MoveOn's Latest Attack on McCain

My previous post, on Jim Croce, reflected how warmly I feel about my readers: I've got the best darned community of readers a guy could wish to have.

But let's get back to regular blog programming here at American Power, and what better way than with this truly underhanded emotional appeal to retreat from Iraq, from the nihilist antiwar group, MoveOn.org:

I've written about Iraq as much as anything else, and I find truly phenomenal the depths of depravity to which the left will descend in demonizing the president, this war, John McCain, our soldiers, and the American people who support them.

Allahpundit puts things in perspective:

The left (or at least the segment that MoveOn represents) still hasn’t quite accepted the idea of a volunteer military. If you enlist, it can only be because you were somehow forced — through a draft or, per Charlie Rangel and Waffles, through economic hardship. No one serves because they want to. Which makes this ad the flip side of liberals wondering why Bush hasn’t “sent” his daughters to war. Mom’s not sending Alex and you can’t “take” him, either, even if he wants to go.

Note how Chuck Todd is just a shade easier than I am on MoveOn's moral destitution:

It was a borderline shameless ad. Using a baby like that. ... That's an ad that strikes me as one that's going to backfire a lot, not a little.

I'll have more ... because the nihilists are just getting warmed up.

Every Time I Tried to Tell You...

I heard Jim Croce, I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song," on the way to work.

Let's remember him, via YouTube:

Well, I know it's kind of late
I hope I didn't wake you
But what I got to say can't wait
I know you'd understand
Every time I tried to tell you
The words just came out wrong
So I'll have to say I love you in a song

Yeah, I know it's kind of strange
But everytime I'm near you
I just run out of things to say
I know you'd understand
Every time I tried to tell you
The words just came out wrong
So I'll have to say I love you in a song

(LEAD BREAK)

Everytime the time was right
All the words just came out wrong
So I'll have to say I love you in a song

Yeah, I know it's kind of late
I hope I didn't wake you
But there's something that I just got to say
I know you'd understand
Everytime I tried to tell you
The words just came out wrong
So I'll have to say I love you in a song...

I miss him.

Have a lovely day, my wonderful readers!

Ranking Political Science: Thoughts on a "Top Paper" Award

Via the Monkey Cage, it turns out that "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," by John Mearsheimber and Stephen Walt, was ranked the top paper in political science by the Social Science Research Network.

As readers may know, there's been a massive debate on the Mearsheimer and Walt thesis (see "Hard-Hitting Critique or Deadly Lies?").

The New York Times has a story on the rankings, "Now Professors Get Their Star Rankings, Too."

I've met Mearsheimer and Walt's scholarship formed a basis for my dissertation research.

I simply wonder if their scholarly bright-light on Jewish influence in American foreign policy was a larger contributor to the article's award citation than the paper's fundamental research excellence.

I don't think critics of the Bush administration's foreign policy agenda will bother with questions like this, for example, "On Israel, America and Aipac," or "Iraq, Israel, Iran."

For a balanced analysis, see Walter Russell Mead, "Jerusalem Syndrome
Decoding "The Israel Lobby."

No Conservatives Daily Kos? Thank Goodness!

Newsbusters asks, "Why Isn’t There a Conservative Daily Kos?"

My short answer: There's just no place for Moulitsas-sponsored bigotry on the right side of the web, or at least there shouldn't be (although there are some hate-filled conservatives, certainly, who aspire to a millenarian takeover of the movement).

Here's this from Newsbusters:

Whether or not one agrees with the political views of Markos Moulitsas, there's no getting around the fact his website has become not just a powerful force in the blogosphere, but is also shaping the Democrat Party.

This raises an important question: Why isn't there a conservative website like Daily Kos?

The answer's not novel: The Kos movment arose in protest against the Bush administation - it's is an oppostitional movement, where the prefix "anti" is placed in front of every one of its causes:

Whether it's anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-Lieberman, or anti-Conservatism, there typically is an anti- in front of any Netroot cause.

Well, you can add "anti-Tim Russert" to the list. Daily Kos hosted an attack on the late NBC moderater that provides more support for my notion that Moulitsas sponsors hatred on his page:

I am not mourning this 5 million-dollar-a-year talking head, felled by his own obesity. How is it that in this world of suffering, we are expected to weep for a talentless and filthy rich tv prince? It is an example of false consciousness, like the frenzy over Princess Di's death...

The post was originally entitled, Burn in Hell, Tim Russert, You Talentless Lackey.

That's emblematic demonization, exemplifying the type of filthy evil that's routinely hosted on Kos' page.

Even Kos readers are questioning Moulitsas' sponsorship of evil, "Where Are You, Kos? We Need You."

Where's Kos? Probably working on his follow-up to his McCain's "yellow teeth" smear.

Conservatives would do well to avoid creating their own Daily Kos, and if they do, hosting the same kind of disrespect, I'll denounce them too.

That's what I do.

Hat Tip: LGF

Texas Fred and the Banality of Racism

This post is an update to my earlier entries, "Texas Fred's Bigotry," and "Texas Fred's No Holds Barred Anti-Immigrant Racism."

Readers will recall that Texas Fred is the bullying online megalomaniac who spouts some of the most reprehensible anti-immigrant racism to found in the conservative blogosphere.

I first came into contact with Texas Fred in 2006, in the comment thread of conservative milblogger, where the issue under discussion was victory in Iraq (and recall that this was pre-surge, and things weren't going well). Texas Fred's a Bush-basher, and he was spouting the extreme antiwar line, and I called him out for his advocacy of all the Murtha/Pelosi talking points. It got a bit nasty, and things now have been rekindled.

For further background on the reemergence of the debate, check Saber Point.

In any case, there's been an interesting (or disturbing) number of developments over the weekend in response to my rebuttals of Texas Fred's anti-immigrant ideology.

I've received a lot of support from readers, in the comments and in private e-mails, and I'm grateful. Texas Fred apparently has been reaching out by e-mail to other conservative bloggers in an effort to find validation for his hated. Samantha West, in the comments to my last post, reported:

Well, he emailed me and asked if I thought he was advocating murder. My response: yes he is.

The problem with such kinds of hatred is that it is easily transferred to any group: bigots need a group to hate, and they will fill that need with anyone who comes along and doesn't act like them.

There's more at the comment, but note that Samantha was so turned off by all of this she wrote her own elegant post repudiating anti-immigrant eliminationism: "Why Do You Hate Them So Much?"

I communicated with another blogging buddy by e-mail as well, and he indicated to me that he'd requested that he be taken off the Texas Fred blogroll. I clicked on the link to Texas Fred's blog in my buddy's note, and it turns out my ISP had been blocked by a plug-in filter system Texas Fred uses to ban critics of his racism, preventing them from monitoring his hatred. When I spoke to my buddy by e-mail later he wrote back:

I'm laughing. I've been banned from Texas Fred's site. When I attempt access it diverts me to the ACLU. The measure of a man...

That's right: Texas Fred's filter-block redirects his critics to the home page of the American Civil Liberties Union!

There's an unbeatable combination of irony and hypocrisy in this feat, by a far right-wing bigot, who bans his critics by redirecting them to the far-left wing homepage of the defenders of open-borders illegal-immigrant sanctuary radicals. You can't make this stuff up!!

But follow along, because it all makes sense: It turns our Texas Fred both sought out validation AND banned his critics while putting up a Father's Day post bragging about his patriotic right to demonize illegals: To ALL of My Low Class Redneck Friends:

We have been called REDNECK, BEER DRINKING, NASCAR LOVING, BACK WOODS, HILLBILLY, PORCH SITTING, GUN TOTING, CRACKERS, DAMNED-FOOL, CRACKER AIRHEAD, FAT-ASSED MURDERING NAZIS and RACISTS simply because WE want to stand up for America while there is still an America to stand up FOR.

And to those accusations I say: IF my standing up for America makes me all of that, then I wear the title of REDNECK proudly, and I hope all my FRIENDS enjoy this little musical thank you!!

We may not be PhD’s, we’re not FAUX Intellectuals, we don’t live in Ivory Towers and we’re NOT hypocrites, we KNOW what we are, we love our families, our homes and our nation, we’re REAL Conservatives, not RINO posers and we’re proud of it too!!

God Bless America, God Bless Texas and God Bless each and every one of you wonderful AMERICAN REDNECKS!!

Now, while there are no links to my page, the references to Ph.D.'s, "faux" intellectuals, RINOs, and so forth, represent outright libelous attacks on my reputation. Here's Texas Fred in his comment over at American and Proud, where had responded to the blog's host, Robert (who had commented on my page):

Damn Donnie Dickless, your superiority complex is enormous…

I hope you realize that not everyone is as impressed with your faux intellect as you are, that was what got your ass run off from Jarheads place the last time…

And because you were pretty much told off, you have taken issue with me in nearly every format that has followed since, troll much Donnie??

Aside from the vulgarity, this quote immediately links Texas Fred at American Proud to his latest slurs on my reputation on his home page. So readers can see why I find it just mindboggling that these "real" conservatives, who pound their chests and announce their martial superiority, and who display tremendously patriotic images on their blogs, actually claim to represent the mainstream of the traditional American right:

Now, in my previous entries (here and here) I went too far in suggesting that maybe Texas Fred's page should be taken down for advocating racist hatred and eliminationism. Constitutionally, extremist hate speech is protected, as long as there is no explicit incitement to violence.

So far, while the noxious sentiment expressed by Texas Fred and his commenters is extreme, I've yet to see Texas Fred, by definition, urge his readers to commit violence on his behalf.

I don't read Texas Fred 's page, of course, and I've never trawled through his archives, so perhaps that's the motivation for setting up the plug-in ISP filter-system.

The issue, in any case, is larger, in that the right of free speech should not be moral license to bigotry and hatred, but that's exactly what's happening in Texas Fred's echo-chamber. I mean, this type of advocacy is not just "venting." We're seeing the extreme glorification of martial eliminationism, which goes just so far before its hedged as constitutionally protected or as plausibly deniable.

Look over at Texas Fred's later comment at American and Proud:

I wouldn’t be terribly upset if the POTUS decided to put me on the border with a 50 cal with shoot to kill orders, I would miss a few at first but eventually I’d get the hang of it.

Read that whole thread, as well as some of the others at these blogs - it's just more of the same.

In fact, this is what I call the "banality of racism," which draws on the concept of the "banality of evil," from Hannah Arendt. Arendt's thesis is controversial, but it does have application.

For our purposes, we're seeing the essential banality of racism in Texas Fred's blog rings. Banality refers the commonplace, the ordinary, the unquestioned. When old Freddie writes up all his bigoted posts, and all of the commenters engage in mutually congratulatory flagellation, it's just establishing racist immigrant-bashing ("shoot-to-kill" or "starve the bastard babies") as commonplace and correctly ordinary.

Contemplation of the horrific becomes operationalized in terms of "normalization." With reference to Arendt, normalization in the Nazi context refered to the process in which noxious, inhumane, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and standard. The justification is found in statements like, "I was just following orders," which is similar to Texas Fred's assertion that "if the POTUS decided to put me on the border with a cal" he might miss a few at first, but would soon be mowing down the "wetbacks." All of this would be just fine, because it's seen as structually mechanical, ordered from above. No need to think about ultimate moral or human agency. Just kill the "bastards," and be done with it.

More recently, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has gone much further than straightforward "normalization" of mass murder in his book, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. He argued that everyday Germans acted on the basis of eliminationist anti-Semitism, and thus the origins and progression of Nazi Germany's extermination of the Jews bubbled from the bottom-up, rather than having been coerced by totalitarian elites.

Now, while I don't want to take such analogies too far, it's certainly the case that those of the Texas Fred blog rings reflect a banality of racism in the commonplace sense used here. Also, recall from above that old Freddie argues that this is what "REAL conservatives" do, not "RINO posers," and that's the problem.

Clear-thinking people know that this level of racial intolerance and anti-immigrant bigotry simply is not mainstream thinking in America.

Texas Fred knows this, deep down, which is why he bans by plug-in filter (and ACLU redirection) those who would shine down the bright light of moral opprobium. It is why he seeks external validation by sending his e-mail probes to potentially sympathetic conservatives, like Samantha above, who he might then recruit into his hate syndicate. It is why he seeks further justfication by lurking around the web to find examples that might validate his views, for example, in his post today, "Michael Reagan Advocates the Mass Murder of 9/11 Truthers."

If there's no psychology at work here, then we're substantiating the "banality of racism" thesis, and we can see where things might logically go. If there's some true mental derangement at work, on the other hand, then the man needs help (as some of my readers have suggested).

Whatever the case, this kind of hate makes it harder for the rest of us conservatives, who respect the rule of law, and who practice some level of divine tolerance, even when we're outraged at our government.

This hate makes it more difficult, because the true extremists - the nihilist left whose anti-Semitism and racism I'd rather be exposing - can point to folks like Texas Fred, who claims to be the "true GOP," and then extrapolate to smear all conservatives as "fascist."

This simply will not do.

Now before concluding, let me disabuse those readers who might think I'm becoming obsessed with Texas Fred.

Frankly, I'll be really glad if I never write another post on the issue. But for anyone who spends serious time on the web, it's a matter of principle to rebut hateful slurs against one's integrity, morals, and reputation. For example, recall Peter Wehner's devastating take-down of Joe Klein's misrepresentions, "The Klein and the Fury."

Finally, I'm no William F. Buckley. I just want to be on record as defending my integrity in a way that promotes a respectable model of how a morally right conservative should act, First Amendment guarantees or not.

Texas Fred and his webrings of hate do not constitute that model.

Father Hunger: The Tragedy of America's Missing Dads

I've been hammering Barack Obama almost exclusively of late, so to be fair I want to praise the Illinois Senator for coming out yesterday with a gutsy statement on the crisis of absent fathers in American life:

Addressing a packed congregation at one of the city’s largest black churches, Senator Barack Obama on Sunday invoked his own absent father to deliver a sharp message to African-American men, saying, “We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception.”

“Too many fathers are M.I.A, too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes,” Mr. Obama said, to a chorus of approving murmurs from the audience. “They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”

The speech was striking for its setting, and in how Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, directly addressed one of the most sensitive topics in the African-American community: whether absent fathers bore responsibility for some of the intractable problems afflicting black Americans. Mr. Obama noted that “more than half of all black children live in single-parent households,” a number that he said had doubled since his own childhood.

Accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, who sat in the front pew, Mr. Obama laid out his case in stark terms that would be difficult for a white candidate to make, telling the mostly black audience not to “just sit in the house watching SportsCenter,” and to stop praising themselves for mediocre accomplishments.

“Don’t get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation,” he said, bringing many members of the congregation to their feet, applauding. “You’re supposed to graduate from eighth grade.”

His themes have been also been sounded by the comedian Bill Cosby, who has stirred debate among black Americans by bluntly speaking about an epidemic of fatherless African-American families while suggesting that some blacks use racism as a crutch to explain lack of economic progress.

I don't think Obama's going to be able to go as far as Bill Cosby on this issue, although I wish he would. No other political or social phenomenon has had as detremental an impact on the life chances of young black Americans than the collapse of the traditional black family.

Juan Williams wrote a powerful essay on the topic this weekend, at the Wall Street Journal:

The extent of the problem is clear. The nation's out-of-wedlock birth rate is 38%. Among white children, 28% are now born to a single mother; among Hispanic children it is 50% and reaches a chilling, disorienting peak of 71% for black children. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, nearly a quarter of America's white children (22%) do not have any male in their homes; nearly a third (31%) of Hispanic children and over half of black children (56%) are fatherless.

This represents a dramatic shift in American life. In the early 1960s, only 2.3% of white children and 24% of black children were born to a single mom. Having a dad, in short, is now a privilege, a ticket to middle-class status on par with getting into a good college.

The odds increase for a child's success with the psychological and financial stability rooted in having two parents. Having two parents means there is a greater likelihood that someone will read to a child as a preschooler, support him through school, and prevent him from dropping out, as well as teaching him how to compete, win and lose and get up to try again, in academics, athletics and the arts. Maybe most important of all is that having a dad at home is almost a certain ticket out of poverty; because about 40% of single-mother families are in poverty.

"If you are concerned about reducing child poverty then you have to focus on missing fathers," says Roland Warren, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, based in Gaithersburg, Md. This organization works to encourage more men to be involved fathers.

The odds are higher that a child without a dad will have more contact with the drug culture, the police and jail. Even in kindergarten, children living with single parents are more likely to trail children with two parents when it comes to health, cognitive skills and their emotional maturity. They are in the back of the bus before the bus – their life – even gets going.

A study of black families 10 years ago, when the out-of-wedlock birthrate was not as high as today, found that single moms reported only 20% of the "baby's daddy" spent time with the child or took a "lot" of interest in the baby. That is quite a contrast to the married black mothers who told researchers that 88% of married black men, or men living with the mother, regularly spent time with the child and took responsibility for the child's well-being.

The statistics indicate the phenomenon of "father hunger" for all sociodemographic groups, but there's simply nothing comparable to the overwhelming statistics of nearly three-quarters of black kids growing up without dad.

Which is why I was a little surprised at Ann Althouse yesterday, who ridiculed Obama's speech from a feminist perspective:

There are a lot of women raising children alone — or with another woman — who don't like to think that their children are missing some special "guide" or "leader" because there is no male parent figure. This is not to say that such women don't see the value of a good father, only that they find something offensive in saying that the "male figure" in particular is needed. And Obama is saying that it is so important that it left a hole in his heart:

“I know the toll it took on me, not having a father in the house,” he continued. “The hole in your heart when you don’t have a male figure in the home who can guide you and lead you. So I resolved many years ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle — that that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father to my children."

Now, I know what he is trying to do is to push more men to be involved in their children's lives, but the way he is saying it, he is siding with traditionalists who think the male role is special, distinctive, and necessary.

I'm with Obama on this one, and in jest I left my two-cents at the Althouse comment thread (and don't miss the reply).

But let Joanne Jacobs respond specifically to Althouse, since the feminist angle's not my specialty:

Children who grow up with two married parents do the best on measures of wellbeing; they also cope very well if a parent dies. Divorce hurts; acquiring a stepfather doesn’t help much. It’s better to be the child of divorce than the child of never-married parents: Divorced fathers are much more involved with their children than never-married fathers. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions, but this is what I heard from a researcher at a seminar on child poverty about 12 years ago.

I don't know which "researcher" Jacobs' is referring to, but social science studies indicate the powerful role of missing fathers in the life outcomes of kids in the black community.

For all the talk of "courage" in making the speech yesterday, Obama's still got a lot of work to do with conservatives on the issue. See, "Obama’s Fatherhood Talk Is Cheap: Act, Senator. Do It for the Children."

World War II: The War Worth Fighting

Christopher Hitchens has a masterful take-down of Pat Buchanan's World War II revisionism, at Newsweek:

Is there any one shared principle or assumption on which our political consensus rests, any value judgment on which we are all essentially agreed? Apart from abstractions such as a general belief in democracy, one would probably get the widest measure of agreement for the proposition that the second world war was a "good war" and one well worth fighting. And if we possess one indelible image of political immorality and cowardice, it is surely the dismal tap-tap-tap of Neville Chamberlain's umbrella as he turned from signing the Czechs away to Adolf Hitler at Munich. He hoped by this humiliation to avert war, but he was fated to bring his countrymen war on top of humiliation. To the conventional wisdom add the titanic figure of Winston Churchill as the emblem of oratorical defiance and the Horatius who, until American power could be mobilized and deployed, alone barred the bridge to the forces of unalloyed evil. When those forces lay finally defeated, their ghastly handiwork was uncovered to a world that mistakenly thought it had already "supped full of horrors." The stark evidence of the Final Solution has ever since been enough to dispel most doubts about, say, the wisdom or morality of carpet-bombing German cities.

Historical scholarship has nevertheless offered various sorts of revisionist interpretation of all this. Niall Ferguson, for one, has proposed looking at the two world wars as a single conflict, punctuated only by a long and ominous armistice. British conservative historians like Alan Clark and John Charmley have criticized Churchill for building his career on war, for ignoring openings to peace and for eventually allowing the British Empire to be squandered and broken up. But Pat Buchanan, twice a candidate for the Republican nomination and in 2000 the standard-bearer for the Reform Party who ignited a memorable "chad" row in Florida, has now condensed all the antiwar arguments into one. His case, made in his recently released "Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War," is as follows:

• That Germany was faced with encirclement and injustice in both 1914 and 1939.
• Britain in both years ought to have stayed out of quarrels on the European mainland.
• That Winston Churchill was the principal British warmonger on both occasions.
• The United States was needlessly dragged into war on both occasions.
• That the principal beneficiaries of this were Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.
• That the Holocaust of European Jewry was as much the consequence of an avoidable war as it was of Nazi racism.

Buchanan does not need to close his book with an invocation of a dying West, as if to summarize this long recital of Spenglerian doomsaying. He's already opened with the statement, "All about us we can see clearly now that the West is passing away." The tropes are familiar—a loss of will and confidence, a collapse of the desire to reproduce with sufficient vigor, a preference for hedonism over the stern tasks of rulership and dominion and pre-eminence. It all sounds oddly … Churchillian. The old lion himself never tired of striking notes like these, and was quite unembarrassed by invocations of race and nation and blood. Yet he is the object of Buchanan's especial dislike and contempt, because he had a fondness for "wars of choice."

This term has enjoyed a recent vogue because of the opposition to the war in Iraq, an opposition in which Buchanan has played a vigorous role. Descending as he does from the tradition of Charles Lindbergh's America First movement, which looked for (and claimed to have found) a certain cosmopolitan lobby behind FDR's willingness to involve the United States in global war, Buchanan is the most trenchant critic of what he considers our fondest national illusion, and his book has the feel and stamp of a work that he has been readying all his life.

Read the whole thing.

Hitchens is exceedingly fair to Buchanan, and note that the arch paleoconservative is hardly the first to make the revisionist argument on the origins of World War II (although A.J.P. Taylor's a much more credible source).

For more on American foreign policy and paleoconservative thought, see David Frum, "Unpatriotic Conservatives: A War Against America."

Democrats Defecting to McCain Banner!

Via Nice Deb, it turns out a number of Democrats are refusing to support Barack Obama for the presidency:

As an avid supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Debra Bartoshevich is not alone in her frustration over Clinton's defeat.

She’s not alone in refusing to support Barack Obama.

And she’s not entirely alone in saying she’ll vote this fall for Republican John McCain instead.

But what makes her unusual is that she holds these views as an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer.

“I’m sure people are going to be upset with me,” said Bartoshevich, a 41-year-old emergency room nurse from Waterford in Racine County, and convention delegate pledged to Clinton.

See also, "The Specter of McCain Democrats."

Obama Grew Up Muslim, Half-Brother Confirms

I've noted many times here that the question is not whether Barack Obama is Muslim, but whether he's been honest and forthcoming about his personal history.

It's thus extremely interesting that Malik Obama, Barack's half-brother, confirms that the presumptive Democratic nominee grew up Muslim:

Apparently the Obamas of Kenya have been reading those scurrilous emails to which Barack likes to refer, because they have no doubt -- contrary to the claims of the Obama campaign, that the presidential candidate was raised a Moslem. They take that as a given.

As the Jerusalem Post reports, "Barack Obama's half brother Malik said Thursday that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background. In an interview with Army Radio he expressed a special salutation from the Obamas of Kenya."

The Obama brothers' father, a senior economist for the Kenyan government who studied at Harvard University, died in car crash in 1982. He left six sons and a daughter. All of his children - except Malik -- live in Britain or the United States. Malik and Barack met in 1985.

In a remarkable denial issued last November that still stands on the official campaign website, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs issued a statement explaining that "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."

Apparently Malik Obama, himself a Muslim, had not read the press release.

Melanie Phillips is the most recent commentator to draw attention to the massive body of evidence that leaves no doubt that Barak Hussein Obama was born a Muslim (Islam is patrilineal) and raised a Muslim (so registered in school, acknowledging attending Islamic classes, reported accompanying his step-father to the mosque, and able to recite the Koran in the original Arabic).

Reuven Koret, Aaron Klein and Daniel Pipes have previously pointed to the attempts by Obama and his campaign to conceal the candidate's Muslim background. The well documented evidence draws upon the on-the-ground interviews by researchers in Indonesia and Kenya, published quotations of Obama's childhood friends and his school records, as well as the candidate's own autobiography.

It is not clear whether Barack Obama will now disown his half-brother Malik, or throw him under the campaign bus, for acknowledging that shared family background. In any case, some one should notify "Fight the Smear" tout de suite. Perhaps they can get him with the program.

Be sure to check the Obama campaign's official denial, "Obama Has Never Been a Muslim."

See also, "Obama's Appeal in the Muslim World."

Photo Credit: Israel Insider

**********

UPDATE: Jake Tapper at ABC News is debunking claims of Barack Obama's Muslim upbringing: "From the Fact Check Desk: What Did Obama's Half-Brother Say About Obama's Background?"

Note, though, that the question remains as to whether Obama's been completely forthcoming on his Islamic heritage.

According to Daniel Pipes, in his investigation, "Confirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam":

Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim who rarely or occasionally prayed with his step-father in a mosque. This precisely substantiates my statement that he "for some years had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian step-father."

See also Melanie Phillips on the massive evidentiary trail, "Obama Takes on the Great Global Blogosphere Conspiracy Against His Holiness."

The Science of Political Smear

Let me point readers to the comment thread to my post, "The Partisan Gap in American Morality."

I highighted in that entry that statistically, Republicans are more concerned about the collapse of American social values than are Democrats. The difference is not large quantitatively, but significant, and I frankly believe that conservative Republicans have more respect for traditionalism than do Democrats, who on average adopt and defend moral relativism.

Note too that we've seen all the outrage on the left and right about smear tactics during this campaign season. But what is a "smear"? Is this concept fundamentally reprehensible, or is political smearing part-and-parcel to bare-knuckled politics?

Within reason, I'd say the latter.

But check out Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars, who is bent out of shape with right-wing bloggers "trolling" the comments at radical-left blogs to find evidence of racist hatred:

For quite a while, conservatives have embraced an annoying strategy — trawl through liberal blogs’ comments sections in the hopes of finding intemperate remarks. The right then takes these comments to “prove” that the left is made up of unhinged radicals....

Little Green Footballs, a prominent far-right blog, had this item yesterday:

A search of the official my.barackobama.com site for “Jewish Lobby” reveals an enormous amount of antisemitic hatred being posted…. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of posts that refer to the “Jewish lobby” at the Obama site. I stopped looking at the results on page 10. […]

By the way, it is absolutely no excuse to say that “anyone can post a blog there.” Barack Obama isn’t running a Blogspot blog, he’s running for president of the United States, and his official web site is full of hatred and antisemitism.

LGF’s criticism was interesting in part because it was only partially attacking Obama. The candidate, the argument goes, is wrong for having a forum filled with ugly content, even if the campaign didn’t produce the content. And, the argument continues, it speaks poorly of the campaign in general that it attracts people who’d provide the ugly content in the first place.

There are a couple of problems with this approach. First, the Obama campaign (to its credit) created an open online forum. Anyone can “post a blog there,” and it’s not the campaign’s fault when someone adds offensive content. Second, the campaign has moderators to delete the truly ridiculous posts and comments, but it’s hard to keep up with the level of abusive text. That’s just a practical, logistical problem, but it hardly speaks to bigotry within the campaign or among the campaign’s supporters in general.

Okay, say we accept that this is a "practical problem," that it would be unrealistic for the Obama campaign to effectively monitor every community blog post that goes up at barackobama.com.

Then what would Benen or other defenders of unhinged community racists say about the fact that the Obama campaign is openly coordinating political rapid-response planning with Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos?

Someone at the Obama headquarters must know that hanging out officially with Markos Moulitsas is a political liability for the general election. It's not just the commenters at Daily Kos who are wickedly evil, racist, and anti-Semitic. Moulitsas himself has personally demonstrated his promotion of hatred many times.

But again, think about this question of political smear: It's not a smear to monitor and disseminate information on the hatred of the left. Indeed, I've been making an industry of it, and so far I've not been attacked as "smearing" people (well, maybe once or twice, by the targets of that opprobrium).

The truth is, political smear is an accepted, long-standing tradition in American politics, although there are degrees of partisan aptitude for the method, as Right Wing Nut House points out:

This is getting so painful to watch that I just had to write this piece.

I would say to my good friends on the left guys, where in all that is good and holy did you people learn how to smear someone? Jesus, Lord you suck at it. Taken as a whole, your efforts are beyond pitiful. Amateurish, disorganized, barely a grade above schoolyard bullying and taunts. Sometimes, you’re not even that good.

In the interest of practicing the “new politics,” – which basically means if you smear someone, you’re only pre-empting a “right wing attack machine” effort that only distracts from the issues in this campaign and if the right smears anyone, they are racist pigs who deserve 5 years in a re-education camp – allow me to instruct you in proper smear etiquette as well as show you the ropes on how to make that smear a winner.

The trouble is, your efforts to date have been horribly childish and uncoordinated. Allow me to give you some pointers:

When attacking another candidate, please refrain from making fun of their physical characteristics like “yellow teeth” or, more broadly, trying to smear the candidate by criticizing him for being tortured while in service to his country, receiving disability pay as a result.

From a tactical standpoint, this is a total waste of good smear material. First, you didn’t say anything about McCain’s cancer – a smearariffic gaffe in that you should always go for the jugular. You could have put it this way:

“John McCain’s teeth are yellowed as a result of his chemotherapy treatment for skin cancer – a disease that will almost certainly kill him before his first term in office is over.”

A truly inspired smear would include the disability pay and the fact that the torture McCain had to endure was so severe he can’t raise his arms above his head. Perhaps you could have thrown something in about how such extreme pain shortens the lives of those who experience it and tie it into the cancer meme.

Get the idea? When smearing someone, creativity and a keen eye for detail is a must.

The real problem you have is that you took the whole thing out of context and the smear was easily debunked. Taking words that someone says and then not putting them in the proper context is so…so…Clintonesque, so 1990’s. This is the 21st century guys! The YouTube of what McCain actually said was all over the place before your smear had a chance to get rolling.

Now, if you’re going to smear someone by taking what they say out of context, the quote must be more extensive and much harder to debunk – like Obama’s “bitter” remarks in San Francisco. The guy went on for 5 minutes about the misguided yokels who cling to their guns and bibles while harboring racist thoughts about blacks and Hispanics. The right wing noise machine went gaga over those remarks and turned them into political dynamite because the explanation by Obama’s camp was almost as long as the quote itself.

See what I’m getting at...?

Now let’s look at a successful smear, shall we? The “Obama is a Muslim” smear is so perfect, it makes me weep to think about how elegant and perfectly logical it is. First, please note the sheer volume of noise on this one. Almost every right of center blogger has posted about it at one time or another. It doesn’t matter if they try to debunk it, it’s like they say about your name in public relations; as long as they spell it right, it’s free advertising. As long as the smear is mentioned, it doesn’t matter which way the writer goes on it.

Secondly, note how impossible it is to be proved wrong. The Obama camp can try and debunk the smear all they want, they only dig a deeper hole for themselves. That’s because every time they try, some Indonesian who knew Obama back when pops up and swears the guy worshipped in a mosque when he was 8 years old or something.

Does that make Obama a Muslim? OF COURSE NOT! But you’re not thinking like the right wing attack machine. What does “true” have to do with a political smear? While an element of truth should reside somewhere in the smear – Obama was in a Muslim country when he was a boy – the rest just follows logically.

Now, that's a pretty good piece of Machiavellianism!

I'll have more later, but keep this post in mind next time you see pictures of Obama in a turban on my page.

Texas Fred's No Holds Barred Anti-Immigrant Racism

The First Amendment goes a long, long way in protecting freedom of political expression, including hate speech, which can be defined as "Bigoted speech attacking or disparaging a social or ethnic group or a member of such a group."

I raise the question of hate speech in the context of my recent post, "Texas Fred's Bigotry."

I noted there that Texas Fred has advocated a policy of "shoot-to-kill" in defending our southern boundary from illegal border-crossers, who are identified by Texas Fred as "wetbacks":

Close the damned border and shoot any SOB trying to sneak back in...

I am guessing that at least half of the 18 million or so WETBACKS in this nation would be denied admission to the USA if we’d act, but the time to act is NOW, put the National Guard on the border, with full combat capabilities and tell em, ANYTHING coming over that border is an ILLEGAL invader, KILL IT!!

Piece of cake, we have dead wetbacks all over the place, now that’s what I call ‘Happy Holidays’!!

Now, note that Texas Fred's got at theory (at the link here), that by empowing the U.S. military, or National Guard, to defend the border by force, the practice of shoot-on-sight would constitute the legimate internationalization of the "castle doctrine," from Anglo-American common-law, which protects the rights of property owners to defend their homes by use of lethal force.

I personally embrace the "castle doctrine," but I don't see that as what's really going on in Texas Fred's ideological program of anti-immigrant eliminationism.

For example, Texas Fred is on record in favor of private vigilantism - that is, individual U.S. civilians taking up arms to shoot and kill illegal Mexican immigrants entering the sovereign United States to have anchor babies ("little bastards," in Texas Fred's lexicon), so as not to place "an additional burden on the American TAXPAYER."

The post indicates that the U.S. needs comprehensive immigration reform, and Texas Fred notes...

...as far as I am concerned, the ILLEGALS that are literally pouring into this nation can either be rounded up and deported or allowed to starve to death or die of thirst as they cross the hot desert of the American southwest, that saves the American patriot the problem of having to buy so many rounds of ammunition...

In the comments there, Texas Fred adds:

Americans are tired of this bullshit from the wetbacks and our government that cares more about the security of Baghdad than it does the folks right here…

Bush is your basic moron ... but yes, he DID call the Minutemen ‘vigilantes’ and his assertion was way off base ... until the vast majority of Americans stand and demand that this problem be eliminated, or they take matters into their own hands and carry out that elimination of wetbacks themselves, it will never happen...

Note also this comment from "Basti" and Texas Fred's response:

Basti: So they’re here illegally ... So anything they do (as in have brats, get jobs) is also illegal on our soil. Deport or cage them all, 2nd offenders will be SOS. (Shot On Sight)...

Texas Fred: How do you determine if they are 2nd time offenders?? Just shoot the bastards and be done with it…

We thus see Texas Fred wants private citizens to take the law into their own hands, to kill the "wetbacks" on sight, which will save the country from being overrun by a bunch of brown-skinned "little bastards."

The legal complication for Texas Fred's violent advocacy is that it goes beyond First Amendment protection for the expressions of racist hatred - which have routinely been allowed by the Supreme Court - to the express advocacy of political violence and private acts of militia justice. Such programs of explicit hate-based calls to racial violence fall outside the boundaries of protected speech and are considered criminal offenses subject to federal prosecution.

(Added, in response to the comments: The legal standard for criminally offensive advocacy must be demonstrated to include the actual "incitement to violence" likely to produce "imminent lawless action," which is not clear in Texas Fred's case, but I've never scoured the archives, and as we're talking the razor's edge of essentially criminally-inclined conduct, Texas Fred's bears watching).

Note though my main point is not to argue for federal hate-crimes charges against Texas Fred. My main point is simply to rebut substantively and morally the embrace of racial hatred by Texas Fred and his blog rings of ignorant, intolerant, and racist rednecks.

These people claim to be conservative, for example, and star-spangled websites like "American and Proud" or "Miss Beth's Victory Dance."

The truth is, many of these bloggers - though not all - would fit closely to some of the extremist ideological movements I described in my entry, "Obamacons, Tin-Foil Hats, and McCain Derangement." As I noted in that post, I do not tolerate neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-Semites, or other assorted self-appointed border-protection heroes.

This is not conservatism, of which basic components include adherence to the rule of law and toleration of political difference.

But think about what one commenter at Texas Fred's page noted with respect to shooting "wetbacks" on sight:

A policy of shoot first and ask questions later is not, in my opinion, the best answer to the problem. As a Christ-follower, I believe that the unnecessary taking of life is wrong. In the case of shooting illegal border crossers I would have to consider it murder unless the force were necessary within a lawfully conducted arrest. Crossing the border illegally is a crime and the person committing the act should be treated as such.

This comment is longer and more complicated, but the introduction captures the basic moral question that's at base of Texas Fred's embrace and dissimination of racist hatred.

Texas Fred has stated he's a proud bigot, that he wants to kill "wetbacks" and "starve" their babies, and that, "damn right, I AM a racist..."

These kind of ideas represent an extreme minority and should rightly be delegitimized and marginalized as outside the bounds of socially acceptable discourse. The question is not whether one has a constitutional right to express this kind of racial intolerance, the question is whether moral, upstanding Americans should confer moral respectability on such views.

See also, "Texas Fred: The Bigot Connection."

Argentina Reconsiders Che Guevara's Murderous Legacy

The Wall Street Journal reports on Argentina's movement toward rehabilitating Che Guevara, the Latin American revolutionary hero:

No Argentine has left a bigger mark on the world than legendary revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, yet there is no major monument in his homeland to the face that launched a million T-shirts.

That changes Saturday with the unveiling of a 12-foot bronze statue in this town where he was born 80 years ago.

Since he was killed trying to foment revolution in Bolivia in 1967, the Marxist guerrilla has been a source of inspiration for revolutionary movements from Northern Ireland to East Timor, a symbol of rebellion for three generations of Western youth, and a marketing phenomenon selling everything from snow boards to air freshener.

Until recently, however, Argentina itself has played down its ties to this larger-than-life character, whose nickname comes from the country's most common slang, a catch-all word meaning "hey" or "dude." For many Argentines, he evokes painful memories of the bloody 1970s, when young Che-wannabes took up arms in the name of revolution. The ensuing turmoil gave rise to a brutal right-wing military dictatorship.

Even today, Mr. Guevara's image is often associated with social conflict, a link that has been reinforced lately as pro-government protestors have hoisted Che banners during confrontations with critics of populist President Cristina Kirchner.

When a government tourism official told Argentine travel agents at a conference last November that Mr. Guevara's high name recognition among Europeans meant he deserved a place in Argentina's "national brand," he drew boos from his audience.

"Che motivated a lot of idiots to go about killing people either because they had money or a uniform. How unenlightened is that?" said Michael Poots, a Buenos Aires travel agent.

Among Mr. Guevara's enduring critics in Argentina are members of his own extended family. In an article titled "My Cousin, El Che," Alberto Benegas Lynch wrote last year that to wear a Che T-shirt "is like flaunting the gloomy image of the swastika as a peace symbol."

Frankly, with all the veneration of Che worldwide, it's reassuring that Argentines themselves can see straight on what Guevara and his legacy really mean. Here in the United States, Che's legacy has overwhelmed reason among large segments of society, apparently even those in positions of leadership and power:

Ohio's Lorain County Judge, James Burge, who's pictured in this article at USA Today, must really have some big hopes for change under a potential Obama administration.

Indeed, perhaps Burge can secure a patronage post in correctional management when a Barack Obama administration establishes the American version of San Carlos de La Cabaña prison.

See also, "Che Guevara Totalitarian Chic."

Top Photo: "As in this Mexico City stall, Che Guevara's photo on T-shirts has become an iconic image of rebellion world-wide," Wall Street Journal.

Tim Russert, 1950-2008

The political world was shocked yesterday by the news of Tim Russert's death.

I watched Meet the Press regularly, and often blogged about the big stories generated by the broadcast. His moderation style was considered revolutionary for the Sunday morning talk format. For more on that see the Los Angeles Times, "Everyman of TV Politics."

In following the coverage on TV yesterday, I was fascinated by the basic fact that Russert knew pretty much everyone in the Washington political establishment. I mean, all the videotapes, all day, showed Russert meeting just about every political luminary under the sun, from presidents to party operatives to fellow journalists. Over and over, I saw the most heartfelt appreciations of the man and his life. Clearly, this election season's now left with a huge void of energy, information, and charisma.

May Russert rest in peace, and my best wishes go out to his loved ones.

Was the media coverage overblown? Did the media indulge itself, making a venerated newsman into more than his journalistic position merited? John Cole at Balloon Juice thinks so:

I liked Tim Russert, even though I thought his BS gotcha nonsense was thorough idiocy and not helping the debate at all. He was a likable guy- friendly, always smiling. I understand it is a loss for the beltway folks, and he had a lot of really good friends and meant a lot to people, and I would be dishonest if I failed to mention that I feel sad by his passing....

But let’s get something straight- what I am watching right now on the cable news shows is indicative of the problem - no clearer demonstration of the fact that they consider themselves to be players and the insiders ... This is precisely the problem. They have walked the corridors of power so long that they honestly think they are the story. It is creepy and sick and the reason politicians get away with all the crap they get away with these days.

Tim Russert was a newsman. He was not the Pope. This is not the JFK assassination, or Reagan’s death, or the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. A newsman died. We know you miss him, but please shut up and get back to work.

Cole's a prominent left-wing blogger, and for all his preamble about how Russert was a friendly, likable guy, this is a sleazy partisan attack, and Cole badly underestimates Russert's legacy and political significance.

For example, George Stephanopoulos argued yesterday that the entire professional television media establishment had been influenced by Russert's style of moderation. Sunday talk hosts took their cues from Russert. Interviews became courtroom drama; guests were held accountable; previous public statements were placed on the screen, putting the owner of those words on the spot, feet to the fire. This is tremendous innovation in the standards of democratic accountability, and we should deeply acknowlege that.

Should we commemorate Russert life less than the loss of Pope John Paul II, who revitalized Catholic theology in an age of rising religious indifference and global postmodern relativism? Perhaps. But we should not belittle the achievements of a pathbreaking journalist because his project put our ideological programs under the spotlight. That's authoritarianism, and reflects what I've noted here as the "absence of divine soul" on the contemporary left.

Take for futher elaboration the case of leftist blogger Ezra Klein, who, before Russert's death, had attacked the NBC moderater in words so filthy I cannot post them directly to my page. Ann Althouse has the links, especially to the Wonkette's expose of Klein's vicious partisan hatred.

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred has even more on the left's loathing of Russert, "How The Left Loved Tim Russert."

I've said many times that the blogosphere's the contemporary Wild West, but it's sometimes disheartening to see the left's online values reverting to the often courser standards of 19th-century political demonization.

Let's close this discussion with a beautiful, genuine remembrance. Here's Tom Brokaw's announcement of Russert's death:

Thank you, Mr. Russert. You redefined political journalism.

Photo Credit: "Russert Had a Gusto for Politics Leavened With Affability," Los Angeles Times.

Has Affirmative Action Run its Course?

I've thought about affirmative action with increasing frequency in light of Barack Obama's victory as the pending Democratic Party standard-bearer.

I teach civil rights every semester, so I have the usual debates over the meaning of equality in my classes, but I noticed, in a recent New York Times article, that Ward Connerly had good words to say about Obama's triumph:

Mr. Obama’s moment seemed to unite blacks across the political spectrum, even those who had no intention of voting for a Democrat for president.

For example, Ward Connerly, a conservative anti-affirmative-action crusader and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, watched a replay of the announcement of Mr. Obama’s victory on Fox News early Wednesday “and I choked up,” he said. “He did it by his own achievement. Nobody gave it to him.”

Mr. Connerly expressed hope that Mr. Obama’s rise would boost his own efforts to end affirmative action.

“The entire argument for race preferences is that society is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist, and you need affirmative action to level the playing field,” Mr. Connerly said. “The historic success of Senator Obama, as well as Senator Clinton, dismantles that argument.”

Connerly, of course, is the mastermind behind California's push to end racial preferences in the state.

I mention all of this because this morning's Wall Street Journal has a big piece on Obama's success and the politics of affirmative action, "Fair Enough? Barack Obama's Rise Has Americans Debating Whether Affirmative Action Has Run Its Course."

Here's an excerpt:

WARREN, Mich. -- Stan Sheyn, a white student who attends community college in this working-class Detroit suburb, supports Barack Obama for president. But he has no time for what he calls "double standards and propagation of victim mentality."

"The fact that a black man can run for the position of the President of the United States of America only corroborates that there is enough opportunity and equality for great things like that to happen," he says. "And that there is no need to create special advantages for any demographic group."

Electra Fulbright, a black small-business consultant in prosperous Southfield, Mich., couldn't disagree more.

"Obama's privileges and his accomplishments are minute compared to the black population at large," says Ms. Fulbright, who plans to vote for Sen. Obama. "When we talk about Obama, we are not talking about the average black American. There is injustice in this country, and until we correct it, we need affirmative action."

Few issues have been as incendiary in the workplace and on college campuses as affirmative action -- in large part because so many blacks and whites have been personally affected by affirmative action, in ways both good and bad.

Now, Sen. Obama's rise is prompting some whites to ask -- and some blacks to fear -- the question: Does America still need affirmative action, given that an African-American has made it to the top of American politics?

The question has been asked before, as other blacks have risen to high positions. But Sen. Obama's swift ascent to the verge of the presidency may have created a turning point in the debate.

Read the whole thing.

I've stated my opposition to affirmative action many times. As the quote above demonstrates, the statement by Ms. Fulbright reflects the cult of victimology that civil rights shakedown artists deploy to perpertuate racial grievances and claims for preferential treatment.

This is the anti-intellectual ideology of equality of result, and it violates constitutional standards of equal protection on the basis of color blindness.

I don't think Obama's going to be favorable to that side of the debate (non-discriminatory equality of opportunity), considering that racial-quota-masters constituency forms a massive part of his postmodern coalition.