President Bush to Leave With Dignity and Grace

President Bush gave his last press conference yesterday morning.

The meeting is getting some big play online, very little of it positive.

That's the way it is for this president, who has been hammered relentlessly on his decisionmaking and policies, on issues ranging from tax cuts to warrantless wiretaps. It's not just the left, of course. Many on the right see the Bush years as an epitaph for conservatism. Not me. The country needs a new direction, but the new administration represents cyclical change. The GOP's dominated politics for decades, in both ideas and power. The Democrats will have a go of it now, and there may of a realignment of sorts depending on how successful the Barack Obama administration is.

But I have no doubts this administration's legacy will be great and profound. I've written recently on President Bush's moral clarity, and I'm sad to see this unyielding advocate of American exceptionalism leave the presidency. I'm not one of those conservatives who have soured on Bush. I understand some of the constraints in foreign policy and war that have derailed other administration initiatives in international relations, but as we see in the video above, Bush has understood that the president must often lead rather than follow, especially on public opinion. The war in Iraq is turning out to be a phenomenal achievement, and it will rightly be the centerpiece of the Bush legacy of standing up against rogued regimes who flout the will of the international community.

We are continuing to see, of course, calls for war crimes prosecutions on the left, and the press conference had the tone of a truth commission, where journalists hectored Bush to admit his "failings." When Bush counted out a few lesser flops, that wasn't enough. Dana Milbank criticized Bush for not admitting the "big mistakes." Jennifer Rubin responds, noting President Bush's dignity and grace as he nears exit from office:

Opinion is sharply divided on the Bush presidency, and many of us don’t yet have a firm grasp on how large the failures will loom and how significant the accomplishments may seem in hindsight. But if there were ever a more graceful exit by a president — both in the tone of his interviews and the magnanimous and robust cooperation with his successor (who excoriated him during the campaign in the most personal terms) — I can’t recall it. That too will be part of the legacy.

It will be a monumental legacy. I have no doubt.

Remedial Classroom Civility

I'm back to school this week so I thought I'd share this piece on the absence of student decorum in the classroom.

The essay, "Remedial Civility Training," is not new. I came across it while reading another excellent article in the latest issue of the NEA's teaching journal. But I like the idea of "remedial civility," and the essay's the best piece on the topic I've seen in a long time:

I think it is a serious problem that many public schools - and private ones - have just about given up teaching many of the academic skills that were once considered basic for every high-school graduate, not just the ones going to college. But what really troubles me is that schools - no doubt, mirroring the broader culture - have given up cultivating the ordinary courtesies that enable people to get along without friction and violence.

Instead, I see among my students a dispiriting amount of cynicism about teachers and contempt for learning except as a hurdle over which one must jump on the road to some lucrative career. Some students imagine they will advance on the basis of having a degree, even if their words and manners indicate that they are unsuitable for any kind of job that involves dealing with people. They seem completely unaware that knowing how to behave will have a serious impact on their future prospects.

This is not about the simple rules governing which fork one should use but about norms of behavior about which nearly everyone used to agree and which seem to have vanished from student culture.

There are the students who refuse to address us appropriately; who make border-line insulting remarks in class when called upon (enough to irritate but not enough to require immediate action); who arrive late and slam the door behind them; who yawn continually and never cover their mouths; who neglect to bring books, paper, or even something with which to write; who send demanding e-mail messages without a respectful salutation; who make appointments and never show up (after you just drove 20 miles and put your kids in daycare to make the meeting).

I don't understand students who are so self-absorbed that they don't think their professors' opinion of them (and, hence, their grades) will be affected by those kinds of behaviors, or by remarks like, "I'm only taking this class because I am required to." One would think that the dimmest of them would at least be bright enough to pretend to be a good student.

But my larger concern here is not just that students behave disrespectfully toward their professors. It is that they are increasingly disrespectful to one another, to the point that a serious student has more trouble coping with the behavior of his or her fellow students than learning the material.

In classrooms where the professor is not secure in his or her authority, all around the serious students are others treating the place like a cafeteria: eating and crinkling wrappers (and even belching audibly, convinced that is funny). Some students put their feet up on the chairs and desks, as if they were lounging in a dorm room, even as muddy slush dislodges from their boots. Others come to class dressed in a slovenly or indiscreet manner. They wear hats to conceal that they have not washed that day. In larger lectures, you might see students playing video games or checking e-mail on their laptop computers, or sending messages on cell phones.

I could share dozens of stories on this stuff, and at some point I will, but right now I have to get ready for my 7:30am lecture. I'll be back online this afternoon.

Fanatical Islam's Tightening Grip in Britain

This essay probably won't be the most heartwarming bedtime reading, but Francesca Segal's essay on growing anti-Semitism in Britain is vital reading:

I am a secular, liberal, identifying British Jew. My parents would have taken great pleasure if my acting talents had landed me a starring role in the primary school nativity play; on Christmas Day, we gather at home eating smoked salmon bagels and mince pies. There is no conflict whatsoever between my religion and nationality. On the contrary, they have always supported and echoed one another in terms of the values and moral structure they promote. Judaism has taught me to value liberalism, education, tolerance, family and charity. All Jewish religious services and celebrations include a heartfelt toast to the Queen, because Jews in this country have felt safe, well-assimilated and, most of all, grateful.

In August 2001, I turned 21 and my parents gave me a Star of David necklace. Then a month later, the world changed and my mother, with remarkable foresight, began her campaign to rescind the gift, begging me to take it off because she was frightened it would make me a target in the wake of mounting evidence that fanatical Islamism was tightening its grip on the country. My argument was always the same - when I am no longer safe being identifiably Jewish on the tube, I don't want to live in England.

Now it's happening and I am devastated. It was bluster. I am resolutely, irreducibly British. I love Marmite and Labradors and Sunday lunch. If you step on my foot, I will reflexively apologise. New York, where I will go if I have to leave the UK, does not feel like home for me nor, I suspect, could it ever. But as the British establishment sides with the appeasing of Islamism at home and abroad and as the word Zionism is increasingly bastardised, hijacked by a new definition comprising traditional antisemitic libels and demonising conspiracy theories, and as the liberal media and campaigning groups single out Israel disproportionately among all other countries for criticism, perpetuating the myth that Israel is responsible for mushrooming anti-western sentiment, I feel increasingly that I cannot stay.

There's more at the link.

Also, don't miss Melanie Phillips' latest post as well, "Peace and Hate," on the anti-Israel demonstrations in London.

Today's "Antiwar" Movement

Some folks may have noticed amid all the protests against Israel in Gaza is that the main sponsor of the demonstrations in the U.S. is the ANSWER coalition. Saturday's pro-Palestinian demonstration in Westwood, for example, was sponsored by "the Free Palestine Alliance and Answer L.A.", according to this report in the Los Angeles Times.

A Times photo of yesterday's demonstration depicts protesters holding signs sponsored by CAIR, the country's top Islamic lobbying group and "front organization for Hamas."

I'm one of those who view the "peace" protests with a wide angle.

A look at the protesters at these demonstrations indicates it's never just about one isolated injustice, military campaign, or alleged gay rights abuse. We routinely see any and all protests ultimately engagint the secular left's most radical forces in their attempts to take down the entire system. Some folks on the Democratic-left, who might call themselves "liberals," minimize the neo-Stalinist totalitarianism in ANSWER's agenda. Folks who supported Barack Obama and the Democrats knowingly support the ANSWER agenda while simultaneously and hypocritically denouncing the actual demonstrators at the barricades as "fringe activists." Natually, for those who consider themselves respectably antiwar and pro-choice, while advocating "universal" healthcare, there couldn't possibly be any connection between their "progressive" agenda and the antiwar demonization parades taking place routinely across America's cities.

In any case, John Bruhns, a veteran anti-Iraq activist, calls baloney on the "peace" movement at the Philly Daily News:

I support people protesting what they think are injustices, but all issues aren't linked. It's not a good tactic to force people to stand under an umbrella of issues, all of which that they may not support.

By alienating the silent majority, the current anti-war movement has dealt itself a bad hand that essentially diminished its credibility.

In a democracy, strength is in numbers. This anti-establishment and absolutist view of the political process is likely to be the real cause of their implosion.

As someone who's been fighting for years for an end to the war in Iraq, I find this tragic because we need the voices of millions to put pressure on our elected officials to end the conflict and fix the many problems facing our country. But those voices have to be credible to be taken seriously, and circus acts never are.

What pains me the most about the self-destruction of the anti-war movement is the fact that the people behind it genuinely want an end to the war. They're not phony front groups or partisan hacks using the war as an advantage to promote their political party, in my mind a worse sin than dragging in all those irrelevant issues.

But the truth is that the "real" anti-war movement has become far too radical to be effective.

They've pushed themselves into a corner where there's no possibility of meeting an opposing side halfway. If they ever hope to regroup into a force capable of generating a strong political will, they'll need to accept that it's 2009, not 1969 - and be more tolerant of other opinions.

Readers can judge the degree of Bruhns' naïvety. It sounds quaint to hear someone announce - after eight years of the most bitter denunciations of the "evil BusHitler regime" - that the movement's gotten too "radical."

The angry activists we've seen in the latest wave of demonstrations against Proposition 8 and now Israel are not good people, frankly. Their agenda is revolutionary, plain and simple. Some of these forces are willing to cooperate with "bourgeoise" democratic-left parties and interest groups, but the most hardline factions allied around ANSWER actively support terrorist movements and armed resistance to American power, seen most recently in the vicious attacks on Jews at the antiwar rallies the past few weeks.

These people are the "nihilists" I routinely excoriate. The backlash I get on this blog from netroots nuts who call me a "fascist" or "wingnut" expresses solidarity with left-wing extremism. The most positive development I've seen in American politics since the election is Barack Obama's strong repudiation of the most radical street activists, their netroots allies, and their extremist policy agenda on such issues as gay marriage and torture-trials for Bush administration officials.

We'll likely see Obama burned in effigy as the new administration hews to a more traditional centrist orientation than the far left. But don't be surprised to see a few congressional Democrats manning the barricades.

*********

UPDATE: Zombietime has a new photo-journalism expose of San Francisco's Israel-Gaza protest from January 10th. Lots of pictures, but this passage reiterates my argument above (via Memeorandum):

Throughout the rally, there was a new name that cropped up all over: Oscar Grant. He was the unfortunate victim of a New Year's Day shooting by a local BART (subway system) policemen (which was either intentional or accidental, depending on whom you ask). Just a few days before this rally, there had been a protest against Oscar Grant's shooting in Oakland that had degenerated into a riot. That protest, unsurprisingly, had been co-organized by ANSWER as well. Almost overnight, Grant has become the new icon of the far left, the poster child for police brutality, and comparisons between Oakland and Palestine and Grant and the Palestinians were commonplace throughout this protest, which theoretically had nothing to do with Oscar Grant or his shooting. This sign was a prime example: "End Government Sponsored Murder in the Ghettos of Oakland and Palestine."

And the protesters have denounced Barack Obama:

Why? Because he's not left-wing enough! In particular, Obama's campaign appearance at a meeting of AIPAC (the pro-Israel lobbying group) infuriated many potential far-left voters who hoped that he would change U.S. policy and be pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel once elected.

On the Decision to Remain "Child Free"

Van Zan, one of my commenters, made an interesting observation yesterday about my repertoire of posts:

I like your posts when they are in common sense non-ideological mode - where everything is not somehow a Left-wing post-modernist plot of equivalence without moral clarity. Refreshing.

So, let me throw this out to readers: Does the passage below on child-bearing and family values raise questions of common sense or postmodernism (or something else)?

My understanding of reproduction is that it is the basis of the institutions of marriage and family, and those two provide the moorings to the structure of gender and sexual oppression. Family is the social institution that ensures unpaid reproductive and domestic labour, and is concerned with initiating a new generation into the gendered (as I analyzed here) and classed social set-up. Not only that, families prevent money the flow of money from the rich to the poor: wealth accumulates in a few hands to be squandered on and bequeathed to the next generation, and that makes families as economic units selfishly pursue their own interests and become especially prone to consumerism.

So it makes sense to say that if the world has to change, reproduction has to go. Of course there is an ecological responsibility to reduce the human population, or even end it , and a lot was said about that on the blogosphere recently (here, and here), but an ecological consciousness is not how I came to my decision to remain child-free.
Because reproduction is seen as a psychological need, even a biological impulse, that would supposedly override any rational concerns arising out of a sense of responsibility, ecological or otherwise, I would like to propose emotional conditioning to counter such a need or impulse to reproduce. Using my own life as a case study, I conclude that I came to a resolve not to reproduce through largely unconscious emotional reactions . I like children, but every time I fantasized of having one, I felt pangs of guilt over how for this 'impulse' of mine, someone else would have to put their body on the line.

Cassy Fiano has this (via Memeorandum):

Modern feminism is no longer about equality or letting women choose their own paths; rather, modern feminism is a hate group that looks at all men as potential rapists and abusers, sees a traditional nuclear family as dangerous, wants to make stay-at-home mothers a permanent thing of the past, and wants to force all women to make the lifestyle choices they dictate they should have.

Hopes for Bush Prosecutions Fade, Left Crestfallen

In his interview this morning at "This Week," Barack Obama signaled the supreme unlikelihood of war crimes prosecutions against top Bush administration officials. I'm making the rounds of all of the commentary and we see hand-waving at Democratic impropriety, with lamentations of anticipated GOP stonewalling, and harrumphing disgust that Republicans have issues with the shameful terror-enabler and attorney general-nominee Eric Holder (and that's not mentioning Glenn Greenwald, who's always the worst of the worst).

I've hammered Barack Obama almost a year, but he'll do the country a huge favor if he continues to ignore the unhinged fringe of the Democratic Party (folks who want justice not so much as revenge). In any case, the most pithily insightful thing I've read on this is from Charles Fried, who prefaces his argument against torture trials as such:

If you cannot see the difference between Hitler and Dick Cheney, between Stalin and Donald Rumsfeld, between Mao and Alberto Gonzales, there may be no point in our talking.

Not much to add there, except, "BAM!", to borrow from a well-known culinary expert.

Self-Preservation on Airlines and Elevators

I took my oldest son to the movie last night. We saw "Defiance," which is a phenomenal picture, and I'll have more about it in a later post.

What I want to talk about here Brian's post at Incertus, "On Flying While Arab," where he denounces racial profiling against ethinic minorities in airline safety as "racist":

Patrick Smith, who writes "Ask the Pilot" for Salon, spent the second half of his column today talking about how some American travelers are a bit too uptight when it comes to reacting to people of a particular ethnicity on airplanes.

He calls them irrational and foolish. I call them racist. And part of the reason it's a problem is because passengers get their irrational feelings reinforced by those in power. Profiling adds to the problem, because it makes the ignorant feel justified in suspecting a group of people based on nothing more than their physical appearance.

I don't really like Brian, from what I see in his essays. He embodies all that is wrong with today's brainless, politically-correct neo-Stalinism on the "progressive" left. In reading this blog, I've yet to see a post that breaks from the orthodoxy of the angry demonic partisanship of the netroots.

Now, my son and I drove to Los Angeles to see the film, which is playing exclusively at The Grove until general realease next week. We hung out at Barnes and Noble after the film was over, and headed for home around 11:00pm. The Grove is a cool Westside shopping mall with an old-town theme. We were especially impressed by the trolley cars and the outside dining by the lake and fountain. It's a country feel, amazingly, just South of Beverly Boulevard. Parking at the complex is facilitated by a huge parking structure, and as usual, we wound up parking near the top, on the 7th level. The night view over West L.A. and the Hollywood Hills was spectacular.

Anyway, as we were leaving, approaching the elevator to take us back up to the top of the structure, I noticed three black youths with heavy athletic jackets, loose jeans, and basketball shoes. I realized right then, before my son pushed the button to call the elevator car, that we'd be riding up with these guys in close proximity. I looked more carefully at them. The guys were playing with each other, having fun. There didn't seem to be an "alpha" leader of the three, and the shorter of the three friends jumped on his buddy's back and playfully bopped him on the head. I didn't notice any of sign of that big, phat urban swagger-stroll, which is inherently menacing, and it's a walk I see all too often in the classroom halls of my college. The guys weren't paying any attention to us, and I held the door open for them as we all hopped on the elevator. Another gentleman hurried to get on, and he pressed level 8 on the control panel, so I knew he'd be riding all the way to the top.

Now readers, am I racist for checking my surroundings and sizing up the safety situation for myself and my son? We rode the elevator up without incident. It was a non-event, no more significant than if a petite elderly Jewish couple had ridden up with us (keep in mind I chatted with just such a couple while waiting in line before we entered the movie house to watch the film, so the example is simply one that comes to me after seeing a movie about WWII Jewish partisans). But let's be honest? How many others out there would have waited for another elevater car? Young black male youths out for some fun at the mall on a Saturday night right? Or, gang-bangers strolling their turf while packing metal underneath their Starter jackets, or whatever other urban gear is the latest status symbol among inner-city coolsters?

Am I then "too uptight"? Well, before the PC troll police attack me for racial insensitivity, remember what Jesse Jackson, a paragon of racial sensitivity, said in 1993:

There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery - then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.

My sense is that self-preservation trumps political correctness, and I think most people, culturally-aware sensitive people, would make the exact same calculations I made last night 50 miles from home, at an unfamiliar shopping center, in an unfamiliar neighborhood, on L.A.'s Westside.

But back to Brian and Arabian airline travelers: Are Americans justified in their concerns and attendent ethnic-profiling of Middle Eastern passengers on commercial airliners? Considering that almost all airline hijacking in the last 35 years (not to mention our most recent terrorist suicide attacks on 9/11) have been staged by young Middle Eastern terrorists, who can you blame? Brian at Incertus blames the Bush adminstration's fearmonger, where ...

... our government, using the power of the TSA, has ingrained in a lot of people [an irrational fear of ethnic difference], which is that we should be more suspicious of brown people with unfamiliar names and accents who want to get on planes.

Actually, it's not irrational at all for people to worry about those who are statistically most likely to do them harm, whether this be young black youths on a cloistered elevator ride at an urban parking garage or Muslims on a post-9/11 commercial flight.

But don't mind me, I'm trying not to inflame anyone's racial sensibilities.

Movies, Moral Clarity, and the Reproduction of Culture

"Not everything has to be a judgment through the prism of 'moral equivalence'."

That's Wordsmith, at my post yesterday, differing with my take on Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima."

Actually, he's right: We don't have to look at everything through a lense of morality, but since the media, Hollywood, and the global film industry will do it for us anyway, it pays to be on guard against the pernicious influence of mass media relativism - doubly so considering the powerful impact movies have on the popular imagination of our younger generations.

With that, I think folks need to read Bill Whittle's essay on Hollywood's reproduction of political culture, "The Workshops of Identity." It's a lengthy piece, but brilliantly explosive in its blatant and triumphant exaltation of American cultural and material power, and of our (providential) exceptionalism. It's also a reminder of our responsibility as a nation not to discard that inheritance:

There was a time when America broadcast its virtues to the world. Films like It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, even Star Wars and Spider-man, were films about common, decent people – Americans, obviously, for we all know that even Luke Skywalker was an Iowa farm boy – who find themselves in dangerous and evil places and whose fundamental decency corrected this wrong in the world and restored a sense of hope and optimism, a sense that we are masters of our own destiny. It is an idea so powerful that even French intellectuals, who seemed then and seem today to be incapable of a single positive or upbeat thought, could watch in wonder and contempt as legions of their countrymen flocked to see them.

Those days have gone. No longer does Hollywood broadcast America’s mythic virtues to the world. No, the flow is reversed now. Now the great creative driving force of Hollywood is to present to America the anti-American hatred of the intellectuals watching in impotent fury out in the rest of the world,

Of the six or seven war movies made during the last few years, all – save one – were spectacular failures. Many were the reasons given for this, but perhaps, someday, while sitting in a hammock in the Cayman Islands, even a studio executive might be just intellectually aware enough to catch a flash of what is obvious to a pharmacist in Des Moines: that maybe, just perhaps, these films failed not because of war weariness or denial or rank stupidity on the part of the American people, but rather – are you sitting down? – that most of the country, unlike Hollywood, has sons and daughters and fathers and brothers in the military and know for first-hand fact that they are not rapists or murderers, hicks, dullards, losers, or broken and victimized children but rather the bravest, the most capable, the most decent and honorable and just plain competent people we have.

And perhaps, just perhaps, it might enter that navel-gazing, self-centered, dim little brain to reflect that the one war movie that did out-of-the-park business was the one that showed the Marines as the good guys, winning on the battlefield, defending their people and their culture against long odds and full of the heroism and sacrifice that used to be so commonplace in this city… even if the Marines in question wore loincloths and funny helmets and advanced with spears and round shields.

If America simply led the world military to the degree that it does today, well, that would simply be historical. That it should have both economic and military might, and use them so much more often for good than for ill, would unique and awe-inspiring. That it could couple military and economic strength with such leadership in science and medicine is simply unheard of in the annals of history, and for it to be the military, economic, scientific and cultural beacon that is is not only unheard of, it simply almost defies imagining – would, in fact, defy imagining to anyone who had not grown up in it, as we have, and seen it with their own eyes.

I have said all of that simply to say this: I know my people and I study our history. The single thing that makes America so exceptional is the belief of its people in American exceptionalism. It is a simple cause and effect relationship, easy to understand from using your own common sense and the examples in your own life. The confident and the bold do bold and confident things. The shameful and self-loathing? Not so much. And Hollywood as it exists today is using all of its vast talent to turn us from the former into the latter.

America is not just a cauldron, but a reactor. From all over the earth, men and women have risked their lives to immerse themselves in this great experiment in freedom and individuality, and the results, by any measure, have produced more goodness, more security, more prosperity and more raw happiness than society or combination of societies in history.

Stars, like our sun, are reactors too: the tremendous, monumental energies and pressures they generate would blow them to pieces in a millisecond, but for one thing… the immense gravity that holds these fiery atoms together and strikes the balance of force and pressure that creates all the light and life in the universe.

The American reactor of individuality and freedom of expression would also fly apart too, but for one thing: the deep love of country that has bound it together and liberated the best of the human spirit. Destroy that love of country and the idea of America – for that is what she is, in the end… simply an idea of freedom and the pursuit of happiness – eliminate that binding love and the reactor will explode. And when it does, there will be no more light – no more medicine, no more art and poetry, no more iPhones and MRI scanners and jet travel, no more Fifth and First Amendment rights, no more security and peace… in fact, no more hot running water.

Readers should absorb the whole thing, here.

This is probably the best essay I've read on American exceptionalism and the primacy of morality in culture. And in reading this, readers can see why I take issue with Tim, my commenter at the post, who says:

Donald: I believe, truly, that there is room for war films that are both triumphant and morally ambiguous. You're sounding a bit grandpa-ish here. By the way, what's wrong with showing something from another perspective? Isn't that one of the goals of art?

Bill Whittle's essay above provides the answers for Tim that in my sense shouldn't be so elusive.

Newshoggers and the Neo-Totalitarian Left

It's not suprising anymore that you'd get quotes like this from Cernig at Newshoggers:

It seems obvious that this war in a fishbowl, where civilians have nowhere to run to by Israeli design and so Israel can continue to allege that Hamas is using them as "human shields" instead of coming out into the field to fight fair and receive a proper ass-kicking, is entirely counterproductive to Israel's longterm aims if those aims are indeed to see an end to Palestinian extremism and terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

Read the whole post, which cites the extreme left-wing (and morally corrupt) LGM for support, and then ask yourself this: Did Israel's IDF and Mossad brainwash Nizar Rayyan's four wives and 11 children to pledge eternal death to the Hamas ringleader in the event of surgical strikes on his compound? As INN reports:

When Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan was assassinated in an IAF strike last week, his four wives and 11 of his children died with him. According to his surviving children, the death of the Rayyan family children was not an accident: Rayyan had trained his wives and children to die with him as "martyrs."

It's been a sickening couple of weeks with all the calls to put the Jews back in the ovens. At protests at home and abroad, anti-Semitic, anti-American nihilist extermination has again reared its head in a preview of the campaign of neo-totalitarianism we'd see if these folks seized total power across the globe, beginning with the destruction of Israel. The blogging contingents on the radical left - led by Cernig and Scott Lemiex, among many others - only serve to provide a web presence of ostensibly acceptable "progressive" thought, which is really the malevelent eruption of the kind of anti-rationalism that the U.S. defeated in World War II.

It's sad - almost tragic - that the left's contemporary discourse has turned authoritarian and reactionary, but this is the concatentation of ideological evil that the conservative forces of good, right, and tradition will face in the years ahead.

War Films Just Aren't the Same

I've been thinking about the Jews a lot lately, if folks hadn't noticed.

Not that much more than usual, really. It's just that unlike during the 2006 Mideast war, I don't recall the protests and recriminations against Israel being as, well, exterminationist. Protesters now yell "go back to the oven" at pro-Israel activists, and "Death to the Juice" banners are de rigeur on the leftists barricades. Perhaps we've reached some turning point in international postmodernism. European governments feel the heat from the pro-Palestinian street. The continent's diplomacy is ineffective in the face of a pro-Muslim electoral backlash. Politically correct norms push for "tolerance" while newer Islamist communities reject assimilitation in favor of jihad. Perhaps the end of the Bush administration has empowered the forces of global darkness. Barack Obama inspires hope that the White House won't take sides with Jerusalem.

I'm not sure, but I'm pondering all of this.

I've also been in the mood for movies lately, and I was hoping to see "Defiance" today, but's it's showing in limited release and I would've needed to drive to Los Angeles to see it. I decided to see "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" instead (watch the trailer here below).

This morning's Los Angeles Times featured an interesting piece on the current wave of postmodern WWII filmography. Gone is the moral surety of "Greatest Generation" films like Saving Private Ryan" (my favorite flick), not to mention the real WWII-era films, starting back even before the war began. In the new genre of "morally ambiguous" war movies, American goodness takes a backseat to the "complextity" of the wartime experience. I find this as just another facet of the increasing postmodern sensibility that avoids grand triumphalism.

I was already thinking about what the movies meant for me as a kid on Saturday afternoons when I got to this passage:

Hollywood started making World War II movies before America even entered the war. Director John Ford enlisted his "Stagecoach" star John Wayne for the cargo-ship drama "The Long Voyage Home," and then Ford himself enlisted in the U.S. Navy, making wartime documentaries. Bob Hope got "Caught in the Draft" and "Wizard of Oz" producer Meryn LeRoy remade "Waterloo Bridge." And once America entered the war, Hollywood ramped up production, making dozens of dramas, action movies and flag-waving patriotic pieces that encompassed the events occurring in both the Pacific and European battlegrounds. Even Bugs Bunny enlisted for the cause.

"If you were growing up then, you couldn't avoid those movies," Clint Eastwood said in an interview in 2006 while promoting his own companion World War II films, "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima." Early in his career, Eastwood starred in two Good War movies of his own, "Kelly's Heroes" and "Where Eagles Dare," the latter an action flick that director Robert Zemeckis remembers as "the one where Clint Eastwood kills more guys than anybody else in movie history."

"That's the way it was with war movies then," Eastwood says. "In some respects, they were an extension of the games boys would play in their backyards when they were kids."

That's how I used to play (green plastic soldiers in the dirt, Germans always the "enemy"). I love Clint Eastwood, too; but I didn't like either "Flags of our Fathers" or "Letters from Iwo Jima," especially the latter, where the film was way too quick to humanize the Japanese and to paint the Americans as war criminals.

Anyway, perhaps there's a cyclical nature to war-filmaking. As for the Holocaust movies, the Times piece says they've reached something of a dead end, although "Defiance" looks to be in the heroic mold of the old-time cinematic favorites.

Oh, and "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas"? Maybe I shouldn't have read Manohla Dargis' review in advance, where she suggests we see "the Holocaust trivialized, glossed over, kitsched up, commercially exploited and hijacked for a tragedy about a Nazi family."

The Problem of Ann Coulter

I have criticized Ann Coulter at this blog, in no uncertain terms. But she looks fabulous in the video available at Tigerhawk, where she is interviewed on the CBS morning show with Harry Smith:

Watch CBS Videos Online

Harry actually gets to the core of the problem of categorizing Ann Coulter: Is she a satirist, pundit, public intellectual, or comedian? Ann neither writes nor says anything more extreme or offensive than many a left-wing comedian, and she is very often as funny. Her problem - apart from the rank double standard that the press applies to the controversy in her humor compared to, say, Bill Maher, Al Franken, or Michael Moore - is that she wades into serious territory more often than most humorists and often within the same work. To some that makes Ann an "irresponsible" pundit, not a humorist, and it is that categorical confusion that drives the chatterers crazy.

Yes, she does drive the "chatterers" crazy. For example, the nihilist Newshoggers crew in their recent post, "Ann Coulter is Just William Ayers in 6" Heels."

Yeah. Right.

Who Cares About the Palestinians?

Dr. Sanity has emerged from her late-year blogging sabbatical and is already tearing up the web.

Here's this from her post (where she draws on some earlier blogging), "Who Gives a Flying Falafel About the Palestinians?":

If only the world would ignore their continual whining and perpetual victimhood; and appreciate the con game the Palestinians have been playing for decades. If only the world would call them to account for undermining every peace process; breaking every truce. If only the world would focus on the murderous rage and suicidal anger the Palestinians project; instead of focusing on and blaming the objects of that projection.

When I look at the Palestinian situation, I see a bottomless cesspool of swirling self-destructive rationalizations. How many times will Israel have to make honest concessions and take the first step toward peace? How many times will Israelis have to demonstrate their goodwill and willingness to live in peace with these maniacs? How many truces, treaties, aggreements, must be broken - before the world sees the Palestinians for the cheap con artists they are?

And more (with the current outbreak of conflict as context) ...

The Palestinians don't want a state. They just want to live in hate. Like many psychopaths and substance abusers given a "second chance" (and "third" and "fourth" etc. etc.) to turn their lives around by the court, the Palestinian leadership has cynically used numerous opportunities to act out the essential deadness within their souls. At the present time, their national mental state - paranoia, psychotic delusions, suicidal and homicidal behavior; unrepentant aggression and hatred - is unlikely to result in a good prognosis for the future of the Palestinians.

And it doesn't take a psychiatrist to come to that conclusion ....

I don't give a falafel about the Palestinians until or unless they are willing to renounce their hate and violence and stop being the left's favorite victims.

Dr. Sanity links to John Derbyshire, "Why Don’t I Care About the Palestinians?"

All good stuff, and just what we need as we continue to be literally shocked by the campaign of recrimination worldwide against Israel's exercise of the right to self-defense.

Rahm the Knife

After reading the news on Howard Dean's exile to Samoa during this week's DNC power hand-off, and Gawker's piece, "Rahm Emanuel Already Knifing Enemies ," I thought I'd leave readers with a musical interlude while I go out for some fresh air.

Please enjoy Bobby Darin's, "Mack the Knife," from 1959:

Here's some improvised lyrics:

Now, d'ja hear 'bout Howie Dean? He disappeared, babe
After drawin' out all that hard-earned cash
And now Ole Rahm spends just like a sailor
Could it be our Chief's done somethin' rash?

I'll have more later ...

Shabbat Shalom and Come Home Safely

Here's the latest post from Israeli Soldier's Mom (Paula in Israel):

I asked Elie to please try to call me before the Sabbath. He said he would try. Shabbat begins in just over 30 minutes and he still hasn't called. I know I should try to call him but I had an idea. I took my phone and gave it to each person in the house and asked them to send Elie a message. I don't know when he'll open his phone next, but when he does, he will be flooded with 7 messages wishing him, in English or Hebrew, in short sentences or long, a peaceful Sabbath.

"from your cute brother, Davidi," my youngest son wrote.

"Shabbat Shalom from Shmulik," my middle son wrote.

"Shabbat shalom and come home safely," my son-in-law wrote.

My older daughter is busy typing him a message now; next my younger daughter will send one as well. My husband is sending it from his phone and then I'll send one.

Shabbat shalom, by beautiful soldier. I am so proud of you. You are doing what is right and honorable and people all over the world are praying for you. There are those who send words filled with hatred and anger. They are nothing against us because we know a simple truth. If Hamas didn't fire rockets into Israel, we would not now be attacking Gaza.

Paula has been getting nasty anonymous comments, really nasty, as can be expected by those who stand up for right and good. She has a post on this, "Comments on Comments." If you get the chance, stop by and leave a nice thank you for Paula, and please remind her that she is in your prayers.

Thinking About Proportionality

Michael Walzer, who is one of our greatest current thinkers on just war theory, faults the news media, political commentators, and the peace protest racket for abusing the concept of "proportionality" in war. The notion is used far more frequently in favor of the use of excessive force, not as a criticism againt it. Proportionality is used correctly when posed as acceptable levels of civilian deaths in relation to the war's aim: "How many civilian deaths are "not disproportionate to" the value of defeating the Nazis?"

Walzer raises serious questions for current critics of Israel, and this one is particularly good:

Is the attacking army acting in concrete ways to minimize the risks they impose on civilians? Are they taking risks themselves for that purpose? Armies choose tactics that are more or less protective of the civilian population, and we judge them by their choices. I haven't heard this question asked about the Gaza war by commentators and critics in the Western media; it is a hard question, since any answer would have to take into account the tactical choices of Hamas.

We haven't heard this question by critics of Israel because Hamas wouldn't pass the test of fighting a legal war respective of civilian life.

Obama Risks Slide to Protectionism

There are few who know more about international trade policy than Jagdish Bhagwati. The Columbia University economist warns that Barack Obama risks caving into demands on the political left for the repudiation of America's historic commitment to free trade:

In the Financial Times, I argued that, unlike with Hillary Clinton, there were several reasons why one could be optimistic that Barack Obama would follow a pro-trade policy despite “prudential” protectionist talk on the primaries circuit (“Obama’s free-trade credentials top Clinton’s”, March 3 2008). But the US president-elect’s eloquent silence on trade issues – and his failure to balance his protectionist appointments with powerful trade proponents – require that we abandon these illusions and sound an alarm.

Consider Mr Obama’s support for the multilateral trading system. It must be admitted that the Doha round is on hold and Mr Obama could not move it forward even if he so desired. A principal problem is that its completion turns critically on the US making further reductions in its distorting agricultural subsidies. But the issue has become even more difficult with the collapse of commodity prices and hence increases in support payments. Besides, history shows that the freeing of trade is nearly impossible to achieve in times of macroeconomic crisis.

But Mr Obama (unlike Gordon Brown) missed the opportunity, provided by the Group of 20’s affirmation of trade’s importance, to affirm that he attaches the highest priority to closing the Doha round and will work on this urgent task throughout his first year.

More important, Mr Obama has missed the bus on preventing a slide back into protectionism. His pronouncements on the car bail-out disregard the lessons of the early 1930s when the Smoot-Hawley tariff was signed into law and a competitive raising of tariff barriers ensued. We learnt then that tariffs and trade restrictions could indeed increase our national income by diverting a given amount of insufficient world demand to our markets. But then others could do the same to divert our demand to their goods, so that the result was reduced trade and deepened depression. Far better to keep markets open and increase aggregate world demand. So, the architects of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (merged in 1995 into the World Trade Organisation) built into it institutionalised obstacles to an outbreak of mutually harmful trade policies.

But what trade barriers did after 1930 can be done also by subsidies. So we now have strict rules on subsidies as well. Under a 1995 WTO agreement, export subsidies and “local content” requirements are prohibited as directly damaging to trade and all other subsidies that are specific to companies or industries are open to complaint; and this applies even when they are claimed to be environmentally friendly.

Read the whole thing. Obama's cabinet appointments are less encouraging for free trade than meets the eye.

Peace Activists Ally with Hamas Against Israel

David Harsanyi has a great piece up at the Denver Post, "Death to all Juice":

In our nation, even twisted extremists are welcome to express their opinions.

Take, for instance, the young Muslim woman in Florida who used her constitutional right to tell Jews to "go back to the oven!" last week. Or the more befuddled protester in New York who brandished a sign that read, "Death to all Juice." (And I thought we Jews ran the country. Clearly, someone is sleeping on the job.)

These rare but revolting displays of hate do offer the "Juice" a valuable reminder that a secure Jewish state in Israel is a historic imperative.

Nevertheless, it is distressing to hear the large number of supposedly peace- loving critics of Israel in essence defend Hamas, one of the most virulently un-intellectual, illiberal, bellicose, misogynistic, hateful and violent brands of religious fanaticism on Earth.

That's no easy trick, mind you. After all, the magnificently overused "cycle of violence" — a platitude that shrewdly spreads blame equally among the culpable and innocent — has thankfully cliched itself to death. So now, detractors have turned to a feeble argument that claims Israel is guilty of failing to deploy a "proportional" response against Hamas.

It is said that every story has two sides. In this tale, one group has a nihilistic interest in placing Jews in ovens (though Hamas, without Iran, lacks the technological capacity to construct a match, much less an oven) and the other side has a stubborn habit of postponing this fate.

For Israel, there is no choice. There is no political solution. No happy ending. The present circumstance in Gaza refutes the Left's quixotic notion that antagonists can just, you know, hug it out for peace. It also counters the neoconservative idea that democracy will spread among people who place no value in it.

Because Gaza is free. Obviously the Palestinians cannot be placated with an independent state — a gift they never had until Israel handed them Gaza with nary a condition. But this is not a 3,000-year-old war steeped in ancient history, despite widespread perceptions. This was a 20th century battle between Jewish and Arab nationalists. It has turned into a more insidious 21st century war with Islamic fundamentalism.

Hamas will not be romanced by the idea of "building bridges" with Israel. There are not enough conference rooms in Oslo or Davos to persuade Hamas to even recognize the existence of a Jewish state. And Hamas is uninterested in ceasefires, except when it is in need of re-loading rocket launchers — supplied by Iran.

When asked if he could ever imagine a long-term ceasefire with Israel, Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan responded: "The only reason to have a hudna [cease-fire] is to prepare yourself for the final battle."

There's more at the link.

A special thank you to Harsanyi, who sends me his columns by e-mail.

Can Israel Survive Gaza?

Can Israel survive its assault on Gaza?

Tim McGirk provides some answers:

Israel's Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, has promised a "war to the bitter end." But after 60 years of struggle to defend their existence against foreign threats and enemies within, many Israelis may be wondering, Where does that end lie? The threat posed by Hamas is only the most immediate of the many interlocking challenges facing Israel, some of which cast dark shadows over the long-term viability of a democratic Jewish state. The offensive in Gaza may degrade Hamas' ability to menace southern Israel with rocket fire, but, as with Israel's 2006 war against Hizballah, the application of force won't extinguish the militants' ideological fervor. The anti-Israeli anger swelling in the region has made it more difficult for Arab governments to join Israel in its efforts to deal with Iran, the patron of both Hamas and Hizballah and a state whose leaders have sworn to eliminate Israel and appear determined to acquire nuclear weapons.

Just as ominous for many Israelis is a ticking demographic time bomb: the likelihood that Arabs will vastly outnumber Jews in the land stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean is a catastrophic prospect for a nation that defines itself by its faith. At some point, Israelis will have to choose between living with an independent Palestinian state or watching Jews become a minority in their own land.

As much as any other nation on earth, Israel is based on a dream: the aspiration to establish a home for the Jews in the birthplace of their ancestors. To a remarkable extent, that dream has been fulfilled, as Israel has grown into the most modern and democratic country in the Middle East and a dependable American ally. A strong, confident Israel is in America's interest, but so is one that can find peace with its neighbors, cooperate with the Arabs to contain common threats and, most important, reach a just and lasting solution with the Palestinians. But accomplishing all that will require Israel and its defenders to confront excruciating dilemmas: How do you make peace with those who don't seem to want it? How do you win a war when the other side believes time is on its side? And what would true security, in a hostile neighborhood populated with enemies, actually look like? As is always true in the Middle East, there are no easy answers. But it's never been more vital that Israel start looking for them.

This reminds me of something I read a couple of years ago, from Hillel Halkin, "After Zionism: Reflections on Israel and the Diaspora."

I still remain convinced: there is no better alternative for a modern Jew than Israel. And as a modern Jew, only Israel strikes me as quite real. In this respect, Zionism has not only given Jews a home, it has made of them an honest people.

Halkin's fear is the Jewish secularism in the United States is the biggest threat to the survival of Israel.

But see Halkin's commentary on Israel and Gaza, as well, which was written a little over a year ago, around the start of the cease-fire that just collapsed, "Stopping The Kassams."

(Related: Strategically, Israel's survival is a lot tougher when American journalists and bloggers constantly champion Israel's Arab and Persian enemies and their Islamist propaganda outlets, as does William Kern at the Moderate Voice, "Gaza: Pride of the Arabs - Le Quotidien d’Oran of Algeria")

Barack is No George W. Obama

Christian Brose offers a provocative take on the coming Barack Obama administration's foreign policy, "The Making of George W. Obama." Unlike the most dire predictions on Obama's likely approach to the world, Brose argues, the next president will in fact pursue a foreign policy of continuity from the Bush years of 2001-2009:

The 2008 U.S. election was all about change. But that’s not what we’re going to get on foreign policy, says the longtime speechwriter for Condoleezza Rice. Instead of a radical departure from Bush, we’re likely to end up with a lot more of the same. And that may be just what we need.

I'm a little skeptical of this argument, although we do need "more of the same," at least in terms of moral clarity. I've been gearing up for a longer essay on Brose's piece, but I'll hold off now that I've found this piece at the Guardian, "Obama Camp 'Prepared to Talk to Hamas'":

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush's ­doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush ­presidency's ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 ­Congress passed a law banning U.S. financial aid to the group.

The Guardian has spoken to three ­people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start ­contacts through Hamas and the U.S. intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.

Readers might remember that Obama's on record, from the primaries, as endorsing diplomacy with Tehran "without preconditions." I'm sure Barack Hussein is likely to go just as easy with Gaza's diabolical terror-propagandists.

Remember, too, that my guest essayist Norm warned against such a turn, in "Obama Must Recognize Evil.

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

Jews Face World Double-Standard

Here's Rabbi Marvin Hier at the Wall Street Journal (via Memeorandum):

The world-wide protests against Israel's ground incursion into Gaza are so full of hatred that they leave me with the terrible feeling that these protests have little to do with the so-called disproportionality of the Israeli response to Hamas rockets, or the resulting civilian casualties.

My fear is that the rage we see in the protesters marching in the streets is far more profound and dangerous than we would like to believe. There are a great many people in the world who, even after Auschwitz, just can't bear the Jewish state having the same rights they so readily grant to other nations. These voices insist Israel must take risks they would never dare ask of any other nation-state - risks that threaten its very survival - because they don't believe Israel should exist in the first place.

The backlash against Israel has been intense even for me, and I write about this stuff all the time.

Fox News has reported that a demonstrator aligned with International ANSWER yelled "go back to the oven" at pro-Israel activists at a recent Fort Lauderdale protest, "calling for the counter-protesters to die in the manner that the Nazis used to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust."

Neo-Neocon has more on this, at the link.

Nate Silver: Not Enough Liberal Economists on WSJ Panel

Nate Silver, who was the break-out political analyst of 2008, questions the validity of the findings from the latest consensus-report from the Wall Street Journal's board of economists. It turns out the "worst" forecast from the 55-member board's report projected "only" a 2 percent decline of GDP in 2009.

Silver is quick with a methodogical explanation for this "counterintuitive" finding:

One can find room to criticize the composition of the Journal's panel: it probably does not contain enough liberal economists, and almost certainly does not contain enough what you might call nontraditional economists -- behaviorists or mathematicians or people that think, quote-unquote, "outside the box". Nevertheless, this represents quite a large difference of opinion with the Intrade forecast.

No, who would have believed it? Not enough liberals in the economics professoriate? And worse! Not enough "quants" thinking "outside of the box"! Geez, what's wrong with the American academy? Where's Paul Krugman when you need him?!!

Well, I guess we can add one more example to my paper, "'Depression Fetishism' All the Rage."

Nate Silver's on board the 1930s Depression Economics Express! More cowbell (infrastructure)!

Israeli Soldiers Don't Rape Arab Women, Sociologists Baffled

I googled to see if could find a pdf version of an "award-winning" research report that's discussed at Israel National News. Doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan argues that the absence of systemic rape by IDF soldiers is another way for the Israeli war machine to achieve its military goals by "dehumanizing" Arab women "in the soldiers' eyes." According to the article:

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences - just as organized military rape would have done.

Also:

The paper was published by the Hebrew University's Shaine Center, based on the recommendation of a Hebrew University professors' committee headed by Dr. Zali Gurevitch.

"I do not have the entire text in front of me," Gurevitch said, when contacted by Arutz-7, "and I don't think we can jump to conclusions based on partial sentences, but I can say the following: This was a very serious paper that asked two important questions: Is the relative lack of IDF rapes a noteworthy phenomenon, and if so, why is it that there are so few IDF rapes when in similar situations around the world, rape is much more common?"

I'd have to look at the research, but Dr. Gurevitch basically asserts that a comparative research design could unpack the causal relationships explaining the presence or absence of systematic military rape across national cases.

Of course, considering the postmodern absurdity of this research, we simply could use common sense like Maggie at Wake Up America:

The article says that the paper's author, Tal Nitzan, "did not consider Jewish tradition as an explanation, ... " Does this mean that no credence was given to the fact that the soldiers may have grown up in homes that gave them a moral compass? Scriptures that condemn it, ... a military that condemns it? That you may face court martial if you rape, ... the disgust of your family and friends, and worse?

Democratic Moral Cowardice on Israel-Gaza

David Frum praises Democratic Party strategist Robert Shrum for endorsing Israel's right to self-defense in the current conflict in the Middle East.

Frum then indicates that Shrum is an extreme outlier in the Democratic Party's ranks, where the great majority of Democratic partisans have recoild from moral condemnation of Hamas' diabolical campaign of destruction against the Jewish state:

Shrum represents an increasingly minority point of view within the Democratic Party. A Rasmussen poll conducted in the last week of 2008 found that while 62 percent of Republicans backed Israel’s action in Gaza, only 31 percent of Democrats did. Almost three-quarters of Republicans blamed Hamas for starting this war; only a minority of Democrats agreed. Republicans are 20 points more friendly toward Israel than Democrats. And while extreme hostility to Israel does not exist among Republicans, almost one in 10 Democrats describes Israel as an “enemy of the United States.”

This is the political environment in which Barack Obama will be forming policy toward the Jewish state. Friends of Israel should find this worrying to say the least.

Democratic revulsion at Israel’s Gaza operation has multiple roots.

First, Democrats are just generally less likely to support military actions by any nation, including the United States. A 2005 MIT poll found that only 57 percent of Democrats would support the use of American troops even to destroy a terrorist training camp. (Compared to 95 percent of Republicans.)

Second, Democrats hold an inexhaustible faith in the value of negotiation. Untroubled by Hamas’ character as a terrorist movement pledged to the total destruction of Israel and the murder of its population, 55 percent of Democrats believe that Israel should have tried to find a diplomatic solution to the Hamas rocket barrage.

Third, the more closely Americans follow the news, the more likely they are to support Israel. Yet more low-information voters are Democrats than Republicans.

Fourth, Democratic attitudes are poisoned by the influence of an anti-Zionist hard left, a vociferous faction whose ideology can bleed into outright anti-Semitism. The foreign policy page at the Barack Obama transition website, Change.gov, features many disturbing examples of this trend. There you will find questions and comments like the following:

“How might you propose to hold Israel accountable for their awful record of human rights abuses? My personal sense is that Israeli abuse of non-Jewish residents in Middle East is our #1 problem.”

“The root cause of the world's problems is the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the ongoing war crimes perpetrated by Israel.”

“The massacre of the Palestinian people by the excessive forces of Israeli military should be soundly condemned—why is Obama NOT taking a MORAL stand on this holocaust? Shocking!”

“What will you do to help end the illegal and immoral occupation of Palestine, to end the oppression of the Palestinian people by the genocidal government of Israel?

“How will President Obama uncouple the ‘Israeli Lobby’ from the US political process, to prevent its current undue influence over U.S. foreign and domestic policy?”

This last part about the attitudes of the "anti-Zionist hard-left" is really key. In fact, there's more fever swamp comments cited at the piece.

Frum suggests that Obama's key challenge on Middle East policy will be to "overcome the institutional flaws in his party."

Actually, Obama's so far doing a bit better than I expected, but if any policy issue helps to validate the "secret theory of progressivism," the new administration's approach to Israel will take the cake.

Charles Kesler on Samuel Huntington

Maggie's Farm posts (kind of foreboding) excerpts from an essay by Charles Kesler on Samuel Huntington:

Modern liberalism, beginning in the Progressive era, has done its best to strip natural rights and the Constitution out of the American creed. By emptying it of its proper moral content, thinkers and politicians like Woodrow Wilson prepared the creed to be filled by subsequent generations, who could pour their contemporary values into it and thus keep it in tune with the times. The "living constitution," as the new view of things came to be called, transformed the creed, once based on timeless or universal principles, into an evolving doctrine; turned it, in effect, into culture, which could be adjusted and reinterpreted in accordance with history's imperatives. Alternatively, one could say that 20th-century liberals turned their open-ended form of culturalism into a new American creed, the multicultural creed, which they have few scruples now about imposing on republican America, diversity be damned.

To his credit, Huntington abhors this development. Unfortunately, his Anglo-Protestant culturalism, like any merely cultural conservatism, is no match for its liberal opponents. He persists in thinking of liberals as devotees of the old American creed who push its universal principles too far, who rely on reason to the exclusion of a strong national culture. When they abjured individualism and natural rights decades ago, however, liberals broke with that creed, and did so proudly. When they abandoned nature as the ground of right, liberals broke as well with reason, understood as a natural capacity for seeking truth, in favor of reason as a servant of culture, history, fate, power, and finally nothingness. In short, Huntington fails to grasp that latter-day liberals attack American culture because they reject the American creed, around which that culture has formed and developed from the very beginning.

Read Kesler's, "The Crisis of American National Identity," here.

Evil Neocons and the Weblog Awards

I commented earlier on the curruption at the 2008 Weblog Awards. While being honored by peers is a worthy recognition, the politics of the whole thing is a bit unappealing.

Martin Kramer has a post on this, discussing how Professor Juan Cole alleged a neocon conspiracy to implement "regime change" on the Middle East category:

Juan Cole is running two campaigns on his blog. One is against Israel—business as usual for Cole. The other is promoting his blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards competition (Middle East category), where there are ten finalists (I am one).

Yesterday, Cole called on his readers to turn out and vote for him. His pitch? "The 'Middle East' category is dominated by Neocons. Where are Marc Lynch (Abu Aardvark), Helena Cobban, Angry Arab, Raed in the Middle, etc., etc. I think the initial nomination voting must have been orchestrated." In other words: a neocon conspiracy! It's even subverted the 2008 Weblog Awards!

So Cole, having raised the specter of the neocons, riled up his supporters, and his vote count rose considerably, putting him in the lead. But at that point, he must have realized that it was unseemly for him to have dismissed the procedures of an award he might even win. (Hey, with all those neocon blogs splitting the neocon vote, he could emerge on top! They've screwed up, like in Iraq!) No problem. Just cut out the offending passage, as though it never existed.

I'm a collector of Cole's retro-editing of blog posts. He'll write something erroneous or outrageous, and then excise it from the record, without so much as a strikeout. In one instance, he made a crude insinuation against me, then deleted it. In another, he wrote that 9/11 was "in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp," which he deleted when it turned out that, uh, Israel's Jenin operation took place seven months after 9/11. He even once explained his "policy" on retro-editing—and then deleted that.

Anyway, below is Cole's original blog post of yesterday, which I retrieved from the Google cache not long before it disappeared from there as well. The prospect that Cole might win this award, in the midst of his wildly biased and hate-filled blogging on Gaza, is one I find repulsive. That the award should go to someone who retro-doctors his blog is likewise repulsive. So I urge readers to vote in the Middle East category, inspired by the principle of ABC—Anything But Cole. Vote for my blog (bit of a long shot), or Michael Totten's (a fine blog, which won last year), or Israellycool (which isn't far behind Cole), or any other sane blog. And you can vote once every 24 hours through January 13. Match Cole's orchestration with your own. Click here to vote.

Question to readers: Should Kramer boycott Weblog Awards altogether, or is the counter-vote campaign the way to go?

American Power wasn't nominated, but there's always next year, and this stuff is important!

Facts on Teen Pregnancy

My commenter Tim is back, and he raised a ruckus yesterday about my post on teenage sexual abstinence.

Tim says: "Turns out Mississippi has the highest teen pregnancy rates, while New England has the lowest." He also argues that "the top ten states for teen pregnancies are all red states"; and he questions my response that minorities are more likely to become pregnant. Tim thus holds, oddly, that partisanship rather than income demographics is the key to understanding the issue.

Well it turns out that Robert Stacy McCain's written an entry on this, "Teen Pregnancy: Fact vs. Spin":

The Associated Press:

Mississippi now has the nation's highest teen birth rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title, a new federal report says ....

The three states have large proportions of black and Hispanic teenagers — groups that traditionally have higher birth rates, experts noted.

Indeed, and if you take a little time to examine the actual CDC report, what you find is that the birth rate (births per 1,000) for females 15-19 breaks down like this:

White.........26.6
Black..........63.7
Hispanic....83.0

Ergo, states where blacks and Hispanics constitute a large proportion of the 15-19 population will tend to have high rates of teen pregnancy. Furthermore, the category "Hispanic" encompasses many nationalities, with varying rates of teen pregnancy, so that for instance, those of Mexican origin have a teen birth rate of 92.9, while Puerto Ricans have a teen birth rate of 69.3.

There's more at the link.

My question to Tim: Does partisanship correlate with low intelligence?

Palestinian Propaganda

Here's an update to last night's post, " The Necessity of Peace," with a big thank you to Reliapundit at Astute Bloggers for his hard work and moral clarity.

Photo Caption (make believe...) at Flickr:

A picture shows the body of a Palestinian girl found in the rubble of her destroyed house following an Israeli air strike on a three-storey house belonging to a Hamas member in the eastern Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitun on January 6, 2009. About 30 people were inside the house when it was destroyed by the air raid, neighbors said. Israeli tanks firing cannons and machine guns and supported by helicopter gunships also moved into the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip before dawn, witnesses said.

See also, Lawhawk, "Palestinian Propaganda 101."