Over the course of the last several years, I've excerpted and referred to plenty of (I think) very reasonable arguments in favor of the Iraq War (which, of course, refers to both the short war to remove Hussein, and the efforts to stabilize resultant chaos and bide time until the Iraqis developed a working government and military of their own). I've also tried to shoot down the various degrees (subtle to blatant) of annoying hysteria that permeates most all anti-war arguments. My rationale there has been that if one is going to critique the war, one ought do so reasonably.
Here's a reasonable argument against the war, offered by the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and excerpted here from her final book:
Iraq lacked practically all the requirements for a democratic government: rule of law, an elite with a shared commitment to democratic procedures, a sense of citizenship, and habits of trust and cooperation.... The administration's failure involved several issues, but the core concern is that they did not seem to have methodically completed the due diligence required for reasoned policy-making because they failed to address the aftermath of the invasion. This, of course, is reflected by the violence, sectarian unrest, ethnic vengeance and bloodshed we see today in Iraq.
I'm not stipulating to anything except that this is a reasonable, genuine, sincere, and humble critique. Note that no anti-Bush, anti-America, anti-imperialism, anti-Conservative, conjectured color-scheme psychological/psychoanalytical who-hah, or post-nationalist perspective needed.
I quite like the following bit from Fred Thompson, possible candidate for U.S president, which is the end of a speech transcribed in full here:
... as Americans, our optimism comes not from an analysis of how things are, but from our belief that we can change what we see for the better.
We have road maps — at least two of them in fact — the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — to guide us. How can we look at the world without thinking about inalienable rights, and doing everything necessary to protect our country? How can we think of fiscal policy or even health-care policy without remembering the limitations appropriately placed upon government and the importance of individual freedom?
I read everything he writes (or try to!). His regular NRO feature, "Impromptus", often feels like a cozy chat amongst friends after Saturday night dinner; or reading a (hand-written) letter from a friend on a Sunday morning over a cup of rich coffee. Or simple, funny tours through the thought of a non-confrontational conservative.
Or something.
Anyway, his newest column contains something about the word "fascism" that I think is required reading by anyone intelligent. Find the original column here. Below is the relevant excerpt:
A word about the French: After Sarkozy's election, hundreds of university students in Paris "went on strike." What does it mean to go on strike, if you're a student? To refuse to attend class? Isn't that called hooky? And who cares, really, if these students go on "strike"? Whom are they injuring, other than themselves? (Actually, the less Parisian education they have, the better off they may be.)
But this is not so amusing: Student and other demonstrators shouted, "Sarko, fascist! The people will have your hide!" (A Reuters story is here.) That, I submit, is the authentic voice of Leninism. Note the reference to "the people," the presumption of speaking for "the people" - and this was after a free and fair election, in which "the people" really and truly spoke! It was the kind of election that these demonstrators would never permit, in their ideal society.
And "The people will have your hide." Yes, behind these shouters is Leninism, or Jacobinism, or whatever we choose to call it. We are reminded that it never dies; that civilization must be always on guard against it.
And then there is "fascist": "Sarko, fascist!" All of us who are conservative, or classically liberal, have had to be called fascist. It goes with the territory. And yet it's no fun. I have been called fascist since I was in college. And those who do it are either malicious or ignorant - sometimes, I guess, they are both (and what a brutal combination: malice and ignorance).
Ordinarily, it does no good to try to reason with people: Fascists are centralizers of power; we are decentralizers. Fascists are nationalizers of industry; we are free-marketeers. Fascists are collectivists; we are anti-collectivists. It is no use to say any of this: "Fascist" is an epithet used by mean or stupid people against those they dislike who are perceived to be "on the right." One result is that, when a real fascist comes along, there is no word left for him.
How odd that we who want to fight tirelessly against jihadists, or Islamofascists, are called "fascists"! How perverse that we liberal democrats, who wave the flag of universal human values, are called "fascists"! If you follow Jefferson and Locke and Lincoln and Churchill and Reagan - why, you are a fascist, at least according to some (to many).
But one must not whine. The other day, I brought up the "fascist" business with Roger Kimball, the conservative writer and editor. I said, "Are you ever called a fascist?" Brightly - for he is a bright kind of guy - he said, "Early and often!" In the past, I knew of Reagan-supporting Jews who had tattoos on their arms who were denounced as "fascists." (And when I say tattoos, I'm not talking about the biker kind.)
Anyway . . . an old, old story. But annoying all the same.
Every word is spot on. And the deeper implication unmistakable. It is found in this statement: "We are reminded that it never dies; that civilization must be always on guard against it." I'm reminded of one of my favorite definitions of creativity: finding new solutions to old problems. And that French student's views are a very old problem, even as dressed in seemingly evolved, progressive garb. But those clothes mask the truth.
Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.
Republicans reject that view and, by a 7-to-1 margin, say the President did not know in advance about the attacks. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view.
Overall, 22% of all voters believe the President knew about the attacks in advance. A slightly larger number, 29%, believe the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. White Americans are less likely than others to believe that either the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. Young Americans are more likely than their elders to believe the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance.
Good thing that the American founders were very suspicious of democracy, and populism in general. Because, as this shows, people can be just silly wrong. It is part of human nature, universally.
Progressivism is the unquestioned assumption in today's Americaposted by MD
That is my take-away from this well-written, general audience column by Jonah Goldberg, in this day's USA Today. I'm not saying that the assumption of progressivism isn't questioned by anybody; certainly it is in various intellectual circles. But most people don't seem to question the assumptions of progressivism in public education, health care, economics, and government authority/bureaucracy. These seem either to be accepted or tolerated by the majority of people (this is my guess), or people aren't even aware that progressive assumptions have so taken root.
I write constantly in this blog about classical education, and that approach flies in the face of progressive assumptions about education. Frankly, the evidence is on the side of classical approaches to education, because public education in this country is failing our children. And of course I have written before, with the argument that contemporary liberalism (which is just progressivism with a new name) is dead as a generator of sustainable ideas for this country.
Anyway, here's a good kwote from Goldberg's column:
But the truth is we might be in another progressive moment in American politics, where both parties represent the same basic assumptions about the role of government, leaving conservatives out in the cold.
What is progressivism? For our purposes, let's just say it's the belief that the government "runs" the whole country, imposing its values on the group, the way a teacher runs a class or a drill sergeant runs a platoon (this actually describes the differences between Wilson and T.R. quite nicely).
Bush-haters — you know who you are — seem to think that Bushism is all about war. But they forget that Bush didn't initially become a war president by choice; 9/11 was thrust upon him. He was a "compassionate conservative" who didn't want to leave any children behind. The strategy that he and Karl Rove (a T.R. groupie) concocted was to create a GOP version of "feel your pain" Clintonism.
The 2000 GOP convention's theme was "Prosperity with a Purpose," and in Bush's acceptance speech he insisted that "American government was made for great purposes." In some ways, Bush was ripping off Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose campaign was a homage to Teddy Roosevelt and the need for Americans to unite in a "cause greater than themselves."
And while the war gets most of the attention, it has hardly escaped notice that the president is a proud "big government conservative" championing everything from government-funded marriage counseling to a new prescription drug entitlement to the federal government's intrusion into education.
In 2003, Bush declared that "when somebody hurts, government has to move."
That last line is a fantastic nutshell of progressivism, and I believe its sentiment is a virus upon the body America.
But what, exactly, do I mean by "progressivism"? Certainly not — or not merely — the tinfoil-hattery that gets called "progressive" on the web and elsewhere. Progressivism has overlapping meanings. It refers both to the generic leftism we associate with the word "progressive" and to the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But both of these senses rely on a more metaphysical meaning. Progressivism was perhaps best summarized by Condorcet's declaration that there is "a science that can foresee the progress of humankind, direct it, and accelerate it." Progressivism takes it as a given that mankind, not God, is the pilot of Spaceship Earth. The good is measured in material terms — greater health, greater prosperity, greater comfort — and the social sciences are the disciplines that allow us to engineer society in ways that will maximize the good. Recall that the phrase "social engineering" didn't start out as an epithet; people once bragged that they were social engineers. Even if the term has fallen into disrepute, the practice is alive and well.
The Supreme Court yesterday released its decision on the case Massachusetts vs the EPA, which has to do with that government agency's authority to regular carbon dioxide emissions. In a 5-4 verdict, the Court ruled that CO2 is a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act, and that the EPA has the authority to regulate its emissions.
I agree with this summary of the case at NRO. The Supreme Court ought not to be weighing in on this case, but rather the matter ought be handled by the Executive and Legislative branches. In other words, the question is not whether the plaintiffs are correct in their claims, but whether the Supreme Court has any business being involved:
In effect, the Green Supremes just signed the 1997 Kyoto Treaty regulating CO2 emissions, a treaty the elected U.S. Senate never ratified. In fact, though the Clinton Administration signed the pact in 1997, it didn't bother to submit it for ratification after a preliminary, 95-0 Senate vote declared the treaty unacceptable.
No matter, the justices have substituted their opinions for our elected bodies.
Follow the link, and it provides a link to the actual written opinions provided by the Court.
President Bush helping Senator Robert Byrd walk, at the occasion of the overdue awarding of a congressional Gold Medal to the Tuskegee airmen who served in World War II.
This is the country where most of my ancestors come from. My great-great-great grandfather, on the paternal side, came with his family to America; particularly, to northern Wisconsin. And to read a story like this, I can say with assurance that I'm glad they did. Key graphs from Germany's Spiegel Online:
Anti-Americanism [in Germany] is hypocrisy at its finest. You can spend your evening catching the latest episode of "24" and then complain about Guantanamo the next morning. You can claim that the Americans have themselves to blame for terrorism, while at the same time calling for tougher restrictions on Muslim immigration to Germany. You can call the American president a mass murderer and book a flight to New York the next day. You can lament the average American's supposed lack of culture and savvy and meanwhile send off for the documents for the Green Card lottery.
Not a day passes in Germany when someone isn't making the wildest claims, hurling the vilest insults or spreading the most outlandish conspiracy theories about the United States. But there's no risk involved and it all serves mainly to boost the German feeling of self-righteousness.
I am thrilled that this (apparent) candidate for the U.S. Presidency made Hirsi Ali the subject of his most recent radio spot. Click here for the transcript as well as the MP3. Among Guiliani, Romney, McCain, Gingrich, Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Richardson, and the rest, I believe Thompson is the only candidate to have talked about her. I have a new level of respect for him. Kosmic Kwote:
There were many Germans and other Europeans who came to America and warned of the Nazi threat in the 1930s, including writers and filmmakers. Can you imagine that any of them would have ever needed bodyguards?
Hirsi Ali does — right here in America. Yet too many people still don’t understand what our country is up against. They might if they read her book.
Besides reading the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution regularly, one ought add to that The Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. For one explanation why, read what Matthew Franck has to say, including the fact that these essays are "the most frequently cited source in Supreme Court opinions, after the Court’s own precedents themselves."
So much that's wrong with progressivism run amok is captured in this story, which details a Seattle children's center banning Legos, and then reinstating their use. Not the least of which is, again, an example of progressivism (i.e. contemporary liberalism) being closer to communist thought (such as Marx) than to classical liberal thought (such as Locke). Kosmic kwote:
And in Hilltop’s new Lego regime, there would be three immutable laws:
1) All structures are public structures. Everyone can use all the Lego structures. But only the builder or people who have her or his permission are allowed to change a structure.
2) Lego people can be saved only by a “team” of kids, not by individuals.
3) All structures will be standard sizes.
You can almost feel the liberating spirit of that last rule. All structures will be standard sizes? At Hilltop Children’s Center, all imaginations will be a standard size as well: small.
I seriously shudder at this. Anyone who values liberty, and its effects on the human imagination, ought to, as well.
Prager, on why we haven't stabilized Iraqposted by MD
This seems spot-on to me:
Without the mass murder of fellow Iraqis, there would hardly be any "insurgency." The combination of suicide terrorists and a theology of death has created an unprecedented form of "resistance" to an occupier: "We will murder as many men, women and children as we can until you leave." Nor is this a matter of Sunnis murdering Shiites and vice versa: college students, women shopping at a Baghdad market and hospital workers all belong to both groups. Truck bombs cannot distinguish among tribes or religious affiliations.
If America had to fight an insurgency directed solely against us and coalition forces -- even including suicide bombers -- we would surely have succeeded. No one, right, left or center, could imagine a group of people so evil, so devoid of the most elementary and universal concepts of morality, that they would target their own people, especially the most vulnerable, for murder.
That is why we have not yet prevailed in Iraq. Even without all the mistakes made by the Bush administration -- and what political or military leadership has not made many errors in prosecuting a war? -- it could not have foreseen this new form of evil we are witnessing in Iraq.
At globeandmail.com. It has to do with her views on what it takes for women to gain the credentials be elected U.S. President. In doing so, she touches on Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, a biography of the Egyptian ruler Hatchepsut, and Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. As far as general audience columns, this is Camille at her best.
A good article about her, with quotes from her, by Joseph Rago, in Opinion-Journal. Here are two kosmic klips, the first by Hirsi Ali:
The multiculturalism theology, like all theologies, is cruel, is wrongheaded, and is unarguable because it is an utter dogmatism .... Minorities are exempted from the obligations of the rest of society, so they don't improve .... With this theory you limit them, you freeze their culture, you keep them in place.
And the second by the author:
...for this remarkable woman, ideas are not abstractions. She forces us back to first principles, and she punctures complacencies. These ought to be seen as virtues, even by those who find some of Ms. Hirsi Ali's ideas disturbing or objectionable. Society, after all, sometimes needs to be roused from its slumbers by agitators who go too far so that others will go far enough.
Last week, I read his speech delivered in Alabama, and was very impressed. I don't know whether I'll vote for him, but I certainly respect his depth of character, shown in this speech in abundance. Here's a kosmic klip:
I’m here because somebody marched. I’m here because you all sacrificed for me. I stand on the shoulders of giants. I thank the Moses generation; but we've got to remember, now, that Joshua still had a job to do. As great as Moses was, despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn't cross over the river to see the Promised Land. God told him your job is done. You'll see it. You'll be at the mountain top and you can see what I’ve promised. What I’ve promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. You will see that I’ve fulfilled that promise but you won't go there.
We're going to leave it to the Joshua generation to make sure it happens. There are still battles that need to be fought; some rivers that need to be crossed. Like Moses, the task was passed on to those who might not have been as deserving, might not have been as courageous, find themselves in front of the risks that their parents and grandparents and great grandparents had taken. That doesn't mean that they don't still have a burden to shoulder, that they don't have some responsibilities. The previous generation, the Moses generation, pointed the way. They took us 90% of the way there. We still got that 10% in order to cross over to the other side. So the question, I guess, that I have today is what's called of us in this Joshua generation? What do we do in order to fulfill that legacy; to fulfill the obligations and the debt that we owe to those who allowed us to be here today?
I love that he challenges people to know the Bible, in order to understand the full implication of his meaning. Here's another klip:
Be strong and have courage, for I am with you wherever you go. We've come a long way in this journey, but we still have a long way to travel. We traveled because God was with us. It's not how far we've come. That bridge outside was crossed by blacks and whites, northerners and southerners, teenagers and children, the beloved community of God's children, they wanted to take those steps together, but it was left to the Joshua’s to finish the journey Moses had begun and today we're called to be the Joshua’s of our time, to be the generation that finds our way across this river.
There will be days when the water seems wide and the journey too far, but in those moments, we must remember that throughout our history, there has been a running thread of ideals that have guided our travels and pushed us forward, even when they're just beyond our reach, liberty in the face of tyranny, opportunity where there was none and hope over the most crushing despair. Those ideals and values beckon us still and when we have our doubts and our fears, just like Joshua did, when the road looks too long and it seems like we may lose our way, remember what these people did on that bridge.
Laura Ingraham interviews her, the most courageous public person in the world. I should add that Ingraham is my favorite radio host. I anticipate American progressives by and large continuing to ignore the koan that is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Which is sad, because Hirsi Ali can educate and enlighten us all.
Not all that much depth to the interview. But still, worth a read. For nuggets like this:
You’re at a conservative think tank — perhaps an odd place for a harsh critic of religion in political life. I consider myself nonpartisan, but I’m a liberal — not in the American sense, because Americans seem to refer to communists as liberals. What we see in Europe, because of the welfare state, is government pretending to provide all sorts of services they shouldn’t be providing.
But what do you make of Christian conservatives in your ranks? No one in the American Enterprise imposes their beliefs. We clash, and I think that’s what the West is all about.
Perfect on both counts. In other words, spoken like a true classical liberal.
Back at the old version of this blog, I wrote a short piece that suggested that Theo Van Gogh's brutal murder presented a "special problem" for Western progressives. Specifically, I said it was a koan — either to be wrestled with, or completely ignored.
I should have added then (so I will now) that the exact same thing is the case for Western progressives (i.e., non-classical liberals) with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In my own survey of the blogosphere, I am continually amazed at just how much Ali and Van Gogh are completely ignored by the progressives. But, again, I think I know why. Koans are difficult to deal with. The temptation at every juncture is to say, "to hell with this" and go on pretending the confusion isn't there. Or to convince oneself that there is no confusion. It is human nature to take the path of least resistance. The problem is that learning is never that path.
Jay Nordlinger echoes all of this, in his own way, here (scroll down a bit). His kosmic kwote:
Hirsi Ali, as you know, is the phenomenally brave woman from Holland, who was born in Somalia and now lives in the United States. And I don’t know whether anyone else in the world so discomforts liberals and leftists. I will indulge in psychological speculation:
She discomforts them because she highlights their own cowardice before the jihad. They would rather not focus on things that Hirsi Ali knows we should focus on. They would rather think about global warming — in which the villains are George W. Bush, the Republican party, and capitalism. You know: very easy. When you criticize Republicans and SUV-drivers, they don’t put a knife through your chest.
Good questions, from Cliff May, about last night's annual awards show:
Has one word been said about the Islamist movements dedicated to the destruction of the West, the dedicated to restricting artistic freedom and a free press, dedicated to suppressing the most fundamental rights of women and gays — movements that attacked us on several occasions during Al Gore’s tenure in the White House, movements that planned 9/11/01 even as Al Gore was assigned the vital task of focusing on airline security?
Or were those inconvenient truths ignored?
Of course there was not mention; same goes, for the third straight year, for any mention whatsoever of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh's murder. For making a film. Or a show of solidarity with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who lives under constant threat of assasination. For writing a film.
Is there any clearer evidence of how disconnected Hollywood is from the genuine edges of artistry?
I ought say that I'm also curious whether there were any mentions of any of the above at the Independent Spirit Awards. Anyone know?
Here's a perspective on art that suggests that art would be better off if it were to consider pro-life themes. Here's an excerpt:
Perhaps, but the failure of contemporary art to join the fight against abortion is one of the saddest facts about the modern American scene. It was predictable, of course. One of the central intellectual problems of twentieth-century art was the need to assert that advancement in art matched advancement in politics. It was an article of faith: The pieces must fit together; the artistic avant-garde ought to reinforce — and be, in turn, reinforced by — the political avant-garde.
In truth, the match wasn’t very good, as the American communists implicitly admitted when, for instance, they raised folk music above jazz as the true art of the proletariat. But people still believed it, and the assertion of art’s good politics reached its peak in the 1950s — when America’s intellectual elites seemed all to hold the unity of high modernism and high liberalism. And this, despite the fact that the literary founders of modernism were hardly liberals: not Yeats, not Pound, not Eliot, not Lawrence, not even Joyce.
Subsequent decades solved the 1950s version of the problem by narrowing the terms to identify not liberal but radical art with radical politics — a turn made easier by the gradual translation of leftism from an economic theory (which it still primarily was in 1955) to a sexual theory (which it had primarily become by 1985). Along the way, however, art took a beating, for there are things certain art forms want to do by their very nature, which become impossible for them to do when confined by the vision of the artist as radical sexual liberal.
I've never thought of this before. For that reason alone, this interests me. Especially the part about the link between politics and art. Because, in my view, the two ought not be linked whatsoever. Genuine art is far upstream from political squabble, or political agenda. When art is linked to politics, what suffers every time is the quality of the art, its capacity to sustain aesthetic mimesis. Which means, of course, that I'm not really interested in a "pro-life art", other than as a curiosity.
... about reading a column on politics by America's most famous game-show host. I speak of none other than Pat Sajak. Here's the column. It is about global warming, and there's a lot in it that strikes me as true. Here's the lead:
Well, it's official. The Earth is warming up, and we're to blame. A United Nations panel of scientists has said it's more that 90% probable that human activities have caused most of the warming in the last 50 years. That's up from a 66% probability in a 2001 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And way up from a 30-year-old warning of a coming Ice Age in Time Magazine. (Oops! That was right in the middle of our 50 years of man-made global warming.)
Anyway, the Time piece (June 24, 1974) reported, "The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth." So, you see, we were also responsible for the global cooling even though, as it turned out, we were in the middle of global warming, although those wacky climatologists of the 1970s didn't notice.
If this dictum (from Mullah Abdul Rauf, of the Herati Mosque in Kabul, quoted in April 2006):
Music is not banned in Islam but to get enjoyment from music is banned.
... in fact actually explains quite a lot, on a profound level. I mean, historically speaking, it is obviously inaccurate, on all merits. No, the profundities to which I refer have to do with it entirely as a modern phenomena, of the particularly rigid sect of Islam that gets so much play today. Even if this means that only "sacred contemplation" of music is permitted, that still is deeply disturbed. To forgo the most immediate effect of any kind of music — namely, it's capacity to first entertain (and then, possibly, educate and enlighten) — is to go against what I hold to be fully-embodied perception. In other words, it goes against the grain of humanity.
I mean, common sense-wise: do you know anyone healthy who gets no enjoyment from music, whatsoever? Would you wish that "condition" on even your deepest enemy? And wouldn't that, honestly, actually be Hell incarnate, that state where there's no enjoyment whatsoever from the play of tones in time?
In a libertarian utopia, most families take care of themselves by working, saving, and purchasing insurance. Taxes are low, but charitable contributions are high, and most people who cannot take care of themselves are served by charities. As James Bartholomew points out in "The Welfare State State We're In," private charities have many advantages over government programs. Finally, if people slip through the cracks of charity, government programs could be a last resort.
The part I don't really understand is why this must be a "utopia". Because something of the above is already rooted in America, and would be all the more given more honest appraisal of just how incompetent government is in managing most areas outside of public goods (i.e., national security, disease prevention, roads — anything that equally benefits all citizens).
Watch an interview of her here. She talks about her new book, her renouncing of Islam as her faith, how she grew up, and what it is like for Muslim women, today. Powerful stuff, even in this short amount of time.
"We are in a rare period in American political history, in which the battlefield alone will determine the next election, perhaps not seen since 1864. The economy, scandal, social issues, domestic spending, jobs, all these usual criteria and more pale in comparison to what happens in Iraq, where a few thousand brave American soldiers will determine our collective future."
"Our freedom is threatened anytime the government intervenes to restrict an individual’s rights. Race preferences strike at the heart of American citizenship. How one is treated by one’s government is the crux of freedom."
— Ward Connerly, of the successful Michigan initiative to amend its State constitution to effectively end racial preferences.
President Bush helping Senator Robert Byrd walk, at the occasion of the overdue awarding of a congressional Gold Medal to the Tuskegee airmen who served in World War II.
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