America and the West: Out With a Whimper?

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When we think about what's happening in America we sometimes fail to see ourselves as a part of a larger collapse -- that of the West, taken as a whole. What is happening here -- reckless deficit spending, multiculturalist abandonment of our heritage, failure of our educational system, Leviathan government, usurpation of sovereignty and liberty -- has been moving apace in Western Europe for decades and is rapidly approaching critical-mass momentum. The American left is in near-perfect alignment with the European left, and the right, as in Europe, forsaking principle, capitulates.

What happened to the right? Some say that, by that by the absorption of liberal memes, (1) the fundamental beliefs of conservatives have been attenuated. I prefer this explanation: that the prevailing cultural curriculum (embedded in education, media and political power) is essentially dominated by liberal feelings and ideas. In short the left owns the Western narrative, and conservatives, wanting critical skills not taught, have failed carefully to examine the assumptions to which they have unconsciously stipulated. Simply put, received knowledge that forms the basis of our thoughts and beliefs is shot through with unrecognized error. It is fair to say that, from the middle of the last century, the right has been intellectually and spiritually neutered.

This is commonly demonstrated by the thinking of "moderate" conservatives who pathetically appeal to the assumed but rarely seen good will and comity of liberals. The politics-as-war disposition of the left offers no quarter, takes no prisoners. The right, ignoring contrary evidence, repeatedly takes the pure hypocrisy of the left's feel-good mantras at face value, denying or failing to see that liberals have no interest in ideas but are solely driven by the lust for power. On this issue the conservative learning curve remains flat (2). Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football.

The singular need to manage and control the lives of others the first principle of the left (3). The history of socialism -- from the communist regimes in Russia and China to the fascism in Europe that served the ends of socialist power to the more recent events in Cuba and newly in Venezuela -- clearly illustrates the arrogation of power by the few to control the many. Worth noting is the glaring contrast between the stated goals of these regimes (improving the lot of the people) and the consequences measured in tens of millions of lost lives, imprisonment and servitude. Power and control.

The latest manifestation on the grand scale is the creeping domination of states by the European Union. With Ireland having caved on the Lisbon Treaty there seems little resistance left to overcome in the EU consolidation of power (4). Improving the lives of the people, again, is the ostensible purpose of this emerging Leviathan. What is exchanged for the organization's stated altruism is personal liberty, jurisdictional sovereignty at every level and, ultimately (ironically) what robustness remains in the economy. Power and control.

What is interesting in the case of Europe is that the brazenness of the EU seizure of authority is met by a near-total meekness of popular opposition. Europeans, more than most, should recognize the resurrection of the patterns from the last century. But they are spiritually and intellectually neutered.

If there is any hope for the survival of the West, it lies in America; but I am concerned whether America -- especially seen in the context of the present administration -- is only a couple of steps behind Europe. Still, there are elements in the traditional American character -- independence, individualism, belief in capitalist meritocracy, robust religious convictions and an innate distrust of government -- that are distinctive. The question is whether these traits have been bred out by liberal indoctrination. The tea parties, townhalls, Tenth Amendment initiatives and the rise of conservative media suggest they have not. The next questions would address numerical distributions, determination (will), and suitable methods of resistance.

Changing the administration at the polls will not be adequate to restore American conservatism. Much of the real power of the left in government is held outside the immediate confines of the White House, Congress and the courts. The enormous, powerful and bloated bureaucracies, like the education establishment are overwhelming liberal. A new Republican administration -- even if conservative -- has little power to curb the ongoing subversion of bureaucracies.

To date there have been no serious confrontations between states asserting Tenth Amendment rights, but I think it is only a matter of time, and that in the short term. How aggressively the government will act may determine the future course of this movement (5).

Modern secession is not out of the question. To be effective it would require a new confederacy of states that would be drawn outside the geographic lines of the Southern Confederacy. Despite the position taken by the left to the contrary, secession -- like nullification -- rests on solid legal ground today as it did prior to the Civil War (6). The Lincoln government responded by illegally asserting Northern power outside the authority of the Constitution. A similar government response to a new secession can be expected, but more swift and violent.

Summary

Whether the Western Tradition survives the postmodern philosophy that is the foundation of modern liberalism is anyone's guess. The erosion of critical thinking and sound education augurs against it, but there are signs of a modest revival of conservatism in Europe, and what may be the beginning of an energetic popular sovereignty movement in America.

I believe we have gone too far along the road to centralized government power to effect a reversal at the polls; change, if it comes, will be occasioned by a confrontation between state and federal powers. What form that confrontation might take and what consequences would follow cannot be known. On the other hand, the states may choose not to assert their rights against the general government. Therein lies the choice between whimper and bang.

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1. Memetics, a hypothesis that wants to become a theory, is superficially attractive because it seems to add explanatory power to cultural shifts. In the end, though, it is at best shorthand for an old idea (learning by osmosis), and it adds little benefit to social analysis.
2. Conservatives naively assume that the left shares their commitment to the traditional rules of civil society.
3. Capitalism, individualism is anathema to control. Free people are by definition unpredictable -- hard to control.
The need to control is an interesting human phenomenon. I find myself wondering if there is a genetic marker at work. If one if discovered some day, I believe I could predict the outcome of a correlation with political leanings.
4. The Lisbon Treaty essentially establishes the EU constitution that was initially rejected by referendum. That document, running to about 40,000 pages, will empower Brussels to micromanage every aspect of the lives of European citizens.
5. About 17 states have either introduced or passed Tenth Amendment resolutions. The resolutions do not have the force of law, but they serve notice to the Federal Government that they are prepared to exercise powers of nullification.
6. There remain legalistic arguments to the contrary, but it is clear that it was generally acknowledge as the right of every state prior to the Civil War. Lincoln, himself, endorsed the concept in an 1847 speech supporting the secession of Texas from Mexico. Only when he became president and sought to consolidate Northern power did he argue against it. He based his new argument on the idea of the "perpetuity" of the union, which was written into the Articles of Confederation but was expressly rejected by the Founders during the Constitutional Convention.

Note: In future posts I intend to address questions of states' rights and secession in some detail. There are some signs that interest is growing in both Tenth Amendment initiatives and secession. About a month ago I ran a Google search on the string, "new secession" and found about 3.3M returns; yesterday the same search yielded 4.45M. Google Trends shows an interesting graphic report.
It is interesting to observe that certain groups are anticipating the emergence of civil conflict. Federal law enforcement produced a study designed to identify possible enemies of the state. On the other side of the coin, an organization called Oath Keepers (law enforcement and current and former military) has made a preemptive move to pledge that they will refuse orders to disarm or use force against citizens. Still others are concerned about the growth of anti-riot/crowd-control weaponry being acquired by law enforcement.

Conservative Reform and the RNC

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We are accustomed to thinking that all conservatives are Republicans, and that is roughly true. But we commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent when we assert that all Republicans are conservative. In fact, most are not.

Defining 'conservative'. Conservatives are persons who believe in principles of liberty, the rule of law, small government, capitalism and a free-market economy, the sanctity of private property and contracts, and, above all, respect for the Constitution as it was originally conceived and formulated.

Measuring the actual performance of our elected and appointed officials against the standards of conservatism, though, can be dicey. The American Conservative Union (ACU), which rates congressmen by voting record, is a useful resource. A 100% record of conservative votes leaves no doubt about the principles (and courage) of a legislator. Conservative voters may see voting records at, say, an eighty or ninety percent rating, as a strong endorsement of their elected representatives, but here one must be cautious.

The rub of analysis lies in exactly where (on what issues) a congressman deviates from conservative principles. In the case of my senators, they had spoken in favor of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and, absent the angry groundswell of public opposition, I suspect they would have voted for it. For that and other reasons I have serious doubts regarding their conservative fides.

I have come to realize that any rating below 100% leaves room for a lot of mischief and requires careful analysis. What to do? In order to assure a majority of principled conservatives in Congress it seems to me that constituents providing incentives for the RNC and liberal Republicans to align politically with conservatism holds promise.

The Republican Party and Conservatism

For some time I have seen the Republican Party leadership (RNC) as bureaucratic, ingrown, contemptuous of conservative principles and thoroughly feckless. Like their opposite number (perhaps by emulation) they have come to embrace statism as the expedient way to win elections. To be sure, winning elections is properly the business of the party, but at what cost?

Republicans have become the party of appeasement in domestic politics as Democrats long have been in foreign policy. As conservative principles have been allowed to languish, the party has become defensive -- reactive -- to political opposition. (1) By doing so they implicitly communicate that Democrats are in control of the rules of debate. Representatives of the Senator John McCain stripe reinforce that impression by demonstrating a willingness to sacrifice principle in the interest of comity.

Too many, nominally on the right, seem to argue that conservative principles cannot attract the votes of independents and loosely committed Democrats, and they make the case for a "Big Tent" approach. Michael Medved, for example, asserts that voters in traditionally liberal northern states cannot be won over by conservative ideas; therefore, conservatives must agree to compromise on principle in their campaigns. He cites the example of Olympia Snowe and others, who as representatives of a liberal constituency, must not stray too far to the right. In other words, what good is it to uphold doctrine and lose elections?

Absent careful examination, the argument is appealing. But I find at least three flaws in this line of reasoning. In the first place, it fails to acknowledge the obvious fact that there will always be some (many?) who cannot be wooed away from hard-case liberalism. In this case targeting votes on the hard left amounts only to squandering resources. Second, it seems to ignore the fact that conservative principles, persistently and well articulated, appeal to the majority of Americans. Finally, the argument does not take into account the naturally conservative disposition of most Americans. (2)

But I will concede one point: liberal states, generally more populous, are heavily represented in the electoral college. But that fact suggests that these states are liberal monoliths. History shows us that they are not. (3)

Changing the Party

I began this essay with the intention of exploring only various (and unexciting) strategies for enabling conservatives to become the new (or renewed) face of the Republican Party. I have since come to recognize that unfolding events in the grassroots political arena may offer unexpected support to those strategies.

The tea parties, townhall confrontations and the steady ascendancy of conservative media at MSM's expense may be taken as signs that America is moving toward the right. Ironically, we have liberal overreach, seen in the bullying tactics of the hard left to undo traditional American institutions, to thank. I think citizens instinctively understand that the hastiness, scope and "foreignness" of legislation pushed so hard by the current administration, is a naked attempt to expand and consolidate extraconstitutional powers without practical restraints.

How to take advantage? It appears to me that the RNC has been typically slow to appreciate the popular movement towards conservatism (or away from liberalism), and it lacks the responsive agility to seize opportunities. Where one sees leadership is at the level of elected conservatives and the various organizations with which they are associated.
From that I conclude that it is conservative congressmen, with the support of like-minded constituents, who can change the party from within.

Another Strategy

In the past I have contributed money to the RNC and to representatives in my state. But about two years ago, I chose another course. I had come to recognize that the Republican Party, itself, undermines conservatism. So also, do candidates who, like the party, sacrifice principle for victory at the polls. Where once I would have made donations to the RNC and local Republican candidates, I now opt to support only hundred per cent conservatives from any state who a.) show outstanding leadership and b.) are in closely contested races.

This strategy is loudly opposed by less-than-robust conservative spokesmen in the media. They argue that hewing too closely to principle does not win elections; does not guarantee pluralities. While that assertion has merit in the short term, where is the benefit of a liberal-Republican majority? John McCain, Lindsey Graham (for examples) and many others demonstrate that the question has already been asked and answered. "Moderate" Republicans and their Democrat counterparts till the same soil, and the harvest, predictably, is not conservative. (4)

Leaners and standers. Many Republican politicians "lean" toward the conservative platform, but they have absorbed the liberal memes of the sixties that became popular orthodoxy, and they have been unable to think themselves out. Unconsciously and uncritically they have bought into the facile, seductive and intellectually specious (5) notions of Utilitarian philosophy -- the greatest good for the greatest number. Worse, they embrace the liberal perversion (6) of Jesus' admonition not to judge, believing that judgment must be suspended in all things. The result is a destructive combination of "touchy-feely" sentimentality that drives public policy accompanied by the inability to evaluate the need for it or the results that follow from it.

On the platform of conservative thought, standers, on the other hand, are not averse to the exercise of judgment. That is especially true in matters of social and fiscal legislation where conservatives recognize that public displays of pious "caring" seldom translate into actions that do not exacerbate the conditions they were meant to improve. The New Deal and Great Society programs being notable examples.

What Might Be Helpful

1. Conservatives should identify themselves more closely with Constitutional principles than with the Republican Party. Foremost among those principles, liberty.
2. To the extent that financial support is directed away from the RNC to bona fide conservative politicians, wobbly conservatives (and eventually, the party itself) will likely discover that their interests are best served by a political shift to the right.
3. Upholding conservative principles (clearly and consistently articulated without apology), will attract more support among voters than bargaining them away in cynical, expedient compromise. While they are privately (though often transparently) held in contempt by liberals, American voters have a remarkable ability to sort out hypocrisy. (7)



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(1) Stipulating to the multicultural smarminess that passes for liberal values, pro forma apologies or denials inevitably precede comments that might potentially offend some identity group.
(2) Pew Research Center, Gallup, Rasmussen and other polls.
(3) Consider Reagan's electoral votes: 1980 - 489; 1984 - 525.
(4) While the ideological shortcomings of McCain and Graham (for the latter most recently) are well documented, even Senate Minority Leader, John Boehner, though among the best spokesmen for conservative positions, seems not above short-term political compromise.
(5) The greatest good for the greatest number. This idea, associated with the work of Jeremy Bentham, cannot sustain the weight of logical analysis or practical application. Though it was quickly refuted by Bentham’s contemporaries, it persists as a favorite liberal mantra.
(6) One of many good analyses is found here. I chose this citation because it is concise and well documented. To the list of examples offered by the author I would add Jer. 5.1
(7) I argue here that Barack Obama was perceived by voters as less hypocritical – more devoted to principle -- than John McCain. The hypocrisy of Obama lay in his false representation of the principles he held rather than his fidelity to them.

Assault on Western Civilization

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What do ACLU-led attacks on public religious observance and the increasingly scant attention now given to Greek and Roman history by the K12 curriculum have in common? Together they symbolize the consequences of a powerful, ubiquitous, longstanding, relentless and largely successful assault on the values and traditions of the West. It is not confined to the Western Hemisphere or to Europe; it is virtually worldwide. We have come to expect it from the UN, controlled by Third World despots, but it is the West, itself, that leads this suicidal charge.
The pillars of Western civilization are the classical tradition and the Judeo-Christian heritage. Perhaps the true value of the Western canon lies in the fact that it best accommodates the strengths and weaknesses of human nature.

I argue that the best of the Western tradition was codified in the Anglo strain of the Enlightenment, and arguably achieved its zenith in the ideals, beliefs and actions of the American Founders.

The Enlightenment
I often make a distinction of convenience between the Anglo (Scottish, English and American) and French threads of the Enlightenment. It is over-simple, to be sure, but it is useful and generally avoids the margins of argument.

The French, following the ideas of Rousseau and the leadership of Robespierre and others, chose totally to embrace reason and to turn violently against religion and tradition. They set out with remarkable energy to change not only the present, but the past as well. The Anglos also embraced reason, but they opted to integrate it with traditions of the Western heritage. The Muslims, curiously, decided to abjure reason altogether and strengthen their faith as an alternative frankly hostile to reason. One might say that the French welcomed reason and rejected God and the Western tradition; the Anglos welcomed reason in the context of tradition and thanked God for it; and the Muslims rejected reason and turned to God as an antidote.

The French (and German) philosophes laid the foundations of post-modernist thought, which elevated pure reason beyond the realm of praxis (experience, observation) to the point of logical absurdity -- cultural, moral and intellectual relativism -- leading ultimately to nihilism. This school of thought is very much with us today, and its heritors -- people of the left (1) -- are determined to do all possible mischief to Western Civilization. Interestingly, they are in many ways allied with those who rejected reason -- Muslims.

The People of the Left - Part I
It is commonly observed that liberals are largely concentrated in media (entertainment and news), education, organized labor, minorities and "victim" identity groups, NGO's and government bureaucracies. This is largely true of the world-at-large, but it is certainly the case in Western Europe, North, Central and South America and Canada. It is noteworthy that these entities have much in common. With few exceptions, they are insulated from free-market competition; they are not existentially accountable for their performance -- the consequences of financial failure. Many have lost the traditional linkage between productive work and earnings. Apparently unaware of their debt to it, liberals tend to despise capitalism. One suspects the sentiment is a holdover from European aristocracy.

Insulation is perhaps a key concept. After generations of prosperity and security, unknown in most of the world, notions of existential threat have taken on an abstract (unreal) quality. In places where economies are weak and governance bad concern with survival is likely to be a constant among the people; they are daily threatened by the possibility of death by starvation, disease, violence and natural catastrophe. Life cannot be sustained without an intimate knowledge of quotidian reality.

Liberal separation from the consequences of thinking and behavior is the foundational point I want to make here: I'll have more to say about secondary characteristics -- assumptions and beliefs of the left and about the non-ideological, "accidental" spread of liberalism.

Affordable Self-Deception
In societies that are relatively free of real poverty, infectious disease (medically amenable where it exists), and death by violence, and that have infrastructure to minimize the consequences of natural disaster, things are different. People can afford to maintain a (delusional) distance from reality. If one observes a rattlesnake, safely caged, or a human predator contained in a prison cell, he can indulge in attributing to them qualities altogether superior to their nature. Similarly, a person living in comfort and security may be dismissive of such "abstractions" as tyranny, jihadi terrorism or economic collapse.

Liberals ignore the lessons of history at their (and our) peril, but they are constitutionally unable to recognize or acknowledge peril. They tend, for example, to favor various kinds of collectivism -- from democratic socialism to Marxism -- over individualism while ignoring the devastation wrought under socialism in the last century -- crippled economies and death and imprisonment suffered by tens of millions and, generally, the tyranny that socialism always engenders. Collectivist social structures inevitably suppress the best qualities of human nature and encourage the worst.

The Founders, to their great credit, understood the reality of human nature and how best to account for it in the organization of government.

The People of the Left - Part II
Is the assault on Western Civilization deliberate, planned and maliciously intended? Yes and no.
Since the beginning of the 20th Century, there have been individuals and groups actively and frankly hostile the Western Tradition and dedicated to its destruction. Many were the intellectual descendants of the French philosophes, but others were motivated by ambitions to power, tribal mentality, anti-individualism, antagonistic cultural differences or politically organized religious beliefs.

What unites liberal ideologues is a vision of social perfectibility -- whether utopian or eschatological. These are people who measure reality against their imagined standards of Utopia or heaven.

At the other extreme are non-ideological persons influenced by liberal memes in popular culture and the orthodoxies of the educational establishment adopted since the 1950's. They are not consciously anti-Western primarily because the don't understand the concept. In a word they are ignorant -- of history, economics, politics and government. They act upon beliefs uninformed by knowledge or analysis. Excluding functional illiterates this group is theoretically salvageable.

Of all the intellectual bigotries and prejudices the abhorrence of liberty seems to top the list. Flowing from that position are the following corollary fears of and enmity towards: anything that is unorganized or regulated, and thus unpredictable; individualism; capitalism; free markets. In short they seek control over the lives, organization and behavior of others; control from which they, themselves, are exempt (2).

A set of sacred beliefs characterizes the left, and these are zealously guarded: social Darwinism, the idea that men are perfectible if properly governed; multiculturalism, which follows from the fear of making value judgments, in part leading to anti-patriotism and contempt for national sovereignty; the conviction that economies (not governments) are zero-sum; a natural affinity for national governments (particularly fascist and socialist) that use oppressive power to control their polities; wars are caused only by failures of negotiation; all men are inherently good, and when behavior indicates otherwise it is because of environmental factors; nature, in all its manifestations, is superior to mankind; all men and societies are literally equal and many more. All contrary beliefs are intolerable.

Finally, there is a set of behaviors most commonly associated with left. These include: intolerance of dissenting opinion (above) expressed in vicious attacks on opponents; intensity of feeling antithetical to a sense of humor; avoidance of honest debate (on the issue of Global Warming, for example); denial of reality not congenial to their prejudices and contempt for factual verification where it would challenge ideology (they simply rely on repetition of fallacious ideas to counter evidence); the use of intimidation, institutional coercion and violence in service of ideology; willingness to lie in furtherance of the "greater truth"; the use of third person plural in reference to grievance groups (they can't afford health insurance). Again, a sampling.

As I have said elsewhere, there is a remarkable similarity between the left and Islam. Opponents are allowed three options: conversion, submission or death. If this statement strikes the reader as excessive, consider the death tolls at the hands of socialist governments in the last century. I believe that in contemporary Europe and North America the left is restrained only by an incomplete consolidation of power.

Future Of the West
Or, in the language of game theory, does the future of the West cast a shadow? The answer to this question is impossible to forecast with confidence, but weight of evidence bodes ill for the survival of Western Civilization.

As Plato has his revenge on Aristotle, so Rousseau has his on Burke. Cultural, moral and intellectual relativism infects and cripples the governments and peoples of Europe, much of Latin America and Canada and is hard at work in the U.S. The model of infection -- pandemic -- seems appropriate, for spread of collectivist memes appears to have a viral quality and is abetted by intellectual elites and allied institutions such as the UN and the EU -- precursors to world government.

Some assert that the populations of Western countries (taken as groups of individuals) are far more conservative than their governments. This may be the case, but they lack the necessary institutional wealth, power and organization of ruling parties that exert their will through the instrument of government. And managed economies (which most increasingly are) effectively destroy the incentives and motivation for the expression of individual will.

The problems arising out the growth of the left, are greatly exacerbated in Europe by growing Islamic populations hostile to the values of their host countries, routinely living on the dole, and not held accountable by feckless governments that seek cover under the suicidal mantle of multiculturalism. These countries willing or fearfully yield sovereignty to malign immigrants who contribute negatively to their economies and, under direct threat of violence, ridicule existing law and insist on Sharia jurisprudence -- not only for themselves, but their countries of residence entire. The US, so far, has not been similarly affected, but it is only a matter of time.

So the outlook for the survival in strength of Western values seems generally poor. If Western Europe is to overcome the decline, Denmark is most likely to lead the way; on the global scale the US must lead. In neither case are the odds favorable.

Some readers of this essay will inevitably question the importance of Western survival. What's the big deal, they may ask. Political change and the realignment of cultures and values, after all, is the natural course of history.

So it is, I would reply. But consider that in all the past, no better organization of human society, governance, and economy ever existed than that informed by the classical tradition melded with the Judeo-Christian heritage that culminated, by way of the Anglo Enlightenment, in the thoughts, actions, systems and structures passed on to us by the American Founders.

Today's Western Civilization has created and deployed, via free-market capitalism and sound, moral, republican political systems grounded in the rule of law, more wealth and security
worldwide than would ever have been thought possible a century ago. The practical work of that civilization has never been surpassed outside the realm of hypothesis.

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(1) The terms, "left" and "liberal" -- as I use them -- refer to persons who have adopted (consciously or otherwise) the ideology and thought of the continental philosophes.
(2) Think of neighborhood and condo associations. While many persons who offer service to these organizations act out of a sense of civic duty, others seem attracted by a fundamental need to organize and manage the behavior of others.

France: A Look Into America's Future

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Implausible Denial. One of the chief characteristics I have attributed to the left is denial. They deny what's there and affirm what ain't. France defines the standard.

Crime in France is a growing and serious problem. Much of it is -- by empirical standards, i.e., facts -- associated with the growing number of hostile, unassimilated Muslims*. Especially Muslim youths. But multicultural relativism and its ideological partners, elitism and political correctness, forbids acknowledging, and thereby dealing with, the truth.

Faithful to the traditions of Rousseau, Robespierre and the admirable outcomes of the Revolution, France would seem to be the purest exemplar of denial, but the balance of Western Europe is hotly competitive. Sadly, so is America.

But in America we have not yet reached the endpoint of reductio ad absurdum reasoning; in France they have.

At Brussels Journal, Tiberge, a regular contributor, transcribes the absurd rationalizations of a televised panel of French intellectuals -- "experts", discussing whether crime was really anything to be alarmed about -- whether violent criminals bear responsibility for their actions. They take consolation in the fact that, after all, things in France are not as bad as in, say, Pakistan....

This is funny, but pathos plays the trump card.

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A fine first-person article by Theodore Dalrymple about the brazenness of immigrant criminality and the PC passiveness of French government.

About Power: Collective vs. Collectivist

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Pat Santy and others have written extensively about Obama-Left, Inc. being out of touch with reality and perpetually in denial. I agree with the analysis, but in the interest of simplicity, on the one hand, and praxis on the other, I have adopted a kind of bare-bones way of assessing liberal performance in the world. A way, that for me, answers the question, “so now what”?

I would argue that these people* are absolutely in touch with reality; but it is their reality. Where most of us perform to standards of quotidian efficacy -- i.e., paying the mortgage to keep the house, investing money for retirement, not meddling in other people's business, and so on -- liberals are busy making for themselves a place in Heaven (read Utopian 'justification'). What does it matter if their diplomatic strategy weakens and endangers the nation? If fiscal policy is profligate? If social policy enslaves us? Never mind -- their motives are pure. They have a vision. They belong to a tribe that sanctifies them.

We may call them elitists (which they are) or narcissists (which they are), but we need to know that the reality of our world is not the reality of theirs. We see their behavior as pathological and bizarre, but to them it makes perfect sense. They simply perform to different standards.

A useful conclusion: it is pointless to reason with liberals, for reasoning (in the traditional Western sense) runs counter to their primary goals -- defense of a secular religion and its belief system and the acquisition and maintenance of power. Power (collective power), they understand perfectly. It is their stock-in-trade. And it is opposing, naked power alone -- not persuasion -- that will cause them to change.

One knows one has scored points when hysterical cries of 'righteous' outrage are heard from the left. The potential loss of power threatens their very being. The argument for power is sustained by observing the effects (ranging from defensiveness to open hostility) of tea parties, town halls and the growth of conservative media and the Tenth Amendment initiative. Though the right, historically, has been uncomfortable with the collective exercise of political power and will, when liberty is at stake the time for that exercise has arrived.

It all comes down to this: it is one thing to understand the enemy (I use the word advisedly) but another to know how to defeat him. The left will use whatever power is at their disposal to subject or eliminate -- in one way or another -- those who hold a different world-view. To force non-believers into submission, forced alliance or extinction. Here, there are remarkable similarities to Islam.

One thinks of the dreary, demeaning, undifferentiated existence of persons living in the former Soviet Republics -- statism in one of its more benign forms. But is a short journey to recall crematoria, gulags and killing fields. Only a few years ago I would have dismissed that last sentence as pure hyperbole, but no longer. There is no want of historical precedent in the annals of collectivist governance.

When individual liberty is attacked by political powers that are not amenable to reason or persuasion, it must be defended by political power. Modest conservative organization (above) has so far been surprisingly effective, which suggests that the power of the left may be overrated. But the left, over the span of a century, has had enormous influence in government and society precisely because its power has been organized. Therein lies a lesson.

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When I use the terms "liberal" and "Left" in most of my critical essays I am referring to to committed ideologues on the far end of the political spectrum -- those whose intellectual heritage derives from Rousseau and Marx. These are the True Believers and their enablers.

Open Thread

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Boston, August 29, 2009

Funeral services today for Edward M. Kennedy. Mary Jo Kopechne unable to attend.

End of post.

Does BHO Rhyme with WHO? It Should.

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The metastasizing, coercive power of government, increasingly unchecked by constitutional restraint, led by a narcissist and his far-flung elitist cohort of KGB-progressives from the houses of congress and offices of bureaucrats to the streets of ACORN. One and all channeling the shades of Rousseau, Marx, Gramci, Marcuse and Alinsky; recklessly betting the wealth of our nation and the liberty of its people on the impossible prospect of reaping a bountiful harvest from the tainted soil of Utopia. Grownups who live on this side of the rabbit hole have reason to be afraid

Childish Fear

The darkened, crape-hung rooms, cobwebs, spaghetti intestines, pans of blood, severed heads, painted-grape eyeballs, skeletons, moans and screams from dark recesses... pretty scary stuff for an impressionable kid. You round a corner and come face to face with a motionless, ghoulish figure. You freeze and sharply draw in a breath. But by now you're beginning to sort things out -- it's just a prop, another dummy meant to terrify you. You relax and then the 'dummy' comes alive, jumps out at you and grabs you by the shoulders. BOO!

Adult Fear

The state of American politics today is somewhat reminiscent of that first haunted house. It has the same eerie, menacing otherworldly quality. And the same terrifying BHO!

Chairman BHO! now rules the haunted house, and if he holds sway, we may see it furnished with real body parts. There is ample precedent.

Pat Santy Resumes Her Blog

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After a brief lacuna between July 6 and August 20, the Dr. Sanity blog is back in business. Since I wrote earlier about her decision to quit, I post here to square the record. Glad she's back.

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Comprehensive Legislation: Just Say No - Part II

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Across the political spectrum, this mantra is often repeated: “Real immigration reform must be comprehensive…”

It’s the word “comprehensive” that really bothers me when used in connection with any big government program. Stimulus, healthcare reform, Cap and trade, Energy policy and the former, failed initiative for immigration reform — all are comprehensive. And bloody-well scary.

Here, I deal with immigration reform because the content of that legislative proposal is less unclear than, say, healthcare reform. The only kind of comprehensive reform I can imagine endorsing is one that addresses dysfunctional law-making (Part I).

Government regularly shows itself to be inept and incompetent even when writing simple, targeted law (such as the “wildly successful” Cash for Clunkers), how much worse will be legislation that addresses an issue as complicated as immigration reform?

Any comprehensive law will typically be embodied in hundreds or thousands of pages that are virtually incomprehensible — sections filled with arcane legalisms and referencing equally incomprehensible prior legislation. Perfect vehicles for the deliberate obfuscation of all manner of pernicious agendas. Perfect vehicles for engendering unintended consequences that will themselves eventually require more comprehensive laws.

Rather than comprehensive, reform (any) law ought to be incremental, carefully prioritized, narrow in scope and clearly written. That would permit quicker implementation and allow for empirical evaluation and adjustment, as needed. The sum of incremental legislation would, over time, become, effectively, comprehensive.

Over time? one might object. But we haven’t got time; this is urgent (another scary word in government)! I would reply by noting that healthcare reform under the Clintons was the most urgent problem facing that administration; what might have we accomplished by now if we had approached that issue incrementally?

If, in the case instant, the elements of reform (many complex, but not complicated) were properly prioritized, many parts of “big bang” style reform might become moot. For example, if we began with aggressive law enforcement (requiring a robust form of state ID) — employer sanctions, penalizing “sanctuary” violations etc., it is likely (in fact, already proven) that illegal immigrants would return to their native homes of their own volition. In itself, serious enforcement would eliminate the need for a complicated and almost-impossible-to-administer legalization program — the major and most controversial element of reform. Likewise, if would simplify and reduce the cost of healthcare burdens (simplifying reform in that area), presumably reduce the cost of policing in major metropolitan areas (addressing crime associated with illegals), and soften the pressures on the prison system. The list goes on.

Aside from ad hoc efficacy, there are other benefits to the incremental approach. They are best illustrated by looking at the destructive effects of comprehensive bills. They cause confusion, social and political tensions, frustration, resignation, apathy and contempt among American voters. Worse, the public’s sense of confidence in their representatives and government itself is eroded, inviting a pervasive cynicism that effectively discourages citizen participation at all levels of government. High prices to pay.

I conclude by saying that comprehensive legislation (read sweeping changes) in any form is a bad idea. One would hope for a time when legislation was written in a way that voters — let alone congressmen — could not only understand, but explain to others. The simple, clear and broad language of the Constitution and Bill of Rights should stand as a model. On that point I entertain some hope but no optimism.

Open Thread

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Cash for Clunkers: Taxes for Government. A perfect metaphor

Comprehensive Legislation: Just Say No - Part I

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This essay is meant to provide some background for a subsequent posting which opposes any kind of "comprehensive" legislation (reform or otherwise) and argues for a radical simplification in the crafting of law. What is at stake is the principle of individual and community sovereignty.



Beginning with the Johnson administration it became the mission of government to write all laws -- general and regulatory -- in a way that they would be extremely detailed, anticipate future judicial scrutiny, be self-executing and account for all contingencies. * That trend continues unabated with the result that these laws are largely impenetrable by legal minds and laymen alike. Tax law is the example most often cited, though environmental law may be even more labyrinthine. Among the consequences are the sheer difficulty and cost of deployment. implementation, compliance and enforcement. Laws that once might have been simple, clear and brief are now beyond understanding. Perhaps the worst effect of the current state of affairs is the fact that the courts can interpret law in a way that suits them; in other words, the rule of law has been superseded by the rule of men.

It was the intent of the Founders that laws be made as general as possible to be adjudicated by the courts on a case-by-case basis. It is worth noting that the most important, foundational law of the land -- the constitution -- was written in just such a way. None of the amendments in the Bill of Rights exceeds a single paragraph! Of these some of the most important (I think of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments) each comprise a single sentence.

The intent of the modern style of legislation is to increase the power and control of central government. Perhaps the best contemporary example is the EU constitution, which has grown from a mere 27,000 pages in April 2008 to about 40,000 today. Compare that with the widely circulated Cato edition of the Constitution, all amendments and the Declaration of Independence, which fits comfortably in a shirt pocket.

____*
Phillip K. Howard, The Death of Common Sense, Ch. I

Thank God For Barack Obama

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Hillary Clinton could not have carried off the feat so effectively as has BHO. His singular achievement has been to awaken and energize the essential conservatism of the American plurality.

The robust elitism of Mrs. Clinton could not have rivaled the malignant narcissism of Obama -- a narcissism which prevents him from concealing effectively his sinister and wholly pernicious anti-American agenda.

The president has created for himself a persona* that some have seen as magisterial, sanctifying and noble. But a little scratching at the surface reveals a buffoon, profoundly ignorant of history, lacking a foundation in common knowledge and common sense, innocent of the values of the Western Tradition, but keenly attuned to Marxist principles. His persona might have been more skillfully crafted -- more marketable -- with the benefit of a true understanding of "America as it is".

It is frankly amazing that the American heritage of distrusting the centralized power of government has not entirely been bred out of our citizens -- casualties of K12, academe and the media. But apparently some notions of individual sovereignty yet persist.

Middle America seems to have awakened sufficiently to perceive the threat that Obama poses to the the nation. One can hope that it will lead -- even modestly -- to a revival of appreciation for founding principles. Thank God for Barack Obama.

____*
Because the narcissist has no innate sense of self, he creates a persona -- an image -- of what he wants to be. In the words of Drew Pinsky (The Mirror Effect), "The key to understanding the Narcissus myth is not that he fell in love with himself, but that he failed to recognize himself in his own reflection."

The Palin Fault Line

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More interesting, perhaps, than Sarah Palin herself is the hysterical reaction she elicits -- from the left especially, but also from a few on the moderate right. It is a phenomenon. It is a war of social and political memes. A war between WASP America and "America as it should be".

As I see things, the characteristic reactions from the left are essentially different in kind from those on the right. The left is visceral, suggesting that Palin is seen as an existential threat (about which more); their reactions are marked by expressions of fear, anger, rage and a deep-seated hatred. The right shows more restraint, suggesting that differences may be more about turf -- political poaching -- and contention over conservative orthodoxy.

On the grand scale we see that a proxy war is being fought in America. The person and candidacy of Sarah Palin are incidental as a cassus belli; she is a symbol of a 'dangerous' worldview. She represents traditional American values and ideas of American exceptionalism so despised and feared by the institutional left. It is also about liberal lifestyles derivative of its own contrarian values.

In this essay I aim to say more about lifestyles (as an expression of social and political values) and less about worldview. The latter I will dispose of with the broad strokes of postmodernist philosophy and some of its most pervasive and pernicious subsets: multiculturalism and militant secularism, relativism and, in particular, elitism.

Politics-as-war. The punishment dealt to Sarah Palin by the elitist left is astonishing, both in scope and virulent meanness. She was attacked on every front: by her political enemies in Alaska (for which some justification might be found) by the usual suspects in print and TV media, by organized Democrat lawyers and (as MediaMatters chortles) by activist bloggers.

What is it about Sarah Palin that provokes the left to become so animated? To mobilize its army of destroyers so quickly? Is it her political views? I think not. She may be closer, politically, to Fred Thompson than to others on the early Republican slate. But Fred Thompson never caused much stir among the opposition. Unlike other candidates, Palin does not honor elitist rules -- the legacy from the childrens' rebellion of the 60's -- that demands political correctness and insincere comity toward that element of the opposition that resists demonization. In short, she is herself, and she has the effrontery not to join the club.

Elitist society in America grows and gains political power as a consequence of expanding government, which itself is increasingly elitist. Since its power is attenuated by pluralist notions asserting the competence of private citizens to make decisions, it is the natural enemy of pluralism. Jonah Goldberg points to the elitist component of big government:

It [fascism] was objectively and proudly populist while at the same time fascists openly argued for an elite cadre of superior, if not super, men who would run the country. The Leninists had a similar argument with all that avant-garde of the proletariat and whatnot. In America, I think a big, big, big part of the problem is the permanent civil service bureaucracy which is naturally sympathetic to big government and parties that champion big government. These governmental elites, in collusion with academia and the "helping professions," take it upon themselves to find new ways to "run" the society. [Emphasis mine]

He adds:

Whenever a political movement arises — like American conservatism — which challenges the elite-bureaucracy's authority they are accused of working against "the people" and the "downtrodden." Just look at all of the silly things people say about John Bolton. Journalists are key to this process because they share the bureaucratic elite's vision of both government and the masses.

The divide between Sarah Palin and the left, I believe, is fundamentally a proxy for that between elitism and pluralism.

She is elite, without being elitist. That is a thing the left cannot abide. The aura (self-arrogated) of moral and intellectual superiority is the liberal shibboleth for success, power and political entitlement. Elitism has the characteristics of membership in an exclusive club which rewards mediocrity and achievement alike. In the case of the former it masks, by general consent, personal and professional shortcomings. The tenured second-rate intellectuals of academe, writers and pundits for whom untested assumptions serve in the place of facts, bureaucrats and elected officials who rise by virtue of crafted appearances and in-network support rather than merit — all persons whose inadequacy is concealed under the mantle of club membership. To be sure, there are true elites in the club, but they hold the conceit that their achievements (in whatever field) entitle them to determine the course of the politea.

Elitism is not exclusive to liberals; it is all too common on the putative right. But, in my view, elitism is the defining characteristic of the left and a minor — if disturbing — attribute of the right.

Which returns us to Sarah Palin. She has elite bona fides, but she refuses to “play fair” (by elitist rules), thereby threatening to expose the the life-sustaining (read narcissist “supply”)* fiction of elitist superiority. She has shown a ‘dangerous’ and threatening willingness to name persons, things and ideologies for what they are. And that calls for circling the wagons.

*—-
Narcissist “supply” is the sum of inputs required to maintain an exalted self-image. For the narcissist it has an existential quality, sustaining the very life of the psyche. It is equivalent to the supply of drugs in substance addiction. I think that idea goes a long way toward explaining the sheer magnitude of the visceral hate-fear response from the far left. Elitism and bullying are prominent manifestations of narcissism.

Note 1: usually I avoid 'psychologizing', but I have come to think ideas about narcissism are justified by common sense and experience; more, I believe they have the virtue of explanatory power in analyzing irrational non-adaptive behavior.

Note 2: I rather like Sara Palin, but mostly because of her ability to set the wolves to howling. Jim DeMint would be my choice if he chooses to run.

Alien Obama - Part II

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Given a provenance as dubious and murky as that of our current president, an antique would find no market among careful buyers. Matters of interest include his mentors, associates and academic and professional records. Yet we have invested the treasure and security of our nation in a cipher -- Barack Hussein Obama.
Who is this man? What do we know about him? By deliberate concealment the public record is scant, but to many of us the little that is known is in no way reassuring. What we do not know may be even less so.

"Birtherists" is the derisive term coined (presumably by the left) to mock citizens who have a legitimate interest in verifying the details of his birth. Elitists of all political stripes assert that the question is settled and to pursue it further is unworthy and smacks of conspiracy paranoia. Though attributed to the strawman malign far right, I believe the desire for definitive resolution has popular support.

The verification of Obama's birth alone, however, focuses much too narrowly. It is a proxy for a plethora of other information deliberately concealed or suppressed. The concealment of information, in itself, raises questions.

Those questions include troubling personal and political associations, lack of information (records, grades, papers) regarding his education, early trips to Pakistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, close connections with the Socialist party in Chicago, his communist mentor in Hawaii, the absence of written records.... The list goes on. Yes, these are things we have been able to learn, but only in the most superficial way. The president and persons with whom he was associated refuse to add probative detail. As many writers have already noted, Mr. Obama's record -- opaque as it is -- would disqualify him government employment requiring security clearance.

So in what way is President Obama an alien? I believe (despite K12, academe and the media) there remains a strong current of individualism, common sense and distrust of government among most Americans; core beliefs and opinions that are shared by the great majority but not by Mr. Obama and his cohort on the hard left. Two issues, for example, are the sanctity of life and the second amendment, but those differences with mainstream America are only ideological symptomatic of foreign worldview.

Therein, I believe, lies the clear disconnect that defines Obama as alien. In his speeches, actions, writing and thinking he has shown himself to be postmodernist, Eurocentric and elitist. He views The Constitution (which is at the heart of American values) as a malleable document that impedes the exercise of dirigiste government power. He is not a patriot in the deeply embedded American sense, seeing himself – as do all 'enlightened' persons – as “a citizen of the world”. How much at variance he is with the mainstream is suggested by a citation from the Washington Post:

Traditional values in the United States, Baker found, are very different than in other nations. Unlike nations where collective identity is based on common ancestry, in the United States, he wrote, the imagined community is "a shared set of ideas." These are the ideas of the Constitution: personal liberty, equality, democracy and the rule of law. America was invented, not inherited. Our traditional values don't come from the fatherland, the volk or an ancient regime. Nor are our most basic shared values a selection of moral positions held by conservative American Christians.
Seen in this way, it is clear that traditional American values are alive and well. Constitutional ideals have unchallenged legitimacy, as do the worth of family, religion (or spirituality) and national pride. This is a stark contrast to the countries that have radically rejected their traditional values: Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Japan and the former Eastern Bloc nations.

I close with an anecdotal reference that seems telling. Even allowing for the giddiness of campaign fatigue -- putting myself in the candidate's position -- I simply cannot imagine myself ever uttering the phrase, "57 states" or the revealing, "America as it should be."

Alien Obama - Part I

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When we think of aliens our imagination may turn to the spacemen of the Roswell, NM or to the melded Robert Heinlein* sort. Of more recent vintage, sliders, conjured up by sci-fi writers who follow eleven-dimension physics -- parallel universes in "inner" space. Or infiltrated spies. More mundane, we may simply consider immigrants -- especially those reared outside the Western Tradition.

Whatever the kind of alien, the term conveys a sense of strangeness, otherness. It means strange, foreign, of or belonging to another. A person who is among us but not of us. It is notable that"Alien" and "Alias" derive from a common root.

Which brings to our president. Is he an alien or an alias, or both? If an alias, we might say, Obama A.K.A.... How to finish the sentence? Is he an original thinker or is he a creature of puppeteers? As I said in an earlier post, we know what he is by his actions and by those of his words that manage to make sense. But we do not know who he is.

I confess that I find it extremely difficult to understand, let alone characterize Mr. Obama and his stranger-than-Haight-Ashbury cohort. Most of their pronouncements are, to me, so outrageous -- so alien -- that I hardly know how to respond. Cognitive overload.

Of many examples, here are two. Mr. Obama on several occasions has put forward his view of "negative" and "positive" rights. Negative rights (one suspects that the adjective was deliberately chosen for its darker connotation) are the very ones spelled out in the Bill of Rights -- those crafted to protect the people from the otherwise inevitable abuse of government power. Positive rights -- those Mr. Obama favors, on the other hand, are those which would enable the government to exercise its power over the people -- always for "good" purposes, of course!

Then there is his stated and demonstrated disdain for notions of private property. Wealth is accumulated for the purposes of sharing -- redistribution; private enterprise, on its face, is not compatible with that view. These ideas are certainly alien to our founding principles.

James Lewis, in a fine article appearing in the American Thinker, captures the idea especially well.

And yet the Obama "birther" debate is important. What's important about it is the feeling a growing number of Americans have in their bones that Obama is foreign -- to our traditions, loyalties and shared understandings about the nature of America. In a way the legal debate matters less than that bone-deep sense that Obama is fundamentally "Other than American".

[snip]

This is not a secret. Obama is foreign to America in a way that has little to do with his birth certificate. He could be American-born and still think in this very anti-American way. A lot of people are. But whatever he is legally, there is not a shred of doubt that he is steeped in an Anti-American way of thinking.



In the concluding Part II I will try to point out that the more we learn about Mr. Obama the more questions are raised.


-----*
Stranger in a Strange Land

Good Government? A Challenge to Readers (Revisited)

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This is a shot across the bow of the statist ship. Or perhaps a Socratic-style taunt. It poses, in any case, a question (or is it a thought-experiment?) that wants an answer.

This is a challenge that, given the wholly pernicious initiatives of the present administration -- healthcare reform, cap and trade, stimulus doles and nationalization of the private sector -- seems to have more urgent relevance than it did at the time of first posting.

The challenge is simple enough, really. It is this:

Cite an example of a serious problem in contemporary society -- social, political or economic -- that is not caused by or exacerbated by government.

.
To date this challenge has elicited few comments, and no satisfactory answers in any forum. But in this era of trope and chains -- well, who knows?.

Marxist Obama

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Which is simply calling a spade a spade. While I can only guess at Barack Obama's motives, and motivations -- who he is as a man -- what he is, behind the evanescent mask of language, is plain enough.

He is a Marxist. 1. To elaborate I would add, consequently anti-American 2. and devoutly anti-capitalist.

Now the president's liberal (and robot conservative) defenders will object to the term -- arguing, as is their custom, only at the margins -- but the evidence is plain enough. His earliest and subsequent associations point us toward making that judgment, but his words and the policies he favors can leave no doubt. Obama's policies and his stated intentions to re-shape America (the world, if it cooperates) reflect clearly those of Marxists past and present.

Besides definitional objections, certain 'conservatives' who carry the memes of the 60's (comity at any cost) will say there is nothing to be gained politically by using the term. That may be so, but, as the left amply demonstrates, denying the truth of a matter does not make the truth go away. Denial is a refuge of comfort, but it carries danger. 3.

I make my case by examining Mr. Obama's policies, pronouncements and actions in the context of his work.

Foreign Policy. Honduras provides a telling current example of the president's views. Here the president chooses to view the lawful (constitutional) ouster of President Zelaya as a coup. It is hard to imagine a reason other than his wish to preserve congenial relations with Zelaya's communist allies, the Castros and Hugo Chavez and his contempt for democratic government. The popular uprising against the theocracy in Iran -- a provocative sworn enemy of the US -- barely drew Obama's notice. He has been hostile toward toward the only fully functional democratic government in the Middle Easy and our traditional ally, Israel.

The US Economy. As famously and unintentionally revealed in a recorded statement to 'Joe-the-plumber' Mr. Obama believes that justice is achieved by the redistribution of wealth. He encourages class warfare by his words and taxation policies. He has seized private business, abrogated the sanctity of contracts by fiat and uses every means further to accrue power to the federal government. The obscene 'stimulus' package, the drive toward socialized medicine and the devotion to taxing by 'cap and trade' in response to the mythical anthropocentric global warming are designs to destroy the US economy. Obama's repeated claim that he intends to rebuild the economy "from the bottom up" fairly boggles the mind. Paving the Road to Serfdom is a shovel-ready job.

Obama's Church. Liberation Theology is a religious denomination created in Latin America about 50 years ago. It is the result of a Faustian bargain between leftist Catholics and Marxists designed to suit their mutual purposes. The publicized preachments of Rev. Wright
supported by his colleague, Father Pfleger, are not aberrations, but rather the mainstream of the politicized church. And doubtless congenial to Mr. Obama.

There is much more to be said about President Obama, but I want to confine myself to the case at hand. If he succeeds in his pernicious objectives -- domestic and foreign -- the future, as game theorists say, will cast no shadow.
--------
1. The matter of political definitions is not an easy one. It is complicated by the fact that Marxist nations and movements have, absent any structural or philosophical change, taken to calling themselves Socialist -- presumably because the term is seen as more benign. But by far the greater problem is the fact that no combination of political, social and economic systems and the ideas that drive them will precisely fit a general definition. I view Marxism as the political heritage of the theories of Marx: dialectical materialism, critical theory of capitalism and revolutionary theory. Ideas that form a consistent thread from Gramci to Alinsky. To be sure the lines between the various surviving forms of collectivism blur, but the Marxist strain -- the most virulent -- tends to unify them.
2. "American" in the sense of the Founders and of history through the middle of the last century. -The America he may be for is a Utopian construction, centrally planned.
3. Denying the existence of a threat -- small, medium or existential -- is to yield the means and readiness to combat it. A herpetologist who calls a rattlesnake by another name and attributes to it innocuous qualities is unlikely to enjoy a long career.
The avoidance of properly descriptive language often makes us feel safer. I was once a jury foreman in a murder case. The case was simple and the evidence clear, but one juror could not agree with the verdict. "I understand the evidence and the law, but when I look at the defendant I just can't believe he's a murder."

The Presidency: Above Obama's Pay Grade

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Last night's preemptive prime-time performance was an exercise in vagueness, evasion, dissembling and sophistry. He preached the liberal vision to the media choir, but he did not inform.

Perhaps the dog ate his homework. Whatever the case, He was clearly (and typically) unprepared with the facts or details ("specificity") of even the fundamental issues bearing on the healthcare (now called 'insurance') 1. reform he ardently advocates.

In his opening remarks he offered the standard complaints about the economy he inherited and congratulated himself on progress contradicted by evidence. The American economy, he asserted, cannot compete in this century; that's because we have not reaped the (illusory) windfall of good jobs that will inevitably follow from investments in clean energy. He went on to note poor graduation rates, how much money is spent on healthcare and claimed that his reforms would (somehow?) be an integral and essential part of a new, robust economy.

It is plain that Mr. Obama is comfortable with his grand, statist Utopian vision; less so that he understands economics, Western history, human nature writ large and individualism in contrast to collectivism. When he speaks the sheer breadth of his empirically incorrect assumptions is stunning.

Under certain circumstances, the President's rhetorical style -- speaking confidently in sweeping generalities, using class and group stereotyping, offering anecdotal strawmen to inspire sympathy or condemnation -- is effective. Those favorable circumstances consist, simply, in not being called to account. On the rare occasion that one of his generalities or assumptions is timidly challenged, he simply replies with more generalities and assumptions. Because he is quick to show a subtle, masked anger (a new meaning for 'bully pulpit'), he tends to intimidate those who question him.

Which brings us back to the press conference. The questions about healthcare reform remain not only unanswered but increasingly muddled.

A few observations.

In connection with costs Mr. Obama said they would not be borne "on the backs" of the middle class. That phrase is generally attested to collectivists who believe that the economy is a zero-sum game. It is not.

The president, using his customary anecdotal strawman, advanced the idea that physicians are driven by financial considerations (an unnecessary tonsillectomy) rather than the welfare of the patient. If that is true, what evidence do we have? An example of stereotyping and assumption.

Based on the information of record, the Cambridge police officer who arrested Prof. Henry Gates acted prudently, legally and with admirable restraint. Mr. Obama -- having admitted he didn't know the facts -- was quick to seize the moment to voice a litany of racial canards not apposite the case, and condemn (as chief law-enforcement officer) the intelligence, motives and lawful actions of Sgt. Jim Crowley. As is often the case, the Bible (if nothing else, an insightful and enduring study of the human condition) offers a terse and cogent bit of wisdom: He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. 2. In the case at hand the presumption of shame may be without merit.

This press conference ('presser', now viral among media) demonstrates a significant contrast between Mr. Obama and recent former presidents. They were interested and in easy command of the issues at hand; he was not.
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1. Lexical morphing in the service of obfuscation

2. Prov. 18.13

Frog Fantasy: A Case for Healthy Skepticism

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No, this is not about the Frog Prince. Rather, it is a cautionary note about politicized science and equally politicized supportive op-eds.
Readers will recall the frenzied cries from the left bemoaning the wanton destruction of nature by a greedy and callous entrepreneurial society. Instant the amphibian equivalent of the Noble Savage -- the noble frog. A defenseless victim of the depredations of unrestrained and pernicious capitalism, the frog was elevated in status (at least for the ad hoc polemic of the moment) to the finest of God's creatures. How could we so long have ignored his pain?

With that wonderful mixture of outrage, moral superiority and frantic worry about eschatalogical implications so often found among self-anointed elites, Nicholas D. Kristof tells us (NYT) It's Time to Learn from Frogs: "Some of the first eerie signs of a potential health catastrophe came as bizarre deformities in water animals, often in their sexual organs." Having set the stage he continues, "Frogs, salamanders and other amphibians began to sprout extra legs. In heavily polluted Lake Apopka, one of the largest lakes in Florida, male alligators developed stunted genitals."

This is terrible! What can be the cause? Mr. Kristof, in due course, explains: "Apprehension is growing among many scientists that the cause of all this may be a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors. They are very widely used in agriculture, industry and consumer products."
He goes on to paint a picture of the horrors portended for humans: genital deformities, misshaped sexual organs and cancer, early puberty in girls, obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, effects on male and female reproduction, breast development and cancer, prostate cancer, neuroendocrinology, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, and cardiovascular endocrinology, brain development and sperm counts.

Now this is scary stuff; it scares researchers too: “Among some scientists, there is real apprehension at the new findings — nothing is more terrifying than reading The Journal of Pediatric Urology…” and a Johns Hopkins professor tells us: “It’s scary, very scary.”
Mr. Kristof concludes with this exhortation: “Those deformed frogs and intersex fish — not to mention the growing number of deformities in newborn boys — should jolt us once again.”

Which brings back – full circle -- to the frog.
An interesting article by editor Matt Walker appeared in Earth News on June 25 – fortuitously three days before the Kristof piece in the Times. The Headline reads: Legless frogs mystery solved. Mr. Walker cites Stanley Sessions, …“an amphibian specialist and professor of biology at Hartwick College…”, who says:
“Deformed frogs became one of the most contentious environmental issues of all time, with the parasite researchers on one side, and the 'chemical company' as I call them, on the other… There was a veritable media firestorm, with millions of dollars of grant money at stake [bolding mine].”

Prof. Sessions, working with Brandon Ballengee, a colleague at University of Plymouth in the UK, found that the problem was not unique to the US. After further collaborative study and observation, they discovered that dragonfly nymphs were snacking on tadpoles – the tasty bits, such as extremities and eyes. A fascinating short video (embedded in the article) persuasively seems to confirm their findings.

Matt Walker concludes, saying: "Sessions is careful to say that he doesn't completely rule out chemicals as the cause of some missing limbs. But 'selective predation' by dragonfly nymphs is now by far the leading explanation, he says."

So we cannot yet know the true effects of endocrine disruptors; they may turn out to be as devastating as Mr. Kristof and the scientists he cites predict. Whatever the case I think we may imagine that the “millions of dollars of grant money will no longer follow the frog.

Pat Santy Quits Her Blog. I’ll Miss Her

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Dr. Patricia Santy is a practicing psychiatrist and a prolific, though careful, conservative writer with a good command of politics, economics and social phenomena. To say that her resume is an impressive is to master understatement.

I first came to her blog, Dr. Sanity, in the course of researching narcissism (about which more, perhaps, in a future blog). I found a wealth of information in her own work and a number of useful links to good resources on the subject. I returned several times to her website and found that she brought valuable insights and knowledge to a wide range of subjects (the threat of Islam, Liberalism, government and private madness...), that she wrote well on topics of interest to me and, above all, that she's fun to read.

Now I am not enamored of the field of psychology (nor any of the "soft" sciences, save economics) because, in my experience, practitioners who write and speak tend to wrap their prose in obscurity and jargon and proceed from unwarranted assumptions (facts would be nice) to sweeping conclusions even less warranted. Worse, their prose is stultifying (APA writing guidelines?) and opaque. But what I discovered in Dr. Santy’s writing was a consistent clarity, a congenial style and -- best -- she elevates psychology to what it should be: disciplined, statistically and clinically tested observations of human nature not wanting in common sense.

Although Dr. Santy has decided to quit blogging (temporarily, one hopes), I recommend visiting her site, enjoying the archives, and following the many good links she has put up.
In her July 6 posting she explains her reasons for retiring her blog.

God bless Pat Santy. And, as I said in the header, I'll miss her. I won't be alone.

Fruits of K12 and Low Pop Culture

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The real sadness regarding the two vignettes that follow lies in the fact that they are so unexceptional.
A young woman tells us what is important in her life and identifies her concerns.
And, as Mary Grabar observes, a young man shows his fealty: “I thought of the people I saw on the MARTA train I took to downtown Atlanta that afternoon, especially the young man accompanied by a scantily clad young woman and three little children. He wore braids and a pendant with a photo of Obama. I would have bet money that he, like many of the students I have taught at my community college, did not know who Hitler was, much less Mussolini.”

It is well that the Founders are dead.

Palin Resigns: Defeat or Strategy?*

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Most pundits on both sides of the political divide seem to agree that the Alaska governor has capitulated. Being somewhat contrarian by nature I'm not ready to call for taps signaling the end of Gov. Palin's political career. But prediction is shaky enough when one knows the salient facts, so I won't hazard one.
What bothers me is the fact that I see her as the proxy (Joe-the-plumber writ large) for conservatism. Anyone who rises to prominence as a symbol of the right can expect the potentially ruinous assaults by the media and the largely corrupt legal system, themselves now proxies of the left. Political intimidation is meant to induce fear. That fear, I believe is very real, and I think it does much to explain the growing timidity of the Republican party. In today's America political correctness is more about cowardice than comity or principle.

So if Sarah Palin is, indeed, out of the picture, who will replace her? Is there a farm team for new conservative leadership?

Which, perhaps ironically, brings us to the tea parties. These widespread public assemblies have two advantages: they are large and amorphous, meaning they are not clearly defined groups with formal structure that can be individually identified and singled out for Alinsky-style destruction or “reform”, and they are numerically large, which weakens the credibility of ridicule. Join them, support them. Too many proud nails may be too much for the liberal hammer. They may contain the seeds of new leadership.

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This posting began as a comment to: http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2009/07/03/palin-retreats/ (hostile territory)

The Awful Specter of Standards*

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To the extent that the problem of hypocrisy can be reduced to a simple cause I would submit that it rests – for conservatives -- on the adherence to standards, writ large. For liberals it is something else entirely.


What kinds of standards? Those traditional in Western culture, particularly – but not exclusively – normative ones: standards of social behavior, decency, honor, objective truth, intellect, principle, language and performance in one’s endeavors. Adherence to standards is, in a word, discipline. Standards that motivate, on the one hand, and constrain on the other.

The petulant, adolescent rebellion of the 60’s was an overt rejection of traditional standards and attendant norms. And it was a wholesale rejection, somewhat reminiscent of the phenomenon that followed the French Revolution. Agin’ what is and for what ain’t. Although he rebellion may have been driven more by demographics than ideology, many of the ‘new’ ideas it internalized had been brewing for half a century

I think that a case can be made that a desire for constraints and a natural sense of good and bad, right and wrong inhere, hard-wired, in human nature, and are probably associated with survival. If they are deliberately ignored or willfully denied one is exposed to nagging phantasms of loss and guilt. A post-Kierkegaardian nihilism. Enter here the specter of standards – not quite destroyed -- to remind the left of the existential angst that eternally besets them.

Conservatives, by definition, embrace tradition, and they are represent a constant scold to the left for their forfeiture of essential structure. Though we often fail to meet them, they are still our standards. This may explain why the left is so hostile to established religion (not in the Constitutional sense) and to the military, where tradition and discipline are foremost.

The left holds the amoral high ground.

Having foresworn intellectual discipline the left trades on emotion – the lowest common denominator. By “lowest” I do not mean least important, but rather least governable, for it operates at the limbic level. It is infantile, requiring no standards beyond the operative and strategic ones of empathy or anger that a situation may demand. It seeks its own ends (power) without any scruple save the primal, self-affirming need to believe they – persons and ends -- are good.

And so we return to hypocrisy. Better, perhaps, “hypocrisies”, since the hypocrisy of the left is qualitatively different from that of the right. For the right hypocrisy lies in articulating standards and failing through weakness to meet them; for the left hypocrisy is simply the pretense of owning standards. Employed as a means to power, It is a weapon taken from the arsenal of the right and used against it. Otherwise it is without meaning. As there can be no shame without honor, so there can be no hypocrisy without standards.

As the experience of the 20th Century illustrates, the political victories of the left may be ultimately hollow, Pyrrhic and haunted, but they are extremely pernicious. As to liberals, better they be true hypocrites.

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Note: this post is a near-verbatim reprint of a comment submitted to PJM, Victor Davis Hanson on 07/02. Here is the link.

Note To Readers on Format Change

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I recently added the "Read More" feature to this blog. The changes do not apply to former postings, but in future you will see a lead paragraph or so and then be able to jump to the full article if you choose. That should tidy up the main page a bit.

Suicide by Government: The Obama-Kavorkian Connection

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Most readers will remember that Dr. Jack Kavorkian came to public notice because he was overtly engaged in the medical specialty of euthanasia. His clients, who were terminally ill and/or in constant, unbearable pain, engaged him to hasten their demise in a quick and humane manner. The courts ruled that his activity was illegal and ordered him to desist. He did not, and he was consequently imprisoned.

Mr. Obama and his party are similarly engaged, but with multiple “clients” – the American polity. Similarly, the plurality of that polity has entered a contract with government to assist them in the matter of assisted suicide. This analogy is sound but limited. When we broaden our examination we find notable differences between Dr. Kavorkian and the Obama government.
First, the polity is reasonably healthy and without severe pain. Second, the manner of death will be neither humane nor quick. Third, and most importantly, there is the matter of informed consent. Dr. Kavorkian, to his great credit, was careful in the extreme to ensure that those under his care (and their families) were perfectly informed regarding alternatives to suicide, and what could be expected in the final moments if they opted for death. And finally, the government will not be subject to prosecution.

We have proceeded from analogy to metaphor. Now, let us consider facts.
Security – economic, political and existential – has and continues to be aggressively undermined. We begin with economic security. The conceit of piety rather than the care of probity drives policies that are certain to weaken or destroy the economy. The wanton spending and printing money in the name of a litany of Utopian purposes seizes money from those who have earned it and distributes it among those who are content to live on government largesse in lieu of honest labor. Under current economic policy America is destined to become a third-world nation – Obamastan, if you like. Despite the stated intention of narrowing the gap between rich and poor, that gap will remain. But it will now be between a ruling bureaucratic aristocracy, on the one hand, and everyone else on the other. Worse than the loss of wealth will be the continuing and accelerating usurpation on personal liberty. Once liberty is surrendered the state will become totalitarian and ultimately murderous. (1)

In the matter of defense diplomatic and military decisions are being taken that make America appear weak in the eyes of our enemies. A posture of appeasement invites challenge from other nations on fronts military, political and economic. The most immediate threat, Islam (2), seems to have escaped this administration's notice; or, perhaps, they seek the comfort of denial. In either case failure to confront aggression in the Middle East serves only to encourage it. (3)

Voting for the services of Dr. Obama seems to have been unwise.

(1) The reader may ask if I am not taking an eschatological view of the world. I would reply that one has only to glance over his shoulder at recent history to note the appalling number of deaths in totalitarian (esp. Socialist/Communist) states. Excluding Nazi Germany, a million times 149.

(2) I use 'Islam' rather than the PC circumlocutions such as, 'Islamist', 'Militant Islam', etc. Diana West has a good article on the matter of corrupted language and the assertion of the right to free speech.

(3) It is vital that we recognize that Islam, in particular, is the natural and enduring enemy of liberty and democratic forms of government that flow from it and – ideally – support it. Where Islam does not threaten violence, it is corrosive to representative government (as we see clearly in Western Europe and increasingly in America).