up at the Washington Post, "Political Pullback for the Christian Right?" I don't trust her, though, considering her turncoat politics vis-a-vis the GOP. But Robert Stacy McCain gives her a pass on this one, "For once, Kathleen Parker has a clue."

Also, Jon Meacham has a big story on religion and politics at Newsweek, "The End of Christian America" (via Memeorandum). I don't trust Meacham, either. He's turned Newsweek, already liberal, into a mainstream mouthpiece for the radical left.

Dan Riehl, however, says the Meacham's essay is worth a read:

Certain elements on the Right need to make up their mind as to whether they want to have primarily a political discussion, or a religious one. Certainly they can have both. But they are not the same thing. The "Christian Right" over-stepped in instances where it failed to realize that. Still, that doesn't mean one's faith can't, or shouldn't influence one's politics at all.

For me, the only real issue is this: in what force or power do you want to source your sense of "rights." The Founders understood the importance of that question, which is why they sourced them to Nature's God in the Declaration of Independence, and acknowledged them as blessings in the Constitution itself. They never invested them in any Church, Christian or otherwise.

But there's a baby with the bath water problem in a mostly juvenile over-reaction against whatever the Christian Right is, or was. The Founders had enough sense to not simply invest our rights in our political processes alone. Processes, as with most anything of man, can be corrupted and co-opted. It happens all the time.

Bottom line, if you want to tear down anything and everything beyond man, then man is the only concept you have left in which to invest your rights. And once you do that, rest assured, one day some man is going to come along and take them away.

Mark Levin: "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto"

I started reading Mark Levin's, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto this morning.

I'm loving the book already, but check out Bernard Chapin's encomium, "Mark Levin Writes the Most Important Book of the Year":

“We conservatives need to get busy,” argues Mark Levin in the conclusion to his magnificent new book, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto. The author’s advice is accurate but also a massive understatement. The year 2009 finds the statists no longer at the gate but advancing well beyond it. Their machinations jeopardize our financial viability and the new crew leading us appears to know less about making an economy work than the Chinese.

Given the state of the country and the Democratic Party’s stranglehold on government, the challenge to the political right has never been greater. Conservatives desperately seek answers as a leftist Leviathan vacuums up huge sectors of our once (mostly) free economy.

Levin urges fidelity to the Constitution, devotion to federalism, and the adoption of a hard, rather than conciliatory, line with environmentalists and radicals of every stripe. His positions should be taken seriously by everyone associated with the Grand Old Party. Republican Chairman Michael Steele has already endorsed the book, and hopefully more rightist officials will discover its merits in the future.

Put simply, Liberty and Tyranny invigorates. It provides ammunition and clarity for those who oppose President Obama and socialism in all its deceptive forms. Unfortunately, the first step in using the book as a catalyst is successfully securing a copy, and that is a bit of a challenge at the moment.

At the time of this writing, the work sits at number one atop Amazon’s bestseller list. As a result, it is sold out and will not be available there for one to three weeks’ time. I was not sent an advance copy and do not know Mr. Levin personally, but obtained one out of luck. After being told by a clerk at the local Borders that their shelves were bare, I stumbled across an edition hiding among the weight loss classics at Target.

The astronomical success of Liberty and Tyranny is an obvious tribute to its worth along with the esteem by which the author is held in conservative circles. Nowadays Mark Levin is primarily known for being the star of a blockbuster talk show bearing his name. Before he became famous for fifteen hours of weekly leftist vivisection, he was an accomplished writer, lawyer, and member of the Reagan administration.

Read the whole thing, here.

I'm going to go read now.

More later ...

Same-Sex Marriage in New England

The New York Times reports that the New England region is the "ground zero" of the same-sex marriage movement:

The Iowa Supreme Court’s approval of same-sex marriage on Friday gave advocates an important first victory in the nation’s heartland, thwarting the notion that only the Northeast will accept it.

But for now, New England remains the nucleus of the same-sex marriage movement, with a campaign under way to extend marriage rights to gay men and lesbians in all six of the region’s states by 2012.

Massachusetts has allowed same-sex marriage since 2004, and Connecticut began allowing it last fall. The Vermont Legislature just voted to let same-sex couples marry, and supporters hope to gather enough votes to override a veto promised by Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican.

New Hampshire is not far behind; its House of Representatives approved a same-sex marriage bill last month. The legislatures in Maine and Rhode Island are considering their own versions, though they are not as far along in the process.

Across New England, advocacy groups have been raising money, training volunteers and lobbying voters and lawmakers as part of a campaign they call “Six by Twelve,” led by the legal advocacy group that persuaded the Supreme Courts in Massachusetts and Connecticut to allow same-sex marriage in 2003 and 2008.

Equal rights advocates said Friday that while the Midwest in general was culturally and politically different from the Northeast, Iowa shared New England’s independent streak and so was a logical place to file another court challenge.

“We picked Iowa because many of us who don’t live in the Midwest might think of it as being a conservative monolith,” said Jennifer C. Pizer, marriage project director for Lambda Legal, which argued the Iowa case. “But people who know Iowa have been saying for some time that it is different from its neighbors. There’s a tradition of independence and willingness to stand up on issues of fairness.”

As in most New England states, voters in Iowa cannot initiate constitutional amendments, a common strategy for blocking same-sex marriage elsewhere. In California, voters last fall amended the State Constitution to ban such marriages after a court decision made it legal. The California Supreme Court is considering a petition to overturn the ban, but many legal scholars have predicted that it will be upheld.

Hmm ... "voters in Iowa cannot initiate constitutional amendments ..." Maybe Iowans need some real progressive reforms.

I should have an essay published on the gay marriage debate at Pajamas Media tomorrow or the next day. Actually, I think California's probably more of a gay rights trendsetter over the last year. But as for this story, I mainly liked the picture accompanying the article, "Opponents of same-sex marriage rallied Thursday outside the Statehouse in Montpelier, Vt." If you look closely at the left of the photo, one of the signs reads, "Referendum: It's Fair. It's Right. It's Time."

See also, Robert Stacy McCain, "Gay Rights and the Politics of Coercive Approval."

Video of Taliban Flogging Girl in Pakistan

Here's the video of a 17-year-old girl being beaten by Pakistani Taliban for allegedly refusing to marry a local militant commander:

The Los Angeles Times reported on this today, "Video of Taliban flogging girl stirs anger in Pakistan":

Face down before a crowd, the teenage girl shrieks and writhes, begging for mercy. But the three masked men holding her down merely tighten their grip while a fourth man whips her again and again.

The video of a 17-year-old girl being publicly flogged by the Pakistani Taliban in the Swat Valley has galvanized the nation, drawing protests from human rights groups, denunciations from the central government and expressions of revulsion from many Pakistanis.

The video, shot with a cellphone, initially shows the girl, clad in an all-enveloping black burka, being held by men while another begins striking her. She can be heard shouting for help in the Pashto language, spoken by most people in Swat. She is then dragged to another location, held down and flogged. Several dozen people can be seen watching.

"For God's sake, please stop, stop it," the girl pleads as the whip falls. "I am dying."

Off-camera, another militant gives orders: "Hold her feet tightly. Lift her burka a bit."

The girl's screams are very disturbing, so please be warned if you watch the video.

Full Metal Saturday: Ann Althouse

Well, I don't know if this will meet Jules Crittenden's criteria, but Ann Althouse is our featured lovely for this week's "Full Metal Roundup."

Or should I say our featured voracious vixen hottie for the week?

Althouse's whirlwind blogging romance is covered in today's New York Times, "Commoner Captures Princess, Blog Version":

Ann Althouse, 58, is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison who blogs about politics, law and cultural whatnots in a sharp, occasionally ribald tone. She admires Rush Limbaugh, voted for George Bush in ’04 and Barack Obama in ’08. She attracts derision and applause from 500,000 monthly visitors.

The jeers [from Althouse's critics] spiked ever since the March 22 announcement on her blog that this divorced mother of two adult sons, stalwartly single for more than 20 years, is engaged to a commenter known simply as “Meade.” Except for her closest readers, the blogosphere was taken by surprise.

“Does she know the guy?” sniggered Mickey Kaus, the Slate blogger, in a bloggingheads.tv interview.

In a phone interview, Ms. Althouse shot back, “If a male blogger found women to consort with by going into his comments, I think he’d be congratulated.”

The tale of Meade and Ms. Althouse is a cross between the studiedness of a Victorian epistolary courtship —a modern-day Robert Browning googling his dear Elizabeth Barrett — and the wackiness of 21st-century life online. The Althouse commentariat would log into the virtual local pub of the blog, gossiping and fantasizing about their queen’s offline love life, and even egging the couple on. When the announcement finally came, the commentariat cheered, bursting with hometown pride that a humble, anonymous son of the Internet could win the hand of the blogger.

Until now, Meade liked his online anonymity just fine. But at his fiancée’s urging, he agreed to be unmasked here. He is Laurence Meade, 55, divorced, father of a college student and a garden designer and caretaker for a Cincinnati estate.

There's a picture of Meade at the piece. He looks like a nice man, and I know he's a pithy commenter! But online love involves security clearances, so take note of Meade's assurances to Althouse upon asking her out: "... he offered his Social Security number, in case she wanted to run a criminal check ... "

Read the whole thing, here (via Memeorandum).

Now, while most people can't resist a good love story, let's not forget the Full Metal Saturday Reach Around!

My friend Carol at No Sheeples Here was a little reluctant to put up a "Rule 5" post, but she came through with a winner! And to futher demonstrate that women love posting Rule 5 hotness, Vanessa, my former student, has posted some Daniel Craig beefcake. But don't miss Monique Stuart's phenomenal entry with Catherine Zeta Jones! And just to throw out a related link, Monique's entry got a big thumbs up from Ennuipundit in the comments.

And just to indicate that breast-blogging shows up where you least expect it, note how Jawa Report posts a photo of Yasmin Fastok Bakri Mohammad, who is probably off the hotness scale for my regular "Rule 5" entries!

Lance Burri's always good for some smooth weekend blogging, for example, in "I don’t know who’s been finding The Trog by googling “socialist troglodyte...”."

Now, I don't see a weekend roundup at Pundette's, but head over there anyway for some great blogging. And make that a double with William Jacobson's Legal Insurrection. Dave at Point of a Gun is worth a look as well.

And I conclude with the obligatory link to Glenn Reynolds.

More later ...

Photo Credit: New York Times.

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UPDATE: Fausta e-mails, "Love the FMJ roundups!"

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UPDATE II: Who knew? Today is "Internatioanal Pillow Fight Day," and hotties like it.

Iowa Ruling Could Bolster California Gay Rights Activists

I'm going to be in and out today running my boys to art classes and math tutoring. I didn't blog so much yesterday because I was working on an essay on the Iowa gay marriage ruling for Pajamas Media. I submitted that late last night, but there's lot more on the topic this morning, by the looks of Memeorandum. Plus, the Los Angeles Times has a front-page article on the ruling, "Iowa court legalizes gay marriage as California watches," so I'll share that with readers for now:

The Iowa Supreme Court, citing California's historic marriage decision, overturned a ban Friday on same-sex marriage in a ruling that emphasized the need for courts to protect minorities even when public sentiment is against them.

The unanimous decision makes Iowa the first Midwestern state to legalize gay marriage, which is also permitted in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The decision came as the California Supreme Court considers whether to overturn Proposition 8, the November ballot measure that banned gay marriages after the court's groundbreaking ruling May 15 that allowed them.

Gay rights activists and a legal scholar said Friday's ruling could provide ammunition for overturning Proposition 8, either in court or at the ballot box. During a hearing last month, a majority of the California court appeared ready to uphold the ballot measure.

In the Iowa decision, Justice Mark Cady wrote: "We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective. The Legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification."

Gay rights advocates were jubilant.

"It's a red-letter day for us here in Iowa," said Matt McCoy, a gay member of the state Senate who cheered the decision from the courthouse steps in Des Moines.

Foes vowed to fight it. Bryan English, spokesman for the Iowa Family Policy Center, said the decision was like "a death in the family."

There's more at the link.

See also, The Anonymous Liberal, "Being a Public Christian'," Rod Dreher, "Gay marriage forced on Iowa," and the additional commentary at Memeorandum.

I Don't Smoke Pot, and I Don't Like It

This is a response to Will Wilkinson's essay, "I smoke pot, and I like it."

Fine. Good for you.

But I don't smoke pot, and I don't like it. Not only that, I don't like what it does to people, including people I know, and especially people I used to know, before they they fatally OD'd; and I worry that my sons will come under the influence of bad people who smoke pot, snort coke, and God knows what else; and my boys will be too inexperienced in the ways of the drug culture to know that what they're being turned on to could kill them. It's not just about "smoking pot." It's about the entire wasting culture that it promotes, especially among the young and aimless, who haven't yet figured out how much work it takes to be successful in life. And my kids, and many other millions of good kids, in good family homes across this country, certainly don't know that pot is indeed a gateway to harder drugs, mainline drugs, and thus to a harder life of crime, dependency, and lost promise.

But check out Wilkinson, in any case:

Marijuana is neither evil nor dangerous. Scientists have proven its medical uses. It has spared millions from anguish. But the casual pleasure marijuana has delivered is orders of magnitude greater than the pain it has assuaged, and pleasure matters too. That’s probably why Barack Obama smoked up the second and third times: because he liked it. That’s why tens of millions of Americans regularly take a puff, despite the misconceived laws meant to save us from our own wickedness.

The Atlantic Monthly’s Andrew Sullivan has been documenting on his blog the stories of typical, productive Americans—kids’ football coaches, secretaries of the PTA—who smoke marijuana because they like to smoke marijuana, but who understandably fear emerging fully from the “cannabis closet.” This is a profoundly necessary idea. If we’re to begin to roll back our stupid and deadly drug war, the stigma of responsible drug use has got to end, and marijuana is the best place to start. The super-savvy Barack Obama managed to turn a buck by coming out of the cannabis (and cocaine) closet in a bestselling memoir. That’s progress. But his admission came with the politicians’ caveat of regret. We’ll make real progress when solid, upstanding folk come out of the cannabis closet, heads held high.

So here we go. My name is Will Wilkinson. I smoke marijuana, and I like it.

It seems to me, that if someone were going to make a rationalist case for marijuana legalization, the last person they'd cite as an authority is the uber-hypocrite Andrew Sullivan.

In any case, far from the chapparals and deep jungles of Mexico and farther south, a former student of mine was busted last week for possession of drugs with the intent to sell and transport. My student, Corrie Vibbert, a smart and handsome young man, with his whole life before him, had a smorgasbord of drugs in his possession, worth more than $7,160:

LBCC student Corrie Vibbert was arrested on several charges, including drug possession, Monday, March 16 after a parking violation led to the more severe charges, police said.

Vibbert, who has attended LBCC since 2006, parked his black BMW between two handicapped spots in a loading zone, which caused special service officer Kent Smith to check the car for the appropriate parking passes.

Lt. Julie Prior of the LBPD said Smith walked up to the vehicle and saw a drug-related pipe on the center console. Vibbert quickly attempted to hide it, according to reports.

Smith immediately asked to search the vehicle and the suspect consented. Smith recovered a bag of marijuana, hash, mushrooms, a bong and a pipe.

The drugs were valued at more than $7,160. Vibbert was taken into custody shortly after.

"He was arrested on possession and intent to sell and transport," Prior said.

"He violated three sections of the health and safety code. Since I've been here, I've never come across a student having drugs of this quantity," said Prior, who started at LBCC in 2005.

Vibbert has been charged with unauthorized possession, transportation, sale and furnishing of controlled substances.

If convicted, Vibbert could face imprisonment by the state and will pay a fine for misdemeanor crimes.

Do not tell me, Will Wilkinson, that "Marijuana is neither evil nor dangerous." Fancy-talking libertarians like you have the luxury of expounding on the "failed" war on drugs while kicking back in cozy offices at the Cato Intstitute, or some other free-market think tank. I mean, look at this blather: "the stigma of responsible drug use has got to end."

Hey, man, can I borrow your Visine?

In any case, no doubt my former student Corrie Vibbert was on his way to deliver some of da kine to "kids’ football coaches, secretaries of the PTA."

You betcha! Those are some great role models for our kids!

Iowa Gay Marriage Ruling Makes End-Run Around State's Voters

I'm looking at the reactions on the left to the ruling from the Iowa Supreme Court allowing gay couples to marry, "Unanimous ruling: Iowa marriage no longer limited to one man, one woman."

So, it's a great day for civil rights? Not exactly:

“Iowa loses,” said Republican Sen. David Johnson of Ocheyedan. “There have been attempts in the past few years to allow Iowans to weigh in on this issue through our constitutional amendment process and it’s been blocked by majority party leadership. That’s why Iowa loses.”

One might think Iowa's leadership would let voters decide the issue at the polls, providing an up or down vote on such a controversial policy.

In a new poll from the University of Iowa, just over a quarter of respondents backed full gay marriage rights:

The random statewide telephone poll of 978 registered voters found that 36.7 percent of Iowans oppose recognition of gay marriage and civil unions. Overall, 26.2 percent of respondents support gay marriage and 27.9 percent oppose gay marriage but support civil unions. The poll was conducted March 23 through March 31. The margin of error is +/-3.1 percent for the full sample.

These findings are similar to Newsweek's survey from last December that found just 31 percent of those polled nationwide supporting a full-blown right to same-sex marriage. Americans are accepting of civil protections for legal same-sex unions. However, they continue to respect the institution of marriage as exclusive to that of one man and one woman.

But what will happen is that gay rights activists will spin the Iowa court ruling as signaling the inevitability of same-sex marriage accross the country? Ben Smith notes this about the language of the court's holding:

It's really a sweeping, total win for the gay-rights side, rejecting any claim that objections to same-sex marriage can be seen as "rational," rejecting a parallel civil union remedy, and pronouncing same-sex marriages and gay and lesbian couples essentially normal.

So, as Andre Agassi used to say, "Image Is Everything."

Gird your loins, conservatives!

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UPDATE: Robert Stacy McCain, in "Iowa gay ruling: Power to the elites!", offers an informed response to Andrew Sullivan's gay marriage nihilism:

Andrew Sullivan is as free to marry a woman as I am, and I am prohibited (at least by the laws of my state) from marrying a man just as Sullivan is. We are, therefore, fully equal under the law, the only difference being that he desires to be married to a man and I do not. His desire for legal endorsement of his preference is thwarted, although his civil liberty is uninfringed.

Sullivan may own property, execute contracts, serve on juries, vote, drive, own firearms, etc., the same as anyone. Yet he makes a great show of his martyrdom to homophobia, so as to elicit pity, to qualify for the victim status that is so coveted in contemporary culture. And if you call bullshit on his histrionic display, you are a bigoted homophobe (since Sully arrogates to himself the power to decide who is or is not a homophobe).

Also, here's Ed Whelan at The Corner:

The lawless judicial attack on traditional marriage and on representative government continues. Today the Iowa supreme court ruled unanimously (7-0) that a “state statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.” Amidst the opinion’s 69 pages of blather, there are two key assertions (and they’re nothing more than that):

(1) “[E]qual protection can only be defined by the standards of each generation.” (p. 16)

There's more at the link. John McCormack links to Whelan as well, "Iowa Court Imposes Same-Sex Marriage."

And, via Ben Smith:

Western Iowa Rep. Steve King:

This is an unconstitutional ruling and another example of activist judges molding the Constitution to achieve their personal political ends. Iowa law says that marriage is between one man and one woman. If judges believe the Iowa legislature should grant same sex marriage, they should resign from their positions and run for office, not legislate from the bench.

Now it is the Iowa legislature’s responsibility to pass the Marriage Amendment to the Iowa Constitution, clarifying that marriage is between one man and one woman, to give the power that the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself back to the people of Iowa. Along with a constitutional amendment, the legislature must also enact marriage license residency requirements so that Iowa does not become the gay marriage Mecca due to the Supreme Court’s latest experiment in social engineering.

Ernest Borgnine!

God, I just saw Ernest Borgnine on the series finale of ER!

He's looks great!

Borgnine was my favorite as a kid, mainly from the original Poseidon Adventure.

I remember laughing a few years back, when on the way to work, I was listening to the K-Earth 101 morning show. I've forgotten the DJ, but he was joking about a Saddam Hussein biopic, and he asked who'd play the Iraqi dictator - and he said Ernest Borgnine!

I love it.

These Twittering folks love him.

See also, E! Online, "ER Fades Into That Good Night," and the Los Angeles Times, "'ER': The room itself was the real star":

Those holiday episodes notwithstanding ("a very special 'ER' "), the show may now be the darkest, bleakest program on broadcast television and the one with the most sophisticated take on life.

Resisting Cultural Degradation

There's a recent onging gay marriage debate between Rod Dreher on one side, and Damon Linker and Andrew Sullivan on the other. Clicking around, I found this quote from Jim Manzi at The American Scene:

I think that the prevalence of the social conservative worldview, broadly defined, is on a long-term downward trajectory in the United States. I make this as an attempt at a descriptive, not normative, statement.

This obviously might change. To some extent, this trend is a product of increasing material abundance, and a truly catastrophic reduction in living standards would likely reverse it, as an example. But the environment in which we live increasingly is one in which it grows ever-more-difficult to maintain a national legal regime that permits any implicit or explicit preferences for a traditional way of life.

Three things: Yes, (1) this is a descriptive, but not empirical, statement, at least for the American case. The verity of the point depends on how the query is operationalized, and in the context of gay marriage, the point's demonstrably false; (2), that said, the normative element of Manzi's claim is certainly manifest in the great majority of left-libertarians, for example, among the Sullivan myrmidons at Ordinary Gentlemen; and (3) the "traditional legal regime" Manzi delegitimizes is a function of the a priori cultural "environment," and it's only "difficult to maintain" if respect for tradition is abandoned in the first place. Increasingly, those who want to overthrow tradition are the most active social constituency on the issue, so much depends on partisan mobilization.

It might help, in any case, to break down the "social conservative worldview" into discrete elements. If we focus on gay marriage - which seems like a useful proxy for one's position in the current culture wars - it's not so much that traditional values are on the decline, but that many people of moderately conservatives social views are not up to the fight, that is, folks simply are beaten down by the merciless and remorseless campaign of hatred directed against those averse to the radical nihilism championed by the secular progressives. I'll have more on this later, but for now recall Robert Bork's argument from a few years back, in favor of resisting cultural degradation, offerred in the context of the for a Federal Marriage Amendment to protect constitutionally the tradition of marriage as the sacred union of one man and one woman:

Social conservatives, Max Boot notes, have been fighting and losing culture wars for decades. That is obvious, but his recommendation that we acknowledge defeat on the issue of homosexual marriage and move on to other issues is bad advice. This issue seems to me so important that a fight against it, whatever the odds, is mandatory. Abandoning resistance here might nevertheless be seen by some as an intelligent strategy, but that would be true only if there were a more defensible line to fall back to. It is difficult to see what line that might be. The cultural left, including homosexual activists, will keep pressing for more. The BBC, as a foretaste of what is to come, has ordered its staff not to use the words “husband” and “wife,” since that might seem to indicate that marriage is preferable to other sexual arrangements. In Canada, a pastor has been charged under a hate speech law for publishing instances of the Bible’s disapproval of homosexuality. Church leaders who imagine they can negotiate immunities from laws applying to the rest of the population are almost certainly fooling themselves. Liberal autonomists have little or no respect for religion, except to the extent that some clergy can be recruited to advance their causes in the name of religion. The Catholic Church will be a particular target of attack, as it already has been in California, where the state supreme court ruled that Catholic Charities had to provide prescription contraceptive coverage in its health insurance plan for employees.

Boot’s advice to cut and run on this issue thus ignores the fact that there are fewer and fewer places to run to. The autonomous drive toward cultural degradation will not leave us in peace, ever. Boot may be right to predict that Republican support for a marriage amendment would make the party “look ‘intolerant’ to soccer moms whose views on this subject, as on so many others, will soon be as liberal as elite opinion already is.” But if that is true, it means that we will lose all the cultural battles of the future, as the soccer moms trail along behind elite opinion. If Republicans refuse to fight cultural battles on that reasoning, they will look cowardly to conservatives, which could be equally disastrous. It would be better to try to convince the soccer moms, who would not be at all happy if their children and grandchildren cohabited instead of marrying, or “married” persons of the same sex.

Socialist Denialism

The Anonymous Liberal needs to get out more often, perhaps to a newsstand or a protest rally or two, for example:

The notion that there is anyone of significance on the American left who still believes in anything approaching genuine socialism is pure fantasy. That debate, to the extent it ever really happened in this country, was settled a long time ago. What we're dealing with right now are differences of opinion regarding how best to manage the failure of a number of major companies. It's not a debate about socialism vs. capitalism; it's a debate about methods of damage control. But many conservatives have so deluded themselves with their own propaganda that they're not even capable of following the conversation any more. So instead they spend all day indulging in paranoid delusions and debates that have no relevance to current events. It's a sad spectacle.

Dissecting Nihilism and Gay Marriage

Robert Stacy McCain has written on Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay, "Nihilism and Gay Marriage," where the latter attacks oponents of gay marriage as bigots and homophobes. Ta-Nehisi is responding the Andrew Sullivan's long essay excoriating Rod Dreher's social conservatism, "Be Not Afraid, Rod." I saw Sullivan's piece earlier, but I've covered this ground so much in the last six months that I skipped over the piece as nothing really new. Not only that. I'm currently reading Sullivan's Virtually Normal, so as to get a sense of this man's thinking prior to his mental deterioration over the last few years (in the Bush era). Plus, the gay marriage debate's picking up steam by the day; so long's as Sullivan's own sexual proclivities don't kill him before society reaches some satisfactory equilibria, we'll certainly be hearing more from the barebacked narcissist.

In any case, McCain has a great takedown, where he notes in particular:

Sully and his friends insult conservatives by supposing us to be cowards. If we disagree on what is, at heart, a question of policy, we are accused of vicious hatefulness. Indeed, we are said to be suffering from a psychological disorder, homophobia. To this insult - and their arrogant supposition that we are too stupid to know when we are being insulted - I quote one of the great heroes of cinema.

"Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining."
- The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

The discourse Sully means to have with us:

Sully: You're stupid.
Us: Excuse me?
Sully: You're mentally ill, too.
Us: What the . . .?
Sully: Hatemonger!
Us: Boy, I'm about to whup you.
Sully: Fascist!

He does not argue in good faith. We have on our side ancient tradition and religious orthodoxy. He has on his side the prestige of the intellectual elite. Ergo, we are ignorant rabble, and he is so infinitely superior to us that he can insult us with impunity, and we dare not even take notice of the insult.

Actually, I don't think Sullivan has "intellectual prestige" anymore. Ross Douthat, maybe so? Sullivan's mostly getting pulled along for the ride at the Atlantic, where's he's now an embarrassment to that previously august publication.

What's interesting here is actually Ta-Nehisi Coates' elaboration of the "bigots" and "homophobes" meme. It's just a dumb attack, first of all, and pure intellectual cowardice on top of that. The slam on conservatives as "bigots" and "homophobes" simply attempts to shut down debate, not encourage dialog or understanding. What's really bad about Ta-Nehisi is how he reverts to the infantile comparison of gay marriage activists today to black Americans during Jim Crow, Americans who faced the enormity of this nation's system of racial apartheid. There's is very little support for the analogy that Ta-Nahisi attempts, for example:

... in the white male paranoid mind, the deepest ambition of all black men lay between the two legs of some white woman--any white woman ....

Bigotry, in all forms, requires a shocking arrogance, a belief that other communities deepest desires revolve around your destruction. It is the ultimate narcissism, a way of thinking that can only see others, through a paranoid fear of what one might lose. The fears are almost always irrational. To go back to Chuck D, perhaps he was too cold when he said, "Man, I don't want your sister." But there was deep truth in it, the idea was, "Fool, this ain't about you and your fucked-up sexual hangups." In much the same vein when I read people complaining that gay marriage is a threat to traditional marriage, I think, "Fool, these gay motherfuckers ain't thinking about your marriage. This ain't about you and your hang-ups."

Bigotry is the heaping of one man's insecurity on to another. Sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Islamism, anti-immigrantism, really all come from the same place--cowardice. In his history of lynching, Phillip Dray notes that mob violence against black men wasn't simply about keeping black men in their place--it was about keeping white women in their place. Lynching peaked as white women went to work outside the home in greater numbers, developing their own financial power base. White men, afraid that they couldn't compete with their women, would cowardly resort to lynching. I am not saying that the anti-gay marriage crowd is a lynch mob. But in tying opposition to the sexual revolution what you see is, beyond a fear of gay marriage, a fear for marriage itself. A fear that their way of life can't compete in these new times. It's ridiculous, of course. But bigotry always is.

Well, yes, Ta-Nehisi, you are alleging traditional Americans to be a lynch mob, because you are conflating the kind of earlier racist bigotry with today's program of moral right that supports the normative conception of the traditional marriage union.

I wrote a post on all of this last November following the violent gay rights protests against Proposition 8, "Gay Marriage is Not a Civil Right." I link there to Eugene Rivers and Kenneth Johnson's, "Same-Sex Marriage: Hijacking the Civil Rights Legacy," where the authors note that:

There is no evidence in the history and literature of the civil rights movement, or in its genesis in the struggle against slavery, to support the claim that the "gay rights" movement is in the tradition of the African-American struggle for civil rights.

And:

It is precisely the indiscriminate promotion of various social groups' desires and preferences as "rights" that has drained the moral authority from the civil rights industry.

Ta-Nehisi Coates descends to the same level of invective found in Sullivan's "Christianist" slur. There's really no underlying argument in support of these claims. Such attacks as "bigots" or "Christianists" are either totally disconnected from historical facts and circumstances, or are just epithets of genuine nihilist hysteria seeking to bully those who hold majoritarian views on the appropriate role of tradition in society.

Of course, It's actually pretty disgusting how low this debate has devolved (to demential and demonism). But that's what you're going to get from folks like Andrew Sullivan and his allies, who are determined to force gay marriage on the rest of society, or die trying.

There's more of this debate at Independent Gay Forum, "Dreher's Conversation With No One." And also Memeorandum.

China Pushes for Bigger Role in World Economy

Well, to update some of my comments on the "one world currency" controversy (at Crooks and Liars, for example), the Los Angeles Times has an interesting article on China's rise to preeminence in world politics, "China pushes for bigger role in reshaping the world economy":

At a time when the U.S. and other traditional economic powers are weakening, China is flexing its muscles, signaling it will seek a much more assertive role in shaping the future of the world financial order.

The apparent shift in Beijing's approach is likely to be displayed at the Group of 20 nations' summit today in London, as China presses for changes in a global finance system long dominated by the U.S. and Western Europe.

Leading up to the gathering of the heads of 20 major developed and emerging economies, Chinese leaders have publicly criticized America's economic system, raised concerns about the safety of China's massive holdings of U.S. debt and, most recently, proposed the creation of a new international currency to replace the dollar.

At the same time, China is snapping up foreign oil fields and mines, ensuring that its raw materials cupboard will be well-stocked when the economy rebounds. This year China has signed deals with Iran, Russia and Venezuela for oil and gas deals worth tens of billions of dollars, and has made moves for stakes or outright purchases of at least seven mining companies.

Chinese companies are also looking to buy high-profile Western brands on the cheap, while recruiting foreign talent to upgrade China's technology. China's Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. has reportedly talked with Ford Motor Co. about purchasing its distressed Volvo unit. And analysts on both sides of the Pacific have floated the prospect of a Chinese automaker acquiring General Motors Corp.'s venerable Buick line, if not the entire company, something once considered unthinkable.

China sees the global downturn as a once-in-a-century opportunity -- and it has the wherewithal to seize the moment. Although Chinese leaders too are struggling with shrinking trade and rising joblessness, their economy is still growing faster than those of other major nations. Chinese banks are more stable. And the Beijing government is sitting on the largest stockpile of foreign reserves in the world, some $2 trillion.

"They have fairly clear objectives of where they see their place in the new world order," said Oded Shenkar, a management professor at Ohio State University and author of "The Chinese Century." "They see it's time to position themselves more assertively" ....

In recent weeks Chinese leaders also have taken aim at the dollar. Premier Wen Jiabao expressed concerns last month about the stability of some $1 trillion of U.S. government bonds in Chinese hands. President Obama swiftly responded by declaring that foreign investors can have "absolute confidence" in Treasury bonds.

Beijing worries about the possibility of a falling dollar or serious inflation eroding the value of its investments, as Washington borrows record sums to dig itself out of the recession. Last week the head of China's central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, raised the idea of creating a new global reserve currency to replace the dominant dollar -- a kind of super-currency made up of a basket of national currencies and controlled by the IMF.

Experts agree it would take years, if not decades, to design and manage a truly global reserve currency that could supplant the greenback. Many Chinese have urged Beijing to stop plowing so much of the foreign reserves into risky dollar assets and instead deploy the funds to acquire the technology and natural resources needed to fuel the nation's economy.

If a "new global reserve" currency were to replace the dollar, economies that have "dollarized" their local markets would seek to shift from the dollar a stronger unit of exchange. For the Chinese, behind this notion of a "super currency" is the yuan. The international system's premiere power will establish its currency as the reigning unit of international trade and finance. Today that role is played by the dollar. Before World War I, Britain's pound-sterling did the trick. Serious analysts of international monetary relations know the stakes involved in this debate. And the Chinese certainly know that when the renminbi replaces the dollar as the globe's sovereign currency, they'll have buried American hegemony.

See also, Dennis Wilder, "How a 'G-2' Would Hurt," on the debate over a U.S.-China strategic condominium, and the fallout this alliance migh have for international relations (via Memeorandum).

Maybe a Great Magnet Pulls ... All Souls Towards Truth...

I've got a lot of work this morning, so until later, please enjoy k.d. lang, "Constant Craving":

Don't miss as well, lang's performance at the 1993 Grammy Awards, where she won Best Pop Female Vocal Performance (here).

Twenty-First Century Marxism

From Christopher Hitchens' essay at Atlantic Monthly, "The Revenge of Karl Marx":

The late Huw Wheldon of the BBC once described to me a series, made in the early days of radio, about celebrated exiles who had lived in London. At one stage, this had involved tracking down an ancient retiree who had toiled in the British Museum’s reading room during the Victorian epoch. Asked if he could remember a certain Karl Marx, the wheezing old pensioner at first came up empty. But when primed with different prompts about the once-diligent attendee (monopolizing the same seat number, always there between opening and closing time, heavily bearded, suffering from carbuncles, tending to lunch in the Museum Tavern, very much interested in works on political economy), he let the fount of memory be unsealed. “Oh Mr. Marx, yes, to be sure. Gave us a lot of work ’e did, with all ’is calls for books and papers …” His interviewers craned forward eagerly, to hear the man say: “And then one day ’e just stopped coming. And you know what’s a funny fing, sir?” A pregnant pause. “Nobody’s ever ’eard of ’im since!” This, clearly, was one of those stubborn proletarians for the alleviation of whose false consciousness Marx had labored in vain.

Until comparatively recently, with the slight exception perhaps of certain pockets within the academy, it was a general tendency among educated people as well, even those of radical temper, to put their old volumes of Marx up on the shelf reserved for the phlogiston theory. Would we again need to consult Critique of the Gotha Program, or the celebrated attacks on Dühring and Lassalle? A few of us kept a bit of powder dry, just in case the times should turn dialectical again. One or two writers predicted that Marx’s relevance would be rediscovered: John Cassidy was arguably the most surprising of these in that one hardly expected, in the fall of 1997, an essay from the economic specialist of The New Yorker announcing that the co-author of the 1848 Communist Manifesto could turn out to be “the next” significant intellectual for those whose job it was to study the markets. James Ledbetter, himself an accomplished business journalist, has since produced an admirable Penguin edition of Marx’s journalism (most of the best, which was very good indeed, having been produced for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune). And Francis Wheen, who wrote a notable biography of Marx in 1999, has now published an anatomy of Capital (as I shall henceforth call it), which concludes with the opinion that Marx “could yet become the most influential thinker of the twenty-first century.”

There's more at the link.

Here's Francis Wheen's, Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography.

We're seeing some twenty-first century Marxism in action this week. See, In Defense of Marxism, "Marching against the G20 summit in London." And, "G20 thugs impersonate police, break into bank."

Springtime for Nazis and Fiscal Conservatives?

Via Tax Day Tea Party, Chad Garrison at the Riverfront Times has published a despicable hit piece, "Nazis, Angry Tax Payers Can't Wait For April Rallies in St. Louis":

It's shaping up to be springtime for Hitler - and fiscal conservatives! - next month in downtown St. Louis.

As I mentioned earlier this month, a group of "like-minded" folks upset with the Obama administration's stimulus plan are planning a downtown rally on Wednesday, April 15.

The piece then goes on to lump Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, and the American Family Association with the National Socialist Movement, who are demonstrating on April 18, three days after the national tea party protests. The National Socialists (Nazis) are marching to protest the Obama administration's program to eliminate "the White man."

For Chad Garrison, obviously, there's no separating the tea party populists marching for limited government and the National Socialists marching for the master race.

No doubt David Neiwert would approve these smears.

Gird you loins, conservatives!

Hat Tip: The Right Side of Life.

Neoconservatism: Mainstream Voice of National Security!

Behold the coordinated attacks between the antiwar conservatives and their leftist brethren on the revival of neoconservatism at the Kristol/Kagan Foreign Policy Initiative (via Memeorandum):

First, the "realist" Stephen Walt, "Would you buy a used foreign policy from these guys?" (don't miss the worst-case photo illustration at the post). Then, Robert Farley, "Will They Get What They Want?":

I'm guessing that FPI is going to be a good deal less successful than PNAC. For one, not many people seem to be buying into the efforts of neocons to distance themselves from the Iraq War.

Then there's The Raw Story, "Scooter Libby shows up for neoconservative foreign policy summit." And also, Matt Duss at the Wonk Room, "Brose: Neocons Are Just Alright," which links to conservartive Christian Brose's, "Neo-cons gone wild!" (which has even more links). Duss is interviewed by Rachel Maddow at the YouTube above.

But for the first time in a long time, I'm happy to quote from Matthew Yglesias, "The Inevitable Triumph of the Neocons":

The commanding heights of the information economy remain incredibly friendly to neocon perspectives. Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Charles Krauthammer are still all there op-edding away at The Washington Post. The Council on Foreign Relations is staffing up with neocons, adding Elliot Abrams to its arsenal. The Very Serious People at the Brookings Institution remain more likely to collaborate with neocons than with, say, Stephen Walt. And the FPI’s unveiling was validated by the attendance of Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) and John Nagl, head of CNAS the left-of-center national security think tank of the moment. Basically, neoconservatism continues to be the mainstream voice of right-of-center national security—the perspective that establishment-oriented institutions feel compelled to shower with respect. The odds of a Republican president getting elected within the next 12 years are extremely high, and the odds of such an administration being heavily influenced by Foreign Policy Initiative ideas strike me as good.

I love it!

On this, I'm kind of like Yglesias: Where he thinks the neocons will have more influence than do all the other neocon-haters cited above (and that's including Brose), I think progressives like Yglesias and his nihilist netroots allies will have more influence than Ronald Brownstein allows in his recent essay, "Why Obama Can't Satisfy The Left."

Brownstein says, for example, "The bottom line is that, compared to Republicans, Democrats are operating with a much more diverse electoral coalition - and one in which the party's ideological vanguard plays a smaller role." That may be so, based on exit polling data from the November election. But the mainstream of the Democratic Party is already so far to the left, with the Obama White House, and the Pelosi/Reid Congress, that any successes on the right of the spectrum are to be celebrated. (And check with Joe Lieberman before dismissing the "smaller role" of the party's vanguard.)

So, go FPI!