President George W. Bush: Farewell Address

Here's the video of President George Bush's farewell address to the nation:

See also the coverage at Memeorandum, including the New York Times', "A Somber Bush Says Farewell to the Nation."

Copies of the text are here and here:

The decades ahead will bring more hard choices for our country, and there are some guiding principles that should shape our course.

While our Nation is safer than it was seven years ago, the gravest threat to our people remains another terrorist attack. Our enemies are patient and determined to strike again. America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict. But we have been given solemn responsibilities, and we must meet them. We must resist complacency. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down our guard.

At the same time, we must continue to engage the world with confidence and clear purpose. In the face of threats from abroad, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning inward. But we must reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism. Retreating behind our borders would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad. If America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led.

As we address these challenges – and others we cannot foresee tonight – America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.

Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This Nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace.

Gay Activists Plan Obama Inaugural Celebrations

Fox News reports that homosexual activists are pulling out all the stops for inaugural-night parties on January 20:

Unprecedented inaugural celebrations for President-elect Barack Obama by gay activist groups, social organizations and ordinary citizens suggests many view his election as a signal of a forthcoming sea change for the gay rights movement in America.

Not surprisingly, the story indicates that these "gayla" party events may not be so family-friendly. According to Americans for Truth (cited in the Fox News article), the Doubletree Hotel Washington will host an inaugural weekend "pig sex" orgy to run concurrently with the "Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend," the latter being described as "an annual homosexual sadomasochistic celebration" at the Washington Plaza Hotel in D.C.

Some of the raunchy orgiastic activities planned are sexual escapades featuring "rimming stations" used to facilitate oral-anal sodomy in the hotel's business conference rooms (one man lies on the floor with his face pointing up, as seen in the photo above). A more explicit description of the gay orgy activities is found here, in an e-mail announcement of the sadistic event.

No doubt that "No on 8" backers and their "progressive" allies are jumping for joy at all of this gay rights "inclusion."

Meanwhile, the inaugural celebration for Barack Obama is expected to be the most expensive in history, at $150 million, which will put the costs of George W. Bush's second inauguration in the shade ($43 million). Note that Obama takes office amid the most serious downturn since the Great Depression, which raises questions of propriety amid hardship. Of course, we won't be seeing anti-inaugural protests amid the grand splurging, unlike in 2005, when the GOP administration was attacked for "inaugural excess."

It's all double-standards and "rimming-seats" for the Democrats, naturally. Who would want to spoil the progressive-left's rainbow celebrations?

Public Prefers Spending Over Tax Cuts, Poll Finds

From the Wall Street Journal, "Obama, Stimulus Proposals Enjoy Broad Backing in Poll":

Americans support the economic-stimulus plan being pushed by President-elect Barack Obama but worry the government will spend too much money and widen the budget deficit, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found.

Overall, the poll found strong public backing for the stimulus plan and its major planks, particularly proposals to spend more federal money to create jobs.

As Mr. Obama prepares to take office next week, he enjoys enormous good will and higher approval ratings than his predecessors enjoyed upon entering the White House.

The poll found that the handful of problems Mr. Obama's transition has encountered have had little, if any, effect on his standing with the public. And even before the Illinois Democrat is sworn in as the nation's first African-American president, the poll found a large increase in the number of Americans who view race relations positively.

The survey of 1,007 adults was conducted Jan. 9-12 and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

As a whole, the nation's mood remains glum, with three out of four people surveyed expecting the recession to persist for at least an additional year.

Asked about the economic-stimulus package, now estimated to cost $850 billion over two years, 43% of people surveyed called it a "good idea," while 27% said it is a "bad idea." The rest didn't have an opinion.

Even Republicans and independents think GOP lawmakers should work to move the legislation forward. Asked whether Republicans in Congress should do everything to stand firm for their party's principles and oppose the legislation, or look to compromise with the Obama administration, 68% of Republicans and independents chose compromise, with 20% picking standing firm.

By a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, people preferred government spending to create jobs over tax cuts to give Americans more money to spend. Large majorities endorsed many details in the plan, with 89% saying they like the idea of creating jobs through increasing production of renewable energy and making public buildings more energy efficient.

At the same time, the survey suggests many remain concerned about the potential impact on the government's budget. Sixty percent said they worry more that the government will spend too much money and worsen the deficit, while 33% said they worry more that the government will spend too little.

Read the whole thing, here.

Secular Progressivism in Comparative Perspective

Peter Berkowitz offers a useful analysis of secular progressive ideology in his new essay, "The European Left and Ours." It's an important discussion, especially since hardline American leftists routinely offer the European socialist states as models for the progressive revolution they advance in the American state and society:

The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States marks a dramatic victory for the progressive left in America and a resounding repudiation of George W. Bush’s presidency and the Republican-controlled Congress with which he governed for six years. Obama’s election also represents an historic moment for the United States.

Many have been celebrating throughout the nation, and for good reason, because America, by electing a black man to the highest office in the land, has taken another impressive stride to overcome the last, lingering legacies of slavery and Jim Crow. To be sure, it would have been better if more progressives had bothered to notice, let alone take pride in, how far their country had come when George W. Bush — white, southern, and conservative — named in his first term Colin Powell secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice national security advisor, and in his second term elevated Rice to secretary of state. But the stirring fact remains that Obama’s triumph crowns a half century of steady progress in fulfilling the Declaration of Independence’s grand promise of freedom and equality for all, and in realizing the Constitution’s aspiration to build a more perfect union through representative government. At the same time, Obama’s election reaffirms the reality, frequently denied or derided by progressive anti-American sentiment at home and abroad, that the United States is a land of golden opportunity.

But winning elections is one thing. Governing is another. One reason for apprehension about whether Obama and the congressional Democrats are prepared for the enormous power they will exercise is structural ....

The structural temptation for Obama and his party to take their principles to an extreme is especially worrisome given the propensity for extreme positions and principles that the left of late has shown ....

Perhaps encouragements to moderation will come from other quarters. With President Bush’s departure from the White House, Bush hatred, along with its many ugly symptoms, may subside. The constraints of office and the realities brought home by daily intelligence briefings on America’s enemies may effectively counsel caution and sobriety. And the centrist Democratic candidates who decisively contributed to victory in the 2006 congressional elections and who, with election 2008, now represent a conservative bloc within the Democratic Party, may exercise a restraining influence on the Obama administration.

Unfortunately, the likelihood is small that Obama will receive encouragement from the intellectual class to reach out to the elected representatives of the 46 percent of the country who, on November 4, voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin. Dominated by left-of-center partisans, the mainstream media in Election 2008 frequently abandoned its traditional watchdog function, ignoring, deflecting, or suppressing even reasonable criticism of Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, while pursuing and amplifying even trivial criticisms of McCain and Palin. Meanwhile, colleges and universities, also dominated by left-of-center partisans, remain bastions of intellectual conformism, stigmatizing, where they can’t formally punish, speech and speakers that depart from campus orthodoxy.

The left, though, displays other worrying signs beyond the media’s failure to objectively report the news and our universities’ failure to promote vigorous exploration of all sides of the moral and political challenges the nation confronts. Unfortunately, it is not rare these days for progressives to indulge in a mocking disdain for traditional religious faith and to blithely regard fellow citizens who hold opposing views about abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and same-sex marriage as ignoramuses unfit for civilized discourse. In addition, the left has shown an unwillingness to examine responsibly the tradeoffs between security and liberty the nation has made and will have to continue to make in the struggle against Islamic extremism and mega-terror. It has been all too ready to join forces with the vilifiers of Israel, as demonstrated by its enthusiasm for Stephen Walt’s and John Mearsheimer’s fact-challenged and poorly argued claims, according to which for decades “the Israel Lobby” has dictated American foreign policy in the Middle East while Cold War containment of the Soviet Union and maintenance of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf, apparently, had little or no impact on America’s conduct in the region. And it is disposed not merely to criticize the U.S. when the country is in the wrong, but to see the country as in the wrong grossly and constantly, and, from Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay abroad to race relations and immigration reform at home, it exhibits a penchant for enthusiastically trumpeting the most sensational accusations against America.

There's more at the link.

Roger Gardner: America Besieged

Roger Gardner is the publisher of Radarsite and an occasional commenter at this blog. He's been battling cancer and was originally told by doctors that he had little time left. It turns out his course of medical treatment has been successful beyond hope - with God's blessing no doubt - and Roger's been back to blogging a bit, about politics and the meaning of life. I wish him well in health and life, and he'll be in my prayers tonight.

Roger's got a post up today that's a lazer beam of moral clarity, and I'm pleased to share it with readers in light of the backlash we've seen here in the comments against some of my posts. Tim, Repsac3, and Truth 101 have formed something of a nihilist trio this past couple of days, and the comment threads have not been without fireworks of vituperation. I have recieved an e-mail from one reader who has observed all of this and has decided to stay on the sidelines. This reader repeatedly thanks me for my essays, and commends me for my patience in fending off the many brutal screeds that sometimes fill (pollute?) these threads.

In any case, Roger's essay today provides a perspective on things that's more powerful than I can offer. So please read and consider this excerpt from his post, "Chemo Thoughts: The End of My World?":

Earlier today a friend emailed me to ask how I was doing. I assume they were referring to my ongoing battle with leukemia. I answered that I was doing fine. I had determined early on when I got that first lethal prognosis that I was not going to use the pages of Radarsite for a continual updating on the morbid details of my chemotherapy. So I answered that I was doing fine. But, I wonder, how am I really doing? Am I really doing fine?

Nothing concentrates the mind like a death sentence. Especially one that is so close at hand and almost certain. Priorities are immediately questioned and reshuffled. What seemed of great import yesterday may have lost much or all of its weight today. The love and closeness of family and friends becomes paramount; whereas the opinions of strangers become less and less relevant. The often frenetic muddle of everyday life is quickly subsumed into the greater battle for life itself. There's only enough space left in your life for those things of real value, or perhaps for those values which are real. There's just not enough time left for empty rhetoric or endless gentlemanly debate. In whatever time is left you must embrace your family and your values and hold them dear ....

How do I feel? My friend asks. Here's how I really feel. From those very first days I have accepted my personal prognosis completely and without complaint. I am grateful for the endlessly fascinating life I have been allowed to live. But I have not yet accepted the dire fate that awaits my beloved country. I am filled with shame and disbelief at what we have become, what we are becoming, what we are giving up, what we have forgotten. My usually dependable inherent optimism has been all but eroded by the preposterous events of these last few years. That America I have so long loved and respected has been turned upside down. Those values that separated us from the rest of the world have either been ingloriously degraded or completely abandoned. We no longer know who we are or what we stand for. We allow others to define us, we allow our sworn enemies -- both within and without -- to determine our national agendas. We are in the fateful process of completely losing our national identity. And according to our recent elections, this makes half of our population happy. Half of our population considers our formerly-precious American identity to be the problem. America is what's wrong with this world. To fix the world we must therefore change what it means to be an American. Change we can believe in.

We are presently besieged by savage enemies. Islamists, Marxists, Anarchists, cruel dictators and criminal tyrants. We are besieged by alien cults of death who nurse apocalyptic visions of destruction. Everything that we hold dear is under attack and threatened. But the most dangerous and shameless enemy of all lives right here amongst us. Our very own treacherous patriots, who rush to give the keys to the kingdom to the barbarians at our gates. The idiots, the fools, the delusional liberals, and those elitist amoral progressives who honestly believe that by utterly destroying the fabric of this great nation they will somehow save it. They have traded our pride for guilt and our strength for safety. And I despise them for it. I despise them more than I despise our sworn enemies, because our sworn enemies do not disguise their motives under the cloak of patriotism.

And what of our innocent children? Our beloved grandchildren? What godless world have we bequeathed to them? What is our message to these innocents? There is no right or wrong. Everything is relative. All peoples and all belief systems are morally equal. There is no such thing as good or evil, just different points of view. War is morally wrong, no matter what its purpose. To defend yourself with violence is as unjustifiable as to attack one with violence.

How do I feel? I have been told that my life is coming to an end. So be it. I can deal with that. But can I deal with the prospect of my beloved country coming to an end? Is my beloved country eagerly embracing its own demise? Will our new America truly be willing to fight for its survival in this savage world? Or, as it seems to me now, have we chosen the ignoble road of appeasement and dishonor? Is there still hope for us?

Now, I can't add to much to Roger's elegy to traditionalism without dishonoring his words.

I will say that in my writing, when I characterize secular progressives as "nihilist," I think Roger's essay captures my meaning. As Merriam-Webster's dictionary indicates, nihilism is " a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths." Despite the protestations of the aforementioned commenters at this blog, Roger's "elitist amoral progressives" are one and the same with those who would deny "any objective ground of truth and especially moral truths."

Perhaps this will clarify some things, and thanks so much to Roger for offering his fine and meaningful musings on life, family, and the universal good.

Obama Was for Gay Marriage Before He was Against It

I've argued a couple of times that Barack Obama will capitulate in due time to the hard-left's demands for gay marriage rights. Obama's official "Change" website features the most comprehensive homosexual rights platform of any incoming presidential administration, and while Obama has argued against same-sex marriage while campaigning, by ideology and inclination he's favorably disposed to the gay marriage agenda.

It's no surprise, then, that the news this morning features a number of stories highlighting Obama's past endorsement of full-blown homosexual marriage rights:

In 1996, during his run for Illinois state Senate, Obama offered a progressive gay rights agenda, which is outlined in the memo above in a response to queries from the now-defunct newspaper, Outlines. The Windy City Times, the paper's successor, has the full story, "Obama Changed Views on Gay Marriage" (see also Ben Smith's report).

The Windy City Times claims that it searched its hard-copy archives for the "missing" questionnaires of the Chicago-area candidate positions for that year's elections. In the case of Obama, with the documents just now coming to light, this could be one of the most momentous bait-and-switch operations in American history.

I argued earlier that at some point, given Obama's language of tolerance and his inherent style of finessing the issues, we'd see a push for gay marriage under a new Democratic administration, starting with the repeal of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law the relieves states of official recognition of the gay marriages of citizens of another state. As I argued:

The DOMA says that the federal government will not recogize same-sex marriages as coequal to traditional marriages, and it holds that states need not recognize same-sex marriages that have been lawfully authorized by legislatures of other states.

Should the Obama administration repeal DOMA, the gay marriage movement will become legitimized under a creeping federalism of No on H8 intolerance, as more and more states recognize same-sex weddings across the nation - that is, an Obama administration will give the green light to the destruction of this country's traditionalism by legitimizing claims to homosexual marriage equality.

This would be a huge step toward consolidating a national religion of secular humanism at the federal level of American government and politics. Indeed, this is exactly the outcome demanded by radical same-sex activists. We will see a new national polity built on an ideology of cultural relativism, no longer that great shining City on a Hill, but just one more run-of-the-mill postmaterialist industrial state with an anything-goes program of amoralism nationalism.

Here again, are the stake before us ...

It's only a matter of time before we see Barack Obama shift his position back to favoring the gay marriage agenda. Whether this begins with DOMA or with legal challenges to gay marriage bans in the states, my sense is that Obama's early statements on homosexual rights reflect his core beliefs, and he'll use his office to advance that agenda as a matter of personal principle. Strategically, he might delay this step until after reelection in 2012, but a first-term repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" could set the tone at the federal level for a major public relations campaign by the Obama administration in the years ahead.

I Know What You're Doing, Baby

A couple of the comments threads are getting a little testy today, so I thought we'd better lighten things up with some sounds. Please enjoy Dionne Farris, "I Know" (video starts shortly):

I know what you're doing yeah yeah
I know why you dialed my number
I know what you're doing yeah yeah
I know why you care

I know what you're doing yeah yeah
I know why you say you love me
I know what you're doing yeah yeah
And I don't think it's fair

I know why you dialed my number
I know why you say you're mine
I know what you're doing,

And it's not, gonna work, this time (2)

I know what you're doing yeah yeah
I can never sing in that key
I know what you're doing yeah yeah
And you're the one to blame

I know what you're doing yeah yeah
I know why you can't forgive me
I know why you're singing lost love
The lyrics haven't changed

1-I can recognize the symptoms
You should know I've changed my mind
I know what you're doing
And it's not, gonna work this time
Hey hey hey, said it's not gonna work this time...

I know what you're doing, baby
I know why you call my name
I know why you say you love me
but I can't say the same
(repeat 1)

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.