Re: The Westerns

The Magnificent Seven!? Archie, if you are going to get involved in a filmography discussion, you ought to do a little more research than watching old Cheers re-runs.

Speaking of Shane. Has anyone ever noticed that Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider was a re-make of that classic Western?

In preparation for this exceedingly important thread, I researched the matter (I just cannot say "googled" here; that term will need to ripen a few more decades before I can deploy it in good confidence) and found only a few varied and variegated comments mostly by the obscure.

The interesting thing is that Pale Rider is a re-make that is more like a re-imagining, uncovering deeper religious meanings in the Old West laying under some sort of post-modern erasure in the standard text of the classics. The Preacher, who is Clint Eastwood, who is Shane, who is Tom Doniphon and Ethan Edwards, is not at all some random rugged individual who happens to confront injustice, but more like an Avenging Angel purposefully sent by God.

It is as if Mr. Eastwood wants to jump completely over any necessity for individuals to civilize America, and gesture at a Manifest Destiny of civilization that only a God-given miracle could bring about.

That said, I now must go. Unlike the rest of you, I am more of a doer than a writer, and must now return to watching movies on my 512 cable channels rather than writing about them.

Re: The Westerns

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What about The Magnificent Seven? I don't know much about motifs and such, but the theme-song alone should put it at the top of anyone's list.

Re: Medicare and the GOP

Easy, Mr. Barlett makes another (uncharacteristic) error in his essay. He writes:

The 'slippery slope' argument has been a staple of conservatives' thinking for decades--they claim that every government program is the first step on the road to socialism. And, as economist F.A. Hayek argued in his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, that inevitably leads to totalitarianism.

This argument continues to be made today in the health care debate, even though it is transparently false. The nations of Europe have governments much larger than ours and long had national health insurance without suffering the sort of tyranny that was certain to have come about by now if Hayek was even remotely correct.

I haven't read Hayek in a while and can't attest to the context of his remarks on totalitarianism, but I do know that in the 1920's 'totalitarianism' was coined to promote the elimination of the distinction between the government and a private sphere, collapsing all of civil society into the bureaucratic state.

Mussolini was the clearest articulater of this new form of society, and at the time his vision was almost universally accepted as good. It was only later (1930's? Post WWII? 1950's?) that 'totalitarianism' came to be seen as a barbaric oppressive Gulag-ridden system of tyranny that Mr. Bartlett seems to be referring to.

In the original 1920's definition of the term, European National Healthcare did, indeed, result in totalitarianism. Europe long-since has become a bureaucratized culture with its governments intruding into every nook and cranny of its citizens lives.

But even under Bartlett's assumptions, that Europeans seem generally happy with the situation does not mean Europe is not a tyranny. If you slowly swath people in the cotton of government care for a few generations, it is not surprising they will be unaware that they are now bound and gagged like so many mummies.

Re: The Westerns

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Ezra, I did not overlook Lonesome Dove. Augustus McCrae and Captain Woodrow F. Call are right up there with the greatest Western iconic characters ever put on the screen, large or small. And the performance of Robert Duvall as Gus McCrae ranks with the best of John Wayne himself, while Tommy Lee Jones portrayal of Captain Call tops all but a handful of other performances in this genre.

But the reason Lonesome Dove does not make the list is because it is in fact a conscious summation and exemplification of all that the great Westerns had on offer. As great an achievement as it is, Lonesome Dove is not, ultimately, original in the sense the three movies I chose were.

Re: The Westerns

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Whit, an intensely tragic motif of the classic Western is that the rugged individualist who is necessary for the Great Wilderness to be transformed into civilization is himself incapable of living in civilization. The very noble traits which mark him as an invincible defender against Evil seem to rub civilization the wrong way. This says something about civilization that I can't quite put into words right now.

Searchers and Liberty Valance express this perfectly, both using the family as symbol of civilization. In Liberty Valance, Tom Doniphon has a personal dream to marry the girl and live happily ever after on his ranch. However, in helping Ransom Stoddard, he in effect is sacrificing his own dreams. To his credit, he knows what's happening, and helps Ransom Stoddard anyway. But the scene where he burns his ranch down vividly expresses the pain his sacrifice causes him, as all sacrifices of great import must, and that he ultimately dies in obscure poverty multiplies this pain for the audience.

Searchers expresses this same tragedy in one single unforgettable cinematic moment.

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Ethan Edwards, having delivered the niece safely home, finds that he cannot stay. He turns and walks outside, slumped and tired. As the movie ends, John Ford frames Ethan in near silhouette in the doorway, the dark cabin behind him, the vast reaches of the Old West in front of him. The End.

In this respect, Butch Cassidy doesn't quite measure up to the other Westerns. The parallel between the exuberant spirit of Butch and Sundance and the rugged noble individual of Tom Doniphon and Ethan Edwards is certainly apt. But beyond some vague recognition of the various harbingers of their death (most significantly when Etta Place declares she will go back to America, after previously telling them both she would do anything except watch them die), they go to their destiny simply because they have no other choice. They are what they are. But Tom Doniphon especially, and Ethan Edwards as well, have choices, hard choices, choices that are painful in the extreme, and they willfully choose their destinies anyway.

In this respect, I would have put Shane in the place of Butch Cassidy. And as one of the great Westerns of all time, it's hard to exclude Lonesome Dove from any such list. Although at 6 hours and made for TV, it fails the classic format.

Medicare and the GOP

Bruce Bartlett, normally a very reliable political analyst, weighs in on purported Republican demagoguery on National Healthcare in their attempts to turn senior citizens against the Democrat's plans.

The upshot for him is the biggest flip-flop of a political party "since the Democrats went from being the party of Southern racists for 150 years to being the party of civil rights in the 1960s." Republicans, long opponents of entitlement programs of every stripe, but Medicare in particular, are now the Party that believes "that Medicare must be protected at all cost," and are using this new position to club the Democrats who are trying to impose some cuts in this near bankrupt entitlement program.

Mr. Bartlett believes Republicans have lost a golden opportunity to reign in the Medicare Behemoth by making "Democrats do the heavy lifting on getting Medicare under control." And by failing to seize this opportunity, Republicans have insured that when the time comes for "fundamental Medicare reform" that they will "unquestionably ... face unified Democratic opposition."

To which I respond, that's some bold prognostication. In fact, I can say with a reliability of about 110% that no matter what the Republicans might do this political season, no matter how bad the fiscal situation becomes with Medicare, even to the point of bankruptcy of the United States, Republicans will unquestionably face unified Democratic opposition to fundamental Medicare reform.

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Beyond the obviousness of his conclusion, however, Mr. Bartlett's error is in forgetting the fundamental problem with Medicare entitlement in the first place. He rightly tells us that Republicans opposed Medicare in the 1960's, at least in part, because of a concern that it was a first step onto a slippery slope towards the nationalization of healthcare, which in turn would lead America into Socialism and over the cliff into Totalitarianism. But he then puts all of this aside to argue that "Democrats want universal coverage badly and are willing to pay a lot to get it. Republicans could have used this desire to get Democratic cover for fundamental Medicare reform."

There's an idea. Republicans should give the Democrats universal healthcare in order to reform Medicare. Mr. Bartlett is in essence counseling us to leap past the slippery slope and go directly to nationalized healthcare, where we can then take our satisfaction in slapping around the original camel's nose of government healthcare, Medicare.

This is perverse. In fact, the most important political point to make in all of this is that Democrats are not the grand defenders of the Elderly of their rhetoric. At the first real opportunity to get National Healthcare, they are more than willing to throw Medicare and the Elderly under the bus, cynically and with cold-blooded intention. For Republicans, this is not a golden opportunity to "think strategically and negotiate with Democrats in good faith," but to high-light the fundamental callousness of Democrats, and separate them from one of their more knee-jerk (and important) constituencies.

Conservatives do not like Medicare or Social Security, nor any other entitlement that serves to confuse citizens about the role of government in American society. But Conservatives appreciate the fact that over the years American citizens have fashioned their lives in reasonable expectation of the continuation of these government benefits. It would be a betrayal of trust for Government at this point to take away these programs.

It is for this reason that Conservatives are actually the ones the public should trust more to save Medicare and Social Security. This was shown nowhere more clearly than when Ronald Reagan went against all his most cherished principles and raised Social Security taxes rather than let it go bankrupt. Mr. Bartlett mentions this, but sees it only as a betrayal of Republican principles. As in most of his essay, he completely misses the point.

The Elderly need to understand that the Democrats care more about maintaining their own political power through demagoguery over Medicare than they do about insuring that Medicare is a viable program over the long haul. They will continue this game if need be right up until Medicare - and America itself - goes bankrupt, arrogantly sure that they will survive such a fiasco for the Elderly the same way they have survived the failure of so many of their Big Government initiatives.

And I think the Elderly are starting to understand this. That's why Republicans are right in their approach and Mr. Bartlett is wrong. The Republican's mantra is and should be, "We want to save Medicare (and Social Security)!" albeit on terms that will actually make these programs sustainable.

This would be a winning political formula. And, as Richard Nixon once said, "It has the added advantage of being the truth."

Re: The Westerns

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The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It is no accident that two out of my top three movies star John Wayne as the rugged individual of American myth. As they say in Olympic gymnastics, he simply nailed the part. On a scale of 1-10 he was a 50. Without John Wayne, the actor, it is quite possible that John Ford would never have achieved such perfectly realized visions of the American myth as Searchers and Liberty Valance.

John Wayne as Tom Doniphon in Liberty Valance is the purist version of the iconic Western character, still rough and rugged, but cleaned up, so to speak, so as to be acceptable in polite society. Kept just below the surface of his civilized veneer, however, is the clear-eyed willingness to recognize and deal with evil in the world, even unto death.

In contrast, Ethan Edwards in Searchers hides nothing.

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Indeed, it is clearly Director John Ford's intention to reveal that the noble passionate thirst for justice rightly praised in men is not so very far from the wild frenzy that can grip the soul with a base desire for death and destruction. All it takes, he seems to say, is for good men to confront one horror too many, and ultimately, even the great American mythic hero can betray human frailty. Ethan Edwards is not just a racist who hates the savage American Indians, he despises them, so much so that he is willing to murder his own niece - the very niece he has dedicated his life to find - because she has "gone native."

In the end, Ethan Edwards does the right thing, redeemed by the simple expedient of seeing his niece, face to face. In loco parentis, Ethan, for all his anger and hatred, cannot forget his humanity nor his duty.

Butch Cassidy is almost post-modern in its handling of the Western, and as a result, just barely made this list. Almost post-modern, but not quite. It deviates from the standard Western in that the rugged individuals pursuing justice in a wild teeming wilderness are all kept off-stage. "Who are those guys?" asks Butch and Sundance. They are Tom Doniphon, Ethan Edwards, Wyatt Earp, and all the rest of America's mythic heroes.

In truth, it is the classic Western told from the perspective of the Outlaws. But not Outlaws as evil, but Outlaws exhibiting another trait essential to the taming of the American West: sheer youthful exuberance at the thrill of it all, living on the cutting edge of life. Butch and Sundance are the Hollywood version of that which drove the popular glorification of Jesse James: they are not immoral, just immature, two wild colts caught up in the joy of just being alive.

In the end, theirs was a life-style nourished by the American West, that ultimately had to give way to the historical necessity of progress. George Roy Hill, the Director, symbolized this impersonal historical demand in an unforgettable way: in the distant thundering hoof-beats of the Posse relentlessly following Butch and Sundance across the vastness of the Wilderness. Their time was over, their friend the Sheriff tells them, while in the real world of Butch and Sundance's time, the U. S. Census of 1890 concludes that, indeed, the American frontier is gone.

Gone but not forgotten. And we have Hollywood, of all things, to thank for that.

A Contest

I am thinking of a contest. In lieu of a thousand + page Healthcare Bill replete with cross-references, fine print, foot notes and whereases, what reform would you propose for Healthcare that can be stated in, say, 25 words or less?

Whit has already put in his entry here. If I may boil down his intricate (and voluminous and large and detailed) argument, he says all will be well if we simply pass a law saying something like, "All medical services shall be accompanied by an itemization of the cost of said services in the absence of insurance."

A nice sentiment, and valid in its way, but without the intricate (and voluminous and large and detailed) argument that accompanies it, I am not sure it leads us anywhere close to a good result. In other words, in itself and without going beyond the 25 word limit, it is quite inscrutable as a solution to our Healthcare crisis.

I am looking for something pithy that goes to the heart of the problem.

The prize for the winner? I'm thinking of a certified 92.4% sterling quality sentimental keepsake No-Prize, suitable for No-Framing and No-Displaying in the toniest homes of Martha's Vineyard. We will even include a No-Certificate of Authenticity, of course. (H/T Stan Lee, c. 1962-1965).

If that's not enough, let me know, and I will shake the tree of the Media Conglomerate that owns this Blog and see what falls out.

Scottish Degeneracy

270 people, 189 Americans, murdered in cold blood on Flight 103, over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The murderer, convicted by a Jury of his peers - a right he would not have had in his home country - gets life in prison.

As we all know, however, the Scottish Criminal Justice system let him free this week on grounds of "compassion," because he had terminal prostate cancer. The murderer then flew home to Tripoli, Libya, to a hero's welcome.

In one sense, he is getting what he deserves. To be celebrated by a people who would celebrate someone like him is itself a profound condemnation. Think of being roundly applauded for your life's work by the likes of Hitler and the Gas House Gang.

But still, in the real world, what Scotland did is disgusting, and I am not sure I will ever be able to indulge again in the pride of my (admittedly) remote Scotch-Irish heritage. As I shouted the other night at the TV screen, compassion in this circumstance means providing the best medical care and comfort available to this (or any) prisoner when he is facing the ultimate judgment of death, no matter how heinous his crimes might be. It does not mean letting such vermin go back home to die among the cheering crowds of his fellow citizens. To do as Scotland officials did in so elemental a moral situation indicates that the Scottish culture can no longer distinguish between right and wrong in any substantive way, and is irrefutable evidence of irretrievable moral degeneracy.

As usual, a national commentator put it much more succinctly, and better, than me. Charles Krauthammer on Fox News tonight said it thus, "This was not compassion, but decadence."

Decadence, indeed. And amidst my anger, there is also a profound sadness, at the passing of a centuries old Scottish heritage into the hands of squeamish sons who are not fit to swab out the spittoons of their Forefathers.

Naked Manipulation

Courtesy of Kathryn Jean Lopez of NRO's The Corner, we have this story from the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security, asserts in a new book that he was pressured by top advisers to President George W. Bush to raise the national threat level just before the 2004 election in what he suspected was an effort to influence the vote.

After Osama bin Laden released a threatening videotape four days before the election, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushed Mr. Ridge to elevate the public threat posture but he refused, according to the book. Mr. Ridge calls it a “dramatic and inconceivable” event that “proved most troublesome” and reinforced his decision to resign.

Let's see. Mr. Ridge resigned in December of 2004, with not a hint that the White House had attempted a naked manipulation of critical Homeland Security operations for purely political reasons.

It is now 2009. As Ms. Lopez asks, why did it take the Secretary of Homeland Security so long to inform us about such a serious threat to the nation's security?

The only answer I can come up with is Mr. Ridge is attempting a naked manipulation of Homeland Security to sell his book.

I am truly tired of the coarseness of our political class.

Gays and the Lutheran Church

Western culture marches on! It is now the largest denomination of Lutherans in the United States, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) that has taken a bite out of the Modernist Apple, passing by the smallest possible margins a Theological Statement that opens the door to official blessings of same-sex marriages under Church auspices, and to full acceptance of the Gay life-style in the Church. This breaking story can be found here in The Washington Times.

Wait! you exclaim. The new Theological Statement does no such thing. It recognizes that there are fundamentally different views about homosexuality within the Church body, and only permits "same-gender relationships [that] are lived out in lifelong and monogamous commitment." As Emily Eastwood, the Executive Director of Lutherans Concerned, a Gay advocacy group, put it, "The social statement is tolerant of our differences both in scriptural interpretation and practice. The social statement supports our unity without requiring uniformity."

Ms. Eastwood's devotion to tolerance, differences and unity without uniformity would be quite moving, if not for her next sentence, which resolutely declares that her work is not yet done.

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"There is still much work to do, but the door to full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered members and their families is now most definitely open." Since her previous statement about "differences" in "scriptural interpretation" referred to the belief of some that the Gay life-style goes against Christan teachings on sex and morality, her goal of "full inclusion" can only mean that she desires a time when all differing views will be "fully excluded" within the Lutheran Church. So much for tolerance of differences and unity without requiring uniformity.

And therein lies the problem for the Lutheran Church. In the name of tolerance, openness and inclusiveness, with this Theological Statement it has gotten into bed (so to speak) with people who are intolerant of those that disagree with them, closed to any who don't share their agenda, and who are more than willing to exclude any deviants from the new Orthodoxy.

These people are militants and they will not stop until they remake the entire Lutheran Church in their own image. They talk the talk of tolerance in order to quiet dissent today, but once they have the levers of power they will walk the walk of intolerance later for any who disagree.

Think I am overstating the problem? I am not a Lutheran and therefore have no institutional dog in this fight. But I am a cultural observer, and I ask you to consider this: despite all the rhetoric, Gays have always been accepted in ELCA, in the exact same way as everyone else is accepted into a Christian Church. Bankers, lawyers, doctors, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, good people and bad, solid citizens and criminals, all come to Christ through giving up their self-centered agendas and earnestly seeking a new life in Christ and Christian service. That is, Christian equality has always been based on the fact that all are sinners and fall short of the Glory of God, and it is the acceptance of this fundamental truth that is a major defining mark of a Christian.

The Gay agenda turns this fundamental truth on its head. The Christian bona fides of the Church is not evidenced by the forgiveness and redemption it offers to all, but by how explicitly it caters to the self-esteem needs of the Gay community as defined by the Gay community. As such, Gays do not humbly join the Body of Christ, but rather demand the Body of Christ adopt them and their agenda. Continuing the Universal Mission of the Church? Feed the hungry? Comfort the poor and afflicted? Not today; today we must all worry about the Gay agenda, and we must continue to worry about it until it is accomplished in full. They will accept nothing less.

There is no reconciliation between Christian equality based on Original Sin and a group who insists on their own privileged agenda. One or the other has to give, and I am afraid it is ELCA that has done the giving. ELCA now stands on a slippery slope of it's own making, and the Gay activists are behind it pushing hard. And they will not give up - ego-centric people like this never give up - until ELCA has slid right down to the very bottom. Meanwhile, local parish after local parish will peal off from the main body, and the grand ecumenical movement of the last 50 years to unite the different Lutheran churches will end in a whimper.

It appears that the Gay community will eventually inherit the ruins of ELCA. When they do, it will be no small irony that after all the years of devotion to their narrow partisan cause, ELCA will no longer be Lutheran or Christian in any definable sense.

In a Nutshell Liberty and Tyranny, by Mark Levin

Do not let the full title of Mark Levin's latest book fool you. Liberty and Tyranny, A Conservative Manifesto is no mere partisan pastiche of red meat for the Conservative base. It is a fully realized rumination on the meaning of America and the American Revolution, and the deep divide in politics between those who desire to continue in the American tradition he describes and those who seek to bring it down and replace it with an idealized dream of an all powerful government.

Mr. Levin is a popular radio talk show host, whose unique style entertains greatly. He will take many minutes to make cogent arguments so calmly and quietly you feel a need to turn up the volume, and then in a sudden eruption of passion will literally yell his conclusions about Liberals into the microphone. And then suddenly he is quiet again. Similarly, when some Liberal calls in to question him, he will politely and methodically explain what and where he is coming from and where the caller is in error, but if the caller betrays any hint of Liberal obstreperousness, he will not hesitate to hang up on them yelling his signature line, "Get off my phone, you dope!"

This book betrays none of this. His writing is spare, elegant and straightforward, masking the deep complexity of the things he is talking about. For instance, he sets up the fundamental dichotomy that will inform his entire book on the very first page with this spare bit of prose: "...what follows are my own opinions and conclusions of fundamental truths, based on decades of observation, exploration, and experience, about conservatism and, conversely, non-conservatism--that is, liberty and tyranny in modern America." Nothing could be clearer and nothing could be more complex. How and in what way can conservatism be liberty and non-conservatism, i.e. everything else, be tyranny? Well, that is what his book will explain.

Rush Limbaugh has remarked that he is asked all the time what someone might read in order to understand conservatism, and he always has a list of authors that he gives out. Now he need only give out one. Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny is as accessible a source of conservative thought, and indeed, of the ideas informing this unique American Republic, as can be found. Read it and pass it on.

Re: How the Death Panels Died

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I don't suspect the big boys (and girls) of a national media outlet are reading The Mercurial Pundit, but it's nice to see the coincidence of opinion between myself and the likes of Andy McCarthy here and here, and Mark Steyn here, of National Review.

Great minds and all of that ....

The Westerns

I am thinking for some reason about movies that are the essential summation of the uniquely American myth of the Old West and our own history. It seems to me you have three, in no particular order: The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Not that there are not other great Westerns. It's just that these seem to sum up the whole genre just right.

All three exhibit the theme that the effort to carve out a country on this continent demanded a particular American character type, the rugged, honest, individual, who was the only one tough enough to do what needed to be done to bring law and civilization to the wilderness of the West. In certain respects, this theme critiques an unacknowledged gap in one component of our national intellectual history, that of the English political philosopher Hobbes, who famously opined that government is instituted to elevate and protect people from the State of Nature, where life is "nasty, brutish and short." However, before government, it is necessary that there be rare individuals with the guts and determination to tame the State of Nature on behalf of us all.

Or, as Liberty Valance makes plain, before Ransom Stoddard could find his place in the Old West, there had to be a Tom Doniphon.

The power of the American myth of the Old West comes from the fact that the Great Wilderness did not simply represent Hobbes primeval State of Nature, it was literally a State of Nature, and it was in fact tamed by real life individuals in real historical time. Founding myths are in the usual run of things idealized Perfections that challenge a people on to unreachable heights. In America this process has been reversed: our gritty historical reality is the ideal that has pulled our myth-makers in Hollywood to try to create adequate depictions of the Olympian heights of character, fortitude and bravery exhibited by our ancestors.

In many great Westerns, Hollywood achieved this. The three I list in my opinion are the creme de la creme.

In a Nutshell Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg

Books in brief for the busy reader.

Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg, a National Review Editor and nationally syndicated columnist, has just come out in paperback after an impressive run in hardback as #1 on the New York Times best seller list. The book achieved this despite being largely ignored by most of the main stream liberal press. It also came under bitter attack from the netroots activists for its cover, its title and anything else except its substantive argument, ad hominem being piled on top of libel and smear in an attempt to make still-born the author’s thesis.

Let me make it as plain as I can: the thesis of this book is so transparently obvious as to be unarguable. The disdain of the main-stream left and bitter invective of the radicals only serves to confirm this.

His thesis is that the main stream understanding of the historical phenomenon known as Fascism has erroneously placed Fascism on the Right of the political spectrum, when in fact it is a variety of Leftist Socialism.

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Look at it this way: the popular conception of the political spectrum is that Socialism is on the Left and Capitalism on the Right. Communism then is placed at the most leftward extreme of Socialism, and is balanced by Fascism as the most rightward extreme of Capitalism. This makes a nice clean picture, but Mr. Goldberg's book argues persuasively that it is just so much nonsense. Italian Fascism and German Nazism both grew directly and organically out of the explosions of Leftist Socialist ideology at the beginning of the 20th Century, the same explosions that gave rise to Communism. In Mr. Goldberg's view, when Fascism and Communism turned against each other, it was not because they were political opposites, but because they were essentially similar Leftward ideologies battling for the same constituencies.

As such, Mr. Goldberg seeks in his book to untangle and document the historical threads linking Mussolini and the Italian Fascists (and thereafter, the German National Socialists) with the same revolutionary Socialism that gave rise to Communism in Russia in 1917. Additionally, Mr. Goldberg delineates the repercussions of Fascism and the Fascist impulse that still play out in American politics today.

One aspect he notes of the ongoing Fascism debate is that it is often overlooked that American conservatism is not the same thing as the European variety. In the early 20th Century in Europe, conservatives were aligned with monarchies and other similar manifestations of old class-structures, big business and government power. As such, although they might balk at the Totalitarian governments desired by the Communists and Fascists, the idea of a strong central government per se was by no means something European conservatives were against. America's conservative tradition however was rooted in the classic liberalism of the Founding Fathers, and as a result it was and is quite antithetical to not only aristocracy and other European class-based traditions, but also strong, powerful centralized governments of any kind.

It is European conservatives who oftentimes found common cause with Fascism, primarily in opposing the spread of Communism. And in doing so, European conservatives played no small part in the confusion that placed Fascism on the Right. But this confusion resulted also from a well documented disinformation campaign by Stalin against the Fascists, in what Tom Wolfe in comments on the book jacket of the hardcover edition calls "... the greatest hoax of modern history, [when] Russia's ... Communists, established themselves as the polar opposites of their two socialist clones, the National Socialists ... and Italy's Marxist-inspired Fascisti."

None of this confusion in Europe between Left and Right should have infected American politics. As I said, American conservatives were directly and organically related to the classical liberalism of the American Revolution. Additionally, and surprisingly for me, Mr. Goldberg locates America's own Fascist moment as occurring BEFORE the rise to power of Mussolini in Italy, when Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1912. President Wilson's politics and policies grew out of the burgeoning Progressive movement in the United States, and was in direct opposition to the classical American tradition of Constitutionally limited government.

But even so, Mr. Goldberg documents, the Left took up Stalin's mantra from the 1930's and has continued to insist to this day that American conservatism is an incipient Fascism just waiting to take over America. And, Mr. Goldberg makes plain, Liberals do this even as they promote programs and policies that grew out of the neo-Fascist Progressivism of the early 20th Century.

In sum, this is a very important book making a very important argument for the times we live in. It is a bold attempt to correct the last 100 years of political theater in America, to untangle a debate which has atrophied into a fine set of canards and cliches.

How the Death Panels Died

Lately, everyone on both the Left and Right feels the need to establish their own reasonableness by fretting over Sarah Palin's term for Obama's End of Life Healthcare provisions. She called them "Death Panels." Our National Commentators apparently fear that such "political hyperbole" as this might damage the national debate.

Except that, after this former (and in many circles, disgraced because she's former) Governor of Alaska, published her short critique of the Democrats Healthcare plans for America, on Facebook of all places and on a Friday, no less, when all the Really Smart People know that Fridays are Death (pardon the hyperbole) for news because all the People Who Matter are heading out of town for a well-earned bit of time off, after this mere private citizen went public with her opinion, she caused the political dials in Washington to pop so far into the Danger Zone that the Democrats within a week (which is well nigh instantaneous in Washington time) eliminated the End of Life provisions from their National Healthcare plans.

"Death Panels" it turns out was the perfect political metaphor delivered at the perfect political moment to shock the Democrats into an awareness of at least one (of many) indefensible policies contained in their National Healthcare prescriptions for America.

This lady effortlessly tosses political Ballistic Missiles, while all others bandy spit balls.

Extremism in Pursuit of Moderation

Over at National Review Online Ramesh Ponnuru weighs in on a Peter Berkowitz review in The Weekly Standard of Mark Levin's national best seller, Liberty and Tyranny. At issue is the standard trope of the last few years that Conservatives are in trouble because they are too extreme and are losing the moderate middle of the electorate.

Of course, this is the standard trope of the last few years, only after being the standard Talking Point of the left liberal partisans for some 50 years before. At various times it was used to denigrate William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, to name just a few. Like all Talking Points of the Left, it has never been intended to be a serious substantive critique, but only a useful tool to confuse and distract the enemy. And in this respect, it has worked. In each political season, there always seems to be some variable number of serious Republicans who take it seriously, and then the same old acrimonious debates arise within the Party.

Mr. Berkowitz is the latest to feel the need to preach the gospel of moderation to his own brethren. His article is serious and thoughtful, and Mr. Berkowitz himself is serious and thoughtful, but I am afraid at this point it's all just too tiresome for me.

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Because in fact, the issue is very simple, if you keep in mind a single fundamental distinction: some politicians primarily want greater and greater political power and some want to accomplish something good for the Republic. If I may assume that most would agree that the politicians holding the latter principle are preferred to those following the former, then understanding the relationship of moderation to Conservatism becomes quite simple.

Conservatism, let us stipulate for brevity's sake, believes that a vibrant civil society living in ordered liberty is the highest good of America, and that therefore a government restricted and restrained only to those exercises of power necessary to assure the ordered liberty of the citizens is the best government. Conservative political goals, then, will be to limit and restrict the growth of government, the centralization of government power, taxation, regulations and the like. It will also want to make what government is supposed to do work better, for instance, regulate interstate trade fairly among all citizens, maintain an armed forces capable of defending the Nation, and conduct a serious foreign policy in the sole interest of its citizens.

Now, let's look at the reality of the political situation: today we (and the world) are at the tail end of 100 years of an exploding political ideology that is and has always been the very antithesis of Conservative aspirations: Progressive Socialism. For 100 years this radical alternative to the fundamental American identity (which has alwsys been Conservative) has insinuated itself in ways large and small into the body politic. Wilson's War Socialism, Roosevelt's New Deal, Johnson's Great Society, all of these explosions of Progressive Socialism into the American bloodstream are, right now, in 2009, historical facts which will not be easily overturned or reversed in a day, a week, a month, a political season, or even a few decades of political victories.

So what is moderation? Moderation is simply that degree of pragmatism required in any particular political season so that (a) more Conservative goals may be accomplished than would otherwise be possible, and (b) significant groundwork will be laid for the advancement of Conservative goals in future political seasons.

As you can see, in this understanding of moderation, there is no conflict between being a principled Conservative and a moderate. On this reading, moderation itself is always in service to principled Conservative goals, by definition. It is only a prescient warning that political realities are such as to prevent those goals from being accomplished, and that we are going to have to bargain for the best deal we can ... today.

Whether or not to give in to the current political realities or to fight to the death is, of course, a judgment call, and so we Conservatives find ourselves constantly on the horns of a dilemma. But that is not the fault of our principles being too extreme, nor of moderation being too squishy. It is merely another example of the essential tragedy of the world we live in.

That said, what then is the moderation of a Peter Berkowitz? I would call Mr. Berkowitz a Moderate Extremist. A Moderate Extremist is one who believes that moderation is an end in itself. Look at what he says about the critical turn of the American Republic when Roosevelt assumed the Presidency in 1932. In a perverse turn on Edmund Burke's brilliant and seminal reflections on conservatism, he says that the New Deal resulted in a store of societal "accumulated experience, knowledge, and traditions over the course of 80 years, during which the federal government, at least partly in response to profound 20th century changes in social and commercial life (and with the persistent support of substantial majorities) assumed substantially greater responsibilities for caring for the vulnerable and regulating an increasingly complex economy."

Uhmmm. So Conservatives are to be moderate in order to uphold the "substantially greater responsibilities" of larger and larger government? But doesn't this directly fly in the face of Conservative principles in the first place? Of course it does, and it highlights the reason "Conservative principles" and "Moderateness" seem to always be in conflict when people like this bring the issue up. Because they do not think principles of any kind are relevant to the discussion. In this context, notice how he soto voce adds that the New Deal policies were and are supported by "persistant support of substantial majorities." Is that any kind of a principle? Of course not. It is the very opposite of a principle and transparently indicates where Mr. Berkowitz is coming from. Principles are bad, moderation is good.

This is not to say moderates like Mr. Berkowitz do not have principles, it's just that their devotion to such diminishes as they get caught up in wonkish particulars of the electoral process. At base, all moderate arguments boil down to the claim that Conservatives cannot affect their agenda unless they win elections, and they cannot win elections holding onto old principles that are no longer relevant to the electorate. New Dealism is here to stay, they gripe, get over it!

But if Conservatives do "get over it," why is it still important to win elections? New Dealism can certainly take care of itself without some mass Conservative migration to the Left. For Moderate Extremists, the answer is simple. We will be the ones in power. We will be the ones furthering, if not the spirit of the age, at least the spirit of this particular political season.

So, Moderate Extremism boils down to nothing more than the politics of winning elections, for gaining as many positions of power as possible for our Party and limiting the political power of as many of the other Party as possible. That is the sole goal and end game of Moderate Extremists, and the often sparkling Burkean riffs they do, the learned references they make, the dazzling prose they write, only serves to obscure the fact that they have no .... firm goal for political power, no ultimate good of the Republic to secure.

Here then is the actual decision moderates put to Conservatives. Will we prioritize winning elections or implementing a political agenda that is best for America? If the former, then progress will be measured simply by how many Presidencies, Congressional seats, Governorships and State Houses we own over the years. If the latter, then progress will be measured by whether we leave this Country better than the way we found it.

For me, moderation of Conservative goals when political necessities demand it is a virtue in the service of Conservatism, and woe be to Conservatives who ignorantly refuse to face the reality of any particular political moment. But extremism in pursuit of moderation in order to win elections is no virtue, but rather the collapse of virtue into the vice of selfish aggrandizement.

Re: American Mob

Easy, in one cascade of the "Angry Mob" Talking Points, we have the charge that citizens were solely at these Town Hall meetings to disrupt or interrupt the proceedings and stifle discussion of the issues.

Booing and hissing and stomping your feet in solidarity with your fellow citizens at a meeting with your government representatives is not a disruption, an interruption, nor a stifling of a discussion of the issues. Senate and House representatives have a huge megaphone to state their position on the issues, and de facto and de jure power to impose their opinions on everyone else.

As such, it is entirely impossible that a small group of citizens could do anything at any single Town Hall meeting to infringe on a politician's ability to "discuss" the issues. The only question is whether the people will gain a voice on important matters. If the people, for whatever reason, decide in these meetings that shouting their reps down is the best way to get their attention, then that is their right and privilege as citizens to do so.

Maybe it won't work and maybe it will, but that is a matter for political strategists and pundits, and in a few years, historians. But in any event, the politicians - of all people! - have no right at all to criticize citizens for expressing their opinions in whatever way they wish, in the few arenas the elite political class allows them.

That's why I truly respect those politicians, like Claire McCaskill, whom I vehemently disagree with on many, many issues. She has been willing to stand up in these meetings, take the abuse, and has not gone out later to a compliant media to denigrate the citizens of her state.

As for the rest of the Democratic Party, I say Man Up! This is a democracy, not a knitting society.

You know, it might help you Democrats to get out of Washington and go to Britain. Although old and sadly weighed down by its history, Parliament still shows a bit of the old spirit when the Prime Minister shows up to explain his policies. If the moment is controversial enough you will hear from the opposition party loud booing, hissing, catcalls, interruptions, disruptions, denigrations, snide comments, outright slanders ... my God, it's a sight! Free people, in opposition and out of power, daring to oppose the current rulers, in their own way, in their own words!

And then come back here and realize what a privilege it is to serve the people of this country, where the old spirit of Liberty is not fading, but vibrant and real.

Re: American Mob

Following up on the slander of American citizens I posted before, I would add the following ruminations on Democrat Talking Point tactics.

It goes like this. First, flood the zone of a particular political news cycle with a constant barrage of Democrats and fellow travelers mouthing an over the top description of a person or group of political opponents. Then, before the opposition can correct the record, use that description as an unargued premise for further political talking points and diatribes. This might be called the "Cascading Talking Points" method of politics, as opposed to, say, the "Reasoned Debate" method we were all taught in civics class.

Examples abound, the epitome being the "Bush lied" mantra of 2005, which although an obvious lie in itself, rose like a tsunami into such a Big Lie as to overwhelm the reasoned debate necessary to set the record straight. Republicans never recovered and the Democrats have been emboldened ever since, thinking they had finally found the golden political method that would always work, in every time and every place, no matter what the issue, no matter what the substance, no matter what the consequences.

The most recent example is, of course, the description of citizens arguing with their representatives at Town Hall Meetings as "Angry Mobs." Real citizens actually showing up to discuss the issues with their representatives at a regular meeting scheduled for that very purpose? "Well," the apparatchiks of the Democratic Party thought to themselves, "facts don't matter in the face of an overwhelming Cascade of Talking Points. If we call them Angry Mobs and the Media calls them Angry Mobs and nightly news cherry picks portions of videos to highlight seeming chaos and near violence, then real American citizens will in fact be Angry Mobs, and our resulting Talking Points will easily cascade down to the warm pools of political victory."

But, in fact, the actions of citizens at all the Town Halls have been entirely and utterly lawful in every respect, and in fact fine examples of "reasoned debate" in a full-blooded democracy. Despite the nightly news cherry picked videos, there has only been one example of people being arrested, and that is the one Town Hall that the Obama White House had the audacity to trumpet their intention to "hit back hard" against the Town Hall citizens. Following through on their threat, they sent Union Thugs to the proceedings, who promptly hospitalized a black person who had the audacity to sell American flags to citizens attending the meeting.

But as appallingly brazen as are the claims that real citizens are acting like "Angry Mobs," the resulting Cascades have come so quickly, "un-American," "un-Patriotic," "Congressman receiving death threats," etc. ad nauseum, that most commentary today, even from those normally sensible, seem to accept the original characterization as true, that citizens at these Town Hall Meetings are behaving like pitch-fork carrying mobs from some B horror movie. See e.g. Charles Krauthammer's comments on Fox News on Monday night. His comments bear the hidden premise that the citizens voicing their opinions are somehow doing something wrong, because he accepts, without argument, the Democrat meme that the citizens' style of communication is "mob-like" and therefore vaguely, in some undefined sense, illegal.

Unfortunately for the Democrats and their mindful and mindless followers, most political tactics do not work forever. It's part of the tragedy of life, that no matter how smart we think we are, reality always has the last word. And in this situation, reality is that National Healthcare is a bad, bad idea, and no amount of slick media PR will change it.

And it's also possible that citizens who have the right to vote their government representatives out of office - like for instance in the Fall of 2010 - might very well be a reality which those venal mouthpieces of Cascading Talking Points cannot survive.

American Mob

The mob. The astroturfing groups determined to disrupt the meetings of democracy; who wantonly desire to stifle debate with angry shouts and vandalism. The voices of nihilism in a society of reasonable Democrats wanting only the Greater Good for society.

This is how the Democratic Party, the party that represents America with majorities in the House, the Senate and the Presidency, not to mention 4 out of 9 of the Supreme Court, describe the citizens that show up at various Town Hall meetings around the country.

Your rulers are dissing you.

Let me say it loud and clear: there is no evidence whatsoever that the citizens attending the Town Hall meetings are breaking the law in any respect. They are simply voicing their opinion, as they were invited to do when the meetings were set by their representatives. Sometimes loud, sometimes with the clapping and support of others also lawfully in attendance, but at no time outside of the normal parameters of citizen activity at such meetings.

The notion that there are "angry mobs" attending these meetings is a lie, a grotesque lie in a democracy as we are supposed to be. And our de facto and de jure leaders, the Democratic Party, should be held to account for this baldfaced slander against American citizens.

Did the citizens attending these meetings receive marching orders from various people representing the GOP or insurance companies? In short, no. In the first place, the insurance companies are solidly behind Obama Health Care, as are many other large Health Care interests like the AMA. In the second place, the GOP is a bunch of idiots, and has been for more than a decade, and there is no way it suddenly discovered the cojones to organize a massive outcry against a government takeover of 1/6th of the American economy.

No, these are legitimate grass roots groups, doing the only thing they can do to be heard, because there is no national organization that represents their interests. Any "memos" directing these people dug up by the smear merchants of the Democrats are simply laughable as evidence of a central "conspiracy." They are simply memos of small groups of Americans who have joined together to do what they can to fight back against their arrogant rulers.

Average Americans do not have a centralized headquarters telling them what to do, and have never wanted such a thing. They are too independent, too self-reliant, too engrossed in the needs and concerns of their own families, churches and communities to ever consider putting themselves in the hands of some national political ideology.

These are not angry mobs, but average citizens pushed to the wall. In most other countries, the slightest provocation brings angry mobs to the street. America, however, is the heir of its Founders, and so they respect government and the existing order, as is so eloquently expressed in the founding document of our Revolutionary Society, the Declaration of Independence. But when the governing class so oversteps its bounds, as has our current government, the American people will be heard.

With passion, most certainly, but also civilly and within the law, most definitely. But nonetheless they will be heard, without a doubt.

Our current ruling class will either hear or not, it really doesn't matter. Because of what our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us, the 2010 elections loom ever closer, and then the people will have the megaphone necessary to say what they want to say, in a way Washington cannot ignore.

A Villainous Talking Point

Use to be the truly bad guys were "evil doers," as popularized by Action Comics in the 1950's, and resuscitated by our own President Bush in the aftermath of 9/11. Now, the term is "villains," according to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who just could not think of a better term to describe the insurance companies opposing National Healthcare. I await the political discourse of the future in this greatest of democracies, when "evil genius," "mad scientist" and perhaps even "churlish" will enter the fray.

At least George Bush's "evil doers" were actually, you know, evil. But in what sense are insurance companies "villains?" Even if you accept the Pelosi premise that anyone who opposes the Democrats' scramble for control of the economy is a very, very bad person, the last I heard, the insurance companies were onboard with National Healthcare.

Even so, the outing of insurance companies as the villains de jour was echoed by Charlie Rangel, full-time off-shore real estate entrepreneur and part-time Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, on Fox News with Chris Wallace this past Sunday. And then re-echoed by Senator Dick "I never met a child using school vouchers that I liked" Durbin, in this video (h/t Philip Klein in The American Spectator). Many other Democrats have similarly taken up the Pelosi line.

What does all this mean? Only that Democrats have no re-call procedure for Talking Points once they are launched. Pelosi's comments were intended to be a profound broad-side against opponents of National Healthcare, changing the terms of debate from the efficacy of government-run National Healthcare to the complicity of the insurance companies in gaming the current system to maximize their profits. Instead, as implemented by Ms. Pelosi, the Talking Point came off as a transparent and feeble attempt to distract the voters with a cartoonish demonization of insurance companies.

Obviously, this Talking Point polled well in the various focus groups at Democrat Headquarters. I would suggest, however, that the Mad Scientists of Democratic Party polling might consider expanding their pool of participants. The vast majority of voters just aren't buying this hackneyed demagoguery anymore.

A Failure to Communicate

Matthew Vadum of The American Spectator tells us that Oklahoma recently received a letter from the Obama Justice Department threatening a cutoff of all Federal funds. It seems a proposed "English Only" amendment to the State's Constitution might violate the rights of "limited English proficient" persons under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

My response to such a threat if I were the Attorney General of Oklahoma? A letter, saying the following:

"Yo no se. En Espanol, por favor."

Re: CLUNK!

Easy, what's amazing is that there are some usually reliable conservative commentators yielding grudging admiration of the huge crowds in dealerships that were induced by the Clunkers program. This shows that human activity of any kind has a powerful hold on the imagination.

But you could get a swirl of human activity by offering to give away $4,500.00 to every man, woman and child who walks 50 times clockwise around the Washington Monument wearing a flowered hat. And not just a swirl; I suspect you would get a torrent of human activity of Kansas twister proportion, but besides the increased sales of flowered hats, I doubt this would produce anything more than a potentially dangerous public nuisance.

The question is whether the activity is real or trivial. The purchase of the new cars under the Clunkers program is certainly real, producing actual economic benefits to all parties. But this benefit is offset by the fact that it is induced by $4,500.00 taken from some Americans and given to others, which works a decrease in overall economic activity, especially in those goods and services that might otherwise have been bought except for the Clunkers program.

But the worst part about the program is the positive damage done to the economy by the destruction of the clunkers. This would be the equivalent absurdity of requiring the Washington Monument walkers, upon receiving their bag of cash from the government, to burn the money rather than spend it.

There is nothing, nothing at all, good about the Cash for Clunkers stimulus program.

CLUNK!

The so-called "Cash for Clunkers" program "has worked better than any other stimulus program that was conceived," crows Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood ungrammatically.

And he's right. It is better, if your goal is to blindly spend Federal tax dollars as fast as you can. After all, it is now many months later and only about 10% of the $787 billion money appropriated by the Democratic whiz kids in Washington has been spent. The $1 billion allocated for Cash for Clunkers took about a week to disburse.

But if your goal is to spend the taxpayers money responsibly, then Cash for Clunkers is just another disaster in a long line of disasters. In the first place, the goal of the program is to reduce America's dependence on oil by encouraging people to trade in their older, low mileage vehicles for higher mileage cars. But as I have pointed out time and time again to friend and foe alike, higher mileage cars reduce the effective cost of gasoline and lead to an increase in gas usage.

Having endured many derisive smiles and dismissive shrugs before, I am going to say it again a bit stronger, so that perhaps the point will sink in: in all times and places, under every economic and cultural scenario, to the extent higher mileage cars replace lower mileage cars in an economy, usage of gasoline always increases more than it otherwise would have.

Therefore, one week out of the box, and using only Obama's stated goal for the program, the Cash for Clunkers program is already an abysmal failure and an utter waste of $1 billion in taxpayer funds.

The Clunkers program was also supposed to induce much needed consumer spending and shore up the faltering auto industry with increased sales. It does this, but only in that slight of hand way that only government can do. What's the difference between government giving GM and Chrysler $1 billion in exchange for preferred shares of stock and $1 billion under the Clunkers program? Under the Clunkers program, taxpayers get nothing for their money - Zip, Zero, Nada. In other words, Clunkers is just a pure gift to the auto companies after we have already bailed them out to the tune of billions. It's also a gift of taxpayer funds to a small number of fortunate citizens. But since it is only a one time gift it gives no incentive to auto makers or dealers to expand production or hire new people, will not lead consumers out of their current savings binge and will not stimulate the economy in any other conceivable way, no matter how ingenious the talking points dreamed up by the Washington whiz kids.

Wait a second, you say, what about the clunkers turned in by consumers? They are worth the $4,500.00 or so per vehicle spent by the government, are they not? So, the Clunkers money is not just lost, it has gone to purchase viable assets, assets that could be sold by the government or car dealers down the road, which would increase sales, the economy, jobs and GDP. In other words, you budding economists would say, the Clunkers money would stimulate the economy as the initial $4,500.00 per vehicle is cycled again and again through future sales and re-sales.

Well, you obviously have not heard about the really stupid part of the Clunkers program. The clunkers traded in exchange for the Clunkers Federal money will be scrapped, dismantled and melted down, so that not even the parts will be available for resale. That's right, your taxpayer dollars are going to purchase perfectly good cars that will then be destroyed. In one week, "poof!" went $1 billion of your money.

And since no one has ever thought of such a thing before, this will create a new, if short-lived, job-category: EPA approved car destruction experts. Ever heard the phrase "tossing money down a rathole?" Clunkers is a program that creates the rathole - a used car destruction system - so that it will have a big enough rathole for all the billions it needs to spend.

This is all a bit of insanity only the ideologues in Washington could come up with.