Le Sabot Post-Moderne

Democratic Buyer's Remorse?

Resisting the most basic inclination of Liberalism, Dems followed the lead of reason this year rather than emotion -- picking the stolid but seemingly-electable Kerry over the true love of their heart, Dean. At the time, a lot of Republicans predicted buyer's remorse. Such was the Dems' desire for victory that they've kept grousing to a minimum, keeping their focus on Bush. But the brave front seems to be cracking in the face of poll after depressing poll.

"It’s too late to make a difference, with President Bush cruising toward re-election and rolling over the pathetic, disorganized Kerry “campaign,”. . ."

"How I wish that John Kerry had grown up in my old neighborhood in the Bronx. It drives me crazy that he doesn't have the street smarts to call those GOP bums out. . ."

"John Kerry is in trouble because the Bush campaign has seized control of what psychologists call the "frame" of this year's presidential contest. . . Kerry has about two weeks to break the frame before the election freezes into a lock."

" Spirit-crushing foolishness from my candidate, John Kerry. The nation is trying to figure out how to fight global terrorism and he's talking about having "not just a Department of Health and Human Services, but a Department of Wellness." How about a Department of F***ing Perspective?"

Toss in the Democratic sources chatting up reporters about campaign infighting; Clinton attempting a resucitation of Kerry's campaign from his own hospital bed; and the fact that more Kerry voters say they're voting against Bush than actually FOR the Democrat. This is a party which is souring on its nominee.

The recriminations and rationalizations are starting early this year. If Kerry loses, as he's poised to do, Dems will blame his loss on a lackluster candidacy, just like they did with Mondale, Dukakis, and Gore. "Weak campaign skills" is a lot easier to swallow than "party-wide intellectual bankruptcy."

Polishing Brass. . .

. . .on a sinking ship of State.

The WaPo has a bleak article today on Russia's demographic future that places Putin's posturing in sad context. Reading the data, the question isn't one of greatness, but survival. The country is currently experiencing 170 deaths for every 100 births. The UN is estimating a 21 million person loss over the next 20 years as its "median variant."

I looked for an abortion tie-in, and wasn't surprised to find it. Back in the days of the Soviet Union, the UN estimates an average of 6 abortions per woman. So an infertility rate approaching 13% is comprehensible, though tragic.

The birth rate is no more suicidal than the rest of dying Europe's, but an incredibly high death rate exacerbates the problem. Putin would do better working toward an economic climate that allows young couples to marry and not live with their parents and a medical system that gets the incredibly high rates of STDs and heart attacks down to normal levels than worrying about Russia's "greatness." There's nothing "great" about a nation-sized graveyard.

The Kerry Bounce

It's been interesting watching the "shock polls" showing Kerry with a slim lead over Bush. They're anything but shocking. Let's examine:

1. Kerry just received a HUGE bounce with his comeback over Dean. Anyone want to bet on the American attention span sustaining this bounce until the general election?

2. Bush hasn't started to campaign yet, staying above the fray. In other words, his huge reserve of campaign funds hasn't begun to fight. Meanwhile, 9 Dem candidates have been bashing him with untold millions in paid and earned media through ad, press release and countless debates.

3. Kerry is still unknown to the American people. He's more the equivalen of the "generic Dem" on an opinion poll. Generics almost always beat live candidates in polls, because people know the warts of the real candidate. The more that is known of Kerry, the less most parts of the country will like him.

This bounce is ephemeral. Kerry WILL be tougher to beat than Dean, but he's still not positioned to defeat Bush.

Sign That Bam Petition. . .

You can go here to sign a petition on the government of Iran that'll be sent to the President, the UN, the ICC, the Queen, the Rothschilds and Colonel Sanders. . . Actually, I'm not sure about the last three, but the rest will definitely be sent a copy.

The petition calls on these international bodies to hold the Iranian government accountable both for its ongoing human rights atrocities, but also for its criminal negligence with the Bam earthquake.

Michael Moore: Famous in Iran

You can tell a lot about people by their friends. One of my Iranian buddies asked me the other day about Michael Moore. It turns out, he hears the name often in the hard-line Islamist papers from Tehran. Moore has a huge following among the jihadist in Iran. Anyone popular with both the chattering classes of France and the Islamists of Iran must be a giant tub of wasted chemicals.

Speaking of which, I just remembered a fun factoid from my days in the Army. An anti-tank landmine requires 300 pounds of pressure to explode. Weighing in at 320 pounds, Michael Moore has enough lard packed into him to detonate an anti-tank mine. Isn't that what the Left calls "conspicuous consumption"?

Forget the "Royal We". . .

. . .and worry about the Orwellian We.

Policy Magazine has a piece on the tendentious use of the word "we" in political rhetoric. While the point may be a small one, it has a lot of truth to it -- politicians use collective words to create a false sense of group identity and need in the electorate.

"The central word here is 'society', which of course refers to a group of people but which is often used, tacitly and even unconsciously, to refer to more than that-namely, to a group that has an overriding, collective goal and therefore has to make central decisions, even though societies can and do exist without having collective goals and without central decision-making. . .

Another term that has been almost completely emptied of meaning by being called social is 'right'. A right properly means a sphere of freedom that is protected by law, or a just claim. But nowadays, by being prefixed with 'social' or related words like 'welfare', a right is taken to mean a claim to redistribution that the law enforces."

It's Fun to Serve in the A-R-M-Y!

Clark a Centrist?

Maybe If He's Standing Between Kucinich and Gephardt. . .

For whatever reason, the CW gave him a centrist label from the early days of Draft Clark buzz. Likely this stems from two causes -- he was the DLC's chosen assassination instrument against Dean and he's retired military.

Well, he's not wearing the uniform these days. Instead he's sporting mufti and hanging out with those gay lads at The Advocate, coming out in favor of homosexual marriage and gays in the military.

Not only is he parroting all of the standard liberal pieties on economic and social policy, he's running to the LEFT of most candidates on several high-profile issues: abortion, the War and gay marriage. And far from turning out to be Clinton's ideological lifepartner, he's chosen strange bedfellows, and is swinging ever farther to the Left.

It's only too bad he didn't wear his uniform for this cover shoot, it would have really won over the Village People vote.

Left Coast Conservative, The Great Separation, and Evangelical Outpost also spare a straight eye for the Clark guy.

The Hayek I Didn't Know

I read Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom in high school, along with plenty of Orwell, Bastiat and Rand. It's a wonder I wasn't seeing Collectivists under every rock. But seriously, he did a lot to form my views on economics and political theory, and caused me to think more deeply about the preservation of liberty.

So it was great to come across an overview of his life and work on the Boston Globe's ideas page. I hadn't known, for instance, of his contributions to cognitive science and information technology or that he'd been an influence on Foucault and post-modernism (nobody's perfect.)

It was also encouraging to look back at a time when advocates of freedom were embattled and the forces of collectivization quite nearly ruled the day.

"Caldwell, who is editing Hayek's collected works for the University of Chicago Press, is currently working on the project's edition of "The Road to Serfdom," a task that entails reading the largely forgotten contemporary works with which Hayek was contending.

"It's almost chilling to read some of these books. They were willing to accept fairly massive interventions in the economy -- directing labor, who should be working at what jobs and that kind of thing," says Caldwell. He adds, "'The Road to Serfdom' today reads reasonably, most of it.

You read these other books and you feel like you're on another planet."

We now live in a time when free markets and free societies have become the ideal, thanks to the brave fight men like Hayek fought during the uncertain days of the Cold War.

The Big Rock Candy Republic

I'm probably not the first to suggest it, but I think the Democratic Party should make Harry McLintock's Big Rock Candy Mountain their official theme song. Harry was, after all, a Wobbly organizer, and the song captures so much of their worldview.

Those who work hard support those who don't:

"Where the handouts grow on bushes/ And you sleep out every night. . . The farmers' trees are full of fruit/ And the barns are full of hay"

You've got revolving-door justice:

"The jails are made of tin./ And you can walk right out again,/ As soon as you are in."

A belief in spontaneous wealth-generation:

"There's a lake of stew/ And of whiskey too/ You can paddle all around it/ In a big canoe/"

Global Warming:

"Oh I'm bound to go/ Where there ain't no snow/ Where the rain don't fall/ The winds don't blow. . ."

Work is for people who can't get a grant, disability payment or subsidy:

"Where you sleep all day,/ Where they hung the jerk/ That invented work/ In the Big Rock Candy Mountains."

The only hitch in the song is the part about "cigarette trees." Maybe they can change that. What rhymes with "medicinal cannabis"?

The State of the State of the Union

Just read the text of the State of the Union, and came away with a B+ sort of good feeling. It doesn't have the rhetorical sweep of some of his earlier speeches, but it isn't a Clintonesque laundry list of promises to fix potholes in individual Pennsylvania towns, either. While not particularly lovely, the text read like George -- down to earth and purposeful.

A few of the promises annoyed me -- his attempts to steal the march against the Dems on health care and education are intrusive and expensive.

On the whole though, some good red-meat for conservatives, and one promise I dearly hope he keeps: holding spending inceases to 4%. Given mandatory funding of entitlements, this isn't easy even without new programs, so we'll have to see how resolved he really is.

A few of the Good Things:

1. Increasing Persian and Arabic VOA broadcasts.

2. A strong emphasis on and defense of abstinence programs.

3. This:

"Activist judges, however, have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives. On an issue of such great consequence, the people's voice must be heard. If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process. Our Nation must defend the sanctity of marriage.

4. Fishmonger-slapping those calling for "internationalizing Iraq":

"This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain, Australia, Japan, etc. . . and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq."

5. Progress in the WoT:

"We are tracking al-Qaida around the world - and nearly two-thirds of their known leaders have now been captured or killed."

6. And lastly, George Bush is a mensch:

"After the chaos and carnage of September 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States - and war is what they got."

Update: I missed one of the best lines in the speech, but The Rough Woodsman caught it:

"America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country."

Unbalanced Journalism

With the exception of our friend, The Liberal Media, Reuters journalists seem to be the most gleefully biased of any outside the New York Times. If you want a good example of their approach to "objective journalism", here's one:

Reuters refuses to use the word terrorist, because it isn't for them to judge one man's terrorist from another man's freedom fighter. On the other hand, they had this to say about the Confederate flag:

"Earlier, Dean had called for security to remove a couple of protesters who were shouting and waving the Confederate flag, a divisive symbol of racism and slavery in the South. As they were hustled out, Dean requested they not be "manhandled."

So they aren't qualified to diagnose 9/11 as a terrorist act, but they're fully capable of unravelling America's complicated relationship with its Confederate heritage and boil it all down to "a divisive symbol of racism and slavery."

Remember this the next time some anemic liberal is whining to you about Foxnews bias.

A Practical Role for the Constitution Party

If I were Terry McAuliffe, I would bankroll the Constitution Party. What better way to weaken an opponent? It's like buying an electoral desert island and encouraging many of the brightest, most articulate people in the opposing camp to go into self-exile there. The Party expends itself on symbolic gestures, and marginalizes conservatives in day-to-day politics by removing them from the centers of power.

But there is a way the Connies could have a positive impact -- by organizing at the state and local level as the Conservative Party in NY has. The Conservatives are a genuine force there (they're one of the few 3rd parties to elect a US senator), and candidates eagerly seek their endorsement. In States with open primaries, such an organization would allow Connies to remain outside of the Republican Party (as some believe their conscience dictates), and still allow them to pull the Republican Party to the right. They could endorse and vote for Rs that they liked, and run independent candidates when the Rs put up a Rockefeller-Winger.

Such an organization would be wooed by the Republican establishment, and help keep conservatives from being taken for granted.

I know some Connies read my blog. What's your opinion?

Doubly Foolish

Not only is the bloating of the Federal budget a betrayal of Republican principles, it's electorally stupid. Yes, in the short-term voters appreciate having new services and the like. But with increased budgets comes increased government payrolls. And these new employees have a vested interest in MORE government growth.

While the overall percentage of unionized workers continues to drop (from 36% in the 50's to 13.6% today,) the number of unionized government workers grows and grows. Their unionized percentage stands at 37.5%. So when we grow the size of the federal government, we also grow the Democrat's get-out-the-vote storm troopers, and the constituency of people who want to bloat the government even further. Duh?

Be sure to also check out John Fund's thoughts on the issue.

Why Are We Even In South Korea?

The Stars and Stripes is reporting that US troops will be pulling out of Seoul by 2007, in order to reduce tensions with local inhabitants. "Tensions" being a euphemism for protests and hatred. Apparently, the 8,000 Americans defending them cause the sensitive residents of Seoul more tension than the 10,000-odd in-range artillery pieces the North Koreans have on the border.

Remind me again, why are we even there?

How many hundreds of thousands of Americans have, for decades now, given up 1-2 years of their life freezing their butts off and away from their family to keep these ingrates safe?

North Korea is an economic basketcase whose primary occupation is starvation. South Korea is an economic powerhouse. Why can't they simply convert a few of their Kia, DaeWoo or Hyundai plants to tank factories and let us go home? For the same reason the Europeans don't -- it's cheaper to let the Americans underwrite their defense. And then hate them for it and stab them in the back whenever possible. South Korea has been undercutting our disarmament initiatives with the North for some time now. And we just take it and ask for more.

If they want to hate us and play kissy-face with a madman like Kim, we should pull out and let them do it.

Recess Appointments: History and Hypocrites

Dems are caterwauling that Bush's recess appointment of Charles Pickering is radical, mean and destroying the bipartisan spirit in D.C. I'm assuming they mean the ranting about miserable failures and conspiracy theories coming from the Democratic front-runners when they talk about bipartisanship. Language and definitions are somewhat subjective, after all.

Here's what Howard Dean's blog had to say:

"This is a polarizing move showing the President's utter disdain for constitutional checks and balances. . . Today's egregious appointment is another reason why we need a President and an administration in Washington that stands up for all Americans."

But is it really such a novel thing to make a recess appointment? Here's a press release, dated 27 December, 2000, from a Clinton, governmental website:

"Today, President Clinton appointed Roger Gregory to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. This appointment is historic. . . The President's power to make recess appointments is embedded in the Constitution. Presidents have made more than 300 recess appointments to the federal judiciary since 1789, the year of the first judicial recess appointment."

Clinton made recess appointments for everything from the judiciary, to a controversial ambassador, to three seats on a library commission and others. The Dems are either lying, or have less than four years of historical memory and no access to the internet. I'll let you decide which.

Update: Mark Byron is also posting on Pickering.

Time for an Amendment.

The last time I posted on this subject, I wrote the title with a question mark. Not any more. It really is time for a Marriage Amendment that will clearly state what marriage is, and who can enter it.

A few commenters scoffed when I mentioned that gay marriage would open the door to polygamy. The logic of the Supremes' recent decision on sodomy laws and the Lawrence decision both trend us strongly toward gay marriage, so my prediction takes on added relevance.

Read Jeff Jacoby'slatest column:

"Three adults who want to live together as a husband and two wives asked a federal court this week to strike down Utah's ban on polygamy as a violation of their constitutional rights."

If the court follows Lawrence's logic, I don't see how they can deny these people their "right" to polygamy. The court system is just dogmatic and whacked enough to do it. We need a Marriage Amendment.

Evangelical Outpost has a good substitute idea for an amendment. And World Magazine's Blog is running regular commentary on the marriage issue.

Why Do I Razz Democrats?

Someone asked me not long ago why exactly I tease the Democrats so much. It's a fair question.

The reason is simple -- I love politics the way other guys love baseball or football. Some guys can rattle off Mickey Mantle's stats for every year he played. I once named every Senator by state on a bet. I root for my team, and love when they win and hate when they lose. And I joke about the other team in the same spirit my buddy, a devout Cowboys fan, used to call the Redskins the world's "toughest gay football team." It's done in fun, and generally without any real animosity toward them. Most Democrats and liberals are decent people who live their lives, pay their taxes, and have different politics than I do. But we're both Americans, and I joke about them lightheartedly.

There is an exception to this -- the AINO (American In Name Only) crowd. On the Hard Left exists a section of people who have truly earned the name traitor. Those who make signs saying "We support our troops when they shoot their officers." Those who go to enemy countries and run-down the United States. Those practically salivating for high casualty counts in Iraq and Afghanistan to "teach us a lesson." Those who blame America for the 9/11 attacks.

In the household of America, these people are termites. For these people my pen is dipped in acid. America would benefit if they followed Alec Baldwin to one of the Marxist paradises they claim to love, and stayed there.

So please read any teasing of normal human beings in the lightest possible vein, and my words for the termites with serious intent. That should keep feelings from being unnecessarily ruffled. :-)

Are Saudis Facing Reality?

The UPI has published a possibly encouraging analysis of Saudi Arabian politics. I say possibly because the Saudis have for decades kept a spin machine going that makes the Clinton "War Room" look like a gang of dissembling toddlers. K Street has nothing on them. You have to admire any group that can be perceived by world jihadism as their best friend and at the same time be viewed as a "critical ally" by the West. An ally of such worthiness that we would sell them F-15s and AWACs.

Nevertheless, it does seem as if the Saudis have decided that the Frankenstein monster of jihadism, which they helped to create, needs to be put down. Or at least suppressed.

"Over 2,000 imams whose preaching advocated militancy have been removed from the pulpit, and 1500 have been sent for reeducation or to jail. . . In December, two prominent Saudi Islamic militant imams publicly recanted their fatwas in which they had called for militancy. At the same time, there has been renewed vigor in tracking down militants and in cooperating with U.S. authorities in the war on terrorism. . . In October, the Saudi authorities announced that they would prepare for elections for half the members of each municipal council within one year. . . Girls' education was removed from control of the religious authorities. Textbooks have been reviewed and egregious statements excised."

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Key Factors for 2004

Will. . .

-- Sharpton support the eventual Democratic nominee?

-- Sharpton run as an independent?

-- Bush's base remain 91% supportive, or will conservatives get restive?

-- Rove's 4 million missing Evangelicals from 2000 come to the polls this time?

-- Bush maintain the 31% support he has among Jewish voters?

-- there be a major act of terrorism on US soil?

-- the Dem nominee be able to credibly tack to the middle? Will he want to?

-- Bush continue to make inroads with Hispanic voters?

-- California's new Governator help Bush?

-- the Democratic party remain fractured after a vicious primary?

-- the impact of Soros and the 527s be as heavy as some think?

What other factors would you add to the list?

Vaulting Centuries

The WaPo points out a small, but hopeful sign of change in the Middle East. For anyone despairing that Islamic countries are incapable of making the transition to modernity, read up on Dubai's leap from the 13th to the 21st century.

"Dubai's prosperity is about free trade. Foreign companies are allowed to operate tax-free and without trade barriers or foreign-exchange controls. This wide-open market has produced a roaring boom, in which Dubai's non-oil sector now produces more than 90 percent of its gross domestic product. An "Internet City" has attracted such giants as Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and IBM; a 'Media City' has drawn Reuters, Sony and CNN."

Capitalists: Smarter Than Fleas

I read once that if you put a flea into an enclosed space, he'll only hit his head twice before accepting the reality of his situation. This makes fleas smarter than your average Leftist. How so, you ask? I'll explain.

Heritage has just posted the 2004 Index of Economic Freedom. Take a moment and peruse the list. You'll notice a pretty tight correlation between countries with economic freedom, and countries where you're likely to have running water in your hotel. There's also a strong level of coincidence between countries where you have economic freedom, and ones where you can criticize the government without losing an extremity. People live better and freer with the Free Market.

This has been the case since, I don't know. . . forever.

And yet the Left continues to hold up socialist strongmen like Castro, Chavez and Ortega as examples of enlightened 3rd World leadership. Look over the museum of history's losers at the bottom of the list. Virtually every one of them subscribes to some form of Marxism -- whether Latin liberationism, pan-Arab socialism or the outright Communism of Burma and North Korea.

No matter how many countries Leftism destroys, they never learn.

Some Partisan Red Meat!

The Duchess found some great photoshopped pics over at MakeThemAccountable.Org (not to be confused with the Leftist .com site.) Warning: Some funny stuff, but some over the top as well. Be cautioned.

On the DeanWatch front, Duchess also found evidence to prove that great minds really DO think alike. Both Captain's Quarters and Bush News have DeanWatch features.

The Only Good Mexican is a Dem Mexican?

Imagine if a politician today were to say, "All (insert minority group) look alike." Can you imagine the hue and cry that would arise? He'd find himself in Trent Lott's shoes before you could say "Jimmy the Greek."

If it's considered insulting to say that a group looks alike, consider how much uglier it is to say they all THINK alike. But this is how liberal activists operate.

Liberal activists in the modern era remind me of nothing so much as Southern sheriffs during the Civil Rights Era. Any minority person who chooses to think as an individual has the attack dogs loosed upon them. Firehoses of vicious invective are turned on them until they retreat from their positions. The leadership of the Democratic Party seems to view their party as a plantation -- and no minority leaves without permission.

This can most easily be seen in the vicious, demeaning attacks on Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice and Colin Powell. They're called Uncle Toms, House Slaves, and worse. Any sane advocate of black advancement would rejoice in their accomplishments. But left-wing ideology trumps the desire to see African-American progress in society.

Now in California we have Rosario Marin, a woman of Mexican descent, running for Senate. The slurs are already starting. In fact, a milestone in racial demogoguery was marked as a Howard Dean supporter coined the term "House Mexican" to describe her. The Deanite claims that by being a Republican, Marin isn't being "true to her race." Apparently, the only good Mexican is a Dem Mexican.

Deport Bush's Immigration Plan

Reading through the particulars of Bush's new immigration "reform" plan, I feel my inner Earl Pitts, Uhmerikun coming out. He plans to increase the level of legal immigration past the million mark where it already resides. I feel like smacking the entire immigration lobby up alongside the head and asking, "Are you in any way aware that it isn't 1925?"

Let's recap the events of the past 75-odd years. Back then, there were two areas of the economy that were perpetually hungry for low-skilled labor -- factories and agriculture. History has progressed a bit since then.

For starters, we're in a POST-industrial era. New factories aren't springing up everywhere and hungering for workers to robotically install cogs on assembly lines. Secondly, they have real robots to do that now, so even existing factories are cutting their workforces.

Further, agriculture is becoming increasingly mechanized, and the percentage of the population engaged in it continues to drop. Do we really need more than a million unskilled laborers a year to fulfill demand? Of course not. This isn't about rationality, it's about buying votes.

The cavil constantly heard from immigration enthusiasts is that there are simply a lot of jobs that Americans won't do. It's equivalent to the "socialization" argument when discussing homeschooling -- it seems to arise by an automated process. National Review has a good article debunking this argument, and also detailing how massive immigration lowers wages for unskilled labor.

An Apologist Gets Froggy With Us!

A French apologist found his way to Le Sabot. He objects to our veni, vidi, Vichy post, and points us to a site that declares animosity toward the French to be a "kind of racist campaign."

" The Vichy regime was an abomination; this goes without saying. But to advance any correlation between Vichy and the Chirac administration is simply outrageous."

This statement, I assume, is predicated on 2 things -- a really, really strong wish that it were true, and a belief that Vichy wasn't a "real" government in the way that Chirac's is. If that were true, you might have a point. But the facts say otherwise. Vichy WAS a legitimate government.

The Vichy PM, Pétain, was appointed by the duly elected French president. He was instructed to negotiate an Armistice. This document divided France into 2 sections -- occupied and Vichy. Your legitimately appointed PM also signed off on the deportation of all Jews in France to the Germans. Your own French National Assembly voted out the Third Republic on July 10th, 1940, and the very next day the Vichy regime was installed, with Pétain as head of state. The Vichy government went on to fight against the Allies in Oran, Senegal, Syria and North Africa.

While it may not be soothing to French sympathies, we can't just pretend that the pockets of Free French resistance fighters tell the whole story of France in WWII. It's a good subplot, but the central themes run more towards dictatorial concubinism, collaboration with genocide, and flipping between Axis and Allies with pragmatic amorality.

There is one sense in which our friend is correct. It took an invading army to make the Vichy toady to Hitler. Chirac plays the lackey to dictators half a world away.

Tort Reform: Sexier than Michael Moore. . .

. . .but not much else.

Nevertheless, I wanted to point out a good, concise analysis of the cost of lawsuits to our economy. For example, "Unreasonable jury awards cost an estimated $70-126 billion extra in health care costs every year, says the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services."

The Dems talk a good game about reigning in health care costs, but they throw a tantrum anytime someone tried to control costs by reforming torts. They use the fat campaign checks written by trial lawyers to wipe away the tears they shed for the poor.

Republicans should make tort reform a priority. It's good for the economy, good for health care, and it gives a well-deserved poke to one of the DNC's cash cows.

The Battle of Algiers Meme.

Christopher Hitchens, a recent convert to hawkishness, has a brilliant article in Slate today. It demolishes the 'America in Iraq=France in Algeria' meme. For anyone who hasn't followed it, the thesis centers around the film The Battle of Algiers and tries to make the case that we'll be chased out with similar ignominy.

Hitchens has seen the Left from the inside -- he first saw The Battle of Algiers in Cuba at a workers' camp. This gives the article a fascinating perspective. In a convincing bit of historical akido he flips the meme on its head, and shows that the Ba'athists are the ones who should learn from the film. And, as he points out, the only guerrillas as effective as the Algerians are on OUR side -- the Kurdish peshmurga.

He also draws parallels between Iraq and the recent victory of the Algerian government over Islamist terrorists.

That "Battle of Algiers," not Pontecorvo's outdated masterpiece, is replete with examples and parallels that ought to be of great interest and relevance to ourselves. Can an Arab and Muslim state with a large non-Arab minority and many confessional differences defeat the challenge of a totalitarian and medieval ideology? In this outcome, we and our Arab and Kurdish friends have a stake, whereas in the battles of the past (as of the present) one can only applaud the humiliation of French unilateralism and neocolonialism, whether it occurs on-screen or off.

Progress in Afghanistan!

Good news continues to roll in from all sides. Afghanistan's Loya Jirga has signed off on the new constitution. While I have no illusions that this will be a panacea, or that a Afghani democracy will emerge immediately in full flower, it's a HUGE step forward. The presidency has been given some real teeth, and he'll have a rough tribal consensus backing him.

Over the Mullahs' Heads, Part Deux

While the Shah himself was a pretty unsavory guy, his exiled son Reza has become one of the more influential voices in the pro-democracy movement, and is a better man than his father. He recently gave an interview on American television, and made some decent points.

I wrote the other day about how happy I was to see President Bush talking directly to the Iranian people, rather than just speaking to their gaolers. Here are Reza's thoughts:

""Engagement and dialogue is much better than containment and isolation," said Mr. Pahlavi. "What is important for the people of Iran, however, is, after so many years of suffering, they would love to see the international community, for a change, shift their focus on them [their aspirations], rather than trying to cut a deal with the current regime. . ."

Mr. Pahlavi said President Bush has always taken care to distinguish between his criticism of Iran's leaders and his feelings toward the country as a whole. He said that has not gone unnoticed by the people of Iran.

Update: A Bloated Reputation. . .

Michael Moore has a corpulently big lead over his competitors in Little Green Football's contest for the Robert Fisk Award. He's actually leading France and Paul Krugman, and seems poised to be 2003's Idiotarian of the Year. Couldn't happen to a nicer Stupid White Man.

A Bloated Reputation. . .

As if enough oxygen, dead trees and electrons hadn't already been wasted on his lies and inanities, Michael Moore has just topped himself.

"Moore went into a rant about how the (9/11 aircraft) passengers were scaredy-cats because they were mostly white," Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote in the Jan. 6 Independent. "If the passengers had included black men, he claimed, those killers. . .would have been crushed by the dudes."

It's appropos that his portrait looms large on the cover of his screed "Stupid White Men." He is, well, the biggest one of all. He is also, as Al Franken might say, a lying liar.

For a verbatim look at how he doctored Charlton Heston's speech for his docmockumentary, Bowling for Columbine, check out this side-by-side comparison.

For a comprehensive deconstruction of Moore's large body of work, check out this site.

It systematically shows the duplicity in each of his productions, and also points up the disconnect between his alleged principles and his own lifestyle -- a faux populist limousine liberal who lives in a multi-million-dollar Manhattan flat and sends his daughter to an expensive private school.

It's a site that dares to ask the tough questions like: Should a 320-pound man advise us on the evils of overconsumption?

Karl Rove Reads Le Sabot. You Should Too!

Mere days after I posted about the need for Republicans to reign in spending, the NYT is reporting that Bush's 2005 budget will get serious about the mushrooming budget. While the follow-through remains to be seen, I was gratified to see such a swift response to my critique.

This is reminiscent of events of last April, when there was great speculation about the status of Saddam's pulse and respiration. I pointed out that he was handing us a HUGE psy ops advantage by allowing these doubts to linger. And lo, two days later he reappeared!

Get the UN Involved. . .

. . .in Chicago!

No matter what's happened in Iraq, the knee-jerk response of the Democratic candidates has been to call for the UN's involvement (despite the fact that the UN has no desire to do any such thing.)

James Taranto makes a good point today in the Journal. Military deaths in Iraq are now down to 38 a month. The murder rate in Chicago is 50 a month.

"America must send in the U.N. and pull out of the quagmire that is Illinois!"

And Now For Something Completely Different. . .

. . . the Tories re-discover principles!

While I certainly think Blair is prefereable to Red Ken or the ghosts of Labour past, I've been in a state of grief ever since Dame Thatcher stepped down. It was as if all the testosterone bled from the Party when she left (which has interesting implications for British manhood, but I digress. . .)

My beloved Tories have for some time been acting like our Democratic Party here in the States. Rather than laying out a positive agenda of their own, they've been trying to bring down Labour through attacks. And failing badly. So I'm SO glad to hear that they've published a "set of 15 Conservative beliefs that will form the basis of policy initiatives to be developed in the run-up to the election expected next year."

We'll have to see if these go anywhere, but it would be great if it focused conservative energies the way our Contract With America did.

Over the Mullahs' Heads

One thing I try always to emphasize to people here in Ukraine is that America never, ever viewed the citizens of Ukraine as our enemy. We rather saw them as victims of a monstrous evil. Ronald Reagan was always careful to make the distinction between the people and the system. And he was brilliant at talking past hostile intermediaries and directly to the people he wanted to reach -- whether the hostiles were liberal reporters or the organs of the Soviet government.

So I was cheered to see Bush doing the same with the people of Iran. As the AP has it:

" Appealing directly to pro-democracy forces in Iran, President Bush (news - web sites) on Thursday said that U.S. humanitarian aid to earthquake victims there should prove that America is compassionate even though it lists Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism."

This is exactly what we should be doing. And it should be taken a step further -- the Farsi-language satellite channels in Los Angeles shouldn't be worrying about staying on the air, but should be taken under wing instead.

It's Only Right. . .

German President Gerhard Schroeder will be joining Chirac at the D-Day commemoration this year. It seems only appropriate for Chirac to be with Schroeder for the event, as the French government was with Germany at the time of the invasion itself.

While most people know the French motto, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, a slightly less-well-known national slogan is veni, vidi, Vichy -- I came, I saw, I collaborated with the Nazis.

Predictions for 2004!

National Review has put up their yearly predictions for 2004. Some are serious, some whimsical. Our friend Evangelical Outpost actually gets mentioned by name. Congrats!

My own predictions:

1. Republicans will gain 3 seats in the Senate and ten in the House.

2. Bush will get 52% of the vote, and it will be closer than analysts predicted because of heavy GOTV work by unions and liberal fear-mongering among minorities and the elderly.

3. President Musharraff of Pakistan will be killed by former clients of his regime.

4. The frequency of attacks in Iraq will be halved over the next year as the Ba'athist and Fedayeen survivors are attrited.

5. Someone will publish a very cheesy Christian equivalent to Harry Potter, which will sell like hotcakes.

6. Al Sharpton will definitively eclipse Jesse Jackson as the leading voice of "Civil Rights" activism.

7. In spite of Dean's loss, his wing of the party will remain in ascendancy. Hillary, thanks to her liberal credentials, will manage to wrest the spotlight from him in 2008 anyway. And through this the DLC "moderates" will be neutered as the Clinton clan abandons them in favor of the newly-empowered liberal activist base.

8. Michael Jackson will be acquited after a circus trial that makes OJ's look sedate. The stigma will remain on him, however, as people consider him just as guilty as OJ. His career in ruins, he'll then turn to the one group who will hire him, and enter a Catholic seminary.

What are your predictions?

Federalism, Interrupted.

Not long ago I read an article by a leading conservative denouncing a Hetero Marriage Amendment. He argued against it on federalist grounds -- that the States severally have the right to decide such things.

If federalism still functioned in any meaningful way, he might have had a point. Federalism is a wonderful idea. Lovely plumage. But the plumage doesn't enter into it. It's stone dead. It isn't pining for the fjords; it's bleedin' demised.

Time after time we win victories at the state level, only to have the democratic process mocked by activist federal judges. Just today word comes out that a federal judge had tossed out New Hampshire's parental notification law.

Forget the stupidity that minors aren't allowed an earpiercing without parental consent, but don't require it for this invasive procedure. Look at what the ruling says -- the state of NH is incompetent to determine something as basic as parental consent for abortions.

We need to fight to reign in the unelected legislators passing for judges these days, and replace them with ones who respect federalism. But in the meantime, we need to face reality. The system is broken, and piousness about federalism will only keep getting us rolled by liberal judges. We have to go over their heads, either through Congress or the amendment process.

Is Bush Omniscient?

Dems keep pushing the "Bush lied about WMDs" line of attack, though thus far without much traction.

My response is that being wrong isn't the same thing as lying. Even if it is one day conclusively proved that Iraq didn't have WMDs at the time of the war, that will only have proved that Bush was wrong. And then the judgement should rest on this -- did he make the best decision based on the available information? Bush isn't omniscient, and the wisdom of his choices should be judged on what he knew, rather than 20/20 hindsight.

The President is largely dependent on our intelligence services for his information. Here's a link to the October 2002 CIA report on Iraq and WMDs. I'll quote their "Key Judgment":

"Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

Hat tips to Self-Composed and Annika for the link!

Saudis Face Reality?

For decades the Saudis have maintained a relationship with Islamic Fundamentalism a bit like Clinton's with North Korea -- namely, fiscal appeasement. They are the Daddy Warbucks of Wahabbism, and the curricula of madrassahs from Washington D.C. to Indonesia have been supplied by Riyadh's petrodollars. Semi-private Saudi "charities" have funneled untold millions to extremist groups.

The WashTimes has a great UPI analysis of the current situation. It seems that their grip on the tiger's tail is loosening. And that may bring consequences for everyone.

Lieberman Tugs on Superman's Cape

Joe Lieberman made what I think will be looked back on as a brave, but doomed gesture yesterday. He dared to question that most sacred of Democratic rights -- the right to kill unborn children.

Abortion is the Left's equivalent of a sacrament, a physical symbol which embodies a much higher spiritual "truth" or reality. In this case, the ultimate liberation from personal responsibility and the limitations of gender and nature. In other words, the closest thing to an Absolute in the Left's religion. Only by giving women "control of their fertility" are they, in the theology of the Left, wholly equal to men and free of the burdens of nature. Liberation in its highest form. . .

It is an untouchable, unquestionable Right. Clinton announced that the era of big government was over, he crossed the unions on Free Trade, he sold out gays in the military and abandoned the liberals on welfare reform. But he faithfully vetoed the partial birth abortion ban, despite 75% support for the ban among the American people. He understood.

Lieberman, apparently, does not. He's stated that a re-evaluation of Roe vs. Wade may be necessary in the light of medical advances. That the period in which a woman has a "right-to-choose" is shrinking as more is known about fetal development and viability. (His statement is predicated on the notion that Roe's health clause doesn't make the 1st trimester restriction farcical, but nevertheless.)

If NOW's Taliban-wing doesn't go berserk at this, I'll be very surprised. Along with the rest of the Democratic activist base. By considering restricting child-murder even in such a tiny way, Lieberman has committed the Democratic equivalent of pulling the mask from the old Lone Ranger. And he'll pay a price for it.

Update- Steven from Poliblogger just pointed out that Lieberman is already backtracking. The feminist clerics have given him a penance of ten mea culpas.

DeanWatch: A Fair Trial for bin Laden?

In case you needed further proof that Howard Dean is an alien from planet Bureaucraton, check out this article. He truly isn't from the same world as the rest of us. He refuses to declare bin Laden guilty for the September 11 attacks. Apparently, the multiple tapes in which bin Laden crows about the attacks and claims responsibility weren't enough for him.

Dean's committed to capturing him alive. Consider the implications -- no Daisy Cutter's dropped on his cave, no shoot-to-kill, no popping him with a Hellfire from a drone. . . We have to dig him out of the mountains alive.

Dean STILL doesn't realize we're at war with terrorism. He continues to think in judicial terms:

"I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found," Dean said in the interview. "I will have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials. . ."

Someone who can't tell a life-or-death struggle from a court case can't be trusted with the security of the United States or its citizens.

DeanWatch: No Safer?

Dean continues to maintain that we're no safer now than immediately after the September 11th attacks. Even if one disagrees on Iraq, this seems like a stretch, given that the Taliban is no longer running Kabul. Now, with Libya unilaterally ending its nuclear weapons program, it seems impossible to maintain. Especially in light of this article:

"I will do whatever the Americans want because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid," Mr. Gadhafi told Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, according to a Berlusconi spokesman who was quoted in yesterday's Telegraph of London.

DeanWatch: And You're No McCain, Gov. Dean

The LA Times has a good write-up of Dean's "contradictory statements", which is what they call lies when an individual is running for president. An example:

" In a Dec. 10 news conference in Concord, N.H., Dean insisted that he "never said Saddam was a danger to the United States, ever."

But in an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sept. 29, 2002, Dean said, "There's no question Saddam is a threat to the U.S. and our allies."

Dean likes to posture as a straight-talker, but each day evidence mounts to the contrary.

Society for Uncreative Anachronisms

The American Left is every bit as intellectually ossified as the remaining Communists we have here in Kiev. Neither have had a fresh idea since about 1968 -- invading Prague on the one hand, invading their own campuses on the other.

For the last four decades, most of the idea generation has been on the Right. Particularly in the past 20 years, during which we've come up with myriad creative, innovative ideas for aiding the poor, defending America, and strengthening the economy. A partial list:

School choice, welfare reform, inner-city enterprise zones, Guiliani's incredibly innovative crime-prevention programs, tort reform, faith-based programs, flat taxes, social security partial privatization, space and sea-based anti-missile defenses, medical savings accounts, repeal of the estate tax, lowering the capital-gains tax, actually color-blind hiring, color-blindness in college admissions, a wise compromise on fetal tissue testing, abstinence-based education, charter schools, merit pay for teachers, competency testing for teachers, immersion-language classes for new immigrants, phonics advocacy, refederalism, deregulation. . . And so on.

In the meantime, the Left has thought up, what? Partial birth abortion?

Honoring a Debt

FrontPageMag raises a point that needs to be made -- the US is shafting Poland. The Liberal Media used almost identical words during his Kiev visit from Warsaw. The Poles have gone out on a limb for us, stared down the Axis of Weasels, and sent their best troops to the desert to back us up.

As the article points out, we're giving a large aid package to a rather backstabbing Turkey, but leaving the Poles almost empty-handed. At the least, we need to help offset some of the expenses the Poles have undertaken in helping us. While their economy is healthier than Ukraine or Belarus's, it's still developing.

Not only is this failure to help dishonorable, it's stupid. Eastern Europe has maintained a staunchly pro-Atlanticist and pro-American foreign policy, and could be a good friend to have in the EU. But we need to be a good friend to Eastern Europe as well.

Good News From Iraq!

Caspar Weinberger, one of my childhood heros, has written a great piece on the current sitch in Iraq. It will be painful for some to read this, as any news of Bush success carries with it an ulcer-like sting for them. But be brave and of good cheer, and read on. . .

The Bad News:

"Crime rates are high, almost as high as New York City's. Our forces have had to deal with the depredation and senseless destruction loosed on the country by some 100,000 of Iraq's criminals, whom Saddam released from jail shortly before our troops went in."

Good News:

"Nearly all of Iraq's schools are open, and data from 10 of the primary and secondary schools showed an encouraging increase in enrollment. All 22 universities and 43 technical institutes are also open. Teachers now earn 12 to 25 times their former salaries.

All 240 hospitals and 1,200 primary health clinics are open. Spending for public health is more than 26 times what it was during Saddam's regime, and doctors' salaries are 8 times what they were.

Power generation reached 4,518 megawatts of electricity in early October, compared with 300 megawatts, prewar. Three-fourths of the prewar level of telephone service has been restored.

A new currency has been issued and the independent central bank opened two months after the war ended. It took three years for post-WWII occupied Germany to do this.

Oil production, even from oilfields urgently in need of modernization following decades of calculated neglect, averaged 1.9 million barrels a day in October and is moving closer to the prewar level of 3 million."

Tempered Enthusiasm About Libya

While I think it's GREAT that Bush's muscular diplomacy has paid off, and Libya is now shedding its strategic weapons, we should remain realistic in our appraisal of them.

I've heard little about their poor human rights record, or about Gadhafi's continuing machinations in sub-Saharan Africa. He may have been outside the West's notice for a couple of decades, but he's been an active little dictator south of the Sahara. After getting his hand smacked in Chad, he's reverted to buying friends down that way. Here's a good overview of his political reach. The article doesn't delve deeply enough into his influence in some of the ugly brushfire wars, but it's a start for anyone who's interested.

The path from pariah to president-next-door is a long one, and we shouldn't let him take short cuts. If he wants full acceptance into the community of nations, further reform is needed.

DeanWatch: Usual Suspects Foreign Policy Team

NRO has a good overview of Dean's new "centrist" foreign policy advisers. Read through this list of Vietnam protestors, UN-philes and appeasers. Then ask yourself: to whom would you trust the safety of America -- these people, or Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice?

Cardinal Martino -- Stick this in your incense and smoke it.

Warning: Genuine Unpleasantness Ahead.

As noted here, the Vatican was weeping bitter tears of compassion after poor Saddam was subjected to the unspeakable horror of a televised medical exam. In case they were curious what REAL horror looks like, here's a partial list of documented horrors from Saddam's regime (Thanks to Hammorabi and Marsupial Mom for the info):

1. Plugging the eyes.
2. Pulling the nails.
3. Cutting hands and legs by.
4. Tying and applying pressure on the eyes.
5. Al Manganah: this is a tool formed from two iron plates and a manual compressor. They put the victim's head in between the plates and press them together to sequeeze the head gradually while requesting him or her to confess (see picture)
6. Putting a squeezable iron ring around the neck of the victim to confess or to strangulate him.
7. Putting the victim tied on his back then they bring an obese man to stand over his chest for a while.
8. Squeezing the fingers in the door's groove while closing it.
9. Pressing the body between two movable walls until he die or confess.
10. Putting one of the chair legs over the jaw or the forehead of the victim and one of the security men sit on it.
11. Passing electric current in the sensitive parts of the body like the nipples, the ears, the gentilia, the nose, the buttocks, the fingers and so on.
12. Electric chair: making the victim to sit on a chair with 5 electric leads fixed to its back. If opened it send painful electric current to the victim.
13. Immersion in a pool of water connected to electrical current.
14. Attaching two aluminium leads; one to the neck from the back and one in the lower part into the coccyx and passing electricity in an alternating mode between both sites.
15. Attaching the whole back into a rod then passing ascending or descending electric current in it.
16. Putting the victim on a chair with spring which could throw the victim 2-3 meters away.
17. Al Dolab: this is a wheel to which they attached the victim and make it to wind so as to tear the victim a part.
18. Strip of the skin with razor or nailing it with nails or screws.
19. Drilling the hands or foot or any part with the electric drill.
20. Using carpentry and farming tools to torture the victim.
21. Putting the victim on a cylinder of its size and put it in a revolving machine to make it rotate quickly.
22. Fixing an iron bar in the mouth and gas cylinders on the back and asking the victim to carry it until he loss his consciousness.
23. Inserting big needles in the tongue of the victim after holding it out and tying the hands and legs so as he or she canâ??t take these needles out.
24. Tying the hands with iron bar in a horizontal way then connecting him into a rotator so as one time his head is up and the other time it is down with the whole body rotating.
25. Inflicting a razor wound while shaving the beard and not allowing the victim to leave the beard after that.
26. Al Thalagha Al Kahrabaiyiah: This is a term used by the security men to describe a box in which they tie the victims hands up and his legs down while he is locked in that box. Then they open freezing water on the hands and feet. On the same time they put electrical leads on both maxillae and when the current and water open they start to beat him over the heads and nose until they break the nose. This is a comprehensive pain inflicting in the whole body!
27. Forcing the victim to stand on one leg with both arms lifted up ward. As soon as he or she put his leg or hands down they will start a session of beating the victim with different kinds of sticks including special rubber ones.
28. Tying the victims to each other while they are naked for long time then asking them to beat each others or striking their heads against each other.
29. Putting an iron hood over the head and striking over it until he start to vomit or get sever headache and shock. Most of these victims will get lasting psychological and neurological disorders.
30. Slapping the victim on his ear to burst the ear drum before executing him or her.
31. Breaking the nose with a hammer.
32. Tying the victims hands to the back and hanging him for many hours from the hands.
33. Pulling the victim with robes tied into a car over a hard road then putting salt or acid over the broken skin.
34. If the victim complain from pain in one part they stand over it and break it
35. Sleep deprivation while he is hanged on a chair.
36. Not allowing the victim to go to the toilet until they decided the time and the period to stay.
37. Putting him in small cells that he canâ??t sit or lying down so as to sleep while standing.
38. Not allowing the victims to practice their religious prayers or to have their holly books.
39. Pulling the hairs from different part of the body so as some of the flesh may be pulled as well.
40. Keeping the victim in a dark cell for long time then exposing them for very bright light.
41. Closing the nose for long time so the victim only breath from mouth
42. Tying the legs and hands and pushing him down stair.
43. Tying the eyes and forcing him to run over the barbed wires or hot oil.
44. Closing the wounds by the security men with a sewing needle without anaesthesia or sterilization.
45. Tying the upper limbs with lower limbs with different positions from back and front for long times.
46. Preventing medication for those who suffers from chronic disease like asthma or diabetes etc.
47. Giving old bad food and partially cooked.
48. Breaking the ear cartilage.
49. Using the iron to burn the body.
50. Tying the victim on a cross of iron and making it to rotate over a fire like the barbeque.
51. Inserting the head in a box with very bright light which will damage the retina
52. Putting him in the melting tar.
53. Burn by using hot bars.
54. Putting a alcohol which is used for sterilization over the body and lit it with fire and repeating it in different parts.
55. Bowring hot water in the mouth of the victim.
56. Halakat Khateem Al Baseer: (the ring of stamping of the sight) this is a term used by the security men to describe a ring of iron heated to become red. They put it over the eyebrows to cause swelling and inflammation of the eye.
57. The lower part of the body of the victim immersed in a container with hot vapour and water and suddenly they drop the water temperature to cold.
58. Putting the whole body in a freezing cold water in the winter.
59. Shaving the hair completely and putting the victim under dripping cold water.
60. Injecting hot water in the rectum.
61. Depriving the victim from water.
62. Using crane to lift the victim and submerge him in alternate hot and cold water
63. Different kinds of threats and humiliation.
64. Forcing him to see the tortures of the other victim or to hear their screaming.
65. Forcing him to kiss their shoes especially if he is educated person.
66. Painting half of the face or shaving half of the hair to make mockery of him.
67. Keeping the body of the executed victim for days with the rest of the prisoners until it become smelly.
68. Forcing the victim to become a dog or a donkey with a rob around his neck and have to make sounds like them. If he refuses they will beat him.
69. They force the victim to work as a slave for the security men.
70. Taking photos for him naked in shameful positions and release him or her to do spying work on her or his family and friends.
71. They torture one victim until shock then they put him on a table and gather the others to see. They take square head wood bars and beat the head of the shocked victim until it become flat over the surface.
72. They pierce the nose of those who are to be executed and drag them with rob to the other prisoners before the execution party.
73. Immersion in the septic tank for long time.
74. Forcing the victim to drink the urine or to eat excrement!
75. Forcing the religious victims to do the opposite of what their religion do.
76. Putting the victims in the mental health hospitals and treat them as psychiatric patients.
77. Injecting the women with male hormones (testosterone) so their voices become harsh and the hair grow over their bodies.
78. Cutting the woman breasts.
79. Al Kamasha: this is a tool used to pull the toes or fingers with force.
80. Nailing the ear on the wall with a screw or a nail and leaving him for a while unable to sleep or move.
81. Forcing the victim to rape another shocked victim!
82. Raping the victims is common.
83. Pushing air inside the rectum until shock.
84. Hanging the women naked during their period so as the blood will come down over the legs and the body.
85. Many women gave birth to children from the security men (raped frequently)
86. Exposing the testes after tying the victim then playing or squeezing them or putting insects over them until death or shock.
87. Tying the father with his daughter face to face and naked or the brother with his sister and so on.
88. Putting rubber tubes in the rectums of the victims.
89. Tearing the mouth or the anus or the vagina by the hands of the security men.
90. Urinating or defecating on the victims after tying them.

Bush Foreign Policy, addendum

Undoubtedly, this was purely coincidental:

"Libya reached out to the United States and Britain nine months ago, at about the same time that U.S. and British troops began their 21-day assault that led to the fall of Saddam's Ba'athist regime in Baghdad."

From the same article:

"The Democratic presidential hopefuls have charged that Mr. Bush needs to work with international organizations to disarm nations of their weapons of mass destruction."

Riiiiggghhhttt. . . 17 years of sanctions with no progress. We fight a war that was explicitly rejected by these very 'international organizations', and Libya disarms. And this is somehow an argument that kow-towing to these organization is the solution? Observe the triumph of dogma over reality.

Bush Foreign Policy -- A Miserable Failure?

Bush is constantly attacked because America is ostensibly less respected in fashionable backwaters like Paris and Brussels.

Yesterday, Moammar Gadhafi announced that he's dismantling his weapons of mass destruction and inviting in weapons inspectors. Iran has opened up her nuclear weapons programs for inspection. North Korea is hemmed in now by multilateral (as opposed to 1-on-1 shakedown) talks. Arafat was forced to (partially) accede to sharing power with a prime minister for the first time in his quasi-dictatorship. And in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar is in hiding rather than ruling the country and chartering bases for al-Qaeda.

Does anyone want to argue with a straight face that these things would have happened if Bush had followed the sort of foreign policy advocated by the Deans of the world?

We live in a dangerous world. And we have a choice in how to face these dangers. The things required to win the respect of Chirac and Co are the very things which earn the contempt of the terrorist-supporting dictators. I would rather we be respected by the Gadhafis of the world than by the Chiracs.

Compassionate Conservatism: A Redundancy. . .

. . .not an oxymoron.

Too often we yield the rhetoric of compassion to the liberals. The stereotype of the hard-hearted conservative has been firmly planted in the collective unconscious. Because of this, we often sound apologetic when talking about helping the needy and the hurting. And because perception trumps reality in politics, the stereotype burns us badly with many voters.

The reality is that conservatives (particularly religious conservatives) are a backbone of volunteerism and charity in this country. Further, conservative governance and policy help the poor and stand for true color-blindness in hiring practices. We should be more vocal about this. As I said, perception trumps reality. These facts mean nothing if people don't perceive them to be facts.

Far from being a rarity, compassion is at the heart of conservatism. Whether one comes from the Evangelical or the traditionalist wings, conservatism believes strongly in a duty to help those who are oppressed or needy. Among the movement's founders, a very common metaphor for society is that of an interdependent organism.

Historic conservatism finds radical individualism just as repugnant as it does radical collectivism. Individuals do owe a duty to their fellow man (though that duty is best and rightfully fulfilled in the private rather than the governmental sphere.)

For an example of conservatism's rejection of egotistical individualism, observe how National Review ostracized the Ayn Randians from the camp back in the 50s. "The Virtue of Selfishness" is NOT a conservative virtue.

Telling it often enough...

Does anyone remember the phrase "Twelve years of Reagan and Bush"? It seemed during the 1992 election that all of the evil of the world could be summarized under this rubric. Unemployment is up a bit -- 12 years of Reagan and Bush. There's a trade imbalance -- 12 years of you-know-what. I stubbed my toe -- Reagan/Bush are at it again.

In the end, the Reagan years were slandered as the Decade of Greed, rather than a time when every single income bracket from richest to poorest saw an increase in after-tax income. The period became the source of all our problems, rather than a time in which we rebuilt our military, restored pride in our country, punked the Communists into surrender and recovered from Carterish stagflation.

The Left is attempting the same thing now with the War in Iraq. They seem to hope that endlessly repeating the mantra that Bush mislead us on WMDs will push it into the popular consciousness.

Bush didn't. He believed that Saddam had them. Just as Pelosi, Dean, Clinton, Gore and all the others went on record as believing back in the 90's. Strangely, it wasn't a Republican president who kept up sanctions on Iraq because of the WMD threat. It was Bill Clinton. Something the Dems seem to have conveniently forgotten.

Nation of Islam Celebrates Diversity!

Extremist watchdog groups were encouraged by news that Michael Jackson had donned the veil. They see his acceptance into the Nation of Islam as a sign that perhaps the group is moving toward more moderate, mainstream positions, as fellow religious leader Rev. Al Sharpton has done.

Everett Fauntleroy, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a press conference Thursday,

"We applaud this progressive step from Mr. Farrakhan. 2004 will be the 50th Anniversary of the historic Brown vs. the Board of Education decision, and today's decision is in the spirit of that great civil rights landmark. The inclusion of a Jacko X, a neo-caucasian, into the ranks of the Nation of Islam is a first step toward full integration."

*No, Virginia, it's not a real quote.

Caption Contest!

Best caption winner gets a write-up post as well as their blog featured in the moderately-coveted "Clog of the Week" section here at Le Sabot. Multiple entries are rather encouraged. Deadline is 7 pm EST, Monday.

New Feature: DeanWatch

Despite Dean's surge, the press continues to give him the second-tier kid's-glove treatment. His misstatements are overlooked, his genuine nuttiness downplayed, and each day brings more near-hagiographical write-ups of his campaign. Gaffes that would damn a Republican candidate, or even a mainstream Dem, are relegated to page B-6 when covered at all.

Recent examples include his strong implication that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance, and him repeatedly calling Russia the Soviet Union.

Thanks to Deb Orin at the NY Post, word has leaked out about Dean's hate-filled fundraiser in New York. Don't try finding much about in it the papers of record, as usual.

"Comic Judy Gold dissed President Bush as 'this piece of living, breathing s---' . . . Comic Kate Clinton evoked Michael Jackson (hit with new child-sex-abuse charges) and said: 'Frankly, I'm far more frightened of Condoleezza Rice' - the Bush national security adviser who has nothing in common with Jackson except being black. . .

Rice seems to drive liberal woman comics especially nuts. Sandra Bernhard insulted her in racial terms with a "Yes Massa" accent at another Dean fundraiser the same night. . . Comedian David Cross used the N-word for blacks in a disjointed "joke" apparently based on the premise that it's fine for a pro-Dean comic to use racial epithets. . ."

Can you imagine if a Bush fundraiser had featured a Donna Brazile "Yes massa" impression during the 2000 campaign? He would have been crucified. Dean gets another pass.

But that's the beauty of the internet. The media can try all they like, but the truth just isn't so easy to quash anymore.

The Stupidest Thing Since Trent

A senior Vatican official pecksniff boo-hooed about Saddam's treatment today, according to the Gray Lady.

"A senior Vatican official and critic of the war in Iraq said today that he felt compassion for Saddam Hussein, and he reproached the United States for releasing video footage showing the former Iraqi leader handled "like a cow."

'I felt pity to see this man destroyed, being treated like a cow as they checked his teeth,'" said the official, Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican Council for Justice and Peace, speaking at a news conference to present the Holy See's World Day of Peace Message."

Cry me a river, you pompous, hypocritical eunuch.

Funny, I heard little compassion coming out of your Vatican for the dissidents being fed into plastic grinders by Saddam, or for the countless thousands mouldering in mass graves. The Shi'ites who saw their croplands turned to salt flats, and the Kurds who choked to death on poison gas also flew under your compassion radar. But you have tears to spare for the mass murderer behind the atrocities.

This is, without a doubt, the stupidest thing to come from the RCs since the Council of Trent.

Moderate Dems -- Snail Darters for a New Century

The moderate Dem is becoming an endangered species. Another of the failing, plaintive voices for sanity in the Democratic Party -- John Breaux, senator from Louisiana -- is retiring. I've always respected him, and he's served as a buffer against the increasing granolafication of the Dems. But no longer.

For those keeping score, that's 5 Southern Democratic senators retiring. Undoubtedly, having a New England liberal at the top of the ticket will help the Dem's chances of holding them. Maybe he could pick Michael Dukakis as his running mate, to boost his appeal in the region.

Granolification n. The process by which an organization or geographical entity comes under the influence of fruits, nuts and flakes. See: California; American Universities; Episcopal Church

The Soft Bigotry of the America-Haters

During the campaign, President Bush spoke about the "soft bigotry of low expectations." This phrase pointed out the subtle racism that pervades the Left. A view that expects less of non-whites, and treats them as children who can't be held responsible for their actions.

This paternalism can be seen in the way liberals appoint themselves as the spokesmen for "oppressed groups" and then delegitimize any members of these groups which offer an alternative viewpoint. For further reading look under Uncle Toms, acting white or Clarence Thomas.

This same racist condescension permeates a lot of the Leftist and recent Paleo-Con critiques of American foreign policy. For virtually ANY world problem, causation is found to lead directly to the United States. The actual perpetrators of the crisis/slaughter/oppression are absolved, and we're mainly to blame.

One genius recently explained to me on another site that America was primarily responsible for the Russian Revolution because we had some rich people who supported Communism. This of course ignores the enormous cliques of Communist intellectuals in Europe, and the revolutionary tradition within Russia which extends well back into the 19th Century. It's all somehow America's fault.

The Leftist and many Paleo-Con views of the 3rd World are a bit like the Victorian outlook on the female sex drive. Indigenous people are passive, lying there inertly until a rakish American comes along and stirs them up. This ignores the fact that wars, inhumanity and barbarism all well predate the Founding of the Republic. It also denies the brown-skinned peoples of the world the dignity of responsibility for their own actions, as well as credit for the basic human faculties of rationality, planning and action.

Way to go, Ivy Division!

Just wanted to thank the guys of the 4th ID for a job well-done. Thank you for the sacrifices you're making. Thank you for finishing off one of the ugliest regimes in recent memory, and thank you for taking out one more friend of the terrorists. We know it wasn't easy. Saddam is a wily opponent, and difficult to pin down.

For two decades he's taken bad situations and manipulated them to his advantage. Word has it that he's already trying to turn his capture to clover, and is in "serious" negotiations with Paramount to play an aborigine in Crocodile Dundee 4: The Mother of All Sequels.

Here's a still from his screentest:

Keegan on the "Religion of Peace"

I've seen this information muliple times before, but always in polemical works that made me question its objectivity. However, John Keegan in his History of Warfare succinctly demolishes the notion that Islam is, or ever was, a religion of peace:

"Muhammad, unlike Christ, was a man of violence: he bore arms, was wounded in battle and preached holy war, jihad, against those who defied the will of God as revealed to him. His successors perceived the world as divided into Dar al-Islam -- the House of Submission, submission to the teachings of Muhammad, collected in the Koran, and Dar al-Horab -- the House of War, which were those parts yet to be conquered. The early Arab conquests of seventh century extended the frontiers of Dar al-Islam in whirlwind leaps, so that by AD 700 the whole of what is now Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and North Africa had been brought within it."

With such a dichotomous view, it's difficult to see how the T.I.'s, the Truly Islamized, will ever peacefully co-exist with the West. Their guiding ideology says we need to submit or die.

Fishmonger-Slaps and Leftist Concubines

Mark Steyn fishmonger-slaps the Chomskyites in his latest column, It's been a good year.

I especially like how he compares the hard Left's concubinism for Communism to their newfound affection for Islamism:

"The extreme Left has made a terrible strategic mistake shacking up with the Islamists. In one sense, they're not as incompatible as they might appear: Islamism may be religious in origin but in its political form it is simply this decade's brand of oppressive statism, as communism was before it. But the only question now is how deeply this strategic error infects the less insane Left. On National Public Radio the other day, Howard Dean advanced the theory that the Saudis had tipped off Bush about 9/11 in advance. When the Democratic presidential front-runner is cheerfully wearing his tinfoil hat in public, it's no wonder the other fellows are scrambling to sound just as loopy."

DeanWatch: Dean of Strategic Incompetence at Democratic U.

If you need another reason to vote for Bush, it splashed down in the Pacific on Thursday. We've now had 4 out of 5 of our anti-missile "hit-to-kill" intercepts come out successfully. This is a validation of both Ronald Reagan's vision for a ballistic missile shield, and President Bush's brave decision to pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

Given that North Korea either has, or will soon have, an ICBM capable of hitting the west coast of the United States, it would require a stupidity bordering on criminal to oppose an ABM system for our country.

For an example of such stupidity, look no farther than Governor Dean. He's on record as saying that he'll re-enter the US into the ABM treaty when he's inaugurated. This, of course, overlooks the fact that the country with whom we entered the compact, the Soviet Union, no longer exists. (Though given that Dean still refers to Russia as the Soviet Union, maybe he's simply unaware of the situation?)

It also overlooks the fact that the only thing standing between us and nuclear blackmail by rogue states is such a shield.

Bucking the System. . .

It looks as if Howard Dean may really bring the Democratic establishment to heel. Gore's endorsement of Dean was typically graceless (especially after Lieberman damaged his own chances waiting for Gore to vacillate a bit longer.) But this endorsement is a sign of things to come. Until now, the gray heads of the party have been vocally cool toward Dean, with zero governors and only 15 members of Congress endorsing him.

Now he's been given the mantle of their martyred 2000 presidential candidate. An aura of inevitability begins to gather around Dean. As this aura coalesces, many will decide it's best to back a winner. Not necessarily the general election winner, but the winner of the intra-party beauty contest.

There's something very encouraging in all of this, really. While I have little use for Dean, to the point where I might offer him a glass of water were he drowning, I respect him. He's tough and wily, and he's managed to put together one heck of a teflon-coated campaign.

If he manages to secure the nomination in the face of near-universal establishment opposition, it should go a long way towards silencing the critics of the party system. Because it will show that the parties are NOT the omnipotent beasts the critics like to portray. In fact, even the under-electable governor of a small New England state can dominate them.

England, England über alles?

I came across an interesting poll from Germany today.

A plurality of Germans now view Britain as the premier power in the EU, with 27% giving them the nod, versus 26% for France and a mere 21% for Germany itself.

Britain's take is up from 8% a decade ago. At that time, 57% of Germans saw themselves astride a united Europe. While I think the good people of Germany are wrong, and that France's disciplined political class continues to punch well above their weight, it's a good misperception for the Germans to have. Perhaps it will close some political pieholes there.

Given the CW that uniting with the United States and distancing themselves from Europe would marginalize and diminish Britain, this is a surprising poll. In fact, Christian Jung of the Federal Association of German Banks is quoted as saying, "Due to the Iraq conflict, Britain has been perceived increasingly as an international player."

I found the link over at The Edge of England's Sword, a great site. Plus, Iain Murray is just a cool Presbyterianish name.

The Incredible Shrinking Candidacy

By now everyone has read that Kerry used the great unspeakable of the English language while attacking George Bush. I want to add to the general consensus that this was way, way beneath the dignity of a Democratic presidential candidate.

Oh wait, never mind. No it isn't.

Sand-lot Absolutists Take Note. . .

I wrote the other day on 3rd parties (which has to be one of the strangest pluralizations in English -- how can they ALL be the 3rd?) Jon Barlow has posted some thoughts on 3rd parties and voting. Along with the post, check out the lengthy discussion, which is enough to make any blogger green with envy.

No Class.

While my dislike of Hillary always matched my similar disdain for her husband, I always respected her more. Sure, she's a Lady MacBeth from central casting, but in contrast to her aging-frat-boy husband she seemed to have a modicum of style and class. I was impressed enough with her recent visit to Afghanistan and Iraq to toss her a kudos bar.

I want my kudos back. After looking in vain for the text of her speech, I read some excerpts from it. Only a Clinton could so crassly turn a morale-boosting trip to the troops into a slam on the President at the expense of the troops' morale.

Here are some highlights:

" Using Iraq as a pulpit, she attacked Bush for having been "obsessed with Saddam Hussein for more than a decade."

"The senator told the troops that while "Americans are proud" of them, "many question the administration's policies." Being told that you might die in a war that is under attack by people back home must be a great stimulant to combat morale."

"She also made sure to plant doubts among the troops about the ability of their commanders, saying that "the obstacles and problems are much greater than the administration usually admits to."

"Bush sought to assure the troops of the united support of the people. Hillary wanted them to know that many people objected to what they are trying to do. Bush's message was that we will persevere in the face of terrorism. Hillary's was that this war was due to one man's "obsession."

You can take the girl out of the trailer park. . .

Where Conservatism and Christianity Diverge. . .

I'm a sincere Movement Conservative. It's a part of who I am. But in my self-definition it takes a distant, distant second to who I am in Christ.

In the 90's it seemed to me at times that many blurred the line between conservative and Christian, almost conflating them. As if adherence to this particular intellectual stream was in the footnotes to the Nicene Creed. As Michael Horton pointed out, many were more concerned with a preacher's politics than his theology.

Conservatism is generally a good, and even lovely, thing. It shows respect for the past, is humble about the nature of humanity, and preserves the hallowed and the beautiful. But it is neither transcendant, nor infallible.

While I admire George Will as a thinker, writer and logophile, his latest column illustrates the divide between the two. He argues, on genuine conservative principles, against a Hetero Marriage Amendment, and opens up the question that perhaps gay marriage wouldn't be so bad. As Christians, we have our answer. It's an abomination. All of the pragmatic concerns of federalism, more stable lives for gays, and the like are irrelevant to Christians. An abomination is an abomination is an abomination.

Addendum- David Frum, writing in NRO, does a good job of answering Will.

3rd Parties and Pressure Groups

Lots of people complain about the two party system, and fantasize about an America with a multiplicity of viable parties. Something like a Parliamentary system, one imagines, with many smaller parties working together in coalitions.

This is silly. First of all, there are only two intellectual traditions in America. 15% of Americans self-describe liberal, about 27-30% conservative. The rest are a diverse hodgepodge. There simply isn't a free-floating constituency or platter of ideas for another party to represent. Which is why 3rd parties are inevitably either single-issue (See Populists, Free Soil and Temperance Parties), essentially bereft of ideas (see Reform Party), or end up cannibalizing an existing party and taking its place in our binary political system (See Whigs and Republicans.) Oh, I left out self-righteous ideologues who live only for the symbolic gesture (See Constitution Party.)

These complainers see the two parties as monopolizing and stifling the political conversation. But I don't think this is true. Rather, unions, PACs, industry groups, think tanks, quaint 3rd Parties and the myriad other pressure groups in America function like the minor parties in Parliamentary systems. They speak for niche groups, and advance their ideas. For example, the AFL-CIO represents the workers' niche. In another country, this might be performed by the National Worker's Party's three Members of Parliament. Here, it gets mediated through one of the existing 2 Parties, but the influence still registers.

The two parties are like the "visualization" feature on Windows Media Player, responding to and interpreting the signals that it receives and taking shape accordingly. In this case, the signals come from hundreds of millions of sources. This is the secret to our 50-50 Nation -- they morph to fit the mood of the people so well that it's difficult for either to gain lasting advantage. The parties are very interactive.

In a system with multiple small parties, coalitions often hang by a thin thread. Thanks to this, tiny parties can extort huge concessions from the ruling party. Because the influence of our pressure groups is mediated through the two Biggies, this happens less frequently in America. Though it does happen -- witness Bush and the steel tariffs.

In the end, we have little need for a viable 3rd or 4th party, because our pressure groups act as de facto parties.

More nails in the collective coffin?

Does anyone else get the sense that Bush took several more 7-League steps toward clinching the 2004 Elections over the past couple of weeks?

Let's recap:

1. Rather than being shifted downward, the estimated 7.2% GDP growth rate was revised upward to 8.2%. Additionally, durable goods and productivity are also charting upwards nicely. Considering that even a perjuring whoremonger can be re-elected if the economy is salutary, this bodes well for a decent man like Bush.

2. While a complete travesty, Bush's Prescription Drugs bill has neutered the key Mommy-Party issue of this decade. In the process, he's also pulled a central member of the Demo coalition, the AARP, over to his camp. To the tune of a 7 million dollar ad campaign backing his proposals. This also robs the Dems of another of their favorite plays -- the Medicare Mau-Mau. Without the AARP to mouthpiece for them, the Demos don't have the clout or the soapbox from which to demagogue the issue.

3. Gay marriage -- if anything will boost conservative turn-out, it's a hot button like this one. Bush's forthright statements about marriage consisting of a man and a woman contrast starkly with the tap-dancing the Demo front runners are pulling. If NASCAR dads really are the key swing vote this year, this is an issue ready-made to fire them up. And the industrial swing states are full of these blue-collar dads.

4. Bush's successful trip to the UK, and his surprise visit to Iraq. Bush far exceeded the pundits' expectations in Britain, and came back with a lot of momentum. And the trip to Iraq is awesome. From a political standpoint, photos of him chowing with the GIs remind us that the War on Terrorism is still a real one, and that it's much better having a mensch like Bush in office than a ranting New England liberal (Dean, Lieberman or Kerry, take your pick.) And I think it's just froodish in general that he spent Thanksgiving with the troops.

Considering how floundering the Democratic pack looks thus far, all of these seem like additional nails in their collective coffin.

Addendum-

I also want to acknowledge Hillary's trip to Afghanistan. Considering the ambivalence of many in her party toward our military, I thought it was admirable that she spent the holiday with our troops and expressed her support for them.

Let's Crawl Before We Run, Maybe?

The Washtimes is reporting that net immigration is swelling -- up to 1.4 million just last year. About half of these are illegals.

"Whatever flimsy arguments the proponents of mass immigration were able to concoct during the illusory economic boom of the late 1990s about immigration serving some national interest, they have been utterly dispelled by the reality of the post-high-tech bust," Mr. Stein said. "

If the government has any reason for existence, securing our nation's borders would seem to be near the top of the list. If it can't do something so basic as this, why in the world would we trust it to regulate and 'improve' our health care system?

Some things to be thankful for. . .

While there's plenty of fodder for pessimism in modern America, David Brooks's latest column, Refuting the Cynics does a good job of pointing up some of the positives.

There's an inherent element of gloom in conservatism -- the nature of history is such that we're often on the side of lost causes and vanishing institutions. For some, this gloom seems to border on despair, these days. . .

He contrasts Europe and the States for much of the article. While less rosy for Euros, here's some good news for us this Thanksgiving:

"American fertility rates bottomed out around 1985, and began rising. Native-born American women now have almost two children on average, while the European rate is 1.4 children per woman and falling. . . Working off U.N. and U.S. census data. . . in the year 2050 the median age in the United States will be 35. The median age in Europe will be 52. The implications of that are enormous."

"The drop in crime rates over the past decade is nothing short of a miracle. Teenage pregnancy and abortion rates rose in the early 1970's and 1980's, then leveled off and now are dropping. Child poverty rates have declined since the welfare reform of the mid-1990's. The black poverty rate dropped "to the lowest rate ever recorded," according to a 2002 study by the National Urban League."

"The air is cleaner. The water is cleaner and we are using less of it. Our homes have doubled in size in a generation and home ownership rates are at an all-time high. There are now fewer highway deaths in the U.S. than in 1970, even though the number of miles driven has shot up by 75 percent."

"Obviously, huge problems remain. But the overwhelming weight of the evidence suggests that despite all the ugliness of our politics, this is a well-governed nation."

Time for an Amendment?

Conservatives have watched victory after victory overturned by activist Democratic judges -- a misnomer if ever there was one -- one vote overturning the votes of millions isn't exactly "democratic". . .

We've been justifiably annoyed by this, and in frustration have looked to the amendment process as a way of putting the cookies on a shelf the judges can't reach. At times this has been WAY premature -- the BBA and the Flag Burning Amendment spring to mind.

But marriage is so core, so central to the healthy functioning of society, that I think it really might be time for an amendment. Reality is this, if we don't make it an iron-clad amendment, then the natural momentum of contemporary "rights" theory is going to legalize gay marriage. Sooner rather than later. The cultural pendulum isn't going to swing our way again anytime soon. If we're ever going to have enough political capital to pass a marriage amendment, it's now.

Pardon My English has some good things to say as well. I especially liked: "Why must every privilege become a right?"

That's EXACTLY the situation we're facing today, on everything from gay marriage to suffrage for felons. . . The leveling instinct has become so strong, so reflexive, that any difference is perceived as a form of repression.

Blogs for Bush!

I just came across Blogs for Bush and joined up. This is the first election since blogging went big, it'll be interesting to see what role it plays.

Also, sign up to volunteer for the Bush campaign! I would, but it'd be a heck of a commute to the campaign office. . .

Found via Matt Margolis.

I like the President.

I just reread President Bush's Whitehall Palace Speech, and am so impressed by it. It's the sort of optimistic, gutsy rhetoric we haven't heard since Reagan. No one could ever match Reagan in my estimation -- I'll never again be a twelve year old boy watching admiringly as my president takes on the hated Communists.

But George Bush has something of the same spark -- a hopeful, patriotic, confident outlook just when the country most needs it. So kvetch all you like; complain about stolen elections or popular votes. . . Say he isn't your president. Well, he's mine. And thank God for it.

McCain-Feingold, meet Mr. Reality

Besides its fundamental incomprehension of human nature, probably the greatest weakness of modern liberalism is its short-term focus -- an inability to look at the attendant consequences of whatever program they seek to impose this week. One of the reasons for their continued electoral viability is that the electorate shares this inability to connect long-term disaster with past short-term liberal "solutions."

One example is urban renewal -- a noble goal of building clean, safe housing for the poor. Reality -- they destroyed poor but livable neighborhoods and built inhumane, people-sized ant-farms which breed crime and despair.

Another example, of course, is welfare. A typically high-sounding goal -- helping unwed mothers. A secondary consequence of helping increase the inner-city illegitimacy rate from around 21% to mid-80%.

Now the "Nicers", as my Uni philosophy prof called them, have tried to improve our campaign finance system. They've accomplished an ostensibly laudable goal of banning soft money. Bully for them. They've accomplished. . . Less than nothing.

Funny, but the money didn't just disappear. Now it goes instead to completely unregulated 527 organizations. Before this money was watched carefully by the FEC. All 527's have to do is file tax returns. These organizations are often the creatures of wealthy donors and single-issue zealots. And the politicians can't get on the 527 bandwagon fast enough.

Government regulation and intrusion is a club -- a clumsy blunt instrument. When it sets out to fine tune things, it only mucks them up worse. But hope springs eternal. Next we'll be looking for a way to fix the 527 problem, and thereby spawn a new set of unintended consequences. . .

CW, Interrupted?

The conventional wisdom about Bush's trip to the UK has looked forward to a hostile and unwelcoming British populace. A new poll today in the Guardian runs hard against the CW. The headline says it all: "Protests begin but majority backs Bush visit as support for war surges..."

It's good to consider the source. This is no Tory rag or Murdoch tabloid. It's from The Guardian, the Lefty paper of record.

"A majority of Labour voters welcome President George Bush's state visit to Britain which starts today, according to November's Guardian/ICM opinion poll.

The survey shows that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American with 62% of voters believing that the US is "generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world". It explodes the conventional political wisdom at Westminster that Mr Bush's visit will prove damaging to Tony Blair. Only 15% of British voters agree with the idea that America is the "evil empire" in the world.

The ICM poll also uncovers a surge in pro-war sentiment in the past two months as suicide bombers have stepped up their attacks on western targets and troops in Iraq. Opposition to the war has slumped by 12 points since September to only 41% of all voters. At the same time those who believe the war was justified has jumped 9 points to 47% of voters.

This swing in the mood of British voters is echoed in the poll's finding that two-thirds of voters believe British and American troops should not pull out of Iraq now but instead stay until the situation is 'more stable'."

Disappointing news for those whose happiness is inversely-proportional to Bush's success, but such is life. As the Dread Pirate Roberts said to the Spanish swordsman, "Get used to disappointment." It only gets worse in 2004.

Pat Who?

The WSJ gives Pat! Buchanan a well-deserved smack today. For those of you who've forgotten him, this is the gadfly who formerly wielded real political influence, actually giving Bush '41 a run for his money. You know, the one with a sister who's marginally more masculine than he is? Still ringing no bells? Here's a pic.

And here are some highlights from the article:

"For all his talk about the "Buchanan brigades" that supposedly lie just over the hill, this is a man who took a Reform Party that captured a respectable 8% of the popular vote in 1996 and drove it down to less than half of 1% in 2000."

"The more fundamental divide is over our belief--the market's belief--that human beings are assets and not liabilities. At least they have proved so in societies of ordered liberty rooted in private property."

"For if the perennial temptation of the left is utopianism, that of the right is despair. Everywhere Mr. Buchanan looks, he sees American decline and another Bush sellout. Yet to take the most contested social issue of the day, the one around which the original Buchanan base was constituted, it's telling that it was the Republican Party of this President Bush that passed and just had signed into law the first national restriction on abortion since Roe v. Wade. While it was Mr. Buchanan who, with his eye on $13 million in matching government funds, jumped to a party founded on the proposition that social issues shouldn't even be discussed. . .

In his riff against "Hong Kong values," Mr. Buchanan believes he is attacking a form of rationalism that elevates efficiency over morality. But the morality divorced from economic efficiency he proposes in its stead will only serve, as it so manifestly has in his own case, to marginalize conservatism back to where it was before the founding of National Review and the rise of Ronald Reagan: a losing catalog of resentments."

Still, given the relative influence of the WSJ and Buchanan these days, there was something infra dig about them swatting him. Now that he's umbilically tied to the circus freaks in the Deformed Party, and his writings are read by a handful of survivalists in Montana (any readers of Le Sabot excepted, of course...) hasn't the guy suffered enough? Now that he's in his political dotage, wouldn't it be kinder to simply let him rant them out in peace?

Tuzla Wars!

Some of you have probably been following the border dispute between Ukraine and Russia over the protective dike the Russians are building near Tuzla. Most of you probably aren't. But you probably DO know within which continent Ukraine resides, a distinction most Americans cannot claim. Anyway. For an overview of the situation, check out this VOA article. For a juicier and more polemical read, turn to the Moscow Times' look at Tuzla and Greater Russia.

It seems that the Ukrainian and Moskali civilians are having a war of their own via the internet. Either that or someone simply has way too much free time on his hands. My good buddy in Warsaw, infamous here at Le Sabot as The Liberal Media, was kind enough to send me some great propaganda pieces:

Peoples of the Entire World. . . Help with the Dam!

Be careful, the doors are closing. Next station is Simferopl.

Not a gram of fat to the Muscovites!

Russians! Let's Defend Tuzla from the Ukrainian Defenders!

Party Distinctives. . .

Shrode, one of the great and talented Thinklings, has linked to a great article on charitable giving and politics. While those of the sinister persuasion like to stereotype conservatives as heartless misers whose favorite holiday pastime is starving orphans and jeopardizing grandma's Social Security check, it turns out that Red states are much more generous than those misguided enough to vote Blue. In fact, the top 20 states in the 2003 Generosity Index ALL went for Bush.

On a similar theme, the Washington Times reports today on a Pew study that finds Republicans to be more patriotic, more hopeful, and more religious than the Demos.

This follows on the heels of my own investigations which clearly find Republicans to be better looking and more hygenic than those on the Left. For a brief abstract of my research, please compare GOP pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick (now Conway) with the ablutophobic Michael Moore.

Senator Harris?

I just noticed that Katherine Harris is considering a bid to replace Bob Graham. While the prospect of a dynamic, Christian senator should be encouraging to any of us, I'm especially happy to hear it.

Back in Uni, I took a 6-month hiatus to work on her very first political campaign. I was the first full-time worker on her campaign besides the manager. I just fell into it. My friend Justin had introduced me to her, and I was as taken with her as everyone is when meeting Katherine in person.

The campaign was one of the happiest times of my life -- working 'til all hours, eating Thai take-out, and fighting the good fight against the single most liberal member of the Florida state senate. . . In the end we won handily, and Republicans took control of the state senate for the first time since Reconstruction.

Katherine was also the one who introduced me to R.C. Sproul, and even sponsored a trip for me to a Ligoniers convention. Her rise from FL senate to Sec'y of State to U.S. Congress has been meteoric, and I'd love to see it continue. Now I just need to find the Embassy and look into absentee voting. . .

Save Your Dixie Cups...

...The South Shall Rise Again!

My favorite Democrat, Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, has a GREAT column in the Washington Times today. The name says it all: How Democrats Lost the South. Not only does it lay out the reasons behind the continuing Dem meltdown in Dixie, but also gives some very encouraging stats about economic, educational and racial progress in the region. For anyone who grinds their teeth at the constant slandering of the South in the mainstream culture, it's a must-read. Here's a peek:

"Democrats have never seen a snail darter they didn't want to protect, but sometimes I think the one endangered species they don't want to save is the Southern conservative Democrat. We're like the alcoholic uncle that families try to hide in a room up in the attic: After the primaries are over and the general election nears, national Democrats trot out the South and show us off -- at arm's length -- as if to say, "Look how tolerant we are; see how caring? Why, we even allow people 'like this' in our party of the big tent. We still love that strange old reprobate uncle." As soon as the election is over, the old boy is banished to the attic and ignored for another two years. "

Does Red or White Wine Go With Crow?

We've spent two years listening to howling and gibbering from the Dems about the "Bush Economy" and how he's somehow singlehandedly responsible for the natural trends of the business cycle. A 6.2% unemployment level constituted the "worst economy since the Great Depression." The burst tech bubble, a worldwide financial slowdown, and 9/11 weren't even peripheral factors. Bush was the Man.

Well, in the spirit of turnabout being fair play, I'll agree. Bush is, indeed, the Man. And in the same spirit, I'll cheerfully wreath him in laurels for the 7.2% GDP growth rate-- the fastest since 1984. We'll toss in some applause for the 4 year high in manufacturing; the highest construction spending in recorded history; the Federal Reserve forecasting 150-200K new jobs a month; signs of recovery in the tech sector; a rebounding dollar; and a stock market surge, including a 30% jump in the S&P 500 since March.

When coupled with the news that Bob Graham is gone and another Southern senate seat open, this must be a painful day for the Bush-haters.

Being the empathic, metrosexual kind of guy I am, I had to fight back shuddering winces several times today. I feel your pain. You were planning on a sour economy to save you, and that's all changed now. I'll just echo the words of one of the truly noble Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton -- "We must learn to make change our friend."

Wholesome Family Fun!

Given the understated and tasteful decor of most Chinese restaurants, I've always given their culture full marks for refinement and subtlety. So I was a little taken aback when our children's babushka brought the kids a 9/11 terrorist playset made in China.

The label I've scanned here isn't nearly as fun as the 1'x1' playmat, complete with exploding Pentagon and wounded victims.

We plan to collect the whole set for the kiddos, including the Dr. Mengele Edition of the game Operation, and the Hamas Homicide Bomber how-to set.

Note: This is a scan of the actual label from this toy our children were given. This image has not been altered, except for being slightly cropped. (Though we at Le Sabot are known to play around with images from time to time.)

Democratic "Think" Tank

The long-anticipated new Democratic think tank has arrived. And I'm left echoing Vizzini in the Princess Bride -- "Am I mad, or did the word THINK escape your lips?"

The Democratic Party hasn't had a fresh thought since Frank Church was in the Senate. Their only period of electoral success they've had since Carter was by consciously borrowing Republican ideas. The Dems have a genuine identity problem these days, and until they decide what they stand for and where they want to take the country, their intellectual bankruptcy will only deepen.

Imagining a Dem think tank, I'm reminded of a passage I read years ago in Chesterton, where he was writing on education and progress. I'll have to paraphrase -- "Progress: let us not decide what is good, but how we can get more of it. Education: let us not decide what is good, but how we can pass it on to our children."

Dystopian Wonderlands

I've been spending some time with Chesterton lately, and came across this little ditty in his "New Poems" collection:

Oh, how I love Humanity,
With love so pure and pringlish,
And how I hate the horrid French,
Who never will be English!

The International Idea,
The largest and the clearest,
Is welding all the nations now,
Except the one that's nearest.

This compromise has long been known,
This scheme of partial pardons,
In ethical societies,
And small suburban gardens --

The villas and the chapels where
I learned with little labour
The way to love my fellow-man
And hate my next-door neighbor.

While Chesterton is writing about the League of Nations impetus, he sums up beautifully why ever idealistic master plan cooked up in the last century turned dystopian. Human nature isn't ideal, and won't be in this world. And with such flawed stock to work with, anyone hoping to build an ideal society is doomed to failure -- whichever side of the political divide they might be on. Absolutists, purists and idealogues of every stripe will learn the bitter taste of disillusionment. Any theory of government and society that fails to account for the Fall will prove unworkable.

This is why true conservatism is antithetical to ideology. It understands the fallen nature of humanity, and the imperfectibility of the world we live in.

A Preview of Coming Degenerations

A few years ago, I shot a rattlesnake behind the head. He kept moving, so I decapitated him with a shovel. For a good hour later his headless body continued to crawl across our yard. This is something like the moral state of modern America. We've decapitated the source of our morality, Christianity, but there has been enough reflexive momentum to carry us forward for a time. But it's winding down.

Now I'm no fan of slippery slope arguments. They're the first resort of demagogues when they want to stir up their base. The idea that background checks for firearms was the first step toward a police state springs to mind. Another might be that a cut in the growth in spending on food stamps is only the beginning of a master plan to make the poor eat Alpo.

While I have little belief in slippery slopes, I have an unshakable faith in Pandora's Box. Some things just shouldn't be opened. And once they are, it's difficult to control what comes out of them. The unthinkable becomes thinkable. Once the sanctity of human life was abandoned, for instance, it legalized not only abortion in the first trimester, but brought euthanasia, late-term abortion and suicide into the realm of the reasonable and normal.

Gay marriage will do the same. The first pairs of shoes to cross the line marked "a man and a woman" will likely be either LPGA cleats or Italian loafers. But these won't be the last. Once it's accepted in law that two people of the same sex are marriage material, on what basis will the State deny the same "right" to the polyamorous?

Given the myriad and polymorphously perverse nature of modern sexuality, how is the State going to draw ANY sort of line as to who can and cannot enter into a state of marriage? If an entire sect of Californians wants to marry one another, how can the State deny them? Once marriage becomes a civil right, how can it be restricted? Especially in today's climate where "discrimination", when shouted loudly enough, proves instantly victorious in any situation?

This doesn't even bring in the liberationist social trends toward "full personhood" for animals and non-adults. The changing definition of marriage isn't taking place in isolation, after all.

Short of a Great Awakening changing the spiritual and moral landscape of America, gay marriage will likely become a reality. And with it will come a host of unintended consequences.

Corpus Mixtum

It seems to me that so many of those who are angry at the two political parties aren't so much protesting the parties as they are human nature itself. What they fail to realize is that if their much-beloved Union of Taxpaying Strict-Construction Survivalists ever did make it big in Washington, its office-holders would be subject to the same human and institutional limitations and temptations that Republicans and Democrats face. That there is nothing inherently more depraved about R and D politicians than the rest of humanity.

There are good and bad (in the civic sense) people in any American political party.

I'll use the church as an analogy, but understand that it's done in a VERY limited sense. I don't mean to equate the two. The church is a corpus mixtum. You have healthy numbers of both true believers and hypocrites -- those who are there for the perks of membership, be it business contacts or the youth group. And even the true believers are fallible and imperfect, and subject to temptation.

So it is in Washington. There are plenty of honest, devoted people on both sides of the political divide. And there are plenty of craven self-seekers on both sides as well. And even those who truly believe what they're saying are imperfect and subject to the temptations of the office. This is just reality. And a third party will neither change this reality, nor will it alter human nature.

Writing everyone off as crooked sell-outs and declaring a Going Out of Business sale for the Republic may be cynically hip, but it looks a bit pale when compared with those actually in the fight trying to change things.

Sand Lot Absolutists

If politics were a backyard football game, the conservative movement seems to have a small but noisy number of kids who think every pass has to be a Hail Mary. Screen plays, a running game, tactics . . . all of these are compromises. The essence of the game for them is the gallant, doomed, hopeless gesture. All or nothing. With the ball on the 50, it's better to lose yardage than to move it only ten yards toward the goal. Anyone who thinks differently is obviously a traitor to the team. Eventually it becomes clear that the vast majority of the team disagrees with them. So they jump on their Huffies and ride home in a sulk, murmuring under their breath that they'll form a team of their own. Once they have more than three people, anyway.

Update- Reviewing my last three posts, I realized that I managed to annoy Left, Center and Right in turn. That has to be considered a Hat Trick of some kind. We at Le Sabot not only celebrate diversity, we're also equal opportunity offenders!

Moderately Amused

The word "moderate" is to politics what the term Evangelical is to ecclesiology -- any meaning it might once have held is largely drained from it. An intellectual SocialLib/FiscalCon has as much in common with a Jenny Jones fan as a Reformed Presbyterian has with a Benny Hinn viewer. Yet both are labeled, respectively, a moderate and an Evangelical.

The word Evangelical these days only has significance once a qualifier is added -- Dispensational, Reformed, Word-Faith, etc. But no one has yet done the same for moderates. Conservatives and Liberals have subgroupings -- Neo, Paleo, New Left, Prairie Socialist, and so on. A similar classification system needs to be developed for moderate voters.

Here's a humble start for such a system:

Apathetic Mods -- Those too lazy to inform themselves, but not too lazy to knock out a chad every once in awhile.

Muddled Mods -- The cognitively dissonant Mods who demand both low taxes and every imaginable middle class government subsidy.

Maverick Mods -- Those who disdain mainstream politicians with their flashy education and experience, and instead flock to demagogic non-politicians from outside Washington such as 18-year "maverick" Senator McCain.

WWF Mods -- A group closely related to the Mavericks, but whose political loyalty is reserved for film stars and former professional wrestlers.

Preening Mods -- Those who wear their Independent status like a 1st grader's Good Citizenship badge, and loudly assert that they "always vote for the man, not the party." Left unspoken by the Preeners, of course, is that these candidates actually do belong to something called a "party", and that the letter designators beside their names on the ballot largely determine which group they'll vote with once in office.

Using this system, journalists will be able to avoid the lazy fiction that a monolithic group called "moderates" is panting for Candidate X. They'll be able to nuance things. Take the stillborn Jerry Springer campaign, for instance. How much better to write, "While Springer's campaign hasn't gained traction with Preeners, he's running strongly among WWF Mods and Apathetics."

Fever-Swamp Dream Sequence

Now that Arnold has won, expect the shrill wail coming from the Left to crescendo until it resembles something like an F-15 Eagle on afterburner.

Put yourself in their place a moment and try to visualize:

Begin Fever-Swamp Dream Sequence

A red haze overlays your vision; a black pall of hatred at watching a dunce from Texas steal the presidency wells up inside you; the conspiratorial wheels spin in your mind as you see the Black Hand of Rove moving across the landscape like a plague... Suddenly, you're watching PBS and the election results are broadcast. And then a still, small voice that sounds like Noam Chomsky whispers inside you: "ANOTHER stolen election..."

Oooh! The surge of righteous anger! Oh! The chills of moral superiority! Ah! The bland but nutritious flavor of your veganic soyburger!

You want to shake the entire American electorate and scream! You want to wave a pencil in your left hand and give a curmudgeonly cry of "Buy Viagra! Wait, I mean, where's the outrage!?!?"

Realizing that this is unfeasible, you instead retreat into an angry funk, eat an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's, listen to a Phish album, and IM your friends to vote for Kucinich.

The dream turns to nightmare on Election Day as you realize that your friends and those like them only account for 14% of the electorate, and that angry funks play badly with the other 86% who don't live on Haight-Ashbury Street. Not to worry though, being out of power allows you to spin whatever sort of fantastical ideologies you'd like, without worry that they'll ever suffer the indignity of facing the limitations of reality.

End Fever-Swamp Dream Sequence

Good-Bye to a Good Guy

Conservatives received some bad news today as Don Nickles announced his retirement. For those who aren't political mavens, this is the senior senator from Oklahoma, and is not to be confused with Don Rickles. Nickles is a conservative stalwart, and carries a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 96.

Cheerily, Rep. Ernest Istook is looking into a run. He's also a reliable movement conservative, with an ACU lifetime of 95. This should be a relatively safe hold for the R's. In the past, OK had plenty of Scoop Jackson Dems. But it's been trending Republican for some time, and now has only a single D in its entire congressional delegation.

As of now, only two R seats look vulnerable -- Alaska and Illinois. On the other hand, the D's face races ranging from challenging to nightmarish in NC, SC, FL, GA, SD and possibly LA. And it will only get worse if Republicans hold power after this election. It's no fun being in the minority, and the Democratic leadership has been promising victory for years. Further Republican gains may make some fence-sitters decide a fat life as a lobbyist or CEO is a little more appealing.

Please note -- I know there are some of you reading this and itching to fill my message section with rants about Republicrats and how it doesn't matter who wins. That both parties are equally pernicious. On October 12th the Senate is expected to vote to ban partial-birth abortion. First read the relative vote counts, and THEN post some rot about how there's no difference.

More Arnold Revelations!

The LA Times is now reporting that Schwarzenegger not only made positive noises about Hitler, but is in fact married to the twin sister of another master of evil -- Skeletor.

Immature Times

According to Wes Pruden's latest column, the LA Times has spent 7 weeks collecting stories of Terminatorial malfeasance dating back as far as 25 years ago.

During the Clinton scandals, it was liberal rags like the Times that sniffily lectured America about our 'immaturity' in not accepting sexual peccadilloes as the French do. Example A was the presence of Mrs. and Mistress Mitterand together at his funeral. Now that the palm is on the other hip, so to speak, the Times seems to have regressed in maturation. They're positively Bible-belt in their shock, nay, shock and outrage at Arnold's improprieties.

If Arnold survives the latest wave of 'revelations', it will be thanks largely to the coming-of-age the nation experienced under Clinton. Here's Pruden on the subject:

'If a president can turn the Oval Office into a cheap bordello and keep his job, survive credible accusations that he raped a constituent and generally behave in a way that would have gotten him thrown out of Maxine's in Hot Springs, voters in California are likely to cut a movie star a little slack for having behaved in a way that everyone expects a Hollywood movie star to behave.'

This isn't said to excuse Arnold's actions. Whether it be Bustamante or Arnold, the People's Republic of Cali is getting the government it deserves.

That Astounding Dwarven Birthrate!

In fantasy literature, dwarves are almost inevitably portrayed as in decline -- their mountain fortresses besieged, their populations falling off due to low birthrates and the attrition of goblins and kobolds.

So the continuing rise in the number of dwarves seeking the Democratic nomination seems a bit counter-intuitive to me. General Clark brings the number to ten now. As an aside, I'll point out that if Hillary Clinton joins the campaign, she'll validate Gimli's comment on the difficulty of telling the female dwarves from the males.

What to make of Clark? I'm witholding firm prognostication for the time, until we have something more substantial than words and a handful of polls. The number of party ops joining him is significant. But I want to see some quarterly fundraising numbers and a relatively comprehensive state-level campaign organization going before I'm whelmed.

Enthusiasm and cross-overs got McCain through a few states, but in the end Bush's money and organization trumped all the fluffing the adoring media could provide. And Clark is no McCain.

On the other hand, Dean is no Bush either. In terms of party consensus, money and the perception of inevitability, he's lightyears behind where Bush was at a similar place in the campaign. So we'll have to see.

Something I haven't seen mentioned, but that occurs to me, is that this could be nightmarish for Dems. Just when it seemed that one candidate was pulling away and could unite the party, Gen. Clark invades the scene. Worst case scenario for the Dems has to be a losing Clark which bloodies an eventually victorious Dean.

Also, I think the entry of Clark into the race shows the lack of, um, stature, among the Democratic dwarves. While he has some things to recommend him, in a healthy party he'd never have become a serious candidate.

A Ukrainian Blip on the Radar

The nation of Ukraine seems to many Americans to be merely an appendage of Russia. At least for those Americans who know in which continent the country exists. In our press, it largely flies under the radar, except when Chernobyl anniversaries come 'round, or a reporter wakes up beheaded.

National Review published a rare, exceptional article today entitled Embracing Ukraine. The point about a double standard in our relations with Putin and Kuchma seems spot-on to me.

Liberalism: The Philosophy of Western Suicide

Pentamom asked a very good question yesterday: "What is it with the tendency of some people who subscribe to certain philosophies to ascribe all the fearsome motives to one's own camp, and never to the enemy? . . . Leftists see America as the danger to the world, whereas every tinpot dictator in the world is only trying to protect his people, etc. And it goes on and on."

James Burnham once called Liberalism the "philosophy of Western suicide." He had a real point. So much of our approach to everything from race relations to foreign policy is driven by a sort of self-loathing. It's as if we have a debt mountain of guilt that we're paying off ad infinitum.

That's not to say that the West hasn't done some bad things along the way. We certainly have. But, as Mark Antony said, "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones..." It's as if the entirety of Western Civilization has been devoted to Crusading, strip-mining Indian burial grounds, burning witches, and slave trafficking. Conveniently forgotten are: the Rule of Law; the concept of human rights; the emancipation of women; the printing press; penicillin and the 1967 Chevelle Super Sport.

Until the West moves beyond this legacy of guilt, it will continue to be paralyzed with self-doubt and a healthy relationship with the rest of the world will be impossible. A mature dialogue can't take place while we still relegate the 2/3rds world to the misunderstood adolescence of victimhood.

Solipsism and the No Dong X

After reading this WashTimes piece, I've decided that those who advocate an exclusively isolationist foreign policy must have a form of nationally-scaled solipsism -- a belief that those outside oneself aren't actually real. How else to explain the willingness to unilaterally bind America's hands when faced with genuine external threats? Only a conscious decision to dismiss the North Korean missile and nuclear programs as imaginary would justify a shrugging "it's none of our business anyway" attitude.

For instance, relying on North Korea's respect for human life or treaties will require one to ignore the couple of million people the regime has starved in pursuit of its weapons procurement programs. Then you'll need to classify their complete and utter disregard for previous non-proliferation treaties as a figment of your imagination.

A belief that America's borders are somehow sacrosanct and that the rest of the world will leave them unmolested will require you to dismiss a couple of other things as imaginary. First, the rather loud wake-up call we received two years ago. Secondly, the No Dong X missile North Korea is expected to unveil which many believe will be fully capable of hitting the West Coast of the United States.

The you'll need to dismiss the nuclear program they've been busily working on. (Yes, they've taken a break, which can be reversed almost immediately.) The fact that they're basing a missile on an old Soviet SLBM and simultaneously developing a payload for this missile is probably nothing to worry about. They aren't trying to miniaturize their warheads either, regardless of what PBS might say.

Once you've convinced yourself of the unreality of these threats, you'll need to do one more thing -- apply all of them to Iran as well. Just reassure yourself that Hezbollah's primary funding source is actually a peaceful and unaggressive country, and you're home free. Just because North Korea has let Iran copy previous versions of the No Dong doesn't mean they'll do it again. And the evidence that they've shipped Iran components for their WMD and missile programs is all an old wive's tale.

And just because North Korea is so cash-strapped that they sell anything they can get their hands on, doesn't mean they'll offload this valuable and coveted new technology to the first person to flash valuta at them. Besides, it's none of our business.

America is perfectly safe. In fact, nothing has changed technologically or geopolitically since about 1939, so there is no need to take account of any changes when formulating our foreign policy. Anyone who tries to tell you differently is a sell-out Neo-Con, and thus instantly dismissable. He probably isn't real, either.

Please consider this a reopening of our earlier, sidetracked discussion on North Korea.

Parsi Patriots

We had a wonderful dinner tonight with some of our Iranian friends. My friend's mother and sister were in town, and we had a traditional Persian meal featuring saffron chicken and a pasta dish known in Farsi as "macaroni." I can only say that they improved on the dish, if not its name. The dinner conversation was a swirling mix of Farsi, English and Russian, as my friend's Ukrainian wife Olya and her mother were also present. It was like some linguist logic puzzle -- Person A knows Russian and English; Person B knows only Russian; Person C knows Farsi and some English, etc. Just a wonderful, hospitable people.

One thing that always strikes me as I listen to them, is how much radical Islam has done to reawaken a sense of Iranian national identity. My friends view Islam as a foreign religion which was imposed on them by the Arabs. Rather than any sense of Muslim solidarity, they view Arabs as a culturally aggrandizing group which has robbed them of their national identity. I asked why the language is called Farsi, rather than Parsi, as it once was. "Because the Arabic language didn't have an 'P' sound, so they changed it." It will be interesting to see how this newfound patriotism affects things when the Mullahocracy finally crumbles.

As a side note, I never know quite how to respond when they half-seriously joke, "America needs to knock off the Iranian government next." If my buddies are representative of the new generation in Iran, we'll never need to.

When I Become Emperor...

Now that we're supposedly an Empire, we'll need an Emperor. I'm thinking of applying for the job. Here are a few things I'll implement immediately:

1. A total ban on commercials for hemorrhoidal ointments, laxatives and feminine hygiene products during the dinner hour.

2. Vocal cord removal for anyone who has ever been a Mousketeer.

3. The deportation of Celine Dion back to Canada.

4. Anyone who complains about how unjust, unenlightened, mean-spirited or corrupt the United States are will be sent to live in the 3rd-World paradise of their choice.

5. Michael Moore, Alec Badwin and Al Franken will all be sent to the salt mines. If there are no active salt mines in North America, one will be custom built for their use. Imperial power is a heady thing.

How about you? What's first on the list if they tap you for the Big Chair?

Know Nothings...

Two-thirds of registered voters in America can't name even one of the nine Democratic candidates for president, according to a recent poll. Does this say more about the sad state of the Democratic field, or the sad state of the American electorate?

Labored Movement

For something to be termed a 'movement', it almost seems like it should have to be going somewhere. The only direction Labor is moving these days is straight down. Down from an estimated 35% of the workforce in the 50's, to 20% in 1983, to 13.2% today...

Other than coercive closed-shop laws, sympathetic Democratic machine politics, and general thuggery, the best friend Big Labor has had over the years is the church. More specifically, mainline Protestantism and the Catholics.

The lovely and talented K-Lo, from NRO, has put together an in-depth look at the erosion of this relationship entitled Keeping Faith With Labor. The average citizen has little clue how radical the social policies of the labor leaders have become as they make common cause with their allies on the Left (social liberalism is the price of admission to the table.)

Thankfully, reading K-Lo's report, it seems that some in the church are starting to question the value of these long-standing ties. Another road marker on the path to union decline. Happy Labor Day!

The Russian Front of the Fight for Life

Abortion is absolutely rampant in Eastern Europe -- for example, WHO estimates Ukraine's rate is the highest in the world, with a per woman average of 6.

After Abortion blog links to an encouraging article about a possible shift in Russia on the issue of abortion. The Duma recently limited access to late-term abortions, which would not have been thinkable even a few years ago.

This shift is still in its infancy, but the mere fact that the morality of abortion is even being discussed is a great sign. As in America, the real hope for cultural renewal is in the strengthening of the Church. Happily, the Evangelical presence in Ukraine is doubling roughly every eight years. If God wills for this to continue, it will be glorious to watch Christ transform culture as He transforms lives. . .

Fighting the Good Fight

The Pro-Life movement, like much of the conservative coalition, has matured with age. Rather than expending vast political capital on symbolic frontal assaults in the form of Constitutional amendments, it's wisely adopted the tactics of its foe -- incrementalism and a winning over of the American people. A poll last year showed a 12-point shift in the Pro-life direction -- from 33% support in 1992 to 45% today. Sixty percent think that abortion should be banned except in cases of rape, incest or life of the mother.

This is vital, because a law that is totally out of synch with the people will prove unenforcable. At the same time, the legal battle itself is also crucial. Life News has a heartening list of Pro-life victories at the state level. Conservative purists and ideologues are always looking for politics to be simple and the fights decisive and clean, and they drop out when they realize that politics doesn't work that way. The real heroes are the conservative realists who stick it out and win the small victories. Because any progress that's going to be made against abortion will likely be incremental and hard-won.

All Islamic Extremists Want is Peace -- A Piece of Germany, and a Giant Piece of Israel

Front Page Mag, led by the madcap David Horowitz, has posted some hard truths about modern Islam. While openly partisan, they do make a body think.

First up is Islam Uber Alles -- a look at the Islamist bid for political influence in Europe. At a time when they're already talking openly of 'Eurabia', this is a sobering read. Given the increasing political power of Europe's restive Muslim population, it's no wonder that many in Europe would be happy if Israel, the region's only democracy besides Turkey, would just curl up and die.

Speaking of which. . . Horowitz, with his usual subtlety, has penned a polemic entitled, Horowitz's Notepad: Why Israel Is The Victim And The Arabs Are The Indefensible Aggressors In the Middle East. While possessing all the nuance of your average cudgel, it presents a side of things not often heard in the mainstream media.

Last up is a photo essay that explores just what is meant when the Palestinian Liberation Organization talks about a 'liberated' Palestine. Perhaps some have come to a tacit acceptance of Israel's existence, but it's difficult to pretend that this is a ubiquitous opinion.

Don't Vote for the Lesser Evil -- Stalin in '27!

On both sides of the Iron Curtain, the Left has never admitted to the monstrousness of Communism. Atrocities are dropped into the memory hole as quickly as they come to light -- Recently, Castro was playing host to Steven Spielberg seeming moments after sentencing a passel of political dissidents to lengthy prison terms.

After WWII, the Germans went through a period of national self-reflection and purging. The guilty were punished for their murders, the truth was exposed for all to see, and the nation made a decisive break with Fascism.

Neither the former Soviet states nor the Western Left has done any such thing. A fuzzy nostalgia reigns in the old USSR, and few people I meet have any notion of what really happend -- even basics the average History Channel viewer takes for granted. Meanwhile, back in the West, the tired moral equivalency line continues, with the US played up as the instigator of most of the problems we had with the Communists.

In a sane world, it would be considered just as hideous and sickening to wear a CCCP or Che t-shirt as one with Nazi symbols. Both were equally twisted and evil. Instead, Communist kitsch is almost ubiquitous in many places.

FoxNews has an encouraging article about a memorial being planned for the victims of Communism. It's about time. It seems to be easy for the Left to forget millions of unmarked graves in far away lands. Hopefully a monument standing in the middle of our nation's capital will be harder to ignore.

One Cheer for the Gov-inator

An enjoyable newscycle for those savoring Gray Davis's slow trundle to the guillotine. This has to be the worst day in his long political life as Ah-nold unexpectedly jumps into the race; Darrell Issa reduces the number of Rs splitting the conservative vote by bailing out; and Davis's own Lieutenant Governor breaks ranks and dogpiles on him.

The news that Schwartzenegger was running admittedly caused one or two of the cockles in my heart to increase slightly in temperature. He's rich and he's garnering millions of dollars in earned media -- wonk-speak for free press exposure. Given the decade-long disintegration of the Cali GOP (thanks to unrestricted immigration, intra-party rifts and general fecklessness) it's hard not to feel cheered at the prospect of a major celebrity lending his popularity to the cause.

Until one looks closely. I've somewhat dismissed allegations of liberalism in the past, because they seemed to all originate in the sleaze machine known as the Davis campaign, and particularly Garry South. But the American Spectator has this to say: "He has told the press he is 'very liberal' about social programs, supports abortion and homosexual adoption, and wants 'sensible gun controls.'

There are honorable people who believe in such things. They're called Democrats.

Politics is the art of the possible. We have to guard against puristically nominating candidates who are ideologically perfect yet electorally leperous. At the same time, it does no good to go to the opposite extreme of choosing a marquee name whose only recommendations are his name recognition and high 'personals.'

Here's hoping that the GOP will pick an actual Republican, rather than an actor who sees the party as a convenient tool to be used. As the Spectator mentions, having a liberal Republican as governor would insulate the Dems from voter backlash at having another 4 years of Democratic rule, while at the same time giving them someone who will follow their lead.

Pessimistic Paleos Propositional Penury Presumably Poses Profound Political Problem

North Korea is moving inexorably closer to acquiring nukes. Given the fact that the geriatric Stalinists running the country would sell grandmothers if there were a market for them, mainstream conservatives are seriously examining the options with which we can halt their impending nuke production. (Mainstream Cons being many of the 47.87% of the electorate that voted for Bush, as opposed to the Paleos, which comprised the 0.43% voting for Buchanan, a number which shrinks further when we exclude the NY retirees in West Palm...)

An intriguing article in OpinionJournal lays out a scenario in which we could possibly neuter Kim's regime while at the same time sparing Seoul the hell of 11,000 dug-in field pieces demolishing the city.

Agree or disagree, the "Neos" (a term constantly misused by Paleos) at least have the stones to address the issue head-on. Left unmolested, Kim's mad scientists will have nukes in the near-term. They will sell them. The Paleos focus on critiquing the President's foreign policy -- they always point out the pitfalls and problems with his decisions. But I rarely see them posting a positive vision of their own. So, step up... How do you Paleos hope to prevent this production and sale of nukes by North Korea? If you want to lead, you should have some idea of where to take the rest of us.

Note- This is not a mean-spirited attack on Paleos. Some of my best friends are Paleos, as the saying goes. It is an invitation to dialogue.

The Gorbachev of Iran?

Ahmad Sahdri has an interesting editorial in The Iranian today. He calls on self-styled reformist President Khatami in Iran to actually DO something to earn the title of reformer. The man is already on his second term, and has accomplished basically nothing.

I've said for a couple of years now that I think Khatami will go down in history as the Gorbachev of Iran -- a transitional figure that presides over the beginning of the end of the system he represents.

Despite the hagiographical accolades that Gorby receives, the truth is he never set out to do what he eventually "accomplished." He hoped to open the door enough to revive a moribund economy and derail the dread SDI system. But as he told Time Magazine twice in one interview, "I am a Communist." Over time people lost faith in the system, and in the one trying to preserve it, and he went down.

Khatami will be similarly transitional. Unlike Gorby, he's failed to achieve anything noteworthy at all. But he also seeks to make modifications in the existing system, rather than dismantling it. After 6 years of talk, the people have lost faith in both the system, and his words. The talk among the activistst is no longer about reducing the power of the Guardian Council or allowing freer press reportage, but rather of overthrowing the Mullahcracy.

Khatami has 2 years remaining. There seems little prospect of him pushing for true reform. Sadly, this probably represents the last hope for a peaceful transition of power in Iran. Instead the people will rise up and tear down the mullahs, as they did to the Party elite in the former Soviet Union. This will be no Velvet Revolution, however. The regime has already shown its willingness to use hired foreign thugs to put down protesters.

Khatami is the Gorbachev of Iran. Who the Yeltsin will be is still undetermined. Given that alcohol is illegal, at least he'll be sober more often than Boris was.

At the Races...

A very interesting poll for you political junkies. Exempting the data for 6/03, because it's skewed by the inclusion of Hillary, there are some considerable shifts in the opinions of likely Democratic voters.

First was Lieberman's 16 point drop, which shows how unpalatable a 'moderate' is to the Democratic base this cycle. Their drift leftward isn't just anecdotal. They've moved pretty decisively away from the closest thing to a centrist in the race.

Gephardt (or Gebhard if you're Barbra Streisand) dropped 9 points, which nearly cuts his support level in half. This is due both to his lackluster fundraising and campaigning, and the loss of a lot of soft support he'd gained simply through name-recognition. Some of Lieberman's erosion can be attributed to the latter cause as well, but not nearly all of it.

The cheeriest element of the data was the growth in the None, Other, Wouldn't Vote, and No Opinion categories. This jumped from a total of 16% in April to 38% now. For those uninitiated in the intricacies of opinion polls, this is what is known in sociological circles as a bad thing.

A side note-

I was never that shocked by Barbra's horrendous spelling. I always figured that if the best her parents could muster was a phonetic spelling of her name approaching that of a 7-year-old, how could we expect her to do any better?

Bathroom Humor

I spent Saturday with my Iranian buddies. After a couple of beers it was time to head for the WC. One of my pals asked me if I was going to the Ayatollah Khameni's office. I blinked several times, trying to figure out how to answer something like that.

It turns out, young people in Iran refer to the bathroom either as Rafsanjani's or the Ayatollah's office. I think that was one of the most hopeful things I've heard in a long time.

Be Careful What You Wish For...

From the Washington Times:

"Stopping the U.S. Navy from conducting live-fire bombing exercises on the tiny Puerto Rican island of Vieques was a hot cause for leftist activists, Hollywood stars and Democrats in Congress in 2001.

But the victory in the Battle of Vieques came at a steep price to the people of Puerto Rico and created a largely unforeseen consequence, the closing of Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, the island's largest employer.

(Congressman) Cunningham said he would oppose any aid package to make up for Roosevelt Roads. "They don't want us there. They had a chance to become a state and declined. They don't pay taxes."

Mr. Inhofe said it's now too late to start worrying about the "natural outcome" of the Vieques protests.

"That's their problem," Mr. Inhofe said. "The time for them to be concerned about that was when they were kicking us off our range. I told them this would happen."

My thoughts on the matter:

Heh. Hehe. Heheheheheheheheheh...

Did Bush Add Icing to the Yellowcake?

I'm still reading up on the Nigerian Yellowcake sitch, and those infamous "sixteen words."

Aside from the Drunkness Monster and Sharon from Len (whose new album can be sampled here) columnist Mark Steyn is the only Canadian around worth listening to. His latest column points up that the Brits were the first to make the allegations, and that they'd gotten the information from the French to begin with (France oversees Niger's uranium operations.) He says it seems commonsensical to trust people with much stronger and long-established ties to the region. Especially given the record of failure the CIA Humint types have amassed in recent years. The Brits, incidentally, stand by their position.

OpinionJournal raises the very good point that the National Intelligence Estimate states essentially what Bush did in his speech. This is a consensus document put out by the Intel community. Last October's estimate said this:

"a foreign government service reported that as of early 2001 Niger planned to send several tons of 'pure uranium' (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Niger and Iraq reportedly were still working out arrangements for this deal, which could be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake. We do not know the status of this arrangement."

If the evidence is as clear as it seems, I'm surprised Rove and Co have let themselves be wrong-footed on this issue as badly as they have.

Cary Grant and World War IV

One historian recently posited that the Cold War was in fact a form of WW III, and that we're presently engaged in World War IV -- a struggle with militant Islam that stretches beyond even the bounds of the second installment in the World War series.

I caught Cary Grant this evening in the 1943 classic, Destination: Tokyo. (A man who appreciated clothes and moisturizer before they even had a snappy label for such people.) At one point in the movie he's explaining to the men the WHY of the war, and he closes by saying,

"So as I see it, that --- got started down the road to putting a knife in Mike's back about 20 years ago. There are a lot of Mikes dying right now. And a lot more will die until we put an end to a system that puts daggers in the hands of 5-year-old children."

I couldn't help but think of the Palestinians dressing their babies like suicide bombers and photographing them. Effecting regime change, and ultimately, cultural change in the Middle East is going to be an massively long and difficult process. But what was true in 1943 is still true today. A lot more people will die until we put an end to a system that fetishizes death.

It's a shame the flamboyantly asinine stars of modern Hollywood have neither the class nor the moral clarity of Cary Grant.

Note- I deleted an offensive term that refers to Japanese people from the quote. Apologies to those who read it.

"Bright" or "Cavefish"?

Although I'm about a week behind the power-curve, I have to comment on the "Bright" discussion. As most of you know, it's the proposal by British atheist Richard Dawkins to coin a term to describe non-supernaturalists. His suggestion is that they call themselves Brights.

I personally can't think of a less appropos term. Here's what Jesus had to say on the subject:

"This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light...." John 3:19-21

Those who reject God aren't bright, the Bible says they live in darkness. In other locations it calls them blind. I gave some thought to it, and came up with a better term: Cavefish. This is an animal that lives in total darkness and is utterly blind. While I refuse to call them Brights, I will happily agree to Cavefish, should they acquiesce.

Pro-Life Progress...

The Washington Times features welcome news today -- The beliefs of a majority of American women would now come under the rubric of 'pro-life.' Not only is this a great morale boost for those who support the right to life, but it deepens the hypocrisy of the feminists in their self-appointed role as spokespersons for all American women. As if having ovaries consigned one to a monolith whose will could only be channeled by the handful of aging bluestockings at NOW.

The shift toward a pro-life majority has been gradual but steady. While there are of course problems in the movement, (including a few despicable acts of violence) I think overall it serves as an excellent model of what Christian social action should look like. There are a few reasons for this:

1. It preserves the prophetic role of the church.

Rather than wedding the name of Christ to a specific political party or a picayune and disputable matter such as tax rates, it deals with the weightiest of moral issues -- the right to life.

2. It focuses on cultural change rather than mere political power.

While for a time the movement concentrated overly on accumulating political clout, the shift in the past decade or so toward changing the hearts and minds of the people is a very healthy one. The idea of making abortion not merely illegal, but rather unthinkable, is wise. It's also consonate with the Biblical principle of focusing on the heart rather than the outward behavior. Christ is a transformer of culture -- whether the issue be slavery, the chattle state of women, or the murder of the unborn. The movement seems to have grasped that.

3. It is ecumenical in a healthy sense.

The movement is a collaboration of Evangelicals, RCs and Eastern Orthodox. Without watering-down their doctrinal differences, the Church as a whole is working to preserve the life of the unborn. This type of unity strengthens the impact of their efforts. The force of the Church's prophetic voice in our culture is amplified when it speaks in unison.

There is still a great distance to cover. But at a time when many seem to believe that an inexorable entropic force is propelling our society toward dissolution, it's encouraging to see that the data can go in the other direction. With faith, hope and charity, the Church can still have an impact.

Nader in 2004?

I just noticed that the Greens have picked Milwaukee for their 2004 convention. This makes sense in light of what Alice Cooper told Wayne and Garth, "Did you know that Milwaukee is the only American city to elect two Socialist mayors?" I also liked the deep insight of the Green's national political coordinator -- "It's an urban city." One assumes this is in contrast to rural cities.

Nader is making noises about seeking the nomination again. I have mixed feelings about this. If I thought the election were going to be a close one, I'd be ecstatic. But if Bush romps the way many are expecting, then Nader will simply bring a lot of people to the polls who might otherwise have stayed away in disgust. And those people, while voting Green nationally, will tend to throw the lever for Democrats in down-ballot races. Green votes were key in the election of two Dem senators in the last election, after all.

That said, the idea of the Dem nominee fighting the 200 million dollar man AND independent bids by Nader and Sharpton does give one a rosy feeling inside.

UPDATE- I just came across a Dick Morris column for FrontPage Magazine. In his view, an independent bid is the best explanation for Sharpton's candidacy. This is less about the Democratic Party, in Morris's view, and more about taking the mantle of leadership from Jesse Jackson. It's tough to decide who is more worthy to wear the crown of King Poverty Pimp.

Dangerously Disaffected Dems Dyspeptically Desire Doomed Dean

Here at Le Sabot, we compensate for any lack of insight or wisdom with alliteration. This condition stems from reading too many Hush-Hush transcripts in James Ellroy novels.

Today the Dems will have to release their fundraising for this reporting period. This is a red-letter day for politics junkies. Will Lieberman better his feeble showing from last time? Will Edwards come anywhere close to the previous 7.4 million he raised, or has he already exhausted the Ambulance Chasing Caucus?

Howard Dean gave us a preview yesterday, and it's very interesting. The word is that he's raised around 6 million dollars. This comes on the heels of his 44% showing in the MoveOn primary. These together should cement his position as a legitimate threat to "Hair"-apparent Kerry (for a look at his enormous mop, check here.) It looks more and more like the D's may elect a real liberal.

The authentic is always pricier than the imitation, and the cost of a real liberal is electability.

Terrorists at the Border?

Human Events has a good article about Middle Eastern infiltration and immigration through Mexico. Considering that we're now tightening our border with Canada in fear of terrorism, isn't it time to get serious about the southern stretch as well? Homeland Defense is concerned about 'dirty bombs' coming in, yet every day countless people walk into our country unmolested from Mexico.

For years Washington has winked at illegal immigration. The Left rhapsodizes about diversity and sees every newcomer as a future voter. On the right you have the WSJ branch of the Republicans which sees each one as a potential low-caste worker.

Consequently, half of the California prison population is made up of illegals. Worse, in the long-term, are the balkanized pockets of immigrants who feel no loyalty to their new country, who seemingly feel no need to learn the language, and who don't share the American values of self-reliance and limited government. They come from a corrupt oligarchy where the key to survival is to live near Mexico City, the source of all blessings, because the government is the economic heart of the country. (Lest anyone think I'm only speaking of Mexican immigrants, the last data I had for Cambodian arrivals plotted the percentage receiving federal assistance at 48%)

Culture is an organism. It evolves and grows slowly, over centuries. It NEEDS immigration and cultural exchange. But this needs to be done at a rate that allows newcomers to learn the values of the receiving country. Limited government and political liberty are not guaranteed rights from God. Rather, they are among the most rare of blessings, historically speaking. Flooding the country with endless millions of unskilled workers in a post-industrial era isn't altruism, it's insanity.

These facts were never enough to make Washington serious about illegal immigration. One hopes that perhaps the threat of terrorism may, but I'm not holding my breath.

Palestinian Death Cult

Opinion Journal features a beautifully written essay by Cynthia Ozick on the Palestinian situation. Not only is it a good primer for anyone unaware of the history underlying the conflict (for example that this has only been the "historic homeland" of the Arabs since the 17th Century) it's also a good summary analysis of their culture as a whole. And the writing sings. Here's a good selection:

"Confronted by this orgiastic deluge of fanaticism and death, there are some who would apply the term psychopathological. But it is metaphysics, not Freud, that is at stake: the life force traduced, cultism raised to a sinister spiritualism--not because the "martyrs" are said to earn paradise, but because extraordinary transformations of humane understanding are hounded into being. A Palestinian ethos of figment and fantasy has successfully infiltrated the West, particularly among intellectuals, who are always seduced by novelty. We live now with an anti-history wherein cause and effect are reversed, protection against attack is equated with the brutality of attack, existential issues are demoted or ignored--"cycle of violence" obfuscations all zealously embraced by the State Department and the European Union.

The Road Map permits no contradiction to the Palestinians' emerging nationhood. But if it is teachings and usages that characterize a nation, then what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches out of Bethlehem to be born?"

Leftists Don't Hate Injustice -- They Hate America

Leftists don't hate aspects of America, they hate America.

They freely attack the UN when it's supporting an American proposal such as Iraqi sanctions. And then hold it up as the sine qua non of international legitimacy when it opposes us.

They rail against America for backing out of the Kyoto treaty, but say nothing about China and India's exemptions from the terms of the treaty. During the lead up to Gulf War II, environmentalists refused to speak out on Saddam's deliberate cause of the worst environmental disaster the region has ever seen--the genocidal draining of the southern salt marshes in Iraq. Defending the environment is only fun when you're opposing the United States.

Now there's wailing and gnashing of teeth because we're installing p-rn filters in libraries. One man fluttered on a blog I read that this might herald a return to male patriarchy and a loss of our free speech rights. Internet filters. In libraries. Sure it will.

Meanwhile, the EU is seriously considering outlawing any media that's guilty of "sexual stereotyping." In other words, they will ban your book, movie or advert if it doesn't meet a Brussels bureaucrat's standards of "respect" for all genders. Yeah, that sounds like free speech.

Don't hold your breath waiting for a hue and cry from the so-called defenders of civil liberties. They don't really hate government usurpation. They hate America.

L'Etat -- C'est Sandra!

One of the great blessings of the American system has always been that (at least in theory) we are a nation ruled by laws rather than by men. We are not a true democracy, subject to the whims of mobs or demagogues. We are not a monarchist state where the law is a creature of the King. We're a Constitutional Republic, and EVERYONE is bound to obey the law.

Usually when we speak of the rule of law, we're using it in the context of the Executive or the Legislature. The president and Congress are bound to obey the Constitution while performing their duties. But what about the Judiciary?

Here the system is breaking down. As my buddy John Rabe has pointed out, Sandy Day's decision-making process in the Michigan case was little less arbitrary than the Great Carnac's. When the Judiciary abandons its role of interpreting the law, and decides instead to legislate it from the bench, the rule of law breaks down. The Constitution ceases to be the master, and instead becomes the servant of a small, black-robed group of unelected officials.

It's especially dire when Supreme Court justices do this. A reckless president can be turned out after 4 years. A Supreme is a Supreme for life.

(Before anyone wastes their time going off on an anti-Bush screed about the 2000 election and judicial activism, save your fingers the trouble. The disputed ballots have been counted and recounted, and have validated his election. Those grapes are no longer just sour, they've turned to vinegar.)

Diverse Discrimination

As if we needed another example of the illiberalism of modern liberalism, we were treated yesterday to the spectacle of supposed liberals calling for college applicants to be vetted by their skin color, while conservatives argued for a color-blind approach to college admissions.

The affirmation of diversity as a good-in-itself is a disturbing change. The court grounded its logic not in traditional "reversing the effects of past discrimination" reasoning, but instead in the nebulous foundation of "diversity." The difference is huge. The legacy of racism argument has a certain shelf-life. You simply can't trot it out indefinitely. But diversity never ends. And the more tribal our country becomes, the more groups will be clamoring for this special leg-up.

It's especially insidious, because it opens the door to other sorts of discrimination in the name of diversity. If a historical grievance is no longer needed, and diversity itself is a goal, then political persuasion, sexuality, handicap, and virtually anything else that post-modern men (and womyn) use to define and segment themselves from one another can be lobbied for as a reason to receive special recognition. After all, it serves the overarching goal of diversity.

Dispatch from an Alternate Reality

Continuing our theme of the liberal drift away from electibility and sanity, here's Donald Lambro's coverage of the recent leftist convention at the Omni Shoreland. More than 1,000 activists from every balkanized tribe of the Left -- environmentalists, feminists, gays, labor activists and the like -- were represented at one of the largest such gatherings in 20 years. An impressive show of force, and another gravitational tug of the Dems in a sinister (in both the Latin and English senses of the word) direction.

For the red-stater who rarely strays into the urban blue-state jungles, Front Page Magazine (put together by the uber-cool David Horowitz) has a virtual menagerie of interesting Leftists here. I especially liked the peace protester carrying a Josef Stalin sign. You know, Josef Stalin, the Russian peace activist who starved seven million Ukrainians and signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler.

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On an unrelated note, my son Calvin seems poised to be as brilliant as his namesake. Today as my wife was nursing him he started humming a hymn. I was impressed both with the doctrinal content of the song, as well as how appropos it was for his position -- Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.

The Dems' Long, Dark Tea-time of the Soul

I've watched the Democratic base's flirtation with bitter madness with a great deal of passionate ambivalence.

On the one hand, it's disturbing, because it's never a good thing for 15% of the country to basically declare war on the functions of government and retreat into a cult-like and insular denial of reality. We live in a two-party Republic, and it's unhealthy for one-half of this system to take leave of its senses.

On the other hand I've felt a surge of what the Russians call zloradstvo. It can basically be defined as the happiness one feels watching an enemy be run over by Cossacks. Well, something close to that, anyway. The spectacle of Democrats drifting farther and farther out into Left field, to the point where the borderguard stations for the Middle Ground can hardly be sighted, is a happy one. Their venomous and irrational hatred of Bush will eventually alienate everyone except themselves. And NPR has never won an election by itself.

For a very good analysis of this phenomenon, check out "Democrats Go Off the Cliff" by David Brooks.

Here's a section that summarizes it well:

"It's mystifying. Fury rarely wins elections. Rage rarely appeals to suburban moderates. And there is a mountain of evidence that the Democrats are now racing away from swing voters, who do not hate George Bush, and who, despite their qualms about the economy and certain policies, do not feel that the republic is being raped by vile and illegitimate marauders. The Democrats, indeed, look like they're turning into a domestic version of the Palestinians--a group so enraged at their perceived oppressors, and so caught up in their own victimization, that they behave in ways that are patently not in their self-interest, and that are almost guaranteed to perpetuate their suffering."

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Another interesting piece is Kenneth Pollack's take on the WMD controversy. It's significant not so much for what it says, as for who is saying it and where. He's a former Clinton NSC guy, and it's published by the closest thing the Dems have to a Heritage Foundation -- the Brookings Institution.

Demographics, hormones, and squirrel droppings...

One aspect of the terrorist problem that I think gets short shrift is the demographics of the region. We hear a lot about "root problems" such as poverty, ignorance and American support of Israeli democracy. I've yet to hear a commentator factor in the population statistics. In the States, whenever a population boomlet reaches adolescence, it's just a given that crime statistics will rise. According to BoJ stats I found here, people under 18 are about 3X more likely to commit a violent crime than one over 25. For property crime the rate is about 5X more likely.

The craziness of the Middle East is a little more comprehensible in this light. First, you have the genuine root problems of ignorance, poverty and repression. Then you have a population inflamed by a homicidal and epically vicious "religion of peace." Then you have a region with a higher percentage of teens than the audience at a Freddie Prinze movie. In Iran about half of the population is under 18. In Gaza it rises to 57%. No wonder everyone seems to be nuttier than squirrel droppings -- hordes of teenagers jacked up on hormones and intoxicated with their own immortality and righteousness. It's like an anti-globalist rally with AK-47s.

Birth rates are trending downward in most of the world. The Arabs simply haven't gotten the memo yet. Let's hope they do soon...

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Staying with our topic, National Review Online demonstrates once again why it's the best online news 'zine around. Check out The Blood of Iranians for an update on the student protests in Tehran. It's written by one of the protesters. His courage is humbling. The article exposes the true viciousness of the regime. Hopefully State will stop the ridiculous policies of engagement and appeasement, and start backing these student's desire to be free of the mullahocracy. You can't reason with people who sodomize protesters with daggers. You can only fight them. And that's just the way it is in the Middle East.

And that's just the way it is in the Middle East

President Bush takes a lot of flack over his ostensible lack of intellectual curiousity. In a technocratic age that fetishizes degrees and academic attainment, Bush seems a bit primitive.

I'm certainly not opposed to education. True learning makes us liberal in the best of senses. But certain fields have become so inbred and provincially-minded they make Arkansas seem cosmopolitan. Women's and the various Ethnic Studies fields are of course the most obvious examples -- the work coming from them written in hermetic in-group language and bearing little resemblance to the world outside. Middle Eastern studies suffers from the same problem. It's strongly pro-Arabist and so fixated on imperialism and victimology that everything is filtered through this paradigm.

The foreign policy types at Foggy Bottom have their opinions formed by these Arabists, and suffer from two other fatal weaknesses -- a positive view of human nature and a thoroughgoing moral relativism. Like Carter, most of them seem to believe that the rest of the world is motivated by the same humanitarian and profit motivations that we are. People are basically reasonable and good, so if you can just TALK with them, things can be worked out. Sting wrote the theme song for this type of thinking with his "Russians Love Their Children Too."

Bush, for all his lack of sophistication, has a much more worldly-wise viewpoint than these alleged experts. He said this on Sunday: " "It is clear that the free world, those who love freedom and peace, must deal harshly with Hamas and the killers. And that's just the way it is in the Middle East..."

He recognizes that religion isn't just a mask for economic or political impulses. He understands that the culture of the Middle East truly is different than ours. Fanatics with a medieval mindset don't see concessions made to them to be an incentive to compromise, but rather a reason to push for further concessions. The relativists at the State Department can't understand the absolutist mindset. Bush does.

Think You Can't Get a Date? Try Being a Chinaman.

Ukraine has a declining population, and whenever I go out with my four boys we're instantly objects of curiousity. Today I tried to imagine how much stranger they would seem in China, given her One Child Policy.

And for the first time I realized what a fascinating sociological experiment this policy really is. Obviously much of it is a moral atrocity, but setting that aside a moment, on another level it's morbidly interesting. First you take a society which has evolved with glacial slowness over millenia. Then subject it to a World War followed by a Revolution. Add in forced urbanization and industrialization of a formerly agricultural society.

Further, as an agricultural society it's always had large families that live in close geographic proximity. Extended family has been very important.

In only a couple of decades they have, by fiat, gone to a one child per couple rule. In other words, they now have a society without uncles, without aunts, without cousins, nephews or nieces. Civilizations are organic entities. It'll be interesting to see how this experiment ultimately shocks the system, and what unintended consequences eventually result.

Social engineering is almost always doomed to failure, because it flies so radically in the face of human nature. The failure is only magnified when attempted on such a grand scale. China of all places should know this, since it was Mao's push for large families during the Cultural Revolution that helped overpopulate them.

Some effects are already apparent-- the pampered "Imperial Children" that result from being the only child in increasingly wealthy families. There's also the small matter of 119 male children being born for every 100 females, which will make for some lonely guys come prom night. But things get REALLY hairy in about 40 years, when about 45% of their population (about 400 million people by then) will be over 60 years of age. Try keeping your social security system in the black then.

Which means that China will end up being a pioneer not only in ingenious means of eliminating inconvenient children, but will use this same prowess in the culling of excess retirees. One wonders what the Chinese characters for "Hemlock Society" and "Officially mandated assisted-suicide" will look like...

A well-regulated militia?

Those who oppose the individual ownership of firearms often appeal to the introductory clause of the 2nd Amendment in order to make their case. The amendment reads:

"A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

In their view, the amendment only protects a state's right to form an organized National Guard. In other words, it's an outworking of federalism allowing states their own military formations. Thus, it has no bearing on individual firearm ownership, and there is hence no constitutional difficulty in banning such weapons. (This is of course, during those rare moments when they actually concern themselves with the constitutionality of a given course of action they've chosen.)

The key word in all of this, of course, is "militia." Does it EXCLUSIVELY mean an organized national guard?

Not if we look at the US Code, the law of our land. It took me awhile to find it, but here's the definition given in TITLE 10; Subtitle A; PART I; CHAPTER 13; Sec. 311:

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"The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

(b) The classes of the militia are -

(1)the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia
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Every able-bodied male is a member of this militia. This presupposes armament, as an unarmed militia is an oxymoron. Both organized and unorganized militias come under the 2nd Amendment.

I had lunch yesterday with

I had lunch yesterday with a young Iranian student. He studies computers at a university here in Kiev. He embodies what many observers of Iran say about the new generation -- he's young, secular, pro-American and couldn't give a fig about the Revolution. He also speaks near-perfect English.

We had a good time discussing the political landscape in Iran these days (for an overview, check here, though the idea that Khatami is anything more than a Tehranian Gorbachev is silly to me.) Then he brought up the inevitable -- the war in Iraq.

I hedged a bit, not wanting to spoil a good lunch. But he turned out to be pretty vehemently pro-war and pro-Bush. I'd heard of pro-American rallies by students in the post-9/11 era, but it was fascinating to actually meet one in the flesh. After fending off attacks about the war all year from our ostensible Ukranian allies, it was a nice twist to find a like mind in such an unlikely place.

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I saw the perfect motto for Postmodernism while I was in Charles de Gaulle Airport. I think it was a Dior ad -- I Sense, Therefore I Am.

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Very belatedly, I want to acknowledge one of my favorite fellow bloggers. You'll notice a newly-minted The Desolation Angels link on my sidebar. Use it. Sarah is my favorite Jones since Alyssa Jones in the New Jersey Chronicles. Anyone who likes Elvis Costello and reads William Gibson and Foucault earns a high place in my pantheon of blogdom.

Faux Amis -- Eric Rudolph and South Korea

Eric Rudolph was quoted by as saying recently that after 5 years away from women, "even the bears started to look good." I imagine that after a few decades of prison they'll look even more attractive. Especially when compared to his 350-pound, hairy-backed cellmate, Tiny. Considering the damage that he's done both to conservatism and the Church, I can't muster up too many crocodile tears.

South Korea also falls under our heading of false friends today. I have a great fondness for the country--my adopted sister is Korean, and it has one of the largest populations of Presbyterians on the planet. Nevertheless, when it comes to matters military and political, they've increasingly "gone wobbly", to crib a line from Dame Thatcher. Aside from the annoying protests that ingrates in that country keep organizing against the American troops (who are functioning as living speedbumps vis-a-vis North Korea), the government itself is undercutting us.

As they've moved increasingly into a dysfunctional appeasing relationship with the North, their interests have begun to diverge from ours. Any moves we make to pressure the North is weakened by their desire to buy friendship with Treasure Troll-cum-Dictator-for-Life Kim.

For a VERY eye-opening look into the South Korean approach, check out A Defector's Story. It details a weapon scientist's defection first from North Korea, and then from the South as he sought to get out the truth about the North's weapons programs. He even writes under a nom de plume out of fear of reprisal from SOUTH Korea's Intel services...

Emasculated Europeans and Empowered Bovines

John Derbyshire's article on the multitudinous stupidities of gun control makes for sober reading. Just as no free society has ever taxed itself to prosperity, likewise no free society has ever disarmed itself to public safety and order. Yet gun control, like so many credal beliefs of the Left, seems impervious to emprirical or rational argumentation. It is instead an article of faith. A blind, Kantian sort of faith totally disconnected from the world around it.

"It is now very difficult for ordinary British citizens legally to acquire a gun of any kind. It is well-nigh impossible in the case of handguns. The results of this gun-panic have been perfectly predictable: a rapid rise in gun crime, and stupendous levels of the kinds of crimes that gun ownership deters -- notably burglary."

I also liked this quip at the beginning:

"Heaven is a place with British government, American houses, French high culture, Japanese hygiene, Chinese cooks, and Italian opera, while Hell has Italian government, Japanese houses, American high culture, French hygiene, British cooks, and Chinese opera."

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Speaking of gun control, Dana Lyon's late-90's classic "Cows With Guns" now has a music video! Check out Shagrat to hear refrains like "We will fight for bovine freedom, and hold our large heads high/ We will run free with the buffalo, or die!" and "He read Che Guevara with great zeal/ A revolutionary veal... Cow Tse-tung!"

Somehow it doesn't translate well to print. You'll have to see the video.

Presidents are sometimes caught in

Presidents are sometimes caught in candid moments that tell us a great deal about them. Clinton's instantaneous shift from back-slapping and chuckles to teary-eyed remorse at the Ron Brown funeral was one of these. One of my favorite anecdotes about Reagan deals with the time he was warming up for a speech and didn't realize he was being overhead. I can't remember exactly, but he basically said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I have just signed a law declaring the Soviet Union illegal. The bombing will commence in five minutes." You had to love the guy.

On Tuesday, Egyptian television caught Bush unaware as he spoke very plainly to those at the Middle East peace talks. "No matter how difficult it is, you have my commitment that I will expend the energy and effort necessary to move the process forward." He was very clear in his demand that the Arab leaders cut off funding for terrorists, and lectured the Israelis about the need for a contiguous Palestinian state. All in all he came across as serious, dignified and engaged. Once again I'm thankful he's our president. A big victory for Bush was the absence of Arafat from the talks. For the first time, someone other than Arafat is being seen by the world as the spokesman for the Palestinian people. Given his addiction to terror and dissembling, this is a great leap forward for peace.