Respecting Christmas

Via Wordsmith at Flopping Aces, here's an interesting cartoon-take on the war on Christmas:

It turns out that some leftists celebrate Christmas anyway, even though it's a "Holiday of Hate":

Back before Christianity was coopted by those who play to the stupid and ignorant and hateful; back before Fox News and the Aryan Nation, it was an inclusive holiday. As a non-Christian and an atheist and someone who knows all too much about Christian history, about early Christian, Greco-Persian, Roman and Norse practices that form the basis of Christmas: as someone who knows how the holiday (and yes, it's a goddamn holiday) owes more to Coca-Cola, Hallmark and Charles Dickens than to some Jewish baby born to a teenage mother in April of an indeterminate year about 2000 years ago, I've always celebrated it anyway. After all Christmas as we know it is an American holiday and one that used to bring about a spirit of tolerance, brotherhood and generosity to a unique degree. It was a holiday that brought out the liberal in most of us ....

Of course if their were any real Christians in this country they might propose at least to ignore this attempt to make it a holiday of hate ...

This commentary is in response to this article and this video, featuring Michelle Malkin on Fox and Friends.

And that's one angry comment for someone arguing that Christmas is about tolerance.

Obama to Use Lincoln Inauguration Bible

The Politico reports that Barack Obama will take his oath of office with President Lincoln's Bible, the same Bible the 16th president used at his inauguration in 1861:

On January 20th, President-elect Barack Obama will take the oath of office using the same Bible upon which President Lincoln was sworn in at his first inauguration. The Bible is currently part of the collections of the Library of Congress. Though there is no constitutional requirement for the use of a Bible during the swearing-in, Presidents have traditionally used Bibles for the ceremony, choosing a volume with personal or historical significance. President-elect Obama will be the first President sworn in using the Lincoln Bible since its initial use in 1861.

Here's an interesting historical tidbit about Lincoln's Bible:

The Bible was originally purchased by William Thomas Carroll, Clerk of the Supreme Court, for use during Lincoln's swearing-in ceremony on March 4, 1861. The Lincoln family Bible, which is also in the Library of Congress's collection, was unavailable for the ceremony because it was packed away with the First Family's belongings, still en route from Springfield, IL, to their new home at the White House.

The Bible itself is bound in burgundy velvet with a gold-washed white metal rim around the three outside edges of both covers. All its edges are heavily gilded. In the center of the top cover is a shield of gold wash over white metal with the words 'Holy Bible' chased into it. The book is 15 cm long, 10 cm wide, and 4.5 cm deep when closed. The 1,280-page Bible was published in 1853 by the Oxford University Press.

This is a grand gesture. Obama's decision to use the Lincoln Bible is a strong affirmation that the President-Elect seeks to confirm the American religious heritage, and by using the Lincoln Bible, Obama also hopes to convey some kind of parallel between the historical circumstances of 1861 and 2009.

Perhaps the shared Illinois background was key to Obama's decision on the Lincoln Bible, but historically, the economic situation today - and the demands for governmental action - have much more relevant analogies in the circumstances surrounding Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inauguration in 1933. Roosevelt would lead a nation that had reached the depths of the Great Depression. In his inaugural address, the 32nd president is most powerfully remembered for these words:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

There's always a supreme majesty in the words of a president's inaugural address. By choosing to launch his administration so closely aligned to Abraham Lincoln, Obama will inevitably invite comparisons of historical greatness. This is especially so as Obama's rise to the office rests largely with the power of his oratory. But Lincoln's an incomparable act to follow, as seen for example in the words from his second inaugural address, March 4, 1865:

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil-war. All dreaded it - all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war - seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and others would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came ....

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare ask a just God s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we will be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh! If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting piece, among ourselves, and with all nations.

Reading this one is struck by the Biblical grandeur inspiring Lincoln's gift to historical memory. Indeed, reading Lincoln seems to preview Obama's historical insignificance in comparison. Obama's moment seems diminished, moreover, by the intraparty rancor seen in the United States today, in his decision to select a controversial pastor to deliver a spiritual invocation on January 20. Not only does the battle for gay marriage seem almost trivial in light of the defining war to free the slaves, there's an anti-American, anti-religious component to current recriminations on the left that would have made Lincoln and his contemporaries shudder. In his recent comments on the debate over Warren, Steve Benen went beyond the gay controversy to attack religion directly:

The real problem isn't with who will give the invocation, but rather, the fact that there's going to be an invocation in the first place.

Such sentiment perhaps illustrates two things: One, the tremendous importance and promise of Obama's gesture to reach back into the American past to lay his hand on the Holy Book on which Lincoln swore his oath of office, but two, Obama's gesture, this act, with a great unfortunateness, may not be recognized to be as large a consecration of our profound Judeo-Christian inheritance as it is. Should Obama, in his coming address, go on to invoke explicit passages from the Bible, he may well be excoriated by the hard-left Democratic Party base for capitulating to the "Christianism" that's allegedly seeking to marginalize those of a homosexual orientation. If so, the epochal majesty of the moment of this new dawn - our new birth of American civilization - could very well be frittered away in the modern cancer of politically-correct polarization.

Obama's Wars

Jason Corley's launched a new blogging journal of ideas, The Western Experience. If the forthcoming commentaries match those published at the blog so far, this should be not only quite a project, but a must read as well.

Head on over there and check out Jason's essay, "America’s Wars and the Next Administration":

The long awaited decision on Iraqi troop withdrawal has all but ended. The Bush administration began hammering out SOFA agreements in the past months and the soon-to-be-arriving Obama administration added urgency to the process. The troop reduction will begin sometime in 2009 and is scheduled to be complete by 2010 or 2011 ....

There will be an estimated 70,000 to 90,000 troops still remaining in Iraq. Withdrawal used in the language of the SOFA agreement is purposely misleading and leaves a large amount of leeway for both governments to remain flexible.

We may consider this phase two or the Iraqi project. The forces left in place will help provide for training, logistics, and security and to ensure that democracy has the opportunity to take root and blossom. Furthermore, Iraqi has always been a bold longterm project. Their government has ambitions in becoming a prosperous, powerful and free nation. Nuclear ambitions are not out of the question, though, it is doubtful if it would mean anything other than peaceful purposes. These goals take time and it takes security for the infant democracy to grow. Americans can expect a longterm presence in Iraq with tens-of-thousands of troops scattered in various bases around the country.

This will undoubtedly come as a disappointment to some Americans who expected and rather naively believed that U.S. troop presence would vanish 16-months into the new Obama administration. It also may cause a backlash to Obama in Iraq itself. Since violence has been reduced, but likely to continue on some scale, a lot of Iraqis are expecting the presence of the U.S. to be gone soon.

It will be interesting to see what agreements and decisions will be made on Iraq after January 20, 2009.

In the meantime, we can judge for ourselves what the new Obama administration plans to do in Afghanistan. Admiral Mike Mullen announced that the Pentagon could double the existing forces there by 20,000 – 30,000 troops bringing the total up to 60,000. This comes on the heels of the report that showed this year was the deadliest for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the invasion in 2001. Admiral Mullen also stated, the 31,000 troops already in place were plenty combat efficient but more troops were needed to control and pacify the territory that had been cleared of Taliban.

Althouse on Transcendent Blogging

I like Ann Althouse and I consider her to be one of the more interesting bloggers on the web.

That said, her take on today's Matthew Yglesias drama is a bit soft and squishy. Althouse wrote a post, "One of the Great Lessons of the Blogosphere: Never Palmieri on an Yglesias," where she noted:

I'd never heard of "Third Way" until I read this post. Now, I think it sucks. Not because of something Matt once wrote about it - which I hadn't noticed - but because of this completely creepy intrusion into Matt's space. Why didn't Palmieri email Matt and ask him to quote a statement from the Center for American Progress Action Fund? Maybe she did and he refused. But either way, the invasion of a man's blog is unjustified, wrong, and also stupid. It's stupid, because even if you don't mind pushing around a respected blogger, you're doing it where everyone can see.

That sounds fine, but Althouse - who's friendly with Yglesias - goes soft on the ideological component of Matt's primitive discourse, to which I replied in the comments:

Ann: You're way too nice to Yglesias. Who cares about a fellow blogger's plight when he's so hip to slam every moderate-to-conservative under the sun with the most filty language imaginable?

Althouse responds:

He is an important blogger, and this problem transcends the political slant of his blog. But I like Matt and have done 2 Bloggingheads diavlogs with him. He had a great position with The Atlantic that most bloggers envy, yet he gave it up supposedly to become more politically active, and look what happens. I'm interested in the dynamics and ethics of blogging. And I want to be part of the outcry so that people learn a lesson - and it's the lesson that I've stressed here, not Matt's personal plight.

There is a lesson here, but it's probably not the one Ann has in mind. That's neat to be doing Bloggingheads, and I suppose, no offense, there's something heuristic about video talking-heads mutually stroking their egos during obscure online performances.

I just think it'd be extremely difficult to have a friendly conversation with someone who's one of the nastiest hard-left commentators online. But's that's me. Folks sometimes praise my writing as akin to William Buckley's, and I'm humble in gratitude. But I don't have Buckley's apparent ability for amiacable repartee. Besides, I find Yglesias' blowoff of the Third Way - his slur on the org's "hyper-timid incrementalist bullsh*t" - to be neither enlightening nor classy (more on that in my essay, "Matt Yglesias, Jennifer Palmieri, and the Third Way").

Althouse is classy, though, and for someone who refrains from hyperpartisan demonization of political enemies, she's mighty tolerant of those who engage in it.

Winter Storms Slam U.S., Tigerhawk Hits the Snow

USA Today reports on the blizzard of storms blanketing the nation, "Winter Storms Slam USA From Coast to Coast."

Meanwhile, Tigerhawk and his family headed out into the whiteness yesterday:

More pictures at the link, and this one too.

It's raining today in Southern California, but the snow levels aren't as low as last week. Still, this is one of the more "White" Christmases we've seen in a while, and not just in around these parts.

Have a wonderful holiday dear readers, and stay warm!

Barack Obama, Most Powerful Person of the Year

On the heels of being named Time's "Person of the Year," Barack Obama has been named Newsweek's most powerful member of the global elite: "The Story of Power":

The beginning of 2009, the last year of the first decade of the 21st century, is a good time to consider the nature of power, and of the powerful, because the world is being reordered in so many ways—broadly by what my colleague Fareed Zakaria calls "the rise of the rest," the emergence of powers such as India, China and Brazil, and specifically by the global recession. The cultural, political and economic consequences of the financial meltdown cannot be overestimated. Unthinking trust in unfettered markets has evaporated, and the concern appears to be more than a temporary fit of worry that will pass when things start to get better. The demise of titans on Wall Street has elevated bureaucrats and politicians in Washington and Beijing and Brussels. And there is one politician in particular whose exercise of power will affect all of us for years to come: the president-elect, whose victory in November and transition—accompanied by the virtual disappearance of President Bush—have marked a resurgence of confidence in America. A senior European diplomat recently marveled to me about the American capacity to change course with rapidity and apparent ease: the shift from Bush to Obama —from the scion of one of America's noblest families to the child of a brief marriage between a young Kansan and a Kenyan academic, who proceeded to see his son exactly once—was simply astonishing ....

In Latin the word for power is imperium, which is largely evocative of the state, and we tend to think of power in political terms—that is, in terms of our relation to one another in the public sphere (power dynamics within families are usually confined to the private sphere, except when those families play political roles—see the Kennedys, the Bushes and the Clintons). Very roughly, political power in America has moved from being the monopoly of the landed elite from the 18th-century Revolutionary era through the 19th-century Age of Jackson, when the suffrage was broadened to white men beyond the traditional gentry. In the 20th century, women and, at long last, African-Americans were included in the mainstream. Now, in the 21st century, the world is turning over yet again. The political energy in the country is being harnessed by a younger and more diverse group than it has been in ages past. This does not mean the millennium is at hand, but it does mean that the face of power is changing.

Read the whole thing here.

Interestingly, it's frankly indisputable that Barack Obama's the most powerful person in the world. Obama will be, of course, the President of the United States, and for all the talk of America's relative interanational decline, it goes without saying that Obama wouldn't be powerful at all if he wasn't representing the American people and the American political system, which remains the light and power of freedom and morality in the conscience of humankind.

Here's Newsweek's top 50 of the world's most powerful people:

1: Barack Obama
2: Hu Jintao
3: Nicolas Sarkozy
4-5-6: Economic Triumvirate
7: Gordon Brown
8: Angela Merkel
9: Vladimir Putin
10: Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud
11: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
12: Kim Jong Il
13-14: The Clintons
15: Timothy Geithner
16: Gen. David Petraeus
17: Sonia Gandhi
18: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
19: Warren Buffett
20: Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
21: Nuri al-Maliki
22-23: The Philanthropists
24: Nancy Pelosi
25: Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
26: Mike Duke
27: Rahm Emanuel
28: Eric Schmidt
29: Jamie Dimon
30-31: Friends of Barack
32: Dominique Strauss-Kahn
33: Rex Tillerson
34: Steve Jobs
35: John Lasseter
36: Michael Bloomberg
37: Pope Benedict XVI
38: Katsuaki Watanabe
39: Rupert Murdoch
40: Jeff Bezos
41: Shahrukh Khan
42: Osama bin Laden
43: Hassan Nasrallah
44: Dr. Margaret Chan
45: Carlos Slim Helú
46: The Dalai Lama
47: Oprah Winfrey
48: Amr Khaled
49: E. A. Adeboye
50: Jim Rogers

It's personally bothersome that Newsweek's editors would "honor" Osama bin Laden as among the world's most powerful people. Osama's a has-been who's currently nowhere to be found.

But note too how Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, makes the cut at #11, and Hassan Nasrallah ranks #43. There's a little "axis of evil rankings" for you.

Maybe New Yorker or some other pop culture rag will come out with a "Moral Relativism Rankings of the Year."

Screw You Glenn Greenwald

I haven't bothered a Glenn Greenwald takedown as of late, and frankly I'm not ballsy enough to do it as well as Robert Stacy McCain, "Thank you, Glenn Greenwald."

Apparently the master sockpuppet called out "The Other McCain" as a "desperate" Bush warmonger and was quickly repaid the favor with both barrels:

This is amusing. Greenwald is demanding war crimes prosecution of Bush administration officials and yet I am "desperate"? Frankly, I don't even give a damn. If I turned on the TV sometime next year to see Paul Wolfowitz in the dock at the Hague, I'd shrug in mute acceptance, and if I blogged about it, would do so in an insouciant way.

But that's never going to happen, which is why I can merrily mock Greenwald's frothing outrage. Nothing, not even a New York Times editorial, can turn this madness of the fanatical fringe into a "mainstream" project. The Democrats would never allow it, no more than they would allow Obama to withdraw too precipitously from Iraq.

The political winds have blown, and the system has encompassed that wind, directing it toward the recent resurgence of the Democratic Party, and smart Democrats know that the surest way to lose that favorable breeze would be to overplay their hand by pandering to the monstrous appetites of Greenwald and his ilk. Obama, Pelosi and Reid will all answer this idiotic demand in the only way it deserves to be answered: Fuck you, Glenn Greenwald.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you Robert Stacy McCain.

Jules Crittenden: The Wisdom of Our Forefathers

Jules Crittenden provides a straight-up defense of Bush-era American government and foreign policy, in response to another round of Andrew Sullivan's hysterical ravings:

In the United States I’ve been living in, the president very politely sought and received authorization from Congress to run this nation’s wars; asked for and received billions of dollars in multiple appropriations from Congress to finance this nation’s wars; consulted Congress on interrogation techniques and had Democrats urging him not to pussyfoot around; and when the going got tough and popular opinion wavered, stood alone as a strong executive, pushing forward to fight and win while the legislative branch dithered, wrung its hands, and did what legislative branches and weak executives do, which is cater to popular whims, ineffectively. Thank God for the wisdom of our forefathers and a Constitution that has allowed us to survive so many assaults from so many enemies, foreign and domestic, and remain free for more than two centuries.

Check the link for the Sullivan takedowns.

Matt Yglesias, Jennifer Palmieri, and the Third Way

People aren't getting some of the key issues in the public smackdown of Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress. It turns out that Yglesias, who is as far left as possible without being formally identified as communist, was smacked down by Jennifer Palmieri, who is the interim chief at the Center for American Progress.

It turns out that Yglesias wrote a post recently on the Third Way, a centrist Washington Democratic policy shop, in which he offered an ultimately unwelcomed turn of phase. Here's the key quote (in bold italicized text), in the context of the the full paragraph, which most of Yglesias' defenders are leaving out:

Third Way is a neat organization — I used to work across the hall from them. And they do a lot of clever messaging stuff that a lot of candidates find very useful. But their domestic policy agenda is hyper-timid incrementalist bullsh*t. There are a variety of issues that they have nothing whatsoever to say on, and what policy ideas they do have are laughable in comparison to the scale of the problems they allegedly address. Which is fine, because Third Way isn’t really a “public policy think tank” at all, it’s a messaging and political tactics outfit. But Barack Obama’s policy proposals aren’t like that. At all. Nor do personnel on his policy teams — including the more ideologically moderate members — stand for anything that’s remotely as weak a brew as the stuff Third Way puts out. And yet, Third Way loves Barack Obama and says he’s a moderate just like them. Which is great. But everyone needs to see that these things are moving in two directions simultaneously. At the very same time Obama is disappointing progressive supporters on a number of fronts, he’s also bringing moderates on board for things that are way more ambitious than anything they were endorsing two or three years ago [emphasis added].

Well, it turns out the Palmieri didn't like this at all, so she logged into Yglesias' blog at Think Progress to write this:

This is Jennifer Palmieri, acting CEO of the Center for American Progess Action Fund.

Most readers know that the views expressed on Matt’s blog are his own and don’t always reflect the views of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Such is the case with regard to Matt’s comments about Third Way. Our institution has partnered with Third Way on a number of important projects - including a homeland security transition project - and have a great deal of respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product. They are key leaders in the progressive movement and we look forward to working with them in the future.

This is a D.C. Democratic-insiders' squabble. The Politico reports that Palmieri might be tapped as an Obama administration assistant secretary of defense for public affairs. So let's break it down:

1) Palmieri's a hack. Who would want to work with her - much less under her - with a demonstrated leadership like that?

2) Palmieri's even more of a hack if she doesn't realize that Yglesias' views above are entirely representative of the organization she currently heads. Maybe she doesn't actually read Think Progress, one of the most disastrous "progressive" blogging outfits on the web. Or if she does, she's down with the filth and spew eminating there, and she only makes a stink of things when her hat's in the ring at the Pentagon. Either way, once again, she's not a very good manager, and the country certainly doesn't need that kind of waffling, self-serving "expertise" on defense policy, unless such abject caving to political pressure is the style of policy leadership and diplomacy expected at Obama's Defense Department.

3) Take a look at Yglesias' post, in any case: If Third Way's positions resemble the practical meaning of the term (Britain's Tony Blair, President Bush's greatest ally on the Iraq war, was a well-known leading advocate of "third way" ideological centrism), he's either living in an isolated pocket of the hard-left blogosphere, or he's truly lost his mind. Sure, the netroots left can raise a big stink on many issues, and these folks get a lot of media coverage for all their blustery talk and self-exaltation. But they are not mainstream. Hillary Clinton dissed them, Joseph Lieberman dissed them, and Barack Obama's now repudiating them (think Rick Warren). This is smart politics (or, on Warren, brilliant Machiavellianism, but that's an aside). Talking "bullsh*t" on one of D.C.'s insider think tanks is hardly the worst offense one might find coming out of the fever swamps of the online Democratic Party base. The considerable outrage among the commenters at Yglesias' post, and well as the support Yglesias is getting from fellow bloggers, only confirms that deep split between the activist base of the party and the top operatives who will have to actually govern.

Remember the debate about a "center-right nation? Stuff like this demonstrates it better than ever. It's actually funny, however, that both Yglesias' original post and then Palmieri's subsequent smackdown reveal that no one involved in this debate's got a shred of class.

Forget Marriage, Gay or Not ... Kill Tradition Altogether

Bob Ostertag, in "Why Gay Marriage is the Wrong Issue," is brutally honest in revealing the subterranean agenda that girds the left's blitzkreig assault on tradition - from marriage itself (which will no longer have original meaning once homosexuals enjoy the same right of union that's by both nature and tradition only available to one man and one woman) to the entire Western ethical system based in Judeo-Christian morality:

Through years of queer demonstrations, meetings, readings and dinner table conversations, about gay bashing, police violence, job discrimination, housing discrimination, health care discrimination, immigration discrimination, family ostracism, teen suicide, AIDS profiteering, sodomy laws, and much more, I never once heard anyone identify the fact that they couldn't get married as being a major concern. And then, out of the blue, gay marriage suddenly became the litmus test by which we measure our allies. We have now come to the point that many unthinkingly equate opposition to gay marriage with homophobia.

Rick Warren is now the flash point, the one all our political allies, even Barack Obama, are supposed to denounce because he doesn't pass gay marriage the litmus test.

I disagree with Rick Warren on many things. To start with, he believes that 2000 years ago God sent his only Son to die on a cross so that mankind would not perish but have everlasting life. To me, that's weird. I don't know how to even begin to address an idea that far out. And he believes that everyone who does not accept Jesus as their savior will go to hell. He doesn't single out gays and lesbians in particular. To me, the weirdest thing there is not that he thinks queers will go to hell, but that he believes in hell at all. But mainline Protestants believe in hell too. So do Catholics, who also add purgatory and limbo.

Steve Waldman, founder of Belief.net (where you find the most thoughtful exchanges on present day religion), did an extended interview with Warren which has been hyped all over the blogosphere as an example of why we should all be screaming for Obama to disinvite Warren from the inaugural. The quote that got all the attention was when Warren said gay marriage would be on a par with marriage for incest, pedophilia and polygamy. And yes, I think that's off-base. Not up there are the scale of the whole God-sent-his-only-Son-to-die-on-a-cross bit, but weird nonetheless.

I thought this was satirical at first, but it's not.

Read the whole thing. It's a tricky argument. On the one hand, Ostertag amounts a vicious atheist attack on marriage traditionalists and those of religious faith. But on the other hand he suggests he'd be perfectly willing to work with "progressive" evangelicals who want to tackle "more important" problems, like global warming, which just "can't wait."

Note though that Ostertag conflates the whole of pro-marriage traditionalism into a faith-based pigeonhole. And that's the trick: There are powerful secular arguments against same-sex marriage, so when leftists take issue with the spiritual proponents of traditionalism, they work to attack the larger edifice of Western culture and tradition that's been the basis for the American political culture, the rise of capitalism (the Protestant work ethic), and the natural law rationalism that grew out of the Enlightement and sustains modern democratic institutions.

The religious argument against gay marriage is a good one. But those who take that approach will be bogged down in defending against anti-Christianist assaults, not to mention the debate over "religious rites" versus "civil rights." And while religion ultimately provides what is in essence the supreme power of universal reason, debating gay marriage on religious grounds puts people of faith in a position of endlessy rebutting spurious allegations of congregational bigotry.

It's too bad that things have come to this, but those who respect traditional values are in a sense fighting a secular creed, an atheistic faith that would banish universal good from the public square altogether. It's this underlying secular humanist agenda that will destroy all that's best about our culture, not just heterosexual marriage traditionalism alone, but the entire moral firmament beneath it.

Purging the Neocons

It turns out there's a pretty nasty purge of the neocons taking place at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the main conservative think tank providing intellectual backing for the Bush administration's foreign policy. Jacob Heilbrunn has the scoop:

The neocon world has been rocked by recent events at AEI. Numerous neocons told me that a vicious purge is being carried out at AEI, spearheaded by vice-president for foreign and defense policy studies, Danielle Pletka.

There can be no doubting that change is afoot at AEI. Recently, Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht have departed AEI. Joshua Muravchik is on the way out as well. Other scholars face possible eviction. Both Muravchik and Gerecht are serious intellectuals who have published prolifically ....

Muravchik has been at AEI for two decades. Gerecht has been there for a much briefer period, but he has written extensively and provocatively on intelligence matters. Gerecht is currently at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which, along with the Hudson Institute, where Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby and Douglas J. Feith are fellows, seems to functioning as something of a safe haven for neocons.

What do these developments actually add up to? They undoubtedly signal a splintering taking place in the neocon world. Pletka has been closely identified with neocon positions on Iraq and Iran. But now there is tremendous hostility toward her among neocons, who allege that, as a former staffer for Jesse Helms, who embodied more traditional Republican foreign-policy precepts, she is out to extirpate neocon influence at AEI. In this version of events, Muravchik was ousted for not being a true Republican. It would be very unfortunate if that were the real cause. What the conservative movement needs is ferment, not an ideological straitjacket—something that neocons have themselves sometimes tried to enforce.

The neocon movement will survive these changes. It will continue to stir up debate. Its real misfortune was to be able to exert power in the Bush administration, where officials such as Paul Wolfowitz and Feith made a hash of things. The notion of a liberated Iraq being the first freedom domino to fall in the greater Middle East was always a pipe dream. The strength of the neocons is to generate ideas, but whether they should actually be implemented is often another matter.

Interestingly, some of those same neocons Heilbrunn mentions - like Reuel Marc Gerecht, in his earlier essay, "A New Middle East, After All" - predict a much more substantial legacy for the Bush administration and its vital agenda of combining American exceptionalism and power in the Mideast.

Also interesting is the notion that neoconservatives - who remain ripe with ideas, while others routinely lament how the broader conservative movement has run out of steam - would be better off not "actually implementing" their intellectual product. Keep in mind that Republicans did not lose the White House because of neoconservative ideas. Alan Greenspan and the Democratic expansion of subprime lending through Fannie and Freddie have taken a lion's share of credit on the collapse of markets. Indeed, the war in Iraq was hardly an issue at all throughout the second half of 2008. Meanwhile the New York Times has recently been making the case that Democrats deserve credit for victory in the war! That's hardly a repudiation of neoconservative ideas.

Heilbrunn's right of course in noting that neocons will survive, and they'll even prosper. Already we're seeing a push for a greater U.S. role in preventing humanitarian crises, and the eventual endorsement of the robust exertion of military power for such missions will take a page right from the neocon playbook. Of course, democracy promotion was never isolated to neconservative thought. Power and purpose always has a role in American foreign policy. It's the stress on the assumed "unilateralism" of this administration, and the "reckless" disregard for the constitution, that's gotten the left all riled up. Don't forget that Bill Clinton never had Security Council support for the airwar over Kosovo, and Janet Reno's Justice Department purged 93 federal prosecutors in 1993, a mass firing that makes the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' actions look like a summer picnic.

The neocon genie's yet to work it's all of its magic yet, and stuffing the movement back in the bottle is not as good an idea as some might think.

Iraq and the Political Scientists

Daniel Drezner provides a link to a Matthew Yglesias essay, which is one of the more interesting recent commentaries I've seen on Iraq: "Political Science at War."

Yglesias takes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to task for a recent CNN interview, where she was asked if she had any regrets on the administration's foreign policy:

I absolutely am so proud that we liberated Iraq ...

Absolutely. And I’m especially, as a political scientist, not as Secretary of State, not as National Security Advisor, but as somebody who knows that structurally it matters that a geostrategically important country like Iraq is not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, that this different Iraq under democratic leadership.

The key is the stress on her identity as "a political scientist." In response, Yglesias not only excoriates Rice, but goes on to denounce the entire media/neocon think tank commentariat which backed the build-up in Iraq. To make his case, he relies on survey data from international relations experts in political science, who were almost uniformly opposed the intervention. Here's the key passage from Yglesias:

My colleague Ryan Powers reminds us that, in fact, many of the leading lights of the international relations subfield of political science tried to warn the country against the invasion of Iraq. There was also this interesting article that surveyed opinion among IR scholars in Foreign Policy magazine several years ago ....

One of the most annoying habits of the press and the DC conventional wisdom more generally has been a persistent habit of ignoring these facts in favor of the rhetoric of “seriousness” that casts war opponents as a much of ignorant hippies and foul-mouthed bloggers who, at best, were right about Iraq by accident or something. But the vast majority of credentialed experts in Middle East regional studies, and the vast majority of credentialed experts in international relations have always been extremely skeptical of the adventure in Iraq. The main supporters of the war have been politicians, magazine and newspaper pundits, and a smallish group of heavily politicized think tank-based experts and “experts” who, for whatever reason, are granted privileged access to the media over people in a better position to offer genuinely independent analysis. I think many political observers watching the debate unfold in 2002-2003 would have gotten the impression that most experts were more-or-less backing the president on Iraq. But while it’s certainly true that most op-ed columnist and most Brookings fellows were behind Bush, the broader group of political scientists who specialize in these issues has always taken the opposite view.

If you check out Yglesias' post, which has a graph of opinion on Iraq within the foreign policy professoriate, the views therein break down reasonably close to the classic left-right split among the general population. Of course, since most political scientists are liberal or moderate, it's natural that a majority of professors would be "against the invasion."

Methodologically, Yglesias' "evidence" for a just opposition to Iraq is, well, embarrassingly biased. I'm no "hot shot" scholar of international relations, and I don't expect to be. But had I been contacted I would have indicated my backing of the deployment. Indeed, my support of the intervention hasn't flinched in nearly six years of warfare. Now that the U.S. has prevailed in what might be called the major anti-insurgency phase of the last couple of years, the left now has the burden of justifying its long stab-in-the-back policy of cut-and-run, which would have abandoned our troops in the field and turned the Iraqi people over to the region's terrorist predators and their backers in Iran.

My disseration advisor, Professor Michael Gordon, a great teacher and tremendous scholar, is retired now. He writes a blog off and on, and while he was very critical of the handling of the war, his writing at the time demonstrated intellectual and moral clarity on the international politics surrounding the run-up to the deployment. Here's what he wrote in a post from 2004:

Despite the errors, bungling, and other problems of the Bush administration, I stand by the intervention in Iraq, [and] believe it will still work out generally well - [and I believe], too, that the repercussions of that in the Middle East will redound to our benefit in the years and decades to come.

Professor Gordon's post is a bit dated on some of his observations, but his basic hunch is accurate, that despite the initial difficulties and incompetence, the fight was worth it and that our engagement would end up creating a positive force for the future of the Middle East.

Despite naysayers, Iraq is on its way to stabilizing its democracy, a free regime which will stand as a regional balance against the region's rogue authoritarian regimes of proliferation and massive human rights violations. As we've seen now, many on the American left have thrown their hands up over Iraq - frustrated that we've actually won - and have now turned instead to mount their nihilist campaign of outrage against the deployment in Afghanistan.

Yglesias is one of these folks. The left, including much of the interational relations academy, took a bath on the long-term outlook in Iraq. No war will be worth it for those marinated in an ideology of weak-kneed internationalism and hostility to American power.

Don't forget to read Drezner's criticisms of Yglesias, which focuses on Secretary Rice and the poliical science angle.

Thinking About Presidential Hatred

I rarely, if ever, rebut commentaries appearing at "The Moderate Voice."

A blog whose very name constitutes a fundamental lie lacks the a priori legitimacy to be taken for much serious consideration. But publisher Joe Gandelman's poorly-written essay this morning cries out for a response. The piece, "Birth of the Professional Obama Haters," argues that the emerging partisan opposition to Barack Obama represents a "harbinger" of an unprecedented campaign of demonization of a presidential administration:

Every President has had his contingent of seemingly professional haters, sometimes stemming from policy but sometimes stemming from the need to market an opposition persona, increase readership or an audience, or rally partisan followers to do battle to halt specific polices. The degree of hatred varies in both its intensity and justification.

Democrat Bill Clinton had his big share of professional Clinton haters (both prominent and not so prominent would say things such as “He’s not MY President…”) and Democrats decried it and some Republicans defended it. Then came Republican George Bush who got his share of haters, then Republicans decried it (the most typical defense was to try and go on the offense and lump those who’d strongly criticize the President on policy with the professional Bush haters as suffering from “Bush derangement syndrome” — a tidy way to try to discredit all critics suggesting they were all unreasonable and not having legitimate grounds for strong criticism) and some Democrats who decried the lack of respect for Clinton defended it.

But here in December 2008 we ‘re seeing a special kind of political hatred — way early in the game. President Elect Barack Obama has not put his fanny in the Oval Office chair for one second yet, and there is an intensity now among some Republican conservatives to push ... hot buttons — a probable haringer [sic] of what is likely to come. Amid reports that the economy is not just bad but is on the brink of tanking, their emphasis is not on policy but overt or slightly disguised overt political demonization. Using whatever they feel can stick to rally their audience and/or readership.

Believe it or not, they’re still beating the now-thinly-disguised drum over Obama’s middle name “Hussein.” Which they wouldn’t do if it had been Walker or even Schwartz. Isn’t it time to call THIS detailed in this post for what it is? It’s politics of hate couched in (barely) plausible deniability.

One example focusing on the right's resistance to a president-elect with an Islamic middle name is hardly an "unprecedented" display of political hatred. Note, too, the mention of how George W. Bush got "his share" of haters. You think?

I've been down the road of comparative demonization before. As intense as things have been over the last year, throughout the primaries and now the presidential transition, nothing even compares to the attacks we've long seen on President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, the "evil" neocon imperialist warmongers, and the "Christianist" social conservative wing of the Republican Party.

Has anyone seen Barack Obama burned in effigy? Can anyone point me to a prominent conservative who has called for the death of Barack Obama? Last July, of course, Spencer Ackerman called for the execution of President Bush following war crimes tribunals at the Hague, and he's hardly the first.

One can't attend an antiwar rally without untold signs, banners, and figurative displays attacking the president in the most filthy language imaginable, calling for impeachment, or exhorting protesters to shoot him and hang him up by a tree. At a fifth anniversary protest against the Iraq war this year, one protester hoisted a sign reading, "Bush Is a Lousy F**K and WE HATE HIM."

Demonization of the Bush administration began well before G.W. Bush "put his fanny in the Oval Office chair." We had weeks of unbridled hatred during the Florida recount in 2000, and it's been non-stop "BusHitler" ever since.

Barack Obama will be my president. He is, of course, a documented liar and a Machiavellian sleezeball. I don't have to like him, but I will support him in a time of existential crisis, and I pray that he demonstrates one ounce of the courage and presidential leadership that Bush 43 has shown these past eight years.

[Endnote: Gandelman's quotation above was edited for punctuation, and he's got that dangling dependent clause that's bugging me: "Which they wouldn't do if it had been Walker..." I know blogging is an informal medium, and all of us make our ample share of typos and so forth, but the folks at "The Moderate Voice" are professional journalists - the bleedin' wankers ought to damn well proofread!]

Parallels to Totalitarianism

I generally avoid comparisons between the American democracy and pre-World War II Germany, but Politeia features a thought-provoking essay that hits extremely close to home, in every sense: "A U.S. Weimar Rep? Red Flags (III): the Lessons":

In the USA since the 1960s many traditional American ideas, values and attitudes have been eroded, and capitalism is being replaced by mixed economies. Religion and morality has less influence on behavior; there is a trend from individualism toward collectivism, relativism and socialism; there is greater acceptance of subjective ideas; there is greater catering to the fears and emotions of factions; and factions are becoming more alienated. These changes have parallels in Germany of the 1930s. A key parallel is the replacement of rational thought with feelings and emotions. Another is how the vast majority of people simply absorb the thoughts presented by the educational establishment, the media, and the entertainment pop culture.

This is the third in a series, "A U.S. Weimar Republic? Red Flags: Our Republic" (click here and here for further reading).

My sense is that we're more likely to see Leninist-style vanguard proletarianism. See, for example, my earlier essay, "The Ideological Foundations of the Obama Phenomenon."

(Note: Neither Germany nor Russia experienced the long cultural development toward pragmatism and rationalism that marks the Anglo-American historical model. This is another reason why I generally avoid comparisons between the U.S. and 20th century totalitarianism. That said, we're at such an extraordinary period in history, it pays to rethink our models of development and socialization of culture.)

Gay Backlash Overwhelms Presidential Transition

I watched Rachel Maddow's show last night. Not only is she funny, but she's a heckuva lot prettier than Keith Olbermann. Plus watching her show reveals just how much influence nihilist left bloggers have on the mainstream Democratic Party agenda - a point to keep in mind when leftists dismiss the policy impact of hardline bloggers like Daily Kos, Firedoglake, and their rotten ilk.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

In discussing the Obama/Warren invocation controversy, Maddow made the case against Warren for his "bigotry" and "hatred," citing John Aravosis at AmericaBlog. At issue is Warren's apparent exclusion of "unrepentant" gays from the ministry of Saddleback Church. Aravosis links to Warren's home page in a post, "Rick Warren Explicitly Bans "Unrepentant" Gays From Membership in His Church."

Now, citing Aravosis raises an interesting quandary: While the "unrepentant" gay issue is troublesome from the perspective of inclusion, Maddow's citation of Aravosis is equally so. As Rick Moran demonstrated during the primaries, Aravosis, last June, stooped to the lowest of the low in attacking John McCain's qualifications for the presidency, arguing that "Getting shot down, tortured, and then doing propaganda for the enemy is not command experience."

While Aravosis is far from a credible source - and his comments on McCain are beyond the pale - he has a point about Warren's position on gays at church; and it's here where folks might rightly ask themselves where they're located on the issue of civil rights for gay Americans. While Warren, as a pastor of a private church, may by rights exclude gay members from his congregation, his practice gives ammunition to his secular and anti-Christianist attackers.

And all of this brings up an interesting thought: What if Barack Obama had it all figured out? What if the President-Elect, realizing Warren's religious fundamentalism might be offputting to many folks of faith who might otherwise hold more welcoming thoughts for homosexuals, people who might be less likely to compare gays to pedophiles or incest lovers, and who might, in fact, realize that same-sex marriage can be firmly opposed on both secular and religious grounds, and thus such demonization of gays is gratuitous and unproductive to the traditionalist case ... what if he picked Warren anyway, on the likely chance of instigating a backlash beyond the radical gay base? Sure, Warren could go on to give the inaugural invocation, but by then Obama, seeing partisan division and distress spread across the land, would have a ready excuse to backpeddle, to renounce his relationship to the "purpose driven" pastor and his ministry of exclusion, and then come out in favor of gay marriage. That's where all of this is headed ultimately, so Obama could have devised a brilliantly underhanded ploy of plausible deniability.

Meanwhile, California Attorney General Jerry Brown has done his own about face. He's announced that the state will seek to overturn Proposition 8 at the California Supreme Court, arguing that "the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights without compelling justification."

Looking at this from the sidelines one would think that, heck, forget majority rule. Tyranny of the majority must be so bad that any aggressive minority can have its way, traditionalism, objective right, and constitutional processes be damned.

But that's the way things are going in this country. We've got a president-elect who squeezed under the media radar with a free pass. We've got the Democratic-left which lies and distorts the truth to fit any purpose, folks who can demonize John McCain for his patriotism in captivity on the one hand, and then turn around and argue in favor radical gay rights activists who adopt the same tactics of totalitarianian intolerance of McCain's captors in Hanoi.

It doesn't make sense, but that's the world we live in right now. Sometimes I think it's best to just let things play out. The traditional majority's not dead, and by no means without power. The radical left, with its allies in Washington and Sacramento, will overplay their hand, and as the economy trundles through the current cyclical downturn, the political pendulum will swing back to more conservative traditionalism. Folks on the right might as well hunker down for a while, clinging to their guns and religion after all, and let the storm pass. Socialism's been tried before and in every instance it's failed. There's no reason to expect the current era to be triumphant over the long haul. And thank God for that.

Holiday Snow, Southern California

We'll likely see a "White Christmas" in Southern California this year.

The snow level was down to 2000 feet during this week's storms. Snow blanketed the local foothills beneath Saddleback Mountain, not far from my home. Pictured above are the San Gabriel Mountains, seen from Bolsa Chica State Ecological Reserve.

I often go down to the beach on Christmas, so this is a beautiful change. Here's wishing readers a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Photo Credit, "Storm Leaves a Blanket of Snow Across Southland," Los Angeles Times.

Gay Rights Extremists Open Lobbying Front at U.N.

Get a load of this: "In a First, Gay Rights Are Pressed at the U.N.":

An unprecedented declaration seeking to decriminalize homosexuality won the support of 66 countries in the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, but opponents criticized it as an attempt to legitimize pedophilia and other “deplorable acts.”

The United States refused to support the nonbinding measure, as did Russia, China, the Roman Catholic Church and members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The Holy See’s observer mission issued a statement saying that the declaration “challenges existing human rights norms.”

The declaration, sponsored by France with broad support in Europe and Latin America, condemned human rights violations based on homophobia, saying such measures run counter to the universal declaration of human rights.

Anyone familiar with the workings of the U.N. recognizes that the protection of "rights" at that organization is nothing less than a despicable farce. The real purpose of this declaration is revealed further down in the piece:

Ms. Yade [the French state secretary for human rights] and the Dutch foreign minister, Maxime Verhagen, said at a news conference that they were “disappointed” that the United States failed to support the declaration. Human rights activists went further. “The Bush administration is trying to come up with Christmas presents for the religious right so it will be remembered,” said Scott Long, a director at Human Rights Watch.

There you have it. Gay rights activists hope to use this U.N. declaration as another wedge to break down traditional values and resitance to gay marriage rights in the U.S. federal system.

The Human Rights Campaign [HRC] has "the backstory" on the French sponsorship of the declaration at the U.N. Note, of course, that the HRC is the lead pressure group on the extremist left that's now raising an outcry over Barack Obama's selection of Pastor Rick Warren for the inaugural invocation.

The left's radical gay agenda is all coming together, as I've noted previously (see, "Gay Radicalism Key to Left's Agenda Under Obama"). The radical gay rights lobby is up in arms over Obama's sensitivity to the moderate middle of the American electorate. But they also know that Obama has pledged to restore American trust in and reliance on international institutions. So, by going to the U.N. and raising a big public relations battle on the issue, the episode represents a chance for homosexual activists to "multilateralize" the push for gay marriage rights, providing one more avenue for activists to intimidate cultural traditionalists.

Meanwhile, criminal states like Iran, which has been identified as among the leading violators of human rights by the U.S. State Department, get a blind eye from the U.N.'s Human Rights Council.

If this new declaration at the U.N. is to have any legitimacy, U.S. gay rights groups and Western NGOs should be protesting the refusal of a majority of the members states of the U.N. General Assemby, who refused to endorse the resolution, rather than the U.S., where gay Americans enjoy unpredented rights and liberties under American constitutional law.

Libby Spencer's Bleg

Libby Spencer, my long-time nemesis at The Impolitic and Newshoggers, has posted what appears to be a bleg, "Ow, ow, ow...."

Ms. Libby writes that "I managed to fall down last night and twisted my foot." The injury's apparently so painful that she was nearly reduced to crawling to the little girls' room. Ms. Libby continues:

I had to drop my health insurance months ago so I can't go get it checked out since I'm already almost $8000 in debt for medical bills. I really need to keep what's left of my credit limit in case the car breaks down. I can't believe it's all that serious anyway. I think it would hurt more if I broke something and the internet doctor sites say the treatment is rest and ice in any event so I'm going to try that for a day or two and see if it helps.

I wish I had some crutches. Ironically, most of my life I've always had a set of crutches around since I've broken toes occassionally and then they just take up room for years on end. Now that I really could use a pair, I don't have any.

Oy. What a life. I can't wait for my luck to turn.

A range of thoughts come to mind upon reading this.

First of all, this is nowhere near an adequate bleg. Ms. Libby's got a link to Pay Pal in her sidebar, so maybe her longtime readers know to throw a few quarters in the cup, and it turns out that she does make cash pleas on occasion, here for example:

If you've ever felt inclined to donate a few bucks to the blog, now would be a good time to hit the "Make a Donation" button at the top of the sidebar. If you don't want to use paypal, you can email me for a land address. If you can't donate money, any advice would be welcome in either the comment section or by email as well. Kind thoughts would also be greatly appreciated.

Chartitable readers at American Power can click on the "email me" link above to help.

Otherwise, I'm pretty well miffed at why a woman of Ms. Libby's maturity would drop health insurance. Perhaps, as her previous posts have indicated, she's out of work and is just scraping by. Or, maybe Ms. Libby's saving money in hopes of the advent of universal health care under the Barack Obama administration next year, although given the success of past efforts to that effect, that's not a possibility on which I'd hold my breath.

I do know why she's not going to the emergency room (see, "Who Needs Health Insurance?).

Here's wishing Ms. Libby a healed ankle and a nice weekend, in any case.

Pakistan's Jihad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Weyrich Dies, Gay Activists Ecstatic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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