OH, BRAVE NEW WORLD.

Spectre of babies from the unborn (David Derbyshire, Telegraph.co.uk, 7/01/2003).

Women seeking fertility treatment could one day be offered donor eggs grown from the tissue of an aborted foetus, researchers said yesterday.

In an experiment that raises the prospect of babies with "unborn mothers", ovarian tissue was removed from seven dead foetuses and kept alive in a laboratory for four weeks.

The egg-producing follicles in the tissue continued to develop normally but did not reach the stage at which they released a healthy egg cell.

One of the scientists working on the experiment said the study could help solve the worldwide shortage of donor eggs for fertility treatment and medical research.

"You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings."

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DOOMED EITHER WAY

The Baathists' Blundering Guerrilla War (Gary Anderson, June 26, 2003, Washington Post)

If the Baathists had followed the classic insurgency doctrines preached by masters such as Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, they would have kept a low profile, spreading agitation and propaganda while the U.S. occupation forces waned in strength. They should have waited for a struggling, post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi central government to try to take control in the region before striking. Instead of a weak, fledgling democratic Iraqi regime, the Baathists are facing a seriously aroused U.S. liberation force still at the height of its power and competence.

In the classic first stage of an insurgency, the rebels build on public discontent to create local covert sanctuaries and muster their strength. They engage in hit-and-run attacks to show the population that they exist, but they try not to draw undue attention to their activities. The high-profile attacks on U.S. forces and Iraqi allies in recent weeks are more like the second stage of a classic insurgency, in which the guerrillas have established a base of public support and have covert sanctuaries among the general population. The Baathists have neither. They remain unpopular, a residual cancer, operating only in the region where they have some civilian support. And they have many enthusiastic enemies among the civilian population, backed up by American firepower that is increasingly in search of retribution. This is not the way to start a popular revolution.

Any successful revolution needs a popular cause. The Baathists want the Americans out of Iraq. But if there is a popular sentiment in Iraq that trumps a desire to see an eventual U.S. withdrawal, it is the desire of the vast majority of people to have seen the last of the Baath Party. Again, this is not a promising building block for a popular liberation front.

The structure of this essay is quite strange because he nboth counsels that the Ba'athists should be fighting their insurgency differently and explains why it would be doomed if they did.

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CULTURAL IDEALS

Where Hatred Trumps Bread: What does the Palestinian nation offer the world? (CYNTHIA OZICK, June 30, 2003, Wall Street Journal)

The salient attribute of any culture is originality and its legacies. Genius, no matter how rare, is a human universal. It sends into the world new perception and new experience, inspiring duplication: Out of Israel came monotheism, out of Greece philosophy, out of Arab civilization science and poetry, out of England the Magna Carta, out of France the Enlightenment. What has been the genius of Palestinian originality, what has been the contribution of the evolving culture of Palestinian sectarianism? On the international scene: airplane hijackings and the murder of American diplomats in the 1970s, Olympic slaughterings and shipboard murders in the 1980s. And toward the Jews of the Holy Land, beginning in the 1920s and continuing until this morning, terror, terror, terror, terror.

But the most ingeniously barbarous Palestinian societal invention, surpassing any other in imaginative novelty, is the recruiting of children to blow themselves up with the aim of destroying as many Jews as possible in the most crowded sites accessible. These are not so much acts of anti-history as they are, remarkably, instances of anti-instinct. The drive to live is inherent: The very mite crawling on this sheet as I write hastens to flee the point of my pen. The child who has been taught to die and to kill from kindergarten on, via song and slogan in praise of bloodletting, represents an inconceivable cultural ideal. And it is a cultural grotesquerie that Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a pediatrician entrusted by his vocation with the healing of children, is in fact a major recruiter of young suicide bombers. (When his wife was asked by a neighbor why her husband did not outfit his own teenage son in a bomber's vest, the good doctor instantly sent the boy abroad.)

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?

One would find Ms Ozick's anti-instinct argument more compelling if the West weren't murdering its own children at such a horrific pace. Forty million abortions after Roe v. Wade who are we to tell the Palestinians that they don't value their children sufficiently?

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WHICH CAME FIRST

LAW OR THE STATE?:NATURAL LAW AND THE RULE OF LAW (Joseph F.  Johnston, Jr., April 26, 2003, The Philadelphia Society National Meeting)

When America's founders adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they based their action on certain "self-evident" truths, specifically, that men are endowed by God with inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that governments are instituted to secure these rights.  From the very outset of the nation, therefore, its independence was based upon the tradition of natural law, which holds that there are objective rights of liberty and property, and that these rights in turn rest upon a higher moral law.  The natural law is in sharp contrast to the opposing theory of legal positivism, which asserts that law is merely the will of the sovereign.  In the real world of today, the will of the sovereign means the power of the state.  The difference between these views of law is critical: if there is no "higher law," then there is no conceptual basis for arguing that any human law is unjust.

We live in an age in which the public is understandably captivated by the achievements of science and technology.  Sometimes this attachment to science becomes excessive and results in attempts to apply scientific method to subjects that cannot be quantified or tested by the methods of experimental science.  One of these subjects is the law.  Ever since the late nineteenth century, a series of doctrines has appeared purporting to reduce law to an empirical or experimental discipline using, to the maximum extent possible, the methodology of science.  These efforts have proceeded under a number of labels, including legal positivism, sociological jurisprudence, legal realism and, more recently, "law and economics."  All of these variations are "positivist" in the sense that they tend to separate law from its moral sources.

In this cultural climate, natural law appears to many lawyers to be a throwback, an obsolete category that ought to be discarded altogether.  If confronted with the term "natural law," a practicing lawyer today is likely to say that there is no such thing, or that it is a religious notion that has no place in legal analysis.  On the other hand, if you mention "the rule of law," he will probably indicate that he knows what this refers to, that it is a good thing and that we ought to preserve it.  And yet many if not all of the basic principles that we usually include under the rubric "rule of law" can be derived directly or indirectly from natural law sources.  Today, unfortunately, the connection between natural law and the rule of law, which formerly was so close as to amount to virtual identity, is largely neglected by the law schools and the legal profession.

This is a great shame, because the defense of the rule of law becomes much more difficult when it is unhinged from its intellectual, historical and moral roots.  As Professor Ellis Sandoz has argued in a recent paper, under the rule of law "there is an appeal to a higher standard of law and justice than the merely mortal or, at the least, than the enacted law of merely contemporary rulers."

In the end this is very nearly all that the argument between conservatives on the one side and libertarians, the Left, atheists, etc. on the other comes down to: do our rights and responsibilities precede or are they created by the state? The Founders explicitly stated the former, which is what conservatism assumes, but this depends on a belief in God who sets absolutes that govern our behavior. Deny those absolutes, deny God, and you are left with only the State, are in fact a statist.

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IT'S ALL IN THE QUESTIONS

Six in 10 Americans Agree That Gay Sex Should Be Legal (Frank Newport, June 27, 2003, GALLUP NEWS SERVICE)

The Supreme Court decision is not a political one, of course, but there are other laws and proposed laws that are political -- including in particular those relating to gay civil unions and marriages.

An appeals court in Ontario, Canada recently changed the definition of marriage to include "two people" rather than a man and a woman, and there are indications that the Canadian government will pass laws legalizing same-sex marriage across Canada in future months.

Conservatives reacting to Thursday's Supreme Court decision have argued that it could lead to a higher probability of legal sanctioning of gay marriage or gay civil unions.

Our latest poll shows great ambivalence on the issue of gay civil unions that have "some of the legal rights of married couples," although the percentage of the public favoring such arrangements has increased over the last three years:

Would you favor or oppose a law that would allow homosexual couples to legally form civil unions, giving them some of the legal rights of married couples?

Favor 49%
Oppose 49%
No opinion 2%

Wow, could that question be any more wishy-washy? Given that one of the legal rights of the married is to engage in sexual congress and you've just gotten 60% of respondents saying they favor granting homosexuals that right it's hardly surprising that many favor some kind of civil sanction. The real question though is: Would you favor or oppose a law that would allow homosexual couples to marry, giving them all of the legal rights of married couples? Because the answer to that is likely still 60% "No" or higher (note that there's still a majority willing to say that homosexual behavior is immoral), this is still a good political issue for conservatives, as Bill Frist demonstrated by calling for a constitutional amendment defending marriage. It's especially useful because the Democratic presidential candidates can't afford politically to oppose gay marriage, which will show them to be extremists.

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ALANIS MORISSETTE ISN'T AMERICAN?

The final irony: 'Isn't it ironic?' You hear it all the time - and, most of the time, actually no, it isn't. Hypocritical, cynical, lazy, coincidental, more likely. But what is irony and why did pundits think it would die two years ago, after September 11? (Zoe Williams, June 28, 2003, The Guardian)

There are a few reasons why we think the Americans have no sense of irony. First, theirs is rather an optimistic culture, full of love of country and dewy-eyed self-belief and all the things that Europe's lost going through the war spindryer for the thousandth time. This is all faith-based - faith in God, faith in the goodness of humanity, etc - and irony can never coexist with faith, since the mere act of questioning causes the faith fairy to disappear. Second, they have a very giving register that, with a sense of irony, would be unsustainable (how can you wish a stranger a nice day with a straight face?). Third, because we think Canadian Alanis Morissette is American, and she proved some time ago, with her song Ironic, that she didn't know what irony meant (this is so ironic - first, because we think we're the more sophisticated and yet don't know the difference between America and Canada, second because America sees Canada as such a tedious sleeping partner, and yet Canada is subversively sending idiots into the global marketplace with American accents. Of course, I'm being ironic. Canadian accents are not the same as American ones!)

...and what would the fact that someone's a stranger have to do with whether you hope they have a nice day?

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DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE FRENCH I TOOK

For Jefferson, Liberty Without Learning Was Unthinkable (Terrence Moore, June 2003, John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs)

Anyone who doubts the power of ideas or the efficacy of a classical education should consider these words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." [...]

On the national holiday, let us take a brief history quiz. Ask your children these questions.

1. From where are the lines in the first paragraph above taken?
2. Who wrote them?
3. Fill in the blank. "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each
other our _____, our ________, and our sacred _____."
4. What English philosopher most influenced Jefferson's writing of the Declaration?
5. Who was King of Great Britain at the time of the American Revolution?
6. What is the legislature of Great Britain called, on which our Congress is modeled?
7. True or False: Jefferson also wrote an influential pamphlet titled Common Sense.
8. True or False: The first government of the United States was the present Constitution.
9. Thomas Jefferson was the ___ President of the United States elected in ____.
10. Jefferson helped found which university?

If your children score below 70%, we have a lot of work to do as a nation.

The children? How may parents would get 70%?

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THE FUTURE OF THE WEST LIES ELSEWHERE

The African Lion Roars in the Western Church: Anglican liberals are fretting, conservatives rejoicing, and all are scrambling to their history books: whence this new evangelical force on the world scene? (Chris Armstrong, 06/27/03, Christianity Today)

Five summers ago, the lion of African Anglicanism roared. This week, it has bared its claws.

The summer of 1998 saw the every-ten-years Lambeth Conference of the worldwide Anglican communion absorbed with issues of human sexuality. At its meetings, African Anglicans led a campaign against the liberalizing of the church's teachings on homosexuality.

Joining in the African "roar" was Bishop John Rucyahana of Shyira, Rwanda, who issued this warning to the liberalizing contingent in Western Anglicanism: "We don't like your First World way of speaking ambiguous words and not being straight on the issues." Rucyahana and his colleagues were heard, and heeded: the conference passed a resolution (526 to 70, with 45 abstentions) that homosexual practice is "incompatible with Scripture."

In the wake of Lambeth, liberals in American Anglicanism (the Episcopalian Church) resented this new voice of "African fundamentalism," while a conservative like bishop Jack Iker of Ft. Worth, Texas could observe with some satisfaction: "No longer does the United States or England speak for the Anglican Communion but the church in Africa and Asia does."

This week, one branch of African Anglicanism seems to be moving from rhetoric to action in the conservative cause. In a letter to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of the Nigerian Church (Anglican Communion)—a church representing 17 million of Anglicanism's 70 million members—has threatened to break communion with the worldwide body over the same issue that dominated discussion at Lambeth: Williams has supported the appointment of the openly gay Dr. Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading, in England.

Said Nigerian Archbishop Peter Jasper Akinola: "We cannot continue to be in communion with people who have taken a step outside the biblical boundaries."

We noted below the delightful irony that even as Europe commits suicide the Christianization of the Third World means that Western ideas will be kept alive by non-Westerners.

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CORRECTION

Last week I posted a gripe about the bad manners of Mr. Harry Potter, wizard-hero. I wrote,

There is not one "I'm sorry; please forgive me" in the whole book....

I do not recall an instance of "please" or "thank you" in the book.

My niece informs me that the word "sorry" appears on pages 66, 81, 233, 292, and 293; and the word "thanks" appears on pages 182, 185, 249, 262, and 285. She reports no sightings as yet of "forgive" or "thank you."

I offer Ms. Rowling my sincere apologies for exaggerating the facts, and beg her forgiveness.

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I'VE LOOKED AT LIFE FROM BOTH SIDES NOW...THIS ONE SUCKS

Two Sides of Political Reality for New Lawmakers (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 6/30/03, NY Times)

Candice S. Miller was riding high last week, flush with the glow of being a freshman Republican in the House of Representatives.

On Thursday, she dipped into Washington's famous pork barrel, when the House approved a military construction bill that included $9.6 million for a new health care center at a base in her Macomb County, Mich., district. Next, in the wee hours of the morning on Friday, her party squeaked out a one-vote victory on the Medicare prescription drug benefit bill.

Then Representative Miller jetted off to Rome, to spend the early part of her July 4 recess talking with European leaders about hydrogen fuel and bioengineered foods as part of her first "Codel" --a taxpayer-financed trip abroad by a Congressional delegation.

"I feel very optimistic," she said shortly before she left.

Optimistic is not exactly the word one would use to describe Raul M. Grijalva these days. Resigned is more like it. Representative Grijalva, a freshman Democrat from Tucson, voted against the prescription drug bill, just as he voted against the repeal of the estate tax and every other piece of legislation Republicans have pushed through this year. For the July 4 recess, he is going home to Tucson, where he expects to tell constituents, "We're putting up a fight."

For Mrs. Miller, a self-described "George W. Bush Republican" from a middle-class neighborhood outside Detroit, and Mr. Grijalva, an unabashed liberal from one of the poorest corners of Tucson, the last week was not much different than any other since they joined Congress in January. These lawmakers, whose first year is being chronicled by The New York Times, represent a microcosm of life in the House, where the political reality these days is stark and simple: Republicans win and Democrats lose.

People have been wondering in recent weeks iif Democrats aren't becoming more frantic and hysterical in their hatred of George W. Bush. Given the President's rather pleasant demeanor and the lack of hugely controversial issues at the moment it seems like on odd time for the Democrats to go postal. To the contrary, as stories like this and the one last week in the Post, on the takeover of lobbying by the GOP, suggest, Democrats are waking up to the cold hard reality of what it's like to be the permanent minority party, a reality that Republicans had to live with for sixty dispiriting years. You can hardly blame them for raging at the dying of the light.

MORE:
Republicans Rule (Howard Kurtz, June 30, 2003, Washington Post)

Is D.C. becoming a one-party town?

With the Republicans controlling all the levers of power -- 1600 Penn, both Hill chambers and the high court -- have Democrats slid into a state of near-irrelevancy?

That's debatable, to say the least, but it's hard to think of a time in the past half-century -- even during the Reagan years, they controlled the House -- when the Dems had less power inside the Beltway. The only Democratic weapon of any potency at the moment seems to be a Senate filibuster. And the party is not wildly optimistic about ousting Bush in '04.

Now the question is whether GOPers are cementing their hold on power by installing their folks in a sort of quasi-permanent government around these parts: the lobbying community.

On one level, Republicans aren't doing anything different than the Democrats did when they ruled Congress. You try to use your clout to soak up the available sources of big corporate cash, and you try to strong-arm the trade associations to support your legislative needs. The lobbying firms, in turn, realize that they need to hire folks (often former officials) with high-level entree to the party that controls the Hill machinery, including such basics as which bills get brought to the floor.

But the Republicans have gotten really, really good at this.

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COURT COMMANDED CULTURAL CONSENSUS

How the Supremes Redeemed Bush: The conservative court's decisions on homosexuality and affirmative action boost Bush's image with moderates (Joe Klein, Jun. 29, 2003, TIME)

Most Americans aren't extremists, and they are not at war. The lovely paradox of 21st century America is that we seem to be
increasingly united by the celebration of our differences. That is what the Supreme Court acknowledged in its decisions on homosexuality and affirmative action last week.

"The court legitimized and endorsed a cultural consensus," says Paul Gewirtz, a professor of constitutional law at Yale University. That consensus walks a socially sensible but legally clumsy line between tolerance and outright acceptance. Scalia noted that many Americans might not be comfortable with an openly gay business partner, scoutmaster, schoolteacher or boarder. True enough, but most people would also say that what Tyron Garner and John G. Lawrence did in the privacy of their Texas bedroom is none of our business. The court's affirmative-action decision was just as pragmatic. Most Americans disapprove of specific, codified racial preferences, like the now famous 20 points granted minority applicants to the University of Michigan. But American life, happily, is no longer plain vanilla. Anything all-white--law-school classes, corporate suites or presidential Cabinets--is not merely aesthetically displeasing, as Clarence Thomas asserted in his dissenting opinion, it is also considered socially deficient, inappropriate, un-American. Our diversity is the wellspring of American creativity, one of our competitive advantages in a global economy.

There is also a consensus on abortion: tolerable during the first few months of pregnancy but with severe limits after that. In fact, the rationale for Roe v. Wade--the right to privacy--was cited in the gay-rights decision. That the court's controversial abortion decision is now being used as a template for privacy cases is remarkable. It means that Roe is probably settled for the foreseeable future.

The political implications of all this are, I suspect, good for both the Republic and George W. Bush. The Republic is always strengthened by a reassertion of sanity.

Perhaps in order to be a liberal it is necessary to deny reality, because if Mr. Klein believes that there are currently any limitations, never mind "severe limits", on abortion after the first trimester he's delusional. And the Court's ruling on homosexuality is a disaster for the Republic for precisely the same reason: it removes from the political process our right as a society to legislate morality and turns an already overly-permissive culture into one where such moral laxity is required by law. Far from indicating that Roe v. Wade is settled law, this makes it all the more important for Republicans to appoint justices who will obliterate the notion that there is a right of privacy in the Constitution. Contrary to Mr. Klein's assertion, the Republic is always weakened when intellectual elites find it necessary to impose via judicial fiat that which they are incapable of securing through the political process. This is not only socially divisive but serves to alienate Americans from their own government and its institutions.

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OUT IT

Sorting through a shift toward a consumption tax (David R. Francis, 6/30/03, CS Monitor)

Conservatives are rejoicing. They see the United States already on a path of fundamental tax changes that will accelerate economic growth.

"Stealth tax reform," it has been called. That's because relatively few voters are aware of the significance of the changes in the system proposed by President Bush and incorporated in the three tax-cutting measures passed by a Republican-led Congress since he took office.

"George W. Bush is the first president to actively understand and embrace the fundamental core principles of tax reform," says Ernest Christian, a founder of the Center for Strategic Tax Reform in Washington. [...]

The next likely "baby step" is the revival of the Lifetime Savings Account proposed by Bush last January, and later dropped for fear it would distract from the White House goal of selling its main tax package. The radical measure would allow taxpayers to contribute up to $7,500 a year of after-tax income into an investment account where it could grow untaxed and be withdrawn tax-free later for retirement, education, or other purposes.

"That is coming back," says Chris Edwards, a fiscal expert at the Cato Institute in Washington. He sees it as having political appeal in an election year. And its revenue loss is small in the 10-year window used by Congress in looking at tax bills.

The measure would also move toward a consumption tax by easing the tax burden on money not spent, that is, savings.

This seems like a worthwhile national goal, but one that should be talked about in this coming election.

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NOT EITHER/OR

G.O.P. Senate Bid May Take the Fall, for Bush's Sake (RAYMOND HERNANDEZ, 6/30/03, NY Times)

Gov. George E. Pataki and the Republican machinery he controls are determined to rally a huge voter turnout for President Bush next year, in a bid meant to bring New York Republicans the sort of national stature that has eluded them since the days of Nelson A. Rockefeller.

But in an intriguing subplot, Mr. Pataki and his advisers appear to have all but abandoned plans to seriously challenge Senator Charles E. Schumer, a popular Democrat, mindful that it would mobilize the opposition and thus undermine Mr. Bush's prospects in New York. [...]

[R]epublicans say the sudden shift in the party's priorities reflects the surprising level of support that Mr. Bush has picked up in New York, a heavily Democratic state that no Republican presidential candidate has won since Ronald Reagan swept it in 1984.

A poll recently released by Marist College, for example, showed that 58 percent of voters who were surveyed in New York rated Mr. Bush's job performance as good or excellent.

But as much as anything else, the strategy also underscores another hard political reality that New York Republicans have been forced to reckon with: the early electoral strength of Mr. Schumer, who has already amassed nearly $15 million in his war chest and whose job-approval rating is at an impressive 58 percent in recent polls.

This is on the one hand the classic mistake that the GOP made in 1980 and 1994 and, on the other, the mistake that Ronald Reagan made in 1984 and one would hope that Republicans and Mr. Bush will avoid repeating past errors. When the landslide is coming you need to recruit the best candidates possible so that they can win re-election. The crop of nitwits, weirdos, and shut-ins who were carried in by the two juggernaiuts of '80 and '94 ended up having great difficulty defending their seats, even though they had initially beaten seemingly invincible incumbents. You don't look at a Chuck Schumer, a Barbara Boxer, etc., and decide to toss up a scarificial lamb because of the unique circumstances in their liberal states. National tides sweep out even such "safe" Senators. But six years from now, in an off year election after 14 years of GOP rule, it will be hard to maintain these seats if you've elected knuckleheads this time around. So go with the best you've got.

Meanwhile, the Bush campaign needs to run as if they're going to win and win big, because they're going to, and that means crafting the party, the agenda, and the Congress that you want to head into the coming years with. Losing NY is an unlikelihood but it wouldn't matter in the bigger picture. Mr. Bush will still win re-election. But getting that seat for the GOP, getting closer to a veto-proof majority, and putting a potential star in office--say Rudy Guiliani--could be huge.

---

)

The Everything Expert: a review of My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message by Amitai Etzioni (ROBERT S. BOYNTON, July 14, 2003, The Nation)

Etzioni's media profile faded in the late 1990s. The communitarian message didn't feel so fresh, and some of its policies seemed downright creepy. Despite Etzioni's embrace of Buberian "dialogue," his presentations felt more like monologues: No matter what the subject, "balancing rights and responsibilities" was always the answer. In 1994 the Guardian asked, "Is Etzioni just a Jerry Falwell in cap and gown? Could communitarianism be a thinking person's Moral Majority?" Etzioni dutifully records that the movement's media citations peak in the mid-1990s. "By the late 1990s, there were more and more days, then weeks, when no one called. Invitations to speak and to attend conferences ceased to pose scheduling problems; there were no longer any who wanted me to be in two places at the same time."

Much of the difficulty had to do with his "third way" communitarian message. The political blood-sport of the Clinton era made Etzioni's plea for nonpartisanship sound naïve, if not disingenuous. If Clinton could gut welfare while simultaneously praising communitarianism ("You are my inspiration," Clinton told Etzioni one New Year's Eve), maybe the movement was more style than substance. Were communitarian ideas merely protective coloration for politicians of the left and right? Was a movement admired by Bill Bennett, Dick Morris and George W. Bush itself worth admiring?

And the more closely people considered Etzioni's proposals, the more it became apparent that many were either stunningly obvious ("If the advocates of civil rights and those of public safety would stop butting heads, we would see all kind of ways to advance our security while minimizing intrusions on our liberty") or absurdly utopian (a "megalogue" on values between members of a super "community of communities"). Wish-and-make-it-so public policy.

I think the reason communitarianism never had the impact of, say, neoconservativism has to do with its message as well as its method of
implementing its ideas. Communitarianism speaks the language of reform, not revolution. It seeks to temper the primacy of the individual, to tame the logic of the market, to alleviate our reliance on government and its laws. It is more "liberalism rightly understood" than an ideology in its own right. Etzioni is less a prophet for a new idea than a publicist for a worthy, but not particularly novel, point of view.

Liberalism rightly understood--a liberalism which supposes responsibilities as well as recognizing rights; which tempers individuality; which tames logic of the market; which doesn't rely on government--is indeed a worthy, even a classic philosophy, that of our Founders and of Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville and Albert Jay Nock and myriad other great figures in the history of Anglo-American thought. It is reformist, even counter-revolutionary, precisely because the democratic revolution had already been won (largely in Britain in the 17th Century) by the time they all wrote. Our task as citizens of liberal societies is not revolution but perfection of the revolution already won.

If communitarianism has a great weakness though--and I believe it does, despite the generally high regard in which I hold Mr. Etzioni and his fellow believers--it lies in the failure to recognize that it must be essentially a retrograde rather than a progressive movement if it is to vindicate its eminently sensible critique of modernity. The community and civil society in which they rightly place so much faith are competitors with government and in particular with the social welfare state. The Communitarian Epoch can not be realized in conjunction with an era of big government, but will only come as we return to the social structure of an earlier day, when individuals, families, neighborhoods, communities, churches, and the like resume their place at the center of our lives and the role of government is drastically diminished. That's a difficult reality for folk of the Left--which most communitarians are or were--to grapple with and they've by and large failed to do so.

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THE WRITER VS. THE MAN

-TRIBUTE: A Seer's Blind Spots: On George Orwell's 100th, a Look at a Flawed and Fascinating Writer (Glenn Frankel, June 25, 2003, Washington Post)

"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent," George Orwell wrote in 1949. He was referring to the recently assassinated Mohandas Gandhi, but these days the same test might well apply to himself, for in the 53 years since his death Orwell has become a secular saint, acclaimed by the political left and right and many in between, revered as a seer and truth-teller, honored for his moral courage, his razor-sharp intellect and his diamond-hard prose.

"The first saint of our age," as social historian Noel Annan once described him, "quirky, fierce, independent and beholden to none."

Somewhere along the way, however, amid all of the hero worship, the real man -- the idiosyncratic, squeaky-voiced, tubercular Englishman who dressed like a pauper, rolled his own cigarettes, chased after women and practiced a wobbly but sincere brand of socialism -- seems to have gotten lost, and perhaps the real writer has as well. Orwell has suffered the famous author's ultimate fate: He is revered and invoked more than he is read. [...]

But even while the orgy of praise and hagiography gathers steam, let's pause for a moment to remember the man himself, starting with all of the flaws that made him human. Based upon his self-critical writings and the accounts of those who knew him, Orwell was a strange and difficult person who had few friends, mistrusted foreigners and harbored a streak of self-righteousness. The characters in his novels are stiff and unconvincing, his portraits of women are one-dimensional and bear the distinct odor of unrepentant misogyny, and his occasional references to Jews are uncomfortable at best. And, oh yes, let's not forget this: As a prophet he was almost always wrong; 1984, as we now know, looked nothing like "Nineteen
Eighty-Four."

Notice how you have to seek outside the text to make Orwell complex and contradictory? The writings speak for themselves and say something quite other than his personal life and purported politics.

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WHAT RIGHT?

Bush, Looking to His Right, Shores Up Support for 2004 (ADAM NAGOURNEY, 6/30/03, NY Times)

Again and again in interviews, leading conservatives drew favorable contrasts with the first President George Bush, who endured a debilitating primary challenge from Patrick J. Buchanan, contributing to his defeat by Bill Clinton.

"It's night and day," said Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group. "Every group that this president has kept faith with, the previous president double-crossed."

David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said: "In the first Bush administration, the conservatives were asked to be
spectators--and it was hoped that they would applaud the action in the field. In this one, they have a president who wants them to be part of the team."

Mr. Bush's effort to tend to the conservative wing of his party has emerged as a crucial part of his early campaign preparations.

The Bush campaign has begun sending a representative to a meeting of conservative leaders that takes place in Washington every Wednesday, joining
a delegation of as many as eight administration officials.

Party officials say Mr. Bush's advisers--starting with Karl Rove, his senior political adviser, and Ken Mehlman, his campaign manager--are now in regular contact with about 60 conservative leaders across the nation, discussing issues of concern to the White House and the re-election campaign.

Mr. Bush has named Ralph Reed, who first rose to prominence as executive director the Christian Coalition, as a senior member of his campaign team. Beyond that, Mr. Rove and Mr. Mehlman are viewed by conservatives as advocates for their point of view in the White House.

Asked about efforts to mobilize conservative support, Mr. Mehlman responded: "Ultimately good policy is good politics. This is a president who has strongly pushed numerous policies that appealed to a lot of different groups--including conservatives."

Many conservatives say Mr. Bush's alliance with their wing of the Republican Party is as solid as that enjoyed by Ronald Reagan. Some suggest it is even stronger.

If you didn't know better, you might think Mr. Bush himself is conservative...

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U.S. OUT OF IRAQ NOW

Who's killing Americans? Loyalists, Islamists, criminals (AP, June 30,
2003)

The Pentagon is puzzling over how many resisters there are, how well they are organized and how they can be stopped.

Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, confirmed Friday to replace war commander Gen. Tommy Franks as head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate that there are three main groups causing the violence:

**Leftover cells from Saddam's Baath party in a triangle bounded by Baghdad, Ramadi and Tikrit.

**Anti-American fundamentalist Islamists, including some foreigners.

* A criminal element including some of the 100,000 prisoners Saddam freed from jail before the war.

Three groups that we are ill-equipped to identify but the Shiites are easily able to--turn the country over to them and they'll handle it.

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IF RACE IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT THEN CONSTRUCT YOUR OWN

What the Supreme Court doesn't know about race (Paul Greenberg, June 30, 2003, Jewish World Review)

I am sitting here tying to think of when I became race-conscious. And I can't. Maybe I never did - another of my numerous failings. I've gone all the way back to childhood, to the kitchen behind the shoe store on Texas Avenue in Shreveport. And I can't find that one decisive moment, that loss of innocence recorded in portentous tones in one Southern novel after another.

Now, roughly ages later, I sit and read a Supreme Court decision that says race matters after all. It matters so much that you need a certain number of this race and that race in law school classes in order to, yes, break down artificial racial categories. You've got to discriminate in order to end discrimination. It may be the funniest Supreme Court decision I've ever read, if unintentionally so.

What's more, you need a certain number of black students in law schools in order to form a "critical mass," whatever that is, but it doesn't take as many Hispanic students to do so, and it takes even fewer American Indians. I give up. Here is still another foreign language. Only this one doesn't make sense, as if it were written for some purely abstract world that exists out in space, or only in law books.

It's all so much hocus-pocus to me, like the idea of race itself so long ago on Texas Avenue. I sit here reading Sandra Day O'Connor's majority opinion, and I'm puzzled. I can't get my mind around it. I laugh out loud here and there, and think: Shoot, I knew better than that when I was 6 years old.

Here's what we'd like to know: do college admissions departments do geneaologies and blood tests? Why don't white kids just start saying they're African-American or Native-American or whatever ethnicity is stylish these days? Who's going to check up on them?

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STAR POWER

Schwarzenegger contemplates political run (Carol
Devine-Molin, June 30, 2003, Enter Stage Right)

Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes, "My kids are normal kids. They go to the mall and pass out recall petitions".

And, on a recent "Tonight" show, Schwarzenegger facetiously remarked to Jay Leno, "There is no money over there (in Iraq). There's no leadership – pretty much like California." Rapper Snoop Dogg was also on the program and promptly dubbed Schwarzenegger "The Notorious GOP" in good fun.

Watch out Governor Davis! Auh-nuld might indeed be gearing up to "terminate" your political career in the state of California. Clearly,
Schwarzenegger is testing the political waters at this juncture.

This is exactly what the CA GOP needs to get itself energized and could quickly re-establish the party's viability.

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STRONG RELIGION. WEAK SECULARISM (via Tom Morin)

The Great Revival: Understanding Religious "Fundamentalism": a review of Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World by Gabriel A. Almond, R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan (David Aikman, July/August 2003, Foreign Affairs)

Almost anyone interested in the rise of Christian conservatism (to use a nonpejorative term) as a cultural and political concept in the United States will quickly discover that although Protestant fundamentalism is indeed an identifiable movement in American history, it was numerically superseded by the late 1950s by what is now called "evangelicalism." Evangelicals believe as ardently as Protestant fundamentalists in the need to propagate the gospel, but they were determined to break out of precisely the enclave mentality into which the fundamentalists had chosen to retreat from the 1920s onwards. Strong Religion refers a few times to Bob Jones University, certainly a bastion of American fundamentalist thinking, but overlooks the important point that Bob Jones, Sr., virtually excommunicated evangelist Billy Graham from fundamentalism in 1957 because Graham wanted evangelicals to work with any Christian church that would accept them.

This fact is important to understand because the evangelical, not the fundamentalist, brand of Christianity seems to be expanding faster than any other religious movement in the world today, including Islam. (It is worth noting that fundamentalist Protestant Christians generally oppose strongly the Pentecostalist or charismatic experience, which is at the heart of much of the Christian growth in the developing world.) The evangelical Christian phenomenon in the southern hemisphere has been thoughtfully examined by Philip Jenkins in The Next Christendom. Jenkins argues that the southward expansion of Christianity in Africa and Latin America will have more profound consequences globally than the ongoing phenomenon of Islamism.

Although perhaps uncomfortable with going into what particular Christian groups believe, the authors of Strong Religion are certainly aware that it is the evangelicals who are expanding their influence both in the United States and around the world, whereas those Christian groups that have sought to accommodate secularism are in decline. Interesting statistics cited in the book for the United States include the rise of Southern Baptists from 10 million in 1960 to 17 million in 2000, a fourfold increase in the adherents to American Pentecostal denominations, and a massive decline in the Episcopal Church from about 3.5 million in 1960 to 2 million in 2000. The Southern Baptists and the Pentecostals have been much more supportive of positions such as biblical inerrancy than the Episcopalians, many of whom appear to have abandoned much of the historical Protestant orthodoxy.

Strong Religion is undoubtedly correct in noting that it is their response to modernity that generally determines whether fundamentalist groups prosper or wither. But how helpful is the book's definition of fundamentalism as "an aggressive, enclave-based movement with absolutist, reactive, and inerrantist tendencies"? This strongly negative depiction does not capture the nuances of modern religious groups.

In Indonesia, for example, the Islamic revivalist movement Nudhat'ul-Ulama is both pro-democracy and pro-pluralism. But it is probably also in favor of "inerrancy" in the Islamic context, thus fitting at least one of the authors' criteria for a fundamentalist group.

Or take the role of religious revivalists elsewhere in the developing world. In Guatemala, many sociologists have observed that communities where Pentecostalism is strong usually manifest what German sociologist Max Weber a century ago defined as "the Protestant ethic": self-discipline, frugality, hard work, and saving. A similar pattern can be seen in China today, where there may be more than 60 million Protestant Christians (compared with 700,000 in 1949). Some Chinese sociologists have noted the "coincidence" that the most significantly Christianized city, Wenzhou, where some 14 percent of the population is now Christian, is also one of China's top performers in domestic commerce and foreign trade.

One of the central beliefs of the rational humanists is that over time secularism will displace superstitious religiosity. They view this as both
inevitable and salutary, but it appears to be neither. Europe, which is secularism's test case, is dying while America remains stubbornly religious and is thriving--this despite the efforts of our own elites to impose secularism. Meanwhile, Christianity is spreading like wildfire in Latin America, Africa, and China. Indeed, Christianity is being reimported to the United States via Latino immigrants.

It's truly staggering just how wrong "reason" has turned out to be both in theory and application. In fact, given that its adherents continue to believe in it despite its conspicuous lack of success, one might conclude that it is merely a successor superstition, and an inferior one at that.

MORE:
-ESSAY: China's Next Great Leap: China may be on its way to becoming a Christian nation. (Terry Eastland, September 30, 2002, Dallas Morning News)

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ROOPER-DOOPER

How to Build the Perfect Democratic Contender (ADAM
NAGOURNEY, June 29, 2003, NY Times)

"The self-deprecating charm of Joe Lieberman--you have got to start with that," said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist. "And Bob Graham's resume. Al Sharpton's one-liners! No one has better one-liners than Al Sharpton. Howard Dean's ability to excite activists and new people." [...]

[J]ohn Edwards, the North Carolina senator, may seem a little too young and slight to be Leader of the Free World; in White House circles, he is mockingly known as the "Breck Girl." But it is not hard to find Democrats who would like to bottle his charm and personable campaign style. John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator, may not seem as if he would be happy eating corndogs in the jostling crowd at the State Fair in Des Moines. But leave the congeniality to the resume-challenged Mr. Edwards: Mr. Kerry has a war record that any candidate would love--two tours in Vietnam that brought him a few medals, and a tour back home leading the opposition to the war.

Mr. Lieberman's campaign is introducing many Americans to the customs of the observant Jew, such as not working on Saturday. It also appears to have awarded him the franchise on the moral and ethical issues. The penchant of Senator Bob Graham to keep detailed notebooks chronicling the most mundane of chores--think: got up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head--may give Democrats pause. But Mr. Graham, as a former member of the Senate intelligence committee, has authority in his challenges to Mr. Bush's efforts to protect the nation from terrorism. Better than that, he is from Florida.

Is there any candidate who can boast more legislative experience and ties to traditional sources of Democratic support than Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the former House minority leader? (Of course, that could be his big weakness as well.) Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, may seem ideologically out of step with a lot of voters, but he has already shown his ability to draw a lot of new people into the system.

Ummm...anybody happen to notice what's missing here? How about a candidate with some popular ideas?

The Democrats are brain dead and have been since Walter Mondale lost in 1984. Bill Clinton had sense enough to borrow the opposition's ideas and won by running as not just a moderate but a conservative Republican--tax cuts, executions, anti-China, etc.. But there's no room to George W. Bush's right and the Democratic Party faithful are tired of being the GOP Junior League. So, incredibly, this batch of candidates seems to have returned to that Mondalism--anti-anti-Saddam instead of anti-anti-communist; take back the Bush tax cuts, as Mondale wanted to take back the Reagan cuts; pro-abortion, pro-gay rights, anti-religious, anti-Vietnam (are they aware the war ended--disastrously for the Vietnamese people--thirty years ago?), etc.. They really have revivified dead flesh and made it walk (well, stumble) again.

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YEAH, THIS'LL WORK.

Statements of Fatah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the Cessation of Military Operations.

Fatah

Out of the desire of the Palestinian political factions on the higher national interests of the Palestinian people in this critical period of our national struggle and stressing the high importance of the national Palestinian unity in our ability to struggle, steadfast to our achieve our fair goals and not to give any chance to harm it on the basis of sticking to the national rights of our people, adopted by the national Palestinian councils of the P.L.O. and the Arab summits, U.N., nonallied and African summits and friends and honorable people in the world, and the full commitment for the continuous struggle to achieve it on top of it the right of our people to return and self-determination and establishing the independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as a capital on all lands occupied in the year 1967 and in response to all the Arab efforts and the Quartet, we declare for all the countries and lovers of peace and freedom in the world our following initiative:

Cessation of all military operations in accordance with the Egyptian initiative.

At the same time we call upon all the states and peoples and governments worldwide and especially those interested in achieving peace, security and stability in the area to (urge) the Israeli side to implement the following:

First, the immediate stop of all acts of Israeli violence against our people, including stopping assassinations, arrests, deportation, massacres against our communities, cities, villages, refugee camps and to stop the incursions and destruction of the buildings, the economic infrastructure, the official and public institutions, (destruction) of agricultural lands and lands confiscation, and to stop the Judeaizing measures.

Second, to lift the closure from the Palestinian people and its legitimate elected leadership.

Third, to release all the prisoners and detainees from the Israeli prisons.

Fourth, not to harm the Islamic and Christian holy places, especially the Haram al-Sharif, the Church of the Nativity and the al-Ibrahimi Mosque.

Fifth, immediate stop of confiscating of lands and building settlements and expansion in the existing settlements as an introduction to removing them and to remove the separation walls.

Sixth, begin the immediate withdrawal of the occupation forces to where they were before Sept. 28, 2000 and to implement the road map plan to quickly send the international monitors to supervise its implementation according to the international legitimate resolutions and to establish a just and lasting and comprehensive peace in the area."

Hamas and Islamic Jihad

Out of our desire for the unity of our Palestinian ranks at this dangerous phase which our people and our cause are going through, and in order to protect our national unity achieved by the intifada and the resistance and documented by the blood of the martyrs, and as the contribution from us to consolidating Palestinian national dialogue on the basis of adherence to the rights of our people, and in order to protect our internal front from the danger of schism and confrontation, and in order to block the enemy from having any excuse to wreck it, and in an assertion of the legitimate right to resist the occupation as a strategic choice until the end of the Zionist occupation of our land and until we achieve all our national rights, and in response to efforts by many in the Palestinian and Arab arena who care about the unity of the Palestinian national ranks, we declare the following initiative:

A. Suspension of the military operations against the Zionist enemy for three months, effective today, in return for the following conditions:

1. An immediate cessation of all forms of Zionist aggression against our Palestinian people including incursions, destruction, closures and sieges on cities, villages and refugee camps, including the siege imposed on President Yasir Arafat, house demolitions, leveling of agricultural land and assaults against land, property and Christian and Islamic holy sites, especially the holy Al Aksa Mosque. In addition, the immediate cessation of all individual assassination operations, massacres, collective measures, all arrests and deportations against our people, leaders, cadres and fighters.

2. The release of all prisoners and detainees, Palestinian and Arab, from occupation prisons without condition or restriction and the return to their homes first and foremost of those who have spent long periods and those with lengthy sentences, women, children, the sick and elderly.

B. In the event that the enemy does not act according to these conditions and commitments, or violates any of them, we see ourselves unencumbered by this initiative and we hold the enemy responsible for the consequences.

Above all, it's their sincerity I find impressive.

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FAREWELL TO THE QUEEN

Katherine Hepburn is reported to have died.

Four pictures that we'd particularly recommend: Bringing Up Baby; The Philadelphia Story; The African Queen, and The Lion in Winter.

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DUPE-OFF

The Gullible Mr. Kerry: The senator gets fooled again. (Christopher Hitchens, June 24, 2003, Slate)

So, the junior senator from Massachusetts has finally come up with a winning line. "Vote for me," says John Kerry. "I'm easily fooled." This appears to be the implication of his claim to have been "misled" by the Bush administration in the matter of WMD. And, considering the way in which Democratic Party activists generally portray the president as a fool and an ignoramus, one might as well go the whole distance and suggest a catchy line for the campaign: "Kerry. Duped by a Dope."

Given that Kerry once went all the way to Vietnam under some kind of misapprehension about a war for democracy and launched a political career on the basis of what he finally learned when it was much too late, one might be tempted to discern a pattern here. But that temptation should probably be
discarded. The Tonkin Gulf resolution was fabricated out of whole cloth (by a Democratic president, building on the legacy of another JFK from Massachusetts), and not even the most Stalinized of the Vietnamese leadership ever ran a regime, or proposed an ideology, as vile as that of Saddam Hussein. Indeed, Ho Chi Minh in 1945 modeled his declaration of independence on the words of Thomas Jefferson, appealed for American help against France, and might have got it if FDR had lived. Uncle Ho shared in the delusion that there could be an anti-colonial and anti-dictatorial empire. If that is indeed a delusion.?

Maybe someone who isn't over his own Ho Chi Minh infatuation should go easy on tossing accusations like "dupe" around?

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APOLOGIZE?

Knights Templar bury the hatchet with Rome.: Whatever next? An apology to Islam, perhaps (Hilary Clarke, 29 June 2003, Sunday Herald)

Multi Templi Scotia, the Scottish branch of the order, now includes people of all denominations. James Ritchie, Grand Herald of the order, said he would welcome both improved relations with the Catholic Church and an apology to the Islamic world for the Crusades. 'I would be in favour of anything that gives us greater understanding of different religions and people,' he said.

Any attempt to issue an official apology for the crusades will, however, be fraught with political difficulties, not least because of the different beliefs of members of the order in different countries.

The grand commander of the US order, James Carey, was a rear-admiral in the US Navy during the first Gulf war. He served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, father of the present President Bush, and has been an outspoken supporter of the current administration in this year's war against Iraq.

How about we apologize for trying to retrieve the Holy Lands if they apologize for taking them?

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ARE WE ALL TAFTIANS NOW?

Old and in the Way: The American Street has sized up best the new paradoxes of foreign policy. (Victor Davis Hanson, June 27, 2003, National Review)

During this entire crisis tired voices of convention have misunderstood the nature of this war and the temporary presence of Americans in exotic places like the Asiatic provinces of the former Soviet Union, the Gulf, or Kurdistan. Instead of seeing such deployments in their proper context of ad hoc military efficacy and reaction to 9/11, they have instead shrilly alleged some sinister conspiracy to harness the world's oil through the use of permanent military deployment abroad and perpetual war.

Fools! The real danger is not that we are interventionists, but rather are on the verge of a weird insularity not seen since the 1920s - a paradox of still being engaged abroad but not in the usual manner of the past. The American Street is in a strangely revolutionary - read "fed-up" - mood. It is growing distant from Europe. It is angry with the Arab world especially, and it is tired with South Korea - and most whiny nations that either take billions of dollars in direct American aid or ankle-bite under the aegis of American arms.

The result is while hothouse analysts in Paris and spoiled teenagers in Seoul with Reeboks and football jerseys damn America the imperialist, the United States they knew is changing right before their eyes in ways that they might not like in the next decade - but that will in fact relieve most Americans. [...]

The real global story is not "anti-Americanism," but perhaps a growing American weariness with strident allies and the braggadocio of pathetic Middle Eastern despotisms. If I were a functionary of the European Union, I would either have an emergency meeting right now to explore ways of stemming a rising, grassroots tide of Middle America's anger against Europe or alternatively allot 400 or 500 billion Euros per annum for its own unilateral and collective defense. We in America are waiting for sober Europeans to question their current frightening leadership that came of age in 1968, but now shrug that the Schroeders, Fischers, and Villepins may not be so aberrant after all. The EU, remember, is now being asked by Mr. Abbas on the West Bank to stop subsidizing Hamas.

So in response, what should we do?

Keep quieter and carry a far bigger stick.

There's an amusing definition of insanity, that it consists of making the same mistake over and over again but expecting the outcome to change. One wonders if observers of America are insane, given that they seem incapable of accepting the fact that America only rouses itself from isolationism long enough to swat down annoyances, then withdraws back into itself. The tragedy of the Cold War was that we failed to swat and so stayed abroad far too long at far too high a cost. But there seems little inclination on the part of the Administration or the people to stay engaged in the world this time, a few more pummelings and we'll come back home. All this Empire nonsense will soon be forgotten...until next time.

MORE:
-Principles Without Program: Senator Robert A. Taft and American Foreign Policy (John Moser, September 2001, Dialogues)

What conclusions, then, may we reach regarding Taft's overall importance for the history of U.S. foreign relations? As the revisionists have pointed out, he was remarkably prescient on many of the problems inherent in a highly interventionist foreign policy: unprecedented accretion of power in the hands of the executive branch of government, curtailment of civil liberties at home, the charge of "imperialism" arising from American influence abroad, and most importantly the danger of what Paul Kennedy referred to as "imperial overstretch"-the extension of overseas commitments beyond the ability of a nation to meet them. Even his contemporary critics, such as John P. Armstrong, admitted that the senator played an important role as a check on the internationalism of the Truman administration, raising difficult questions about particular policies even if only to be voted down. Indeed, in the wake of the Vietnam War many liberals, including (most ironically) Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., proved willing to embrace many of Taft's positions on foreign affairs.

But while it certainly would not do to reject Taft's importance out of hand, it is equally erroneous to claim that he offered a coherent alternative paradigm for the conduct of foreign affairs. Republican party platforms in the late 1940s and early 1950s to a large extent echoed the interventionism of their Democratic counterparts. The reason for this was twofold: first of all, Taft never felt comfortable enough with the subject to put the sort of effort into foreign policy as he did into, say, domestic economic matters; and secondly his intense partisanship led him to view foreign affairs as little more than a stick with which to beat the Democrats. Thus to some he appeared as merely a mindless "isolationist," while others failed to recognize any consistent viewpoint whatsoever.

It is probably a mistake, however, to place all the blame for this on Taft. The late 1940s and early 1950s were, after all, a period of America Triumphant, a time when almost all Americans believed in the role of the United States as leader of the free world, and very few questioned the wisdom of extensive overseas commitments. Taft himself seemed to accept these premises in his book, A Foreign Policy for Americans (though in it he often hedged about how to best follow through on them). Therefore even if he had mapped out a clear and coherent plan for foreign affairs derived from his core principles, it is unlikely that he would have found much support for it. It was when he was being most consistent and true to his principles, such as when he opposed the North Atlantic Treaty, that he appeared to be the most out of step with the times. It was not, therefore, until the 1960s and the doubts raised by the Vietnam War that a serious reevaluation of Taft's foreign policy was possible. And indeed, as policymakers of the post-Cold War era struggle with the issue of foreign affairs, perhaps it is time for another such reconsideration.

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HARK, HEROLD

The new Joan of Arc on a crusade to stop French unions causing misery to millions (Philip Delves Broughton, 04/06/2003, Daily Telegraph)

France's exhaustion with its unions has found its voice in a 21-year-old student, Sabine Herold, who is challenging the silent majority to revolt against the strikes crippling her country and causing havoc for British travellers.

With schools and government offices closed yesterday, Channel ferries halted, and airlines cancelling most of their flights to and from France, Mlle Herold called the union members 'reactionary egotists'

They "claim to defend public services but are just defending their own interests", she said.

With her pale blue mascara and long eyelashes, she makes an unlikely Joan of Arc. But her words have found an echo in large protests by students and parents against repeated strikes by teachers and threats to disrupt this summer's exam schedule.

She has also become an emblem for the many in French society who believe that economic reforms are long overdue. She blames President Jacques Chirac for caving in repeatedly during his career to union pressure. The many British travellers who have been affected by the strikes in France can only hope her campaign succeeds.

One recalls how the Maid of Orleans ended up...

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GREAT SLIGHT NORTH

Our cultural icons: the flag, beer 'Two-fours,' Shania Twain, brewskies with Trudeau top list of Canadiana (Chris Nuttall-Smith, June 29, 2003, CanWest News Service)

If we had our way this Tuesday, most beer-drinking Canadians would spend Canada Day ogling Shania Twain while sharing a brewski with Pierre Trudeau in Quebec -- home to Canada's sexiest people -- before closing out the festivities with sex on a beach in the Maritimes, a new poll shows.

Wow...and we worry about the state of American culture...

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THE ANSWER

"CRY":What would Captain Cook say? (Roger Kimball, 6.28.2003, Armavirumque)

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POST-DEMOCRATIC AMERICA

Ralph Nader: The US Needs Regime Change: He's the most radical US politician alive, blamed for losing Gore the 2000 election and allowing America's most conservative president ever to gain power. Now, he has a message for the world (Chris Lee, 29 June 2003, Sunday Herald)

'Not enough Americans are rolling up their sleeves as active citizens and as a result, they are watching their country be hijacked by giant corporations and their political allies in Washington,' he says. 'With 9/11, the politicians have seen a political advantage. We are moving away from democracy and into a plutocracy. This is an extremely serious condition.'

Call it a leadership disorder. In Nader's mind, Bush's wartime presidency and his quixotic war on terror are responsible for an era of eroded civil liberties and the reckless build-up of the munitions and defence industries. Government corruption and distortion of the truth, Nader feels, are taking place on the most serious level possible. 'The president has lied to the American people,' he exclaims. 'We were misled, or worse, about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction, his ties to al-Qaeda, his threat to the rest of the world. This is an impeachable offence. Now the president is emphasising the 'liberation of the Iraqi people' because that's the only reason left. Everything else has been shown to have been phoney. More people are getting killed and injured every day while his propaganda enriches corporations and the president's friends, not to mention his re-election campaign. But as long as he beats the drum of war and struts as a wartime president, he's able to camouflage what is essentially a losing presidency and inoculate himself from impeachment.'

To hear Nader tell it, the White House is in the grip of big-money contributors and conservative ideologues. And Bush's prime motivation for launching an invasion of Iraq is the same one that many observers suspect prompted the first Gulf War: oil. [...]

Furthermore, Nader believes that the US -- and, perhaps, the UK -- teeters on the brink of its own regime change. 'There has to come a time when people say 'Are you exaggerating the war on terrorism? Are you exaggerating the terrorist threat?' Iraq? It's in Bush's interests to keep saying that there are terrorist cells here and there. But no Democrat has asked if there are al-Qaeda cells all over the United States and if they are suicidal and they are funded and they hate us, why hasn't anything happened?' he says. 'If whistle-blowers start leaving the Pentagon or the CIA, he is going to be in serious trouble. If Tony Blair gets in more serious trouble, then the trouble is going to spill over here. They are one step away from serious political disaster. That step is if the parents of the troops killed over in Iraq convene for a news conference and accuse them [Blair and Bush] of costing their sons' lives, they'll be in serious trouble.'

Supposing for a moment that we accept the Left's hysteria as a legitimate response to the turning of America into some kind of repressive police state and international agressor, doesn't this argument answer Mr. Nader's last objection? "Why hasn't anything happened?" Because crypto-fascism is working?


MORE:
-Rage. Mistrust. Hatred. Fear. Uncle Sam's enemies within: While the US fights a war on terror, it is also systematically crushing its citizens' rights. Neil Mackay on the alarming rise of a new tyranny (Sunday Herald, 29 June 2003)

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IDLING

Economy is set on idle: Nation's use of capacity is nearing a modern low (JOHN SCHMID, June 28, 2003, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

Airlines these days fill little more than half the seats on their planes, leaving hundreds of the world's aircraft sitting idle.

America's automakers have the capacity to build 2 million more cars each year than people buy.

And in 2001 and 2002, the nation's paper-making heartland - concentrated in Wisconsin - decommissioned 104 paper-milling machines, each the length of a football field.

From greasy tool-making machinery to high-speed fiber-optic data lines, the United States has mothballed more industrial equipment this year than it has since 1982.

The shuttered offices and factories - some mutely awaiting an upturn and others closed for good - are a legacy of the longest economic expansion in post-World War II America. The giddy years of the late '90s,before the boom abruptly turned to a bust, left the economy saddled with more capacity than the marketplace can absorb.

And in the view of economists, the years of over-investment are now impeding a broad-based economic revival.

"If you have 26 percent of the capacity of the economy sitting idle, it is hard to sell to your board or your bank that you need to invest in new capacity," said Charles W. McMillion, chief economist of MBG Information Service, a forecasting firm in Washington, D.C.

The reference to "1982" is cause for hope, as we've enjoyed 20 years of uninterrupted economic expansion since that year.

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GOOD SAMARITANS

Graham's works defy anti-Muslim image (VAN KORNEGAY, Jun. 26, 2003, The State, SC)

Many will brand [evangelist Franklin] Graham as intolerant and divisive for his words, but they should also consider his work before trying to banish him from the Muslim world. It is work that has not only alleviated human suffering but also has given Christians and Muslims the chance to rub elbows rather than cross swords.

In the summer of 1999 in a boggy field on the Albanian coast, I saw a dozen Samaritan's Purse staffers build and run a small tent town for 2,000 mostly Muslim refugees who had fled ethnic violence in Kosovo. In less than two months' time they worked like characters in a fast-forward video erecting tents, digging latrines, installing a water system and starting a bakery.

For many of these refugees, the Serbs were the only people calling themselves Christians they had ever known, and it was these same Christians who had terrorized them and driven them from their homes. It's no wonder they were a little perplexed that a Christian organization was now coming to their aid.

Samaritan's Purse relief workers came from all walks of American life -- college students and professors, nurses, doctors, retired military, even a short-order cook. They lived in tents alongside the refugees, ate the same food, used the same pit latrines and provided a humane haven from the oppression the Albanians had known for more than 10 years.

The refugees had the freedom to worship any way they wanted, and Samaritan's Purse training materials even proscribed how staffers should dress and act in order to avoid offending Muslim sensibilities.

One wonders what charitable works groups like People for the American Way and other critics of Mr. Graham undertake in the Muslim world.

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BACKWARD LONGING

What a kick: Kickball enjoys comeback -- by adults (Robyn Dochterman, June 28, 2003, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

In a world where everything old is new again, the kickball craze probably shouldn't surprise anyone. The rubbery smell of the red ball has the power to take adults back to simpler times on grade school playgrounds. But unlike freeze tag or Big Wheels, kickball seems to translate to adulthood with surprising ease.

More than 1,100 people participate in organized leagues in the Twin Cities area. The Midwest Unconventional Sports Association (MUSA) and the Cities
Sports Connection (CSC) have nearly 400 players each. Edina, Plymouth, Apple Valley, St. Louis Park and other city leagues make up the balance. The World Adult Kickball Association (WAKA), which has 6,000 players nationwide, is starting a Twin Cities league. [...]

The sun is sinking. The swimming pool near the kickball field closes and three kids weave their bikes along the sidewalk, trying to ride without hands. When they spot the game, they wheel into the grass to watch. A player kicks a high foul ball, and it spins into the street. A city bus nearly flattens it as it bounces crazily down the slope.

The pleasure of diving for pennies, telling knock-knock jokes or catching lightning bugs might fade as kids grow up and go to work. But the urge to reach back to those days, and the desire to have simple, sheer fun, is still alive -- and kicking.

Kickball translating to adulthood is hardly surprising, it is after all a game even spazzes can play. Kill the Guy With the Football would be surprising.

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THE LOOSENING

Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse (Timothy J. Dailey, Ph.D., Family Research Council)

Scandals involving the sexual abuse of under-age boys by homosexual priests have rocked the Roman Catholic Church. At the same time, defenders of homosexuality argue that youth organizations such as the Boy Scouts should be forced to include homosexuals among their adult leaders. Similarly, the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a homosexual activist organization that targets schools, has spearheaded the formation of "Gay-Straight Alliances" among students. GLSEN encourages homosexual teachers-even in the youngest grades-to be open about their sexuality, as a way of providing role models to "gay" students. In addition, laws or policies banning employment discrimination based on "sexual orientation" usually make no exception for those who work with children or youth.

Many parents have become concerned that children may be molested, encouraged to become sexually active, or even "recruited" into adopting a homosexual identity and lifestyle. Gay activists dismiss such concerns-in part, by strenuously insisting that there is no connection between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of children.

However, despite efforts by homosexual activists to distance the gay lifestyle from pedophilia, there remains a disturbing connection between the two. This is because, by definition, male homosexuals are sexually attracted to other males. While many homosexuals may not seek young sexual partners, the evidence indicates that disproportionate numbers of gay men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners. In this paper we will consider the following evidence linking homosexuality to pedophilia:

Pedophiles are invariably males: Almost all sex crimes against children are committed by men.

Significant numbers of victims are males: Up to one-third of all sex crimes against children are committed against boys (as opposed to girls).

The 10 percent fallacy: Studies indicate that, contrary to the inaccurate but widely accepted claims of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, homosexuals comprise between 1 to 3 percent of the population.

Homosexuals are overrepresented in child sex offenses: Individuals from the 1 to 3 percent of the population that is sexually attracted to the same sex are committing up to one-third of the sex crimes against children.

Some homosexual activists defend the historic connection between homosexuality and pedophilia: Such activists consider the defense of "boy-lovers" to be a legitimate gay rights issue.

Pedophile themes abound in homosexual literary culture: Gay fiction as well as serious academic treatises promote "intergenerational intimacy."

Here for instance is that "martyr" of libertarianism, Pim Fortuyn:

In chapter 1 about the 1950s, I wrote about my early sexual experiences, experiences that I see as an enrichment. Today, an experience like that in the park could easily lead to a complaint by parents to the police because of paedophilia, and the relevant young man would be in trouble. But why?

He didn't do me any harm. On the contrary, he showed me something that was incomprehensibly exciting and I could feel and touch it, but today we are ready to interfere with complete teams of professionals. By interfering in such an irritating and grown-up way in the world of children, we make an enormous problem of something that for a child is no problem at all and is only exciting.

It would be absurd to argue that we can as a society embrace homosexuality as normal and an integral part of human liberty but then turn around and reject the core elements of this sexuality. If we are to love not just the sinner but the sin, then these behaviors can't be considered sinning any more. As surely as night follows day anti-paedaphilia laws must follow anti-sodomy laws into oblivion. As Maureen Dowd admonishes Antonin Scalia today, it's time for conservatives to "Loosen up...baby."

MORE:
-ESSAY: Pedophilia Chic: If you thought sex with children was taboo--think again.
(Mary Eberstadt, 06/17/1996, Weekly Standard)
-ESSAY: "Pedophilia Chic" Reconsidered: The taboo against sex with children continues to erode. ( Mary Eberstadt, 01/01/2001, Weekly Standard)
-ESSAY: The Elephant in the Sacristy : Beneath the scandals now consuming the Catholic church is a cluster of facts too enormous to ignore. (Mary Eberstadt, 06/17/2002, Weekly Standard)

In the end, one must believe one of two things about the offenders: Either they were born with a sexual "orientation" toward molesting children; or somehow, just maybe, the experience of being molested themselves affected their future sexual feelings. If one holds to the "orientation" view, one faces the serious problem of explaining away as "coincidence" a broadly shared experience of childhood or adolescent molestation--one out of proportion to the general population. But if, on the other hand, sexual predators are made, not born, a currently forbidden hypothesis suggests itself: that other "sexualities," too, may be affected by experience.

Today, the few researchers and clinicians who dare touch this subject are treated as professional lepers. Think only of the calumny that has come the way of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), which provides counseling to homosexual men and women who believe that sexual "orientation" is susceptible to change. Public opprobrium has also been the fate incurred by groups like Courage, a ministry to homosexuals from the perspective of traditional Catholic teaching. There is no doubt that the experience of groups like these--similar to those of the few writers who have dared dissent from the contemporary secular articles of faith about homosexuality--has had a chilling effect on public discussion, including discussion that could help identify, diagnose, and treat offenders in the future.

And here is where a contemporary secular taboo--that of questioning the ideology of "orientation"--crashes head-on into the greater public good. What the priest scandals demonstrate beyond argument is that what we need, right now, is in-depth study of the victim-to-perpetrator causal chain. We need answers to questions that, properly understood, will help prevent other boys from being preyed upon in the future--for example, why some children who are abused do not go on to become abusers themselves; why others become compulsive offenders whose victims number as high as the hundreds; and how institutions of all sorts might better screen and thwart and help the adults tempted by this profound evil. Today, however, because the ideology of "orientation" has effectively foreclosed discussion of just these issues, there is a tragically short supply of such theoretical and clinical exploration--and likely an even shorter supply of personal will and fortitude among potential researchers. As the JAMA article cited earlier noted suggestively--in a review, recall, of the clinical literature on the sexual abuse of boys--"No longitudinal studies examined the causal relationship between abuse and gender role or sexual orientation." There should be such studies. Interestingly, among the proposed reforms the bishops will discuss in Dallas, one promises that "we offer to cooperate with other churches, institutions of learning, and other interested organizations in conducting a major research study in this area"--namely, "the problem of the sexual abuse of children and young people in our society."

Such information would not only be useful to the bishops and the rest of the public in contemplating the matter of deterrence. It might also shed light on human sexuality more generally. In particular, it might help explain the prominence of the theme of man-boy seduction--which I have documented in two essays in these pages--in gay literature, journalism, and culture. It is now over 20 years since gay eminence grise Edmund White observed that "sex with minors" was one of two features of gay life "likely to outrage the straight community" (the other, he believed, was "sex in public places"). In the wake of the priest scandals, a few other gay voices have acknowledged just such a homosexual/heterosexual divide on the question of minors. As a writer for the Washington Blade put it with surprising candor, "These cases--where the 'victim' lies somewhere in between childhood and adulthood, and the 'abuser' may or may not also have a gay adult sexual life--prove far murkier than either the Catholic Church or many gay rights advocates seem willing to admit." But no gay writer has sounded a more poignant note than the unnamed man who wrote in a letter posted on Andrew Sullivan's website--which contribution Sullivan deserves credit for publishing: "I must disagree with your disavowal of any homosexual complicity in the Church scandal. . . . Until all queers are able to face the fact that we have created for ourselves a culture that values youth and beauty above all else, and to realize that this obsession creates, in at least some gay men, a deviant and abusive tendency toward sex with minors, we are doomed to continue to create victims as surely as the atrophied Church."

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MAJORITY DREAMS

Bush Plays It Fast, With Hard Money (DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, 6/29/2003,. NY Times)

By early next March, Democrats will probably have settled on a nominee for president.

At that point, with no opposition in the primaries, President Bush's re-election campaign is expected to begin spending the massive amount of money it is raising to paint an unfavorable picture of the Democratic candidate in voters' minds and to establish the terms of the fall contest in a way that benefits the president.

It is almost certain that the Democrats will not have the money to respond. "They will be flat on their backs," said Scott Reed, an experienced Republican consultant who is not involved in the 2004 presidential race, "tired from an exhausting primary campaign, still at each other's throats and completely broke." [...]

But Mr. Bush is forgoing matching money, so there will be no limit to what he can spend. His campaign says it plans to raise $170 million, almost twice what Mr. Bush had in 2000 when he also refused matching money and faced stiff primary opposition, and many times more than any other candidate has ever spent. [...]

Because Mr. Bush plans to accept public financing for the general election campaign, he can use the money he is raising only between now and the Republican National Convention in New York in September 2004.

"It's a bonanza for them," said Tony Coelho, who for a time was Al Gore's campaign manager in the last presidential race. "There's no way they can spend this amount of money just for themselves."

Mr. Coelho said he expected the Bush campaign to contribute millions of excess dollars to Congressional campaign committees and state and local Republican parties to be used to improve the party's position in Congress. "What they want to do is not just target Bush's re-election but also make the Republican Party the majority party for the rest of the decade if not longer," he said.

The big thing at this point is for the Party to avoid the Reagan/Clinton mistake of not running on any agenda. You need to make your landslide look like an endorsement of the things you want to get done--in Mr. Bush's case, counter-revolutionary entitlement and tax reform--whether it is or not.

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TOO LONG AT THE FAIR

Who says Al's our pal? (Neil Cavuto, June 29, 2003, Town Hall)

So Alan Greenspan and his buddies on the Federal Reserve Board lowered interest rates again this week. Another quarter-point bone to the masses, for which we're to be eternally grateful. Pardon me, but I don't think so.

First off, it should have been a half-point cut. That would have sent an unequivocal message to the markets and the rest of us that this Fed gets it. Things are still dicey, so there's no time for fooling around.

By moving as conservatively as they did, Al and his pals sent quite the opposite message: that things are fine, just you wait. Well, for better than three years' worth of rate cuts, we've been waiting, and the Fed has been dithering. This latest cut only continued the trend, and was one of the big reasons why the Dow fell 98 points the day the Fed moved. Too little, too late.

What amazes me is despite the disappointment, few criticize Al himself. He's held in remarkably high regard almost everywhere. Wall Street loves him. Congressmen trip over themselves praising him. And even the Bush administration is afraid to say boo to him. Why? What has this guy done to warrant such unanimous love?

I'll tell you, in one word: nothing.

Mr. Greenspan hasn't understood the economy since Paul Volcker and Ronald Reagan destroyed inflation--time to enjoy a well deserved retirement.

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WHAT EVER BECAME OF EUROPE?

Aging Europe Finds Its Pension Is Running Out (RICHARD BERNSTEIN, June 29, 2003, NY Times)

[W]hile pension reform is the urgent political issue of the moment in Germany, Austria, France and other countries, many experts see it as a harbinger of things to come, a sign of a demographic shift with important implications not only for the welfare of retirees but also for European societies as a whole. The crucial factor is age.

One study by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, predicts that the median age in the United States in 2050 will be 35.4, only a very slight increase from what it is now. In Europe, by contrast, it is expected to rise to 52.3 from 37.7.

The likely meaning of this "stunning difference," as the British weekly The Economist called the growing demographic disparity between Europe and the United States, is that American power--economic and military--will continue to grow relative to Europe's, which will also decline in comparison with other parts of the world like China, India and Latin America.

With its population not only aging but shrinking as well, Europe seems to face two broad possibilities: either it will have to make up the population shortfall by substantial increases in immigration, which would almost surely create new political tensions in countries where anti-immigrant parties have gained strength in recent years, or it will have to accept being older and smaller and therefore, as some have been warning, less influential in world affairs.

"The European countries are aging in a world that is becoming younger," Mr. Frey said in a telephone interview. "And in a global economy, they're not going to share in the energy and vitality that comes with a younger population." [...]

"In reality, a legal retirement age of 80 is what we should aim at," Erich Streissler, an Austrian economist, wrote in a newspaper article.

It's hard to know whether media like the Times are finally waking up to the most important story of the late 20th Century/early 21st--the death of Europe--or whether this is just a case of their best writer, Richard Bernstein, doing a story he's noticed because he's pretty conservative. Folks have a tendency, perhaps because the implications are so dire, to pooh-pooh these stories and say the decline so far isn't too bad and can be easily reversed. But one of the studies cited in the story and linked below does a nice job of explaining what happens when "negative momentum" takes hold, as it has already in Europe, with ever smaller generations duplicating the infertility of the previous generation.

Can't you just imagine what the streets of Paris will look like when a government tells the French they have to work until they're 80 to get their pensions? Like a nursing home production of Les Miserables...


MORE:
-Europe's Population at a Turning Point (Wolfgang Lutz, Brian C. O'Neill, Sergei Scherbov, Science)

Europe has just entered a critical phase of its demographic evolution. Around the year 2000, the population began to generate "negative momentum": a tendency to decline owing to shrinking cohorts of young people that was brought on by low fertility (birthrate) over the past three decades. Currently, the effect of negative momentum on future population is small. However, each additional decade that fertility remains at its present low level will imply a further decline in the European Union (EU) of 25 to 40 million people, in the absence of offsetting effects from immigration or rising life expectancy. Governments in Europe are beginning to consider a range of policy options to address the negative implications of population decline and rapid aging. Social policies and labor laws aimed at halting the further increase in the mean age of childbearing--which contributes to low fertility--have substantial scope for affecting future demographic trends. They also have an additional health rationale because of the increasing health risks associated with childbearing in older women.

-ALL 10 MILLION EUROPEANS: The last two generations grew up with the idea of the "population explosion". For a century the world has lived with constant upward revision of population forecasts: the only question was if the growth would be fast, or very fast. And the last generation faced the question: how many billions can this planet support? So it is a culture shock, when new projections of global population include scenarios of dramatic population decline - without any meteorite impacts, new epidemics, or famines. Or when a UN report suggests that Europe needs 700 million immigrants to maintain its age structure... Is the future population nightmare not rural Bangladesh, but rural Estonia? (Paul Treanor, March 2003)

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YOU'VE GOTTA BE FARUQUIN KIDDING

-REVIEW: of Islam Under Siege by Akbar S Ahmed (Ahmad Faruqui, Asia Times)

One would be hard pressed to disagree with the core argument of the book, which is directed at Muslims. It consists of two parts. First, don't blame the "Great Satan" for all your ills. Second, be inclusive and compassionate toward other human beings regardless of their faith, because that is what God has willed the believers to do. Many (but not all) of the problems facing the Muslim world are indeed self-inflicted, and blaming the West for all of them has set the Muslims back on the path to progress. Conspiracy theories dominate Muslim views of the West, which is believed to be plotting for the extermination of Islam while indulging in an orgy of sex and violence. It is too often the case that the lives of Muslims are cloaked with a fatalism based on a misunderstanding of God's will. [...]

He also mentions that the freedom of speech and religion in the US prior to September 11 had created an atmosphere that could be compared to that of Muslim Spain (Andalus) when Christians, Jews and Muslims lived side by side in peace. However, everything changed after the terror attacks, as the US came in the grip of hyper-group solidarity. Muslims could be arrested anywhere and held without charges indefinitely, merely for being Muslims. Many who were arrested had their beards shaven forcefully.

Hopefully Mr. Faruqui understands Islam better than America, but that bit in the second paragraph doesn't instill much confidence in his analytical abilities.

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ONE MORE FOR THE ASH HEAP

U.S. Policy Change Toward Beijing (J. Michael Waller, June 26, 2003, Insight)

The People's Republic of China (PRC) is losing its hard-won image as a force for stability in Asia as key thinkers in and around the Bush administration are beginning to view it as a dangerous and often reckless power that is fomenting fear and instability. If this change sweeps through the government leadership like other recent paradigm shifts - for instance, the quickly spreading view that Saudi Arabia no longer is a stable force in the Middle East but a corrupt and unpopular financier of terrorism - Sino-American relations will be headed for the rocks. That's bad news for the Chinese Communist Party leadership and the U.S. and other companies that have built their fortunes on it. [...]

The Chinese leadership has used its "partner" status in the world war on terrorism to crack down even further on religious, political and social movements. According to Al Santoli, editor of the American Foreign Policy Council's China Reform Monitor, "Beijing is using the war on terror as an excuse to imprison and execute political opponents and religious leaders," including underground Roman Catholic clergy, democracy activists and the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement.

Even the State Department responded to this, at least expressing "deep concern" over the life sentence imposed on Wang Bingzhang last February, stressing that "the war on terrorism must not be misused to repress legitimate political grievances or dissent."

The sheer volume of evidence presents a damning indictment of the PRC as a fomenter of instability and fear, a purveyor of weapons of mass destruction to the world's most dangerous state-sponsors of terrorism, a supplier of nuclear-missile technology to the planet's most tense hot spots and a unilateral force committed to changing the world's political map. Analysts see Beijing pursuing a two-track strategy of sustained, low-level military pressure with positive inducements of trade, loans, development assistance and even security cooperation - which combined create a sense of fear and dependency on the part of China's neighbors. [...]

Beijing's "long-term strategic objective is to drive American bases and influence out of the Pacific region and to exercise hegemony over it," according to Australia-based sinologist Peter Zhang. "I wrote those words nearly four years ago," he said in a recent essay for the New Australian. "Since then events in the region have only strengthened my assessment."

They're not a threat to us in the short or long term, but they aren't a partner in any way either. We should bring America's full rhetorical pressure to bear on them--"the PRC is one of the most murderous regimes in human history, remains repressive, and is incapable of satisfying the demands for freedom and prosperity of its people"--and base our military-space program on destroying their satellite and missile capability. This latter will be useful even as and after China disintegrates, because it will give us the capability to destroy missiles in other lesser nations. Prepare for China and the Saddams and Kim Jong-Ils are a snap.

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THANK GOODNESS FOR SHARIA

Iran Reportedly Nabs Bin Laden's No. 2 Man (Fox News, June 28, 2003)

Ayman al-Zawahiri, Usama bin Laden's right-hand man, was reported last night to be in custody in Iran along with several other top Al Qaeda leaders.

The Arabic news channel Al-Arabiyah said the fanatic Egyptian-born doctor is under arrest in Iran along with bin Laden's son Saad and Al Qaeda's infamous spokesman Abu Ghaith.

The report said they may be sent back to their home countries.

Al-Zawahiri has been sentenced to death in Egypt for his role in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.

Well, he definitely won't be a head man in al-Qaeda for much longer.

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THERE'S ALWAYS A STATE RELIGION

Our state religion is secularism (Ted Byfield, June 27, 2003, National Post)

Canada's state religion is secularism, which proclaims that if there is a God, man could know nothing about It. Therefore, any viewpoint that contends otherwise should be dismissed as an absurdity, and above all permitted no role in the determination of public policy, because religion must be regarded as a purely "private" affair.

Claims of individuals to know anything as actually true, or morally good, should be disparaged, and school curricula must be designed to discourage such assumptions. Influence over children should be gradually taken away from parents and vested in the state. In particular, the ability of parents to imbue their children with any religious viewpoint should be thwarted through public education.

The purpose of human life is pleasure, the centre of all human endeavour is properly the self, and the chief vehicle for all human fulfillment and advance is the state. Finally, the source of all moral authority must be vested in what Plato called "the Guardians," which in our day would mean the professoriate, the luminaries of the liberal media, the educators, and the bureaucracy. Judges, the intelligentsia, commentators and assorted "experts," these are the priests and the prophets.

Such is the state religion of Canada. Its chief adversary is Christianity, and Christianity has no media voice. When The Report magazine folded, this was the real loss.

It's strange that people believe you can try to erradicate religion from public affairs without replacing it with some other set of ideas, as if the
opposite of Truth weren't No Truth.

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CON COM

Miller Emerges as New Voice for Bush Re-Election (Reuters, 6/28/03)

A new voice has emerged in the re-election campaign of President Bush, that of Dennis Miller, who is gaining a reputation as a conservative comic by attacking Democrats with biting humor.

Miller flew on Air Force One from San Francisco to Los Angeles with the president on Friday, and later gave a stand-up routine at a Bush fund-raiser in Los Angeles. [...]

Bush remained offstage until after Miller's often caustic comic performance during the fund-raiser that drew in $3.5 million, most of it in $2,000 checks from 1,600 people. [...]

"[Howard Dean can roll up his sleeves all he wants at public events, but as long as we see that heart tattoo with Neville Chamberlain's name on his right forearms, he's never going anywhere," Miller said.

New?

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WHO ON EARTH IS LEO STRAUSS?

Philosophers and kings (Lexington, 19/06/2003, The Economist)

FROM the moment George Bush moved into the White House, the search has been on for the man (or woman) who is pulling his strings. But now all are forgotten in the fuss about the most surprising suspect of all: Leo Strauss, a political philosopher who died in 1973 and produced a series of learned studies of political theorists (such as Xenophon's Socratic Discourse) that are variously described as seminal and utterly opaque. But his real talent was for teaching.

One reason why Strauss is so controversial is that a little selective quotation can be used to give his thinking a decidedly sinister tinge. Strauss emphasised both the fragility of democracy and the importance of intellectual elites. He was also a devotee of Plato, who famously argued that “philosopher kings” sometimes had to be willing to tell “noble lies” in order to keep the ignorant masses in line. The implication: Mr Wolfowitz and his fellow Straussians deliberately lied about Saddam Hussein's nukes to advance their political cause. This is stretching it. Strauss was critical of democracy in much the same way that Winston Churchill was: he believed (unlike Plato) that it was the worst political system apart from all the others. He focused on the weaknesses of liberal democracy—particularly its habit of underestimating the dangers of tyranny—precisely because he had seen the Weimar Republic destroyed at close hand.

The rise of the Straussians suggests that American conservatism has shifted its focus from liberty to virtue. Ronald Reagan was surrounded with free-marketers in Adam Smith ties. But Mr Bush is an intensely religious man who has no qualms about using big government to improve people's behaviour. Strauss was an agnostic, but he also stressed the cultivation of personal virtue, and his followers (perhaps traducing him, and certainly outraging Plato) have argued that organised religion is a necessary buttress of civilisation. Strauss's paternalist side would have warmed to the way that Mr Bush has expanded the Department of Education, has started promoting marriage through the Department of Health and Human Services and has toughened America's drug policies. Straussians such as Mr Walters (the current drug tsar) and Mr Kass (head of the council of bioethics) have helped to clothe Mr Bush's Christian instincts in the non-religious language of moral philosophy and practical policy.

The rise of the Straussians also illustrates an odd point about modern American conservatism. Despite all their bile about Old Europe, the American right has repeatedly found its inspiration in European thinkers. A few years ago, it was an Austrian libertarian called Friedrich Hayek. Now it is a German Jew who regarded ancient Greece as the fountain of all wisdom. With European constitution-makers seeking inspiration in the Philadelphia Convention, and American conservatives embracing European philosophical tracts, perhaps transatlantic relations aren't quite as bad as all that.

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YET ANOTHER DEAN ARTICLE

Meet Howard Dean (Lexington, 26/06/2003, The Economist - subscription required)

HOWARD DEAN admits that when he decided to run for president even his mother said it was preposterous. He meant nothing to anybody except his fellow Vermonters and a handful of health-care bores. Now, he is the Democrat to watch. He is selling himself as the embodiment of authenticity: an anti-politician who is not afraid to express outrage. And he is turning his sharp-edged personality into an asset, proof that he is not just another blow-dried mediocrity from the Beltway. The result is huge enthusiasm. “Howard Dean” bumper stickers are replacing “Peace Now” stickers on the nation's Volvos. In the first quarter of this year he raised more money in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Beverly Hills than Mr Kerry or Mr Lieberman.

Mr Dean is actually rather an odd champion for the party's Democratic wing. As governor of Vermont for 11 years the doctor-turned-politician was a pragmatic New Democrat in the Clinton mould. He resisted irresponsible spending increases, fought with the state's Progressive Party and vigorously upheld the right of Vermonters to carry concealed guns. He even defied a national trend by changing his mind in favour of the death penalty. He continues to sell himself as a “deficit hawk” and “balanced budget fiend” (the Bush fiscal policy, he says, is modelled on Argentina's). His health-care plan is much more market-driven than the Clinton administration's plan, and much cheaper than Dick Gephardt's ($88 billion compared with $214 billion). His views on the Middle East are pretty close to the Israeli lobby's. He is against medical marijuana laws and the anti-global-warming Kyoto protocol.

So would Mr Dean be able to repackage himself as a centrist if he won the nomination? Hardly. His views on guns count for little compared with his strident opposition to war in Iraq and his determination to repeal “every dime” of Mr Bush's tax cuts. For good or ill, Mr Dean has decided to climb on the back of the leftist tiger. He cannot climb off without being eaten alive. On Capitol Hill Democrats worry that a Dean candidacy will not only allow Mr Bush to sweep the electoral college but also to cull vulnerable Democrats in the conservative south and the middle-American heartland. What chance has a liberal north-easterner backed by money from Beverly Hills and Harvard Yard of helping the Democrats in vulnerable Senate seats in Arkansas, South Carolina and the two Dakotas?

Besides, Mr Dean does not have to win for his party to lose. His insurgency is already tugging other candidates to the left. Hardly a day goes past without the other front-runners producing some new piece of populist rhetoric. This week Mr Gephardt promised that as president he would use executive orders to countermand “any wrong thing that the Supreme Court does”. The problem for the Democrats is not just the man from Vermont but the rank-and-file rage that he embodies. Far too many Democrats are just too angry to think straight at the moment. And far too many would rather go down to glorious defeat than make the irritating compromises necessary for power.

2004 = 1932.

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RYAN'S OUR HOPE

Senate hopeful gets bad rap (THOMAS ROESER, June 28, 2003, Chicago Sun-Times)

A misleading rumor has circulated that Republican Jack Ryan, candidate for the U.S. Senate, is a Rockefeller Republican. Not so. [...]

Ryan is a conservative--at least as conservative as George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and in some ways more.

On the social issues Ryan is pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother (same as Bush and Reagan). On gay marriage or registry, if legislation were to create ''any special rights, I'm against it. . . . I'm against any special rights attached to someone's sexual orientation.'' On stem cell research he has the same position as Bush: favoring research on existing lines of stem cells, but creating life for experimentation is the wrong thing to do.

He favors the Bush tax cuts and Iraqi war, but what intrigues me is where he takes a rightward departure from the president. He says the
administration spends too much and cites $80 billion in corporate subsidies that can be cut. He points to a Cato study that criticizes the Advanced Technology program, where government does poorly what private business should do for itself. Next is a so-called Partnership for the Next Generation of Vehicles, a Commerce Department project that spends public dollars on automotive research, and another Commerce Department effort that attempts to advertise U.S. products. He says that if elected, he would hope to serve on the Appropriations Committee, where such boondoggles can be cut. Education Department expenditures could be pared, too, if school choice were implemented.

Ryan wants to reduce the capital gains tax to zero, abolish the Commerce Department's minority business development arm and focus resources instead to the education of minority youth on how to gain access to capital.

On foreign-defense policy, he believes our stake in Europe should be drastically reduced. The European countries spend about 1.5 percent of their gross national product on defense, he says. We spend 3 percent of our GNP on arms in part because ''we are subsidizing their defense.'' NATO countries' GNP is very close to our own.

Karl Rove and the President need to get into IL and strongarm the Party into backing this guy, the way they did for folks like Norm Coleman and John Thune last cycle. Then the 2004 campaign should focus on IL, CA, WA, NV, NY, etc. (even HI), places where the Democratic candidate for president will have to play defense and a win by the President could synergistically carry in a GOP Senator or vice versa.

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PROVOCATIONS

Pentagon Delays Releasing 5 Syrians Hurt in U.S. Raid: This delay has come despite objections from Syria, the U.S. State Department and even American military officers on the ground. (DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT, 6/28/03, NY Times)

Now close your eyes, open them again, and read the following:

War Department Delays Release of Five Soviets Hurt in Berlin Clash: This delay has come despite objections from Stalin, the U.S. State Department and even American military officers like General Bradley. (NY Times, 6/28/45)

How easy it would have been...

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)

Contemplating the L-word: Six reasons why the stars could be aligning for a Bush landslide in 2004. (Fred Barnes, 06/27/2003, Weekly Standard)

THE POLITICAL STARS are suddenly aligned for President Bush for a smashing re-election victory in 2004. This doesn't guarantee he'll win. And it doesn't preclude anything of political significance changing the situation between today and Election Day 16 months from now. What it does mean, though, is that if all goes as expected--and that's a big "if"--Bush will be in an extremely strong position against his Democratic opponent.

The stars consist of six factors, all of which appear favorable to Bush at the moment. They are: an improving economy, a successful war, a big domestic triumph, a boatload of campaign money, an opposition party in disarray, an a discredited big media. [...]

Again, the caveats. Nothing is assured. One can imagine a Democratic ticket--Lieberman-Graham perhaps--that would be competitive. Political scientist Larry Sabato calculates the 2004 contest now with 278 electoral votes probable or leaning for Bush and 260 for the Democratic challenger. That's a Bush lead, but not a landslide. And, of course, it's only a projection. But you have to like Bush's chances a lot better than any Democrat's at the moment.

Neither is this sudden nor are the caveats terribly sensible; it's just a fact of modern politics that all but our worst presidents get a second term and get it by a significant, even landslidish, margin. Hoover, Ford, Carter, and Bush I were denied but they required a Depression, Watergate, the Iran hostage situation, and the violation of a tax cut pledge in order to lose--with Ford nearly winning anyway. Meanwhile, Harry Truman won in 1948 despite facing general election challengers from the racist (Dixiecrat) and socialist (Henry Wallace) wings of his own party. Competent incumbents win.

And they win pretty big, at least in electoral terms. You could sit down and draw up all the reasons that Truman, Ike, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II should face close re-elections, but that's not what happens. Truman won 303 to 189. Ike won 457 to 73. LBJ won 486 to 52. Nixon won 520 to 17. Reagan won 525 to 13. And Clinton won 379 to 159. So, imagine that you want to argue that the closeness of 2000 and the conservatism of George W. Bush will mitigate against a landslide. Given that Mr. Bush's first victory most closely resembles the narrowness of Nixon's first and that his ideological extremism most closely resembles Reagan's, their re-election bids seem like proper comparisons for 2004 and they suggest the possibility of a 500+ electoral vote total. This may seem absurd at first, but add in the fact that Mr. Bush carried thirty states even in 200 and that the Senate will have about a 60 seat Republican majority after the 2004 election and you begin to see the massive advantage Mr. Bush starts with. Then take a look at the most significant "Blue" states and you find things like the following: Nixon and Reagan both carried CA, NY, NJ, MI, PA, IL in their re-election bids and all those states had Republican governors just before their current governor or, in the case of NY, still have one. PA even has two Republican Senators. And MN, which Reagan lost, and MA, which Nixon lost, both have Republican governors.

In short, no Red state is in play while every Blue state is winnable by Mr. Bush. A landslide is not only possible but nearly inevitable. There are three conceivable eventualities that could prevent it--Mr. Barnes scenario of a Lieberman/Graham ticket would make a landslide more likely not less, as it would drive away black voters without attracting any whites--they are:

(1) Terror. A domestic terrorist attack or series of attacks of such magnitude, daring, and success that they suggest gross incompetence on the part of the administration's anti-terror team. But even this would require that the administration's retaliation be ineffectual. Take out Bashir Assad and Muammar Qaddafi and few would quibble over their noninvolvement while the action would appear "strong", even if not proportionate.

(2) Economic collapse. This would require a massive spike in unemployment and a drastic drop in the stock market. This may be possible, but seems unlikely

(3) Scandal. If Mr. Bush himself were to be implicated in a personal scandal, some Clinton-type episode of accosting a young woman--or even worse young boys--he'd be toast. No other President in memory is so closely identified with the personal qualities he brings to the job. Other decent men have been president in modern times (TR, Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Ike, Reagan in particular come to mind) but none became president specifically because they were decent, as Mr. Bush arguably did. It was this dynamic that made the revelation of a twenty year old drunk driving arrest so devastating in 2000, perhaps costing Mr. Bush several Midwestern Catholic states.

A major sexual scandal would destroy him because his own constituency would take out their disappointment on him. This seems though like a rather thin reed for Democrats to rest their hopes on.

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HOUSING PROJECT

Davis Backs Expanding House for D.C. Seat: GOP Plan Would Give District a Vote in Congress, Balanced by Republican Slot (Craig Timberg, June 27, 2003, Washington Post)

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III is working on a proposal to expand the House of Representatives by two seats, giving the District of Columbia its long-sought vote in Congress while not upsetting the partisan balance of power there.

The Davis plan, which an aide said is months from being in final form, was hailed by city officials as a crucial step toward giving residents their rightful say in the nation's lawmaking, military actions and spending decisions. [...]

The Davis plan likely would give mostly Republican Utah, which lost a seat in the last round of redistricting, a fourth House seat, counterbalancing the presumably Democratic seat for the District, where the party holds an 11-1 registration edge. [...]

The size of the House of Representatives is set by law, not by the Constitution, and can be changed by Congress. The number of districts was increased to 437 after Alaska and Hawaii were added as states in the 1950s. Then in 1963 the number reverted to 435, where it has stood since.

If you're going to give the District a seat just do so, don't try to balance it racially and politically. That's embarrassing.

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SEPARATED AT BIRTHDAY

Here's an odd juxtaposition: it's the birthday of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), an author so silly he made liberty sound bad and Mark Helprin (1947-), an author so gifted he made Bob Dole sound good.

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YOU WILL BE MINE, ALL MINE

THE MOYNIHAN GAMBIT (Edward Driscoll, June 27, 2003)

I've long been a fan of Stanley Crouch, ever since I first saw him on Charlie Rose's show in the late 1980s or early 1990s. In his latest New York Daily News column, he praises Bush's outreach towards blacks, as he dedicated June Black Music Month at a White House event entitled Harlem's Song:

"If this event was indeed part of a grand strategy, Bush seems well on his way to redirecting the ethnic tone of the Republican Party in a way that may not automatically make black people feel friendly toward it but that could, over time, bring issues of importance to Afro-Americans to the front and put party affiliations in the back.

I thought about all of that walking around the White House as the rehearsals were going on. Integration was everywhere. It felt good to see the military personnel and all the guests representing the many faces of the nation just as much as they did under President Bill Clinton.

Further, with Bush's emphasis on educational policy, with his appointments of Rice and Powell, with his pledge to refurbish Frederick Douglass' home, with his $15 billion relief package for black Africa and with his recent admonishment that federal law enforcement agencies should not profile any ethnic community unless the issue of terrorism is at hand, this President is changing his party."

Brother Driscoll says this could be part of a "Moynihan Gambit". We hope he's right. Consider only this: if the GOP could consistently get just 20% of the black vote, they'd never lose a national election and few statewide.

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SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY

Justices Extend Decision on Gay Rights and Equality (LINDA
GREENHOUSE, 6/28/03, NY Times)

In an immediate application of its new protective approach to gay rights, the Supreme Court today vacated the sodomy conviction of a Kansas teenager who received a 17-year sentence for having oral sex with a younger boy. [...]

Matthew R. Limon had just turned 18 when he had consensual sex with a 14-year-old boy at the residential school for developmentally disabled youths where both were living.

Typically when something occurs like the Court's anti-sodomy ruling conservatives bemoan the slippery slope we've been placed on and the Left protests that this is nonsense. Here the Court clears the matter up by okaying sexual assault on a retarded child, placing us fairly close to the bottom of the slope right off the bat.

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DUE REGARD

Daily Philosophical Quotation (28 Jun 2003)

Licentiousness, or rather the frenzy of liberty, has taken possession of us, and is throwing everything into confusion. How happy do I esteem it, that in all my writings I have always kept at a proper distance from that tempting extreme, and have maintained a due regard to magistracy and established government, suitably to the character of an historian and a philosopher!

-David Hume, Letters

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THE ABANDONED TASK

Christian Quotation of the Day (June 28, 2003)

To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal.
    -Simone Weil (1909-1943)

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MAYBE NOT QUITE APPALLING

10 Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq (Christopher Scheer, June 27, 2003, AlterNet)

LIE #1: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment need for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." - President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.

FACT: [...] Department of Energy officials, who monitor nuclear plants, say the tubes could not be used for enriching uranium. [...]

LIE #2: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." - President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.

FACT: [...] based on a document [...]

LIE #4: "[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." - CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that evening's speech by President Bush.

FACT: Intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between Saddam and al-Qaeda in the early '90s [...]

LIE #6: "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." - President Bush, Oct. 7.

FACT: Said drones can't fly more than 300 miles [...]

LIE #7: "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons [...]

FACT: Despite a massive nationwide search by U.S. and British forces, there are no signs, traces or examples of chemical weapons being deployed in the field, or anywhere else during the war.

LIE #8: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." - Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.

FACT: [...] these stocks...were well past their use-by date and therefore useless as weapon fodder. [...]

LIE #10: "Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited." - President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003.

FACT: This was reference to the discovery of two modified truck trailers [...]

So if you take a monkeywrench to context (also called Dowdification these days), here's what you come away with:

(1) Iraq tried purchasing these tubes.

(2) There was a document saying they tried to purchase uranium.

(3) Saddam had contacts with al-Qaeda.

(4) Iraq was developing drone aircraft.

(5) Iraq had chemical and biological weapons but may not have deployed them.

(6) AlterNet's own investigations prove Iraq had WMD.

(7) Iraq had those two modifed trucks.

You could obviously choose to give Saddam the beneft of the doubt on all those points, but it doesn't seem like an administration that did so would be doing its utmost to protect our national security or that of friends in the region.

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THEY CAN GO WHEN THE JIHAD ENDS

In the Land of Guantanamo (TED CONOVER, June 29, 2003, NY Times Magazine)

It feels surreal to be on an American naval base inside the territory of a Communist country. And it feels doubly strange -- like a parody of a David Lynch movie -- to cruise slowly by little town-house subdivisions, past batting cages and even by a rocky outcrop where high-school students spray-paint their names, then come suddenly upon a prison camp in the ''war on terror'' wreathed in razor wire.

Prisoners from the Afghan war first arrived at ''Gitmo,'' as locals call the base, in January 2002. The first 110 men were brought to a makeshift set of cages called Camp X-Ray and were made to kneel, shackled and blindfolded with special blacked-out goggles, while soldiers trained rifles on them, an image captured in the first news photographs of them. Then, last spring, they were all moved to a newer, larger facility, Camp Delta. Unlike X-Ray, Delta has running water, indoor toilets and plenty of unused capacity. (There are 680 prisoners housed there now, with room for about 1,000.) Soldiers call Camp Delta ''the Wire,'' and it has plenty of that -- rows of chain link and concertina. Rising behind them are plywood guard towers, some draped with American flags, and an array of lights for night.

At the camp's main gate, a 4-foot-by-8-foot sign attached at eye level says ''Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.'' This is the slogan of J.T.F./Guantanamo, the joint military task force -- 2,000 strong -- that runs the detention-and-interrogation operation. It is printed on handouts and official documents and signs and is constantly recited, soldier to soldier, at the camp's checkpoints. As I arrived at the main gate for the first time, I turned to the first lieutenant who was escorting me. ''Isn't that a little strange,'' I offered, ''a slogan about freedom on the gate of a prison camp?''

He looked at me flatly. ''Doesn't seem strange to me,'' he said. ''Does it seem strange to you?''

What a lovely reference to the slogan over the gates of Auschwitz: "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Will Set You Free). Mr. Conover was on NPR talking about this piece today and was followed by Anthony Lewis who was complaining that he was unfamiliar with any instance in our history of our holding "prisoners of war" indefinitely. One would have liked the interviewer to ask: did we really send captured soldiers back to Nazi Germany before the end of that war?

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HELLO, JUSTICE GONZALES

The Texas Clemency Memos: As the legal counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush, Alberto R. Gonzales-now the White House counsel, and widely regarded as a likely future Supreme Court nominee-prepared fifty-seven confidential death-penalty memoranda for Bush's review. Never before discussed publicly, the memoranda suggest that Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise Bush of some of the most salient issues in the cases at hand (Alan Berlow, July/August 2003, The Atlantic Monthly)

During Bush's six years as governor 150 men and two women were executed in Texas-a record unmatched by any other governor in modern American history. Each time a person was sentenced to death, Bush received from his legal counsel a document summarizing the facts of the case, usually on the morning of the day scheduled for the execution, and was then briefed on those facts by his counsel; based on this information Bush allowed the execution to proceed in all cases but one. The first fifty-seven of these summaries were prepared by Gonzales, a Harvard-educated lawyer who went on to become the Texas secretary of state and a justice on the Texas supreme court. He is now the White House counsel.

Gonzales never intended his summaries to be made public. Almost all are marked CONFIDENTIAL and state, "The privileges claimed include, but are not limited to, claims of Attorney-Client Privilege, Attorney Work-Product Privilege, and the Internal Memorandum exception to the Texas Public Information Act." I obtained the summaries and related documents, which have never been published, after the Texas attorney general ruled that they were not exempt from the disclosure requirements of the Public Information Act.

Gonzales's summaries were Bush's primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. Each is only three to seven pages long and generally consists of little more than a brief description of the crime, a paragraph or two on the defendant's personal background, and a condensed legal history. Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim. This assumption ignores one of the most basic reasons for clemency: the fact that the justice system makes mistakes.

A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.

This is an act of sheer brilliance by the White House, shifting the topic of Mr. Gonzales's confirmation hearings from abortion, on which conservatives are suspicious of him, to the death penalty and putting him on the Right while the Democrats will be going after him and the President for executing criminals.

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"IN THE LAND OF THE PLOW HORSES"

A Nation of Grinders (DAVID BROOKS, June 29, 2003, NY Times Magazine)

So how about Abraham Lincoln as the defining capitalist figure for our age? [...]

Lincoln began life with high anticipations of glorious success. When he was young, he had a little boat, which he kept on the Ohio River. One day a pair of travelers asked him if he would row them to the middle of the river, where they could intercept a steamboat. Lincoln took them out, and as the men boarded the steamboat, they each threw a silver half-dollar into the bottom of his boat. ''You may think it was a very little thing,'' Lincoln later recalled, ''but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day. . . . The world seemed wider and fairer before me.''

He became a fervent believer in social mobility and came to see, as the historian Allen C. Guelzo has pointed out, that self-transformation is almost a moral responsibility for the aspiring American. [...]

In the land of the plow horses, wealth is acceptable because it is legitimized by the creed of social mobility, which in many ways originated with Lincoln and the Whig Party, of which he was a member for most of his career. According to this creed, affluence is admired because it is the product of hard work, and it does not corrupt because you continue to work even when you don't have to anymore. According to this creed, social mobility is the saving fire that redeems society. Social mobility opens up horizons because people can see wider opportunities and live transformed lives. Social mobility reduces class conflict because each person can build his own fortune, rather than taking from the fortunes of others. Social mobility unleashes creative energies and keeps everything new and dynamic. It compensates for inequality, because the family that is poor today may become richer tomorrow. It is the very essence of justice, because each person's destiny is somehow related to the amount of talent and effort he or she pours into life. The purpose of government is to ensure that there is, to use Lincoln's words, ''an open field and a fair chance'' so that everyone can compete in the race of life.

This is the sensible, steady and admirable ethic of American life. And people who hew to this ethic are still rewarded. If you get an education, get married and stay married, the odds are overwhelming that you will rise. If you migrate here from a developing country, and if you work hard, the odds are pretty good that you and your children will enjoy brighter and more open futures.

The salient point here is just how much of this depends on oneself. No task is more worthwhile to our culture than restoring this idea of "self-transformation".

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WHERE ARE THE NEOCONS?

Liberian President Appeals for U.S. Help to End Rebel War (SOMINI SENGUPTA, June 27, 2003, NY Times)

Embattled President Charles Taylor of Liberia appealed to the United States for help in rescuing his country from civil war today but said that he would not abandon power until an international military force arrived to guarantee peace.

In a radio address aired late this afternoon, Mr. Taylor said he wanted the United States to lift ``Liberia and Liberians out of this mess.'' He said he remained open to negotiations to end the bloody conflict.

His plea came a day after President Bush called on President Taylor to resign in the interest of halting a three-year rebel conflict that has fractured this West African country, spurred a regional refugee crisis and left hundreds dead.

Part of the burden of being a great power is that we do have some moral obligation to intervene here, especially when we're asked to.

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WHAT BUSH GOT RIGHT

Israeli sources: IDF pullout in Gaza could begin Monday (Aluf Benn, Amos Harel, Nathan Guttman and Arnon Regular, 28/06/2003, Haaretz)

Israel and the Palestinian Authority reached an agreement Friday for an IDF pullback in the Gaza Strip and a transferal of security control to the Palestinians, during a meeting between Palestinian Minister for Security Mohammed Dahlan and Israel's coordinator in the territories, Major General Amos Gilad.

No agreement was reached on a transfer of security control in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, but talks on the matter will take place in the coming week.

Officers in the field from both sides will meet Sunday to finalize details and the pullout from Gaza is estimated to begin as soon as Monday, sources in Jerusalem said.

If we concede that opponents of the war were right and neither Saddam Hussein nor WMD existed in Iraq, will they concede that the administration was right and that winning the war has completely changed the dynamics of the Middle East in our favor?

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MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

The Transformer: Is Tony Blair what Bill Clinton should have been? (David Brooks, July/August 2003, The Atlantic Monthly)

Shortly after becoming the leader of the Labour Party, Blair said, "If you really want to understand what I'm all about, you have to take a look at a guy called John Macmurray. It's all there." Macmurray was a Christian socialist who after World War II became a pacifist and joined the Society of Friends. He emphasized social action and is sometimes credited with having invented communitarianism.

Macmurray rejected politics as it is traditionally understood, with its emphasis on conflict, competition, opposition groups, and partisanship. He regarded the family as the primary unit of society, and believed that people should come together to form communities based on friendship, love, and the Golden Rule. He argued that it is the job of citizens to heal rifts and build partnerships. [...]

A frequent paradox of communitarianism is that whereas more-traditional politicians, who are not averse to conflict, bind themselves firmly and fiercely to one party or team that helps them attain their goals, the peace-loving communitarian is often more or less alone, dreaming of an abstract community but lacking in the here and now an intimate group to help realize the vision. While other students at Oxford were banding together and issuing angry manifestos, Blair was charting his own course, and showing no signs of anger or alienation. He moved to London and trained to be a barrister; he had little interest in political office until he met his future wife, Cherie Booth, who had earlier in her life talked about becoming Britain's first woman Prime Minister. Both Cherie and Blair unsuccessfully sought a Labour Party nomination for Parliament in 1981; Blair won a seat in Parliament in 1983.

At first Blair went along with the Labour Party doctrines of the day-unilateral disarmament, the nationalization of industry, withdrawal from the European Community-without fervently believing in them. He gradually discovered his own style of politics, which almost always involves reconciling opposites: fiscal discipline with social spending, tough anti-crime policies with compassionate welfare support, the free market with government activism.

And like all communitarians, the great frustration one has with Mr. Blair is that he ultimately lacks confidence in the family and community in which he supposedly believes and, therefore, balks at reducing government and returning to a reliance on the private sphere.

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UNPROTECTED SPEECH

National Do Not Call Registry

This seems clearly violative of the First Amendment as civil libertarians wish us to read it. So we're all for it.

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A DEBATE WORTH HAVING, SO WE WON'T

With Interest: Why Democrats should campaign against the tax cut by appealing to Americans' self-interest (Michael Tomasky, 6/25/03, American Prospect)

[T]he question comes down to this: Is there a point at which tax cuts work against regular Americans' self-interest? I think there is, and it can be articulated in two ways.

The first has to do with the hideous situation in the states. Virtually every state in the union is raising income or property taxes, cutting services to middle-income people, charging fees for things that were once free, and raising fees on things that were once cheap. They're doing this for the obvious reason that they're getting no help from the feds; and they're getting no help from the feds because the feds don't have any money because the feds keep passing tax cuts. In Connecticut, for example, conservative Gov. John Rowland (R) has been pushing $250 million in spending cuts -- and has just agreed to $250 million in tax increases (actually, a rollback of a local property-tax credit).

That's on top of the $650 million in tax increases agreed to in a February deficit-reduction plan. And even after all that, the state is left with a $300 million gap.

Connecticut is closer to the rule than the exception. An argument that the federal tax cuts are just forcing tax hikes on the other end is one that will make intuitive sense to people. It can put the White House on the defensive. And it appeals to Americans' self-interest: It explains to them that in exchange for their $400, they're getting hosed in other ways that probably add up to the same thing.

The second line of attack on the tax cuts will take more courage and imagination. It has to do with Democrats having the gumption to defend government.

These are exactly the grounds on which the election should be played out. The two basic questions are: (1) should tax and spending decisions be made at the local level or in Washington; and (2) should you or the government determine how your education, retirement, health care, and unemployment insurance taxes are spent. Mr. Tomasky understands little about Americans if he thinks they'll answer those two questions in favor of the Democratic Party in Washington, DC.

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HOME AND ABROAD

Round-the-World Ruling (Jim Hoagland, June 26, 2003, washingtonpost.com)

The Supreme Court's reasoned, fundamentally fair majority rulings in two affirmative action cases -- and the acceptance by U.S. institutions, politicians and citizens of the binding validity of those rulings even as they debate them -- should provide a useful contrast to the American rogue superpower image that public opinion polls show is so rampant abroad right now.

They should at least raise the question for critics of whether a nation that emphasizes the importance of fairness, openness and legality at home -- as the United States does -- could long sustain brutal power politics and armed force as its chief instruments of policy abroad. Could the United States, or any other great power, really be John Locke at home and Thomas Hobbes abroad for very long?

I think not. Governments ultimately behave toward the rest of the world as they behave toward their own citizens. That was why Saddam Hussein was a grave international danger and why China's government still has far to go before attaining international legitimacy.

That is why the Bush administration must not think that dictators who may be momentarily useful in the war on terrorism can be counted on to promote democracy and liberty in their regions if given a little time and coaching. And finally, it is why President Bush has such limited opportunity to become world dictator (a goal often imputed to him abroad) when he and his government are under constant scrutiny and challenge at home.

This analysis also suggests why the natural foreign policy posture of the United States is isolationist and why it can be roused to intervene against especially despicable tyrants, but then does so badly in the nation-building afterwards.

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THE GRIP OF THE LIE (via Tom Morin)

I SAW THE PASSION (Church of the Masses, The Blog of Barbara Nicolosi, Director of Act One: Writing for Hollywood)

So, here's my take...

The Passion is a stunning work of art. It is a devout, act of worship from Mel and his collaborators - in the way that Handel's Messiah and Notre Dame were artistic acts of worship in previous times.

Let's get the controversy out of the way right at the top. The film is faithful to the Gospel, particularly St. John. It is no more anti-Semitic than is the Gospel. There are at least two members of the Sanhedrin who come forward to protest on Jesus' behalf during the sham trial. The Romans are just as guilty of cruelty and hatred against Jesus in the film. And best of all is a final look right into the camera of Mary, holding her dead Son. She is looking at all of us with a kind of , "Look what you've done"/This is for you" expression. A cinematic Pieta worthy of Michelangelo.

Having seen the film now, I can only marvel that the attacks are pretty much demonic.

"Demonic" might be overstating it, but the suggestion that Christians not portray the moment that is the very core of their religious belief is troubling. Here's how Richard John Neuhaus described that moment in Death on a Friday Afternoon:

In perfect freedom, the Son become the goat become the Lamb of God is condemned by the lie in order to bear witness to the truth. The truth is that we are incapable of setting things right. The truth is that the more we try to set things right, the more we compound our guilt. It is not enough for God to take our part. God must take our place. All the blood of goats and lambs, all the innocent victims from the foundation of the world, all the acts of expiation and reparation ... all strengthen the grip of the great lie that we can set things right. The grip of that lie is broken by the greatest of lies, 'God is guilty!' ... God must die. It is a lie so monstrous that to suggest it invites instant annihilation--except that God accepts the verdict.

It sounds like that glimpse of Mary may expose the lie.

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THE FIRST FAMILY

The Mouth of the Young Dems (Dotty Lynch, Douglas Kiker, Steve Chaggaris, Nicola Corless, Smita Kalokhe, and Joanna Schubert, June 27, 2003, CBS News)

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., son of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and no stranger to controversy, has stepped into the gossip pages again.

The Washington Post reports that Kennedy, while delivering a speech to a group of Young Democrats, was a tad more candid than his staff might have liked.

"I don't need Bush's tax cut. I have never worked a [bleeping] day in my life," Kennedy said shortly after presidential candidate Howard Dean addressed the crowd. One of those present told the Post that Kennedy then "droned on and on, frequently mentioning how much better the [Democratic presidential] candidates would sound the more we drank." The source added that he eventually "had to be stopped by a DNC volunteer."

There's not enough alcohol in America to make them sound sensible.

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PAUL KRUGMAN IS RIGHT

Toward One-Party Rule (PAUL KRUGMAN, 6/27/03, NY Times)

A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now. [...]

Why isn't the ongoing transformation of U.S. politics--which may well put an end to serious two-party competition ? getting more attention? Most pundits, to the extent they acknowledge that anything is happening, downplay its importance. For example, last year an article in Business Week titled "The GOP's Wacky War on Dem Lobbyists" dismissed the K Street Project as "silly--and downright futile." In fact, the project is well on the way to achieving its goals.

Whatever the reason, there's a strange disconnect between most political commentary and the reality of the 2004 election. As in 2000, pundits focus mainly on images--John Kerry's furrowed brow, Mr. Bush in a flight suit--or on supposed personality traits. But it's the nexus of money and patronage that may well make the election a foregone conclusion.

The only real error in this column is Mr. Krugman's necessary blindness to the fact that politics is playing the largest part in this and that it is a typical situation in our history. America was Democratic until the Republicans won the Civil War, Republican from then until the Depression, Democratic from then until Republicans won the Cold War, and now we're headed into what is likely to be a long period of GOP dominance that will end only when the Democrats jettison minorities and make a naked appeal to white middle-class greed, as Europe's socialist parties do.

The money and patronage is following the politics, not leading it. But the press is pretty much missing the story.

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FEED THE BEAST OR BE ITS FEAST

Dean's Dilemma (Howard Kurtz, June 27, 2003, Washington Post)

[N]ow that Dean has boosted himself into top-tier status, news organizations are starting to take a second, and harder, look at some of his fudges and inconsistencies, including his apologies to some of the other Democratic candidates.

As the Baltimore Sun's Paul West observes: "He has not become the darling of the national media corps, which regards him as thin-skinned and prone to complain about tough reporting, sometimes even before an article has appeared in print."

Carl Leubsdorf writes in the Dallas Morning News that some top Democrats "fear a repetition of the electoral disasters" created by George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984, and that Dean has "gained a reputation for nastiness that could create problems."

One of the smart things that John McCain did was suck up to the press so that they were essentially co-opted into his campaign. Mr. Dean needs to buy the bus.

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EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY

£1 'superpill' could cut heart attacks by 80% (Nigel Hawkes, June 27, 2003, Times of London)

By combining four therapies, the proposed “polypill” could eliminate 200,000 premature deaths a year in Britain alone. Aimed mostly at the over 55s, it would end the need for complex screening, and might be sold in supermarkets and pubs for less than £1 a day. [...]

“Those who can be identified as at risk are a minority. But a third of people over 55 who would otherwise suffer heart attack or stroke would benefit, and gain on average an extra 12 years of life.

“Chasing risk factors is a mistaken strategy. By giving this pill to everybody we can reverse the damage of a lifetime. We have been telling people to change their lifestyles, but the practical effect is small. In Western society the risk factors are high in us all, so everyone is at risk.”

And you don't have to change your lifestyle? Bonus!

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SECOND, BUT NO LESS

Friends, family pay last respects to Doby (Steve Strunsky, June 24, 2003, Associated Press)

Friends, family and fellow Hall of Famers gathered Monday to remember Larry Doby, 56 years after he became the American League's first black player.

Doby died last Wednesday at his home in Montclair after a long illness. He broke the AL's color barrier when he joined the Cleveland Indians on July 5, 1947, 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League.

Doby, who played 13 seasons in the major leagues and was selected for seven All-Star games, was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.

During an afternoon memorial service at the Trinity Presbyterian Church in Montclair, Doby was remembered as a man of quiet dignity who never said an unkind word, even about those hostile to his joining the Indians. [...]

Lawrence Eugene Doby Sr. was born Dec. 13, 1923, in Camden, S.C., but he grew up in Paterson, N.J., then moved to Montclair 40 years ago, and has been adopted by New Jersey officials and institutions as one of their own.

According to Harvey Frommer's fine book, Rickey and Robinson, Branch Rickey had an opportunity to sign Larry Doby too, but wanted other teams to integrate so passed him up. He was an important pioneer in his own right and by all accounts a terrifically decent man.

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PAST TIME

Bearing witness: In 1932, the Pulitzer Prize went to a foreign correspondent who concealed a famine and the deaths of millions. Ukrainians want that prize revoked. (Charles Leroux, June 25, 2003, Chicago Tribune)

After 300 years of Russian occupation, many urban Ukrainians had become Russianized, maybe speaking Russian in preference to Ukrainian, maybe adding a Russian ending to a last name. But the rural people remained staunchly nationalistic, and Stalin -- seeking to consolidate his power -- wanted to stamp out Ukrainian nationalism. He turned the famine -- which conveniently stopped at the border with Russia -- into an opportunity to force farmers to move to industrial jobs in the cities.

He also, the Ukrainian community says, intensified the famine into what they call the Holodomor, roughly translated as "famine-genocide," the "H" intentionally capitalized to emphasize a parallel with the Holocaust.

"My grandparents stayed on the farm and died of starvation. Two uncles died in prison," Kolomayets said. "The children of one of the uncles, a boy and a girl, 5 and 6, came to live with us. One day, my cousins went out looking for food and we never saw them again. My mother heard they had been killed and eaten."

Reporters other than Duranty -- principally Welsh journalist Gareth Jones and The Guardian's Muggeridge -- described scenes of great suffering. One such report told of grain stores (the Soviets exported grain to the West during the famine) guarded by armed Russian troops while Ukrainians died of starvation nearby. Jones wrote, "I walked alone through villages . . . everywhere was the cry, `There is no bread. We are dying.'"

Jones wrote his accounts only after he had gone home. Muggeridge smuggled his articles out to England in diplomatic pouches. In those pieces, he described peasants kneeling in the snow, begging for a crust of bread.

"Whatever I may do or think in the future," he wrote in his diary, "I must never pretend that I haven't seen this. Ideas will come and go, but this is more than an idea. It is peasants kneeling down in the snow and asking for bread. Something that I have seen and understood."

Muggeridge's reports were discredited. He was fired, his reputation as a reporter slandered. Duranty chimed in on the vilification, and in an
August 1933 New York Times story called Muggeridge's and Jones' work "an exaggeration of malignant propaganda." At that time, Duranty
reportedly had told a British Foreign Office acquaintance that at least 10 million people had died.

Communist dupe Lincoln Steffens had a line that nicely covered the Left's attitude: "Treason to the Tsar wasn't a sin, treason to Communism is."

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FROM THE "AXIS OF GOOD" FILES

Australia Outlines New Foreign Policy (PETER O'CONNOR, June 26, 2003, Associated Press)

The Australian government on Thursday branded multilateral forums such as the United Nations "ineffective and unfocused" and said its foreign policy will increasingly rely on "coalitions of the willing" like the one that waged war in Iraq.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer also said that in Canberra's view, other nations' sovereignty was "not absolute."

The assertive new doctrine outlined by Downer came a day after Australia announced it would lead an international force of troops and police to restore order to the violence-wracked Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific.

Downer's speech reflected comments late last year by Prime Minister John Howard that Australia would be prepared to launch pre-emptive strikes against terror targets in Asia -- words that sparked outrage in Asia.

Downer's doctrine is likely to cause further unease among Australia's Asian neighbors. For example, Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister of Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim nation and longtime critic of Australia, has accused Howard of acting like a deputy sheriff to President Bush.

It increasingly looks like the future belongs to the Anglosphere (at least those portions ruled by conservative governments) and its allies.

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LOOK AWAY

Ex-S.C. Sen. Strom Thurmond Dies at 100 (DAVID ESPO, 6/26/03, AP)

Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a one-time Democratic segregationist who helped fuel the rise of the modern conservative Republican Party in the South, died Thursday. He was 100 and the longest-serving senator in history.

Thurmond died at 9:45 p.m. after having been in poor health in recent weeks, his son Strom Thurmond Jr. said. He had been living in a newly renovated wing of a hospital in his hometown of Edgefield, S.C., since he returned to the state from Washington earlier this year.

"Surrounded by family, my father was resting comfortably, without pain, and in total peace," Thurmond Jr. said in a statement released by the hospital.

Speaking of populists, he was one of the greats, though he made a grave mistake by joining the popular side of the race issue.

MORE:
Strom's legacy will be his service to the state and people he loved (The State, Jun. 26, 2003)
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100: Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was a central figure in the political transformation of the South and the longest-serving senator in American history. (ADAM CLYMER, 6/27/03, NY Times)

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THE BROTHERS JUDD HOME FOR BAD JEWS

Be a good Jew and vote Democratic: Jews shouldn't vote for Jewish candidates because they're Jewish, but they should vote for the Democratic Party because of Jewish values. (Bradford R. Pilcher, June 26, 2003, Jewsweek)

Forgive the partisan tone, but the Democratic Party is simply more in line with Jewish values today. Conservative Jews will protest, of course, and they could certainly cite some examples to bolster their case. Some Democrats have openly vilified the Jewish state to a degree that is simply absurd if not anti-Semitic. But issues like these are exceptions rather than the rule. On the whole, the Republican agenda is largely out of step with Judaism. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, is filled with political Yiddishkeit.

Take abortion and sexual politics. There's a fair share of controversy over how permissive Judaism is of abortion, but nobody can question that Judaism allows for it in some circumstances. Yet Republicans aggressively pursue the repeal of Roe v. Wade and obstinately block exceptions in cases of rape or a danger to the mother's life from their attempts to restrict abortion. It's Democrats who seek to make the procedure "safe, legal, and rare."

Fine. Let's adopt only the abortion restrictions provided by Jewish law, which conveniently appear elsewhere in the magazine, Abortion distortion: Roe v. Wade's 30th anniversary is bringing the abortion debate back into the spotlight. Why Jews should support pro-life. (Rabbi Avi Shafran, June 26, 2003, Jewsweek.com):

The assertion that Jewish law allows a woman to terminate a pregnancy at will in no way reflects accepted -- or even seriously entertained -- rabbinic opinion. And if anything undermines basic tenets of Judaism, it is the notion that the Torah allows unfettered "access to reproductive services" -- i.e. Roe v. Wade-style abortion-on-demand.

To be sure, the Talmudic sources are clear that the life of a pregnancy-endangered Jewish mother takes precedence over that of her unborn child when there is no way to preserve both lives. And, while the matter is not free from controversy, there are respected rabbinic opinions that allow abortion when the pregnancy seriously jeopardizes the mother's health. But those narrow exceptions certainly do not translate into some unlimited mother's "right" to make whatever "choice" she may see fit about the child she carries.

And in the case of "partial birth abortion," the procedure approaches -- in fact, likely crosses -- the border between abortion and infanticide, where Jewish law does not even recognize a "life of the mother" exception.

Whatever Hadassah and its allies might wish were the case, the Torah clearly affords fetal life significant protection. There is absolutely no source in halacha, or Jewish religious law, for the contention that a mother may "choose" to terminate a pregnancy at will.

Who's closer: Republicans or Democrats?

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THREE STRIKES FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME

Orrin Hatch: Software Pirate? (Leander Kahney, Jun. 19, 2003, Wired)

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Tuesday that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed. [...]

Hatch on Tuesday surprised a Senate hearing on copyright issues with the suggestion that technology should be developed to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Net.

Hatch said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights," the Associated Press reported. He then suggested the technology would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."

You ever notice how many folks are all law-and-order and fry-the-criminals until it's a matter of their own criminal behavior?

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IMPEACHMENT GOES MAINSTREAM

The media politics of impeachment (Norman Solomon, 06.23.03, Working for Change)

Early summer has brought a flurry of public discussion about a topic previously confined to political margins -- the possibility of impeaching President George W. Bush. The idea is still far from the national media echo chamber, but some rumblings are now audible as people begin to think about the almost unthinkable.

Wanna bet Mr. Solomon can describe, in interminable detail, every nook and cranny of his navel?

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POPULISM ISN'T POPULAR

Seriously Now: Howard Dean's transformation from protest candidate to populist (David Kusnet, 6/24/03, American Prospect)

Howard Dean has been well-served by the rusty ritual of presidential contenders pausing from their campaign travels to go home and formally declare their candidacies.

Subtly but effectively, in yesterday's "announcement speech," Dean recast his candidacy from a protest campaign targeting his fellow Democrats at least as much as President Bush to a populist movement "to take our country back." [...]

While one speech doesn't define a campaign, Dean's announcement can rescue him from being the latest in a line of losing Democratic candidates whose appeal was based on their being intellectually and morally superior to their rivals and, implicitly, their fellow citizens as well. Starting out as refreshingly free from political cant, Bill Bradley, Paul Tsongas, Eugene McCarthy and Adlai Stevenson all ended up appealing to affluent voters who saw politics as an expression of their cultural identities, not a way to improve their own lives and others'. With this announcement speech, Dean has the opportunity to reverse his predecessors' path and inspire at least a segment of those discontented voters whom he gracefully admits understand the nation's problems better than he did when he began his campaign.

Of course the problem is that it's not the people who believe in "populism" but those elites. In fact, one irony is that Governor Dean's slogan, "take our country back", is borrowed from the conservative populist movement to Take Back Vermont, a reactionary grassroots campaign against gay marriage, environmental regulation, and the use of statewide property taxes for public education. Sadly for the Left, the people are wahoos.

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TALES OF THE CREEPING COUP

Targeting Lobbyists Pays Off For GOP: Party Earns More Funds, Influence (Jim VandeHei and Juliet Eilperin, June 26, 2003, Washington Post)

Nearly a decade after Republicans launched a campaign to oust Democrats from top lobbying jobs in Washington, sometimes through intimidation and private threats, they are seizing a significant number of the most influential positions at trade associations and corporate government affairs offices -- and reaping big financial rewards.

Partly because of the "K Street Project" -- and partly because of GOP control of Congress and the presidency -- virtually every major company or trade association looking for new top-level representation is hiring or seeking to hire a prominent Republican politician or staffer, according to Republicans and Democrats tracking the situation.

This year, General Electric, Comcast, Citigroup and many other Fortune 500 companies have hired Bush administration officials and former GOP congressional advisers for top lobbying posts. A Republican National Committee official recently told a group of GOP lobbyists that 33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans, according to someone who attended the meeting.

The trend could deeply influence Washington politics, policy and fundraising for years. Already in control of the White House and Congress, Republicans are tightening their grip on the largely unseen but vital world of big-time lobbying. Lobbyists for major trade groups not only represent clients' interests but also play key roles in political fundraising and often help shape legislation. [...]

This trend worries Democrats, who say it gives Republicans both an unfair legislative and fundraising advantage. Former representative Tony Coehlo (D-Calif.), who aggressively targeted business in Congress in the 1980s, said Republicans are "going too far" by pressuring companies to hire Republicans only and threatening retribution to those who disobey.

"They've put the fear of God in these businesses and few of them are able to withstand it," Coehlo said. Indeed, several top officials at trade associations and corporate offices said privately that Republicans have created a culture in Washington in which companies fear hiring Democrats for top jobs, even if they are the most qualified.

Republicans have done this with a few, well-publicized warnings to companies they felt were too cozy with Democrats. The most famous and ominous warning came in 1998 from then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). The two leaders held up a vote on intellectual property legislation in protest of the Electronics Industry Association's plan to hire a Democrat to run the group. The House ethics committee admonished DeLay for his tactics in the incident. It was a slap on the wrist by congressional ethics standards, and Republicans say that was a small price to pay for the fear it put in companies thinking about hiring a Democrat. [...]

Dan Mattoon -- who left the National Republican Congressional Committee a few years ago to partner with Democrat Tony Podesta to represent several corporations -- and his wife contributed $90,000 in the last election, with almost all of it going to GOP candidates.

"There is a recognition that Republicans are in a position to continue to control both houses of Congress for the next 10 years, and the K Street community should be reflective" of the party with power, Mattoon said.

Two thoughts:

(1) Democrats don't hate Tom DeLay nearly as much as they should, given how effectively he's kicked their butts.

(2) How is it that everyone who watches politics for a living understands that the GOP is going to be running things for at least the next decade, but the press won't talk about it?

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WHITTAKER CHAMBERS WAS PROBABLY ILL TOO

Blacklisted writer says illness clouded Orwell's judgement: Survivor tells Guardian that author was 'losing his grip' (Fiachra Gibbons, June 24, 2003, The Guardian)

A founding member of the SDP who appeared on George Orwell's list of communist sympathisers yesterday dismissed it as the work of a dying man whose mind was clouded by illness and bitterness about the Spanish Civil War.

Professor Norman Mackenzie, now 82 - and the only known surviving member of the 38 "crypto-communists and fellow travellers" who Orwell claimed should not be trusted - said the writer was gravely ill with TB and "losing his grip on himself" when he handed over the list to a murky Foreign Office propaganda unit in 1949. [...]

"Tubercular people often could get very strange towards the end. I'm an Orwell man, I agreed with him on the Soviet Union, but he went partly ga-ga I think. He let his dislike of the New Statesman crowd, of what he saw as leftish, dilettante, sentimental socialists who covered up for the Popular Front in Spain [after it became communist-controlled] get the better of him."

The fact that the magazine's editor was Kingsley Martin, who rejected Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's dispatches from Spain, where he survived being shot in the neck, may have been the root of his loathing. "[The list] represents everything he hated about the New Statesman - that it was full of fluffy-headed fellow travellers and that it was intellectually dishonest, which is probably true."

Of course he can't have fingered themn because he thought the Left was a threat. That would mean...oh, never mind.

MORE:
Orwell Up Close: On the 100th anniversary of his birth, a clutch of new biographies explores the wintry genius of George Orwell - a hero claimed by left and right (DONALD MORRISON, June 30, 2003, TIME Europe)

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HE AIN'T HEAVY

James and the Giant Reach (Jeremy Lott, 6/25/2003, American Spectator)

"James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Those words, translated from Aramaic, lit a fire under the archaeological community, when Biblical Archaeology Review announced last year that it had found a limestone burial box in a private collection from the first century AD with just such an inscription.

Because it was exceedingly uncommon to carve a brother's name into a burial box, and because some fancy mathematical analysis showed that while James, Joseph, and Jesus were fairly common names in the first century, the lottery-like lineup of a James who was a son of Joseph and brother of Jesus was a rare occasion, many concluded that this was the final resting place of the brother of the Jesus. [...]

One person closely watching the blow-by-blow in all this was Acadia Divinity College's professor Craig A. Evans (full disclosure: I took classes under him before he left Trinity Western University), who has his own book on ossuary inscriptions due out in the fall. Though he initially expressed relief that had taken a neutral position with regard to the inscription's authenticity, and thought that Shanks had "tons of egg" on his face, Evans quickly changed his mind as the story developed. As things stand now, of those who have closely examined the patina:

"We have four geologists?who think it is genuine, and one?who thinks it isn't... Shanks still thinks the inscription is genuine; he is calling for further testing... Rochelle Altman and others who all along claimed the ossuary was a fake do not want further testing. Interesting, eh?"

More interesting than the question of authenticity is the way believers and unbelievers fight over this as if the box itself would prove or disprove the divinity of Christ. Don't we have to assume that James would have thought being the brother of Jesus was important regardless?

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FROM THE "ALL HUMOR IS CONSERVATIVE" FILES

Mallard Fillmore

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ALL ABOUT THE OIL

Bush threatens to pacify Liberia (Tim Butcher, 27/06/2003, Daily Telegraph)

An American military operation to restore order in Liberia looked likely last night as President George W Bush called for peace in the war-torn West African republic.

He drew cheers and applause from an audience of businessmen, academics and African leaders when he called on Liberia's President Charles Taylor, an indicted war criminal, to stand down.

"President Taylor needs to step down so that his country can be spared further bloodshed," he said. [...]

With a US Navy amphibious assault ship, the USS Kearsarge, just off the Liberian coast carrying 1,200 marines, Mr Bush has the option of ordering a significant deployment to one of Africa's most chaotic countries.

Liberia has close historic and traditional links with America. It was founded in the early 19th century as Africa's first republic by freed slaves from the United States.

It's long past time for the U.S. to take a more constructive role on that godforsaken continent.

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CONDOMS = DEATH

United Nations Report says Condoms have 10% Failure Rate against AIDs (LifesiteNews.com/CWN, 6/24/03)

The United Nations AIDS agency (UNAIDS) has published a draft of a study, due out at the end of the month, which shows that condoms are ineffective in protecting against HIV an estimated 10 percent of the time. The admission from the UN, which is far lower than some studies which have shown larger than 50 percent failure rates, is a blow to population control activists which have aggressively marketed condoms in the Third World as nearly 100 percent effective.

The Boston Globe, which reviewed the draft report, demonstrates the false marketing of the population control advocacy group, Population Action International (PAI). A September 2002 report, ''Condoms Count,'' published by PAI, said, ''Public health experts around the globe agree that condoms block contact with bodily fluids that can carry the HIV virus and have nearly 100 percent effectiveness when used correctly and consistently.''

The report examined two decades of scientific literature on condoms, and UNAIDS says lead author Norman Hearst "makes a cogent argument that we should be talking about safer sex, not safe sex, with condoms."

For close to twenty years now the Left has marketed two lies where AIDs was concerned, one which was just meant to destigmatize the disease, but the other of which was murderous. We've been told that everyone is at risk of AIDs, even though it is not possible for a straight male to contract the disease via sexual intercourse. And we've--but more importantly gay men have--been told that it's perfectly safe to continue having frequent random sex so long as you use a condom. We'll never know how many people believed this latter lie, nor, given their other pathlogies, whether being told the truth would have made a difference, but it is undeniably one of the most shameful episodes in the history of public health.

MORE:
-ESSAY: The Spin on Condoms: Study shows lack of evidence for condom effectiveness in preventing STDs (Kathryn Hooks, 6/26/2003, Concerned Women for America)

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TONY BLAIR, THE CONSERVATIVE VERSION OF MUSSOLINI?

A chip off the old block?: What do Fascism's belligerent founding father and our own democratically elected Prime Minister have in common? A great deal more than you might imagine. (Nicholas Farrell, 25 June 2003, Independent uk)

Indeed, despite all the uncanny similarities between the two leaders, there are, of course many differences, not the least of which is that Blair is in many ways more right-wing. Mussolini, for example, founded Italy's welfare state. Presumably, most people would agree that such a move was fairly left-wing. Blair, on the other hand, is doing his best not just to hack away at the welfare state but also at workplace rights traditionally regarded by the left as sacred. Clause Four - the Labour Party's commitment to common ownership of the means of production - went years ago and Blair has forged an axis with the European Union's two Thatcherite leaders, Jose Maria Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi, to make the labour market in Europe more flexible - making it, for example, easier to sack people.

While Blair has doggedly pursued Daily Mail-reading Sierra Man, Mussolini despised the middle classes above all (like all left-wingers, he called them the bourgeoisie) even more than communists, whom he called "state capitalists", because his view was that the middle classes were riddled with parasites. They lived, Mussolini sneered, "la vita comoda", the comfortable life.

This is all presumably meant to be pejorative, but seems pretty accurate (other than underestimating the leftist nature of fascism), and reasonably complimentary.

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MIDDLE CLASS ENTITLEMENT

True confessions of a middle-class welfare recipient: A high-quality university degree is a bankable commodity. I should know (Tim Watts, June 25 2003, The Age)

Hello. My name is Tim and I'm a middle-class welfare recipient.

It's not an easy thing to own up to, but I can now admit it: Australian taxpayers subsidised more than 70 per cent of the cost of my tertiary education.

Even though I'm now out earning more than $60,000 a year, I will never pay back a cent of the cost of my tertiary education. My HECS fees were paid upfront and so I got a substantial additional discount from the Government.

My Melbourne University commerce/arts degree has proven very valuable in the employment market. I find it opens doors that are closed to my friends who went to other universities.

It has given me critical thinking skills and problem-solving abilities that have led to a succession of interesting, fulfilling jobs and to steady rises in my income. I own a house and have the capacity to save thousands of dollars a year, unlike many of my Generation X peers.

It hurts to admit it, but I have achieved this on a form of middle-class welfare: the old HECS tertiary education funding system. I call it welfare because I feel taxpayers basically paid me to get an elite education that is not universally available.

Even worse, the universal availability of other forms of education aid drive an inflation in that sector that would not otherwise exist.

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DAY OF THE DONUT

President Hailed By Over A Million In Visit To Berlin (ARTHUR J. OLSEN, June 26, 1963, The New York Times)

President Kennedy, inspired by a tumultuous welcome from more than a million of the inhabitants of this isolated and divided city, declared today he was proud to be "a Berliner."

He said his claim to being a Berliner was based on the fact that "all free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin."

In a rousing speech to 150,000 West Berliners crowded before the City Hall, the President said anyone who thought "we can work with the Communists" should come to Berlin.

However, three hours later, in a less emotional setting, he reaffirmed his belief that the great powers that must work together "to preserve the human race."

This was in many ways the low point of the Cold War, as President Kennedy placed the U.S. metaphorically in the position of Berlin, surrounded and embattled by a superior foe. The psychology of this was just appalling and compares especially badly to Ronald Reagan's visit when he ordered the Soviets to tear down the Berlin Wall.

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QUIZZICALLY HE READ

Overblown: THE REAL RISK ISN'T DEFLATION (Noam Scheiber, 06.23.03, New Republic)

There are two key reasons the prices of certain goods are falling, neither of which has to do with the money supply. First, all the equipment and information technology that companies invested in during the last 20 years--particularly during the late '90s--has dramatically increased productivity, enabling companies to produce the same amount of goods more cheaply than ever before. Second, that investment has led to excess capacity, meaning companies are able to produce more goods than the market can absorb. According to The Wall Street Journal, for example, the global-production capacity for automobiles stands at about 80 million per year, while global demand is about 60 million. Companies that overproduce tend to cut prices to move all their extra goods. [...]

The mantra repeated again and again in the Fed's "Preventing Deflation" paper is that the costs of overcompensating to avoid deflation are exceedingly low. As a practical matter, what the Fed means by overcompensating is that a central bank facing the risk of deflation should determine where interest rates should be based on that risk and then push them even lower. What's more, it should keep them low for longer than it otherwise would. In general, this will lead to a period of higher-than-desired inflation once the risk of deflation passes. But that extra inflation is relatively harmless, the thinking goes, and in any case a cost worth bearing when you consider the horrible alternative.

All of which assumes, of course, that falling prices are, in fact, a horrible alternative. As we've established, they're not--unless the falling prices reflect a contraction of the supply of money and credit. But no sentient central banker would ever allow that to happen. The Fed gets weekly data on the money stock--meaning, according to Meltzer, that it would require a "massive error on its part" to allow the money supply to shrink. "You couldn't do it without knowing about it," he says. But, even if that error somehow got made and prices began to fall as a result, it wouldn't be so hard to correct: You just start printing money and injecting it into the economy.

In fact, not only is deflation not a serious risk today, but its mirror image, inflation--and the rising interest rates that accompany it--is. Thanks primarily to a recent orgy of tax-cutting, the projected ten-year federal deficit now stands somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion. Even more alarming, according to a report ordered by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill but subsequently suppressed by the Bush administration, is that the current value of the gap between all of the government's future liabilities and its future revenue is $44 trillion. Shortfalls like this are highly inflationary since they stimulate demand for goods and services in the short run, which raises prices, and because they often get paid for in the long run by printing money. Likewise, the dollar's recent decline--it has fallen by over 20 percent against the euro and almost 10 percent against the yen in roughly the past year--is also inflationary, since a weaker dollar raises the prices of imports.

In this context, the problem with "overcompensating"--that is, pushing short-term interest rates lower, and keeping them there longer, than you otherwise would--is that it compounds the inflationary pressure created by large federal deficits and the weakening dollar. That's especially problematic because inflation is very difficult to root out once it gets embedded in people's expectations: Consumers expect prices to rise quickly, so they bargain for higher wages; companies expect wages to rise, so they set higher prices.

Here are two things I don't get about this essay, most of which I agree with:

(1) Isn't it kind of disingenuous to talk about real interest rates later in the essay but ignore them early? Is an 8% interest rate in an inflationary environment worse than a 2% one in a deflationary environment if both represent a "real interest rate" of 4%? And isn't the problem that the Fed fought imaginary inflation pressures for several years in the late nineties & 2000, thereby creating usurious real rates?

(2) Isn't it kind of disingenuous to talk about the psychology of inflation but not of deflation?

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SLEEPER HOLD

Negatives vs. Affirmatives: Countermeasures against racism have gone too far for much too long. (Jim Sleeper, June 24, 2003, LA Times)

The court has diverted us all from two basic truths. For conservatives, the more important one is that damage caused by racism is severe enough to require transitional but daring public investments in early child-rearing and primary education. That kind of heavy lifting requires civic unity. Enforcing diversity in the military, which conservatives defend, works only because generals can order soldiers to remedy their deficiencies, on the taxpayer's dime.

But for liberals, the important truth is that some racist damage can be repaired only by the damaged themselves, with clear moral signals from a cohesive and, yes, demanding society. That's a different kind of heavy lifting. To shirk it is to discount the dignity of racism's victims. When low expectations demoralize and demobilize the poor, conservatives have an excuse for providing virtually no public investments at all.

The court should have forced us back to basics. Instead, its diversity rationale delays introducing the only D-words that should matter in American education and public life: daring and dignity.

Mr. Sleeper is interesting chiefly as a case study in how certain ex-liberals find it difficult or even impossible to follow where their observations lead.

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I DON"T WANNA BE YOUR BEAST OF BERLIN

You Want Propaganda?: Now This Is a Story About Propaganda (Thomas Fleming, 6-23-03, History News Network)

Wilhelm II was a juicy target. Before the war, Lord Northcliffe, the conservative British press lord, had regularly abused him as a warmonger and a menace. A grandson of Queen Victoria, the Kaiser had a prickly relationship with his British royal cousins and a tendency to shoot off his mouth about Germany's martial prowess and its right to a "place in the sun." He was also fond of discoursing on the danger of "the yellow peril" -- the growing power of Japan -- and the superiority of white northern European Protestants. One pundit dubbed him a German version of Theodore Roosevelt.

Prone to nervous breakdowns -- he suffered three in the five years preceding the war -- the Kaiser was extravagantly fond of gorgeous military uniforms, perhaps an attempt to achieve masculinity in spite of a withered arm. At his desk, he sat in a saddle because it made him feel like a warrior. His gaunt face, which featured haughtily curled mustaches, made him a hostile cartoonist's dream.

Soon the Kaiser, who had little more control over his armies than King George V of England had over the British Expeditionary Force, was being blamed for rapes and murders in Belgium and called a megalomaniac with a hunger to rule the world. From here it was only a short step to calling him "the Mad Dog of Europe" and "The Beast of Berlin."

Same as it ever was...

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LEADING FROM BELOW

Palestinian public pushes deal: Militant groups discussed a three-month halt on violence Thursday. (Cameron W. Barr, June 27, 2003, The Christian Science Monitor)

The Palestinians are inching toward a cease-fire that could prove more durable than previous attempts if it leads to an easing of measures Israel has used to punish and prevent Palestinian attacks.

US and Israeli pressure is only one reason why Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has tried so hard in recent months to convince Hamas and other militant groups to lay down their arms.

Another is that Palestinians today are demanding an improvement in their situation more loudly than they are clamoring for attacks against Israel.

"We are looking for someone to ease our suffering," says longtime Palestinian human rights activist Bassam Eid. "And Hamas is just increasing it."

It is now commonplace to hear Palestinians say that nearly three years of intifada, or uprising, against Israel have yielded nothing but Israeli-imposed closures, restrictions, and checkpoints that make day-to-day living nearly intolerable.

Mr. Abbas's strategy, Palestinian analysts say, is to arrange a cease-fire in order to win from Israel an easing of the measures imposed in the name of security. "The priority for me," says Mr. Eid, "is to take off the checkpoints rather than to fix the borders of the Palestinian state."

The cease fire won't hold because the terrorists can't afford to let it, but the point is that Palestinians, just like you and I, would rather have a functioning state and economy than an extra three feet of territory. It's almost like they're normal human beings, eh?

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ROCK ONTO ELECTRIC AVENUE

-REVIEW ESSAY: AMERICAN ELECTRIC: Did Franklin fly that kite? (ADAM GOPNIK, 2003-06-30, New Yorker)

Franklin had just given up his career as a printer when he began his work as an "electrician," fascinated by the small shocks you could make out of amber rods and glass jars. Electricity was not yet a serious science. Though everyone agreed that it was a phenomenon, no one was sure at first if it was a phenomenon like the hula hoop or a phenomenon like gravity. People played with it for fun. Then, in the seventeen-forties, the Leyden jar, an early capacitor, showed that an electrical charge could be held in place and made to pass through glass. Essentially, you could collect and store electricity; and in 1749 Franklin reported to the Royal Academy in London that he had created the first electric battery.

In his correspondence with the academy, he understood that he would inevitably be viewed as a provincial, and that it paid to play the clown a little. In the midst of his serious submissions, he also wrote to the academy, apropos the state of "American electricity," that "a turkey is to be killed for our dinners by the electrical shock, and roasted by the electrical jack, before a fire kindled by the electrified bottle, when the healths of all the famous electricians in England, France and Germany, are to be drank in electrified bumpers, under the discharge of guns from the electrical battery." The metropolis, while it mistrusts an upstart, forgives a lovable provincial eccentric. (Though he was being funny about the American enthusiasm for electricity, he wasn't entirely joking. He electrocuted at least one turkey, and boasted of how tender it was, a thing typical of the way he could turn a joke into a fact.)

Previously, it had been proposed that there were two different kinds of electricity, both fluid: one generated by glass and one generated by resin. Franklin, experimenting with varieties of electric shock, swiftly arrived at a fundamental insight: that electricity was a single fluid, and that what he was the first to call "positive" and "negative" charges came from having too much or too little of it. The importance of Franklin's theory, as the great historian of science I. Bernard Cohen has shown, was not only that it insisted on the conservation of charge but that it accepted "action at a distance": there didn't have to be holes for the charge to pass through, or invisible levers in the sky to send it along; electricity was just there, like gravity.

Many people, whatever theory they held, had noticed that lightning in the sky looked a lot like electricity in a jar, only there was more of it. In 1749, it seems, Franklin himself made a list of the resemblances, a list that reveals the tenor of his scientific mind, at once disarmingly particular and searching for unity: "Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars. 1. Giving light. 2. Color of the light. 3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7. Subsisting in water or ice. . . . Since they agree in all particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise in this? Let the experiment be made." The lightning experiment would be suggestive about the centrality of electricity in an essentially Newtonian world picture. The simpler the world picture, the less intricate the celestial mechanics, and the greater the play of universal forces, however bizarre their action. E pluribus unum applied-a motto that Franklin, once again running from the absurd to the solemn, took from a classical recipe for salad dressing.

Did he really do it?

We highly recommend Edmund S. Morgan's recent Franklin bio.

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WHAT HAROLD KNEW

James Thurber: The Art of Fiction X-Excerpt (Interviewed by George Plimpton and Max Steele, Fall 1955, The Paris Review)

INTERVIEWER

Could [The New Yorker editor, Harold Ross] develop a writer?

THURBER

Not really. It wasn't true what they often said of him-that he broke up writers like matches-but still he wasn't the man to develop a writer. He was an unread man. Well, he'd read Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi and several other books he told me about-medical books-and he took the Encyclopedia Brittanica to the bathroom with him. I think he was about up to H when he died. But still his effect on writers was considerable. When you first met him you couldn't believe he was the editor of The New Yorker and afterwards you couldn't believe that anyone else could have been. The main thing he was interested in was clarity. Someone once said of The New Yorker that it never contained a sentence that would puzzle an intelligent 14 year old or in any way affect her morals badly. Ross didn't like that, but nevertheless he was a purist and perfectionist and it had a tremendous effect on all of us: it kept us from being sloppy. When I first met him he asked me if I knew English. I thought he meant French or a foreign language. But he repeated, "Do you know English?" When I said I did he replied, "Goddamn it, nobody knows English." As Andy White mentioned in his obituary, Ross approached the English sentence as though it was an enemy, something that was going to throw him. He used to fuss for an hour over a comma. He'd call me in for lengthy discussions about the Thurber colon. And as for poetic license, he'd say, "Damn any license to get things wrong." In fact, Ross read so carefully that often he didn't get the sense of your story. I once said: "I wish you'd read my stories for pleasure, Ross." He replied he hadn't time for that. [...]

INTERVIEWER

Did he have much direct influence on your own work?

THURBER

After the seven years I spent in newspaper writing, it was more E. B. White who taught me about writing, how to clear up sloppy journalese. He was a strong influence and for a long time in the beginning I thought he might be too much of one. But at least he got me away from a rather curious style I was starting to perfect-tight journalese laced with heavy doses of Henry James.

INTERVIEWER

Henry James was a strong influence then?

THURBER

I have the reputation for having read all of Henry James. Which would argue a misspent youth and middle-age.

INTERVIEWER

But there were things to be learned from him?

THURBER

Yes, but again he was an influence you had to get over. Especially if you wrote for The New Yorker. Harold Ross wouldn't have understood it. I once wrote a piece called The Beast and the Dingle which everybody took as a parody. Actually it was a conscious attempt to write the story as James would have written it. Ross looked at it and said: "Goddam it, this is too literary; I got only 15% of the allusions." My wife and I often tried to figure out which were the 15% he could have got.

Thus the unreadable Henry James.

MORE:
Where Charlotte Wove: On a visit to E.B. White's Farm, we find the animals gone but the place still enchanted (Andrew Ferguson, July 12, 1999, Time)

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THE PATH TO POWER

Hillary To Replace Daschle? (Fox News, June 26, 2003)

Democratic lawmakers and aides said Wednesday there is growing interest in tapping Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Senate Democratic leader if Sen. Tom Daschle retires next year.

Sources said elevating Clinton - in the Senate for only two-and-a-half - would be the best way to raise the party's profile in the face of a popular president and at a time when both houses of Congress are ruled by Republicans.

For the former first lady, the powerful post could offer her a high-profile platform from which to pursue the White House in 2008, as many believe she wants to do.

"It makes perfect sense," said one source. "Some people may have a hard time with it but it would be a perfect fit."

This begins being interesting with its assumption that Tom Daschle is in such tough shape back home that he won't even bother running for re-election. Even more interesting is the degree to which Democrats and Clintonites are kidding themselves.

The Party can't afford her as its public face any more than the GOP could afford Newt Gingrich. Such figures of intense controversy are necessary to a political party and can even make effective leaders nationally, but are seldom suited to leadership of legislative bodies.

From Ms Clinton's perspective, the position makes no sense because it makes it almost impossible for her to run for President. You'll recall that Bob Dole quit the Senate entirely in order to run and Mr. Daschle determined he couldn't run from the position. JFK is the last Senator elected to the presidency and he was hardly a leader of the party, let alone a Senate officer.

You really have to wonder if the folks running the Democratic Party these days understand politics and history at all.

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SURRENDERING OUR RESPONSIBILITIES

Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Law Banning Sodomy (JOEL BRINKLEY, June 26, 2003, NY Times)

The Supreme Court struck down a Texas law today that forbids homosexual sex, and reversed its own ruling in a similar Georgia case 17 years ago, thus invalidating antisodomy laws in the states that still have them.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 6-to-3 Texas decision, said that gay people "are entitled to respect for their private lives," adding that "the state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer agreed with Justice Kennedy. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor sided with the majority in its decision, but in a separate opinion disagreed with some of Justice Kennedy's reasoning.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissent and took the unusual step of reading it aloud from the bench this morning, saying "the court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," while adding that he personally has "nothing against homosexuals." Joining Justice Scalia's dissent were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas.

Justice Scalia said he believed the ruling paved the way for homosexual marriages. "This reasoning leaves on shaky, pretty shaky, grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples," he wrote.

The court's actions today would also seem to overturn any law forbidding sodomy, no matter whether it deals with homosexual or heterosexual activity.

You can defend or oppose anti-sodomy laws on the merits, but there's something no one can do who cares about constitutional government: concede the notion that the Court can strike down ancient laws on the basis that they violate some newfound liberty. If such laws are to be stricken it should be done only by legislatures or via the constitutional amendment process.

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IT TAKES A FAMILY - AND MAYBE RELIGION TOO

Can Harry Potter Rescue U.S. Children's Media? (Andrew Ferguson, Bloomberg, 6/24/2003)

The Potter books and their British author, J.K. Rowling, have charmed everyone, apparently, by reviving the most ancient medium, words- on-paper, with the most basic technique: excellent stories, told with intelligence and taste.

So why, with all its enviable success, hasn't the Potter series been more influential among those who produce entertainment for young people? Why is children's media -- from the cartoon violence of the X-Men to the mindless potty-mouthing of Eminem -- still a swamp of silliness and worse? Why aren't there more Harry Potters?...

A new book from Johns Hopkins University Press, Kid Stuff: Marketing Sex and Violence to America's Children, compiles essays by writers, liberal and conservative, who dare to ask [if parents are to blame]...

"Are parents reluctant to exercise their responsibilities as adults?" the editors write. "Many seem to be fearful of being considered prudes by their peers."

The result of this massive abdication of authority, writes the researcher Kay Hymowitz, is a "race to the bottom" by entertainment producers whose product never passes through the censor of a parent's higher expectations and values. In the marketplace of kids' media nowadays, only kids are setting the standards....

[P]arents have to assert their own authority and impose their own standards on the market. Maybe then, miraculously, there will be more Harry Potters - and, delightfully, fewer Eminems.

Hannah Arendt said that civilization is invaded by barbarians every generation -- they're called "children." It is the responsibility of parents to pass on to their children certain moral norms and tastes -- known as "culture" -- that have been proven over time to be good for humans. If we fail in this duty, then civilization may be displaced by barbarism.

The crowning accomplishment of liberalism and cultural Marxism in recent decades has not been in politics, but in the discrediting of efforts to conserve traditional culture. They have used moral suasion and legal coercion (see the Elks post) to persuade us that it is wicked to preserve and transmit culture by moral suasion.

Andrew Ferguson is pointing here to a loss of confidence so great that we do not teach our convictions even to our own children. Though I have no data, I would speculate that this loss of confidence coincides with an absence of religious faith. Without faith, how many generations can civilization survive?

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SILLY STORY OF THE DAY

Doctors ignoring guidelines, study says (JANET McCONNAUGHEY, 6/25/2003, The Associated Press)

Doctors fail to take nearly half the recommended steps for treating common illnesses such as high blood pressure and diabetes, suggesting that health care in the United States isn't nearly as good as many people thought, researchers say.

Treatment guidelines, many written by medical specialty organizations, outline recommended approaches to many common ailments, ranging from painkillers and exercise for arthritis to surgery for breast cancer.

However, the guidelines are often ignored, indicating that even people who have good insurance and doctors they like don't always get the best care, said Elizabeth McGlynn, a researcher with the Rand Corp. think-tank who led a study published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. [...]

The report, based on a review of medical records for 6,712 people in 12 cities, looked only at how often their doctors followed the rules, not whether they suffered any ill effects from the lapses.

This is absurd. The most brilliant ploy that unions use as a weapon against employers is following work guidelines. The longshoremen basically shut down the West Coast docks just by doing their jobs the way they are written. You'll note that they did not test the effects of this "deficient" treatment, because they're most likely beneficial. It's certainly more efficient.

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WAH

Intrusive health care (Robert Novak, June 26, 2003, Town Hall)

Desperate to control the congressional embrace of prescription drug subsidies, the House Republican bill would apply means testing to catastrophic illnesses. That laudable effort, however, carries an unexpected consequence. The health insurance industry would have access to the income data of every senior citizen in America.

You can't suckle at the public teat and complain that you live in a Nanny State. Want privacy? Pay for your own care.

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LOBOTOMY

Veteran neo-con advisor moves on Iran (Jim Lobe, 6/26/03, Asia Times)

When The Washington Post published a list of the people whom Karl Rove, President George W Bush's closest advisor, regularly consults for advice outside the administration, foreign policy veterans were shocked when Michael Ledeen popped up as the only full-time international affairs analyst.

"The two met after Bush's election," the Post reported cheerfully, quoting Ledeen about Rove's request that "any time you have a good idea, tell me". "More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric," noted the newspaper.

"When I saw that, I couldn't believe it," said one retired senior diplomat. "But then again, with this administration, it seemed frighteningly plausible." [...]

Throughout his career, Ledeen has insisted that war and violence are integral parts of human nature and derided the notion that peace can be negotiated between two nations.

Though America is often portrayed as naive and idealistic, these days it is only Americans who still understand that human nature is fairly base and extraordinarily selfish. Mr. Lobe, the Left, and Europe all share a vision of man as rather peaceful and communal. They're wrong.

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CAN'T LOSE FOR WINNING

The virtues of building communities by leading them from behind. (Mark Randell, June 18, 2003, Online Opinion)

In one of my children's books, the lion is made fun of for "leading from behind" while searching for the monster of the story. Subtly, it is implied that cowardice is behind the move, and the lion loses and regains his voice with the ebb and flow of his courage and his position in the pack.

Yet I would argue "leading from behind" - or at least by walking beside, rather than in-front of your charges - is exactly what is needed for leaders of all kinds (corporate, governmental, community) in the new century.

This is hardly a new idea. The notion is referred to directly in the Tao te Ching, that 1000-year old classic of Chinese literature: "When a good leader is finished, the people think they did it themselves". That is, lead through empowerment of the people, rather than by undertaking all tasks yourself - or at least make it look that way, make people believe they are making the decisions, providing the solutions. [...]

I was once asked by a CEO, in a meeting with his executive, what kind of leadership would be necessary in the 21st century. My reply - met with blank stares from the gathered management team - was "Taoist leadership". I was referring to the quote I have already made from the Tao te Ching. The type of leadership we need from all quarters is "facilitative" leadership, "empowering" leadership, humble leadership, Taoist leadership. We need leadership from those who would build us up and stand aside, insisting that we take all the credit. We need leaders who truly understand the first principle of community development: "Work yourself out of a job". If a good leader does good work, they render themselves virtually obsolete: the workers, the community, the team becomes self-sufficient.

Yet few of today's leaders - particularly in government - would be willing to "hand the credit" to others; they all want their moment in the spotlight, their 15 minutes. Credit is necessary to their continuing success as politicians, bureaucrats. Indeed, we set the entire "system" up that way from the beginning: We believe in the heroic leader, we build hierarchical enterprises where "the boss" is the only public face of the enterprise, we clammer for "doorstop" interviews with the leader, the Minister, the head honcho, as the only one who can give us the pearls of wisdom we crave. We focus our media on the people, we subscribe to the twin cults of personality and celebrity.

President Bush has actually carried this to a level beyond zen, wherein his opponents claim victory even as he gets his way. So, for instance, the Democrats won on Campaign Finance Reform, guaranteeing their annihilation on 2004; Ted Kennedy's Education bill leads inevitably to vouchers; the French win in the UN Security Council destroyed the institution; and the Democrats, after drawing a line in the sand on taxes, proceeded to insist on an immediate third round of tax cuts "for the poor", effectively bleeding the very government budgets they claim to defend. If you let your foes "win" you can apparently get away with anything.

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SOMETIMES SUNSHINE IS THE BEST INFECTANT (via Mike Daley)

South Korea 'did pay North for summit' (Andrew Ward, June 25 2003, Financial Times)

South Korean prosecutors on Wednesday said that former president Kim Dae-jung's government paid $100m to secure North Korea's participation in the two countries' historic summit three years ago.

Two senior aides to Mr Kim were indicted in connection with the secret payment, following a 70-day investigation into the "cash-for-summit" scandal.

The findings threatened the credibility of Seoul's "sunshine" policy of engagement with North Korea and tarnished the reputation of Mr Kim, who won the Nobel peace prize for the summit.

"The government was involved in secret cash remittances [to North Korea], which were made through improper channels," said Song Doo-Hwan, the special prosector who led the probe.

The payments add to the embarrassment but are really beside the point, which is that any negotiations at all with N. Korea represent a victory for the regime. You aren't negotiating their demise so you've already conceded the only issue that matters.

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TOO SHY

For Norah Jones, Nights Are Made for Sentiment and Slow Dancing (BEN RATLIFF, 6/26/03, NY Times)

Halfway through Norah Jones's concert on Tuesday night at the Beacon Theater, her five-member band left her alone onstage. She sat at the grand piano and played Duke Ellington's "Melancholia," singing her own lyrics about not missing a lover who had checked out. "Melancholia" is one of Ellington's slow, exotic songs with chord changes that make it too weird for standard repertory. And Ms. Jones's voice--bright, precise and drawling--did very well by it.

Then the band reappeared, and the concert--her first major theater concert in New York since winning five Grammys in February--became a crashing bore again, just as the first half had been. There was a sense in Ms. Jones's show--expressed in the songwriting, in the arrangements (such as they were) and in the basic elements of stagecraft--that the kids had taken over and weren't sure what to do with their power. If ever a singer and a band could benefit from the guidance of elders, it is this one.

For sure, one quality that makes the 24-year-old Ms. Jones so likable is her unpretentiousness. I don't think I've seen a headlining pop star who has sold 14 million copies worldwide of a first record seem less sure about what to say to her audience. But would she be betraying that likable personality by using more effective arrangements, some changes in key and tempo?

Perhaps we'll find out on her second album, but for now--during a three-night sold-out stand at the Beacon and the rest of a national tour--her job is to play the songs and the style of the first one, her Grammy-winning "Come Away With Me."

For whatever reason, early success in sports is an indicator of greatness but in music and literature it's often an omen of doom. Who will ever forget the heart-rending evening on Solid Gold where they announced that Kajagoogoo was breaking up because of "creative differences", never to be heard from again. One would hope Ms Jones does not become the Hootie and the Blowfish of the aughts.

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SO ENDS THE ASIAN MIRACLE (via Tom Morin)

Don't Delay Pension Reform (Paul F. Gruenwald, May 23, 2003, Chosun Ilbo)

Korea currently faces some difficult decisions about reforming its National Pension System. As many readers know, the public pension system will come under increasing financial strain in the coming decades as the population ages rapidly; indeed, the OECD projects that Korea will age faster than any other industrialized country. While it is tempting to dismiss such concerns as being too distant, there is a strong case to act now. Delaying reform to future generations will only shift the burden of fixing the system, and then more drastic actions will be needed. The IMF urges the government to adopt gradual reform measures now to ensure a smooth transition to a financially sound pension system, and to ensure fairness across all generations of Koreans. [...]

There is widespread agreement that the finances of the National Pension Fund (NPF)in essence, the savings account of the NPS will deteriorate markedly in the coming decades as the Korean population ages. At present, the NPF runs an annual surplus equal to more than 2 percent of GDP, with accumulated assets of almost W100 trillion. However, these rosy numbers reflect the relative youth of Korea’s population. To conclude that all is well with the pension system would be a mistake. By the mid-2020s expenditures will exceed contributions, based on reasonable economic assumptions, and by the mid-2040s the financial resources of the NPF will be completely exhausted.

Ensuring the long-term solvency of the public pension system will inevitably require some combination of lower benefits and higher contributions.

Just wait until they try to reassimilate N. Korea.

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HOW YOU FUND TERROR (via Tom Morin)

Aid Used to Produce Narcotics (Kim Kwang-in, 4/07/03, Chosun Ilbo)

Fertilizer that South Korea gives to North Korea is used to grow opium plants, said an organization of South Koreans who fled the North during the Korean War.

The group, called Iebukdominhoi, reported in its newsletter Donghwa Shinmun this week that a defector support organization in China said that Room 39 of the North's Labor Party, which specializes in earning hard currency, has been distributing the fertilizer given by the South. The paper said the fertilizer had gone to farms throughout at least four provinces - North Hamgyeong, South Hamgyeong, Jagang and Yanggang - and that North Korea authorities have mandated that at least 30 percent of the acreage on some farms be devoted to growing opium poppies. Those farms had staff that specialize in growing the poppies, the report said. [...]

North Korea started growing poppies in 1992 on the orders of former President Kim Il Sung. The project was called "Baikdoraji Saeop," which translates to "white balloon flower project." The current leader Kim Jong Il changed the name of the project in 1999 to "Piramidon Saeop" - the meaning of which is not quite clear.

Buy drugs, support terror.

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THE SKIRTS AND THE SKINS

Outrage as black judge attacks affirmative action (David Rennie, 26/06/2003, Daily Telegraph)

Clarence Thomas, the only black judge on the United States Supreme Court, has triggered liberal anger by denouncing positive discrimination as a "cruel farce".

In his most personal remarks, Mr Thomas wrote that when some blacks are given a helping hand, "all are tarred as undeserving" whether or not they were actually qualified in their own right.

"When blacks take positions in the highest places of government, industry or academia, it is an open question today whether their skin colour played a part in their advancement," he wrote. Maureen Dowd, a liberal pundit in the New York Times, called the judge "barking mad" in a commentary on his remarks.

"It's poignant really: it makes him crazy that people think he is where he is because of his race, but he is where he is because of his race," she wrote. "It's impossible not to be disgusted at someone who could benefit so much from affirmative action and then pull up the ladder against himself."

One does admire Ms Dowd her consistency: as a quota hire herself she wants to keep the ladder down to help other undeserving women take men's jobs. That is what she means, right?

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AMERICAN BEAUTY

U.S. Finds Nuclear Materials Buried in Iraq (Fox News, June 25, 2003)

An Iraqi scientist has led the CIA to nuclear materials buried in his backyard, Fox News has learned.

Mahdi Obeidi told U.S. agents in Iraq he was ordered in 1991 to hide documents and parts for a centrifuge to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

"A box of parts and a bunch of documents were buried under the rose bushes in his backyard," one U.S. official told Fox News.

Obeidi also said he was told the materials should remain buried in the backyard of his Baghdad home until sanctions against Iraq ended, when they would be dug up and used to reconstitute a program to enrich uranium to make a nuclear weapon.

"This shows how hard a job it will be to find stuff when it's under people's rose bushes," the U.S. official added.

Obeidi told the CIA he was one of four Iraqi nuclear scientists told to hide such plans and parts. He did not know the identities of the other three and the CIA has so far been unable to locate them, a senior U.S. official told Fox News.

You have to question the competence of a government that took this long to plant bogus evidence. Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and LBJ must be so ashamed.

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TOO MUCH ORDER

Stop Blaming, Wise Up to Postwar Realities: A clever foe may have an 'occupation fatigue' strategy for victory (Caleb Carr, June 25, 2003, LA Times)

The continuing violence means that Iraq is not yet ready for the Middle Eastern Marshall Plan we were once so convinced that the Iraqis wanted. Let's remember that in order to implement the Marshall Plan, we destroyed Germany and dealt with the German populace ruthlessly. Had anyone in the former Nazi Reich mounted the kind of violent dissatisfaction with the pace of our charitable intentions that we're seeing in Iraq, they would have been arrested or wiped out, no questions asked.

Do we now want to shift gears toward a similarly draconian preparation for reconstruction in Iraq? Perhaps not, but the war is clearly not over, despite what Bush said during his patently silly amateur theatrics on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.

The Pentagon must, however reluctantly, send in not only additional Special Forces units (the only troops we have that are capable of handling this situation without alienating the Iraqi people) to pick apart the resistance machine, but also police troops to meet the public safety emergency, as well as extra engineering units to restore services quickly.

We were all supposed to be happy friends in Iraq by now. But our antagonist may have proved, once again, to be a damnably clever opponent. Before we get entirely swept up with finding people on our own side to blame (there will be ample time for that later), we ought to be about the business of devising new schemes to neutralize our foe - schemes even more imaginative than those admirable plans that brought us into Baghdad so quickly.

The problem in Iraq right now is actually the opposite of what folks are saying it is. We restored order too quickly and are maintaining it too tightly. When we liberated European nations from their German oppressors in WWII there were healthy periods of vicious vengeance-taking against those who had collaborated. Iraq could use a stiff dose of the same therapy. We should devolve power to the Shiites as quickly as possible so that they can undertake the massive and murderous reprisals against the Sunnis that will make it crystal clear to the Sunni minority that they will never again be able to lord it over the Shiite majority and make the country governable again.

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HOWARD DEAN?

Dean Struggles With His Voice: Former Vermont Gov. Seen as Great Orator, but Interview Raises Questions (Terry M. Neal, June 25, 2003, washingtonpost.com)

Until recently Dean was virtually unknown outside of New England. But he has been more successful than any Democratic candidate in improving the position from where he started a few months back. The former governor has proved himself to be a scintillating speaker. Tapping into liberal rage, he has given the party's activists the undiluted, uncut stuff in a way that brings them to their feet every time.

Speechifying is Dean's thing. Interviews and debates appear not to be.

Good Dean and Bad Dean were both on display this week. First Dean delivered what has to be one of the worst Sunday morning news show performances in recent memory. Then the next day he delivered one of his typically passionate and rousing speeches in his presidential announcement in Burlington, Vermont.

Dean actually gives the Rev. Al Sharpton a run for his money in the oratory department, but he has the added benefit of being seen as electable by many in the party.

Great orator? Scintillating speaker? Electable? Howard Dean?

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LORD, PLEASE WHISPER HOW TO GET TO 60 IN THE SENATE

'Road map is a life saver for us,' PM Abbas tells Hamas (Ha'aretz, 6/26/2003)

According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

This seems to me good diplomacy: the Palestinians claim to know Allah's will, why shouldn't Bush claim to know God's? Of course, on the lefty sites it is being taken to mean that Bush hears voices in the air and follows their instructions. Luckily, the voices are canny political strategists.

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JUST SAY, YES

Tories want to pull out of EU, says Blair (Andrew Grice, 24 June 2003, Independent uk)

Tony Blair clashed angrily with Iain Duncan Smith yesterday as he accused the Conservative Party of supporting Britain's withdrawal from the European Union.

The Tories said the Prime Minister had deliberately misrepresented their policy after he claimed that the Opposition backed the idea of "associate membership". He said that would be the result of proposals by the Eurosceptic Tory MP David Heathcoat-Amory, a member of the convention that drew up a new EU blueprint.

During a Commons statement on last week's EU summit in Greece, Mr Blair said Mr Heathcoat-Amory's alternative draft treaty would mean redrawing the terms of Britain's EU membership. This policy, which he claimed was endorsed by the Tory front bench, would be "wholly inconsistent with Britain's present membership".

Rejecting calls for a referendum, he told Mr Duncan Smith: "That is the true dividing line. The reason that you want a referendum is so that you can say 'no', so that you can paralyse the EU, so that you can get out." Mr Duncan Smith told MPs: "The Conservative Party does not want Britain to leave the EU. We want to make it work."

Imagine the excitement if IDS had just said: "Yes, that's right. We reject the Franco-German superstate in favor of unfettered British sovereignty. We say: No to submerging Britain in a European Union." Take that to the nation and the Tories would revive their currently moribund party.

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BREYER PATCH

How to Head Off a Fight Over the High Court (David S. Broder, June 25, 2003, Washington Post)

It would greatly disappoint the warring armies of interest groups in Washington, salivating for a fight over the next Supreme Court vacancy. But there is a way out of such a debilitating battle, with all its ominous implications for the independence and reputation of the judiciary, if key players at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are willing to show some flexibility.

The path around such a knock-down, drag-out fight has been opened by Democratic senators who have urged President Bush to "consult" with Capitol Hill before deciding on his choice for the high court.

No one knows when there may be a vacancy to fill, but with the current term coming to an end, speculation is rife that Chief Justice William Rehnquist or Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, both in their seventies, may be ready to retire.

In anticipation of that possibility, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has written to Bush urging him to engage "in meaningful consultation with members of the Senate, including those in the other [Democratic] party, before deciding on nominees."

Leahy's proposal was quickly endorsed by Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who wrote the president that "should you be willing to convene a meeting of Senate leaders from both parties to begin a bipartisan process of consultation . . . we believe it is not necessary to have a divisive confirmation fight over a Supreme Court appointment."

This is an exquisite trap for the Democrats tp place their heads in and the White House would be wise to spring it. Ask the Senate Democrats to suggest a list of nominees they would support. First of all, just putting the list together will turn into a hilarious political exercise because it will have to represent every race, gender, religion, sexual preference, etc., and each Senator will have his/her own favorites who will have to be included. The final list could have two or three hundred names.

Meanwhile, in order to be taken at all seriously the list will have to include conservatives and Republicans, who thereupon become bulletproof. If not, or if the list does not include the White House's first choice, they can simply dismiss it as partisan hackwork. It's a win/win situation for the GOP.

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CLOSELY WATCHED TRAIN WRECKS

Original Party Animals: Democrats say they are hopeful about the coming election. But then, they have to say that (Mike Mosedale, 6/25/03, City Pages)

Last week, when Democratic bigwigs from across the country assembled in St. Paul to take a look-see at the party's presidential aspirants, one buzzword trumped all the others. Optimism. Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, state committee functionaries, candidates--they were all so inflated with hope you worried that one of them might explode and set off a chain reaction. [...]

But insofar as the optimism on display this weekend was genuine, it may have sprung from a more elemental source: helpless, baseless rationalization. When things look as bad as they do for the Democrats right now, how likely is it that they'll get any worse?

Unfortunately for the Democrats, the answer may well be "pretty damn likely." Why? Well, look at the candidates. Of the six who spoke, none emerged as anything near a consensus favorite. That may not seem surprising. But by many accounts, it was Bill Clinton's impressive showing at this same meeting in the summer of 1991 that propelled him to the front of the '92 field.

But the Dems' lack of distinction hardly ends there. You can start by noting that the best orator among the participants, the Rev. Al Sharpton, is also the most unelectable. Sharpton was the funniest of the speakers as well, though in one sense his best jabs were at the essential unseriousness of the event. Asked how he would handle the federal deficit, Sharpton said he was uniquely qualified because "I've been in a deficit most of my life." The line that got the heartiest laughs: "Some people say, 'Al, can you win?' Well, Bush didn't win and he's president!"

If Sharpton were mounting a serious campaign for the nomination, he would not have been received so warmly. But he cozied up to the insiders
by effectively declaring his candidacy the front for a voter-registration drive.

Alan Keyes won just about every Republican debate he was allowed to attend, but there was no natural constituency in the lilly-white GOP for his candidacy asa a racial matter and the eventuals nominees were inevitably going to be nearly as conservative as he, so it didn't matter how well he did. But the Democrats are unlikely to nominate a genuine liberal and there is a racial constituency for the Reverend in their party, so he can stay in the race as long as he wants to and make a difference in more than a few states.

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IT'S BASEBALL, JAKE

What's in a Number?: Stat love and baseball love (Brad Zellar, 6/25/03, City Pages)

This season more than ever before, I find myself spending so much time poking holes in strategic moves or personnel decisions and arguing with the damn game that I end up pissed off rather than entertained. And that's just plain wrong. Armed with so many statistics, and with the opinions formed by those numbers, and determined with each new frustrating skid in the season to dig further into the stats in search of answers, I often feel like one of those scientists who gets so lost in the mysteries of physics that she's no longer capable of recognizing what an everyday miracle this world really is.

And the bottom line is that baseball, despite its essential and attractive order and the fact that so many of its components can now be subjected to rigorous statistical evaluation, is still a largely unpredictable sport, a game in which intangibles and absurdity continue to play regular roles in the outcomes of games. You could pick virtually any great game in the history of baseball whose outcome was affected by anomalous events and obscure, mediocre--even lousy--players whose moment of glory could not have been predicted by any statistical formula or pool of data.

The players understand this better than the writers and the stats junkies do. To them there is virtually no mystery, bizarre occurrence, or unexpected event on a field that can't be explained with a shrug and the oldest clubhouse cliche in the book: "That's baseball."

We offer in evidence: Jimmy Qualls.

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NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION

Should Americans Who Don't Pay Taxes Have a Say? (Robert R. Eberle, 07/08/03, Insight on the News)

There is a classic slogan in America that is probably as old as the country itself. You've heard it many times, and it goes like this: There are only two sure things in life - death and taxes.

Unless the fountain of youth is discovered or secret advances are made in human cloning, I think we still can count on passing from this earth at some point. However, the paying of taxes is not the certainty it once was. With each passing tax bill, more and more Americans no longer are paying income taxes. Thus, the question arises: Should these nontaxpayers have a say in what America does as a nation?

The proper parallel would seem to be to the disenfranchisement of residents of Washington, DC, who were expected to have too vested an interest in the operations of the Federal government. There's an obvious threat to liberty from allowing those who are dependent on government to have a say in how that government is funded and run. We'd not allow them that say.

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THE DADDY PARTY

The GOP Changes Its Estrada Strategy: They’ll now force Democrats to vote on ending the filibuster. (Byron York, March 4, 2003, National Review)

Republican Sen. Rick Santorum has just announced a major change in the party's strategy in the Miguel Estrada confirmation fight. Santorum told reporters minutes ago that Republicans will file for cloture today, which will lead to a vote on Thursday.

So far, Republicans can count on just four Democratic votes in favor of Estrada, which will leave them short of the 60 votes needed to stop the Democratic filibuster. "We've sort of hit a wall now," Santorum said. "We haven't had anybody come forward in a week and a half, and at some point, you're going to have to change strategies to make this happen."

Santorum said the Republican strategy now "will be to put people on the record" through a cloture vote. Anticipating that Republicans will at first fail to reach 60 votes, Santorum added, "This will be one of many cloture votes."

"My guess is we will do another cloture vote next week and wait and see what happens," Santorum said. "If we're successful and pick up a vote, we may have some other options."

Why do Republicans always have to be the ones who behave responsibly? Just make the Democrats filibuster 24/7.

UPDATE:
Okay, Senate rules are famously complex, so I may well have this wrong--if you see differently please tell us--but it appears from this that by forcing a vote, the GOP would be effectively bringing Senate business to a halt until the filibuster ends, whereas as right now other measures can be considered on the floor while the filibuster goes on.

UPDATE:
That's apparently completely wrong. Please check the comments for more informed instruction.

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HOIST ON HIS OWN PETARD

God, Satan and the Media (NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, March 4, 2003, NY Times)

Claims that the news media form a vast liberal conspiracy strike me as utterly unconvincing, but there's one area where accusations of institutional bias have merit: nearly all of us in the news business are completely out of touch with a group that includes 46 percent of Americans.

That's the proportion who described themselves in a Gallup poll in December as evangelical or born-again Christians. Evangelicals have moved from the fringe to the mainstream, and that is particularly evident in this administration. It's impossible to understand President Bush without acknowledging the centrality of his faith. Indeed, there may be an element of messianic vision in the plan to invade Iraq and "remake" the Middle East. [...]

I tend to disagree with evangelicals on almost everything, and I see no problem with aggressively pointing out the dismal consequences of this increasing religious influence. For example, evangelicals' discomfort with condoms and sex education has led the administration to policies that are likely to lead to more people dying of AIDS at home and abroad, not to mention more pregnancies and abortions.

But liberal critiques sometimes seem not just filled with outrage at evangelical-backed policies, which is fair, but also to have a sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself. Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable. And liberals sometimes show more intellectual curiosity about the religion of Afghanistan than that of Alabama, and more interest in reading the Upanishads than in reading the Book of Revelation.

This is priceless. Here's how the Times has handled the evangelicals in just two particularly notorious recent examples that we've noted:
The first was a really despicable slur by Bill Keller, labelling the entire Christian right "bigots", The Soul of George W. Bush (Bill Keller, NY Times) :

Nor can Mr. Bush be claimed by the culture warriors of the Christian right, although he gave them John Ashcroft and occasionally throws them a steak. The president is not a bigot, or a pessimist.

the second a rather breathless front page piece about Christian radio stations crowding out NPR, Religious and Public Stations Battle for Share of Radio Dial (BLAINE HARDEN, September 15, 2002, NY Times)

The Rev. Don Wildmon, founding chairman of a mushrooming network of Christian radio stations, does not like National Public Radio.

"He detests the news that the public gets through NPR and believes it is slanted from a distinctly liberal and secular perspective," said Patrick Vaughn, general counsel for Mr. Wildmon's American Family Radio.

Here in Lake Charles, American Family Radio has silenced what its boss detests.

It knocked two NPR affiliate stations off the local airwaves last year, transforming this southwest Louisiana community of 95,000 people into the most populous place in the country where "All Things Considered" cannot be heard.

which prompted this from the Times editors, Some Things Considered (NY Times,9/17/02):

Every devoted radio listener has experienced it at some time or another--a favorite station changes its format. The effect is unsettling. Last year, National Public Radio listeners in Lake Charles, La., experienced something even more alarming.

Nice the way they just assume that folks in Lake Charles must have found it "alarming", eh?

Now, these may not necessarily be indicators of liberal bias at the Times; they may just demonstrate grotesque insenitivity to the religious beliefs of a plurality of Americans. But, whichever is the case, surely Mr. Kristoff's crusade against the "sneering tone"of media coverage of Christians should begin at home, shouldn't it?

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MUCH HAJDU ABOUT NOTHIN'

Wynton's Blues: For two decades Wynton Marsalis ruled the jazz universe, enjoying virtually unqualified admiration as a musician and unsurpassed influence as the music's leading promoter and definer. But after a series of sour notes?he parted from his record label, has been caught up in controversy at Jazz at Lincoln Center; and has been drawing increasing fire from critics and fellow musicians alike for his narrow neotraditionalism?perhaps the biggest name in jazz faces an uncertain future. Just like jazz itself. (David Hajdu, March 2003, The Atlantic Monthly)

For twenty years the fates of Marsalis and jazz music have appeared inextricably intertwined. He was a young newcomer on the New York scene at a time when jazz seemed dominated and diminished by rock-oriented "fusion," marginalized by outr? experimentation and electronics, and disconnected from the youth audience that has driven American popular culture since the postwar era. Extraordinarily gifted and fluent in both jazz and classical music, not to mention young, handsome, black, impassioned, and articulate, especially on the importance of jazz history and jazz masters, Marsalis was ideally equipped to lead a cultural-aesthetic movement suited to the time, a renaissance that raised public esteem for and the popular appeal of jazz through a return to the music's traditional values: jazz for the Reagan revolution. In 1990 Time magazine put him on the cover
and announced the dawn of "The New Jazz Age." Record companies rediscovered the music and revived long-dormant jazz lines, signing countless young musicians inspired by Marsalis, along with three of his five brothers (first his older brother, Branford, a celebrated tenor saxophonist; later Delfeayo, a trombonist; and eventually the youngest, Jason, a percussionist) and his father, Ellis (a respected educator and pianist in the family's native New Orleans). By the 1990s Wynton Marsalis had become an omnipresent spokesperson for his music and also one of its most prolific and highly decorated practitioners (he was the first jazz composer to win a Pulitzer Prize, for Blood on the Fields, his oratorio about slavery)?something of a counterpart to Leonard Bernstein in the 1950s. He took jazz up and over the hierarchical divide that had long isolated the music from the fine-arts establishment; the modest summer jazz program he created won a full constituency at Lincoln Center. In 1999, to mark the end of the century, Marsalis issued a total of fifteen CDs?about one new title every month.

In the following two years he did not release a single CD of new music. In fact, after two decades with Columbia Records, the prestigious and high-powered label historically associated with Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis, Marsalis has no record contract with any company. Nor does his brother Branford, who just a few years ago was not only one of Columbia's recording stars but an executive consultant overseeing the artists-and-repertory direction of the label's jazz division. (Branford recently formed an independent record company.) Over the past few years Columbia has drastically reduced its roster of active jazz musicians, shifting its emphasis to reissues of old recordings. Atlantic folded its jazz catalogue into the operations of its parent company, Warner, and essentially gave up on developing new artists. Verve is a fraction of the size it was a decade ago. In addition, jazz clubs around the country have been struggling, and the attacks of September 11 hurt night life everywhere; New York's venerable Sweet Basil closed in the spring of 2001, after twenty-five years in operation, and later reopened as a youth-oriented world-music place. In the institutional arena, Carnegie Hall discontinued its in-house jazz orchestra at the end of the 2001-2002 season.

For this grim state of affairs in jazz Marsalis, the public face of the music and the evident master of its destiny, has been declared at least partly culpable. By leading jazz into the realm of unbending classicism, by applying the Great Man template to establish an iconography (Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Coltrane), and by sanctifying a canon of their own choosing (Armstrong's "Hot Fives," Ellington's Blanton-Webster period, Parker's Savoy sessions, Coltrane's A Love Supreme), Marsalis and his adherents are said to have codified the music in a stifling orthodoxy and inhibited the revolutionary impulses that have always advanced jazz.

"They've done a lot to take the essence of jazz and distort it," the composer and pianist George Russell told The New York Times in 1998. "They've put a damper on the main ingredient of jazz, which is innovation."

A former executive with Columbia Records who has worked intimately with five Marsalises says, "For many people, Wynton has come to embody some retro ideology that is not really of the moment, you know?it's more museumlike in nature, a look back. I think as each day passes, Wynton does lose relevance as a shaper of musical direction. He's not quite the leader of a musical movement any longer. That doesn't mean he's not remarkable, or without considerable clout, or that he's not the leader of a cultural movement. But within the record industry the Marsalises are no longer seen as the top guys."

Interesting piece on Wynton... I have a lot of thoughts on it, so in no particular order:

1) Yesterday, I went to a master class taught by Paquito D'Rivera....something Adriana saw and surprised me with a ticket. It wasn't a normal master class (in which everyone brings their horns, and the teacher uses the students to demonstrate his points), rather just Paquito talking about elements of jazz and Latin music...with him (accompanied by a piano player) making his own points on alto and clarinet....it was a great time for someone like me...anyway, here's the tie to Wynton: at one point, Paquito was talking about what he thinks is lacking in a lot of instrumentalists, and one of the things he mentioned was articulation (which in wind instrument refers to the differentiation of individual notes by using the tongue). He said not enough guys anymore really articulate well, and even fewer do so with any personal imprint. He went on to cite Wynton as an example of a guy who is a "genius" of articulation and dynamics, which results in him having a beautiful, exciting sound. He then mimicked Marsalis's sound with his voice. Well, I admire the hell out of Paquito D'Rivera, and if Wynton is good enough for him, who am I to argue?

2) I'm not that familiar with Hadju or his views on jazz, but I have read his best-known work, his biography of Billy Strayhorn, which I liked very much. I know he must know a lot about the music, and maybe his opening in this article was exaggerated for dramatic effect, but I find it hard to believe he had to sit there for 4 songs before he was sure the trumpet player was Wynton. Separate and apart from whether someone likes his music, Marsalis does have a distinctive (and remarkably beautiful) tone on the trumpet....if I had been in the club, I would have known it was him even if I had been blindfolded...it struck me as unbelievable that the author, and the jazz man sitting next to him, couldn't tell...

3) Hadju makes a surprising number of references to Wynton and women: that he has kids with 2 girlfriends, that he has access to lots of good looking girls, that Crouch lured him to the surprise birthday party by telling him they were going to meet to girls, etc. I thought it was a bit out of place for an article that was supposed to be comparing the State of Jazz to the State of Wynton. It wasn't quite "Mandingo", but I don't know that "black man as sex machine" was really relevant to the main thesis. (Especially without any allegations that Wynton mistreats women or doesn't take care of his kids....in fact, the author made the opposite point: that Marsalis is seemingly polite and solicitous to all of his fans and acquaintances and takes the kids during vacations, etc.)....

4) Hadju shouldn't have taken his appearance at a club in late August as a shock. The summer is typically when musicians make the "Jazz Festival" circuit...Montreaux, Newport, JVC (in NY), Telluride, Italy, Japan, etc. The festivals are usually over by mid-August. So, at that point, Wynton is home, a great musician who he would respect (McPherson) is playing at the most famous jazz club in the world (the Village Vanguard), so Wynton, who lives a $5 cab ride away, stops in for a few sets. All that shows me is that Marsalis wasn't b.s.'ing the writer when he told him he loves to play. I find it remarkable and admirable (but not surprising) that a world-famous musician, who plays to sold out concert halls everywhere, loves to play so much that he'll drop in for a few tunes with a friend. At my club, I've seen guys like Joe Williams, Alan Broadbent, and even Miles freaking Davis himself, come out of the audience to sit in on a song or two.

5) I chuckle at the attempt to draw distinctions between Branford and Wynton. Yes, Branford has done some pop stuff, but his first release on his own record label features his interpretations of Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" and Sonny Rollins' "Freedom Suite"....so, unlike his brother, he obviously doesn't hold the old masters in reverence or anything.

6) He makes a good point about the difficulty posed to critics by Wynton when he acts as a critic. Tough to have a guy invade your turf who can actually do the thing at a high level and he knows as much about the history as you do.

7) Finally, Hadju says about 5 times that the jazz club business is struggling throughout the country since 9/11, and he uses the cut backs at some labels as an indicator that the music is dying. Now, I don't doubt that there has been a drop off at places like the Blue Note in NY which always catered to busloads of Japanese and German tourists. But whenever I'm in NY (3 or 4 times a year) and go by Iridium or the Vanguard, they are always packed. And, I'm happy to say, the Catalina Bar and Grill has seen a significant increase in business since 9/11...we don't' know why, but I suppose it's because people from LA may not be taking as many vacations, so they go out to do something special in town. On the record side, interesting, avant garde (for want of a better, less pejorative word) new comers like Jason Moran, and established non-traditional players like David Murray, Arthur Blythe and Wayne Shorter have all released new albums in the last few months. Mainstream guys like Hank Jones (in his 80's), Kenny Barron, Larry Coryell, Cedar Walton, etc., etc., are going strong....and Jackie McLean and Sonny Rollins (both in their 70's) can still outplay anyone on the planet, and continue to make fresh, challenging music that doesn't rest on their laurels from the 1950's and 60's..... Oh yeah, and back to where I started, with Paquito: guys like D'Rivera and Sandoval, and players from all over the world (Paquito's piano player is Israeli) are coming to this country, adopting jazz and adding touches of their home cultures.

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STILL A SLEEPING GIANT

Europe's dreams of muscle dashed: The EU's hopes of becoming a defence superpower are looking less realistic (Ian Black, December 6, 2002, The Guardian)

[A]s transatlantic tensions mount over Iraq and the "war on terrorism", the signs are that the EU's faltering attempts to get its own act together are in a state of serious crisis. It is only two weeks since Nato - the institutional embodiment of European-US relations for half a century - decided at its Prague summit to build new military capabilities that would allow it to meet the strategic challenges of the 21st century.

The main intention is to narrow the gap between the US and Europe - in big transport planes, modern ships, precision-guided weapons, hi-tech surveillance equipment and secure communications. This kit is intended for use either by the alliance or by the EU, if there is a conflict, say in the Balkans, in which the US does not wish to be involved. Eleven of the union's 15 members are also in Nato.

So the decision by Germany to slash its military spending comes as a grave if predictable blow to these already slow-moving efforts. If Europe's biggest country and economy cannot do more to help it punch above its weight, some gloomy analysts believe, then the whole project may simply be doomed. [...]

The figures show just how stark the contrast is: Germany spent 1.5% of its GDP on defence in 2001, compared with an average of European Nato members of about 2.1%. Britain and France spent 2.5% and 2.6% respectively while the US spent 3.2%. And after September 11 US spending was increased by a staggering $48bn dollars (£31bn) for 2003, more than any European annual defence budget.

What is truly staggering about all this is how little we spend on Defense now, as this chart shows:

We'd have to more than double our spending just to reach the historic average. That's one reason all the catterwauling over George W. Bush being a big government liberal is truly silly.

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PEDRO DON'T PREACH

The Roar of Life: Seattle's Pedro the Lion tells it like it is. (Annie Holub, 11/21/02, Tucson Weekly)

As easy as it is to write off Pedro the Lion as depressing, slit-your-wrist music, the sadness is only skin deep. Underneath the stories of failed politicians, marriages and families, there is something uplifting in [David] Bazan's songs, something redemptive and forgiving in all the sex and booze that color the tracks. Bazan confronts the denizens of 21st-century middle-class life and doesn't try to idealize their lives. In Bazan's songs, people have extramarital affairs in cheap motel rooms; they go to Grandma's house for tea and cake and leave their little brother wandering lost in the woods; they admit they like girls better when they shave their legs; they disappoint their parents; and they may not love Jesus every day. And it's OK. The people in Bazan's songs are real. They screw up and they may be unhappy, but listening to their stories is kind of like watching bad TV: Your own life, suddenly, doesn't seem so dire in comparison. [...]

Pedro the Lion has been a loud rock band at times and the outlet for Bazan's quieter musical side at others. But even at its most simplistic, the songs resonate with intensity. Control is the story of a failing marriage: The first song has a couple walking along the beach and one saying to the other, "I could never divorce you/ without a good reason/ though I may never have to/ it's good to have options." The next song, "Rapture," shows the husband in the throes of adultery: "This is how we multiply/ pity that it's not my wife." Later on the record are two more songs about infidelity, and the saga culminates with "Priests and Paramedics," where the wife kills the husband with a knife.

Not that Bazan is condoning unfaithfulness; he's merely acknowledging its existence and exploring the emotions and factors involved. Bazan is Christian and the fact that many of his songs are spiritually themed leads many to conclude that Pedro the Lion is more Christian rock than indie rock. But he's not preaching anything.

"The prevailing notion of Christian music is that the singer or the writer is attempting to present a message, and through that message, trying to convert people to their way of thinking," said Bazan. "I think that that just contradicts the purpose of what art is and what music is, in that I feel like it's art, and so that's not really what I'm trying to do. I think if I was to sit down and have a conversation about it, I'm not sure if they would categorize me personally as a Christian or not, but nonetheless I value the Bible and Jesus's teachings and whatnot, but how it interacts with the music is really kind of up to the moment of creativity and doesn't really have anything to do with me setting out to write about certain things or having an agenda or anything like that."

Even realizing that Kajagugu was already taken, what a rotten name for a band.

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LOUISIANA VALUES

The Battle of New Orleans: The last election of 2002, Terrell vs. Landrieu, may also be the meanest. (Stephen F. Hayes, 12/09/2002, Weekly Standard)

When they faced off in a televised debate here last week, Suzanne Haik Terrell accused Senator Mary Landrieu of abandoning her Catholic faith because of her votes in favor of abortion. The comment--one of the strongest in-person attacks in recent memory--was virtually ignored by the media.

Perhaps that's because the charge is just one among dozens of harsh attacks traded in a race that is quickly becoming one of the most bitter of the 2002 election cycle. Maybe it's because Louisiana voters have heard similar sentiments before. In 1996, Archbishop Phillip Hannan said, if "a person actually believes in Catholic doctrine, then I don't see how they can vote for Landrieu without a feeling of sin." Or maybe the remark was overlooked because Landrieu's protest--she called it the "pit of politics"--was unconvincing. Landrieu, after all, has been playing victim on just about everything. When Terrell criticized her six years representing the Bayou state in the U.S. Senate, the incumbent responded pitifully. "Well, somebody thinks I'm doing a good job." And when Terrell spoke with pride about her three lovely daughters, Landrieu had had enough. "Ms. Terrell, who knows me quite well, fails to say that I also have two beautiful daughters." Oh, the indignity.

As for "Louisiana values"--Terrell used that phrase in the first sentence of the New Orleans debate, and returned to it several times over the next half-hour. "The people of Louisiana are extremely family-oriented and they have tremendous faith," she said, defining the term in an interview two days later. "It's a recognition of those things that are important--estate taxes and the tax structure, personal responsibility, raising children, the sanctity of life, guns, crime, and faith. Sixty percent of southern Louisiana is Catholic," she adds. Terrell insists that her opponent is out of touch with those values--voting with Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and Tom Daschle more than 80 percent of the time.

That, of course, is fair to point out. And it certainly contrasts with Landrieu's attempt to portray her voting record as moderate Democrat, which it is not. (Her record has won her high marks from liberal groups like Americans for Democratic Action. That group said Landrieu voted with its agenda 95 percent of the time in 1999, 80 percent in 2000, and 85 percent in 2001; her scores for those same years from the American Conservative Union were 4, 16, and 28.) But is it appropriate to accuse your opponent of abandoning her faith?

"Maybe it's an inappropriate comment," says Terrell. "I don't know. But as a practicing Catholic, I just don't understand how she can reconcile being a Catholic with her support for federal funding of abortions on overseas military bases, or with distributing morning-after pills in school."

That may be harsh but it seems fair. For too long the GOP has practiced unilateral rhetorical disarmament on the abortion issue, allowing Democrats to portray them as anti-woman with impunity. There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that folks like Ms Landrieu, Mario Cuomo, and Joe Lieberman—to name a few--violate the tenets of their professed faiths when the keep abortion on demand legal.

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FIELD VS. HOUSE

Black Democrats Concerned on House Posts (JANELLE CARTER, Nov 26, Associated Press)

As House Democrats pick a new leader for their fund-raising committee, black lawmakers are again protesting about being overlooked for key positions despite delivering millions of votes each year.

Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson (has been lobbying to replace Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But Jefferson's prospects of getting the plum assignment are anything but certain since the elevation earlier of this month of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to House minority leader. The job may go to Rep. Martin Frost, a Texan who challenged Pelosi for the leader's job before dropping out of the race. Frost has chaired the committee twice before.

Pelosi, the first woman to lead the party in either the House or Senate, also approached Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., about taking the job, but he declined, according to a Markey aide.

Jefferson would be the first black to chair the campaign committee. Many black Democrats are clearly frustrated that his appointment is not a done deal.

"It is time for diversity to show its head," said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. All 38 members of the caucus are Democrats. "We want to have input with the Democratic caucus of the House. We get frequently labeled as the base but the base is rarely heard from when it comes to decisions related to the DCCC."

And yet two weeks from today, in Louisianna, a Senate seat will be decided by how many blacks turn out to vote for Mary Landrieu. How long will blacks keep giving something for nothing?

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GIVE US BACK OUR MONEY

Positive Ratings for the G.O.P., if Not Its Policy (ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER, November 26, 2002, NY Times)

Three weeks after Republicans captured control of the government, Americans hold favorable views of the party and President Bush, but they are less enthusiastic about some of the policies Republicans are promoting, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. [...]

Mr. Bush's enthusiasm for his $1.25 trillion tax cut plan is...not entirely shared by the public. Two-thirds said they would have preferred the federal surplus be used to shore up Social Security and Medicare rather than finance a tax cut. With the surplus gone, 48 percent of those polled said they did not believe it was possible to both cut taxes and reduce the federal budget deficit; 42 percent said they believed it was possible. But the respondents were evenly divided about whether they preferred to focus on reducing the deficit or cutting taxes. [...]

Americans are also evenly divided about whether future retirees should be permitted to invest part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts, as is strongly supported by Mr. Bush and many Congressional Republicans. At the same time, more than half of the respondents said they did not expect the Social Security system to be able to pay them benefits owed by the time they retire.

If you take a look at the raw numbers, that even divide on the question of cutting the deficit or cutting taxes appears to be historic. In all the prior polling numbers they've included, cutting the deficit won by a significant margin. Combined with the data on where folks think the tax cuts went, it suggests that the GOP should push a big middle class tax cut, immediately.

One would also note how well Social Security privatization held up, despite a barrage of negative ads from the Democrats and virtually no defense of the idea by the GOP.

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BOOKNOTES

Carnegie by Peter Krass (C-SPAN, November 24, 2002, 8 & 11 pm)

Mr. Krass lives here in Hanover and his book's terrific.

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NO PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK

Hot on the Trail: Australia's first great adventure was part Lewis and Clark, part Donner Party-searing proof that fame is a four-letter word (Mark Jenkins, June 2003, Outside Magazine

The Dig Tree is a gnarled coolibah that stands in the burnt heart of the outback, beside the warm, green water of Cooper's Creek. It is the most famous tree in Australia, on account of the cryptic instructions carved into its trunk and the part it played in that country's most notorious expedition.

In 1860, Robert Burke and William Wills set out to become the first white men to cross Australia, a historic south-north traverse from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Their eight-month journey took them through the Tibooburra region in October of that year, en route to a base camp on Cooper's Creek, and then into vast, desperate stretches of the interior. Burke and Wills were like the Lewis and Clark of Australia, famed icons of early outback exploration-although, by the time it was all over, they'd be-come legends for very different reasons.

"Burke and Wills-now they were some bloody tough bastards!" says the bartender, suddenly animated. "I hope they're still teaching the schoolchildren about our heritage."

If you're lucky, your local video store might have the fine but harrowing film version of this story Burke and Wills.

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GOVERNMENT OF THE JUDGES, BY THE JUDGES, FOR JUDICIAL SUPREMACY

Club Codes (Eugene Volokh, National Review Online, 6/25/2003)

The Franklin Lodge of Elks in New Hampshire faced a controversy about whether women should be allowed to be members. During the controversy, some of the male members made offensive statements about the women who were trying to get in....

Just two weeks ago, the New Hampshire supreme court affirmed the commission's decision, and held that the club was legally liable. And the court didn't just hold that the women were entitled under state law to be admitted to the club — it also upheld the decision to assess damages against the club for its members' "sexual harassment" of the women plaintiffs. Speech that offends fellow club members based on sex, and presumably also on "age, . . . race, creed, color, martial status, physical or mental disability or national origin" or "sexual orientation," is now legally punishable....

The total damages in the Elks case were $40,000, which amounted to over 25 percent of the club's yearly budget....

What about the First Amendment? Neither the commission nor the New Hampshire supreme court even mentioned it. It's as if the term "harassment" has become the universal solvent of constitutional rights....

The statements in the Elks case have no place in polite company. Under the First Amendment, though, the proper way to deal with such offensive speech is through moral suasion and social pressure, not through legal coercion.

It was bad when courts, responding to cases in which thousands of dollars of damage was done, levied punitive damages in the millions or billions, thereby enriching locals at the expense of out-of-staters. It was worse when courts diminished freedom of contract, removing all contractual mechanisms for avoiding such juridical property-takings. It was worse yet when they attacked freedom of association by insisting that courts could remedy race or gender discrimination by forcing private persons to associate with particular persons. Now we see that freedom of speech must also fall, so that judges can make sure no one is offended.

Harassment law is a double-victory for the authoritarian left: it broadens the scope of legal coercion, making government stronger; and it inhibits moral suasion and social pressure by subjecting them to coercive punishment, thereby undermining cultural, moral, and religious norms and making civil society -- government's great competitor -- weaker.

It's curious the path the law has taken. Traditional rights to liberty and property, the basis for cooperation among free adults, have been assaulted. Meanwhile, new rights which undermine traditional institutions and moral norms are promoted. There may be no aspect of traditional liberty or property which is beyond infringement by a juridical process of "law" (due or not) -- but the right to kill unborn babies stands secure.

MORE: Law professor and blogger David Bernstein will soon be out with a book that looks good: You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Law.

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DISUNION

Solidarity? Not Quite (Dotty Lynch, Douglas Kiker, Steve Chaggaris, Nicola Corless, Smita Kalokhe, and Joanna Schubert, 6/25/03, CBS News)

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney is using all his negotiating skills these days trying to heal a breach inside the union movement over how to conduct political affairs in the 2004 elections. Roll Call reports that there will be a political committee meeting on Thursday attended by AFSCME President Gerald McEntee and SEIU President Andy Stern at which Sweeney will try to "mediate a nasty internal dispute" over a planned multi-million dollar political operation run by former AFL political director Steve Rosenthal.

McEntee left the board of the new tax-exempt 527 organization, Partnership for America’s Families, that was formed this year by Rosenthal to try to deal with the restriction imposed by the McCain-Feingold bill on using union money for political purposes. Rosenthal was hoping to raise $30 million from unions and other liberal donors for a massive get-out-the-vote program to help Democrats in 2004, when the fight erupted over how to best target minority voters.

Democratic Party officials are nervous that the split will hurt their campaigns next year, but are powerless to do anything to mend it. "It is very, very important for them to be united," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. "I am very sorry there’s a split but I hope they can heal it and pull together."

McCain-Feingold, the gift that keeps on giving...

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TRY THE SHOE ON THE OTHER FOOT

Gibson's Jesus Pic Faces More Anti-Semitism Charges (Gregg Kilday, June 25, 2003, Reuters/Hollywood Reporter)

Continuing to raise concerns over "The Passion," the Mel Gibson-directed film about the last days of Jesus Christ, the Anti-Defamation League of America (ADL) charged Tuesday that, based on a study of an early version of the screenplay, the project could be "replete with objectionable elements that would promote anti-Semitism."

The ADL embraced the findings of an interfaith committee of scholars that has raised objections to the unreleased film -- even though the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has distanced itself from the same group.

In its statement, the ADL contended that Gibson and his collaborators "must complement their artistic vision with sound scholarship, which includes knowledge of how the passion accounts have been used historically to disparage and attack Jews and Judaism. Absent such scholarly and theological understanding, productions such as 'The Passion' could likely falsify history and fuel the animus of those who hate Jews."

Imagine for a moment that the "must complement" standard were to be universally applied, that Schindler's List and The Pianist opened with a statement that Jews were hated in Europe because they were blamed for the Crucifixion or that Hitler rose to power because of the Treaty of Versailles. Would giving that context not tend to be offensive?

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TAKE A GANDER AT THE GOVERNOR

A Democrat leaps in and lands on his face (Zev Chafets, June 25, 2003, NY Daily News)

Last Sunday on "Meet the Press," host Tim Russert asked Howard Dean if he knew the size of the American military. "Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 or 2 million," the former governor of Vermont replied. (The correct answer is 1.4 million.)

Now, half a million is a fairly large margin of error for someone who comes from a state of 608,000 people. Especially if that someone wants to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces. When Russert pointed this out, Dean - who evidently regarded the whole subject as a trick - snapped: "That's like asking me who the ambassador to Rwanda is."

Yeah, Rwanda, that dumb place. Nothing ever happens there.

These pop quizzes are obviously inane, but were considered to prove that George W. Bush was an idiot. What's good for the goose...

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LIEBERMAN '04--"PUTTING ME FIRST"

Lieberman's Focus: Raising Cash: Heads West In Midst Of Medicare Voting (DAVID LIGHTMAN, June 25 2003, Hartford Courant)

Joe Lieberman headed west Tuesday, in search of California gold, ready to miss nearly a week's worth of votes on the most sweeping Medicare reform in 38 years so he can raise enough money to stay competitive in his White House bid.

At the end of the day what's more important your own personal ambitions or the legislation your party claims is the most important you've ever had a chance to vote on?

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THE ASPIDISTRA, THOUGH TATTERED, STILL FLIES

George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair] was born one hundred years ago today in Motihari, Bengal, India. We have a number of links to more information about and by him. If you notice broken links or know of others that should be added please let us know (it looks like several of his essays were taken down, presumably for copyright reasons). Or if you have a favorite we'll add it at the front here so others can share in it.

There's much bickering these days over who is entitled to his legacy, with the Left staking their claim on the basis of his professed socialism, and nothing else that can be discerned. But to understand how profoundly conservative he really was you need to read two of his lesser known novels--Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Coming Up for Air--which express an overwhelming love for middle-class England, especially as it existed before WWI. Here's more on his conservatism, in relation to Christopher Hitchens's book, which similarly is a product of a former-Leftist's move to the Right: AB HONESTO VIRUM BONUM NIHIL DETTERET (Brothers Judd Blog, 2/11/03).

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, AND ANTI-ANTI-SEMITISTS CONVERT MUSLIMS?

Should Christians Convert Muslims?: A new flock of missionaries has launched a campaign to take the Gospel to Islamic countries. But will they inspire more backlash than belief? (DAVID VAN BIEMA, Jun. 22, 2003, TIME)

In the broadest theological sense, Josh and other emissaries of Christ are answering Jesus' call in the Gospel According to Matthew, known as the Great Commission: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Since the Middle Ages, missionaries—revered by some, reviled by others—have been among history's great cross-cultural pollinators.

In the past century, as mainline Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. adopted a social gospel that stressed aiding the poor over preaching to the unenlightened, evangelizing at its purest fell to Evangelicals. Rare is the conservative Protestant church that doesn't send its teens off on short-term mission trips or play host to a stream of missionaries on home leave, their stories full of exotic places and changed hearts. Although they would never admit it, the returnees are Evangelicalism's paragons, making its philosophy of relentless outreach their lives' work. Says Beth Streeter, a Moraga, Calif., health-care consultant who left on a short mission trip to Egypt with her husband and two young children shortly after Sept. 11: "When you believe at your core that the love of Jesus Christ really is the best gift to humankind, you want to find ways and places for people to hear that for themselves. Sometimes it drives us places that can be awkward and uncomfortable."

Through the 1970s, the great missions fields were Latin America, where conservative Protestantism competed with Catholicism for the hearts of the poor, and (for the more daring) Africa and the Iron Curtain countries. Gradually, however, the focus shifted. A missions strategist named Ralph Winter suggested in 1974 that Christians turn their attention from areas already exposed to Christ to "unreached people groups" who had never heard the Gospel. The plan held special allure for those who read literally another verse in Matthew suggesting that when every nation is reached, the long-awaited end times can commence. In 1989 Argentine-born evangelist Luis Bush pointed out that 97% of the unevangelized lived in a "window" between the 10th and 40th latitudes. This immense global slice, he explained, was disproportionately poor; the majority of its inhabitants "enslaved" by Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism and, ultimately, by Satan.

In a later paper, Bush urged Christians, "Put on the full armor of God and fight with the weapons of spiritual warfare." (He has emphasized to Time that he did not mean military action.) Of Islam specifically, he wrote, "From its center in the 10/40 Window, Islam is reaching out energetically to all parts of the globe; in a similar strategy, we must penetrate (its) heart with the liberating truth of the gospel." Many mustered themselves to the Window. [...]

Evangelicals assert again and again that their message is based in love. They are far better informed and more actively concerned than the average American citizen about the Islamic world's material needs, and their desire to share Christ springs in the main from a similarly generous impulse. Claims that Christian aid groups engage in charity as a "cover" for proselytizing do a disservice to the sometimes heroic humanitarian efforts by workers who believe that Christians should heed not just Jesus' message of salvation but also his example as a feeder and a healer. Yet there should be no question that while most evangelical missionaries love Muslims, they hope to replace Islam. Some cringed at Graham's "evil and wicked" description, but their critique was more about tone than substance. A few would suggest that only parts of Islam, and not its whole, are misguided. But most would subscribe to Luis Bush's generalization about Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism: "Satan wants to keep people as miserable as possible for as long as possible."

Clearly, this ideology is at odds with President Bush's statements that Islam is a religion of peace, his visit to a Washington, D.C., mosque and his invitation to prominent Muslims to break their Ramadan fast at the White House. Sufficiently amplified, it could also presumably complicate American efforts to bolster moderate Islam in the Middle East. The Administration, however, does not see it that way. Government officials admit the existence of a few "cowboys," but by and large, says one, missionaries "are often helping people, and not simply because they want to convert them," and Muslims are happy for the aid. During discussion of Graham's role in Iraq, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Agency for International Development noted to a reporter for the Beliefnet website that the government could not in any case control private charitable organizations. And a senior Administration official told Time that given the President's close ties to the Christian right and his support of faith-based charity work, there was little chance the White House would discourage Christian aid organizations from going to Iraq.

The national debate over missionaries in Iraq has provoked a parallel discourse in the evangelical community, or rather, a new chapter in the ongoing dialogue about how best to deliver God's word. At a gathering called last month by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington think tank, fervor and self-criticism mixed with a sense that Christianity's overtures to Muslims might be entering a critical stage. "If we don't get this right this time, we could become irrelevant," worried one participant. Another, Serge Duss of the Christian charity World Vision International, asserted that the current controversy is "merely a blip on the screen." The value of Christian missions would not be judged on the past few months but on the past half-century, during which, "because we love God and love our neighbor," they have been "in the forefront of providing not only humanitarian aid but development, child health care, sanitation and communications." At times, Duss said, "we have been able to be more overt about our Christian faith and at times not. And this," he added, "is where we need to be very wise."

there's something deeply silly about the notion that we should try to bring the Middle East the fruits of Judeo-Christianity--capitalism, democracy, protestantism--without planting the roots.

MORE:
Missionaries in Islamic countries stand the test of Time (Ted Olsen,
06/23/2003, Christianity Today: Weblog)

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THE LOST OPPORTUNITY OF 1944

Syrians Wounded in Attack by U.S. on Convoy in Iraq (DOUGLAS JEHL, 6/24/03, NY Times)

So we see how easy it would be to stage a provocation when armed forces inevitably come in contact with one another in a war zone.

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I'LL BE BACK FOR YOU, AND WE'LL LET THE MACHINES SPEAK

Controversial Win Puts Gordons At Odds Once Again (MIKE MULHERN, Jun 24, 2003, Media General News Service)

The smoke won't settle soon, and don't expect the Gordons, Robby and Jeff, to be sharing Thanksgiving dinner or exchanging Christmas cards this year. In fact, they could be bumping heads in just a few weeks at Loudon, N.H., where - remember - Robby got his first Winston Cup win in the long-delayed finale to the 2001 season by punting Jeff out of the way in traffic over the final laps.

Robby certainly knows how to get Jeff's goat. At Loudon 18 months ago, Jeff was so angry that after the race he dropkicked Robby hard at the end of the backstretch in a rare display of anger. Again Sunday, Jeff was irate afterward with Robby, spending most of his post-race energy berating Robby.

"He should mind his own business,'' Robby said in response to Jeff's complaints that he shouldn't have passed teammate Kevin Harvick in a race back to the yellow flag at the 140-mile mark of the 220- mile race. ``Now Kevin may be mad at me ... but it is what it is.''

Harvick wanted to keep out of the verbal fray: "I think Jeff said it best,'' was all Harvick would offer after his third- place finish, after listening to Jeff Gordon rant.

Our son's first words were: "Jeff Gordon is evil".

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SPARKING AN IMPROVED POLITICS

Savant for a Day (Lawrence Osborne, NYT Mag, 6/22/2003)

My forehead was connected, by a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked something like an old-fashioned beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described to me as a "Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator." This was not just any old Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this was the Medtronic Mag Pro ...

The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool for brain surgery: by stimulating or slowing down specific regions of the brain, it allowed doctors to monitor the effects of surgery in real time. But ... people undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, could suddenly exhibit savant intelligence -- those isolated pockets of geniuslike mental ability that most often appear in autistic people....

Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills.

I see the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2004 stepping up to the debate podium with this contraption on his head, and for two hours talking like a conservative.

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JUST SAY, NO, TO EUROPE

Poll shows Blair is hurting Labour (Alan Travis, June 24, 2003, The
Guardian)

Tony Blair's personal unpopularity is seriously damaging Labour's poll rating for the first time, according to the results of this month's Guardian/ICM opinion poll.

The June ICM survey shows that the prime minister's popularity has fallen again, and Labour's lead over the Conservatives has plunged from 12 points last month to only four points now - its lowest level since the petrol crisis two and a half years ago.

Last fortnight's fudged euro decision, the botched reshuffle and the row over taxes have hit Labour. It share of the vote is down by three percentage points on the month, to 38%, while the Tories are up by five points, at 34%. The government's four-point lead is its smallest on the Guardian/ICM poll since 2000.

The poll also shows that the government's "not yet" statement on the single currency has proved disastrous for the pro-euro camp, and support for joining the eurozone has fallen to its lowest level since March 2001. According to the monthly ICM/Goldman Sachs tracker poll, support for the euro fell by nine percentage points to only 21%, after the statement by Mr Blair and the chancellor, Gordon Brown.

It continues to mystify us why neither Mr. Blair nor the Tories can figure out that their political fortunes are tied to outright opposition to the EU.

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BLUEBLOOD OF THE RED STATES LURES BLUE COLLARS

The Bad News for Big Labor: Blue Collars Love This Blueblood (Richard S. Dunham, 6/26/03, Business Week)

Labor's basic problem: It's up against a plain-spoken, tough-guy President who commands the affection of blue-collar workers. Democratic consultant Brian Lunde, an unabashed Bush admirer, compares the President's rank-and-file support to that of Ronald Reagan, who captured a six-pack bloc dubbed Reagan Democrats. "Once in a while, strong leadership and personal character traits can trump interest-group issues checklists," says Lunde.

Worried union leaders want to make sure that this flirtation with the GOP remains a fleeting infatuation. Otherwise, the political consequences could be devastating for Democrats. If Bush makes major inroads among working-class voters in 2004, it could tip the balance in swing states throughout the industrial heartland that Al Gore carried in 2000. Among them: Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Polls show the President riding a wave of blue-collar popularity, particularly among whites. In Michigan, Bush receives a 63% favorable rating from white unionists and 59% from labor women, according to a May 18-22 EPIC/MRA poll. Among the families of white union members, the President leads an unnamed Democrat by 56% to 32%. Many working stiffs "still like Bush even if they have profound disagreements on [economic] policy," says Catholic University political scientist John Kenneth White. "It's values, stupid, and Democrats still don't get it."

Four major factors worked against George W. Bush in 2000, making his victory improbable:

(1) He was up against a popular incumbent VP in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

(2) He'd had a very difficult primary battle that did him particular harm in what should have been an area of strength--the Catholic Midwest.

(3) He had a reputation for being a lightweight.

(4) The last minute revelation of a drunk driving arrest nearly sank him.

Despite all of these negatives, he still managed to win.

Now he heads into a re-election where he'll be renominated by acclamation, after having dispelled most peoples' doubts by leading the country through one of its more difficult periods, to face a challenger of lilliputian stature who will himself have had a bruising primary fight and who will have no money all Summer, while Mr. Bush will be all over the airwaves.

Unlike his father, Mr. Bush had the good fortune to inherit a slowing economy so that he will be running during an obvious recovery. The
Republicans control both houses of Congress and with a chance to pick up more seats, especially in the Senate, will be the more energized party at the grassroots level. There is no major divisive issue--nothing that rises to the level of degregation or Vietnam--that has the country at war with itself at this time (abortion could be such an issue but is tending in favor of the Right so has become fairly quiet). The President's health is not an issue--as it was for FDR, Ike, and Reagan when they sought re-election--but his vice president's is, and this could give him the opportunity to name a black woman running mate from California, one of the great political trifectas of all time.

The stars are all lining up for what could be a rout of historic proportions in November 2004. Neither Democrats nor the press have yet come to grips with this, but when they do things are going to get very ugly.

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MADISON'S REVENGE

Democrats pledge support for affirmative action (AP, June 23, 2003)

"When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day," said Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri.

This is the first good idea we've heard from a Democratic presidential candidate. The Court should not have the final word on the Constitution and to allow such an obviously anti-Constitutional scheme to continue is to abdicate our responsibilities as citizens.

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CUE RANDY NEWMAN

Short Men, Short Shrift. Are Drugs the Answer? (NATALIE ANGIER, June 22, 2003, NY Times)

There is a harsh rule of thumb about male height, and it measures six feet and counting. As study after study has shown, tall men give
nearly all the orders, win most elections, monopolize girls and monopolies, and disproportionately splay their elongated limbs across the cushy unconfines of first-class cabins. By the simple act of striding into a room, taller than average men are accorded a host of positive attributes having little or nothing to do with height: a high IQ, talent, competence, trustworthiness, even kindness.

And men who are considerably shorter than the average American guy height of 5-foot-9 1/2? These poor little fellows are at elevated risk of dropping out of school, drinking heavily, dating sparsely, getting sick or depressed. They have a lower chance of marrying or fathering children than do taller men, and their salaries tend to be as modest as their stature. If they are out striving to make their mark, they are derided as "Little Napoleons." Call them whatever you please, and chances are you won't get called on it, for making fun of short men is one of the last acceptable prejudices.

Small wonder, then, that an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration has just recommended that the agency approve the use of genetically engineered human growth hormone for healthy children who are "idiopathically" short - that is, children who are at the bottom-most tail of growth curves, yet who, unlike a small subset of very short children, do not suffer from growth hormone deficiency. [...]

ARE we really willing to subject our kids to buttock or thigh injections three to six times a week, year after year, just so that the local Dudley Dursley will taunt them about their big ears and good grades, rather than their stature?

Good racket for the drug companies because taller men will just start taking it to keep their lead.

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LEMME HEAR YA' SAY, YEMEN!

Yemeni troops launch assault on fugitive Islamist extremists hiding in mountainous region in south Yemen (Hammoud Mounassar, 6/24/03, Middle East Online)

Hundreds of Yemeni troops backed by tanks and helicopters on Tuesday launched an operation in this mountainous region in south Yemen to net a group of fugitive Islamist extremists.

The sweep unfolding in Jabal Hatat, 120 kilometres (75 miles) northwest of the port city of Aden, was being led by Defence Minister General Abdullah Ali Eleiwah himself, a correspondent reported.

The assault is aimed at netting a group of around 80 extremists accused of having launched Saturday's attack on an army medical convoy that left seven wounded, a military official told journalists at the scene.

The extremists hidden out in the rugged and largely inaccessible region comprises elements from the Islamic Jihad group and the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan, as well as sympathisers with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network, the official said.

Robert D. Kaplan's recent essay on Yemen is invaluable.

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GAME ENDER

Moral Stupidity (Orson Scott Card, June 16, 2003, The Rhinoceros Times)

I had just finished an interview at a public television station, and a staff member was kindly presenting me with a tape of the program, when I saw on a monitor a CNN report that Hamas had declared total war on Israel.

I laughed and said, "And how will that be different from what they've already been doing? Once you've spent a few years blowing up babies and schoolchildren and old people, how can you make your war more total than that?"

To my astonishment, she clucked her tongue and said, "It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between the two sides."

I couldn't believe she actually meant that. "Israel hasn't been targeting helpless civilians," I said.

To which she contemptuously replied, "They just use the regular army to achieve the same result."

Then she picked up a phone and made a call, rudely turning her back on me. I was, apparently, no longer worthy of serious attention.

Her rudeness, of course, was entirely understandable -- the politically correct are above the rules of ordinary civility, once they have identified you as an unbeliever in their religion.

A better novelist and essayist than Bruce Sterling.

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WILL THE TRENT LOTT FALLOUT NEVER END?

Schwegmann switches to GOP: She launches bid for lieutenant governor (New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 24, 2003)

State Rep. Melinda Schwegmann announced Monday that she is switching her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican and will run for her former office of lieutenant governor in the October primary.

Addressing the House floor on the last day of the legislative session, the New Orleans representative said she "felt somewhat abandoned by many Democrats, while at the same time, I have been embraced and encouraged to run by numerous Republicans."

Schwegmann, who was lieutenant governor from 1992 to 1996, the first woman to hold that office, said she will expand upon the inroads the office has made in encouraging tourism and would be a champion for the state's senior citizens.

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GOING NUCLEAR

Senate Committee Passes 'Nuclear Option' Filibuster Rule (Jeff Johnson, June 24, 2003, CNSNews.com)

Anticipating a possible vacancy on the Supreme Court later this year, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee Tuesday passed what opponents
have called the "nuclear option" to end the Democrats' strategy of filibustering judicial nominees they do not have enough votes to defeat. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) predicted Democrats will be able to block the resolution, just as they have been successful in blocking the president's judicial nominees. [...]

The full Senate must vote on the resolution before it can take effect. Rules changes require only a simple majority - 51 votes - to pass, but opponents can filibuster the resolution under a special rule that would let only one-third of the senators block a vote on the proposal.

Given that the GOP is more likely to get to 60 than the Democrats to 50, it seems unwise of Mr. Daschle & company to play hardball.

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THE SCALE JUSTICE HOLDS IS BINARY, IS IT NOT?

A Mathematician Crunches the Supreme Court's Numbers (NICHOLAS WADE, June 24, 2003, NY Times)

The voting pattern of the Rehnquist court over the last nine years "shows that the court acts as if composed of 4.68 ideal justices," says Dr. Lawrence Sirovich, a mathematician at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan whose day job is figuring out how the visual system works.

By another measure, "the decision space of the Rehnquist court requires only two dimensions for its description," he writes in the issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences being published today.

Nine independent thinkers who focus solely on the merits of cases might be expected to vote in all possible combinations over a long enough period. Dr. Sirovich's analyses indicate that the Supreme Court voting falls a long way from that pattern.

His first measure entails considering that if two members were twins who always voted the same way, the court would effectively have eight members, not nine. On a court with nine members, there are 512 possible voting patterns, or half that number if a vote is marked as being in the majority or not.

But the actual number of voting patterns is very much less, as if generated by a smaller number of wholly independent individuals.

Analyzing nearly 500 opinions issued since 1995 - the court membership has not changed since Justice Stephen G. Breyer joined it in 1994 - Dr. Sirovich calculates, based on information theory, that 4.68 ideal justices would have produced the same diversity of decision making.

By ideal, Dr. Sirovich means a justice whose voting is uncorrelated with any other's. His measure, thus, points up the high degree of correlation in the court's voting pattern.

Is complete randomness really a desirable quality in a system of justice?

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INSIDE BASEBALL TO THE NTH DEGREE

Re-Elect Bush: Beta Version: A sneak preview of the president's 2004 campaign. (Timothy Noah, June 24, 2003, Slate)

Presumably by accident, somebody left a live prototype of President Bush's 2004 campaign site on the Web for a few hours today. (It's locked up behind a password now, so all links in this item are to snapshots Slate took earlier.) At least Chatterbox thinks it was a live prototype. An editorial by former Justice Department spokesperson Mindy Tucker is headlined, "Placeholder for Mindy's Editorial," with the intriguing subhead, "Mindy's editorial on women." The editorial itself reads like radical feminist poetry:

"This is the body this is the body this is the body this is the body this is the body this si th body asdf asdf sdf asdfsadf sadfsdfsdfsadf"

Other gems include a hot link, "See more Hispanic photos," underneath the caption to a photograph of Laura Bush reading to Hispanic children. (As her father-in-law would say, "Message: I care.")

In what sense is this journalism that truly tells us something about the '04 campaign, rather than a bit of snarky childishness?

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HEADS WE ACT, TAILS WE ACT HARDER

LOOKING FOR LEGITIMACY IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES (Robert Kagan, Foreign Policy)

"Legitimacy" is an intangible factor in foreign policy, but like so many intangibles it can have great practical significance. Neither this nor any future American administration wants to be regarded as behaving illegitimately when it goes to war; hence President George W. Bush sought U.N. support before the conflict. A perceived pattern of illegitimate behavior can limit the cooperation other countries are willing to offer and put sand in the gears of even a sole superpower. Nor are Americans likely to be comfortable consistently acting in ways that much of the world, and especially other like-minded peoples, deem illegitimate. [...]

In addressing the problem of legitimacy, a simple institutional legalism will not avail. If the United States seeks legitimation for its actions, and it should, it will have to earn that legitimacy the old-fashioned way. It must promote and appear to promote not only its own national interest narrowly conceived, but also the common interests of the liberal democratic world. Even if the Cold War alliances cannot be re-created, this quality of American leadership during the Cold War can and should be emulated today.

The problem of legitimacy, like most international problems, can never be definitively solved. Perhaps the best test of American foreign policy in the coming years will therefore be whether, through an active and generous diplomacy and through successful actions in the common interest, the United States can win the argument that it has acted in the common good more often than it loses it.

The contradiction inherent in this argument is that if our interventions in the Middle East leave it a worse place than it is today--frightening though, eh?--the Europeans will be begging us to act more forcefully, to just annihilate the Arab world and put it out of our misery. It's not like we can foment instability and violence and then have folks tell us to walk away.

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OUR PRICES ARE LOW, LOW, LOW

Is bargain aisle also deflation alley?: Low and falling prices are becoming ingrained in the consumer psyche - for better or worse. (Ron Scherer, June 18, 2003, The Christian Science Monitor)

Cost-conscious shoppers have been seeing prices plunge on goods such as computers, blue jeans, sandals, and even Harry Potter card games. Bargains are evident from Circuit City to the local auto mile. And while food prices haven't fallen overall, alert buyers at this Stop & Shop can find hot deals from Aisle 1 to Aisle 10: half-price bottled water, discounted razors, and more.

Welcome to "I can get it for you cheaper" America. It's a phenomenon that has Alan Greenspan watching prices as closely as Mr. Tamres. The Federal Reserve chairman worries that tumbling prices on many goods - while they make shoppers happy - could lead to broader deflation that harms the economy. [...]

The low prices are having an affect on the way consumer expectations. The University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers has found that consumers expect the inflation rate to average 2.6 percent annually for the next 10 years. "It's lowest since we started asking in the mid-1970s," says survey director Richard Curtin.

Here's the question: subtract out those goods and services where the Federal government artificially drives prices higher--housing, medicine, education--and is there anything you think will cost more a few months or years from now than it does today? And if we undertook a rational reform like putting people into Medical Savings Accounts, who thinks that health care prices wouldn't start falling too?

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WE DROPPED ONE BOMB ON SOME JAPANESE CITY? SO WHAT?

Donald Regan (The Economist, 6/19/03) (may require registration)

One of his continuing problems was what he called the “shadowy distaff presidency” run by Nancy Reagan. The president's wife had faith in the clairvoyant talents of a woman in San Francisco she called My Friend. From a study of Mr Reagan's horoscope the friend claimed to pick good days and bad days in the president's life. Mrs Reagan would in effect veto activities arranged by Mr Regan if they fell on bad days. Mr Regan described the vexing problem in his book “For the Record”:

The president's schedule is the single most potent tool in the White House, because it determines what the most powerful man in the world is going to do and when he is going to do it. By humoring Mrs Reagan we gave her this tool, or, more accurately, gave it to an unknown woman in San Francisco who believed that the zodiac controls events and human behavior and that she could read the secrets of the future in the movement of the planets.

The friend was particularly busy with advice when Mr Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev at summits at Geneva and Reykjavik. She prepared a horoscope of the Russian leader as well. Nothing much resulted from these meetings so perhaps, inadvertently, they were held on bad days. For Mr Regan anyway there must have been quite terrible days when he regretted taking the job. Until he had become chief of staff, his life had been one long much-praised path to good fortune.

This is a uncharacteristically pedestrian obituary of a man who, had he ever been close to achieving anything, might have been a great tragic hero. But, much more importantly, does The Economist not realize that, in terms of making the modern world, the most important date since 1945 was October 12, 1986. On that date, to the consternation of leftists everywhere and against the wishes of many of his political and diplomatic advisers, President Reagan walked away from the table in Reykjavik and sealed the Soviet Union's doom.

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A BUREAUCRATIC MESS, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT

Where to file it: Europe's constitutional convention has produced a lamentable piece of work (The Economist, Jun 19th 2003)

There was always a risk that the convention would not design a particularly good constitution. What was harder to imagine was that the convention would produce a text which would worsen the very problems it had been instructed to address. This is what it has somehow contrived to do. In many ways the draft constitution, more than 200 pages long, makes the Union's constitutional architecture harder to understand than it was before. That is an incredible feat. Worse, it weaves perpetual constitutional revolution more securely into the Union's legal fabric. The draft, admittedly, gets one or two things right: it is not entirely devoid of sense (see article). But for the most part the text is sound on points that are relatively unimportant. Everything that is crucial it gets wrong.

The most important task for any constitution is to assign powers while ensuring that the officers and institutions exercising those powers are held in check, accountable to citizens. This central preoccupation is plain in the constitution of the United States. Europe's constitutional convention has barely troubled itself with the question.

It is here that we see why it matters that America's Founders took a rather Hobbesian view of human nature, while the Europeans (really just the French because they're the only ones who matter) take their cue from Rousseau. Consider only the words of Thomas Jefferson, the most French and democratic of our Founders: "In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution." A constitution that doesn't limit the power of the governors is hardly worthy of the name.

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WHY COPY ERRORS?

Seeing Red: Philip Foner influenced a generation of young labor historians, but critics call him a plagiarist who helped himself to their research (SCOTT McLEMEE, June 27, 2003, Chronicle of Higher Education)

The question remains: Why did his colleagues put up with it?

Younger labor historians in the 1970s and '80s "tended to be people with left sympathies, who felt the man had suffered enough," says Mr. Dubofsky. "So even the people whose work he had borrowed from freely did not want to say anything." [...]

"If you look at the whole of his body of work, a lot of historians think that my uncle's most important contributions are things that aren't being discussed at all in this," says Eric Foner. "He edited the writings of Frederick Douglass at a time when, believe it or not, nobody remembered him. He edited seven volumes of documents on the history of black labor in the United States, and collections of material from black political conventions in the 19th century. And he did all of it without research assistants or grants. This debate is not doing justice to his contributions to scholarship."

The New York Labor History Association has no plans to revoke the lifetime-achievement award it gave Foner in 1994, according to the group's president, Irwin Yellowitz, a professor emeritus of history at CUNY's City College. "I was on the board, and there was a discussion about the rumors that he had been cutting corners," he says. "But the decision was finally made that the award would be given in recognition of the body of work as a whole, even if it was not always of the very highest quality all throughout."

Eric Foner is sort of right: his uncle's Marxism mars his work more than his plagiarism.

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Muslims studying American religion (Shari Rudavsky, 6/22/2003, Boston Globe)

Voices rose in agreement and dissent. Hands gesticulated to make a point. At first glance, the 40 people in the Hebrew College classroom could all have been Talmudic scholars, arguing over the fine points of the tale of the sacrifice of Isaac.

But only about half of the heads sported kippahs, the skullcaps observant Jews wear, and 16 of the participants had never before studied Torah, the sacred Jewish text. Rather, they were Muslim scholars on a four-week mission to learn more about the United States' religious practices.

Hosted by Boston College's Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, the 16 academics spent one recent weekend, for example, attending Saturday services at Temple Shalom in Newton and heading the next day to the New Covenant Church in Mattapan, an African-American charismatic church.

Khaldun Malek, a participant from Malaysia reared on a steady diet of Walt Disney, ''Sesame Street,'' and ''The Brady Bunch,'' found the contrast simultaneously dizzying and edifying. ''America from looking at the outside is something you can easily grasp, but from the inside it's one of the most diverse countries that I have ever encountered,'' said Malek, a Muslim who teaches political theory at the University of Malaya.

But even from inside there's no explaining the Brady Bunch...

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THE ARGUMENT FROM SIMPLICITY

The Justification of Theism (Richard G. Swinburne, OrthodoxyToday)

The hypothesis of theism is that the Universe exists because there is a God who keeps it in being and that laws of nature operate because there is a God who brings it about that they do. He
brings it about that the laws of nature operate by sustaining in every object in the universe its liability to behave in accord with those laws. He keeps the Universe in being by making the laws such as to conserve the matter of the Universe, that is, by making it the case at each moment that what there was before continues to exist. The hypothesis is a hypothesis that a person brings about these things for some purpose. He acts directly on the Universe, as we act directly on our brains, guiding them to move our limbs (but the Universe is not his body-for he could at any moment destroy it, and act on another universe, or do without a universe). As we have seen, personal explanation and scientific explanation are the two ways we have of explaining the occurrence of phenomena.

Since there cannot be a scientific explanation of the existence of the Universe, either there is a personal explanation or there is no explanation at all. The hypothesis that there is a God is the hypothesis of the existence of the simplest kind of person which there could be. A person is a being with power to bring about effects, knowledge of how to do so, and freedom to make choices of which effects to bring about. God is by definition an omnipotent (that is, infinitely powerful), omniscient (that is, all-knowing), and perfectly free person; He is a person of infinite power, knowledge, and freedom; a person to whose power, knowledge, and freedom there are no limits except those of logic. The hypothesis that there exists a being with infinite degrees of the qualities essential to a being of that kind is the postulation of a very simple being. The hypothesis that there is such a God is a much simpler hypothesis than the hypothesis that there is a god who has such and such a limited power. It is simpler in just the same way that the hypothesis that some particle has zero mass or infinite velocity, is simpler than the hypothesis that it has of 0.32147 of some unit of mass or a velocity of 221,000 km/sec. A finite limitation cries out for an explanation of why there is just that particular limit, in a way that limitlessness does not.

That there should exist anything at all, let alone a universe as complex and as orderly as ours, is exceedingly strange. But if there is a God, it is not vastly unlikely that he should create such a universe. A universe such as ours is a thing of beauty, and a theatre in which men and other creatures can grow and work out their destiny. The orderliness of the Universe makes it a beautiful Universe, but, even more importantly, it makes it a Universe which men can learn to control and change. For only if there are simple laws of nature can men predict what will follow from what-and unless they can do that, they can never change anything. Only if men know that by sowing certain seeds, weeding and watering them, they will get corn, can they develop an agriculture. And men can only acquire that knowledge if there are easily graspable regularities of behavior in nature. So God has good reason to make an orderly Universe and, ex hypothesi, being omnipotent, he has the power to do so. So the hypothesis that there is a God makes the existence of the Universe much more to be expected than it would otherwise be, and it is a very simple hypothesis. Hence the arguments from the existence of the Universe and its conformity to simple natural laws are good arguments to an explanation of the phenomena, and provide substantial evidence for the existence of God.

Science too hopes that the Universe is governed by a very simple set of laws, that we might be as Gods ourselves. It's foolish then to argue the unlikelihood of a God prior to the Universe. We can't know, but He seems more likely than not by reference to our own situation.

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MAD MAX?

Is Mel Gibson Plotting the Death of Jews?: Jews and Catholics warn Gibson about his film (Ted Olsen, 6/24/03, Christianity Today: Weblog)

[T]he ADL's Ken Jacobson defends his group's criticism of the film. "We have good reason to be seriously concerned about Gibson's plans to retell the Passion" he says in a letter to the New York Post, which last Thursday published a columnist's summary of the dispute. "Historically, the Passion-the story of the killing of Jesus-has resulted in the death of Jews."

Of course, the story of the killing of Jesus is told every year in thousands upon thousands of churches worldwide without any violence to Jews whatsoever, but the ADL seems more concerned about such questionable history as Oberammergau's Passion Play causing the Holocaust.

For his part, Gibson is no longer threatening to sue, and says critics should judge the film once it's actually in theaters. But will it offend Jews? "It's true that, as the Bible says, 'He came unto his own and his own received him not,'" he said. "I can't hide that." But he promises his film is"meant to inspire not offend. . . . My intention in bringing it to the screen is to create a lasting work of art and engender serious thought among audiences of diverse faith backgrounds. If the intense scrutiny during my 25 years in public life revealed I had ever persecuted or discriminated against anyone based on race or creed, I would be all too willing to make amends. But there is no such record."

Mr. Gibson could be headed for the worst career move since Michael Ovitz's.

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A CLICHE CLINCHED

Is there scientific validity to the saying 'Red sky at night, sailors' delight; red sky in the morning sailors take warning'? H. Richardson (Joe Sienkiewicz, June 23, 2003, Scientific American)

Indeed, there is scientific validity to the adage, "red sky at night sailors? delight; red sky in the morning sailors take warning." This saying has very old roots. In the bible (Matthew 16:2-3), the following quote is attributed to Jesus: "When it is evening, ye say, fair weather: for the heaven is red. And in the morning, foul weather today for the heaven is red and lowering." There are also versions of this saying that refer to shepherds instead of sailors.

Two factors contribute to the cogency of this saying. The first is that weather systems generally travel from west to east in the mid latitudes. Because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, a rising sun in advance of an approaching weather system would illuminate the approaching mid- and high-level clouds to create a red sky in the morning. Alternatively, if the sun is setting as a weather system exits and high pressure is building, then the departing clouds would be illuminated. This would create a red sky at night with fair weather to follow.

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Why Dean Isn't Going Away (Joe Klein, Time, 6/23/2003)

"It's time to shift gears," [Dean] told me, "to become a more presidential candidate with an inclusive vision, not just a bomb thrower."... And the broader vision? "We've lost our sense of community," he told me. Not exactly a new theme. The Governor road-tested "community" at the Larkspur rally, and it wasn't nearly as much fun as the bomb throwing.

I hope he develops this "community" theme, because it will help conservatives make the case that dependence on government destroys community, while the mutual dependence of free persons on their neighbors is community. Until then, it will be interesting to observe Dean's attempts at "inclusive" bomb-throwing.

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FORGET THE MAINE ALREADY

Poll: Majority Backs Use of Force in Iran: Survey Reflects Concern on Nuclear Effort (Richard Morin and Claudia Deane, June 24, 2003, The Washington Post)

Most Americans would support the United States taking military action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons despite growing public concern about the mounting number of U.S. military casualties in the aftermath of the war with Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

President Bush last week said the rest of the world should join the United States in declaring that it "will not tolerate" nuclear weapons in Iran -- a vow that most Americans appear willing to back with force. By 56 percent to 38 percent, the public endorsed the use of the military to block Iran from developing nuclear arms. [...]

Two in three -- 67 percent -- of those interviewed said they approve of the way Bush is dealing with Iraq. That's still a strong majority but down from 75 percent in late April, at the end of the conflict. Nearly as many -- 64 percent -- said the benefits of the war outweighed its cost, a drop from 70 percent in the late April survey.

Seven in 10 said they were concerned that the United States would become involved in a long and costly peacekeeping mission in Iraq, a figure unchanged in recent months.

Here's what it means to be a Democrat in post-9/11 America: you're still questioning the wisdom of attacking Saddam Hussein while the American people are ready to leave Iraq behind and move on to the next target.

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TONY THE TORY FILES

Tories back in business (Ed Vaizey, June 24, 2003, The Guardian)

All the signs are that a turning point has been reached in the Conservatives' electoral fortunes - and Labour is doing all it can to help us. After a botched reshuffle, confusion over huge constitutional changes at home and in Europe, and internal division on tuition fees and foundation hospitals, comes Haingate.

The importance of the debate on income tax should not be underestimated. It is the return of old Labour, filling the vacuum created by the absence of any ideological anchor for New Labour. Ministers and ex-ministers such as Charles Clarke, Peter Mandelson and Stephen Byers now find themselves in the old Labour camp, again looking seriously at tax rises. It is the return of the same Kinnock-Smith agenda that failed to convince voters in the 1980s and 1990s.

This is the real agenda of the left. It is so bereft of ideas about how to solve the country's ongoing problems with schools and hospitals, and incapable of hard thinking or creative solutions, that it returns to tax and spend.

Mr. Blair seems to have paid a high price for the war, which is control over his party's basest urges. In order to become a permanent force the Third Way leadership has no other choice but to turn to its real base, conservatives. This was the accidental genius of Bill Clinton, to get himself a Republican Congress in '94 so that he could govern as a Republican, though a randy one. Mr. Blair should borrow a page from that playbook and lead the Tories back to power.

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NOT A PEACE PLAN BUT A STRATEGY

The peace plan show (Barry Rubin, Jun. 24, 2003, Jerusalem Post)

PREMISE: If only Israel cooperates and makes concessions the situation will improve.

Fact: While Palestinian leaders constantly demand concessions from Israel easing security controls, withdrawing from Palestinian-populated areas, releasing Palestinians involved in terrorism, dismantling settlements, and so on they never seem to give anything in exchange. Not a finger is lifted to stop the terrorism, much less any other compromises.

Premise: Israeli attacks on terrorists are counterproductive.

Fact: Given the Palestinian determination to keep fighting, Israeli actions are the only things that can effectively reduce the level of successful terrorism by weakening the terrorists, disrupting their activities and intimidating would-be participants. It is no instant or perfect solution, but it is the only strategy that may achieve anything.

Premise: Saddam Hussein's overthrow has created a chance for progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front.

Fact: The war in Iraq has had no perceptible effect on any aspect of this issue.

Premise: The United States is in a position to advance a new peace process.

Fact: While the US certainly has incentives to show it is trying to make progress, it exercises no useful leverage on the Palestinians. It has shown no ability to strengthen Abu Mazen or gain a cessation of terrorism. It cannot even get its European allies to stop trying to build up Arafat and
unconditionally subsidize the PA.

Premise: The road map will bring European and Arab states' policies closer to the US's.

Fact: European and Arab states tend to view the road map as a plan that will automatically bring an independent Palestinian state in two years regardless of what the Palestinian leadership does.

This is wrong as to each point except the last. Israel need make no further concessions, just accept that made at Oslo, that Palestine will be an independent state rather than an Israeli possession. That will end the terrorism, because further attacks will be acts of war by a sovereign nation.

After fifty years of tit for tat, you may not think that retaliation is counter-productive, but we can all agree it isn't productive.

The Iraq war gave President Bush the leverage he needed to tell Ariel Sharon what to do and Mr. Sharon the cover he needed in order to do it.

The Europeans and Arabs are right: there will be a Palestinian state two years from now. If the Israelis weren't locked in a death dance with the Palestinians it would in fact be that state's tenth anniversary two years from now. Negotiations have been a futile mistake, as such things always are, but that has no bearing on the the conclusion that has been inevitable since Oslo: the two state solution.


MORE:
THE DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES (Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., June 24, 2003, Jewish World Review)

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RUMSFELD'S PUPIL

Headlines (Debka, 6/24/2003)

Jordan agrees to restore ambassador to Tel Aviv. DEBKAfile Washington sources quote Powell as advising king not to wait for Egypt which belongs to Old Middle East, while Jordan is the New Middle East.

Who says Defense shouldn't give State lessons in diplomacy?

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I'M AFRAID OF THE RUSSIANS; CAN'T SLEEP AT NIGHT

New offensive against killer Indian jets (Raju Bist, 6/23/03, Asia Times)

In the past three years alone, 48 MiGs have crashed while on training flights. In most of the cases, the pilots have died. There have also been cases where the pilots have managed to bail out, but the fighter planes have plummeted into thickly-populated areas, killing innocent civilians. In the latest accident, a MiG-21 fighter jet crashed in Rajasthan, killing the pilot, in early June.

So immunized by a sense of deja vu, news editors of major Indian publications buried the Gadgil story - as they have subsequent accidents - in the inner pages. Two months later, two more IAF pilots, Naresh Dogra and A K Chauhan, were killed when their MiG-21 crashed into a tea estate in the east Indian state of West Bengal. It was the 22nd IAF crash that year. It took place within a week of a meeting convened by India's Defense Minister, George Fernandes, at the air headquarters in New Delhi to "get to the root of the problem" following the frequent crashes. The Indian public has not been told what happened at, or after, the meeting.

What happened? You're using Soviet weaponry, that's what happened. You should see what would happen to them in combat. Remind me again why we just didn't juke it out with those knuckle-draggers...

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LET THE MARKET DECIDE

Bush accuses Europe of betraying starving Africa (Roland Watson and Tom Baldwin, June 24, 2003, Times of London)

EUROPE is prolonging starvation in Africa by refusing to allow the import of genetically modified foods, President Bush said
yesterday.

He urged Brussels to lift the ban and said it was the special responsibility of developed nations “to combat hunger and disease in desperate lands”.

Speaking before tomorrow’s EU-US summit in Washington, Mr Bush said that the ban, which costs American farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost exports, was unfounded and unscientific.

It prevented African farmers from importing the food technology, which could help to make crops resistant to disease while boosting yield, for fear that the produce would be cut out of overseas markets. “For the sake of a continent threatened by famine, I urge the European governments to end their opposition to biotechnolgy,” he said.

Europe’s opposition to GM foods has undermined confidence in the products in the developing world, particularly Africa. However, India has undertaken experiments with genetically modified cotton, and this month decided to feed “nutritionally enhanced” GM potatoes to
children.

Here's the beauty of the EU's oh so principled stand. Let a couple markets like India and China open to GM food and the Euros will be tripping over each other trying to get it planted.

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SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY

Universe Slightly Simpler Than Expected (Space Daily, Jun 22, 2003)

The universe just became a little less mysterious. Using images from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers at the University of Florida have concluded that two of the most common types of galaxies in the universe are in reality different versions of the same thing.

In spite of their similar-sounding names, astronomers had for decades considered "dwarf elliptical" and "giant elliptical" galaxies to be unique.

The findings, which appear in this month's edition of The Astronomical Journal, fundamentally alter astronomers' understanding of these important components of the universe, making it easier to understand how galaxies form in the first place.

"This helps to simplify the universe because we replace two distinct galaxy types with one," said Alister Graham, a UF astronomer and lead author of the paper.

If you'd already invented the wheel, why would you reinvent it?

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A VISION THING

$1bn sweetener for trade plan (Emad Mekay, 6/23/03, Asia Times)

The United States will negotiate free trade agreements separately with Arab countries as a first step towards setting up a US-Middle East Free Trade Agreement (MEFTA) by 2013 that will include up to 20 of the region's nations.

"Our vision is to foster the revival of a prosperous region once again united by culture, commerce and goodwill among nations," said US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick in a speech on the last day of the high-profile World Economic Forum meeting in this resort town on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea on Monday.

Zoellick and US Secretary of State Colin Powell met government ministers from Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)to discuss steps towards negotiating MEFTA, first announced by US President George W Bush on May 9. Powell told reporters that the effort would help create a more stable Middle East based on the strong links between trade and peace in the trouble region.

Damn those steel tariffs...

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The New Gloomsayers: Thinkers again predict American decline. Is there any reason to think they'll be right this time? (JOSHUA MURAVCHIK, June 23, 2003, Wall Street Journal)

The declinists, to use the label given to them by the political scientist Samuel Huntington, aimed "to shake Reagan's America from a decade of rose-colored . . . torpor," in the approving phrase of the New York Times. Their thesis was that "imperial overstretch," a term coined by the historian Paul Kennedy, was causing the U.S. to spend too much on defense, thus sending the nation into an economic downturn that would eviscerate the very basis of its strength. A similar theme could be heard among the heralds of a new era of Japanese supremacy, brought about by the readiness of Japan's government to intervene in the marketplace. "Japan has, as I predicted it would, become the undisputed world economic champion," boasted the economist Clyde Prestowitz in 1989. William Pfaff, a columnist for the International Herald Tribune, chimed in that America's relationship with Japan had taken on a "colonial
quality"--with America in the role of colony.

The forecasts of American decline or Japanese ascendance did not stand the test of even a very brief amount of time. Soon, the Soviet empire collapsed, followed by the Soviet Union itself, allowing, in no small measure, to Ronald Reagan's military expenditures and his "overstretched" foreign policy--that is, to the very things that the declinists had decried. Japan, meanwhile, fell into an economic tailspin from which it still, after more than a decade, shows few signs of escaping, while the U.S. economy grew enough to boost per capita income by more than 25%, widening the margin by which our prosperity outstrips that of the other industrialized countries. And just as America's political-military success came from spurning the counsel of the declinists, so its economic success flowed from ignoring those who propounded the Japanese model. The lighter hand of government in America's version of capitalism allowed our firms to adapt more readily than their Japanese or European counterparts to globalization and the revolution in information technology.

Unprecedented triumphs of U.S. policy and industry have unfolded during the 15 years since America ignored the summons to emerge from its "rose-colored torpor" and face up to a supposedly grimmer national reality. To boot, these years have also witnessed the triumph of American ideas all around the world. According to the authoritative tally of Freedom House, some 63% of the world's countries are now governed as electoral democracies, and a virtual global consensus has been reached on the validity of market economics as opposed to state planning.

Of course, new challenges have arisen, notably from terrorism and radical Islam, but these in turn have brought into view other facets of America's strength. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. has scored two decisive military victories, each exceeding all forecasts of success and making mockery of the plentiful warnings of fiasco. They have served to demonstrate the extraordinary prowess and agility of American arms while also dispelling the notion that the country, has grown too soft to tolerate casualties in war.

Abroad, this astounding run of success has generated a discernible uptick in expressions of envy. At home, one reaction has been a revival of premonitory scenarios of gloom. Just as the declinists of the late 1980s took aim at the spirit of national self-confidence that had been engendered by President Reagan's upbeat rhetoric and the success of his economic and foreign policies, so today's Cassandras seek to rouse the public from the complacency of America's present vaunting status. They take aim at the very things--military mastery, the spread of democracy and markets--that others interpret as signs of American triumph. Will their warnings prove better founded than those of Messrs. Kennedy, Prestowitz and
Pfaff?

The comparison that begs to be made here is of Islamicism to the two prior totalitarianism's we defeated in world wars--Nazism and Communism--and of the supposed coming economic rivalry with a United Europe and/or China to the imagined Japanese juggernaut of the 80's. Looked at in these terms the idea of American decline relative to these threats is too absurd for words. These new pretenders to the throne suffer from nearly identical problems as their predecessors. Does anyone imagine that a new variant on the totalitarian theme is going to work any better than the old or that an increasingly amoral Europe with declining populations, sclerotic bureaucracies, and unassimilated immigrant populations is a good bet for economic success?

We, though concerned that America too has problems that need to be dealt with post haste, are inclined to the opposite view. The gap between the US and others is likely to widen, not narrow, and certainly not reverse. Europe is toast. China is going to implode. Islam is going to undergo a Reformation or continue its long decline. Meanwhile, an America that allies itself to the rest of the Anglosphere, portions of Latin America, Christian Africa, India, Israel, Taiwan, etc., and possibly to some newly democratic Islamic states, would be in for an extended period of economic and geo-political dominance even more startling than the past century's.

Avoiding decline is a near certainty but to achieve a new Golden Age two somewhat interrelated things are necessary, but one is difficult, the other perhaps impossible: we must recognize the insignificance of Islamicism and of China as strategic threats and must reprivatize our social welfare net. The first is necessary because the rebuilding and maintenance of a massive Cold War security state would indeed tend to warp our economy and society in many of the same ways they were deformed from 1941 to 1991. We can withstand another 9-11, but we'll never heal the damage done by the 60's and 70's.

More difficult, likely even undoable, we must privatize health care and Social Security, for mostly budgetary reasons, and return social services to localities, for reasons of restoring social capital. All of
this would make possible a huge reduction in the federal tax burden and a simplification/rationalization of the tax code, perhaps even a transition to something like a flat tax or system of consumption-based taxation. It would also necessitate a reknitting of family, neighborhood, church, social organizations, etc. This is assuredly unlikely, but that such possibilities are even imagined here--from President Bush's proposals for Social Security and Medicare to the Faith-Based Initiative to school vouchers--is a sure indicator of just how great are our advantages over any rivals. That such reforms might happen, even if only in part, suggests that our heyday is nowhere near done.

How fares the City? "All in all, not bad, not bad at all."

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THERE ARE NO SMART MOBS

E-Mail Mob Takes Manhattan (Michelle Delio, Jun. 19, 2003, Wired)

The Mob Project is the brainchild of a man publicly known only as Bill, who says he works in the "culture industry."

"The idea is mine, and I write the e-mails, but I don't think of myself as the leader of the mob," Bill wrote in an e-mail. "In my mind (the mob) is led by whoever forwards the e-mail around. People make the mob through whoever they know."

Bill has become more secretive about Mob Project plans since the first mob event was held in May.

That event drew six police officers and one paddy wagon, after one of the e-mail recipients (now officially known to the mob as "Squealy") alerted authorities to the impending arrival of the mob.

Due to that unwanted attention from law enforcement officials, Bill opted to keep the details of the second mob action a secret until the very last possible moment.

The e-mail invite instructed participants to synchronize their watches and be waiting at 7 p.m. in one of four specified bars at a particular spot (for example, near the framed prints of the elephant and the leopard in the midtown Holiday Inn's bar).

That evening, mob representatives sporting stylish headgear appeared in the bars and passed out slips of paper containing information on where the mob was to convene and what to do once they got there.

About 200 people then proceeded to Macy's. They rode the escalators to the ninth floor rug department, where they gathered around a large carpet on display.

"We were told to say we all lived together in a big old warehouse in the suburbs," said Jenni Valton, a participant. "We all explained to the salesman that we were looking for a love rug to play on, and that we only make purchases as a group."

After discussing the merits and drawbacks of the selected carpet for 10 minutes, the mob dispersed.

"It was all perfect," Bill said of the activity.

He refused to comment on plans for the next mob event, beyond confirming that there will be another action in July.

Some mob members said they believed the project could serve as an excellent trial run for political protests.

But most said they hoped the Mob Project didn't turn political.

"I've always wanted to be able to say 'I'm a member of the mob' and now I can," said Valton. "In this city, where people seem to need a logical reason for doing anything, it's great to just have some stupid fun."

Never underestimate the capacity of people to trivialize a technology.

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HARRY POTTER AND THE DISORDER OF MANNERS

Thanks to a bad case of food poisoning this weekend that left me unfit for work or play, I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Allow me a gripe. There is not one "I'm sorry; please forgive me" in the whole book, not even after Harry steals an ally's most private memories from a Pensieve. Through the book, characters get angry at those they've wronged, but they never apologize for their offenses -- they merely explain themselves in an aggrieved tone, and expect everyone to ignore the offense thenceforth.

It is not just the teenage Harry whose manners are bad. I do not recall an instance of "please" or "thank you" in the book. Nor is there moral teaching. Dumbledore does not suggest that Harry forgive those against whom he nourishes grudges, nor does he suggest that Harry apologize to those he has betrayed, even though he regards as critical Harry's reconciliation with an ally he both loathes and has betrayed. If, as Dave Kopel has argued, J.K. Rowling is a Christian writer, it is a Christianity that has lost the themes of repentance and forgiveness.

Fortunately, however, you can still tell the good guys from the bad guys. I am not yet crotchety enough to root for the Dark Lord.

MORE: Quidditch Quaintness (Richard Adams, The Guardian, 6/18/2003)

[R]eaders in this country can perceive a political bandwagon being pushed. Despite all of the books' gestures to multiculturalism and gender equality, Harry Potter is a conservative....

It's no coincidence that Rowling herself is an honorary member of the British Weights and Measures Association - which defends the ounce and pint, and calls the metric system "a political philosophy".

As Josh notes in the comments, the series is pleasingly conservative.

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THE $64 QUESTION

Can Islam have a democratic future?: It has a glorious past and present. (Surin Pitsuwan, 19/6/2003, Online Opinion)

What you see in the Middle East is not development. What you see in the Middle East is modernity. Modernity you can buy. If you have the money you can buy all the gadgets of the latest invention, but there is very little development. That is the distinction. But in Malaysia and Indonesia you see greater efforts for human resource development, a process that forces a country to be more open. The society is diversifying. Therefore there is room for participation, access and for give and take within the same Islamic society.

I once asked President Khatami of Iran, a Shi'ite, this hypothetical question: There are two men. One lives in a closed society. Every minute of his life
is prescribed. He has to follow the rules of Islam. He has to pray five times a day. He has to fast. He has to pay his alms - his zakat. He has to do everything prescribed by the law, government, regime and police.

There is another Muslim who lives in an open society, with all the choices to be bad. Yet he remains good. He prays five times a day. He fasts. He pays his alms and does everything that the religion requires of him. Which is the better Muslim? President Khatami clapped his knees and laughed. He said, "You from south-east Asia are better than many Muslims around here".

My point is that Islam can inspire you to become a good democrat. Islam can also inspire a society to become a democracy. It depends on various factors that have to somehow work in order to propel that process of democratisation forward. [...]

I think the Muslims are just like any other human beings, aspiring to move forward but frustrated by the present circumstances that they find
themselves in. I think you should feel sympathy with some of the problems they are facing.

We're all sympathetic but Mr. Pitsuwan assumes a bit too blithely that every religion can form a suitable basis for democracy. To date it appears that only Judaism and Christianity, and conspicuously not
Islam, are reliable foundations. That's not to say it can't be, but it has work to do first.

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)

Robin Hood 'did not exist' (BBC, 6/19/03)

[Professor Stephen Knight] claims the Robin Hood "myth" is reinvented when people feel they are being oppressed by their own version of the Sheriff of Nottingham. [...]

"The obsession with identifying the 'real Robin Hood' is futile and misguided. The name Robin Hood existed - Hood is not an uncommon name - but it's more likely the name gave rise to the character.

"He represents resistance to local oppression - freedom and liberty in whatever shape you need it to take."

"The reality of the myth is that people believe in those values and might be guided by them."

The professor's book, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography, describes how the core elements of the outlaw myth - links with nature, hostility to
oppressive authority, youthfulness, fun and games - have been interpreted over six centuries.

"The genuine Robin Hood is a world-wide figure of myth - he represents a utopian vision of liberty which tends to thrive especially in illiberal contexts like the late 17th Century, the early 19th Century and most recently, the 1980s."

One of the most interesting aspects of this is the way the Left tried misappropriating Robin Hood in the 20th Century to turn him into nothing more than a redistributor of wealth.

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IT'S NOT THE ECONOMY, STUPID

Bad moves, not economy, behind busted state budgets Governors, legislators failed to act quickly when boom began to fade, analysis finds (Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY, June 23, 2003)

To make ends meet, some states have removed thousands of low-income adults from Medicaid and reduced benefits for others. Many states have raised college tuition, cigarette taxes and other narrowly targeted fees. Six states have increased sales and income tax rates, and several more might do so this week.

But one thing has remained constant throughout the crisis: State spending keeps growing.

It went up 6.3% for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2002, and it's on track to rise about 5% in the 12 months that end June 30. The number of people on Medicaid, which pays for health care and nursing homes for the poor, remains at a near-record 40 million. That number is up 30% since 1998, the result of efforts to sign up people who qualify. And despite anecdotal reports of layoffs -- Oregon furloughed 130 state troopers, for example -- state governments have added 74,000 workers (an increase of 1.5%) in the past two years while the private sector has registered a net loss of 2.6 million jobs (a decline of 2.4%).

By almost any measure, state governments have suffered less than businesses and taxpayers during the economic downturn. Even so, nearly every state is struggling to balance its books.

And here I thought states' only problems were a slow economy and post-911 security costs.

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HOW PUSILLANIMOUS

Court Upholds Use of Race in College Admissions With Limits (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 23, 2003)

In two split decisions, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that minority applicants may be given an edge when applying for admissions to universities, but limited how much a factor race can play in the selection of students.

The high court struck down a point system used by the University of Michigan, but did not go as far as opponents of affirmative action had wanted. The court approved a separate program used at the University of Michigan law school that gives race less prominence in the admissions decision-making process.

The Constitution "does not prohibit the law school's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote.

The court divided in both cases. It upheld the law school program that sought a "critical mass" of minorities by a 5-4 vote, with O'Connor siding with the court's more liberal justices to decide the case.

The court split 6-3 in finding the undergraduate program unconstitutional. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion in the undergraduate case, joined by O'Connor and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer.

Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.

Potter Stewart would be proud: they don't know what level of racism is proper, but they'll know it when they see it. This sets up courts to review every plan in the country.

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STICK TO FICTION

New World Disorder: There are four ways to solve planet-wide problems. None of them work. (Bruce Sterling, July 2003, Wired)

At the top of the heap are the global multilaterals, the brass-plate institutions whose members include diplomats from the world's 190-plus nation-states. Examples are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations. They might look big and scary to street protesters, but once you peek behind the velvet curtains, it's dead obvious that they're stretched thin, put-upon, weak, fractious, crooked, and low in morale. They lack public legitimacy and democratic representation. Street opinion, the "second superpower," hates and fears them bitterly. The first superpower, the one with stealth bombers, can't stand them either. That's bad news for global multilaterals.

The second system involves international treaties and conventions. These vast, clotted webs of apparent consensus are too many, too messy, and too meager to manage a teeming, boisterous world. Often treaties are signed but never ratified. Many that are ratified aren't enforced. National leaders just plain lose track of all their accords. Consider environmental agreements, more than 200 of which have been promulgated in the past 40 years. Whatever the subject, the Bushites take positive pleasure in sweeping away clutter like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the International Criminal Court treaty, and whichever target of opportunity they choose to hit next.

The third arrangement is the coalition of the willing. More of these exist than you might think, including the Group of Seven Industrialized Nations, the Group of Eight, the Group of 20, and the weirdly named Group of 77 Plus China. Coalitions of the willing are barely coalitions, they're rarely willing, and they're never broad enough. Nafta has been good at dissolving trade barriers, but outside the gates of the Nafta consumer's club, Argentina collapsed while Brazil and Venezuela turned hard left. The top willing coalition, the European Union, is a golden exception to the norm, because it boasts an occasional accomplishment.

The fourth approach is to stage glamorous international powwows like the Rio Summit, Rio Plus Five, Rio Plus Ten, the Cairo summit on population, the Durban racism summit, the Copenhagen Social Summit, and, lately, nongovernmental countersummits like the World Social Forum. These massive blabfests are ritualized and wooden. They make proper noises, but they have no teeth, no budget, and no follow-through. They're good for consciousness-raising and for swapping business cards, but they have no effect on the awful crises they purport to address.

Outside the US, most people believe the planet recently suffered a massive, bomb-flinging breakdown in the new world order. The news is worse: There never was any order to break down.

It takes a certain gift to perceive NAFTA as a failure because the countries that didn't join suffered economic dislocations recently and to think the EU, currently sliding into depression, has accomplished good things.

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RICKEY DON'T QUIT

What keeps Rickey running?: Well past his prime, a future Hall of Famer goes the independent route to prove he still can play ball (Jack Etkin, June 23, 2003, Rocky Mountain News)

Henderson created chaos on the field in a distinctive way. He was as unique off the field, renowned for not knowing teammates' names. Rockies coach Walt Weiss, an Oakland teammate, said, "If you were standing in front of your locker, he had a chance. He'd pick out a letter in your name, usually what your name started with. Like (Rich) Bordi and (Lance) Blankenship, he called them B. 'What's up today, B?' "

Fast-forward to Newark outfielder Piercy, whom Henderson calls "Burger Man." Does he know Piercy's name? "He calls me by my name," Piercy said. "So I'm not sure whether he wrote it down or somebody said it."

Rockies bench coach Jamie Quirk was Henderson's Oakland teammate for 3 ½ years. Asked whether Henderson knew Quirk's name, he said, "I can't say yes or no. I don't know. Rickey would say everything but your name, so you weren't sure if he knew your name.

" 'Hey, Dude. How's it going? Hey, big guy. Hey, man.' Anything but (your name), so you're thinking maybe he doesn't know. But maybe he did."

Quirk said that as a coach, he has run into Henderson at various times, and Henderson always greeted him by name.

Even though they were teammates, Quirk said he can't "say I really know him." And that's understandable, because Henderson typically was in his own orbit. Jay Alves, the Rockies public relations director, held that title with Oakland when Henderson was there.

Billy Beane's locker was next to Henderson's, Alves said. During one season, Beane was sent back to Class AAA and, Alves said, was in the minors at least six weeks. According to Alves, when Beane returned to Oakland and went back to his same locker, Henderson said, "Man, where you been?"

Henderson was Oakland's fourth-round pick in the 1976 draft. He went to high school in Oakland, Calif., and made it to the A's in June 1979, at age 20 - he made it to stay in 1980 - and in his first major league at-bat, doubled against Texas' John Henry Johnson.

The A's traded Henderson to the Yankees after the 1984 season, and the Yankees shipped Henderson back to Oakland in 1989. That was Weiss' second full season in the big leagues. He had grown up just north of New York and was amused to hear Henderson describe Manhattan.

"He said when he was playing for the Yankees, he lived in the city," Weiss recalled. " 'Yeah, I could look out my window, see the Entire State Building.' When he told me that, I was like, 'Man, that's awesome. You can see the whole thing?' "

If Henderson's teammates sometimes laughed at him, they also marveled at his natural athletic ability. Former A's manager Tony La Russa used to praise Weiss, third baseman Lansford and catcher Terry Steinbach for being "grinders." Henderson was anything but a grinder. Steinbach calls him "a thoroughbred" and Weiss, using the word in the most complimentary sense, said Henderson is "a freak."

Rickey Henderson is one of the two guys most of us got to see play who can undoubtedly be said to have been the best all-around player ever at his position and the best at ant position in the game for a period of years, the other being Mike Schmidt. Right now he'd be no worse than the third or fourth best player on teams like the Tigers, Mets, Pirates, etc.

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STEPPIN' FETCHITISM

Democratic Candidates Court Black Voters: At the 32nd annual conference of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Rev. Jesse Jackson's organization, seven Democratic hopefuls seemed to disagree on little. (MONICA DAVEY, 6/23/03, NY Times)

In his opening comments, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said that he had fought beside an African-American man in Vietnam. In answering a question, Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, noted that he had traveled to Africa. And several of the candidates, including Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, quoted the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., some weaving his words into their comments on more than one occasion.

It has been 15 years since Mr. Jackson ran for president, but he had advice for these Democrats. Before the candidates' forum, Mr. Jackson, who ran in 1984 and again in 1988, urged Democrats to pursue a "Southern strategy," and not to abandon the South to Mr. Bush, as he said the Democrats did in their 2000 loss.

"We must not write the South off, it is the key to the emancipation of the whole country and the preservation of the Union," Mr. Jackson said. "We must launch a new Southern strategy of reconciliation, shared economic security and hope and healing." [...]

In this ballroom, Mr. Jackson remains a rock star. He draws standing ovations. And his endorsement for president, which he says will come "no time soon," is a coveted prize. One sure sign of that: Only two candidates missed his forum, Senators John Edwards of North Carolina and Bob Graham of Florida. Mr. Edwards had a scheduling conflict, his spokeswoman said. Mr. Graham had to take care of personal business in Miami, and had called Mr. Jackson to let him know that before the weekend, his spokesman, Jamal Simmons, said this morning.

One person he has not been invited to meet with over the last two and half years, Mr. Jackson said, is Mr. Bush.

Kowtowing to an increasingly marginalized segment of the electorate is necessary in the Democratic primaries but death in the general. The candidates seem to have forgotten that Bill Clinton made his bones with white voters by attacking a black rap musician in front of an infuriated Jesse Jackson. He had his eyes on the prize.

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UNHOLY ALLIANCE

Judicial Imperialism: There's one way in which America is as bad as Belgium (ROBERT H. BORK, June 22, 2003, Wall Street Journal)

We Americans are rightly amused by Belgium's claim to universal jurisdiction so that its courts can try violations of human rights anywhere in the world, having absolutely no relation to Belgium. For instance, Belgium recently opened an investigation of former President Bush, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and Gens. Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf for alleged crimes in the first Gulf War. But while we are scoffing, we ought to consider that our courts are engaged in the same judicial imperialism.

U.S. courts are deciding cases by citizens of Paraguay against another citizen of Paraguay for acts in Paraguay; claims by citizens of
Bosnia-Herzegovina against the leader of the Bosnian Serbs; and claims against the estate of a former Philippine president, although all plaintiffs and defendants were Philippine nationals and the alleged violations occurred entirely in the Philippines. Major American corporations, such as Texaco and Unocal, are being sued when they do business abroad, for the human-rights violations of host governments. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, has just upheld suits filed here against foreign nationals who assisted our government in the seizure of criminals abroad. We may expect soon suits against our allies for capturing and extraditing alleged terrorists.

How did we get to this state of affairs? Many American courts claim authority from the little-known Alien Tort Act: "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." Early in my time on the federal appellate bench, I sat on a three-judge panel that heard Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic (1984), involving Israelis' claims against the Palestine Liberation Organization, Libya and others for a murderous attack launched in Israel. It seemed preposterous that we should decide the legality of an assault by foreigners against foreigners on foreign soil. My first thought was that the statute must be a modern excrescence. To my chagrin, it turned out to have been part of the first Judiciary Act of 1789.

There was an excrescence all right, but it was not the statute. It was what the Second Circuit Court of Appeals had made of it in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala (1980), the Paraguayan case. Torture, the court said, was a violation of customary international law and hence within the Alien Tort Act. Judge Roger Robb and I on different grounds rejected Filartiga's reasoning. Since then, most federal courts have chosen to follow Filartiga rather than Tel-Oren. Yet it is clear not only that Filartiga is wrong but that it is a serious incursion by courts into the domain of Congress, involving, as it does, the enactment of world-wide law by an unholy alliance of imperialistic judges and a leftish cadre of international law professors.

Maybe Congress can re-exert its authority as part of broader tort reform?

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RED V. BLUE

Metrosexuals Come Out (WARREN ST. JOHN, 6/22/03, NY Times)

By his own admission, 30-year-old Karru Martinson is not what you'd call a manly man. He uses a $40 face cream, wears Bruno Magli shoes and custom-tailored shirts. His hair is always just so, thanks to three brands of shampoo and the precise application of three hair grooming products: Textureline Smoothing Serum, got2b styling glue and Suave Rave hairspray.

Mr. Martinson likes wine bars and enjoys shopping with his gal pals, who have come to trust his eye for color, his knack for seeing when a bag clashes with an outfit, and his understanding of why some women have 47 pairs of black shoes. ("Because they can!" he said.) He said his guy friends have long thought his consumer and grooming habits a little . . . different. But Mr. Martinson, who lives in Manhattan and works in finance, said he's not that different.

"From a personal perspective there was never any doubt what my sexual orientation was," he said. "I'm straight as an arrow."

So it was with a mixture of relief and mild embarrassment that Mr. Martinson was recently asked by a friend in marketing to be part of a focus group of "metrosexuals"--straight urban men willing, even eager, to embrace their feminine sides.

Up here we have rurasexuality which causes similar misunderstandings--you should see people tense up when you refer to a heifer as being dewy-eyed or a sheep as shapely.

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MY NAME IS LUCAS

Studies shatter myth about abuse (Karen S. Peterson, 6/22/2003, USA TODAY)

It is not just men who hit women. Women hit men, too. And the latest research shows that ignoring the role women play in domestic violence does both women and men a disservice.

There is little doubt that women get hurt more than men. She may slap him. But then he may hit her harder or more often.

By not understanding the mutual role they often play, women are at great risk for injury, new studies show.

Still, the newest findings challenge the feminist belief that "it is men only who cause violence," says psychologist Deborah Capaldi of the Oregon Social Learning Center. "That is a myth."

The number of women who hit first or hit back is "much greater than has been generally assumed," Capaldi says. She says she is surprised by the frequency of aggressive acts by women and by the number of men who are afraid of partners who assault them.

Capaldi and two other female researchers call for a re-evaluation of treatment programs nationwide. Such programs focus on men and ignore women. Men are court-ordered into some type of rehabilitation, and their women are told in support groups or shelters that they had nothing to do with the violence, Capaldi says.

You still can't smack them around. Defending yourself is okay, but then walk away.

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SISTERS ARE DOIN' IT TO THEMSELVES

Today's women live faster and die younger (Christine Seib, June 23, 2003, Times of London)

LIBERATION is a danger to women’s health, official figures suggest. By the end of this century, men are likely to become the
longer-living sex.

The rise in alcohol consumption among young women and in smoking levels and stress experienced by the increasing number of working women is feared to have affected female life expectancy.

While the average life expectancy of men and women has risen over the past five years, the rate of improvement among women has declined. Should life expectancy trends continue and factors affecting lifestyle stay the same, men born this century may live longer than women, a think-tank has found.

Tony Leandro, secretary of the Continuous Mortality Investigation Bureau, whose findings are reported in The Journal, the leading insurance publication of the Chartered Insurance Institute, said: “If the trend continues, mortality rates for men and women will cross at some point in the future. You’re looking at some time at the end of this century.”

He explained that using statistics drawn up in 1999, a 35-year-old man could expect to live five years longer compared with predictions made 12 years earlier. However, he said that while women of the same age could also expect to live longer, they could not expect to be able to add as many years on to their lifespan as their male contemporaries.

“The male-female lifespan gap shrank from 4 ½ to three years in that period,” he said. “Subsequent studies have confirmed that this trend is
continuing.”

Add in things like: gender-selection abortion, which nearly always selects against women; the decline of marriage and rise in illegitimacy; etc.; and it seems fair to say that had women's liberation been a plot hatched by men it could be considered a serial hate crime.

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DEMOCRATS STARE INTO THE ABYSS

Outsider Dean fires up left: After months on stump, the outspoken Democrat announces presidential bid. (Liz Marlantes, 6/23/03, The Christian Science Monitor)

The factor with the greatest potential to fuel Dean's campaign may be Iraq. Certainly, much of Dean's momentum has come from his opposition to the war. In the runup to the US invasion, his outspoken antiwar stance won him media attention and many liberal activists' support. More recently, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, and US troops' difficulties in securing the peace have brought more debate - and ammunition.

To some extent, Dean's stance has polarized his party. Centrists have attacked him: This spring, the Democratic Leadership Council warned that he represented "the McGovern-Mondale wing [of the party], defined ... by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home." But other aspects of his candidacy don't fit the liberal mold: He supports a balanced budget and takes a states' rights position on gun control, spurring some liberal attacks.

To many, Dean's appeal has less to do with his positions than with his bluntness, and a willingness to challenge the administration. Even the enthusiasm he has sparked among many Democrats over the war can be interpreted as "less about the substance of the issue, and more that he was willing to be a contrarian,'" says Jeff Link, an aide to Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who's hosting forums in the first caucus state. [...]

Rival campaigns acknowledge that Dean has tapped into a surprisingly strong vein of liberal rage, not only at President Bush's policies, but at Democrats' perceived timidity. But while this has given Dean short-term momentum, many see it as doomed to failure. "There's a lot of fury in [Dean's] presentation," says Jim Margolis, an adviser to Sen. John Kerry. "That can ... energize the base vote. I don't think it's a very good long-term strategy."

Rage is a fine emotion to tap into to fuel a party, drum up money, turn out the core, motivate volunteers, etc., but American presidential campaigns are never won by raging candidates, who are inherently frightening. Americans--except in races where an incumbent is running--and with the disastrous exception of Herbert Hoover--tend to choose the "less intelligent" candidate with the sunnier disposition, perhaps having unwittingly internalized the wisdom of Demosthenes: "There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust."

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DEAD AGAIN

U.S. Bombs Convoy of Fleeing Iraqis (DOUGLAS JEHL with ERIC SCHMITT, June 23, 2003, NY Times)

An American Predator drone aircraft firing Hellfire missiles destroyed a convoy last week that was believed to be carrying fugitive Iraqi leaders, and experts are trying to determine whether those killed might have included Saddam Hussein or his sons, United States government officials said today.

The officials said they had obtained intelligence indicating that senior Iraqi leaders were traveling in the convoy. They suggested that the intelligence might have come from an intercepted telephone conversation or an informant. The attack took place Wednesday near the Syrian border in western Iraq.

There was no evidence so far, the officials said, to support the idea that Mr. Hussein or his sons might have been killed in the raid, and some officials were doubtful that they were. But they said intelligence teams, including DNA experts, were at the site to review the wreckage and assess the evidence.

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A CONSPIRACY SO VAST

Saddam's Bombs? We'll Find Them: The search for Iraq's nonconventional weapons program has only just begun. (KENNETH M. POLLACK, 6/20/03, NY Times)

The fact that the sites we suspected of containing hidden weapons before the war turned out to have nothing in them is not very significant. American intelligence agencies never claimed to know exactly where or how the Iraqis were hiding what they had ? not in 1995, not in 1999 and not six months ago. It is very possible that the "missing" facilities, weaponized agents, precursor materials and even stored munitions all could still be hidden in places we never would have thought to look. This is exactly why, before the war, so few former weapons inspectors had confidence that a new round of United Nations inspections would find the items they were convinced Iraq was hiding.

The best evidence for the proposition that George W. Bush is an evil genius whose entire presidency is one enormous plot to extract and sell oil to enrich his family and cronies is the insidious seeding of the prior administration with operatives like Mr. Pollack, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, George Tenet, Bill Cohen, and others who, as we've only now discovered, lied for eight years about the presence of WMD in Iraq. It's quite diabolical.

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EMPOWERMENT ZONING

Bremer brings Reaganomics to Iraq (Bret Stephens Jun. 22, 2003, Jerusalem Post)

Ambassador Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator in Iraq, spoke Sunday at the extraordinary meeting of the World Economic Forum, laying bare an agenda that stressed economic over political reform. [...]

The bulk of Bremer's 20 minute address...was devoted to economics. He talked in detail about the need in Iraq for new commercial codes, a simplified regulatory regime, a new antitrust authority, reform of the financial sector, higher standards of corporate governance, lower taxes, and"best practices in business ethics." [...]

The economics of reconstruction were evidently dear to the ambassador, who last worked in the State Department during the Reagan administration. "For the last 14 years I have been in business," he said. "We will succeed in transforming Iraq from a dead-end for business...into a country that is both free and economically prosperous."

The nations of the emerging democratic Middle East have a potentially huge advantage over the West, in that they could avoid the sclerotic welfare states, cumbersome taxes and regulations, and other accretions which are dragging us down. The strength of such institutions as family, mosque, and tribe--all of which offer private alternatives to government--would be particularly helpful in this regard.

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"TANGLED AND HIEROGLYPHIC BEAUTY"

Art vs. Science: Matthew Barney's a bore; the Hubble Space Telescope's a blast (Brendan Bernhard, 6/20/03, LA Weekly)

The poet W.H. Auden once said that hanging out with scientists made him feel like a shabby curate. Or like a witch doctor at a
convention of neurosurgeons--I forget the exact wording. But I recalled the remark while watching a recent 60 Minutes segment on the Hubble Space Telescope in which Dr. Mario Livio, who heads up Hubble's science division, told reporter Ed Bradley that the images of the solar system produced by the telescope "are in some sense the most fantastic artworks of our time."

While it's doubtful that Dr. Livio is correct in his assessment--close up, the universe has an unfortunate tendency to look like bad psychedelia--it was fascinating to hear what he and the other scientists had to say. And I couldn't help comparing this with the boredom, verging on stupefaction, I'd experienced a month earlier while watching Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic for The New York Times, interview the conceptual artist Matthew Barney on WNET (The Cremaster Cycle: A Conversation With Matthew Barney). And this, mind you, coming from a person so unscientific that he was asked to give up chemistry, physics, biology and math in school. For the teachers' sake. They simply couldn't take it anymore.

Why is the conversation of "cutting-edge" artists so often dull and insipid?

Is there a better understood issue than the way artists' envy of scientists has led to the decline of art?

Meanwhile, the scientists don't appear to get it either: art is our paltry attempt to represent Creation. Merely photographing Creation, while it adds to our appreciation, is cheating. The telescope itself is the work of art.

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YOU GONNA BELIEVE THE PUNDITS OR YOUR LYIN' EYES?

Untethered to Reality (Michael Kinsley, June 20, 2003, The Washington Post)

According to a Harris poll out Wednesday, a majority of Americans still think the Bush administration was telling the truth before the war when it said it had hard evidence of WMD. A Knight Ridder poll released last weekend reports that a third of the populace believes the weapons have been discovered. A Fox News poll last week found that almost half of Americans believe that the administration was "intentionally misleading" about Iraq's weapons, but more than two-thirds think the war was justified anyway. A Gallup poll released Wednesday concludes that almost 9 out of 10 Americans still think Hussein had or was close to having WMD. [...]

The most striking thing about polls such as these isn't how many people believe or disbelieve some unproven factual assertion or prediction but how few give the only correct answer, which is "Don't know." In the Fox News poll, vast majorities expressed certitude one way or the other about the existence of WMD in Iraq, the likelihood of peace in the Middle East and so on. Those who voted "not sure" (an even more tempting cop-out than the pollsters' usual "don't know") rarely broke 20 percent and usually hovered around 10. Four-fifths or more were sure about everything.

As someone who manufactures opinions for a living, it is my job to be sure. And my standards for the ingredients of an opinion are necessarily low. There may be a few ancient pundits such as George Will who still follow the traditional guild practices: days in the library making notes on index cards, a half-dozen lunches at the club with key sources, an hour spent alone in silence with a martini and one's thoughts -- and only then does a perfectly modulated opinion take its lovely shape. Most of us have no time for that anymore. It's a quick surf around the 'Net, a flip of the coin and out pops an opinion, ready to go except perhaps for a bit of extra last-minute coarsening.

Still, even the most modern major generalist among the professional commentariat likes to have a little something in the way of knowledge as he or she scatters opinions like bird seed. The general public, or at least the part of it that deals with pollsters, is not so cowardly. Most people, it seems, will happily state a belief on a question of fact that nobody knows the answer to, then just as happily do a double back flip from that shaky platform into a pool of opinions about which they are "sure."

Pollsters themselves, and the media that report their findings deadpan, are partly responsible for this. Every news report about a poll result reinforces the impression that opinion untethered to reality is valid or even patriotic (and to be "not sure" is shameful). The modern pundit culture is also partly to blame, I suppose, with its emphasis on televised argumentation. Viewers do not always grasp the difference between low standards and no standards.

Given that Saddam Hussein acknowledged having WMD--at least chemicals and missiles--and is acknowledged to have used them in the Iran war, the first Gilf war and to suppress the Kurd uprising, the American people would have to deny reality in order to arrive at the level of doubt that Mr. Kinsley and his ilk now counsel.

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SCATOLOGY VS. LICENSE

The Book of Vices: A review of Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America, by Dan Savage (John B. Kienker, Claremont Review of Books)

[U]nderneath the pretension of sunny, daring, nothing-can-stop-me happiness, chapter after chapter betrays the dank nihilism always driving these sinful Americans, driving them further and further in hopes that they might feel something-anything-in their drifting lives. Whether it's hopeful gamblers (greed); after-work stoners (sloth); 500 lbs.+ women who can no longer walk or wash themselves (gluttony); suburban parents who've traded affection for orgies (lust); or shirtless homosexuals who just want to dance, dance, dance, while their friends die around them (gay pride)-they all need to silence society's judgmental voices before any harsh truths can penetrate the stimulations and distractions with which they've anesthetized themselves.

Even in the final chapter, when Savage himself tries to commit in a single weekend all seven deadly sins, he does so with all the gusto of a contractual obligation to his publisher. And his odyssey culminates not in heady abandon or self-actualization, but in a wince-inducing scene of his own subjection to insult and humiliation from a bullying gigolo.

Savage's feeble caricature of the American founding might be easier to shrug off if it weren't so familiar. As he rightly points out, many conservatives-particularly traditionalists and those who see the American regime as low but solid-have bought into the myth that the founders infected America with the freedom "to go your own way," that "[o]ur bodies and minds and souls are our own, and we should be free to use and abuse and dispose of them as we see fit." Conservatives just don't celebrate this sentiment the way liberals and libertarians do.

But the same Thomas Jefferson who articulated the right to pursue happiness also said that we are "free from all but the moral law." He counseled that "[h]ealth, learning and virtue will insure your happiness," and in his Notes on the State of Virginia endorsed strict penalties for, among other things, the crime of sodomy. This connection between virtue and happiness is the real expression of the American mind, and of a liberty distinct from license.

Despite Dan Savage's wishful thinking, if the author of the Declaration were to return today, upon seeing this supposed "love letter to Thomas Jefferson" he would surely file for a restraining order, or at least a change of address.

Thereby proving two of the arguments below.

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SHOW US

Putting a name to it: As Muslim groups push for Americans to add "Islamic" to the phrase "Judeo-Christian," the argument about how to describe our values heats up (Mark O'Keefe, June 21, 2003, Newhouse News Service)

Leading Muslim organizations say it's time for Americans to stop using the phrase "Judeo-Christian" when describing the values and character that define the United States.

Better choices, they say, are "Judeo-Christian-Islamic" or "Abrahamic," referring to Abraham, the patriarch held in common by the monotheistic big three religions.

The new language should be used "in all venues where we normally talk about Judeo-Christian values, starting with the media, academia, statements by politicians and comments made in churches, synagogues and other places," said Agha Saeed, founder and chairman of the American Muslim Alliance, a political group with headquarters in Fremont, Calif.

Others take offense, arguing that to alter the phrase "Judeo-Christian" is political correctness and revisionist history at its worst.

"A lot of the ideas that underpin civil liberties come from Judeo-Christian theology," said the Rev. Ted Haggard of Colorado Springs, Colo., president of the National Association of Evangelicals. "What the Islamic community needs to make are positive contributions to culture and society so we can include them."

Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, said a "Judeo-Christian understanding of things like freedom of conscience and liberty" are embodied in the Constitution. "No offense intended," he said, "but Muslims weren't a part of that, even though they're part of the discussion now."

One would hope that eventually the new term will be appropriate, but for now count us with Mr. Haggard: you have to earn inclusion in such a high standard.

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CRUCIFIX, HAKENKREUZ, IT'S ALL THE SAME...

Mel's Passion: Gibson's making a film on Jesus worries some Jews. (Marvin Hier and Harold Brackman, June 22, 2003, LA Times)

Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 biblical epic, "The King of Kings" offended American Jews by portraying the Jewish people - rather than the Romans - as responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. DeMille dismissed criticism, insisting that "if Jesus were alive today, these Jews I speak of might crucify him again."

But whether DeMille admitted it or not, the film did fuel anti-Semitism. Consider the following note, passed between two fourth-grade girls, that found its way into the files of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise: "Martha, I found out who killed our God. The Jews did it. I went to see King of Kings. It showed how the Jews killed him."

Now comes Mel Gibson, who insists Jews and Catholics will have nothing to worry about in his new, self-financed, $25-million film, "The Passion." It's true that the final script hasn't been made available, and there is currently no release date, or even distributor, for the film. Still, there are reasons for concern.

The passion of Christ - the crucifixion and hours leading up to it - has been used by bigots, including popes and kings, to inflame anti-Semitism through the ages. A belief that Jews were responsible for crucifying the son of God led Pope Innocent III to conclude in the early 13th century that Jews should be consigned to a state of "perpetual subservience" as wanderers and fugitives, and made to wear a mark on their clothing identifying them as Jews. His pronouncement reinforced widespread anti-Semitism that led over the centuries to millions of Jews being burned at the stake and murdered in pogroms throughout Christian Europe.

Any film about such a sensitive subject would set off alarm bells. [...]

Gibson's secrecy about his film stands in contrast with the handling of other controversial films. The producers of a recent drama about the young Hitler responded to criticism by soliciting input from responsible critics. They got good suggestions that made for a better film.

It would obviously be repellant for Mr. Gibson's film to be anti-Semitic, but what are we to make of the double standard that allows these essayists to compare the story that stands at the very heart of Christianity to a biography of Hitler? The comparison seems especially unfortunate coming as part of an argument that people be hypersensitive to how the passion is portrayed.

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DESPAIRING FOR WHILE HOPING FOR THE WOGS

Two Pulls: Questions Iran raises (Richard Brookhiser, June 19, 2003, National Review)

Events in Iran raise, for the manyeth time, a tension in fundamental conservative attitudes towards freedom struggles around the world. As a conservative, I feel two pulls.

One is Tory (often, though not exclusively, English), which might be summed up as "bloody natives." The classic 20th-century expressions were Evelyn Waugh's African novels, Scoop and the far meaner Black Mischief. The Tory attitude colors many of the ethnic observations in the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Circassians are brave, but thievish - that kind of thing). The Tory believes that the world is full of colorful and fascinating peoples who are, however, mostly incapable of good government and self-rule. [...]

Simultaneously, and as Americans, we believe "The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them" (Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British North America). This is what our Founders believe. If they were wrong, the country sucks.

Toryism can lead to nihilism, and acquiescence in tyranny (the tyrant's plea, necessity). Americanism can lead to childish enthusiasm, and painful surprises.

Luckily, we need not choose between these two pulls. We can, indeed must be, be skeptical about the future of freedom in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Palestine even as we hope there is one.

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OTTOMAN DIGNITY?

Iraq exports first oil since war (ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 22, 2003)

Iraq returned to the world oil market Sunday, exporting its first crude oil since the U.S.-led invasion in a crucial step that will bring in revenue vital to rebuilding the country.

The export of crude from Iraq, which has the second largest oil reserves in the world, is a major step for the country, which is in desperate need of funding to repair battered infrastructure--including its oil facilities--and rebuild an economy devastated by more than 12 years of U.N. economic sanctions.

Turkish workers began loading 1 million barrels of Iraqi crude onto the Turkish tanker Ottoman Dignity in a ceremony attended by senior Iraqi, U.S. and Turkish oil officials at this Mediterranean oil terminal, at the end of a twin pipeline running from Iraq's northern oil fields.

The Ottoman Dignity will carry the oil to a Turkish refinery on the Aegean coast.

"This will mark the beginning of a new era and beginning of normalization," Mehmet Takiyuddin Bilgic, head of Turkey's pipeline company BOTAS, told The Associated Press.

The money from the sale will go to a U.S.-controlled fund for rebuilding efforts.

Some 8 million barrels of oil have been stored in southern Turkey since before the U.S.-led war began. Iraqi officials had said that the country could begin pumping fresh oil to Turkey as early as Sunday. But other Iraqi oil officials in Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, said Sunday that the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline is still not ready to begin carrying crude.

Well, as long as it is all about the oil, we may as well get it pumping.

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DOWN AND DIRTY

The Paradox of Conservative Bioethics (Yuval Levin, Spring 2003, New Atlantis)

Among the more prominent peculiarities of our politics in recent years is that something called ?bioethics? has become a key conservative priority. The bioethics movement has been around in America since at least the late 1960s, when the Hastings Center was created as the first bioethics think tank. Its task was to advance the study of the ethics of biology and medicine, and to examine the moral and social significance of new developments in genetics, psychopharmacology, reproductive medicine, and other new frontiers of biological science. The movement has since grown by leaps and bounds, and bioethics has developed into a profession, if not an industry.

Some American conservatives have long shared the concerns that animate bioethics. The pro-life movement has always worried deeply about the treatment of the unborn by scientists and doctors, and many conservatives have through the years been interested in various issues surrounding medical ethics, illicit drug-use, assisted suicide, and other social and cultural matters that have much to do with modern science. But it was not until fairly recently that bioethics emerged as a general and prominent category of concern for the American right.

That concern has been particularly influenced by worries about what has been dubbed the "Brave New World." This allusion to Aldous Huxley's famous book hints at a vision of a world reshaped by biotechnology: procreation replaced by manufacture, the pursuit of happiness replaced by drugs, and human nature remade into something lower and shallower, more easily satisfied but less capable of greatness and awe. This general vision has expressed itself in specific disquiet about reproductive technologies like cloning and genetic engineering; about the transformation of human embryos into research tools and raw materials; about psychoactive drugs and assorted enhancement technologies; and about a wide array of other attempts to fundamentally reshape human life through biology and medicine. American conservatives have begun to think hard about "where biotechnology may be taking us," as Leon Kass puts it, and what we might do about it.

The resulting intellectual and political activity has melded some of the interests of the pro-life movement with those of conservatives more concerned with the general culture and its institutions, and it has formed, through that combination, an altogether plausible conservative program. This trend, together with several sensational recent advances in biotechnology, has sent bioethics toward the top of the agenda of the American right. President Bush?s first prime-time address to the nation was about his new policy on the funding of embryonic stem cell research. Human cloning has been prominent on the congressional agenda for much of the past two years. And a substantial portion of the intellectual energy of the conservative movement has been devoted to the cause of a new bioethics.

And yet, the motives and methods of this movement present conservatives with a profound and complicated problem. Bioethics is necessarily focused on the deepest and most sensitive of human moral intuitions and taboos-those surrounding birth and death, sex and procreation, pleasure and pain, and the meaning of the body. At the same time, it is also directed toward policy, which in a liberal democracy rightly means that it must be an ethics of fully public argument. It is therefore in the business of public argument about taboos-of making the most private things more public, and shining bright lights on things long left in the dark. Herein lies the paradox of a conservative bioethics. Lifting the veil from society's most delicate implicit moral sentiments is hardly a conservative enterprise, and yet one form of doing just that has become a central conservative project. To succeed, a conservative bioethics must be alert to this deep difficulty and its consequences.

Conservatives indeed make a mistake when they underestimate the force that scatology can lend their moral arguments even if it does make them squeamish. The willing degradation of human beings is not a topic that should be left to the politesse of the parlor. For instance, rather than shy away from the topics of homosexuality and AIDs, conservatives should hand out copies of Randy Shilts's great book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, with its graphic descriptions of why the disease spread so quickly in the gay community and why, given the myriad other health problems associated with anal sex, it was so hard to recognize. Similarly, two films of a couple years ago that were putatively critical of the drug war--Traffic and Requiem for a Dream--are in fact terrifying glimpses of the depths to which drugs drive people. Reality, no matter how ugly, is the ally of natural law.

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BETTER TO RECEIVE THAN TO ASK

The essence of prayer does not consist in asking God for something but in opening our hearts to God, in speaking with Him, and living with Him in perpetual communion. Prayer is continual abandonment to God. Prayer does not mean asking God for all kinds of things we want; it is rather the desire for God Himself, the only Giver of Life. Prayer is not asking, but union with God. Prayer is not a painful effort to gain from God help in the varying needs of our lives. Prayer is the desire to possess God Himself, the Source of all life. The true spirit of prayer does not consist in asking for blessings, but in receiving Him who is the giver of all blessings, and in living a life of fellowship with Him.

    -Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889-1929)

Apropos our tedious disquisition on prayer of this past weekend.

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IT'S ALL ABOUT THE OIL

President's tumble off a Segway seems a tiny bit suspicious (Kevin Maney, 6/18/03, USA TODAY)

President Bush meant to fall off his Segway.

Oh, I'm sure of it. What we've got here is a clever conspiracy -- a pre-emptive strike to save the oil industry from a technology that could sap its power.

Over the weekend, while on vacation, Bush looked like Chevy Chase doing a Gerald Ford imitation as he stepped onto the platform of a Segway personal transportation scooter and went flying right off.

The first U.S. president to try a Segway supposedly forgot to turn it on, so the gyroscopic stabilizers couldn't automatically balance him.

But maybe Bush wanted to fall. Maybe he understands in a way few do that society is on the verge of a debate that could mold the future of transportation, much like the debate 100 years ago when cars first suggested that horses weren't the only way to travel.

And if the future veers toward little two-wheeled electric-powered personal transporters, where does that leave ExxonMobil and Halliburton and the rest of the oil industry President Bush adores? Probably in the same sad league as the old Pennsylvania coal-mining companies, with Houston as the next Wilkes-Barre. [...]

Why would the Bush team want to derail the Segway? Well, the scooter is one of the most inspired pieces of technology this country has produced in years. It looks like it should be as unstable as a unicycle. But step on, and the smarts inside it keep you balanced. Lean forward and you go forward. Lean back and you go back. Twist a handle to turn. It is as intuitive to use as a coffee cup. [...]

Unlikely as Segway domination may seem, history shows it's possible. And if it happened, the oil industry could kiss its profits and power goodbye.

This would be funnier if most of the Left didn't take the absurd notion seriously.

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BADLY KEPT SECRETS

Sharon's not-so-secret plan (Saul Singer, June 13, 2003, Jerusalem Post)

As another mass murder seems to snuff out the Aqaba summit's ray of hope, the unavoidable question screams out: When will this ever stop? At first glance, the road map now looks like a sick joke, a pathetic attempt to impose order on a conflict that has no end.

Yet within this chaos, a new structure is emerging that could well determine the sequence of events in the years to come, and their ultimate outcome for Israel. This structure is etched in invisible ink on the road map. Once described, it can be seen out in the open, but in practice it is Bush's and Sharon's secret plan. [...]

For Sharon, the road map's "independent Palestinian state with provisional borders" is not at the bottom of the slippery slope, but a brake that prevents precisely the slide that Begin fears. The deal Sharon is offering the Palestinians is a partial state in exchange for a partial peace. You don't want to renounce the "right of return" and accept Israel as a Jewish state? Fine, says Sharon, but for that all you get is a truncated state whose borders are controlled by Israel. Why would the Palestinians accept such a deal? Because they know that the only alternatives are the status quo, in which both sides bleed indefinitely, or making a full peace, neither of which they want.

Sharon's real objective is to get to the middle phase of the road map and park there until the Arab world is ready for peace, which may or may not ever happen. It is a reasonably comfortable place for a gradualist to be. Palestine may choose to be belligerent, but Israel will have a provisional border to defend and a state to hold accountable.

And that, of course, has been the point of statehood all along.

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LIBERTY VS. LICENSE

Declaring independence: Family ties and self-control free us from enslavement (Marvin Olasky, 6/28/03, World)

Freedom is not "just another word for nothing left to lose," as Janis Joplin sang before she drugged and drank herself to death. Actually, the word free in Old High German, as Gregory Beabout of Saint Louis University showed, stems from the Indo-European prijos (dear, beloved) and is related to the Sanskrit priyas (dear) and priya (wife, daughter).

The word free is also connected to the Old English frigu (love); Germans and Celts used it to mean neither controlled from outside the household nor enslaved, but benevolent toward and intimate with those inside. In Danish, I'm told, frie means "to make an offer of marriage," which should be done both through free choice and love. The etymology explains why the goddess Frigg was the Old Norse equivalent of Venus, the goddess of love in Roman mythology. Perhaps Fridays (the name derived from Frigg) are for lovers-and marriage is an act of freedom that promotes true love.

In the movie Braveheart, when William Wallace (played by Mel Gibson) under torture near the end yells "Freedom" and envisions his murdered wife, he is thinking as a Celt would have. [...]

The 1904 version of "America the Beautiful" proclaims, "Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law." Liberty, self-control, and the external control of law all work together to keep us from being enslaved by our temporary desires. Two centuries ago, the antonym to liberty that sprang to people's lips was not slavery but license. A free person stood in the middle of a spectrum, tugged by one mob to embrace libertinism or another mob to hug dictatorship and political slavery.

A century later, we've forgotten much of that. But if we want to maintain independence, we should dare to remember.

The manner in which each extreme must lead to its opposite--libertinism provoking a crackdown and repression fomenting revolution--is nearly enough to convince you there's a divine hand at work that points us instead towards the conservative form of liberty. Nearly...

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PHAIR GAME

Liz Phair's Exile in Avril-ville (MEGHAN O'ROURKE, June 22, 2003, NY Times)

In 1993, the year Liz Phair's "Exile in Guyville" came out, legions of young, middle-class, well-educated women found in her lo-fi debut a kind of all-purpose autobiography, and a template - smart, deadpan, but also earnest - for making sense of their own experience. Within a year Ms. Phair went from being a 26-year-old singer-songwriter who had performed live some half-dozen times to the woman on the cover of Rolling Stone with the headline "Liz Phair: A Rock and Roll Star Is Born." The obvious question was: Would Ms. Phair be able to sustain her success?

Ten years later, having put out two albums, "Whip-Smart" (1994) and "whitechocolatespaceegg" (1998), that were both greeted with mixed praise, she is now releasing her fourth - the eponymously titled and much anticipated "Liz Phair." It is, Ms. Phair has suggested, her bid for center stage - the moment when she will finally make the leap from indie-rock quasi-stardom to teen-pop levels of superstardom.

Instead, she has committed an embarrassing form of career suicide.

Well, if it's not suicide, this is for dang sure attempted career homicide.

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THE WORLD TURNED RIGHTSIDE UP

GOP Aims for Dominance in '04 Race: Republicans to Seek Governing Majority by Feeding Base, Courting New Voters (Dan Balz, June 22, 2003, The Washington Post)

Republican strategists see the 2004 election as their best opportunity in a generation to construct a durable governing majority, and they have set in motion a systematic and coordinated strategy designed to leverage President Bush's popularity and break the impasse that has dominated the country's politics since the mid-1990s.

The president himself established the ambitions behind the 2004 strategy earlier this year, when he authorized advisers to begin planning for a reelection campaign that began in earnest last week with a series of fundraising events. According to several GOP strategists, Bush told his team: Don't give me "a lonely victory." Said one top Bush adviser, "He said, 'I don't want what Nixon had. I don't want what Reagan had.' "

It is Mr. Bush's willingness always to up the ante that is the most remarkable facet of his political personality. It would have been easy for Ronald Reagan, with a booming economy, to make such a play in '84, but to his shame he focussed on a 50 state presidential victory instead, with a truly selfish last minute stop in Minnesota, when he could have been out stumping for Republican Congressional candidates instead. For Mr. Bush to set his sights on genuine realignment even as he faces what would right now appear to be a difficult re-election bid--with a slow growth economy--demonstrates, once again, a visionary streak that few understood when he was first running for president four years ago. It is the quality that made it vital to the future of the party and the nation for him to defeat John McCain.

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ON DEATH AND DYING

Democrats Go Off the Cliff: Powerlessness corrupts (David Brooks, 06/30/2003, Weekly Standard)

Democratic strategists are trying to put a rational gloss on what is a visceral, unplanned, and emotional state of mind. Democrats may or may not be behaving intelligently, but they are behaving sincerely. Their statements are not the product of some Dick Morris-style strategic plan. This stuff wasn't focus-grouped. The Democrats are letting their inner selves out for a romp.

And if you probe into the Democratic mind at the current moment, you sense that the rage, the passion, the fighting spirit are all fueled not only by opposition to Bush policies, but also by powerlessness.

Republicans have controlled the White House before, but up until now Democrats still had some alternative power center. Reagan had the presidency, but Democrats had the House and, part of the time, the Senate. Bush the elder faced a Democratic Congress. But now Democrats have nothing. Even the Supreme Court helped Republicans steal the last election, many Democrats feel. Republicans--to borrow political scientist Samuel Lubell's trope--have become the Sun party and Democrats have been reduced to being the Moon party. Many Democrats feel that George Bush is just running loose, transforming the national landscape and ruining the nation, and there is nothing they can do to stop him.

Wherever Democrats look, they sense their powerlessness. Even when they look to the media, they feel that conservatives have the upper hand. Conservatives think this is ludicrous. We may have Rush and Fox, conservatives say, but you have ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times. But liberals are sincere. They despair that a consortium of conservative think tanks, talk radio hosts, and Fox News--Hillary's vast right-wing conspiracy--has cohered to form a dazzlingly efficient ideology delivery system that swamps liberal efforts to get their ideas out.

When they look to the culture at large, many Democrats feel that the climate is so hostile to them they can't even speak up. During the war in Iraq, liberals claimed that millions of Americans were opposed to war, but were afraid to voice their opinions, lest the Cossacks come charging through their door. The actor Tim Robbins declared, "Every day, the airwaves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent. And the public, like so many relatives and friends that I saw this weekend, sit in mute opposition and fear." Again, conservatives regard this as ludicrous. Stand up and oppose the war, conservatives observe, and you'll probably win an Oscar, a National Magazine Award, and tenure at four dozen prestigious universities. But the liberals who made these complaints were sincerely expressing the way they perceive the world.

And when they look at Washington, they see a cohesive corporate juggernaut, effortlessly pushing its agenda and rolling over Democratic opposition. Again, this is not how Republicans perceive reality. Republicans admire President Bush a great deal, but most feel that, at least on domestic policy, the conservative agenda has been thwarted as much as it has been advanced. Bush passed two tax cuts, but on education he abandoned school choice and adopted a bill largely written by Ted Kennedy. On Medicare, the administration has abandoned real reform and embraced a bill also endorsed by Kennedy. On campaign finance, the president signed a bill promoted by his opponents. The faith-based initiatives are shrinking to near nothingness. Social Security reform has disappeared from the agenda for the time being. Domestic spending has increased.

Still, Democrats and liberals see the Bush presidency in maximalist terms. "President Bush's signature on his big tax cut bill Wednesday marked a watershed in American politics," wrote E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post. "The rules of policymaking that have applied since the end of World War II are now irrelevant." The headline on a recent Michael Kinsley column was "Capitalism's 'Deal' Falls Apart," arguing that the Bush administration had revoked the social contract that had up to now shaped American politics.

In short, when many liberals look at national affairs, they see a world in which their leaders are nice, pure-souled, but defenseless, and they see Republicans who are organized, devious, and relentless.

The frightening thing for Democrats has to be that this is just stage two of Kubler-Ross's stages of death:

(1) Denial

(2) Anger

(3) Bargaining

(4) Depression

(5) Acceptance

The Denial stage saw them disbelieve that the Republican Revolutions of 1980 and 1994 meant anything larger. Now they are simply raging at the realization that their time is over. Next, probably in the elections of '04 and '06, will come the bargaining phase, where their essential argument will be that they are the party that created the Welfare State and, therefore, deserve to run it. Then, as the GOP privatizes things like Social Security and Medicare, will come Depression, followed by Acceptance, when they fold up into the same moribund status that characterized the Republican Party from 1928 to 1980.

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BOOKNOTES

Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman (C-SPAN, June 22, 2003, 8 & 11pm)

A manifesto for an aggressive liberal response to terrorist attacks.

Paul Berman is one of our most brilliant writers on the impassioned and unpredictable life of ideas especially the doctrines that lead masses of people to try to change the world. The Terror War is nothing new or unprecedented. It is the same battle that tore apart Europe during most of the twentieth century-the battle between liberalism and its totalitarian enemies. Islam is not the cause of this war. Islam is the arena in which the war is presently being fought.

Berman shows how a genuine spiritual inspiration can be twisted into a fanatical demand for murder. He offers remarkable insights into the trends and conflicts influencing Islamic radicalism. He illuminates the surprising connections between very different political movements, and he reveals the several ways in which Islamic extremism resembles some all-too-familiar episodes in American and European experience. He is the historian of good intentions gone awry.

Berman draws on sources that range from Albert Camus's The Rebel to the Book of Revelations; from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to the Islamist scholar Sayyid Qutb's magisterial In the Shade of the Koran. Berman condemns the foreign policy "realism" of the political right, and he diagnoses the na?vet? of the political left. He calls for a "new radicalism" and a "liberal American interventionism" to promote democratic values throughout the world-a vigorous new politics of American liberalism. Berman's ability to shine a spotlight of history and philosophy on the present era makes him a peerless interpreter of today's events. This short book of original argument and dazzling prose will remain a guidepost for discussion for years to come.

MORE:
-ESSAY: Terror and Liberalism (Paul Berman, 10.22.01, American Prospect)
-ESSAY: Resolves: What Lincoln Knew About War (Paul Berman, 02.21.03, The New Republic)
-ESSAY: Why Germany Isn't Convinced: Joschka Fischer is wrong to resist the Iraq war. But he's not evil. (Paul Berman, February 14, 2003, Slate)
-ESSAY: The Philosopher of Islamic Terror (PAUL BERMAN, March 23, 2003, NY Times Magazine)
-ESSAY: Swastika School: The impious piety of the Jewish Museum's Nazi art show (Paul Berman, March 15, 2002, Slate)
-ESSAY: Labor and the Intellectuals (Paul Berman, American Prospect)
-ESSAY: Simple Math and Dimpled Chad (Paul Berman, December 12, 2000, Slate)
-ESSAY: About Those Ads: A Reply to Chatterbox (Paul Berman, November 15, 2000, Slate)

-REVIEW: of JUST WAR AGAINST TERROR: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World. By Jean Bethke Elshtain and THE GREAT TERROR WAR By Richard Falk (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of KOBA THE DREAD: Laughter and the Twenty Million By Martin Amis (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of THE LAST EMPIRE: ESSAYS 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America. By Hasia R. Diner (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World's Most Famous Passion Play By James Shapiro (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of WILD FRUITS: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript By Henry David Thoreau (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of A COVERT LIFE: Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster. By Ted Morgan (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of God & the American Writer By Alfred Kazin (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century. By Donald Sassoon (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of In Defense of Affirmative Action By Barbara R. Bergmann; Ending Affirmative Action The Case for Colorblind Justice. By Terry Eastland; and The Affirmative Action Fraud Can We Restore the American Civil Rights Vision? By Clint Bolick (Paul Berman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of American Pastoral By Philip Roth (Paul Berman, Slate)
REVIEW:of Latin America at the End of Politics by Forrest D. Colburn (Paul Berman, Spring 03, Dissent)
-INTERVIEW: Paul Berman on What the Left Should Want From the War (SARAH GOLD, 3/25/2003, Publishers' Weekly)
-ARCHIVES: Paul Berman (Slate)
-ARCHIVES: The New York Review of Books: Paul Berman
-ARCHIVES: "paul berman" (Find Articles)
-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman (Gary Rosen, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism (Martin Bright, The Observer)
-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism (Stephen Schwartz, FrontPageMagazine.com)
-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism (Jonathan Sumption, The Spectator)
-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism (Adrian Karatnycky, National Review)

-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism (Suzy Hansen, Salon)
-REVIEW: of A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968 By Paul Berman (Alan Ehrenhalt, Slate)
-REVIEW: of A Tale of Two Utopias (Nick Cohen, New Statesman)

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HILLARY FACES THE TIGER

Hillary, the outside story: Review of Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton (Mark Steyn, Daily Telegraph)

Chapter Two begins: " 'What you don't learn from your mother, you learn from the world' is a saying I once heard from the Masai tribe in Kenya." And you think, well, isn't that just wonderfully diverse, and she heard it from an actual tribe in Kenya! Any tribesman in particular? Or did they all yell it out in unison as her motorcade passed by? Either way, it's the sort of soothing multicultural sentiment that separates enlightened Democrats from rabid redneck Clinton-haters, and that's all you need to know. So you put the book up on the shelf and never open it ever again.

The main victim of this approach is Bill Clinton. From the moment they met, she knew he "had a vitality that seemed to shoot out of his pores", but not a lot shoots out in these pages. One reason is that all the personal details Monica got to first in her interviews with Andrew Morton for Monica's Story: Bi