From Steve Benen's Commenters...

William Jacobson wrote a great piece yesterday taking down Alex Knapp, an alleged libertarian, but I thought it worth sharing some of the comments from Steve Bennen's post harrumphing Knapp's meme. This stuff is all ignorant grandstanding - these people wouldn't know what freedom looked like it if hit them on the head:

A lot of this is Michelle Malkin's (aka 'The Kabuki Queen') thespian production.

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I often wonder why so many middle class people vote for these Republicans - that party has done absolutely nothing to help them with education, healthcare, tax breaks. The GOP are certainly crafty in their duplicity.

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Don't feel sorry for them. Their blind-stupid votes for repugs forced the rest of us to suffer under a government we didn't deserve.

I only wish they could actually suffer from this administration the way we and the whole world suffered from Smirky/Darth.

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It's hard to feel sorry for folks who spent 8 or 10 hours a day listening to talk radio or watching Fox blather instead of--shucks--reading a book or taking a walk or teaching their kids and grandkids how to use a screwdriver or any number of other things that make more sense.

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These people are not conned.

What we see here is social conservative personality disorder.

The social conservaitves' standard ploy is almost invariably to do nothing and make a spectacle out of it, consequently they are self-righteously indignant at the idea of anyone else doing anything.

As if they had the slightest clue.

It's a learning disability.

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I've been a full-time resident in Florida (southwest) now for almost 6 years. I'm not sure what makes people down here so crazy, except that a majority of the residents aren't native to the state (ncluding me) and are largely from the mid-west and atlantic states. TONS of them from Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa and so forth. The ones from the atlantic states (i.e., New York, Mass, PA) tend to be moderates at least, and some liberals. The rest seem to be folks from the mid-west who are very financially secure, many of them with second homes down here. I'd say it's in the water or something, but I've not been infected by their b.s. What I DO know is that the folks I know the best down here listen to ONLY Fox News for their information and read the local papers here, which all lean to the right. And trying to find either a moderate or left-leaning radio talk show is close to impossible. A few folks I know "woke up," but the great majority are just as right-wing Republican as always. The one thing these people all have in common is that they are very well off, if not "rich." Any ideas that threaten their status quo is seen as a threat, and it doesn't help that many of them are as old as dirt. Well...I'm as old as dirt myself I guess (61), but have always been a free-thinker and a Libra. It makes a difference. Needless to say, I don't get invited to many parties these days!

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So, the wingnut followers are now literally protesting against straw men. They are upset that Obama is taking away their guns (no gun laws are proposed), raising their taxes (he's actually lowering them), and in some vague way imposing on their freedoms (he's actually cut back on domestic spying and other unconstitutional Bush practices).

The scary part is that they really believe this stuff -- gun restrictions, tax increases, liberty reductions.

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As one of the commenters on Knapp's site pointed out, the Tea Party part is humorous - but the "Going Galt" part is downright hysterical. Apparently, wingers can't read - otherwise they'd be aware that the John Galt of "Atlas Shrugged" is not who they think he is...

In the end, it doesn't matter, because they are getting exactly as much media attention as they deserve.

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Faith in Our Fathers

Some readers might have come across Sippican Cottage's commemoration of his recently-passed father, a ball gunner on a B-24J bomber during the Pacific campaign in World War II. It was quite moving, and as we're always touched by poignant memorials to our fathers who served in the "Good War," let me share Bloviating Zeppelin's piece on his dad, Richard, was an Army Air Corps bomber pilot in the war. BZ's original memoriam is here, but he's also got a letter his grandather wrote to his father before the latter shipped off to fight:

You are indeed a fortunate individual in that you are on the threshold of the new America that will arm itself to insure the retention of its principles of freedom, and by the very reason of your being a part of this greater respect and a deeper love of those principles for which America stands.

So in the realization of a real success in the job you have ahead of you and I have complete confidence that you will be a success which can be measured only in terms of Honesty, Simplicity, Tolerance and Respectability -- there can be no greater honor or reward that could possibly come to me than in being ---

Your Dad

Read the whole thing, here.

Hat Tip: Vinegar and Honey.

Michele Bachmann: Keeper of the Conservative Flame

Regular readers may remember my post from last fall, "Michele Bachmann and the Conservative Future." At the time, Representative Bachmann was facing a battle for her political life after the netroots hordes excoriated her for speaking truth to power about the Democratic-socialists in the United States Congress. I quickly logged on to her website, Michelle Bachmann for Congress, and made a contribution. I'm now on her mailing list, proudly so.

Well it turns out Ms. Bachmann's in the news for the commments she made over the weekend during a Northern Alliance program with John Hinderaker and Brian Ward. It turns out Ms. Bachmann was discussing her current work in resisting the collectivists in Washington. When discussing her use of modern social-networking technologies to keep in contact with her constituents, Ms. Bachmann remarked:

I’m a foreign correspondent on enemy lines and I try to let everyone back here in Minnesota know exactly the nefarious activities that are taking place in Washington.

Minnesota's Smart Politics puts this in the context by providing quotes of her earlier statements:

I would say there are probably 30 keepers of the flame over here…The main thing we can do right now is be foreign correspondents reporting to you from enemy lines ....

I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people – we the people – are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.

I'll be the first to say, unequivocally, this is not controversial.

Really, as the old saying goes, "politics ain't beanbag." As far as I'm concerned, the Obamacrats are indeed the enemy, out to destroy this country, and Michelle Bachmann knows it: "Michele Bachmann isn’t afraid to stand up to the Democrats and say what she believes." Naturally, the lefties don't like it. The closer she hits to home, the harder the nihilists hit back. Here's a sample of the comments from the Smart Politics thread:

Unfortunately, this is what happens when politicians are incapable of understanding the issues, unwilling to listen to people who can fix the situation, and would prefer to take the whole country down rather than work with or learn something from someone new.

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I want this nutjob - and others like her - stripsearched every time she comes close to the President. It would NOT at ALL surprise me if at one point people like her get the insane idea that they need to "save" the nation and do stupid things.

The last comment is particularly totalitarian. Exercizing your First Amendment rights gets you - "and others like her" - "stripsearched"?

But check out Firedoglake as well as well, with a post attacking Representative Bachmann as Nazi stormtrooper:

This is beyond unhinged. It sounds like a press release from Stormfront.

Let's imagine for a moment the Faux News/National Review/InstaMalkin/RedState freak out if, say, Debbie Wasserman Schultz gave a radio interview with Kos in 2005 and referred to the Bush administration and the GOP congress as an evil, foreign enemy.

How loud and non-stop would the drumbeat of right-wing outrage get before she'd be forced to apologize on the House floor?

But that's the thing about the right-wing. They engage in this kind of political hate speech so often, it literally goes unnoticed when one of their sitting members of Congress calls the President "the enemy."

Well, I don't know about Debbie Wasserman Schultz, but Markos Moulitsas is up for the job:

I have been sweating rumors that Bush will replace Cheney with someone more exciting, charismatic, engaging, friendly, and, well, less evil ... I won't rest easy just yet ... Bush needs Cheney so he, himself, can look less evil. Literally.

God bless Representative Michelle Bachmann. She speaks for me!

"Jail the Rich" Protests in San Francisco

Via Gateway Pundit, "jail the rich" demonstrations in San Francisco (from the Chronicle):

Umbrellas mixed with protest signs Saturday in San Francisco, where demonstrators marked the sixth anniversary of the war in Iraq with speeches, chanting and a march up Market Street that stretched about three blocks.

In typical San Francisco fashion, the demonstration, which began at Justin Herman Plaza, attracted support for a broad medley of causes.

Protesters carried signs about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, 9/11 conspiracies, jail time for Wall Street bankers, single-payer health care and Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban. There were grandmothers for peace, brass bands for peace and dozens of dogs for peace.

The protest remained peaceful, if slightly soggy, until the main group arrived at Civic Center Plaza. There, scores of pro-Israel protesters waving Israeli flags were waiting for the larger contingent, which included many pro-Palestinian protesters ....

Much of the protest focused on the economic crisis. One man ran through the crowd dressed as a banker, with fake money spilling out of his hat and briefcase. Judy Greenspan, a third-grade teacher in Richmond who recently received a pink slip, led the crowd at Justin Herman Plaza in a chant, "Jail the rich, bail out the poor, stop the foreclosures, stop the war."

The video above chronicles the "police oppression."

The New Humanism

I was reminded of Repsac3, and his merry band at American Nihilist, upon reading Roger Scruton's essay, "The New Humanism":

Like so many modern ideologies, the new humanism seeks to define itself through what it is against rather than what it is for. It is for nothing, or at any rate for nothing in particular. Ever since the Enlightenment there has been a tendency to adopt this negative approach to the human condition, rather than to live out the exacting demands of the Enlightenment morality, which tells us to take responsibility for ourselves and to cease our snivelling. Having shaken off their shackles and discovered that they have not obtained contentment, human beings have a lamentable tendency to believe that they are victims of some alien force, be it aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, capitalism, the priesthood, or simply the belief in God. And the feeling arises that they need only destroy this alien force, and happiness will be served up on a plate, in a garden of pleasures. That, in my view, is why the Enlightenment, which promised the reign of freedom and justice, issued in an unending series of wars.

Repsac3 has declared he's Unitarian, which has been discredited as disguised humanism amenable to atheism. It's nihilism, in other words, pure nothingness, just as Scruton shows.

Saber Point on Obama

My friend Stogie at Saber Point is short and sweet on Barack Obama, "Barack Obama: Naive, Ignorant and Dangerously Incompetent":

Barack Obama is the biggest jackass to insult the office of the Presidency since Jimmy Carter. What we said about him in the presidential campaign has proven completely true. He is naive, ignorant, inexperienced, and burdened with a radical left ideology that simply doesn't work in the real world. However, his massive shortcomings are exacerbated by his massive ego, fantasies and delusions. He is every bit the bad news we told you he would be, America; but in your self-delusion, you voted for the asshole anyway.

Speaking of bad news, President Obama is in some hot water for his letter to former French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, where he indicated that "we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world ..." The Christian Science Monitor tried to defend the President, but Fausta provides the decisive smackdown: "Obama’s Letter to Chirac."

News From Protein Wisdom

I checked Protein Wisdom's page this morning and the screen was blank, except for the Pajamas Media ad and a "gone fishing" notice. I thought that was it, Jeff Goldstein was hanging up his keyboard after Roger Simon put the kibosh to Pajamas' blog ad network.

But that wasn't it after all. Jeff's got a somewhat ominous post up now, "In response to a public lynching: Patrick Frey has no honor. In my opinion. Which qualifier, like, saves me from a libel suit I think...":

Now that I’ve stepped back and cleared my head a bit…

From a comment I left over at Stacy McCain’s:

Patterico writes:

Oh, and Serr8d: I reject your implication that I am unprincipled. To put it kindly: bugger off. I *think* Robert recognizes that I am not unprincipled, and I think that fair-minded people who actually take the time to read my words (and not how they are characterized elsewhere) will agree.

Okay, let’s put an end to this convenient and self-serving fiction once and for all.

Patterico used a trumped up charge of a non-existent “death threat” to ban me from his site.

Once he’d established the pretext for disallowing me to defend myself — and giving his commenters the freedom to attack me without my having recourse to respond directly to them (something I’ve never disallowed him to do on my site) — he then encouraged people to support his “honor” at the expense of mine. He set up a lynch mob and then pretended to wash his hands of the whole thing.

One of his commenters, after having already declared that I was guilty of acting in bad faith with respect to debating Patterico on the issues of language (another ridiculous charge, inasmuch as I’ve consistently and patiently answered his questions, even going so far as to write a primer for him on semiotics, sent via email; and as anyone who’s been following my posts on the topic, or who read my Hot Air essay knows, I am committed to the argument, and have always welcomed those who wish to debate it), decided he’d “look at the evidence” and decide who was at fault for the way this has all turned.

There's (lots) more at the link.

As for "the argument," I haven't followed the debate between Jeff and Paterico's all that closely. I certainly didn't know it was getting this intense. I read Paterico's post on the post-CPAC conservative crack-up, "David Frum Does Not Speak for Me Any More Than Rush Limbaugh Does." He hammered Frum and Limbaugh, although he gave little indication of a preferred path forward for conservatives (other than "don't be too hard on those poor liberals"). Patterico's subsequently got in a "last word" at his blog, "Purity, Common Sense, and The Case of the Missing Comment

Jeff's earlier response at Hot Air, both more cerebral and pointed, is found in "How I learned to stop worrying and love the f-bomb."

Obviously, from a look at Jeff's links, the debate's continued to escalate.

So, folks will have to sort through some of these threads themselves, if they're interested.

I like Jeff. He's posted some of my stuff to Protein Wisdom, so I'm not impartial. But on the merits of argumentation (and in context to my past readings of Patterico, who favors gay marriage), I think Jeff's makes the more rigorous case for a possible conservative vision. What's particularly good about Jeff is that he's willing to fight! I see so much pansied compromise, from the David Brookses and David Frums, who are saying we just can't have a socially conservative party, blah, blah, blah. As I've noted here a few times already, conservatism's going to come back strong through an alliance of "hard" classical liberalism (like Jeff's) and core-values conservatism (which I've been promoting). We can come up with some different labels, but if conservatives are to remain at the core of the GOP coalition, these two contingents are going to be essential to a party comeback. If Patterico's going with the "progressive Repubicans," despite his protests to Frum, count me out. There are some principles involved here, and capitulating to the right's Obama-enablers violates most of those conservatives should hold sacred.

Cases in False Equivalence: Tea Parties and Iraq

Via Memeorandum, Alex Knapp perfectly demonstrates the left's false equivalencies, "Tea Parties, Going Galt, Iraq, and Delicious Irony":

The folks in the blogosphere largely cheerleading the Tea Parties are the same folks in the blogosphere who cheerleaded the war in Iraq. So apparently, government intervention to the tune of $650 Billion is okay to spend when it comes to an unnecessary war that in no way advances American interests, but not okay when it comes to building bridges, cutting taxes, helping state governments meet budget shortfalls, or making sure that Americans don’t get covered in lava. Gotcha.

Check Knapp's post for more "delicious ironies" of false equivalence. But this line is classic: "At the time, I did support the Iraq invasion, which in hindsight was stupid." Stupid on Iraq, like Andrew Sullivan.

As for the "unnecessity" of Iraq? This is the left's "Big Lie, and it's an old debate, with consequences. As Arthur Borden has noted:

President Bush was right to confront Iraq. While the decision to go to war is in the past and cannot be reversed, the emerging consensus that it was a mistake is not. Unless we can revisit the debate over the invasion, and comprehend President Bush's reasons for removing Saddam Hussein, we will be unprepared to debate policy toward Iran - and potentially ill-equipped to prevent Tehran from achieving the regional domination through weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which we denied Baghdad.

Borden's book lays out this argument in detail: A Better Country: Why America Was Right to Confront Iraq.

See also, Legal Insurrection, "Confused Blogger Hates Tea Parties (Title Changed to "Instalanche Loving Blog Hates Instapundit")."

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UPDATE: Interestingly, I cited Andrew Sullivan above as an illustration of the left's total hypocrisy on this - you know, "I supported the war before I was against it" baloney. Well, my sixth sense must be working this morning, as Mr. Sullivan's got a post reiterating Knapp's false equivalencies:

My sense is that it is a delayed reaction in some ways to Bush, and his betrayal of conservatism. For all sorts of reasons, most of the current tea-partiers backed the GOP under Bush and Cheney, although some, to be fair, did complain about some of it. The pent-up frustrations behind conservatism's collapse under Republicans were trumped, however, by the fruits of power, partisan hatred of "the left", defensiveness over the Iraq war and torture, and, above all religious devotion to the Leader. Now that Bush has been removed, the massive damage done, and a pragmatic liberal is trying to sort out the mess in a sane, orderly fashion, they've gone nuts.

There's more at the link, and Memeorandum.

And in case you missed, see last night's post, "Andrew Sullivan: Unrepentant, Still Clinical

Obama’s Economic Brain Trust

From John Heilemann's essay at New York Magazine, on Tim Geithner and Larry Summers:

When Obama appointed Geithner and Summers back in November, the reaction in Washington and on Wall Street was the same: first relief and then elation. (The day the news of Geithner’s selection leaked, the Dow rose 6.5 percent.) They were brilliant, experienced, crisis-tested, market-minded but progressive, a kind of economic-policy dream team. Since then, they have worked side by side along with Fed chair Ben Bernanke to quell an economic crisis as monstrous as any since the Great Depression—while formulating an economic agenda as ambitious as any since FDR’s. They’ve unveiled big plans, talked big talk, and crafted and shepherded into law the biggest fiscal-stimulus package in American history.

But Obamanomics represents something even bigger than all that. At a moment when the fundamental precepts of market capitalism and government’s relationship to the economy are up for grabs, the Obamans are attempting nothing less than a redefinition of progressivism, which could alter the terms of political engagement and the ideological balance of power for decades to come. With their budget, they have laid out a vision that, as former Labor secretary Robert Reich puts it, “reverses and repudiates the economic philosophy that has dominated America since 1981.” Obamanomics isn’t merely the end of Reaganomics, in other words. It’s the end of Rubinomics, too.

An agenda this transformative is bound to stir up criticism, and so it has—from the left and the right, Wall Street and Main Street, arch-Establishmentarians and hot-eyed populists in roughly equal measure. The complaints of these factions vary wildly, but they share a point of agreement: that the administration so far has badly mishandled the banking crisis; that it’s dithered, dawdled, and dinked around instead of delivering bold, decisive action. For Obama, confronting this issue poses a vexing dilemma. Saving the banks is the sine qua non for the country’s emergence from its ever-deepening miasma, but in doing so, Obama risks incurring a tsunami of bailout rage. If, on the other hand, he appeals too much to populism, he risks driving elites away. Either outcome could deny him the support he needs for the rest of his agenda. Getting the economics right may be devilishly difficult—but the politics are even trickier, and just as crucial.

I love the understatement: "An agenda this transformative is bound to stir up criticism ..."

You think?

See Michelle Malkin, "Today, hapless, truth-challenged tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner officially unveils another $1 trillion magic trick. Instead of letting failed banks fail, we’ll have another desperately massive and massively desperate attempt to prop them up through a 'public private partnership investment program'."

Cartoon Credit: Michael Ramirez. See also, Memeorandum.

Secure Computing Commissar's Web Filtering

The progressive Internet commissars may have your number!

Don't miss the " Trusted Source" web filtering URL checker! It works like postmodern magic!

Michelle Malkin's extreme! Pamela Geller's blog is markd as "hate/descrimination." American Power sneaked by the progressive thought-filtering police: "wiki/blog."

From Omessiah's secret police:

Comrades! Those who question the supreme leadership of The One are guilty of Extreme thought crime! They must be silenced for the good and fairness of the people! Fear not, SUPERFILTER is there for us comrades. Another throught criminal sent to the ether-gulag - it shall indeed be a glorious day! Praise supreme leader!

Punch Drunk Obama: Inappropriate Affect

Steve Croft to President Barack Obama on last night's 60 Minutes (which I watched during dinnertime): “Are you punch-drunk?”

Gaius identifies Obama's case of "inappropriate affect” : "Emotional responses that are out of context, such as laughter when hearing sad news."

Everything's funny to this president.

Full interview transcript, here.

Sexsomnia

This is Haley Batty, "sexsomniac":

"I can have sex three or four times a night if the guys have the stamina, but in the morning I won’t know anything about it ..."

Hat Tip: Glenn Reynolds.

Congratulations to Ann Althouse!

Ann Althouse is getting married.

"Let there be no doubt about it": Blogging is good for your love life.

Congratulations!

Photo Credit: "Goodbye to Cinncinati."

Andrew Sullivan: Unrepentant, Still Clinical

Get a load of this:

I should say I regret nothing about my blogging about Sarah Palin last year and would do it again - with feeling - if such a duplicitous farce of an apparatchik were to be advanced as a possible leader for the US in the future. None of the crucial factual evidence for her constant fabulisms was ever provided and the MSM, as uninterested in the truth as they are eager for their own reputations, curled up into a little ball of deference. As for my use of the term Christianist, here's my defense of the word, from 2006 ...

Andrew Sullivan's in his own clinical world. If folks missed it during the election, the best response to Sullivan's paranoid psychosis is AOSHQ, "Don't Go Over There, But Sullivan Is Pushing (of Course!) Trig Trutherism Now":

He's gone fucking bananas, due to AIDS or steroids or other reasons, and if we're not observing a minimum level of politeness and civility anymore - if innocent 16 year old girls are now valid targets - I see no reason to continue extending the courtesy of polite silence to Sullivan ... Let's see a brain scan, buddy. Let's get some answers to these questions. Medical fucking answers.

What's especially interesting in Sullivan's pathetic self-defense, is how he's responding to another pathetic self-defense, this time at the home of the Extraordinary Gentlemen, where the gang's reduced to calling off accusations of "Sullivan Group Think." That's right, you can't make this stuff up! For example, here:

I’m disinclined to place much stock in those folks who feel like epitheting via Andrew’s name is a damning criticism of anyone’s writing or thought process ... Look, the fact of the matter is that it is a rare (perhaps non-existent) human being who isn’t influenced by someone’s body of work and thought, and the beauty of our modern polities is that we have free rein to decide for ourselves who it is that we choose to be influenced by. The “group think” meme seems to assume that those of us who respect and even — dare I say it? — admire Andrew Sullivan, do so without any speck of criticism for what Andrew says or how he says it. Of course, that simply isn’t true of 99% of the cases, and it certainly isn’t true of this site, where as much criticism gets layed at Andrew’s feet as does praise.

Oh. My. God! You have got to be kidding me!

"Layed" at Andrew's feet? Yo, there's got to be a double entendre in there somewhere! And calling Mr. Webster!

And don't forget to check the Sitemeter folks. Oh, say wot you Ordinary Gentlemen! It's all Sullivan! Thy up to a bit of "bareback" blogging, eh mates? NTTAWWT!

The Sitemeter's spinning Andrew's gold right now, Sunday night, but pretty soon you'll see Ross Douthat, Daniel Larison, Will Wilkinson over there as well. They'll be chanting: "Oh, Great Sully!" Palin-bashing "liberaltarians" of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your "National Greatness"!

Great Powers and the Indian Ocean

Robert Kaplan's lead article at the latest issue of Foreign Affairs is a classic, "Center Stage for the 21st Century: Power Plays in the Indian Ocean":

The greater Indian Ocean region encompasses the entire arc of Islam, from the Sahara Desert to the Indonesian archipelago. Although the Arabs and the Persians are known to Westerners primarily as desert peoples, they have also been great seafarers. In the Middle Ages, they sailed from Arabia to China; proselytizing along the way, they spread their faith through sea-based commerce. Today, the western reaches of the Indian Ocean include the tinderboxes of Somalia, Yemen, Iran, and Pakistan -- constituting a network of dynamic trade as well as a network of global terrorism, piracy, and drug smuggling. Hundreds of millions of Muslims -- the legacy of those medieval conversions -- live along the Indian Ocean's eastern edges, in India and Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Indian Ocean is dominated by two immense bays, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, near the top of which are two of the least stable countries in the world: Pakistan and Myanmar (also known as Burma). State collapse or regime change in Pakistan would affect its neighbors by empowering Baluchi and Sindhi separatists seeking closer links to India and Iran. Likewise, the collapse of the junta in Myanmar -- where competition over energy and natural resources between China and India looms -- would threaten economies nearby and require a massive seaborne humanitarian intervention. On the other hand, the advent of a more liberal regime in Myanmar would undermine China's dominant position there, boost Indian influence, and quicken regional economic integration.

In other words, more than just a geographic feature, the Indian Ocean is also an idea. It combines the centrality of Islam with global energy politics and the rise of India and China to reveal a multilayered, multipolar world. The dramatic economic growth of India and China has been duly noted, but the equally dramatic military ramifications of this development have not. India's and China's great-power aspirations, as well as their quests for energy security, have compelled the two countries "to redirect their gazes from land to the seas," according to James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, associate professors of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. And the very fact that they are focusing on their sea power indicates how much more self-confident they feel on land. And so a map of the Indian Ocean exposes the contours of power politics in the twenty-first century.

Yet this is still an environment in which the United States will have to keep the peace and help guard the global commons -- interdicting terrorists, pirates, and smugglers; providing humanitarian assistance; managing the competition between India and China. It will have to do so not, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, as a land-based, in-your-face meddler, leaning on far-flung army divisions at risk of getting caught up in sectarian conflict, but as a sea-based balancer lurking just over the horizon. Sea power has always been less threatening than land power: as the cliché goes, navies make port visits, and armies invade. Ships take a long time to get to a war zone, allowing diplomacy to work its magic. And as the U.S. response to the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean showed, with most sailors and marines returning to their ships each night, navies can exert great influence on shore while leaving a small footprint. The more the United States becomes a maritime hegemon, as opposed to a land-based one, the less threatening it will seem to others.

Moreover, precisely because India and China are emphasizing their sea power, the job of managing their peaceful rise will fall on the U.S. Navy to a significant extent. There will surely be tensions between the three navies, especially as the gaps in their relative strength begin to close. But even if the comparative size of the U.S. Navy decreases in the decades ahead, the United States will remain the one great power from outside the Indian Ocean region with a major presence there - a unique position that will give it the leverage to act as a broker between India and China in their own backyard. To understand this dynamic, one must look at the region from a maritime perspective.

Readers can access the full article at Foreign Affairs, but they've revamped their website, and free articles require registration (especially recommended for regulars of American Power). I rarely post subscription-only essays, but if I do, I'll make the key sections of articles available at my posts.

Image Credit: Foreign Affairs.

Bush Administration's Predator Air Strikes Degrade Al Qaeda in Pakistan

I was surprised to read the positive treatment, in the L.A. Times, of the Bush administration's policy of Predator drone stikes on Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas: "U.S. Missile Strikes Take Heavy Toll on Al Qaeda, Officials Say":

An intense, six-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say.

The pace of the Predator attacks has accelerated dramatically since August, when the Bush administration made a previously undisclosed decision to abandon the practice of obtaining permission from the Pakistani government before launching missiles from the unmanned aircraft.

Since Aug. 31, the CIA has carried out at least 38 Predator strikes in northwest Pakistan, compared with 10 reported attacks in 2006 and 2007 combined, in what has become the CIA's most expansive targeted killing program since the Vietnam War.

Because of its success, the Obama administration is set to continue the accelerated campaign despite civilian casualties that have fueled anti-U.S. sentiment and prompted protests from the Pakistani government.

I'm also a little surprised that President Obama is actually willing to carry on with a robust antiterror policy of his reviled predecessor.

What does not surprise me is the response on the left, especially that of Matthew Yglesias (via Memeorandum):

I can’t imagine that an American president ever would or should completely disavow the right to launch this sort of attack. But still, I think people should be concerned about our government’s growing enthusiasm for this tactic and the possibility that the Obama administration will start to rely on it even more heavily. Simply put, there’s little evidence to suggest that this kind of thing can achieve a strategic victory over al-Qaeda, though it may or may not reduce short-term vulnerabilities ... The impact of these strikes on public opinion in the Muslim world writ large, and specifically on political dynamics inside Pakistan, can easily outweigh the gains from killing even a bona fide bad guy.

Yeah. Right.

Al Qaeda's utterly decimated and Yglesias is (1) in classic neo-Marxist anti-imperial denial, and (2) public opinion in the Muslim world was badly shaken by last November's Mumbai attacks (see, "Muslims Condemn Mumbai Attacks, Worry About Image"); the evils that descended on the people of Mumbai, and most wrenchingly, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, were planned and executed by many of the same remnant forces U.S. predator drones are now destroying.

The folks on the antiwar left are just awful people. As I've written previously, Matthew Yglesias has never met a policy of appeasement he didn't like.

Photo Credit: "The Radical Foreign Policy of Matthew Yglesias."

**********

UPDATE: I just found Daniel Byman's, "Taliban vs. Predator: Are Targeted Killings Inside Pakistan a Good Idea?" Here's a key nugget:

What the Obama administration’s reliance on Predator strikes ultimately shows is just how flummoxed U.S. policymakers are when it comes to Pakistan. Stopping al Qaeda from using Pakistan as a base will depend on strengthening the government of Pakistan and stiffening its will to go after its own homegrown jihadis - a tall order indeed. The current political leadership is weak and not fully committed to democracy and true reform. Civilian control over the military is nonexistent, and, in addition to the jihadist problem, bitter ethnic, sectarian, and political divisions threaten Pakistan’s unity. As the Obama administration begins the slow process of addressing these issues, the sad truth is that relying on bolts from the blue to keep al Qaeda and the Taliban weak and off balance is a sensible course to follow.

Unpacking Postmodernism

A big hat tip goes out to Dan Collins at PwPub. Dan links to David Thompson's interview with Stephen Hicks, the author of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Thompson asks Hicks if "postmodernism marks a crisis of faith and a retreat from reality among the academic left"?

It is striking that the major postmodernists - Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Richard Rorty - are of the far left politically. And it is striking that all four are Philosophy Ph.D.s who reached deeply skeptical conclusions about our ability to come to know reality. So one of my four theses about postmodernism is that it develops from a double crisis - a crisis within philosophy about knowledge and a crisis within left politics about socialism.

If you read all the way through the interview, Hicks evinces optimism that postmodernism, after a counter-movement in the academy, is "on the defensive."

I can't say outside of my field, but I'm not optimistic that postmodernism is in retreat in political science. Sure, some of the top scholarship remains firmly ground in positivist epistemology. Yet, it's becoming increasingly the case that top, mainstream works of academic political science are grounded in the radical ontology associated with the hardine postmodernist political agenda (see my recent essay, for example, "Violent Patriarchy in International Security"); and there's apparently a consensus in international relations that the largely postmodern "constructivist" paradigm has emerged as the main (legitimate) contender to the field's dominant approaches of the last 35 years, neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism. It's a complicated story, but at the most basic level constructivism represents the current "radicalist" paradigm in the field, drawing eclectically on a range of post-structuralist influences. As Stephen Walt has argued, constructivism "has largely replaced marxism as the preeminent radical perspective on international affairs." (Note: I hesitate to cite Stephen Walt, for between him and Michael Desch, the realist paradigm they champion is becoming almost a mirror image to the political praxis offered by postmodernists in political science, especially with regards to Israel and U.S. foreign policy. For more on that, see my recent essay, "America's Academic Tragedy.")

Islamic Gender Apartheid

I wanted to share with readers a couple of related essays: (1) Phyllis Chesler and Marcia Pappas', "Gender Apartheid - Not Our Agenda. Part One," and (2) Dr. Pat Santy's guest essay, "The Hijab: Thoughts of an American Muslim Woman."

According to Professor Chesler and Ms. Pappas:

The issue of Islamic/Islamist gender apartheid is one of epidemic and global proportions. Although it has reached American shores, the feminist establishment here remains tragically ambivalent about how to deal with forced veiling, arranged marriage, separatism, and honor-related violence, including honor killings. Many feminists fear that, were they to tie the subordination of women to a particular religion or culture, especially to Islam, that they would be perceived as “racists,” or “Islamophobes.” This fear trumps their sincere concern for womens’ rights and womens’ lives.

The issue, quite simply, is whether or not non-Muslim white folks can discuss Muslim-on-Muslim crime or black-on-black crime or whether only people who share the same faith and skin-color are allowed to raise this issue.

The issue is also whether American feminists really support an American foreign policy, which both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have indicated can or should be tied to womens’ rights. Feminists viewed President Bush’s post 9/11 invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq as morally outrageous and as far more hurtful to Afghan and Iraqi women than was their pre-existing subjugation. Some feminists believed that women had been better off, at least, in Iraq, before the American invasion. We may disagree with this analysis but, nevertheless, why would American feminists hesitate to condemn crimes against women which are being committed on American soil by immigrants, including Muslims, from Third World countries?

There's more at the link.

Professor Chesler and Ms. Pappas review the history of "mainstream feminist" indifference to the violent subordination of Muslim women. But see the anonyomous guest essay at Dr. Sanity's blog:

Every once in a while I come across published material that makes an attempt to defend the state and standard of women in Islam. Such material compares the clothed and cloaked women of the Islamic world to the undressed vixen-like women of the West, exposing all the ills of the Western views on women, their exploitation of women and the miserable state of such women. The material then goes on and states how Muslim women are not oppressed, but liberated; that they are dressed in liberation of not conforming to the degradation of the Western world’s sexual standards and lack of values and lack of modesty. The rhetoric shouts out in the voice of all Muslim women, that the veil is the choice of the modest, the choice of moral beauty and the standard of chaise and respected women.

But somehow all the rhetoric out there written in defense of the veil and defense of the cloaked women of Islam and of Arabia, strike an odd chord of wounded faith in me. I cannot seem to find such usual irate tirade against the sinful, immodest and unchaste women of the West, to be appealing let alone material to be accepted and treated with respected discourse. Somehow demonizing one party just to prove that the other side is better doesn’t bode too well for logical reasoning and discourse. Instead, it is quite distasteful and demeaning to not only the non-Muslims but to Muslims as well.

Read the whole thing, at the link.

In both of these essays, we see, as noted by Chesler and Pappas, "a politically correct 'cultural relativist' philosophy in which one standard applied to the West and another standard to the formerly colonized Third World."

The Folsom Cell Block National Culture

Via Memeorandum, Scott Johnson (a good read in itself), and Fausta Wertz, be sure to check out Victor Davis Hanson's essay at Pajamas Media, "Thoughts About Depressed Americans."

I read the essay earlier this morning. Hanson discusses the Obama administration's disastrous handling of the economic crisis, as well the rapidly collapsing level of trust Americans have in political and economic institutions, But I was really struck by Hanson's comments on the general courseness of our society, what I interpret as part of our larger social breakdown:

I was always an advocate of informality, of casualness, but now when on a plane, in a restaurant, at Starbucks, I am struck by the rare well-dressed person who does not crowd. How odd the extra-polite woman, who conducts herself with charm and grace at the counter, or the gentleman who opens doors, says excuse me, and whose intelligent conversation I enjoy listening in on—like a dew drop to someone thirsting in the desert. In contrast, when the punk walks by, with radio blaring, mumbling obscenities, flashing the ‘I’ll kill you’ stare,” it all leaves me in depression.

Worse still, on the opposite end of the scale, is the master of the universe who elbows his way onto a plane while he blares on the telephone and blocks the aisle. I feel creepy after walking through an electronics store and seeing some of the video game titles and covers.

In short, I don’t want to hear any more Viagra or Cialis ads, no more douche commercials—please no more talking heads about penises that are enlarging, hardening, stimulated on the public air waves.

The sum of these foul parts is smothering us. I don’t want to know that there is a new sex clinic opening in Fresno, or hear another ad about how I can skip out on my credit card debt, or that some sort of food is stuck to my intestinal walls like spackle and paste unless I buy some gut cleansing product.

At some point, we need to say enough is enough, and try to find some sense of honor and decorum in these times of crisis. My god, the entire country has become some sort of Rousseauian nightmare, as if the Berkeley Free Speech Area circa 1970 is now the public domain, as if the culture of the Folsom cell block is now the national ethos.

That's makes for a pretty good line: "The Folsom cell block national culture." Indeed, I was thinking about that cell block culture this morning.

I exchanged e-mails with my friend Lynn from Virginia. She asked how it was going out West? I told her that I'm doing okay, but not all is well in California, especially in our darkened social-breakdown milieu.

I referenced a couple of stories at the Los Angeles Times. One is the tragedy of 18 months-old Emma Leigh Barker: "Mother of dead toddler found in Sylmar says she dumped body, authorities say." The baby's mother, Stacy Barker, claims her daughter died "accidentally." My money says that's baloney, of course, but check the comments at Free Republic for some skepticism. The second story is out of Oakland, where three police officers have been killed, and another is near death, after being shot during a routine traffic stop last night: "State mourns three slain Oakland police officers." And get this, the suspect, Lovelle Mixon, was killed in a firefight with police, but the kicker is that he "was wanted on a no-bail warrant for violating his parole on a conviction of assault with deadly weapon."

So, here we have a woman, Stacy Barker, who has concocted a web of lies to cover up the likely murder of her beautiful 18 month baby, and we have Lovell Mixon, who just killed three police officers with an "assault weapon" who at the time of the shooting was out on parole for a previous conviction for assault with a deadly weapon.

So yes, "the culture of the Folsom cell block is now the national ethos."

And here's this from Folsom State Prison's homepage, "Originally designed to hold inmates serving long sentences, habitual criminals, and incorrigibles, Folsom State Prison quickly gained the reputation of being the end of the line." I think there's some double meaning there, as we're certainly at "end of the line" for the historical restraints of traditional moral conservatism.

Blogging Buddies, or Pure "Bullshit and Lies"?

Pardon the crude title of the post, but I'm riffing off Ann Althouse, who's demonstrating how this whole Althouse/Ezra Klein controversy is both interesting and instructive

Althouse has a new post up on the brouhaha, "'Meta question. Is a tweet the equal of a blog post as cause for offense to be taken?'"

For a tweet, it's pretty normal to mention an association that pops into your head, while for a post one would want to conduct some research." Asks Ben Masel.

So Twitter is a special place for bullshit and lies?

I say to Ann, "Welcome to the blog wars," or, "welcome back," since Althouse needs no introduction (remember "Let's take a closer look at those breasts"?).

But we need some context: Some time back, in a blog post or an e-mail exchange, Ann told me how much she liked Matthew Yglesias. She said he was a real nice guy, and that she'd done Bloggingheads.tv with the guy. Yglesias was just swell. And that's fine. The problem for me is that it's one thing to be cordial in person, or during a video debate/dialog, and then turn around in outrage at the totally characteristic "bullshit and lies" from people like Ezra Klein. I don't know either of them, but as typical far-left moral relativists, they're peas in a pod. Perhaps if Klein had done Bloggingheads with Ann he wouldn't have slurred her as anti-Semitic? But it's academic really. If Yglesias had to take up sides, my money's on an alliance with Klein. For all we know, they're yapping about Althouse right now on JournoList. These folks could be eviscerating Ann in the comfort of their anonymity, and then days from now Matt could go on the next Bloggingheads episode and blow smoke up Althouse's behind.

Readers should go read the comment thread at Klein's post, "Are Ann Althouse's Commenters Anti-Semites?" It's a fairly all-star list of contributors, but "Aimai, an LGM regular, ought to give folks a flavor:

The problem with Ann's blog in general, and her commenters, is "how can you tell the dancer from the dance?" Its fucking morons all the way down. Sure, some sane people head over there to comment, and some liberals troll her comments, and some people are anti semites and some are just your typical crappy right wing racists who get off on having a woman law professor on their side and can't be bothered to see she needs to be drunk out of her mind and not very bright in order to be there.

But read the whole thread. Althouse jumps in there calling out Klein for his "unattactive weaseling." I could say the same thing about Yglesias, but I want to focus on the larger point. Why do we want to be such good buddies with hardline leftists bloggers? They hate us, they really do. They'll put on a mask in person, but they show no class in a quick Twitter post designed to deflect attention away from their real Machiavelllian inside game. I mean, if Klein's got the a source at the West Wing, who's to say JournoList doesn't get play among top White House staffers? Klein throws out the red herring of Althousian anti-Semitism, chums up the right wing waters, and even get conservative bloggers to defend him, like TigerHawk (with all due respect) in the comments to my post yesterday, "Ezra Klein Does Not Deserve to Be Treated Fairly."

So yes, it is all "bullshit and lies," and while I'm sure we can often get along with our political opponents, there's little upside to making buddies in the diabolical effluvience of left's blogospheric fever swamps.

Thousands Demonstrate at Orlando Tea Party

Glenn Reynolds has a great roundup of today's tea party protests around the country. Some of the folks attending the Orlando rally are boasting "John Galt" paraphernalia.

The photo above shows the son of one of Reynolds' regular readers, who sent in photographs along with this report:

I am an enthusiastic reader who has checked in with Instapundit nearly daily for almost six years. I thoroughly enjoy your perceptive comments and your quirky and often witty selection of stories and links, and I have cited you to my two sons often. One of them, Walker, is home for Spring Break from Stanford, where he is a junior. He is a libertarian, and he often finds himself philosophically isolated and lonely in Palo Alto. He and I attended the Orlando Tea Party this afternoon, and I have attached a photo of Walker there. While I am an inveterate issues nerd, always eager to read about and discuss political/economic/social issues, I have not been very active politically, so today was a rare treat for Walker and me. The crowd at the rally was friendly, enthusiastic, and good-natured, and we heard few comments directed towards the President or Congress that were nasty or personally derogatory.

Via Nice Deb, Central Florida News 13 has a report, "Thousands Rally Against Stimulus Plan at ‘Orlando Tea Party’."

Compare the tea party protests to the ANSWER marches around the country. Popular activism's alive and well, on both sides of the ideological spectrum. But which side will end up on the "ash heap of history"?

See also, Michelle Malkin, "Liveblogging the Lexington KY Tea Party" (via Memeorandum).; and Riehl World View, "Embracing The Coming Polarity Shift In American Politics."

Code Pink Hotties for the Revolution!

I never thought I'd be "Rule 5" blogging on Code Pink anti-Americans, but there's a first for everything. Via Ace of Spades HQ and Blackfive, check out "Code Pink Cuties":

More seriously, This Ain't Hell reports on the "ANSWER March on the Pentagon."

The photo-essay includes a banner hoisted by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) that reads "TROOPS OUT NOW ... NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR ... OUT ENEMY IS AT HOME" ...

The PSL website boasts Che Guevara across the top banner, and the page features links to upcoming events, such as "SOCIALISM: THE TIME IS NOW - CONFERENCE AND WORKSHOP," in Los Angeles, scheduled for April 25. Some of the PSL links for today's Pentagon protest are hosted at ANSWER's website, and the group also mounted a demonstration in Los Angeles this afternoon. Here's the list of sponsors:

Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General; Cindy Sheehan; Ron Kovic, Born on the 4th of July; Paul Haggis, Academy-Award winning director and screenwriter; Edward Asner, actor; ActiAstLA, Addicted to War, After Downing Street, Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside, San Bernardino Chapters), Alliance for Global Justice, American Friends Service Committee, Los Angeles, ANSWER Orange County, ANSWER South Bay, ANSWER Ventura County, Be Love, Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid-Southern California, Citizens Awareness Network, Las Vegas, Coalition for Equal Marriage Rights-LA, Coalition for World Peace, Code Pink, Cuauhtemoc Mexica, DAMAYAN Migrant Workers Association, Echo Park Community Coalition, Equality Network,Free Iraq Now, Frente Amplio Progresista en Los Angeles, Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales (FIOB), Frente Unido de Los Pueblos Americanos, Fullerton Junior College Invisible Children, Global Resistance Network, Granada Hills Peace Vigil, Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, International Socialist Organization, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, KmB Pro-People Youth, Labor Community Strategy Center, LGBT Greens, Middle East Children's Alliance, Minjok-Tongshin, Montrose Peace Vigil, Mount St. Mary's College-Amnesty International Club, Muslim American Society Freedom, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, National Council of Arab Americans, Nicaragua Network, Office of the Americas, Orange County KPFK Support Group, Out Against War: LGBT & Friends Coalition for Peace & Justice, Palisadians for Peace, Partnership for Civil Justice, Peace Bakersfield, Progressive Democrats of America, Riverside Area Peace and Justice Action, Santa Monica College Feminist Alliance, Tendencia Revolucionaria de El Salvador, The People's Coalition, The People's Party, Topanga Peace Alliance, U.S. Labor Against War, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), Venezuela Solidarity Network, Veterans C.A.R.E., Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Voters for Peace - U.S., WeAreChangeLA, World Can't Wait-LA, Youth Speak! Collective Point Loma Nazarene University; Jim Lafferty, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild-LA; Juan Jose Gutierrez, Director, Latino Movement USA; Mimi Kennedy, Actor and Activist; Elaine Johnson, Gold Star Mother; Tina Richards, Executive Director, Grassroots America; Angola 3 Defense Committee; Herman Wallace, Political Prisoner, Angola Prison, Louisiana; Albert Woodfox, Political Prisoner, Angola Prison; Raul Pacheco, guitarist, Ozomatli; David Swanson, After Downing Street; Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild*; Michael Ratner, President, Center for Constitutional Rights*; Blase and Theresa Bonpane, Office of the Americas and so many others.

The Los Angeles Times provided the group media coverage for the event, with a map listing road closures adjacent to Hollywood and Vine. Here's a description of the scheduled events:

Protesters will stop in front of the Kodak Theatre and participate in a 10-minute "die-in," where demonstrators will lie on the street as loudspeakers blare the sounds of dropping bombs. Marchers will then carry coffins draped with the U.S., Iraqi, Afghan and Palestinian flags toward an armed forces recruitment office at Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea Avenue. The march will finish off with a short rally about 3:30 p.m. there.

Ezra Klein Does Not Deserve to Be Treated Fairly

Late last December, when Israel's Gaza incursion was winding down, I had this to say about Ezra Klein:

Ezra Klein deserves an honorable mention in this rogue's gallery of self-styled 1930s-appeasement look-alikes.

Readers should check the original post for context, but Klein's extreme relativism is endlessly infuriating, and, frankly, I plain just don't like the guy. So readers can see my interest in the serious pushback against Klein's attack on Ann Althouse.

It turns out William Jacobson's on the case in his post, "Ezra Klein Smears Ann Althouse:

Ezra Klein, blogger for the "liberal" American Prospect, got caught by Politico coordinating his stories with other liberal bloggers and journalists. Exposed for being a journalistic fraud, Klein needed an enemy. He found Ann Althouse. Althouse, who has a very popular blog, could be considered "conservative" (as in, when a law professor doesn't kneel at the alter of Obama, she is a "conservative").

Althouse's crime? She linked to the Politico story in a post at 8:54 a.m. on March 19, 2009 under the title "The Journolist." Althouse's blog gets tons of comments, unlike mine, which only gets a lot of comments when there is an Instalanche. Apparently, some of the comments were hostile to Klein, so Klein decided to take out Althouse by smearing her as an anti-Semite.

Klein's attack on Althouse is pure "faux" outrage. The guy was raised Jewish but has confessed his agnosticism, and he apparently "hates" anything having to do with organized religion. That's perfectly in keeping with Klein's secular collectivist agenda, but check the comments at Althouse's follow-up post, "''Did Ezra Klein post anti-Semitic comments to set up Ann Althouse?'":

Ezra is a hate-monger ... As such, everything is in play. He deserves nothing but contempt. And he certainly does not deserve to be treated fairly.