Obama's Deficit

Obama's intellectual deficit, that is, in addition to fiscal ...

This graph showing the Obama administration's projected deficits is not new, but a couple of my fellow bloggers are posting it with reference to Obama's townahll meeting today as a comparison to Bush-era budget deficits:

Nice Deb's got the quote:

“Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I’m not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, Obama said, “let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security.”

“But,” Obama continued, “let’s not play games and pretend that the reason [for the deficit] is because of the Recovery Act.”

Moe Lane's got both the graph and the video from the townhall event, and he adds:

He’s not really all that gracious when it comes to dealing with people that don’t already love him, is he? Kind of smirky, with a faint flavor of exasperation. But perhaps I’m just being mean and cynical: if you really want to have a conversation on our financial situation, Mr. President, that’d be great. Can we start with this?

"This" would be the graph.

More at Memeorandum.

You're a Professor, Really?

Without a doubt, the most frequent left-wing attack on me and my writing is some variation of, "I can't believe you're a professor."

The "I can't believe you're a professor" attack is not really a repudiation of ideas (the slur almost never comes with an actually rebuttal of the issues at hand), but is meant ultimately to excoriate, to harm, to indict, and to inflict pain against those who refuse the progressive party line. And Lenin forbid (not God, for they are atheist) a professor of political science deviate from the left's ongoing campaign to dominate all the institutions of cultural values and learning.

Note here that I am just reporting this, not complaining. Leftists have no power over me as an activist and thinker, since I don't let them.

Still, it's just extraordinary how the "I can't believe you're a professor" attack reveals how entrenched is the totalitarian mindset among secular progressives. The thought that someone who holds traditional views would actually be standing in front of a classroom filled with young people, debating issues with facts and reason, is simply horrifying to those marinated in an ideology of hated and intolerance. Leftists mean to intimidate. Their goal is to shout down, to repudiate, to scourge, and to demonize those who find reason in faith and values, and especially those who are best able to cut through the postmodernist clutter to reveal the left's project of nihilistic relativism and destruction of culture.

The left wants to obliterate right and wrong. What happens on my blog - the attacks and the endless trolling by the nihilist extremists - is a miniature version of the media establishment's campaign against Carrie Prejean. Just the thought that someone like Prejean could hold traditional values, and especially that she'd stand up for them in public, brings out the cultural barbarians of the left. They constantly attempt to beat down people like Carrie Prejean, and in so doing they only reveal the depths of their own depravity.

I wrote the other day on Tristero at Hullabaloo, and his embarrassingly lame defense of atheistic culture (in his ignorance, Tristero attacked Sam Harris as an "asshole," although Harris' books are at the top of the pantheon of popular atheist radicalism).

In response, I get this in the comments from "Anonymous":

It boggles the mind to think that you are employed at an institution of higher learning. The intelligence one finds in your writing is typical of a junior-high school student. A very sheltered and rather unimaginative one.

"Anonymous" makes absolutely no effort to defend Tristero's stupidity, nor does he make any argument of his own. "Anonyomous" just attacks. He rejects my intelligence and my standing as a professor. How dare you deviate of the prevailing ideological program!

As noted, these attacks are common. I saved a classic example of the "I can't believe you're a professor" slur from a post last year, "Matt Yglesias, Jennifer Palmieri, and the Third Way." As some readers know, Matthew Yglesias is an American communist. There is no position that's too far to the left for that man. Thus my takedown of Yglesias at the post above brought out this attack from "chrsux," who took saw my "pro-victory" profile at the sidebar, and bared his fangs:

Re: "pro-victory Associate Professor of Political Science" ...

So, is this a tenure track position?

Perhaps if you taught at some place other than long beach community college, your vocation might carry some weight. As it stands, your position affords you the same amount of respect as someone whose profile reads: "pro-victory guy standing on a random street corner"

Note something about this one: It's not just the "I can't believe you're a professor" attack, but it's also the "you're not really a professor" variant, since I teach at a two-year college. The attack on my status as professor at community college is particularly informative. By attacking community colleges as "not real colleges," leftists provide the perfect signal of their alliance with nation's cultural elite (especially the tenured radicals who long ago infiltrated the universities, turning them into training grounds for the shock troops of the revolution). Leftists thus demonstrate the total hypocrisy of their ideology. Radicals care nothing about the lives and hardships of many in the classic community college demographic: the minorities, the poor, and those without even the basic reading skills to comprehend a Marxist tract.

It's not just in the comments either.

The appropriately-named Deranged Left-Wing Baker wrote an entire post chronicling his disbelief and frustration at my rationalism: "A Professor, Really?":

The more I read American Power, the harder it is for me to believe that Donald Douglas is actually a professor. He has to be either intellectually dishonest or have severe comprehension problems. Either way, I pity the student who has to suffer under his tutelage.

The last sentence is especially key, the "pitying the student" who's not under the allegedly superior tutelage of some far left-wing professor ramming doctrines of anti-capitalist hatred and postmodern anti-rationalist epistemology down the throats of his students.

Deranged Left-Wing Baker links to one of the prominent antagonists of this blog, TBogg at Firedoglake.

TBogg's cultivated the "I can't believe you're a professor" slur to high art: I'm smeared as the "JuCo Toynbee," which includes the snarky reference to "junior college," itself a term that's out of fashion in the community college academy as derograting the crucial role in education that two-year colleges serve.

But the resistance to me is clear from all of this: I stand up for moral clarity, reason, and truth. But we can't have that in the 21st century. Pretty soon, if leftists had their way, I'd be down on my knees apologizing to the commissars at the gates of the gulag, repudiating my offenses to the high collectivist state as a capitalist roader and a traitor to his eminence, "The One."

As was true of Carrie Prejean, leftists won't stop their campaign of villification until they control all of the institutions of the cultural superstructure.

This is why I fight. It's a battle for the soul of the nation, and every minute I'm engaged is worth the effort to preserve, what little I can, the exceptionalism that's made this country great, not to mention the liberty that allows the secular collectivists to mount their program of cultural extermination in the first place.

What Specter's Defection Means

Here's Fred Barnes on the significance of Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party:

My one rule of politics is that the future is never a straight line projection of the present. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's unexpected decision to switch parties and run for re-election in 2010 as a Democrat proves the rule. Mr. Specter often votes for liberal Democratic initiatives and infuriates conservative Republicans. Still, his surprise defection was a crushing setback for the GOP, instantly reducing what limited power Republicans have in the Senate. The GOP's ability to stop liberal legislation is now weakened if not eliminated in some instances.

Mr. Specter's jump across the aisle significantly adds to the heavy Republican burden in Senate races next year. True, the political climate then may be more favorable for Republican gains; the economy probably won't be booming and the president's popularity won't be sky-high. But there's a problem: the map.

The states with Senate races in 2010 do not favor Republicans. They must defend 19 seats, six in states won handily by Barack Obama. In three -- New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio -- Democrats also have a built-in, blue-state edge. Indeed it was the strong Democratic advantage in Pennsylvania that prompted Mr. Specter's switch. In two other states -- Florida and North Carolina -- Republican chances are no better than fair. Only in Iowa, with incumbent Chuck Grassley a shoo-in for re-election, are Republicans assured of holding on in Obamaland.

Losing one or two or three Senate seats on the heels of Mr. Specter's departure would be devastating for Republicans. Already his defection has robbed them of their most reliable weapon in blocking President Obama's liberal proposals. If the 60 Democrats (counting Mr. Specter and Al Franken) stick together, they can keep Republicans from getting the 41 votes for a successful filibuster.

Read the whole thing at the link.

Related: Loads of analysis on Specter at Memeorandum.

Photo Credit: Midnight Blue.

Leslie Gelb: Necessity, Choice, and Common Sense

Leslie H. Gelb's new essay in Foreign Affairs is rather odd.

Entitled, "Necessity, Choice, and Common Sense: A Policy for a Bewildering World," Gelb pretty much rejects every major assertion of U.S. power in the last 50 years as driven by "the demons of ideology, politics, and arrogance." Even G.H.W. Bush's State Department is taken down as giving Saddam Hussein the green light to invade Kuwait in 1990 (Amabassodor April Glaspie's remark that "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts"). It's hard to take his attacks seriously from a credibility standpoint. Just three years ago Gelb - along with then Senator Joseph Biden - was calling for the dismemberment of Iraq, during the high point of American difficulties there, which most likely would have exacerbated the alreading deadly violence, turning the country into the Middle East's version of the Yugoslavian slaughterhouse of the 1990s.

At the Foreign Affairs piece, Gelb also harsly criticizes each of the major foreign policy orientations on the scene today: realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and neoconservatism (and a couple of others). The repudiation of realism is particulary strange coming from Gelb, who himself is generally a "realist insider" and his policy proposals here and elsewhere represent classical realist foreign policy thinking (with a narrow material focus on what's in the national interest).

Here's the passage:

The core problem is not American democracy or American ideals or American power. It is Americans themselves. In part, leading Democrats and Republicans mishandle the politics of U.S. foreign policy. Most Democrats adhere to fundamental liberal beliefs about the value of negotiations and cooperation with other states. At the same time, however, they calculate that this will sound too soft to mainstream Americans. As a result, they seem to be torn between their beliefs and their politics, and they create the impression that they were for something before they were against it and against it before they were for it. Democrats convey uncertainty about what they will do; the public senses this and then loses confidence in how they will manage national security.

By contrast, the Republicans exude nothing but conviction about the virtues of being aggressive, standing up to any possible adversary, and painting the world in simple black and white. They are forever proclaiming that they will never allow the United States to be pushed around in the world. And although Republicans have little regard for careful formulations of problems and difficulties, and the public senses this as well, mainstream Americans appear to like the Republicans' conviction. Thus, the American public has more confidence in the GOP than in the Democratic Party when it comes to international affairs.

In part, the moderates are reluctant to fight for the reasonable portrayal of problems and what can be done about them. The moderates know that good policy requires an open and honest review of the facts. They know that the effective use of power requires being able to push a range of buttons until some are found to work. Yet they do not fight for choice.

Most foreign policy experts are pushing for a new grand strategy to replace the old strategy of containment. They are disposed toward big ideas and toward wedging all the pieces of a problem snugly together into one big, neat theory. They are not enamored of loose ends or unintended consequences, which call their expertise into question. To their credit, most contribute valuable perspective and insights, although not without drawbacks.

The neoconservatives rightly remind Americans that irredeemable and irreconcilable evil is out there. But then they paint almost all foreign opponents (and some domestic ones as well) with a similar brush. They see past enemies, such as China and Russia, as future enemies as well. And they portray the United States' allies, particularly the European ones, as mostly worthless: lacking any military power and averse to the use of force.

The reality is that the neoconservatives will never be happy unless they are promoting some form of ideological warfare. Some of them argue that instead of the old ideological clash between democracy and communism, there is a new one: between democracy and autocracy - the United States versus China and Russia. But the leaders of China and Russia are not going around the world proselytizing for their forms of government today the way their communist predecessors did. Rather, Moscow is playing its old power games by trying to muscle its neighbors, but this time mostly with economic rather than military power. At this point, China's leaders are interested almost solely in protecting themselves from domestic threats. The only preaching being done by these two autocracies is against the United States' "unilateralism," and they do this to give themselves some elbowroom for pursuing their own limited global concerns. If there is anything approaching an ideological battle in the world today, it is between what other states perceive as U.S. unilateralism and their own new sense of entitlement.

The realists, comfortable with power, rightly remind Washington to focus on the United States' vital interests rather than take on all the world's problems. But they are often too impressed by power per se. Many of them were too eager to embrace Saddam, for all his sins and unpredictability, as a counterweight to Iran. Many now are eager to excuse the rough behavior of China and Russia as merely what big dictatorial nations do. And they have not paid much attention to how to use U.S. power with failed or failing states or to address new transnational issues, such as the environment. The realists continue to chafe at the value of values and the U.S. president's need to espouse them to sustain his foreign policy at home. Their realism is sometimes actually not realistic enough, and when it is not, the realists overlook both policy choices and policy areas that call for the application of power.

The liberal internationalists still exist today as an important element within the Democratic Party. Their most impressive contribution has been to keep reminding Washington of the need to cooperate with allies and negotiate with adversaries in almost all instances. But since the Vietnam War, they have been calling for new international institutions without being specific or practical about them, and they have been drifting toward softer and more unrealistic definitions of power. Formulating a strategy is difficult for them because it is mainly a call for more negotiations and more multilateral diplomacy and less reliance on military power and force. To complicate matters further, when they come under great political pressure, many of them appear to abandon these principles and become war hawks themselves, as happened when the decision to invade Iraq was being debated.

Interestingly, some of the liberal Democrats have joined with the neoconservatives to form a new group that advocates a concert of democracies, or some kind of institutional alliance to consolidate like-minded democracies. That sounds like a helpful project, and it might even be one, if its advocates would demonstrate how they propose to corral the world's hundred or more democracies. Besides, they make little room in their concert for China and Russia, which are not democracies but matter more than, say, Botswana, Costa Rica, Peru, or Mauritius when it comes to diplomatic coalitions and power.

Then, of course, there are the globalizers, who, to their credit, bear witness to the new centrality of economics, which the national-security-oriented foreign policy clan traditionally ignores - out of ignorance. But the globalizers still tend to overplay their hand by suggesting that economics will bring peace and democracy. Notoriously, they scant diplomatic and military choices.

As you can see, Gelb's got most everyone in the crosshairs of his analysis.

Gelb's final recommendation is for partisans to simply abandon their ideologies and to come together: "that pragmatists, realists, and moderates unite and fight for their country."

Reading this piece you'd think partisanship was not only something new, but it was taken to extraordinary lengths during the G.W. Bush years. This then caused a near-inevitable decline in American preponderance, which only "common sense" will cure.

The truth is that politics and ideology are twins, and that current trends toward hyperpartisanship will continue indefinitely. Rather than reach for a new paradigm eschewing ideology, the current administration should continue to stabilize Iraq and to further prioritize America's mission in Afghanistan. In the background is the economy. As the market continues to shake out toxic assets, and as businesses begin to invest in infrastructure, inventories, and human capital, the U.S. will come roaring back once again to lead another cycle of international prosperity. Talk of U.S. decline - already foolish - will look simply ignorant at that time.

Perhaps Gelb will be retired by then, no longer calling for the partition of countries where the U.S. has committed itself to security and democratization.

Speaking of Swine: Specter to Switch Parties

I don't know much about Arlen Specter other than his long-term service as a centrist Republican in the U.S. Senate, as well as his brief mention in Oliver Stone's "JFK" - Specter's the orginator of the Warren Commission's "single bullet theory."

Well Spector's in the news today with his announcement that he'll cross the aisle to run as a Democrat in 2010 (via Memeorandum). Check this out from his statement:

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

Ah, the "stimulus" package, a.k.a, "porkulus maximus."

Also, perhaps this had something to do with it: "Specter Faces Conservative Challenge From Familiar Foe."

More later ...

Change! Obama Flyovers Show Wall Street Bankers Who's Boss

The leftists just don't seem to get it: The Obama New York photo-op flyover was the worst. Deliberately terrifying your own citizens? Only a Democrat in power. Not only that, some progressive backers of The One even endorse such "harsh intimidations" as a way to get New Yorkers with the program:

12:42 am April 28, 2009

All you banksters are hilarious.

Here’s what actually happened.

Some of your bosses have been trying to play hardball with Obama.

They — and you — just got a wakeup call: a friendly reminder who wears the pants around here, and who HOPES they can find a CHANGE of pants right about now.

And you know what the best part is? No one will ever believe that’s all this was — a friendly reminder that all you guys have is money (if that — these days it’s all just 1s and 0s)…but power? Power’s being able to fly 2 fighter jets and air force one right past the executive offices of some of the most “powerful” offices in the land just to take some awesome photos of the masters of the universe gripped with mortal terror.

And even if someone did believe this is what happened — the O man showing you who’s who and what’s what — you think anyone other than you cares? Can you think of any group of people more reviled and less sympathetic than the last banksters still standing?

This administration gives new meaning to the notion of "Air FORCE One."

Worst. President. Ever.

I'm late getting to this story due to a long day at the office but ...

I think every American should put themselves in the shoes of the New Yorkers who today relived the horrors of September 11, 2001, when the low-flying Air Force One photo-op buzzed the Manhattan skyline (see Memeorandum). The first video shows the tremendously horrifying immediacy of the flyover :

For a news report, check the Wall Street Journal's coverage, with the apt title, "A 'Classified' Photo Op Turns Into a Soaring Blunder for the White House: Mission to Get Beauty Shots of Presidential Jet at Statue of Liberty Panics 9/11-Wary New York."

As the story indicates, "the photo shoot looked like a terrorist attack."

I have to say: This is one hundred times worse than "Mission Accomplished."

Indeed, Barack Obama is the Worst. President. Ever.

The whole nightmare never should have happened, but the administration has apologized, so credit where it's due: "White House Apologizes for Air Force Flyover."

Lots of commentary at Memeorandum. See, especially, JammieWearingFool, "The 100 Daze Celebration: Bumbling Submorons Apologize for NYC Flyover."

The 09-12-09 National Tea Party March on Washington!

Check out the homepage for The 09.12.09 National Taxpayer Protest:

It’s time to take the tea party movement directly to Washington, D.C. Please join thousands of local organizers and grassroots Americans from across the country as we gather in our nation’s capital to deliver a message to the politicians: Enough!

We’ve had enough of the out of control spending, the bailouts, the growth of big government and the soaring deficits. And we reject the future tax increases to pay for all of this spending and debt down the road. We are gathering on 9-12-2009 to deliver our message in person that we’ve had enough!

Organize. Plan. Be there on September 11, 2009, for a National Tea Party March on Washington!

Hat Tip: Megan Barth.

Bigotry's Mirror: Carrie Prejean Just Needs Some Education!

Miss USA Runner-Up Carrie Prejean was interviewed by gay media activist Rex Wockner yesterday at San Diego's Sanctuary of the Rock Church. The link is here, via Memeorandum.

Readers should read the whole interview. Other than manners, I make no distinction between Rex Wockner and Perez Hilton. Wockner's questions are just as much "set-ups" as were Hilton's at the Miss USA pageant. For example, Wockner's very first query attempts to establish Ms. Prejean as an anti-gay bigot:

Clearly, nobody would ever get up there (at the Miss USA pageant) and say, "I don't think black people should be able to marry white people" or something like that. Or nobody would get up there and say something sexist. And people are wondering if maybe we've gotten to a moment in American culture where you can't really say something that's interpreted as anti-gay anymore, like you might have been able to five years ago ...

Ms. Prejean responded well, but without seeing her response in person or by video it's difficult to assess her comfort level. She was right to suggest the discussion should be about tolerance, but let's add to that: Whose tolerance is at issue here? Tolerance for a traditional Christian woman to have her own opinions about the proper relationship between men, women and matrimony? Actually, no: Leftists reject Prejean's traditional views. As Ed Morrissey notes this afternoon, Miss USA officials have stated that Ms. Prejean needed to "apologize to the gay community." But for what? Having an opinion, and for responding honestly to Perez Hilton's homesexual views and agenda?

Note too that Wockner's question - "black people should be able to marry white people" - is bogus. The comparison of gay activists today to the same-sex interracial couples prior to Loving v. Virginia has long been discredited, but radical leftists continue to deploy it as a battering ram designed to make traditionals feel guilty, and thus force them to capitulate to the extremist gay marriage program. Have people forgetten Marjorie Christoffersen already?

Ms. Prejean turned the tables on Wockner, in any case. He asked her "what would be so wrong" with two women getting married, and she turned it around and asked to him, "What don't you see wrong with that?" and "'Why"? In response, Wockner repeats the left's redefinition of the marriage institution:

Uh, why don't - oh, this is fun - why don't I see anything wrong with it? Uh, because they're in love with each other, and they want to spend their lives together, and marriage is kind of the way that our society recognizes that two people love each other and want to spend their lives together and make commitment and be financially intertwined and be faithful and, you know, permanent. So, why should that be something that gay people can't do? There's gay people all around us all the time.

Well, there's nothing now in the laws of California that prohibits two people who love each other from spending "their lives together." Further, what's key here is that marriage is much more than recognizing love and making things, you know, "permanent." Love is wonderful, but gays can have a "permanent" relationship without being married. No, the key is that marriage "historically is recognized as a practice that his essentially procreative and regenerative." Same-sex couples cannot claim to be biologically equal to heterosexual couples. What they seek is to change society's discourse and overturn the historical and regenerative conception of marriage as between one man and one woman.

An interesting footnote here is Pam Spaulding's response to the interview. Spaulding attacks Ms. Prejean for her alleged ignorance:

I don't think Carrie Prejean is a spiteful and hateful person - clearly she hasn't given this issue much thought outside her social circle, and quite frankly, doesn't have to. She could have remained in her bubble of ill-informed views, but now, due to her high-profile, she is no doubt going to engage with many who have a different worldview, and hopefully people who can explore this in civil conversation. Perez Hilton's hostility after the interview has given license to the Right to hide behind the rancor as a defense. More encounters like the one with Rex Wockner will challenge Miss California in a positive manner to think more deeply about what discrimination really means.

Actually, it's clear the Ms. Prejean has given a great deal of thought to the gay marriage question. Would that so many more people had done so as much. This point about the correct "social circle" is more leftist authoritarianism. Just because traditionals choose not to hang out with gay libertines and barebackers doesn't mean they can't form an honest (and morally superior) opinion.

And Pam Spaulding's cant about "Perez Hilton's hostility" is pure smokescreen. Why treat Carrie Prejean in such a civil manner when you're not willing to treat other opponents of same-sex marriage with the same respect? Just a few weeks ago Spaulding was attacking traditional marriage advocates as "fundies," and she excoriated the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins in a post entitled, "Fundies gone wild: reaction to Vermont, Iowa, DC."

But recall that Mr. Perkins issued a press statement on Carrie Prejean last week, "Miss USA Pageant Guilty Of Cheap Ratings Stunt At Expense Of Miss California's Reputation." So, it's just kind of strange that the young Ms. Prejean is treated with such thoughtful concern trollery, when she's hardly different in views and opinion from the D.C. "fundies gone wild."

Leftists are the true bigots here. Perez Hilton is representive not anomalous, and Pam Spaulding's hollow efforts to separate herself from gay activist "bitch" hatred should be seen for exactly what it is: reverse discrimation and a hypocritcal scam.

Discrimination Against Atheists?

This morning's New York Times has a big piece up on the trend toward more vocal activism among American atheists (via Memeorandum):

They are connecting on the Internet, holding meet-ups in bars, advertising on billboards and buses, volunteering at food pantries and picking up roadside trash, earning atheist groups recognition on adopt-a-highway signs.

They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.

Notice that?

Atheists are hitching their wagon to the radical gay rights agenda, which is seen by many as achieving greater respectability, although that's mostly in the courts and in the far-left media and netroots fever swamps.

What's interesting is the explicit victimology in play here. Forty-five years after the passage of the most sweeping civil rights legislation in American history - and the subsequent expansion of rights and opportunities to millions of Americans previously subjugated by genuinely archaic hierarchies of race, class, and gender - there remains a few groups who will continue to mine the emotions of guilt-ridden citizens who cling to a "reparations mindset" on civil rights.

Atheists are not an oppressed class, but you wouldn't know it from the Times' piece. But observe how Tristero takes up the "prejudice" banner to hammer even more aggressively the bogus discrimination line:

Despite their numbers - or perhaps because of them - atheists today are often the victims of genuine discrimination. It is impossible for an avowed atheist to hold high national office and, despite Obama's oft-noted shout out to non-believers at his Inaugural, the entire ceremony was a religious love-fest. True, I wouldn't have missed Rev. Joseph Lowery's address for anything, but seeing the vile, lying Rick Warren up there was mega-creepy.

So it is good, extremely good, that atheists and atheism have gained so much national status. And hopefully, atheism as an ethics and a belief system will evolve to the point where no one feels they need to go out their way to make excuses for assholes like this simply because they affirm the non-existence of God.

Note something strange here: Tristero's calling Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, an asshole. But why? Harris' work is right up there with Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) in the popular pantheon of secularism and anti-religion. Shouldn't Tristero be recommending Harris rather than scourging him as an "asshole."

Well, no, actually. Tristero's either totally ignorant of Harris' writings - see, for example, "There is No God (And You Know It) - or he's blogging too fast to take a moment to check the guy's biography. Most likely, he's just totally intolerant of anyone making the case for torture, since Tristero's link for Harris goes to his piece, "In Defense of Torture."

I just take all of this as exemplary of the program of intolerance and rigid ideologism on the left (and Tristero's blogging at Digby's Hullabloo, a bastion of far left-wing radicalism).

This is what these people are about. Atheism is good, if it gets you closer to your goal of completely eliminating faith in the public square. That eventuality, of course, bolsters the gay radical agenda, so it's all of a piece when you think about it.

Are We Still at War?

Let me share a couple of essays that really get to the heart of the current debate over interrogations and national security.

Are we really still at war? That's the question William Kristol throws out in his piece, " 'On a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009': Are we still at war?"

Speaking of Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, who sought to put the administration's release of the "torture" memos in the "perspective" of new bright, sunny and safe day, Kristol notes:

We were once in danger. Now we live in "a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009." Now, in April 2009, Obama's Director of National Intelligence seems to be saying, we're safe.

Good news, if true. And it would be an amazing tribute to the preceding administration's efforts in the war on terror--efforts that Democrats have been saying for years were making us less safe. Apparently, the old policies worked. The threat from al Qaeda has gone. We now have the luxury of "reflection," as President Obama put it in his statement, the luxury of debating and deploring what we did back in the bad old days when there was a war on. After all, "we have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history."

Leave aside how dark and painful the chapter really was. The question is, Is it over? Is the chapter in which we had to focus on preventing further attacks really through? Isn't there still a war against the jihadists on?

Actually, for most of those on the left, and certainly those who visit my blog, it's the U.S. that should be the focus of international attention, not the terrorists. Former Bush administration officials should be in the dock at the Hague, or at least in some courtroom of the U.S. Star Chamber.

But check out as well Mark Theissen's, "The West Coast Plot: An 'Inconvenient Truth'."

I'll have more later ...

Tea Party - Valley Forge

The Spirit of '76 (or '77–'78) was alive and well this weekend at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Skye at Midnight Blue's got the report, "Tea Party - Valley Forge, Pa":

A hundred or so people gathered around the Arch in Valley Forge to continue the newly minted tradition of a "Tea Party". One participant spoke on the difference between astroturfing, a technique perfected by dem activists and true grassroot activities, like the nationwide Tea Party ...

You'll have to check the link for Skye's videos!

See also, Right Minded Online, "Highlights from the Tea Party in Mt. Juliet."

"Rebellion" Brewing at Base of GOP

Here's The Politico's report, "In GOP base, a 'rebellion brewing'":

A quick tour through the week’s headlines suggests the Republican Party is beginning to come to terms with the last election and that consensus is emerging among GOP elites that the party needs to move away from discordant social issues.

There was Sen. John McCain's daughter and his campaign manager who last week demanded that their fellow Republicans embrace same-sex marriage. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman – the most devoted modernizer among the party's 2012 hopefuls – won approving words from New York Times columnist Frank Rich for his call to downplay divisive values issues. The party’s top elected leaders in Congress, meanwhile, spooked by being attacked as the “party of no,” were recasting themselves as a constructive, respectful opposition to a popular president.

But outside Washington, the reality is very different. Rank-and-file Republicans remain, by all indications, staunchly conservative, and they appear to have no desire to moderate their views. GOP activists and operatives say they hear intense anger at the White House and at the party’s own leaders on familiar issues – taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction.

There is little appetite for compromise on what many see as core issues, and the road to the presidential nomination lies – as always – through a series of states where the conservative base holds sway, and where the anger appears to be, if anything, particularly intense.

"There is a sense of rebellion brewing," said Katon Dawson, the outgoing South Carolina Republican Party chairman, who cited unexpectedly high attendance at anti-tax “tea parties” last week.

That same sense is detectable in New Hampshire, where Union Leader publisher Joseph McQuaid – a stalwart of the base – warned in a column last weekend that the push for same-sex marriage in the state legislature was really about “forcing society to embrace and give positive reinforcement to their lifestyle and agenda in our schools and in every other area of public life imaginable.”

And it is perhaps most tangible in Iowa, where same-sex marriage will become the law this month in response to a state Supreme Court ruling. There, Republican activists and officials say the party is as resolute as ever, if not more so, on cultural issues – regardless of the soundings of some party elites.

Rep. Steve King, an outspoken conservative who represents all of rock-ribbed western Iowa and may run for governor next year, said he had held 11 town hall meetings across the state since the early April state Supreme Court decision.

"Of those 11 meetings, 10 of them were full. Most of them were standing room. The marriage issue was the No. 1 issue on their minds. No. 2 was the massive federal spending taking place. In every discussion, immigration came up."

And these Iowans, King noted, "stand in the same square they always have: They believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and they're opposed to amnesty."

"My e-mail overfloweth," said David Overholtzer, a longtime GOP activist in western Iowa's Pottawattamie County. "Amnesty is still very much a hot-button and gay marriage especially is here in Iowa. The view is that we've got to hold our legislators' and governors' feet to the fire."

"I’ve never seen the grass-roots quite as motivated, concerned and angry," said Steve Scheffler, the head of the Iowa Christian Alliance and the state's RNC committeeman.

The marriage issue and other traditional conservative litmus tests aren't likely to fade before the state's next presidential caucuses, either.

Asked about how a presidential candidate urging the party toward the middle on cultural issues would fare, Scheffler said flatly: “They’re not gonna go anywhere.”

In one sense, Republican leaders face the same challenge their Democratic counterparts did during the Bush years: how to effectively channel the deep emotion of the base while tamping down its excesses.

There's more at the link.

Photo Credit: Obi's Sister, "Atlanta Tea Party Pictures."

Related: Snooper's Report, "Obama: The Incessant Whiner."

Washington Times: Say No to Democratic Show Trials

Maybe Green Eagle can learn a thing or two from this Washington Times essay, "Say no to show trials":

The politicization of policy differences has been a fact of life in Washington since the Watergate era, but in the past one could reasonably expect that such political warfare would end when a new administration commenced. Investigatory panels, such as the "Commission of Inquiry" called for by Sen. Patrick Leahy, Vermont Democrat, would represent an unprecedented escalation of political warfare in the American system. Proponents of such tribunals exhibit a spirit of political retribution not seen since the end of the Civil War.

There is little doubt that the ultimate target of such investigations would be former President Bush, who some in the far left of the Democratic Party consider to be a war criminal deserving prosecution. Those who had previously advocated that Mr. Bush be impeached for his alleged crimes may consider this as a way to pursue their version of justice after the fact. But it would inject poison into the body politic that would take a generation to fade ....

There is no value in pursuing any of these tribunals, which would quickly take on the theatrical attributes of show trials. They would be a gift to America's enemies who have fought for years to delegitimize our conduct of the war on terrorism, and they represent a distinct danger to a polity already riven by deep distrust. Any "truth and reconciliation" commission would produce neither truth nor reconciliation. The desire to punish political leaders retroactively for policies that have already been reversed marks a new level of meanness in America's political journey.

On Drug Legalization

I wrote about Will Wilkinson's pot smoking a few weeks back. I don't write on this topic often, but I've learned that drug decriminalization is not only backed by (putative) libertarians, but is a top issue favored by secular progressives and hardline big-government collectivists.

A woman in East Liverpool, Ohio, smokes crystal methamphetamine in her dealer's kitchen.

In the comments to my post, where I mentioned my concerns over how factors outside the home may well adversely affect the health and safety of my boys, Tao from "A Radical Perspective" attacked me thus:

If you worry about your kids hanging out with the wrong people, or the drug culture, then quit blogging so much and spend sometime [sic] raising them.

I don't put much credibility in whatever merit folks can raise in favor of drug decriminalization, but when folks attack me on the assumption that I'm not raising my kids well, it just shows how personal it is for the nihilists.

Well it turns out there's more on the decriminalization debate online today. Time's got a piece, for example, "The Portuguese Experiment: Did Drug Decriminalization Work?" (via Memeorandum), and the Wall Street Journal covers the Portuguese case as well, in "Drugs: To Legalize or Not."

For conservative bloggers, there's a particular interest in Portugal's decriminalization program in that Glenn Greenwald (the same Glenn Greenwald of Rick Ellensburg fame) is the author of study that's cited by Time and has been touted by the Cato Institution. The Master Sock Puppet himelf is blogging about it, naturally.

I'm not going to convince the left-libertarians that decriminalization is a bad idea. These people claim, from the evidence in Portugal, that "decriminalization does not result in increased drug use."

The huge methodological problem here is that Greenwald and the others are generalizing from a single case, but that's not really my beef. From personal experience, and from what knowledgeable friends in academe and law enforcement tell me, drug decriminalization - always expected to start with marijuan, the "non-dangerous" drug) - would be a disaster for both personal lives, families, and society.

That said, let me direct readers to John Walters' piece, also at the Journal. Walters is executive vice president of Hudson Institute and was director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the G.W. Bush administration. Please read the entire essay, but this part relates to Master Tao's attack:

When I became the drug policy director in 2001, we faced an inherent weakness in prevention programs for youth. Teens told us they had been taught the dangers of drugs, but if their boyfriend or girlfriend used they did not want to be judgmental or estranged, so they were likely to join in.

Walters stresses the dangers of addiction, and the responsiblity of society to protect the vulnerable. But the conclusion responds directly and powerfully to the Greenwalds and Wilkinsons of the world, and their left-libertarian allies:

We can make progress faster when more of us learn that drug use and addiction can not be an expression of individual liberty in a free society. Drug abuse is, by nature and the laws of organic chemistry that govern this disease, incompatible with freedom and civil society. Drug abuse makes human life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short (a special version of Hobbes's hell in our own families). In the deepest sense, this is why failure is not an option.

Photo Credit: Wall Street Journal.

The Madness of King Charles

Pamela Geller provides this screen capture from Little Green Footballs:

It's obvious that anti-jihad conservative bloggers now have another jihad to deal with: Charles Johnson's pathological obssession with folks like Pamela and Robert Spencer, and now Michelle Malkin and Robert Stacy McCain.

This conflict is not really about Geller and Spencer's alleged ties to neo-fascist groups.

This story is about Charles Johnson losing his mind. If you check Robert Spencer's response to LGF yesterday, "Charles Johnson's latest libels answered," you'll find that Johnson has blocked the outgoing hyperlinks coming from Jihad Watch. As Robert suggests, "paste the link into your address bar and it will work."

So much for the free exchange of ideas and debate?

It's one thing to disagree with others on the issues, and to defend your positions vigorously. It's quite another to have some psychological syndrome that demands the elimination of competing information that might cause cognitive dissonance. Charles Johnson's a bloody tyrant.

I keep seeing notes at various blogs from former LGF commenters who've been banned. I had one last week at my page, but Always on Watch jumped into my thread the other day with this update:

Despite my having taken a strong and public stand against ethnic supremacism, the same stand as Charles Johnson took (See this post I did back in 2007), I was banned at LGF some time back, around the time I interviewed Robert Spencer on The Gathering Storm Radio Show. As far as I know, nothing in that interview was in any way directed at Charles Johnson, nor had the great rift between Spencer and Johnson yet occurred.

Charles Johnson bans commenters based on those bloggers' blogrolls. Link to anything of which he disapproves, and out you go. I wonder if he bans bloggers who link to Christian sites? LGF has taken a decidedly anti-Christian turn in the past several months.

Also, check out this commenter from Atlas Shrugs from a couple of weeks ago:

Ok, I just got banned from LGF. I'm sure I'm one of many. Actually, it wasn't that hard to do. Simply posit an opinion different from the "Lizard King" and you're "Banned".

So much for.....

"Welcome, newcomers. Our community is enriched by numerous differing points of view and perspectives. Those who are unable to obey the rules will find the deletion and banning sticks wielded rather quickly. Those who can follow the rules will find that we can have lively discussions, so long as the rules posted above are followed. No personal attacks, and no advocacy of violence."

You never get a chance to explain yourself. They take your post out of context and immediately you get banned, before you can even clarify what you're talking about. Over the past few months, his site has been getting really weird. All this evolution crap and bashing Talk radio.... not what I expected from a conservative blog. I'm sure it's going down hill very quickly. Personally, I'm done with LGF.

Pam, your site is great. I read it everyday! Thanks for letting me speak my mind.

Robert Stacy McCain has a post up on the controversy, and he notes:

Charles Johnson seems determined to travel the same road that took David Brock from being a famous investigative reporter to being the hack-in-chief at Media Matters. It saddens me.

More later...

**********

UPDATE: McClatchy Watch was just banned at LGF yesterday. See, "Weird ... erratic blogger Charles Johnson blocks my account at Little Green Footballs."

Israeli Women Soldiers

Via Glenn Reynolds, Rachel Papo offers a compelling photo gallery of Israeli women soldiers:

Americans Split on Obama's Interrogations Policy

From the new Washington Post survey, via (Memeorandum):

Barack Obama's performance in the first 100 days of his presidency draws strong public approval in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, but there is decidedly less support for his recent decision to release previously secret government memos on the interrogation of terrorism suspects, an initiative that reveals deep partisan fissures.

Overall, the public is about evenly divided on the questions of whether torture is justifiable in terrorism cases and whether there should be official inquiries into any past illegality involving the treatment of terrorism suspects. About half of all Americans, and 52 percent of independents, said there are circumstances in which the United States should consider employing torture against such suspects.

Barely more than half of all poll respondents back Obama's April 16 decision to release the memos specifying how and when to employ specific interrogation techniques. A third "strongly oppose" that decision, about as many as are solidly behind it. Three-quarters of Democrats said they approve of the action, while 74 percent of Republicans are opposed; independents split 50 to 46 percent in favor of the decision.

The release of the documents, which was fiercely debated at high levels within the government, met with quick fire from former vice president Richard B. Cheney, who said last week that companion memos showing the "success of the effort" should be declassified as well, arguing that the methods had "been enormously valuable in terms of saving lives, preventing another mass casualty attack against the United States."

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who served in the same position in George W. Bush's administration, supported the release of the documents but said it made him "quite concerned with the potential backlash in the Middle East and in the theaters where we are involved in conflict -- that it might have a negative impact on our troops."

Hmm, a "negative impact on our troops?

Let's see what Cop the Truth says about that:

To me, the question is a simple one: if your family was in immediate danger, your friends and neighbors, wouldn't you do everything possible to protect them? What if it was thousands of your countrymen whose lives could be saved? Wouldn't you throw their would-be murderer into a cold room and blare Barry Manilow at him for a few hours? Or dunk him repeatedly in water, with medical personnel standing by to make sure that he wouldn't be permanently injured?

Of course you would! If you wouldn't, you're a coward who doesn't deserve the freedom that others have purchased for you with their blood. Run along and stick your head in the sand and pray that better people than you are running this country.

Related: Rasmussen Reports, "58% Oppose Further Investigation of U.S. Torture Allegations." Also, Nice Deb, "Most Americans Want Obama To Move On."

Obama's Post-American World

From Mark Steyn's Sunday column:

... 100 days into a new presidency Barack Obama is giving strong signals to the world that we have entered what Caroline Glick of The Jerusalem Post calls "the post-American era." At the time of Gordon Brown's visit to Washington, London took umbrage at an Obama official's off-the-record sneer to a Fleet Street reporter that "there's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." Andy McCarthy of National Review made the sharp observation that, never mind the British, this was how the administration felt about its own country, too: America is just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. In Europe, the president was asked if he believed in "American exceptionalism," and he replied: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

Gee, thanks. A simple "no" would have sufficed. The president of the United States is telling us that American exceptionalism is no more than national chauvinism, a bit of flag-waving, of no more import than the Slovenes supporting the Slovene soccer team and the Papuans the Papuan soccer team. This means something. The world has had two millennia to learn to live without "Greek exceptionalism." It's having to get used to post-exceptional America rather more hurriedly.

It makes sense from Obama's point of view: On the domestic scene, he's determined on a transformational presidency, one that will remake the American people's relationship to their national government ("federal" doesn't seem the quite the word anymore) in terms of health care, education, eco-totalitarianism, state control of the economy and much else. With a domestic agenda as bulked up as that, the rest of the world just gets in the way.

You'll recall that, in a gimmick entirely emblematic of post-exceptional America, Hillary Clinton gave the Russians a (mistranslated) "Reset" button. The button has certainly been "reset" – to Sept. 10, to a legalistic rear-view-mirror approach to the "war on terror," in which investigating Bush officials will consume far more time and effort than de-nuking Iran. The secretary of Homeland Security's ludicrous reclassification of terrorism as "man-caused disaster," and her boneheaded statement that the Sept. 11 bombers had entered America from Canada (which would presumably make 9/11 a "Canadian man-caused disaster") exemplifies the administration's cheery indifference to all that Bush-era downer stuff.

But it's not Sept. 10. In Pakistan, a great jewel is within the barbarians' reach, the first of many. At the United Nations, the Islamic bloc's proscriptions on free speech will make it harder even to talk about these issues. In much of the West, demographic decay means the good times are never coming back: recession is permanent.

Hey, what's the big deal? Britain and France have been on the geopolitical downward slope for most of the past century, and life still seems pretty agreeable. Well, yes. But that's in part because, when a fading Britannia handed the baton to the new U.S. superpower, it was one of the least disruptive transfers of global dominance in human history. In the "post-American era," to whom does the baton get passed now?

Since January, President Obama and his team have schmoozed, ineffectively, American enemies over allies in almost every corner of the globe. If you're, say, India, following Obama's apology tour even as you watch the Taliban advancing on those Pakistani nukes, would you want to bet the future on American resolve? In Delhi, in Tokyo, in Prague, in Tel Aviv, in Bogota, they've looked at these first 100 days and drawn their own conclusions.

Full Metal Saturday: Kristen Dalton

With most of the attention on the Carrie Prejean controversy this week, it's been easy to overlook the accomplishments of the winner of the Miss USA contest, Kristen Dalton of North Carolina:

Actually Pirate's Cove reported on Ms. Dalton's win on Sunday, before the gay marriage brouhaha kicked up.

In any case, Ms. Dalton's a beautiful woman (with a family of beauty contestants), and she managed to remain on the sidelines all week without throwing any fat on the fire.

So with that, let's start hitting the links with our Saturday "Rule 5" roundup of greatest blogging hits.

Leading off, check out the impressive entry from Carol at No Sheeples Here!, "In Shameless Pursuit Of Rule 5 Sunday For April 26, 2009." See also, TrogloPundit's entry, "Rule 5, big-hearted entrepreneurism, and supporting the troops!"

For some hilarious anti-Rule 5 blogging, see the gruesome comparison of the "two Janets" at Snooper Report (Janet Napolitano and Janet Reno, and sorry, but, ughh!).

Also fun is Suzanna Logan's, "Torture a Terrorist for Less Than a Dollar!." And get some advice on coffee drinking from Stogie at Saber Point, "The Perils of Caffeine: or How Stogie Upped His Game."

For more subdued blogging, check Obi's Sister's, "Sad Saturday Georgia Round-up."

In political news, see Moe Lane, "Liz Cheney breaks Norah O’Donnell on ‘torture’ discussion," as well as Skye at Midnight Blue, "Pelosi Lied, Terrorists Died." And the related post from Darleen at Protein Wisdom, "The late great (free) America."

Plus, Joseph at Valley of the Shadow, "I do not believe the Democrats regarding the Torture Memos: Prove me wrong." And Dan Riehl, "Obama: Just Another Liberal Hack Politician."

And for great blogging news, Jimmy at Sundries Shack reports that Elizabeth Scalia of The Anchoress will now be writing at First Things. Congratulations!

Now, I NEED TO PUT THIS IN CAPITALIZED ITALICS, because I owe my new friend Jehuda at The Rhetorican some big-time linkage!

Plus, check out my regular reader and occasional commenter, Chris Wysocki, who is blogging up a storm in New Jersey; and don't forget Dave at Point of a Gun!

Ken Davenport has been finding time between business and family for some quality blogging, so check him out! And Pundette's eschewed her Saturday roundup, but the "NASA image of Saturn" makes up for it!

Last but not least, check out Courtney at GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD!

E-mail me for inclusion in upcoming roundups, and if I missed anyone, just give me a holler!