Jeremayakovka

True Whit Day

April 1st is True Whit Day, a day to remember so as not to be made a fool of by history.

Straight Talk With Sarah Palin

I try to keep it so simple by reading the [Constitution of the State of Alaska] and believing in it and living it. I get chided all the time, especially in the campaign. It was funny -  people got so sick and tired of me quoting the Constitution. It's my Bible in governing. It's a simple Constitution. It's short and sweet. It was providential. It was written by very wise minds fifty some years ago. Some of these crafters of our Constitution, they're still alive today. They're my mentors, they're my advisers. I get to meet with these folks and say, "What did you mean by this provision in our Constitution." They get to tell me what they meant and what the intention was and they make so much sense. And if more of our lawmakers knew what it says about equality: inherently it's the people who have the power - it's not the elected officials - it's the people who have the power in Alaska. And when we develop these God-given resources of ours it's to be for the maximum benefit of Alaskans.

- Governor Sarah Palin

Before the election one liberal commenter suggested I was "naive and sentimental" in my support for Sarah Palin. Far from it. Yes, I welcomed her to the ticket and, yes, last week I voted for her. I also had the good fortune to meet one of her former neighbors and constituents from Wasilla. That was a refreshing antidote to the mainstream media's/entertainment industry's/netroots' relentless assault on her character. Much as I feel about Obama, she's lived a great American life; and as Joe Lieberman suggested about Obama in his RNC speech, she may one day make a good national executive. Voters this year decided Obama's chance would come sooner. Fine.

Still, Palin didn't overly impress me in the places where she had to most - her high-profile media interviews and her one debate. In the former, her awkwardness revealed the weaknesses of being merely a regional reformer and not a Machiavellian, cloak-and-dagger operator. In the latter, her winks into the camera were more worrisome, even offensive, than any on-stage knuckle-bumping. What I, and I think many others, would have appreciated would have been more opportunities to hear straight talk from Sarah Palin.

Back in June 2007 Dimitri Vassilaros of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review sat down for an inquisitive one-on-one with her. The stakes were low then which, sadly, may be why the conversational quality is high. Palin's got a bunch to say about financing Wasilla's sports complex, her critical hindsight about beauty pageants, her conservative principles, her legal perspective (as an executive) on gay marriage and school choice, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and more. Listen to the audio while it's still available.

One of the best questions is near the very end: 

DV: When will you be running for president?
SP: President of the PTA, maybe!... I can't answer that.... Life happens.
DV: So she didn't answer No. OK, great.

Obama's Election Heralds America's "Long, Slow Descent Into The Third World"

It's been going on for some time now. In any case, what he said:

[T]he US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighbourhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.

If Mr Obama’s election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn’t. Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.

If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination programme aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn’t get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.

And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn’t vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue....

The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world. Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

Forest, Meet Trees

The Republican brand may be "tarnished," John McCain definitely is "tarnished" (as in finished), but through it all conservatism sparkles: Kevin McCullough predicted Obama's ascension 23 months ago. Five decisive factors: raging liberals, disgusted conservatives, exhausted moderates, energized blacks, gullible evangelicals. Read it all.

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More: Two red-blooded, blue-state residents (one Christian, one Jewish) don't need Weathermen to know which way the wind blows. Read "President Fraud."

Obama's "Post-Partisanship" Is As Clear As The Raised Middle Finger In Your Face

The number of middle fingers in a "progressive" crowd is directly proportional to the number of Ph.D.s in a ten-block radius.

Socialism For The Rich

First, attempted regulation of the rich.

McCain proposed, Obama silent on, mortgage reform back in 2006:

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If that doesn't pass, then it's socialism for the rich.

Bill "Red-Star-Over-Chicago" Ayers and Daniel "Young America's Foundation" Flynn agree that the federal bailout of the home mortgage lending industry is class warfare. Depends on which side of the war you're on, that's all.

Ayers (Weather Underground/Annenberg Challenge), from his own blog:

If “government is the problem” and the genius of the “free market” the solution to everything from health care and education to national defense and public safety, why are the marketeers in line with their hands out?

Flynn, in this uncharacteristically long post:

Bush's bailout embraces a perverse form of socialism that turns Marx's theory of surplus value (the idea that profits are theft) on its head by viewing losses as a collective rather than an individual burden. Other ingredients in Bush's Marxist recipe for solvency include nationalizing the means of production (AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) and embarking upon a class war, albeit on the side of Marx's dreaded capitalists rather than his beloved workers. It is socialism for the rich, which isn't socialism's antithesis but its flipside. It still socializes, making the debts of financiers the debts of society.

Wasilla Remembers Sarah

* Welcome, Conservative Grapevine and Little Green Football readers! *

Yesterday evening I had a remarkable encounter with a man here in California (let's call him “Hank”) who had been a resident of Wasilla, Alaska during the years when Sarah Palin served as city councilwoman and then mayor. He and I chatted for half an hour, completely off the cuff. More than most mainstream media stories about her life and career, Hank's memories, impressions, and opinions – of Wasilla as much, actually, as of Sarah Palin – are indeed a breath of fresh air. They lend credence to the persona that the McCain-Palin campaign is projecting: a frontier, hockey mom with “a servant's heart.”

First, Hank said that most Americans will find it difficult to understand many particulars of Alaska small-town life. Wasilla is small by head count, but it's spread over a wide area with many miles between it and the nearest cities. Yes, it has “sprawl,” but growth merely peppers (not plasters) its way toward adjacent boroughs. (“Boroughs”: the category for unincorporated land outside the city proper.) Out there neighbors often live at a distance from each other, but these individuals also learn to make do with each other -- and especially with nature -- out of non-negotiable need, not choice.

Hank never mentioned “environmentalism” or “hunting,” but instead spoke of “game management.” Area game (or, if you prefer, wildlife) seems to coexist with the citizenry in a pragmatic, managed equilibrium. Certain technology, he said, tracks the number of moose or fish that pass through certain areas. The environs can only support so many number of this or that animal, so often it's a good (and prudent) thing that hunters and fishers are issued more licenses, and get out and bring in big catches. Never forget that many Alaskans count on outdoor kills for basic sustenance. This includes roadkill – when a big animal goes down on a road or highway, a local church will receive a call and then send out members to haul and properly strip the carcass. This has to do with sustenance and community service, not with sport and spoils. Teddy Roosevelt would be proud.

This also has to do, as Hank described it, with a “pay-as-you-go” way of life. Since there are few state taxes, Alaska government remains small and usually in the background, even if services are scarcer and more expensive. For example, the state university is relatively expensive as state universities go, but that's because only students pay in to it. More bureaucratized states like California and New York fund their state universities by taxing the entire populace. Hank also wanted me to note that there's a fair amount of home schooling in Alaska. (I have to add, the tenor of these remarks reminded me of an old Dinesh D'Souza anecdote: Ronald Reagan, back in the 80s, received D'Souza as a guest at the White House. Reagan pointed out the window to a large structure, not too far off. “You see that building?” he asked. “Yes.” “That's the Department of Education. Do you know what they do over there? “No,” D'Souza acknowledged, "I don't." “Neither do I,” Reagan declared.)

Back in Wasilla, during Palin's time in office an effort took hold to incorporate his outlying borough, but Hank was wary because he knew that the city wouldn't be able right away to keep up roads and provide fire department services as he'd been used to. It was a trade-off, but one brokered in open (if close) quarters. Just as former Alaska senator, Democrat Mike Gravel recently said, Hank said he didn't always agree with her decisions, but he tended to respect them. He said she always carried herself confidently, as when she had Wasilla's chief of police replaced.

In this and other ways, Hank said, he formed over the years strong, up-close impressions of Sarah (whom he always referred to as “Sarah”). As Sarah gave birth to new children, the town paper ran items about them. She and her husband gave them funny, marvelous names – “Piper,” he explained, is named after the piper cub airplane (a fixture in long-distance Alaskan transportation). Sarah typically attended Wasilla's high school's graduation ceremonies, including his own child's graduation. Her mayor's office was “a shack.” When years later she put a former governor's plane on eBay, he said it didn't surprise him one bit. Did Hank watch her recent vice-presidential nomination acceptance speech? “It was 100% her,” he said, without hesitation nor undue emphasis.

Now that I think about it, I didn't even ask Hank whether he's registered to vote with any party, nor whether he is planning to vote for McCain-Palin in November. It doesn't much matter, since his opinions and input regarding Sarah Palin are based mostly on her no-nonsense fulfillment of two non-partisan offices. What a world of difference this is from the dozens, even hundreds of liberal journalists and Democratic operatives who – like Kremlin commissars dispatched to quell defiant Soviet republics – have descended upon Alaska to try to destroy, by any means necessary, the hard-earned, hard-nosed reputation of America's most popular vice-presidential nominee, the woman who will forever be remembered by her former municipal constituents as “Sarah.”

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Live-Blogging McCain's Acceptance Speech

Per C-Span's broadcast:

7:05 PM - The crowd bops and hops to the Stray Cats, chomping, bustling, waiting...

7:08  - The biographical slide show is underway. Crowd hushes.

7:10 - The slide show is low on politics, high on character. His grandfather's and father's extraordinary Naval records ... McCain's early record, dating back to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and earlier (Who hears about this in the MSM? Where? When? If it were up to the MSM, lives like McCain's would permanently cast down the MSM memory hole.)

7:12 - More slide show, connects POW years to his release, entrance into politics. Almost seamlessly. It's as if he's lived three lives, not just one.

7:16 - Enter the candidate. Cool and measured. The previous heavyweights on previous days revved up and worked the crowd - Romney, Giuliani, Palin. McCain is on even keel throughout. Note the yellow necktie - bright, optimistic, a little flair. Silverhaired goldenboy.

7:22 - A warrior bearing olive branches: acknowledges Obama's achievement ... welcomes to work with all patriotic Americans.

7:25 - Crowd chants USA! USA!  - pent-up emotions overflowing.... McCain doesn't blink, doesn't get sidetracked, doesn't let it go to his head.

7:28 - Graciously thanks convention for welcoming Sarah Palin yesterday - second big applause line.  McCain the gentleman-statesman: Palin his "partner" to govern ... he wants to "introduce" her to Washington.... This is how one generation passes a torch to another. Barack Obama couldn't have gotten as practical a blessing from Ted Kennedy or Robert Byrd.

7:32 - Populism, populism, populism.  Smaller government.

7:38 - He names names: hard-working, ordinary individual Americans. Nothing fancy, but that's the point. Including "the family of Matthew Stanley of Wolfboro, New Hampshire, who died serving our country in Iraq. I wear his bracelet and think of him every day."

7:42 - "Education is the civil rights issue of this Century." A talking point he made verbatim at his Saddleback appearance. If the MSM were committed, objectively, to the well-being of historically deprived communities - not simply to the Obama star-narrative - there'd be news profiles, investigative reports on this. It would be front and center.

7:48 - Energy here at home.

7:51 - Democrats, read his lips: "I hate war. It is terrible beyond imagination."

7:54 - The understatement of his life: "Long ago, something unusual happened to me that taught me the most valuable lesson of my life. I was blessed by misfortune."

7:59 - The run-up to the peroration. This stuff is too good to make up: "I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's."

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My feed got choppy, so here's the rest, cribbed from Yid With Lid. It was over the top, McCain didn't ramp it up, the crowd simply ran with it. It's all about...  humble greatness:

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's.

I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.

If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you're disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier. Because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.

I'm going to fight for my cause every day as your President. I'm going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight with me.

Fight for what's right for our country.

Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.

Fight for our children's future.

Fight for justice and opportunity for all.

Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.

Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America.

Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We're Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.

Thank you, and God Bless you.

Thinking Like A Communist Thinking Like A Nazi To Catch A Thief Called History

I've realized that everything in this world is geared to destroying mankind, to destroying me, among others. Everything: even the faith I once had. The Party, the triumphant revolution, I used to believe in all that. Deep down I still believe in it, but only as one believes in a dream after waking... I am on my own. I have the right to want to live, even through the decline of Europe.

Some notes here from my recent read of Victor Serge's Unforgiving Years, a pressing meditation about European Communists on the run in WWII even more from Stalin than from Hitler.

True to the concerns of this itinerant Communist's other written works -- humming with a force vitale that ranges from the polemical to the historical to the poetic, taken together they comprise some of the 20th Century's most "committed" literature -- the energies at stake in this novel are political and, above all, psychological. From page one unsettled characters are on the run and remain so for five years (1940-45), in four countries, on two continents, and through 340 pages. They juggle aliases and addresses while beset by trenchant reassessments -- sometimes shared, often private -- of the state of the Class Struggle In A Time Of War.

Come to think of it, a tantalizing twist on Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon would be had Serge managed to compress his tale into one continuous narrative rather than four successive ones. The novel could then be titled (more intensely, likely, and certainly with more economy) Unforgiving Hours. As it stands, the narrative offers two sections whose major machinations unfold amid real warfare, but where battle is but the backdrop -- the mise en abîme of Leningrad under Wehrmact seige, and later the fin de Reich leveling of the city of Altstadt before its American liberation.

Serge's primary purpose is not martial, but civil. For a ruthless agitator, he stares with considerable sympathy into the fragile frontiers of everyday minds overrun by extraordinary, totalitarian ideologies. One passage especially near the end of the Altstadt section struck me. Here an elderly Nazi school instructor speaks his mind to an American journalist:

"A very great people the Americans ... The United States is presently the foremost industrial power in the world, and superior at waging war ... On the other hand, there is a certain lack of social cohesion and spiritual tradition..."
"You think so?"
"Beyond a doubt.... You will realize that in fifty years."
"Phew, we got time to turn around then."
(p. 263)

In these lines is the crux of the "culture war" we came to by the 1990s -- stoked by the "adversary culture" (which Norman Podhoretz elaborated in The Bloody Crossroads), then superseded by the "counterculture" -- which rages and festers today. These lines are also, let it be noted, nearly identical to those which "The Philospher of Islamic Terror," Sayyed Qutb, drew in the sand during his nearly identical years in America. Yet note as well the journalist's reflexive, rolling-up-our-sleeves, can-do attitude. Only in America can history be -- or, to a European, seem, at least in part -- neither pathetic nor heroic.

So much of 20th Century European history is unpardonable, yet so much of 21st Century American history remains unfinished.

Happy Birthday, Whittaker Chambers

** Update (04/10) ** New site! WhittakerChambers.org

For all the tricks Fate played on you -- you who labored so hard to take leave of trickery --  it's no surprise you were born on April Fool's Day.

Last year's commemorative post, "True Whit."

"He Was A Good And Decent Man"

Rick Perlstein on why William F. Buckley, Jr. was his role model.

"A Tribute to the Master" from the Center for Visions and Values at Grove City College.

Between friends: Charlie Rose hosts Buckley who reminisces about Joe McCarthy, Whittaker Chambers, Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan .... It's impossible to defend McCarthy and it's super-impossible to defend his critics .... weighs in on Bush: He has not entirely succeeded in declaiming his own mission.... He has not successfully mobilized public sentiment on this issue [Iraq]. On conservatism: There isn't at this point a solid challenge posed by [i.e., to] conservatism.

William F. Buckley, Jr. vs. Gore Vidal: "It Is Really Unprofitable To Talk About Camelot, Since We Don't Live In Camelot, But In The Good Old U. S. A."

The late William F. Buckley, Jr. weighs in on the 1968 presidential election, along with Gore Vidal.

Buckley: [The next president of the United States] shouldn't be too naive. For instance, when the president of the Soviet Union informs him that the Communists desire world peace, the next president would ideally tell him to cut the horse feathers. He shouldn't crave the idolatry of world opinion. For instance, when criticized by the United Nations for taking a position he feels he needs to take in the best interests of his country, he should feel free quite ostentatiously to turn off the national earphone.
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Note Vidal, with calumnious alarm -- expectorated drippings whence waft a whiff of the nauseous mal de vivre Jean-Paul Sartre cooked up -- referring to the American Empire and to the race war, intoning that the 37th president of the United States could very well be the last president. Picture yourself in the 1960s. Militantly touting its cult of "social change," the Left has taken to the streets, it conspires and boasts of revolution, its most ruthless individuals (a Communist and a Palestinian) assassinate, first, a president, then a major presidential candidate -- and that "malevolent fantasist" Vidal suggests that fascism  is just around the corner. ("Malevolent fantasist," a phrase borrowed from Roger Kimball's farewell to Buckley.)

It may have been. Yet let us recall, Gentle Reader, that whatever be the hard, sometimes bitter (and, yes, sometimes bloody) costs of preserving the political order, upheavals threatening that order come typically from the Left, sometimes with popular approval. During the Roman Republic's shaky final decades Caesar decided early on that the Populares, not the Optimates, party would best translate his indecipherable genius into real power. In a later era Bonaparte and Hitler each enjoyed, for dreadful seasons, enormous popularity when they provided order where the institutions that had guaranteed order had collapsed. Truly there is more to be said on the subject -- yet Vidal, for his seemingly moderate erudition and insight, agitates more than penetrates the subject. His final phrases identify a generalized, troubled sentiment (a queasiness, if not a nausea) but they do not indicate an issuance from that sentiment. "Law and Order" is strong medicine, mind you, strong for good reason and to good ends.
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In this second video Vidal (below), an American blue-blood just as much as Buckley, tosses out more dour, veiled threats, perceiving himself no doubt as some kind of tribune, some kind of messenger: Very soon the poor, black and white in alliance with the young, are going to challenge the old order, and if Nixon does not respond with intelligence and with compassion, then there will be such revolution in these United States as has never been before.... Not all of the police and national guards combined will be able to withstand the eruption of those without hope or means of redress save through violence.

 

We Don't Want Bill Either

Ms. Rodham Clinton's 2008 election troubles boil down to one word: Bill.

Many voters are already hip to him being her ticket to power. Others are wary of the complications inherent in installing a two-term ex-president in the White House, which could be worse than defying the 22nd Amendment. Their Her election would create a climate where the scope of executive authority could be blurred beyond proper and effective discernment. This would involve not just any ex-president but one who, rara avis, has been tried on two out of four counts of impeachment lodged against him.

Ms. Rodham Clinton frequently insists she's ready to lead "on Day One." Yet when she says that what many voters hear is Day 2923 -- the first day of a third-term of a Clinton (co-)presidency. During another era, when the American people voted for president during an extraordinary wartime election, at most only 46% rejected Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt when they he vied for unprecedented terms.

So far -- counting all the Republican and the Obama and other Democratic votes -- 70% of presidential primary voters are saying, We Don't Want Bill Either. Sound familiar? It should.

(Republican campaign button, 1930s or 1940s; image found in Campaigning for President)

"Republicans Have In Spades All The Things That Combine To Make Us Happy"

.Yep. And it ain't moaning for change.

What's Newt With Me

* Update * Bill Kristol, "Good News for Conservatives"

You don't have to be Newt Gingrich to call for a revitalized conservative movement, distinct from but operating largely within the Republican Party. Podhoretz fils said it a few days ago, as did I.

"Every Time Someone Makes Bad Art, You Should Have The Right To Get Angry At Them!"

Mark Steyn at CPAC yesterday. Note especially the q&a at 18:20 forward.

Spit back in the face of ivory tower condescension against conservatives (i.e., those not, or no longer, indoctrinated by critical theory) being boors or hicks. Score one for coherent, confident culture!

Mitt Concedes Race, Asserts Conservatism

Some reason that culture is merely an accessory to America’s vitality; we know that it is the source of our strength.
-- Mitt Romney

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Mitt's concession speech is a bridge-builder, not a barn-burner. From "Stepping Aside for the Good of America":

[C]onservative principles are needed now more than ever. We face a new generation of challenges, challenges which threaten our prosperity, our security and our future. I am convinced that unless America changes course, we will become the France of the 21st century—still a great nation, but no longer the leader of the world, no longer the superpower. And to me, that is unthinkable....

The threat to our culture comes from within. The 1960’s welfare programs created a culture of poverty. Some think we won that battle when we reformed welfare, but the liberals haven’t given up. At every turn, they try to substitute government largesse for individual responsibility. They fight to strip work requirements from welfare, to put more people on Medicaid, and to remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever. Dependency is death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity. Dependency is a culture-killing drug—we have got to fight it like the poison it is!....

The attack on faith and religion is no less relentless. And tolerance for pornography—even celebration of it—and sexual promiscuity, combined with the twisted incentives of government welfare programs have led to today’s grim realities: 68 percent of African-American children are born out-of-wedlock, 45 percent of Hispanic children, and 25 percent of white children. How much harder it is for these children to succeed in school—and in life. A nation built on the principles of the founding fathers cannot long stand when its children are raised without fathers in the home.

The development of a child is enhanced by having a mother and father. Such a family is the ideal for the future of the child and for the strength of a nation. I wonder how it is that unelected judges, like some in my state of Massachusetts, are so unaware of this reality, so oblivious to the millennia of recorded history. It is time for the people of America to fortify marriage through constitutional amendment, so that liberal judges cannot continue to attack it!

Europe is facing a demographic disaster. That is the inevitable product of weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of human life and eroded morality. Some reason that culture is merely an accessory to America’s vitality; we know that it is the source of our strength. And we are not dissuaded by the snickers and knowing glances when we stand up for family values, and morality, and culture. We will always be honored to stand on principle and to stand for principle.

On To The Next, Crucial Test - CPAC

Jed Babbin, "McCain Didn't Close the Deal": At 3 pm tomorrow, McCain is scheduled to address the crowd expected to number over 6,000 activists....  This is the group before which Ronald Reagan said in 1975 that, “A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.”... For John McCain, the finish line is at CPAC, after his Thursday speech.  McCain has to finish first at CPAC or risk a disunited party this fall.

Also: Eyes on this year's CPAC

Previous: "Somewhere In Washington A Conservative Political Action Conference Is Missing Its Idiot"

Evangelicals Say, "Mitt's No Savior, He's Just Another Caesar"

That's my only explanation for Huck's continued progress -- not toward the nomination, of course, but toward becoming kingmaker at the Republican National Convention. His victory in Iowa was the iceberg hitting the hull; crushing victories today in West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia constitute the crack-up of the luxury liner S.S. Romney, now going down during its maiden, transnational voyage. Romney's forces, if that's not too strong a word (for he vows to keep on) might broker with other factions at this summer's convention, but -- barring a brokered convention that doesn't break in his favor -- McCain is the man for this season, likely for this fall, and just possibly next winter.

Huck's evangelical votes fill the void of confidence left not just by Romney's record in Massachusetts but by the Bush Administration's tepid accomplishments in their regard. Bush often took evangelicals for granted, except when it became impossible to do so (e.g., when Miers was forced to step down from SCOTUS consideration). Somewhat like Obama's deep support tonight among Southern blacks (which might serve notice to the Clintons to deliver better there), it's payback time for lifetime, beltway Republicans. Professional Republicans who backed Romney and who are also professing Christians have a lot to think about. Or pray about.

Preacher credentials aside, does anyone mistake the former Arkansas governor -- a fisher of votes -- for a fisher of men? It's just that, in flocking to Huck, Southern evangelicals are saying, "Mitt's no savior, he's just another Caesar."

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More:

Conservatives to begin a strategic retreat within the GOP
(Right Wing Nuthouse)

Podhoretz fils differentiates between a party and a movement
(Contentions)

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As for the Democrats:

[T]he bitterness of [Hillary Clinton's victories in the Democratic primaries] may have done irreparable harm to relations with African-Americans..
(Contentions)

If Democratic superdelegates end up securing the nomination for Ms. Rodham Clinton, [t]he African-American vote would see this as a stolen nomination and could walk away from the Democrats.
(Ed Morrissey)

It's Ain't Over Till It's Over, But What's True Will Always True

McCain-Huckabee is not a horrible Republican ticket. It's just that a ticket led by Mr. Romney is substantially better on taxes, the environment, illegal immigration, campaign finance, terrorist interrogations - the familiar litany of issues on which Mr. McCain essentially has been a Democrat far too often.

Conservatives have no one to blame but themselves....

Imagination Is Funny, It Makes A Cloudy Day Sunny

During One of American Conservatism's - And The Republican Party's - Dimmest Hours, A Very Long View

Longtime conservatives will remember how by the mid-1970s their worldview's influence had become diminished. The order of the day included: a winnable war sabotaged by domestic radicalism... Republican presidents who pushed for big-government solutions at home and coexistence with the West's totalitarian enemies... and a rejuvenated and radicalized Democratic Party.

Some observations from that time about "the big picture":

Are the retreat and the decline of the West, then, and the weakening of the Western will, so far gone by now as to be irreversible? Certainly there are few signs of reversal, or of individuals, movements, or ideologies that might inspire a reversal. If modern liberalism is the ideology of Western decline and suicide, no ideology or doctrine of Western revival is visible.... The prelude to the Western decline was the Bolshevik revolution. The main action began with World War II, from which issued the division of Europe and the collapse of the Western dominated world structure. As the drama has relentlessly unfolded over that past generation, the brief ascendancy of the United States begins to appear as no more than an incidental subplot.

It is not that liberalism, with its innate historical masochism, is flourishing. On a global scale, the liberal hope for the universalization of the representative democratic governmental form with which liberalism is most naturally correlated, has proved a fantasy.... But a renewed conservative movement, incorporating beliefs and a program consonant with the epoch's issues, challenges, and perils, and able to rally a mass following, has not taken form and is not in sight: a Ronald Reagan might conceivably be elected president, but will not lead a resurgence of the West. The movements outside of the broad liberal-conservative spectrum that exhibit vigor and purpose aim at the destruction, not the renaissance of Western society.

-- James Burnham
from the Afterword to the Second Edition (1975) of The Suicide of the West

* * *

The cycles of American presidential elections have almost as little impact on the trend of Western civilization as the Earth's revolutions do on its orbits around the sun. As the Earth's revolutions are a result, not a cause, of its orbit, so it is tempting to think (not without some reason) that American presidential elections are the mere side effects of an entire civilization's downward trend. Post facto but pre mortem, as it were. Hence, emanating from both parties in 2008 the misty mantra of  "change"....

That's why thinking in terms of Romney vs. McCain or Hillary vs. Obama (and certainly McCain vs. Hillary) is, to some degree, incidental to the big picture. Also incidental is the Republican tendency to claim to identify who most resembles Ronald Reagan, a useful calculation, perhaps, but an ultimately futile task. Reagan's presidency defined his era truly, but the flesh and blood Reagan was, like all men, a man of his time. Only legends are for all time.

Western complacency during the aggressive ascent of Islamofascism showed during the administrations that succeeded his that Reagan did not divert darker currents that ran more deeply through his era. Like a river's relentless stream that beats on, then around, then past a squat rock lodged in that river's bed, the enervation of Western culture and values and amour-propre beat upon those individuals who, rock hard, upheld them, then and now.

Romney or McCain ... Hillary or Obama ... Democrat or Republican ... we are in for a very long, very hard haul. Thankfully, Burnham's message about the West's suicide came in the form of a book, not a note.

* * *

Meanwhile, a dispirited (and dispiriting) counterculture was knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven' s door.

And Hollywood warped "God Bless America" from uplifting hymn into a damp, dismal dirge (watch to the end).

"Bush Is One Cool Customer"

I neither love him, nor hate him -- but I do insist to his visceral, knee-jerk critics that he's more intelligent, more civil, and more moral than they'll ever realize, let alone acknowledge. Yes, his popularity is low -- for varying reasons, depending on whom (and how) you ask -- but not as low as that of the Democratic-run Congress.

So here's a little breather in the never-ending brouhaha between those who still carry water for Bush and those who toss buckets of slime at him every chance they get. When in the market for the next person who best personifies presidential qualities, don't ignore the ones this two-term Republican has brought to the table. (Found at Bookworm Room.)

One Blogger's Reasons For Romney

Wasting few words, he whittles down the choices -- and Mitt's still standing. 

Christianity and Culture and War

Continuing to track down sources of recent reads, this week I acquired a copy of  T. S. Eliot's Christianity and Culture (1948). The collection of lectures and essays is referenced in Pat Buchanan's The Decline of the West (2000) (see previous post), also Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah (1996).

Eliot's abiding concern here is to make Christianity central to Western nations during the modernist era. He does not intend any "social justice" agenda. He does not advocate a faith that would conform to conditions created by modernization -- technology, political liberalism, and "the mob." This last phrase (Eliot's word choice) is similar to what Ortega y Gasset scrutinized in The Revolt of the Masses (1930). Eliot affirms, rather, a particular and enduring power for Christianity. Yet it's not a preacher's sermon, elaborating on scripture. Nor is it the feminist critique of pacifism that is Virgnia Woolf's Three Guineas (1938), nor the decadent road recits, of Greece and America (respectively), that are Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi (1941) and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945). 

The first half of the book, "The Idea of Christianity," was originally a series of lectures he delivered in early 1939. They conclude with remarks referencing the Czechoslovakia crisis Hitler had provoked the previous year, the one "resolved" by the now infamous Munich Agreement and Chamberlain's fallacious declaration of "Peace in our time."
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The term "democracy," as I have said again and again, does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces that you dislike -- it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.

I believe that there must be many persons, like myself, who were deeply shaken by the events of September 1938, in a way from which one does not recover; persons to whom that month brought a profounder realisation of a general plight. It was not a disturbance of the understanding: the events themselves were not surprising. Nor, as became increasingly evident, was our distress due merely to disagreement with policy and behaviour of the moment. The feeling which was new and unexpected was a feeling of humiliation, which seemed to demand an act of personal contrition, of humility, repentance, and amendment; what had happened was something in which one was deeply implicated and responsible. It was not, I repeat, a criticism of the government, but a doubt of the validity of a civilisation. We could not match conviction with conviction, we had no ideas with which we could either meet or oppose the ideas opposed to us. Was our society, which had always been so assured of its superiority and rectitude, so confident of its unexamined premises, assembled round anything more permanent than a congeries of banks, insurance companies and industries, and had it any beliefs more essential than a belief in compound interest and the maintenance of dividends? Such thoughts as these formed the starting point, and must remain the excuse, for saying what I have to say.
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Note well, from Eliot's postscript to this (dated September 6, 1939):
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[T]he possibility of war, which has now been realised, was always present to my mind.

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Join the Christians Against Leftist Heresy blogroll
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The DoW of Pat Buchanan, The SoW of James Burnham

Fans of Liberal Fascism, unite!

Earlier this month, before dropping over $30 for the debut of Jonah Goldberg's (so far, wildly popular) Liberal Fascism, for $5 at a used bookstore I picked up for the first time ever a Pat Buchanan title, The Death of the West (2000).

I'm glad I did. It's a summary of the cultural, demographic, and economic trends that are the downfall of Western Civilization. It makes no particular case against militant Islam, although it does identify some of the harm it had already caused American interests; hence it cannot be accused of being particularly "Islamophobic" nor "isolationist." It identifies a culture war within American society, unappeasable and unavoidable -- very much as others, post-9/11, have acknowledged the jihad with Islam.

Rarely, however, do I notice Pat mentioned by name by post-9/11 counter-jihad pundit-authors. To pick a few, Mark Steyn in America Alone, Melanie Philips in Londonistan, or Claire Berlinski in Menace in Europe. Yet several of his basic observations and ideas pop up in their work -- declining Western birth rates, for example, or plummeting church attendance in Europe. If a schism exists between Pat and the rest, it seems to me everyone involved would benefit from a spirited debate that identifies just what are their (our) common interests. (In LF Goldberg devotes a few pages to him, btw.)

With an indecisive GOP primary season afoot (uncertain, weary, and chaotic all at once; "the party's falling apart," says Dick Morris) someone's got to ask: Where is American conservatism headed? How well (or poorly) is the Republican Party its "home"? And since the November election will be, in part, a second referendum on "The Bush Doctrine": Of the flagrantly liberal aspects of Bush's record -- nation-building abroad, government expansion at home -- which are worth keeping, amending -- or dismissing?

In The Death of the West Pat is neither grim nor optimistic, just diagnostic. For all the pitched partisanship and great American romance that make up a presidential election, it would be good also to administer a dose of Pat's "DoW-ism" to the Republican and national discussions already underway.

* * *

A pleasant surprise of DoW is its more than occasional literary references. In a way that in no way relies on the academiklatura (something which would surprise and annoy them, would any deign to read it) Pat clearly is well-read in American letters. He quotes from novels and essays only to illustrate his political points, but also -- mirabile lectu -- Pat believes that Western literature should be read (and written) to bolster, not undermine, the West. History -- not "the text" -- is literature's proper reference. In today's culture war that's radical. (That also helps to explain why so much contemporary scribbling may be many things, but certainly not literature.)

One of Pat's sources is James Burnham's The Suicide of the West (1964). It's out of print, but not impossible to track down in used form. So after finishing The Death of the West, I ordered a used copy of The Suicide of the West. It does not disappoint.

A heartening passage about modern literature runs as follows:

It is also ironic that liberalism -- so prevalent among modern intellectuals and so widely regarded as the truly creative outlook in modern society -- has failed to attract any of the major creative writers of our century. Professor Lionel Trilling [described by a former student here] who seldom deviates from the liberal line on specific political or social issues though he is mildly heterodox in theory, discussed this little remarked but surely significant fact in an article published in 1962 by the magazine Commentary. He pointed out that none of the major writers has been a liberal and that most of them have been anti-liberal; and that there is no great twentieth-century literary work infused with the liberal ideology as De Rerum Naturae, the Aeneid, The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Faust, and War and Peace were infused with other ideologies. In the twentieth century, Professor Trilling declares, there has been "no literary figure of the very first rank . . . who, in his work, makes use of or gives credence to liberal or radical ideas." Many secondary writers and a substantial majority of critics have been and are liberals; but Henry James, Marcel Proust, Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Andre Gide, Thomas Mann, T. S. Eliot -- all of whom the liberals so much admire, so frequently imitate and so endlessly comment on -- have all been, often explicitly and scornfully, anti-liberal. (pp.135-136)

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Search inside this book!

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Indeed

* Updated *

[T]his is a very flawed field, or at least one ill-suited for the times we're in.... But conservatives should contemplate the possibility that the fault lies less in the stars -- or the candidates -- than in ourselves. Conservatism, quite simply, is a mess these days. Conservative attitudes are changing. Or, more accurately, the attitudes of people who call themselves conservatives are changing.
-- Jonah Goldberg recently, in WaPo

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Updates: John Hawkins interviews Goldberg.

Plus, did you know that one of FDR's New Dealers hung a portrait of Benito Mussolini in his office? Goldberg touches on the historical sources of Liberal Fascism (his new book) in this 10-minute radio segment.

* * *

Goldberg detects a fascist strain in Obama:

Take Barack Obama. One of the themes in almost all the classic definitions of fascism is this yearning for unity, you know, that if we could all just work together -- the Nazis called it the Gleichschaltung, which is to coordinate all the aspects of society so that everyone's on the same page. They use things like political correctness to do that -- everyone has to talk the same way. Speech crimes -- you can't say the wrong things. This idea of the totalitarianism of politics seeping into every nook and cranny of American life. That is what we see very much on the left, certainly at the universities.

You take someone like Barack Obama -- who I think is an honorable and decent guy, I should say -- his whole campaign is based on this idea of unity -- and this transformative leader, another aspect of fascism. If we all just believe in Barack Obama, if well just sort of hold hands, sing "Kumbaya," and march uphill, at the end of history we can buy each other a Coke and the whole world will be changed. If you listen to him, he says we can create a kingdom of heaven on earth. That is a utopian vision. Democracy is about disagreements, it's not about agreement.

And you never hear a liberal say -- we hear liberals say every day -- Al Gore says it about global warming, Hillary Clinton says it about everything -- "If we could only just put aside our ideological differences," you know, that is a very fascistic way of talking about things because what you're saying is, "You drop your objections what I'm doing and get with the program."

John Vincent Coulter, RIP

Father spent most of his nine-year FBI career as a Red hunter in New York City.

Rush's Caucus Night Roundup

Short takes on the long picture. Phoned in last night to Fox.

Huckabee is tapping in to a sentiment of someone who is a straight-talker, or who appears to be ....

Found at Political Party Poop.

Solzhenitsyn For A New Year's Sermon

To usher in the New Year, anti-Communist Titan Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 1979 Harvard Commencement Address. Some excerpts:

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable, as well as intellectually and even morally worn it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and with countries not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists. Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

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I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale than the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.

* * *

The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

* * *

The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media.) But what sort of use does it make of this freedom? Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no true moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to his readers, or to his history -- or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? It hardly ever happens because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist usually always gets away with it. One may -- One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none -- and none of them will ever be rectified; they will stay on in the readers' memories. How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press -- The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus, we may see terrorists described as heroes, or secret matters  pertaining to one's nation's defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "Everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era. People also have the right not to know and it's a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls [stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk.] A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislative power, the executive, and the judiciary. And one would then like to ask: By what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?

* * *

But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger -- 60 years for our people and 30 years for the people of Eastern Europe. During that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life's complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting characters than those generally [produced] by standardized Western well-being....

After the suffering of many years of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music. There are meaningful warnings which history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen.

* * *

The American Intelligentsia lost its nerve and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. That small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation's courage. But if a full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a small communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?

* * *

Western thinking has become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost; there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.

Facing such a danger, with such splendid historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?

* * *

Read the whole thing along with a full-length audio clip of the speech.
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Shelby Steele On White Guilt, The Obama Phenomenon

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Teach, brother!

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Steele's ...Why Obama Can't Win -- the book; the interview
 

Whew! Reason And Religion

Dobson praises Romney's faith speech:

Gov. Romney’s speech was a magnificent reminder of the role religious faith must play in government and public policy. His delivery was passionate and his message was inspirational. Whether it will answer all the questions and concerns of Evangelical Christian voters is yet to be determined, but the governor is to be commended for articulating the importance of our religious heritage as it relates to today.

An indication, hopefully, that the Christian Right will not bolt the GOP next year. Something similar in 1992 helped usher in a Democratic victory.

If there's one good thing about the protracted presidential election, it allows an extended period during which each party can air, negotiate, wrangle over its values, vision, direction. Mitt Romney just provided some leadership in that department for the GOP, and even for the country.

FWIW, Hitch couldn't be more unimpressed.

"He Understands The Need For A Conservative Judiciary..."

* Updated (11/19)*

If Giuliani is elected, and he doesn't appoint constructionist judges, those are the words Robertson will have to eat. But if Pat's glowing (and noticeably unreligious) estimate proves accurate....

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* Update *

Giuliani's 200 reasons

Roger Kimball Comes To Bury Mailer, Not To Praise Him (Really)

Roger Kimball must have been polishing this piece for months, if not years. He seems to have read every book ever written by and about the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and five-time marriage loser (also, one-time marriage winner).

From Kimball's "Norman Mailer, A Dissenting View":

No one combined critical regard, popular celebrity, and radical chic politics with quite the same insouciance as did Mailer. From the late 1940s until the 1980s, he showed himself to be extraordinarily deft at persuading credulous intellectuals to collaborate in his megalomania. Although he modeled his persona on some of the less attractive features of Ernest Hemingway—booze, boxing, bullfighting, and broads—he managed to update that pathetic, shopworn machismo with some significant postwar embellishments: reefer, radicalism, and [Wilhelm] Reich, for starters. The glittering example of Mailer’s commercial success was obviously the cynosure that many aspiring writers set out to follow: his neat trick was to combine cachet with large amounts of cash.

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Wow! I thought I had shrewd opinions about stormin' Norman. E.g., JMK on The Castle in the Forest: Adolf Hitler was more of a genius -- and more evil -- than Norman Mailer ever was or will be. And that may make Norman jealous. Previous JMK blog entries about Mailer here and here.  

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Most telling is to compare Mailer's recent major effort with that of one of his ex-friends and contemporaries, ex-liberal Norman Podhoretz. Norman M's final work is an exploration of the psychological formation of Adolf Hitler whereas Norman P's most recent work is the case for the destruction of Islamofascism. Mailer looks back at the 20th and even the 19th Century whereas Podhoretz focuses on the present and looks ahead to the rest of the 21st Century. It's more evidence that, post-9/11, so-called liberals are rather regressive and so-called neocons are rather progressive....

Why Become A Republican?

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Dinesh D'Souza Reporting For Duty

David Limbaugh reviews What's So Great About Christianity?:

D'Souza's approach is admirable because he doesn't allow himself to be on the defensive but aggressively highlights the weaknesses in atheistic thought and proves that professed intellectual objections to Christianity are often a cover for rebellion against Christian morality.

While atheists congratulate themselves for employing reason to follow the evidence "wherever it leads," D'Souza shows that their presuppositions, including their "unwavering commitment to naturalism and materialism," sometimes inhibit their objective inquiry.

Related: "Q&A With Dinesh D'Souza"

When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Bork

Jonah Goldberg serves up salient recollections of the demagogic obstruction of one of the most qualified men, of any philosophical stripe, from taking his rightful place on the Supreme Court -- Judge Robert Bork:

[Senate Judiciary Comittee member Ted] Kennedy’s assault rallied left-wing interest groups to the anti-Bork banner for an unprecedented assault on a man liberal Supreme Court Justice Warren Berger dubbed the most qualified nominee he’d seen in his professional lifetime. As Gary McDowell noted recently in the Wall Street Journal, that time span included the careers of Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black and Felix Frankfurter.

* * *
His supreme jurisprudence may have been thwarted, but his cultural influence can still be felt. JMK highly recommends Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline.

Memo To Conservatives: Avoid Ad Feminam Attacks Against Ms. Rodham Clinton

* Updated (10/23) * HRC's pollster boasts that 1/4 of GOP women will vote for her.
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This past weekend TAPPED blogger Kate Sheppard reacted to something I've sensed from the very outset of Ms. Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign: ad feminam attacks against the former First Lady do nothing to engage the left nor (more importantly) the middle during the long, rhetorical slogfest underway between now and November 4, 2008. Here Sheppard is less than impressed with talkradio personality Mark Levin for having dubbed Ms. Rodham Clinton "Her Thighness."

As matters of principle and strategy, conservatives should not dismiss Sheppard's complaint. Principle, because the candidate needs to be confronted on her record; strategy, because "ideologically moderate white women" just might hold the key to the White House. Indulging a conservative chuckle now could easily lead to hearing the roar of many a woman voter later. For believe it or not, as this poll suggests, Ms. Rodham Clinton could (if only by default) prove "a uniter, not a divider." Then again, if we grant that a woman deserves to be respected for her mind, we should also insist that a woman be disrespected for her mind, if she so deserves....

For my part I prefer more substantive and slyly argumentative epithets to demolish the polished artifice of "Hillary," such as "the junior senator from New York," or "the Shady Lady," or "Madame Macbeth." Or as I once quipped here:

Oh, and I was going to have some comments about that other Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, but it turns out that under a Rodham Clinton Administration, you could be audited by the IRS if you use the word "dyke."

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Previous:
"Excuse Me? God Has Summoned Hillary Rodham Clinton?"
"Southpaw Hillary Throws A Sucker Punch"
"C'mon Hillary, It's Chinatown"
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Rudy's Rumbles Felt On The Left

* Update *(10/19) * Daniel Pipes clarifies his departures from the Bush Administration's policies in "Giuliani's Fresh Start": I twice voted enthusiastically for George W. Bush, am proud to have been his nominee [to the United States Institute of Peace] in 2003, and predict historians will rate his presidency a success. But presenting Rudy Giuliani and his advisors as Bush administration clones is nonsense. News magazines might consider doing some research before spouting off.
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A prospective Giuliani nomination means a commitment to continue and refine the Bush Doctrine, to pursue a forward military and ideological strategy against Islamofascism. Unfortunately liberal opinion makers are viewing this with alarm. Scott Lemieux at The American Prospect's blog TAPPED quotes Matthew Yglesias, Joshua Michael Marshall, and Matthew Duss on the matter. In "STOP RUDY" Lemieux makes a hanky-grabbing point about the truly catastrophic foreign policy Giuliani would likely pursue were he to succeed at being elected, a policy that would kill millions of people. Makes me want to grab a hanky all right, and wipe a nether region with it.

Remember Noam Chomsky's October 2001 slander that invading Afghanistan would lead to genocide? Chomsky, it says in that link (scroll down), warned that millions would die within the next couple of weeks. I recall Norman Finkelstein's radio remarks in March 2003 comparing the imminent invasion of Iraq to Hitler's invasion of Poland. Yet supposedly mainstream liberal pundits think this way -- their talking points derive from the extreme left (and the Jewish extreme left, at that). Lemieux goes on to finger Giuliani's brain trust as the culprit in the persons of Daniel Pipes, who braves implacable Islamic ideology (at home even more than abroad), and Norman Podhoretz, who consistently rectifies the errors of contemporary American liberalism, most recently in World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. (WWIV reviewed here: "a bracing read, and a necessary one.")

Lemieux also poo-poos Giuliani's lack of foreign policy experience. As if Ms. Rodham Clinton has a competitive resume to put forward in that department. And as if her brief and undistinguished Senate career weren't made possible, arguably, by the prostate cancer that forced Giuliani in 2000 to stand down from a head-to-head contest with her for the seat.

The left's stubborn refusal to concede hawkish Jewish-Americans a place at the table, to consider the grave process by which they (we) have arrived at our convictions, has been and stands to remain the death knell (morally, if not always electorally) of the Democratic Party. Just ask Joe Lieberman -- and Rudy Giuliani.

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Previous: "Giuliani In San Francisco And His 12 (13?) Commitments For America"

More Left-Wing Incitement To Assault Right-Wing Personalities

Web site not only urges, but offers $1,000 to anyone who assaults Ann Coulter.
Found via Kevin McCullough.

Previous: "A Pie For A Pie Only Makes Whole World Blind, Deaf, Dumb"

Entering the Ex-Gay/Ex-Ex-Gay Debate

* Update (10/18) * Psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, who in the 1970s led the effort to depathologize homosexuality, defends research which vindicates "reparative therapy."

Last week I inserted myself into a comment thread at Ex-Gay Watch and in the process elicited several responses. Most responses were, uh, testy, and only a handful appreciative or constructive. The thread in question is a take-down of "reparative therapist" Richard Cohen, brought to you in part by The Daily Show. Cohen offers psychological counseling to men who are (or who think they are) homosexual and who want to be (or who think they want to be) heterosexual. The ex-gay "watchers" mock Cohen while I introduce coherent criticisms, trying to tease the same from the site's regular commenters.

Thanks, Jim Phelan, for your complementary remarks, and thanks, Asher, for linking to it. Your constructive feedback, Gentle Reader, is welcome.

A Case for Romney

This just up at Hugh Hewitt. It's the first content in favor of Romney I've posted, as well as the most solid case for him I've yet seen:


To: Conservative Evangelical Leaders
From: Mark DeMoss (Personally)
Subject:  The 2008 Presidential Election
Date:  October 9, 2007                      

In about 100 days we will likely have a Republican nominee for president.  Most political observers believe it a near certainty that this nominee will face Hillary Clinton in the general election.  While most people think this election cycle started too early, I’m finding that few people realize the primaries are almost upon us—and how compacted the primary calendar is.

Within about 30 days after the last college football bowl game is played, primaries (and an all-important caucus) will be held in Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia!  (At least a dozen of these will fall on the same day—February 5, 2008.)

As certain as it seems that Hillary will represent the Democratic Party, it now appears the GOP representative will be either Mayor Rudy Giuliani or Governor Mitt Romney (based on polls in early states, money raised and on hand, staff and organization, etc.).  And, if it is not Mitt Romney, we would, for the first time in my memory, be faced with a general election contest between two “pro-choice” candidates.

I decided over a year ago to help Mitt Romney; and while I have not been (and will not be) paid one dollar, I have worked harder on behalf of a candidate this past year than in any election of my lifetime.  Why?  In large part because the next president is almost certain to appoint two-to-four Supreme Court justices.

When I began surveying the landscape of potential candidates I was looking for three things:

Someone who most closely shared my values;

Someone who has proven experience and competence to lead and manage large enterprises;

Someone who can actually win the nomination (without which it is obviously impossible to challenge or beat Hillary Clinton, or any other Democrat—people who certainly don’t share our values).


So how did I settle on Mitt Romney?  After spending months researching his life and his record, and hours with him (and his wife and staff) in his home, his office and on the road, I am convinced his values practically mirror my own—values about the sanctity of life, the sacredness of marriage, the importance of the family, character and integrity, free enterprise and smaller government.  But more than one candidate shares my values; which leads me to my second criterion.

The President of the United States is the CEO of the largest enterprise on planet earth, presiding over a nearly $3 trillion budget and some 2 million employees (the size of the workforces of General Motors, General Electric, Citigroup, Ford, Hewlett-Packard and AT&T combined).  Mitt Romney has already been the chief executive of one of the most successful investment management firms in the world—Bain Capital, with nearly $6 billion under management; a Winter Olympic Games (Salt Lake City, 2002), where he turned a $379 million operating deficit into one of the most profitable Games ever; and the state of Massachusetts, where he eliminated a $3 billion deficit without raising taxes or borrowing money.

That kind of experience convinces me Mitt Romney could lead, manage and govern America during a critical time in world history.  But can he actually win (my third criterion)?  After he was the runaway winner of the important Iowa straw poll in August, TIME magazine’s political columnist Joe Klein wrote, “Romney now has to be considered a strong favorite to win the Republican nomination.  And another prediction: if nominated, Romney will be formidable in the general election.”

Like it or not (and most of us don’t), these campaigns have become obscenely expensive.  It has been estimated that the two party nominees may well spend in excess of $100 million in the primaries, and several times that in the general election.  One insider told me Hillary may spend half a billion dollars before it’s over!  This means a successful candidate must be able to come up with this kind of money.  Through the first three quarterly reporting periods, Republican candidates reported total revenues as follows:

Mitt Romney: $62.4 million
Rudy Giuliani: $46.1
John McCain: $30.5
Fred Thompson: $12.8
Ron Paul: $8.0
Sam Brownback: $3.3 (through 2 quarters; 3rd quarter number had not been reported yet)
Mike Huckabee: $2.3


These numbers are important for many reasons.  It takes money to hire staff, recruit volunteers, send out mailings, travel the country, organize events (Mitt told me recently he had done 462 events just in Iowa so far!) and to buy TV commercial time.  CNN recently reported that Romney just became the first candidate in history to buy 10,000 TV commercials at this point in the presidential campaign (by comparison, John McCain was purchasing his first commercials the same weekend).

Gov. Romney is also leading by 4%-11% or more in polls in a number of early states, such as Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada—and one recent poll now shows him leading in
South Carolina.  Historically, a candidate who wins the Iowa caucuses and several of the early primaries benefits from a tremendous amount of national exposure and fundraising momentum.

As this race heats up and we approach the final stretch of the nominating process, I have three growing concerns:

Currently, conservatives (whether evangelical or not) are dividing their support among several candidates.  In the long run, this only helps Rudy Giuliani, who clearly does not share our values on so many issues.

Talk of a possible third party candidate draft movement only helps Giuliani (or, worse yet, Clinton), in my view.  While I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. James Dobson that not having a pro-life nominee of either major party presents an unacceptable predicament, I would rather work hard to ensure we do nominate a pro-life candidate than to launch an 11th-hour third party campaign.  Mike Huckabee affirmed this concern when he told the Washington Post last week, “I think a third party only helps elect Hillary Clinton.”

Perhaps most troubling to me is the idea I keep hearing that electing someone like Hillary Clinton would “actually be good for the conservative movement,” since it will “galvanize our forces, enable us to build our mailing lists and raise more money…therefore, I’m not going to vote for anyone this time around.”  Well, I am not willing to risk negatively changing the Supreme Court, and our entire judicial system, for the next 30 years in exchange for building our conservative mailing lists and operating budgets for the next four or eight years.  That, in my opinion, is selfish, short-sighted and dangerous. 


Here is what I believe is at stake in this election:

Someone is almost certain to appoint two, three, or four justices to the Supreme Court.  Do we want that person to be Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney?

Someone will cast vision and lead Congress on matters of national security, including securing our borders against illegal immigration.  Should that be Hillary, Rudy or Mitt?

Someone will deal with the definition of marriage in America—and will either defend and model a faithful marriage and strong family, or not.  Who should that person be?

Someone will either defend unborn life—or defend those who place their rights and desires above those who can’t defend themselves.  Would we prefer that Clinton, Giuliani or Romney be in that position?

[By the way, I am also troubled by skeptical sentiment in some corners about the legitimacy and sincerity of Gov. Romney’s “conversion” on the abortion issue.  I always thought the pro-life movement existed for the purpose of influencing hearts and minds on the issue of life, and historically, we have celebrated converts to our side.  We embraced Ronald Reagan (who signed a liberal abortion law as governor of California), Norma McCorvey (“Jane Roe”), and others—and I am prepared to accept and embrace Mitt Romney.  I’ve also told him he will be held accountable on this if elected.]

Someone will need to deal with radical Islamic Jihadists and the threat they pose to our nation.  As evangelicals, do we want to entrust Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney with that critical assignment?

Finally, someone will either welcome evangelicals and people of faith into the White House and their administration; or shut them out of deliberations and consideration for various appointments.  Would Hillary, Rudy or Mitt be most accepting of evangelicals and people of faith?

Now, I fully recognize some evangelicals take issue with me for supporting a Mormon for the office of president, and I respect their concerns.  Indeed, I had to deal with the same concerns in my own heart before offering to help Gov. Romney.  But I concluded that I am more concerned that a candidate shares my values than he shares my theology.  (If I believed similar theology was paramount in a president, I would be writing this memo urging support of Mike Huckabee.)

As a Southern Baptist evangelical and political conservative, I am convinced I have more in common with most Mormons than I do with a liberal Southern Baptist, Methodist, Roman Catholic or a liberal from any other denomination or faith group.  The question shouldn’t be, “could I vote for a Mormon,” but, “could I vote for this Mormon?”  After all, Mitt told me there are Mormons he couldn’t vote for (I presume Harry Reid, for example); and there are Southern Baptists I couldn’t vote for (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, to name a few).

Incidentally, if one-third of “white evangelicals” voted for Bill Clinton, the second time (a Southern Baptist who doesn’t share our values on most issues); can we not at least consider supporting a Mormon who does share our values?  Noted conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote this month that Mitt Romney is “the only Republican candidate unequivocally opposed to gay marriage and the only one who signed the no tax increase pledge.”

On May 17, my friend of nearly 30 years, Jerry Falwell, went to Heaven.  In addition to being my first employer and like a second father following the death of my father in 1979, Jerry was my political mentor in many ways.  I learned from him, some 25 years ago, the value of working closely with people of other faiths and religions who shared our convictions about the sanctity of life, support for the state of Israel, the sacredness of marriage and the importance of the family unit, the dangers of pornography, and the value of God in public life.  Consequently, the Moral Majority (and many subsequent organizations) was built with coalitions of evangelicals and like-minded Roman Catholics, Jews and yes, Mormons.

Just about six months before his death, Jerry accepted my invitation to a meeting with Gov. Romney at his home outside Boston.  He joined me, and about 15 other evangelicals, for an intimate discussion with the Governor and his wife Ann.  Jerry was one of several that day who said, “Governor, I don’t have a problem with your being Mormon, but I want to ask you how you would deal with Islamic jihadists…or with illegal immigration…or how you would choose justices for the Supreme Court…,” and so on.

While Jerry Falwell never told me how he intended to vote in the upcoming election, I think I know how he would not have voted.  I also know he would not have “sat this one out” and given up on the Supreme Court for a generation.

I am wholeheartedly convinced that Mitt Romney can be trusted to uphold the values and principles most important to me as a political conservative and an evangelical Christian.  Again, I am not being paid, and I am not interested in a job in a Romney Administration (I would not accept one even if offered, as I’m still raising three teenagers).  Neither is my public relations firm involved in any way.  I am involved because I believe the stakes are high, perhaps higher than ever before in my life.

In closing, I would respectfully urge fellow conservatives and evangelicals to consider doing the following:

1.      Pray fervently for this election.

2.      Follow the news and the primary calendar; being familiar with the process and aware of the urgency of the schedule.

3.      Encourage people to vote and not “sit this one out,” merely because they aren’t excited about a candidate.

4.      Encourage people to support the candidate who best represents their values; whether or not they share your theology.

5.      Galvanize support around Mitt Romney, so Rudy Giuliani isn’t the unintended beneficiary of our divided support among several other candidates—or, worse yet, so we don’t abdicate the presidency (and the future of the Supreme Court) over to Hillary Clinton.


I believe we can make a difference—the difference in this election—and if Mitt Romney should become the 44th president of the United States, I’m confident he won’t forget how he got there.  I hope you’ll join me.  Thank you for your consideration of these things.

/rmd

Civility In The Face Of Criticism Is Cowardice

By yielding to a false form of 'civility,' we sometimes allow our critics to intimidate us. As I have said, active citizens are often subjected to truly vile attacks; they are branded as mean-spirited, racist, Uncle Tom, homophobic, sexist, etc. To this we often respond (if not succumb), so as not to be constantly fighting, by trying to be tolerant and nonjudgmental -- i.e., we censor ourselves. This is not civility. It is cowardice, or well-intentioned self-deception at best.
-- Justice Clarence Thomas, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute,
quoted in "The Education of Clarence Thomas"
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How To Talk Back To Liberals And Conservatives (When You Must)

The following is an excerpt from Ann Coulter's new book, which could have been called How To Talk Back To Liberals And Conservatives (When You Must), but which instead is called If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans:

Liberals’ response to unbridled right-wing speech makes the Muslims look laid back. Reacting with stupefied indignation whenever someone disagrees with them—especially in a way that makes people point and laugh at liberals—they seem to be in a constant state of outrage. Liberals, and the conservatives who fear them, have a look of perpetual outrage, kind of the way Nancy Pelosi has a look of perpetual surprise.

About twice a year for nearly a decade, I have upset the little darlings with some public statement, and yet they manage to summon fresh outrage for each new offense. Each time they think I can’t “sink any lower”—I proceed to do so! And by the way, if they’re going to keep using the tired formulation “This time, she’s gone too far!”—can I get an admission that the last sixteen times were, therefore, not “too far”?

I’m almost at the point that I could put together an entire speech containing only lines that make liberals cry. It would be a rather disjointed speech, involving references to Muslims, Katie Couric, Bill Clinton, Max Cleland, Muslims again, Norman Mineta, Justice Stevens, the Jersey Girls, more on the Muslims, Jack Murtha, John Edwards, still more on the Muslims, and Lincoln Chafee—among many others.

To compensate for all the Republicans who go supine at the sound of liberal squalling, I would include a short section in my speech on Strom Thurmond’s contributions to America. I’d fire some of Bush’s U.S. attorneys. I’d have a few jokes about Abu Ghraib—which I think I’m entitled to. I suffered more just listening to the endless repetition of those Abu Ghraib stories than the actual inmates ever did. Then I would wrap it up by laughingly referring to a liberal in the audience as a “macaca.”

Of course, if I start going around making disjointed speeches that make liberals cry, Barack Obama might accuse me of stealing his act.

Liberal hysteria about conservative speech always follows the same pattern; I call it “The Five Stages of Conservative Enlightenment.” There are public denunciations, demands for apologies, letter-writing campaigns, attacks on the sources of your income, and calls for censorship. There will be lots of wailing, but no facts refuting the point behind your hysteria-inducing statement. Liberals prefer denouncing people with idioms—over the top, gone too far, crossed the line, beyond the pale—not substance. Whose line? Whose pale? It almost makes you think they don’t want to talk about the substance.
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Video: This is the funniest book you've ever done. -- Sean Hannity
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Gay Marriage and The Constitution

Here's The Guy From Boston considering the question of gay marriage before the Constitution -- the U.S.S. Constitution, that is.

The reasoning could be tweaked just a little, but it sums up my feelings.

Michael Savage: "The Orthodox Jews Understand What A Gun Is"

Let this put the lie to the slander that Michael Savage is a "self-hating Jew."

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From DC to Anbar, CPAC Honoree Honors Martyred Sheik

Matt Sanchez, whose media spotlight earlier this year provided a great opportunity for me to "come forward" about homosexuality in a new, critical, and appreciative way, has been reporting for several months now as an embed from Iraq, the Gulf, and Afghanistan. As more proof of the need for and rise of the New Media, Matt conducted what most unfortunately became the last interview Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi gave to the press. Sheik Sattar, who apparently craved to live in a civil Iraq and for Islam to be a civil religion, recently received media when al-Qaeda savages assassinated him. Hopefully there will be more from Matt on the martyred sheik.

Chuck Yeager Endorses Duncan Hunter for President

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From the desk of Gen. Chuck Yeager:

To my Fellow Americans,

Congressman Duncan Hunter is the best candidate for President of the United States of America - he has integrity, tenacity, courage, and diplomacy.  He is intelligent and thoughtful, does his research and acts on it.  He is the only candidate who has the best of Ronald Reagan's character and politics

I have known Congressman Duncan Hunter for over 35 years.  Duncan Hunter has served his country not only in Congress, but also in the Army. In Vietnam, he served in one of the most dangerous outfits - the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 75th Army Rangers, on advance recce teams of three on patrol from their unit, at night.

Duncan Hunter is the former and very effective Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and I am proud to be the Honorary Chair of the Congressman Duncan Hunter for President Committee.
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General Chuck Yeager, the first human being to break the sound barrier.
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I Believe You, Anita!

(No, not Anita Hill.)

Further reading:

"The Gaycott Turns Ugly"
(originally published November 21, 1977 in Time)

"Exorcising the Ghost of Anita"
(originally published September 18, 2002 in the Chicago Free Press)

Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Comes to San Francisco

* Update (8/21) * What does BFW have to do with Glenn Reynolds and with 9/11? Veteran blogger Ed provides context and depth for an event that was years in the making.

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Yesterday evening the few, the proud right-leaning Bay Area bloggers (and those from a little beyond) responded to the call put out by Ed, Nina, and Cinn to meet and greet at Blog Fest West in "the Anbar Province of American politics," Nancy Pelosi's C.D. in San Francisco (CA-8). The last purely social event I'd attended there, a New Year's Eve party last December, had been less than meaningful: shortly before the stroke of midnight I asked fellow revellers for a moment of silence for recently deceased Gerald Ford, but ... strange to say ... everyone ignored it.... So this weekend I looked to Blog Fest West as a way to say goodbye, yet again, to all that liberal mojo.

The affable event afforded a few dozen of California's more linearly critical thinkers an occasion to match a face to a url, to swap stories old and new, and to float ideas and visions. The fleshy forms of over 20 web sites attended, with all told over 40 present. True to form, when bloggers gather in person, despite tasty food and tempting drink the appetite for conversation proves strongest. (Click here for a roll call, including links to other blogposts about BFW.)

It was fortifying personally to meet other survivors of 60s-derived radicalism; a true, NY metropolitan area post-9/11 patriot; a refugee from post-Soviet eastern Europe (who's a legal immigrant); and the LA-based brains behind Pajamas Media.

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In one segment of Fahrenheit 9/11 Michael Moore shows footage of a seemingly harmless little group plopped on couches and munching homemade cookies as they plan their next "antiwar" demonstration. With his snotty tenor voiceover Moore mocks legislation that empowers the feds to gather information on individuals and groups that have determined to try to reverse the American government's anti-terror policies.

To rip a page out of Moore's (or is it Karl Rove's?) playbook, Blog Fest West, by its mere existence, mocks the proposed reimposition of the "Fairness Doctrine" -- which would crush fruitful competition generated by the free marketplace of ideas in American media. Count me in, Mike, with these red meat wingnuts who are obviously (isn't it obvious?) the mainstream enablers of imminent Christian theocracy in America. IT can't happen here -- can it?
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(above, left) PJM CEO Roger Simon joins BFW impresarios Cinn, Nina, and Ed in indoctrinating attendees with blind hatred. Says Nina: If you can't stand the hate, get out of the blogosphere!

(above, right) Diversity of opinion über alles - Bwahahahaha!

(below, left) Grim, fanatic conspiracists swallow right-wing propaganda hook, line, and sinker: Cinnamon's evil clone monitors the scene; the tall guy is ready to rumble; Mickey Kaus breaks ranks to mug for the camera; and lookie there, Karl Rove did show up after all! [pic doctored to protect the guilty]

(below, right) The Fedora Has Landed: Cinnamon delights as Roger picks a raffle winner. Be afraid, be very afraid.