She Makes All The Right People Angry

The best way to tell for whom to vote in presidential elections is whom the candidates make angry, and how much. Sarah Palin has almost locked up my vote forever.

Charlie Rangel recently referred to her as "disabled" (Hat tip: Allahpundit). Canadian tax dollars funded this statement that Sarah Palin is "white trash" (Hat tip: also Allahpundit). And there's so much more.

It's been, quite honestly, a blast. I hate to see someone like Sarah--it just seems fitting to use her first name, or perhaps Mrs. Palin--trashed endlessly in national news outlets, but she seems like the type who can handle it. (That may be what they hate most.) However, it's been enormously entertaining to see the pent-up elite condescension and arrogance come bursting forth in a flood of the sort of hate-filled expression one rarely finds outside of college campuses and the occasional high-school classroom.

At Least There Aren't Any FUNNY Shows Campaigning For Obama Yet

But in case you missed it, the once-amusing sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live has lent out its airtime to the Obamessiah.

SNL opened a recent episode with a sketch featuring John McCain fumbling with technology (haha! he's old!) and approving ridiculous attack ads against Obama (OMG heresy). They even took a shot at Sarah Palin's lack of experience (haha! she's got less experience ... campaigning ... nationally...hrm...). If these things were simply SNL attempting to be funny instead of making some sort of ill-considered point, then....how do they have a comedy show and I don't?

This looks bad for a few reasons. First of all, this sketch could have come directly from the Obamessiah's recent talking points: 1) McCain can't use email (in fact, this is because of injuries sustained during his torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese Communists). 2) The idea that, somehow, McCain's campaign has taken a much lower road despite the Obamessiah camp's repeated sliming of critics, absurd and outright lies to scare the elderly, and his recent Spanish-language ad insinuating that John McCain is an anti-immigration zealot in league with Rush Limbaugh, who by the way is a racist if you take some things he said completely out of context. (This is particularly laughable to anyone who's lis tened to a single full episode of Rush.)

Of course, it isn't particularly surprising that SNL would stoop to becoming a Democratic campaign commercial. And it's especially unsurprising that flailing Democratic Senate candidate and noted sleazeball Al Franken probably came up with the idea, considering just how funny it is.

Just imagine how devastating it could potentially be if a good show started this kind of thing. I, for one, am looking forward to second seasons for NBC's Chuck and CBS's The Big Bang Theory, as well as NBC's The Office and 30 Rock and ABC's merciful mid-season pick-up of Scrubs for its eighth season.

Credit and the FDR Myth

I'd planned a more elaborate post regarding the powerful "FDR Myth" in American electoral politics, but alas, rude interruptions from my life as a graduate student have prevented me from doing so.  Suffice it to say that the FDR Myth--that the free market failed, Hoover's conservative policies were ineffective, and Roosevelt fixed the whole thing with government involvement--is back.  This time, McCain plays the role of the inept Iowa Republican, refusing to buck conventional (constitutional?) wisdom to fix everything, and Obama is the heroic Progressive who rides into town and restores America to the Little Guy.  Such arguments are invariably short on economic analysis, heavy on overwrought outrage about such things as an offhand comment that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.  Try these on for size:  my friend's Facebook post of an Eric Rauchway column in the American Prospect (which is, far from "stunningly good," rather stunningly ignorant of economics), and Froma Harrop on RealClearPolitics.

On the other hand, we have several columns from people who--what do you know!--actually know something about financial markets.  And they seem to think that these problems have been caused--what do you know!--by some absurd regulations panickedly passed into law after the Enron scandal and absurd regulations forced on banks by racemongers in the Nineties.  Here you go:

• Larry Kudlow, "Never Sell America Short"
• Neal Boortz, "The Rest of the Meltdown Story"
• Zachary Karabell, "Bad Accounting Rules Helped Sink AIG"

I know, guys.  Ever since the unfettered free market--*snort*, interjects Michelle Malkin--caused the Great Depression, every economic downturn, every stock market crash, every downtick in employment has, to these economic illiterates, provided a reason to return to Thirties-style socialism.  It must be disappointing that, for all the impassioned attacks against such left-wing bogeymen as "speculators," the free market isn't going to send the economy into a deregulation-induced tailspin while Republican fat cats retire to their mansions to let the exploited underclass rot in their sprawling Dubyavilles.  Maybe next time.

The imagery would be more entertaining if it weren't politically effective.

Disiuncta

Grad school has been consuming much time I would normally spend on this blog, so I apologize for the extremely long delays between posts.  I cannot predict an uptick in blogging here, but I can post what I can when I can, anyway.  So here goes!

• Jay Nordlinger is, hands-down, my favorite political writer.  Unlike most who write about politics, Jay displays in his columns an irrepressible humanity, a love of beauty, and a rare sincerity.  He is, quite simply, terribly normal. His expression of conservatism is not a series of logical arguments that forth a political doctrine, but a window into the heart of a person who lives conservative values each day.  And really, isn't conservatism about life and values anyway, and not doctrine?  Read his stuff at http://www.nationalreview.com/, already!
• Michigan did manage to defeat Miami (Ohio), if underwhelmingly.  I keep hearing that Steven Threet was outperformed by Nick Sheridan.  Threet had his problems connecting with open receivers downfield--in the same sense that Varrus encountered some difficulties in the Teutoberg Forest (classics zing!) (Threet, give me back my touchdowns!  I need to stop.)--but that option isn't even there with Sheridan.  Not only that, but Threet seems to make better decisions than Sheridan, even out of the zone read play.  I think Threet will eventually find those receivers, and he's the starter.  At any rate, the real problems are in blocking:  the offensive line is riddled with injuries, and the wide receivers are struggling in their new role as downfield blockers.  These things will improve with reps, but it remains to be seen how effective the offense can conceivably be against major-conference teams.
• The defense is not a huge worry.
• John McCain is coming back in a big way.  The latest indication?  The Intrade Market Odds, which once had Arizona's senior senator down 20-30 points, now give him a 6-percent edge.  Is it any wonder that the media are melting down?
• Speaking of which:  Obama's skid is greatly satisfying, but not moreso than the media's Palin huffery.  Men are revealed most in the sudden, unguarded moments of great emotion, and their immediate and natural condescension gave Americans a look at what their true colors: all blue.  Happily, in more ways than one.

Palin: My Take

The Sarah Palin thing has generated enough interest in me at a time when I happen to have the luxury to post a lot, that...here we are. My post about Sarah Palin. Or, I guess, Sarah Palin in the larger context of the presidential election/general electoral politics.

Her speech was good. Not just good. Awesome. I haven't heard a better speech since, perhaps, Zell Miller's at RNC '04. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities." Money.

I haven't always agreed with John McCain's actions, but he is definitely unafraid to attack entrenched interests, and that is something we could use. Sarah Palin only bolsters that reputation, as she took on corrupt Republicans in Alaska, not to mention the oil companies, and scored unlikely and impressive victories--although much work is left to be done there, so long as the reprehensible Sen. Stevens and Rep. Young remain in office. Certainly, Obama, with his solid and longstanding support of such interests as NARAL and the NEA--not to mention his participation in Chicago machine politics--cannot claim the same reformist credentials.

Suddenly, I have another reason--if I needed one--to vote for McCain against Obama. I want to see Sarah Palin in national politics, and if she can gain more experience and the stars align, I will wholeheartedly support her for president someday. She is smart, up-front, a doer rather than a talker, nevertheless a great communicator, and genuine. She seems to have a knack for mocking opponents in a way that seems more legitimate than mean. And she gets people fired up in a big way. (Just watch the video.)

And not just people...ME. How often does that happen without some maize and blue involvement?

Blog Difficulties Of Various Kinds

Hey guys.  I've been absolutely terrible about posting, obviously, but to be fair, it's my first week at one of the top grad schools in its field in the world.  Things are busy, to say the least!  But as I adjust and things settle down a bit, I'll try to be back and providing insight--or ramblings, depending on your perspective--on the political/athletic/whatever interests me events of the day.

Furthermore, my ability to comment on my own posts has been...curtailed, somehow.  I'm thinking here of prospective and, inexplicably, impossible comments in response to "Ed Darrell" on the topic of DDT.  I had no idea that such inoffensive concepts as the fact that light indoor spraying of DDT could save millions of lives from malaria or that DDT has not been demonstrated to be a carcinogen--and it certainly has not--would be responded to with such force and vehemence.  (With a little added Big Tobacco accusation thrown in!  Delightful.)  Another round of DDT links to follow.

Anyway, I'll throw in a little bonus comment about Sarah Palin:  She's likeable.  I like her.  There.

Someday, Maybe They'll Find That Wonderful "Generic Democrat"

But so far, they're stuck with trivial and/or unintelligent people.  Thank heaven.

Obama's in trouble.  After the national convention, a presidential candidate ought to see a 10-15 point bounce...nothing.  Not only that, but McCain's surprise pick of Sarah Palin, an energetic corruption-buster and staunch social conservative from Wasilla, Alaska, has been earning praise from the conservative base--and, just as importantly, millions in campaign contributions.  The pick upstaged the DNC and started the excitement of the GOP convention early.  Obama has already looked seriously wishy-washy and trite in a one-on-one debate with McCain; the Arizonan maverick is clearly a better debater than the Chicago machine pol.  And in one nationally televised debate, the feisty and intelligent Palin will reveal Biden to be an old, establishment blowhard and an intellectual lightweight.  The Obama campaign is looking more and more like failed Democratic campaigns past, whereas the McCain camp has energy and the promise of serious reform.  For the second time in as many presidential elections, a Democrat will speak on the first day of the Republican National Convention.

Everything's coming up roses for the GOP.

The Battle of Saddleback Church

The two major presidential candidates recently participated in a debate hosted by the enormous and influential Saddleback Church in California and moderated by its ultra-famous pastor, the author of the heavily-merchandised The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren.  Byron York has two good columns on the subject, here and here.  I'd like to comment on another, poorer, column, which can be found here.

Joan Walsh's monstrosity bears the title, "Are We Now an Officially Christian Nation?"  Like, are we now officially using the word "officially" a bit too loosely?

I marvel at Barack Obama's courage going into the lion's den of evangelical Saddleback Church, where the membership skews Republican.  I truly believe his kind of leadership will be crucial in moving the country forward after the polarizing Bush administration.

Pay attention, by the way, to what Joan Walsh apparently considers courageous, and what she does not.  Anyway, the concept of the "polarizing Bush administration" has always been somewhat laughable to me, especially considering his early, concerted, rebuffed efforts at reaching out--think No Child Left Behind, which was widely panned at the time by conservatives as pandering to the Senate Democrats such as Ted Kennedy, whose partnership was critical to the bill's passage.  But no matter; after all, according to the Left's definition of "bipartisan"--"We all agree that liberals are actually right"--Bush's would be a fairly polarizing presidency.  And that's just about the only way Barack Obama's presidency wouldn't be.

McCain occasionally does semi-courageous political jaunts--he went on an American poverty tour this spring, but when nobody was looking, at the height of the Obama-Clinton race, and (more to his credit) he visited the NAACP last month.

Oh, and McCain was kinda-sorta courageous when he visited the NAACP.  And he, erm, didn't do it as a political stunt.  But those guys'll only make TV ads that suggest Republican politicians are personally responsible for lynchings; the evangelicals are just vicious!

Walsh plays up his being "comfortable talking about his Christian faith."  All right, but then:

On the other hand, that bothered me a little bit too.  I'm not sure why Obama voluntarily sat down for a nationally televised conversation about his private religious faith with a relatively conservative Christian leader, as though that's a reasonable station of the cross, so to speak, for a major American presidential candidate.  There's no doubt Rick Warren's congregation has done good things on social justice issues, especially AIDS, but Warren has made no secret of his extreme views on abortion and gay rights (as well as his support for the Iraq War).  Obama visiting the church, speaking there?  Smart politics.  Attending a nationally televised forum, almost as big a deal as a debate, at such a church?  I think that was wrong.

Where do I start here?  Of course it bothered her; she clearly finds Christians, on the whole, distasteful.  (Unless, of course, they can be Christians who, like Obama, use their religion mostly as a vehicle for liberal politics.)  Beyond that, Walsh not only doesn't understand why a presidential candidate should take part in a debate held by evangelical Christians; she thinks it was "wrong." (!)  Wrong to address a major group of voting citizens, wrong to allow evangelical Christianity, as an institution, to influence our government.  Clearly, the only institutions that should be allowed to influence politics are liberal special-interest lobbying groups like the NAACP, NARAL, moveon.org, and so on.  You know, people who don't hold "extreme views" (read: views that are different from mine).  And if Walsh thinks that opposing the defining-down of marriage and believing that life begins at conception are "extreme" views, she's either been spending too much time on the Left Coast or watching too much TV.  As far as Obama's "private" religious views, we might remember Russell Kirk and the fact that all political disagreements are, at their root, theological disagreements.  We might also remember C.S. Lewis:  "No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.'"

Oh, by the way, Walsh thinks Warren treated McCain much better than Obama.  He kept saying "mhmm" and "um-hm" during Obama's answers!  For a member of the mainstream media, you'd think she'd have seen bias before; of course, I suppose seeing isn't perceiving.  She probably never noticed it until this savage example of partisanship.

The next paragraph is simply so trite, so filled with unabashed vapidity, that I find myself unable to post it all at once.  It must be enjoyed bite by bite.  "I thought he used this opportunity...to hammer home his worldview and the specific policies he knows he and Saddleback members have in common--from the Supreme Court justices he wouldn't reappoint to arguing his crazy hawkish view on the Russia-Georgia conflict."  In the first place, are we twelve, Ms. Walsh?  "Crazy hawkish"?  Beyond the teeny-bopper lingo, I guess it just doesn't take much to be a "hawkish" these days, considering that McCain's response to Russia's invasion of Georgia is to...I don't know, say it was wrong?  Oh, and he wants to "persuade the Russian government to end violence permanently and withdraw its troops from Georgia," place "international monitors" in "war-torn areas," and "ensure that emergency aid lifted by air and sea is delivered."  Quit harshing my conquest!

"My reaction to that creepy pandering was, simply, oy.  But the crowd loved it."  Does it really amount to "creepy pandering" when a presidential candidate says something the crowd agrees with?  Ms. Walsh does know that, despite the likely political composition of her own personal group of friends, there are people out there who sincerely believe differently from her, doesn't she?  Those people voting Republican aren't just hoaxes perpetrated by the military-industrial complex, represented primarily by Halliburton.  (But how could such people live in a civilized state, like California?  Indeed.)

I shudder even to place the next one on my blog, but I must press on:  "He played his prisoner of war role to great advantage as well."  Let's remember the "courage" of Barack Obama, at which Ms. Walsh "marveled."  What exactly is her definition of courage, anyway?  Simply being someone with whom she agrees?  John McCain wasn't an actor in a movie in which he was a prisoner of war.  Nor was his camp like Bridge Over the River Kwai or Stalag 13.  He was actually tortured.  Ms. Walsh, unlike you or Barack Obama, the most difficult period of his life wasn't the WGA writer's strike, or that time there was a really long line at Starbucks.  I'm not saying that makes him a better presidential candidate; I'm not really saying anything about him.  But this statement reveals not only Ms. Walsh's fatal unseriousness, but also an unseriousness that plagues society in general.  Despite recent complaints, we have more material prosperity than has ever existed in the world; very few can remember a time when things were much worse.  It's no wonder, then, that people forget what it took to generate and sustain this prosperity.

"I'm sure he did himself a little bit of a favor just by going.  We'll see.  The Jesus I believe in wishes he hadn't felt he had to, but maybe that's just me."  Ms. Walsh, I suspect that it's more than just "maybe":  The Jesus you believe in, evidently, is just you.

Kill The Messenger!

The great Thomas Sowell writes today on National Review Online about the lack of economic knowledge driving Obamania:

In an election campaign in which not only young liberals, but also some people who are neither young nor liberals, seem absolutely mesmerized by the skilled rhetoric of Barack Obama, facts have receded even further into the background than usual.

Sowell, as a distinguished economist, is understandably offended by this proclivity of mature democracies. The man (the legend!) exposes some of Obama's worst statements about economic policy, including those regarding the capital-gains tax and minimum wage laws.

Several comments about facts. We live in a post-modern age in which truth is, to put it mildly, not what it once was. The mass of people are barely able anymore to see propositions, especially those regarding politics and religion, as true or false; rather, they are mean or not mean. They make us feel good, or they make us feel bad. Perhaps more precisely, they make us feel what we want to feel--bad when we want to feel guilty, and good when we want to feel good. Obama comes out on the advantageous side of this: he makes us feel the appropriate amount of guilt for our country's racial sins, but also makes us feel good that his election can absolve us. Rhetorically, his waffling and distortion are not so much due to his arrogance as to his insistence on simple pandering--he can do nothing but reflect everyone's passions, and so he comes out on every side of everything. The man is all sentimentality, and no substance.

He isn't a liar, like Bill Clinton; he simply values propositional truth at nothing. Feelings are everything. Because the basic tenet of rationalism--that man is ruled by reason--is false, this seems the inevitable end of democracy. Observe our current election, pitting a Third Way, know-nothing, feel-good charlatan against a Third Way, know-nothing, tough-guy charlatan. People don't want to believe that governance is about balancing goals; instead, they want to believe in easy, low-cost solutions to problems. Too often, the hidden costs of the actions thence undertaken are in the categories of property rights and individual liberties, non-sentimental concepts that do nothing more than provide the foundation for civilization.

We set ourselves a dangerous precedent. Hard truths are immovable objects, and civilization is not an unstoppable force.

Obamacons

Thomas Sowell pens an article today on RealClearPolitics about the appearance of "Obamacons":  Conservatives who are voting Obama this November.  Here's a bit:

Partly what is going on is that, in recent years, the Congressional Republicans in general-- and Senator John McCain in particular-- have so alienated so many conservatives that some of these conservatives are like a drowning man grasping at a straw.

The straw in this case is Obama's recent "refining" of his position on a number of issues, as he edges toward the center, in order to try to pick up more votes in November's general election.

Understandable as the reactions of some conservatives may be, a straw is a very unreliable flotation device.

It seems to me that many evangelicals of late have decided to vote for the candidate who makes them feel the best, the one who talks the best game.  Mike Huckabee did in the primary, and won their thorough support.  Barack Obama may well make inroads among evangelicals, because talking--well, not off the cuff, but in general--is what he's best at.  Feeling has too much replaced thought in evangelical circles, and this is as true in politics as anywhere else.  Childish action has been mistaken for childlike faith.

If anyone could tell me what Barack Obama's views are on, say, Iraq, Iran, entitlement programs, or taxation, I'd be surprised.  (And Obama himself is included in "anyone.")  Failing that, does anyone know what he's done in the last two years in the Senate, or in his years in the Illinois state senate before that?  Failing that, does anyone know what his associations were outside of politics?  When all these data are taken together, it paints a picture, not of a devout Christian dedicated to a God-honoring politics, but a left-wing secular radical with a plan to remake America along watered-down Marxist lines.  That such a man could gain the support of any conservatives at all is a testament to the power a politician has when he simply makes someone feel good.

Obama's New Regime Of Morality

Hello, gentle readers!  I'm back after a hectic Independence Day weekend, bringing you all the news that I cared to comment about.

And here's the result:  PowerLine's Paul Mirengoff writes today about Barack Obama's plan to inculcate civic pride in our nation's youth.  That is, use the federal government's coercive power to force high school students to do 50 hours of local community service and college students to do 100 hours.

Mr. Mirengoff's comments are excellent.  (So go read them!)  But, naturally, I'd like to add a few things.

A community service requirement strikes me as a secular way of using the state to enforce morality.  Research also shows that heavy drinking and divorce lead to social problems, and that attending church regularly is correlated with greater happiness.  Should the former be banned, the latter required?  Of course not!  The logic is flawed.

And it is flawed because you cannot legislate morality that is not already in the national character; otherwise, it becomes a cynical parody.  This is precisely the case with community service requirements now.  As Mr. Mirengoff points out, it is difficult to define "community service" exactly, and in my experience in high school, those who don't care will find ways to accumulate hours while doing hardly anything.  Additionally, requiring students to do community service to graduate will turn "volunteer" work into a paid job, for all intents and purposes.  Combined, these two effects will actually cheapen community service to the point of cynicism.  This is often the result of coercive moral legislation:  obedience to that moral principle becomes a point of self-interest rather than real morality.

Instead of engaging in hasty, ill-considered federal projects, we need to think about the societal forms and institutions that foster good citizenship and responsibility.

Obamessiah Watch: Talk Radio "Delusions"

Camille Paglia today called out talk radio for their delusions about Barack Obama:

Meanwhile, conservative talk radio, which I have been following with interest
for almost 20 years, has become a tornado alley of hallucinatory holograms of
Obama. He's a Marxist! A radical leftist! A hater of America! He's "not that
bright"; he can't talk without a teleprompter. He knows nothing and has done
less. His wife is a raging mass of anti-white racism. It's gotten to the point
that I can hardly listen to my favorite shows, which were once both informative
and entertaining. The hackneyed repetition is numbing and tedious, and the overt
character assassination is ethically indefensible. Talk radio will lose its
broad audience if it continues on this nakedly partisan path.

If only, Camille, if only. Hey, wait, she didn't present any argument to refute what talk radio is saying here! Let's look at the evidence.


--Marxist. Hmm, well, he did basically tell a group of San Francisco progressives that right-leaning proletarians were suffering from false consciousness. Probably just a coincidence...

--Radical leftist. Okay: He was in charge of the Harvard Law Review--not exactly a bulwark of political moderation--was a community activist for the radical leftist group ACORN, has a longtime mentor who ran a black separatist church, and offers the most sweepingly leftist platform in the history of American politics.

--A hater of America. Well, I've never actually heard talk radio claim this, so Camille's telling a little fib here. Although it is a little puzzling why Obama would want to "reshape" a country he sees as "great." But that's really neither here nor there. Now, Michelle Obama is a different story: she claims she was never proud of America before Barack Obama looked like he might win the nomination, and that America is "downright mean." Tough stuff, kids.

--"not that bright." Okay, maybe there's something there. However, it's not too much of a stretch to think that a guy who talks about an asthmatic needing a "breathalyzer" and then corrects himself and says "inhalator" might not be the sharpest Parisian in the commune. Add in the fact that he claims he managed to travel to fifty-seven states during his campaign, and you have to conclude that if this man had an "R" next to his name you know the legitimacy of his entirely Ivy League education would be called into question.

--the teleprompter thing...well, see before. Oh, I forgot the "My grandmother is a typical white person" comment. Inspiring!

--"knows nothing"--hey, I just remembered the part where he claimed he was born because of Selma, which happened two years after his birth. And didn't he claim that his uncle liberated Auschwitz while he was serving in Germany in World War II, even though Auschwitz is in Poland and was liberated by the Russians? Anyway, yeah, she's got a point here, I'm sure.

--"done less." Well, umm...what HAS he done? I guess voting party line is an accomplishment. Of a sort. Oh yeah, he managed to beat carpetbagger Alan Keyes in a Senate race after his first opponent was caught in a shocking sex scandal and forced out of his candidacy. Must've been tough.

--Ahh, Michelle Obama. Well, we don't really know a lot about her, except that she's not the biggest fan of the United States historically and she thinks we're all a bunch of meanies. There's a rumor that someone has a videotape of her railing against whites at that hilarious church they attended for nigh on twenty years, but just rumors. She wrote a pretty radical thesis in college, from what I hear, but that was in college. So who really knows? In all seriousness, this is Paglia's only potential good point here.

--"overt character assassination." Hehe. Is it character assassination if someone didn't have much to begin with? Or if it's just reporting on character suicide?

--"ethically indefensible." Yeah! No bad-mouthing the messiah. He's the messiah.

Grudgingly, McCain

If you look back at the entire run of this blog--maybe four and a half months--you will find that I was not always the prospective McCain-votin' blogger that I am now. In fact, I wrote scathingly about the man in several posts. I seriously contemplated rebelling and voting third party or not at all. But back then, I wasn't a college graduate, and now I am, and with that--apparently--has come maturity. McCain's got my vote this November.

That's not to say that McCain has gotten better, or my principles have changed. He has my grudging support in the same way that Eisenhower and Nixon had the reluctant endorsement of National Review in their times. Today, there is no single publication that has the influence among consevatives that National Review did then--which is, of course, a good thing. But some conservative publications have been less than responsible in their treatment of this presidential race. Ron Paul got a lot of traction and gained a small, loyal following of the same extremist, right-wing isolationists that William F. Buckley kicked out of the movement half a century ago. Certain blogs--admittedly, 0nce including my own--have kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism against McCain, even as he has become the clear Republican candidate and even as he will clearly face Barack Obama, the most radical leftist ever to gain the Democratic nomination.

John McCain has some views that are extremely distasteful to conservative ears. He wants government to take immediate, costly action to solve a global warming that no one knows is coming or what its effects might be. He still thinks his unconstitutional campaign finance reform bill was a good idea. His attempts at passing a disguised amnesty bill for illegal aliens are well-documented. He even has the funny idea that the salaries of corporate executives are somehow the people's business. (Mac: The stockholders can pay their executives whatever they want. It's their money. For now, anyway.)

On the other hand, he's light-years ahead of Barack Obama and his platform full of the same old liberal "solutions" and, somehow, also full of "change." Even more than that, McCain has some policy plans that provide a good first step toward a decline in the size and scope of government. He will certainly be better on judges than Obama, who would certainly nominate the sort of activist judges that have been the Left's major mechanism for advancing their agenda during the last decade. McCain has also not shown the sort of naivete and downright ignorance Obama has in discussing foreign affairs.

Although the principles he espoused were timeless, I believe that we are reaching the end of the Reagan Era, politically. His landmark election in 1980 reorganized American politics, just as Roosevelt's election did in 1932. John McCain is not quite the visionary one wants representing one's party at such a time, but he can be a good delaying tactic while we find someone who is. Moreover, we need to refocus from stopping the long march of increasing government and start developing strategies for shrinking it and presenting to the American people a vision of a freer nation.

But this sort of progress will only come about through the Republican Party, and we cannot fool ourselves into thinking otherwise. Philosophies are not electoral forces, but party organizations are. Just as the Reaganites did in the Seventies, we need to work to promote real conservatism, a real agenda of freedom, in the party that will have us. And sometimes that means holding your nose and punching the ticket for Gerald Ford.

A Vision For The Future

Barack Obama has vision. Well, that's not precisely true; he has articulated a vision. It is a vision of an America remade, reborn, reinvigorated. An America without inequality and without boundaries and limits. Most of all, an America unified. It all sounds very nice, but like everything politicians say--and Barack Obama has been revealed to be nothing more than a politician, shady associations and all, and a radical one at that--this vision deserves scrutiny.

One part of this vision is equality. Equality is a founding principle of this country, but it has several different meanings. This distinction is nowhere more important, philosophically, than in the splitting of modern "liberalism," which favors equality of outcome and equality between groups, and liberalism classically conceived, which favors equality of individuals before the law. These separate conceptions--which both sides conceive of as being obvious--have never been on more open display than in the recent bans on racial preferences/affirmative action passed in California and Michigan. Obama is a standard-issue modern liberal on this issue, mostly emphasizing differences between rich and poor. In order to serve this conception of equality, the loser is to be liberty; more income will be confiscated in order to redistribute it to others.

A second characteristic of Obama's vision is that it is a moral vision of politics. In this vision, Americans will treat their bodies better, other people better, their environment better, their neighbors better. In terms of health, this will mean, inevitably, state attacks on activities that harm people's health, mostly unpopular things like smoking and overeating. (Not drinking or marijuana, though, as two examples, mostly for political reasons.) It will mean mandates against activities perceived as "harming" the environment--whatever that means at the time. It will mean treating the world as though all national leaders, however they came to power and whatever their policies are, have concerns that are as legitimate as our own, even--and especially--when they don't. Finally, helping other people is the sort of morality that most Americans can line up behind. However, the question of whether that is a proper job for the government is a legitimate question--though it won't be treated that way. And Obama's vision is for an increased governmental role in charity. In all these cases, the loser--again--is liberty.

This brings us to the most frightening part, to me, of Obama's vision, which is unity. Unity, again, is nice, but what kind of unity is it? There is partisan unity, and there is bipartisan unity. Bipartisan unity is when members of the two major philosophical persuasions can agree on something; partisan unity is when members of one philosophical persuasion all agree on something. Obama's, clearly, is not a bipartisan unity. And why not? His moral vision cannot be disagreed with, at the risk of sounding unsympathetic to those who are less fortunate. And this is the danger: that those who belong to one of the dominant philosophical traditions will actually be ostracized in the name of unity. In fact, this is just what is happening whenever Obama shoots back at McCain for criticizing him. That is a perilous road.

Here, again, the loser is freedom of thought and debate--if not in code, at least in the social realm. This is the defining characteristic of Barack Obama's vision: we have certain moral values, and these will be emphasized at the expense of freedom. In the light of the last hundred years of history, this should be absolutely terrifying.

The Misuse-ity of Hope!

Wow, I was gone from blogging for a long time! Okay, back to business.

Since Barack Obama has now won the nomination, prepare for a potential series of posts--especially if I feel like it--about the man against whom I will be campaigning vociferously. I promise, I won't talk about how his supporters regard him as the second coming of Jesus Christ himself. Well, no, the other thing...the opposite. Right, I WILL be talking about that.

Sort of.

Hope is a good thing, depending on whom you talk to. It motivates us to accomplish goals. (On the other hand, it can disappoint us bitterly if it was unfounded in the first place.) Hope speaks to all of us, because all of us have ambitions and dreams. Barack Obama knows that hope is important to Americans in particular; we are a hopeful people. Obama was attacked for invoking Ronald Reagan during the campaign, but one can understand why: Reagan, too, effectively based his presidency on hope for America's future at a time when that future looked anything but bright. Moreover, people vote for the person, not the issues, and what better person to illustrate hope than a black man raised by a single white mother? (Beyond that, who better to appeal to liberals than a private-school-educated Harvard and Columbia grad who was a community organizer for the radical group ACORN and attended a radical black separatist church for twenty years? But I digress.) Republican opponent John McCain, on the other hand, is an old white man from a long line of high-ranking military officers, and a Vietnam War veteran to boot. Ho-hum.

But hope alone isn't all that great; it has to be in something. Something worthwhile--hopefully. (Ha! Erm.) Ronald Reagan's was a hope in people--ordinary people, helping other people in their neighborhoods and beyond. His was a dream of the potential of individual Americans participating in their communities, in their families, exercising their freedom to help their fellow man. He rightly recognized that state involvement in this process curbs that community involvement when he said that the most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." History bears this out. Most people know about the Lion's Club; perhaps fewer people remember the Oddfellows, the Elks Lodge, and others. Lion's Club does excellent work helping the blind, but it--and the others--used to be more than that: they were voluntary associations to bring people in the community together and help its members when they were in need. With welfare and other redistribution programs, these organizations no longer had a serious purpose. That's just one example in a larger story.

Barack Obama's hope is that of a world improved, reshaped by the state. Before you tell me that "reshaped" is an exaggeration of his words, read this column by Jonah Goldberg, containing this Obama gem: "This was the moment--this was the time--when we came together to remake this great nation..." (Does he think it's a great nation, or does he want to remake it? Or does he want to remake a nation that's already great? These questions answer themselves one way or another.) He insists that he dreams of America coming together, of Americans helping each other. But if you think he means that he trusts Americans to give voluntarily of their time and money, think again. Instead, he means to take the sphere of morality out of Main Street, USA, and move it to the office buildings of Washington, D.C. That is the fundamental mistake of modern liberalism: it means to make morality an issue of governance, rather than of private will.

This is its appeal to many Christians, and its downfall when compared to actual Biblical teaching. Christians rightly believe that their duty is to help the sick, the poor, the needy: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world" (James 1:27, NIV). But just as Christianity emphasizes loving those around us, so too it emphasizes a separation between the Church and the state: "Then he said to them, 'Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's'" (Matthew 22:21b, NIV). At question here was the payment of taxes, but it also gives us an important principle for understanding the relationship between Christianity and the state. If charity is in Caesar's sphere, then by all means empower him to conduct charity. But if it belongs rather to God, then Caesar must not get hold of it. The state is not, nor can it be, an instrument of grace. As Jonah Goldberg wrote in Liberal Fascism, politics cannot be redemptive. Anyone who tells you otherwise is truly a totalitarian; for this reason, hope in the state's ability to change the world was central to Nazism, Fascism, Communism, and Roosevelt's New Deal.

The idea does not make us feel good, and therefore does not often get much traction, but politics must be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, whether the candidate in question is a war hero, a powerful speaker, a Baptist minister, or an actor. Government cannot be a realm of hope for us; indeed, such an idea could not be more terrifying. It is the ultimate primrose path, taken with the highest intentions, to a totalitarian hell. In the Aeneid, the prophet Laocoon, who warned the Trojans not to bring the horse into their city--it was here, in fact, that Vergil coined the phrase, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts"--was an unsavory character, but he was right. Likewise, beware politicians proclaiming hope. Hope is not theirs to proclaim.

Whither The GOP: Positives and Negatives

Yuval Levin wrote a piece for Commentary recently, entitled, "Not Quite Dead," in response to an obituary written by George Packer of The New Yorker for a political philosophy--you can guess which one. Here's an interesting bit:

Let me suggest two things he might have noted. First of all, the kind of
intellectual turmoil and self-searching he cites would be almost unimaginable on
the left, today or at most points in the past half century. Conservatism is an
intellectual movement in a way that American liberalism generally hasn’t been.
For a long time, American liberals could draw their ideas from the European
Left, and from the socialist experiment. The fall of communism—which certainly
ended an era for the Right, and left many conservatives searching for a clear
purpose—was far more of a challenge to the Left, and one the left has yet to
recover from, or even fully engage. Clintonian triangulation helped pass the
time for a while in the 90’s, and anti-Bushism has helped since, but what is the
worldview underlying Obama’s and Clinton’s platforms today? The relative absence
of heated arguments about that question on the left is not a sign of strength.

As Jonah Goldberg would point out--what? I'm reading his book, alright?--modern liberals (i.e. progressives) would rather not probe their philosophical foundations, since it has a genealogy that goes back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution, and more recently Karl Marx, with the discomfiting philosophical off-shoots of fascism and communism. Moreover, progressivism is all about improving mankind, both in its external environment and internal character. Thus, they have no need for a political philosophy beyond this; there is need only for science to tell us what government ought to do, and do it. Fascism, Communism, and the Wilsonian experiment, the New Deal, and the Great Society are all experiments toward this goal.

Conservatism--that is, classical liberalism--on the other hand, is uniquely an intellectual and philosophical entity. Unlike progressivism, it has always been fed through discourse and argumentation rather than action. This is undoubtedly a time in which progressives see the door open for bold new experimentation in government problem-solving, but with the continuation of conservative stalwarts such as National Review, Commentary, and The Weekly Standard, as well as the burgeoning blogosphere and new and important thinkers, it is also a time of intellectual rebirth for classical liberalism.

Take heart; here are a few past presidential elections that featured only progressives, after which liberalism lived on:

1912 (Progressive Party endorsed Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson ran as the progressive hero of Princeton)
1916 (Charles Evans Hughes had a progressive track record, Wilson was Wilson)
1928 (revered progressive Herbert Hoover won this, no politcal conservative he)
1932 (Hoover wasn't going fast enough for progressives anymore)
1936 (Republican Alf Landon supported much of the New Deal)
1944 (Thomas Dewey accepted most of the New Deal)
1948 (Thomas Dewey vs Truman)
1952 (Eisenhower continued the New Deal, and Adlai Stevenson was a famed progressive leader)
1956 (see before)
1960 (leftist Nixon vs militarist Kennedy)
1968 (Nixon vs revered progressive Humphrey)
1972 (McGovern. Nuff said.)
1976
1988
1992
1996
2000
2004

Okay, that leaves 1920's Harding, 1924's Coolidge, 1940's Wendell Wilkie, 1964's Barry Goldwater, and 1980's and 1984's Ronald Reagan. Harding was philosophically better than Wilson and certainly left the country in better shape, but hardly distinguished himself. Coolidge basically represented the American resentment toward progressivism that lingered after Wilson's suppression of domestic dissent. Thereafter, Wendell Wilkie managed to win nomination only because of Republicans' distrust of its party's more distinguished but dovish aspirants. 1964 was a watershed moment, as the first truly classical liberal nominee in forty years managed to become the Republican nominee. The New Conservatism, by now the intellectually robust movement it is today, then gave us Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Some leading lights have faded, but new ones are coming. Until then, keep standing up to those who would take away your freedoms.

Can't Touch This

Obama cannot be touched, apparently.

It's not okay to hint that Barack Obama is an appeaser, even if you're really suggesting that about Jimmy Carter. Even if it actually makes a good point.

It's not okay to say that Barack Obama won't do a good job of protecting the nation. That would be an unacceptable personal attack.

There are other examples--including the racism column from The New Republic that I linked to a few days ago--but the fact is that any attack on a black politician (as long as he's a Democrat) is either a thinly-veiled appeal to Americans' supposed subconscious racism or an irresponsible lowering of the level of discourse, even when the attack is a legitimate issue.

This isn't a new politics; it's the old politics of manipulating public opinion by trying to form a certain image of yourself and a certain image of your opponent. Barack Obama is fashioning himself as the candidate who is above it all, who can work on a bipartisan basis (to enact strongly partisan legislation, shhh!), and, on a deeper level, who can absolve us all of guilt about the racial discrimination in our past. John McCain, on the other hand, represents the old way of politics (hehe, he's old!): personal attacks--how dare he say I'm less than fully qualified to run for president! for example--and the like.

Okay, end rant. My next post will be the first in a series, hopefully, about the future of the Republican Party. You stay classy, small number of readers.

Choose Your Oppressed Minority

One of the delightful features of the current Democratic primary is the battle between Democratic gender pandering and race pandering. Two columns today highlight the issue.

First, The New Republic's John Judis writes about implicit racism against blacks hurting Obama in the Democratic primary and the general election. Here's a bit of it:

What role, exactly, will that be? No one knows for sure, but the field of political psychology offers some clues. In recent years, scholars have been combining experimental findings with survey data to explain how race has remained a factor in American elections--even when politicians earnestly deny that it plays any part at all. In 2001, Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg summarized this research in a pathbreaking book, The Race Card. Her provocative analysis is hotly debated and far from conclusive; political psychology, after all, is not a hard science. Still, her ideas and those of other academics help to shed light on what has happened so far in the primaries and what might unfold once Obama wraps up the nomination. Their findings suggest that racism remains deeply embedded within the psyche of the American electorate--so deep that many voters may not even be aware of their own feelings on the subject. Yet, while political psychology offers a sobering sense of the difficulties that lie ahead for Obama, it also offers something else: lessons for how the country's first viable black presidential candidate might overcome the obstacles he faces.

You can read it yourself--though it's very long--but I can sum it up for you. Before 1970, there was explicit racism on bipartisan lines. After that, there was mostly only implicit racism all from Republicans...why, after all, did they oppose busing and affirmative action? Now, all Republican politicians that attempt to portray a Democratic opponent in a negative light are using racial code words to exploit voters' unconscious prejudices. Barack Obama will have a difficult time overcoming those Midwestern rednecks who don't even know they're racist. (By the way, how come those white blue-collar voters don't see how in-touch the Democrats are?) We've heard it all before, but this time it's backed up by university researchers whose tenured jobs are based entirely on the idea that blacks are systematically oppressed and prove it using experiments with severely flawed methodology and the useful recourse of calling your detractors racists.

What do the feminists have by way of response? Marie Cocco, writing for RealClearPolitics, decries the sexism that she says has ruined the Clinton campaign. She writes about all the things she won't miss, providing a hilarious litany of past anti-Hillary shenanigans. Then, this:

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't uttered a word of public outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Here's the gist of this shorter article: Pundits and politicians are using sexist images like a scolding mother or a nagging wife to exploit voters' implicit biases, and they're getting a pass for it. In fact, they're betraying Hillary Clinton, a distinguished stateshuman who has done a lot for make benefit of glorious party of Democrats. (Instead, her campaign is not success, and she will be execute.) The truth of the matter, of course, is that the Democrats are understandably sick of the Clintons' politics of personal destruction--a tactic which, unlike what Dems would have you believe, was perfected by the pair's machine during the Nineties, long before the name Monica Lewinsky became widely known. But the dark secret that the DNC doesn't want you to know is this: the Democrats have long based their tactics on pandering to demographic groups, and they think they can afford to offend women, but not blacks. They don't think feminists will riot at the convention, the way an Al Sharpton might. (Those racists! Or are they sexists?)

This is the true greatness of this primary season. Clinton and Obama barely differ in their policy stances. They're both richer-than-rich folks who grew up as children of privilege, now trying to use their gender and race identities to appeal to regular Americans. And, magically, it's tearing the Democratic party apart.

Here's to you, Operation Chaos.

At Least The Dems Make The Trains Run On Time

Captain Ed Morrissey--he'll always be "Captain Ed" to me, by the way--writes in his post "The Nanny State, Explained" about some of Hillary Clinton's more frightening comments that have been overlooked. Here's the gem that he notes: "We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can't take a sick child to the doctor?" His response:

I just finished watching the excellent HBO series John Adams last Sunday. It tells the story of our nation’s birth and the sacrifice many of our founders made to create a free nation. They wanted a nation with government limited to just enough power to keep the peace and defend the nation. They didn’t conceive of the idea that a free people would trade their fortunes and freedom to create a government that would dictate choices to them in a manner far more egregious than George III.

*nodding* Actually, freedom meant a great deal to a large number of people who did not have access to the sort of medical care available to even the poorest in this nation. It meant enough that they fought and died in the war that killed the largest percentage of Americans ever against a people to whom they were intimately related. But it seems that the days are gone when the majority of Americans strongly believed there was anything more out there than life and comfort. And with the passing of those ideals, the courage of a nation is passing, as well.

Gone are the days of "ask not," replaced by the days of "you deserve." (What do people really deserve, anyway? Of course it will be more popular to enact policies based on the idea that you deserve everything the world has to offer; the only problem is that it isn't true.) The party of John F. Kennedy died with him; the commitment to freedom is no longer a bipartisan effort.

The Company You Keep

We do it all the time, sometimes unconsciously. If you want to know more about somebody, you look at his friends. Whom one surrounds oneself with is important, says a lot about you. And I don't think that anybody should come under as much scrutiny in this regard as a president or prospective president of the United States.

Suddenly, Democrats disagree. And no wonder: Barack Obama has been shown to have friendly ties to so many vile, America-hating radical leftists that he's being legitimately called "out of touch" by a woman who once embarrassingly affected what she must have considered a "black accent" to appeal to African American voters. Alan Colmes last night tried to suggest that Republicans were using only a few relationships in the Obamessiah's life to characterize the man as a whole, then went on to talk about how he grew up in Kansas. Newt Gingrich immediately pointed out that Barack Obama grew up in an expensive private school in Hawaii, had a brief stint in boarding school in Indonesia, went to (I think) Columbia and then Harvard Law, then attended a black separatist church in South Chicago and became a state senator. His relationships with the racist, anti-American Jeremiah Wright and with the socialist, anti-American Bill Ayers aren't outliers, they are part of a pattern.

But it's no wonder that he won't seem out of touch to people in college. To them, it will seem mainstream, seem like common sense. Sadly, he also won't seem out of touch to a large portion of the Democratic electorate, who don't see America as specially good or extraordinary. Hopefully voters do realize that Barack Obama does not share their belief, and mine, that America is an exceptional nation in the history of the world. Judging by some recent poll results, I think that they will.