The Sophistry

As is obviously, I’ve been blogging less and less on this site.  Real life has a way of interrupting blog life.

Add to that the fact that there are now a couple of good conservative political sites out there where I could participate in discussion without my own blog, and my decision is settled.

I will be putting all my random thoughts going forward on Redstate.com as a diary/blog post.  Someday, I may revisit resurrecting The Sophistry, but for now, consider me a Redstater.

-TS

In repeating a theme that has been sounded before both by himself and by the likes of Zell Miller, Sen. Lieberman takes the Democratic Party to task for abandoning its core foreign policy vision:

How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

He then takes Obama to task for his unwise statement that he would meet with various and sundry America-hating despots without precondition.

Many of us on the Right have heard this lament before, both from conservative Democrats and from Republicans who want politics to stop at the water’s edge.  The contemporary Democratic Party has lost its way, lost its soul, and simply cannot be taken seriously in vital matters of security and foreign policy.

I would have thought the stinging defeat in 2004 would have made the Democrats reconsider their shrill blame-America-first stance on foreign policy that has served them and the country so ill since the 1960’s.  But instead, the Democrats have become even more shrill, even less serious, and even more dangerously naive and self-hating.

Let’s take for granted that I believe defeating the Democrats in 2008 is in the vital national interest.

Is defeat in 2008 in the interest of the Democratic Party as well?  Would the nadir that a defeat by the Secular Messiah be the final straw that would force a self-examination from within?  Or would the Democrats become even more bitter, even more angry, and even more radical than they are today?  (The mind wonders at how much room there might be to go, pressed absolutely against the radical left as the Dems are today.)

If a defeat makes the grownups and the rank & file amongst Democrats begin to question their incredibly naive and destructive foreign policy positions, and reject once and for all the Vietnam contingent from within their midst, then I think that would be an incredibly positive development for them.  They might continue to be as liberal, as leftist, and as wrongheaded (in my view, of course) on matters domestic, while still joining with the Republicans in insisting on defending America, making moral judgments about the world, and defending freedom and our way of life without apology.  I and millions of other Americans might finally be able to decide that this or that candidate’s views on social security and same sex marriage are more in line with my own without worrying that he would immediately surrender the country to the Islamists and bring back the Bad Old Carterite Days.

-TS

Mark Steyn writes over at The Corner that the stakes for the Dems are much higher in this election than for the Republicans:

What’s the best that could happen to the Democrats?

Obama wins. History is made. In the dazzling sheen of his Kennedyesque glamour, no-one will dare obstruct his transformative reforms.

What’s the worst?

Hillary manages to deny him the nomination, or he gets it but loses on a McGovernite scale. Traumatic meltdown, bitterness, civil war in the party, etc, leading perhaps to the sundering of key elements of the Dem coalition.

Whereas for the Republicans, whether we win or lose with McCain, the party itself will continue its gradual decline as it is all out of ideological gas.

Well, I don’t know if the GOP is out of gas or not, but I do think there is another possibility for the Dems:

Obama wins. History is made. In the dazzling sheen of his Kennedyesque glamour, no-one will dare obstruct his transformative reforms.   He implements his policies.  American people wake up to realize that they have signed up for domestic socialism coupled to voluntary international emasculation, all to benefit the unions, special interest groups, and the race industry.  Iran finally develops nuclear weapons, the economy tanks under taxes and regulations not seen since the 70’s, and terrorists go on a rampage emboldened by the defeat of the Great Satan by Allah the Almighty.  Dems suffer catastrophic electoral defeat in 2010 and are forever tainted in American politics. 

So there is a third possible outcome after all.

-TS

Buried in the story about the brouhaha at U.Penn’s clashing endorsements, I find this telling quote:

Meanwhile, the joint Obama letter — signed by the student body presidents of Penn, Temple and Villanova Universities and Haverford College — takes pains to “note that we are speaking on behalf of our own views as prominent student leaders at our institutions, not on behalf of the student body or our student government,” even as it begins with the line, “We, the student government leaders of schools in the Philadelphia region….”

…

The letter’s argument hinges on Obama’s plans to expand access to higher education: “Barack’s plan to address the concern of financial assistance for higher education particularly resonates with us. His plans to simplify the application process for financial aid, expand Pell Grants to low-income students, streamline Direct Loans for students and create the American Opportunity Tax Credit are critical in truly making higher education available to any American who wants to go to college.”

Well then, apparently, everyone is a special interest group.  When privileged college students at Ivy League schools support a candidate because he promises them handouts from the federal trough… I suppose we’ve seen the beginning of the end for the American republic.

This is especially laughable coming from Penn, Haverford, and Villanova students who are paying roughly $30K a year to attend these private schools.  If they honestly believed that the lack of government handouts for students is the reason why people aren’t all going to college, then they ought to give up their places at these high-cost schools and hie themselves to the nearest State U, or better yet, nearest community college.

Privileged, pretentious jerkoffs prescribing government medication for the poor and underprivileged… that habit of nobility which Obama embodies so well is being taught well and early apparently in our schools.

-TS

Normally, one doesn’t expect to find things like this on a politically liberal technology-oriented site, but TED.com has a great presentation from Paul Koontz with photos and commentary about North Korea.  I highly recommend it.

Apparently, many of the photos were taken on the sly, as Paul and his family were watched pretty carefully.

I couldn’t help but wonder what images Paul would have brought back if he had been allowed, like an actual tourist, to go visit other parts of the country besides Pyongyang and other places westerners are allowed to travel.

-TS

For those who still don’t know (although I highly doubt that anyone is not aware of Michael Yon and yet is visiting this little blog on the corner of the web), Michael Yon is a national treasure as it comes to reporting facts from the ground in Iraq. Although many of us on the Right like Michael, I don’t get the sense from his writing/reporting that he’s particularly partisan about anything. He was pretty brutal in his criticism of the Bush Administration’s pre-surge strategy, and he continues to be critical about its actions (or lack thereof) in Afghanistan, for example.

I think he is one of the few sources of actual information, actual news, presented in as bias-neutral way as possible today. Those who get their news only from CNN, NYT, and the rest of the MSM simply do not have the facts necessary to form an educated opinion. Bookmark his site; visit it often.

He has a new book out, called Moment of Truth in Iraq.  I’ve ordered it, and I just want to encourage everyone to support Michael.  He’s providing a real service to Truth, Justice and the American Way.

-TS

A new friend of mine, who specializes in religion and politics, got into a discussion recently over lunch.  The question is to what extent a Christian’s religious beliefs ought to control his conduct in the secular world, especially as it pertains to work.

The example used is close to my day-job: Should a Christian marketer refuse to use the Beijing Olympics as a venue to market his product to the masses?

Her argument was that he absolutely should, and is in fact under moral compulsion as a Christian to do so.  Since China is a repressive community nation that is currently in the process of brutally cracking down on Tibetans, she reasons that it is un-Christian of a marketer to take advantage of the Beijing Olympics to promote his company’s products.  It is, in her view, supporting evil.

My take on it was a bit more… nuanced?  tortured?  Whatever.  But here it is.

I believe that the Christian marketer may refuse to “support evil” if it conflicts with his conscience, but if it does not, then there is no moral compulsion to refuse.   In fact, I would love to go work for Phillip Morris marketing Marlboros, and I consider myself a Christian.

How exactly does this work?

Well, my reasoning is that we live in the Real World, even as we hope for a different one.  Our thrownness is complete; we are each one of us in-der-Welt-Sein.  To reject promoting a product at Beijing Olympics, or refuse working for Phillip Morris as a result of Christian belief is, in my view, a rather selective application of the moral rule that one should not support evil.

Merely living in the world itself is supporting evil, because one cannot live in the world without becoming involved in, and supporting both actively and passively, all of the infrastructure and systems that make evil possible.  For example, banking: if you keep your money in a bank account, then your money is part of the global capital markets that may make loans to Phillip Morris, or to weapons manufacturers, or increase the M1 money supply such that drug dealers in Miami have more customers.  The minute you buy something to eat, you have made financial contributions not just to the store where you bought your sandwich, but to the farming cooperative, to Archer-Daniels Midland who made the corn starch, to the plastics manufacturer who made the wrap for the sandwich, to labor unions whose workers get paid by ADM and others, etc. etc. etc.

Not to mention payment of taxes, which Jesus himself discussed, that may be used to buy guns and tanks and nuclear weapons.

If Christians are forbidden from “supporting evil”, then we are essentially forbidden from living in this world.

I see no real qualitative difference between being the Director of Marketing coordinating a campaign for Phillip Morris, thereby “supporting evil”, and being a depositor at Citibank that loans money to Phillip Morris in order to expand cigarette production.  I only see degrees of separation and degrees of “guilt” if you will.  Therefore, an attempt to impose a moral standard that Christians-qua-Christians must follow is both invalid and impractical.

Of course, the trap here is that my standard can very well mean having no standards.  It is logically possible to jump from that to, “Well, in that case, I oughta continue my job as an armed robber” or “Seeing as how my job is to torture dissidents, and I’m thrown into this world, I might as well get with it.”

My take on that dilemma is a bit of a dodge: appeal to conscience.

Christ promised us that he would send the Holy Spirit as a counselor.  Granted, the Gospel of John is a wee bit on the ole mystical side, but even so, I know I haven’t actually communicated with a ghost or such since becoming Christian.  I do know, however, that I have a conscience.  I choose to equate my conscience as “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”  (John 14:26)

If something asked of me actually bothers my conscience, then I will refuse.  Torturing dissidents would bother me.  Armed robbery would bother my conscience.  Cheating on my taxes, as much as I hate to pay them, would bother my conscience — and I’m no fan of government.  I don’t do them.

Thing is, none of these things are a particularly onerous burden.  That I choose not to cheat on my taxes is not something I trouble myself about as an externally imposed moral compulsion by Christianity.  Rather, it is an internally embraced self-affirmation that also, I believe, affirms the moral teachings of Christianity.

I believe this to be at the heart of what I believe is Christian politics: the freedom from external compulsion, even from Christianity itself.  I believe this is 180-degrees from what Christian politics is today, so concerned with other people’s behavior and morality that it forgets the whole concept of salvation through grace.  This is a theme we may need to explore more later.

The wholesale rejection of the ontic Welt is impossible.  Selective enforcement of some moral code or another is just that: selective enforcement.  It is, therefore, arbitrary.  Rather than trying to increase morality, its arbitrary, unjust, selective enforcement itself creates an evil in the world.

This, I think, is the SoCon dilemma.  How to promote social conservatism, socially conservative Christian values, without becoming arbitrary, judgmental, evil people?

I think I have a suggestion, but that will have to wait till next time.

-TS

I just watched this incredible clip from Reason.TV

I can’t embed it on WordPress.com so you’ll just have to go see it for yourself.

Now… my crazy idea.

Dafydd at Big Lizards a while back spoke of a need for McCain to run this campaign as a transformative election:

Narrow victories like 2000 and 2004 do little to awaken people to the implicit failure of progressivism, and to the alternative philosophies out there… Capitalism, conservatism, and individual and family responsibility, as opposed to statism and “it takes a village (or a nation) to raise a child.” With an unorthodox candidate like John McCain, we have the opportunity to wrench this election out of the normal mode on the Republican side… and we’re fools if we don’t roll those dice.

This can either be an ordinary election — or a transformative one. We can choose to just kick the can down the road, or we can establish what Republicanism will mean for the next several decades. McCain is the gateway to 21st-century Republicanism; but like Moses, he can see but not enter the promised land. To make this election transformative, we need someone who exemplifies the future of the party… and the vice presidency is one good way to highlight such a person.

I know he probably means people like Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, and an Asian-American.   That makes eminent sense, although some want to save Jindal for the future, as he’s clearly a rising star in the GOP.

My crazy idea: How about Drew Carey?

I know he’s Hollywood; I know he gave money to Ron Paul.  I suspect some folks will have a fit if McCain named Carey as his running mate.

But he is a conservative — okay, a libertarian — in a town that isn’t known for them.  And he brings two things to the table that can help in 2008.

1.  He has an everyman appeal that will absolutely contrast with either Hillary or Obama.  For that matter, I think it counterbalances John McCain, American Hero.  The greatness of McCain’s personal history is a bit intimidating, and the man himself isn’t exactly warm and fuzzy.  Drew really humanizes the ticket.

2.  He can easily counter the “niceness” advantage that Obama has.  Leaving their policies aside, the Obama v. McCain boils down to the likable guy vs. cranky old man.  No one questions McCain on substance or gravitas.  Instead, people just think he’s an angry mean white guy.

Add in Carey’s obvious capability to use humor, to make fun of the ridiculous positions of the liberals, and you’ve got a potentially powerful combination.

Again, I know it’s a crazy idea.  But if we’re looking for a departure from the norm, to effectuate a transformative election… I really don’t think Drew Carey is completely out-of-this-world crazy.

-TS

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

-Inscription on the Statue of Liberty

Not much more to be said.

-TS

For some time now, I’ve been engaged in a running debate about the American Identity with some very smart thinkers on the topic, such as Paul Cella. One recent thread on Redstate.com led to a seeming consensus that the American identity, whatever else it may be, is nebulous and difficult to pin down. Another thread goes into more detail trying to define “American culture” that is worth reading.

I’ve been thinking about this topic for pretty much my entire conscious life. What is an American? What are the characteristics of Americanness?

I have a working hypothesis now:

Americanness is licentiousness.

That’s a different way of saying freedom, but the emphasis, I think, is useful. The dictionary definition of “licentious” is:

li·cen·tious

1. sexually unrestrained; lascivious; libertine; lewd.
2. unrestrained by law or general morality; lawless; immoral.
3. going beyond customary or proper bounds or limits; disregarding rules.

It is the third definition I find most interesting.

We often talk about freedom as being the ability to do things that others don’t approve of. Hence, Voltaire’s famous quote: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” The First Amendment is based almost entirely on this idea. Other nations and other cultures, clearly, have such ideas of freedom as well. But the United States, I submit, is unique.

In American culture, there is no difference between licentiousness and freedom, because there is no “customary or proper bounds or limits” that would distinguish between them.

The original thirteen English colonies may have shared a common culture in terms of “customary or proper bounds or limits”, but even they had very different views on issues such as slavery and attitudes towards nobility between slaveowning, genteel South and the free, industrial North. One gets the sense from the Bill of Rights prohibition against establishment of religion that perhaps the clergymen from Massachusetts and the humanists from Virginia may have differed sharply on what is “customary and proper” as pertains to religion and government.

And whatever the origins of the Union may have been, over the course of its history, the influx of different cultural viewpoints — Irish Catholics, Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, Jews, Chinese, and others — meant that there really was no “shared customary or proper bounds or limits” in what evolved as American culture. Courtship rituals may be dramatically different between Puritans in Rhode Island and the Irish in New York — what one culture considered proper bounds may have been seen as lewd or prudish by the other. Certainly, the distinctively American culture that arose amongst the slave population had wholly different customary or proper bounds or limits than that which might have been predominant in the white population.

In the arts, what distinguishes American arts is that very lack of respect for customary or proper bounds or limits. For example, American music was not tied down to paying homage to custom of a particular musical tradition, and ended up going in hundreds of different directions, mixing and blending influences from Methodist hymns to African chants to music of the frontier to come up with jazz, blues, rock and roll, rap, and disco. Even as more “unitary” cultures like China and Japan have maintained traditions such as Chinese opera or Noh drama, Americans are constantly looking for the new, the shocking, the thing that transcends the customary or proper bounds or limits of good musical taste.

Even in literature, the most American of contributions to the millenia-old tradition of poetry is free verse. Talk about violating the customary bounds of poetry.

Unlike the older traditions and cultures of Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, the American mindset is firmly set on the idea of measuring an individual by his or her own merits. Not so in older, more clan-based cultures. For example, Koreans may look deeply at a young man’s parentage, grandparents, uncles, aunts, extended family to determine his worth as a bridegroom. Americans just ask if he’s an honest, hardworking, solid guy. Social mobility in America — in violation of customary or proper bounds or limits — is unlike anywhere else in the world.

We speak of the self-made man; no other culture does — except as homage to American ideals of meritocracy, born from both the frontier spirit and the lack of a common shared societal understanding amongst its peoples.

I recall as a young man, whenever I was rude or uppity, my parents would refer to that as “being American”. Korean culture values age-based hierarchy immensely, and the idea of a son talking back to his father would have been shocking to the conscience. They called that “being American”. Licentiousness. Freedom as licentiousness.

Even in such minor things as dress, the distinction came up from time to time. My mother might say that a certain girl was “dressing too American” meaning she was exposing too much flesh. The conservative Confucian-influence moral mindset of the Korean would think a young woman exposing her shoulders in public is improper. So even in her own mind, as an immigrant slowly (oh, ever so slowly) becoming Americanized, she thought of restraint and modesty as “Korean” and brazenness as “American”. And yet, the average American wouldn’t have thought twice about a young woman wearing a tanktop in the summer. Freedom as licentiousness. Accepting elements that transcend “customary or proper bounds or limits” because we do not have a common understanding of such customs, such traditions.

Of all of the nations, and more importantly of all of the cultures, only American culture has such widespread acceptance of licentiousness.  Other cultures might look at an innovation in social practices as a violation of mores and social norms; Americans tend to celebrate such license.

I do not claim that this is the end of the discussion — indeed, I see it as only the beginning of exploring what makes a particular thing “American”.  My sense is that the inchoate characteristic is bound up with “freedom” — but freedom of a certain kind.  A transgressive freedom, if you will, that recognizes no customary or proper boundary because of a lack of agreement on customs and propriety between the many groups and people who make up American society and history.

But they all agree, it seems, in some idea of transgressive freedom.

-TS

In the event you haven’t seen this yet… the Tale of the Asse-Hatte

53  “But Father Williams,” sayed the Gaye-manne
54  “Though I am but a layman

55  The Mussleman youthes hath smyte me so

56  Whan on streets I saunter wyth my beau.”

57  Sayed the Bishop in a curt replye

58  “I am as toolrant as anye oothere guy,

59  But if Mussleman law sayes no packynge fudge,

60  Really nowe, who are we to judge?”

As many have said, including Glenn Reynolds the Blogfather, “We are not worthy.”  This is one of Iowahawk’s finest works.

You owe it yourself to read it.

-TS

On this day celebrating love, we get yet another heartbreaking story of a fatal massacre at a university: (HT: Instapundit)

A man dressed all in black and armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and two handguns stood at the front of a crowded Northern Illinois University lecture hall and opened fire this afternoon, killing five people and injuring 16 more, police said.

The gunfire was over within moments as the lone gunman shot himself on the lecture hall’s stage, police said.

…

Seventeen victims, including three who were critically injured, were taken to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb. Those with the most serious injuries were later flown to OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford.

The gunman entered an auditorium at Cole Hall shortly after 3 p.m., pulled back a black curtain on the stage at the front of the class, and began shooting, police said.

“It started and it stopped very quickly,” said NIU Police Chief Donald Grady. “… When he died, he was on stage.”

Officers were on the scene within two minutes — but the gunman had already shot himself, he said.

Grady said it would have been all but impossible to have prevented the tragedy.

“I wish I could tell you that there was a panacea for this kind of thing, but you’ve noticed there’s been multiple shootings all over this country within the last six months,” Grady said. “It’s a horrendous circumstance.”

After the tragedy at Virginia Tech, you would think that the university administrators would have learned a lesson. Bill Quick at DailyPundit responds with what can only be described as bitter sarcasm:

Obviously this could not have happened. Northern Illinois University is a gun-free zone:

Northern Illinois University The Student Code of Conduct

3-1.5 Dangerous Weapons:
1.5a Possession, use, sale, or distribution in any residence hall, building,
or grounds under university control of: fireworks, firearms, shotguns, rifles, hand guns, switchblade knives, any type of ammunition, explosives, and all other serious weapons.
1.5b Misuse of martial arts weaponry, BB guns, pellet guns, clubs, knives,
and all other serious weapons.
Students who wish to bring firearms to the campus must obtain written
permission from the chief security officer of the university. Firearms must be stored at the University Security Office except with written permission of the chief security officer of the university. At no time will any of the above dangerous weapons be allowed in the university residence halls

Probably a hallucination of some sort.

I’m not built to respond to tragedy with dark humor as Bill is, perhaps.  This is an absolute outrage.

How many more shootings of defenseless victims must we have before the country can agree that gun-free zones simply don’t work?  How many more young people with their whole lives in front of them have to die before society wakes up to the fact that cops can’t protect you, that codes of conduct don’t matter to psychotic killers, and that the sanctimonious anti-gun nuts are endangering all of our lives and those of our children?

The NIU Police Chief Grady is either a fool or a liar when he says it would have been all but impossible to prevent the tragedy.

Another witness told his family as many as 20 shots were fired, and students crawled out of the lecture hall on their bellies. Gaynor ran through the back doors of the auditorium and escaped.

Another student in the class, Kristina Balluff, thought the gunman was playing a joke.

“I thought it was fake. A bright light coming out, like fire,” she said. “I fell to the ground. Then there were people running on top of people.”

There were about 150 people in the classroom. Gaynor was about 30 rows from the stage toward the back. He was attending Geology 104: Introduction to Ocean Sciences, which is taught by Professor Joseph Peterson.

One responsible, trained, armed person in the 150 in that classroom could have stopped the tragedy.  If just 10% of the students, or 15 of the 150, were carrying handguns, the tragedy could have been mitigated greatly.  Instead of twenty shots fired into the defenseless, disarmed mass of victims, there may have been three or four, answered by countering fire from armed citizens exercising their right to self-defense.

Note that police response was within two minutes.  In those two minutes, this crazy son of a bitch killed five people, and critically injured seventeen.  Police can not protect you when your life in in danger.

I sincerely hope that the Northern Illinois University is sued out of existence for failing to protect those students under its care that it disarmed through its Code of Conduct.  I hope that legislatures across the country pass laws holding those creating gun-free zones liable for harm to people it has disarmed, and to pass greater freedom for concealed carry laws by law-abiding citizens.

My heart goes out to the friends and family of the victims today.  This is a tragedy that could have been avoided, especially after the VT massacre.  Let’s make no mistake about these killings: heartless university administrators created defenseless victims, failed to protect them, then make mealy-mouthed excuses about how it would have been impossible to prevent the tragedy.  Lying, self-serving, ass-covering sons of bitches.  These young people have been sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.

How many more need to die before we realize the idiocy of the anti-gun nuts?

-TS

In a recent post, Beldar asks if we are really at war, and then follows up with consequences of the answer for voters — particularly conservative voters. (HT: Big Lizards)

If you’re convinced in your bones that your sensations are accurate, that your current experience is reliable, that what you don’t know isn’t likely to hurt you, and that it’s safe for you to act in all important respects like our nation is at peace, then you’ve established an essential precondition, an essential premise, for a particular political decision:

If you’re convinced we’re not at war, then you’re absolutely entitled to insist that it doesn’t matter whether you vote in November 2008 for Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama or for John McCain. In particular, if you consider yourself to be a principled conservative, and you believe we’re at peace, then you’re absolutely entitled to withhold your presidential vote in its entirety, rather than cast it in favor of John McCain. Certainly he’s insulted you enough in the past; certainly he’s betrayed the principles you hold dear; certainly he’s been disingenuous and sneaky and self-righteous and petty, and he’s pretty damned unapologetic about all of that. He’s an old dog now, and he’d rather snarl than even try to learn any new tricks. It would just feel delicious to cast a spite vote against him, wouldn’t it?

*******If, by contrast, you understand in your bones that — despite all the indicia of peacetime I’ve summarized — we are at war; that our enemies are still alive and dangerous; that their lust for our blood is not only unabated but more inflamed by the events since 9/11/01; and that their entire existence is devoted to repeating and eclipsing the events of that day, then you don’t have that luxury. Your “feel-good” vote against McCain, or even your non-vote, carries too high a price.

I fully understand the depth of your loathing for John McCain. My own is considerable, and other than for his record as a Navy pilot and POW, such respect as I am able to summon up for him could serve as a dictionary-precise example of the phrase “grudging respect.”

But the immortal Winston Churchill had it right when, in response to a challenge over his wartime support of Joseph Stalin, he illustrated the need to prioritize one’s villains: “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

McCain, if president, will continue to fight the Global War on Terror. Indeed, he will keep us on the offensive. This is the sole issue on which I have absolute confidence in John McCain. And I have equal confidence that either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will, for all practical purposes, refuse to fight it.

And that is the transcendent difference among the remaining presidential candidates. That is the issue in this election that is more important than all of the others combined. There are other things that are important, and from a committed conservative’s point of view, McCain is wrong, or unreliable, on many of them. Clinton and Obama, though, are wrong on most of them. And no matter how many of those issues they’re all wrong together on, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re at war, or the fact that Obama or Clinton wouldn’t fight it effectively.

As always, Beldar makes sense.  Which is why it’s almost redundant to write that sentence: Beldar = Sense.

Nonetheless, this wouldn’t be a Sophistry post if there were no questions to be had.  Simply agreeing Beldar = Sense is against the grain of sophistry in the first place.

The question is a variation of the same one that I wrote on earlier: Is John McCain the man to fight this war, or the last war?

There is no question that Beldar is correct that there are enormous and transcendent differences between McCain and either of the two Democrats.  He would prosecute the war vigorously, and stay on the offensive.  The Democrats would quickly seek ways to surrender and capitulate, for “peace in our times” or some such claptrap.

But one can ask whether this war against Islamists can be won that way at all.

It is my belief that we are engaged in what some very smart people are calling “4th Generation Warfare” (4GW).  The technical details are beyond the scope of this post (or frankly, beyond my competence as a non-military man) but what does emerge is the idea that one of the main weapons of 4GW is the media.  Rather than reducing the enemy’s will to fight through air superiority, military presence, and economic ruin, 4GW does so by manipulating the public sentiment directly.  Hence the whole notion that we are fighting for the “hearts and minds” of the Arab public.

Well, apparently the Islamists have far more success in fighting for the “hearts and minds” of the American public than we do, judging by the op/ed pieces, the so-called news stories, and by the opinion polls of the American electorate.

Hold that thought for a moment.

An orthogonal thought is something that Mark Steyn has been hammering for some time now, especially in his book, America Alone, but also in his recent speech at CPAC.  His point is that the War on Islamists is not fought abroad, but at home, through domestic issues.

As he says in his speech (I’m transcribing this, and I hope a full transcript is available soon):

Sometimes it doesn’t seem that there is any obvious connection between the War on Terror and the so-called pocketbook issues of domestic politics.  But in fact, there is a very precise relationship between the structural weaknesses of the modern Western world and the rise of globalized Islam.  In the developed world, the state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood: healthcare, child care, care of the elderly, to the point where it has effectively severed its citizens from even our most primal instincts, including the survival instinct.

There is much more, but the point is clear.  If we are in a generational, existential war, then we cannot win it in Iraq, in Iran, in Syria, or anywhere outside of the United States.  We have to win it here, at home, by avoiding the descent into frail enervated permanent adolescence that the modern socialist state wants to impose on its citizens.

Is McCain the man to win that war?  Has he demonstrated a true commitment to freedom, to preventing the continuing slide into adolescence of the American public, not merely as a domestic issue to assuage fiscal conservatives, but as a component of the war on Islamists?

Combining the two strands of thought here, is McCain the leader we need who can fight a 4th generation war against a stateless enemy, leveraging the power of media, of entertainment, of popular culture, against an ideology that festers because of structural weaknesses in our society?

Or is he still operating under the outdated modes of thinking on war: soldiers, boots on the ground, air power, economic pressure, diplomatic maneuvering, etc.?

I think he could be.  But the jury is still out.

There is little doubt that McCain — even if he can’t fight a 4th generation media-centric warfare, and reform the nanny state — is infinitely preferable to the two Democrats.  At least he’ll win the third generation war of guns and bombs, whereas they would seek to lose that one right quick.

But his inability to rally the conservatives — who are the only people in the American political landscape who see the connection between Osama bin Laden and Hillarycare, who understands that middle class entitlements are a national security threat — is worrisome.  He has made appeals, and he has to continue to do so — not just for political gain, but to help Americans understand that he understands this is a war that cannot be won abroad with guns and tanks.  He must show the country and lead the people who have already been enervated by too many government programs and too much coddling by the government out of comfortable dependence into free struggle.

He has to start by first convincing the conservatives.  Then he has to show that he can get the media under control, working for our side for a change.  That will be a tall order for any Republican.  Finally, he must show that he has the political courage and the will to do the things not only unpopular with Republicans and conservatives, but unpopular with the American people, such as eliminating Social Security, Medicare, and the rest of the nanny state apparatus.

Is he that man?

I hope so.  I’m out of choices for 2008.

-TS

An enterprising Canadian blogger, Robert Jago, was understandably disturbed by the philosophical leviathans on the Canadian Left who apparently subscribe to the notion of “Free speech for me, but not for thee”. So he emailed one Noam Chomsky for his thoughts on the whole Steyn, Levant kerfuffle.

He posted the response:

So best to start with Americans. I’ve contacted a number of prominent left-wing American writers, editors and thinkers to get their point of view on Free Speech, and the Steyn and Levant cases. I’ll be posting them over the next few weeks.

The first one I’ll start with is Noam Chomsky. I don’t agree with much of what he says, but I know that he is well respected by young people on the left. I asked him this:

A number of prominent right-wing Canadian authors are before my country’s various human rights tribunals and human rights commissions. One of those authors is Ezra Levant, who is charged with publishing the “Muhammad Cartoons”. The other is Mark Steyn, charged with a number of offenses amongst them quoting a European Imam on demographic predictions.
What is your opinion on these Human Rights Commissions and other government restrictions on “hate speech”? Are you generally supportive of these types of measures, or do you oppose them?

Here is his reply:

There should be a very heavy burden of proof on any effort to restrict freedom of speech. I strongly oppose the measures you describe. I do not think the burden of proof is even approached, let alone met. In this respect I agree with the US Supreme Court, which, in the 1960s, set what i think is a proper standard for protection of freedom of speech.

Noam Chomsky

That argument alone shouldn’t convince you to oppose the HRCs. But if this is someone you respect, then just take some time to reconsider your position and see if you can answer these questions: What is your position based on - logic or cultural bias? Can you defend it? If we on the right are hate-mongers for wanting to re-write or scrap the hate speech laws, then don’t you have to apply that same label to people like Chomsky?

First of all, good for Mr. Jago for getting a straight answer from his Manufacturing-Consentness on the issue of the freedom of speech. I fully agree with Chomsky on this question. Oh yes, it was odd to write that sentence, but there it is.

Secondly, I can’t wait to see what other American intellectuals of the Left Mr. Jago gets answers from.

Finally, I do not expect that anyone — even Noam Chomsky — could convince those of the Canadian Left to oppose the HRCs if they don’t already do so. Tyrannies (whether large or small) are seldom deterred by words, or logic, or appeals to authority. History is filled with examples of just what deters tyrants, from the playground bully to Josef Stalin.

That is why in America we say, “Freedom isn’t free.” It’s a lesson that Canadians may be learning for themselves right soon.

-TS

Mark Steyn is the best writer of the English language working today.

He gave a fairly long speech at CPAC that has been videotaped. You owe it to yourself to watch him speak. No one speaks with greater gusto, greater humor, and greater urgency on the problems facing the country and the world.

See it here.

-TS

We are a nation at war.  And we are going to elect a new executive leader of the country.

There is no question that winning the war against Islamists is our most important priority — at least, if you believe that we are in fact at war, and that we cannot concede or negotiate our way out of it.

This is the #1 reason why I will likely vote for the Republican nominee in November, despite my lack of enthusiasm for McCain, Romney, or Huckabee.

But from the incredible Mark Steyn comes a different perspective that is worth considering:

Right now, the two-party system seems to have decayed into a one-and-a-half-party system, with McCain largely in agreement with the Dems on immigration, pharmaceutical companies, global warming and much else. A President McCain will get media bouquets for his bipartisanship in supporting the Democrat domestic agenda. Against that, he is admired in these parts for his stand on the war.

But if this is, as many argue, a “long war”, then in a two-party system, don’t the Democrats at some point have to take joint ownership of it? Parties don’t wage wars, nations do. One could make the case that the war, rather than being the sole overwhelming reason for electing McCain, is actually a compelling reason, given their convergence on domestic issues, why you might as well stick Hill in there. I don’t think Mrs Clinton will be so eager to lose the thing once it’s on her watch.

One hopes that Steyn is right, for the sake of civilization — that if given the responsibility for defending America and the civilized world from the predations and pretensions of Islamist radicals, even Hillary or Obama would step up to the challenge and discover their inner John F. Kennedy.

But there is another aspect to this thought.  We are not only in a war, but we are in what some are calling a 4th Generation War.  4GW has some distinct characteristics that distinguish it from past “generations” of warfare which emphasized things like order and march, firepower, and battlefield maneuver.  For example, the authors of the article above write:

To draw our potential fourth generation out still further, what if we combined terrorism, high technology, and the following additional elements?

• A non-national or transnational base, such as an ideology or religion. Our national security capabilities are designed to operate within a nation-state framework. Outside that framework, they have great difficulties. The drug war provides an example. Because the drug traffic has no nation-state base, it is very difficult to attack. The nation-state shields the drug lords but cannot control them. We cannot attack them without violating the sovereignty of a friendly nation. A fourth-generation attacker could well operate in a similar manner, as some Middle Eastern terrorists already do.

• A direct attack on the enemy’s culture. Such an attack works from within as well as from without. It can bypass not only the enemy’s military but the state itself. The United States is already suffering heavily from such a cultural attack in the form of the drug traffic. Drugs directly attack our culture. They have the support of a powerful “fifth column,” the drug buyers. They bypass the entire state apparatus despite our best efforts. Some ideological elements in South America see drugs as a weapon; they call them the “poor man’s intercontinental ballistic missile.” They prize the drug traffic not only for the money it brings in through which we finance the war against ourselves — but also for the damage it does to the hated North Americans.

• Highly sophisticated psychological warfare, especially through manipulation of the media, particularly television news. Some terrorists already know how to play this game. More broadly, hostile forces could easily take advantage of a significant product of television reporting — the fact that on television the enemy’s casualties can be almost as devastating on the home front as are friendly casualties. If we bomb an enemy city, the pictures of enemy civilian dead brought into every living room in the country on the evening news can easily turn what may have been a military success (assuming we also hit the military target) into a serious defeat.

One element of the war we are currently in is the importance of media.  In fact, one might actually describe the conflict as a Media War.  The enemy doesn’t bomb, shoot, behead, and kill people in order to impose their will on the populace.  No, they do these things in order to create a media story that will sap the will to fight of the civilian population back home.

What nations have tried to do with strategic bombing, with siege warfare, and with other traditional force of arms, the Islamists are doing with the media.

Conservatives have long complained about the bias in the media that seems slanted entirely against the United States and its allies.  But beyond cursing at irresponsible reporters and editors, there is precious little that conservatives can do.  Over the long haul, conservatives can redouble efforts to establish alternative media (such as the Web and talk radio) or infiltrate mainstream media organizations (as Bill Kristol, Fox News, and others are trying to do), or such similar efforts.  But those are long-term solutions, not something we can leverage right here, right now.

One thing we can do is surrender.  I don’t mean the nation should surrender; I mean the conservatives can surrender to the liberals, in order to win the War against Islamists.

As I see it, the anti-war movement by itself is powerless and meaningless.  It is only because the media uses them as a tool to try and bring down the Bush presidency that those guys have any relevance.  Once the media stops paying attention to the Cindy Sheehans and ANSWER’s and Code Pinks of the world, they will cease to be relevant.  Plus, once the media stops portraying Al-Qaeda and its ilk as freedom fighters against the evil imperialist United States, and our own troops as either (a) bloodthirsty psychopaths, or (b) poor widdle victims of evil Bushitlercheney warmongerocracy, we will have won a major victory in 4th generation warfare against Islamists.

So the question is, what needs to happen to win the media over to our (that is, American) side of the war?

The answer seems pretty simple: give them what they want.  I believe that liberals (and by extension, the media) don’t really care about war per se.  They care, instead, about imposing their values on the rest of America.  They want same sex marriage, consequence-free recreational sex, and political correctness.  They want any mention of God to be taboo.  They want to enforce an environmentalist regime at any cost to jobs, to businesses, or to society in the name of some Gaia-saving virtue.  They want unions to be sacrosanct, to pay off their supporters in the various worker collectives who go to bat for Democrats year in and year out.  They want judges who will create policies that the legislature can’t, since the judges are highly educated law school graduates not answerable to the unwashed masses.  They want to control people in every aspect, to make them more virtuous, or “safer”, or more comfortable — and if that means taxing the rich, massive wealth transfers, then so be it.

If we conservatives give the media what they want — a liberal, tax-and-spend, all-powerful nanny state government — then I believe that we will get the media’s support in our war against Islamists.

After all, once the Republicans and the American conservatives are defeated, the liberals will have to realize that these Islamists aren’t exactly fans of socialist multi-culti do-as-thou-wilt philosophy of the Left.

If that is the Faustian bargain to be struck, what then?

At what cost victory? 

A Hillary or better yet, an Obama presidency pretty much guarantees that we will enter an era of Big Government and socio-economic liberalism the likes of which we haven’t seen to date.  But at the same time, it could mean that the media will be on our side in the war against Islamists.  (Especially after President Obama withdraws all the troops from Iraq, watches that country fall into bloodshed and civil war, and then have an untraceable Iranian dirty bomb carried by a jihadi who crossed the border illegally in Arizona blow up in Times Square.)

It’s an impossible choice for most conservatives.  What cost victory?  What sacrifice for victory?

And is that victory a victory at all?

-TS

While the 2008 primary season is coming to its peak with Super Tuesday today, I find myself oddly detached from the whole affair.  Ever since the GOP repudiated Thompson, I am unable to summon the level of enthusiasm necessary to be engaged in a primary fight between a moderate and an unknown.  I will likely vote for the GOP nominee, whoever he is, simply because I don’t particularly wish to surrender either to Islamists or to domestic socialists.  But I’m not enthused about this election.

Having said that, there is one thing I am actively looking forward to, no matter what the result of 2008: George Bush leaving office.

Not for the reasons you might think.  No, I’m looking forward to the schadenfreude I will enjoy with gusto as the Democrats and liberals find themselves completely at sea with no oars once the hated Bush is out of office.

Whatever will they do once the hated Bushitler is once again a private citizen?

Look at this story on condo developments in Nashville (HT: Instapundit):

The flagellation of Nashville’s urban market for condominiums has become a sport over the past few months.

There are developers, even those with urban projects, who want to declare the market dead, except of course, their development, which happens to be the finest quality and better than all the others.

Of course there is more supply on the market than demand. That happens in real estate cycles.

….

All of this is President George Bush’s fault anyway. Five years ago, he pushed for increasing homeownership in America with programs for zero-down payment and loan programs targeting low-income borrowers.

It brought abuse, fed subprime lending and drew people in over their heads. The Democrats in Congress went along with the populist plan. So, it all catches up. The housing market tanks, somehow to everyone’s shock, and ripples through to cause many pain.

As Glenn Reynolds put it so eloquently, “Isn’t everything Bush’s fault?”

What will the liberals do once Bush is gone?  Who will they blame for oversupply of condos in Nashville?  Or holes in their socks?  Or global warming?

Especially if one of the two Dems win the Presidency?  Who to blame then?

I imagine the factions of the Democrat coalition at each others’ throats once the hated Republicans have been taken care of.  It’s already happening.  I have to admit that I will derive some measure of sick delight from seeing the liberal media Death Star turned against its own.

How long before we start to see articles on droughts in Nevada with “It’s all Hillary’s fault anyway” lines?  Or blaming the ongoing practice of female circumcision in Somalia on Obama?

Perhaps with an Obama presidency, we may see American feminists suddenly discover the plight of their Arab sisters who can’t go for a walk in public without a male family member chaperoning them.  Maybe with Hill-Bill in the White House, Hollywood stars by the dozens will realize with shock and horror that Theo van Gogh was murdered for a film he made.  “Why, that could be me!” they might wonder.  Why isn’t Hillary doing something about this problem?  We might have benefit concerts, and movies about Iraq that don’t portray our soldiers as mentally deranged rednecks with a 3rd grade education and pathological homicidal rage.

I know, I know — in my heart of hearts, I know that it is irresponsible to consign the nation (indeed, the world) to sixteen years of darkness where civilization will retreat, individuality eviscerated, and a socialist system finally instituted in the Land of the Free, and Home of the Brave.  I know that.

But we deserve the leaders we get.  And the polls and the signs point to Americans willingly yoking themselves to the Nanny State, and willingly surrendering to pipsqueak malcontents from the House of Allah.  Staring into the abyss, sometimes the only thing you can do is to find humor in the situation.

And for my money, the best source of humor will be to watch liberals flounder around looking for someone else to hate, once their North Star of hatred is back at his ranch.

-TS

Over at Redstate (to which this is cross-posted) Absentee’s excellent post on why the anti-illegal immigration movement needs to expel the racists and bigots from within its ranks and engendered a healthy debate and discussion.

One of the things I found most interesting is the oft-expressed view that we, as a nation, must focus on assimilating immigrants. English as a national language is a common theme, and many opine that legal employment, citizenship, and various benefits be contingent on a showing that the immigrant want to learn, absorb, and assimilate American culture.

I’ve been engaged in past debates on the issue, but I’ve realized there’s an aspect to this that hasn’t been much discussed.

I believe that if we put into place a set of requirements for assimilation — which, by the way, we absolutely should, including English language as a required skill — then it is quite likely that within a short period of time, the immigrant will be more American than the citizen.

There is little doubt that the state of civics education in American is abysmal. According to one study, less than half of college seniors know that the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” comes from the Declaration of Independence. Only 42.7% of college seniors know that NATO was founded to resist Soviet aggression. These are college seniors, at some of our top institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. They’re not high school dropouts, or drug addicted homeless people.

If you went out into the streets of any major city, randomly stopped passersby and asked them to name:

1. Their two senators

2. The four main characters in Sex and the City

I have no doubt that you would find the result shocking.

The number of American citizens who believe that a tax refund is the government giving them money is simply unbelievable. Those who believe that they have a constitutional right to education is frightening.

American citizens, born and bred, speak and write English as if it were not their first language. If a literacy test were to become a requirement for employment, I wonder how many citizens would be able to pass it.

None of these observations are meant to suggest that we do not need enforcement of our borders. Nor are they meant to suggest that we need not focus on efforts to assimilate those who come to the United States looking for opportunity.

They are, however, meant to suggest that we not have a double standard as it comes to the citizen vs. the immigrant.

Knowledge of basic American history, American system of laws, our federal form of government, our rights and duties under the Constitution, basic economics of the free market capitalist system we toil in, are these things unimportant to the citizen?

I know that amongst conservative circles, I am preaching to the choir. I know that conservatives for the most part fully support the idea of increased civics education for our youth, and bemoan the state of ignorance run rampant in our citizenry that cares more about American Idol than the American Presidential Elections.

But such is not necessarily the case in the body politic. Whether it’s through laziness, through indoctrination, through being too busy, or what, fact is that the American citizen is busy debasing his own heritage and culture. To demand that the newcomer then learn all those things that he himself doesn’t know is the height of hypocrisy, and could not withstand scrutiny along the lines of darker motives.

I believe now that any effort towards assimilating immigrants to American society and culture must be tightly coupled with efforts towards greater civic education throughout the population. That government schools should absolutely require civics goes without saying. That American people themselves undertake a renewed interest in their own nation’s history, institutions, and culture is imperative. For who is the immigrant to assimilate to if not the citizen? And who better to teach an immigrant the values of our country, if not his citizen neighbors and coworkers and peers?

Today, those values are all about People magazine, Entertainment Tonight, and the NFL. Let’s not kid ourselves here.

And as long as that remains the case, any effort at forcing immigrants to learn the history and culture of their newly adopted country is doomed to failure. Or worse, the citizen will find that their nation will be redefined by immigrants, who after all, know more about it than they do. Then whose country is it really?

I don’t know that greater civic education and engagement by citizens is a prior condition to assimilation requirements — I am a fan of greater requirements for immigrants myself. And I’m an immigrant, with immigrant parents and family members. But it is a condition.

Let’s get to work, conservatives.

-TS

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch is nominally a fan of startups, of Web 2.0, of technology, innovation, and capitalism.  But somehow, when it comes to the whole environmentalist cult, he’s a brainwashed drone like everyone else.

His latest rant is against self-important “Do Not Print this Email” footers that are the rage among the glitterati in the Valley and elsewhere.  But amongst all the good sense, he goes irrational on us:

The same people who insist on wearing colored rubber bracelets to show their support for the cause du jour put this crap at the bottom of emails. My suspicion is that they don’t particularly care about the issue, they just want credit from everyone that they are a caring, thoughtful human being.

This isn’t the way to show support for the our planet. Last week at Davos, Earth defender Al Gore himself made it clear that personal choice decisions at the individual level have little to do with helping the environment. What matters is that our governments make the right policies and hold us, particularly corporations, accountable. That isn’t happening yet. If you really want to change the world, start talking to your elected representatives. Or march on Washington.

Makes sense that Al Gore thinks individuals don’t matter; only that governments matter, and that governments have to hold all the people “accountable”.  Particularly corporations.  Like the ones Michael spends a lot of time promoting on TechCrunch, y’know, those evil corporations that create jobs, economic value, and return on investment.  Those guys really need a lesson on accountability from the government, because no one does accountability as well as the government.  After all, Al Gore is… a politician I believe.  I guess Al would be the one holding us accountable.

But I don’t get the obsession with the U.S.  Michael, what do we do about China?  When’s the march on Beijing scheduled?  China is polluting the hell out of the environment, and I thought this was all about global warming, not local warming.  Why the focus on Washington?  Where’s the pressure on Vladimir Putin?  On Chavez?  On Ahmadinejad?

Now who’s being symbolic?  Wearing colored rubber bracelets to show their solidarity with the cause du jour?

-TS

In light of the 2008 primary season, there is much discussion about the present and future of the Republican party amongst conservative circles.  This post is not about the presidential primary, McCain, Romney, or Huckabee.

Rather, it is about two Republican lawmakers who are providing yet another example that if the GOP should perish, it was through self-inflicted wounds (from Junkfood Science):

It has actually happened. Lawmakers have proposed legislation that forbids restaurants and food establishments from serving food to anyone who is obese (as defined by the State). Under this bill, food establishments are to be monitored for compliance under the State Department of Health and violators will have their business permits revoked.

House Bill 282 was introduced in the 2008 Mississippi legislative session on Friday by Representative W.T. Mayhall, Jr., a retired pharmaceutical salesman with DuPont-Merk. Its co-authors are Bobby Shows, a businessman, and John Read, a pharmacist.

I thought for sure that this was yet another example of overreach by those government-loving liberals, and clicked on the “honorable” gentlemen’s names.

Imagine my shock and horror to discover that W.T. Mayhall, Jr. and John Read are Republicans.  And apparently, they weren’t joking when they introduced the bill:

I called lead author, Rep. Mayhall, and asked if this was serious legislation or tongue-in-cheek to make a point. He kindly took a moment to answer my question while the legislature was in session. He said that while, regrettably, he doesn’t believe his bill will pass, this is serious. He wrote it, he said, because of the “urgency of the obesity crisis and need for government action.” He hopes it will “call attention to the serious problem of obesity and what it is costing the Medicare system.” So, yes, this is for real and these elected officials actually believe this stuff.Oh yes, apparently this is for real, and these elected Republicans actually believe this stuff.Urgency of the obesity crisis and need for government action?  Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater are rolling over in their graves.  Apparently, “limited government” is a concept entirely foreign to these Republican lawmakers.

If these two aren’t voted out at the very next opportunity in the Republican primaries in Mississippi, I am prepared to announce the death of the Republican Party as we know it.

-TS

So John McCain has won Florida, and with it, the Republican nomination for President in all likelihood.  I was a FredHead, and not sure where I am with McCain — but right now, I’m likely going to vote for him over either of the Democrat candidates for a variety of reasons, least of which is that McCain is unlikely to rush into surrender.

Having said that, as a conservative, I’m not exactly bursting with enthusiasm for the McCain presidency.

There are a number of voices within the conservative blogosphere who take people like me to task for our lack of enthusiasm.  This blog on Redstate.com is a great example:

“Let’s grow up, conservatives! If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work.” - Barry Goldwater, encouraging his supporters to work for Nixon in 1960.

I don’t want to get in to the endless sniping about how conservative McCain is or not, about what’s a “pure” conservative, etc.

But if you are a conservative of any type, and actually believe in the country instead of making yourself feel good, I suggest you listen to Sen. Goldwater’s advice.

He makes a good point, in a way.  After all, what can conservatives do?  Pitch a fit and threaten to take the ball and go home?  Stamp our feet and hold our breaths?

No, in all likelihood, we’re going to have to “take back the party” by being even more active, even more valuable, even more energetic in promoting the Party’s causes (namely electoral victory) in order to rise up through the ranks of the Party to steer it back towards conservatism.  That’s some good solid practical advice.

Having said that, I’m not really in the mood for good solid practical thinking.  Rather, let’s get a little bit theoretical and self-indulgent for a moment.

I’ve been saying this since South Carolina, but the main issue from a conservative viewpoint with a McCain nomination is the message it sends to future officeseekers.  Essentially, I think we are caught in an iterated prisoner’s dilemma.  I’m not a formal game theorist, but those years of studying Philosophy weren’t entirely useless (at least as it comes to being theoretical and self-indulgent).

The prisoner’s dilemma is a classic problem, and the Wikipedia link above goes into considerable depth on it.  The iterated prisoner’s dilemma is a variant in which the same two players keep playing the game, with knowledge of how the other guy acted in earlier rounds.

What’s interesting is that the classic prisoner’s dilemma — a one shot choice between cooperation and defection — results in sub-optimal equilibrium where both will defect.  But in the iterative, the result is often an optimal equilibrium where both will cooperate.

At the heart of the dilemma is the idea of rational players, and clear incentives and punishment.  When you iterate the prisoner’s dilemma, both sides pretty quickly come to understand that defection might win you one round, but the next round, the other guy’s going to remember and defect as well.  The incentive is to cooperate, as non-cooperation will be punished.

I believe that the Republican politicians and the conservative movement are engaged in what is essentially an iterative prisoner’s dilemma game.  For some time now, politicians who ‘cooperated’ with the conservatives have been rewarded by ‘cooperation’ by the conservatives.  As we saw early on in the 2008 campaign, every candidate was eager to don the mantle of Ronald Reagan and loudly proclaim his conservative credentials.  Those who have ‘defected’ did so knowing that a national nomination was very unlikely, as the conservatives within the GOP would ‘punish’ them.  It was never a good thing as a Republican seeking national office to be known as the “liberal” or “moderate” candidate.  We had, basically, a pareto-optimal equilibrium.

McCain’s victory changes that equilibrium.

Now, from the Republican politician’s point of view, ‘defecting’ is rewarding.  I certainly don’t want to give the impression that I think McCain is some sort of raving liberal.  He’s not.  But I do want to give the impression that politicians are motivated primarily by their desire to win and to exercise power.  Why else would anyone get into that business?

Maybe McCain recognized years ago that the traditional conservative coalition was fraying, and that he could take advantage by ‘defecting’ with one or more of the wings.  Maybe he saw that no matter how ‘moderate’ he got, because the liberals have lost their minds, he would get conservative support in the general election when the choice became picking the lesser of two evils.  Or maybe he simply ran on policies and ideas that he himself genuinely believes.  It doesn’t matter.  His motivation is not the issue here.  The result is what is important.

And that result is that someone more or less identifiable by a huge swath of conservatives has won by being a ‘moderate’ on many key issues.  A politician has ‘defected’ in the prisoner’s dilemma game.

What should conservatives do?

Knowing that this is a case of an iterated prisoner’s dilemma, where how we respond isn’t just about this round, but the next one, and the one after that, how we respond is critical.  Do we punish politicians like McCain by withdrawing all support, in the hopes that the message it sends to future officeseekers is that ‘defecting’ will be met with ‘defecting’ from the conservatives?  Or do we ‘cooperate’ by going all out for even the politician who ‘defected’ in the hopes that future officeseekers will see that it is in their best interests to cooperate as well?

If politicians have no reason to fear reprisal from conservatives once they are the Republican nominee, then what incentive do they really have to ‘cooperate’ with them?

If conservatives continue to support the Republican candidate, no matter how little he appeals to conservative principles and platform, then do we really have a prisoner’s dilemma here, or simple, straightforward ownership wherein one side can do whatever it wants knowing that the other will always cooperate?

The whole situation reminds me forcefully of where African-Americans are in the Democratic party.

-TS

Apparently, a fairly large Al-Qaeda group’s plans to attack Barcelona were foiled:

A GROUP of alleged Islamist extremists were planning a wave of suicide attacks across Europe before they were detained in Barcelona last weekend.

The group intended to carry out three attacks in Spain and one each in Portugal, France and Germany, an unnamed man who infiltrated the group told top-selling daily El Pais.

But… didn’t Spain surrender already to Al-Qaeda in 2004, after suffering a vicious attack on its commuter trains?

Why, it’s as if Al-Qaeda operatives didn’t get the memo.

Three attacks in Spain, of the six planned.  Doesn’t make any sense.  Shouldn’t it have been the extremists gathering in Barcelona to plan attacks on France, Germany, Portugal, the UK, and of course, the Great Satan, but leaving the good people of Spain — already so compliant to the demands of Al Qaeda — alone?

It’s as if the idea that Islamic radicals attack the West because of our policies is… *shudder* incorrect.  I mean, if any nation in Europe should be safe, shouldn’t it be Spain?

-TS

So it seems that Bill Gates gave a speech at the World Economic Forum, and also an interview with the Wall Street Journal talking about something he calls “creative capitalism”. The video is here:

Perhaps this is proof that great wealth leads to great ignorance?

We don’t need a “new type of capitalism” to help the poor. We need simply to implement capitalism in those countries. Three simple steps to success:

1. Allow private property.
2. Establish the rule of law.
3. Eliminate corruption.

Voila! Capitalism saves the poor.

Virtually every single country with a deep poverty problem is lacking one or more or all of the above three. Where private property rights do not exist — particularly to land — as in parts of Africa and South America, there is no incentive to work. Where the rule of law doesn’t exist, contracts mean nothing, property is defensible only by force, and you get not capitalism, but gangsterism. Where corruption — whether by money, or by tribalism, or by connection-ism — runs rampant, it isn’t what you can do, but who you know that matters. And that retards capitalism.

So rather than spending millions of your dollars on trying to figure out some “technological” solution to the problem of poverty, use the money to fund a Microsoft Mercenary Military to take out the world’s dictators, establish private property and the rule of law, and see how that works out for ya.

-TS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;

- W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

In the aftermath of the South Carolina Republican primary result, where Fred Thompson — the most conservative choice in the field — placed a distant third behind John McCain and Mike Huckabee, a number of people are wondering whether we have heard the death knell for the Reaganite vision of conservatism.

I am one of those people.

The defeat of Fred Thompson was enormously significant for a number of reasons, as I’ve detailed elsewhere. The brief version is that specifically because Thompson was not a great candidate in the traditional sense, the contest in S.C. became one of substance vs. process, one of product vs. marketing. And marketing, process, and campaigning won out over substance, principle, and consistency.

Because I have always viewed conservatism as a movement first, as opposed to merely the expression of the Republican Party platform, the repudiation of the substance raises the question of whither (or wither) conservatism now? This is an attempt at an answer.

The Reagan coalition could be described in many ways, and the true depiction of the Reaganite conservatism is beyond the scope of this post. In simplified terms, the Reagan coalition was the unification of social conservatives (SoCons), fiscal conservatives (FisCons), and national security conservatives (Defense Conservatives, or DefCons). The three pillars of the movement have always had natural tension between them, especially as each group vied for primacy. It is an oft-heard complaint among the SoCons especially that they are expected to shut up and vote for the GOP candidate, no matter how imperfect he may be to their core issues of the ‘culture of life’. Similarly, there is a large contingent of FisCons (and their fellow travelers, the libertarians) who believe that SoCons hurt the Republican party by making us look like a bunch of Bible-thumping Jesus freaks.

The emergence of Mike Huckabee in particular as a major candidate points to a deep fault line within not just the GOP, but within the conservative movement as a whole. If one can be a conservative and advocate class warfare, huge government programs, and protectionism, then conservatism is dead. The FisCons would absolutely abandon such a Christian populist philosophy. And certainly, at least the large Catholic contingent within the GOP and within the conservative movement as a whole could be said to lean towards a Christian Populist set of principles.

And that is merely one of the many fault lines.

Ronald Reagan welded these disparate, sometimes hostile, pillars together into the modern conservative movement, and into the Republican Party. That feat may have been a work of political genius, as Reagan himself was such an enormously gifted communicator. His legacy, it appears, did not last one generation, since we have not had a leader his equal since his passing from the stage.

So where do we go from here? Is there any organizing principle, or set of principles, that could either weld the coalition back together again, or in the alternative, articulate a new vision of what conservatism means in contemporary American society that could give rise to a new coalition of the willing?

I wish to put forth one such idea for discussion and debate.

Conservatism’s organizing principle should be fidelity to the Constitution.

That’s it.

No more confusion and profusion of various policy positions, issue advocacy, and such. No more conflict between SoCons, FisCons, DefCons, RandomCons. No more rancor amongst conservatives as to whether one can be a conservative and be for amnesty for illegal immigrants, or want gun control, or what federally mandated health care plans. No more list of principles that all conservatives must embrace, or be cast out from the movement.
Rather, the simple question: Is the policy proposed or issue advocated faithful to the Constitution of the United States?

A simple litmus test for candidates, instead of the profusion of single-issue litmus tests: Will you, to the best of your ability, and in good faith, be faithful to the Constitution of the United States?

I believe this new organizing principle does have the possibility of saving the current coalition. But failing that, it has the possibility of creating a new coalition, a new meaning of the term “conservative” that is not only based on reason, based on tradition (important to conservatives), but has the chance to be relevant and competitive in the current socio-political environment.

This is no easy task, as any student of jurisprudence knows. Discerning the meaning of a document written over two hundred years ago is difficult at best. The temptation to impose our own set of meanings to those words, such as “interstate commerce”, is great indeed. The temptation to force our policy preferences by reference to the founding document is enormous. The “Living Constitution” folks do make some good points, after all.

Nonetheless, fact is that the Constitution is the North Star of American politics. Its creators were men of genius, who foresaw some of the difficulties that will arise as mere human beings try to create a more perfect union. It is the one constant in our political life, no matter how events and circumstances change. The Founders even built in safeguards, among them the ability to amend the Constitution to meet the challenges of a new era.

As a nation, we have strayed too far, indulged ourselves too much in the laziness of “judicial interpretation”, resulting in serious social and political dislocation.

The Constitutionalist approach to conservatism could heal the divide.

Social Conservatives, motivated by their fight against abortion, can easily remain within the coalition, as a Constitutionalist approach would repudiate Roe v. Wade as an illegal amendment-by-the-judiciary. Does the First Amendment really require our current war on Christmas? No, it does not. Can a nation be faithful to the Constitution if it has lost all values, all morals, all vestiges of civilized behavior among its people? No, it cannot. Conservatives everywhere, of whatever persuasion, could advocate for family values, for civic responsibility, and for a restoration of morality in government as necessary ingredients for a polity faithful to the Constitution.

Fiscal Conservatives, motivated by the idea that the federal government (indeed, all government at every level) has become too powerful and too intrusive, will take comfort in advocating one of two things: either a return to the government as laid out in the Constitution (once stripped of judicially-imposed doctrines such as substantive due process), or an amendment to the Constitution in order to reflect a changed reality. Do we really need an administrative state to deal with the problems of modern society? Then by all means, let us amend the Constitution to allow for it. Did the Founders envision the modern Federal government with its immense power and total dominance in every aspect of our lives, to the point that some folks are proposing a national ban on smoking? If not, we must oppose such a policy, not simply because it’s bad policy, but because it is not faithful to the Constitution.

Defense Conservatives, I believe, would have little problem with an organizing principle of fidelity to the Constitution. After all, is not one of the great motivations behind its creation the need for a national defense and protection of the entire United States? Is the current climate of legislative meddling with the Commander-in-Chief, or the judicial management of war efforts, something envisioned by the Constitution? If not, we must oppose such unconstitutional moves, or call for an amendment.

And all conservatives, no matter what their pet policy or issue, must curb them by principle if such policy or issue is not faithful to the Constitution. Or else, advocate for an amendment.

I may deeply wish to have a Christian Populist platform — but first, it must pass the test of Constitutional fidelity before it can be accepted into the conservative fold. Populism, I argue, is simply not part of the Constitution as evidenced by how the Founders have set up the electoral college system, and by the creation of an independent Judiciary, and by the Bill of Rights. All of these things are designed to contain the passion of the masses, to slow down the mob, and to let cooler heads prevail.

We may still have, indeed there’s no doubt that we will still have, vigorous disagreement and debate within the conservative movement about this issue or that policy. But we will have a guiding principle within which to argue: the Constitution. We will have a way to evaluate whether conservatives support or oppose drilling in ANWR, or intervention abroad, or national ID cards, or what have you. And should social or technological change bring about an issue completely outside of the ambit of the Constitution — e.g., do conservatives support or oppose the creation of American colonies on Mars — then we can refer to the amendment process to work out our policy preferences, while remaining faithful to the Constitution by following its own processes.

As an alternative, if the Coalition cannot be united under the principle of fidelity to the Constitution, then at the very least, such a principle offers a path forward to organizing a new coalition based not on the pure will to power, but on a philosophical basis.

Perhaps the DefCons will reject such fidelity to the Constitution in a time of war, or the SoCons reject it because an amendment allowing same-sex marriage is passed through the process. At the very least, other Americans may be recruited to the cause of Constitutional fidelity by its simple appeal and inexorable logic.

As an added advantage, I believe this approach helps to eliminate the unhelpful distinction between so-called “moderate” conservatives and “rock-ribbed” conservatives. You cannot logically be “moderately” faithful to the Constitution anymore than one can be partially pregnant. Differences in opinion and policy preference will exist, but all of them will be based on an honest attempt to be faithful to the Constitution — and such differences of opinion have much more in common than they do in disagreement.

This is merely the first step in trying to work out what such a vision might mean. I hope those wiser, more intelligent, and better informed than myself could help discuss whether Constitutional Fidelity might form the basis of the conservative movement.

I would appreciate any thoughts and input.

-TS

As promised…

I’m going to try hard not to overreact. I’m going to try to stay away from hyperbole. I’m simply going to try and think through what the results of 2008 South Carolina, and the aftereffects, mean.

What truly matters to me in the final analysis is not that Fred Thompson was rejected, but who the primary voters of SC selected over him, and possible reasons why they did so. And the result is that I now must seriously entertain the idea that the Reagan Coalition is indeed no more, and that the future of conservatism as a movement and the future of the Republican Party as a political organization are both in flux.

There are three things about the SC primary results that are simply striking to me.

1. Fred Lost

There are some who remain optimistic, who believe that in this strange year, anything is possible and that Fred Thompson could remain viable somehow — perhaps involving a brokered convention, etc. That’s all fine and good, but such optimism cannot obscure the fact that Fred Thompson lost, and lost big. He got beat pretty badly by McCain and Huckabee both.

Why did he lose? Especially when it appeared that everyone up and down the Republican Party invariably agreed with Fred on the positions, and further agreed that he was the most consistently, across-the-board conservative in the field?

Well, the answer usually is some form of “Fred rocks, but his campaign sucks”. This is the criticism most often levelled at Thompson: we agree and believe in him, but his campaign just didn’t get it done. Whether it’s a criticism of the organization, a criticism of the candidate, or a criticism of timing, fact is that many SC Republicans voted against Fred not because of his positions, but in spite of them.  We can talk about electability, about leadership, about discipline, about “fire in the belly”… whatever term you want to use.  But the point is that the SC electorate punished Fred for failing to execute.

There are, of course, some very good reasons to do so. As many have pointed out, if you can’t sell the message, then it doesn’t matter what the message is.  However it happened, Thompson was seen as being unable to get the message out.

2.  Voters went for Huckabee and McCain

The second salient fact is that in rejecting Fred Thompson — the candidate who just didn’t get it done — 30% of the voters of SC went for Huckabee, and 33% went for McCain.  This is significant for slightly different reasons, but nonetheless significant.

McCain’s problems with the conservative base is so well-known that even Fox News commentators talk about it.  They say that he needs to extend a branch to conservatives, and have a Come to Jesus moment on McCain-Feingold (among other issues).  McCain’s own supporters have problems with some of his record on illegal immigration, on Gang of 14, on McCain-Feingold, on voting against the Bush tax cuts, etc.  And these are his active supporters.

Nonetheless, 33% of those voting in the Republican primary in rock-ribbed conservative state of South Carolina went for McCain.  I can only think of two possible explanations.  One possibility is that McCain, despite his issues, was seen as being the best on the preeminent issue before the SC GOP electorate: the War.  (With the very high military family population in SC, this isn’t too far from the truth, I believe.)  Large numbers of conservatives in SC forgave McCain all of his “foibles” because he was right on the One Thing to Rule Them All.  The other possibility is that McCain won over all of the moderate Republicans and independents in the SC primary.  (More on this shortly)

Huckabee’s 30% is immensely significant.  Fred Thompson simply tore apart Huckabee’s economic populism during the SC debate, and Huckabee simply couldn’t answer his charges.  Huckabee’s positions are so different from classic conservative principles — including the class-warfare rhetoric he uses on stump speeches — that his strong second-place finish could only be explained by one of two things: “conservatism” no longer means what it used to mean, or social conservatives have become an identity politics group (which… probably means that “conservatism” no longer means what it used to mean).

Take a look at the exit polling data on some of these questions.

McCain won 47% of those who describe themselves as being liberal on most political issues, 51% of the moderates, and only 26% of the conservatives.  3 out of 4 SC voters who described themselves as “conservative” voted against McCain.  And yet, they did not vote for Thompson or for McCain.  Instead, 35% of them voted for Huckabee.  Romney and Thompson together accounted for 35% — meaning that as many self-described conservatives voted for Huckabee (whose positions are not conservative, as that term used to mean) as did for the two candidates who espouse the most consistently conservative positions.

Further consider that 70% of the respondents said that it mattered “somewhat” or “a great deal” that the candidate shared their religious beliefs.  That group went heavily for Huckabee: 50% in the “great deal” category and 29% of the “somewhat” category, with the combined result being that 40% of the 70% to whom the candidate’s religious beliefs matter went for Huckabee.  That is, I submit, identity politics — a variety of politics I happen to be fairly conversant in.  At least 40% of the 70% voted for the guy who was “most like them” as a person.

3.  Rejection of the Commentariat

The final observation that I take away is that the 2008 SC primary showed the powerlessness of the conservative commentariat — and in particular, the irrelevance of the Internet.

Rush Limbaugh himself constantly attacked both McCain and Huckabee.  Mark Levin’s hostility to McCain is well-known and well-documented.  The blogosphere as a whole was pulling for Thompson with a fervor usually seen on the left side of the blogosphere.  (Myself included.)  Reports have been that the party elites really wanted Fred Thompson to be the GOP nominee.  Thousands of trees, and billions of pixels gave their lives for the cause of promoting the Thompson candidacy.

None of it mattered.

And yes, one can always fall back on the “Thompson ran a terrible campaign” theme.  That very well might be true.  But one of the hallmarks of campaigning is to win over the so-called opinion makers and influencers.  And the Thompson campaign did that in spades.

It did not matter.

I see this as a wholesale rejection of the conservative commentariat.  The endorsements of various “powerful” organizations and entities did not matter.  The support of various writers, media personalities, and the Blogosphere did not matter.

To some extent, this blog entry does not matter.

What does all this mean?  Why the title?

Taken together, the conclusion I draw from the above three observations is that we have crossed the Rubicon in Republican politics.

There is no intellectual leadership in the Republican party — the intellectual commentariat is just an echo chamber of those of us who really care about discussing principles, philosophies, and policies.  The voters themselves pay no attention to the commentariat, and vote accordingly.

You see, the converse of the “Thompson campaign sucked” is something like, “The McCain/Huckabee campaigns rocked!”  The message, the inconsistency, the divergence from conservative principles — these things did not matter.  What mattered was their organization, their GOTV, their TV advertising, their townhall meetings, etc. etc. — all of the process-oriented execution of a campaign.  Whatever it is that the McCain & Huckabee campaigns did, it mattered more than the principles so beloved by the commentariat.

It mattered more to an enormous bloc of South Carolina voters that Huckabee’s personal religious beliefs were similar to their own than that his policies cohered with “conservative principles”.

In short, the results of S. C. show that it is the marketing, not the product, that counts.

If we lose in the general election vs. the Democrats, it will be because our candidate lacked organization, or didn’t have fire in the belly, or wasn’t displaying enough leadership, or ran a poor GOTV operation, or did not have the right zinger in the presidential debates.  If we win, then it has nothing to do with the electorate coming to see that conservative principles are better than liberal ones — instead, it’s all about our machinery being better than theirs.

Politics is no longer about ideas and principles and policies, but about gameplan and execution.  We don’t need the conservative commentariat, and thinktanks like Cato Institute.  No — we need Bill Belichick.

Perhaps this has always been the case, and I was just naive in thinking that conservatism — and the contemporary Republican Party — was different.

When the Kerryites lost in 2004, and Al Gore lost in 2000, I thought it was because they believed the wrong things, and had wrong policies, and had no principles to speak of besides Wille zu Macht.  The Dems thought it was because of the Bush organization machine, the insidious machinations of Karl “The Emperor” Rove, various dirty tricks, and the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.  Turns out, maybe the Dems were right.  McLuhan has been right along — the medium is the message.  The campaign is the message in today’s America.

Already, there are some who are calling for a ‘rebranding’ of the Republican Brand — as if it were AirTran and just needed a new logo and some new paint.  Then there are others who believe that we need a new coalition for a new era, a new product for a changed marketplace.

Perhaps both are right.

Whoever our nominee is, and whether we win or lose in November, it does appear to me that today, after the SC primaries, conservatism is not about ideas, but about winning, or about identity, or about… well, whatever else a movement would be about once it transcends ideas and becomes about process and execution.

The disappointment that many of us Fredheads feel about the results of South Carolina has this sense of having crossed the ideological Rubicon.  We know our candidate was flawed; we know his campaign wasn’t the Patriots offense.  We thought, nonetheless, that he would win because the Republican Party — especially the conservatives within the party, well-represented in S. C. — would be about ideas and principles, not just the theatrics and the mechanics of campaigning.  That may have been naive.  In retrospect, it certainly seems so.  Some of us (myself included) congratulate Sen. McCain and Gov. Huckabee for running a great campaign.  None of that changes the pit-in-the-stomach feeling that we have crossed some important line, and have chosen — as a party, as a movement — that we will be about winning, about process, about campaigning.

We will be about marketing, not the product.  And that, in some way, is the most tragic result of South Carolina.

-TS