Honduras Leads the Way

Let's see:

Pre-election primaries held on time and without fraud, check.

National elections held on time and without fraud, check.

Score: Honduras 1, Chavez 0.

Looks like a soccer score, but the meaning is clear: Chavez, and his sycophantic Organization of American States are the big losers in their bid to oust democracy in Honduras. Fortunately, the Obama Administration came to its senses just in time to get on the band wagon of freedom in Honduras.

Now it's time to get serious about the increasing adventurism of the strongman-style governments around the world. It is no accident that every one of the trouble makers in the world today depend heavily on oil revenues to maintain their power and influence. Russia, Iran, and Venezuela all strut and preen on the world stage as if they have done something other than milk their oil revenues for world prominence.

This is easily remedied. Drill, Baby, Drill is not just a catch-phrase for the resurgence of the American economy. It is also the Achilles heel of all these faux powers. If we and the portion of the world that is still sane will flood the world with oil rather than printed money, the price of oil will plummet, leaving these paper tigers limp and gasping.

Of course, this is all a bit too simple for the best and brightest in the Obama Administration. But as Honduras has shown, free and fair elections have consequences, and our own chance at democracy-in-action is coming the fall of next year.

Click the title above to see all posts in this series.

Re: Evolution: Is this Progress?

Apropos my previous post on Climate Science, let me expand a bit more on a thread I started the first of this year.  If you will recall, I was arguing that secular scientists, especially those studying evolution, refuse to permit any argument into their discipline grounded in what I called extra-causal explanations, such as teleology, artistic concepts of beauty and mystery, or theological concepts like Divine Intervention. At the same time, their own discipline permits quasi-causal concepts like "randomness" and "probability." There is a good reason for this, but it is not the reason the secularists think. In the same way a Christian believes in a loving, active God, secularists believe that physical phenomena behave in ways that can be measured and analyzed. Their science is the development of formal rules and methodologies to investigate the physical world in conformance with this belief. As a result, the phenomena they study does, in fact, behave in ways that can be measured and analyzed, but largely due to reasons expressed in the cliche that for someone with a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. Where they find phenomena that do not conform with their expectations, by and large they simply eliminate it from their studies.  For instance, in the old days, artistic categories of form and perfection were understood and utilized by philosophers, theologians, and scientists in describing and understanding the world around them. But at some point, scientists fell prey to the notion that Beauty was only in the eye of the beholder, and so they reduced physical objects to more objective criteria like shape, color, density, motion, and the like. All else was outside science's parameters, not because artistic categories were invalid or wrong, but because it just wasn't what the scientists wanted to do with the physical world. I know this sounds like a criticism of science, but I actually think it points us to the merit in excluding certain concepts from all types of science. The world is such an immensely complex thing that without rigorous conscription of a science's objects and methods, it would be simply impossible to make any progress.  It is therefore the mark of a good sphere of scientific research that it demand a set of very strictly defined phenomena, together with a methodology appropriate to the phenomena as defined.  Contemporary attempts to make progress in such mushy areas as "Cultural Studies" make this point rather well.  But on the positive side, evolutionary science is also a good example. Continue ..... The phenomena evolution seeks to study are the observed multiplicity of species. Where did all these species come from? What happened to species that have become extinct? What will happen to various species in the future? Evolutionary science investigates this and other questions with a toolbag of concepts like "survival," "fitness," "ecosystems," "randomness," and "probability," and in so doing, constrains itself to physical phenomena, per se.  As such, theological concepts like Divine Intervention are inappropriate, not because they are wrong, but because such concepts are more suited to a wider field than mere physical phenomena, a field as big and as complex as the Universe itself. To put it another way, the will of God is largely inexplicable. As a result, derivative concepts like Divine Intervention or Creationism just cannot help us to understand the concrete details of processes like evolution.  Such concepts will not yield any kind of a quantifiable answer at all, much less one that fits within anything calling itself science. It is with God and theological concepts, however, that the secular evolutionist usually goes wrong when he insists, in the name of his science, in passing judgment on such things. In so doing he oversteps the bounds of the very scientific discipline he has created. If the objects of evolutionary science are pre-defined so as to exclude God from consideration, then the evolutionary scientist can say nothing about God or Creationism or Divine Intervention without exiting his discipline. Such theological concepts are simply defined out of the scientist's vocabulary, ab initio, and he ought to stand mute on such questions - at least insofar as he tries to speak as a scientist.  Immanual Kant called such attempts as this amphibolies of reason, which result from extrapolating from one category of thought into another irrelevant sphere.  He might just as well have pointed out what the Preacher says in Ecclesiastes: "[God] has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."  Evolutionary science is not about ultimate beginnings or ends, but about physical processes in the here and now. If the scientist wants to talk about ends or beginnings, he must use other more theological language, for his discipline is not geared towards that sort of thing. But if the evolutionist may not delve into theological matters, the same is not true in reverse. The processes of evolution that our scientists discover can help us appreciate the Divine better, just as the deeper understandings of cosmological physics and quantum theory can bring us to a greater sense of awe: of God, because of what He has wrought.

Garbage In. Garbage Out

The Net is roiling with the news that mainstream climate research scientists have been corrupting the science of global warming for upwards of a decade. That's the science that has the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change in a terrible frenzy over the coming apocalypse, along with sundry Hollywood types and our great leaders in Congress. The evidence of this corruption is straightforward and damning: someone dumped a mountain of internal emails off of Britain's Climate Research Unit (CRU) server, catching the big-wigs of world climate research (people like Phil Jones, Michael Mann, and Thomas Wigley) discussing how to alter the data to conform with climate models, plotting to marginalize climate skeptics by freezing them out of the peer-review process, and conspiring to destroy information requested under Britain's Freedom of Information Act.

Don't look for this story in the Mainstream Media. It's too busy worrying about gate-crashers at Washington parties.

As shocking as the emails are, the fact is we already knew the science community - and the peer-review process, which is its raison d'etre - was corrupt. Here's why.

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The climate debate is actually rather simple. We are sure about two things: (1) if you introduce greater concentrations of CO2 into, say, a green house, the temperature will rise; and (2) the earth's temperature has been rising for about the last 100 years or so. This establishes a plausible hypothesis that the world's temperature increase has been caused by increases in atmospheric CO2 stemming from the Industrial Revolution of the last couple of centuries.

But only a plausible hypothesis. Coincidence does not equal causation; something else is needed to eliminate other possible causes of global warming. If, for instance, it can be established that 20th Century global warming is anomalous, that is, much higher than years past, then the case for global warming as a man-caused problem becomes much stronger. This is precisely the tact of climate scientists over the past 15 years, and this is precisely where the debate is most fierce.

Which brings us to the last 1,000 years and the so-called Medieval Warm Period. 1,000 years ago the world apparently was quite warm, as evidenced by historical curiosities like a current-day icebound northern island that is called 'Greenland.'  Climate science, however, needs more than anecdotal evidence; it needs hard temperature data with which to compare current data. Modern temperature information is pretty good, especially since the advent of satellite technology, but there is nothing remotely comparable from medieval times.

So, climate scientists have come up with the notion of "proxies" for temperature. During warm periods, it is reasoned, things will grow and flourish, leaving a record behind. For instance, sedimentation layers and tree rings should be larger during warm periods. As a result, the science and methodology of deriving temperature data from the study of sedimentation and tree-rings (and a growing number of other things) has exploded over the last few decades.

Central to our story are the tree-rings in the Yamal Peninsula of Russia. It is these trees which provided the basis in the 1990's for deducing that the temperature during the Medieval Warm Period was actually much cooler than supposed, and that the subsequent temperature variations, even during the so-called 'Little Ice Age' of the 1700's, was milder than previous assumptions. The result was a graph of temperatures over the last 1,000 years that looked like a hockey stick, with 20th Century temperatures exploding upward. 

This Hockey Stick graph was a political bomb-shell, kicking off a nearly world-wide angst over the coming world apocalypse. 20th Century temperature was not only anomalous to previous centuries, it seemed to be in a class by itself. A man-made class, in fact.

Again, if the 20th Century temperature rise is indeed statistically anomalous with the preceding 800+ years, this presents powerful evidence that man's industrial activity is at least a very significant cause of global warming. Not conclusive evidence (something else might still be causing it), but certainly strong evidence.

But well before the CRU email dump, we already knew that the science behind the Hockey Stick was flawed. That is because the research was conducted, published, and peer-reviewed in gross violation of the scientific method. Normally, when a scientist publishes his research, it is accompanied with the actual data and conditions underlying his conclusions, in such detail that other scientists can duplicate his research to see if they get the same results. In the case of the Hockey Stick graph, and subsequent studies seemingly confirming the Hockey Stick, fundamental data was withheld. Specifically, the information on the precise trees used in compiling the temperature series prior to the 20th Century was not published, nor were the various computer algorithms that were used to interpret the tree-ring data made available.

The climate scientists essentially published their conclusions and as for the rest, they said, "Trust us."  In fact, they refused to divulge the deep data behind their global warming conclusions right up until they were forced to by a Congressional investigation in 2005. Since then, other scientists have discovered, among other things, that the tree-ring data was cherry-picked to produce the now infamous Hockey Stick graph.

So, the recent CRU email dump only confirms what we already knew.  The behavior of the mainstream climate scientists in withholding their data from scrutiny should have made them and their theories laughable, ab initio. Instead, they have been lauded and feted, received millions of dollars in research grants, and have driven the world to the brink of madness in the name of a Global Catastrophe, wherein grown-up educated people contemplate spending trillions of dollars and regulating freedom to near death.

And all of it, all of it, based on a monstrous scientific hoax. Man-made global warming might still be true (as any theory might be true before it is researched), but we will never know it from scientists such as these. For they are not scientists, but mere partisan ideological hacks feeding away at the public trough. These people need to get other jobs, and let the real scientists get back to work.

Re: Where's the GOP

Tut, tut, Ezra. It is not dishonest and deceitful per se to step back and let another political party shoot itself in the head. Each political season is different, and quietly permitting the political suicide of the opposition is one possible approach among many. The only relevant question is whether these are times that dictate such a strategy.

I am saying that this is not one of those times. The extreme over-reaching by the current Democrat Administration and Congress this past year has stirred up political winds that will, undoubtedly, push many Democrats out of office, even if the Republicans stand pat. But such winds as I see in America today can do more than blow against the Democrats; it can also accelerate a Republican positive agenda item: the reform of our current Healthcare system into a more competitive, lower-cost, freedom enhancing part of our economy.

All it will take are Captains of the Republican ships who are willing to unfurl the sails and catch this timely wind.

Which brings up the question: are our Captains Courageous or Queegs? We will soon know.

Senator Graham Puts on Airs

A little bit ago, Lindsey Graham co-wrote a Wall Street Journal Op/Ed with the esteemed Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry, advocating for Cap and Trade legislation. We wrote about that Op/Ed here.

Yesterday, Senator Graham defended himself in an interview on the Sean Hannity radio program. In essence, he said the EPA was already empowered to regulate CO2 emissions, and it was important therefore to pass legislation insuring that such regulation would not burden small businesses and consumers with costs that would stifle economic activity and growth. He then concluded his defense, saying that he did not know to what extent Global Warming was a true man-made cataclysm, but that CO2 emissions by cars and other polluters was certainly not good and we needed to move as fast as possible to energy sources other than fossil fuels.

He talks as if the EPA is some natural, unstoppable force in the world, instead of a bureaucracy which owes its continuing existence to Congress. Why not legislate it out of existence, or if he is not willing to do that, curtail its jurisdiction over CO2? Because Senator Graham's real rationale for joining with Democrats on Cap and Trade is what he concluded with: CO2 is a pollutant, and pollutants are bad.

But, Mr. Graham, CO2 is not a pollutant. Another word for CO2 is "air." Air is not bad; unless it is hot air, in which case it can be very damaging to the political health of this Country.

Let the record show that I am in favor of eliminating all sources of hot air, including, perhaps especially including, Senators Graham and Kerry.

Re: Where's the GOP?

Chaz, in a nutshell, here are the Republican reasons for why they are doing what they are doing:

Why on earth should Republicans go on record with actual Healthcare bills? Wouldn't that leave them open to criticism on the merits? Wouldn't the Democrats and the Media literally revel in the real or imagined facts of harm and misery inflicted on the citizens of those States that had passed the Republican Healthcare measures?

As it is now, all the voters know is the evils of the Democrats' plans. Why give the Democrats an ability to tell a story about a corresponding evil of a Republican plan?

Best to stay low, and quiet, and let the enormity of the Democrats' plans for America be the only thought in the minds of the electorate.

Then, in 2010, we can pounce, and run the scoundrels from office.

For myself, I think that if this is the tack the GOP takes, then it will result only in the replacement of existing scoundrels with other scoundrels. Politicians should stand for something and be elected or not on account of that something. To try to slide into office by the back door - by simply not being an "unacceptable" Democrat - is a demeaning and deceptive strategy. Not to mention that such politicians are inherently unable to resist the lure of joining a $1+ trillion dollar spend-a-thon each year.

KSM Takes Manhattan

Bill Kristol makes a striking point about Attorney General Eric Holder's description of the upcoming trial in New York City of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of 9/11, as the "Trial of the Century."

That phrase, in colloquial usage, refers to a media fire-storm type trial that rivets the nation, often for the same reasons a train wreck commands attention. The usual result of such an incendiary spectacle is something less than a trial and more like a circus. Think "O. J. Simpson" here, and you'll get the idea.

This nicely exposes the mind-set of the Administration regarding the erstwhile war between America and its enemies. This trial is not about justice or the defense of America against an implacable foe. If it were, then the military commissions - approved by the Supreme Court and enacted into legislation by Congress, with the support of then Senator Obama - would have sufficed. This is about a public spectacle, because to this Administration, success is gaged in terms of the amount of media coverage it commands and the number of news cycles it saturates with the President's picture and rhetoric.

This is foreign policy as conducted by a Hollywood PR expert. Military commissions in Cuba? "Puhleeeze! How am I going to get this covered by anyone? Which major media outlet will send cameras to that dreary place? New York, Baby! The Big Apple is the place! We'll get 'em to preempt Oprah with this one!"

Where's the GOP?

In politics, when opportunity knocks, it is important to open the door. If that cliche doesn't thrill you, then how about this one: if you want to instruct a mule, you must first get its attention. The old joke finds a 2 x 4 to be the best method. However, if it is the mule who is knocking, then you already have its attention and can toss away the lumber. Just open the door and start instructing.

Voters are a particularly mulish lot. Most of the time, they are not paying attention. The only exceptions are the hard-line followers of both parties who are always thinking about politics. I estimate this group to be about 15% of the electorate and fairly evenly distributed between Democrats and Republicans. This means that the primary ongoing struggle for either political party is somehow to get the other 85% to pay attention long enough for it to make the sale on its policies and programs.

By their nature, Presidential elections gain a significant amount of attention from the 85%, but those times come around only once every four years. Off-year elections can have the same effect, but markedly less so, especially when there is no galvanizing political theme. This is why the party in power usually loses Congressional seats in off-years. Of the 85%, it is mostly the dissatisfied who will rouse themselves grumpily off their bark-a-loungers to vote; the satisfied are apt to stay home.

And then there are the important legislative battles in between elections. During these times, most of the 85% are comfortably hibernating from politics and could care less. George Bush's 2005 attempt to reform Social Security is a case in point. Social Security reform was one of his major policy planks, and the 2004 electoral victory had given him a sizable mandate for his second term, together with legislative majorities in Congress. However, after sweating out a particularly rancorous Presidential contest, the 85% retreated to their homes and political somnambulism. Try as he might, President Bush could not get any significant public support for his efforts, and Social Security reform fizzled, along with a good portion of the President's mandate. His Presidency never recovered.

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However, the 85% will wake up to politics sometimes, in unpredictable ways and at unpredictable times, even in the no-man's land of non-election cycle politics. As rare as these time are, it is critically important that a political party be alert to their occurrence, and act decisively.

In my opinion, we are in such a time right now. The national electorate, including a sizable portion of the 85%, is awake and listening intently to the Healthcare debate. Exactly why the 85% is paying attention is not important. The fact is that they are, and I wonder: where is the GOP? Why are Republicans not seizing this opportunity to push their agenda when a substantial portion of the electorate is listening?

I am not talking about Congressional action. Republicans have come under heavy criticism from Democrats and the national media for obstinately opposing the Democrats on Healthcare without offering any constructive alternatives. However, the GOP has put forward significant alternatives, such as Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan's Healthcare legislation, only to see them vanish amidst Washington's political whirl-winds. In fact, as a distant minority in Congress, the only strategy the GOP can and should pursue in that august body is high-profile opposition to all that the Democrats represent. Nothing else will break through Democrat control of both the legislative process and the media.

But the GOP does command strong majorities in many State governments, and until the Democrats succeed in passing their National Healthcare program, the regulation of Healthcare and health insurance is largely a State responsibility. Why isn't the GOP pursuing a national campaign to reform State laws to allow interstate purchase of health insurance, reduce State insurance mandates, and otherwise increase choice and competition for consumers? A national State based campaign such as this would gain traction in the national media, especially so if it was coordinated with real legislative action in GOP dominated State legislatures. Imagine the impact on the Washington debates if the Republicans not only proposed market based solutions for Healthcare, but enacted the same!

All the polls show that the American people do not like the Democrats' reactionary New Dealism, where bigger, bloated government seems to be the answer for everything. As a result, the GOP is perfectly positioned to take control of this issue at the State level, giving the voters real-time programs and policies that will actually solve the Healthcare problem rather than make it worse.

The public is knocking at the door, looking for leadership on the Healthcare issue that will not take them down the Democrats' road. Where is the GOP? Why won't they open the door?

Probably for the same reasons that made them the minority party in the first place.

Our President, Lower than a Highness

Socialist, Marxist, Ideologue. These are the usual epithets hurled our President's way. Is it possible, however, that he is none of the above, but instead ... a Royalist? He has a curious habit of bowing to Emperors and Kings, something American's (much less American President's) are not prone to do. The LA Times has helpfully included a file photo of then Vice President Cheney bow-lessly greeting the Japan Emperor. As the Times asks, how low is this President willing to go?

Straining a Gnat

Let's count the expenses: a $787 billion Stimulus, with more contemplated; more than $1 trillion approved by the House for National Healthcare; and proposed legislation for Cap and Trade that will add trillions of dollars in expenses to the national economy.

Recently, however, our Leaders " ... expressed reservations about the potential long-term costs of expanding the war in Afghanistan." The costs? $26 billion. That's $26 billion BEFORE factoring in the savings from the wind-down of the Iraq war. Net cost after troop levels are reduced in Iraq? $0.00; that's zero, zip, nada.

Our Dear Leaders strain a gnat and swallow a camel.

Ignorance? Stupidity? No; just politics as usual, Washington style.

A Brief History of Faith

President Obama said yesterday at Fort Hood, "No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts. No just and loving God looks upon them with favor." Taken as a universal moral prescription, he is correct. But as a description of the history of religions, he could not be more wrong. The norm in human history is to kill or be killed in the name of religion. Taking only the last 2,000 years and a very narrow slice of peoples, Romans killed Christians because of their faith, and thereafter, Christian sects killed other Christian sects. Meanwhile, Muslim sects killed other Muslim sects. Then, Christians killed Muslims and Muslims killed Christians, while Christian and Muslim sects continued to kill each other. All of this occurred with a regularity bordering on a scientific necessity. In fact, the only major religion that has not killed others in the normal course over the last millennia is Judaism, mainly because it was altogether too busy fending off the recurrent bloody mobs seeking its extinction. The idea that religious difference does not, and should not, justify killing others is an epiphany of the last few hundred years. This notion gained some credence in Western culture during the Enlightenment, and finally emerged in the American revolution as an obdurate challenge to the religious history of mankind.  The Continent followed suit shortly thereafter, due in large part to the translation and publication in Germany towards the end of the 19th Century of the works of the incomparable Kierkegaard. As of today, this Western ethic of religious tolerance is accepted almost universally, by the Left, the Right, and everyone in between ...... except, of course, by a large slice of about a billion Muslims. Continue ..... I am not being critical of Muslims, I'm really not. My brief history of religious tolerance is intended to show that this is a very recent invention. It should not be a surprise that people as passionate as Muslims will be a good bit behind the curve, as it were. And this is not least because their own culture was marginal and marginalized during the period of the ascendancy of religious tolerance. However, for almost 40 years now, Islam has been ascendant, due to the conjunction between a growing, prospering world starving for energy and the huge reserves of black gold under the sands of the Middle East. Muslims, rightly, insist on taking their place on the world stage. If they do so, however, there is no more important lesson for them to learn than that bloody war in the name of their religion is something the world will no longer accept. And it is up to the rest of the world, and the United States in particular, to teach them this lesson, through persuasion if possible, but through steely nerve and force of arms, if that is what they prefer. The world lost too many people in the countless millennia of religious warfare to let itself fall back into those dark ages. At bottom, this is the problem with the Obama Administration's prevarication and obfuscation about Islamic Terrorism. The Obami are treating the issue as if it is some parochial American political battle with the Right. Instead, it is a transcendent worldwide cultural war. This brazen idea, that people of different religions can live in peace, is at a cross-roads: will it become a universal law between people of all nations, or shall it be just another 19th Century Western curiosity, like bustles and spats? If we can secure this principle of religious tolerance against the forces of Islamic Jihad, then the world will be a better place. Perhaps we can then move on to educating the world about political liberty, and make it a two-fer for 19th Century Western culture.

Witness Unprotection Program: Bubble Boy v. UPI

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(h/t Ez. Yeats)

Is it a Terrorist Yet?

There is not a little bit of buzz as to whether the alleged Ft. Hood killer, Major Hasan, is a terrorist or not. The Obami, including the Major Media, are emphasizing the fact that the Major did not coordinate his actions with al Quaeda or any other outside organization. He was a lone mad killer, perhaps a victim of pre-post traumatic stress disorder or harassment for his Muslim religion. Or both. In any event, he is no terrorist.

The conservative net, however, seems to be moving back and forth between proliferating definitions of terrorist, war criminal, and traitor.

Let's keep a little focus here, people. This is not a definitional problem. This was murder and an act of Jihadist terror, pure and simple. Whether the Major coordinated with al Quaeda or was a lone gunmen, whether he had personal mental problems or not, the fact remains that he clearly indicated an intention to further by his actions the worldwide Islamic Jihad against America and Americans. And he did so using the classic terrorist method of mass slaughter of unarmed, defenseless people in an unpredictable manner and place. This was an act of radical Islamic terror, in the same category as 9/11, QED.

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And therein lies the Obami problem, and the reason for Administration obfuscation. You may praise or bury President Bush, but one thing is irrefutable: his policies kept America safe from Islamic terrorism on American soil for eight years after 9/11. Now, just nine months into the Obama Administration, Islamic terrorism has claimed more American victims.

It is being speculated that one of our problems is a multi- culti- diversity pablum infecting the command structure of our Armed Forces which prevented anyone from properly investigating the Major's suspicious activities. If true, and it appears it is, we should not let this sort of thing distract us. The ultimate problem rests with the Commander in Chief. President Obama has made it plain from the start that he does not like the War on Terror, nor the Bush Administration practice of calling a Muslim terrorist a Muslim terrorist. This attitude at the very top of our government has reduced the readiness of our Armed Forces, Homeland Security, the FBI, and all others who are charged with protecting America in this War that we did not start.

To coin a phrase, this past week the President's chickens ..... came home to roost.

To the lasting sorrow of thirteen American families and the Nation at large.

NY-23

Bill Owens, newby Representative from New York's District 23, broke 4 campaign promises in his first 24 hours. A new record. As politicians go, this guy is a real over-achiever. Bleh.

Bubble Boy

20 years ago today, the signal event of the 20th Century occurred. More significant than VE Day in Europe or VJ Day in the Pacific, for those just marked the ends of two great battles in the larger 70 Years War since Communism raised its ugly head in Russia in 1917.

The final volley in the 70 Years War was fired by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 when he uttered those immortal words in front of the Brandenburg Gate, "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Almost all of the best and brightest advised Reagan not to give such a speech. But he knew his times better than most, and his destiny and the destiny of his Country: to oppose those that would imprison human beings behind walls, barbed wire, and sick ideologies. And so, as near universal consensus acknowledges, President Reagan defeated Soviet Communism, won the 70 Years War, and ended the omnipresent nuclear crisis known as the Cold War, without firing a shot, with words, only words. But what words!

Which brings us to our current President, Barack Hussein Obama, II. He was invited by German Chancellor Merkel to attend the ceremonies marking this great occasion; unfortunately, he was otherwise engaged. That Presidential calendar sure can fill up quick!

But with what? In addition to ministerial functions like a British Prime Minister, the President performs the functions of a Monarch; that is, a President personifies the Nation, and participates in ceremonial occasions on behalf of all Americans, especially those that are central to the identity of this Country. There is hardly anything more central to what the United States is about than the fall of the Berlin Wall, and therefore hardly anything more important for our President to be doing today. Why did he not attend these ceremonies?

Helmut Kohl, then Chancellor of West Germany, said 20 years ago to President George H. W. Bush: “Without the U.S., this day would not have been possible. Tell your people that.” Tell them he did. But when he did, some Americans were not listening.

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As I have related here and here, President Obama is gripped in an ideology he learned as a young man. For he and his brethren of the 1980's, the fall of the Berlin Wall was not the living metaphor of a joyous celebration of freedom, but the distasteful triumphalism of a predatory capitalism foisted on the world by America. Those free people, dismantling brick by brick the "gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers," as President Reagan described it, were but dupes of the system. They were the soon-to-be petty bourgeoisie whose ignorant sloth would serve the interests of the real oppressors.

Nothing of the history of the last 20 years can penetrate ideology such as this. Rip Van Winkle eventually woke up, and began processing the changes of the new world around him. President Obama does not need to wake up, for he has never been asleep. Only encased in his bubble, safe and secure from any truth that might nudge him to engage the reality of the world as it is, not as he would wish it to be. Our President, the Bubble Boy.

That said, if our President will not represent the United States on this most momentous occasion, leave us not forget to offer our own little congratulations, to the German peoples, who endured post-World War II a horror disproportionate to any punishment they might have deserved, and now live in the freedom which is the birthright of all peoples, everywhere.

(h/t for the quotes herein, Bill Bennett).

Witness Unprotection Program: Meet the Press

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The Speaker Speaks

As the lone person of the female persuasion on this blog, it is my sorrowful duty to report the following: July 22, 2009, CBS News reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says "Democrats have the votes to pass health care legislation in the House." October 21, 2009, The Hill reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says "House Democrats "definitely" have a health reform bill right now that could win 218 votes in the House." And then, just one day before Healthcare is to go to a vote, there is this: November 6, 2009, Gateway Pundit reports that "House Democrats acknowledged they don't yet have the votes to pass a sweeping overhaul of the nation's health care system." Now, I do not favor National Healthcare. The only things that should come between a woman and her doctor are the traditional barriers, like cold hands, clumsy probes, and rumpled suits. But I just cannot abide incompetence, even when it serves to defeat National Healthcare. Especially when incompetence is so publicly exhibited by a woman in the highest seats of power. It's simply an embarrassment. "Speaker," indeed. A perfect title for someone who is all inane talk, and no action. via email

Sez Who?

Hey, this is fun. If you remember, the game is to take a Lefty critique of conservatives, and by substituting a very few nouns, transform it into a devastating critique of the Left.

Courtesy of Yuval Levin, we have this quote from a book written by Diana DeGette, the current Democrat Chief Deputy Whip in the House, castigating the Christian Coalition for inordinate power. For 'Christian Coalition,' let's substitute 'Democrat Left,' and see what we get:

I have seen the power of the DEMOCRAT LEFT and its members. While not representative of the views of the majority (or even a large minority) of Americans, this group wields disproportionate influence over our politicians. Why? Because it is a single-issue group that has enormous power to control campaign donations and the votes of its members. If voters who belong to this group are told to denounce a politician because he or she opposes the wishes of this group, they will. No questions asked — and this right here is one of our fundamental problems.

I like especially her point that the Democrat Left does not represent even a large minority of Americans. So true, so true. These people are the fringest of the fringe of American politics, given to all sorts of deranged conspiracy theories and ignorant nostalgia for ideologies long since relegated to the ash-heap of history.

The reason 'Democrat Left' substitutes so easily into this quote, of course, is that the Left is a religious coalition, just as much as is the Christian Coalition. Except the power the Christian Coalition - and, for that matter, the Catholic Church, another target of Ms. DeGette - has over how its members vote is not as strong as Ms. DeGette's stereotype. On the other hand, the Left exercises an almost Stalinesque control over its denizens. The Left's mouthpiece, MoveOn.org, need but publish a 120 word ex communication against, say, the apostate Joe Lieberman, and the Democrat Party yanks the endorsement of their own Party's former Vice Presidential nominee, and backs another for the Senate seat in Connecticut.

But like most religions that indulge too much the dark side of Holy Righteousness, the Left overreached itself. Senator Lieberman exposed them as the fringe they are when he ran as an Independent against his own Party, and won the election easily.

These people can move money and cadres of grass-roots activists, but its all mostly smoke and mirrors, propped up by the Major Media it controls like Moscow controls Pravda. Nevertheless, Ms. DeGette's revised quote highlights a very real, and grim, problem this religious cult presents for the Republic. Vigilance, people, vigilance.

Re: The Political Season

Ezra, you make a nice point about the central conservative principles of Life and Liberty. I do not think it is an accident that fiscal and social conservatives have joined in a formidable coalition these last 30 years or so. Life and Liberty, the philosophical foundations of social and fiscal conservatives, respectively, are indeed complementary, if not dynamically synergistic. After all, Jefferson separated them with only a comma in the Declaration of Independence.

As for your question, I think you are being premature. The first question that needs answering is: can a full-throated conservative, in both the fiscal and social sense, win elections nationally, even in the Northeast precincts? Contra your speculations, I do not think yesterday's elections definitively answered this in the negative.

Let me make a preliminary point: politics is the art of the practical. Most successful political campaigns are a deftly managed series of feints, drawing the attention of the electorate away from those issues where the candidate is weakest, towards those he is strongest. This is commonly called "staying on message," and is an extremely difficult thing to do these days, given the near instantaneous, 24/7 media spotlight every campaign struggles under.

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In the northeast, generally considered to be hostile territory for social conservatives, the task would be to keep the electorate focused on fiscal and good government issues, and downplay any differences on social policies. Again, this is difficult, but not impossible, for a disciplined and experienced campaign organization.

As always, Ronald Reagan gave us a good example of this sort of thing. In the election of 1979, he did not ignore or prevaricate about his social conservatism. As a matter of fact (and this is from memory), when John Sears, his soon-to-be fired campaign chief, demanded that he forgo campaigning as a Pro-Life abortion opponent, Reagan angrily threw a pencil across the conference table and exploded, "This is my campaign!"

Reagan, of course, got his way, and as a result, he was able to galvanize the Religious Right in his favor, which became a critically important grass-roots component of his campaign. But at the same time, he deftly kept the national focus squarely on the depressed economy and foreign policy weaknesses of the Carter Administration, and away from divisive social issues, and ultimately won the election handily.

A good bit closer to hand, the recent Virginia Governor's election gives us another example of this. Consider this analysis of Bob McDonnell's victory from Jennifer Rubin of Commentary's Contentions blog:

[McDonnell] didn’t budge from his pro-life and gay-marriage stances (in fact, his social conservatism so scared the editors that they made particular mention of it in their endorsement of his opponent). Moreover, it is hard to think of a single non-conservative position he took on anything else: he opposed taxes and was in favor of charter schools and against cap-and-trade, card check, and ObamaCare. ... It is more accurate to say, then, that a conservative candidate held the center of the electorate. But he didn’t do it, as the Post suggests, by splitting the difference and running on mush. McDonnell didn’t run on raising taxes less than his opponent; he ran on no tax increase. He didn’t run on a modified cap-and-trade position or a tweaked version of ObamaCare; he ran on opposition to big government. It doesn’t sit well with the mainstream media and liberal pundits when this happens — as it suggests that conservative ideas have resonance beyond the right-wing base. It suggests that Olympia Snowe-ism, a pastel version of the liberal agenda, isn’t the way to rebuild a winning Republican coalition.

Tactically, Bob McDonnell kept the focus of the campaign on fiscal conservative issues, and as a result, won almost every county in the State.

Beyond tactics, however, note her central point: "conservative ideas have resonance beyond the right-wing base." That is, conservatives can win elections, even in places like purplish northern Virginia, by running as conservatives. This suggests what you and I and many others have always intuited, that the middle slice of the electorate, so-called Moderates or Independents, are not some amalgam of equal parts liberal and conservative, but in fact are very much more conservative than liberal. Republicans, then, do not have to bend their conservative principles to get elected; as a matter of fact, doing so might lose more Independents than are gained.

And I include social conservative principles within that last statement. Ms. Rubin manages to finesse McDonnell's social conservatism out of the equation in her conclusion, but his social conservatism was well known in this election, and northern Virginians were not frightened by it (despite the best efforts of the Washington Post).

I think it is because he stayed adamantly on message (it's the economy, stupid), and by doing so, kept from being categorized as a narrow, parochial, ignorant social conservative. The latter has been the Left's incessant Talking Point for going on 20 years now, and Bob McDonnell, I think, has shown how to handle it: emphasize the issues that have the widest voter appeal, and let social issues rise to whatever level the current campaign demands - but no more. If this is done correctly, in any Blue or Purple State a politician’s social conservatism should recede as a defining characteristic, to simply one political position among many, reassuring the Moderates and reducing the number of knee-jerk negative votes.

In conclusion, then, there is no reason at this time for conservatives to consider off-loading social conservatives to win elections in northeast America. Doing so might very well harm our electoral chances more than it will help.

So there it is, my preliminary conclusions derived from a very small sampling of tea leaves served up this election season. But Ezra, Ms. Rubin's conclusion has wider implications than just whither social conservatism in the Republican Party in the northern reaches of the United States. However, I have gone on too long already. Perhaps more on this later.

Re: The Political Season

Chase, you state, "Republicans are either the opposition Party to Democrats, and define themselves so by their policies and principles, or they will be the minority Party in American politics for many years to come." What can I say? I agree.

But there are some questions. When it's all said and done, we lost NY-23 to a liberal Democrat where a clearly conservative candidate ran explicitly against the Obama agenda. Chris Christie is conservative - but only by New Jersey standards, which is not a very high bar.

It seems, at least in the northeast, there has to be some mitigation of the conservative standard to be competitive. Where do we draw the line? I have heard some commentators say the line is between fiscal and social conservatives; that is, northeastern Republicans would be conservative on taxes, the size of government, regulations, Federalism, and the like, but would play to whatever the local politics dictates on abortion, gay marriage and other social issues.

This makes some sense, but feels a might too pat. I suspect this line is most embraced by our Republican intellectual elites, who tend to look down their patrician noses at the social conservative wing of the Party, often wishing on some level that the socials cons would just leave the Republican Party altogether. But social conservatives are an absolutely necessary component of the Party, without which we lose every Presidential election since 1980 (possibly excepting only Reagan's 1984 landslide).

Besides, the social's do the heavy lifting in branding the Republican Party as the Party of Life, a critical philosophical core of conservatism, and an important complement to the fiscal conservative foundation in Liberty. In fact, fiscal conservatives, left to themselves, tend too much towards dry economics and wonkishness, leading them to be less skeptical of government solutions than they should be.

Any thoughts?

Witness Unprotection Program The Stimulus Czar

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The Political Season

Political realignments are hard to come by; the Obami thought they had it in 2008, but it appears they have another think coming. Purple Virginia goes heavily for a true conservative who ran on the basics of Republicanism: common sense governance with concrete policy proposals to better the State. Royal Blue New Jersey went Peasant Red with a convincing victory by Chris Christie who, again, ran on Republican basics of lower taxes and cleaned up, downsized, effective government.

And then there is NY-23, that obscure northern New York District race that became a national sensation. At first blush, this appeared to be the mini political metaphor Conservatives were looking for: a Tea Party type backlash against the imposition by the Republican Establishment of a classic Molted (More Liberal Than Democrats) Republican, wherein a surprising Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, leaps from single digits in the polls to force the withdrawal of Republican Dede Scozzafava from the race. All this metaphor needed was a win by Hoffman; instead, Democrat Bill Owens took the prize.

The spin-meisters, especially the Democrat ones, but also the Rinos and Molteds, will crow that the lesson of NY-23 is what happens when the radical fringe of the Republican Party takes over. But they miss the real point: NY-23 was another instance of the historic confrontation between two factions of the Republican Party going back more than 60 years. To name just a few of the contests: Goldwater v. Rockefeller in 1963, Reagan v. Ford in 1975, and then Reagan v. Bush (the Elder) in 1979.

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The lesson for the Republican Party is the same lesson after NY-23 that it should have learned from those races: the Rino/Molted faction of the Republican Party are bitter, petty, losers, who will not hesitate to savage their own party when election day comes. Rockefeller did it to Goldwater; Ford did it to Reagan when he refused to make Reagan his Vice President; and George Bush (the Elder) would have done it to Reagan if not for Reagan's statesmanlike reach across the Republican divide to tap Bush for Vice President.

Dede Scozzafava did it to Hoffman, when she withdraw (exclaiming her devotion to the Republican Party) from the race and then threw her support to the Democrat. Her 6 percent of the vote (although she withdrew, she remained on the ballot) would have been enough by itself to carry Hoffman to a narrow victory; the additional votes that would have gone to Hoffman but for her endorsement of the Democrat might very well have made Hoffman's victory a convincing one, helping to set the stage for a true Republican resurgence in 2010.

History shows, and NY-23 confirmed, that Rinos and Molteds not only lose consistently against Democrats, but are a net negative for the Party's other candidates. Republicans are either the opposition Party to Democrats, and define themselves so by their policies and principles, or they will be the minority Party in American politics for many years to come.