Culture of Corruption, anyone?

If you're reading this blog, your time would be better spent at Big Government. The big news these days is about ACORN and the misuse of the National Endowment for the Arts.

But there are a few other things to read. Start with Breitbart's editorial in the Washington Times today. Be sure also to check out this rather lengthy analysis of ACORN's mission in the New York Post.

This week should be interesting...

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The Trouble with "Progressivism"

Nobody wants to find themselves opposed to progress. The problems usually start when people disagree about what progress means and how it should be realized. But there's a more sinister trouble that shows its head only occasionally, and that's when the ideal of progress is mistaken for the purpose of the governing body of a free people. The purpose of that government is to guarantee liberty (not grant it) and order.

This brings me to Thomas Friedman's column in the NY Times. Mr. Friedman begins his argument thus:

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

This is exactly the sort of nonsense that brought us both Nazism and Communism in the first place. A vision of progress (defined variously) takes precedence over everything and justifies anything, including the destruction of liberty ("That one party can just impose..."). Don't believe me? Read Eric Hoffer sometime. Hitler did it. Lenin did it. Mao did it. And now Thomas Friedman is praising it to the skies (except for the Hitler bit, of course).

America must have progress at any cost! Frankly, I don't believe that's true. The most fragile thing in all the world is not the world itself, but human civilization. France descended to the worst sort of barbarism after the Revolution went crazy. Hitler massacred millions. Lenin, then Stalin massacred millions more. What's really terrifying about these things is what they have in common. Every one elevated some ideal of progress to the highest value, surpassing political liberty and notably the value of an individual human life.

Progress is nice, but not when it becomes the end-all be-all of the world. That's where it goes bad.

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Krauthammer Predicts Fascism

That's my interpretation, but you should read for yourself here. Krauthammer actually claims to be predicting the death of "the public option" and its grisly company in the monstrosity that has generated so much anger at the town hall meetings. I come to my conclusion that it's fascism he predicts based on this passage in his piece:

The end result is the liberal dream of universal and guaranteed coverage — but without overt nationalization. It is all done through private insurance companies. Ostensibly private. They will, in reality, have been turned into government utilities. No longer able to control whom they can enroll, whom they can drop, and how much they can limit their own liability, they will live off government largesse — subsidized premiums from the poor; forced premiums from the young and healthy.

The fundamental economic difference between fascism and socialism is that the former leaves private property intact while regulating it to death and the latter gives "the people" (the government) ownership. In practice, of course, the outcomes are very similar. Krauthammer notes that too:

Isn’t there a catch? Of course, there is. This scheme is the ultimate bait-and-switch. The pleasure comes now, the pain later. Government-subsidized universal and virtually unlimited coverage will vastly compound already out-of-control government spending on health care. The financial and budgetary consequences will be catastrophic.
However, they will not appear immediately. And when they do, the only solution will be rationing. That’s when the liberals will give the FCCCER regulatory power and give you end-of-life counseling.
But by then, resistance will be feeble. Why? Because at that point the only remaining option will be to give up the benefits we will have become accustomed to. Once granted, guaranteed universal health care is not relinquished. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we.

What to do?
I don't know.
Weep?

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Stupidly...

President Obama says the Cambridge police behaved "stupidly" by arresting Henry Louis Gates.

But to have said as much without having read the police report was...well, for lack of a better word, stupid.

President Obama also says that 'cooler heads should have prevailed' and that arresting Mr. Gates should not have been necessary.

But if cooler heads had prevailed at that White House press conference, Mr. Obama would not have offered comment on a local police matter, and certainly not without studying it closely.

I'm reminded of a great line from a good movie, Forrest Gump:

"Stupid is as stupid does."

Notice that Forrest's mother wasn't concerned so much with what stupid says. Why? Well, because she wasn't stupid.


Now, down in Honduras, word has it that Zelaya wasn't just trying to hold an illegal referendum to unconstitutionally change the constitution, he was planning to illegally steal the illegal referendum. You'll recall that our dear president has called the removal of Zelaya a "coup" and is currently insisting on his reinstatement as president of Honduras.

I'm so glad our president is so smart and so cool-headed. Aren't you?

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I wrote this before reading Rich Lowry's piece, if anybody is wondering. I also highly recommend Heather MacDonald's fine prose--she includes a detailed review of the facts and figures of policing.

The Faint Sound of...Music

That's exactly what this is--at least in my ears.

It has been my fervent hope for some weeks now that the gargantuan economic stimulus farce would lead ultimately to a failure of Cap-and-Trade and ObamaCare.

On the horror scale, a new health entitlement is off the charts. Temporary government spending that merely distorts an already screwy economy and forces a hike in taxes is delicious in comparison because they are much easier to change 5 or 10 years down the road. Cap-and-Trade is only slightly less bad than the entitlement: it will not merely distort the economy, it will stunt future growth potential.

We have the makings of a deep irony: Conservatives thanking Democrats for passing the Stimulus.

It's too early to know if it will come, but I long for the day when we can look at the exit of many Democrat politicians in the legislative and executive branches and say as Willy Wonka did to Charlie,

When they leave here, they'll be completely restored to their normal, terrible old selves. But maybe they'll be a little bit wiser for the wear. Anyway, don't worry about them.

One can hope.
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The Romance is Gone

All of the best stories have told, in some way or another, how the strong differ from one another: the heroic strong man defends the weak, and the wicked strong man takes advantage of them. In the cowboy movies, the good wear white hats; the bad black.

I know international relations aren't supposed to be about romance (I admit: realism keeps nations out of trouble a good deal), but one can't help noticing how ugly it is for the big dogs in the world to rip at the throat of small fry--like Honduras. Especially when strong powers go about the business of oppression without a care in the world--like China.

I think back to the interlude between the World Wars, when the West experienced its strongest revulsion to war. A good deal of romance was attached to Wilson's dream of the League of Nations and the same romance came to its successor, the United Nations. But when the UN condemns constitutional procedures to defend the people's liberty in a small, poor state and keeps regimes like the PRC on the Human Rights Council, the romance is banished like a mist, and a happy romping ground turns to barren desert.

But my expectations of the UN have been low for the entirety of my short life. America was different. It was a place that kept the romance of justice alive, even when it could not always strike the decisive blow and rescue the weak and oppressed. But what is this? I find America delivering kicks into the side of the Central American Republic.

Perhaps I'm putting it too strongly. Hans Bader writes here.

Is this what America has become? Obama, what is this hope?

The Coup that Isn't

President Obama is threatening Honduras with sanctions unless it brings its "president," Mel Zelaya, back. I believe the inverted commas are necessary because it's clear that Zelaya has committed a "high crime" in seeking to illegally jurry-rig the Honduran government for his own purposes. By doing so, he forfeits any claim to legitimacy.

The Honduran military did indeed send Zelaya into exile, but it did not a) dissolve the Congress, b) reconstitute the Supreme Court, or c) install a high-ranking general as "president." Thus, this hardly fits the usual profile of a "military coup."

In fact, it's even steeper than that. The Honduran Congress voted to remove Zelaya, and the Supreme Court ordered him to cease his efforts to hold his pet referendum. (See this helpful Q&A at the BBC.)

In all honesty, I think Obama's quick rush to condemn Honduras makes perfect sense, though not in light of Iran. Look at the American left's affinities for both Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and it's at least clear that they're comfortable with strongmen running countries (provided they're leftist strongmen, of course). Here we have a chance to get one more, and it's not to be missed. Apparently.

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Insanity

The House of Representatives has passed the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-[Tax] bill.

Paul Krugman, in his typically detatched and rational way, says the no-voters have committed a kind of treason against the planet. Nevermind that the case for allegiance to the planet is difficult to make in legal terms (though certainly not so hard in Gaia-worshipping metaphysical terms--'can you harm the mother that bore you?!?') and that the last time the United States had gumption enough to actually try and convict someone of treason against the United States was in 1952 (Tomoya Kawakita). I daresay there's been a good deal of reasonably clear-cut treason to be found since then (the Rosenbergs were executed for espionage--which has a minor technical difference from treason), but the only indictment since then has been Adam Yahiye Gadahn (2006).

But Krugman's quick jump to the T-word reminds me of something Chesterton wrote in his great polemic, Orthodoxy:

Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals. On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot be human.

Insane sentimentality has taken over if Krugman is any indication.

Meanwhile, even the famously nutty regimes in North Korea and Iran look sane in comparison to the irrationality that passes for American foreign policy these days. Apparently desperate to relieve the world of its worries about American proclivities for meaningful action, Obama has steadfastly kept the negotiating table clear and the chairs warm for Iran, even while the regime brutally crushes legitimate outrage over its blatantly fixed election. Well, it's clear that one facet of the policy at least worked: Iran isn't half so worried about the USA as it once was. The same goes for North Korea. Both of these bad actors share a peculiar rationality: they know what they want, and they know how to get it. America, however, knows what it wants (sort of) and goes about not getting any of it with great ingenuity.

While America may collectively be conflicted about projecting a strong image abroad, it is strength that the bad actors of the world respect. Cicero put it this way: "Oderint, dum metuant." [Let them hate so long as they fear.] When the regimes that threaten harm to their neighbors and to the interests of the United States no longer fear the world's lone superpower, they will seek without caution their own ends.

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Qualification

I have long been an adherent to the policy of 'put up or shut up'--it's a good way to avoid being misunderstood when serious questions need answering.

Foreign policy is one of those places where serious questions need careful answers because even ambiguity carries meaning. An amorphous policy can be colored either strong or weak depending on previous activity or intangibles such as the perceived character of a foreign policy team (headed in America by the President and the Secretary of State).

And so the USS John McCain tails the North Korean vessel...to what end? If the United States intends to do something concrete about making sure proliferators like North Korea can't get away with it, then the United States will have to buck up and take the risk of war (by boarding the Kang Nam).

With large-scale engagements still active in Iraq and Afghanistan, America hardly wants to open a war with North Korea--that's rational at least. But why half-heartedly attempt to curb North Korean proliferation?

To sum up: intercepting the Kang Nam is only a good decision if we intend to follow through and board the ship. If what North Korea has insisted is really true (that such a confrontation would be an act of war), it might start bombarding Seoul, yes. I doubt that North Korea will risk that, but if it does, the United States should respond with clear force on the really valuable military targets. We could start by bombing all of the known nuclear sites and missile launchers.

If all that sounds like a bit more than we're willing to manage, then trailing the Kang Nam isn't a good idea after all.

So we've got to ask ourselves: how badly do we want North Korea to stop threatening the world? Alternately, how much of a commitment problem do we have?

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Intercept!

In light of yesterday's post, I'd say this is a step in the right direction.

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North Korean Bluster

The putrid nonsense spewing from North Korea about 'thousandfold' retaliations if it is 'provoked' strike me as more than just meaningless babble. It's the sort of thing a child says when he's trying to figure out if the babysitter is up to the task of making him do his chores and go to bed on time.

This is not to say we shouldn't take North Korean bluster seriously--it is very serious indeed. But it does go a good way toward explaining how ineffective Obama's approach to the basket-case nation really is.

Here's what Krauthammer had to say:

What I think is remarkable is that even though over the last 16 years in the Clinton and the Bush administrations we did not succeed in stopping, although we slightly slowed the nuclear program, look what's happened in the six months of the quote, unquote, "smart diplomacy" of the Obama administration?

Long-range missile tests, the explosion of a nuclear weapon probably a third the size of Hiroshima, the declaration that the plutonium the Bush administration had frozen will be weaponized entirely, the entire stock, and the declaration that the uranium program which the Bush administration talked about, which Democrats had said was an invention of the Bush administration, the uranium enrichment is going to start up. All of that and the seizure of two Americans.

The lesson to take away here is that Kim Jong Il doesn't care what American Presidents, Secretaries of State, or diplomats say; he cares what they do. And right now, the answer is 'sit on their hands'. The only real question in Kim's mind is how long Americans will continue to do so. Which explains his repeated provocations.

I'd say that North Korea isn't in any serious danger of 'being provoked'. Indeed, North Korea is provoking! Like the little kid with a new babysitter, Kim is pushing as hard as he possibly can and will continue to do so until he encounters concrete resistance. In short, Obama must do something to establish the bounds across which the backwards regime will not be permitted.

Today, it seems that North Korea is preparing to test a missile that might arc toward Hawaii sometime around the Fourth of July. Destroying it on the launchpad or in the air would be entirely justifiable, even if the improved Taepodong-2 can't manage the distance to Hawaii. Doing so would demonstrate defensive capabilities and at least a modicum of determination to contain the poisonous North Korean belligerence.

Of course, whenever North Korea threatens retaliation, it really means it'll slit the throat of its South Korean neighbor (and maybe lob a missile or two at Japan). Like any hostage situation, this gives responsible people a great deal of pause and more than a little squeamishness. But maybe it's time to push back anyway--but only with the understanding that Seoul is in grave danger and that a serious military response to a North Korean attack might be necessary.

But if North Korea is really the scheming little brat that I think it is, we might have less to lose than we think. We certainly have a lot to gain.

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Arabs Idiotically Skewer Selves

Obama sees signs of hope in the quest for Middle East peace after Netanyahu indicates that he is willing to accept a Palestinian state.

Oh wait. That was yesterday's--er, Sunday's--news! As usual, the brutal truth is that there have been no steps forward (or even backward). Middle East peace stands precisely where it has stood for more than a generation: at the question of Israel's existence. To wit, here's the Egyptian president's reaction to the Netanyahu speech (via the BBC):

"I have also told him loud and clear that the call for recognising Israel as a Jewish state would complicate matters and abort the chances of peace," the state-run Mena news agency quoted Mr Mubarak as telling military officials.

"I even warned him that this particular call would not be met by a favourable response from Egypt or beyond."

It's laughable. If Israel, by requiring that its existence be officially recognized, "ruins" the chances for peace, then I think it's safe to say that peace is not possible at present. Only someone determined not to see the fact could miss it. There are many more appropriate ways to label this, however. Israel didn't "ruin" anything that wasn't already in the garbage. Try this title instead:

Arabs Defeat Themselves In Quest For Palestine

That just about sums it up. Well, provided that the rest of the world doesn't follow Mubarak's lead and join the ranks of the insane.

There are few in Israel who oppose the existence of a Palestinian state--provided that it does not serve as a launching pad for the destruction of the Jewish state. This has been the case for so long it's easy to lose track of time. And you don't have to be a pro-Israel-radical to see the sense of requiring the recognition of Israel as a condition for a Palestinian state (or else the threshold of 'radicalism' is at a very low ebb).

So, I think it's fair to say Golda Maier got it right when she said: “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

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Inflation: it's coming

Our government has been fretting about deflation (which was indeed something of a problem), but inflation is now in the hot seat. This is always the danger when government tries to deal with complex economic issues--bureaucratic inertia prevents the kind of nimbleness that is necessary to start and stop doing the right things at the right times. Usually things start too late and persist too long. It's normal, yes, but the effect compounds with each government switch--which is later and overstays its welcome longer each time.

So much for my non-technical opinion. You really should read Arthur Laffer's warning...and note his pessimism.

The broad lesson to learn is that our choices are not usually between problems and solutions (which is how things often get cast, especially when the government is offering the solutions), but between problems and other problems. Deciding which problems we prefer requires being clear about which ones will occur.

On this, however, I'm not very hopeful. But I'll still be able to say 'I told you so' when inflation gets going. Not that it'll make my savings account any happier, of course.

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Persuasion

What's right? And what works?

These two questions periodically bother me because their answers are so frequently different, even incompatible.

Right now, there's something dismal (and familiar) going on in the Sonia Sotomayor pre-confirmation-hearing chatter: Conservatives, united in purpose, are fighting among themselves over the second question.

Sonia Sotomayor has said some pretty astonishing things about the essence of race--I can't count the number of times I've seen this quote in recent days:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

It's pretty hard not to cry foul about such things, really (and before I get email about how I'm reading out of context, I even read Kos on this one). As others have said, this is a concrete example ofObama's "empathy" standard, and it reeks of partiality in a place where partiality is supposed to be unconscionable--it's why portrayals of Justice in art figure a blindfolded woman with a scale in one hand and a sword in the other.

Cue Rush Limbaugh. "Racist" is what he calls Sotomayor's approach. (I prefer the term "racialist" because it's a larger concept involving the positive as well as negative considerations of race--but that's a relatively small matter.) It's not hard to say that, but it doesn't usually carry the day when Conservatives use the term. There are reasons for this, and none of them are fair. But they're real all the same. (Rich Lowry makes that point here.)

Krauthammer argues sensibly: "Use the upcoming hearings not to deny her the seat, but to illuminate her views." Well, of course. She's going to be confirmed anyway, because Republicans don't have the votes; Republicans just need to get very energetic about making Sotomayor's jurisprudential ideas the stuff of dinner-table conversation.

Mark Krikorian adds something that Krauthammer left to the imagination: "Gingrich, Limbaugh, and Tancredo crying "racist" isn't going to help at all." Of course, Rush is offended (I got quite an earful on his show today in just the first hour), and not without cause. It's hard not to be offended when you're being told not to say what is true and evident on the grounds that it won't help.

I think the clash here is relatively minor, and I think that the Republican Party will be no more prone to the charge of racism after opposing Sotomayor than it was before. But it's going to be rough for a patch here, and the Democrats are eager to scatter the Conservatives any way they can. Obama is clearly setting a trap to consolidate already well-recognized Democratic gains in the Hispanic population. But as Michael Gerson explains,

Republicans must still enter the trap -- with open eyes and no expectation of gain -- not to defeat a nominee but to maintain a principle.
The principle is simple: A court should be a place where all are judged impartially, as individuals. The Obama/Sotomayor doctrine of empathy challenges this long-established belief. It is not a minor matter.

And I think Rush jumps to the end of the argument. Really, that's the only mistake he makes. What we've got here is a lot of conditioned thinking (constructed in part by historical events located mostly in the 1960s, but more recently by malicious political race-baiting). Conservatives have to go back to the beginning and argue the things they know so well that it bores them now. The goal, of course, is to adjust the popular stereotypes about race toward something that actually resembles the truth. For instance:

-All people are unique and have capabilities that differ as much with personality as they do with circumstance.
-The essence of economic and political freedom is the ability to alter one's circumstances by dent of creative and motivated effort (or, to state the negative side of that, by dent of destructive activity and indolence).
-The examples of creativity and rising out of adversity that we remember and love are inspirational precisely because we would like to think of ourselves as having within ourselves (our unitary selves) the power to produce something valuable. Think of a child--aged two or three--pushing aside the willing assistance of a mother or older sibling with the words "I can do it by myself!" There's pride and dignity there, and it's beautiful.

Such points are important to make over and over again. There's another level:
-It's cheating to take proxies for individuals for the sake of economy in policy or argument--it diminishes the value of the individual even as it makes statistical analysis easier.
-Pop culture occasionally provides an interesting perspective. Think about this deadly serious set of instructions from a kid's movie (The Incredibles): "Put these [masks] on. Your identity is your most valuable possession. Protect it. And if anything goes wrong, use your powers." The use of anonymity can augment personal strength by aiding, among other things, mobility. But that's the point: it should augment, not diminish, personal power. Becoming little more than a statistic in a racial or socio-economic breakdown of society is hardly the kind of anonymity that boosts individual power.

Only after covering such concepts can you ascend to 30,000 feet and look down at the state of things far below and observe thoughtfully: "Gee, that's interesting. When we go around treating whole groups of people "specially" and "differently" based on their racial classification, isn't that strangely similar to that great evil thing we worked so hard to destroy called 'racism'?"

Rush says all of these things, but he's remembered best for his broad conclusions. We have a whole society to persuade, so why don't we dwell on the steps toward the broad conclusion, even as a justice with repugnant racialist views waltzes onto the nation's highest court. There really is a lot to say, and it won't all fit into a single word.

This is how an out-of-power party starts swinging a nation toward what is good and right and true, even as the government is growing and consolidating its power at the expense of individuals.

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Delicious

Horrors! A woman-of-color eats the heart of a seal!

Jay's right--it's beautiful to see clashes of "liberal pieties". Here's his corner post, and here's his column. Reading JayNord is good for your soul...and your sanity. Besides seal meat, he's got some very timely thoughts on the Sotomayor nomination and what it means to be gracious. Read seriously, and read for fun.

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UPDATE

Nordlinger's post for today is delicious too. I especially liked this bit:

Get this, folks (although it will be hard to stomach): “Fidel Castro criticized former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney for defending American interrogation methods against terror suspects, saying in comments published Wednesday that torture should never be used to extract information.” That is the opening of this AP story. You can see Castro’s point, too: He has always tortured people, not to extract information, but for the sheer sadistic pleasure of it.

Bastard.

Yeah. What he said.

Legal Perversity

Massachusetts contemplates an epic divorce of meaning: If this bill passes, "sorry" won't mean "sorry" any more.

It's just another in a long string of evidences that our society is outrageously litigious--which is to say unwilling merely to adapt to adversity and mishap.

Doctors, surgeons, and other medical professionals will make mistakes that they could have avoided--they're human, after all. And what's more, they're no less prone to error than a police officer, accountant, politician, or taxi driver. It just so happens that the stakes are somewhat higher than for most working folks: their small errors can have big effects on people's lives (even end them), and people get desperate and vindictive when they're hurt... just like wild animals.

So much for progress in civilization, eh?
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***UPDATE***
A reader makes an important point:

I fully understand why they're doing it. A doctor is a human being...I daresay most doctors would like to express sorrow for someone's loss. But even if they did nothing wrong, if they express sorrow in the sense of "I'm sorry for your loss" they risk being sued for it.

Of course that's the reason for the bill being proposed. But wouldn't it be better if people saw a human being (rather like themselves) under the labcoat? Is there a way to discourage the view that doctors work miracles, perhaps by doctors themselves actively working against such a view? And can we not make the bringing of frivolous suits more costly (and rare)--by requiring the loser to pay all court costs (and perhaps a frivolous suit fee)? Perhaps such measures would make gramatical engineering less urgent.

Making Real Progress

Since a buddy of mine first showed me the Bugatti Veyron in a Youtube video of Top Gear, I've been an admirer of Jeremy Clarkson, whose opinion is at once delightfully expressed in the mechanical idiom and wonderfully commonsense. To wit, his column of May 17.

Clarkson makes several good points. First, a very concise criticism of greenhouse gas hysteria:

While I have yet to be convinced that man’s 3% contribution to the planet’s greenhouse gases affects the climate,...

And then an equally concise statement of the most important concern:

...I do recognise that oil is a finite resource and that as it becomes more scarce, the political ramifications could well be dire. I therefore absolutely accept the urgent need for alternative fuels.

Then Clarkson sums up some important technological history:

Since about 1917 the car industry has not had a technological revolution — unlike, say, the world of communications or film. There has never been a 3G moment at Peugeot nor a need to embrace DVD at Nissan. There has been no VHS/Betamax battle between Fiat and Renault.

Car makers, then, have had nearly a century to develop and hone the principles of suck, squeeze, bang, blow. And they have become very good at it.

And then he points out the challenge that change presents:

But now comes the need to throw away the heart of the beast, the internal combustion engine, and start again. And, critically, the first of the new cars with their new power systems must be better than the last of the old ones. Or no one will buy them. That’s a tall order.

A tall order indeed. Unlike Clarkson, however, I'm not convinced that Hydrogen holds the answer (can you imagine the explosions that would accompany high-speed collisions?), but hey, it might. In any case, I think we'd do ourselves a favor if we saw hybrid technology to be the "half-arsed halfway house for fools and madmen" that it is.

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Impressions

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still holding out against the CIA, which has begun the process of destroying her credibility and will likely finish the job too. I'm a little surprised that Pelosi would put herself in such a perilous position. But it seems she's been taking her eye off the ball rather more than I knew. Oh, what a tangled web we weave...
Let us review a basic principle here. Bureaucracies exist for two purposes: to continue their existence and to expand their budgets. Any perceived threat will find itself targeted for neutralization. Good luck, Madam Speaker.

Niall Ferguson has a pretty common-sense piece up about the economic crisis. Here's the central argument:

The reality is that crises are more often caused by bad regulation than by deregulation.

My thoughts exactly. But I'm no expert, so nobody listens to me. So listen to him and read the whole thing.

I have occasionally reflected on the issue of "Special Interests", and it's on this topic that I found myself least inclined to take either McCain or Palin seriously back during the campaign. And the reason is that no politician will say what really needs to be said on the subject and McCain is very determined to needlessly restrict political speech (by which I mean the McCain-Feingold legislation) in order to avoid saying it. The point is that American political contests are about special interests. I have interests, you have interests, everybody has interests. We often form groups that are then known as "special interest groups" and are ipso facto "evil" in PC parlance. Which is nonsensical. If special interests are evil, then we are all evil, for it is only voluntary associations of individuals that make up the special interest groups, which are ostensibly protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution. Well, here is Daniel Henninger making the point much better than I ever could. When it comes to "earmarks," the problem is local. Stop demanding that congressmen bring home federal dollars and the earmarks will stop. Simple as that.

And here's Douthat making an interesting point: "You can have Jesus or Dan Brown. But you can’t have both." In some ways, I think this is similar to what Obama's speech to Notre Dame represents. Catholicism in America is being pulled in two directions, and Catholics are having to choose whether they will accept the authority of their bishops on matters that are at once religious, moral, and political, or whether they will make their political identity primary. Increasingly it looks like a choice between church and party, at least on the left. George Weigel has some helpful comments here. I think having to make choices like this tears people up inside--it forces them to fight an internal battle in which some of the things they believe must be rejected and others retained. How it all shakes out will not be obvious for years, even decades, I daresay.

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Just Say It

I said in a previous post that Republicans are going to have to do the best they can with what they've got for now. And if Byron York has it right, that means stating the obvious over and over and over again: healthcare reform does not equal economic recovery!

Now it doesn't seem a particularly popular thing to say, or one that 'the people' are generally worked up about, but it's true, and it ought to be thoroughly demonstrated. Every Republican within range of a microphone ought to be making the point, even if it seems amorphous and hazy to think about.

Make no mistake, it's hard to get a rhetorical handle on the proposals and arguments Obama is making. Here's York:

Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it.
[...]
GOP message mavens are struggling with something that academics call “insensitivity to scope.” It affects us all; we can understand something on a small scale but have a difficult time comprehending the same thing on a massive scale.

But just because it's hard doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. In fact, even though it seems difficult and perhaps ineffective, it's at least policy-focused. And if its anything Republicans need to do it's get out of their own navels and start acting like a motivated opposition party. Bill Kristol made the point rather well, I thought:

...the Obama plan can be fairly charged with endangering both [quality of and access to healthcare] and may, therefore, be far more politically vulnerable than its backers think. Even if the Democrats can ram elements of Obama's health plan through Congress this summer under the budget reconciliation process, there will still be a debate, presumably in the fall and winter, on legislation needed to complete the plan.

I know it's asking a lot, but just make the arguments and keep making them.
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Crime, Fear, and Enforcement

I've been hearing fairly frequent reports of unsatisfactory treatment of British criminal behavior. It usually takes an anecdotal form--some variation on 'perp gets kidd-gloves and victim lands in the slammer'. It's enough to raise the old eyebrow at what seems a reversal in reason and good sense, but ultimately not much to go on.

But today I read an interesting and sobering analysis of British crime in City Journal by Claire Berlinski. Besides rationalizing the apparent disjuncture of officially declining crime rates and escalating public fear, Berlinski sheds some light on the statistical difficulties involved in crime rates themselves. To take just one relevant example, consider the relationship of punishment to reporting: if a criminal justice system generally metes out lenient punishments that more often than not don't include incarceration, victims will be less inclined to report the commission of crime.

Why? Because the criminal is likely to be free to bring retribution against his accuser in very short order if he is not held in prison or otherwise deterred by sufficiently serious punishment.

Berlinski concludes with a call for what worked in New York City more than a decade ago, namely "Broken Windows" policing:

The reason Broken Windows policing works is not that it is inherently important to jail every petty thug who breaks a window; it is that the window-breakers tend to be muggers, rapists, burglars, and murderers as well. If you get them off the streets, the rate of serious crime will fall.

The whole piece is worth a careful read.

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Popularity

I've never really had a constructive relationship with Popularity--I've always given it sidelong glances, and I've occasionally treated it with undisguised contempt. Maybe that makes me maladjusted, but I prefer to tell myself that there's often a disconnect between what people like and what they need. Sometimes people need to be told how awful they are. And then sometimes they like being told exactly that (can you think of another reason why Al Gore's film was so popular?). But this doesn't mean that popularity amounts to need or vice versa.

Sometimes the winds of popularity shift dramatically. It shouldn't be surprising, but it almost always is. Leaders find themselves walking at the head of a rag tag band of hangers-on where once a large crowd had frolicked happily. When the astonishment wears off, it often leaves self-doubt.

There are a few who think it's actually quite interesting to be saying unpopular things--at least there's the consolation of knowing that one is correct, that those who need to hear what one is saying will somehow hear it... But that's really quite an odd way to go about preserving what is good in the world. Incidentally, that's exactly how Albert Jay Nock thought--and he was odd in his own ways. His ideal type is expressed in this 1936 essay: Isaiah's Job.

(As an aside, Nock's reflections on the prophet's role of speaking to the "Remnant" while being completely ignorant of who they are strikes me as remarkably similar to what blogging is in practice.)

Nock's apparent contentment with failure is insupportable, but there's a less fatalistic lesson to learn from the whims of popularity: what is needed and what is popular are sometimes the same. From a conservative point of view, that is a good way to describe the Reagan Revolution. It's not as simple as that, exactly, but it's close. Reagan and co. had to make their arguments over and over and over again, but the people to whom they spoke also had to be willing to be persuaded.

Now, I'd like to apply this to the Republican Party just now. It could produce a hundred really good candidates tomorrow, complete with a steadfast commitment to conservative principles, but it would not guarantee either popularity or victory. Goldberg says essentially the same thing today (We Need a Hero), but I think he doesn't make adequate space for the peculiar and hard-to-predict movement of a people's willingness to be persuaded.

Nevertheless, his and my takeaway is the same: sometimes it's just not your day. It doesn't mean you're wrong or that America is doomed. It means that you're going to have to wait until the fickle properties of popularity shift favorably. It doesn't mean waiting idly for an election landslide to fall in your lap, but neither does it mean an existential crisis.

So my recommendation for Conservatives is the old stiff-upper-lip. Popularity or the lack thereof is no cause for confidence in the rightness of a cause, but in a democratic republic like ours, some measure of popularity is a necessary precondition for the power to move the cause forward. Until such time as popularity swings again, just do the best you can with what you've got. And don't go running headlong after Popularity. It is a fickle beast and nearly impossible to predict. Those who follow it (rather than waiting for it) wind up looking silly.

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Specter, the Republican Party, and a Movie

When he switched parties, Arlen Specter said two things worthy of note. First, he claimed to be a 'Reagan Republican' of the good old 'big tent' days. Second, he claimed that the Republican Party has been moving to the right.

Now if anybody is an expert on what it meant to be a Reagan Republican, it's Reagan. And he set Specter down as faithless after he sided with Democrats in judicial nominee battles, including his vote against Judge Bork. So much for point number one--Specter is still an opportunist who will do anything to win his next election.
Peggy Noonan says that Specter shows us something important nonetheless: which side is winning. Well, yes, I suppose. That's no earth-shattering profundity--clearly the Democratic Party is worthy of description as 'ascendant'. But I doubt he has much to offer in the way of lessons for the Republicans. Jonah Goldberg says as much today: Specter's switch means almost nothing important when compared to the things Jack Kemp (may he rest in peace) believed and said during his political career.

Then there's that specious claim about the Republican Party moving to the right. It's made often enough alright, but it just isn't true. If the Republican Party has done any moving at all, it has been to the left. It hasn't gone far to the left, thankfully, but even its slow motion is apparent to those of us who are not moving leftward. It has to do with vantage point, really: if you're running as hard as you can leftwards and you look over your shoulder and see the Republican Party diminishing into the horizon, it's understandable that you might think it was running toward the right--but only if you're also denying your own leftward movement. Jay Nordlinger has a few thoughts on the subject today too--I'm especially grateful for his concise list of particulars since they reflect my own:

Bush and the Republicans spent massively, especially in Bush’s first term. We opposed that, mightily. The president’s most cherished initiative, probably, was the Faith-Based Initiative. We opposed that. Then there was his education policy: No Child Left Behind. We opposed that (mainly on grounds that it wrongly expanded the federal role). He had his new federal entitlement: a prescription-drug benefit. We of course opposed that. He imposed steel tariffs—for a season—which we opposed. He signed the McCain-Feingold law on campaign finance—which we opposed. He established a new cabinet department, the Department of Homeland Security. We opposed that. He defended race preferences in the University of Michigan Law School case; we were staunchly on the other side. He of course proposed a sweeping new immigration law, which included what amounted to amnesty. We were four-square against that.

I am talking about some things that were very dear to Bush’s heart, and central to his efforts—and self-image, as a leader. NR, the conservative arbiter, opposed those things. The Republican party, by and large, supported them—with one glaring exception: the immigration push.

Just so. I find myself saying that a lot with respect to what Nordlinger writes.

I'd like to flesh out this business of running left while insisting vociferously that you're standing still. I'm not trying to say that Democrats or lefties are delusional or even lying with malice aforethought, it's just that I object to their redefinition of things to suit themselves.
Let me start by mentioning "inertial frames." You can calculate the parabolic arc of a tossed baseball inside a moving train car as if the car were standing still (provided, of course, that the car's vector is constant). By defining the movement of the car as an inertial frame, we can simply ignore it while we calculate the baseball's motion. But to complete the mathematical description of the baseball's motion we ultimately have to account for the train's progress toward Union Station in Washington, DC. So an inertial frame is just a way of breaking down a complex problem into manageable pieces, not a denial of reality.
Politically, however, there is an inertial frame encapsulated by the word "progress". Lefties generally treat progress as if it were the natural state of things and that its movement is to be treated as constant. And when the Republican party (which, as I said, has been moving left--i.e. in a "progressive" direction) doesn't move fast enough, it's "moving right." Well, yes, I suppose. But that's in a relative (rather than objective) sense. But once we account for the inertial frame in the equation, we see the Democratic Party racing left and the Republican Party jogging left.
I'd like to see a little saunter to the right, by which I mean a shift of personal responsibility back toward the individual, the beginnings of an objective reduction in the number and scope of government responsibilities, and a decreased willingness to attempt social engineering.

A couple nights ago, I watched the movie, Der Baader Meinhof Komplex. It's a film about the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany and its rather lengthy campaign of terrorism--bombings, arsons, assassinations, kidnappings, etc. during the late 1960s and through the 1970s. In it the chief of the Federal Police, Horst Herold, argues that any response to the RAF terrorists must account for their motivations, not just their actions. His explanation of their motive? A myth.
For those of us conservatives who marvel at the unflagging insistence that our friends and neighbors on the left bring to their goals of changing the world, it is instructive to remember the power of myth: it can motivate people to political action, and it can motivate them to commit monstrous crimes (fortunately this latter effect has been relatively rare and is certainly not a necessary characteristic of those who believe the myths). It is worth pointing out, I think, that a myth is not necessarily something that is not or cannot be true, though it is certainly an expression of yearning, as C.S. Lewis observed in his essay "Myth Became Fact." To yearn is to be human, so concluding (as Eric Hoffer did in his deep little book, The True Believer) that we must cease to have expectations for the future is to deprive ourselves of a part of our humanity. The point I'm trying to make is simply that we need to be honest and humble about our expectations and yearnings.
We can begin by understanding that while change is inevitable, real progress is not the necessary result of much-sought-after change. This is where conservatives come in: we understand instinctively that making genuine improvements and achieving real progress is not easy, that there are more ways to go wrong than there are to go right, and that the best intentions can result in disastrous outcomes. We think that civilizations are inherently fragile. Moreover, they are the product of small, carefully chosen changes that accumulate over time. These little things, complete with mistakes, false starts, and clear successes, comprise something larger, and more comprehensive than any myth or ideology: all these little things taken together are tradition.

And I daresay the action of tradition is progressive--really progressive. As Margaret Thatcher said, "the facts of life are conservative."

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Obama: Pragmatic Ideologue

This is my late 100-days analysis. I don't even really want to do it. There are a lot of things people are saying about his honeymoon, and I don't care to repeat all the stuff about the stimulus or his temperament or the various shenanigans surrounding his nominations to executive posts.

But there is one thing I'd like to register here, and that's my consistent dissatisfaction with the disjuncture between what Obama says and what he does. I was unhappy about this during the campaign, I was unhappy about it when he was elected, and I'm unhappy about it now. Why am I carping now? Well, it's clearly demonstrable, that's all.

Obama loves to tell us that he is not a wild-eyed ideologue: no, he's a pragmatist. Whatever is best for the situation, that's what he's for.

Question: does 'what works best' ever look like something that a modern liberal ideologue would not do? For a pragmatist, the answer is an obvious and immediate "yes".

Obama talks pragmatism, but what he does is consistently ideological. Who, in the name of helping the economy, gives a workers' union a controlling stake in an auto company (Chrysler) but an ideologue who believes that workers ought to own rather than work for their company? Who but an ideologue says that torture is never appropriate? And who but an ideologue looks for empathy for the poor and disadvantaged as a major qualification for the Federal bench (a Supreme Court seat just opened up)?

Who would do these things? A moralist, yes. An ideologue, certainly. But a pragmatist? Heavens no.

For all his cool brainyness, I really can't forgive Obama this one. Not only is he producing ruinous policy, but he's impoverishing language. No intellectual worthy of the name should be caught doing that. Intellectuals don't play shell-games with word meanings; Obama does it in sonorous tones and with a cool temperament...

He's pragmatic about how he gains power and builds his popularity, and ideological about what he does with those assets. I find that chilling.

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Free vs. Fresh

I ran across this little gem this morning:

If you go to a market and are offered free fruit and vegetables, they will be rotten. If you want fresh fruit and vegetables, you have to pay for them.

Well, it stands to reason, I guess. But wait--the vegetables in question are intangible. To what does the analogy refer? Private education in a poor section of Nairobi. (Thanks to James Tooley!)

I guess the under-educated don't necessarily lack intelligence, especially where their children are concerned. It seems fairly obvious, but I think the underlying principle bears amplification:

People will pay dearly for what they value. It follows that what people will not pay for, they do not value.

Now, for the policy implications: it is unwise to remove the costs of a service or a commodity by making it into a basic human right. Now before the emails start screaming into my inbox, let me say that removing the duty of payment does not automatically destroy the willingness to pay, nor does it necessarily kill the value people place on a given good or service like education, healthcare, food, or even voting.

Voting?

Yes--the franchise was once the right of land owners who paid a special poll tax. It was a way of preventing whole sections of the population from having a political voice, of course, but it was also a way of recognizing that the franchise was essentially valuable. Yet even when voting had a monetary cost, it was considered a political right (not a mere privilege granted by the government).

I know I've steered into territory that makes it easy for people to charge me with bigotry, but that's not the sort of argument I'm trying to make. What I'm attempting to say is that by removing the direct tangible costs from what we consider basic rights, we cheapen those rights and invite contempt of them.

So, in the interests of helping Americans take their political rights more seriously, I say make 'em pay. Speaking for myself, I'd pay for some fresh freedom--the free variety is rotten.

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Fear and Security

I wrote in February that left-wingers don't object to the 'politics of fear' on principle. I happen to think they're right (I don't object to the 'politics of fear' on principle either), but a caveat is in order: fears are bad when they are irrational. It follows, of course, that cultivating irrational fears for personal or political gain is immoral.

It was frequently argued that the last administration manipulated American fears in order to gain control of oil fields in Iraq, that TERRORISM was just a tool to further the aims of Big Oil, &c. Blah blah blah. Looking back, all the screaming by leftists seems pretty juvenile. Bush came from oil country, and Cheney had at one time worked for Haliburton, but that didn't make them into villains conspiring against America for financial gain.

In contrast, Obama's administration is showing some early signs of manipulating fear for overtly political ends, namely the de-legitimization and stigmatization of conservative political thought. It's not difficult mental gymnastics, even. For someone who can see the label "freedom fighter" lurking behind the flashing neon sign reading "terrorist", it's child's play to see terrorism beginning to foam within the ranks of veterans, tax-protesters, and even "right-wingers" broadly construed.

Which is exactly what Janet Napolitano recently did with her Department of Homeland Security assessment (thanks to Michelle Malkin for posting the pdf). Now why, in heaven's name, would a bureaucrat think right-wing American groups are so dangerous, especially since the administration evidently doesn't think foreign terrorists are such a big deal any more (thus releasing the internal information on our advanced techniques for squeezing intelligence out of high-level terror operatives)?

I think it boils down to two basic left-wing political assumptions:
1. Terrorism is primarily a reaction to the misuse of American power in the world.
2. The largest and most important struggle in the world is between the "haves" and the "have nots."

"Right wingers", for the left-wing thinker, represent the "haves" who oppress the "have nots" (either knowingly or unknowingly). They represent the privileged few who ought to be brought down a bit so that the underprivileged many can be brought up a bit. So if we just look at the problem through the left lens of our spectacles here, we can see that "right wingers" are dangerous opponents to progress and terrorists are just acting out their economic frustrations in irrationally violent ways.

Now in my (admittedly right-wing) view, this is plain silly. There is no question that there are a few nuts in America who do really nasty things--we often hear about Timothy McVeigh at times like this--but there really is no broad based conspiracy against America from the American "right". International terrorism is a much more clear danger.

Which brings us back to the release of the release of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos. It's a bad policy choice, and one that will have a deleterious effect on future intelligence efforts against our ever-evolving terrorist enemies. Michael Hayden and Michael Mukasey make the point well:

The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.

They go on to address the many misperceptions and rebut the usual arguments against the interrogation techniques before concluding with an explanation of how the creation of "institutional timidity" has weakened intelligence in the past:

In his book "The Terror Presidency," Jack Goldsmith describes the phenomenon we are now experiencing, and its inevitable effect, referring to what he calls "cycles of timidity and aggression" that have weakened intelligence gathering in the past. Politicians pressure the intelligence community to push to the legal limit, and then cast accusations when aggressiveness goes out of style, thereby encouraging risk aversion, and then, as occurred in the wake of 9/11, criticizing the intelligence community for feckless timidity. He calls these cycles "a terrible problem for our national security." Indeed they are, and the precipitous release of these OLC opinions simply makes the problem worse.

Oh well, at least they're watching those really scary conservatives in America. After all, those right-wingers seriously cloud up our 'bright, sunny, safe' April days... The inversion of reason is incredible--unless, of course, the policy here is purely a consolidation of political power at the expense of American security. Here's to the politics of fear.

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ps: This little blog will be unusually quiet next week as I'm off for a little Katrina relief work on the Gulf Coast. I'll be back at it on the 27th.

Taxes and Tea Parties

I must confess to being less-than-enthralled with the idea of the tea parties that sprang up all over the place yesterday, mainly because there's a certain disjointedness about the historical analogy.

It's a relatively minor quibble, though, since most people aren't trying to make a thoroughgoing analogy. Besides, I'm not one to join the snarky classes who are currently holding down the "you're just stupid" chorus very ably by themselves and looking pretty mean for their troubles.

But then again, there are really good analogies to be made if one steps back a bit and considers. Iain Murray did a pretty good job, I'd say--in fact, I don't think I can offer any improvement on it.

So, instead of asking why people are so stupid, one should ask why so many people are upset about taxes in a general sort of way. That's exactly what...[hold on a sec while I cue the ominous mood music for the 'evil genius']...Karl Rove did before he wrote today's column. Here's the main conclusion he drew:

But the center of the debate is in Washington, not the states. The fear of future federal tax hikes is fueling the tea-party movement.

There is a portion of the American population that doesn't believe the government can incur record expenses, cut taxes, and meet all its obligations. Tax hikes are coming. When and what shape--well, it's to be determined.

And as Rove so aptly observes, whether or not the Republican Party (as the only viable organized opposition party) benefits from the tea parties is a very open question. That it would like to surge back into power on the current of tax-induced protest is certain, but I have heard with my own ears a feisty objection to attempts by various political figures to "co-opt" the tea parties. Republican policymakers had better beware that they don't try merely to harness this event.

They'd better listen well.

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Update: I knew I was forgetting something. I had meant to include a link to this story from March. It illustrates that "tea party" is just a popular form of protest and that strict historical analogizing isn't the point. That, and the interesting and salient point that right wingers aren't the only ones doing this sort of thing.

Changing Cuba

I mentioned Cuba in yesterday's post as an example of a real 'sea-change' in American policy. For all I know it could very well be the right change, but I'm still unconvinced that it will have any positive impact on Cuba or Cubans--though I'm certain it will certainly bring a little more money to the impoverished island's repressive government.

The Castro brothers are, of course, still hoping for a lift of the embargo, because it would mean the effective withdrawal of substantive American disapproval of the Cuban state. I found this passage interesting:

Mr Obama has said he wants dialogue and improved relations with Cuba, but that the embargo should be maintained until the Cuban government shows progress on democracy and human rights.
Fidel Castro said he did not blame Mr Obama for past US policy towards Cuba, but added: “The conditions are created for Obama to use his talent in a constructive policy that puts an end to what has failed for the past half century.”
He pointed out that Raúl Castro had expressed willingness to hold US talks on the basis of equality and without preconditions. [emphasis added]

I can't say I'm surprised at the demand for equality and the withdrawal of preconditions, especially considering that Obama has seemed willing enough to grant those things elsewhere. But what I do find surprising is that there are American conservatives who think lifting the embargo has zero drawbacks and many benefits.

Mario Loyola has a piece up at the Washington Times arguing exactly that. It's easy to argue that American policy has "failed" because Cuba hasn't changed in the last 50 years, but I don't think 'changing Cuba' is the only reason for the policy. The embargo is also useful for de-legitimizing the Cuban state, for preventing active American financial support for the government, and a simple statement of deep disapproval.

But what really irks me about Loyola's analysis is his belief that we should emulate Nixon's approach to China. I really can't see why opening up with China can be seen as a spectacular success in terms of American interests. Now think--is China more democratic? Less repressive? Is China more friendly toward American interests abroad? No, no, and no. China has proven no help with North Korea, continues to persecute the Falun Gong and Christians, and it continues as a one-party state. There is one big change in China though: the government seems to think that it can remain Communist while stabling a quasi-capitalist cash-cow. Orwell's pigs have truly made good.

On the other side, Peter Brookes at the New York Post holds down the older conservative argument. There's nothing particularly new in what he says, but that's because there's really nothing new to say (and that's not a bad thing, really). The fact is that for 50 years the ball has been in the Cuban government's court. America hasn't made the Cuban people's life miserable--the Cuban government has done that.

If America wanted to literally force Cuba to change, it's militarily possible, of course. But American interests aren't strong enough to use overwhelming military power, so the embargo stands as the primary bargaining chip. When Cuba reforms, America lifts the economic sanctions.

Your move, Castro.

PS: The only really decent reason for lifting the embargo without receiving some kind of good-faith effort from Cuba first is if we want something that only Cuba can provide. Which means...cigars, I guess. But we're busily taxing and banning tobacco. On second thought, Cuban cigars would qualify as some dangerous conspiracy against the health of witless Americans. Oh well.

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Plus ça change...

If you know how that line ends, you probably had a good history teacher in high school or college. But even if you don't recognize it in French, it's pretty familiar in English too: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

It's more than a cynical outburst: it's sometimes a statement of fact and sometimes a commonly held perception (sometimes both), which is why it resonates in generation after generation. Somehow I think there are some cynical liberals muttering it under their breath at the latest news that Obama has chosen to continue yet another Bush policy: the use of the "state secrets" privilege to keep certain kinds of surveillance (including wiretaps) secret. Regardless, many liberals who expected this to blow away with the new president are upset.

I think it's a good policy choice, but I doubt there's going to be a statement from the White House with the words "I was wrong" any time soon. Ah, change! But all this is to point out that Obama's presidency has been and will likely continue to be a mixed bag. There are some big changes, and there are some big non-changes. I'm relieved and grateful every time Obama makes what I think is a decent policy choice because I don't really expect it. But it's a fact that he can't do everything the opposite way that Bush did. It's just not possible.

That doesn't stop some folks from reading big changes into relatively small circumstances. Jonah Goldberg's plug on The Corner yesterday generated a smattering of email to this humble blog (thanks, Jonah!), including one arguing that the tow-rope extended to the pirate life-boat and the presence of negotiators constituted a "sea change" from the last administration's policy of refusing to "deal" with those it deemed "evil."

Besides grossly overloading the incident with policy meanings, the charge against the Bush administration is just not true. North Korea and Iran were deemed "evil", and Bush routinely participated in talks of some sort or other throughout his administration. What he did not do, however, was make unilateral concessions hoping that the Iranians or North Koreans would follow suit.

The logic is actually quite good: an evil power is also one you can't trust. So, instead of trusting it, you declare that if it meets such-and-such precondition(s), then there will be some basis on which to strike a bargain. And so "talks" in this kind of situation consist mostly of haggling over the preconditions before arriving at other policy negotiations. Or, to put it another way, it's pre-negotiation negotiation.

But there's a real sea-change in American policy underway that doesn't involve pirates, tow-ropes, or FBI hostage negotiators. Obama is seriously considering a decision to dispense with pre-negotiation negotiation, which means that he's effectively prepared to admit Iran into the nuclear club without further protest. Iran doesn't seem to have gotten the message, though (sorry, I can't read the Arabic script, so we'll have to make do with Rubin's translation): America is still 'the enemy'. So even if we're not calling Iran "evil" any more, Iran is still rooting for a punishment of its chief "enemy."

And so we can modify our little quotation to say, The more America changes, the more Iran stays the same. I hope I may be pardoned for thinking Bush's way was more realistic.

There's another manifestation of this particular policy "sea-change"--this time with Cuba. It's not as dangerous a policy as dropping preconditions with Iran, to be sure, but the logic under which the change takes effect is highly questionable. Apparently Obama hopes that easing travel, communication, and remittance restrictions will inspire goodwill and "foster the beginnings of grassroots democracy." I'm skeptical. Cuba is a repressive and totalitarian state that has little scruple concerning democracy, property, or basic liberty. If Obama seriously thinks that making nice will subvert the Castro regime, I think he's in for a disappointment. Which brings us full-circle:

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

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Pirates and Politics

Jonah Goldberg issued a congratulations to the Prez last night on the decisive end to the pirate standoff...and Rush Limbaugh isn't particularly happy about it.

The difference between these two heavy-hitting conservative commentators isn't as antagonistic as it seems, though. I may be wrong, but I don't think Limbaugh isn't just trying to pull some kind of "propaganda" stunt (for a look at what propaganda entails, read this Corner post by Goldberg).

No, it seems that Limbaugh is concerned that Obama is pulling a Clinton. (You can check the transcript of today's show over at Limbaugh's website sometime tomorrow.) Acting tough in politically inconsequential situations (asprin factory, anybody?) is cheap PR that might have the result of weakening opposition to his genuinely bad agenda items (in this case, most of the domestic agenda plus military spending cuts).

Limbaugh has a point. There are good reasons to oppose the President's stated agenda items, and we mustn't get too excited when he does something right (even if, in this case, it means chiefly that he didn't interfere in the Navy's very capable handling of the situation).

But Goldberg has a point too: part of being an opposition party member, or just an opponent, is to goad your political counterparts into adopting good policy. To the extent that they choose what you want, you say "thank you", but it doesn't mean you lend them active support. With Democrats in control of the Legislative and Executive branches of the Federal government, I'll take what I can get.

So I'm happy the pirates got their comeuppance, and I hope Obama considers seriously the Navy's rumored proposals for stabilizing international shipping lanes. That doesn't mean I don't still think his policy agenda is generally very bad. In fact, I'll continue to bleat and carp about it in my little corner of the world.

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Thinking about Peace

I saw a bumper sticker on the rear of a passing car this morning that made me laugh out loud:

Do people really think that peace comes as a result of "popular demand"? Come on! Peace is something fragile that must be constructed and maintained (often through force of arms) not "demanded" by masses of people. Peace isn't even the natural state of things: let people alone and they will fight. Don't believe me? Check out your local school yard when it is without a supervising teacher for about five minutes.

The waters off the Somali coast are a vast unsupervised playground, and the bullies are grabbing little Susie's and Johnny's lunches. Only it's worse than that. Pirates, like terrorists, are not just bullies in need of after-school detention and a note home to the parents. Nor are they criminals in need of trial and imprisonment.

No, pirates are enemies of mankind (this is a well-established category--see here, and here--with roots in the Roman civilization) and ought be executed whenever they are caught. They do not bow to noble and civilized notions like the "rule of law". They understand one language and one language only: that of raw power. And so we should mete it out.

While our attorney general is thumbing through his files on how to solve a problem we haven't dealt with for quite a while, maybe we could issue some letters of marque, or at least put some "sea marshals" (we already have "air marshals") onboard US-flagged ships to man 30mm cannons, or something.

None of that is likely, I'm afraid. With the problem being classed as an annoying distraction for the president, I'd say we're in for more piracy. Andy McCarthy thinks so too. His whole article is worth reading, but I especially liked his reflections on what it means to be "civilized":

“Civilized” is a much-misunderstood word, thanks to the “rule of law” crowd that is making our planet an increasingly dangerous place. Civilization is not an evolution of mankind but the imposition of human good on human evil. It is not a historical inevitability. It is a battle that has to be fought every day, because evil doesn’t recede willingly before the wheels of progress.
There is nothing less civilized than rewarding evil and thus guaranteeing more of it. High-minded as it is commonly made to sound, it is not civilized to appease evil, to treat it with “dignity and respect,” to rationalize its root causes, to equivocate about whether evil really is evil, and, when all else fails, to ignore it — to purge the very mention of its name — in the vain hope that it will just go away. Evil doesn’t do nuance. It finds you, it tests you, and you either fight it or you’re part of the problem.

I think it's fair to say that while Mr. Obama finds piracy distracting, the rough-and-tumble types out there find it very interesting. They will calculate based on what the American President does. If Obama wants to set the stage for easier conflict resolution in the future of his administration, he will demonstrate that there is cold hard steel behind his words. If he does sow in strength now, his administration will reap little more than foreign policy failures garnished with an occasional UN Security Council resolution.

As a result, peace will find itself much demanded and seldom delivered.

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Exceptionalism

Americans are exceptional. It means that they march to the beat of a different drummer, and usually their own. (There are exceptions even to this rule, though the White House denies that bow to King Abdullah happened.)

Meanwhile, an all-American crew on an American cargo ship carrying humanitarian aid has proved exceptional in their response to the predations of Somali pirates. Other crews of ships taken by the Somali thugs have lain quiet until vast sums of money are transferred to Somali recipients (as it is generally agreed that resisting pirates once they've successfully boarded is deadly and usually counter-productive).

But not this American crew. They took one of the pirates hostage instead. As in all such situations, it didn't work out as well as it might, and the captain of the Maersk Alabama is sitting with a bunch of pirates in a life-boat that has no gas while the USS Bainbridge looms ominously nearby.

I can't help thinking this is an echo of 9/11/2001. It took the American passengers of Flight 93 just a few minutes to realize their plane was a suicide weapon headed for Washington, DC, so they risked--and lost--their lives in a revolt against their crew of hijackers.

The point is that exceptionalism is not always good for your health--it is frequently quite the opposite. It isn't necessarily good for your ship or your family. But one thing is certain: being exceptional guards one's personal dignity. To wit:

Those who know [Captain] Murphy said they expected a good outcome.

"To me, he was a hero anyway. As strange as it is, it's almost not surprising. That's about it. That's Shane," said Patrick Stewart, Murphy's roommate at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth.

Robert MacAleese, a senior at Massachusetts Maritime, said Murphy recently visited his father's modern cargo class.

"He stated that he sees pirates all the time," MacAleese said. But Murphy added that he thought the pirates "knew better than to go against the American ships."

Part of American exceptionalism is a conviction that we must not submit to evildoers, we must defeat them. In this case, the conviction has escalated a problem and may result in a tragically exceptional solution. The captain may not survive; the pirates may get away. The stakes are high and may go higher (especially as more pirates seem to be heading in the direction of the scene), and as they do, the one thing certain is that the United States is getting more interested in the pirate problem.

The American Marine Corps broke the back of the Barbary-Coast pirate problem many, many years ago (that's why the Shores of Tripoli are in the Marine anthem to this day), and it seems that they may be called upon to do it again, this time on the coast of Somalia. And if they are, you may be certain that the solution will be another exceptional example of American dignity on display.

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PS: In case I didn't make it clear enough, it is my sincere hope that there will be more gibbets and fewer payments for pirates. The Washington Times makes the point pretty well here.

Taxes

I hate the way deadlines loom ominously over my consciousness and seep into my dreams at night. Which is why I managed to get my tax returns filed in March this year. Whew. But I'll spare you the rest of the details. Suffice it to say...I'm with Jonah.

Happy Tax Season!

Guns=Evil

This is what passes for nuance. Exhibit A: Today's Boston Globe sports one of the most ridiculous editorials I've ever seen: "A Bulletproof Bottom Line".

Apparently in the minds of the Globe editors, allowing trained citizens to carry concealed weapons onto the "pristine" acres of national parks constitutes not only a transformation of "these peaceful places" into war zones, but also amounts to the NRA "gun[ning] down democracy."

There's not a whit of truth to the argument.

In the first place, the parks aren't "pristine". They have ranger stations and trails running through them, and millions of people routinely visit. If they were really pristine, nobody would know what they looked like.

Second, they're hardly the definition of "peaceful". Not only are they the sites where the struggle of life against death races furiously without timeouts or ceasefires (just what do you think wolves, bears, and coyotes do with the antelope? Play polo?), but they are also favorite places for (*ahem*) "farmers" to carry their weapons around.

Third, the NRA is a legitimate "interest group," which may be likened to any of the Left's favorites--the NAACP or the ACLU--and which uses "collective bargaining" (sound familiar? Labor Unions are all over that one) with the government for policy ends. The NRA, far from the evil anti-American institution it is made to seem, speaks for thousands upon thousands of law-abiding and "peaceful" gun owners throughout the United States. In the give-and-take of policy, then, it constitutes one of the elements of democracy itself.

But get a load of this little gem:

Allowing such weapons in national parks was one of the most thoughtless of President Bush's outgoing midnight rules, which took effect in January. Happily, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last week issued a preliminary injunction, saying the rule was conjured up in an "astoundingly flawed process." Responding to a suit by gun-control and park advocates, the judge said the Bush administration made no effort to assess possible environmental impacts of people packing heat in these peaceful places. [emphasis added]

You've got to be kidding me. Environmental impacts of people carrying concealed weapons?!? Okay, this is just plain silly. People carrying concealed weapons have permits that can be revoked if they abuse the privileges afforded by them. An environmental concern would be appropriate if Dubya had ordered that national parks become target ranges (which are known for their large quantities of lead and brass added to the soil content), but he didn't do that. Concealed weapons cause no more environmental damage than the presence of people in parks causes already. In fact, it might have a net-positive effect, making national parks a place where thugs, rapists and murderers will have to be on notice, even out in the middle of a "pristine" wilderness.

I have an idea: why don't we try to make American liberties "pristine". It would be a nice change.

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The Armed Citizen

A Miami, Florida Burger King hosted one of the most recent displays of patriotic commitment to law and order--and good marksmanship.

Police said a man wearing a ski mask walked into the store at Biscayne Boulevard and 54th Street and demanded money from a clerk.

A customer, who has a concealed weapons permit, pulled a gun, said Officer Jeff Giordano, a Miami police spokesman.

The customer and robber exchanged fire.

The robber was shot dead at the scene.

The customer, who had several gunshot wounds, was taken to Ryder Trauma Center in serious but stable condition, said Lt. Ignatius Carroll, a Miami Fire Rescue spokesman.

there are several things to note about this incident: The customer who was packing evidently is a better shot than the robber--that comes with training had on the range (required for concealed-carry permits); the customer was apparently reluctant to pull the trigger and was rewarded for his lenience with a couple non-lethal wounds.

But the thing that really gets my attention is that the man drew a gun to defend a fast-food chain from robbery. Obviously he made some determination of the risk to human life, as well, but the standard procedure for a robbery is to hand over the cash and hope the police catch the robber later.

How many people do you know who would mutter under their breath about how Burger King somehow deserved to be robbed? I know several, and it's a crying shame. The man with the concealed weapon is just the sort of man who saves us from madmen. And with AIG executives walking the plank these days, we could use a few more heroes.

Stop the Madness Already!

President Obama would do well to sit at the feet of that famous British democrat, G.K. Chesterton. I'm thinking now of that little gem he penned in his (very theologically oriented) Orthodoxy:

It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own.

This is easily applied to politics (and I happen to think Chesterton intended it that way) if one remembers that being 'a heretic' means simply being wrong. There are thousands of ways to make mistakes, to err, to blunder, even to lose one's mind (which is the result of habitual error more often than we would like to admit).

So back to my point: Obama needs to stop the madness--Congress is careening at the head of a mob, and it needs to be checked. And as the Wall Street Journal notes today, there's something in it for the President too: mobs are notoriously finicky, picking their victims seemingly at random, devouring even their friends.

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"I'm Serious"

That's what Joe Biden assures us now:

You think I’m kidding? This is the only part the president was right about: Don’t mess with Joe, because I mean it. I’m serious, guys. I’m serious. I’m absolutely serious.

Sure you are.

You know, my niece has a habit of looking up at whoever she's trying to convince that her latest whim must be satisfied immediately and saying, "I'm serious! I'm really, REALLY serious!" And you know what always happens to me when she says that? I get a fit of the giggles which I invariably try (unsuccessfully) to suppress.

Dear Mr. Vice President: if you come to a point where you have to say that you're being serious, then you've already lost the battle. Nobody is taking you seriously, and there's not a thing you can do about it. The joke's on you.

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In Praise of Humor

The expansive deserts of seriousness make the occasional oasis of humor blessed. But humor has more than just refreshing qualities. My favorite benefit is its capacity to take the edge off hubris.

After all, what can be more ridiculous than a politician who always takes himself seriously? Chesterton said that the greatest merit of the English aristocracy was that nobody could take it seriously.

And I say that the greatest merit of Obama's teleprompter is that it has its own blog.

Let the good times begin.

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