Please note that effective immediately I'll be posting exclusively at Townhall. I've been posting here and at Townhall for quite some time, and in an effort to streamline the process I've decided to eliminate this site. You can find my commentaries at:
http://clearcommentary.blogtownhall.com/
Thanks for your continued interest.
The expansion of government and its insidious intrusion into our lives takes many forms. But the most incrementally seductive is the nanny state that seeks to mold behavior, from our so-called 'public health' initiatives to variable-type road signs. The former cloak the left's political agenda in the garb of improved health, but since their policy nets are so wide and finely meshed they capture everything from smoking to 'affordable' housing. And, those obnoxious highway signs warn us about the inclement weather that we're currently driving through, so we're left none the wiser.
But, beyond the fatuousness of their messages, covert and overt, such programs ensure that we're kept on a trajectory of incremental infantalization. The corollary is the encroachment on our freedoms which happens so slowly we occasionally find ourselves unwittingly embracing the apparent good will implied in much of these initiatives.
Here in Colorado Springs, a week doesn't pass without some elected official complaining about budget shortfalls due to reduced tax collections. And, although that might lead otherwise intelligent public officials to diligently pursue targeted reductions in spending, that kind of scrupulous self-examination always seems to escape them. Just this week, as Governor Bill Ritter (D) and the Democrat-controlled state legislature bemoaned the impending deficits, Sen. Moe Keller, (D-Wheat Ridge), chairman of the Joint Budget Committee, dismissed the notion that further spending cuts would be easy. “Colorado doesn’t have fat in its budget, so the cuts we make down the road are going to hurt,” she said.
Fiscal pain, as the current crop of leaders in Washington have aptly demonstrated, is a relative term. The problem is that most elected officials, at the local and national level, don't have adequate reserves of common sense to recognize fiscal fat when they see it. They examine budget cuts in political terms, which taps their 'flight or fight' gene, and since they're terrified of taking a principled stand, at the first sign of political danger they instinctively head for the tall grass, like the gazelle eluding the cheetah.
In nearby Teller County, the state department of transportation is installing those mammoth variable-type road signs. Despite our state's financial woes, these are cropping up everywhere and they must cost a couple hundred grand each. The majority of time they are blank, communicating nothing whatsoever, but on occasion they tell us to be careful of bikes because today is 'ride your bicycle to work day,' or telling us to "Click it or ticket," another nanny state warning to save us from ourselves.
Moreover, trickle-down stupidity is emanating from Washington, as President Obama intends to eliminate risk from our lives. The Consumer Protection Agency isn't nearly expensive or massive enough so he's going to mint another layer of bureaucracy to protect us from predatory credit card companies and mortgages, as if common sense can be codified like a virtue.
The functionally obtuse, like evildoers, will always be with us, but in Obama's world, paying for mistakes is hostile to the common good. His goal, which amounts to a civic exemption from personal responsibility, is a form of pre-emptive cultural penance, because when you eliminate the consequences for imprudent behavior you also remove the potential for lessons learned.
In the metastasizing area of 'public health,' the savage fitness programs hatched at the county level are a kind of nagging parent, telling us to exercise or stop smoking, lest the ill effects of a life of indolence or nicotine addiction puts us in an early grave. With its myopic goal of decimating two thousand years of learning, the liberal polity also jettisoned the quaint lessons imparted by a life of duty, obligation, and, yes, discipline. Now, many health insurance plans include a personal trainer to lose weight--they call it 'prevention'--and, despite the fact that one in six fails the program, it marches on moronic denial of reality.
Politics can't abide a vacuum, which is why liberalism is so successful. Our apparent incapacity to face life's challenges alone left us at the mercy of the left's agenda of replacing personal responsibility with government programs. And, as the sainted Ronald Reagan astutely observed, the only thing on earth that enjoys immortality, is a government program.
A good test of political traction is when the opposition tries to re-frame the issue. With health care, President Obama and his liberal foot soldiers such as Mitchell Bard, writing in today's Huffington Post, play the obtuse card, which they do with more grace than intelligence.
Bard mixes churlish rhetoric with a premise that forms his counter-argument for Republicans (and, centrist Democrats, which he is forced to include in his diatribe) who are making credible arguments against the so-called 'public option.' He makes the following assertion, which would be laughable were it not so thoroughly specious:
...when you argue for a public option, with people being given the chance to keep what they have (with private insurers) or opt for a new public option (especially for those who don't currently have any insurance) that would compete with the private companies, then the Republicans say that the private insurers would be driven out of business because they can't compete with the public plan. But if the government-run plan would be so bad, why would the private insurers lose to it?
This argument posits an inverted learning curve which amounts to an insult to the common man. Indeed, the problem of competing with the government's 'public option' has nothing to do with a de facto dual on the battle field of health care insurance, but rather the fact that when it's funded by effectively limitless deficit spending, the feds can set artificially low prices to strangle private carriers into submission.
You might recall that the anti-trust laws were written to mitigate the influence of inadvertent or overt market dominance by economic powerhouses that gobbled up small companies or merged with other giants, and which translates into hegemonic pricing. Bard and his arch leftists shrug their shoulders and look surprised when this patently uncompetitive aspect of the public option is raised, but since there's no cogent rejoinder it, it perfectly illustrates their true motivations.
It's not about the most optimal way to provide health care services--because a truly competitive model is the most effective way--but rather, it underscores the left's concurrent disdain for capitalism and their infatuation with power. Indeed, liberals have a deep distrust of markets because, they correctly assert, they are aren't perfect; but, rather than understanding that they do perfectly dovetail with human nature--read incentives and disincentives--and, as such they produce the best outcome for the most number of people, they prefer the universal mediocrity of government-run systems.
Bard and his legion of liberals routinely assert that "the American health care system is not working," which is a curious assertion since fully 80 percent indicate they're satisfied with their current plan. What we have is an expense problem, and as they would learn in an off-the-shelf high school economics class, you reduce expense by increasing the marginal cost to the consumer.
That means you provide each American with a refundable tax credit, you allow health insurance plans to market across state lines, and consumers purchase the plan that's right for themselves and their family and allocate their resources accordingly. If you price the tax credit appropriately, they'll be obliged to pay for a larger percent of services with discretionary income, but the marginal cost will be suppressed by cross-state competition. Several independent studies have shown that when you increase the per unit cost of service, utilization is inhibited but there's no measurable adverse effect in clinical outcomes. Coupled with tort reform, which would reduce the incentive physicians understandably have for over-utilization of expensive testing, and you're on track to control costs.
But, rather than supporting a plan that expands choice and reduces costs, the left is touting the new CBS/New York Times poll (which Bard quotes), which found that 72 percent of respondents supported a government-sponsored insurance plan. But, as with most polls, they don't tell the entire story: it's always a question of the cost and relative quality, and other polls show that when timely access to specialists and testing is compromised, and when life-style exclusions are imposed (no knee replacements for the overweight, which is the case in Great Britain), respondents' support drops significantly.
We all enjoy choosing a DSL carrier for our home computers, vetting car manufacturers to find just the right one for our budgets, and even reading cereal boxes to pick one that appeals to our individual tastes. Why would we willingly allow the government to design, price, and implement a one-size-fits-all health insurance plan?
Slowly, almost tectonically, the intellectual ice age that froze the elitist left's thinking concerning the relative merits of the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, is finally showing signs of a thaw. One to today's archetypes of liberal thought, Thomas Friedman, made the following assertion in a recent New York Times op-ed concerning the astonishing events unfolding in Iran:
...for real politics to happen you need space...the fact is, in ousting Saddam in Iraq in 2003 and mobilizing the U.N. to push Syria out of Lebanon in 2005, he opened space for real democratic politics that had not existed in Iraq or Lebanon for decades.
Although he injects the typical liberal stretch, arguing that "Mr. Obama's soft power has defused a lot of that [the Iranian anti-Americanism]", the clear implication is that our incipient success in Iraq provided a linear legitimacy for revolt in Iran.
Expert opinion concerning the potential for regime change in Iran varies widely, but the fact that it's even being discussed is obvious evidence of the success of the Bush Doctrine. For those such as Friedman, and his less restrained cohorts on the left, who have been faithfully agnostic on the idea of Iraq being the beta site for a fledgling form of democracy in the Middle East, his statement borders on intellectual heresy.
The left's caustic dismissal of former President Bush's belief in the universality of democratic principles would be shocking were they not so utterly arrogant, xenophobic, and cynical. That their motivations were purely political was transparently obvious, but it also made one wonder whether there was any war--or conflict, to use their sanitized term--they would support. This, of course, in light of the paradoxical fact that it was Democrat presidents who either started or continued every major war in the 20th century. That, in turn, raises the legitimate question of why they felt that toppling Saddam Hussein and permitting 25 million souls to have a taste of freedom was antithetical to American values.
Now that the oppressed Iranians are revolting against both Ahmadinejad as well as the real titans of totalitarianism in Iran, the mullahs, even inveterate liberals such as Friedman have slapped themselves on the forehead and connected the dots to Iraq. But for Republicans, Iraq was always the conditional precursor for the potential liberation of Middle Eastern nations, although Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia were seen as the more likely candidates. It was only the liberals, whose blinkered reading of history--in particular, American history--fails to yield a constructive lesson for dealing with the latest iteration of tyranny, be it Iran or North Korea.
Driving the point home, you may have made the useful comparison between President Obama's speech in Cairo and his remarks concerning the brutality evolving in Iran: in Egypt he felt no compunction in inserting himself into the inner-workings of Israel--the only democratic nation in the Middle East--and effectively criticizing its leaders, but in his comments concerning Iran--a tyrannical state--he said we can't dictate how its leaders choose to govern, that it's up to the people.
Moreover, it's staggering to ponder his statement that we'll have to wait until the Iranian government completes its investigation into potential election irregularities; as Frank Gaffney recently observed on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, that's akin to Stalin looking into the problem of starvation in Ukraine.
Although it's unlikely that the mullahs will be overthrown, it's incontestable that the specter of freedom in Iraq that got its spark from American ideals--and might--is looming large in the collective psyche of the revolting Iranians. Were Obama the post-political transnationalist he professes to be, he would take a hard line with the mullahs and support the suffering citizens of Iran. But, it turns out he's as intellectually conventional--read politically predictable--as any DC liberal.
We probably shouldn't call it a sea change, but it did cause more than a ripple across the otherwise uniformly liberal surface of the LA Times when it issued a warning in today's editorial that spending under President Obama may be getting out of hand. As you peruse it you'll see it's hardly a call for fiscal austerity and sacrifice, but anytime the likes of the Times calls Obama's version of "pay-go" "practically worthless," it should catch our eye.
Almost unique among all other professional callings, politics is one in which satisfying the pre-requisites should disqualify you from obtaining office. Beyond having built up a lengthy political resume with the goal of progressively higher office--read more power--one of the more unflattering characteristics it requires is an out-sized ego. 'Political calculation,' which is, of course, something of a redundancy, encourages the most cynical and craven motivations, and the result is a Congress that moves in a kind of perverse unison, blindly voting for more and more spending.
Anyone who studies Congressional spending habits--an admittedly masochistic practice--knows that "pay-go" is nothing more than a political fig leaf for tax increases. As the Times editorial notes "A true pay-go rule might help curb the worst instincts of lawmakers," but as it's typically enshrined, it merely provides an end-around for extracting higher taxes: To wit, Obama's favored "pay-go" program exempts 40 percent of the budget that is discretionary spending, which is why when pay-go was law between 1991 and 2002, Congress still increased the budget deficit by $700 billion, since the law is written with exceptions such that Congress--and the president--can easily find ways to ignore it.
Critics have suggested everything from a line-item presidential veto to a Constitutional amendment that requires a balanced budget, but those are either unconstitutional or unworkable. Moreover, they smack of the kind of rules we institute for adolescents to keep them from unwittingly harming themselves due to the pathological stupidity endemic to that age group. We would like to think that some version of common sense would suddenly overtake Washington, but as history demonstrates, a lightning strike on a clear day is far more likely.
Part of the problem, it goes without saying, is us. We've clearly raised stupidity to a kind of virtue in that as our average weight increased our knowledge of economics and history decreased. The result is that as Obama lobbied earlier this year for so-called stimulus spending at levels that stagger the imagination, many, perhaps most Americans nodded their heads in bovine-like agreement. Now, with health care 'reform' apparently just around the corner, they're once again heading for the fiscal precipice, lemming-like.
For those of us who find rewards in sacrifice, who see the civic symmetry of a restrained government, and who are convinced that risk was meant to be a part of life in America, it's thoroughly dispiriting to live through all of this. That this appears to be the narrow edge of a wedge malignly designed to willfully weaken this great Republic, pains us is ways that no words can express.
All of us recall our early tenure in a new employment position, the struggles that ensued as we grappled with the myriad duties while delicately negotiating our way through political mine fields. If the department we inherited was in disarray we found ourselves shaking our heads and casting a cold eye on our predecessor, while telling our supervisors about the mess he left.
But, if we're completely honest, we also recall that with the passage of time, we became progressively reticent to invoke the ghost of our predecessors because we intuitively--and correctly--sensed it would irritate our bosses. They understandably have little sympathy for our plight because we were being paid to do a job, so all they wanted was results.
If you've been paying attention to the narrative of Bush blaming emanating from the White House since President Obama's inauguration, you probably sense that it's wearing thin among the electorate. But when David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser, protests that the newly minted administration isn't in fact, blaming Bush, that they're only cautioning the public that the profound nature of the problems will require time, that too has the ring of the querulous employee who still doesn't appreciate the nature of his charge.
But sinceresults are the measure of success, we might ask why unemployment is inching far higher than Obama said it would if Congress approved his so-called stimulus package. Politicians, for the untutored, have a remarkable knack for moving the goal posts down-field. Their deft, if conveniently self-serving reply is that the recession is deeper than first believed.
We can segue to foreign policy and discuss the curiously anti-American apology tour Obama began during the campaign and mysteriously continued since his election. Laced throughout his speeches and press conferences was a latently smug assertion that his administration would bring a deeply divergent approach to the problems we face, with renewed and more artful efforts in diplomacy, effectively supplanting eight years of impotence with unprecedented progress.
Therefore, we should look for Iran to acquiesce to Obama's insistence for a dialog without pre-conditions, and thence proceed to dismantle its nearly completed nuclear program. Kim Jong Il, the recalcitrant tyrant of Pyongyang, will cave to U.S. led sanctions, and blithely cease its nuclear testing and allow U.N. inspectors to resume their verification program. Afghanistan and Pakistan, the new theater of regional instability, will succumb to Obama's strategic genius, with the Taliban abandoning its designs for absolute dominance.
What's becoming apparent, even at this early stage in his presidency, is that Obama's Ivy League acumen is no match for the problems America faces. Pure intelligence, as so many leaders in history have demonstrated, some unwittingly, is a poor proxy for success in civic matters or victory on the battlefield.
It's because Obama seems so utterly behind the comprehension curve, focused as he instinctively is on himself, that conservatives should regroup, co-opt Independents and like-minded conservative Democrats, and make this man a one-term president.
Our understanding of leadership inevitably takes us down the road which intersects with character, principles, and values. Each American president had a public persona and agenda that reflected some mix of these vital elements, each of which differed in degrees that distinguished their presidencies, as well as highlighted their triumphs and failures.
During the campaign and since his election, we were told that one of the fundamental strengths of Barack Obama is his post-political, transpartisan approach to governing, which would translate into successes, domestically and in foreign affairs. For two views of that we turn first to Eugene Robinson, writing in today's Washington Post.
For Robinson, we can distill leadership down to certain key components, beginning with Obama's personal narrative and the way his unique ancestral influences have contributed to his universal appeal. Coupled with another vital facet of the ideal leader--humility--which, in Robinson's view, was absent in the prior president and which led to America acting in ways "contrary to our ideals," and you have the complete 21st century leader.
What's intriguing about Robinson's analysis is the studied absence of the principles that won two world wars and the Cold War last century, that overcame the blight of slavery and led to a strong and unwavering insistence upon civil rights for all. Rather, he focuses, rather narrowly, on Obama's adroit, new age view of the world, a place which obligates America to apologize for itself, to meekly assume her place among dozens of other nations, which also demands a revision of history as sweeping as Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust.
There's also an ignorant irony in Robinson's implied argument that Obama set a new tone in his Cairo speech by stating that America is not at war with Islam. There are too many instances to quote, but this was a theme former President Bush maintained throughout his tenure, and it's the height of hypocrisy that liberals such as Robinson are so ideologically incandescent concerning the Obama-phenomenon that he doesn't have the--yes, humility--to admit the truth.
Another paradoxical truth is how the left lionizes emotion over substance. Robinson becomes teary-eyed when recounting the audience member in Cairo who shouted "We love you!" at Obama, comparing it with obvious disdain with the shoe-throwing spectacle during President Bush's news conference in Iraq. So, we have Obama who, as a senator, authored legislation that mandated the removal of all American combat forces by March of 2008, just when the surge was having a positive impact, who, to this day, minimizes the fact that a butcher is no longer installed as chief tyrant of 25 million people, who erroneously called Afghanistan a war of necessity, and who stunned our moral sensibilities by comparing the slaughter of 6 million Jews to the injustices the Palestinians have suffered for the past 60 years. And, this is the man Robinson touts as a Messiah?
For a bracing antidote, let's have a look at this piece by Patrick Buchanan. Although there are many issues where he and I would diverge, sometimes dramatically, in general Buchanan's reading of history, which he deftly applies to current challenges, is at once credible and thoughtful.
I'll let his piece speak for itself, but, since we're on the subject of truths, it's irrefutably true that no American president has ever prevailed in a regional or global conflict with a foreign policy that effectively denigrates his own nation. There's a time and place for apologies and national self-criticism, but they shouldn't be woven into a national narrative thematically expressed in speeches on foreign soil.
Especially in a time when America's civic resolve is frayed its national security is challenged.
It's a peculiarity of contemporary culture that government spending has achieved a kind of civic cache. It's probably due to a combination of factors, beginning with a nascent ignorance of how and why this Republic was founded, and including the tacit denial that discipline is one of the prerequisites for a life of virtue.
Writing in today's Denver Post, David Harsanyi extols that and other endangered virtues by touting the low-tax and fiscal restraint that has made Colorado the envy of a spendthrift nation. Culture is the mechanism that provides plausibility to public policy, and when a large fiscal footprint for government is viewed as prudent--which is surely the case today--we can be assured capitalism and free enterprise will suffer. Witness the debacle evolving in California, the only place in America that can make inebriated mariners look positively frugal.
But, it's not limited to the poor souls on the west coast. Nationwide, the license to expand government seems limitless, and, as the Congressional Budget Office noted this week, the 2009 deficit will likely crest $1.8 trillion, a fourfold increase. The debate between fiscal stimulus and monetary policy to redress our ailing economy would be a healthy one, but our elected officials have conveniently ducked the question.
Since inaction is a kind of kryptonite for politicians, they've all excelled at hogging the stage to outspend their colleagues. Underlying the premise of their fiscal effervescence is an implied understanding that the electorate is incapable of the sacrifice and work necessary to weather an economic downturn. Those who made imprudent decisions with respect to volatile mortgages, along with businesses from AIG to General Motors, are being 'rescued' from their stupidity, which will only ensure it will resurface again, none the wiser from the experience.
Here in Colorado, one of the last vestiges of civic restraint and discipline, our legislators are showing signs of succumbing to the national addiction to spending. As reported in yesterday's Colorado Springs Gazette, Democrat Governor Bill Ritter just signed a bill that eliminated a 1991 law that imposed a "6 percent annual growth limit on appropriations to the state's general fund and mandated that money in excess of the 6 percent be automatically diverted to two separate pots of money, the transportation and capital construction funds."
State Sen. John Morse, a Colorado Springs Democrat, touted the legislation, asserting it "simply provides greater flexibility so the state can make wiser investments with existing resources." [emphasis added]. Well, in case you haven't noticed, the Democrats have redacted the word "tax" from our national lexicon and replaced it with "investment." Mr. Morse, being an astute student (read politician), is merely parroting President Obama, who is so obviously enamored of government spending. And, of course "flexibility" is just code for a license to exploit, which is yet another transparently obtuse attempt to frustrate the will of voters.
Of course, it would be more challenging for Democrats locally and nationally to achieve their statist aims if voters didn't telegraph conflicting messages by electing them. The next two elections are litmus tests that will either impede or abet the Democrats' (and their invertebrate cousins across the aisle) propensity to expand the role of government in our lives.
Let's not stand idly by as they decimate what's left of this great Republic.
It's a curiosity of liberals that in the arena of morality, truth and absolutes are in the eye of the beholder, but in politics they alone have a direct conduit to the truth. For an example almost guaranteed to cause heartburn, let's have a look at Arrianna Huffington's piece on Dick Cheney, which again demonstrates that the former vice president's truth tour is hitting a nerve with the hard left.
Despite the fact that even President Obama has conceded our successes in Iraq, putting twenty-five million souls on a slow track to a fledgling form of democracy, Huffington continues gnawing on the bone about pre-war intelligence and Iraq-9/11 connections. With respect to the former issue, we should remind her that page 84 of the July 7, 2004 report by the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, titled “Report of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Pre-War Intelligence Assessments on Iraq,” references a June 1999 report, which concluded: “All of the assessments in these [Intelligence] Community papers on Iraq’s nuclear program were consistent in assessing that: Iraq continued low-level clandestine theoretical research and training of personnel, and was attempting to procure dual-use technologies and materials that could be used to reconstitute its nuclear program…if Iraq acquired fissile material it could have a crude nuclear weapon within a year.”
Having used chemical weapons on his own people, and given his wholesale lack of compliance with the U.N. Resolutions, literally every intelligence agencyin the world believed that Hussein constituted a credible threat to his neighbors and to the civilized world. Why is this so difficult for Huffington and her liberal brethren to admit? Because it's a stark concession that their appeasement gene once again blinded them to the truth.
With respect to connections between Iraq/Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda/9/11, we turn to the most credible source available, Stephen F. Hayes' The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America. His work is well researched and provides incontestable evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda, which really should surprise no one. In order to make their arguments nominally plausible, critics are obliged to trot out the argument that Hussein was a secularist and had no interest in al Qaeda's goal of hegemonic Sharia law.
For those willing to look, history provides numerous examples of paradoxical alliances based on the momentary alignment of strategic interests of two otherwise adversarial forces. The practice of medism in ancient Greece involved wayward Greeks siding with the Persian Empire and it played an adverse role in key battles such as Marathon. In modern times, we're reminded of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, which may seem shocking at first glance. However, when you realize it was Hitler's attempt to avoid a two-front war--which is what led to Germany's defeat in WWI--it made perfect strategic sense.
Huffington concludes her misinformed paean to political cynicism with a reference to glass houses, noting "that people with a paper trail that proves they ignored the looming threat of al-Qaeda, sanctioned torture, and used lies and manipulated intelligence to get us into a war, shouldn't be so fast to throw stones either."
Well, of course, no one sanctioned torture, and, as I've argued here, there's no evidence that anyone lied to get us into Iraq, but with respect to ignoring "the looming threat of al-Qaeda," she must be referring to former President Clinton's studied avoidance of the threat that developed under his very eyes, abetted, of course, by his insistence on maintaining the bifurcation of intelligence between the FBI and CIA.
Talk about 'glass houses.'
As adults, we all know the power of infatuation. We can recall swooning over someone of the opposite sex in high school or college, and how overpowering the emotions can be. But when it comes do doing our jobs we have an intuitive understanding that infatuation has no legitimate role, that, in fact, it can cause serious problems.
Unless, of course, you're a member of the mainstream media charged with covering President Obama. As Robert J. Samuelson reports in today's Washington Post, media coverage of Obama has ranged from merely fawning to blind infatuation, with a summary indifference to any pretense of maintaining journalistic standards. Of course, Samuelson's observations and the data he provides in support of them merely confirm what most Americans are already convinced is the case: Not only are reporters in Obama's thrall, their visceral attraction has compromised their integrity (or, more candidly, further compromised their integrity).
Samuelson also explores the linear relationship between uncritical coverage and approval ratings, which effectively means the media is complicit in distorting Obama's relatively high job approval ratings. This kind of shameful self-promotion and indifference to professional honesty would be headline news were it not for the fact that these mainstream media mavens also have absolutely no humility, or insight.
Imagine for a moment that a Republican president moved to aggressively decimate federal spending, proposed eliminating entire departments, including the Internal Revenue Service, slashing the federal budget by twenty-five percent. Every newspaper and news program nationwide would report that doomsday was around the corner and bleeding-hearts in news rooms nationwide would sound like town criers in Pompeii.
Yet here's Obama, launching the highest level of federal spending in American history, creating deficits for decades to come, and now, proposing to put us on a track to nationalize health care, and all you hear from the media is the sounds of silence. Pick up any newspaper or watch any evening news show and it's as though the content was faithfully copied off the White House web site or lifted from the Democratic National Committee's talking points.
Reinforcing the perception we all have of them is the fact that they're oblivious to the problem. Indeed, the studied indifference they bring to their work would earn anyone in a normal job a one-way ticket out the door. For a more lively take on how the press treats the Obama monarchy, have a look at James Lewis' column in the American Thinker, who notes that "Stalin himself couldn't have wished for a more slobbering press corps."
Of course, we can thank God for the Internet, but the consensual infatuation of the press corps is truly a national embarrassment, and, it does a great disservice to the voters who the media also scorns by its willful refusal to do its job.
An enduring, if annoying article of liberal faith is that since average Americans are, by definition, behind the elitists' cultural curve, they're inherently in need of correction. The latest instruction is being administered by President Obama and his leftist pals in Congress and their foot soldiers in the media, and the subject, in case you're the type to not pay attention class, is empathy.
I could choose any of dozens of news reports or editorials which are all part of the national curricula, but Gloria Borger, a "senior political analyst for CNN" has an illustrative piece at CNNPolitics.com, so we'll use that for our counter-culture lesson. Well before Obama chose Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee, I wrote that he would target a "stealth" candidate, someone culturally difficult to pigeonhole, a person politically immune from rigorous scrutiny.
The litmus test for such a candidate is that she (it had to be a 'she') would be so impervious to criticism that Republicans would be fighting among themselves, some seduced by the tacit argument that empathy and judicial impartiality aren't, in fact, mutually exclusive. Well, of course they're not, but the question is whether a substantive reliance on "life experiences" versus a fidelity to law is what our Founders contemplated and what is enshrined in our Constitution?
In light of the cloud of civic confusion that hovers over America, Obama's choice was tactfully ingenious because it had the intended result of confounding Republicans and delighting Democrats. Having successfully seeded identity politics into our cultural loam, the left now sits back and smirks, confident that we all implicitly avow the veracity of race and ethnicity as reflective of values and principles. Add to that noxious mix the notion that gender makes the jurist, and you have just the right formula for a left-of-center legal temperament.
So, we have the practical Republicans among us cautioning conservatives not to lose sight of 2012, that our strategy in dealing with Sotomayor must be conditioned with an adroit understanding of the nuanced moderate or Independent voter, lest we cede electoral real estate to the Democrats. In truth, for far too long many on the right have unwittingly adopted the left's duplicitous recommendation that bipartisanship requires them to accept disparately deep political concessions. And, with their army of media flooding the zone and quick to characterize principled opposition as mean and uncaring, it's no wonder their arguments have achieved cultural traction.
A telling, early response by many liberal commentators and legal analysts was their pre-emptive shock that any Republican would see political advantage in challenging this nominee. You see, it doesn't occur to these masterful political tacticians that we might just be opposing her on principle. Indeed, that we sincerely believe that judicial activism--use empathy, or the euphemism of your choice--is anathema to our judicial system, is entirely lost on them.
The problem is that many Republicans are myopically subscribing to the same myth, fearful that a principled opposition to a candidate who is on record as asserting that a Caucasian male is innately less wise than a Latina female--i.e., herself--is ill-advised, that we should tone it down a bit.
Succinctly stated, although we should always be respectful and never harsh or shrill, principles shouldn't be conditioned by political expedience.
One of the fascinating developments since President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is the contrast between the deluge of conservative writers who are highlighting her astonishingly liberal record and the deafening silence from the mainstream media. They and their leftist brethren in Congress are too busy celebrating the inevitability of Sotomayor's ascendancy to the highest court, riding the cultural coattails enshrined in judicial activism which has finally achieved its lifelong goal--an unfettered license to create law based on personal preferences.
Although it's not been widely published in the media, anyone perusing the center-right blogosphere couldn't have missed Sotomayor's racist comment that "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion (as a judge) than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Upon questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee she'll doubtless find a deft way to deflect or minimize that starkly hostile comment, but it provides us average folks a window into the left's curious universe, a place where values and principles are presupposed based on skin color and ethnicity.
Conservative writers such as George Will have reflected on the torrent of front-page invective that would have obtained had a Samuel Alito stated the converse--that "I would hope that a white male with the richness of this traditional American values would reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn't had that life." But the deeper paradox is that otherwise intelligent people such as Sotomayor sincerely believe that judicial decisions should often be predicated on one's life experiences versus the Constitution.
One of the key questions she must answer, therefore, is whether she truly believes that people's identity can be divined by their skin color or ethnicity? And, have we run so far afield that a member of one ethnicity is deemed incapable of rendering a fair legal judgment concerning a member of another ethnicity?
The transparently craven motivation of this president is abundantly evident by this choice because were this individual neither a female nor an American of Hispanic ancestry, her rather unremarkable legal career would never qualify her for the highest court in America.
As I've argued in numerous posts, culture is the civic engine of any society, which informs its character and plots its trajectory as a nation. Its strength and resilience depends upon a vigilant adherence to a set of principles, one immune from the sway of fashion and the allure of values codified by relativism. Tragically, Obama and millions like him in America today are convinced that the most superficial human traits--that is, pigment and ancestry--supersede the values and ideas we hold dear.
The president will likely have two more opportunities to put his stamp on the Supreme Court. If this nomination is prelude to the next two, we can expect a grim resurgence of judicial activism which can only inhibit the guarantee of equality under the law.
Memorial Day is a holiday that is becoming culturally perplexing for many Americans. We instinctively know that thousands have given their lives and been wounded in service to their country, and when we try to imagine their heroism in horrific places, from the Battle of Trenton to Appomattox to Bataan, our throats swell and we become mute with profound respect. Although the passage of time has blurred the contemporaneously contentious nature of wars America has fought, it's clear that today's engagements don't enjoy the same level of civic support.
Beyond the fact that time has provided a more candid reckoning of past wars--which is to say a more unequivocal justification of them--another compelling reason for that disparity is how we view the nature of good and evil, coupled with a collective reticence to sacrifice our blood and treasure. In 1992, Francis Fukuyama published a seminal work titled "The End of History and the Last Man," which made the argument that human beings had reached the end of their ideological evolution, and that liberal democracy was its inevitable incarnation. That view, of course, was met strong counter-arguments in the ensuing years, which have seen the rise of radical Islam as well as Russia's recidivist impulses towards autocracy, mirroring that of China.
Unfortunately, the unfinished nature of our human narrative has been painfully punctuated with these realities at the precise moment when the historical consensus regarding good and evil is fraying. The fashionable introspection posited by the left, the kind that holds America to far higher standards than any other nation, conjures the argument for the moral equivalence among all nations. That leads us to the foreign policy corollary, which is the perennial argument regarding the presumed justification of U.S. interventions, whether they use 'soft' or 'hard' power, to either encourage democratic principles or topple manifestly hostile despots.
In this context the efficacy of military intervention is also being seriously questioned. One of the central tenants of President Obama's ascendancy is the alleged potency of diplomacy as a vital precursor to any threat of military action. It's truly not a matter of a nascent isolationism sweeping the land than it is the tacit conviction that the military option is wholly unsuited to the complexities America faces, from North Korea to Iran, which is to say, a forced conclusion is less convincing than one underwritten by persuasion and patience.
Although history belies the practical application of such arguments, they ought not be dismissed out of hand. Rather, it's what underlies them that is cause for concern. Implicit in Obama's approach to foreign policy is a summary rejection of the doctrine employed by every previous president, which is a parsing of geopolitical problems based on their relative intransigence. On one end we have China and Russia, ostensible if inconstant allies whose sketchy adherence to democratic principle are truly concerning; at the other end we have belligerent and unpredictable regimes such as North Korea and Iran.
The Obama doctrine's premise is that there's an effectively untried way to positively influence all of these relationships, one that employs incentives and disincentives based on an algorithm known only to him. This fundamental revision of common sense, one that presupposes the existence of an entirely new set of diplomatic tools, and one curiously undiscovered for the past two thousand years, is at once intriguing and deeply concerning. Among other peculiarities, it suggests that such patently evil men as Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are, in fact, acting rationally, defending their unique sense of justice against a world hostile and indifferent to its beliefs, as opposed to flouting international conventions and the will of the civilized world.
It's a fascinating, if somewhat academic argument, that is, one that can take us just so far. Because, among other reasons, it stipulates that the behavioral paradigm in these regimes is amenable to reasonable intercourse, if we could just break its abstruse code. That argument simply can't stand the test of history: If we examine regional conflicts that evolved into war, from Thermopylae to the Punic Wars to the Hundred Years War, and the two world wars last century, the theme is consistent. They each involve some combination of revanchist motivations and designs of economic or geographic hegemony.
We can dress them up in the vogue parlance of contemporary diplomatic parlor games, but the fundamentals are timeless and they apply no less persuasively with Iran than they did to Rome and Carthage in the Punic Wars. The difference is the Obamaesque propensity to a dangerous intellectual hubris that downgrades evil to the status of a misdemeanor while naively supposing a reasonableness on the part of tyrants, one that's conspicuous by its absence.
Therefore, as we celebrate the valor and heroism of those whose sacrifice provided the foundations of the freedoms we too often take for granted, let's not forget that evil is, in fact, timeless, and, although candid discussions with our adversaries are an important component of American foreign policy, in the end, the only language despots understand is the kind written in blood--their own.
See today's Colorado Springs Gazette where my letter to the editor appears (scroll down to "Left Ignores Facts in Debate"). As you'll see it focuses on two issues: the first is the resilience of the liberals' revisionist instincts with respect to pre-Iraq war intelligence; the second, House Speaker Pelosi's pathetic prevarications concerning notification by the CIA of the enhanced interrogation techniques that had been implemented.
Now that Iraq is becoming a relatively stable nation, with the promise of being the first legitimate democracy in the Middle East (apart, of course, from Israel), the left remains intellectually mired in its fantasy land where conservatives misled a naive nation into war. It will be fascinating to watch as their story is serially revised to include progressively candid admissions of success, which, for the common folk, is already impossible to ignore.
President Obama is leading that initiative with his occasional concessions made in unguarded moments, noting that the much maligned surge has worked. It's kind of difficult not to admit it since he's using the exact same strategy in Afghanistan.
The Pelosi matter is a real delight and conservatives pray her speakership continues right up to the 2010 mid-term elections, with Congressional hearings sprinkled here and there to keep the issue front and center. Political chameleons, who try to finesse their way out of every self-made contradiction, are an unsightly lot, and she's a textbook example.
Civic dissension and argument is a vital part of life in America, and, when the terms of engagement are reasonably equitable and people act in good faith, regardless of the outcome, both sides can take solace in the fact that it's only in totalitarian states where debates are summarily settled.
However, if we didn't have enough supporting evidence before President Obama's speech at Notre Dame, his remarks there made it unambiguously clear that the debate over abortion not being waged on a level playing field. To listen to his speech, its lofty rhetoric about finding common ground notwithstanding, one might be inclined to conclude that a fetus isn't, in fact, a separate human being. Indeed, it's the casual manner in which liberals such as Obama characterize the abortion decision, as though it's merely one of many on a narrow moral continuum, ranging from the annoying to the disconcerting, but never reaching the threshold of the morally noxious.
With the liberals' habitual defense of every creature in the animal kingdom, from the dolphin to the snail darter, not to mention their defense death row inmates, one might think their apparently limitless ethical reservoir would extend to an innocent unborn human--think again. The reason the abortion debate is so contentious, Obama said, is that Americans hold no values more dear than "life" and "choice."
We could proffer the argument about school choice as our first exhibit, but that would only further muddy the already murky liberal waters. Rather, let's examine how we got to the point where 1.2 million innocent lives are snuffed each year. Recall that back in the 1950s the incidence of pre-marital sex, abortion, and single parenthood was profoundly lower. Enter the 60s with its myopic iconoclasm and insistence that God, love, and matrimony were quaint--read expendable--virtues that oppressed free expression and women's rights.
The marriage contract was annulled and sexuality was severed from procreation within relationships blessed by God, and the result was the incidence of single parenthood and abortion skyrocketed. At that point a Supreme Court antagonistic to any semblance of Constitutional literacy crafted a right of privacy out of thin air, which provided a legal, if not moral license to slaughter the unborn.
The cruel and wholly disingenuous way in which liberals characterize this debate reflects an astonishing level of dishonesty and self-delusion: They originally argued that a fetus wasn't a separate human being; then, with the advent of ultrasound, they conceded--duh!--it was, but that it was still the mother's "right" to murder it. Obama has taken the argument to unprecedented amoral heights with his votes in the Illinois senate against legislation that would have proscribed "live birth abortion."
Only those immune to the darker side of human nature should read about that savage proceduree, those who don't wince when viewing those gray photographs of emaciated bodies in Auschwitz piled high like cord wood. But for most of us who are moved to visceral revulsion, suffice it to say it's a practice we would never, ever perform on a dog.
So, as Obama calls for a calm ecumenicalism in search of common ground, let's not forget that with the passing of every hour, another 137 innocent unborn humans are killed--all for the sake of "choice."
My recent post on Christie Brinkley's exposition on nuclear nonproliferation struck a nerve with a writer whose moniker is "Balance and Security," and who submitted a caustic comment. Although this individual provides some informative historical context and a few curt rejoinders and admonitions, he fails to address the core contention of my post: To wit: In our age, which is witnessing a growing cohort of nuclearized belligerents, a call for universal disarmament is quixotic, because only the world's civilized nations would consider it.
Indeed, even if we stipulate that all 187 member nations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) agreed to comply, what compliance leverage would that provide for rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran, not to mention a volatile one such as Pakistan? The left's implied reliance on such agreements has produced checkered results at best, because there's only one language despots understand and that's the kind backed with the threat of military action.
Perhaps most convoluted is his statement concerning American values versus power:
The assymetrical (sic) foe is fear driven provincialism that thinks that people are different in the rest of the world and cannot live with the thought that we might actually be able to overcome threats with our core American values of rule of law backed by a strong military not the law of power and a mocking of international law.
The first challenge is parsing that sentence, but once it's digested the complaint seems to be that conservatives instinctively resort to the "law of power" and that they mock international law. Actually, although we were deeply concerned with the balance of power and threat of regional hegemony by tyrants during the wars of the 20th century, it was ultimately American sovereignty and national security concerns that motivated our involvement.
The same principles ought to obtain with respect to our decisions to back the NPT, which is to ask what, exactly, is the U.S. interest. That's not to say we can't strive for world peace, only that we must have a defined course of action predicated on the recognition of the danger of nuclear disarmament by the world's civilized nations, which would leave only rogue nations with nukes.
The writer also excoriates the Bush Administration for its alleged violation of treaties, without offering a scintilla of evidence. Is the charge related to our invasion of Iraq? If so, does he forget that it was Democratic presidents who initiated or continued every major war in the last century? And, was it a violation of international law when President Clinton ordered the attacks in the Balkans without U.N. approval?
This individual's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, international law is largely a fiction, written and enforced by such moral exemplars as the United Nations. In that regard it has no leverage and no functional authority, which means barbaric nations such as North Korea routinely flout it. The same process is unfolding in Iran, so I would close by asking the likes of this writer how exactly the NPT would force Ahmadinejad to shut down its enrichment program?
He may "like Ms. Brinkley's love the (sic) land of the free and brave!", but in the end our Republic is free because of the brave--not because of international treaties.
A scene in the film classic The Grand Illusion is shot in a bistro and includes a sign that reads, "Alcohol kills slowly, but who's in a hurry." We might use that quip as a metaphor for the incremental manner in which the grotesque expansion of the federal government in the past half a century has insidiously worked its way into every corner of our lives.
It's not merely the arrogant assumption that government can make wiser decisions, or that it's an expensive quid pro quo that only grows over time, but rather, that it slowly hollows out a place in our collective civic core and leaches the lifeblood of our Republic--freedom. In an unprecedented report issued earlier this year by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, professors William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens provide a state-by-state analysis titled Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom.
The except below from the Executive Summary explains the scope and content of their report:
This study improves on prior attempts to score economic freedom for American states in three primary ways: (1) in includes measures of social and personal freedoms such as peaceable citizens' rights to education their own children, own and carry firearms, and be free from unreasonable search and seizure; (2) in includes far more variables, even on economic policies alone, than prior studies, and there are no missing data on any variable; and (3) it uses new, more accurate measurements of key variables, particularly state fiscal policies.
For many, this might seem like a quaint look at a problem of minimal magnitude. But that view only has validity when glimpsed through the prism of modern culture, where rights and obligations have been slowly eroded by a lifeless bureaucracy at every level of government. It's our tectonic adaptation to these encroachments that is arguably the most hostile aspect of their hegemonic designs, because, with the passing of each year our recollection of civic life sans a Leviathan government presence becomes more vague. That renders the deepening penetration of government into our lives ever more plausible, and we become progressively more susceptible to larger doses.
Delving more deeply into this vile development we find something even more profound: When decisions are pre-emptively made for us, from the lack of choice in K-12 education to the stranglehold taxation has on us, our choices are not only restricted, but our failure factor is restricted. Indeed, beyond power acquisition and retention, the left's dream of mortal happiness at the hands of government focuses on the elimination of risk and the redaction of consequences.
Those, in turn, blunt motivation and inhibit our ability to learn by failure. In contemporary civic parlance, no one should be allowed to fail and no one should be held accountable for mistakes. Yet, that pounding in your chest when make a significant mistake is a kind of life marker, a moment indelibly stained with a lesson we'll carry which provides a vital, self-correcting mechanism. It also creates the kind of resolve and resilience so crucial to charting a trajectory of professional success and personal happiness.
So, as you review the report, don't merely think about the discrete implications of the loss of freedom, but rather, how it leads to a more cossetted civilization, one where challenges are handicapped and adverse outcomes mitigated. It's that creeping sense that we're ignorantly creating a civic and cultural landscape less robust than the last, where collectivism predicated on a liberal agenda has replaced individualism and accountability, that is most disturbing.
The early indications of the Obama administration, as well as our invertebrate Congress, provides convincing evidence that freedom is slowly moving from endangerment to obsolescence.
It's almost an article of liberal faith that the ability to misconstrue the essence of a message is a inalienable birthright. John Dickerson, writing in Slate, argues that Libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul's counter-message at the recent Republican debate was criticized because he expressed "unpopular opinions." The confusion between popularity and the credible explication of events is, indeed, a hallmark of modern liberalism.
Mr. Dickerson further expands his theme by arguing that Paul's assertion that 9/11 was the result of our presence in the Middle East is, in fact, a GOP talking point. However, as always, he misses the larger point: bin Laden himself has issued fatwas that stipulate that America's power projection worldwide, but in particular in the Middle East, were the predicates for 9/11, so that is not at issue. Rather, the more profound question is whether the U.S.'s efforts to correct the balance of dictatorships and totalitarian regimes is a legitimate global role?
That is, does Mr. Paul's appraisal of American values include its renowned exceptionalism, and does he agree that the degree to which the U.S. can seed those democratic values in otherwise hostile civic nations not only improves the lives of their citizens but provides a measure of security for ourselves? Or, is he effectively arguing that the U.S. should mimic the isolationist instinct of the late 30s and wall ourselves in from the world, hoping the Islamic barbarians will decide to no longer pursue our demise?
Dickerson's other points merely confirm the left's apparently limitless capacity for drawing the wrong conclusions as he argues that the GOP should allow opinions such as Paul's because theirs is allegedly a big tent party. Whether pro-abortion candidates such as Mr. Guiliani should be allowed into the party will play itself out as the primaries heat up, but the more fundamental question is whether the party wants to brook theories that are antithetical to the core values of our Republic--specifically, that America is an unambiguous force for good in the world, that the radical Islamists are, in truth, the agents of evil.
The problem with Mr. Paul's argument is that it challenges those historically hallowed precepts and implicitly suggests that the Islamists' civic philosophy is on equal moral footing with ours and, as such, that they have the right to attack America. It's a despicable inversion of the truth but one that the liberal arm of the Democratic Party shares with Mr. Paul. As such, he would be welcome in that party rather than running as a Libertarian Republican.
As reported this weekend, Fox News reporter Steven Centanni and his cameraman, who were abducted and then released by Islamofascists, were forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam. Yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume and William Kristol reflected on the kind of religion that would resort to gunpoint conversions.
Although most Muslims would never use the threat of death to convert the unwilling, this is nonetheless a savage condemnation of the kind of extremism that Islam breeds. Now for the political dimension: Imagine the frenetic response if an Israeli or Christian group had done this, yet the sounds of silence from our European and American elites are deafening.
The double standard against mainstream religions such as Judaism and Christianity is a natural outgrowth of the anti-establishment crowd that despises anything that smacks of absolutes or has a hierarchical structure. Whether civic or religious in nature, any assertion, value, or principle that requires suplication in any form is anathema.
The irony is that although there is nothing in the world more rigid, more patriarchal, or more inflexible, than the Islamic religion, the left is reticent to criticize it, or, more specifically, they will deign to criticize this particular act but none will agree that it is consistent with the precepts or tenets of the faith.
A cursory review of the Koran tells us something rather different. Further, the 18th century Wahabi movement, which has flourished in Saudi Arabia, is the most popular sect among "true believers." It's also one that demands death for any who blasphemes it.
We would do well to candidly recognize that Muslim extremism is spreading across the globe like a religious wildfire and it's finding fertile ground in virtually every place it attacks. We can wring our hands and spend time like our ivory-towered academics analyzing the genesis of this movement or we can agree that it began long before 9/11, and that regardless of how erudite we may be in our exegesis, the fact remains that the Islamofascists are bent upon our destruction.
Mr. Centanni was remarkably calm in his interview and had nothing but predictably kind words for the religion of Islam. Indeed, it pains decent people who are forced to conclude that such a religion is de facto dangerous to the common good. But although untold millions of Muslims practice it in peace there are disturbing numbers who contend those peaceful Muslims are themselves heretics because they are unwilling to take arms against the "infidels," we Westerners.
The best efforts of liberals worldwide to minimize and obfuscate the truth, the Islamofascists are excelling beyond our wildest nightmares in making the case that we are indeed in a perilous situation. Whether or not we aggressively prosecute this enemy, it will never abate.
Indeed, we can only hope to depreciate it to the point where it's less lethal, and that can only be done when we speak with one voice.
I. Sunday Reflection: The Problem with Suffering
Perhaps the most eternal question posited by theists and atheists alike is why a beneficent God would allow innocents to suffer, not to mention to be killed. The contemporary, that is to say, superficial gloss would provide little guidance, much less comfort.
But, the more dispassionate view is that there is an indelible, if latent value in suffering which our New Age world reflexively dismisses, preoccupied as it is with what is euphemestically called 'creature comforts.'
The question, for those concerned with the rapidly rising rate of intellectual attrition, is how best to account for this apparent affront to our modern sensibilities. Our historical religious paradigm stipulated a deterministic universe and, as such, there was little one could do to improve or degrade one's existence in the eyes of the Creator because one's fate was inherently pre-cast. In more presumably enlightened times and, in particular, in light of advances in scientific theory concerning causation, there is ample evidence of the vital role of human agency in the outcome of events.
Stipulating that our lowly planet Earth, one of a handlful in a nondescript solar system, at the edge of one of billions of galaxies, has any value in the eyes of the Almighty, the ability to choose good or evil is paramount. Which is to say that each moment of our lives provides the opportunity for enhancing or diminishing the role of good in our world. It's a decision not foreclosed until we actually make the decision.
Each decision creates a cascade of subsequent events, some inevitable others incidental, but all of which naturally accrue as a result of our actions. Therefore, the puzzling question is how to parse from the decidedly mixed outcome the notion that ours is a world, much less a universe, that a loving God oversees.
The answer inheres in the notion that the process is always more critical than the end, because, according to this polity, our role in that process as it's evolving demands the highest level of moral accountability. Critically, failures, accidents, and other unpredictable outcomes, provide invaluable lessons that we offer to the Almighty as a recompense that brings desperately needed but latently understood moral course corrections.
In short, despite our contemporary instinct to recoil against them, pain and suffering play a vital role in the development of our moral bearing. The fact that our culture finds them intolerable and an affront to the dream of heaven on earth is no reason to discount their value or relevancy.
II. The Death of String Theory?
Columbia University professor Peter Woit's new book, "Not Even Wrong," purportedly debunks string theory as "a disaster for physics." For those who have followed string theory since its initiation into the rarefied world of particle physics in 1984 there is no question that it achieved a rapid pre-eminence among the preponderance of university physicists. So why does Dr. Woit believe it's such a disaster?
First, some background. String theory's revolutionary premise is that elementary particles such as electrons are not points, as traditional physics held. Rather, they are vibrations of uni-dimensional strings 1/100 billion billionth the size of an atomic nucleus. A variation of vibrations supposedly creates all of the subatomic particles, from quarks to gluons. Beyond that abstruse background, the theory also stipulates the existence of 11 dimensions.
Perhaps most astounding, string theory's proponents argued that it reconciles the perennial dilemma between quantum mechanics and gravity. The reason it comes under withering attack from the likes of Dr. Woit is that the theory has failed as a predictive model. Further, its equations have innumerable solutions and those have all been made by other theories.
Its many adherents tend to interchange dimensions when cornered, asserting that if a given equation is non-performing in one dimension it surely performs in another.
Yet it survives in a field where the competition for ideas is incandescently hot. Perhaps the lack of more persuasive explanations for our subatomic world reflects its relative longevity, but if Dr. Woit has his way, string theory will loose its currency and the bright minds preoccupied with it will move on to more productive pursuits.
III. The Most Successful Generation?
In an unprecedented report, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics performed a longitudinal survey of consumer habits and living conditions, compiled in a report titled "100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending: Data for the Nation, New York City, and Boston."
Perusing the report one learns that in 1901 Americans spent 42.5% of their income on food, whereas in 2002-03 that figure was 13.1%. Home ownership at the turn of the 19th century was 19% and now it's 67%. Turning to the Holy Grail of Western civilization, average annual income in 1901 was $750, whereas today it's $50,302; restated in 1901 dollars, that's $2282, a three-fold increase.
Add to this mix the current omnipresence of cars, telephones, cell phones, computers, not to mention such relatively rare phenomena in 1901 as hot and cold running water and indoor bathrooms and you have a contrast that is truly remarkable. Only one conclusion is possible from this report: Americans enjoy an astronomically higher quality of life in all regards than they did in 1901. The only question it didn't answer is whether we're happier, less anxious, or--to take a real risk--wiser.
Clearly, that wasn't the charge or intent of the BLS's report, but it's a question that logically if obliquely arises as one reflects on the striking disparity. Happiness is difficult to gauge, wisdom even harder, but we'll wade briefly into those murky waters.
In our high speed culture where time is dear, work seems frustratingly demanding, and the future alarmingly ambiguous, it's natural to yearn for what appears to be a simpler time, and there is no question that, barring the horrors of WWI, the early decades of the 20th century were civically and culturally less complicated. However, average life expectancy in 1900 was only 42, childhood diseases were by no means conquered, and fundamentals such as a potable water supply were hit and miss.
But what is also clear is that the level of cultural distractions and faddish ephemera were less hostile to the common good and the nation shared a consensus of values conspicuous by their absence today. Again, in contrast to today, that cultural mantle that undergirded the nation provided a civic substructure that rendered the need to question our most fundamental values moot.
At the core of those values were notions of good and evil and people implicitly understood that both existed and that the battle between them was timeless. Further, indifference to incipient evil, whether in one's personal life or on the international stage, was correctly seen as an invitation to disaster. Understanding that we must confront presence of evil in our lives is a credible working definition of the word 'wisdom' and a legitimate touchstone against which to measure ourselves today.
By all available indices, we are suffering an advanced case of moral malaise in the form of a confusion concerning the very existence of good and evil, and it's a phenomenon that is infecting and undermining our capacity to confront evil across our entire civic spectrum, from our personal lives to our volatile international scene.
Disturbingly, there doesn't appear to be a ready-made solution, at least not one capable of producing a timely result. Indeed, since this problem didn't materialize overnight, it won't be resolved in that manner either.
A prudent beginning would include a candid recognition that its obvious faults notwithstanding, ours is a nation unparalleled in history for its system of governance. With its unique tripartite structure, rigorous defense of individual freedoms, and a deep respect for the rule of law, America is, as President Reagan asserted, "a shining city on the hill." And, despite the bitter differences between the political parties, we all share an unquestioned sense of patriotism, concern for those less fortunate, and a communal yearning for a brighter future for our children. That's not a panacea, but it's a meaningful start.
IV. President Bush in Vienna
The nascent unity that was in evidence during President Bush's trip to Vienna among the U.S., EU, and other nations, was a reassuring development during a time of fragile relationships.
It was marred only by a reporter's effete suggestion that the U.S. is more of a threat than those President Bush characterized as an "axis of evil." Mr. Bush responded appropriately, calling it "absurd," but it's really far more than that. It reflects the deepening sense of moral confusion on the world stage, the epicenter of which is the United Nations, that great apologist for corruption and dictators.
The phenomenon has its proponents here in America who fervently believe that the Bush Doctrine of seeding democratic principles and values in the hostile political ground of the Middle East as an antidote to seething Islamic hatred is misguided and, worse, is itself responsible for spawning evil.
This Janus-faced, chicken-egg confusion is remarkable in that the current plague of Islamic terrorism had its roots in developments that date to the 1970s. Those with pattern recognition deficits can be excused from this discussion but for the vast majority of Americans the progressively lethal series of attacks on the West and the Islamic terrorists' stated revanchist intents make clear which nations and people are the aggressors, and, in particular, which are in the thrall of evil--and, it is not America.
V. North Korea's Missile Test: Don't Worry, Be Happy
According to an Associated Press report, U.S. citizens in range of North Korea's Taepodong 2 missile aren't at all worried. While it is obviously the government's job to protect the nation, the notion that because the missile is in a test phase, that it's not nuclear-tipped, and that, to quote one San Franciscan, an earthquake is more of a concern, seem to ignore the more profound reality at hand.
That is, North Korea is on a glide path to being a truly lethal adversary in the region, and, subsequently, to the U.S. In the firm Stalinist grip of the unpredictable Kim Jong Il whose absolute disregard for the lives of his own citizens mirrors his hatred for the West, we must ask ourselves some difficult questions. Since he purportedly already has a nuclear capability all that's missing is the delivery system. The first missile test, in 1998, was the Taepodong 1, and his sworn avowal to proscribe future tests notwithstanding, we're now threatened with the second test, with a missile that more than doubles the potential range.
Of course we're pursuing the diplomatic solution but it's clearly a reflection of the U.S.'s feckless foreign policy for the past 15 years that Kim Jong Il feels there would be no meaningful consequences to a second and far more threatening test. That's precisely why we should make clear our intent to take defensive measures should they take the risky step of launching it.
Finally, it must be noted that our current anti-ballistic missile capabilities are in an unproven stage of development; we've had some successes and many failures. It's inarguable that we would have been further down the path to a seamless, effective defensive system had Congressional liberals not thwarted missile defense efforts during the 1990s.
In our age where nuclear weapons are fairly common and can be sold on the black market, one can't help being astonished at the misguided opposition of our brethren on the left to a defensive shield. Perhaps North Korea's latest irrational attempt to destabilize and traumatize the world will convince them that these threats are real and that President Bush's efforts to aggressively make the shield operational is prudent and worthy of pursuit.
VI. Hungary's 50th Anniversary Observed
In a speech in Hungary, which is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first uprising against totalitarian rule, President Bush compared its struggle for freedom with that of the Iraqis. Mr. Bush told the Hungarians that "Liberty can be delayed but it cannot be denied."
Predictably, the Chicago Tribune noted that Mr. Bush ignored the fact that the U.S. "stood by while the Soviet Union crushed the 1956 uprising." But students of history will recall that the United Nations debated the Hungarian uprising, and that the Security Council met in an emergency meeting. However, it failed to pass a resolution, in large part because Dr. Peter Koss, the permanent U.N. representative argued vehemently that it was an internal matter. France, Great Britain, and the U.S. conceded.
The political complexities of such situations aren't reducible to the attempts of contemporary sensibilities to cast them in such transparently naive and facile terms, but that has never prevented them from doing so, and the Tribune carries on that common, if inexcusable tradition.
