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Iraq Withdrawal & Obama's Lack of Political Humility

The evolution of a president's thinking on the key issues he confronts is a fascinating to track.  Today, President Obama announced that combat missions in Iraq will end by August 2010.  Although there's political potency in drawing a time-line for withdrawal, given the strategic myopia associated with it we shouldn't be surprised when the same president who believes deficit spending is the best hope to end a recession, does so.

If you paid close attention during the campaign, you'll recall that Obama's positions on Iraq changed based upon political expedience, which is to say evolving circumstances.  An ABC News article from July of 2008 captures the tectonic nature of Obama's thinking, and, when juxtaposed to today's announcement, dovetails perfectly with a man thoroughly in the grasp of uncertainty about his thinking. 

Delving further into his agile repositioning process, we find that in 2005, he called for a phased withdrawal of our troops, in 2006 he argued for a timetable to remove our troops, a political solution within Iraq, and aggressive diplomacy with all of Iraq's neighbors, and, in January 2007, he introduced legislation in the Senate to remove all of our combat troops from Iraq by March 2008.  Military analysts and political commentators alike have marveled at Obama's talent for providing serial strategies, each of which seems candid and principled, but when considered in summary reflect a less than serious approach to a very serious matter.

Beyond his ungenerous inability to admit that former President Bush's surge was responsible for creating the possibility of a withdrawal, had the U.S. acted on his wholly irresponsible recommendation to leave Iraq in March 2008, it would have created civil war and bloodshed on a massive scale. Moreover, it would have emboldened Iran, which would have exploited the civil confusion and pandemonium to its advantage.

None of that happened because Bush stood his ground against the likes of Senator Harry Reid who routinely called Iraq a failure, as well as a host of other liberals who acted as though their political cowardice and intellectual dishonesty were badges of honor.

The reason political historians rarely weigh in on presidents until many years have passed is that the absence of perspective and the sway of the masses overwhelm any attempt to achieve a measure of objectivity.  But, with the passage of time, perhaps on the same trajectory as Iraq's move towards a constitutional democracy, history will correctly affirm that Mr. Bush's steadfastness is what permitted Obama to cavalierly issue a date certain for withdrawal, as naive as that surely is.

Whether it's spending future generation's money or excoriating his predecessor while exploiting his successes, this is clearly a president for whom political humility is a stranger.

Huffington: Pushing Prudence & Discipline to Extinction

One of the curious hallmarks of modern liberalism is its fervent belief that common sense can be legislated and subsequently minted into a kind of civic virtue through regulation.  An apt example is Arianna Huffington's piece decrying the next self-inflicted crisis, that of credit card debt.

Although every American has compassion for those who seem impervious to appreciating the dangers of life's many pitfalls, there is an important distinction between disasters and crises that befall the innocent and those that are the result of a studied self-interest combined with an abiding belief in the proverbial 'free lunch.' 

In service to a transparent political agenda, Huffington deftly conflates the financial travails of Americans who are suffering due to layoffs and who resort to credit cards for essentials, with the vastly larger cohort who carry shocking amounts of such debt.  Indeed, reports indicate the average credit card balance is about $12,000.  But, blaming the card companies for handicapping their risk with higher interest rates for those with spotty credit is just another example of a conveniently misplaced accusation. 

But liberals seem to excuse or overlook the fact that we all instinctively act to minimize our exposure to risk, whether it's avoiding unhealthful habits such as smoking or ensuring our homes are adequately insured, while at the same time indicting a corporation for doing the equivalent.  Indeed, in Huffington's world, offering credit cards at a higher rate for those with poor credit ratings is a form of abuse.

Implicit in her rant is the wholly misinformed notion that credit cards are the only recourse for those in financial need, due either to unemployment or underemployment, and, second, that it's a problem ripe for government intervention.  Ironically, Huffington maligns the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 because it raised the bar for declaring bankruptcy.  It's apparently an affront to her that lawmakers wanted to legislate a measure of self-sufficiency and thrift by suggesting that reflexively invoking the bankruptcy courts might not be in the long-term interest of the individual, much less society in general.

She goes on to talk about the proposed legislation sponsored Senator Chris Dodd and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, which, once again, would legislate a set if civic immunities against stupidity, pushing fiscal prudence and discipline--which were an integral part of our civic fabric in decades past--from its current status of merely being endangered, into extinction.

The infantilized society that Huffington and her ilk are striving to create is not the one our Founding Fathers envisioned, nor is it conducive to individual responsibility and accountability, two more traits that seemed to have been forced into cultural obsolescence.

Nationalizing the Banking System: Whom Do You Trust?

Beyond the obvious arguments for and against the nationalization of our banking system is the deeper question of implicit trust:  To wit, on balance, do you feel the government is more trustworthy than  private corporations when it comes to operating our banking system?  A corollary is whether you feel government is more proficient and reliable than private corporations in operating large, complex business systems?

Making the case that government can't be trusted is Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr., writing in today's Wall Street Journal.  He outlines the central concerns with nationalization, but the most sweeping and credible charge is that the process would be rife with politics, not unlike the so-called 'stimulus' package.  We can ask such questions, as Mr. O'Driscoll does, such as whether a government-owned bank would act with fiscal prudence and follow sound business practices, which is highly dubious.

But, more fundamentally, there is simply no reason to believe that politicians and bureaucrats can be trusted to remain dispassionate about this because both sides of the aisle, but, in particular, the Democrats, have a rich history of exploiting such problems to their political advantage.

Arguing in favor of nationalization is Raymond J. Learsy, in a piece in today's Huffington Post.  Ironically, he uses the notion of trust to support his argument for nationalization, that regardless of the billions already pumped into the banking system, consumers have lost trust, because of a lack of transparency:

Neither we, nor the government fully understand what the banks are doing with the funds showered upon them by the TARP agency.  Most damaging is the almost universal lack of confidence in the competence and integrity of these tone-deaf managements who have clearly gotten us into this mess.

Well, have we forgotten that it was the government who wrote the rules for acceptance of the funds the first time around?  If transparency and operational credibility are lacking it's because the same group of government bureaucrats who wants to nationalize the banks were dozing at the helm when billions were showered on them the first time around.  So, speaking of trust, why should the average tax payer have faith in them given their checkered past?

As for Learsy's argument that we can't infuse more capital into banks "without control over the sad sacks who got us into this mess is lunacy," we would be guilty of intellectual dishonesty if we denied that the group of "sad sacks" must include certain members of Congress, many of whom are elbowing one another to the microphone to argue for nationalization.

Somehow, we're supposed to sleep soundly knowing that Learsy's band of bureaucrats will exercise cutting edge business acumen while those who do it for a living won't.  However, keeping the banking system private doesn't mean allowing the executives an unregulated operating hand in decision making.  Let the bureaucrats do what they do best, which is to draft Draconian regulations that Congress will  hopefully retool to allow banks to maximize profits without risking reserves.

But, Learsy is correct that trust is the issue on which all of this rests:  Do we trust those in government, from Congress, which sat idly by as this storm developed to the bureaucrats at our regulatory agencies, who seem to awaken from their civil service slumber just in time to overlook another impending crisis?

Or do we trust those in the industry who, with a measure of meaningful regulation, can right their own fiscal ship with far more confidence and credibility?

The 'Fairness Doctrine' & The Left's Failure of Confidence

The confidence of one's ideas is reflected in a variety of ways.  The most profound is the willingness to allow the free market to determine the success or failure of media outlets and venues, be it network or cable news, newspapers, or the radio waves.  Making the case for the free expression of ideas is Rush Limbaugh, writing in today's Wall Street Journal. 

The left's motivation for stridently demanding the reinstitution of the so-called Fairness Doctrine is found, in part, in the history of liberal talk radio, which has been an unambiguous failure.  Since no liberal commentator has been able to sustain a large audience on the AM dial, liberals mistakenly conclude it's just because conservatives are monopolizing the frequencies.  Political introspection is as healthy an exercise as it is rare, which is why the left overlooks the more fundamental reason for their failure--the shows that have been featured over the years are at once bland and sulfurous examples of hard-edged liberalism that simply fail to entertain.

The reason millions of Americans listen to Messrs. Limbaugh, Hannity, Hewitt, Prager, Medved et al, is because these hosts engage their audiences, they challenge sacrosanct ideas, and they do so with intelligence and verve.  Threre's also something they don't do, which so many on the left, be they in radio or in writing, commonly do--conservative radio hosts don't scold and they don't condescend.  Rather, they're wry, intellectually nimble, and they mount arguments based on credible evidence and an abiding sense of decency. 

But there's another reason that conservative radio has been such an unqualified success, and that is it's one of the few places where traditional--read, mainstream--Americans can hear the glib pieties of the left challenged, and, indeed, decimated.  It's also because modern liberals seem to live in an intellectual bell jar, insulated from regular folks who spend their days working and taking care of their families, hoping--and, yes, praying--for a better life for their kids.

The haughty smugness of the modern liberal provides talk show hosts such as Limbaugh with a nearly limitless reservoir of topics, from 'global warming,' which Al Gore said was a bigger threat than radical Islam to the horrors of guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens to the paradox that liberals will spend millions and march in the streets to protect endangered species but do nothing to protect the innocent unborn.  Add to that list their infatuation with dictators, from Castro to Chavez, and in prior decades, Stalin, and you have the perfect recipe for a party so thoroughly confused about morals and absolutes, that it draws millions to their radios to listen to articulate hosts eviscerate them--day after day.

So, as the liberals mount their attack on free speech, let's not let them deny the real reason for their desire to provide "equal time" to liberals on the airwaves:  They lack the confidence in their ideas that the Truman Democrats had, and, in moments of political clarity and candor, they know in their hearts that the average American inhabits a rather different universe, the one then-candidate Obama ridiculed when he talked about bitter people turning to guns and religion.

Relearning Old Lessons at Our Own Expense

Although sanitizing history in service to political goals is a timeworn practice of those who lack confidence in their ideas, every political season it's dressed up in new garb as though it was opening night on Broadway.  This time around it's the Democrats who are reanimating the New Deal of the 1930s to support their $1 trillion spending bill, arguing that only through massive federal spending can we reinvigorate the economy, in the same manner, so we're told, that FDR did some seven decades ago.

For a refresher course on the New Deal there's no one better than Amity Shlaes, and her piece at Bloomberg.com brings needed sunshine to the dark falsehoods peddled by Democrats.  Her conclusions are that "more pro-growth strategies, especially low taxes on business, less aggressive labor law and consistent regulation, would have brought recovery sooner in the 1930s, and would likewise do so today."

Why this is difficult to fathom is perplexing.  That politics trumps common sense is yet another one of life's vexing paradoxes.  Henry Morgenthau was FDR's Treasury Secretary, and he staunchly opposed Keynesian economics and even disapproved of certain parts of the New Deal.  That's because he correctly understood that a dramatic infusion of federal dollars to correct market inefficiencies and distortions only protracts a depression or recession.  As he stated in his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee in May of 1939:

We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot.

At the core of this lesson, one that President Obama and the Democratically controlled Congress are studiously ignoring, is the unambiguous fact that private enterprise and small businesses are the engine of economic recovery, not deficit spending, which will be like throwing sand into they gears of capitalism. 

Peeling away the layers of this conundrum, we know that politics is driven by culture, which is informed by values and principles.  Our age is the product of a post-modernism which was thoroughly convinced of its intellectual certitude, that iconoclastic ideas would become the new norm, and would create a freshly minted set of absolutes firmly grounded in relativism, underwritten by a summary rejection of historical precedent because, in view of the rebels, they were produced by subjugation and oppression.

A corollary of our arrogant dismissal of history and traditional values is the civically unsavory fact that judgment and authority have been deleted from our cultural lexicon.  The result is that our elected officials are merely faithful proxies for the inbred stupidity that has evolved in the past fifty years.  So, they provide smug assurances that two-thirds of the spending bill should be government-based, and that most of the remaining one-third that focuses on 'tax relief'' should actually be in the form of tax credits for those who pay no taxes whatsoever.

The confidence Mr. Obama exhibited yesterday as he signed the bill stands in stark contrast to the fact that no recession in history, and certainly not the Great Depression, was ameliorated by massive government spending.  So this is not only a failure of leadership, it's an abdication of responsibility to tell the American people the truth. 

The word in Washington is that the Obama Administration is already hard at work on the second phase of the 'stimulus' program, because, not unlike all federal spending, the sky is the limit.  But ultimately it will be the tax payers who bear the burden, beginning with us, and continuing with our children, and grand-children.

The Dems Real 'Stimulus' is Political Power

You may have seen the cover of Newsweek which, in a fit of brazen ignorance, declares that "We're all Socialists Now."  It faithfully mirrors the majority of liberal Democrats nationwide, which is determined to reanimate the ghost of Lord Keynes, the discredited champion of profligate government spending.

Economics is a science the way Photoshop is an art, which is to say both can be adroitly manipulated to produce almost anything you can imagine.  For proof, we turn to off the graph liberal Ann Pettifor, writing in the Huffington Post, whose forte appears to be intellectual deceit.  Consistent with her liberal brethren, she willfully confuses "government" with "tax payers":

At times of high unemployment tax cuts may be saved and not spent into the economy.  But when the government invests the bulk of $789 billion in real, productive economic activity - it always gets its money back - plus some.

First, government has nothing to invest, it only exists because tax payers feed it.  In her Looking Glass world where Keynes reigns in delusional supremacy, tax payers will fund "investment" in "energy efficiency/ transportation/ public housing programs," who, in turn, will

...use the income to pay taxes - direct to the US government. So immediately the government can use these tax revenues to fix the budget. Then workers purchase goods and services - boosting the economy. Companies hire more workers to deal with demand for materials from stimulus-sponsored programs. More employed workers equals more taxpayers.

Interrupting her dream of government grandiosity, we must remind her that only 7 percent of the 'stimulus' package will be spent in 2009, and 10 percent in 2010, which means that the scant money invested in those years will make no appreciable difference in the unemployment rate. 

Pettifor's myth-making is music to the liberals' vision of a limitless role for government, one predicated on a cynical distrust of the common man.  Indeed, the left implicitly trusts the bureaucrat and entrenched politician, who only risk embarrassment, far more than the entrepreneur, who risks everything. 

It's not merely the scope and magnitude of this problem that the Democrats seem to have naively misappraised, it's the grim fact that their recommendations reflect an unequivocal ignorance of how it was created.  Since much of it can be laid at the doorstep of the housing industry generally, and Fannie May and Freddie Mac specifically, we might begin with Senate bill 190, the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, which would have severely tightened the regulatory apparatus under which they operate.  Ironically, Senator John McCain was one of the three co-sponsors of the bill, but it was strangled in the crib by Democrats in committee.

The mortgage-backed securities that were sold in a process so opaque no one to this day knows their true value, are not addressed in this fiscally irresponsible spending bill, nor has the mechanism that abetted them, the infamous mark to market, been confronted from a regulatory perspective.  Pricing the toxic assets is key to cleansing the system in a manner that exploits market place mechanics.  Paradoxically, in the view of Pettifor and her liberal ilk, these issues are peripheral to the political potency of indiscriminately overwhelming the system with cash, creating new leftist programs and augmenting those in service to their dream of omnipotence.

Therefore, when these fools rush in and make absurd assertions, from blaming capitalism to asserting that the $789 billion isn't enough, we can only point to the centuries of convincing evidence which demonstrates that, it's shortcomings notwithstanding, capitalism is the only system that has provided the greatest economic good for the greatest number, while safeguarding individual freedom.

But, it's clear that political power, not the pursuit of truth and real economic justice isn't their ultimate goal.

Is President Obama Providing Inspired Leadership?

There are inevitable times during any administration's tenure when circumstances test the president's will and when events appear to be creating a kind of negative political equity, if you will.  Given President Obama's thin executive resume and almost non-existent management experience, it's hardly surprising that the hopelessly complex challenge of reinvigorating the economy seems to be spiraling out of his control.

Writing in today's Wall Street Journal, financial guru Andy Kessler tells us why the markets dropped nearly 400 points yesterday after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner articulated the Obama Administration's plan for reviving the economy with its so-called stimulus package. 

As every investment neophyte knows, markets are so exquisitely tuned that the slightest hint of uncertainty is translated into a catastrophic reaction, and as Kessler argues, yesterday's politically myopic announcement by Mr. Geithner sent seismic shivers throughout the markets.

You can wend your way through Kessler's recommendations, but whether or not you agree with the balance he strikes, his level of specificity and confidence stands in refreshing contrast to Geithner's nebulous rhetoric.  But, the specifics aside, what does this tell us about President Obama's judgment?  Indeed, why would he let his treasury secretary, the apparent architect of his recovery plan, make a passionless speech without any hint of a blue print for reanimating our financial markets, which only confirmed people's fears that no one is at the helm of the largest expenditure in U.S. history?

Although Geithner mentioned an expansion of the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Lending Facility (TALF), which would help finance the consumer loan securitization packages that provide a large percent of small-business and consumer lending, he apparently felt the details weren't important enough to include.

However, these are peccadilloes compared with the more fundamental questions of how toxic assets will be priced, what's being done with mark-to-market, and who will set new mortgage interest rates for troubled loans.  Or, even more profound, since the first installment of the Troubled Asset Relief Program has made no appreciable difference in the recipients' balance sheets, much less the economy, why should we believe the current $1 trillion rescue plan will be any different?

The more desperate the situation becomes the more stridently pessimistic Mr. Obama's rhetoric becomes, and the fewer cogent reassurances we receive from his cabinet members.  Is that the kind of confident, uniting leadership we were promised? 

From Larry Summers, head of the White House's National Economic Council, to TS Geithner, these are bright and talented people.  However, in electing Obama, the nation may have naively used a charismatic algorithm for leadership, rather than insisting on the kind of leadership that's been tested under fire.

We're early in the game, but the initial score for the home team isn't inspiring, and in this particular kind of game, the stakes could hardly be any higher.

The 'Stimulus' Bill: A Pyrrhic Victory for Obama?

As President Obama may learn in the weeks and months after he signs his 'stimulus' bill, unambiguous political victories are something of an oxymoron.  As we've documented in recent posts, an even cursory analysis of this legislation belies the fantasy that it's stimulative, since so much of it is either for projects and programs that require at least a year to inject capital into the economy or merely adds money for existing liberal causes such as the National Endowment for the Arts.

We're sternly warned by everyone from Obama to moderate senate Republicans such as Arlen Specter, that "The country cannot afford not to take action."  For a glimpse into the convoluted and self-serving justifications for this behemoth we turn to Senator Specter, writing in today's Washington Post.  It's quintessential 'senate-speak,' which means it makes up for its lack of substance with expansive, nebulous rhetoric, studiously avoiding any confrontation with reality.

Beyond the utter unseriousness of this legislative process is the laughable way in which many Democrats, the president included, characterized it as bipartisan.  In truth, it was a study in arch partisanship without a hint of meaningful compromise.  The jobs that the Democrats are purporting to save must be government jobs or those at the myriad government sponsored programs they're over-funding, because so little is dedicated to investment incentives and small business tax relief, the twin engines of economic recovery.

In light of the fact that the economy will be the supreme electoral test of Mr. Obama's first term, the unreflective and overweening confidence he and his fellow Democrats have exhibited in their support for this bill puts extraordinary pressure on them.  As Byron York et al have argued, they're taking a kind of faith-based economic approach which requires astounding improvements in job creation and productivity, as well as a reanimation our capital markets in order for them to be deemed successful.

In his rush to pass this Leviathan, Mr. Obama seems to have confused an economic stimulus with spending that merely provides economic relief to those in need.  The latter, while important, won't appreciably add to productivity or investment.  As former President Bush's rebate checks aptly demonstrated, merely putting money in the hands of consumers does little for the economy.  Moreover, the president's assertion that all spending is the equivalent of an economic stimulus is, at best, a rhetorical sleight-of-hand. 

Since no one predicted this economic nightmare--which has included a recession, a slumping housing market, and systemic problems in our capital markets--no one can say with any certainty how best to end it.  Indeed, regardless of whether one is an advocate or critic of Keynesian spending, there have only been three times in the past fifty years where a government intervention caused an unequivocal economic recovery, and all three were tax cuts--Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush 41.

It will be instructive to see how the balance of 2009 evolves and whether Mr. Obama's plan to resuscitate the economy with massive infusions of deficit spending will make a difference.  Either way, he seems to have only a dim appreciation that it's a gamble of monumental proportions.

President Obama's Sputtering Leaderhip

As further evidence that intelligence isn't closely correlated with wisdom, President Obama continues his fruitless pursuit of a 'stimulus' bill that voters nationwide recognize as a sop for left-of-center politicians and their special interests.  Writing in today's Wall Street Journal is Daniel Henninger, who provides a brief itemization of the more egregious expenditures, concluding,

Sen. Tom Coburn is threatening to read the bill on the floor of the Senate.  I have a better idea: Read it on "Saturday Night Live."

But despite his lack of political acumen on this matter, one might think Mr. Obama recognizes that this bill is a shameful, transparently bloated, spectacle that's an embarrassment to tax payers across the income spectrum.  Since his inauguration, politicians on both sides of the aisle have graciously provided the president with some breathing space, but it's clear that their patience is ebbing. 

Indeed, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today stated the obvious, which is that Obama hasn't demonstrated leadership on this, the most pressing issue facing the nation.  Perhaps the fact that the distractions of Tom Daschle's failed bid to become Secretary of Health & Human Services, as well as other nominees whose checkered financial backgrounds became apparently only as the vetting process loomed, have contributed to the sense that the blush has come off the Obama rose.

It also highlights something few seemed to have noticed, which is the fact that senators rarely make exemplary presidents.  The senate, as is well known, is a staid and deliberative body, driven by a kind of lethargic consensus, where loquacity is a virtue and raw leadership is rare.  Although many excel in that rarefied kind of political oxygen, it seldom produces presidents with the capacity to lead, especially during challenging times, which, of course, is what we face.

Merely repeating the dire consequences of inaction, which appears to be Mr. Obama's modus operandi, is hardly a profile in courage.  Indeed, that's just a notch above indecisiveness, which is itself a stone's throw from fear of failure.  Real leadership is not merely courage under fire, it's a sense of quiet confidence, a kind of intuited understanding of complex and troubling challenges, one informed by years of experience.

During the campaign Obama seemed to posses many of these traits, if not an abundance of experience.  One of the strengths he exhibited was a refreshing candor and ability to connect with the common man.  Now that he's governing, it's as though he's lost that real-time connection and is caught up in hopelessly circular reasoning that can only complicate the momentous problems facing our Republic.

He should recall Ronald Reagan's singularity of purpose when he dealt with monumental issues, from a moribund economy to an intransigent Soviet Union:  Apply simple, conservative--read cautious--principles that can be easily communicated and quickly operationalized.  Trying to please a multiplicity of constituencies by over-analyzing virtual outcomes has the hallmarks of a Jimmie Carter--a bright man without the slightest idea of how to lead.

President Obama has the potential to eschew that kind of Carteresque torpidity and demonstrate real leadership, but based on his handling of this seminal piece of legislation, he doesn't seem to grasp that he's charted a course that takes him over the political shoals.

Radical Islam & The Definition of a 'Civilized' Society

Those who have studied history understand that despite our technological and civic advances, belligerents are a timeless and implacable facet of our earthly existence.  Whether it's the expansion of land or economic hegemony, those with unchecked power and tyranny in their blood will prey upon the weak and helpless.

However, when we add the dimension of ideology, one with a perverted religious overtone, we end up with a hybrid of barbarism that is as heinous as it is unrelenting.  That's a good working definition of radical Islam, and since this is the seventh anniversary of the savage slaughter of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, we'll try to honor his memory by advancing the rule of law in an otherwise chaotic world.

Writing in today's Journal is Mr. Pearl's father, who provides ample evidence that although we've not been attacked again on our soil since 9/11, neither have we achieved a consensus concerning the nefarious terrorists who plague our world. 

Confounding the efforts of every age to combat evil is the resilient predisposition of humans towards moral confusion, and our age seems uniquely positioned to embrace it.  As Mr. Pearl persuasively argues, when evil becomes legitimized, the rule of law is inhibited and compromised, and the rights of aggressors take precedence over bona fide victims.  The moral haze through which we're obliged to view our world confuses otherwise intelligent people such as Jimmy Carter, whom Mr. Pearl cites as a champion of terror when used by those he deems disadvantaged. 

Artfully abetting the moral equivalence argument is the exquisitely nuanced Bill Moyers with the ingeniously ignorant statement that "one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression."  When we begin weaving the false victim narrative into the substrata of motivations of those who act outside the scope of international law, not only do we invite evil into the mainstream, we demean and undermine the efforts of the world's law-abiding people who have legitimate grievances.

It's also an undeniable fact that academicians nationwide are complicit in the inversion of good and evil, and Mr. Pearl, who teaches at UCLA, provides an apt example.  Efforts to demonize Israel demonstrate the limitless capacity of academics to conflate terrorists with 'freedom-fighters.'  The media, in turn, is a reliable champion of ersatz victims, from criminals to terrorists.  Indeed, because no system of governance, and certainly no economic model, is perfectly fair, they justify illicit behavior as a kind of necessary corrective.

As we recall the nation's shock at the horrific beheading of Daniel Pearl, we should never forget that evil is at once insidious and incremental.  Its predatory instincts capitalize on America's innate beneficence and the decency of our people who ask nothing more than to be treated with dignity and respect.  You may have seen the bumper sticker that uses a variety of symbols to spell the word "COEXIST."  Absent in that heartfelt but ultimately naive assertion is any credible recommendation for dealing with those who would as soon slit your throat as look at you.

As we're incessantly told by our brethren on the left, tolerance and diversity are the hallmarks of an advanced civilization.  But until we achieve a nominal consensus that evil exists, and then a deeper consensus about how to deal with it, we will never be a truly civilized society.