Make Mine Freedom

[Via Red Planet Cartoons.]

Thank you

Who is Obama? Really.

What do we know about Barack Obama? His autobiographies and his official history, found on his website, tell us part of the story, but who is he really? Jay Tea, over at Wizbang, points out some interesting facts that are not part of the official narrative.

So, now that Obama is heading up the CAC, with a nine-figure budget to improve Chicago's schools, what does he do?

Well, he oversees out the doling of money not to the schools themselves, but to "outside partners" who, in turn, work with the schools. Outside partners like Ayers' "Peace School," which pushes an internationalist, pro-UN world view on young students. Outside partners like Ayers' old crony, Maoist Mike Klonsky, who took $175,000 for his "Small Schools Project." Outside partners like the Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama's church for 20 years and headed by race-baiter and black separatist Jeremiah Wright.

Obama ran the board for four years, then stepped down to a board member for three years longer, until the Foundation shut down in 2002. In the end, they spent over $150 million on improving Chicago's schools.

And the result? A study showed virtually no difference between the schools the Challenge "helped" and those they did not. In short, Obama spent seven years and $150 million and achieved exactly nothing.

Except, of course, lining the pockets of his and Ayers' friends. With money from charities and the people of Chicago.

These are the kinds of things that Obama doesn't want talked about. These are the kinds of things that shows what Obama has done when he is placed in an executive position. These are the kinds of things that sensible people ought to keep in mind when they are deciding who they want to have as their Chief Executive of our nation.

Go read the whole thing.

As I've said before, Barack Obama should scare the hell out of every thinking American.

Catching wild pigs

A good friend sent me a story that resonates with where we are today in America . . .

There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the professor noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America . The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms - just a little at a time.

One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.

Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government 'help' is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America , you might want to tell this to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to our way of life then you will probably delete this, but God help you when the gate slams shut!

In this 'very important' election year, listen closely to what the candidates are promising you - just maybe you will be able to tell who is about to slam the gate on America.

Think about this very carefully because:

'A government that is big enough to give you everything you want, is also big enough to take away everything you have.
'
- Thomas Jefferson

Are we, as a nation, going to go through that gate next month?

A video note to Mr. Obama

This is a moving tribute to the absolute necessity of fighting for freedom.

[Via The Jawa Report.]

The problem with dialogue in America

Over the course of the last few years, I have become very concerned with the increasingly vitriolic rhetoric being exchanged between the political left and right in this country. Increasingly, the proponents of liberal politics are verbally assaulting, sometimes viciously, those professing a conservative philosophy, and right-leaning people are increasingly returning the favor with personal attacks of their own. One need only look at Michelle Malkin's website to see this kind of hate-filled bile -- in the comments to her posts.

American politics seems to be spiraling down into the sewer -- in more ways than one. It appears that we've lost our ability to hold reasoned debate. Our tradition of exchanging contrary ideas and their supporting arguments is virtually non-existent anymore.

And we are the poorer because of it.

Instead of reasoned debate, we exchange personal insults. Instead of an exchange of arguments and supporting facts and logic, we exchange demeaning and inflamatory accusations. Instead of logic, we exchange bile.

I can't but help to think -- hope, really -- that we all are seeing this happen and are saddened by it. We are diminished when we stoop to such mean-spirited and bullying tactics in some pathetic attempt to win an argument.

Our founding fathers were far from perfect when they undertook to form "a more perfect union." They harbored tremendous differences as they labored to forge a government based upon "the people." They, too, debated with great vigor and passion. But they were far less likely to impugn the honor of those they disagreed with so mightily -- let alone utter the vile obscenities that are so readily exchanged today.

I have an idea about why this is so. America's founding fathers were generally men of faith. And they read their bibles. A passage in James caught my attention Sunday, and I wonder if it was one that these men observed when undertaking their debates [emphasis mine]:

Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here's what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It's the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. Mean-spirited ambition isn't wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn't wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn't wisdom. It's the furthest thing from wisdom—it's animal cunning, devilish conniving. Whenever you're trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others' throats.

Real wisdom, God's wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.

-- James 3: 13-18 (The Message translation)

We, in America, need to stop taking the lazy, self-centered path, and start doing the hard work of getting along with each other -- treating each other with dignity and honor. Only then will we become a healthy, robust society -- again.

Like we are meant to be.

Thomas Sowell's random thoughts

Thomas Sowell periodically publishes a column called "Random Thoughts." This one has some interesting ones:

What is amazing this year is how many people have bought the fundamentally childish notion that, if you don't like the way things are going, the answer is to write a blank check for generic "change," empowering someone chosen not on the basis of any track record but on the basis of his skill with words.

Some of the most emotionally powerful words are undefined, such as "social justice," "a living wage," "price gouging" or a "fragile" environment, for example. Such terms are especially valuable to politicians during an election year, for these terms can attract the votes of people who mean very different-- and even mutually contradictory-- things when they use these words.

Although most of the mainstream media are still swooning over Barack Obama, a few critics are calling the things he advocates "naive." But that assumes that he is trying to solve the country's problems. If he is trying to solve his own problem of getting elected, then he is telling the voters just what they want to hear. That is not naive but shrewd and cynical.

How many in the media have expressed half as much outrage about the beheading of innocent people by terrorists in Iraq as they have about the captured terrorists held at Guantanamo not being treated as nicely as they think they should be?

Go read the whole thing.

Obama favors a nat'l civilian security force?

This really bothers me. Obama wants to create a domestic civilian national security force with the same budget as our military.

The stunning comments from Democrat Sen. Barack Obama that the United States needs a “civilian national security force” that would be as powerful, strong and well-funded as the half-trillion dollar United States Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force have mysteriously disappeared from published transcripts of the speech.

In the comments, Obama confirmed the U.S. “cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set.”

Campaign officials have declined to return any of a series of WND telephone calls over several days requesting a comment on the situation. Nor have they posted a transcript of the speech on their website.

This disturbs me on a couple of levels. First, where is the money coming from to effectively double our defense budget?

The more important question that comes out, though, involves a civilian national security force. That sounds alarmingly like a federal secret police organization. East Germany called theirs "Stasi", Nazi Germany called theirs, the "SD".

Here's a definition of secret police:

Secret police (sometimes political police) are a police organization which operates in secrecy to maintain national security against internal threats to the state. Secret police forces are typically associated with totalitarian regimes, as they are often used to maintain the political power of the state rather than uphold the rule of law. Secret police are law enforcement organizations officially endowed with authority superior to civil police forces, operating outside the normal boundaries of the law, and they are often accountable only to the executive branch of the government.

Now one can argue that Obama wants security from external threats, not internal ones. But the two are very closely related, and we have no need for civilian security forces beyond what we already have. We need to boost the budget of our border control agents, but we don't need a federal civilian security force like Obama espouses.

Special grace

Spengler, at Asia Times Online, writes about what makes America different from the rest of the world. Why it is both loved and hated. About it's special grace.

Violent antipathy to America measures the triumph of the American principle, and the ascendance of America's influence in the world. America's enemies make more noise than her friends, but her friends are increasing faster than her enemies. America's influence in the world leapt as result of her victory in three world wars, including the fall of communism in 1989. Arguably, America is ascending even faster today, despite the reverses in its economic position and the strains on its military resources.

There are nearly a billion more Christians in the world today than in 1970, including a hundred million Chinese, most of whom adhere to the House Church movement on the American evangelical model. Denominations of American origin, notably Pentecostals, led the evangelization of a quarter of a billion Africans in the past generation. There are nearly 100 million additional Latin American Christians, of whom perhaps 40 million belong to Pentecostal or other Protestant denominations centered in the United States. Philip Jenkins has chronicled the spiritual transformation of the Global South, I reviewed his most recent book (A new Jerusalem in sub-Saharan Africa Asia Times Online, Dec 12, 2006.)

It may be outrageous, but it is not far-fetched, to speak of a special grace for America, because hundreds of millions of people around the world look toward such a special grace, in the precise sense of the word.

This is something that I have experienced with acquaintances and friends I've met around the world back in the 1990's when I was traveling overseas a great deal. They envied Americans even as they criticized America. They wanted what I had, even though they did not fully understand it. (At the time, I didn't fully understand what I had as an American, either.)

Go read the whole thing. It is well worth it.

Homeland heroes

Though this is a little dated, it still reflects the true heart of America.

Hat tip to my father-in-law who reminded me of this video.

Face the Flag

Face the Flag of stars and bars,
Of red and white and blue,
A Flag that guarantees the rights
For men like me and you.

Face the Flag, son! Read what's written there,
The history, the progress and the heritage we share.
Our Flag reflects the past, son, but stands for so much more,
And in this Age of Aquarius, it still flies in the fore.

It leads the forward movement, shared by all mankind,
To learn...to love...to live with peace of mind;
To learn the mysteries of space, as well as those of earth;
To love each man for what he is, regardless of his birth;
To live without the fear of reprisal for belief;
To ease the tensions of a world that cries out for relief.

Face the Flag of stars and bars,
Of red and white and blue,
A Flag that guarantees the rights
For men like me and you.

Face the Flag, son!
Take a good long look.
What you're seeing now can't be found in a history book.
It's the present and the future, son.
It's being written now,
And you're the one to write it,
but the Flag can show you how.

Do you know what it stands for? What its makers meant?
To think...to speak...the privilege of dissent;
To think our leaders might be wrong...
to stand and tell them so.
These are the things that other men
under other flags will never know.
But responsibility...that's the cross that free men must bear,
And if you don't accept that, the freedom isn't there.

Face the Flag of stars and bars,
Of red and white and blue,
A Flag that guarantees the rights
For men like me and you.

Face the Flag, son, and face reality.
Our strengths and our freedoms are based in unity.
The flag is but a symbol, son, of the world's greatest nation,
And as long as it keeps flying, there's cause for celebration.

So do what you've got to do, but always keep in mind,
A lot of people believe in peace...
but there are the other kind.
If we want to keep these freedoms,
we may have to fight again.
God forbid, but if we do, let's always fight to win,
For the fate of a loser is futile and it's bare:
No love, no peace...just misery and despair.

Face the Flag, son...and thank God it's still there.

[From the book and album "America, Why I Love Her " by John Wayne. Words by Bill Ezell]
[Via JellyJar.com]

Long May She Wave

For more than 200 years, the American flag has been the symbol of our nation's strength and unity. It's been a source of pride and inspiration for millions of citizens. And it has been a prominent icon in our national history. Here are the highlights of its unique past.

On January 1, 1776, the Continental Army was reorganized in accordance with a Congressional resolution which placed American forces under George Washington's control. On that New Year's Day the Continental Army was laying siege to Boston which had been taken over by the British Army. Washington ordered the Grand Union flag hoisted above his base at Prospect Hill. It had 13 alternate red and white stripes and the British Union Jack in the upper left-hand corner (the canton).

In May of 1776, Betsy Ross reported that she sewed the first American flag.

On June 14, 1777, in order to establish an official flag for the new nation, the Continental Congress passed the first Flag Act: "Resolved, That the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation."

Between 1777 and 1960, Congress passed several acts that changed the shape, design and arrangement of the flag and allowed for additional stars and stripes to be added to reflect the admission of each new state.

Act of January 13, 1794 - provided for 15 stripes and 15 stars after May 1795.
Act of April 4, 1818 - provided for 13 stripes and one star for each state, to be added to the flag on the 4th of July following the admission of each new state, signed by President Monroe.
Executive Order of President Taft dated June 24, 1912 - established proportions of the flag and provided for arrangement of the stars in six horizontal rows of eight each, a single point of each star to be upward.
Executive Order of President Eisenhower dated January 3, 1959 - provided for the arrangement of the stars in seven rows of seven stars each, staggered horizontally and vertically.
Executive Order of President Eisenhower dated August 21, 1959 - provided for the arrangement of the stars in nine rows of stars staggered horizontally and eleven rows of stars staggered vertically.
Today the flag consists of thirteen horizontal stripes, seven red alternating with 6 white. The stripes represent the original 13 colonies, the stars represent the 50 states of the Union. The colors of the flag are symbolic as well: Red symbolizes Hardiness and Valor, White symbolizes Purity and Innocence and Blue represents Vigilance, Perseverance and Justice.

-- Patriot Post, History of the American Flag

In harm's way

Some quotes from men who were willing to die in defense of our liberty.

"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1787 - Federalist No. 1

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves."

-- John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, 1775 - Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

-- Patrick Henry, 1775 - Speech to the Virginia Convention

"An honorable Peace is and always was my first wish! I can take no delight in the effusion of human Blood; but, if this War should continue, I wish to have the most active part in it."

-- John Paul Jones, 1782 - letter to Gouverneur Morris

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."

-- Thomas Paine, 1776 - The American Crisis, No. 1

"We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our won Country's Honor, all call upon us for vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions."

-- George Washington, 1776 - General Orders

Over a million men and women have died, through the years, in defense of our liberty here in the United States of America.

Our obligation to those who have died, and to the men and women in uniform who are in harm's way defending us today, is to respect and honor their sacrifice.

Think on the other countries in this world. How many of them are guaranteed the rights that we Americans have?

None. Not one. Zip. Zero. Nil. Nada.

Freedoms we are guaranteed: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, equality, to bear arms, to vote, speech, assembly, due process.

Guarantors of our freedoms: United States Marine Corps, United States Army, United States Navy, United States Air Force, United States Coast Guard.

Today we honor those who have died in order that we might live in liberty. Let's go out their and show them the honor, respect, and gratitude that they deserve by stepping forward and preserving those rights that so many have died to protect. Remember that most great nations in history were not conquered . . . they died from within. If we allow America to continue to rot from within, we dishonor those who laid down their lives for this great nation.

And that would indeed be an American tragedy.

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood."

-- John Adams, 1765 - A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law

Thanks to the ultimate sacrifice by over a million American heros, we are free.

And I am deeply grateful. Thank you.

Scarlett supporting our Marines

Scarlett Johansson went to Kuwait with the USO and visited some Marines there on Saturday.

What a wonderful way for her to support our troops!

Thank you.

Project Valour-IT 2007

Project Valour-IT, in memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss, helps provide voice-controlled and adaptive laptop computers to wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries at major military medical centers. Operating laptops by speaking into a microphone or using other adaptive technologies, our wounded heroes are able to send and receive messages from friends and loved ones, surf the 'Net, and communicate with buddies still in the field. The experience of MAJ Charles “Chuck” Ziegenfuss, a partner in the project who suffered serious hand wounds while serving in Iraq, illustrates how important these laptops can be to a wounded service member's recovery.

Please, please, please, consider supporting the troops in this way. They are over there, putting life and limb in harm's way, to keep us safe here at home.

When you hit the donate button, it takes you to a secure PayPal page and allows you to donate via credit card or as a direct debit from your bank account. It's a good link -- I used it myself.

This post is dated 11 November, Veteran's Day, and will remain at the top until the drive is over on November 12th. Please scroll down for new posts.

There is more on Project Valour-IT below the fold.

Every cent raised for Project Valour-IT goes directly to the purchase and shipment of laptops for severely wounded service members. As of October 2007, Valour-IT has distributed over 1500 laptops to severely wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines across the country.

Valour-IT accepts donations in any amount to support the purchase and distribution of laptops, but also offers a sponsorship option. An individual or organization may sponsor a wounded soldier by completely funding the cost of a laptop and continuing to provide that soldier with personal support and encouragement throughout recovery. This has proved to be an excellent project for churches, groups of coworkers or friends, and members of community organizations such Boy Scouts.

Originally Valour-IT provided the voice-controlled software, but now works closely with the Department of Defense Computer/electronic Accommodations Program (CAP): CAP supplies the adaptive software and Valour-IT provides the laptop. In addition, DoD caseworkers serve as Valour-IT’s “eyes and ears” at several medical centers, identifying possible laptop recipients. Wounded military personnel can also directly request a laptop through the sign-up form or through the Valour-IT/Soldiers' Angels representatives at the following medical centers:

* Balboa Naval Hospital

* Brooke Army Medical Center

* Madigan Regional Medical Center

* National Naval Medical Center (Bethesda Naval Hospital)

* Naval Hospital, Camp Pendleton

* Robert E. Bush Naval Hospital (29 Palms)

* Walter Reed Army Medical Center

Thanks to the efforts of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Valour-IT is also able to reach patients in VA hospitals who would benefit from a Valour-IT laptop.

Taking care of our wounded warriors

Boudicca, over at Boudicca's Voice, blogs about a charity organization that is helping our wounded veterans and their families. It is a heartwarming post.

But it also has some disturbing elements.

He told a story of a woman who helped inspire them to create the Haley House, a girlfriend who would come in when the doors opened to sit at the bedside of her wounded warrior and would leave when visiting hours were over. Her boyfriend could do nothing but stare at the ceiling for three weeks, having paralysis. She held his hand every day, never left his side, talking to him, bringing attention to the staff when she saw changes, the biggest change happening on the third week when he took his fingers and formed the word LOVE, letter by letter. And somebody on the staff noticed… this young woman was sleeping in her car. She slept in her car every night, having no place to stay, and during the day, she never left his side.

And her love and devotion were part of the inspiration for the Haley House… a fund established to help the families as a supplement to the Fisher House.

I listened to the most amazing women speak of the courageous families and what the Haley House Fund does. It is a fund… a local hotel with a discounted rate for Haley House families, puts the families up, with the Haley House Fund paying for the accommodations. A private Haley House Room has been established for those families, making available to them a washing machine and dryer, a family room, kitchen, and various items that you would typically have in a home, including toys for children.

I sat aghast as they told us that the location of the hotel that supports the Haley House must always remain secret for the safety of the families.

For the safety of the families.

Safety from anti-war Americans who, allegedly, abhor violence.

Aghast, indeed.

Heaven help us . . .

The United States of America

Land of the free . . .

. . . because of the brave.

Supporting the troops -- in action

Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group truly deserves being awarded with the Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2007 – Marine reservist Cpl. Blake Milam says his civilian employer, Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, has gone the extra mile to make him feel good about his military service.

Last year, the Tulsa, Okla.-based rental car company gave a welcome-home party for Milam after he returned from an 8-month duty tour in Fallujah, Iraq, he said.

“They’ve been really supportive,” the 23-year-old automobile inventory technician said of his employer. “They’ve gone out of their way to help me out.”

Milam nominated his employer to receive the prestigious Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award. Dollar Thrifty is among 15 businesses and organizations selected to receive the annual award, which recognizes exemplary support for employees in the Guard or reserve.

Dollar Thrifty also provided Milam with two raises and a slice of company profits that he’d missed while he was serving in Iraq.

A radio operator in military life, Milam said his employer’s support enabled him to perform dangerous duty in Iraq without worrying about his job back home. Milam experienced the death of three of his fellow Marines and the severe wounding of three other comrades during heavy fighting against the enemy.

Milam credited Dollar Thrifty for helping him to transition back to civilian life after his return from Iraq in October 2006.

“Things are going really good right now,” he said.

Although Dollar Thrifty officials are pleased to earn recognition for supporting their servicemember-employees, receiving the Freedom Award “really wasn’t our goal,” said Gary L. Paxton, Dollar Thrifty’s president and chief executive officer.

“Our goal is to support our people and to support the troops,” said Paxton, who had served as an active-duty Marine. Guard and reserve members live two lives, as civilians and as deployable members of the military, he explained.

“There is always the possibility of being called up,” Paxton said of members of the Guard and reserve. “And, yet, they’re trying to build a personal life, too.”

The Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award recognizes U.S. employers that rise above the requirements of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. The National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, a Defense Department agency, manages the award process. ESGR assists Guard and Reserve members and their employers understand employee eligibility and job entitlements, employer obligations, benefits and remedies under the act.

Paxton is slated to accept the Freedom Award on behalf of his firm during a formal ceremony here tomorrow.

I hope our Congressmen can learn from examples like this -- since they are having so much difficulty with the concept of "supporting our troops".

The Muslim Brotherhood -- in America

Rod Dreher, a columnist with the Dallas Morning News has a disturbing column about how the international Muslim Brotherhood (whose Palestinian arm is Hamas) has been quietly working in the USA for decades in an attempt to bring the caliphate to power here. An excerpt of their 'explanatory memorandum' (which is part of the evidence in a terror trial in Dallas) includes:

The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization-Jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who choose to slack.

This is alarming stuff . . . especially in light of other evidence in the trial that indicates that most mainstream Muslim organizations in North America, like CAIR and ISNA, are being run by the Muslim Brotherhood -- just like Hamas is being run by them in Palestine.

You know, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you . . .

Why we fight terrorism

A remembrance of 9/11

Gerard Van der Leun posts an essay about his experience in Brooklyn Heights on September 11, 2001.

The wind came when the pillar of fire became, in what seemed a moment outside of time, a pillar of smoke. We had been standing on the Promenade that morning in our thousands watching death rage at the center of a beautiful September morning. It was a morning with a clear and washed blue sky; the kind of rare New York morning when you can believe, again, that anything is possible in that city of dreams that so often dissolve into disappointment.

Anything, of course, except the two towers whose peaks were engulfed in flames.

Anything, it would seem, but what we were seeing.

And it was a morning, as I recall, that had no wind at all. That was why the flames and the smoke from the flames went almost straight up into the sky, a long sooted streak that bisected one side of the blue sky from the other.

Go read the whole thing.

Moon shot films online

This sounds like fun: Digitized Apollo Flight Films Available Online.

Played like a violin

An op-ed in OpinionJournal this week, written by an ex-communist propagandist, discusses specifics from his former profession in Romania to illustrate how Al Qaeda is using the American Left to undermine the war against terrorism in Iraq.

I've reprinted the whole article below the fold. It's a thinker . . .

Propaganda Redux
Take it from this old KGB hand: The left is abetting America's enemies with its intemperate attacks on President Bush.

BY ION MIHAI PACEPA
Tuesday, August 7, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

During last week's two-day summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown thanked President Bush for leading the global war on terror. Mr. Brown acknowledged "the debt the world owes to the U.S. for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism" and vowed to follow Winston Churchill's lead and make Britain's ties with America even stronger.

Mr. Brown's statements elicited anger from many of Mr. Bush's domestic detractors, who claim the president concocted the war on terror for personal gain. But as someone who escaped from communist Romania--with two death sentences on his head--in order to become a citizen of this great country, I have a hard time understanding why some of our top political leaders can dare in a time of war to call our commander in chief a "liar," a "deceiver" and a "fraud."

I spent decades scrutinizing the U.S. from Europe, and I learned that international respect for America is directly proportional to America's own respect for its president.

My father spent most of his life working for General Motors in Romania and had a picture of President Truman in our house in Bucharest. While "America" was a vague place somewhere thousands of miles away, he was her tangible symbol. For us, it was he who had helped save civilization from the Nazi barbarians, and it was he who helped restore our freedom after the war--if only for a brief while. We learned that America loved Truman, and we loved America. It was as simple as that.

Later, when I headed Romania's intelligence station in West Germany, everyone there admired America too. People would often tell me that the "Amis" meant the difference between night and day in their lives. By "night" they meant East Germany, where their former compatriots were scraping along under economic privation and Stasi brutality. That was then.

But in September 2002, a German cabinet minister, Herta Dauebler-Gmelin, had the nerve to compare Mr. Bush to Hitler. In one post-Iraq-war poll 40% of Canada's teenagers called the U.S. "evil," and even before the fall of Saddam 57% of Greeks answered "neither" when asked which country was more democratic, the U.S. or Iraq.

---

Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. This same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels. For communists, only the leader counted, no matter the country, friend or foe. At home, they deified their own ruler--as to a certain extent still holds true in Russia. Abroad, they asserted that a fish starts smelling from the head, and they did everything in their power to make the head of the Free World stink.

The communist effort to generate hatred for the American president began soon after President Truman set up NATO and propelled the three Western occupation forces to unite their zones to form a new West German nation. We were tasked to take advantage of the reawakened patriotic feelings stirring in the European countries that had been subjugated by the Nazis, in order to shift their hatred for Hitler over into hatred for Truman--the leader of the new "occupation power." Western Europe was still grateful to the U.S. for having restored its freedom, but it had strong leftist movements that we secretly financed. They were like putty in our hands.

The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the "butcher of Hiroshima." We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents: Eisenhower as a war-mongering "shark" run by the military-industrial complex, Johnson as a mafia boss who had bumped off his predecessor, Nixon as a petty tyrant, Ford as a dimwitted football player and Jimmy Carter as a bumbling peanut farmer. In 1978, when I left Romania for good, the bloc intelligence community had already collected 700 million signatures on a "Yankees-Go-Home" petition, at the same time launching the slogan "Europe for the Europeans."

During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren't facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.

The final goal of our anti-American offensive was to discourage the U.S. from protecting the world against communist terrorism and expansion. Sadly, we succeeded. After U.S. forces precipitously pulled out of Vietnam, the victorious communists massacred some two million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Another million tried to escape, but many died in the attempt. This tragedy also created a credibility gap between America and the rest of the world, damaged the cohesion of American foreign policy, and poisoned domestic debate in the U.S.

Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, for example, Bush critics continued our mud-slinging at America's commander in chief. One speaker, Martin O'Malley, now governor of Maryland, had earlier in the summer stated he was more worried about the actions of the Bush administration than about al Qaeda. On another occasion, retired four-star general Wesley Clark gave Michael Moore a platform to denounce the American commander in chief as a "deserter." And visitors to the national chairman of the Democratic Party had to step across a doormat depicting the American president surrounded by the words, "Give Bush the Boot."

---

Competition is indeed the engine that has driven the American dream forward, but unity in time of war has made America the leader of the world. During World War II, 405,399 Americans died to defeat Nazism, but their country of immigrants remained sturdily united. The U.S. held national elections during the war, but those running for office entertained no thought of damaging America's international prestige in their quest for personal victory. Republican challenger Thomas Dewey declined to criticize President Roosevelt's war policy. At the end of that war, a united America rebuilt its vanquished enemies. It took seven years to turn Nazi Germany and imperial Japan into democracies, but that effort generated an unprecedented technological explosion and 50 years of unmatched prosperity for us all.

Now we are again at war. It is not the president's war. It is America's war, authorized by 296 House members and 76 senators. I do not intend to join the armchair experts on the Iraq war. I do not know how we should handle this war, and they don't know either. But I do know that if America's political leaders, Democrat and Republican, join together as they did during World War II, America will win. Otherwise, terrorism will win. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi predicted just before being killed: "We fight today in Iraq, tomorrow in the land of the Holy Places, and after there in the West."

On July 28, I celebrated 29 years since President Carter signed off on my request for political asylum, and I am still tremendously proud that the leader of the Free World granted me my freedom. During these years I have lived here under five presidents--some better than others--but I have always felt that I was living in paradise. My American citizenship has given me a feeling of pride, hope and security that is surpassed only by the joy of simply being alive. There are millions of other immigrants who are equally proud that they restarted their lives from scratch in order to be in this magnanimous country. I appeal to them to help keep our beloved America united and honorable. We may not be able to change the habits of our current political representatives, but we may be able to introduce healthy new blood into the U.S. Congress.

For once, the communists got it right. It is America's leader that counts. Let's return to the traditions of presidents who accepted nothing short of unconditional surrender from our deadly enemies. Let's vote next year for people who believe in America's future, not for the ones who live in the Cold War past.

Lt. Gen. Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc. His new book, "Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination" (Ivan R. Dee) will be published in November.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Coal supplies half of America's electricity needs

Popular Mechanics has an interesting article about high-tech coal mining in America.

. . . Wind, water, nuclear, oil, natural gas, solar energies — add them all up and together they barely produce as much electricity as coal.

Last year, America consumed more than 1 billion tons of the mineral. At the present rate, using existing extraction technology, the reserves will last 243 years. Coal is dramatically cheap to mine, too: In 2005 it cost $8.66 to produce a million BTU of oil; the equivalent energy from coal cost $1.19. About two-thirds of America's favorite fossil fuel comes from surface mines (about 778 million tons); the rest is produced in underground mines, mainly in Appalachia.

Recommended.

It's the infrastructure, stupid!

The tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis is just another symptom of something Americans have refused to deal with: America's infrastructure is reaching the end of its service life and needs to be replaced. This problem is getting worse throughout the country. We're just going to have to do something about it -- starting now . . .

In the end, investigators may find that there are unique and extraordinary reasons why the I-35W bridge failed. But the graphic images of buckled pavement, stranded vehicles, twisted girders and heroic rescuers are a reminder that infrastructure cannot be taken for granted. The blind eye that taxpayers and our elected officials have been turning to the imperative of maintaining and upgrading the critical foundations that underpin our lives is irrational and reckless.

I'm hoping we don't wait until there are more tragedies like what happened in Minneapolis this week.

We're winning overseas -- and losing in Washington, D.C.

Even the BBC recognizes this. Why can't our politicians?

Well put

Victor Davis Hanson gives us a dose of perspective. And points out a mammoth flaw in our cultural elite.

It is hard to recall an enemy so savage and yet one so largely ignored by rich affluent and distracted elites as the radical jihadists, as we have to evoke everything from mythology to comic books to find analogies to their extra-human viciousness.

For a self-congratulatory culture issuing moral lectures on everything from global warming to the dangers of smoking, the silence of the West toward the primordial horror from Gaza to Anbar is, well, horrific in its own way as well...

Independence Day 2007

While I was in church on Sunday, we sang and listened to several patriotic hymns. They were all familiar ones, but the words in them struck a chord in me as the choir or congregation sang them.

After church, we had a picnic (indoors because of all of the rain in these parts lately) to celebrate Independence Day.

And those songs continued to play in my head.

I have reprinted the words to two of those songs -- traditional 4th of July music -- below. Please read the verses with your heart -- you will find that they describe the America that our founding fathers fought and died for, the country that many men and women have fought and died for throughout America's history.

America

My country,' tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing;
land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrims' pride,
from every mountainside let freedom ring!

My native country, thee,
land of the noble free, thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
thy woods and templed hills;
my heart with rapture thrills, like that above.

Let music swell the breeze,
and ring from all the trees sweet freedom's song;
let mortal tongues awake;
let all that breathe partake;
let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.

Our fathers' God, to thee,
author of liberty, to thee we sing;
long may our land be bright
with freedom's holy light;
protect us by thy might, great God, our King.

America the Beautiful

O beautiful for spacious skies,
for amber waves of grain;
for purple mountain majesties
above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed his grace on thee,
and crown thy good with brotherhood
from sea to shining sea.

O beautiful for heroes proved
in liberating strife,
who more than self their country loved,
and mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
till all success be nobleness,
and every gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream
that sees beyond the years
thine alabaster cities gleam,
undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God mend thine every flaw,
confirm thy soul in self-control,
thy liberty in law.

The America described in these patriotic songs still exists today -- though it has been subdued by intellectual elitism, scientific materialism, and the generally prevalent self-centeredness of its citizens.

We, as the people of the United States of America, need to take the words of these songs to heart -- instead of taking them for granted. We need to make our country more important than ourselves in order to remake our country into the great nation it once was, and spread liberty and justice to those people in other countries who know only oppression and hopelessness.

Yes. I know. I'm being way too idealistic here. But I believe that God has great plans for America -- if we only turn from our selfishness, and seek His guidance.

I pray that God blesses America, and that America, without fail, shares those blessings with the rest of the world.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people he chose for his inheritance.

-- Psalms 33:12 (NIV)

Happy Independence Day.

American philanthropy

What makes this country so great? American citizenry.

"It tells you something about American culture that is unlike any other country," said Claire Gaudiani, a professor at NYU's Heyman Center for Philanthropy and author of The Greater Good: How Philanthropy Drives the American Economy and Can Save Capitalism. Gaudiani said the willingness of Americans to give cuts across income levels, and their investments go to developing ideas, inventions and people to the benefit of the overall economy.

Gaudiani said Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7%. No. 2 Britain gave 0.73%, while France, with a 0.14% rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany.

Good on you, America. May it always be so.

Keep the home fires burning

Sarah, over at trying to grok, has a post up that all Americans should read. It's about making America a country worth defending, worth sacrificing for, worth dying for.

I'm answering her call, and spreading the quote. But also, and more importantly, I will work more diligently to make this country worth the sacrificial efforts of the men and women in our military who fight for it every day. I want them to be proud of their country when they return home. They deserve that.

Please, just go read Sarah's post . . . and then go do your part in making America worth fighting for.

Flag Day

The American Flag.

Remember what it stands for.

Vote fraud undermines democracy

John Fund has a good opinion piece up about the political posturing revolving around voter ID laws and the very real need for those laws right here in America.

It makes for some very interesting reading.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

Vote-Fraud Demagogues
Americans overwhelmingly support voter ID. Are they all racists?

Wednesday, June 13, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Appointments to the Federal Election Commission rarely draw attention. But at a confirmation hearing today, there's likely to be some fireworks over Hans von Spakovsky.

Mr. von Spakovsky has already amassed an 18-month long, largely uncontroversial record at the FEC as a recess appointment. But that's not likely to stop Senate Democrats from grilling him about his time at the Justice Department during President Bush's first term. The aim will be to portray him as a partisan who mishandled voting rights cases. Exhibit A will be his support for state voter ID laws.

For months, since the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys sparked a mini scandal, Democrats have insisted that the president has improperly politicized the Justice Department. Specifically, the accusation is that, under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, DOJ has pursued a political agenda by enforcing laws to curb voter fraud.

Last week, Judiciary Committee Democrats held a hearing aimed in part at discrediting a 2005 Justice lawsuit seeking to force Missouri to cull ineligible voters from its rolls. But while the Missouri case was thrown out by a district judge, similar Justice lawsuits in Indiana and New Jersey led to voter rolls being cleaned up.

---

There is no limit to the hyperbole directed at Mr. von Spakovsky. He has come under such vitriolic fire from Gerald Hebert, now with the liberal Campaign Legal Center, that even Bob Bauer, the counsel to the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees, has called his criticism of the nominee's FEC record "an argument boiling over with personal contempt and so short on reasoned argument."

Other critics claim that Mr. von Spakovsky ignored concerns that a Georgia law requiring photo ID at the polls would disenfranchise poor and minority voters who have a hard time obtaining documentation. They note that a federal judge twice blocked the law from going into effect.

But yelling "voter suppression" in a crowded congressional theater should be done with caution. In the Georgia case, the federal judge didn't find evidence that the law was racially discriminatory. He struck it down on other grounds. Also, the Georgia Supreme Court on Monday unanimously threw out a separate challenge to the state's photo ID law.

Indeed, courts have tended to uphold voter ID laws. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned a Ninth Circuit ruling that had blocked an Arizona ID law. In doing so, the Court noted that anyone without an ID is permitted to cast a provisional ballot that could be verified later. The court also noted that fraud "drives honest citizens out of the democratic process."

Voter ID laws are hardly the second coming of Jim Crow. In 2005, 18 out of 21 members of a federal commission headed by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker came out in support of voter ID laws. Andrew Young, Mr. Carter's U.N. ambassador, has said that in an era when people have to show ID to travel or cash a check "requiring ID can help poor people." A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last year found that voters favor a photo ID requirement by 80%-7%. The idea had overwhelming support among all races.

One reason for such large public support is that the potential for fraud is real. Many people don't trust electronic voting machines. And in recent years Democratic candidates have leveled credible accusations of voter fraud in mayoral races in Detroit, East Chicago, Ind., and St. Louis.

Last week, election officials in San Antonio, Texas determined that 330 people on their voter rolls weren't citizens and that up to 41 of them may have voted illegally, some repeatedly. In 2004, San Antonio was the scene of a bitter dispute in which Democratic Rep. Ciro Rodriguez charged his primary opponent with voter fraud.

In Florida, a felon named Ben Miller was arrested last week for illegally voting in every state election over a period of 16 years. The Palm Beach Post discovered that in Florida's 2000 infamous presidential recount, 5,643 voters' names perfectly matched the names of convicted felons. They should have been disqualified but were allowed to vote anyway. "These illegal voters almost certainly influenced the down-to-the-wire presidential election," the Post reported. By contrast, only 1,100 people were incorrectly labeled as felons by election officials, the Post estimated.

---

Everyone has reason to be concerned about a politicized Justice Department. But to set up a cartoon version of reality in which principled career lawyers at Justice were battling Bush political appointees bent on voter suppression is absurd. The Civil Rights shop at Justice has been stuffed with liberal activists for decades. Many of the former career Justice lawyers complaining about Mr. von Spakovsky today now work at liberal groups such as People for the American Way. And their imaginative, hyperaggressive enforcement of the Voting Rights Act hasn't fared well in court. During the Clinton years, when their theories were allowed to be put to a legal test, courts assessed Justice over $4.1 million in penalties in a dozen cases where it was found to have engaged in sloppy, over-reaching legal arguments. In one case, the Supreme Court noted "the considerable influence of ACLU advocacy on the voting rights decisions of the Attorney General is an embarrassment."

Voter suppression and fraud both deserve to be vigorously addressed. But those concerned with the first who would paint those worried about the second as racially discriminatory are engaged in a form of willful blindness.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Dear Republican Party

I received a solicitation from the Republican Issues Campaign in the mail last week which, I believe, was prompted by a short, but noncommittal, phone conversation. I mailed my reply without sending any money. I doubt anyone but a mail clerk will actually read it, but it felt good . . .

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

10 June 2007

Linda Chavez
Honorary Chairman
Republican Issues Campaign
PO Box 71437
Washington, DC 20024-1437

Re: My “pledge”

Dear Ms. Chavez,

About two weeks ago, I was contacted by phone for your Republican Issues Campaign. I agreed that I might give a small donation at some later, and unspecified, date. About a week ago, I received the enclosed acknowledgement of my “pledge”.

I must disabuse you of the notion that I pledged anything. In fact, I feel it important that you understand something here. I am one of a large number of independent voters who feel betrayed and abandoned by the Republican Party. I have consistently voted Republican over the last two decades because I believed the Republican Party advocated the conservative positions that I hold concerning social, economic, and foreign policy issues of importance to America.

Alas, I find that the Republicans in Washington DC are just as corrupt as the Democrats have been (and are proving to be once again). The breadth of earmarks and the dearth of transparency concerning them takes my breath away.

I also have trouble with the party abandoning its own President Bush on critical issues like the war against terrorism, Social Security Reform, and permanent tax rollback. What happened to loyalty and doing the right thing for our country? All I see amongst Republicans legislators in Washington DC are bottom-feeding, self-serving invertebrates.

Finally, the pathetic comprehensive immigration bill now being worked on Capitol Hill is nothing but another amnesty bill – and another attempt by spineless legislators to avoid doing the difficult-but-right thing for our country: seal our borders, deal with the illegal immigrants, and put together a workable package for all future immigrants.

When the Republican Party stands up to the difficult task of leading this country by addressing the difficult issues facing us with reason and resolve . . . is when I will begin supporting it financially, and when I will resume supporting it with my votes.

Regards,

Calling it like he sees it

Thomas Sowell has a fascinating column out regarding the contradictory nature of many of America's intelligentsia.

You may not agree with his assertions, but you have to admit that he makes some very good points.

I have reprinted it in the extended entry.

5 June 2007

Adolescent intellectuals

By Thomas Sowell

To a small child, the reason he cannot do many things that he would like to do is that his parents won't let him. Many years later, maturity brings an understanding that there are underlying reasons for doing or not doing many things, and that his parents were essentially conduits for those reasons.

The truly dangerous period in life is the time when the child has learned the limits of his parents’ control, and how to circumvent their control, but has not yet understood or accepted the underlying reasons for doing and not doing things. This adolescent period is one that some people -- intellectuals especially -- never outgrow.

The widespread and fervent use of the word “liberation” in a wide variety of contexts is one of the signs of the adolescent belief that only arbitrary rules and conventions stand in the way of doing whatever we want to do.

According to this vision of the world, the problems of all sorts of individuals and groups -- women, minorities, homosexuals, children -- are to be solved by liberating them from the restraints of laws, rules, conventions and standards.

They are to be liberated even from the threat of adverse judgments by other individuals. We are all to be “non-judgmental."

Two centuries ago, the great British legal scholar William Blackstone pointed out that there are some laws so old that no one remembers why they existed or what purpose they served then or now. But the bad consequences of repealing some of these laws have often made painfully clear what purpose they served.

Some of the painful consequences of various “liberations” that began in the 1960s have included the disintegration of families, skyrocketing crime rates, falling test scores in school, and record-breaking rates of teenage suicide.

A long downward trend in teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases sharply reversed during the 1960s, starting a new trend of escalating teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases, climaxed later by the AIDS epidemic.

Sometimes bad things happen because of adverse circumstances -- poverty or war, for example. But our post-1960s social disasters occurred during a long period of peace and unprecedented prosperity. Murder rates, for example, were much lower during the Great Depression of the 1930s and during World War II than they became after various “liberating” changes in the 1960s.

One of the signs of maturity is the ability to learn from experience. Some of us have learned and we have halted or reversed some of the adverse trends. For example, the quest for those elusive “root causes” of crime, so dear to the political left, has been put aside in favor of locking up more criminals -- and the crime rate has declined.

The left is upset that we have so many people behind bars and lament how much it is costing to keep them there. They do not even bother to estimate how much it would cost to turn them loose.

The left has never understood why property rights are a big deal, except to fat cats who own a lot of property. Through legislation and judicial rulings, property rights have been eroded with rent control laws, expansive concepts of eminent domain, and all sorts of environmental restrictions.

Some of the biggest losers have been people of very modest incomes and some of the biggest winners have been fat cats who are able to use political muscle and activist judges to violate other people's property rights.

Politicians in cities around the country violate property rights regularly by seizing homes in working-class neighborhoods and demolishing whole sectors of the city, in order to turn the land over to people who will build shopping malls, gambling casinos, and other things that will pay more taxes than the homeowners are paying.

That's why property rights were put in the Constitution in the first place, to keep politicians from doing things like that. But the adolescent intellectuals of our time have promoted the notion that property rights are just arbitrary rules to protect the rich.

Many academics and federal judges are sufficiently insulated from reality by tenure that they never have to grow up.

© 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

[Reprinted with permission of The Patriot Post (PatriotPost.US)]

America's heroes

Somehow I missed this, but (thankfully) Sarah over at trying to grok linked to it, and I thought I'd point out the article as well. It's a keeper.

It captures the essence of America.

Recommended. Highly.

I've posted it in the extended entry.

America's Honor
The stories behind Memorial Day.

BY PETER COLLIER
Monday, May 28, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors.

Former football star Pat Tillman and Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham were killed on the same day: April 22, 2004. But as details of his death fitfully emerged from Afghanistan, Tillman has become a metaphor for the current conflict--a victim of fratricide, disillusionment, coverup and possibly conspiracy. By comparison, Dunham, who saved several of his comrades in Iraq by falling on an insurgent's grenade, is the unknown soldier. The New York Times, which featured Abu Ghraib on its front page for 32 consecutive days, put the story of Dunham's Medal of Honor on the third page of section B.

Not long ago I was asked to write the biographical sketches for a book featuring formal photographs of all our living Medal of Honor recipients. As I talked with them, I was, of course, chilled by the primal power of their stories. But I also felt pathos: They had become strangers--honored strangers, but strangers nonetheless--in our midst.

---

In my own boyhood, figures such as Jimmy Doolittle, Audie Murphy and John Basilone were household names. And it was assumed that what they had done defined us as well as them, telling us what kind of nation we were. But the 110 Medal recipients alive today are virtually unknown except for a niche audience of warfare buffs. Their heroism has become the military equivalent of genre painting. There's something wrong with that.

What they did in battle was extraordinary. Jose Lopez, a diminutive Mexican-American from the barrio of San Antonio, was in the Ardennes forest when the Germans began the counteroffensive that became the Battle of the Bulge. As 10 enemy soldiers approached his position, he grabbed a machine gun and opened fire, killing them all. He killed two dozen more who rushed him. Knocked down by the concussion of German shells, he picked himself up, packed his weapon on his back and ran toward a group of Americans about to be surrounded. He began firing and didn't stop until all his ammunition and all that he could scrounge from other guns was gone. By then he had killed over 100 of the enemy and bought his comrades time to establish a defensive line.

Yet their stories were not only about killing. Several Medal of Honor recipients told me that the first thing they did after the battle was to find a church or some other secluded spot where they could pray, not only for those comrades they'd lost but also the enemy they'd killed.

Desmond Doss, for instance, was a conscientious objector who entered the army in 1942 and became a medic. Because of his religious convictions and refusal to carry a weapon, the men in his unit intimidated and threatened him, trying to get him to transfer out. He refused and they grudgingly accepted him. Late in 1945 he was with them in Okinawa when they got cut to pieces assaulting a Japanese stronghold.

Everyone but Mr. Doss retreated from the rocky plateau where dozens of wounded remained. Under fire, he treated them and then began moving them one by one to a steep escarpment where he roped them down to safety. Each time he succeeded, he prayed, "Dear God, please let me get just one more man." By the end of the day, he had single-handedly saved 75 GIs.

Why did they do it? Some talked of entering a zone of slow-motion invulnerability, where they were spectators at their own heroism. But for most, the answer was simpler and more straightforward: They couldn't let their buddies down.

Big for his age at 14, Jack Lucas begged his mother to help him enlist after Pearl Harbor. She collaborated in lying about his age in return for his promise to someday finish school. After training at Parris Island, he was sent to Honolulu. When his unit boarded a troop ship for Iwo Jima, Mr. Lucas was ordered to remain behind for guard duty. He stowed away to be with his friends and, discovered two days out at sea, convinced his commanding officer to put him in a combat unit rather than the brig. He had just turned 17 when he hit the beach, and a day later he was fighting in a Japanese trench when he saw two grenades land near his comrades.

He threw himself onto the grenades and absorbed the explosion. Later a medic, assuming he was dead, was about to take his dog tag when he saw Mr. Lucas's finger twitch. After months of treatment and recovery, he returned to school as he'd promised his mother, a ninth-grader wearing a Medal of Honor around his neck.

---

The men in World War II always knew, although news coverage was sometimes scant, that they were in some sense performing for the people at home. The audience dwindled during Korea. By the Vietnam War, the journalists were omnipresent, but the men were performing primarily for each other. One story that expresses this isolation and comradeship involves a SEAL team ambushed on a beach after an aborted mission near North Vietnam's Cua Viet river base.

After a five-hour gunfight, Cmdr. Tom Norris, already a legend thanks to his part in a harrowing rescue mission for a downed pilot (later dramatized in the film BAT-21), stayed behind to provide covering fire while the three others headed to rendezvous with the boat sent to extract them. At the water's edge, one of the men, Mike Thornton, looked back and saw Tom Norris get hit. As the enemy moved in, he ran back through heavy fire and killed two North Vietnamese standing over Norris's body. He lifted the officer, barely alive with a shattered skull, and carried him to the water and then swam out to sea where they were picked up two hours later.

The two men have been inseparable in the 30 years since.

The POWs of Vietnam configured a mini-America in prison that upheld the values beginning to wilt at home as a result of protest and dissension. John McCain tells of Lance Sijan, an airman who ejected over North Vietnam and survived for six weeks crawling (because of his wounds) through the jungle before being captured.

Close to death when he reached Hanoi, Sijan told his captors that he would give them no information because it was against the code of conduct. When not delirious, he quizzed his cellmates about camp security and made plans to escape. The North Vietnamese were obsessed with breaking him, but never did. When he died after long sessions of torture Sijan was, in Sen. McCain's words, "a free man from a free country."

Leo Thorsness was also at the Hanoi Hilton. The Air Force pilot had taken on four MiGs trying to strafe his wingman who had parachuted out of his damaged aircraft; Mr. Thorsness destroyed two and drove off the other two. He was shot down himself soon after this engagement and found out by tap code that his name had been submitted for the Medal.

One of Mr. Thorsness's most vivid memories from seven years of imprisonment involved a fellow prisoner named Mike Christian, who one day found a grimy piece of cloth, perhaps a former handkerchief, during a visit to the nasty concrete tank where the POWs were occasionally allowed a quick sponge bath. Christian picked up the scrap of fabric and hid it.

Back in his cell he convinced prisoners to give him precious crumbs of soap so he could clean the cloth. He stole a small piece of roof tile which he laboriously ground into a powder, mixed with a bit of water and used to make horizontal stripes. He used one of the blue pills of unknown provenance the prisoners were given for all ailments to color a square in the upper left of the cloth. With a needle made from bamboo wood and thread unraveled from the cell's one blanket, Christian stitched little stars on the blue field.

"It took Mike a couple weeks to finish, working at night under his mosquito net so the guards couldn't see him," Mr. Thorsness told me. "Early one morning, he got up before the guards were active and held up the little flag, waving it as if in a breeze. We turned to him and saw it coming to attention and automatically saluted, some of us with tears running down our cheeks. Of course, the Vietnamese found it during a strip search, took Mike to the torture cell and beat him unmercifully. Sometime after midnight they pushed him into our cell, so bad off that even his voice was gone. But when he recovered in a couple weeks he immediately started looking for another piece of cloth."

---

We impoverish ourselves by shunting these heroes and their experiences to the back pages of our national consciousness. Their stories are not just boys' adventure tales writ large. They are a kind of moral instruction. They remind of something we've heard many times before but is worth repeating on a wartime Memorial Day when we're uncertain about what we celebrate. We're the land of the free for one reason only: We're also the home of the brave.

Mr. Collier wrote the text for "Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty" (Workman, 2006).

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Remember

To paraphrase Patton, we should not mourn those who have fallen in the defense of our lives and liberty. Rather we should thank God for them.

My father-in-law forwarded this to me, and I thought it appropriate to include it here.

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." --Nathan Hale

"[G]ather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with choicest flowers of springtime.... [L]et us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us as sacred charges upon the Nation's gratitude, the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan." --General John Logan, General Order No. 11, 5 May 1868

Memorial Day is reserved by American Patriots as a day to honor the service and sacrifice of fallen men and women who donned our Armed Forces uniforms with honor. We at The Patriot pay our humble respects to those that gave the ultimate sacrifice as members of the U.S. Armed Forces. We will remember you always.

Accordingly, this tribute is in honor of our fallen American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coastguardsmen.

One appropriate way to recognize fallen veterans and their families is to join with others and help place flags on the graves of fallen Patriots at your nearest National Cemetery (generally done the Saturday before Memorial Day).

Please join Patriots honoring Memorial Day across our great nation on Monday by observing a minute of silence at 1500 local time for remembrance and prayer. Flags should be flown at half-staff until noon, local time. Please give a personal word of gratitude and comfort to surviving family members who grieve for a beloved warrior fallen in battlefields defending our cherished liberties.

General George Patton insisted, "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."

Founding Patriot John Adams said: "I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth more than all the means...." Indeed it is!

Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those, who have given their life in defense of American liberty, while prosecuting the war with Jihadistan.

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis!

Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot's editors and staff.

(For The Patriot's tribute to our Armed Forces, see "To Support and Defend ... So Help Me God.")

Also, Michael Yon, an embed in Iraq, has a more personal tribute to those of ours who have fallen in the defense of our country. I recommend it.














Cox and Forkum has a fitting tribute:

I thank God for the men and women who have died defending America. And I pray that their spirit of courage and sacrifice lives on in the citizens of America today and in the future.

Amen.

An open mind

[Via the Jawas.]

What Bush undoubtedly wants to say

Ethne, over at Pole Dancing in the Dark, posted this hypothetical farewell speech by President Bush. It was originally posted as a comment to a post at The Road Kill Diaries.

It is quite good, and many of the thoughts expressed are very close to my own.

I've posted it in the extended entry. Enjoy!

We all have our disagreements with President Bush. Immigration, U.S. Attorney firings, Iraq, Darfur, etc. are all hot topics these days. The following "speech" was written yesterday by an ordinary Maineiac. While satirical in nature, all satire must have a basis in fact to be effective. An excellent piece by a person who does not write for a living. Sent with the author's permission.

The speech George W. Bush SHOULD give:

Normally, I start these things out by saying "My Fellow Americans." Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer.

I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: there's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.

The reason I'm quitting is simple. I'm fed up with you people.

I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.

Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media. Polls show that the majority of you think the economy is in the tank. And that's despite record numbers of homeowners including record numbers of MINORITY homeowners. And while we're mentioning minorities, I'll point out that minority business ownership is at an all-time high. Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton Administration. I've mentioned all those things before, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in.

Despite the shock to our economy of 9/11, the stock market has rebounded to record levels and more Americans than ever are participating in these markets. Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security.

We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this "blood for oil" thing. If I was trading blood for oil I would've already seized Iraq's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don't give me this 'Bush Lied People Died' crap either. If I was the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty. Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named 'Clinton' established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you?

You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to outspend and out-tech them.

That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can.. But they are. They want to kill you. And the bastards are all over the globe.

You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor'.

Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.

Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dammit, you might just as well Fedex a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.

In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch American Idol.

I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching. I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.

So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.

Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there're just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.

So that's it. God bless what's left of America. Some of you know what I mean.

Posted by: Ross at May 15, 2007 9:02 AM

OBL: U.S. is weak

Was Osama Right?
Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won't change their view.

BY BERNARD LEWIS
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: "What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?"

A few examples may suffice. During the troubles in Lebanon in the 1970s and '80s, there were many attacks on American installations and individuals--notably the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, followed by a prompt withdrawal, and a whole series of kidnappings of Americans, both official and private, as well as of Europeans. There was only one attack on Soviet citizens, when one diplomat was killed and several others kidnapped. The Soviet response through their local agents was swift, and directed against the family of the leader of the kidnappers. The kidnapped Russians were promptly released, and after that there were no attacks on Soviet citizens or installations throughout the period of the Lebanese troubles.

---

These different responses evoked different treatment. While American policies, institutions and individuals were subject to unremitting criticism and sometimes deadly attack, the Soviets were immune. Their retention of the vast, largely Muslim colonial empire accumulated by the czars in Asia passed unnoticed, as did their propaganda and sometimes action against Muslim beliefs and institutions.

Most remarkable of all was the response of the Arab and other Muslim countries to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Washington's handling of the Tehran hostage crisis assured the Soviets that they had nothing to fear from the U.S. They already knew that they need not worry about the Arab and other Muslim governments. The Soviets already ruled--or misruled--half a dozen Muslim countries in Asia, without arousing any opposition or criticism. Initially, their decision and action to invade and conquer Afghanistan and install a puppet regime in Kabul went almost unresisted. After weeks of debate, the U.N. General Assembly finally was persuaded to pass a resolution "strongly deploring the recent armed intervention in Afghanistan." The words "condemn" and "aggression" were not used, and the source of the "intervention" was not named. Even this anodyne resolution was too much for some of the Arab states. South Yemen voted no; Algeria and Syria abstained; Libya was absent; the nonvoting PLO observer to the Assembly even made a speech defending the Soviets.

One might have expected that the recently established Organization of the Islamic Conference would take a tougher line. It did not. After a month of negotiation and manipulation, the organization finally held a meeting in Pakistan to discuss the Afghan question. Two of the Arab states, South Yemen and Syria, boycotted the meeting. The representative of the PLO, a full member of this organization, was present, but abstained from voting on a resolution critical of the Soviet action; the Libyan delegate went further, and used this occasion to denounce the U.S.

The Muslim willingness to submit to Soviet authority, though widespread, was not unanimous. The Afghan people, who had successfully defied the British Empire in its prime, found a way to resist the Soviet invaders. An organization known as the Taliban (literally, "the students") began to organize resistance and even guerilla warfare against the Soviet occupiers and their puppets. For this, they were able to attract some support from the Muslim world--some grants of money, and growing numbers of volunteers to fight in the Holy War against the infidel conqueror. Notable among these was a group led by a Saudi of Yemeni origin called Osama bin Laden.

To accomplish their purpose, they did not disdain to turn to the U.S. for help, which they got. In the Muslim perception there has been, since the time of the Prophet, an ongoing struggle between the two world religions, Christendom and Islam, for the privilege and opportunity to bring salvation to the rest of humankind, removing whatever obstacles there might be in their path. For a long time, the main enemy was seen, with some plausibility, as being the West, and some Muslims were, naturally enough, willing to accept what help they could get against that enemy. This explains the widespread support in the Arab countries and in some other places first for the Third Reich and, after its collapse, for the Soviet Union. These were the main enemies of the West, and therefore natural allies.

Now the situation had changed. The more immediate, more dangerous enemy was the Soviet Union, already ruling a number of Muslim countries, and daily increasing its influence and presence in others. It was therefore natural to seek and accept American help. As Osama bin Laden explained, in this final phase of the millennial struggle, the world of the unbelievers was divided between two superpowers. The first task was to deal with the more deadly and more dangerous of the two, the Soviet Union. After that, dealing with the pampered and degenerate Americans would be easy.

We in the Western world see the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western, more specifically an American, victory in the Cold War. For Osama bin Laden and his followers, it was a Muslim victory in a jihad, and, given the circumstances, this perception does not lack plausibility.

---

From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that they expected this second task, dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks--on the World Trade Center in New York and on U.S. troops in Mogadishu in 1993, on the U.S. military office in Riyadh in 1995, on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000--all of which evoked only angry words, sometimes accompanied by the dispatch of expensive missiles to remote and uninhabited places.

Stage One of the jihad was to drive the infidels from the lands of Islam; Stage Two--to bring the war into the enemy camp, and the attacks of 9/11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage. The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then. The U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq indicated that there had been a major change in the U.S., and that some revision of their assessment, and of the policies based on that assessment, was necessary.

More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting.

Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author, most recently, of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004).

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

reference link

The importance of military history

Jules Crittenden makes some good points about the need for Americans to study military history -- war, and its causes and effects. He also cites Betsy Newmark, a history teacher and conservative blogger, who makes some good points of her own.

We don't get much of that in school unless we go through one of the military academies. And we desperately need it in order to understand what war is like, so that we can make informed decisions about going to war and what to expect during and after war.

Studying military history would also help us to come to the realization that war is sometimes a necessary and moral endeavor.

Democrats dooming themselves?

Larry Kudlow maintains that the Democrats' appraoch to taxes and national security will doom their 2008 political aspirations.

To a person, each Democratic presidential candidate wants to undermine the global war against jihadist terrorism — wherever it may be and especially in Iraq. The Democrats see a civil war in Iraq, where the Republicans view a growing al Qaeda threat. And while Republicans talk about significantly increasing the defense budget and expanding American force levels for all the armed services, the Democrats are hoping for some sort of Iraqi peace dividend upon immediate withdrawal — one that can be re-channeled into higher domestic social spending.

To a person, each Democratic presidential candidate also wants to raise taxes on the rich and roll back President Bush’s tax cuts. The Republicans, however, understand that those tax cuts have propelled economic growth and contributed to a stock market boom. And they recognize that Bush’s Goldilocks bull-market economy — which I call the greatest story never told — relies on extending the investor tax cuts and perhaps even moving forward with a flat tax or national sales tax.

Finally, to a person, each Democratic presidential candidate also has it in for corporate America. The Democrats discuss various punishments for business — especially oil companies, but also drug, utility, and insurance firms. Not so for the Republicans, who talk about helping businesses and promoting entrepreneurship in our successful free-enterprise economy.

The differences between the two parties couldn’t be clearer, and next year the voting public will have a very stark choice. But with this election season only two debates old, that choice already favors the Republican position.

And he doesn't even mention how idiotic the Dems have been so far . . .

I am very concerned about America's future, right now. And a lot of it has to do with the self-serving politicking going on. We're eating our own young in Washington and there appears to be no end in sight.

Lord help us . . . please!

Support the troops: wear red on Fridays

Let's all support our troops by wearing red every Friday. Southwest Airlines is doing it . . .

And so will I.

Stop blaming America for all of the world's woes

Michael Barone has a recent op-ed in which he discusses the absurdity of the "blame-America-first" attitude that seems to be prevalent among many educated people who should know better. He draws from Andrew Roberts's book, "History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900" -- among others.

Roberts points out almost all the advances of freedom in the 20th century have been made by the English-speaking peoples -- Americans especially, but British, as well, and also (here his account will be unfamiliar to most American readers) Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. And he recalls what held and holds them together by quoting a speech Winston Churchill gave in 1943 at Harvard: "Law, language, literature -- these are considerable factors. Common conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, especially to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial justice and above all a love of personal freedom ... these are the common conceptions on both sides of the ocean among the English-speaking peoples."

Churchill recorded these things in his four-volume history of the English-speaking peoples up to 1900: the development of the common law, guarantees of freedom, representative government, independent courts.

Read the whole column.

I also recommend you begin an independent study of American history. You'll be glad you did.

St. Pattrick's Day Gathering of Eagles

Michelle Malkin provides a comprehensive report on the Gathering of Eagles in Washington, D.C. last Saturday.

One of the photos that really resonates:

Because it is so true.

Economics lesson for Sen. Obama

Thomas Sowell presents some economic fundamentals to Senator Obama -- who seems to be ignorant of them.

Senator Obama is being hailed as the newest and freshest face on the American political scene. But he is advocating some of the oldest fallacies, just as if it was the 1960s again, or as if he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing since then.

He thinks higher teacher pay is the answer to the abysmal failures of our education system, which is already far more expensive than the education provided in countries whose students have for decades consistently outperformed ours on international tests.

Senator Obama is for making college “affordable,” as if he has never considered that government subsidies push up tuition, just as government subsidies push up agricultural prices, the price of medical care and other prices.

He is also for “alternative fuels,” without the slightest thought about the prices of those fuels or the implications of those prices. All this is the old liberal agenda from years past, old wine in new bottles, a new face with old ideas that have been tried and failed repeatedly over the past generation.

Senator Obama is not unique among politicians who want to control prices, as if that is controlling the underlying reality behind the prices.

I hope the good senator is teachable.

Go read the rest.

Healthcare reform

Sorry I missed this article last week, yet it is intriguing enough to report on it now. Michael Barone reports on Bush's healthcare reform proposal that he mentioned in his SOTU speech this year. Hardly anyone else has even discussed it . . .

Not many expected George W. Bush to advance a serious healthcare proposal in his State of the Union Address, and few expect anyone in Congress to act in response to it. But Bush did, and at least one member of Congress seems interested. More ought to be paying attention.

Bush's proposal in a nutshell is to end the preferential tax treatment for employer-provided health insurance. In 1943, in the midst of World War II, when wage and price controls were in effect, the government decided that employers could deduct the cost of health insurance for their employees and that employees would not be taxed on the value of the policies. This decision has saddled us with a system in which health insurance has been tied to employment, with many perverse results. Healthcare is perceived as a free good, and consumers have no incentive to take costs into account.

Bush proposes to change this by giving every couple paying taxes a standard $15,000 deduction ($7,500 for individuals) for the cost of health insurance. Those with employer-provided insurance worth more than $15,000 (about 20 percent of the total) would be taxed on the additional amount; this would very likely discourage expensive policies.

As a Washington Post editorial on the speech pointed out, this would be a progressive change.

This looks like a good market-based way to make healthcare more available to Americans. Go read the rest.

Psychological denial

Dr. Sanity has an excellent essay on the consequences of denial.

A while back, I listened in disbelief as Democrat after Democrat denounced the compromise bill that defines for detainees what torture is and isn't. To a person, they paid lip-service to being against torture (whatever it might be); and to a person it was obvious that the detainees "rights" were paramount. How strange that they don't give individual's in our own society the same "rights" to express their religion as they would like in public; or that they denounce opinions with which they differ with such passion. How nice it would be to see them behave consistently for a change....but it isn't going to happen because they just don't see it.

I'm sure that the recent court decision about all this will stimulate even more histrionic moral outrage--particularly since the outrage conveniently obscures the reality that we are at war with an implacable enemy that wants to kill us all.

That's what denial is all about. It allows--nay, it encourages-- the most blatant contradictions in thinking; and the individual does not ever have to account for those contradictions or take responsibility for them because they don't even perceive them! Facts, schmacts.

The left pretends their behavior is motivated from" love" or "peace" or "patriotism"; but these are only words they use to rationalize to themselves their actions, which demonstrate exactly the opposite. Their self-deception and denial is simply stunning in its sweeping grandiosity and self-righteousness betrayal of the good.

I, too, have been completely baffled by the words and actions of those congressmen and senators who oppose the war in Iraq, oppose the struggle against terrorism and oppression in the name of Islam, and oppose the prudent measures being taken to attempt to ensure America's security.

This may explain a lot of it.

Denial: the new policy position of the Democrat Party.

God have mercy on us all.

America embodied in Anna Nicole Smith

Tunku Varadarajan, over at OpinionJournal, likens the story of Anna Nicole Smith's life to the American Dream.

Playwrights notwithstanding, Ms. Smith was the object of a fierce popular fascination. It could be said--and said not entirely as metaphor--that Anna Nicole Smith embodied America. She embodied its bounty as well as its overabundance; its exploitability, and its propensity to exploit. She embodied, also, its litigiousness, its enterprise, its universal offer of the chance to remake oneself (Gatsby did it one way, Anna Nicole Smith did it another). And to many foreigners--particularly foreign men--she embodied America in a literal way, too: in a brassy blondeness that people in repressed cultures marvel at. It is no coincidence that the places in the world where women such as Ms. Smith are the most popular are typically those with which the U.S. has the worst diplomatic relations.

When I am feeling cynical about this great nation, I find myself thinking these kind of thoughts.

It's sad, really.

Remember Cambodia

In 1998, Jeff Jacoby pointed out, in chilling detail, the results of America withdrawing aid to Cambodia in 1975.

It was noted everywhere that the communist reign of terror in Cambodia lasted nearly four years and that at least 1 million human beings -- by some estimates as many as 2 1/2 million -- were murdered in an orgy of executions, torture, and starvation.

"In the name of a radical utopia,'' The New York Times recalled in its long obituary, "the Khmer Rouge regime had turned most of the people into slaves. . . . Dictatorial village leaders and soldiers told the people whom to marry and how to live, and those who disobeyed were killed. [Those] who did not bend to the political mania were buried alive, or tossed into the air and speared on bayonets. Some were fed to crocodiles.'' Nearby was a photograph of human skulls -- emblem of the dreadful "killing fields'' in which the communists butchered a quarter of Cambodia's people.

But nowhere in the Times story was there a reminder that the Khmer Rouge was able to seize power only after the US Congress in 1975 cut off all aid to the embattled pro-American government of Lon Nol -- and that it did so despite frantic warnings of the bloodbath that would ensue. President Ford warned of "horror and tragedy'' if Cambodia was abandoned to the Khmer Rouge and pleaded with Congress to supply Lon Nol's army with the tools it needed to defend itself.

It appears as if history may repeat itself -- only this time in Iraq.

[Via Jay Tea at Whizbang!.]

Disgraceful

OpinionJournal has a pointed op-ed up about our invertebrate Congress' latest move toward aiding and abetting a sworn enemy.

Congress has rarely been distinguished by its moral courage. But even grading on a curve, we can only describe this week's House debate on a vote of no-confidence in the mission in Iraq as one of the most shameful moments in the institution's history.

On present course, the Members will vote on Friday to approve a resolution that does nothing to remove American troops from harm's way in Iraq but that will do substantial damage to their morale and that of their Iraqi allies while emboldening the enemy. The only real question is how many Republicans will also participate in this disgrace in the mistaken belief that their votes will put some distance between themselves and the war most of them voted to authorize in 2002.

How on Earth can Congress behave like this? Why are they opposed to giving Iraqis a fighting chance at a successful democracy? Why do they not realize that Islamic terrorists are aiming at world domination -- which necessarily means a subjugated, if not destroyed, America?

As this country continues to spiral downward in its post-noble period, I can only pray that the decay can be reversed by our children. My generation has done its damnest to wreck the tradition of honor and nobility that has made this country great. I doubt very seriously that it can undo the damage it has wrought. As a result we, as a people and as a nation, are diminished.

The whole op-ed is in the extended entry.

Awaiting the Dishonor Roll
Congress "supports the troops" while emboldening the enemy.

Thursday, February 15, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

Congress has rarely been distinguished by its moral courage. But even grading on a curve, we can only describe this week's House debate on a vote of no-confidence in the mission in Iraq as one of the most shameful moments in the institution's history.

On present course, the Members will vote on Friday to approve a resolution that does nothing to remove American troops from harm's way in Iraq but that will do substantial damage to their morale and that of their Iraqi allies while emboldening the enemy. The only real question is how many Republicans will also participate in this disgrace in the mistaken belief that their votes will put some distance between themselves and the war most of them voted to authorize in 2002.

---

The motion at issue is plainly dishonest, in that exquisitely Congressional way of trying to have it both ways. (We reprint the text nearby.) The resolution purports to "support" the troops even as it disapproves of their mission. It praises their "bravery," while opposing the additional forces that both President Bush and General David Petreaus, the new commanding general in Iraq, say are vital to accomplishing that mission. And it claims to want to "protect" the troops even as its practical impact will be to encourage Iraqi insurgents to believe that every roadside bomb brings them closer to their goal.

As for how "the troops" themselves feel, we refer readers to Richard Engel's recent story on NBC News quoting Specialist Tyler Johnson in Iraq: "People are dying here. You know what I'm saying . . . You may [say] 'oh we support the troops.' So you're not supporting what they do. What they's [sic] here to sweat for, what we bleed for and we die for." Added another soldier: "If they don't think we're doing a good job, everything we've done here is all in vain." In other words, the troops themselves realize that the first part of the resolution is empty posturing, while the second is deeply immoral.

All the more so because if Congress feels so strongly about the troops, it arguably has the power to start removing them from harm's way by voting to cut off the funds they need to operate in Iraq. But that would make Congress responsible for what followed--whether those consequences are Americans killed in retreat, or ethnic cleansing in Baghdad, or the toppling of the elected Maliki government by radical Shiite or military forces. The one result Congress fears above all is being accountable.

We aren't prone to quoting the young John Kerry, but this week's vote reminds us of the comment the antiwar veteran told another cut-and-run Congress in the early 1970s: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" The difference this time is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha expect men and women to keep dying for something they say is a mistake but also don't have the political courage to help end.

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), that (1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and (2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

Instead, they'll pass this "non-binding resolution," to be followed soon by attempts at micromanagement that would make the war all but impossible to prosecute--and once again without taking responsibility. Mr. Murtha is already broadcasting his strategy, which the new Politico Web site described yesterday as "a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration's options."

In concert with antiwar groups, the story reported, Mr. Murtha's "goal is crafted to circumvent the biggest political vulnerability of the antiwar movement--the accusation that it is willing to abandon troops in the field." So instead of cutting off funds, Mr. Murtha will "slow-bleed" the troops with "readiness" restrictions or limits on National Guard forces that will make them all but impossible to deploy. These will be attached to appropriations bills that will also purport to "support the troops."

"There's a D-Day coming in here, and it's going to start with the supplemental and finish with the '08 [defense] budget,'' Congressman Neil Abercrombie (D., Hawaii) told the Web site. He must mean D-Day as in Dunkirk.

---

All of this is something that House Republicans should keep in mind as they consider whether to follow this retreat. The GOP leadership has been stalwart, even eloquent, this week in opposing the resolution. But some Republicans figure they can use this vote to distance themselves from Mr. Bush and the war while not doing any real harm. They should understand that the Democratic willingness to follow the Murtha "slow-bleed" strategy will depend in part on how many Republicans follow them in this vote. The Democrats are themselves divided on how to proceed, and they want a big GOP vote to give them political cover. However "non-binding," this is a vote that Republican partisans will long remember.

History is likely to remember the roll as well. A newly confirmed commander is about to lead 20,000 American soldiers on a dangerous and difficult mission to secure Baghdad, risking their lives for their country. And the message their elected Representatives will send them off to battle with is a vote declaring their inevitable defeat.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

A larger tragedy

Thomas Sowell, over at Townhall makes some insightful observations about the real tragedy in the Duke non-rape case.

However reprehensible District Attorney Nifong's words and actions have been throughout this case, it would be a serious mistake to see in this tawdry episode just the vileness of one man.

The larger tragedy is what this case revealed about the degeneration of our times and the hollowness of so many people in "responsible" positions in the media, in academia, and among those blacks so consumed by racial resentments and thirst for revenge that they are prepared to lash out at individuals who have done nothing to them and are guilty of no crime against anybody.

The haste and vehemence with which scores of Duke University professors publicly took sides against the students in this case is just one sign of how deep the moral dry rot goes, in even our most prestigious institutions.

Recommended.

Defeatism

A long time ago, when my wife and I were attending a Sunday School class for newlyweds, our teacher said something to us about relationships that has stayed with me for 28 years: "If you say bad things about your spouse long enough, you will come to believe them." That is precisely what is happening in this country. We are so busy bitching about America and its involvement in Iraq that we are starting to believe our own rhetoric.

The United States is talking itself into defeat in Iraq. Its political culture is now in a downward spiral of pessimism. In the halls of Congress, across endless newspaper columns, amid the punditocracy and on Sunday morning talk shows--all emit a Stygian gloom about America.

Yes, on any given day on some discrete issue (Prime Minister Maliki's bona fides, for example), the criticism of the American role is not without justification. But the cumulative effect of this unremitting ill wind is corrosive. We are not only on the way to talking ourselves into defeat in Iraq but into a diminished international status that may be harder to recover than the doom mob imagines. Self-criticism has its role, but profligate self-doubt can exact a price.

It pains me to say this, but I do not believe that America, as it is today, would have had the fortitude to fight and win against the Axis powers in WWII.

We, as a nation, no longer have the sheer cussedness required to succeed in the face of determined opposition. And thus we, as a nation, are diminished.

And so, he was

President Bush was, in fact, brutally honest in his SOTU address.

If American forces step back before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill out across the country -- and in time, the entire region could be drawn into the conflict.

For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective. Chaos is the greatest ally -- their greatest ally in this struggle. And out of chaos in Iraq would emerge an emboldened enemy with new safe havens, new recruits, new resources, and an even greater determination to harm America. To allow this to happen would be to ignore the lessons of September the 11th and invite tragedy. Ladies and gentlemen, nothing is more important at this moment in our history than for America to succeed in the Middle East, to succeed in Iraq and to spare the American people from this danger. (Applause.)

This is where matters stand tonight, in the here and now. I have spoken with many of you in person. I respect you and the arguments you've made. We went into this largely united, in our assumptions and in our convictions. And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure. Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work. And I ask you to support our troops in the field, and those on their way. (Applause.)

The war on terror we fight today is a generational struggle that will continue long after you and I have turned our duties over to others. And that's why it's important to work together so our nation can see this great effort through. Both parties and both branches should work in close consultation.

I wonder how many Americans truly understand the magnitude of this fight we find ourselves in. We need to stop milling about and step out together with the common objective of exterminating this threat to every one of us -- and our descendants.

The SOTU address we needed

Jules Crittenden writes, for Pajamas Media, a much more brutally frank State of the Union address than that delivered last night.

So what is the best thing I can do tonight? I can tell you the truth. What none of you want to hear. What you’ve been stopping your ears to. The ugly truth.

The State of the Union is a disaster. I did my best, but I made mistakes, and my best wasn’t good enough.

We went to war without building up our army, and now, I am trying to make up for that.

But that is not the disaster.

The disaster is that you, Congress and the American people, do not care to fight.

It's something we Americans need to hear.

Go read the rest.

Words from the grave

2LT Mark Daily died in Iraq while doing his duty. He left behind friends and family, and an inspirational post on his MySpace page.

Here's a link to the post.

Here's an excerpt:

So that is why I joined. In the time it took for you to read this explanation, innocent people your age have suffered under the crushing misery of tyranny. Every tool of philosophical advancement and communication that we use to develop our opinions about this war are denied to countless human beings on this planet, many of whom live under the regimes that have, in my opinion, been legitimately targeted for destruction. Some have allowed their resentment of the President to stir silent applause for setbacks in Iraq. Others have ironically decried the war because it has tied up our forces and prevented them from confronting criminal regimes in Sudan, Uganda, and elsewhere.

I simply decided that the time for candid discussions of the oppressed was over, and I joined.

The entire post is reprinted below the fold.

[Via Michelle Malkin.]

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Why I Joined:

Current mood: optimistic

Why I Joined:

This question has been asked of me so many times in so many different contexts that I thought it would be best if I wrote my reasons for joining the Army on my page for all to see. First, the more accurate question is why I volunteered to go to Iraq. After all, I joined the Army a week after we declared war on Saddam's government with the intention of going to Iraq. Now, after years of training and preparation, I am finally here.

Much has changed in the last three years. The criminal Ba'ath regime has been replaced by an insurgency fueled by Iraq's neighbors who hope to partition Iraq for their own ends. This is coupled with the ever present transnational militant Islamist movement which has seized upon Iraq as the greatest way to kill Americans, along with anyone else they happen to be standing near. What was once a paralyzed state of fear is now the staging ground for one of the largest transformations of power and ideology the Middle East has experienced since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Thanks to Iran, Syria, and other enlightened local actors, this transformation will be plagued by interregional hatred and genocide. And I am now in the center of this.

Is this why I joined?

Yes. Much has been said about America's intentions in overthrowing Saddam Hussein and seeking to establish a new state based upon political representation and individual rights. Many have framed the paradigm through which they view the conflict around one-word explanations such as "oil" or "terrorism," favoring the one which best serves their political persuasion. I did the same thing, and anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception (though there are countless like me).

I joined the fight because it occurred to me that many modern day "humanists" who claim to possess a genuine concern for human beings throughout the world are in fact quite content to allow their fellow "global citizens" to suffer under the most hideous state apparatuses and conditions. Their excuses used to be my excuses. When asked why we shouldn't confront the Ba'ath party, the Taliban or the various other tyrannies throughout this world, my answers would allude to vague notions of cultural tolerance (forcing women to wear a veil and stay indoors is such a quaint cultural tradition), the sanctity of national sovereignty (how eager we internationalists are to throw up borders to defend dictatorships!) or even a creeping suspicion of America's intentions. When all else failed, I would retreat to my fragile moral ecosystem that years of living in peace and liberty had provided me. I would write off war because civilian casualties were guaranteed, or temporary alliances with illiberal forces would be made, or tank fuel was toxic for the environment. My fellow "humanists" and I would relish contently in our self righteous declaration of opposition against all military campaigns against dictatorships, congratulating one another for refusing to taint that aforementioned fragile moral ecosystem that many still cradle with all the revolutionary tenacity of the members of Rage Against the Machine and Greenday. Others would point to America's historical support of Saddam Hussein, sighting it as hypocritical that we would now vilify him as a thug and a tyrant. Upon explaining that we did so to ward off the fiercely Islamist Iran, which was correctly identified as the greater threat at the time, eyes are rolled and hypocrisy is declared. Forgetting that America sided with Stalin to defeat Hitler, who was promptly confronted once the Nazis were destroyed, America's initial engagement with Saddam and other regional actors is identified as the ultimate argument against America's moral crusade.

And maybe it is. Maybe the reality of politics makes all political action inherently crude and immoral. Or maybe it is these adventures in philosophical masturbation that prevent people from ever taking any kind of effective action against men like Saddam Hussein. One thing is for certain, as disagreeable or as confusing as my decision to enter the fray may be, consider what peace vigils against genocide have accomplished lately. Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics. Often times it is less about how clean your actions are and more about how pure your intentions are.

So that is why I joined. In the time it took for you to read this explanation, innocent people your age have suffered under the crushing misery of tyranny. Every tool of philosophical advancement and communication that we use to develop our opinions about this war are denied to countless human beings on this planet, many of whom live under the regimes that have, in my opinion, been legitimately targeted for destruction. Some have allowed their resentment of the President to stir silent applause for setbacks in Iraq. Others have ironically decried the war because it has tied up our forces and prevented them from confronting criminal regimes in Sudan, Uganda, and elsewhere.

I simply decided that the time for candid discussions of the oppressed was over, and I joined.

In digesting this posting, please remember that America's commitment to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his sons existed before the current administration and would exist into our future children's lives had we not acted. Please remember that the problems that plague Iraq today were set in motion centuries ago and were up until now held back by the most cruel of cages. Don't forget that human beings have a responsibility to one another and that Americans will always have a responsibility to the oppressed. Don't overlook the obvious reasons to disagree with the war but don't cheapen the moral aspects either. Assisting a formerly oppressed population in converting their torn society into a plural, democratic one is dangerous and difficult business, especially when being attacked and sabotaged from literally every direction. So if you have anything to say to me at the end of this reading, let it at least include "Good Luck"

Mark Daily

I thank you, Mark, for your willingness to die for the rest of us. Your sacrifice is appreciated more than I can put into words. God rest your soul, and may His grace be with your friends and family.

A sincere thank you

Wal-Mart has generally been getting bad press over the last few years for reasons that are more political than anything else. Here is a sterling example of the good things that Wal-Mart brings to this country.

Frankly, if it wasn't for Wal-Mart, you wouldn't be reading this page. The VFW Foundation website is just one of numerous things this great company has backed to support our cause.

Wal-Mart has donated money, time, and products to help our military personnel and their families stationed all over the world. Every time, it seems, the Foundation needs something, Wal-Mart is there asking what it can do to aid in our success.

Without the generosity of Wal-Mart, we simply wouldn't be where we are today. We simply wouldn't be supporting and managing all the programs we do. We simply wouldn't be reaching nearly the number of service personnel and their loved ones with the help and support they deserve.

Thank you, Wal-Mart. Thank you, thank you.

[Via Sarah at trying to grok.]

Americans in Iraq

Bill Roggio has a post up describing how Spirit of America is working to help the kids in Anbar. This is another one of those things you don't see reported by the mainstream media.

Major Britt Rosenberry, the Army Special Operations Liason officer serving in Fallujah, has just placed an order with Spirit of America for bulk of school supplies. The order consists of several thousand backpacks filled with notepads, books, pens, pencils and other school materials for the children throughout the Al Anbar Province. I met Major Rosenberry at Camp Fallujah and discussed the difficult situation with the schools and how the supplies will help the children throughout Al Anbar Province.

This is another one of those things you don't often see reported by the mainstream media.

Go read the rest.

A culture of victory

In stark contrast to the cut and run crowd, a group of military experts were consulted by the White House and said that reducing troops was the wrong answer.

White House officials emphasized that although the experts gave a bleak assessment, they still believe the situation in Iraq is "winnable."

"I appreciate the advice I got from those folks in the field," Bush said after emerging from the morning session. "And that advice is . . . an important component of putting together a new way forward in Iraq."

Recommended reading.

A culture of defeat

Mary Katharine Ham reports on the accolades given to the Iraq Study Group report. She also attempts to bring a more realistic interpretation to the table by pointing out those who disagree with the study group recommendations.

I know a Marine. He sits on a low bench at Walter Reed Hospital, white paper crinkling beneath him as he works his left knee back and forth. Below the knee is about 12 inches of tibia, wrapped at the end in gauze and tight bandages while the wound heals.

His left foot took its last step in Ramadi. It landed on an IED instead of Iraqi sand. He was on his way to clear a tower of an insurgent sniper when it happened. His fellow Marines—some double amputees jogging on treadmills and lifting weights—rib him, calling the injury a “flesh wound.”

These are Marines who are fighting for our life, liberty, and security. They are part of a culture of victory in this country -- one, unfortunately, that is sadly diminished.

And who, you may ask, are a part of this country's culture of defeat?

Tim Russert. Harry Reid. Joe Biden. Carl Levin. George Stephanopoulos.

You would think they would know better. Anybody remember the silly movie, "Advance to the Rear?" That's these guys spin on things.

MKH has it right when she says:

Only in a Washington TV studio, perfumed with hairspray and haughtiness, could running away before the job is done be considered tough and resolved.

She talks about other Marines, too.

I know a Marine. He is packing his stuff this week. On Saturday, he will bend down, kiss his wife good-bye, and deploy again for Iraq. He will not leave with a mind to allowing the collapse of Iraq’s government, a humanitarian catastrophe, a propaganda victory for al Qaeda, the diminishing of America’s global standing, or negotiations with the enemy, just because it means we can get out of Iraq quickly.

He’ll go with a mind to win, and he will not find boldness, passion, toughness, glee, or honor in anything less. That is a practice for Washingtonians, not Marines.

Thank God for our Marines, Soldiers, Airmen, and Sailors. I just wish there were more like them in our nation's capitol.

UPDATE: MKH has received many emails in response to her piece referred to in this post. You can read several of those responses right here. Here's one of them:

I know a few Marines as well, and I no longer am able to know a few others.

I sadly shake my head at the turn taken by our government, and by our elected leadership. We get whet we elect. The Press is well beyond reproach, yet we have never seen them happier. It is like living through Viet Nam all over again (my fight, 4 years USN).

We have much to repair, it is time to begin to work even harder...

Shop at Sears

My father-in-law forwarded me an email that said some pretty good things about Sears. I found out at Snopes that the email has been floating around cyberspace since 2003, and I also found out that the email is true. Here's an excerpt of that email:

I assume you have all seen the reports about how Sears is treating its reservist employees who are called up? By law, they are required to hold their jobs open and available, but nothing more. Usually, people take a big pay cut and lose benefits as a result of being called up...

Sears is voluntarily paying the difference in salaries and maintaining all benefits, including medical insurance and bonus programs, for all called up reservist employees for up to two years. I submit that Sears is an exemplary corporate citizen and should be recognized for its contribution.

Suggest we all shop at Sears, and be sure to find a manager to tell them why we are there so the company gets the positive reinforcement it well deserves.

Pass it on.

On their website, it is obvious that Sears goes the extra mile in support of our troops. But this is where I discovered one innaccuracy in the email.

Reservist/National Guard employees who are called to active duty and deployed are paid the difference between their military pay and their salary at Sears. Sears Holding Company Life/Medical/Dental insurance continues, as do annual merit increases and incentive pay. And Sears holds their job for them. And all of this for five years!

It turns out that Sears changed their military benefits policy in 2004 -- by extending the benefits from 36 months to 60 months.

Talk about supporting our troops!

I'm going to do more of my shopping at Sears from now on. I urge you to do the same.

Grace

Peggy Noonan talks about grace under pressure.

We will need grace to get through this time: through the discussion of the Baker-Hamilton report, through debate on the war, through a harmonious transfer of legislative power in January, through the beginning of the post-Bush era.

I've reprinted the whole piece in the extended entry.

Grace Under Pressure
Difficult times call for less-contentious politics.

Friday, December 1, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

We're going to need grace. We are going to need a great outbreak of grace to navigate the next difficult months.

America is turning against a war it supported, for the essential reason that no one is able to promise a believable path to a successful outcome, and Americans are a practical people. It is not true that Americans are historical romantics. They are patriots who, once committed, commit on all levels, including emotionally. But they don't wake up in the morning looking for new flags to follow over old cliffs. They want to pay the mortgage, protect their children, and try to be better parents in a jittery time. They are not isolationist. They want to help where they can, and feel called to support the poor and the sick wherever they are. They are also, still, American exceptionalists, meaning they believe the creation of America--the long journey across the sea, the genius cluster that invented the republic, the historic codifying of freedom--was providential, and good news not only for us but the world. "And the glow from that fire can truly light the world."

Much has been strained. We were all concussed by 9/11--we reeled--and came down where we came down. For the administration, extreme events prompted radical thinking. American exceptionalism was yesterday. They would be universalists, their operating style at once dreamy and aggressive: All men want the same thing, and we're giving it to them whether they want it or not. Now the dreamers hope to be saved by men--James Baker, Vernon Jordan--they once dismissed as cynics. And the two truest statements on Iraq are, still, Colin Powell's "You break it, you own it" and Pat Buchanan's "A constitution doesn't make a country, a country makes a constitution." Iraq has a constitution but not a country.

When history runs hot, bitterness bubbles. Democrats who should be feeling happy are, from what I've observed in New York and Washington, not. The closest they come to joy is a more energetic smugness. Republicans are fighting among themselves--or, rather, grumbling. They haven't, amazingly, broken out in war, and if they did, no one would be debating if it were a civil war. It would be like Iraq, like a dropped pane of glass that is jagged, shattered, dangerous.

We will need grace to get through this time: through the discussion of the Baker-Hamilton report, through debate on the war, through a harmonious transfer of legislative power in January, through the beginning of the post-Bush era.

---

People often speak of an absence of civility in Washington, but that's not quite the problem. Faking civility is a primary operating style: "My esteemed colleague."

What is needed is grace--sensitivity, mercy, generosity of spirit, a courtesy so deep it amounts to beauty. We will have to summon it. And the dreadful thing is you can't really fake it.

A very small theory, but my latest, is that many politicians and journalists lack a certain public grace because they spent their formative years in the American institution most likely to encourage base assumptions and coldness toward the foe. Yes, boarding school, and tony private schools in general. The last people with grace in America are poor Christians and religiously educated people of the middle class. The rich gave it up as an affectation long ago. Too bad, since they stayed in power.

The latest example of a lack of grace in Washington is the exchange between Jim Webb and President Bush at a White House Christmas party. Mr. Webb did not want to pose with the president and so didn't join the picture line. Fair enough, everyone feels silly on a picture line. Mr. Bush approached him later and asked after his son, a Marine. Mr. Webb said he'd like his son back from Iraq. Mr. Bush then, according to the Washington Post, said: "That's not what I asked you. How's your son?" Mr. Webb replied that's between him and his son.

For this Mr. Webb has been roundly criticized. And on reading the exchange I thought it had the sound of the rattling little aggressions of our day, but not on Mr. Webb's side. Imagine Lincoln saying, in such circumstances, "That's not what I asked you." Or JFK. Or Gerald Ford!

"That's not what I asked you" is a sentence straight from cable TV, from which many Americans are acquiring an attitude toward public and even private presentation.

Our interviewers and anchors have been taught, or learned, that they must show who's in charge, who's demanding answers, who's uncompromising in his search for truth. But of course they're not in search of truth; they're on a search for dominance.

Interviewers now always, as you have noticed, interrupt the person they're interviewing. Yes, they are trying to show who's in control of this conversation, and yes, they're trying to catch the interviewee off guard in hope of making news. They are attempting to keep trained and practiced politicians from launching unfruitful filibusters and boring everyone.

But interviewers also interrupt their subjects because they don't want the camera on the subject. They want the camera on themselves. They interrupt to keep the camera where it belongs. If they don't, the camera will stay on the interviewee and not the journalist, which will not help the journalist rise. They know their bosses, after all. They do not want the boss to say, "What an enlightening interview, who did it?" They want him to say, "You looked great, you were all over that guy, you grilled him!"

The Dominance of the Face leads to the inevitability of the interruption:

"Why did you vote 'no'?"

"I felt--"

"But why'd you do it?"

"Well, the implications of the question, and the merits of the arguments seemed--"

"That's not what I asked you!"

---

Because of this style, no one in America has been allowed to finish a sentence in the past 10 years. And it is not confined to cable but has spread to the networks, to government, and is starting to affect regular people, encouraging in them a conversational style that is not friendly or graceful, but depositional.

This has not contributed to the presence of grace in our public life. And too bad, because right now and for the next few months we'll need grace more than ever.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father" (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays on OpinionJournal.com.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

The Enlightenment is darkening

Victor Davis Hanson has a brilliant essay over at OpinionJournal about how our civilization is losing the Enlightenment.

I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.

Losing the Enlightenment
A civilization that has lost confidence in itself cannot confront the Islamists.

BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian benevolence, is the foundation of our material progress, common decency, and scientific excellence, is at risk in this new millennium.

But our newest foes of Reason are not the enraged Athenian democrats who tried and executed Socrates. And they are not the Christian zealots of the medieval church who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity. Nor are they Nazis who burned books and turned Western science against its own to murder millions en masse.

No, the culprits are now more often us. In the most affluent, and leisured age in the history of Western civilization--never more powerful in its military reach, never more prosperous in our material bounty--we have become complacent, and then scared of the most recent face of barbarism from the primordial extremists of the Middle East.

What would a beleaguered Socrates, a Galileo, a Descartes, or Locke believe, for example, of the moral paralysis in Europe? Was all their bold and courageous thinking--won at such a great personal cost--to allow their successors a cheap surrender to religious fanaticism and the megaphones of state-sponsored fascism?

Just imagine in our present year, 2006: plan an opera in today's Germany, and then shut it down. Again, this surrender was not done last month by the Nazis, the Communists, or kings, but by the producers themselves in simple fear of Islamic fanatics who objected to purported bad taste. Or write a novel deemed unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That is what did Salman Rushdie did, and for his daring, he faced years of solitude, ostracism, and death threats--and in the heart of Europe no less. Or compose a documentary film, as did the often obnoxious Theo Van Gogh, and you may well have your throat cut in "liberal" Holland. Or better yet, sketch a simple cartoon in postmodern Denmark of legendary easy tolerance, and then go into hiding to save yourself from the gruesome fate of a Van Gogh. Or quote an ancient treatise, as did Pope Benedict, and then learn that all of Christendom may come under assault, and even the magnificent stones of the Vatican may offer no refuge--although their costumed Swiss Guard would prove a better bulwark than the European police. Or write a book critical of Islam, and then go into hiding in fear of your life, as did French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker.

And we need not only speak of threats to free speech, but also the tangible rewards from a terrified West to the agents of such repression. Note the recent honorary degree given to former Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, whose regime has killed and silenced so many, and who himself is under investigation by the Argentine government for his role in sponsoring Hezbollah killers to murder dozens of Jewish innocents in Buenos Aires.

---

There are many lessons to be drawn from these examples, besides that they represent a good cross-section of European society in Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, and Italy. In almost every case, the lack of public support for the threatened artist or intellectual or author was purportedly based either on his supposed lack of sensitivity, or of artistic excellence.

Van Gogh, it was said, was obnoxious, his films sometimes puerile. The academic Pope was perhaps woefully ignorant of public relations in the politically correct age. Were not the cartoons in Denmark amateurish and unnecessary? Rushdie was an overrated novelist, whose chickens of trashing the West he sought refuge in finally came home to roost. The latest Hans Neuenfels's adaptation of Mozart's "Idomeneo" was apparently as silly as it was cheaply sensationalist. And perhaps Robert Redeker need not have questioned the morality of Islam and its Prophet.

But isn't that fact precisely the point? It is easy to defend artists when they produce works of genius that do not challenge popular sensibilities--Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" or Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws"--but not so when an artist offends with neither the taste of a Michelangelo nor the talent of a Dante. Yes, Pope Benedict is old and scholastic; he lacks both the charisma and tact of the late Pope John Paul II, who surely would not have turned for elucidation to the rigidity of Byzantine scholarship. But isn't that why we must come to the present Pope's defense--if for no reason other than because he has the courage to speak his convictions when others might not?

Note also the constant subtext in this new self-censorship of our supposedly liberal age: the fear of radical Islam and its gruesome methods of beheadings, suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices, barbaric fatwas, riotous youth, petrodollar-acquired nuclear weapons, oil boycotts and price hikes, and fist-shaking mobs, as the seventh century is compressed into the twenty-first.

In contrast, almost daily in Europe, "brave" artists caricature Christians and Americans with impunity. And we know what explains the radical difference in attitudes to such freewheeling and "candid" expression--indeed, that hypocrisy of false bravado, of silence before fascists and slander before liberals is both the truth we are silent about, and the lie we promulgate.

There is, in fact, a long list of reasons, among them most surely the assurance that cruel critics of things Western rant without being killed. Such cowards puff out their chests when trashing an ill Oriana Fallaci or a comatose Ariel Sharon or beleaguered George W. Bush in the most demonic of tones, but they prove sunken and sullen when threatened by a thuggish Dr. Zawahiri or a grand mufti of some obscure mosque.

Second, almost every genre of artistic and intellectual expression has come under assault: music, satire, the novel, films, academic exegesis, and education. Somehow Europeans have ever so insidiously given up the promise of the Enlightenment that welcomed free thought of all kinds, the more provocative the better.

Yes, the present generation of Europeans really is heretical, made up of traitors of a sort. They themselves, not just their consensual governments, or the now-demonized American Patriot Act and Guantanamo detention center, or some invader across the Mediterranean, have endangered their centuries-won freedoms of expression--and out of worries over oil, or appearing as illiberal apostates of the new secular religion of multiculturalism, or another London or Madrid bombing. We can understand why outnumbered Venetians surrendered Cyprus to the Ottomans, and were summarily executed, or perhaps why the 16th-century French did not show up at Lepanto, but why this vacillation of present-day Europeans to defend the promise of the West, who are protected by statute and have not experienced war or hunger?

Third, examine why all these incidents took place in Europe, where more and more the state guarantees the good life even into dotage, where the here and now has become a finite world for soulless bodies, where armies devolve into topics of caricature, and children distract from sterile adults' ever-increasing appetites. So, it was logical that Europe most readily of Westerners would abandon the artist and give up the renegade in fear of religious extremists who brilliantly threatened not destruction, but interruption of the good life, or the mere charge of illiberality. Never was the Enlightenment sold out so cheaply.

---

We on this side of Atlantic also are showing different symptoms of this same Western malaise, but more likely through heated rhetoric than complacent indifference--given the events of September 11 that galvanized many, while disappointing liberals that past appeasement had created monsters rather than mere confused, if not dangerous rivals. The war on terror has turned out to be the torn scab that has exposed a deep wound beneath, of an endemic Western self-loathing--and near mania that our own superior education and material wealth have not eliminated altogether the need for force and coercion.

Consider some of the recent rabid outbursts by once sober, old-guard politicians of the Democratic Party. West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller insists that the world would be better off if Saddam were still running Iraq. Congressman John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, rushed to announce that our Marines were guilty of killing Iraqis in "cold blood" before they were tried. Illinois Senator Richard Durbin has compared our interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis and mass murderers, while Massachusetts Senator John Kerry said our soldiers have "terrorized" Iraqi women and children. The same John Kerry warned young Americans to study or they would end up in the volunteer army in Iraq--even though today's soldiers have higher educational levels than does the general public. But furor as well as fear, not logic, drives us in West to seek blame among the humane among us rather than the savagery of our enemies.

Billionaire leftist philanthropists seem to be confused about the nature of American society and politics that gave them everything they so sumptuously enjoy. Ted Turner of CNN fame and fortune said he resented President Bush asking Americans, after 9/11, to take sides in our war against Islamic terrorists. George Soros claimed that President Bush had improved on Nazi propaganda methods. Dreaming of killing an elected president, not a mass-murdering Osama Bin Laden, is a new national pastime. That is the theme of both a recent docudrama film and an Alfred Knopf book.

What are the proximate causes here in America that send liberal criticism over the edge into pathological hysteria? Is it only that George Bush is a singular polarizing figure of Christian and Texan demeanor? Or is the current left-wing savagery also a legacy of the tribal 1960s, when out-of-power protestors felt that expressions of speaking bluntly, even crudely, were at least preferable to "artificial" cultural restraint?

Or does the anger stem from the fact, that until last week, the Democrats had not elected congressional majorities in 12 years, and they've occupied the White House in only eight of the last 26 years. The left's current unruliness seems a way of scapegoating others for a more elemental frustration--that without scandal or an unpopular war they cannot so easily gain a national majority based on European-based beliefs. More entitlements, higher taxes to pay for them, gay marriage, de facto quotas in affirmative action, open borders, abortion on demand, and radical secularism--these liberal issues, at least for the moment, still don't tend to resonate with most Americans and so must be masked by opponents' scandals or overshadowed by a controversial war.

Just as the Europeans are stunned that their heaven on earth has left them weak and afraid, so too millions of Americans on the Left are angry that their own promised moral utopia is not so welcomed by the supposedly less educated and bright among them. But still, what drives Westerners, here and in Europe, to demand that we must be perfect rather than merely good, and to lament that if we are not perfect we are then abjectly bad--and always to be so unable to define and then defend their civilization against its most elemental enemies?

There has of course always been a utopian strain in both Western thought from the time of Plato's "Republic" and the practice of state socialism. But the technological explosion of the last 20 years has made life so long and so good, that many now believe our mastery of nature must extend to human nature as well. A society that can call anywhere in the world on a cell phone, must just as easily end war, poverty, or unhappiness, as if these pathologies are strictly materially caused, not impoverishments of the soul, and thus can be materially treated.

Second, education must now be, like our machines, ever more ambitious, teaching us not merely facts of the past, science of the future, and the tools to question, and discover truth, but rather a particular, a right way of thinking, as money and learning are pledged to change human nature itself. In such a world, mere ignorance has replaced evil as our challenge, and thus the bad can at last be taught away rather than confronted and destroyed.

Third, there has always been a cynical strain as well, as one can read in Petronius's "Satyricon" or Voltaire's "Candide." But our loss of faith in ourselves is now more nihilistic than sarcastic or skeptical, once the restraints of family, religion, popular culture, and public shame disappear. Ever more insulated by our material things from danger, we lack all appreciation of the eternal thin veneer of civilization.

We especially ignore among us those who work each day to keep nature and the darker angels of our own nature at bay. This new obtuseness revolves around a certain mocking by elites of why we have what we have. Instead of appreciating that millions get up at 5 a.m., work at rote jobs, and live proverbial lives of quiet desperation, we tend to laugh at the schlock of Wal-Mart, not admire its amazing ability to bring the veneer of real material prosperity to the poor.

We can praise the architect for our necessary bridge, but demonize the franchise that sold fast and safe food to the harried workers who built it. We hear about a necessary hearing aid, but despise the art of the glossy advertisement that gives the information to purchase it. And we think the soldier funny in his desert camouflage and Kevlar, a loser who drew poorly in the American lottery and so ended up in Iraq--our most privileged never acknowledging that such men with guns are the only bulwark between us and the present day forces of the Dark Ages with their Kalashnikovs and suicide belts.

So we are on dangerous ground. History gives evidence of no civilization that survived long as purely secular and without a god, that put its trust in reason alone, and believed human nature was subject to radical improvement given enough capital and learning invested in the endeavor. The failure of our elites to amplify their traditions they received, and to believe them to be not merely different but far better than the alternatives, is also a symptom of crisis in all societies of the past, whether Demosthenes' Athens, late imperial Rome, 18th-century France, or Western Europe of the 1920s. Nothing is worse that an elite that demands egalitarianism for others but ensures privilege for itself. And rarely, we know, are civilization's suicides a result of the influence of too many of the poor rather than of the wealthy.

---

But can I end on an optimistic note in tonight's tribute to Winston Churchill, who endured more and was more alone than we of the present age? After the horror of September 11, we in our sleep were also given a jolt of sorts, presented with enemies from the Dark Ages, the Islamic fascists who were our near exact opposites, who hated the Western tradition, and, more importantly, were honest and without apology in conveying that hatred of our liberal tolerance and forbearance. They arose not from anything we did or any Western animosity that might have led to real grievances, but from self-acknowledged weakness, self-induced failure, and, of course, those perennial engines of war, age-old envy and lost honor--always amplified and instructed by dissident Western intellectuals whose unhappiness with their own culture proved a feast for the scavenging Al-Qaedists.

By past definitions of relative power, al-Qaeda and its epigones were weak and could not defeat the West militarily. But their genius was knowing of our own self-loathing, of our inability to determine their evil from our good, of our mistaken belief that Islamists were confused about, rather than intent to destroy, the West, and most of all, of our own terror that we might lose, if even for a brief moment, the enjoyment of our good life to defeat the terrorists. In learning what the Islamists are, many of us, and for the first time, are also learning what we are not. And in fighting these fascists, we are to learn whether our freedom can prove stronger than their suicide belts and improvised explosive devices.

So we have been given a reprieve of sorts with this war, to regroup; and, in our enemies, to see our own past failings and present challenges; and to rediscover our strengths and remember our origins. We can relearn that we are not fighting for George Bush or Wal-Mart alone, but also for the very notion of the Enlightenment--and, yes, in the Christian sense for the good souls of those among us who have forgotten all that as they censor cartoons and compare American soldiers to Nazis.

So let me quote Winston Churchill of old about the gift of our present ordeal:

"These are not dark days: these are great days--the greatest days our country has ever lived."

Never more true than today.

Mr. Hanson is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, a distinguished fellow of Hillsdale College, and author most recently of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." This article is adapted form a speech he delivered at the Claremont Institute's annual dinner in honor Sir Winston Churchill.

Staying power

Mark Steyn makes a good case that we cannot leave Iraq in defeat. Here's his conclusion (emphasis added):

As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.

It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.

Go read how he got there.

No honor in this defeat

We cannot abandon our responsibilities in Iraq.

Leaving Iraq will be worse than leaving Vietnam, not necessarily in terms of bloodshed, though that will be no comfort to those who will be slaughtered, but because the jihadist threat today is more dangerous than the Soviet threat then. Despite lacking - so far - in similar capabilities to the Communists, our enemies more than make up for it with an insatiable bloodthirsty ruthlessness. The honor that Mr. Carroll sees in defeat will soon be forgotten should Al Qaeda establish a caliphate in Anbar Province and begin a healthy trade in the export of mayhem throughout the West. The Furies that will visit us from such a redoubt will engender much more than a little longing that we had stayed.

Go read the writing on the wall.

One can hope

Austin Bay thinks the Democrats may not "cut-and-run".

If we are lucky, the Baker-Hamilton magic show will drop a scarf over the top hat and with a the ”poof” of a New York Times headline produce a “unifying” policy of words that will let the Democrats join the war, despite the howls of their blogosphere nutsroots.

Then the military will continue to do what it’s been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and the new Iraqi government will continue to learn by doing — and in the ordeal of war that will mean learn by bleeding, suffering, and sweating.

I hope he's correct in his assessment. Recommended.

Veteran's Day

Today we honor those men and women who have gone in harm's way to defend this nation.

They sacrifice much for our way of life. A "thank you" just doesn't seem to be enough, does it?

My father was a veteran, and his brother, too. My father-in-law and his cousin. A very close family friend served in Korea. I have several friends who served in Vietnam and a few in Desert Storm. I work with many veterans at my workplace -- both as customers and as co-workers. Though I have never served in the military, I have worked (as a civilian) with the military extensively -- on one occasion in a war zone.

And, because of all of my experiences around veterans, I have a deep appreciation for their sacrifices -- in peacetime and in war. These men and women who serve in the armed forces are loyal patriots who are willing to lay down their lives for you and me, for this great nation of ours, for our way of life.

I cannot think of a more honorable profession. And I cannot put together the words to adequately express my gratitude to America's veterans -- both past and present.

God bless them all.

Election Day 2006

"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual - or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country."

-- Samuel Adams

Please vote. It is not only our privilege, but is also our duty.

Question

“The European Union has just uncovered another dangerous threat to European social stability: home-schooling. Yes, German police recently arrested the mother of children who were being home-schooled. The father had to flee with the children to Austria. The European Court of Human Rights upheld the German ban on home-schooling, which dated back to 1938 in the Nazi era. ... Think about that at a time when Americans, even Supreme Court justices, are advocating the use of foreign legal precedents for American court rulings. Do we really want to start jailing home-schooling parents?”

—Patrick Henry College Professor David Aikman

A worthy cause

Mario Loyola has an op-ed up at National Review Online wherein he makes a good case for staying the course in Iraq. Despite the inaccurate perception that Iraq is a failure.

I hate to call for a parade in the middle of a thunderstorm, but the fact is that democracy — the political process of self-government — is plainly succeeding in Iraq. The violence has slowed it down, but has not been able to stop it. Indeed, the reconstruction effort remains much more vast than the insurgency, which has never been able to achieve national scope and will never achieve national unity. People should avoid concentrating on the spectacular violence: It may rage for years without ever achieving lasting strategic significance.

Recommended.

Censorship?

Michael Yon, over at The Weekly Standard, discusses an alarming development in Iraq.

My experiences with the U.S. military as a soldier and then as a writer and photographer covering soldiers have been overwhelmingly positive, and I feel no shame in saying I am biased in favor of our troops. Even worse, I feel no shame in calling a terrorist a terrorist. I've seen their deeds and tasted air filled with burning human flesh from their bombs. I've seen terrorists kill children while our people risk their lives to save civilians again, and again, and again. I feel no shame in saying I hope that Afghanistan and Iraq "succeed," whatever that means. For that very reason, it would be a dereliction to remain silent about our military's ineptitude in handling the press. The subject is worthy of a book, but can't wait that long, lest we grow accustomed to a subtle but all too real censorship of the U.S. war effort.

I hope this is not true, but if it is, we must nip it in the bud. This is NOT why we fight.

Yon goes on to talk about the critical need for our side of the story to be reported. (Emphasis added.)

There's little comfort in the supposition that this mess might be more the result of incompetence than policy. After all, what does it matter whether the helicopter crashed because it ran out of gas or because someone didn't tighten the bolts on a rotor? Our military enjoys supremely onesided air and weapons superiority, but this is practically irrelevant in a counterinsurgency where the centers of gravity for the battle are public opinion in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe, and at home. The enemy trumps our jets and satellites with supremely onesided media superiority. The lowest level terror cells have their own film crews. While al Sahab hums along winning battle after propaganda battle, the bungling gatekeepers at the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC) reciprocate with ridiculous and costly obstacles that deter embedded media covering our forces, ultimately causing harm to only one side: ours. And they get away with it because in any conflict that can be portrayed as U.S. military versus media, the public reflexively sides with the military.

Read the whole thing. Yon's is a rare perspective -- one that needs to be shared. Highly recommended.

Cranky electorate

Michael Barone postulates about why this election seems so unsettled to an uneasy America.

Why so cranky? So why do large majorities of voters say the nation is off on the wrong track? One reason is that we have come to expect good things. Even as consumers keep spending lots of money, they get cranky when gas prices spike upward -- and then don't take much note when, presto, the market works and they plunge back down again. We take it for granted that Times Square is as crime free a tourist zone as Walt Disney World. We are dismayed by continuing violence in Iraq because we have come to expect military interventions to be as casualty free as our effort in Kosovo.

But there is something else. It's the looming threat behind the headlines: London terrorist bombers arrested. Terrorist plot to bomb trains in Germany. Iran is developing nuclear weapons, while its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to destroy Israel. Hugo Chavez at the United Nations railing at the United States. North Korea is developing nuclear weapons to go with the missiles it already has. All these remind us that there are people out there who want to destroy our bounteous and tolerant civilization.

Go read the whole thing. Recommended.

2 percent

George Will explains why, as Bill Clinton said to the British Labour Party's annual conference, America is "now outsourcing college-education jobs to India."

It's the economy, stupid!

But Clinton-as-Cassandra should not persuade college students to abandon their quest for diplomas: The unemployment rate among college graduates is 2 percent.

He goes on to discuss many other very positive economic indicators.

I recommend you read the whole thing.

'Can we talk?'

Thomas Sowell has an op-ed up at Townhall that explores free speech in contemporary society.

Free speech is not a luxury but a necessity if we are to hear the various sides of issues before we decide what to do.

[Via Betsy Newmark.]

The perils of social engineering

Dick Armey has a good opinion piece posted about Christians and Big Government.

We must avoid the temptation to use the power of government to perfect our society and its citizens. That is the same urge that drives the Left and the socialists, and I can assure you that every program or power we give government today in the name of our values can be turned against us when the day comes where a majority of Congress is hostile to us.

Instead, we need to limit the sphere of government and create civil space where private institutions, individual responsibility and religious faith can flourish. By reducing the size of the welfare state, we increase the importance of the works of Christian charities and our church communities. By reducing the tax burden on families, we make it easier for Christian households to tithe or for young mothers to stay home to raise their children. The same is true for retirement security based on ownership. Reducing the ever-growing reach of the federal government means local communities, and more important, parents, are free to establish the standards and values for the education of their children.

Consider the welfare reform we passed in 1996. By reducing bureaucracy and dependency and emphasizing work and responsibility, we changed conditions for an entire segment of our society. Since welfare reform passed, teen pregnancy, welfare caseloads, and the number of abortions in America have all declined. That is the kind of policy change that values voters need to support, and it is the result of limiting government’s power over our lives.

He has some compelling arguments, and he takes on James Dobson and others who are tempted to use government to effect social change.

Recommended.

You disagree? Then shut up!

Peggy Noonan has a thoughtful op-ed up at OpinionJournal about the intolerence of the political Left for dissenting opinions.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

The Sounds of Silencing
Why do Americans on the left think only they have the right to dissent?

Friday, October 13, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Four moments in the recent annals of free speech in America. Actually annals is too fancy a word. This all happened in the past 10 days:

At Columbia University, members of the Minutemen, the group that patrols the U.S. border with Mexico and reports illegal crossings, were asked to address a forum on immigration policy. As Jim Gilchrist, the founder, spoke, angry students stormed the stage, shouting and knocking over chairs and tables. "Having wreaked havoc," said the New York Sun, they unfurled a banner in Arabic and English that said, "No one is ever illegal." The auditorium was cleared, the Minutemen silenced. Afterward a student protester told the Columbia Spectator, "I don't feel we need to apologize or anything. It was fundamentally a part of free speech. . . . The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration."

On Oct. 2, on Katie Couric's "CBS Evening News," in the segment called "Free Speech," the father of a boy killed at Columbine shared his views on the deeper causes of the recent shootings in Amish country. Brian Rohrbough said violence entered our schools when we threw God out of them. "This country is in a moral freefall. For over two generations the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum. . . . We teach there are no moral absolutes, no right or wrong, and I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children." This was not exactly the usual mush.

Mr. Rohrbough was quickly informed he was not part of the legitimate debate, either. Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post: "The decision . . . to air his views prompted a storm of criticism, some of it within the ranks of CBS News." A blog critic: Grief makes people say "stupid" things, but "what made them put this man on television?" Good question. How did they neglect to silence him?

Soon after, at Madison Square Garden, Barbra Streisand, began her latest farewell tour with what friends who were there tell me was a moving, beautiful concert. She was in great form and brought the audience together in appreciation of her great ballads, which are part of the aural tapestry of our lives. And then . . . the moment. Suddenly she decided to bang away on politics. Fine, she's a Democrat, Bush is bad. But midway through the bangaway a man in the audience called out. Most could not hear him, but everyone seems to agree he at least said, "What is this, a fund-raiser?"

At this, Ms. Streisand became enraged, stormed the stage and pummeled herself. Wait, that was Columbia. Actually she became enraged and cursed the man. A friend who was there, a liberal Democrat, said what was most interesting was Ms. Streisand made a physical movement with her arms and hands--"those talon hands"--as if to say, See what I have to put up with when I attempt to educate the masses? She soon apologized, to her credit. Though apparently in the manner of a teacher who'd just kind of lost it with an unruly and ignorant student.

On "The View" a few days earlier it was Rosie O'Donnell. She was banging away on gun control. Guns are bad and should be banned. Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who plays the role of the young, attractive mom, tentatively responded. "I want to be fair," she said. Obviously there should be "restrictions," but women have a right to defend themselves, and there's "the right to bear arms" in the Constitution. Rosie accused Elizabeth of yelling. The panel, surprised, agreed that Elizabeth was not yelling. Rosie then went blank-faced with what someone must have told her along the way is legitimately felt rage. Elizabeth was not bowing to Rosie's views. Elizabeth needed to be educated. The education commenced, Rosie gesturing broadly and Elizabeth constricting herself as if she knew physical assault were a possibility. When Rosie gets going on the Second Amendment I always think, Oh I hope she's not armed! Actually I wonder what Freud would have made of an enraged woman obsessed with gun control. Ach, classic projection. Eef she had a gun she would kill. Therefore no one must haf guns.

---

There's a pattern here, isn't there?

It is not only about rage and resentment, and how some have come to see them as virtues, as an emblem of rightness. I feel so much, therefore my views are correct and must prevail. It is about something so obvious it is almost embarrassing to state. Free speech means hearing things you like and agree with, and it means allowing others to speak whose views you do not like or agree with. This--listening to the other person with respect and forbearance, and with an acceptance of human diversity--is the price we pay for living in a great democracy. And it is a really low price for such a great thing.

We all know this, at least in the abstract. Why are so many forgetting it in the particular?

Let us be more pointed. Students, stars, media movers, academics: They are always saying they want debate, but they don't. They want their vision imposed. They want to win. And if the win doesn't come quickly, they'll rush the stage, curse you out, attempt to intimidate.

And they don't always recognize themselves to be bullying. So full of their righteousness are they that they have lost the ability to judge themselves and their manner.

And all this continues to come more from the left than the right in America.

Which is, at least in terms of timing, strange. The left in America--Democrats, liberals, Bush haters, skeptics of many sorts--seems to be poised for a significant electoral victory. Do they understand that if it comes it will be not because of Columbia, Streisand, O'Donnell, et al., but in spite of them?

What is most missing from the left in America is an element of grace--of civic grace, democratic grace, the kind that assumes disagreements are part of the fabric, but we can make the fabric hold together. The Democratic Party hasn't had enough of this kind of thing since Bobby Kennedy died. What also seems missing is the courage to ask a question. Conservatives these days are asking themselves very many questions, but I wonder if the left could tolerate asking itself even a few. Such as: Why are we producing so many adherents who defy the old liberal virtues of free and open inquiry, free and open speech? Why are we producing so many bullies? And dim dullard ones, at that.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father" (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays on OpinionJournal.com.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Paper tiger

New Sisyphus has a good post up that he calls Quick Notes Tuesday. His last note cited a Canadian blog:

"The United States will not permit the worlds most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

--George W. Bush, 2001 State of the Union Address

"Ka-boom"
--North Korea, Sunday night

To restore our credibility as a nation, perhaps we should follow through with our promises.

Vote next month -- seriously

Thomas Sowell discusses frivolousness and seriousness in contemporary politics and reporting. He also addresses next month's election:

You may deserve whatever you get if you vote frivolously in this year's election. But surely the next generation, which has no vote, deserves better.

Recommended reading.

Who's really in denial?

William Kristol asks and answers the quoestion: 'Who's Really in Denial?'.

"Americans face the choice between two parties with two different attitudes on this war on terror."

--George W. Bush, September 28, 2006

President Bush is right. It would be nice if he weren't. The country would be better off if there were bipartisan agreement on what is at stake in the struggle against jihadist Islam. But despite areas of consensus, there is still a fundamental difference between the parties. Bush and the Republicans know we are in a serious war. It's not the Bush administration that is in a "State of Denial" (as the new Bob Woodward book has it). It's the Democrats.

Consider developments over the last week. Democrats hyped last Sunday's news stories breathlessly reporting on one judgment from April's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)--that the war in Iraq has created more terrorists. More than would otherwise have been created if Saddam were still in power? Who knows? The NIE seems not even to have contemplated how many terrorists might have been created by our backing down, by Saddam's remaining in power to sponsor and inspire terror, and the like. (To read the sections of the NIE subsequently released is to despair about the quality of our intelligence agencies. But that's another story.) In any case, the NIE also made the obvious points that, going forward, "perceived jihadist success [in Iraq] would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere," while jihadist failure in Iraq would inspire "fewer fighters . . . to carry on the fight."

What is the Democratic response to these latter judgments? Silence. The left wing of the party continues to insist on withdrawal now. The center of the party wants withdrawal on a vaguer timetable.

Bush, on other hand, understands that the only acceptable exit strategy is victory.

Go read the rest.

Democrats and national security

Lorie Byrd, over at Townhall posted an op-ed last week that sums up the scepticism that many Americans have toward the Democrats' stance(s) on national defense. She starts with:

Prompted by Condoleeza Rice’s reponse to Bill Clinton’s theatrical production on Fox News Sunday over the weekend, Hillary Clinton came out Tuesday in defense of her husband’s record on terrorism in an effort to establish Democrats’ credibility on the issue. She is going to have to come up with something more persuasive if she wants to convince voters that Democrats can be trusted with national security.

She then goes on to describe some little-known facts about the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 -- and then-President Bill Clinton's response to that terrorist attack by quoting Confederate Yankee Bob Owens:

Owens states the fact that Hillary Clinton’s husband hoped to disguise with bluster: “Bill Clinton was President of the United States when lower Manhattan was the victim of an al Qaeda plot executed by an Iraqi bomb-builder who detonated a chemical/conventional weapon under tens of thousands of Americans. President Clinton later knew what the bomb was composed of, knew how it was intended to be used, and what threat al Qaeda posed…Bill Clinton was President for another 7 years, 10 months, 25 days after this attack.�

Finally she gets to the crux of many moderate and conservative Americans' doubts:

We know what Bill Clinton did, and didn’t do, to combat terrorism after that attack. As for what a President Hillary or a Democrat-controlled congress would do to fight terrorism, what they refuse to do today, even after 9/11, tells me all I need to know about what they would do if they were in control.

Food for thought.

The Coming Crisis in Citizenship

The National Civic Literacy Board of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute has released a troubling report: The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education's Failure to Teach America's History and Institutions. There's more of the executive summary below the fold.

The report presents scientific evidence that,

for the very first time, reveals how much American colleges and universities—including some of our most elite schools—add to, or subtract from, their graduates' understanding of America's history and fundamental institutions.

It presents four key findings:

FINDING 1: America's colleges and universities fail to increase knowledge about America's history and institutions.

• Seniors scored just 1.5 percent higher on average than freshmen.
• If the survey were administered as an exam in a college course, seniors would fail with an overall average score of 53.2 percent, or F on a traditional grading scale.
• Though a university education can cost upwards of $200,000, and college students on average leave campus $19,300 in debt, they are no better off than when they arrived in terms of acquiring the knowledge necessary for informed engagement in a democratic republic and global economy.

FINDING 2: Prestige doesn't pay off.

• Colleges that rank high in the U.S. News and World Report 2006 ranking were ranked low in the ISI ranking of learning in these key fields. Specifically, a 1 percent increase in civic learning as measured in our survey corresponded to a decrease of 25 positions in the U.S. News ranking.
• There is no relationship between the cost of attending a college and students' acquired understanding of America's history and key institutions. Students at relatively inexpensive colleges often learn more, on average, than their counterparts at expensive colleges.
• At many colleges, including Brown, Georgetown, and Yale, seniors know less than freshmen about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and economy. We characterize this phenomenon as "negative learning." A majority of the 16 schools where senior scores were actually lower than freshman scores are considered to be among the most prestigious colleges in the United States.

FINDING 3: Students don't learn what colleges don't teach.

• Student learning about America's history and institutions decreases when fewer courses are taken in history, political science, government, and economics.
• Schools where students took more courses in American history, political science, and economics outperformed those schools where fewer courses were completed.
• Civic learning is significantly greater at schools that require students to take courses in American history, political science, and economics. Student knowledge in these key areas improves significantly at colleges that still value excellent teaching in the classroom.

FINDING 4: Greater civic learning goes hand-in-hand with more active citizenship.

• Students who demonstrated greater learning of America's history and institutions were more engaged in citizenship activities such as voting, volunteer community service, and political campaigns.

And makes recommendations:

RECOMMENDATIONS

The report concludes with five recommendations aimed at improving undergraduate learning about America's history and institutions:

• improve the assessment of learning outcomes at the college and university level;
• increase the number of required history, political science, and economics courses;
• hold higher education more accountable to its mission and fundamental responsibility to prepare its students to be informed, engaged participants in a democratic republic;
• better inform students and their parents, public officials, and taxpayers of a given university's performance in teaching America's history and institutions; and
• build academic centers on campuses to encourage and support the restoration of teaching American history, political science, and economics.

ISI offers this report with the hope that it will stimulate corrective action and accountability among those immediately responsible for higher education—trustees, donors, alumni, parents, public officials, administrators, faculty, and students. It is still possible to improve the teaching at our colleges and universities of America's history and institutions, and thereby to forestall the coming crisis in citizenship.

You can truly see symptoms of this deficiency just by looking at the political environment in which we find ourselves. Politicians, journalists, and pundits alike consistently fail to apply reason to a given situation. Why? Because the electorate tends to go with whatever is shouted the loudest and shouted the most recently.

I fear that this is the dumbing down of America in terms of our politics, our understanding of history, and our duty to community and nation.

I pray that I am wrong.

European invertibrates

Victor Davis Hansen has a column up at Pajamas Media wherein he speculates about Europe's (or at least its political elite) lack of backbone -- and how it might grow one.

It has been a parlor game of sorts to guess when—but even more so if—the Europeans (Britain included) will sigh, “Enough is enough,� and so get tough with both their own unassimilated angry Muslim minorities and the radical Islamic world at large. There will never be liberal values in the Middle East, no change, no future—as there would not have been in Hitler’s Germany, as there is not today in Cuba or North Korea—without the defeat of Islamic fascism, in its latest Islamic incarnation, as an ideological force.

The latter always proves more frightening than any caricature, the proverbial wild teenager who starts throwing things when told that his room is a bit messy. The riots in France, murders in Holland, cartoon fiasco in Denmark, bombings in London and Madrid, foiled plots in Germany and Spain, and now the Pope threats—will Europe insidiously bleed from a thousand nicks or take action and call fascists fascists?

And yet what would such spine-strengthening look like?

He goes on to explain a dissonence he has noticed between European elites and the common European citizenry.

When I go to Europe, I am always struck how at odds the average European’s talk is from what one reads in the newspaper or hears on the television. That degree of frustration and cynicism will only get worse unless there is some honest talk about the dangers Europe faces.

And then he talks about the "American Street":

I respect and fear the American version far more, because its anger is fueled by reason and is slow and steady and furious when released. The world should not worry when the half-educated, fueled by zealotry and nursed on conspiracy theory, starts chanting; but it should when a rational and patient American slowly fumes and decides he has had it with the Iranian “President�, Hezbollah’s fascism, the various thugs on the West Bank, the Sunni Triangle’s murderers, the primordial of the Hindu Kush, or some subsidized dictator in Pakistan or Egypt lecturing us.

Go read all of it. Recommended.

Conspiracy

James Meigs has a confession:

ON Feb. 7, 2005, I became a member of the Bush/Halliburton/Zionist/CIA/New World Order/Illuminati conspiracy for world domination. That day, Popular Mechanics, the magazine I edit, hit newsstands with a story debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories. Within hours, the online community of 9/11 conspiracy buffs - which calls itself the "9/11 Truth Movement" - was aflame with wild fantasies about me, my staff and the article we had published. Conspiracy Web sites labeled Popular Mechanics a "CIA front organization" and compared us to Nazis and war criminals.

For a 104-year-old magazine about science, technology, home improvement and car maintenance, this was pretty extreme stuff. What had we done to provoke such outrage?

Research.

Highly recommended.

Rumsfeld's address to the American Legion Nat'l Convention

SecDef Donald Rumsfeld recently addressed the American Legion National Convention. In case you have only been exposed to media news accounts of what he said, I provide this link to the SecDef's actual speech. Here's a taste:

Iraq, a country that was brutalized by a cruel and dangerous dictatorship, is now traveling the slow, difficult, bumpy, uncertain path to a secure new future under a representative government that will be at peace with its neighbors, rather than a threat to their own people, to their neighbors, or to the world.

As the nature of the threat and the conflict in Iraq has changed over these past several years, so have the tactics and the deployments. But while military tactics have changed and adapted to the realities on the ground -- as they must -- the strategy has not changed, which is to empower the Iraqi people to be able to defend, and govern, and rebuild their own country.

The extremists themselves call Iraq the “epicenter� in the War on Terror. And our troops know how important their mission is.

There's a lot more. And it is an accurate representation. Highly recommended.

The Bush Doctrine

Norman Podhoretz has a comprehensive essay up about President Bush's foreign policy doctrine from 2000 to now. Here's how he starts:

In recent months, we have been bombarded with reports of the death of the Bush Doctrine. Of course, there have been many such reports since the doctrine was first promulgated at the start of what I persist in calling World War IV (the Cold War being World War III). Almost all of them were written by the realists and liberal internationalists within the old foreign-policy establishment, and they all turned out to resemble the reports of Mark Twain's death--which, he famously said, had been "greatly exaggerated." Nothing daunted by this, the critics and enemies of President Bush are now at it yet again. This time, however, their ranks have been swollen by a number of traditional conservatives who were never comfortable with the doctrine bearing his name and who have now moved from discomfort to outright opposition.

But what is genuinely new, and more surprising, is the entry into this picture of a significant number of my fellow neoconservatives. As the Bush Doctrine's greatest enthusiasts, they would be much happier if they could go on pointing to signs of life, but so disillusioned have they become that a British journalist can say that, to them, "The words 'Rice' and 'Bush' have all but become the Beltway equivalent of barnyard expletives." No wonder that they have now taken to composing obituary notices of their own.

Are we then to conclude that the latest reports of the death of the Bush Doctrine are not "greatly," if indeed at all, exaggerated, and that it has at long last really been put to rest?

Though the essay is lengthy, it is well worth reading because it gives a great deal of well-researched background information. I highly recommend it.

Sole responsible power

Rich Lowry has an interesting op-ed up at NRO ascertaining that the U.S. is the only world power willing to take responsibility in global events.

The United States is not just the world’s sole superpower, it is the world’s only responsible power.

Consider the recent action related to a peacekeeping force taking control of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah. France initially agreed with the United States on a United Nations resolution creating an international force that would operate with robust rules of engagement to confront the terrorist guerrilla group. When the Arabs balked, France insisted that the rules of engagement be made considerably vaguer. Since France was going to lead the force, the U.S. deferred to Paris, which has subsequently said that it will contribute only 200 combat engineers to the force because ... the rules on engagement are so vague.

It's worth reading the rest, even if it is a bit pessimistic. But I'm not saying it's wrong . . .

Tribute 2996

I discovered a website set up by D.Challener Roe to organize a tribute to those 2996 people who died on 09/11/2001. If you have a blog or a website, I urge you to visit there and sign up to help out.

Americans and liberty

Andrew Gimson, writing for the UK publication, The Telegraph, writes an interesting essay about the intensity of Americans' belief in liberty.

We are inclined, in our snobbish way, to dismiss the Americans as a new and vulgar people, whose civilisation has hardly risen above the level of cowboys and Indians. Yet the United States of America is actually the oldest republic in the world, with a constitution that is one of the noblest works of man. When one strips away the distracting symbols of modernity - motor cars, skyscrapers, space rockets, microchips, junk food - one finds an essentially 18th-century country. While Europe has engaged in the headlong and frankly rather immature pursuit of novelty - how many constitutions have the nations of Europe been through in this time? - the Americans have held to the ideals enunciated more than 200 years ago by their founding fathers.

Recommended reading.

Why we spy

OpinionJournal has a extremely pertinent op-ed up about why it is vital that America continues to use surveillance of all kinds to protect its citizens.

. . . The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.

A good thing to wonder. I've reprinted the article in its entirety in the extended entry.

'Mass Murder' Foiled
A terror plot is exposed by the policies many American liberals oppose.

Friday, August 11, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Americans went to work yesterday to news of another astonishing terror plot against U.S. airlines, only this time the response was grateful relief. British authorities had busted the "very sophisticated" plan "to commit mass murder" and arrested 20-plus British-Pakistani suspects. As we approach the fifth anniversary of 9/11 without another major attack on U.S. soil, now is the right moment to consider the policies that have protected us--and those in public life who have fought those policies nearly every step of the way.

It's not as if the "Islamic fascists"--to borrow President Bush's description yesterday--haven't been trying to hit us. They took more than 50 lives last year in London with the "7/7" subway bombings. There was the catastrophic attack in Madrid the year before that left nearly 200 dead. But there have also been successes. Some have been publicized, such as a foiled plot to poison Britain's food supply with ricin. But undoubtedly many have not, because authorities don't want to compromise sources and methods, or because the would-be terrorists have been captured or killed before they could carry out their plans.

In this case the diabolical scheme was to smuggle innocent-looking liquid explosive components and detonators onto planes. They could then be assembled onboard and exploded, perhaps over cities for maximum horror. Multiply the passenger load of a 747 by, say, 10 airliners, and this attack could have killed more people than 9/11. We don't yet know how the plot was foiled, but surely part of the explanation was crack surveillance work by British authorities.

---

"This wasn't supposed to happen today," a U.S. official told the Washington Post of the arrests and terror alert. "It was supposed to happen several days from now. We hear the British lost track of one or two guys. They had to move." Meanwhile, British antiterrorism chief Peter Clarke said at a news conference that the plot was foiled because "a large number of people" had been under surveillance, with police monitoring "spending, travel and communications."

Let's emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.

And almost on political cue yesterday, Members of the Congressional Democratic leadership were using the occasion to suggest that the U.S. is actually more vulnerable today despite this antiterror success. Harry Reid, who's bidding to run the Senate as Majority Leader, saw it as one more opportunity to insist that "the Iraq war has diverted our focus and more than $300 billion in resources from the war on terrorism and has created a rallying cry for international terrorists."

Ted Kennedy chimed in that "it is clear that our misguided policies are making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism harder to win." Mr. Kennedy somehow overlooked that the foiled plan was nearly identical to the "Bojinka" plot led by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to blow up airliners over the Pacific Ocean in 1995. Did the Clinton Administration's "misguided policies" invite that plot? And if the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation, just what policies would Senators Reid and Kennedy have us "focus" on?

Surveillance? Hmmm. Democrats and their media allies screamed bloody murder last year when it was leaked that the government was monitoring some communications outside the context of a law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA wasn't designed for, nor does it forbid, the timely exploitation of what are often anonymous phone numbers, and the calls monitored had at least one overseas connection. But Mr. Reid labeled such surveillance "illegal" and an "NSA domestic spying program." Other Democrats are still saying they will censure, or even impeach, Mr. Bush over the FISA program if they win control of Congress.

This year the attempt to paint Bush Administration policies as a clear and present danger to civil liberties continued when USA Today hyped a story on how some U.S. phone companies were keeping call logs. The obvious reason for such logs is that the government might need them to trace the communications of a captured terror suspect. And then there was the recent brouhaha when the New York Times decided news of a secret, successful and entirely legal program to monitor bank transfers between bad guys was somehow in the "public interest" to expose.

For that matter, we don't recall most advocates of a narrowly "focused" war on terror having many kind words for the Patriot Act, which broke down what in the 1990s was a crippling "wall" of separation between our own intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. Senator Reid was "focused" enough on this issue to brag, prematurely as it turned out, that he had "killed" its reauthorization.

And what about interrogating terror suspects when we capture them? It is elite conventional wisdom these days that techniques no worse than psychological pressure and stress positions constitute "torture." There is also continued angst about the detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, even as Senators and self-styled civil libertarians fight Bush Administration attempts to process them through military tribunals that won't compromise sources and methods.

In short, Democrats who claim to want "focus" on the war on terror have wanted it fought without the intelligence, interrogation and detention tools necessary to win it. And if they cite "cooperation" with our allies as some kind of magical answer, they should be reminded that the British and other European legal systems generally permit far more intrusive surveillance and detention policies than the Bush Administration has ever contemplated. Does anyone think that when the British interrogate those 20 or so suspects this week that they will recoil at harsh or stressful questioning?

Another issue that should be front and center again is ethnic profiling. We'd be shocked if such profiling wasn't a factor in the selection of surveillance targets that resulted in yesterday's arrests. Here in the U.S., the arrests should be a reminder of the dangers posed by a politically correct system of searching 80-year-old airplane passengers with the same vigor as screeners search young men of Muslim origin. There is no civil right to board an airplane without extra hassle, any more than drivers in high-risk demographics have a right to the same insurance rates as a soccer mom.

---

The real lesson of yesterday's antiterror success in Britain is that the threat remains potent, and that the U.S. government needs to be using every legal tool to defeat it. At home, that includes intelligence and surveillance and data-mining, and abroad it means all of those as well as an aggressive military plan to disrupt and kill terrorists where they live so they are constantly on defense rather than plotting to blow up U.S.-bound airliners.

As the time since 9/11 has passed, many of America's elites have begun to portray U.S. government policies as a greater threat than the terrorists themselves. George Soros and others have said this explicitly, and their political allies in Congress and the media have staged a relentless campaign against the very practices that saved innocent lives this week. We doubt that many Americans who will soon board an airplane agree.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

The bottom line

In all of the discussion/analysis/finger-pointing concerning the foiled terrorist plot yesterday, and since, Ed Morrissey puts it into proper perspective.

Do you want to know what the big story of the day really was? We beat the terrorists -- again -- and saved lives. Perhaps we could have spent the day reflecting on that and the need for continuing vigilance. The politics could have, and should have, waited for another day.

Thanks for bringing it back into focus, Cap'n.

The cost of lawyers

John Stossel has an interesting article over at Townhall about the costs of litigation in America -- and they are more than just monetary costs.

Critics of lawsuit abuse tend to focus only on the cost of litigation. The cost is nasty. But the higher cost is just the start of the nasty side effects. What's worse is that fear of lawsuits now deprives us of things that make our lives better.

Sure, fear of the "invisible fist" makes manufacturers more careful. Some lives have been saved because the litigation threat got companies to make their products safer. That's the "seen" benefit.

But that benefit comes with a bigger unseen cost: The fear that stops the bad things stops good things, too -- new vaccines, new drugs, new medical devices. Fear suffocates the innovation that, over the past century, has helped extend our life spans by almost 30 years. Every day, we lose good things.

[Hat tip to Betsy.]

Immigration reform needed

The LA Times has an interesting article about illegal immigrants and their 10 kids.

Neither Magdaleno nor her husband speaks English, though she has been in the United States 22 years and he 28. Even her teenage daughters speak mostly Spanish; their English vocabulary is limited.

Yet all of Magdaleno's 10 children are U.S. citizens. The triplets receive subsidized school lunches. All the youngsters have had their healthcare bills covered by Medi-Cal, the state and federal healthcare program for the poor.

A sibling, on the other hand, emigrated to Kentucky, had only two children and worked toward a better life.

Today, the Magdalenos in Lexington earn more than they did in Los Angeles, in a city where the cost of living is lower. Kentucky is now their promised land, and they talk about California the way they used to talk about Mexico.

"What we weren't able to do in many years in California," Alejandra said, "we've done quickly here.

"We're in a state where there's nothing but Americans. The police control the streets. It's clean, no gangs. California now resembles Mexico — everyone thinks like in Mexico. California's broken."

I think this speaks volumes about the need to assimilate immigrants into this nation -- rather than encouraging them to retain their previous national identity.

Questioning

Peggy Noonan asks some thoughtful questions about President Bush.

Tribute to the 9/11 2996

There is an effort going on by bloggers to honor the 2996 victims of the murderous attacks on 9/11/2001 on the fifth anniversary this year. If you have a blog, and you would like to support this effort by honoring one of the 2996, then click here.

Thank you. It is a worthy cause, and more help is needed!

Agreement on immigration reform

Michael Medved has an enlightening article up at Townhall that reveals broad agreement on immigration reform in America.

On two of the three key elements of reform, public opinion is nearly unanimous. Americans of every ethnicity and every political perspective agree that we need both stronger efforts to block illegal crossings at the border, and more vigorous enforcement of laws against employers who knowingly hire millions of undocumented workers.

The rest is well worth reading. Recommended.

No amnesty

Thomas Sowell has a thought-provoking op-ed up at Townhall wherein he makes some very good points in opposing amnesty for illegal aliens.

No small part of the outrage over the immigration issue came from people's sense that their intelligence was being insulted by those they elected.

The biggest insult was the endlessly repeated claim that illegal aliens "take jobs that Americans won't take." Even in agriculture, where illegal aliens have their biggest impact, three quarters of the workers are not -- repeat, not -- illegal aliens.

In some particular localities, some particular work may be done primarily by illegal aliens. But that does not mean that this work would go undone without them. More pay attracts more people.

New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg is still pushing the line that there would be economic collapse without illegal immigrants. But, despite the scary picture of 12 million illegals being suddenly deported, the cold fact is that 12 million young Americans in the prime of life were removed from our economy to go into the military during World War II and the economy did not collapse.

Mr. Sowell has a way of getting to the roots of an issue. Recommended.

Another reason I like and respect him

Bush jogs with wounded soldier.

President Bush took a jog Tuesday with a soldier who lost part of both legs in Iraq, following through on a bedside promise even the president had doubts about at the time.

Despite a slight drizzle, Bush and Staff Sgt. Christian Bagge took a slow jog around a spongy track that circles the White House’s South Lawn. About halfway through their approximately half-mile run, Bush and Bagge paused briefly for reporters.

“He ran the president into the ground, I might add,� Bush said, as the two gripped hands in an emotional, lengthy shake. “But I’m proud of you. I’m proud of your strength, proud of your character.�

A duty of care

Jonathan Gurwitz has an enlightening article up at OpinionJournal about some great efforts going on to provide help to our wounded warriors and their families. As is said in the article:

"Don't use the word charity with regard to the military," Arnold Fisher declares passionately. "This is duty."

This touched my heart.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

Intrepid Fallen Heroes
"This is Americans doing for Americans."

BY JONATHAN GURWITZ
Thursday, July 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

SAN ANTONIO--"I want to get back to active duty," Staff Sgt. Steve Bosson told me in May. "I want to go back to my unit."

Two years earlier, the native of York, S.C. had been on a rocket denial mission west of Baghdad with Delta Troop, 9th Cav, 1st Cavalry Division. After an ambush and a firefight with insurgents, Mr. Bosson went to secure an RPG launcher lying near a wounded fighter. The launcher was booby-trapped. When he picked up the weapon, a grenade exploded, shredding his left leg.

Today, Mr. Bosson is at Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. After more than 50 surgeries, he is fitted with a prosthesis and near the end of his rehabilitation process. On Friday, he was scheduled to go in for yet another revision surgery.

Since the fall of 2001, BAMC has treated more than 2,300 casualties from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The trauma center is heartbreakingly filled with the mangled and burned bodies of young Americans. For the wounded, the love and care of family members is indispensable. The painful rehabilitation process is made more bearable by the presence of loved ones. And many times, that would not be possible were it not for Fisher Houses, like the one where I met Steve Bosson.

---

Fisher Houses are homes away from home for the families of wounded service members. They were born from a discussion in 1990 between the late Zachary Fisher, New York developer and philanthropist, and Pauline Trost, wife of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Carlisle Trost. Mrs. Trost, who was a volunteer at Bethesda Naval Hospital, relayed the story of a sailor sleeping in his car because he couldn't afford a hotel room while his wife was recuperating from surgery. The account inspired Mr. Fisher and Adm. Trost to begin a bureaucratic fight to create an innovative partnership between government and private philanthropy.

Slashing through red tape, the first Fisher House opened in Bethesda eight months later. Today, 35 Fisher Houses are in operation, all but two in the U.S. Three more are under construction: two additional facilities in San Antonio to accommodate a lengthy waiting list of families at BAMC, and another in Tampa.

All this has been accomplished entirely with private funds from the Fisher family and from corporate and individual donations. The Pentagon proffers land to the Fisher House Foundation (fisherhouse.org) for the construction phase. When the houses are complete, the foundation turns them back over to the Department of Defense for operation and maintenance.

"We don't want government money," says Arnold Fisher, Zachary Fisher's nephew and the driving force behind the Fisher family's efforts. "This is Americans doing for Americans."

Bill White, a director of the Fisher House Foundation and president of the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, another of the Fisher family's philanthropic endeavors, says the houses have saved military families in excess of $70 million. In addition to offering housing, the foundation has partnered with the Hero Miles program to provide airline tickets for the families of wounded service members. Fisher House Foundation travel agents have booked more than 7,000 flights.

The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund (fallenheroesfund.org) evolved from Zachary Fisher's desire to provide financial assistance to the families of service members killed in the line of duty. Without fanfare, Mr. Fisher and his family directed assistance to dependents of military personnel killed in the USS Iowa explosion, the Gulf War, the bombings of the Khobar Towers and the USS Cole, along with other military operations.

After Sept. 11, 2001, the Fisher family established the fund and opened it to public donations. Grants of $10,000 went out to the widows and widowers of military personnel who lost their lives in Afghanistan, $5,000 to their children. At the time, the U.S. government military combat death benefit was only $6,000.

Congress raised the death benefit to $12,420 in 2003 and $100,000 last year. With the U.S. government finally providing respectable compensation, the board of directors of the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund took on an even more ambitious project. The extraordinary number of catastrophic injuries from the war on terror has created a critical need for long-term rehabilitative care.

Progress on a $10 million Military Amputee Training Center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has languished for more than two years. At the suggestion of Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, surgeon general of the Army, the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund committed to build a 60,000-square-foot, state-of-the art rehabilitation center at Fort Sam Houston.

Ground was broken on the $37 million project last October. Under the watchful eye of Arnold Fisher, the Center for the Intrepid is on schedule to open in January. Like the two Fisher Houses already in operation and the two that are currently under construction at Fort Sam Houston, the center is being built entirely with private contributions from over 500,000 donors.

---

Staff Sgt. Bosson's determination to get back to his unit, which will redeploy to Iraq in November, isn't just wishful thinking. Among 447 amputee patients from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom treated in all Army facilities, 10 have returned to active duty. "I'd rate my chances at 90%," he says.

In this nation of 300 million, the burden of the war on terror falls on an exceedingly small community. Beyond the obscured corridors of Walter Reed and Brooke Army Medical Center, normalcy reigns in the homeland. Perhaps more than anything else, the lack of a sense of shared sacrifice has attenuated the brutal reality of this conflict.

And while there are many things that governments can do, there are some things, such as helping the fallen warriors of the voluntary armed forces, that citizens of a free nation should do. "Don't use the word charity with regard to the military," Arnold Fisher declares passionately. "This is duty."

Mr. Gurwitz is a columnist at the San Antonio Express-News. [Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Winning on Iraq

Victor Davis Hanson has an interesting essay at NRO about the different aspects of the war in Iraq. Here's how he begins:

The present fighting is part of a fourth war for Iraq: Gulf War I, the twelve years of no-fly zones, the three-week war in 2003, and now the three-year-old insurrection that followed the removal of Saddam Hussein.

But this last and most desperate struggle, unlike the others, is being waged on several fronts.

First, of course, is the fighting itself to preserve the elected democracy of Iraq. Twenty-five-hundred Americans have died for that idea — the chance of freedom for 26 million Iraqis, and the more long-term notion that the Arab Middle East’s first democracy will end the false dichotomy of Islamic theocracy or dictatorship. That non-choice was the embryo for the events of September 11.

It is an insightful article. Go read the rest.

The real reason for isolation

AskMom has an excellent post up about the disconnect between appearances vs. reality in today's sexualized culture.

This disconnect is worrisome and typifies the schizoid approach to values and choices all too frequently seen in America.

Though AskMom says it much better, I would like to say that the widepsread nihilistic culture of today has, in many ways, replaced real intimacy with sex. Sex is a poor substitute for intimacy, and our society is diminished as a result.

Go read the whole thing.

Sleeping giant

Frederick J. Chiaventone, a retired Army officer who taught counter-terrorism at the U.S. Army’s Command & General Staff College has an interesting piece at The American Thinker about how the torture and murder of two American soldiers may not have the results that the terrorists were hoping for.

If they have not already figured it out, and it is highly unlikely that they have, the murderers in Iraq have made yet another egregious error. Perhaps even a fatal one for their own cause. Americans don’t react to barbarity in the way in which our enemies hope. Americans still remember the Alamo.

Consider the aftermath of the Little Bighorn.

Consider the evidence of Pearl Harbor.

I certainly hope he is right.

What makes this country great

Gerard Van der Leun has a good post up in which he recounts a conversation with a [legal] Russian immigrant to the USA.

So I was surprised last Tuesday when I was standing in the laundry room of my home and Paul entered to say, "The election, today, right?"

"That's right. The election is today," I said and waited.

"You vote?"

"Always. It is the duty," I said dropping quickly into the pompous, "of an American to vote. Your one duty above all others."

"I will be American by the next election and I will vote always."

"Great." And then it got sort of quiet.

After a long moment of just looking carefully at my face, Paul said, "So.... who?"

"Bush."

Go read the rest . . .

Sometimes we get it right

A federal court ruled that Arizona can require proof of citizenship from people who register to vote.

This should have never become an issue in the first place, but at least it was resolved the way it should have been.

Good question

Betsy Newmark asks: Why is there a federal requirement for bilingual ballots? And she makes a good point:

. . . in order to get naturalized as citizens, immigrants must take a test on American civics and history. If they can answer simple questions about how our government works then they can probably figure out which box to check when there is a list of candidates for a federal position. If you can answer a question about what is in the Bill of Rights, you should be able to read the difference between Bush and Kerry's names on the ballot.

There's more . . .

On shame

Mary Katharine Ham has a column up at Townhall about the benefits of shame and how our PC culture is trying to eradicate it.

Unfortunately, in today’s society, we spend so much time making sure no one is “stigmatized,� that we tend to forget that some things deserve a stigma. A good old-fashioned stigma can be useful.

An L.A. Times editorial claimed this week that criticizing Katrina refugees and Katrina conmen for spending their FEMA debit cards on strip clubs and vacations is tantamount to “blaming the victims.� Well, no.

Read the whole thing.

Honor

Josiah Bunting III has an interesting essay up at OpinionJournal about a noble virtue that is under seige in America. William Bennett calls it our sacred honor.

It's in the extended entry.

A Noble Virtue Under Siege
Do Americans still understand the meaning of honor?

BY JOSIAH BUNTING III
Tuesday, June 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

In our culture of therapy, self-absorption and celebrity, "honor" has very little cachet. An abuse of honor--say, by perpetrating a public fraud or acting duplicitously in private life--is but the occasion for the administration of comforting words of understanding, the application of medicines to assuage lingering anxieties and the invitation to appear on "Oprah," the better to explain the forces that, overwhelming meager resources of conscience and character, impelled a dishonorable act. Next may come an invitation to undertake the labor of a book, more fully to explore and expiate the fall from grace. Closure (as it is called) will then, at last, be obtained.

In short, there is no shame in actions once known as dishonorable, and the virtues that supported honor seem moribund. Chastity and modesty--so important to honor in social relations--are treated as relics from Jane Austen and "Little Women." When a high-school girl defends a sexual encounter on the grounds that an American president said that her particular act was not really sex, both she and her role model are, if not completely forgiven, understood to be, as members of the human family, subject to the same vagaries of uncontrollable temptations as you and I.

Things used to be so different. James Bowman's "Honor: A History" offers a brilliantly astringent accounting for the disappearance of honor as a normative standard of conduct in American society. Mr. Bowman traces the idea of honor from its classical origins to its aristocratic and democratic forms. Along the way, he discusses religious teachings (in Christianity and Islam), philosophical definitions (e.g., Aristotle and Nietzsche) and literary treatments (Arthurian legend, Shakespeare, Hemingway). Throughout, he cites the emblems of honor--or dishonor--in current events and popular culture. Perhaps most pertinent to the present moment, he surveys America's use of honor (and prestige) as causes (and justifications) for going to war, indeed for serving in the armed forces.

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As late as the mid-1960s, lest we forget, members of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations prized "toughness" in foreign affairs and considered national honor a principal justification for fighting in Vietnam. There was a need, the architects of foreign policy felt, "to avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor)." What was on the line, Mr. Bowman writes, "was the 'prestige' that was really old-fashioned honor under a different name." Yet the war was not always justified to the American people in such terms, and when Richard Nixon promised "peace with honor," few believed him: Honor was, by then, understood as a slipshod synonym for "this is all we can take. We've done all we reasonably could for our ally."

In the West, the identity of personal with national honor was part of the fighting spirit in World War I, though it nearly sank in the slime of Passchendaele and the Somme. Its last florescence was in World War II, Mr. Bowman observes. And even then, "honor" and "duty" in the stiff, upper-class sense of the terms gave way, during the war, to a democratic ideal: the average guy "just doing a job." For America, this antiheroic theme was part of a national self-definition. "We were still, surely, different from . . . those old-fashioned jingoist or imperialist forebears who had been able to speak unashamedly of honor and its demands."

The rhetoric surrounding war changed over time--in Korea, in Vietnam, in the Balkans and now in Iraq. Governments came to feel, Mr. Bowman argues, that appeals to national honor, prestige and reputation for toughness no longer worked. The Marines may remain determined to keep their honor clean, but no such justification seems to animate the country as a whole in its role in the world. When terrorists took over Fallujah in 2004 and the Marines moved in to take them out, Mr. Bowman remembers a commentator saying: "This isn't about national security anymore: it's about pride and credibility." True enough, but the words were rare and tell-tale. Mr. Bowman notes that only in a post-honor society would such an explanation be necessary: Pride and credibility, he argues, are "commonly used substitutes for the old-fashioned sounding 'honor.' " They imply "jealousy for reputation" and the respect that countries and armies once demanded and expected.

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Can honor be resuscitated? As Mr. Bowman notes, "honor is stark and unforgiving," and early-21st-century America does not like stark choices. ("Then it is the brave man chooses / While the coward turns aside," in the words of the old hymn.) "Character," meaning resolution, the persistence in right action whatever its costs, seems a quaint and Victorian crotchet. Citizens feverishly, fitfully, deplore the inadequacies of body armor for their Marines and soldiers; three days later, they have moved on. Did you say 32 Iraqis were blown up this morning, and a soldier killed, north of Baghdad? Shame. Let's see what that does to the president's poll numbers.

How well America understands its enemies' notions of honor--and how prepared the country is, itself, to act honorably--will be tested between now and the fall elections. A failure to understand, though not inevitable, may be writ large in a headline like this one: "Administration Announces Withdrawal of 28,000 American Troops by End of Year." As Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh must have smiled the first time they heard the word "Vietnamize," radical Islamists will rejoice at such a development, irrefutable evidence that America neither understands their own misbegotten notions of honor nor has the will, if it does understand, to act honorably in confronting them.

Mr. Bunting is president of the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation in New York. You can buy "Honor: A History" from the OpinionJournal bookstore.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

'Lawfare'

David Rivkin and Lee Casey have made the case that Americans are helping the terrorists in Iraq.

It is worth reading.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

'Lawfare' Over Haditha
The administration's domestic opponents play into the enemy's hands.

BY DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. AND LEE A. CASEY
Wednesday, June 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

The unfolding investigation of last November's events in Haditha reveals much more about the Bush administration's critics than it does about the U.S. armed forces. Although the inquiry is ongoing, it appears that 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians were deliberately murdered, allegedly by American Marines seeking revenge for a fallen comrade. If true, the episode was a war crime, something that must be--and no doubt will be--severely punished. However, the administration's critics are already cynically leveraging the Haditha killings as a means of undercutting the president, heedless of the effect this may have on American national interests.

Here is an outline of the emerging anti-Bush thesis: Haditha was the fault not of a handful of Marines, but of an administration that has refused to honor international law. As support, critics point to the administration's refusal to grant Geneva Convention rights to al Qaeda or the Taliban, to the use of aggressive interrogation techniques to obtain intelligence from terrorist detainees, and to a determination not to treat these individuals as ordinary criminal defendants. All of this is claimed despite the fact that the most fundamental aspects of administration policy--that the U.S. is at war, that individuals captured in this war can be held without trial as "enemy combatants" or tried by a military commission--have been vindicated so far by the courts.

Nevertheless, the killings at Haditha and a handful of other incidents in which U.S. troops have violated the laws of war (and are in the process of being punished) are already being cited as evidence of a systematic problem with American forces abroad and American leadership at home. In fact, although scores of atrocities have been alleged in Iraq and Afghanistan, the vast majority have been false claims. Most recently, for example, charges that U.S. forces executed civilians during a March 15 night-time raid on an al Qaeda safe house in Ishaqi proved to be groundless.

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To put things in perspective, it is worth noting that abuses and violations of the laws of war have occurred in every armed conflict in human history, regardless of how well-led or disciplined were the troops involved. Indeed, by the standards of past conflicts, U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have behaved in exemplary fashion, using force in combat with unprecedented precision, minimizing collateral damage and civilian deaths--often at risk to themselves and to their mission. In Iraq, this has been the case even though American forces are fighting in the toughest possible urban insurgency environment.

Overall, all U.S. forces, including the Marines, have used deadly force in a proportionate and discriminate manner, fully in accord with the laws and customs of war. By contrast, our enemies engage in war crimes on a daily basis as a matter of policy. For them, targeting civilians is not the exception but the rule--it is the essence of the "asymmetrical" warfare they practice.

Throughout history, irregular forces have used the surrounding civilian population in two distinct ways. First, guerrilla fighters do not wear uniforms or carry their arms openly--critical elements of lawful warfare--so as to hide among the civilian population. In effect, they use civilians as shields. Second, like the insurgents in Iraq, they seek to goad opponents into mistakenly, or deliberately, attacking civilians--as a means of mobilizing the population against the regulars. The killings at Haditha show how this strategy can work.

However, the advent of modern media coverage--coupled with a growing and valid concern among democracies about humanitarian norms during warfare--has provided a new tactical innovation, increasingly known as "lawfare." Al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgents thus routinely claim that American forces systematically violate the laws of war by targeting civilians and abusing prisoners. These claims are not targeted at the Iraqi people (although similar claims regarding insults to Islamic believers are so directed) but at public and, especially, elite opinion in the U.S. and other democracies. With Vietnam as its model, the Iraqi insurgency well understands that it can win only by undermining America's political will to win, and the center of gravity in this conflict lies in Washington, not Baghdad or the Sunni Triangle.

These lawfare tactics have several other important consequences. If the Pentagon's investigation of Haditha was delayed, it was most likely because similar massacre allegations are made virtually every time American forces take to the field. The fact that, in Iraq, IED explosions are so often followed by insurgent attacks launched from civilian structures also clearly gave credence to the initial--and evidently incorrect--reports from Haditha. When civilian buildings are used in insurgent operations, civilians often are killed in the crossfire, and so the report that a number of civilians had been killed by small arms in Haditha would not have appeared exceptional to the U.S. commanders.

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Ultimately, the Haditha incident must remind American policy makers--and the American people--of the challenges of modern warfare. Although the individual actions of U.S. forces on that day may have been exceptional, the surrounding circumstances are not--and our enemies will look more and more to such irregular tactics. The Pentagon's emphasis on exhaustively training American troops in the laws of war is a good first step. U.S. forces already are the best equipped and trained in history, and it is only through a constant emphasis on duty, discipline and American values that our armed forces will prevail in Iraq and similar conflicts.

At the same time, should the Haditha incident mature into a full-fledged war crimes drama prompting a premature U.S. withdrawal, the damage would not be limited to Iraq. If the U.S. cannot fight and win against a brutal urban insurgency in Iraq today, its ability to defeat any determined foe willing to sacrifice the civilian population in irregular warfare will be in question. This can only benefit the most vicious regimes and movements. The Bush administration's critics should pause a moment, and reflect, on whether this would really be worth it.

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey, lawyers in Washington, served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

English: the national language of America

Charles Krauthammer makes a very good case in favor of making English the official language of the United States of America.

One of the major reasons for America's great success as the world's first "universal nation," for its astonishing and unmatched capacity for assimilating immigrants, has been that an automatic part of acculturation was the acquisition of English. And yet during the great immigration debate now raging in Congress, the people's representatives cannot make up their minds whether the current dominance of English should be declared a national asset, worthy of enshrinement in law.

Recommended reading.

Good news from America

Deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives, Peter Wehner, has an encouraging op-ed up at the Washington Post about good stuff happening in terms of cultural, economic, and national security in America. He starts with:

By now Americans know the litany: The nation is engaged in a difficult and costly war in Iraq; Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon; gas prices are high; the costs of reconstructing the Gulf Coast region are huge; illegal immigration is a major problem -- and more.

These issues are real and pressing. But they aren't the whole story -- and they ought not color the lens through which we see all other events. We hear a great deal about the problems we face. We hear hardly anything about the encouraging developments. Off-key as it may sound in the current environment, a strong case can be made that in a number of areas there are positive trends and considerable progress. Perhaps the place to begin is with an empirical assessment of where we are.

And takes it from there. Recommended.

Holding on to the vision

Thomas Sowell has an interesting piece up (in three parts) about how some folks are desperately preserving a vision that does not conform to the facts.

In Preserving a vision, Sowell discusses the vision so dearly held by some people.

Before we turn to facts, we need to understand the vision. This is a vision of the world more precious than gold. To those who believe it, this vision is a treasure beyond price because it is also a wonderful vision of themselves -- and they are not likely to give it up for anything so mundane as grubby facts.

For those liberals who lived through the 1960s, that was often also the springtime of their youth, increasingly treasured as a memory, as the grim realities of old age settle down upon them today. It is expecting an awful lot to expect them to consider any alternative vision of the world, especially one that shatters the beautiful picture of themselves as wise and compassionate saviors of society.

But what are the facts?

In Preserving a vision: Part II, Sowell addresses the dichotomy between our country's current economy, and our perception of it.

Even Americans in the bottom 20 percent in income have higher real incomes than in the past and such staples of middle class life as microwave ovens and motor vehicles are now common among "the poor."

[ . . . ]

In general, people earning the minimum wage have been a declining proportion of the population during the past quarter century. In absolute numbers, they have declined from 7.8 million to just over 2 million, even though the population as a whole has been growing.

[ . . . ]

But you would never guess this, judging by media hype.

In Preserving a vision: Part III, Sowell points out how rationally administered tax cuts have been a boon to America.

For years -- indeed, decades -- the Wall Street Journal's editorial page has repeatedly been arguing that cutting tax rates increases tax revenues. Nor did this idea originate with them. There is a whole school of economists who have been saying the same thing even longer.

There is nothing "unanticipated" about the increased revenue. It was unanticipated by the Congressional Budget Office's estimates but that is why the CBO has come under fire from economists. But apparently none of this has yet registered on the Wall Street Journal's front page reporter.

More than 40 years ago, President John F. Kennedy got Congress to cut tax rates, with the idea that this would provide incentives to change economic behavior in a way that would increase economic growth and individual incomes, and therefore lead to even more tax revenue coming into the Treasury than had been the case under the higher tax rates. That is exactly what happened.

Years later, Ronald Reagan made the same argument and his "tax cuts for the rich" produced the same result. Tax receipts during every year of the 1980s were higher than they had ever been in any year before. Moreover, taxes paid specifically by "the rich" were higher than before, because their incomes rose so much as the economy boomed that they paid more total taxes despite the reduced tax rate.

How surprised should we be that exactly the same thing has happened after tax cuts under the Bush administration?

I highly recommend all three for good information on America's economy.

UPDATED & bumped up:

In Preserving a vision: Part IV, Sowell discusses an apparent attempt to suppress some inconvenient facts:

Still, facts are a danger to the vision. In recent times, those on the left have increasingly sought to suppress facts that go counter to the vision.

Commencement address at West Point

Our President's commencement address at West Point.

The field of battle is where your degree and commission will take you. This is the first class to arrive at West Point after the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. Each of you came here in a time of war, knowing all the risks and dangers that come with wearing our nation's uniform. And I want to thank you for your patriotism, your devotion to duty, your courageous decision to serve. America is grateful and proud of the men and women of West Point.

Go read the whole thing. It's worth it.

Memorial Day address at Arlington Nat'l Cemetery

President Bush honors our noble dead at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day.

Our nation is free because of brave Americans like these, who volunteer to confront our adversaries abroad so we do not have to face them here at home. Our nation mourns the loss of our men and women in uniform; we will honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives -- by defeating the terrorists, by advancing the cause of liberty, and by laying the foundation of peace for a generation of young Americans. (Applause.) Today we pray that those who lie here have found peace with their Creator, and we resolve that their sacrifice will always be remembered by a grateful nation.

Recommended.

Never forget

Gerard Van der Leun has a moving essay posted about his family's sacrifice to freedom during WWII. An uncle he never knew -- who's name he carries proudly.

Remembering these long ago moments now as we linger on the cusp of the Long War, I still cannot claim to understand the deep sense of duty and the strong feeling of honor that drove men like the uncle I've never known to sacrifice themselves. Lately though, as we move deeper into the Fourth World War, I think that, at last, I can somehow dimly see the outlines of what it was. And that, for now, will have to do.

Highly recommended.

In your face

Ted Nugent certainly has an interesting outlook on life:

"You want to know how to get peace, love and understanding?" he replies. "Who doesn't know this? The Ku-Klux-Klan? The Black Panthers? Child rapists? How do you get peace, love and understanding? First of all you have to find all the bad people. Then," Nugent adds, "you kill them."

The reporter who interviewed him for this article seemed to be on the edge of outrage the whole time. It is an interesting read, to say the least.

Get over it and move forward

Owen West, a reserve Marine major who served in Iraq and is the founder of Vets for Freedom has a thoughtful op-ed up at the New York Times about how we need to get over past issues concerning Iraq and move on against Islamofascism.

First, in battle you move forward from where you are, not where you want to be. No one was more surprised that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction than the soldiers who rolled into Iraq in full chemical protective gear. But it is time for the rest of the country to do what the military was forced to: get over it.

Go read the rest . . .

[Via Instapundit.]

Honor our noble dead

At 3 PM, your local time, please take one minute to honor the fallen during America's National Moment of Remembrance today.

Because they fell on our behalf.

English as the national language

Jeff Jacoby, over at Townhall has an excellent essay on why declaring English our national language is NOT racist. And then he shows how it is a good thing for all of us -- including immigrants.

[This] is a column about the English language, which has always been indispensable to the American identity, and without which no citizen can fully participate in American life. It is a column about the power of English literacy, thanks to which, Douglass wrote in his autobiography, he first "understood the pathway from slavery to freedom." And it is about the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of leftist elites like Senate minority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who last week denounced as "racist" a bill declaring English the national language of the United States.

My grandfather emigrated here from Greece. His son (my father) could not speak Greek. Because his father adopted his new country's language when he came here.

I recommend you go read it.

Moral clarity

Mary Katharine Ham, over at Townhall has an excellent essay pointing out this country's need for moral clarity.

I have heard it said that what America needs to win the war on Islamofascism is moral clarity—a strong belief that our ideology and theirs are not comparable; that there is a good and an evil and we are on the good side; that Western civilization, for all its faults, is a damn sight better than that which seeks to destroy it.

Recommended.

Bush the brave

Michael Novak has a good essay, over at NRO about President Bush's bravery in the face of virulent opposition.

What I do want to argue is that, after Washington and Lincoln, Bush is the bravest of our presidents. He has faced the most intense fire, hatred, contempt, heavily moneyed and bitterly acidic partisan opposition, underhandedness, betrayal, of any president in the last hundred years. He has faced hostility over a longer time, in possibly the most dangerous period of international warfare in our national history. He has remained constant, firm, decided, and generous (to a fault) with his opponents.

It is a good read, and it ends with a statement that I have been thinking for years:

I like this guy. And I admire his guts, and his decency.

Good reading.

Katrina revisited

Lou Dolinar has a very interesting article up describing what really happened in New Orleans after Katrina hit. Based upon in-depth research, here's how it starts:

Remember the dozens, maybe hundreds, of rapes, murders, stabbings and deaths resulting from official neglect at the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina? The ones that never happened, as even the national media later admitted?

Sure, we all remember the original reporting, if not the back-pedaling.

Here's another one: Do you remember the dramatic TV footage of National Guard helicopters landing at the Superdome as soon as Katrina passed, dropping off tens of thousands saved from certain death? The corpsmen running with stretchers, in an echo of M*A*S*H, carrying the survivors to ambulances and the medical center? About how the operation, which also included the Coast Guard, regular military units, and local first responders, continued for more than a week?

Me neither. Except that it did happen, and got at best an occasional, parenthetical mention in the national media. The National Guard had its headquarters for Katrina, not just a few peacekeeping troops, in what the media portrayed as the pit of Hell. Hell was one of the safest places to be in New Orleans, smelly as it was. The situation was always under control, not surprisingly because the people in control were always there.

Read the whole thing. It's a real eye-opener.

Myth-conceptions

Peter Wehner, deputy assistant to President Bush, has an op-ed up at OpinionJournal that debunks some myths about the war in Iraq.

He's trying to set the record straight.

It's in the extended entry . . .

Revisionist History
Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked.

BY PETER WEHNER
Tuesday, May 23, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations--the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn't possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so--and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them. Let me examine each in turn:

The president misled Americans to convince them to go to war. "There is no question [the Bush administration] misled the nation and led us into a quagmire in Iraq," according to Ted Kennedy. Jimmy Carter charged that on Iraq, "President Bush has not been honest with the American people." And Al Gore has said that an "abuse of the truth" characterized the administration's "march to war." These charges are themselves misleading, which explains why no independent body has found them credible. Most of the world was operating from essentially the same set of assumptions regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities. Important assumptions turned out wrong; but mistakenly relying on faulty intelligence is a world apart from lying about it.

Let's review what we know. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is the intelligence community's authoritative written judgment on specific national-security issues. The 2002 NIE provided a key judgment: "Iraq has continued its [WMD] programs in defiance of U.N. resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

Thanks to the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission, which investigated the causes of intelligence failures in the run-up to the war, we now know that the President's Daily Brief (PDB) and the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief "were, if anything, more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE" (my emphasis). We also know that the intelligence in the PDB was not "markedly different" from that given to Congress. This helps explains why John Kerry, in voting to give the president the authority to use force, said, "I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." It's why Sen. Kennedy said, "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." And it's why Hillary Clinton said in 2002, "In the four years since the inspectors, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program."

Beyond that, intelligence agencies from around the globe believed Saddam had WMD. Even foreign governments that opposed his removal from power believed Iraq had WMD: Just a few weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Wolfgang Ischinger, German ambassador to the U.S., said, "I think all of our governments believe that Iraq has produced weapons of mass destruction and that we have to assume that they continue to have weapons of mass destruction."

In addition, no serious person would justify a war based on information he knows to be false and which would be shown to be false within months after the war concluded. It is not as if the WMD stockpile question was one that wasn't going to be answered for a century to come.

The Bush administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments. Earlier this year, Mr. Gore charged that "CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House . . . found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases." Sen. Kennedy charged that the administration "put pressure on intelligence officers to produce the desired intelligence and analysis."

This myth is shattered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's bipartisan Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. Among the findings: "The committee did not find any evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with administration policy, or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to do so." Silberman-Robb concluded the same, finding "no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. . . . Analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments." What the report did find is that intelligence assessments on Iraq were "riddled with errors"; "most of the fundamental errors were made and communicated to policy makers well before the now-infamous NIE of October 2002, and were not corrected in the months between the NIE and the start of the war."

Because weapons of mass destruction stockpiles weren't found, Saddam posed no threat. Howard Dean declared Iraq "was not a danger to the United States." John Murtha asserted, "There was no threat to our national security." Max Cleland put it this way: "Iraq was no threat. We now know that. There are no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons programs." Yet while we did not find stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, what we did find was enough to alarm any sober-minded individual.

Upon his return from Iraq, weapons inspector David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), told the Senate: "I actually think this may be one of those cases where [Iraq under Saddam Hussein] was even more dangerous than we thought." His statement when issuing the ISG progress report said: "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities" that were part of "deliberate concealment efforts" that should have been declared to the U.N. And, he concluded, "Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programs, had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction."

Among the key findings of the September 2004 report by Charles Duelfer, who succeeded Mr. Kay as ISG head, are that Saddam was pursuing an aggressive strategy to subvert the Oil for Food Program and to bring down U.N. sanctions through illicit finance and procurement schemes; and that Saddam intended to resume WMD efforts once U.N. sanctions were eliminated. According to Mr. Duelfer, "the guiding theme for WMD was to sustain the intellectual capacity achieved over so many years at such a great cost and to be in a position to produce again with as short a lead time as possible. . . . Virtually no senior Iraqi believed that Saddam had forsaken WMD forever. Evidence suggests that, as resources became available and the constraints of sanctions decayed, there was a direct expansion of activity that would have the effect of supporting future WMD reconstitution."

Beyond this, Saddam's regime was one of the most sadistic and aggressive in modern history. It started a war against Iran and used mustard gas and nerve gas. A decade later Iraq invaded Kuwait. Iraq was a massively destabilizing force in the Middle East; so long as Saddam was in power, rivers of blood were sure to follow.

Promoting democracy in the Middle East is a postwar rationalization. "The president now says that the war is really about the spread of democracy in the Middle East. This effort at after-the-fact justification was only made necessary because the primary rationale was so sadly lacking in fact," according to Nancy Pelosi.

In fact, President Bush argued for democracy taking root in Iraq before the war began. To take just one example, he said in a speech on Feb. 26, 2003: "A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America's interests in security, and America's belief in liberty, both lead in the same direction: to a free and peaceful Iraq. . . . The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life. And there are hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the Middle East. . . . A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region."

The following day the New York Times editorialized: "President Bush sketched an expansive vision last night of what he expects to accomplish by a war in Iraq. . . . The idea of turning Iraq into a model democracy in the Arab world is one some members of the administration have been discussing for a long time."

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These, then, are the urban legends we must counter, else falsehoods become conventional wisdom. And what a strange world it is: For many antiwar critics, the president is faulted for the war, and he, not the former dictator of Iraq, inspires rage. The liberator rather than the oppressor provokes hatred. It is as if we have stepped through the political looking glass, into a world turned upside down and inside out.

Mr. Wehner is deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

A friend indeed

Australian PM John Howard had some kind things to say about the U.S. of A. in a speech to Canada's parliament:

“Australia, as you know, is an unapologetic friend and ally of the United States,� Mr. Howard told a Commons chamber that's heard all-too-frequent criticism of Washington in recent years.

Fresh from a visit to the White House, Mr. Howard told a chamber packed with Tory MPs, staffers, lobbyists and party functionaries — but noticeably light on Liberal Opposition MPs — that the U.S. “has been a remarkable power for good in the world.

“And the decency and hope that the power and purpose that the United States represent in the world is something we should deeply appreciate,� Mr. Howard said to sustained applause.

He also cautioned those who continually slander America:

“For those around the world who would want to see a reduced American role in the affairs of our globe, I have some quiet advice. That is, be careful of what you wish for. Because a retreating America will leave a more vulnerable world.�

It is encouraging to hear such comments from other heads of state.

Captain Ed has more to say on the subject.

Petropolitical economics ad nauseam

Jonathan Adler is concerned that Congress does not understand free-market economics.

Criminalizing “price gouging� will do more to encourage gas shortages than control price increases. Whether politicians like to admit it or not, the profit motive plays a key role in calibrating supply and demand. Limit the ability of companies to profit from energy-related investments, and they will make fewer of them. Limiting the potential for profit will limit future supply. Threaten companies with prosecution should they respond to market conditions by raising prices, and shortages are the inevitable result. During the debate, House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton said, “Price spikes are a scourge, but dry pumps are a catastrophe.� Barton and his colleagues supported a proposal that will make “dry pumps� more likely nonetheless.

I'm inclined to agree.

And, personally, I'm glad that my family now has a hybrid vehicle -- because things, petrochemically speaking, are going to get worse before they get better. If they get better.

Recommended.

Looking back from the future

Hans Moleman, on National Review Online, puts polls in perspective with an historical example.

The sight is a pathetic one. An embattled president moves into a second term that quickly turns into an uninterrupted downhill slide: poll approval sinking to the low 30s; his own party members distancing themselves at every opportunity; his political capital now consumed by a once-popular war that became a hopeless quagmire with no end in sight; a war in which he persists, determined to stay the course despite the political cost, refusing to abandon the valiant allies who took his commitment seriously.

George W. Bush? Oh yeah, him too. But we were discussing Harry Truman, weren’t we?

It's a good read . . .

President Bush on immigration

President Bush's speech Monday night on immigration reform was encouraging to a certain degree.

At the same time, we're launching the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history. We will construct high-tech fences in urban corridors, and build new patrol roads and barriers in rural areas. We'll employ motion sensors, infrared cameras, and unmanned aerial vehicles to prevent illegal crossings. America has the best technology in the world, and we will ensure that the Border Patrol has the technology they need to do their job and secure our border.

But I'm wondering if a rational, methodical approach to this massive problem will ever be arrived at before it gets much, much worse.

Go read the whole speech . . .

Truman understood it

[soapbox]

Betsy Newmark pointed to a speech by President Truman in 1947 that just brought home to me that we Americans have been in a worldwide struggle for freedom for a long time.

One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations.

To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations, The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.

Though he was talking about Greece and Turkey, Truman hit upon some salient points that apply to all countries on this Earth.

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.

The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuges as political infiltration. In helping free and independent nations to maintain their freedom, the United States will be giving effect to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

What was true after WWII is still true today. Whether we like it or not, the United States of America has a moral obligation to advocate for freedom on Earth -- up to and including going to war with tyrannies, if necessary.

It is what this country is all about -- how it was founded, and how its foreign policy has been conducted ever since.

We've got to do what we've got to do. Because it is our national purpose.

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.

The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms.

If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world -- and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.

Great responsibilities have been placed upon us by the swift movement of events.

I am confident that the Congress will face these responsibilities squarely.

Lately, I have been less confident in the Congress ability to "face its responsibilities squarely", but I still have hope that we -- as a free nation -- will do the right thing and fulfill our national purpose by spreading freedom throughout the world.

It will take decades to do, but we should never falter in our efforts toward that goal.

And if believing this makes me an idealist, then so be it.

[/soapbox]

Border control

Thomas Sowell makes a good case for separating border control from immigration.

There is no reason other than politics why amnesty and border control have to be in the same bill. It will take time to see how various new border control methods work out in practice and there is no reason to rush ahead to deal with the people already illegally in this country before the facts are in on how well the borders have been secured.

He makes several good points. I recommend you read it all.

Irony

Greyhawk illustrates widely differing attitudes about Iraq by posting a news story out of Jordan and one out of America.

I am ashamed of our negativity.

This may be painful

Related to yesterday's post on this: It seems that there may be an intelligence scandal brewing on the border.

Michelle Malkin, who has been a stalwart on immigration, reports that the United States government has been providing Mexico with intelligence about the lawful activities of American citizens, specifically, the locations and tactics of Minuteman patrols.

I hope that this is not what it sounds like. If it is, though, mid-management heads better start rolling in the Dept. of Homeland Security!

Advice to the President

Johm Hinderaker has some excellent advice for President Bush.

You know how the Democrats are always after you to admit that you made a mistake? You've wisely ignored them; they don't have your interests at heart, and the policies they're talking about weren't mistakes. The time has come, though, to go on national television and say you were wrong, and you've changed your mind. About immigration.

I just hope President Bush reads the whole thing while he prepares for his speech tomorrow.

Harry Potter and the War on Terror

Crypto-conservative Bookworm, at American Thinker has published a composite books/movies/society review. She points out some compelling characteristics of several different books and movies that have come out over the last ten years, or so. Many of them are ones that I have greatly enjoyed, and encouraged my children to read and watch.

Recommended.

How can we secure our borders this way?

Providing operational intelligence (about U.S. citizens lawfully exercising their rights in their own country) to a foreign country is definitely a losing proposition -- especially when those citizens are assisting the U.S. Border Patrol in securing our borders.

According to three documents on the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Web site, the U.S. Border Patrol is to notify the Mexican government as to the location of Minutemen and other civilian border patrol groups when they participate in apprehending illegal immigrants -- and if and when violence is used against border crossers.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman confirmed the notification process, describing it as a standard procedure meant to reassure the Mexican government that migrants' rights are being observed.

"It's not a secret where the Minuteman volunteers are going to be," Mario Martinez said Monday.

(Are you listening, Washington?)

Sheesh . . .

101st Fighting Keyboardists

The "Fighting KeeBees are looking for a few good bloggers!

For those who wish to join, please either drop a comment on this post or send me an e-mail. The Fighting Keebees, as one of our members called it, is strictly a volunteer organization. We just ask that you support the troops and support civilian control over foreign policy and the military, and have a really good sense of humor. It's all in fun and meant to irritate all the right people.

I've signed up . . . why don't you?

Too much environmentalism?

Robert Farago has some choice things to say about President Bush's "Declaration of Less Dependence" on foreign oil. Here is his conclusion:

In fact, the nuclear power plant debate-- or lack thereof-- encapsulates all that’s wrong with America’s energy policy: we don’t have one. As long as environmentalists set the political agenda, as long as our oil companies go along to get along, America’s push for energy independence is doomed. President Bush’s finale about leaving our children a “cleaner, a healthier and a more secure America� reveals the extent to which our future has been hijacked by environmental politicial correctness. The truth is, unless we detach ourselves from imported oil first and fast, all those clean, healthy Americans and their life-sustaining economy will continue to be at the mercy of foreign despots.

I recommend you go an read the build up to it.

Personal reflections and "United 93"

Gerard Van der Leun has posted an introspective piece on 9/11 and "United 93". He was living in New York City on that stunningly infamous day.

The best among us all had our rituals for getting through those days and, to tell the truth, for a long time in New York, the best of us were the most of us. In time, as you can see today, that faded out of a lot of New Yorkers' souls, and left them even emptier and more cynical than before as they turned back to petty politics and bad art. A lot of the output of these damaged souls can be seen in the media products that the city produces to fainter and fainter acclaim. But we were, for a bit, somewhat united by the evil that had been visited on us. That and the need to bear witness to our dead.

You should go read the whole thing.

Flight 93 and the war on terror

Callimachus, at Done With Mirrors has posted an excellent and balanced summation of America's psychological struggle with the war on Islamofascism.

We all do see the enemy for who he is and we read his own words and take them at their face value. Some of us recognize this as a Long War for Civilization, and think the obvious disparity in firepower and national economies masks a vulnerability in the West. The people we are fighting say certain things very clearly: we are infidels who have offended their religion, they are at war with us, and they want us to die. They may not have an air force, but they have other weapons, more intangible, perhaps more powerful. And we have weak spots. We could be brought down hard by a combination of lack of will and a few hard, well-timed terrorist strikes with the right volume.

Go read the whole thing.

Energy outlook

Larry Kudlow tells us the greatest story never told.

The big point here is that free markets work. Rising prices from the global boom will lead to more conservation, less consumption, and more production, but only so long as government stays out of the way. Instead of blaming ExxonMobil for high gas prices, irate motorists and voters should blame Congress for mandating, regulating, and taxing against energy.

It's good news about the economy . . .

Recommended.

A 1000 Days Plan

Peggy Noonan does a good job of bringing together what she feels (and I agree with her) are the three most important issues that President Bush should focus on during the final 1000 days of his term in office. An analogy she used about border security is priceless:

Congress and the White House right now are like people who live in a big house who have finally noticed the kitchen is on fire. So they all meet in the living room and debate how exactly to rebuild the kitchen, what color to repaint the walls, and how to get the best deal on a new microwave. And while they are holding their discussion they're forgetting to do the most important thing. They're forgetting to put out the fire. You can lose a house this way. Putting out the fire in this case is closing and policing the essentially open border with Mexico--now. Close down illegal immigration, now. Then talk. (A hunch for liberals: Your views will be received with greater generosity once the air of daily crisis is removed.)

Read the whole thing.

(I've reprinted it all in the extended entry.)

The Big Three
Here's what the president should focus on in his last thousand days.

Thursday, April 27, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

The meme is out there: "A thousand days." That's how long the Bush administration has in office (or had, to be precise, as of yesterday).

To criticize the White House--if the criticism is serious, well-grounded and well-meant--is helpful, and part of a long and good tradition. But allowing philosophical estrangement to leave you wishing the administration ill is to give in to the destructive spirit of the age. That too has a tradition, but not a good one. Five years ago this September history took a dark turn, and though we can forget it in the day to day, we're all in this together.

In that spirit, a plan for the thousand days.

---

With the appointment of Tony Snow the first round of staff changes seems ended, and the desired effect is achieved: a new start, with new people.

The sense of newness will last for a while because the reporters who tell us the news need a storyline. They need, as they say, a narrative. The narrative they will go with now is: "Staff Changes Being Felt Throughout White House / May Signal Policy Changes."

The next story line will either be "Staff Changes Fail to Stop Listless Drift" or "Shakeups Yielded New Dynamism".

So the story now is change, and the story a few months from now is the change that change wrought.

This is a time of opportunity. White House staffers can work to help create the future headline they want.

As a public face of the White House, Tony Snow will likely get a good start. His remarks to the press yesterday--"Believe it or not, I want very much to work with you"--were gracious, and showed legitimate sympathy for the press corps. They have hard jobs and operate under many pressures, from uncomprehending editors in the bubble back in the newsroom to officials who try to jerk them around to executive producers in New York who don't like their hair. (One of the best White House correspondents I ever knew, a woman of seriousness and sophistication who threw the ball straight down the middle, was removed from her assignment, her career thwarted, because she'd committed the sin of not being considered pretty enough by her boss. Before she was removed she had to spend half her time getting new clothes and haircuts and makeup. This so she could do a serious job with expertise and spirit. TV is absurd.)

Mr. Snow's White House press briefings are going to be nice to watch. The press does not want to appear to be ungracious and oppositional. They have an investment in demonstrating that the tensions each day in Scott McClellan's press briefings, with David Gregory's rants and Helen Thomas's free-form animosities, were the fault of Mr. McClellan, not the press.

So they will start out gracious with Tony. Good. Everyone involved will benefit from turning the page.

---

A plan for the administration? Free advice is worth the price, but here goes:

Narrow--and deepen--the focus. The administration has popped too much the past five years, tried to do too much, and all at the same time. An administration about everything is an administration about nothing.

There are three issues on which the administration can, and should, focus, and only three. Why? Because three big issues in a thousand days is more than enough, and because history itself will hand the White House new problems every day and every week--a hurricane, a scandal, a coup, a famine, an insurrection, a terror incident. It all has to be dealt with. It all will come along and take your attention, for a while, from the big three. Lincoln confessed what all presidents learn: events controlled him more than he controlled events.

Issue 1: Iraq, Afghanistan and the age of terror. On these, stabilize, fortify, succeed. Keep America safe. All this will require ruthless concentration. Back up all action with illustration and explanation. Inform the public--constantly--as to what is happening, and why, and what is being done, and why. We already know liberty is God's gift to man; make statements that are less emotive and more fact-filled, more strategically coherent.

Renew attention to Afghanistan. The American invasion of that country had the support of the world. Don't let anything endanger the stability and health of the endeavor. Public confidence in the administration's management of homeland security went down after Katrina. Talk about what's being done, and how, and why. Find Osama--it is a scandal that the man who started the new era is still free, still taunting the West, still inspiring those who see the world as he does. It was a mistake to think finding him was not as important as a wider war on terror. Finding him is key. It is almost five years since he did what he did. Get him, try him, kill him.

Issue 2: the economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at new post-9/11 highs; there's little unemployment. New home sales are up, productivity up, profits up. This is President Bush's triumph. And yet in polls Americans don't credit him with it. (My hunch: Americans, a deeply savvy lot, never want to tell a politician he's doing well on the economy because their applause may lead him to feel he can shift focus to, say, colonizing Mars. Americans always name prosperity in retrospect. In real time they like to keep the pressure on.)

There are problems, challenges, changes that require thought. The biggest complaint I hear now from people who email me from all parts of the country is that they're being worked to death, longer hours at the office, can't see the kids. Gas prices are up and up, etc. The president should talk about the economy--not in a braying, bragging way but in an instructive, engaged way that discusses the philosophy and actions that allowed the market to do what it wants to do, grow.

Presidents always--all of them--like to say they created 50,000 jobs last month. No president has ever created a job, except in the public sector. But presidents can take steps that keep jobs from being created, and deserve credit when they don't. And they can take steps that are helpful to job creators, and deserve credit when they do.

Did the tax cuts, at the end of the day, help the economy? Why? How? Will a change in the tax structure, or will making permanent the tax cuts, help? What impact does high federal government spending have on the economy? Where should we go on that, and why? Talk about the flow of money in America.

Issue 3: the integrity of America's borders. That is, the right and ability to decide who comes here and when, the right and ability to make judgments based on our nation's needs. This is both an economic issue and a national security issue; it naturally connects to issues 1 and 2.

On this, Washington is talking a lot and doing nothing.

Congress and the White House right now are like people who live in a big house who have finally noticed the kitchen is on fire. So they all meet in the living room and debate how exactly to rebuild the kitchen, what color to repaint the walls, and how to get the best deal on a new microwave. And while they are holding their discussion they're forgetting to do the most important thing. They're forgetting to put out the fire. You can lose a house this way. Putting out the fire in this case is closing and policing the essentially open border with Mexico--now. Close down illegal immigration, now. Then talk. (A hunch for liberals: Your views will be received with greater generosity once the air of daily crisis is removed.)

---

So that's it. Three big issues, plus whatever comes over the transom each day and demands a response. On that, the wisdom of Calvin Coolidge: When 10 problems are walking toward you, don't feel you have to do something right away. Some of the problems will fall to the side and not reach you, some will solve themselves. Face what remains. But focus, to the extent you can, on the big three.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

HR 4409, the "Fuel Choices for American Security Act"

Representative Jack Kingston is sponsoring a bill designed to help America achieve energy independence. And he's being quite reasonable about it.

Energy independence is not a partisan idea. Republicans and Democrats pay the same high prices at the pump, liberals and conservatives are both threatened by oil funded terror. There will be plenty of places we can have political disagreement this year, I hope this is not one of them.

It's worth reading and discussing. We've got to get a handle on our dependence on petroleum fuels. This looks like a good start.

For your consideration

Michelle Malkin rebuts President Bush's open borders arguments with some compelling examples of why we do not want unrestricted travel across America's borders.

-- The bludgeoning death of Florida teenager Jesse Howell and the rape and strangulation murder of his fiance, Wendy Von Huben.

-- The bludgeoning death of University of Kentucky student Christopher Maier and the rape and near-murder of his girlfriend, who survived the attack.

-- The murder of Leafie Mason, an elderly Texas woman whom Resendiz hammered to death with a fire iron.

-- The rape, stabbing and bludgeoning death of Baylor College of Medicine researcher Claudia Benton.

-- The sledgehammer bludgeonings of Texas pastor Norman Sirnic and his wife, Karen.

-- The bludgeoning death of Houston teacher Noemi Dominguez.

-- The murder of elderly Texas widow Josephine Konvicka, who was killed with a grubbing hoe.

-- The murders of George Morber, shot in the head, and Carolyn Frederick, clubbed to death.

Recommended.

Another good question

Michelle Malkin asks "who's assimilating whom?

The Bush Doctrine: A New Hope

Natan Sharansky, Russian dissident and Iraeli statesman, has a thing or two to say about President Bush's democracy agenda.

He calls Bush a dissident, and Mr. Sharansky should know something about dissidents. He spent nine years in a Soviet gulag because of it.

I've reprinted his essay in the extended entry.

Dissident President

George W. Bush has the courage to speak out for freedom.


BY NATAN SHARANSKY

Monday, April 24, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

There are two distinct marks of a dissident. First, dissidents are fired by ideas and stay true to them no matter the consequences. Second, they generally believe that betraying those ideas would constitute the greatest of moral failures. Give up, they say to themselves, and evil will triumph. Stand firm, and they can give hope to others and help change the world.

Political leaders make the rarest of dissidents. In a democracy, a leader's lifeline is the electorate's pulse. Failure to be in tune with public sentiment can cripple any administration and undermine any political agenda. Moreover, democratic leaders, for whom compromise is critical to effective governance, hardly ever see any issue in Manichaean terms. In their world, nearly everything is colored in shades of gray.

That is why President George W. Bush is such an exception. He is a man fired by a deep belief in the universal appeal of freedom, its transformative power, and its critical connection to international peace and stability. Even the fiercest critics of these ideas would surely admit that Mr. Bush has championed them both before and after his re-election, both when he was riding high in the polls and now that his popularity has plummeted, when criticism has come from longstanding opponents and from erstwhile supporters.

With a dogged determination that any dissident can appreciate, Mr. Bush, faced with overwhelming opposition, stands his ideological ground, motivated in large measure by what appears to be a refusal to countenance moral failure.

I myself have not been uncritical of Mr. Bush. Like my teacher, Andrei Sakharov, I agree with the president that promoting democracy is critical for international security. But I believe that too much focus has been placed on holding quick elections, while too little attention has been paid to help build free societies by protecting those freedoms--of conscience, speech, press, religion, etc.--that lie at democracy's core.

I believe that such a mistaken approach is one of the reasons why a terrorist organization such as Hamas could come to power through ostensibly democratic means in a Palestinian society long ruled by fear and intimidation.

I also believe that not enough effort has been made to turn the policy of promoting democracy into a bipartisan effort. The enemies of freedom must know that the commitment of the world's lone superpower to help expand freedom beyond its borders will not depend on the results of the next election.

---

Just as success in winning past global conflicts depended on forging a broad coalition that stretched across party and ideological lines, success in using the advance of democracy to win the war on terror will depend on building and maintaining a wide consensus of support.

Yet despite these criticisms, I recognize that I have the luxury of criticizing Mr. Bush's democracy agenda only because there is a democracy agenda in the first place. A policy that for years had been nothing more than the esoteric subject of occasional academic debate is now the focal point of American statecraft.

For decades, a "realism" based on a myopic perception of international stability prevailed in the policy-making debate. For a brief period during the Cold War, the realist policy of accommodating Soviet tyranny was replaced with a policy that confronted that tyranny and made democracy and human rights inside the Soviet Union a litmus test for superpower relations.

The enormous success of such a policy in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end did not stop most policy makers from continuing to advocate an approach to international stability that was based on coddling "friendly" dictators and refusing to support the aspirations of oppressed peoples to be free.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. It seemed as though that horrific day had made it clear that the price for supporting "friendly" dictators throughout the Middle East was the creation of the world's largest breeding ground of terrorism. A new political course had to be charted.

Today, we are in the midst of a great struggle between the forces of terror and the forces of freedom. The greatest weapon that the free world possesses in this struggle is the awesome power of its ideas.

The Bush Doctrine, based on a recognition of the dangers posed by non-democratic regimes and on committing the United States to support the advance of democracy, offers hope to many dissident voices struggling to bring democracy to their own countries. The democratic earthquake it has helped unleash, even with all the dangers its tremors entail, offers the promise of a more peaceful world.

---

Yet with each passing day, new voices are added to the chorus of that doctrine's opponents, and the circle of its supporters grows ever smaller.

Critics rail against every step on the new and difficult road on which the United States has embarked. Yet in pointing out the many pitfalls which have not been avoided and those which still can be, those critics would be wise to remember that the alternative road leads to the continued oppression of hundreds of millions of people and the continued festering of the pathologies that led to 9/11.

Now that President Bush is increasingly alone in pushing for freedom, I can only hope that his dissident spirit will continue to persevere. For should that spirit break, evil will indeed triumph, and the consequences for our world would be disastrous.

Mr. Sharansky spent nine years as a political prisoner in the Soviet Gulag. A former deputy prime minister of Israel and currently a member of the Knesset, he is co-author, with Ron Dermer, of "The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror" (PublicAffairs, 2004). You can buy "The Case For Democracy" at the OpinionJournal bookstore here.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Houston and Katrina

Nicole Gelinas has an excellent article in City Journal about how Houston opened its arms to the Katrina refugees and is doing well at dealing with all of the subsequent challenges that have resulted from the unexpected influx of 240,000 people.

Houston isn’t just showing its guests some Texas hospitality; it’s showing displaced New Orleanians what a difference it makes to live in a city that strives, if imperfectly, to operate upon sound urban-governance precepts—leadership in a crisis, competent policing, a functioning judicial system, accountable urban schools, and a culture of private-sector entrepreneurship.

This is a really good read. Especially if, like myself, you hail from Houston originally.

Oil and terror

Cal Thomas has an interesting op-ed in which he describes how some of the money we spend to fill our gas tanks is being used to fund terrorists.

One of many excellent books on the subject is "Terror, Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks" by economist Loretta Napoleoni. Napoleoni follows the money earned from the sale of oil and shows how it ends up funding terrorism and terrorist centers. Recipients of some of the money include mosques and Islamic schools in America, at least some of which are now, or can be expected to teach, incite, train and equip jihadists to again do unto us what they did on 9/11, and what they carry out regularly in Israel and Iraq.

He then goes on to make a good argument for this country to achieve energy independence.

I can't think of a better reason.

Recommended.

Pertinent question

Thomas Sowell asks a very good question:

Whatever the decision as to how many and what kind of immigrants should be let into the United States, why should that decision be made by people in Mexico, instead of being made here by Americans?

He actually asks several good questions. I recommend you read the whole thing.

American betrayal

Gerard Van Der Leun, over at American Digest has posted an excellent essay refuting the National Geographic spin about the "gospel" of Judas. In it, Gerard provides the reader with an astute analysis of our present culture.

It's a fact of our self-centered contemporary existence that betrayal has become one of the common forces that shape our lives. For when our own desires ride us like a drunken demon lodged on our shoulders, betrayal is the first order of the day when others seek to thwart our desires, or even when others become a mere inconvenience to our wants and whims.

I also think the essay is a warning of things to come if we, as individual members of this culture, continue down the slippery slope of "it's all about me".

Please don't tarry, but go and read the whole thing. It's a thinker.

Good nukes

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, has changed his mind about nuclear power. Here's an excerpt:

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.

Go read the rest, he makes some good points.

Good nukes

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, has changed his mind about nuclear power. Here's an excerpt:

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.

Go read the rest, he makes some good points.

Easter message

Mark Townsend has an excellent essay on the Resurrection and liberty.

It's a good read, and quite appropriate for this particular day.

Tribute to a hero

Mark Alexander writes a fond farewell to one of our WW2 heros who has recently passed on. The tribute starts with:

Last week marked the passing of yet another friend, neighbor and Patriot from the Greatest Generation.

Desmond T. Doss was reared in a religious tradition that forbade him from taking up arms. When WWII began, he declined a religious exemption that would have allowed him to continue working in a Virginia shipyard and became an Army medic. He was classified as a "conscientious objector," though he preferred the term "conscientious cooperator" because he never refused to serve his country.

"I felt like it was an honor to serve God and country," said Desmond. "I didn't want to be known as a draft dodger, but I sure didn't know what I was getting into." He never picked up a rifle, though he found himself in the heat of combat in places like Leyte and Guam after being sent to the Pacific. But it was his actions in May of 1945, near Urasoe on Okinawa, that really distinguish this small, lean and singular man.

Bravo Zulu, Mr. Doss. And thank you.

Welfare state

Michael Barone has a good op-ed at Townhall in which he discusses the slippery slope of entitlements in America. Here's how he starts:

"This much is certain: The welfare state as we know it cannot survive." So Charles Murray writes in The Wall Street Journal in an article on his new book, "In Our Hands."

"No serious student of entitlements thinks that we can let federal spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid rise from its current 9 percent of gross domestic product to the 28 percent of GDP that it will consume in 2050 if past growth rates continue."

Scary? It is to me. Now go read the rest. We have got to do something about entitlements in this country -- or we'll end up like France.

Health care reform

Mitt Romney, Governor of Massachusetts, has a column up at OpinionJournal about Massachusetts new approach to health care. Here's how it starts:

Only weeks after I was elected governor, Tom Stemberg, the founder and former CEO of Staples, stopped by my office. He told me, "If you really want to help people, find a way to get everyone health insurance." I replied that would mean raising taxes and a Clinton-style government takeover of health care. He insisted: "You can find a way."

I believe that we have. Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced. And we will need no new taxes, no employer mandate and no government takeover to make this happen.

It sounds intriguing, to say the least. And it can be adapted to meet other states' needs, as well.

I've reprinted the article in the extended entry.

Health Care for Everyone?
We've found a way.

BY MITT ROMNEY
Tuesday, April 11, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

BOSTON--Only weeks after I was elected governor, Tom Stemberg, the founder and former CEO of Staples, stopped by my office. He told me, "If you really want to help people, find a way to get everyone health insurance." I replied that would mean raising taxes and a Clinton-style government takeover of health care. He insisted: "You can find a way."

I believe that we have. Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced. And we will need no new taxes, no employer mandate and no government takeover to make this happen.

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When I took up Tom's challenge, I assembled a team from business, academia and government and asked them first to find out who was uninsured, and why. What they found was surprising. Some 20% of the state's uninsured population qualified for Medicaid but had never signed up. So we built and installed an Internet portal for our hospitals and clinics: When uninsured individuals show up for treatment, we enter their data online. If they qualify for Medicaid, they're enrolled.

Another 40% of the uninsured were earning enough to buy insurance but had chosen not to do so. Why? Because it is expensive, and because they know that if they become seriously ill, they will get free or subsidized treatment at the hospital. By law, emergency care cannot be withheld. Why pay for something you can get free?

Of course, while it may be free for them, everyone else ends up paying the bill, either in higher insurance premiums or taxes. The solution we came up with was to make private health insurance much more affordable. Insurance reforms now permit policies with higher deductibles, higher copayments, coinsurance, provider networks and fewer mandated benefits like in vitro fertilization--and our insurers have committed to offer products nearly 50% less expensive. With private insurance finally affordable, I proposed that everyone must either purchase a product of their choice or demonstrate that they can pay for their own health care. It's a personal responsibility principle.

Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate. But remember, someone has to pay for the health care that must, by law, be provided: Either the individual pays or the taxpayers pay. A free ride on government is not libertarian.

Another group of uninsured citizens in Massachusetts consisted of working people who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford health-care insurance. Here the answer is to provide a subsidy so they can purchase a private policy. The premium is based on ability to pay: One pays a higher amount, along a sliding scale, as one's income is higher. The big question we faced, however, was where the money for the subsidy would come from. We didn't want higher taxes; but we did have about $1 billion already in the system through a long-established uninsured-care fund that partially reimburses hospitals for free care. The fund is raised through an annual assessment on insurance providers and hospitals, plus contributions from the state and federal governments.

To determine if the $1 billion would be enough, Jonathan Gruber of MIT built an econometric model of the population, and with input from insurers, my in-house team crunched the numbers. Again, the result surprised us: We needed far less than the $1 billion for the subsidies. One reason is that this population is healthier than we had imagined. Instead of single parents, most were young single males, educated and in good health. And again, because health insurance will now be affordable and subsidized, we insist that everyone purchase health insurance from one of our private insurance companies.

And so, all Massachusetts citizens will have health insurance. It's a goal Democrats and Republicans share, and it has been achieved by a bipartisan effort, through market reforms.

We have received some helpful enhancements. The Heritage Foundation helped craft a mechanism, a "connector," allowing citizens to purchase health insurance with pretax dollars, even if their employer makes no contribution. The connector enables pretax payments, simplifies payroll deduction, permits prorated employer contributions for part-time employees, reduces insurer marketing costs, and makes it efficient for policies to be entirely portable. Because small businesses may use the connector, it gives them even greater bargaining power than large companies. Finally, health insurance is on a level playing field.

Two other features of the plan reduce the rate of health-care inflation. Medical transparency provisions will allow consumers to compare the quality, track record and cost of hospitals and providers; given deductibles and coinsurance, these consumers will have the incentive and the information for market forces to influence behavior. Also, electronic health records are in the works, which will reduce medical errors and lower costs.

---

My Democratic counterparts have added an annual $295 per-person fee charged to employers that do not contribute toward insurance premiums for any of their employees. The fee is unnecessary and probably counterproductive, and so I will take corrective action.

How much of our health-care plan applies to other states? A lot. Instead of thinking that the best way to cover the uninsured is by expanding Medicaid, they can instead reform insurance.

Will it work? I'm optimistic, but time will tell. A great deal will depend on the people who implement the program. Legislative adjustments will surely be needed along the way. One great thing about federalism is that states can innovate, demonstrate and incorporate ideas from one another. Other states will learn from our experience and improve on what we've done. That's the way we'll make health care work for everyone.

Mr. Romney is governor of Massachusetts.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Rumsfeld on Iraq

Donald Rumsfeld has an essay up about what we've gained in three years in Iraq. Here's an excerpt:

Though there are those who will never be convinced that the cause in Iraq is worth the costs, anyone looking realistically at the world today -- at the terrorist threat we face -- can come to only one conclusion: Now is the time for resolve, not retreat.

Read the rest.

U.S. economy

Jason, over at TexasRainmaker has an excellent summative post on America's thriving economy.

1. Real GDP increased 3.5 percent in 2005. The economy has been growing for 17 straight quarters, and the composite index of leading indicators has risen the past 6 months, indicating continued growth.

2. Consumer Confidence rose to 107.2 in March - the highest level in nearly four years.

3. Inflation remains contained.

4. Over the past year, employment has increased in 48 states.

5. Real disposable incomes have risen 2.2 percent over the past 12 months.

6. Real household net worth is at an all-time high of $52.1 trillion, and the median net worth of American households rose 1.5 percent between 2001 and 2004.

7. Real consumer spending has increased 3.2 percent over the past year, and nominal retail sales are up 6.7 percent over the past 12 months.

8. College Graduates face the best job market in five years.

9. Manufacturing activity grew for the 34th consecutive month in March.

10. Non-manufacturing business activity grew for the 36th consecutive month in March.

All this has been happening amongst predictions of gloom, doom, and dire consequences from the political Left. I'm just grateful that Bush and the Republicans in Congress didn't listen to the naysayers . . .

I recommend you read the rest of Jason's post.

Families United

Families United is dedicated to supporting our troops and their families. It is a worthwhile endeavor and I encourage you to support it.

They are asking for your help:

This Week is Iraqi Liberation Week.

Families United Mission is sending a letter to the media, reminding them of our fallen heroes and our troops' accomplishments in the War on Terror.

We want the media to give Iraqi Liberation Week the coverage it deserves.

Click here to add your name to our letter

What I fear will happen

Americans don't like long wars. I fear our war on terror will fail for precisely that reason.

The United States cannot lose the war on terror militarily. Our soldiers are too good, too well-equipped, and too ferocious. But we can still lose the war, if the American people--antsy and staring at our calendars, the wrong lesson of our military history heavy upon us--order them home.

Hopefully not.

Just the facts -- please!

Thomas Sowell has an excellent commentary over at Townhall about the shortage of factual information in our media and our classrooms. Here's how he begins:

What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey put it this way: "Demagoguery beats data."

People who urge us to rely on the United Nations, instead of acting "unilaterally," or who urge us to follow other countries in creating a government-run medical care system, often show not the slightest interest in getting facts about the actual track record of either the UN or government-run medical systems.

Highly recommended.

Counterpoint

Peter Wehner, deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives has published an op-ed at OpinionJournal that refutes several conservative columnists' claims that Iraq is a failure.

Frankly, I just think George Will, Bill Buckley, and Francis Fukuyama have lost their resolve. I'm very disappointed that they are now parroting the disingenuous arguments of long-time opponents of the war.

The whole article is in the extended entry.

The Wrong Time to Lose Our Nerve
A response to Messrs. Buckley, Will and Fukuyama.

BY PETER WEHNER
Tuesday, April 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

A small group of current and former conservatives--including George Will, William F. Buckley Jr. and Francis Fukuyama--have become harsh critics of the Iraq war. They have declared, or clearly implied, that it is a failure and the president's effort to promote liberty in the Middle East is dead--and dead for a perfectly predictable reason: Iraq, like the Arab Middle East more broadly, lacks the democratic culture that is necessary for freedom to take root. And so for cultural reasons, this effort was flawed from the outset. Or so the argument goes.

Let me address each of these charges in turn.

The war is lost. "Our mission has failed," Mr. Buckley wrote earlier this year. "It seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly," saith the man (Mr. Fukuyama) who once declared "the end of history" and in 1998 signed a letter to congressional leaders stating, "U.S. policy should have as its explicit goal removing Saddam Hussein's regime from power and establishing a peaceful and democratic Iraq in its place."

These critics of the war are demonstrating a peculiar eagerness to declare certain matters settled. We certainly face difficulties in Iraq--but we have seen significant progress as well. In 2005, Iraq's economy continued to recover and grow. Access to clean water and sewage-treatment facilities has increased. The Sunnis are now invested in the political process, which was not previously the case. The Iraqi security forces are far stronger than they were. Our counterinsurgency strategy is more effective than in the past. Cities like Tal Afar, which insurgents once controlled, are now back in the hands of free Iraqis. Al Qaeda's grip has been broken in Mosul and disrupted in Baghdad. We now see fissures between Iraqis and foreign terrorists. And in the aftermath of the mosque bombing in Samarra, we saw the political and religious leadership in Iraq call for an end to violence instead of stoking civil war--and on the whole, the Iraqi security forces performed well. These achievements are authentic grounds for encouragement. And to ignore or dismiss all signs of progress in Iraq, to portray things in what Norman Podhoretz has called "the blackest possible light," disfigures reality.

---

One might hope our own democratic development--which included the Articles of Confederation and a "fiery trial" that cost more than 600,000 American lives--would remind critics that we must sometimes be patient with others. We are engaged in an enterprise of enormous importance: helping a traumatized Arab nation become stable, free and self-governing. Success isn't foreordained--and neither is failure. Justice Holmes said the mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort.

The freedom agenda is dead. The president's freedom agenda is now "a casualty of the war that began three years ago," according to Mr. Will. The Bush Doctrine is in "shambles," Mr. Fukuyama insists. We cannot "impose" democracy on "a country that doesn't want it," he says.

Why is Mr. Fukuyama so sure people in Iraq and elsewhere don't long for democracy? Just last year, on three separate occasions, Iraqis braved bombs and bullets to turn out and vote in greater numbers (percentage-wise) than do American voters, who merely have to brave lines. Does Mr. Fukuyama believe Iraqis prefer subjugation to freedom? Does he think they, unlike he, relish life in a gulag, or the lash of the whip, or the midnight knock of the secret police? Who among us wants a jackboot forever stomping on his face? It is a mistake of a large order to argue that democracy is unwanted in Iraq simply because (a) violence exists three years after the country's liberation--and after more than three decades of almost unimaginable cruelty and terror; and (b) Iraq is not Switzerland.

Beyond that, the critics of the Iraq war have chosen an odd time to criticize the appeal and power of democracy. After all, we are witnessing the swiftest advance of freedom in history. According to Freedom House's director of research, Arch Puddington, "The global picture . . . suggests that 2005 was one of the most successful years for freedom since Freedom House began measuring world freedom in 1972. . . . The 'Freedom in the World 2006' ratings for the Middle East represent the region's best performance in the history of the survey."

Mr. Will says it is time to "de-emphasize talk about Iraq's becoming a democracy that ignites emulative transformation in the Middle East." Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a democracy activist from Egypt, says different. Mr. Ibrahim, who originally opposed the war to liberate Iraq, said it "has unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon's 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on the agenda, even if only to fight against us."

Cultural determinism. The problem with Iraq, Mr. Will said in a Manhattan Institute lecture, is that it "lacks a Washington, a Madison, a [John] Marshall--and it lacks the astonishingly rich social and cultural soil from which such people sprout." There is no "existing democratic culture" that will allow liberty to succeed, he argues. And he scoffs at the assertion by President Bush that it is "cultural condescension" to claim that some peoples, cultures or religions are destined to despotism and unsuited for self-government. The most obvious rebuttal to Mr. Will's first point is that only one nation in history had at its creation a Washington, Madison and Marshall--yet there are 122 democracies in the world right now. So clearly founders of the quality of Washington and Madison are not the necessary condition for freedom to succeed.

A mark of serious conservatism is a regard for the concreteness of human experience. If cultures are as intractable as Mr. Will asserts, and if an existing democratic culture was as indispensable as he insists, we would not have seen democracy take root in Japan after World War II, Southern Europe in the 1970s, Latin America and East Asia in the '80s, and South Africa in the '90s. It was believed by many that these nations' and regions' traditions and cultures--including by turns Confucianism, Catholicism, dictatorships, authoritarianism, apartheid, military juntas and oligarchies--made them incompatible with self-government.

This is not to say that culture is unimportant. It matters a great deal. But so do incentives and creeds and the power of ideas, which can profoundly shape culture. Culture is not mechanically deterministic--and to believe that what is will always be is a mistake of both history and philosophy.

Americans have debated matters of creed and culture before. John C. Calhoun believed slavery was a cultural given that could not be undone in the South. Lincoln knew slavery had deep roots--but he believed that could, and must, change. He set about to do just that. Lincoln believed slavery could be overcome because he believed human beings were constituted in a particular way. In the "enlightened belief" of the Founders, he said, "nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows." Lincoln believed as well that the self-evident truths in the Declaration were the Founders' "majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man."

What has plagued the Arab Middle East is not simply, or even primarily, culture; it is antidemocratic ideologies and oppressive institutions. And the way to counteract pernicious ideologies and oppressive institutions is with better ones. Liberty, and the institutions that support liberty, is a pathway to human flourishing.

---

Critics of the Iraq war have offered no serious strategic alternative to the president's freedom agenda, which is anchored in the belief that democracy and liberal institutions are the best antidote to the pathologies plaguing the Middle East. The region has generated deep resentments and lethal anti-Americanism. In the past, Western nations tolerated oppression for the sake of "stability." But this policy created its own unintended consequences, including attacks that hit America with deadly fury on Sept. 11. President Bush struck back, both militarily and by promoting liberty.

In Iraq, we are witnessing advancements and some heartening achievements. We are also experiencing the hardships and setbacks that accompany epic transitions. There will be others. But there is no other way to fundamentally change the Arab Middle East. Democracy and the accompanying rise of political and civic institutions are the only route to a better world--and because the work is difficult doesn't mean it can be ignored. The cycle has to be broken. The process of democratic reform has begun, and now would be precisely the wrong time to lose our nerve and turn our back on the freedom agenda. It would be a geopolitical disaster and a moral calamity--and President Bush, like President Reagan before him, will persist in his efforts to shape a more hopeful world.

Mr. Wehner is deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Our immigration problem

Herbert E. Meyer has a thought-provoking article up at The American Thinker about why Washington is not addressing the immigration problem that the rest of America perceives. Here's how he starts:

One of the most striking features of the immigration debate now raging in Washington is that none of the Democratic or Republican proposals seem to hold any appeal for ordinary Americans -- which is why this debate is generating so much frustration among voters that no matter which proposal Congress adopts, the issue itself threatens to shatter both parties' bases and dominate the November elections.

Simply put, the debate in Washington isn't about "immigration" at all -- and that's the problem.

I recommend it.

Important message

A message that bears repeating.

Entertainer Bill Cosby urged New Orleans' black population on Saturday to cleanse itself of a culture of crime as it rebuilds from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina last year.

Let's stop fooling ourselves and just speak the truth about this issue. We need to respect America's poor people's dignity and worth (regardless of color) by not giving them handouts -- rather we should just give them a hand up toward self-sufficiency. It is how almost all of our ancestors got their start in this great nation.

Black America

Shelby Steele talks about how blacks in America, in general, got to the unpleasant place they are in now and how they have to stand up and take responsibility.

I'm old enough to remember segregation. Where I grew up, whites had no shame about being racist. They used to come up to me and explain that racism and segregation were God's will. And they were perfectly comfortable with it. Today, there's no white person that could do that. Among whites, things have changed. No one wants white supremacists around. Sure, there are some, but America's transformation is just amazing. It's just amazing.

Now it's time for blacks to make a similar transformation, to grow up, and take responsibility for their own future. If they don't do it, they're not going to have prospects that amount to very much. If they do do it, they'll be able to succeed. We've come to a place in our history where the real onus for change is on black Americans.

He also covers other aspects of the issue. I recommend you read it.

America's heritage

Peggy Noonan does an admirable job of putting into words the idea that Americans are in danger of losing their unique heritage -- because of our flagging patriotism. Here is part of her conclusion:

When you don't love something you lose it. If we do not teach new Americans to love their country, and not for braying or nationalistic reasons but for reasons of honest and thoughtful appreciation, and gratitude, for a history that is something new in the long story of man, then we will begin to lose it.

It is well worth your time to read this.

I've reprinted the rest in the extended entry.

Patriots, Then and Now
With nations as with people, love them or lose them.

Thursday, March 30, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

I had a great experience the other night. I met some of the 114 living recipients of the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award. It was at their annual dinner, held, as it has been the past four years, at the New York Stock Exchange.

I met Nick Oresko. Nick is in his 80s, small, 5-foot-5 or so. Soft white hair, pale-pink skin, thick torso, walks with a cane. Just a nice old guy you'd pass on the street or in the airport without really seeing him. Around his neck was a sky-blue ribbon, and hanging from that ribbon the medal. He let me turn it over. It had his name, his rank, and then "1/23/45. Near Tettington, Germany."

Tettington, Germany. The Battle of the Bulge.

When I got home I looked up his citation on my beloved Internet, where you can Google heroism. U.S. Army Master Sgt. Nicholas Oresko of Company C, 302nd Infantry, 94th Infantry Division was a platoon leader in an attack against strong enemy positions:

Deadly automatic fire from the flanks pinned down his unit. Realizing that a machinegun in a nearby bunker must be eliminated, he swiftly worked ahead alone, braving bullets which struck about him, until close enough to throw a grenade into the German position. He rushed the bunker and, with pointblank rifle fire, killed all the hostile occupants who survived the grenade blast. Another machinegun opened up on him, knocking him down and seriously wounding him in the hip. Refusing to withdraw from the battle, he placed himself at the head of his platoon to continue the assault. As withering machinegun and rifle fire swept the area, he struck out alone in advance of his men to a second bunker. With a grenade, he crippled the dug-in machinegun defending this position and then wiped out the troops manning it with his rifle, completing his second self-imposed, 1-man attack. Although weak from loss of blood, he refused to be evacuated until assured the mission was successfully accomplished. Through quick thinking, indomitable courage, and unswerving devotion to the attack in the face of bitter resistance and while wounded, M /Sgt. Oresko killed 12 Germans, prevented a delay in the assault, and made it possible for Company C to obtain its objective with minimum casualties.

Nick Oresko lives in Tenafly, N.J. If courage were a bright light, Tenafly would glow.

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I met Pat Brady of Sumner, Wash., an Army helicopter medevac pilot in Vietnam who'd repeatedly risked his life to save men he'd never met. And Sammy Davis, a big bluff blond from Flat Rock, Ill., on whom the writer Winston Groom based the Vietnam experiences of a character named Forrest Gump. Sgt. Davis saved men like Forrest, but he also took out a bunch of bad guys. And yes, he was wounded in the same way as Forrest. That scene in the movie where Lyndon Johnson puts the medal around Tom Hanks's neck: that's from the film of LBJ putting the medal on Sammy's neck, only they superimposed Mr. Hanks.

I talked to James Livingston of Mount Pleasant, S.C., a Marine, a warrior in Vietnam who led in battle in spite of bad wounds and worse odds. I told him I was wondering about something. Most of us try to be brave each day in whatever circumstances, which means most of us show ourselves our courage with time. What is it like, I asked, to find out when you're a young man, and in a way that's irrefutable, that you are brave? What does it do to your life when no one, including you, will ever question whether you have guts?

He shook his head. The medal didn't prove courage, he said. "It's not bravery, it's taking responsibility." Each of the recipients, he said, had taken responsibility for the men and the moment at a tense and demanding time. They'd cared for others. They took care of their men.

Other recipients sounded a refrain that lingered like Taps. They felt they'd been awarded their great honor in part in the name of unknown heroes of the armed forces who'd performed spectacular acts of courage but had died along with all the witnesses who would have told the story of what they did. For each of the holders of the Medal of Honor there had been witnesses, survivors who could testify. For some great heroes of engagements large and small, maybe the greatest heroes, no one lived to tell the tale.

And so they felt they wore their medals in part for the ones known only to God.

In a brief film on the recipients that was played at the dinner, Leo Thorsness, an Air Force veteran of Vietnam, said something that lingered. He was asked what, when he performed his great act, he was sacrificing for. He couldn't answer for a few seconds. You could tell he was searching for the right words, the right sentence. Then he said, "I get emotional about it. But we're a free country." He said it with a kind of wonder, and gratitude.

And of course, he said it all.

---

What this all got me thinking about, the next day, was . . . immigration. I know that seems a lurch, but there's a part of the debate that isn't sufficiently noted. There are a variety of things driving American anxiety about illegal immigration and we all know them--economic arguments, the danger of porous borders in the age of terrorism, with anyone able to come in.

But there's another thing. And it's not fear about "them." It's anxiety about us.

It's the broad public knowledge, or intuition, in America, that we are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically. And if you don't do that, you'll lose it all.

We used to do it. We loved our country with full-throated love, we had no ambivalence. We had pride and appreciation. We were a free country. We communicated our pride and delight in this in a million ways--in our schools, our movies, our popular songs, our newspapers. It was just there, in the air. Immigrants breathed it in. That's how the last great wave of immigrants, the European wave of 1880-1920, was turned into a great wave of Americans.

We are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically now. We are assimilating them culturally. Within a generation their children speak Valley Girl on cell phones. "So I'm like 'no," and he's all 'yeah,' and I'm like, 'In your dreams.' " Whether their parents are from Trinidad, Bosnia, Lebanon or Chile, their children, once Americans, know the same music, the same references, watch the same shows. And to a degree and in a way it will hold them together. But not forever and not in a crunch.

So far we are assimilating our immigrants economically, too. They come here and work. Good.

But we are not communicating love of country. We are not giving them the great legend of our country. We are losing that great legend.

What is the legend, the myth? That God made this a special place. That they're joining something special. That the streets are paved with more than gold--they're paved with the greatest thoughts man ever had, the greatest decisions he ever made, about how to live. We have free thought, free speech, freedom of worship. Look at the literature of the Republic: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist papers. Look at the great rich history, the courage and sacrifice, the house-raisings, the stubbornness. The Puritans, the Indians, the City on a Hill.

The genius cluster--Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, Franklin, all the rest--that came along at the exact same moment to lead us. And then Washington, a great man in the greatest way, not in unearned gifts well used (i.e., a high IQ followed by high attainment) but in character, in moral nature effortfully developed. How did that happen? How did we get so lucky? (I once asked a great historian if he had thoughts on this, and he nodded. He said he had come to believe it was "providential.")

We fought a war to free slaves. We sent millions of white men to battle and destroyed a portion of our nation to free millions of black men. What kind of nation does this? We went to Europe, fought, died and won, and then taxed ourselves to save our enemies with the Marshall Plan. What kind of nation does this? Soviet communism stalked the world and we were the ones who steeled ourselves and taxed ourselves to stop it. Again: What kind of nation does this?

Only a very great one. Maybe the greatest of all.

Do we teach our immigrants that this is what they're joining? That this is the tradition they will now continue, and uphold?

Do we, today, act as if this is such a special place? No, not always, not even often. American exceptionalism is so yesterday. We don't want to be impolite. We don't want to offend. We don't want to seem narrow. In the age of globalism, honest patriotism seems like a faux pas.

And yet what is true of people is probably true of nations: if you don't have a well-grounded respect for yourself, you won't long sustain a well-grounded respect for others.

---

Because we do not communicate to our immigrants, legal and illegal, that they have joined something special, some of them, understandably, get the impression they've joined not a great enterprise but a big box store. A big box store on the highway where you can get anything cheap. It's a good place. But it has no legends, no meaning, and it imparts no spirit.

Who is at fault? Those of us who let the myth die, or let it change, or refused to let it be told. The politically correct nitwit teaching the seventh-grade history class who decides the impressionable young minds before him need to be informed, as their first serious history lesson, that the Founders were hypocrites, the Bill of Rights nothing new and imperfect in any case, that the Indians were victims of genocide, that Lincoln was a clinically depressed homosexual who compensated for the storms within by creating storms without . . .

You can turn any history into mud. You can turn great men and women into mud too, if you want to.

And it's not just the nitwits, wherever they are, in the schools, the academy, the media, though they're all harmful enough. It's also the people who mean to be honestly and legitimately critical, to provide a new look at the old text. They're not noticing that the old text--the legend, the myth--isn't being taught anymore. Only the commentary is. But if all the commentary is doubting and critical, how will our kids know what to love and revere? How will they know how to balance criticism if they've never heard the positive side of the argument?

Those who teach, and who think for a living about American history, need to be told: Keep the text, teach the text, and only then, if you must, deconstruct the text.

When you don't love something you lose it. If we do not teach new Americans to love their country, and not for braying or nationalistic reasons but for reasons of honest and thoughtful appreciation, and gratitude, for a history that is something new in the long story of man, then we will begin to lose it. That Medal of Honor winner, Leo Thorsness, who couldn't quite find the words--he only found it hard to put everything into words because he knew the story, the legend, and knew it so well. Only then do you become "emotional about it." Only then are you truly American.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Well thought out and well stated.

Jihadi alternatives, parts 2 and 3

Part 2 of Prospects of Terror: An Inquiry into Jihadi Alternatives is here.

Part 3 of Prospects of Terror: An Inquiry into Jihadi Alternatives is here.

And if you missed my earlier post, part 1 of Prospects of Terror: An Inquiry into Jihadi Alternatives can be found here.

All are long, but highly recommended reading.

The consequences of defeat

An op-ed at OpinionJournal discusses what happens if we lose in Iraq.

First of all, we are not now losing:

More fundamentally, the coalition remains solidly allied with the majority of Iraqis who want neither Saddam's Hussein's return nor the country's descent into a Taliban-like hellhole. There is no widespread agitation for U.S. troops to depart, and if anything the Iraqi fear is that we'll leave too soon.

I've seen too many first hand accounts and cogent analyses of the progress being made there to think otherwise. The column, however, is about what happens if we Americans lose our resolve and leave Iraq prematurely.

I've reprinted the whole article in the extended entry.

What if We Lose?
The consequences of U.S. defeat in Iraq.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

The third anniversary of U.S. military action to liberate Iraq has brought with it a relentless stream of media and political pessimism that is unwarranted by the facts and threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophesy if it goes unchallenged.

Yes, sectarian tensions are running high and the politicians of Iraq's newly elected parliament are taking a long time forming a government. But the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra several weeks back has not provoked the spiral into "civil war" that so many keep predicting. U.S. casualties are down over the past month, in part because Iraqi security forces are performing better all the time.

More fundamentally, the coalition remains solidly allied with the majority of Iraqis who want neither Saddam's Hussein's return nor the country's descent into a Taliban-like hellhole. There is no widespread agitation for U.S. troops to depart, and if anything the Iraqi fear is that we'll leave too soon.

Yet there's no denying the polls showing that most Americans are increasingly weary of the daily news of car bombs and Iraqi squabbling and are wishing it would all just go away. Their pessimism is fed by elites who should know better but can't restrain their domestic political calculations long enough to consider the damage that would accompany U.S. failure. A conventional military defeat is inconceivable in Iraq, but a premature U.S. withdrawal is becoming all too possible.

---

With that in mind, it's worth thinking through what would happen if the U.S. does fail in Iraq. By fail, we mean cut and run before giving Iraqis the time and support to establish a stable, democratic government that can stand on its own. Beyond almost certain chaos in Iraq, here are some other likely consequences:

• The U.S. would lose all credibility on weapons proliferation. One doesn't have to be a dreamy-eyed optimist about democracy to recognize that toppling Saddam Hussein was a milestone in slowing the spread of WMD. Watching the Saddam example, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi decided he didn't want to be next. Gadhafi's "voluntary" disarmament in turn helped uncover the nuclear network run by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan and Iran's two decades of deception.

Now Iran is dangerously close to acquiring nuclear weapons, a prospect that might yet be headed off by the use or threat of force. But if the U.S. retreats from Iraq, Iran's mullahs will know that we have no stomach to confront them and coercive diplomacy will have no credibility. An Iranian bomb, in turn, would inspire nuclear efforts in other Mideast countries and around the world.

• Broader Mideast instability. No one should underestimate America's deterrent effect in that unstable region, a benefit that would vanish if we left Iraq precipitously. Iran would feel free to begin unfettered meddling in southern Iraq with the aim of helping young radicals like Moqtada al-Sadr overwhelm moderate clerics like the Grand Ayatollah Sistani.

Syria would feel free to return to its predations in Lebanon and to unleash Hezbollah on Israel. Even allies like Turkey might feel compelled to take unilateral, albeit counterproductive steps, such as intervening in northern Iraq to protect their interests. Every country in the Middle East would make its own new calculation of how much it could afford to support U.S. interests. Some would make their own private deals with al Qaeda, or at a minimum stop aiding us in our pursuit of Islamists.

• We would lose all credibility with Muslim reformers. The Mideast is now undergoing a political evolution in which the clear majority, even if skeptical of U.S. motives, agrees with the goal of more democracy and accountable government. They have watched as millions of Iraqis have literally risked their lives to vote and otherwise support the project. Having seen those Iraqis later betrayed, other would-be reformers would not gamble their futures on American support. Nothing could be worse in the battle for Muslim "hearts and minds" than to betray our most natural allies.

• We would invite more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Osama bin Laden said many times that he saw the weak U.S. response to Somalia and the Khobar Towers and USS Cole bombings as evidence that we lacked the will for a long fight. The forceful response after 9/11 taught al Qaeda otherwise, but a retreat in Iraq would revive that reputation for American weakness. While Western liberals may deny any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, bin Laden and the rest of the Arab world see it clearly and would advertise a U.S. withdrawal as his victory. Far from leaving us alone, bin Laden would be more emboldened to strike the U.S. homeland with a goal of driving the U.S. entirely out of the Mideast.

We could go on, but our point is that far more is at stake in Iraq than President Bush's approval rating or the influence of this or that foreign-policy faction. U.S. credibility and safety are at risk in the most direct way imaginable, far more than they were in Vietnam. In that fight, we could establish a new anti-Communist perimeter elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The poison of radical Islam will spread far and wide across borders if it can make even a plausible claim to being on the ascendancy, and nothing would show that more than the retreat of America from Iraq.

---

We still believe victory in Iraq is possible, indeed likely, notwithstanding its costs and difficulties. But the desire among so many of our political elites to repudiate Mr. Bush and his foreign policy is creating a dangerous public pessimism that could yet lead to defeat--a defeat whose price would be paid by all Americans, and for years to come.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

The consequences of cutting and running from Iraq would be paid in blood and destruction and fear inflicted on our children, and most likely their children, as well.

Do you want to support that happening?

Neither do I.

Press on in Iraq

Christopher Hitchins has a good column up at OpinionJournal about Iraq being the most important battlefield in our struggle against islamofascist organizations like al-Qaeda.

I've reprinted the entire article in the extended entry.

The Stone Face of Zarqawi
Iraq is no "distraction" from al Qaeda.

BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Tuesday, March 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

In February 2004, our Kurdish comrades in northern Iraq intercepted a courier who was bearing a long message from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to his religious guru Osama bin Laden. The letter contained a deranged analysis of the motives of the coalition intervention ("to create the State of Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates" and "accelerate the emergence of the Messiah"), but also a lethally ingenious scheme to combat it. After a lengthy and hate-filled diatribe against what he considers the vile heresy of Shiism, Zarqawi wrote of Iraq's largest confessional group that: "These in our opinion are the key to change. I mean that targeting and hitting them in their religious, political and military depth will provoke them to show the Sunnis their rabies . . . and bare the teeth of the hidden rancor working in their breasts. If we succeed in dragging them into the arena of sectarian war, it will become possible to awaken the inattentive Sunnis as they feel imminent danger."

Some of us wrote about this at the time, to warn of the sheer evil that was about to be unleashed. Knowing that their own position was a tenuous one (a fact fully admitted by Zarqawi in his report) the cadres of "al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" understood that their main chance was the deliberate stoking of a civil war. And, now that this threat has become more imminent and menacing, it is somehow blamed on the Bush administration. "Civil war" has replaced "the insurgency" as the proof that the war is "unwinnable." But in plain truth, the "civil war" is and always was the chief tactic of the "insurgency."

---

Since February 2004, there have been numberless attacks on Shiite religious processions and precincts. Somewhat more insulting to Islam (one might think) than a caricature in Copenhagen, these desecrations did not immediately produce the desired effect. Grand Ayatollah Sistani even stated that, if he himself fell victim, he forgave his murderers in advance and forbade retaliation in his name. This extraordinary forbearance meant that many Shiites--and Sunnis, too--refused to play Zarqawi's game. But the grim fact is, as we know from Cyprus and Bosnia and Lebanon and India, that a handful of determined psychopaths can erode in a year the sort of intercommunal fraternity that has taken centuries to evolve. If you keep pressing on the nerve of tribalism and sectarianism, you will eventually get a response. And then came the near-incredible barbarism in Samarra, and the laying waste of the golden dome.

It is not merely civil strife that is partly innate in the very make-up of Iraq. There could be an even worse war, of the sort that Thomas Hobbes pictured: a "war of all against all" in which localized gangs and mafias would become rulers of their own stretch of turf. This is what happened in Lebanon after the American withdrawal: The distinctions between Maronite and Druze and Palestinian and Shiite became blurred by a descent into minor warlordism. In Iraq, things are even more fissile. Even the "insurgents" are fighting among themselves, with local elements taking aim at imported riffraff and vice-versa. Saddam's vicious tactic, of emptying the jails on the eve of the intervention and freeing his natural constituency of thugs and bandits and rapists, was exactly designed to exacerbate an already unstable situation and make the implicit case for one-man "law and order." There is strong disagreement among and between the Shiites and the Sunnis, and between them and the Kurds, only the latter having taken steps to resolve their own internal party and regional quarrels.

America's mistake in Lebanon was first to intervene in a way that placed us on one minority side--that of the Maronites and their Israeli patrons--and then to scuttle and give Hobbes his mandate for the next 10 years. At least it can be said for the present mission in Iraq that it proposes the only alternative to civil war, dictatorship, partition or some toxic combination of all three. Absent federal democracy and power-sharing, there will not just be anarchy and fragmentation and thus a moral victory for jihadism, but opportunist interventions from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. (That vortex, by the way, is what was waiting to engulf Iraq if the coalition had not intervened, and would have necessitated an intervention later but under even worse conditions.) There are signs that many Iraqi factions do appreciate the danger of this, even if some of them have come to the realization somewhat late. The willingness of the Kurdish leadership in particular, to sacrifice for a country that was gassing its people until quite recently, is beyond praise.

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Everybody now has their own scenario for the war that should have been fought three years ago. The important revelations in "Cobra II," by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, about the underestimated reserve strength of the Fedayeen Saddam, give us an excellent picture of what the successor regime to the Baath Party was shaping up to be: an Islamized para-state militia ruling by means of vicious divide-and-rule as between the country's peoples. No responsible American government could possibly have allowed such a contingency to become more likely. We would then have had to intervene in a ruined rogue jihadist-hosting state that was already in a Beirut-like nightmare.

I could not help noticing, when the secret prisons of the Shiite-run "Interior Ministry" were exposed a few weeks ago, that all those wishing to complain ran straight to the nearest American base, from which help was available. For the moment, the coalition forces act as the militia for the majority of Iraqis--the inked-fingered Iraqis--who have no militia of their own. Honorable as this role may be, it is not enough in the long run. In Iraq we have made some good friends and some very, very bad enemies. (How can anyone, looking down the gun-barrel into the stone face of Zarqawi, say that fighting him is a "distraction" from fighting al Qaeda?) Over the medium term, if our apparent domestic demoralization continues, the options could come down to two. First, we might use our latent power and threaten to withdraw, implicitly asking Iraqis and their neighbors if that is really what they want, and concentrating their minds. This still runs the risk of allowing the diseased spokesmen of al Qaeda to claim victory.

Second, we can demand to know, of the wider international community, if it could afford to view an imploded Iraq as a spectator. Three years ago, the smug answer to that, from most U.N. members, was "yes." This is not an irresponsibility that we can afford, either morally or practically, and even if our intervention was much too little and way too late, it has kindled in many Arab and Kurdish minds an idea of a different future. There is a war within the war, as there always is when a serious struggle is under way, but justice and necessity still combine to say that the task cannot be given up.

Mr. Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair, is the author of "A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq" (Penguin, 2003).

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

This resonates. I mean to consider it carefully.

Jihadi alternatives

J.R. Dunn, over at the American Thinker has an excellent essay on grand strategy, strategy, goals, and methods of both the U.S. and the jihadists in the conflict in Iraq. Here's an excerpt:

A political solution is necessary to secure the military victories already won. This strategy will require patience, understanding, and willingness to overcome setbacks. Things are going to happen that we do not like. There will be disappointments and failures. These are not products of policy, but aspects of the human condition. None of them will be any reason to turn back or abandon the effort. Errors can corrected, failures can be overcome. And it should never be forgotten that, in the words of Churchill, the ongoing liberation of the Middle East remains "one of the great unsordid acts of history."

This is a well thought out, in depth analysis of what has worked, what has failed, and what still needs to be done in the struggle for supremacy between Western democracies and Islamofascists.

It is a long article (and it's only part 1 of 3!), but it is well worth your time. Grab a cup of coffee and settle down for a good read.

Thank you

President Remarks on Third Anniversary of Beginning of Iraq Liberation.

"So, on this third anniversary, the beginning of the liberation of Iraq, I think all Americans should offer thanks to the men and women who wear the uniform, and their families who support them. "

President George W. Bush, 19 March 2006

Thank you all for your service. There are many, many of us here in America and around the world who truly appreciate the sacrifices that our U.S. troops, and their families, are making on our behalf.

God bless you and keep you.

Sunday talk show round-up

Brian Phillips has a good round-up of Sunday talk shows at Townhall.

It includes General George Casey, Commander of Forces in Iraq, Senator Dick Durbin, Vice-President Cheney, Congressman John Murtha, and others. Everyone's talking about Iraq.

It makes for interesting reading.

A candid peek at illegal immigration

Rich Tucker, over at Townhall has a short column about illegal immigration. Here's an excerpt:

But in the long-term supply side economics always wins out. Undocumented workers can make $500 a week or more tax-free in the U.S., and that's more than they can make at home in a month. Ironically, even if the wall worked and fewer illegals were coming across, those already here would be able to earn even more.

This article supports my opinion that illegal immigration is much more complex than most pundits have acknowledged.

De-feminised feminism?

Noel Stanger has an interesting op-ed at Townhall about what Feminism has become. And she asks some good questions:

When did Feminism become ridiculous (e.g. coming up with ways to make the English language more female-friendly by reworking words like "history" into "herstory")? When did feminists start defining true womanhood as anti-male, anti-family, and pro-sex? When did it stop being a noble fight to be heard and start becoming a contest in vulgarity? When did feminists start claiming to represent all women but stop listening to most of them?

Recommended.

OIF in retrospect

Military historian, John B. Dwyer, looks back on the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He focuses on its origins and issues, but he ends up talking about Americans:

The center of gravity, the strategic focus, for Al Qaeda is the will, the staying power, of the American people. They've made no secret of their goal to weaken and destroy it, to force President Bush to abandon Iraq. We cannot, we should not, we must not allow this to happen. We are the Americans who fought and died to gain our own independence. We are the Americans who waged a bloody Civil War to preserve our national unity. We are the Americans who defeated fascism and then totalitarianism through WW2 and the Cold War. Therefore, on this third anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom, let us triple our determination, our fortitude, and our resolve until victory in Iraq is achieved.

So, do we still have the cajones to do what is necessary to win this war?

Recommended.

A letter to the President

Peggy Noonan, over at OpinionJournal has some questions for Prsident Bush regarding his spending habits:

Mr. President:

Did you ever hold conservative notions and assumptions on the issue of spending? If so, did you abandon them after the trauma of 9/11? For what reasons, exactly? Did you intend to revert to conservative thinking on spending at some point? Do you still?

Were you always a liberal on spending? Were you, or are you, frankly baffled that conservatives assumed you were a conservative on spending? Did you feel they misunderstood you? Did you allow or encourage them to misunderstand you?

What are the implications for our country if spending levels continue to grow at their current pace?

What are the implications for the Republican party if it continues to cede one of the pillars on which it stood?

Did compassionate conservatism always mean big spending?

Good questions.

Poverty

Author Burt Prelutsky, at Townhall does not mince words about poverty in America. Here's an excerpt:

Poverty in this country isn't a condition, it's an industry. Not only are there charitable organizations staffed by those to whom it's a lifetime career, but, without the terminally impoverished, many politicians would have nothing to talk about. Without those perennial "victims," one of the two parties would have gone the way of the Whigs long before now.

The truth is, there is nothing sacred about being poor. In a land with as much opportunity as America offers, it's virtually impossible for a person of average intelligence and even a modicum of ambition, to remain poverty-stricken.

Recommended.

Reporting of good news

Another old story -- this one in late January -- but still something in my draft archive that I failed to post.

More than 2 million new jobs were created in 2005, but the broadcast networks instead emphasized such negatives as corporate layoffs and outsourcing, according to a study released Wednesday by a group dedicated to challenging misconceptions in the media about free enterprise.

Recommended.

A wrong approach to immigration

OpinionJournal published an op-ed on Saturday about current legislative moves regarding immigration. Mostly they are wrong moves, but there is some hope for a viable, comprehensive, immigation bill.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

All Cops, No Economics
The House's restrictionist bill would create more illegal immigrants.

Saturday, March 11, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

The immigration debate is finally picking up some Beltway steam, which is long overdue. The problem is that it's moving in a direction that could do real damage to the economy, not to mention to the Republican Party.

Any sensible immigration reform would focus not just on keeping illegals out of the country, but also on why they're coming and how to get the estimated 11 million illegals already here out of the shadows. Yet last year the House whooped through a bill that expands enforcement and nothing else.

We doubt voters elected a Republican Congress to build walls along the Rio Grande and Canada and punish businesses for hiring willing workers. But since Representative James Sensenbrenner and other House GOP leaders have ignored President Bush's request for comprehensive reform, soberer types in the Senate will have to keep Republican restrictionists from running the party over a cliff.

---

Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter is cobbling together a bill pulled from measures previously introduced by John McCain, John Cornyn and others. And while Mr. Specter's current proposal meets the President's requirement for broader reform, it still ignores some basic economic realities and thus won't solve the problem.

For starters, the Senator's guest-worker program would require participants to leave the U.S. after six years and remain in their home country for an entire year before returning to the U.S. That kind of forced turnover could mean huge labor disruptions for U.S. businesses, and the likely result would be more illegal aliens, as some workers exit the program and enter the black market rather than returning home.

This is the same mistake the restrictionists made in 1986, when President Reagan signed a bill legalizing three million workers but didn't create a mechanism--dispensing enough green cards--for the economy to get the workers it needed in the future. Some 500,000 people continue to enter the U.S. illegally every year, and the strong economy and low jobless rate (4.8%) are evidence that these undocumented workers aren't "stealing" jobs but simply filling them.

The U.S. dispenses only about 10,000 green cards annually for unskilled workers. And by not providing enough paths to permanent residency for those who want to stay, we're setting ourselves up for another large illegal population down the road. Under current law, foreign workers in high-tech fields can extend their stay if an employer sponsors them for a green card. Why should the same rules that apply to Intel's engineers not also apply to Marriott's chambermaids and California's farm hands?

Like the House bill, Mr. Specter's proposal also includes over-the-top security measures like expanding the definition of "alien smuggling" to include church soup-kitchen operators and people who take in relatives who are here illegally. Mr. Specter would also create an army of federal agents and prosecutors to "investigate" immigration violations. But it makes little sense to start raiding businesses and driving foreigners further underground without first expanding the legal ways for the economy to get the workers it needs.

At least Mr. Specter isn't proposing to deport illegals already here en masse, which isn't practical in any case. But he still wants to create an 11 million-strong subclass of noncitizens who would be allowed to continue working in the U.S. but have little chance of ever receiving a green card. People in this new status would be subject to deportation if they're out of work for more than 45 days, which lays the foundation for all manner of exploitation. Workers need mobility and the freedom to quit unsatisfactory jobs.

In theory, Mr. Specter's proposal puts these current illegal residents on course for a possible green card. But the reality is that they would be placed at the end of a very long queue that already contains millions of people, and very few would ever see normal status in their lifetime because the annual caps make for a very slow-moving line.

As public policy, it's also hard to see the benefit of keeping 11 million largely Latino residents in permanent "conditional" status instead of allowing (and encouraging) them to become full-fledged members of American society. Relegating so many people to second-tier status sends precisely the wrong message about assimilating to U.S. norms, and which political party sends that message won't be lost on Hispanic voters.

---

The good news is that there's still time for Mr. Specter to cherry-pick better ideas from his Senate colleagues. A good bipartisan guest-worker plan introduced by Senators McCain and Ted Kennedy would allow employers to sponsor workers for green cards. As for illegals already here, Messrs. McCain and Kennedy would allow them to earn green cards and perhaps even citizenship over a multiyear period if they pay a fine, meet certain work requirements and learn English.

None of this will appease the small but vocal "no amnesty" crowd, but restrictionists put forth no solutions other than greater militarization of the border and harassment of employers, which we know from experience won't work alone. If the real goal of immigration reform is to have people "obey the rules," let's make sure the rules are sensible.

That might be too tall an order for the current Congress, which is making up policy based on the latest polls. Mr. Bush is right to insist on comprehensive reform, and we hope he backs up his rhetoric with a veto if it comes to that. He'll be doing the economy, and his own party, a big favor.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Myth-ing competence

Rick Moran, who blogs at Right Wing Nuthouse has a provocative opinion piece up at the American Thinker wherein he asserts that the Bush administration is being wrongly accused of incompetence. He serves up some history and covers several contemporary issues, including Iraq:

Despite all the provocations by the insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists, Iraqis from all walks of life, all sects, and all parts of the country are working together to keep civil war from happening. And while it is still an open question whether or not civil war can be avoided, this unity among so many Iraqis is a direct result of administration efforts to promote democracy. The people of Iraq have been given a stake in their own future by the government of the United States.

Whether they can take advantage of this is still open to question. But to call the policy a "failure" at this point is wrong. The Iraqis may be taking two steps forward and one back in their march to the future. But the fact is the only way for our policy to fail is if we pick up and go home. In this, both administration critics and al Qaeda terrorists have something in common.

I recommend this one -- no matter which side of the fence you stand on.

Profs need to go back to school

George Will does a good job of putting law professors in their place. Then again, Chief Justice John Roberts did a pretty good job of that, himself.

Recommended.

True Survivor

A tearful, joyous surprise for the survivor of a Nazi concentration camp.

This is a must-read.

[Hat tip to Sarah over at trying to grok.]

Arab perceptions

DJ Drummond, over at Polipundit has an excellent discussion about what some Arabs are saying about terrorism and the U.S.. Here's an exceprt:

I asked my Arab and Muslim acquaintances about the attitude which seems prominent among them, to allow the more radical and militant voices to speak for the whole and give the false impression, if it is indeed false, that Islam and the Arab world hate the West and America in particular, and wish to wage war against us in the name of their religion. As I expected, the general reaction to such a claim was one of angry denial in various degrees, though finding out why there is no effective push-back to the Jihadists is a long and murky process.

Recommended.

[Hat tip to Jack Kelly at Irish Pennants.]

The fiction of moral relativism

Selwyn Duke, at The American Thinker has posted a fascinating essay about moral equivalence.

If anything renders people sheep among wolves, it's when they convince themselves that every creature is a sheep. We live in an age in which one of the few sins is giving offense, one of the only virtues is a tendentious tolerance and one of the top priorities is getting along. In light of this, it's not surprising that a steadfast refusal to draw moral distinctions is all the rage.

It will make you think. Recommended.

Katrina's myth-ing facts

Noel Sheppard, an economist, business owner, and writer, has an op-ed up at The American Thinker that discusses seven myths about Hurricane Katrina that were perpetuated by, but never subsequently dispelled by, the news media. He uses Popular Mechanics magazine as his resource. Here's an excerpt:

In its March issue, PM took on virtually all of the media myths and misnomers that were so drilled into the citizenry by press representatives that many have become part of the public psyche. Thankfully, its authors made it clear right in the first paragraph that they planned on pulling no punches:

“In the months since the storm, many of the first impressions conveyed by the media have turned out to be mistaken.�

Our national media should be ashamed at their pathetic reporting about Katrina.

It's an interesting read . . .

Bush as a liberal

Ed Morrissey, over at the Captain's Quarters has a post up about the similarities of U.S. foreign policies under Bush 43 and Wilson. He also asserts, correctly, that in this case, President Bush is a liberal:

This is true liberalism, not the leftist/socialist tripe that hijacked its name -- the effort to spread liberty and individual freedom as a forward strategy against the evils that oppression breeds.

Well worth reading.

U.S. port security

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, over at the Counterterrorism Blog has posted a well-balanced analysis of the security concerns revolving around DP World's management of six U.S. ports. He cuts through the hysteria surrounding the issue and discusses the pros and cons. Here's an excerpt:

First of all, after this sale, DP World won't suddenly become our only recourse for port security. There is in fact a layered set of security checks that operates independent of DP World. These checks include the following:

-- A 24-hour Manifest Rule that requires sea carriers to provide U.S. Customs with detailed descriptions of the contents of containers bound for the U.S. a full 24 hours before the container is loaded onto a vessel. This allows U.S. Customs officers to assess risks and scan the containers in overseas ports before they enter the U.S.

-- The Coast Guard remains responsible for port security regardless of who manages the ports, while Customs and Border Protection maintains responsibility for container and cargo security.

-- As containers enter the U.S., officers on the ground screen the containers using imaging and radiation detection technology.

These security procedures will not change even if DP World takes over port operations. Whether or not one believes that these security procedures are sufficient, the fact remains that we won't be left any worse off.

Recommended reading.

Terrorism on our home turf

This post should impress upon us all that the terrorist threat is very real, and that it is here in the U.S.

Now will someone please explain to me again why we should be upset by the NSA monitoring communications of suspected terrorists?

Fatwa Me!

If you consider yourself an infidel, or just someone who would like to stand up for freedom of speech, then visit Fatwa Me!, and get you name on the list . . .

[Hat tip to Phoenix who, by the way, is a new mother and a classy lady.]

Nobel Peace Prize

Can you believe that John Bolton was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize?

CNSNews.com) - John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is one of two Americans who have been nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Last year, Democrats and a few Republicans refused to confirm Bolton to the U.N. post, forcing President Bush to resort to a recess appointment.

Bolton and Kenneth R. Timmerman were formally nominated by Sweden's former deputy prime minister Per Ahlmark, for playing a major role in exposing Iran's secret plans to develop nuclear weapons.

I believe he has earned it, though I'm rather surprised that he was actually nominated . . .

Honoring Coretta Scott King

Unlike many of the politicians and civil rights activists who spoke at Ms. King's funeral Tuesday, President Bush truly and reverently honored her.

I've reprinted his speech in the extended entry.

To the King Family, distinguished guests and fellow citizens. We gather in God's house, in God's presence, to honor God's servant, Coretta Scott King. Her journey was long, and only briefly with a hand to hold. But now she leans on everlasting arms. I've come today to offer the sympathy of our entire nation at the passing of a woman who worked to make our nation whole.

Americans knew her husband only as a young man. We knew Mrs. King in all the seasons of her life -- and there was grace and beauty in every season. As a great movement of history took shape, her dignity was a daily rebuke to the pettiness and cruelty of segregation. When she wore a veil at 40 years old, her dignity revealed the deepest trust in God and His purposes. In decades of prominence, her dignity drew others to the unfinished work of justice. In all her years, Coretta Scott King showed that a person of conviction and strength could also be a beautiful soul. This kind and gentle woman became one of the most admired Americans of our time. She is rightly mourned, and she is deeply missed.

Some here today knew her as a girl, and saw something very special long before a young preacher proposed. She once said, "Before I was a King, I was a Scott." And the Scotts were strong, and righteous, and brave in the face of wrong. Coretta eventually took on the duties of a pastor's wife, and a calling that reached far beyond the doors of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

In that calling, Dr. King's family was subjected to vicious words, threatening calls in the night, and a bombing at their house. Coretta had every right to count the cost, and step back from the struggle. But she decided that her children needed more than a safe home -- they needed an America that upheld their equality, and wrote their rights into law. (Applause.) And because this young mother and father were not intimidated, millions of children they would never meet are now living in a better, more welcoming country. (Applause.)

In the critical hours of the civil rights movement, there were always men and women of conscience at the heart of the drama. They knew that old hatreds ran deep. They knew that nonviolence might be answered with violence. They knew that much established authority was against them. Yet they also knew that sheriffs and mayors and governors were not ultimately in control of events; that a greater authority was interested, and very much in charge. (Applause.)

The God of Moses was not neutral about their captivity. The God of Isaiah and the prophets was still impatient with injustice. And they knew that the Son of God would never leave them or forsake them.

But some had to leave before their time -- and Dr. King left behind a grieving widow and little children. Rarely has so much been asked of a pastor's wife, and rarely has so much been taken away. Years later, Mrs. King recalled, "I would wake up in the morning, have my cry, then go in to them. The children saw me going forward." Martin Luther King, Jr. had preached that unmerited suffering could have redemptive power.

Little did he know that this great truth would be proven in the life of the person he loved the most. Others could cause her sorrow, but no one could make her bitter. By going forward with a strong and forgiving heart, Coretta Scott King not only secured her husband's legacy, she built her own. (Applause.) Having loved a leader, she became a leader. And when she spoke, America listened closely, because her voice carried the wisdom and goodness of a life well lived.

In that life, Coretta Scott King knew danger. She knew injustice. She knew sudden and terrible grief. She also knew that her Redeemer lives. She trusted in the name above every name. And today we trust that our sister Coretta is on the other shore -- at peace, at rest, at home. (Applause.) May God bless you, and may God bless our country. (Applause.)

'One nation, under God . . .'

Michael Novak and Ashley Morrow, over at First Things, have done an interesting bit of research about America, its states, and God. They start with this:

The first amendment prohibited the federal government from making any laws "respecting" the establishment of religion (either for it or against it). Its intent was not to derogate from religion, but to signal its intense importance to the American people. Over the next 175 years or so, as new states entered the Union, the people of all but one of the states (Oregon) took care to give their belief in God prominence of place in the preambles of their state constitutions. Many of the preambles seem almost like opening prayers set before the text of the constitution of a free republic. They "invoke," "recall," "acknowledge with gratitude," and express "reverence." The reason for this appears to be that most Americans believe that liberty is a gift of God, and therefore that their opportunity to erect a republic is also a gift of God. Here is how the state constitutions read . . .

Go read the rest.

[Hat tip to the Anchoress.]

An excellent commentary . . .

. . . on whether or not the New York Times violated the Espionage Act when it published the story of the NSA 'wiretaps' of suspected foreign Al-Qaeda operatives.

A long read, but very compelling. Recommended.

The case for a strong presidency

James Taranto interviews Vice President Dick Cheney about the need, in these times, for a strong presidency. They also talk about FISA, the NSA surveillance program, 9/11, and Iraq.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

A Strong Executive
Does Watergate's legacy hinder the war on terror?

BY JAMES TARANTO
Saturday, January 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

WASHINGTON--In the vice president's office in the West Wing of the White House hang portraits of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson--or "No. 1 and No. 2," as the current occupant of the office calls them. No. 46, Richard B. Cheney, sat at his desk Tuesday morning for an interview with Paul Gigot, editor of this page, and me.

A day earlier, the vice president had attended a farewell dinner for Alan Greenspan, who steps down next week after more than 18 years at the Federal Reserve. Our conversation began with Mr. Cheney reminiscing about when, as a 30-year-old appointee in the Nixon administration, he first met Mr. Greenspan, then an economist consulting for the government. "I was the assistant director of the Cost of Living Council in charge of operations"--that is, of administering wage and price controls. "I had about 3,000 IRS agents trying to enforce those damn things," Mr. Cheney recalls with rueful humor. "I don't put [it] on my résumé."

Not that Mr. Cheney, who turns 65 on Monday, has any need to pad his résumé. In 1975 he became President Ford's chief of staff, at 34 the youngest man ever to hold that job. Three years later he ran successfully for Wyoming's House seat. He served just over a decade in Congress, and in January 1989 he became minority whip, the No. 2 Republican. Two months later, George H.W. Bush tapped him as defense secretary. After spending the Clinton years in the private sector, Mr. Cheney returned to government with the help of another George Bush.

This career path gives Mr. Cheney a unique perspective on today's debate over executive vs. legislative power. He formed his views on the subject during the Ford administration, a time when presidential authority was ebbing. "In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate . . . there was a concerted effort to place limits and restrictions on presidential authority--everything from the War Powers Act to the Hughes-Ryan Act on intelligence to stripping the president of his ability to impound funds--a series of decisions that were aimed at the time at trying to avoid a repeat of things like Vietnam or . . . Watergate.

"I thought they were misguided then, and have believed that given the world that we live in, that the president needs to have unimpaired executive authority. It doesn't mean, obviously, that there shouldn't be restraints. There clearly are with respect to the Constitution, and he's bound by those, as he should be. . . But I do think the pendulum from time to time throughout history has swung from side to side--Congress was pre-eminent, or the executive was pre-eminent--and as I say, I believe in this day and age it's important that we have a strong presidency."

That lesson was reinforced for then-Rep. Cheney in 1987, when he was the ranking Republican on the congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal. Democrats accused President Reagan of violating the Boland amendment, intended to prevent aid from reaching Nicaragua's anticommunist guerrillas. "If you go back and look at the minority views that were filed with the Iran-Contra report, you'll see a strong statement about the president's prerogatives and responsibilities in the foreign policy/national security area in particular."

---

Today some argue that the Bush administration finds itself in a roughly analogous position. Critics of the National Security Agency's surveillance of terrorists claim that the administration is violating a statute, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, that purports to limit the president's power to act in the interest of national security. That power, Mr. Cheney counters, is inherent in the office: "The combination of the president's constitutional authority under Article II as commander in chief, the resolution Congress passed after 9/11 [authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda], as well as the historical precedent that all presidents have claimed in terms of their authority with respect to intercepting enemy communications" all establish "ample justification for the NSA program."

Does this mean the vice president endorses the argument made in the 1970s by former Deputy Attorney General Laurence Silberman that FISA may itself be unconstitutional because it empowers judges to overrule presidential decisions on national security? "That's an interesting issue," Mr. Cheney says. "There are a number of propositions . . . that never really get tested, like the War Powers Act. Everybody sort of walks around the edges of it, but we never really have a confrontation over it."

After 9/11, surveillance of terrorists would seem an odd subject for a confrontation. Mr. Cheney explains that the program in question is quite modest: "This notion [is] peddled out there by some that this is, quote, 'domestic surveillance' or 'domestic spying.' No, it's not. It is the interception of communications, one end of which is outside the United States, and one end of which, either outside the U.S. or inside, we have reason to believe is al-Qaeda-connected. Those are two pretty clear requirements, both of which need to be met."

Mr. Cheney says key members of Congress--the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, and sometimes both parties' top leaders from each chamber--were fully informed. "These sessions with Congress, most of which I presided over . . . answered every question that they wanted to ask. We've always said, look, if there's anything else you need to know, just let us know."

The lawmakers, Mr. Cheney says, shared the administration's view that secrecy was essential. "Public debate and discussion about the program would have done--in our view and in the view of members of Congress who were consulted--damage to our capabilities in this respect. We'd rather not have this conversation about this program, except for the fact that the New York Times went public with it."

Yet after the Times broke the story, Democratic members of Congress changed their tune from the one Mr. Cheney says they had sung in private. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Intelligence Committee Democrat, released a handwritten July 2003 letter to Mr. Cheney in which he said he was "writing to reiterate my concern regarding the sensitive intelligence issues we discussed." We asked Mr. Cheney if he remembered Mr. Rockefeller iterating his concern in the first place. "No, I recall the letter just sort of arriving, and it was never followed up on."

Meanwhile Rep. Jane Harman, Mr. Rockefeller's House counterpart, has opined that the administration broke the law by failing to brief every member of the intelligence committees. Says Mr. Cheney, "If we had done that since the beginning of the program back in '01--I ran the numbers yesterday--if we did the full House and Senate committees, as well as the elected leadership, we'd have had to read 70 people into this program" instead of eight or nine. Expecting that many congressmen to keep a secret is a faith-based initiative.

If the vice president's account is accurate, how does one explain Mr. Rockefeller and Ms. Harman's about-face? It may be that their party's base--the Angry Left--is so implacably opposed to the administration and to the war effort that leading Democrats can afford to be responsible about national security only behind closed doors. If this is so--and given the electoral price the Democrats paid in 2002 and 2004 for their uncertain approach to national security--the public revelation of the NSA program could end up jeopardizing their prospects for taking advantage of the GOP's very real problems this November.

It may also prove costly to the press. The Justice Department is now investigating who leaked the NSA program to the Times, a disclosure Mr. Cheney says has "done serious damage to the national security of the United States. . . . If somebody has been responsible for divulging information that damages national security, then appropriate action ought to be taken." He declines to comment on the possibility that reporters will be forced to testify in the investigation--a more likely prospect given the precedent set by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in a "leak" investigation involving no apparent threat to national security. For those of us who work in the press, it's a grim irony that the New York Times, eager to damage the Bush administration, cheered on Mr. Fitzgerald's appointment, heedless of the damage it would do to reporters' ability to protect confidential sources.

We asked Mr. Cheney to justify the NSA program in practical terms, and his answer was frustratingly vague: "FISA was written nearly 30 years ago, in the late '70s, and doesn't meet all our requirements today." What are those requirements? "I can't be any more precise than that without getting into details of the program. . . I don't want to get into operational details." It may well be that the administration cannot responsibly reveal more, but this answer seems sure to fuel both the adversary press's hostility and the left's antigovernment paranoia.

On the other hand, Mr. Cheney gave a revealing answer when we asked why President Bush had signed the McCain amendment limiting the interrogation of terrorist detainees--despite Mr. Cheney's opposition, and the constraint it puts on executive discretion. "Well, I don't win all the arguments," he replied.

---

We also discussed foreign policy with Mr. Cheney, the highest-level official to serve in both the Bush administration that left Saddam Hussein in power and the one that overthrew him. What changed? "I think that 9/11 was a watershed event," he says. "It became clear that we were up against an adversary who, with a relatively small number of people, could come together and mount a devastating attack against the United States." This brought into focus the danger of proliferation: "The ultimate threat now would be a group of al Qaeda in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon."

By 9/11, Mr. Cheney notes, "we had 10 years of experience with Saddam Hussein defying the international community and refusing to come into compliance with U.N. sanctions . . . and, based upon the best evidence that everybody had at the point, proceeding with his WMD programs." Saddam also supported international terrorism, "everything from $25,000 payments for the family of suicide bombers to a home for Abu Nidal and Palestinian Islamic Jihad."

This newspaper had argued since 1991 for regime change in Iraq, so Mr. Cheney had a sympathetic audience when he made this case. But we wondered why the current administration is taking a much more cautious approach to Iran, a sponsor of terrorism that is eagerly pursuing nuclear weapons. The vice president disputed our premise. "We tried for a long time . . . to resolve the questions with respect to Iraq peacefully, and through international organizations and mechanisms . . . We didn't immediately jump to Operation Iraqi Freedom." Yet given that those efforts failed, what makes him think the same approach will work with Iran?

"We're not the only ones who've been hit since 9/11," Mr. Cheney responds. "We're not the only ones who'd be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran that was a state sponsor of terror. And the international community needs to come together and find effective ways of dealing with this to make certain that that situation doesn't arise." Fair enough, but one could have said that about Iraq anytime between 1991 and 2003.

Four years ago tomorrow, President Bush delivered his first State of the Union Address, in which he famously declared that Iraq and Iran, along with North Korea, made up an "axis of evil." In light of the divergent ways in which the administration has approached the three countries, I asked Mr. Cheney, was it a mistake to lump them together like this?

No, he said, it wasn't. "There are ways to approach different problems, and I think we've got to be sophisticated enough to figure out which one is most likely to work." After all, "you wouldn't want to accuse us of being simplistic."

Mr. Taranto is editor of OpinionJournal.com.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.}

Noonan on taking stock

Peggy Noonan has a thoughtful article about why we should assess our current political situation. But it's more than that.

It's in the extended entry . . .

Not a Bad Time to Take Stock
Thoughts on the decline of the liberal media monopoly and the future of the GOP.

Friday, January 20, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

I don't think Democrats understand that the Alito hearings were, for them, not a defeat but an actual disaster. The snarly tone the senators took with a man most Americans could look at and think, "He's like me," and the charges they made--You oppose women and minorities, you only like corporations and not the little guy--went nowhere. Once those charges would have taken flight, would have launched, found their target and knocked down any incoming Republican. Not any more. It's over.

Eleven years ago the Democrats lost control of Congress. Then they lost the presidency. But just as important, maybe more enduringly important, they lost their monopoly on the means of information in America. They lost control of the pipeline. Or rather there are now many pipelines, and many ways to use the information they carry. The other day, Dana Milbank, an important reporter for the Washington Post, the most important newspaper in the capital, wrote a piece deriding Judge Alito. Once such a piece would have been important. Men in the White House would have fretted over its implications. But within hours of filing, Mr. Milbank found his thinking analyzed and dismissed on the Internet; National Review Online called him a "policy bimbo."

Could Democratic senators today torture Clarence Thomas with tales of Coke cans and porn films? Not likely. Could Ted Kennedy have gotten away with his "Robert Bork's America" speech unanswered? No.

And the end of the monopoly of course isn't only in the news, it's in all media. The other night George Clooney, that beautiful airhead, made a Golden Globe speech in which he made an off-color reference to Jack Abramoff. The audience seemed confused, as people apparently often are when George Clooney speaks. Once, his remark would have been news. Once, Marlon Brando stopped the country in its tracks when he sent Sacheen Littlefeather to make his speech at the Academy Awards. Once, Vanessa Redgrave did the same when she gave a speech about Palestinians, receiving in turn a rebuke from Frank Sinatra, who didn't want some British broad telling us how to do our thing. Now, actors make their comments and it's just another airhead involved in an oral helium release. "You don't like it, change the channel," network executives used to say. But that, as they knew, meant nothing: There were only three channels. Now there are 500. And more coming.

---

You know who else experienced, up close and personal, the end of the information monopoly this week? Walter Cronkite. Once, he said America should leave Vietnam and the president of the United States said if we've lost him we've lost middle America. Now, Walter calls for withdrawal from Iraq and it occasions only one thing: stories about how once such a thing mattered. I saw Mr. Cronkite the other night. Frail, distinguished--big white eyebrows; soft, folded pink face--he looked like Dean Acheson grown very old. It was at a New York screening he hosted for a documentary called "Why We Fight," a piece of antiwar propaganda that will likely soon be followed by a piece of pro-war propaganda. It was like ducking a Propaganda Punch that will be answered by another Propaganda Punch you'll have to duck. Featured in the documentary is a former voice of God, Dan Rather, there to lend support to the enterprise.

What was sad about the documentary is that it did not explore what it asserted, that a military-industrial complex within the United States has more power and influence than is helpful or good. A lot of sophisticated Americans worry about this. "The military-industrial complex" is something we were warned of almost half a century ago by Dwight Eisenhower, a man who knew a few things about war and weaponry. We want our makers of weapons to be the best in the world; we do not want them to own congressmen who have an electoral stake in the pieces of weapons made in their districts. When every congressman has a piece of a project, we should worry. War should not be the health of the state.

We are in a time when the very diminution of the importance of network news leaves some old news hands to drop their guard and announce what they are: liberal Democrats. Nothing wrong with that, but they might have told us when they were in power. The very existence of conservative media--of Rush Limbaugh, of Fox, of the Internet sites--has become an excuse by previously "I call 'em as I see 'em/I try to be impartial" journalists to advance their biases. Actually, it's more Fox than anything. The existence of a respected cable network that is nonliberal and non-Democratic (or that is conservative, or Republican, or neoconservative--people on the right have polite disagreements about this) is more and more freeing news outlets, encouraging them actually, as a potential business model, to be more and more what they are. Is this good? Well, it's clearer. Then again Time magazine this week illustrated a story about Republicans in Congress with a drawing of a merry circus elephant surrounded by the Republican leadership. They were covered, I'm not kidding, in the elephant's fecal matter. (It's on page 23. Time will no doubt call it chocolate.)

---

But where does this leave us? With our mass media busy with reluctant reformation . . . with the old network monopoly over and done . . . with something new, we know not what, about to take its place . . . with the Democratic Party adjusting to the loss of its megaphone . . . Where does that leave us? I think it leaves us knowing that, more than ever, the Republican Party--the party ultimately helped by the end of the old monopoly and the reformation of news media--must be a good party, a decent one, and help our country.

That it regain a sense of its historic mission. That it stop seeming the friend of the wired and return to being the great friend of Main Street, for Main Street still, in its own way, exists. That it return to basic principles on spending, regulation and state authority. That it question a foreign policy that often seems at once dreamy and aggressive, and question, too, an overreaching on immigration policy that seems composed in equal parts of naiveté and cynicism. That its representatives admit that lunching with lobbyists is not the problem; failing to oppose the growth of government--so huge that no one, really no one, knows what is in its budget--is. That they reduce the size and power of government. That they help our country.

Is that a sissy thing to say? Sorry. But today is the 25th anniversary of the coming to Washington of modern conservatism, and the rise to power of a Main Street romantic who was also a skeptic and an appreciator of human nature. Not a bad time to take stock.

Republicans in Washington struggle with scandal and speak of reform, and reformation. They would better think of words like regain, refresh, rebuild. If they don't, if Republicans don't choose to lead well, and seriously, and with principle, they should ask themselves: Who will? Seriously: Who will?

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Why are some people so scared of Intelligent Design?

Juliana Barbassa has an article up at TownHall about a school district in California that was forced to drop an elective course on 'Intelligent Design' from their curriculum.

A group of parents had sued the El Tejon school system last week, accusing it of violating the constitutional separation of church and state with "Philosophy of Design," a high school course taught by a minister's wife that advanced the notion that life is so complex it must have been created by some kind of higher intelligence.

Who are the ones being close-minded about things now?

Pictures of New York City

Gerard Van der Leun has an interesting photo essay of New York City in the 12-13 months following 9/11. He has entitled it New York Life: 1,000 Pictures of New York City , and he has almost half of the pictures posted at this time.

It's well worth browsing.

It takes a lot of bandwidth, though, so I don't recommend it if you're on a dial-up connection.

"Saddam's Documents"

OpinionJournal has an interesting op-ed up about the exploitation of the captured Saddam regime records and documents.

Or the lack of such exploitation. I've been following this for a while now. There are over 2 million documents, hard drives, files, etc. that were captured during, and after, our invasion of Iraq. We've only translated and analyzed around 50,000 -- in the 30 months that we've had them.

I've reprinted the entire article in the extended entry.

I recommend you read it. And read the Stephan Hayes article in the Weekly Standard that this one refers to.

Saddam's Documents
What they tell us could save American lives today.

Friday, January 13, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

It is almost an article of religious faith among opponents of the Iraq War that Iraq became a terrorist destination only after the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein. But what if that's false, and documents from Saddam's own regime show that his government trained thousands of Islamic terrorists at camps inside Iraq before the war?

Sounds like news to us, and that's exactly what is reported this week by Stephen Hayes in The Weekly Standard magazine. Yet the rest of the press has ignored the story, and for that matter the Bush Administration has also been dumb. The explanation for the latter may be that Mr. Hayes also scores the Administration for failing to do more to translate and analyze the trove of documents it's collected from the Saddam era.

---

Mr. Hayes reports that, from 1999 through 2002, "elite Iraqi military units" trained roughly 8,000 terrorists at three different camps--in Samarra and Ramadi in the Sunni Triangle, as well as at Salman Pak, where American forces in 2003 found the fuselage of an aircraft that might have been used for training. Many of the trainees were drawn from North African terror groups with close ties to al Qaeda, including Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Mr. Hayes writes that he had no fewer than 11 corroborating sources, and yesterday he told us he'd added several more since publication.

All of this is of more than historical interest, since Americans are still dying in Iraq at the hands of an enemy it behooves us to understand. If Saddam did train terrorists in Iraq before the war, then many of them must still be fighting there and the current "insurgency" can hardly be called a popular uprising rooted in Sunni nationalism. Instead, it is a revanchist operation led by Saddam's apparat and those they trained to use terror to achieve their political goals.

This means in turn that much of the Sunni population might be willing to participate in Free Iraq's politics but is intimidated from doing so by these Saddamists. The recent spurt of suicide bombings, aimed at Iraqi civilians and police trainees, looks like an attempt to revive such intimidation after the successful election. These Saddamists can't be coaxed into surrender by political blandishments because their goal isn't to share power but is to dominate Iraq once again. Or if they do play in the political process, it will only be in the Sinn Fein sense of doing so as cover for their real terror strategy.

In any case, it is passing strange that the Bush Administration has been so uninterested in translating, and assessing, the information in the two million documents, audio and videotapes and computer hard drives it has collected in Iraq. Mr. Hayes reports that only 50,000 of these "exploitable items" have been examined so far, and those by a skeleton crew with few resources. Does anyone think, had there been a Nazi insurgency after Hitler fell, that the U.S. wouldn't have scoured everything found in Berlin? Why the dereliction this time?

A benign explanation is that the first Bush priority was searching Saddam's files for WMD, not terror ties. But the WMD work has been done since the Duelfer report was substantially wrapped up well over a year ago. The current threat to U.S. soldiers in Iraq is from terror attacks, not WMD. Anything the U.S. can discover about whether and how Saddam and his coterie planned a guerrilla war before the invasion could be invaluable in defeating this enemy.

In his new memoir about his year in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer reports that in July of 2003 he was told about a captured document from Saddam's intelligence service (dated January 2003) outlining a "strategy of organized resistance" if the regime fell. About the same time, pamphlets began circulating in Baghdad describing the "Party of Return," with vows to kill Iraqis who worked with the Coalition. We also know that documents discovered with Saddam in his rabbit hole in late 2003 included a claim that the insurgents would know they had won when a U.S. Presidential candidate called for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. These are signs of a disciplined political party, not some broad Algerian-like nationalism.

---

A less benign explanation for the Bush Administration's lethargy is that its officials don't want to challenge the prewar CIA orthodoxy that the "secular" Saddam would never cavort with "religious" al Qaeda. They've seen what happened to others--"Scooter" Libby, Douglas Feith, John Bolton--who dared to question CIA analyses. Mr. Hayes reports that the Pentagon intelligence chief, Stephen Cambone, has been a particular obstacle to energetic document inspection.

But if we've learned nothing else about U.S. intelligence in the last four years, it is that its "consensus" views are often wrong. The 9/11 Commission has confirmed extensive communication between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda over the years, including sanctuary for the current insurgent leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. We have also learned that in the years leading up to his ouster Saddam had implemented a "faith campaign" to use fundamentalist Islam as a tool of internal control. Especially if U.S. troops are going to remain to help the new Iraq government defeat the terrorists, we should want to know everything we can about them.

And the American people should know too. For three years now, opponents of the war in Congress and the bureaucracy have cherry-picked intelligence details and leaked them to influence public opinion. The Bush Administration until recently has been remarkably reluctant to fight back. Telling truths about Saddam that are revealed by his own documents is part of that fight.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Treason

Ralph Peters, a former officer in military intelligence, has a good op-ed about how revealing classified information can endanger us all. And doing that is considered an act of treason. Here's an excerpt:

. . . We need to get serious about treason and the destructive culture of leaks -- on both sides of the aisle. Let's face it: Both political parties have served our country badly with their use of leaks for partisan purposes.

Compromising classified information, for any purpose and at any level, is a serious crime. Those who betray their trust and harm our national defense need to go to jail -- for life. If we were truly serious, we'd treat treason as a capital offense again.

The guy knows what he's talking about. Recommended.

Earmarks

John Fund, over at OpinionJournal, has an op-ed up about earmarks, a corrupted appropriations process, and Congress. Here's an excerpt:

Nothing better illustrates the meltdown in spending restraint than earmarking, the process by which members secure special pork projects such as Alaska's infamous $223 million "bridge to nowhere." Pork is an inevitable product of political compromise, but earmarks are a particularly corrupt form. They are often last-minute additions to conference reports that were never considered in the original bills passed by either the House or Senate. They can thus avoid competitive bidding, performance standards or even disclosure of the direct recipient.

I copied the entire article into the extended entry.

Marks for Sharks
The Abramoff scandal may sink congressional Republicans if they don't get serious about spending reforms.

Monday, January 9, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

It's fitting that Rep. Tom DeLay is returning to his seat on the Appropriations Committee now that he is gone for good as House majority leader. It was his years serving in that "favor factory" that gradually turned him into a purveyor of pork who last fall claimed there was no more budget fat to cut. His departure gives Republicans a chance to return to first principles. If they don't, they may face a political drubbing.

Many Republicans have forgotten that as government grows, its increased power to grant favors or inflict pain attracts more people who would abuse the system. Sen. John McCain once told me that "the best long-term answer to corruption is a smaller government." Indeed, disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff observed a decade ago, "More money available from government is blood in the water for sharks." He proved to be one hungry shark.

If the GOP response to the Abramoff scandal is merely to enact "lobbying reforms," the party will skirt the problem that underlies the corruption: runaway spending. "The 2001-2005 period marks the transformation of the Republican party from its traditional role as a win-or-lose guardian of limited government to that of a majority government party just as comfortable with big government as the Democrats, only with different spending priorities," says Chris DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute.

That's dangerous ground, given that the GOP base still believes in smaller government. Mr. Abramoff steered campaign cash to and hired staffers from members of both parties. But in 1994, after 350 members of both parties had been tarred by the House bank scandal, it was Republicans who were able to exploit it because Democrats controlled Congress.

---

Nothing better illustrates the meltdown in spending restraint than earmarking, the process by which members secure special pork projects such as Alaska's infamous $223 million "bridge to nowhere." Pork is an inevitable product of political compromise, but earmarks are a particularly corrupt form. They are often last-minute additions to conference reports that were never considered in the original bills passed by either the House or Senate. They can thus avoid competitive bidding, performance standards or even disclosure of the direct recipient.

In 1998, Congress approved 1,850 earmarks just for transportation projects. Last year's transportation bill contained 6,371. Earmarks have become the corrupt currency by which bills like the ruinously expensive prescription drug entitlement are bought vote by vote. They inevitably result in some lower-priority projects being funded first, with potentially disastrous results. In Louisiana, the Army Corps of Engineers spent $1.9 billion between 2000 and 2005, more than 80% of which was earmarked. Less than 4% of the total was spent on protecting levees, while over a third of the money went to building a new lock on an underused canal. Then along came Hurricane Katrina.

Earmarks have created their own parasitic specialized lobbying industry. "They go client hunting, telling cities or counties they can virtually guarantee an earmark," says Ron Utt, a former federal budget official now at the Heritage Foundation. In 2004, 3,521 companies or local governments hired lobbyists to pursue earmarks, up from just 1,865 four years earlier. A top White House aide told me that "there's need for lubrication of the legislative process, but it's gotten out of control."

Earmarks are at the heart of the scandals surrounding Mr. Abramoff and Duke Cunningham, the former GOP congressman who admitted to taking $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for earmarks. Military contractor Brian Wilkes not only lavished gifts on Mr. Cunningham but spent $1.1 million on lobbying others. The payoff: at least $95 million in government contracts. The Copley News Service reported that "Wilkes made no bones about where his money was coming from. His jet-black Hummer bore a license plate reading MIPR ME--a reference to Military Interdepartmental Purchase Requests," the means by which his firm got paid.

For his part, Mr. Abramoff bragged that appropriations committees were "earmark favor factories." His associate Tony Rudy e-mailed him asking if an Indian tribe client could pay for a hunting trip for Congressional staffers as a "thank you . . . for the approps we got." Other lobbyists have bosom-buddy relationships with key appropriators. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that House Appropriations chairman Jerry Lewis has steered hundreds of millions in federal funds to clients of lobbyist Bill Lowery, a former congressman who is so close to Mr. Lewis that they have exchanged two key staff members, "making their offices so intermingled that they seem to be extensions of each other."

---

Many congressional relatives earn a lucrative living as lobbyists for earmarks, including the brother of Rep. Jack Murtha (D., Pa.), the brother-in-law of Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Ted Stevens (R., Alaska) and the son of David Obey of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on House Appropriations.

Democrats vie with Republicans in priming the pork barrel, but some now see reform trumping pork politically. Several want to make sure that copies of bills are available 24 hours before a vote and limit endless roll-call votes so promises of earmarks can't as easily be used to bribe members.

Republicans face being outflanked if they don't get ahead of the earmark scandal. Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona wants all earmarks to be subject to debate and amendment. Others want a limit on how much local governments can use taxpayer dollars to lobby for still more federal dollars. Appropriations committee leaders could be required to stay within overall spending ceilings or forfeit their posts.

Sens. Tom Coburn and John McCain now plan to challenge every hidden earmark. "If we aren't told who is asking for it, who benefits and its justification, we'll move to strike it," Mr. Coburn told me. He expects many earmarks to be quietly withdrawn rather than face such scrutiny.

Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, once defended earmarks by saying bureaucrats can "prostitute the language" of the bills Congress writes so that "the normal process doesn't work." But now that earmarks are normal in Congress, they are prostituting the entire institution. Post-Abramoff, the local political benefits of bringing home pork will shrink in the harsh national spotlight that is about to shine on earmarks.

The federal government is now 250 times as big in real terms as it was a century ago. If Republicans don't use Mr. DeLay's departure to restore their limited-government credentials, they will see their own voters rebel.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

American competence

Michael Barone, on his blog at U.S. News and World Report, has a very interesting post about the competence of Americans at ages 18 and 30 as compared to the rest of the world.

. . . American 18-year-olds are incompetent or far less competent than 18-year-olds in other advanced countries, while American 30-year-olds are the most competent 30-year-olds in the world.

He goes on to postulate why this is so, and how the push toward more rigorous and standardized testing for our 6-18 year-olds may have some negatives.

Recommended.

Was there a case for war?

The Chicago Tribune does a pretty balanced job of judging the case for war in Iraq.

They take the nine arguments in favor of war that were advanced by the Bush administration in late 2002/early 2003, and examine them using what is known now about the situation.

This link is a summary of nine editorials the Trib published in November and December of 2005.

I recommend it. It is one of the least biased evaluations of the reasons for the Iraq war that I have ever seen in the mainstream media.

Quote

"What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?"

-- Irv Kupcinet

Quotable

"Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right."

-- Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine

Thank a Soldier Week

It is Thank A Soldier Week (19-23 December)!

Townhall.com is sponsoring an effort to get our words of gratitude to our troops. Click on the link to go watch a video taken at the Country Music Awards. While you're there, take the time to send an email of thanks. And there are also links to various organizations that support our troops and their families where you can donate money, knitting, and other things.

This post will remain at the top of my posts for the whole week. Scroll down to see other new posts.

Lessons learned?

Michael Barone has a op-ed up that looks at lessons of the last 25 years. Here's an excerpt:

Twenty-five years ago, in December 1980, Jimmy Carter was serving his last full month in office and Ronald Reagan was president-elect. More than 50 Americans were being held hostage in Iran--an act of war by the revolutionary mullahs. The Soviet Union was on the march in Afghanistan. The American economy was finishing a decade of high inflation and sluggish growth at best--stagflation. The past three presidents had been repudiated: Richard Nixon in 1974, Gerald Ford in 1976, and Jimmy Carter 1980.

Experts preached that America's best days were behind it, counseled that we seek accommodation with the Soviet Union, and urged nations of the avaricious North to share their wealth with nations of the deserving South. Low-inflation economic growth was no longer possible.

Now we know, with as much certainty as is possible in these things, that these experts were dead wrong . . .

Highly recommended.

A hand up vs. a handout

I heard the news this morning that Bill & Melissa Gates as well as Bono were named Time's People of the Year for their philanthropy. And I applaud their efforts. But I have some reservations.

I strongly believe charity is an essential part of our society and the Christian heritage in this country. My immediate as well as my extended family practices charity in many different ways -- we've all been brought up that way, as has a great number of Americans. In fact, the proof that Americans in general believe in charitable giving is in the fact that donations to non-disaster relief efforts are not down this year despite the outpouring of donations toward relief efforts for the tsunami and hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Instead of re-directing our charitable donations, Americans ponied up more money and more time in volunteer work.

How great is that!?

There is a good way to provide charitable gifts, and there is a bad way. Betsy Newmark had this post up about giving a hand up instead of a hand out before I had sat down to post on the subject myself. As usual, she communicated her thoughts more eloquently than I could, and she provided some pertinent links. So go read her post.

I have no problems with charitable efforts in terms of disaster relief, humanitarian aid, research into diseases and medicines, and things like that. But we have to help people learn to help themselves. Instead of just buying a man bread every year, we should be buying wheat and teaching him how to cultivate and harvest it. Instead of just providing a village a doctor, we should be training villagers to be doctors and providing them with the tools to practice medicine in that village.

And I think that is what is missing in a great deal of the aid and debt-relief being pumped into Africa.

And, no, I don't really have a good answer as to how to implement such an approach. It would almost have to be continental in scope, and we'd have to somehow reduce and eliminate the rampant corruption and greed in many of the governments there.

This is definitely not politically correct to say, but maybe we should use the same approach we did in Iraq . . . after all, though there are still security issues to deal with, but economically, Iraq is doing better than it ever has, and politically, the country is progressing quite well.

(Come to think of it, the Iraqi people should get Time's People of the Year award for 2005. Just look at what they've accomplished!)

Something to think about . . .

President's 12-12-05 speech

Here is President Bush's speech in Philadelphia on Monday about the war on terror and the upcoming Iraqi elections. He also answers a few questions after the speech.

Recommended reading because you're not going to see any accurate accounts of his speech in the mainstream media. [/cynicism]

A case for torture

An interesting opinion piece by Charles Krauthammer about when torture is justified.

Torture is not always impermissible. However rare the cases, there are circumstances in which, by any rational moral calculus, torture not only would be permissible but would be required (to acquire life-saving information). And once you've established the principle, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, all that's left to haggle about is the price. In the case of torture, that means that the argument is not whether torture is ever permissible, but when . . .

I'm not sure how I weigh in on this one.

It's worth reading.

Bruce Willis and Deuce Four

It looks like there is at least one person in the news/entertainment industry that supports our troops in Iraq.

Standing up for what's right

Senator John McCain has an opinion piece up about the foolish Senate amendment that was passed this week calling for a drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq in 2006. Here's an excerpt:

The Senate has responded to the millions who braved bombs and threats to vote, who put their faith and trust in America and their government, by suggesting that our No. 1 priority is to bring our people home.

We have told insurgents that their violence does grind us down, that their horrific acts might be successful. But these are precisely the wrong messages. Our exit strategy in Iraq is not the withdrawal of our troops, it is victory.

Americans may not have been of one mind when it came to the decision to topple Saddam Hussein. But, though some disagreed, I believe that nearly all now wish us to prevail.

Because the stakes there are so high -- higher even than those in Vietnam -- our friends and our enemies need to hear one message: America is committed to success, and we will win this war.

He's got it right.

Recommended (requires free registration).

Win every battle yet lose the war

J.R. Dunn, over at the American Thinker, tells us how we're winning in Iraq, but losing at home.

Every car bomb, every IED, every assassination is a weapon aimed at American public opinion. The same must be made true of Coalition victories. Success is not success if it remains unacknowledged. Progress in Iraq must be brought out of the shadows. Until it is, we're not quite winning, no matter how many emirs we account for.

Our forces in Iraq have performed magnificently, but they cannot win the war at home. That is up to us. Too many of us are content to passively support the troops, and allow the media to sap national morale with a prefabricated story ignoring the facts. We cannot afford to be AWOL. It is time to engage in the combat of words and ideas on the home front. Our victorious forces deserve no less.

It's worth reading.

Win every battle yet lose the war

J.R. Dunn, over at the American Thinker, tells us how we're winning in Iraq, but losing at home.

Every car bomb, every IED, every assassination is a weapon aimed at American public opinion. The same must be made true of Coalition victories. Success is not success if it remains unacknowledged. Progress in Iraq must be brought out of the shadows. Until it is, we're not quite winning, no matter how many emirs we account for.

Our forces in Iraq have performed magnificently, but they cannot win the war at home. That is up to us. Too many of us are content to passively support the troops, and allow the media to sap national morale with a prefabricated story ignoring the facts. We cannot afford to be AWOL. It is time to engage in the combat of words and ideas on the home front. Our victorious forces deserve no less.

It's worth reading.

Nadir

Rick Moran has some pointed things to say about how the war in Iraq is being conducted at home in the USA.

In just a few weeks, the people of Iraq will hold an election under their newly minted constitution that, on paper, is a marvel of compromise and idealism. What kind of government emerges from these elections may not be very satisfying to the United States. But that is not the point. It will be the kind of government that the Iraqi people want. And that is what more than 2,000 American boys and girls have died trying to establish; a democratically elected government set in the heart of jihad territory. The Iraqis are about ready to spit in the eye of Osama bin Laden and all our weak kneed, faint of heart "nervous nellies" can spout about is how much of a failure the war has been and how we should leave these courageous people to the tender mercies of al Zarqawi and his Merry Band of Beheaders.

I sure wish I had said that. Go read the rest. It's well worth it -- even if you disagree.

Setting the record straight

The White House is finally refuting the lies.

Thank goodness.

Price gouging?

No, not price gouging. Rose and Milton Friendman Foundation Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell says that it's just simple supply and demand (basic economics).

What do higher prices do? Force people to restrain their own purchases more so than usual. What do higher profits do? Cause more money to be invested in producing whatever is earning higher profits, and this in turn expands output. Isn't a larger supply of oil and a reduced consumption of it what we want? Whenever there have been sharp rises in gasoline prices, whether nationwide or locally in California, Senator Barbara Boxer has loudly demanded an investigation of the oil companies. These repeated investigations over the years have repeatedly failed to turn up anything other than supply and demand.

The real irony is that it has been precisely liberals like Barbara Boxer who have been the chief obstacles to increasing the supply of oil because they are dead set against drilling for oil in more places and against building more refineries.

When you refuse to let supply rise to meet rising demand, why should you be surprised -- much less outraged -- when prices rise?

So, then, what is all of the wailing about when it comes to gasoline prices?

President Bush's Veterans Day speech

Townhall has provided a transcript of the President's Veterans Day Speech (11/11/05).

Read this before you start believing the Kennedy/Reid/Durbin spin on what he said. Frankly, I think they must be referring to another speech entirely . . .

Recommended.

Veteran's Day

"Let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain."

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Honor to the soldier, and Sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country's cause. Honor also to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field, and serves, as he best can, the same cause."

-- President Abraham Lincoln

Many of our veterans paid for our freedom and safety with their lives. Many more of them bear the scars of their service -- physically and emotionally.

Please honor our veterans today (especially), but also honor and thank them every single day you enjoy the liberty and freedom that we have so abundantly here in America. Because without our veterans, those individuals who fought and died for us, we would not be a free people.

To every man and woman who wore our country's uniform, who trained and prepared for battle, who stood guard in our defense, who put his or her life in harm's way: Thank you for your service, and for your suffering. You have my respect, my honor, my prayers, and my gratitude. God bless you and keep you.

Operation Enduring Service

Operation Enduring Service proposes to converty old WWII era military vessels into Fast Attack Emergency Ships that would be used for emergency relief following disasters such as Katrina or Rita.

Phin tipped me off to this, so I've put his email describing the program in the extended entry. This is a worthwhile cause. Recommended.

I apologize for the spamish nature of this e-mail, I typically don't resort to mass e-mail and I wouldn't now if this message weren't so important. There is a project underway that will reduce the amount of dependence placed on the government when a natural disaster strikes one of the coastal states (Atlantic, Gulf or Pacific). The projects name is Operation Enduring Service and was created by Beauchamp Tower Corporation.

Posted on my site phin's blog and cross-posted at Confederate Yankee are calls to press Senators to insert a rider that will allow this to happen. Due to time constraints the legislation required to make this happen is dangerously close to falling by the wayside-in fact it has to pass before Congress ends this Session (less than 14 days).

The project calls for the transfer of decommisioned and obsolete military ships to an established award-winning nonprofit organization that will convert them into powerful and 100% volunteer-funded floating rescue and recovery vessels to assist those in need in the wake of natural and manmade disasters.

Via Operation Enduring Service:

So, you want to see what these old girls will be able to do? Here's a list of only a few things we can provide during a Coastal State disaster (such as flooding or a hurricane)

----Service a disaster area of up to 10,000 square miles (up to 100 miles inland) with minimal (if any) outside support

----Provide complete berthing facilities for up to 400 emergency responders "on scene" at a disaster site

----Fully integrated communications system serving all local, state, and federal agencies, as well as cell phone coverage and military band frequencies--allowing for seamless communications between all disaster scene personnel, no matter what radio frequency or cell phone is being used.

----Daily provide 110 tons of bagged and palletized ice to the disaster region

----Daily generate, bottle, and palletize up to 50,000 gallons of fresh water

----Provide refueling station and loading platform for helicopters operating in the disaster area

----Carry over 7,000 tons of food and supplies for a disaster area

----Store (and provide delivery of) 700,000 gallons of diesel, gasoline, and aviation fuel for use in the disaster area on emergency vehicles and critical needs generators (hospitals, emergency operation centers, etc)

.......and that's just one ship.

They're talking about fielding two ships, not one... a regular "Salvation Navy." We have a chance to make a great deal of difference in future disasters (these ships may be ready for the '06 hurricane season) but we must act now. Think of the number of lives saved and the peace of mind that can be brought, while saving the government and tax payers money.

Any help you can give in the form of summoning your readerships to help press the key senators listed (and their own) would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
phin
http://phin.mu.nu

Why not in America?

Joel Kotkin, author and Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, has an op-ed up at OpinionJournal about why we don't have immigrants rioting in the USA. He starts with this:

The French political response to the continuing riots has focused most on the need for more multicultural "understanding" of, and public spending on, the disenchanted mass in the country's grim banlieues (suburbs). What has been largely ignored has been the role of France's economic system in contributing to the current crisis. State-directed capitalism may seem ideal for American admirers such as Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The European Dream," and others on the left. Yet it is precisely this highly structured and increasingly infracted economic system that has so limited opportunities for immigrants and their children. In a country where short workweeks and early retirement are sacred, there is little emphasis on creating new jobs and even less on grass-roots entrepreneurial activity.

Since the rioting began in France, I have been concerned about something similar here in America. I wasn't worried so much about Muslim/African immigrants as I was about Hispanic ones. However, this article has eased my concern a bit -- Mr. Kotkin has some convincing points. I'm still not completely at peace about it though.

I've reprinted the entire article in the extended entry.

Why Immigrants Don't Riot Here
France's rigid economic system sustains privilege and inspires resentment.

BY JOEL KOTKIN
Tuesday, November 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

The French political response to the continuing riots has focused most on the need for more multicultural "understanding" of, and public spending on, the disenchanted mass in the country's grim banlieues (suburbs). What has been largely ignored has been the role of France's economic system in contributing to the current crisis. State-directed capitalism may seem ideal for American admirers such as Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The European Dream," and others on the left. Yet it is precisely this highly structured and increasingly infracted economic system that has so limited opportunities for immigrants and their children. In a country where short workweeks and early retirement are sacred, there is little emphasis on creating new jobs and even less on grass-roots entrepreneurial activity.

Since the '70s, America has created 57 million new jobs, compared with just four million in Europe (with most of those jobs in government). In France and much of Western Europe, the economic system is weighted toward the already employed (the overwhelming majority native-born whites) and the growing mass of retirees. Those ensconced in state and corporate employment enjoy short weeks, early and well-funded retirement and first dibs on the public purse. So although the retirement of large numbers of workers should be opening up new job opportunities, unemployment among the young has been rising: In France, joblessness among workers in their 20s exceeds 20%, twice the overall national rate. In immigrant banlieues, where the population is much younger, average unemployment reaches 40%, and higher among the young.

To make matters worse, the elaborate French welfare state--government spending accounts for roughly half of GDP compared with 36% in the U.S.--also forces high tax burdens on younger workers lucky enough to have a job, largely to pay for an escalating number of pensioners and benefit recipients. In this system, the incentives are to take it easy, live well and then retire. The bloat of privileged aging blocks out opportunity for the young.

Luckily, better-educated young Frenchmen and other Continental Europeans can opt out of the system by emigrating to more open economies in Ireland, the U.K. and, particularly, the U.S. This is clearly true in technological fields, where Europe's best brains leave in droves. Some 400,000 European Union science graduates currently reside in the U.S. Barely one in seven, according to a recent poll, intends to return. Driven by the ambitious young, European immigration to the U.S. jumped by 16% during the '90s. Visa applications dropped after 9/11, but then increased last year by 10%. The total number of Europe-born immigrants increased by roughly 700,000 during the last three years, with a heavy inflow from the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and Romania--as well as France. These new immigrants have been particularly drawn to the metropolitan centers of California, Florida and New York.

The Big Apple offers a lesson for France. An analysis of recent census numbers indicates that immigrants to New York are the biggest contributors to the net growth of educated young people in the city. Without the disproportionate contributions of young European immigrants, New York would have suffered a net outflow of educated people under 35 in the late '90s. Overall, there are now 500,000 New York residents who were born in Europe (not to mention the numerous non-European immigrants who live, and prosper, in the city).

Contrast this with Paris, where the central city is largely off-limits to immigrants, in some ways due to the dirigiste planning that so many professional American urbanists find appealing. Since Napoleon III rebuilt Paris, uprooting many existing working-class communities, the intention of the French elites has been to preserve the central parts of the city--often with massive public investment--for the affluent. This has consigned the proletariat, first white and now increasingly Muslim, to the proximate suburbs--into what some French sociologists call "territorial stigma." In these communities, immigrants are effectively isolated from the overpriced, elegant central core and the ever-expanding outer suburban grand couronne. The outer suburbs, usually not on the maps of tourists and new urbanist sojourners, now are home to a growing percentage of French middle-class families, and are the locale for many high-tech companies and business service firms.

The contrast with America's immigrants, including those from developing countries, could not be more dramatic, both in geographic and economic terms. The U.S. still faces great problems with a portion of blacks and American Indians. But for the most part immigrants, white and nonwhite, have been making considerable progress. Particularly telling, immigrant business ownership has been surging far faster than among native-born Americans. Ironically, some of the highest rates for ethnic entrepreneurship in the U.S. belong to Muslim immigrants, along with Russians, Indians, Israelis and Koreans.

Perhaps nothing confirms immigrant upward mobility more than the fact that the majority have joined the white middle class in the suburbs--a geography properly associated here mostly with upward mobility. These newcomers and their businesses have carved out a powerful presence in suburban areas that now count among the nation's most diverse regions. Prime examples include what demographer Bill Frey calls "melting pot suburbs": the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles; Arlington County, Va.; Essex County, N.J.; and Fort Bend County in suburban Houston. The connection between this spreading geography and immigrant opportunity is not coincidental. Like other Americans, immigrants often dramatically improve their quality of life and economic prospects by moving out to less dense, faster growing areas. They can also take advantage of more business-friendly government. Perhaps the most extreme case is Houston, a low-cost, low-tax haven where immigrant entrepreneurship has exploded in recent decades. Much of this has taken place in the city itself. Looser regulations and a lack of zoning lower land and rental costs, providing opportunities to build businesses and acquire property.

It is almost inconceivable to see such flowerings of ethnic entrepreneurship in Continental Europe. Economic and regulatory policy plays a central role in stifling enterprise. Heavy-handed central planning tends to make property markets expensive and difficult to penetrate. Add to this an overall regulatory regime that makes it hard for small business to start or expand, and you have a recipe for economic stagnation and social turmoil. What would help France most now would be to stimulate economic growth and lessen onerous regulation. Most critically, this would also open up entrepreneurial and employment opportunity for those now suffering more of a nightmare of closed options than anything resembling a European dream.

Mr. Kotkin, Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of "The City: A Global History" (Modern Library, 2005).

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

U.S. intel and Saddam's Iraq

Stephan F. Hayes has an op-ed at the Weekly Standard about the case for war in Iraq and how it has become publicly distorted. He discusses the Democrat party politics about this, but also talks about the Bush administration's failure to get the real story out to the nation.

Recommended.

What she said

The Anchoress takes us all by the hand and reminds us about the origins of the WMD intel on Iraq.

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." - President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

She does a thorough job of it, too. Highly recommended for those who seek the true history of the Iraqi WMD threat.

Porkbusters

There is a movement afoot to help our federal congressional representatives to return to a more fiscally conservative approach to legislation. In the blogosphere, an aspect of this effort is to point out to Senators and Congressmen the pork that they have inserted into legislation like the recently passed transportation bill, and urge them to pull it. Thus, the effort earned the moniker "porkbusters".

Last week, Senator Tom Coburn and six other Senators (Sam Brownback, Jim DeMint, John Ensign, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and John Sununu), styling themselves as the "Fiscal Watch Team", released an "offset package" aimed at identifying budget cuts to pay for hurricane relief. The key provision in the bill for our purposes is that it would elminate all "offsets" ( i.e., pork) in the highway bill --- wiping away a vast chunk of pork in a single stroke.

You can read more about this effort at the Truth Laid Bear.

I support the Fiscal Watch Team Offset Package. And I urge you to do the same. We have got to reign in the dangerously irresponsible spending that has taken hold in Washington, D.C.

Oh, one last thing. It is safe to come out now . . . my 'political activism moment' is over . . .

Democracy-in-the-making

Diana West, over at Townhall, has an interesting op-ed about Condoleeza Rice's approach to explaining democracy. Here's a taste:

If Condoleezza Rice ever does run for president, the following line may become very familiar:

"The only problem, of course, was that when the Founding Fathers said, `We the people,' they didn't mean me."

For the past few years, the most powerful woman on Earth has been delivering this clincher. And it gets a gasp every time. I first read it in a speech Ms. Rice gave last week in Birmingham, Ala. Of course, it's a dramatic, even melodramatic, statement -- a testament to the continuing expansion of liberty provided by our 218-year-old Constitution. But Ms. Rice drops it in by way of illustrating the historic flaws of democracy, American-style; and this she drops in by way of dismissing the current flaws of democracy-building in the Muslim world.

It'll make you think . . .

Leadership

Jason Riley, senior editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, has a serious op-ed about civil rights leadership -- past and present.

It's all in the extended entry.

When the Leaders
Of Civil Rights
Were Civilized
We will miss Rosa Parks.

BY JASON L. RILEY
Friday, October 28, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

In the last paragraph on the last page of his thoughtful Penguin Lives biography of Rosa Parks, the historian Douglas Brinkley writes: "Finally, according to Rosa Parks there are three autobiographies that all Americans should read and that helped shape her worldview." The first two--Booker T. Washington's "Up From Slavery" and W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Souls of Black Folk"--would, or at least should, make most such lists. But Parks's third choice, James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man," caught my attention, and not just because it isn't an autobiography but in fact a novella told in the first person.

Johnson, who died in a car accident in 1938 at the age of 67, was among the most prominent and accomplished black Americans of his day. An irrepressible polymath, he managed to distinguish himself in politics, diplomacy, journalism, literature, the arts and civil rights. But to the extent that he is remembered at all today, it is primarily for "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" (aka "The Negro National Anthem"), a song he wrote in 1900 to commemorate Lincoln's birthday. It was an instant hit and remains a black choir staple more than a century later.

---

Johnson's real legacy, however, is his work in the first third of the 20th century, leading up to that famous act of civil disobedience on a bus in Jim Crow Alabama that turned a Montgomery-branch NAACP bookkeeper into a cultural icon and kick-started what would become the modern civil-rights movement.

Starting in 1913, Johnson was editorial-page editor of the New York Age, a black weekly, and his widely disseminated commentaries on racial violence and segregation helped raise much needed awareness. Before becoming the NAACP's first black head in 1920, he was responsible for the formation of new chapters throughout the U.S. Inside of four years, he quadrupled the number. In 1917, foreshadowing tactics that Martin Luther King would use decades later, Johnson organized a silent protest parade down New York City's Fifth Avenue in response to the frequent lynchings and race riots of the period. Some ten thousand blacks participated.

That Rosa Parks cited Johnson as an inspiration along with giants like Washington and Du Bois tells us something about her deep appreciation of him. But it's also a reminder of Parks's dignified brand of social activism. Like Johnson, Parks recalls a time when the NAACP was an important institution staffed by serious people tackling real problems faced by a marginalized race.

While laboring under the thumb of policies enacted to preserve racial inequality, these pioneers consciously compiled a large store of near-universal respect for a movement whose goals couldn't have been more principled. The passing of Parks, and what she represented, leaves us with black leaders who seem to excel in cheapening this legacy when they're not squandering it altogether. .

---

The NAACP's idea of civil discourse in the 21st century is Kweisi Mfume accusing President Bush of "divide and conquer" tactics "when it comes to black organizations and black people and black thinking." It's Julian Bond comparing Republicans to Nazis and the Taliban and asserting that there is a right-wing conspiracy against blacks "operating out of the United States Department of Justice."

Harlem Rep. Charlie Rangel calls President Bush "our Bull Connor," the notorious police commissioner in Alabama who turned dogs and fire hoses on civil-rights demonstrators in 1963. The remark prompts a correction from Major Owens, a fellow member of the Congressional Black Caucus, who insists that the president is "more diabolical" than Connor was. When the rhetoric of so-called elder statesmen is materially no different from hip-hopper Kanye West's, it might be a sign that the movement is in trouble.

Or that it's irrelevant.

An America where blacks run Merrill Lynch, American Express and the State Department no longer needs civil-rights activism of the Rosa Parks and James Weldon Johnson variety, and hasn't for decades. Thanks in large part to their diligence and sacrifices, the battle for legal equality has been fought and won. Blacks still face social and economic challenges, but these result mainly from self-inflicted cultural wounds, not a manifestly unjust society.

The current crop of opportunistic pretenders isn't ready to acknowledge this reality--just ask Bill Cosby--but as more and more black Americans reach the middle class and beyond, it's becoming self-evident.

Mr. Riley is a senior editorial writer at The Wall Street Journal.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Failures

Star Parker does a good job of describing the danger in relying on our government to bail us out. Here's an excerpt (emphasis added):

When the news of Katrina first broke, I wrote about my cousins from New Orleans who lost everything. Since then, they have moved to North Carolina and are building new lives for themselves. They are working for the same telemarketing firm that they worked for in New Orleans. A local church provided them temporary housing while they got resettled and is providing day care for their youngest child. The two oldest children are back in school, the parents are back at work and a new chapter in their life has begun.

They had the foresight to have purchased renters insurance; now they have funds to make their first home purchase.

The only government involvement in the whole process was the $2,000 check from FEMA.

Americans, white and black, rich and poor, can take care of themselves. We don't need politicians using our personal tragedies as an excuse to spend money that isn't theirs in the first place to try and buy votes and popularity.

I'll second that.

Tribute

Linda Chavez has a nice tribute to Rosa Parks who was instrumental in bringing racism to the forefront of this country's conscienceness. Only then could this nation begin to deal with that cruel inhumanity.

The day that Rosa Parks went to court to be tried for violating Montgomery's bus ordinance, 40,000 black Montgomery residents refused to ride the bus, sparking a boycott that lasted more than a year. The boycott, which established the reputation of a young black minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., only ended when the Supreme Court handed down a decision outlawing segregation on public buses.

Recommended.

Why war?

I have to agree with Betsy on this topic.

I'll be posting more on this later in the week.

Temples

Ed Morrisey has an interesting column up about the modern-day "temples" our cities are building, and what that may be saying about us.

He certainly makes you think . . .

Introspection

Gagdad Bob, over at One Cosmos, looks at the subject of history from a more philosophical perspective. Here's a taste:

To contemporary observers, the life of Jesus, or of the Hebrew prophets, was invisible. This is highly instructive. That is, the most important and influential events in human history were completely undetected and overlooked by contemporary sophisticates. Rather, they were noticed only by a handful of provincial rubes who "saw" and "heard," not with their eyes and ears, but in a trans-cerebral, intuitive manner.

Then he ties it into the present, and what we see (or fail to see), in terms of history, happening around us.

Black empowerment

Star Parker makes some good points regarding what blacks need to achieve success in their lives. Here's an excerpt:

It may be news to Farrakhan, and perhaps to other black leaders, that blacks are unique and individual human beings. It's the racists who look at us otherwise. It does not empower black citizens when they hear from their leaders that they are not unique individuals but racial objects. Am I suggesting that blacks in America today do not have to contend with the burden of racism? Of course I am not. What I do claim is that the most damaging racism in our community is what it hears from its own leaders. It is the message that black citizens cannot and should not be treated as free and personally responsible individuals.

What she has to say really applies to all of us, regardless of race. And that is what makes her arguments so credible.

People like Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan are calling for treating blacks differently than everyone else. How can that be anything other than racism on their part? These black "leaders" are leading blacks down the proverbial garden path -- when they should be leading them to self-sufficiency, self-discipline, and self-respect.

Which, by the way, is exactly what is expected of the rest of us . . .

"Our nation needs two parties . . ."

". . . that believe in America as a great country."

Michael Barone has a good post up about the failure of the Democrats to move toward the political center, and what that means to the country.

And it's not a good thing . . .

Oil

OpinionJournal has a good op-ed about our scarcity of oil (or lack thereof).

If gasoline cost today what it cost a family in 1900 (relative to income), we would be paying not $3 but $10 a gallon at the pump. Or consider that in 1860 oil sold for $4 a barrel, or the equivalent of about $400 a barrel in today's wage-adjusted prices. The first of a continuous series of innovations, in this case the invention of modern drilling techniques in 1869, cut the price by more than 90%--to 35 cents a barrel.

I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.

The Oil Bubble
Seventy dollars a barrel? Relax, it'll come down.

Saturday, October 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

We keep hearing the word "bubble" to describe industries with rapid and unsustainable rising prices. Hence, the Internet bubble, the telecom bubble, stock market bubble, and now, some analysts believe, a housing bubble. Yet for some mysterious reason no one speaks of the oil bubble--though prices have tripled in two years to as high as $70 a barrel.

Reviewing the history of oil-market boom and bust confirms that we are in the midst of a classic oil bubble and that prices will eventually fall, perhaps dramatically. Despite apocalyptic warnings, the world is not running out of oil and the pumps are not going to run dry in our lifetimes--or ever. What's more, the mechanism that will surely prevent any long-term catastrophic shortages in energy is precisely the free-market incentive to make profits that many politicians in Washington seem to regard as an evil pursuit and wish to short circuit.

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The best evidence for an oil bubble comes from the lessons of America's last six energy crises, dating back to the late 19th century, when there was a great scare about the industrial age grinding to a halt because of impending shortages of coal. (Today coal is superabundant, with about 500 years of supply.) Each one of these crises has run almost an identical course.

First, the crisis begins with a spike in energy prices as a result of a short-term supply shock. Next, higher prices bring doomsday claims of energy shortages, which in turn prompts government to intervene ineffectually into the marketplace. In the end, the advent of new technologies and new energy discoveries--all inspired by the profit motive--brings the crisis to an abrupt end, enabling oil and electricity markets to resume their virtuous long-term downward price trend.

The limits-to-growth crowd has predicted the end of oil since the days when this black gold was first discovered as an energy source in the mid-19th century. In the 1860s the U.S. Geological Survey forecast that there was "little or no chance" that oil would be found in Texas or California. In 1914 the Interior Department forecast that there was only a 10-year supply of oil left; in 1939 it calculated there was only a 13-year supply left, and in 1951 Interior warned that by the mid-1960s the oil wells would certainly run dry. In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter somberly told the nation that "we could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade."

We can ridicule these doom-and-gloom predictions today, but at the time they were taken seriously by scholars and politicians, just as the energy alarmists are gaining intellectual traction today. But as the late economist Julian Simon taught, by any meaningful measure oil (and all natural resources) has gotten steadily cheaper and far more bountiful in supply over time, despite periodic and even wild fluctuations in the market.

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If gasoline cost today what it cost a family in 1900 (relative to income), we would be paying not $3 but $10 a gallon at the pump. Or consider that in 1860 oil sold for $4 a barrel, or the equivalent of about $400 a barrel in today's wage-adjusted prices. The first of a continuous series of innovations, in this case the invention of modern drilling techniques in 1869, cut the price by more than 90%--to 35 cents a barrel.

Fifty years ago people would have laughed out loud at the idea of drilling for oil at the bottom of the ocean or getting fuel from sand, both of which were technologically infeasible. The first deep-sea oil rig went on line in 1965 and drilled 500 feet down. Now these rigs drill two miles into the ground--and miraculously, the price of extracting oil from 10,000 feet deep in the sea bed today is approaching the cost of drilling 100 feet down from the richest fields in Texas or Saudi Arabia 40 years ago.

This spectacular pace of technological progress explains why over time the amount of recoverable reserves of oil has increased, not fallen. Between 1980 and 2002 the amount of known global oil reserves increased by 300 billion barrels, according to a survey by British Petroleum. Rather than the oil fields running dry, just the opposite has been happening. In 1970 Saudi Arabia had 88 billion barrels of known oil. Thirty-five years later, nearly 100 billion barrels have been extracted and yet the latest forecast is that there are still 264 billion barrels left--although the Saudis have never allowed independent auditors to verify these numbers.

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In this industry, alas, bad news tends to crowd out the good. When Shell announced earlier this year that its oil and gas reserves were down by 30%, there was a global outcry. But when Canada announced in 2004 that it has more recoverable oil from tar sands than there is oil in Saudi Arabia, the world yawned. There is estimated to be about as much oil recoverable from the shale rocks in Colorado and other western states as in all the oil fields of OPEC nations. Yes, the cost of getting that oil is still prohibitively expensive, but the combination of today's high fuel prices and improved extraction techniques means that the break-even point for exploiting it is getting ever closer.

The energy Malthusians counter that China, India and other nations will satisfy their growing appetite for oil by driving demand and prices ever higher. In the short term, yes. But over the longer term, as the Chinese become more prosperous through free markets, China will become vastly more fuel efficient and also help discover new sources of energy.

America produces twice as much output per unit of energy consumed as it did 50 years ago. Liberals who say we need government to intervene in the energy markets, to patch the alleged failings of the free market, fail to comprehend that the command-and-control economies of the last 50 years have been far and away the biggest wasters of energy (and the biggest polluters). South Korea produces about three times as much output per kilowatt of electricity as North Korea does.

This is no call for complacency or inaction in the face of very high energy prices; it's a call for realism. Higher prices for gas and fuel for home heating have cost the average U.S. family about $1,500 to $2,000 a year. (Thankfully the Bush tax cuts have given back about precisely that amount in lower tax payments to the IRS.) The tax on the American economy from higher oil prices has reached $300 million a day and has chopped nearly a percentage point off GDP growth.

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Our point is that the constraints on our ability to find and extract new oil are not geologic or scientific. The real constraints on oil production are barriers created by government. Myron Ebell, an environmental analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, notes that roughly 90% of the oil on the planet rests under government-owned land and these resources are abysmally managed.

In the U.S., environmentalists have erected myriad barriers to drilling for new sources of oil. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that there are at least 100 billion barrels that are fairly easily recoverable in Alaska and offshore that oil companies are not permitted to exploit. Once, we could afford the luxury of not drilling there. Now, thanks to a witch's brew of unforeseen circumstances--political turmoil in the oil producing countries, China's surge in demand, and hurricanes that have knocked out Gulf refineries--it's an economic and national security imperative that we do.

Here's one simple idea to increase the domestic supply of oil: Have Uncle Sam share its oil-drilling royalties with the California government. If Californians realized they could go a long way to solving their deficit and overtaxation problems by raising billions of these petro-dollars, the aversion on the left coast toward offshore drilling might well begin to subside.

We will assess at another time the many dreadful ideas--price controls and "windfall profit" taxes--that Congress is considering to deal with the energy crisis. But for today it is sufficient to note that the free market will deliver oil, electricity and other forms of energy at declining prices in the future, if only the government will let the market's benign and productive forces work their magic.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

President Bush's speech on the GWOT

If you missed it, you've got to read President Bush's speech about the war on terror. He's got some good things to say:

Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence -- the Israeli presence on the West Bank, or the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, or the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago. In fact, we're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers -- and no concession, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.

Read the whole thing -- it's worth the time, and thought.

07 Oct 2001

Alan Dowd, over at American Enterprise, reminds us about the other anniversary.

. . . it should come as no surprise that after 9/11, Americans responded yet again by taking the battle to the enemy. In fact, the first counterstrike against al Qaeda actually took place on 9/11 itself, when passengers on that fourth plane-turned-missile stormed the cockpit of Flight 93 and prevented al Qaeda completing its mission.

What they began on that doomed jetliner, the US military continued and expanded on October 7, 2001.

He points out something about the unique American character.

Recommended.