The failed theology of arms control
So-called experts are frequently certain about what they know about nuclear material -- and they're frequently wrong.
By Gabriel Schoenfeld
May 24, 2008
ONE OF THE least noticed and most peculiar campaign promises made by Barack Obama is his pledge, if elected president, to "secure all loose nuclear materials in the world within four years." Without doubt that is a laudable goal, but one is left wondering how exactly he expects to accomplish it in four years, or even, for that matter, in 40.
One of many obstacles is that our intelligence agencies seldom know where loose nuclear materials are, especially when they are hidden on the territory of hostile states. An even bigger problem is that when we they do locate them, there always will be some expert or another telling us that, despite all the evidence, they are not really there. Obama, of all people, should know this.
He has one such expert advising his campaign.
On Sept. 6, 2007, Israeli jets destroyed a large box-shaped structure built in Syria at Al Kibar, not far from the Euphrates River. Although Israel maintained a discreet silence about the raid, and Syria confined itself to denouncing Israel for violating its airspace, suspicion immediately began to mount that the target was a nuclear reactor. In the weeks that followed, satellite photos and other data buttressing that suspicion rapidly began to emerge.
But not everyone was convinced. Among the skeptics was Joseph Cirincione, formerly a staff member for Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) on the House Armed Services Committee and more recently a denizen of the Washington think-tank world, who has been an informal advisor on nuclear affairs for Obama and has written a series of memos for the campaign.
Interviewed by Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker after the Israeli raid, Cirincione was emphatic: "Syria does not have the technical, industrial or financial ability to support a nuclear weapons program. I've been following this issue for 15 years, and every once in awhile a suspicion arises and we investigate and there's nothing. There was and is no nuclear weapons threat from Syria."
Thanks to materials made public by the U.S. on April 24, we now know that the facility at Al Kibar was a nuclear reactor and that it had been built with North Korean assistance. Indeed, it was a close copy of the North Korean plutonium producing reactor at Yongbyon that the U.S. has been trying, via negotiations, to shut down. Cirincione has admitted that he got it wrong, explaining that the evidence "seems strong" that Syria was building a reactor and that no one can bat 1,000.
Cirincione is correct about the difficulty of attaining a perfect batting average. But still, why did he miss this particular ball?
One obvious explanation is that he fell victim to Syrian deception. As a report by the Institute for Science and International Security makes plain, Syrian engineers and architects went to "astonishing lengths" to erase the "signature" of the reactor at Al Kibar and to camouflage and/or bury "commonly expected attributes and conceal the building's true purpose." So successful was the Syrian concealment effort that even after 2005, when U.S. intelligence officials first became aware of the structure and a North Korean presence at it, they labeled it an "enigma facility."
Yet secrecy and camouflage are par for the course. No country with a covert nuclear program has failed to use such means to keep its effort hidden from the world. And no nuclear nonproliferation expert worth his boron would be unaware of this. What else must have been at work here?
Experts, like generals, have a tendency to fight the last war. In this instance, the last war was the Iraq war, in which the U.S. invaded in no small part to dismantle a nuclear weapons program that turned out not to exist. A good many nuclear specialists within and outside the intelligence world appear to have become so fearful of repeating that sorry experience that they are afraid even to acknowledge things that do exist. Last year's National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that declared, misleadingly, that Iran's nuclear weapons program ended in 2003 is a prominent case in point.
Cirincione seems to have been snared by precisely the same trap. Reports of a Syrian nuclear reactor, he wrote a week after the Israeli strike, were "nonsense," the handiwork "of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted 'intelligence' to key reporters in order to promote a preexisting political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should."
It "is all political," he insisted to Hersh. Those peddling the story of the nonexistent reactor appear to have been aiming "at derailing the U.S.-North Korean agreement that administration hard-liners think is appeasement."
In his solicitude for the U.S.-North Korean agreement -- itself a deeply flawed document and one repeatedly violated by Pyongyang -- the solution to the riddle becomes clear. Cirincione is now the president of an outfit called the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation dedicated to funding advocates of arms control negotiations around the world. To him and his fellow members of the arms control creed, the admission that North Korea was illicitly shipping nuclear technology abroad -- and that a country such as Syria, a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, had been caught in a brazen violation of its commitments -- might be taken as an acknowledgment that the arms control regime on which they have staked their reputations and dedicated their lives has failed utterly.
But it is as irrational to suggest that weapons never exist as it would be to suggest that they always exist. As the Syrian episode demonstrates, there may not be weapons of mass destruction under every dictator's bed, but sometimes there will be, and it is not something about which we -- or, in this instance, the Israelis -- can afford to be wrong.
In short, when the Israelis obliterated the reactor at Al Kibar, the reverberations of the blast also shattered a theology. If Obama is to make any headway at all on his quixotic pledge to secure all loose nuclear materials in the world in four years, he might begin by securing some more realistic nuclear advisors.
Gabriel Schoenfeld is senior editor of Commentary magazine.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Rev. Wright Connection Still Haunts Obama
May 24, 2008
Rev. Wright Connection Still Haunts Obama
By Michael Barone
As Barack Obama makes his slow but steady way toward the Democratic nomination, the assumption in the admiring precincts of the press corps is that voters have dismissed as irrelevant his longtime association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But that may prove as mistaken as the assumption, back in 1988, that voters would not be impressed by Michael Dukakis's 11-year support of a law granting weekend furloughs to convicts sentenced to life without parole, an issue brought up in the primaries by Al Gore but largely ignored in press coverage at the time.
Evidence for this comes in the exit polls from the West Virginia and Kentucky primaries on May 13 and 20. In both, about half the voters -- and these are voters in the Democratic primary -- said that they believe Obama shares Wright's views either somewhat or a lot. And slightly under 50 percent of these voters said that Obama is honest and trustworthy.
To be sure, these were primaries in which Obama was beaten, and beaten badly, by Hillary Clinton -- 67 percent to 26 percent in West Virginia, 66 percent to 30 percent in Kentucky. So they would be inclined, one might believe, to think ill of Obama. Yet it is not universally the case that voters who choose one candidate in a hotly contested election doubt whether the other candidate is honest. You can oppose someone who you believe to be trustworthy. Only 38 percent of Americans voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and George McGovern in 1972. But probably a higher percentage believed that they were basically honest.
Which leads me to ask why these voters declined to say Obama is honest. When have they seen him lie or being caught in a lie? The response to the question on Wright may provide the answer. They know that he attended Wright's church for 20 years. They know that he said, both on March 18 when he refused to renounce Wright and on April 29 when he did renounce him, that he was not aware of his pastor and spiritual mentor's incendiary comments. Yet half of these voters also think that, despite those statements, Obama agrees with what Wright has been saying.
It's a little dangerous in interpreting polls to assume that voters' thinking proceeds along logical lines. People who aren't professionally involved in politics, whose knowledge comes from bits and snippets of news, can hold beliefs that are contradictory or in tension with each other. They don't feel obliged to resolve contradictions. But even granting that, it seems to me that about half of West Virginia and Kentucky Democratic primary voters were saying that Obama lied about not knowing what Wright has been preaching and that he agrees with him a lot more than he has let on.
Now West Virginia and Kentucky are not typical primary states. They, together with Arkansas, where Hillary Clinton was first lady for 12 years, were Obama's weakest states in this year's primaries. And some percentage of registered Democrats in these states have been voting Republican in recent presidential elections. Nevertheless, the negative verdict these voters render on Obama's honesty and his relationship with Wright is likely to be typical of some significant quantum of potential Democratic voters this year. And not just in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, which he will certainly lose, but in marginal states which he must carry in order to be elected.
I find confirmation from this in a recent focus group conducted for the Annenberg Public Policy Center by pollster Peter Hart (for whom I worked for seven years) of non-primary voters in Charlottesville, Va. As Hart and Alex Horowitz note in their analysis of reactions to Obama, "When asked to recount any two memories of the total presidential campaign so far, seven of the 12 participants cite Rev. Wright by name. So far, clips of Rev. Wright clearly are the one 'key defining moment' of this campaign."
Most reporters are liberals, whose circles of friends and acquaintances have included people with views not dissimilar to those of Wright or William Ayers, the unrepentant Weather Underground bomber with whom Obama served on a nonprofit board and at whose house his state Senate candidacy was launched. Such reporters don't find these views utterly repugnant or particularly noteworthy. But most American voters do. And they wonder whether a candidate who associates with such people agrees with them -- or disbelieve him when he says he doesn't.
Though most in the press won't admit it, that's a problem -- for the Obama candidacy and for the whole Democratic Party once it nominates him.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/the_rev_wright_connection_stil.html at May 24, 2008 - 09:46:02 AM PDT
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Rev. Wright Connection Still Haunts Obama
By Michael Barone
As Barack Obama makes his slow but steady way toward the Democratic nomination, the assumption in the admiring precincts of the press corps is that voters have dismissed as irrelevant his longtime association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But that may prove as mistaken as the assumption, back in 1988, that voters would not be impressed by Michael Dukakis's 11-year support of a law granting weekend furloughs to convicts sentenced to life without parole, an issue brought up in the primaries by Al Gore but largely ignored in press coverage at the time.
Evidence for this comes in the exit polls from the West Virginia and Kentucky primaries on May 13 and 20. In both, about half the voters -- and these are voters in the Democratic primary -- said that they believe Obama shares Wright's views either somewhat or a lot. And slightly under 50 percent of these voters said that Obama is honest and trustworthy.
To be sure, these were primaries in which Obama was beaten, and beaten badly, by Hillary Clinton -- 67 percent to 26 percent in West Virginia, 66 percent to 30 percent in Kentucky. So they would be inclined, one might believe, to think ill of Obama. Yet it is not universally the case that voters who choose one candidate in a hotly contested election doubt whether the other candidate is honest. You can oppose someone who you believe to be trustworthy. Only 38 percent of Americans voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and George McGovern in 1972. But probably a higher percentage believed that they were basically honest.
Which leads me to ask why these voters declined to say Obama is honest. When have they seen him lie or being caught in a lie? The response to the question on Wright may provide the answer. They know that he attended Wright's church for 20 years. They know that he said, both on March 18 when he refused to renounce Wright and on April 29 when he did renounce him, that he was not aware of his pastor and spiritual mentor's incendiary comments. Yet half of these voters also think that, despite those statements, Obama agrees with what Wright has been saying.
It's a little dangerous in interpreting polls to assume that voters' thinking proceeds along logical lines. People who aren't professionally involved in politics, whose knowledge comes from bits and snippets of news, can hold beliefs that are contradictory or in tension with each other. They don't feel obliged to resolve contradictions. But even granting that, it seems to me that about half of West Virginia and Kentucky Democratic primary voters were saying that Obama lied about not knowing what Wright has been preaching and that he agrees with him a lot more than he has let on.
Now West Virginia and Kentucky are not typical primary states. They, together with Arkansas, where Hillary Clinton was first lady for 12 years, were Obama's weakest states in this year's primaries. And some percentage of registered Democrats in these states have been voting Republican in recent presidential elections. Nevertheless, the negative verdict these voters render on Obama's honesty and his relationship with Wright is likely to be typical of some significant quantum of potential Democratic voters this year. And not just in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, which he will certainly lose, but in marginal states which he must carry in order to be elected.
I find confirmation from this in a recent focus group conducted for the Annenberg Public Policy Center by pollster Peter Hart (for whom I worked for seven years) of non-primary voters in Charlottesville, Va. As Hart and Alex Horowitz note in their analysis of reactions to Obama, "When asked to recount any two memories of the total presidential campaign so far, seven of the 12 participants cite Rev. Wright by name. So far, clips of Rev. Wright clearly are the one 'key defining moment' of this campaign."
Most reporters are liberals, whose circles of friends and acquaintances have included people with views not dissimilar to those of Wright or William Ayers, the unrepentant Weather Underground bomber with whom Obama served on a nonprofit board and at whose house his state Senate candidacy was launched. Such reporters don't find these views utterly repugnant or particularly noteworthy. But most American voters do. And they wonder whether a candidate who associates with such people agrees with them -- or disbelieve him when he says he doesn't.
Though most in the press won't admit it, that's a problem -- for the Obama candidacy and for the whole Democratic Party once it nominates him.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/the_rev_wright_connection_stil.html at May 24, 2008 - 09:46:02 AM PDT
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GOP strategists mull McCain ‘blowout’
GOP strategists mull McCain ‘blowout’
By: David Paul Kuhn May 24, 2008 11:37 AM EST
It sounds crazy at first. Amid dire reports about the toxic political environment for Republican candidates and the challenges facing John McCain, many top GOP strategists believe he can defeat Barack Obama — and by a margin exceeding President Bush’s Electoral College victory in 2004.
At first blush, McCain’s recent rough patch and the considerable financial disadvantage confronting him make such predictions seem absurd. Indeed, as Republicans experience their worst days since Watergate, those same GOP strategists are reticent to publicly tout the prospect of a sizable McCain victory for fear of looking foolish. But the contours of the electoral map, combined with McCain’s unique strengths and the nature of Obama’s possible vulnerabilities, have led to a cautious and muted optimism that McCain could actually surpass Bush’s 35-electoral-vote victory in 2004.
Though they expect he would finish far closer to Obama in the popular vote, the thinking is that he could win by as many 50 electoral votes. By post-war election standards, that margin is unusually small. Yet it’s considerably larger than either Bush’s 2004 victory or his five-electoral-vote win in 2000.
“A win by 40 or 50 electoral votes would be an astonishing upset, just a watershed event with all the issues that were stacked against him from the very beginning,” said David Woodard, a Republican pollster and Clemson University political science professor. “But it could happen. I know this seems like wishful thinking by Republicans. I’m thinking that Republicans could win by 40 electoral votes. But I dare not say it,” he added. “Certainly what is possible could come to pass.”
A top strategist with the Republican National Committee, who asked that his name be withheld to speak candidly, explained that by his own examination, “we’re actually sitting pretty well in most states.” “There are a lot of scenarios that look good for McCain, and I almost would go so far to say that there are a lot more scenarios [than for Obama],” the strategist added. “I don’t think anybody over here wants to let themselves get too excited about it. It is an eternity between now and November. But McCain looks a lot stronger than our prospects as a party.”
It is virtually impossible to find an established GOP strategist who believes McCain will win in a landslide. But in light of the circumstances, more than a few Republicans are pleasantly surprised to find that McCain is at all situated to defeat Obama. “The broader environment clearly favors the Democrat,” said Whit Ayers, another veteran GOP pollster. But Ayers argued that “a state-by-state analysis actually makes McCain a narrow favorite to win the Electoral College majority.” “That would certainly run against the grain of history, if he pulled that off,” Ayers added. “But it’s also clearly plausible and a manageable outcome partly because of John McCain’s strength among independents and partly because of Obama’s weakness in culture, ideology and association.”
Some Republican strategists can envision a scenario in which Obama wins the popular vote but loses in the Electoral College — he might galvanize Southern black turnout, for example, but still fail to switch a state in the region. Among the 10 strategists interviewed by Politico for this story, there was near-uniform belief that had any other Republican been nominated, the party’s prospects in November would be nil. “No disrespect to the other candidates,” said GOP pollster Glen Bolger, “but if anyone else had been nominated we’d be toast.”
The case they make for a comfortable McCain win is not beyond reason. Begin with the 2004 electoral map. Add Iowa and Colorado to Obama’s side, since both are considered states Obama could pick off. Then count McCain victories in New Hampshire and Michigan, two states where McCain is competitive. In this scenario, McCain wins the Electoral College 291-246, a larger margin than Bush four years ago. If Obama managed only to win Iowa from Republicans and McCain managed only to win Pennsylvania, McCain would still win by a much greater margin than Bush — 300-237.
“McCain is in a remarkably strong position for how poor the political environment is right now,” said Brian Nienaber, a GOP pollster. “McCain could win Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado and Nevada with a high Hispanic population. It really does scramble the map of where Obama does find those electoral votes.”
Naturally, Democrats do not concede the point. But conversations with several Democratic strategists reveal that many acknowledge that the Republican scenarios are at least reasonable, though they say less likely to occur because Obama has the potential to dramatically alter the map, putting some nontraditional states in play at the same time.
The bottom line, though, is that McCain’s ability to compete in some big industrial states offers a ray of hope in an otherwise dismal election cycle. “We have to hold Michigan and Pennsylvania. McCain wins one of those states, we are in trouble. They have to hold Florida and Ohio or they are trouble,” Democratic pollster Paul Maslin said. “The truth about this race [is], this is the year that we shouldn’t lose, and we could lose.”
The GOP scenarios do not rely on some game-changing event but rather the possibility of Obama failing to overcome his own and his party’s weaknesses. Obama has long been thought by analysts to have a higher electoral vote ceiling as well as a lower floor than Hillary Clinton. It is that potential Obama floor that increasingly occupies the minds of Republicans studying the map. Even the potentially dramatic rise in turnout of African-Americans may only gain Obama 1 percentage point in many swing states, according to Maslin.
Yet Obama’s weaknesses may end up neutralizing some of those relatively modest gains. Since 1968, Democrats have had a deficit with whites, particularly men. Some Republicans believe that Obama may exacerbate those Democratic challenges, especially in key rural regions like Appalachia, struggle to win back Hispanics or some women, and dash Democratic prospects during their most favorable landscape in at least three decades.
“There is a one in four shot that McCain can win an electoral majority in excess of 50 electoral votes, which by most recent standards would be a blowout,” Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio said. “Considering where the Republican brand is right now, that’s pretty phenomenal.”
By: David Paul Kuhn May 24, 2008 11:37 AM EST
It sounds crazy at first. Amid dire reports about the toxic political environment for Republican candidates and the challenges facing John McCain, many top GOP strategists believe he can defeat Barack Obama — and by a margin exceeding President Bush’s Electoral College victory in 2004.
At first blush, McCain’s recent rough patch and the considerable financial disadvantage confronting him make such predictions seem absurd. Indeed, as Republicans experience their worst days since Watergate, those same GOP strategists are reticent to publicly tout the prospect of a sizable McCain victory for fear of looking foolish. But the contours of the electoral map, combined with McCain’s unique strengths and the nature of Obama’s possible vulnerabilities, have led to a cautious and muted optimism that McCain could actually surpass Bush’s 35-electoral-vote victory in 2004.
Though they expect he would finish far closer to Obama in the popular vote, the thinking is that he could win by as many 50 electoral votes. By post-war election standards, that margin is unusually small. Yet it’s considerably larger than either Bush’s 2004 victory or his five-electoral-vote win in 2000.
“A win by 40 or 50 electoral votes would be an astonishing upset, just a watershed event with all the issues that were stacked against him from the very beginning,” said David Woodard, a Republican pollster and Clemson University political science professor. “But it could happen. I know this seems like wishful thinking by Republicans. I’m thinking that Republicans could win by 40 electoral votes. But I dare not say it,” he added. “Certainly what is possible could come to pass.”
A top strategist with the Republican National Committee, who asked that his name be withheld to speak candidly, explained that by his own examination, “we’re actually sitting pretty well in most states.” “There are a lot of scenarios that look good for McCain, and I almost would go so far to say that there are a lot more scenarios [than for Obama],” the strategist added. “I don’t think anybody over here wants to let themselves get too excited about it. It is an eternity between now and November. But McCain looks a lot stronger than our prospects as a party.”
It is virtually impossible to find an established GOP strategist who believes McCain will win in a landslide. But in light of the circumstances, more than a few Republicans are pleasantly surprised to find that McCain is at all situated to defeat Obama. “The broader environment clearly favors the Democrat,” said Whit Ayers, another veteran GOP pollster. But Ayers argued that “a state-by-state analysis actually makes McCain a narrow favorite to win the Electoral College majority.” “That would certainly run against the grain of history, if he pulled that off,” Ayers added. “But it’s also clearly plausible and a manageable outcome partly because of John McCain’s strength among independents and partly because of Obama’s weakness in culture, ideology and association.”
Some Republican strategists can envision a scenario in which Obama wins the popular vote but loses in the Electoral College — he might galvanize Southern black turnout, for example, but still fail to switch a state in the region. Among the 10 strategists interviewed by Politico for this story, there was near-uniform belief that had any other Republican been nominated, the party’s prospects in November would be nil. “No disrespect to the other candidates,” said GOP pollster Glen Bolger, “but if anyone else had been nominated we’d be toast.”
The case they make for a comfortable McCain win is not beyond reason. Begin with the 2004 electoral map. Add Iowa and Colorado to Obama’s side, since both are considered states Obama could pick off. Then count McCain victories in New Hampshire and Michigan, two states where McCain is competitive. In this scenario, McCain wins the Electoral College 291-246, a larger margin than Bush four years ago. If Obama managed only to win Iowa from Republicans and McCain managed only to win Pennsylvania, McCain would still win by a much greater margin than Bush — 300-237.
“McCain is in a remarkably strong position for how poor the political environment is right now,” said Brian Nienaber, a GOP pollster. “McCain could win Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado and Nevada with a high Hispanic population. It really does scramble the map of where Obama does find those electoral votes.”
Naturally, Democrats do not concede the point. But conversations with several Democratic strategists reveal that many acknowledge that the Republican scenarios are at least reasonable, though they say less likely to occur because Obama has the potential to dramatically alter the map, putting some nontraditional states in play at the same time.
The bottom line, though, is that McCain’s ability to compete in some big industrial states offers a ray of hope in an otherwise dismal election cycle. “We have to hold Michigan and Pennsylvania. McCain wins one of those states, we are in trouble. They have to hold Florida and Ohio or they are trouble,” Democratic pollster Paul Maslin said. “The truth about this race [is], this is the year that we shouldn’t lose, and we could lose.”
The GOP scenarios do not rely on some game-changing event but rather the possibility of Obama failing to overcome his own and his party’s weaknesses. Obama has long been thought by analysts to have a higher electoral vote ceiling as well as a lower floor than Hillary Clinton. It is that potential Obama floor that increasingly occupies the minds of Republicans studying the map. Even the potentially dramatic rise in turnout of African-Americans may only gain Obama 1 percentage point in many swing states, according to Maslin.
Yet Obama’s weaknesses may end up neutralizing some of those relatively modest gains. Since 1968, Democrats have had a deficit with whites, particularly men. Some Republicans believe that Obama may exacerbate those Democratic challenges, especially in key rural regions like Appalachia, struggle to win back Hispanics or some women, and dash Democratic prospects during their most favorable landscape in at least three decades.
“There is a one in four shot that McCain can win an electoral majority in excess of 50 electoral votes, which by most recent standards would be a blowout,” Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio said. “Considering where the Republican brand is right now, that’s pretty phenomenal.”
Friday, May 23, 2008
Gay Marriage by Judicial Decree
Gay Marriage by Judicial Decree
California Chief Justice Ronald George’s majority opinion exuded impatience bordering on contempt for the government by the people that is the foundation of our democratic system.
Sat. May. 24, 2008by Stuart Taylor Jr.
I wholeheartedly support gay marriage. And I am happy for the many gays who rejoiced at the California Supreme Court's 4-3 decision on May 15 ordering the state to stop calling committed gay couples "domestic partners" and start calling them "married."
So why do I see the decision as an unfortunate exercise in judicial imperialism? Let me count the ways. Then I'll touch on how it could be a harbinger of the constitutional innovating that we might see if the next president engineers a strong liberal majority--a likelier prospect than a strong conservative majority--on the U.S. Supreme Court.
First, the California court's 121-page opinion was dishonest. This was most evident in its ritual denial of the fact that it was usurping legislative power: "Our task ... is not to decide whether we believe, as a matter of policy, that the officially recognized relationship of a same-sex couple should be designated a marriage rather than a domestic partnership ... but instead only to determine whether the difference in the official names of the relationships violates the California Constitution [emphasis in original]."
This was a deeply disingenuous dodge, if not a bald-faced lie, to conceal from gullible voters the fact that the decision was a raw exercise in judicial policy-making with no connection to the words or intent of the state constitution. It is inconceivable that anyone but a supporter of gay marriage "as a matter of policy" could have found in vague constitutional phrases such as "equal protection" a right to judicial invalidation of the marriage laws of every state and nation in the history of civilization.
To be sure, this was not exactly a bolt from the blue. The steady accretion of both state and federal judicial power since the 1950s has left a malleable mass of hundreds of precedents straying ever-further from the original understanding of the constitutions and laws they purport to be "interpreting." This made it easy for the California court to take the leap--as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had done in 2004--to overriding the state's voters on gay marriage in the guise of enforcing "the ultimate expression of the people's will."
But President Franklin Roosevelt's indictment of the conservative U.S. Supreme Court of the 1930s, which struck down much of the New Deal, fits here as well: "The Court ... has improperly set itself up as ... a superlegislature ... reading into the Constitution words and implications which are not there, and which were never intended to be there."
The California court's majority descended into especially slick sophistry when it suggested that the many gay-rights reforms that the state's elected branches had already adopted were not a reason to let the democratic process work but rather a mandate for judicial imposition of gay marriage. The message to voters in other states may be: If you give the judges an inch on gay rights, they will take a mile.
Also disingenuous was the majority's vague dismissal of the powerful argument by opponents of judicially imposed gay marriage that the made-up constitutional principle underlying the decision would also--if seriously applied--require the state to recognize polygamous and incestuous marriages among adults.
Chief Justice Ronald George's majority opinion exuded impatience bordering on contempt for the government by the people that is the foundation of our democratic system. California's voters and elected branches had already made great progress toward full legal equality for gay couples. They enjoyed all of the state-law rights and privileges of marriage except the name, which 61.4 percent of the voters had reserved for heterosexual couples in a 2000 ballot initiative. California's domestic-partnership laws were more generous to gays than the laws of almost all other states and almost all nations.
But to the majority, this domestic-partnership-but-not-gay-marriage compromise--also advocated by Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain--was "a mark of second-class citizenship." George analogized domestic partnerships to the "separate but equal" laws of the segregated South, including laws making interracial marriage a crime in some states until they were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967. (The California court, admirably, had voided that state's ban on interracial marriage in 1948.) The chief justice thus insulted the voters--not to mention all three presidential candidates--and treated California's denial of official benediction as the legal equivalent of the Jim Crow South's system of grinding oppression.
This is not to deny the importance to many gay couples and their children of being officially recognized as "married." They should be treated as married. But to decree this by judicial fiat has large costs to democratic governance. Judicial power to override the deeply felt values of popular majorities should be used sparingly, to enforce clear constitutional commands or redress great injustices, not deployed whenever the judges think they can improve on the work of the elected branches or accelerate progressive reforms already under way.
Also troubling is the majority's eagerness to move beyond enforcing substantive rights into dictating what words the government must and must not use: Same-sex couples, the majority ruled, have a "fundamental right ... to have their official family relationship accorded the same dignity, respect, and stature as that accorded to all other officially recognized family relationships."
This urge to regulate government speech resonates with the logic of those federal judges who have sought to strip "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance. Can court-ordered erasure of "In God We Trust" from U.S. currency, and perhaps a judicial rewrite of the National Anthem, be far behind?
Also troubling is the majority's eagerness to move beyond enforcing substantive rights into dictating what words the government must and must not use.
It's true, as defenders of the California decision stress, that the justices there and elsewhere are politically astute enough to avoid flying too boldly into the teeth of public opinion; that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has accepted the decision; and that California's voters will have a chance to override it, if they choose, through the state's ballot initiative process. All of this mitigates the affront to democracy. But it is still an affront, no less for the fact that three of the four majority justices are Republican appointees.
And while conservative judges are not above displacing democratic choices with made-up constitutional law (see my July 7, 2007, column, p. 12), that urge seems stronger on the Left.
Looking to the future of the U.S. Supreme Court, a sharp lurch to the right seems unlikely. Even if McCain wins the presidency and ends up replacing liberals John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg--who at 88 and 75, respectively, are the oldest justices--an enhanced Democratic majority in the Senate would no doubt block any strong conservative nominees to replace them.
A Democratic president, on the other hand, would probably have a free hand to appoint the sort of justices envisioned by Obama, who opposed the nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Obama has suggested that his criteria would not be fidelity to constitutional text or modesty in the use of judicial power, but rather "what is in the judge's heart" and "one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy."
Based on the wish lists published by liberal judges and law professors, justices who fit Obama's description might well invent federal constitutional rights not only to gay marriage but also to Medicaid abortions, physician-assisted suicide, human cloning, and perhaps free medical care, food, and housing for poor people; strike down the death penalty (as Stevens recently advocated) and laws making English the official language; ban publicly funded vouchers for poor kids to attend parochial schools; bless ever-more-aggressive use of racial and gender preferences; and more.
As a policy matter, this prospect worries me less than it does my conservative friends. I support legislative adoption not only of gay marriage but also of Medicaid abortions and some other policies on the liberal wish list. And I would not much miss the death penalty, "under God," or "In God We Trust."
But I am concerned about the gradual, relentless strangulation of Abraham Lincoln's vision of ours as "government of the people, by the people, for the people," by judges who see constitutions not as binding law but as invitations for judicial rule.
I am also struck by the official list of "Attorneys for Respondent" joining amicus briefs supporting gay marriage in the California case. It included more than 700 lawyers, law firms, and legal groups. Justice Antonin Scalia had a point in complaining 12 years ago, when his colleagues struck down a Colorado ballot initiative in the name of gay rights, that they were enforcing not the Constitution but rather "the views and values of the lawyer class from which the Court's members are drawn."
California Chief Justice Ronald George’s majority opinion exuded impatience bordering on contempt for the government by the people that is the foundation of our democratic system.
Sat. May. 24, 2008by Stuart Taylor Jr.
I wholeheartedly support gay marriage. And I am happy for the many gays who rejoiced at the California Supreme Court's 4-3 decision on May 15 ordering the state to stop calling committed gay couples "domestic partners" and start calling them "married."
So why do I see the decision as an unfortunate exercise in judicial imperialism? Let me count the ways. Then I'll touch on how it could be a harbinger of the constitutional innovating that we might see if the next president engineers a strong liberal majority--a likelier prospect than a strong conservative majority--on the U.S. Supreme Court.
First, the California court's 121-page opinion was dishonest. This was most evident in its ritual denial of the fact that it was usurping legislative power: "Our task ... is not to decide whether we believe, as a matter of policy, that the officially recognized relationship of a same-sex couple should be designated a marriage rather than a domestic partnership ... but instead only to determine whether the difference in the official names of the relationships violates the California Constitution [emphasis in original]."
This was a deeply disingenuous dodge, if not a bald-faced lie, to conceal from gullible voters the fact that the decision was a raw exercise in judicial policy-making with no connection to the words or intent of the state constitution. It is inconceivable that anyone but a supporter of gay marriage "as a matter of policy" could have found in vague constitutional phrases such as "equal protection" a right to judicial invalidation of the marriage laws of every state and nation in the history of civilization.
To be sure, this was not exactly a bolt from the blue. The steady accretion of both state and federal judicial power since the 1950s has left a malleable mass of hundreds of precedents straying ever-further from the original understanding of the constitutions and laws they purport to be "interpreting." This made it easy for the California court to take the leap--as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had done in 2004--to overriding the state's voters on gay marriage in the guise of enforcing "the ultimate expression of the people's will."
But President Franklin Roosevelt's indictment of the conservative U.S. Supreme Court of the 1930s, which struck down much of the New Deal, fits here as well: "The Court ... has improperly set itself up as ... a superlegislature ... reading into the Constitution words and implications which are not there, and which were never intended to be there."
The California court's majority descended into especially slick sophistry when it suggested that the many gay-rights reforms that the state's elected branches had already adopted were not a reason to let the democratic process work but rather a mandate for judicial imposition of gay marriage. The message to voters in other states may be: If you give the judges an inch on gay rights, they will take a mile.
Also disingenuous was the majority's vague dismissal of the powerful argument by opponents of judicially imposed gay marriage that the made-up constitutional principle underlying the decision would also--if seriously applied--require the state to recognize polygamous and incestuous marriages among adults.
Chief Justice Ronald George's majority opinion exuded impatience bordering on contempt for the government by the people that is the foundation of our democratic system. California's voters and elected branches had already made great progress toward full legal equality for gay couples. They enjoyed all of the state-law rights and privileges of marriage except the name, which 61.4 percent of the voters had reserved for heterosexual couples in a 2000 ballot initiative. California's domestic-partnership laws were more generous to gays than the laws of almost all other states and almost all nations.
But to the majority, this domestic-partnership-but-not-gay-marriage compromise--also advocated by Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain--was "a mark of second-class citizenship." George analogized domestic partnerships to the "separate but equal" laws of the segregated South, including laws making interracial marriage a crime in some states until they were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967. (The California court, admirably, had voided that state's ban on interracial marriage in 1948.) The chief justice thus insulted the voters--not to mention all three presidential candidates--and treated California's denial of official benediction as the legal equivalent of the Jim Crow South's system of grinding oppression.
This is not to deny the importance to many gay couples and their children of being officially recognized as "married." They should be treated as married. But to decree this by judicial fiat has large costs to democratic governance. Judicial power to override the deeply felt values of popular majorities should be used sparingly, to enforce clear constitutional commands or redress great injustices, not deployed whenever the judges think they can improve on the work of the elected branches or accelerate progressive reforms already under way.
Also troubling is the majority's eagerness to move beyond enforcing substantive rights into dictating what words the government must and must not use: Same-sex couples, the majority ruled, have a "fundamental right ... to have their official family relationship accorded the same dignity, respect, and stature as that accorded to all other officially recognized family relationships."
This urge to regulate government speech resonates with the logic of those federal judges who have sought to strip "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance. Can court-ordered erasure of "In God We Trust" from U.S. currency, and perhaps a judicial rewrite of the National Anthem, be far behind?
Also troubling is the majority's eagerness to move beyond enforcing substantive rights into dictating what words the government must and must not use.
It's true, as defenders of the California decision stress, that the justices there and elsewhere are politically astute enough to avoid flying too boldly into the teeth of public opinion; that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has accepted the decision; and that California's voters will have a chance to override it, if they choose, through the state's ballot initiative process. All of this mitigates the affront to democracy. But it is still an affront, no less for the fact that three of the four majority justices are Republican appointees.
And while conservative judges are not above displacing democratic choices with made-up constitutional law (see my July 7, 2007, column, p. 12), that urge seems stronger on the Left.
Looking to the future of the U.S. Supreme Court, a sharp lurch to the right seems unlikely. Even if McCain wins the presidency and ends up replacing liberals John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg--who at 88 and 75, respectively, are the oldest justices--an enhanced Democratic majority in the Senate would no doubt block any strong conservative nominees to replace them.
A Democratic president, on the other hand, would probably have a free hand to appoint the sort of justices envisioned by Obama, who opposed the nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Obama has suggested that his criteria would not be fidelity to constitutional text or modesty in the use of judicial power, but rather "what is in the judge's heart" and "one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy."
Based on the wish lists published by liberal judges and law professors, justices who fit Obama's description might well invent federal constitutional rights not only to gay marriage but also to Medicaid abortions, physician-assisted suicide, human cloning, and perhaps free medical care, food, and housing for poor people; strike down the death penalty (as Stevens recently advocated) and laws making English the official language; ban publicly funded vouchers for poor kids to attend parochial schools; bless ever-more-aggressive use of racial and gender preferences; and more.
As a policy matter, this prospect worries me less than it does my conservative friends. I support legislative adoption not only of gay marriage but also of Medicaid abortions and some other policies on the liberal wish list. And I would not much miss the death penalty, "under God," or "In God We Trust."
But I am concerned about the gradual, relentless strangulation of Abraham Lincoln's vision of ours as "government of the people, by the people, for the people," by judges who see constitutions not as binding law but as invitations for judicial rule.
I am also struck by the official list of "Attorneys for Respondent" joining amicus briefs supporting gay marriage in the California case. It included more than 700 lawyers, law firms, and legal groups. Justice Antonin Scalia had a point in complaining 12 years ago, when his colleagues struck down a Colorado ballot initiative in the name of gay rights, that they were enforcing not the Constitution but rather "the views and values of the lawyer class from which the Court's members are drawn."
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Democrats and Our Enemies
Democrats and Our Enemies
By JOSEPH LIEBERMANMay 21, 2008; Page A19
How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?
Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.
This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.
This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged 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."
And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."
This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.
It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.
Of course that leftward lurch by the Democrats did not go unchallenged. Democratic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson fought against the tide. But despite their principled efforts, the Democratic Party through the 1970s and 1980s became prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.
Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party's lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.
This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate – Vice President Gore – championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent – and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.
By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.
Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.
Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.
Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.
In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right – regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.
John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to have become confused about lately – the difference between America's friends and America's enemies.
There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.
Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.
If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies.
A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn.
Mr. Lieberman is an Independent Democratic senator from Connecticut. This article is adapted from a speech he gave May 18 at a dinner hosted by Commentary magazine.
By JOSEPH LIEBERMANMay 21, 2008; Page A19
How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?
Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.
This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.
This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged 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."
And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."
This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.
It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.
Of course that leftward lurch by the Democrats did not go unchallenged. Democratic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson fought against the tide. But despite their principled efforts, the Democratic Party through the 1970s and 1980s became prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.
Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party's lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.
This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate – Vice President Gore – championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent – and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.
By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.
Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.
Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.
Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.
In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right – regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.
John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to have become confused about lately – the difference between America's friends and America's enemies.
There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.
Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.
If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies.
A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn.
Mr. Lieberman is an Independent Democratic senator from Connecticut. This article is adapted from a speech he gave May 18 at a dinner hosted by Commentary magazine.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Let's Drill
Let's Drill
There's oil in them thar hills.
by Fred Barnes 05/26/2008, Volume 013, Issue 35
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, the Mr. Magoo of American politics, stumbled onto the truth last week. He discovered the law of supply and demand. "We want to put [more oil] on the market to increase supply and lower prices," Reid said. "With oil and gas prices continuing to break record highs every day, much more needs to be done."
Indeed it does. But Reid won't allow it. His understanding of economics only extends to matters in which he might embarrass President Bush. The oil he wants on the market is the oil the administration is buying for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), now nearly full. Reid got his way. The administration now plans to stop oil shipments to the SPR next month.
Beyond that, Reid and his party are committed to suppressing increased oil production in this country, as they wait for that magical day when fossil fuels are no longer needed to supply the nation's energy needs.
That day may come in 50, 60, 70 years--or never. In the meantime, America needs oil, and the good news is we're awash in the stuff. If the oil reserves miles off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and in federally owned lands in the West and Alaska were tapped, our dependence on foreign oil could begin to be reversed. In 10 years, half of America's oil could be produced at home (up from 40 percent), with more coming from increased exports from Canada.
We wouldn't achieve energy independence. That's a pipedream, and anyway it isn't necessary in a global economy with multiple producers. But America would be taking a big step toward energy security and reducing the flow of dollars to unstable countries--notably Iran and Venezuela--that do not wish us well.
So more oil production would strengthen America's national security. By increasing the supply of oil, it would reduce the price, or at least ease the pressure on price from rising world demand. And the mere commitment to boosting production would have a soothing effect on a world market easily spooked by threats to supply.
But there's a problem: Eighty-five percent of the untapped domestic sources of oil have been put off-limits. There's a federally mandated moratorium on drilling offshore, and huge roadblocks to exploiting the oil on the vast federal lands have been erected.
"What keeps these areas closed are exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity," wrote Robert Samuelson recently. Lifting the moratorium requires action by Congress and the White House. So don't hold your breath. The Democratic Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environmental lobby, which regards oil exploration, much less drilling, as a sin against nature.
Advances in technology, however, make serious offshore oil spills a thing of the past. One hundred eight platforms were destroyed and hundreds more damaged in the Gulf of Mexico by hurricanes Rita and Katrina without a single major spill. Californians may remember the damaging spill off Santa Barbara, but that was 40 years ago and was the result of ancient technology.
New technology also means the coastlines would not be marred by unsightly oil platforms. Drilling now goes miles deeper to capture oil once out of reach--and much farther offshore. The moratorium doesn't take this into account. It blindly bars drilling for 200 miles off the Atlantic and Pacific shores.
The United States is virtually alone in treating offshore production as taboo. Great Britain and Norway drill off their coasts without polluting the North Sea. Brazil has achieved energy independence not only by ethanol use but also by expanded offshore oil production. China is now drilling at Cuba's behest in waters halfway to the coast of Florida.
There's another compelling reason to boost domestic production. Oil from current sites is gradually being depleted. Unless new sources come on line in the next few years, America will produce less oil at home and become even more dependent on oil from abroad, the Middle East in particular.
Reid and Democrats, OPEC's best friends, aren't noticeably concerned. Their next step is to remove tax incentives to explore and drill for more oil. And Senator Hillary Clinton is eager to impose a new windfall profits tax on oil revenues. These measures have no purpose other than to punish oil companies. They are counterproductive.
When you remove incentives to produce something and when you slap higher taxes on its producers, one thing happens: You get less of the product. In the case of oil, we need more of it and will for the foreseeable future. The oil is there for the getting. But it won't come out of the ground on its own.
--Fred Barnes, for the Editors
© Copyright 2008, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
There's oil in them thar hills.
by Fred Barnes 05/26/2008, Volume 013, Issue 35
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, the Mr. Magoo of American politics, stumbled onto the truth last week. He discovered the law of supply and demand. "We want to put [more oil] on the market to increase supply and lower prices," Reid said. "With oil and gas prices continuing to break record highs every day, much more needs to be done."
Indeed it does. But Reid won't allow it. His understanding of economics only extends to matters in which he might embarrass President Bush. The oil he wants on the market is the oil the administration is buying for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), now nearly full. Reid got his way. The administration now plans to stop oil shipments to the SPR next month.
Beyond that, Reid and his party are committed to suppressing increased oil production in this country, as they wait for that magical day when fossil fuels are no longer needed to supply the nation's energy needs.
That day may come in 50, 60, 70 years--or never. In the meantime, America needs oil, and the good news is we're awash in the stuff. If the oil reserves miles off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and in federally owned lands in the West and Alaska were tapped, our dependence on foreign oil could begin to be reversed. In 10 years, half of America's oil could be produced at home (up from 40 percent), with more coming from increased exports from Canada.
We wouldn't achieve energy independence. That's a pipedream, and anyway it isn't necessary in a global economy with multiple producers. But America would be taking a big step toward energy security and reducing the flow of dollars to unstable countries--notably Iran and Venezuela--that do not wish us well.
So more oil production would strengthen America's national security. By increasing the supply of oil, it would reduce the price, or at least ease the pressure on price from rising world demand. And the mere commitment to boosting production would have a soothing effect on a world market easily spooked by threats to supply.
But there's a problem: Eighty-five percent of the untapped domestic sources of oil have been put off-limits. There's a federally mandated moratorium on drilling offshore, and huge roadblocks to exploiting the oil on the vast federal lands have been erected.
"What keeps these areas closed are exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity," wrote Robert Samuelson recently. Lifting the moratorium requires action by Congress and the White House. So don't hold your breath. The Democratic Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environmental lobby, which regards oil exploration, much less drilling, as a sin against nature.
Advances in technology, however, make serious offshore oil spills a thing of the past. One hundred eight platforms were destroyed and hundreds more damaged in the Gulf of Mexico by hurricanes Rita and Katrina without a single major spill. Californians may remember the damaging spill off Santa Barbara, but that was 40 years ago and was the result of ancient technology.
New technology also means the coastlines would not be marred by unsightly oil platforms. Drilling now goes miles deeper to capture oil once out of reach--and much farther offshore. The moratorium doesn't take this into account. It blindly bars drilling for 200 miles off the Atlantic and Pacific shores.
The United States is virtually alone in treating offshore production as taboo. Great Britain and Norway drill off their coasts without polluting the North Sea. Brazil has achieved energy independence not only by ethanol use but also by expanded offshore oil production. China is now drilling at Cuba's behest in waters halfway to the coast of Florida.
There's another compelling reason to boost domestic production. Oil from current sites is gradually being depleted. Unless new sources come on line in the next few years, America will produce less oil at home and become even more dependent on oil from abroad, the Middle East in particular.
Reid and Democrats, OPEC's best friends, aren't noticeably concerned. Their next step is to remove tax incentives to explore and drill for more oil. And Senator Hillary Clinton is eager to impose a new windfall profits tax on oil revenues. These measures have no purpose other than to punish oil companies. They are counterproductive.
When you remove incentives to produce something and when you slap higher taxes on its producers, one thing happens: You get less of the product. In the case of oil, we need more of it and will for the foreseeable future. The oil is there for the getting. But it won't come out of the ground on its own.
--Fred Barnes, for the Editors
© Copyright 2008, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
California's Gift to McCain?
California's Gift to McCain?
The state supreme court imposes same-sex marriage. by John McCormack 05/26/2008, Volume 013, Issue 35
Eight years ago, 4,618,673 California voters--61 percent of those casting ballots--approved an initiative that stated: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Last Thursday, four of the seven justices of the California supreme court struck down that law, ruling that it violates the "fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship."
California chief justice Ronald George, writing for the majority, declared that "an individual's sexual orientation--like a person's race or gender--does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights" and therefore "the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples."
"It looks like a fairly conventional liberal judicial activist decision," says Princeton professor of jurisprudence Robert P. George. "These guys had the votes, and they rammed it through. They don't regard the will of the people of California as worthy of their particular concern."
Like the Massachusetts supreme court, which redefined marriage contrary to the will of the people in 2004, the California court has thrust the issue of same-sex marriage upon the nation in the midst of a presidential race. Within hours of the decision, Barack Obama's campaign issued a statement saying that the candidate respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage.
Then the McCain camp fired back:
John McCain supports the right of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution sanctioning the union between a man and a woman, just as he did in his home state of Arizona. John McCain doesn't believe judges should be making these decisions.
By supporting the court's decision, Obama exposed a number of vulnerabilities. McCain might ask, What exactly would preclude the U.S. Supreme Court, refreshed with a couple of Obama appointees, from declaring same-sex marriage a constitutional right in all 50 states? And if laws against same-sex marriage are just like laws against interracial marriage, as the California court declared, then what would stop the government from treating those who oppose same-sex marriage like racists?
Indeed, says Professor George, the next logical step will be to use "antidiscrimination laws as weapons" primarily against religious institutions and individuals who refuse to recognize same-sex marriage. In the eyes of the law, George says, they'll be "treated as bigots." For example, after the Massachusetts same-sex marriage decision in 2004, Catholic Charities shut down its adoption services rather than comply with a government order to place children with same-sex couples.
In California, conflicts between religious liberty and gay rights have already reached the courts. In a case to be heard May 28 by the California supreme court, two Christian doctors are being sued for refusing to artificially inseminate a lesbian, and last summer four firefighters sued the city of San Diego on sexual harassment grounds after they were required to participate in a gay pride parade over their objections. How would California deal with doctors who refused to treat an African American? Revoke their licenses. How would San Diego treat firefighters who objected to marching in a Martin Luther King Jr. parade? Fire them.
A voter initiative on marriage in California--to amend the state constitution with wording identical to the 2000 measure--appears to have enough signatures to make it onto this November's ballot. Such an amendment would trump last week's decision. Prior to the ruling, the state of California already provided virtually the same tangible benefits and legal rights for same-sex domestic partners as for husbands and wives, so the debate in California may focus on the threat that the court's decision poses to religious liberty.
A strong enough voter backlash in California has a chance of putting the state's electoral votes in play: A Rasmussen poll in April showed McCain trailing Obama by 7 percentage points. The issue could also bolster McCain's support in Florida--the only other state with a marriage amendment on the ballot this year--where a RealClearPolitics average of polls shows McCain leading Obama by nine points.
There's no guarantee, however, that either of these initiatives will pass or necessarily have a spillover effect in McCain's favor. Though 27 states have passed marriage amendments to their state constitutions, 2006 saw the first defeat by the voters of such an amendment--in McCain's home state of Arizona. That same year, Colorado gay rights activist Tim Gill gave $15 million in political donations and organized activists to donate millions more, mostly to defeat state legislators who oppose same-sex marriage. Now, same-sex marriage proponents are planning to flood California with campaign cash. Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, the fledgling organization leading the fight for this fall's marriage amendment in California, estimates that their campaign will need at least $10 million to succeed in a state with some of the most expensive media markets in the country.
Though McCain caught flak from social conservatives in 2004 for opposing a federal amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, Brown says that McCain's speaking out in favor of the California initiative and articulating his judicial philosophy in this context would resonate with voters.
But it will be up to McCain himself to draw the contrast between his positions and Obama's. The media are content to say that the candidates "are pretty much in agreement" on marriage, as the New York Times reported, since both favor legal protections for same-sex couples and oppose same-sex marriage as well as the federal marriage amendment.
McCain opposed the federal amendment partly because the federal Defense of Marriage Act--which McCain supports and Obama opposes--already defines marriage as between a man and a woman; it also says that a state is not required to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
In light of the California court's ruling, McCain may be more open to supporting a federal amendment, which would prevent either state or federal courts from redefining marriage, though it's unclear whether he's considered such a move to forestall judicial activism. What's certain is that the ballot initiative this November in California--where one out of every eight U.S. citizens lives--will keep this issue alive whether the candidates like it or not.
John McCormack, a Collegiate Network fellow, is an editorial assistant at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
© Copyright 2008, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
The state supreme court imposes same-sex marriage. by John McCormack 05/26/2008, Volume 013, Issue 35
Eight years ago, 4,618,673 California voters--61 percent of those casting ballots--approved an initiative that stated: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Last Thursday, four of the seven justices of the California supreme court struck down that law, ruling that it violates the "fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship."
California chief justice Ronald George, writing for the majority, declared that "an individual's sexual orientation--like a person's race or gender--does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights" and therefore "the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples."
"It looks like a fairly conventional liberal judicial activist decision," says Princeton professor of jurisprudence Robert P. George. "These guys had the votes, and they rammed it through. They don't regard the will of the people of California as worthy of their particular concern."
Like the Massachusetts supreme court, which redefined marriage contrary to the will of the people in 2004, the California court has thrust the issue of same-sex marriage upon the nation in the midst of a presidential race. Within hours of the decision, Barack Obama's campaign issued a statement saying that the candidate respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage.
Then the McCain camp fired back:
John McCain supports the right of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution sanctioning the union between a man and a woman, just as he did in his home state of Arizona. John McCain doesn't believe judges should be making these decisions.
By supporting the court's decision, Obama exposed a number of vulnerabilities. McCain might ask, What exactly would preclude the U.S. Supreme Court, refreshed with a couple of Obama appointees, from declaring same-sex marriage a constitutional right in all 50 states? And if laws against same-sex marriage are just like laws against interracial marriage, as the California court declared, then what would stop the government from treating those who oppose same-sex marriage like racists?
Indeed, says Professor George, the next logical step will be to use "antidiscrimination laws as weapons" primarily against religious institutions and individuals who refuse to recognize same-sex marriage. In the eyes of the law, George says, they'll be "treated as bigots." For example, after the Massachusetts same-sex marriage decision in 2004, Catholic Charities shut down its adoption services rather than comply with a government order to place children with same-sex couples.
In California, conflicts between religious liberty and gay rights have already reached the courts. In a case to be heard May 28 by the California supreme court, two Christian doctors are being sued for refusing to artificially inseminate a lesbian, and last summer four firefighters sued the city of San Diego on sexual harassment grounds after they were required to participate in a gay pride parade over their objections. How would California deal with doctors who refused to treat an African American? Revoke their licenses. How would San Diego treat firefighters who objected to marching in a Martin Luther King Jr. parade? Fire them.
A voter initiative on marriage in California--to amend the state constitution with wording identical to the 2000 measure--appears to have enough signatures to make it onto this November's ballot. Such an amendment would trump last week's decision. Prior to the ruling, the state of California already provided virtually the same tangible benefits and legal rights for same-sex domestic partners as for husbands and wives, so the debate in California may focus on the threat that the court's decision poses to religious liberty.
A strong enough voter backlash in California has a chance of putting the state's electoral votes in play: A Rasmussen poll in April showed McCain trailing Obama by 7 percentage points. The issue could also bolster McCain's support in Florida--the only other state with a marriage amendment on the ballot this year--where a RealClearPolitics average of polls shows McCain leading Obama by nine points.
There's no guarantee, however, that either of these initiatives will pass or necessarily have a spillover effect in McCain's favor. Though 27 states have passed marriage amendments to their state constitutions, 2006 saw the first defeat by the voters of such an amendment--in McCain's home state of Arizona. That same year, Colorado gay rights activist Tim Gill gave $15 million in political donations and organized activists to donate millions more, mostly to defeat state legislators who oppose same-sex marriage. Now, same-sex marriage proponents are planning to flood California with campaign cash. Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, the fledgling organization leading the fight for this fall's marriage amendment in California, estimates that their campaign will need at least $10 million to succeed in a state with some of the most expensive media markets in the country.
Though McCain caught flak from social conservatives in 2004 for opposing a federal amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, Brown says that McCain's speaking out in favor of the California initiative and articulating his judicial philosophy in this context would resonate with voters.
But it will be up to McCain himself to draw the contrast between his positions and Obama's. The media are content to say that the candidates "are pretty much in agreement" on marriage, as the New York Times reported, since both favor legal protections for same-sex couples and oppose same-sex marriage as well as the federal marriage amendment.
McCain opposed the federal amendment partly because the federal Defense of Marriage Act--which McCain supports and Obama opposes--already defines marriage as between a man and a woman; it also says that a state is not required to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
In light of the California court's ruling, McCain may be more open to supporting a federal amendment, which would prevent either state or federal courts from redefining marriage, though it's unclear whether he's considered such a move to forestall judicial activism. What's certain is that the ballot initiative this November in California--where one out of every eight U.S. citizens lives--will keep this issue alive whether the candidates like it or not.
John McCormack, a Collegiate Network fellow, is an editorial assistant at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
© Copyright 2008, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
Obama an appeaser? How dare you
By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
"That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me."
That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies.
President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.
Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough. That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.
Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Here's what the president said:
"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they're talking about me. Actually, he wasn't – or, to be more precise, he wasn't talking onlyabout you.
Yes, there are plenty of Democrats who are in favor of negotiating with our enemies, and a few Republicans, too – President Bush's pal James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group was full of proposals to barter with Iran and Syria and everybody else. But that general line is also taken by at least three of Tony Blair's former Cabinet ministers and his senior policy adviser, and by the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party and by a whole bunch of bigshot Europeans. It's not a Democrat election policy, it's an entire worldview. Even Barack Obama can't be so vain as to think his fly-me-to-[insert name of enemy here]concept is an original idea.
Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks arethe end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing – chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It's easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything.
And, as the Iranians understand, talks provide a splendid cover for getting on with anything you want to do. If, say, you want to get on with your nuclear program relatively undisturbed, the easiest way to do it is to enter years of endless talks with the Europeans over said nuclear program. That's why that Hamas honcho endorsed Obama: They know he's their best shot at getting a European foreign minister installed as president of the United States.
Mo Mowlam was Britain's Northern Ireland secretary and oversaw the process by which the IRA's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness became ministers of a Crown they decline to recognize. By 2004, she was calling for Osama bin Laden to be invited to "the negotiating table," having concluded he was no different from Adams: Stern fellow, lots of blood on his hands, but no sense getting on your high horse about all that; let's find out what he wants and give him part of it.
In his 2002 letter to the United States, bin Laden has a lot of grievances, from America's refusal to implement Sharia law to Jew-controlled usury to the lack of punishment for "President Clinton's immoral acts." Like Barack Obama's pastor, bin Laden shares the view that AIDS is a "Satanic American invention." Obviously, there are items on the agenda that the free world can never concede on – "President Clinton's immoral acts" – but who's to say most of the rest isn't worth chewing over?
This will be the fault line in the post-Bush war debate over the next few years. Are the political ambitions of the broader jihad totalitarian, genocidal, millenarian – in a word, nuts? Or are they negotiable? President Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took umbrage at, he said:
"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously."
Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah:
"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So, too, are those of Hezbollah's patrons in Tehran.
President Reagan talked with the Soviets while pushing ahead with the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. He spoke softly – after getting himself a bigger stick. Sen. Obama is proposing to reward a man who pledges to wipe Israel off the map with a presidential photo-op to which he will bring not even a twig. No wonder he's so twitchy about it.
Syndicated columnist
"That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me."
That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies.
President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.
Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough. That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.
Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Here's what the president said:
"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they're talking about me. Actually, he wasn't – or, to be more precise, he wasn't talking onlyabout you.
Yes, there are plenty of Democrats who are in favor of negotiating with our enemies, and a few Republicans, too – President Bush's pal James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group was full of proposals to barter with Iran and Syria and everybody else. But that general line is also taken by at least three of Tony Blair's former Cabinet ministers and his senior policy adviser, and by the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party and by a whole bunch of bigshot Europeans. It's not a Democrat election policy, it's an entire worldview. Even Barack Obama can't be so vain as to think his fly-me-to-[insert name of enemy here]concept is an original idea.
Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks arethe end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing – chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It's easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything.
And, as the Iranians understand, talks provide a splendid cover for getting on with anything you want to do. If, say, you want to get on with your nuclear program relatively undisturbed, the easiest way to do it is to enter years of endless talks with the Europeans over said nuclear program. That's why that Hamas honcho endorsed Obama: They know he's their best shot at getting a European foreign minister installed as president of the United States.
Mo Mowlam was Britain's Northern Ireland secretary and oversaw the process by which the IRA's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness became ministers of a Crown they decline to recognize. By 2004, she was calling for Osama bin Laden to be invited to "the negotiating table," having concluded he was no different from Adams: Stern fellow, lots of blood on his hands, but no sense getting on your high horse about all that; let's find out what he wants and give him part of it.
In his 2002 letter to the United States, bin Laden has a lot of grievances, from America's refusal to implement Sharia law to Jew-controlled usury to the lack of punishment for "President Clinton's immoral acts." Like Barack Obama's pastor, bin Laden shares the view that AIDS is a "Satanic American invention." Obviously, there are items on the agenda that the free world can never concede on – "President Clinton's immoral acts" – but who's to say most of the rest isn't worth chewing over?
This will be the fault line in the post-Bush war debate over the next few years. Are the political ambitions of the broader jihad totalitarian, genocidal, millenarian – in a word, nuts? Or are they negotiable? President Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took umbrage at, he said:
"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously."
Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah:
"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So, too, are those of Hezbollah's patrons in Tehran.
President Reagan talked with the Soviets while pushing ahead with the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. He spoke softly – after getting himself a bigger stick. Sen. Obama is proposing to reward a man who pledges to wipe Israel off the map with a presidential photo-op to which he will bring not even a twig. No wonder he's so twitchy about it.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Stop Believing Obama
Stop Believing Obama
By Philip Klein
Published 5/12/2008 12:08:39 AM
David Axelrod laughed.We were in the spin room following last month's debate in Philadelphia, and I had just asked Barack Obama's chief strategist to respond to a statement made by a top Hamas adviser endorsing Obama's candidacy, and favorably comparing the young Illinois Senator to John F. Kennedy.
"I like John Kennedy too," Axelrod responded. "That's about the only thing we have in common with this gentleman from Hamas. We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it's flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps."
Just a few days later, Obama was asked, at a diner stopover, about Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas, and his response was, "I'm just going to eat my waffle."
Last week, Obama described it as a "smear" that John McCain, in response to a question, correctly noted that a spokesman for the terrorist group publicly expressed support for Obama.
But on Friday, McCain was further vindicated when the Times of London reported that Obama adviser Robert Malley had to sever ties with the campaign, because the newspaper was about to report that the prominent critic of Israel had been regularly engaging in talks with Hamas.The Obama campaign has suggested that Malley's role with the campaign was "informal." But this is the same campaign that tried to downplay Obama's 20-year relationship with Jeremiah Wright (who, among other incendiary remarks, referred to Israel as a "dirty word").
Why was there a need to sever ties if none really existed? And if Obama is so utterly opposed to dealing with Hamas, as he has stated publicly, then why would he have an adviser, even an "informal" one, who was doing just that?
THROUGHOUT THE CAMPAIGN, Obama and his staffers have dismissed any scrutiny of his views on Israel with a blend of outrage and sarcasm, as if his record of support for Israel is so extensive, so undeniable, that anybody who raises doubts about his actual views is launching an inquisition. But as is the case with most issues, Obama is such a blank slate, and has such a thin public record, that voters are forced to parse his statements, sift through his past, and examine those he chooses to associate with to get a better sense of his underlying philosophy.
Obama has touted his foreign policy approach as a break from "conventional Washington thinking." As part of this approach, Obama has boasted of his willingness to engage in direct talks with our enemies, including Iran, without preconditions.Iran has consistently been deemed the leading state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department, has vowed to annihilate Israel within the context of seeking nuclear weapons, and has helped finance Hamas. Why should it be beyond the pale to question the earnestness of Obama's vow not to negotiate with Hamas, when he has promised, as part of his sweeping program for change, to negotiate with its patron, which shares the same ultimate goal?
It's no secret that within elite liberal foreign policy circles, one of the primary laments is that the United States hinders peace in the Middle East by being too reflexively pro-Israel.So when a liberal politician comes along and assures that same crowd that he is going to do away with "conventional Washington thinking," it is only fair to wonder whether he is sending an unspoken signal that he also plans to tilt the balance of U.S. policy in the Middle East in a direction that is more favorable to the Palestinians and more critical of Israel.
ALI ABUNIMAH, a Palestinian activist from Chicago, insists that at least in the recent past, Obama wanted to see U.S. policy move in that direction."In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor," Abunimah has written. "On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
Abunimah says that as late as 2004, during his tough primary race, Obama praised him for his activism, and apologized, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front."
The Obama campaign has disputed Abunimah's account, and there is no audio to back him up. But Abunimah has released a photo of Obama breaking bread with Edward Said, one of the leading anti-Israel intellectuals of the 20th century, at a 1998 Arab community event in Chicago. Furthermore, Obama has ties with Rashid Khalidi, who currently serves as the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. Khalidi, who once served as a flak for Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, is an active proponent of the view that U.S. policy is too biased in favor of Israel.Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that Obama spoke at a going away party in honor of Khalidi in Chicago in 2003:
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases... It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."
WITH THIS PAST as prologue, many of the statements (or omissions) Obama has made on the campaign trail raise questions about his true stance on Israel.When Obama said, "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people," did he really mean as he later clarified, that nobody was suffering more from the failure of the Palestinian leadership? Or was he trying to start a "conversation" about whether the U.S. is too focused on Israeli suffering, and not enough on the suffering of the Palestinians?
When he was asked by Brian Williams in a debate last year to name the top three allies of the United States, why did he filibuster the question without naming Israel?When he said in February, "I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel," what did he mean by "pro-Likud"?
There is an active strain within the liberal foreign policy community that believes that since Hamas was democratically elected and controls Gaza, any peace process would have to include talks with their leaders.
When Carter met with Hamas last month, Obama was slow to criticize the former president. "I'm not going to comment on former President Carter," Obama said at first. "He is a private citizen, and you know, it's not my place to discuss who or -- who he shouldn't meet with." (Obama, interestingly, didn't employ the private citizen dodge when he called on NBC to fire Don Imus last year in the wake of the controversy over the radio show host's racially insensitive remarks.) While Obama did eventually criticize Carter's trip, it was only after much prodding, and he still didn't consider the question important enough to disrupt his waffle-eating experience.
On a number of other issues, there has been a pattern of Obama saying one thing on the campaign trail that was undercut by his advisers. We saw that when his economic adviser assured the Canadians that Obama wasn't really serious about the anti-NAFTA rhetoric he was spewing in Ohio.We saw that when former adviser Samantha Power, speaking of Obama's plans to withdraw troops out of Iraq, said Obama wouldn't "rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate." And now we have Obama's public opposition to Hamas undercut by the fact that an adviser is meeting with them.
SO IS IT REALLY a stretch to wonder whether Obama would eventually support talks with the terrorist group, despite his public pronouncements to the contrary?This is not a theoretical matter. Ahmed Yousef, the same Hamas adviser who said that the terrorist group supports Obama, wrote a Washington Post op-ed last June arguing for engagement with Hamas.The group is obviously embarking on a strategy, similar to the one Arafat pursued during the Oslo peace process, of making public overtures of peace abroad, duping naive Western leaders into granting them legitimacy and the financial aid that comes along with it, while continuing to support terrorism at home.
Clearly, Hamas views Obama as an easy mark.The interesting thing about Obama's candidacy is that his lack of experience, and the mixed messages he sends, enable close observers to come to drastically different conclusions as to what kind of policies he would support as president.Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing Jewish magazine Tikkun, said, "Based on my conversations with Obama, I have a very strong belief that he shares the Tikkun perspective..." But the staunchly pro-Israel Marty Peretz assured "friends of Israel" that they could trust Obama. Abunimah, the Palestinian activist from Chicago, is disappointed that Obama has sold out to the pro-Israel Lobby, while Hamas adviser Yousef chalked up Obama's pro-Israel statements to election year posturing, and declared that the terrorist group still wants him to win.
Obama is running for the most powerful job in the world without much of a public record of which to speak. Yet those who demand to know a little bit more about the candidate by scrutinizing his statements and relationships are arrogantly dismissed as engaging in "smears" and being divisive for refusing to simply take him at his word.
Welcome to the new kind of politics.
Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.
By Philip Klein
Published 5/12/2008 12:08:39 AM
David Axelrod laughed.We were in the spin room following last month's debate in Philadelphia, and I had just asked Barack Obama's chief strategist to respond to a statement made by a top Hamas adviser endorsing Obama's candidacy, and favorably comparing the young Illinois Senator to John F. Kennedy.
"I like John Kennedy too," Axelrod responded. "That's about the only thing we have in common with this gentleman from Hamas. We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it's flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps."
Just a few days later, Obama was asked, at a diner stopover, about Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas, and his response was, "I'm just going to eat my waffle."
Last week, Obama described it as a "smear" that John McCain, in response to a question, correctly noted that a spokesman for the terrorist group publicly expressed support for Obama.
But on Friday, McCain was further vindicated when the Times of London reported that Obama adviser Robert Malley had to sever ties with the campaign, because the newspaper was about to report that the prominent critic of Israel had been regularly engaging in talks with Hamas.The Obama campaign has suggested that Malley's role with the campaign was "informal." But this is the same campaign that tried to downplay Obama's 20-year relationship with Jeremiah Wright (who, among other incendiary remarks, referred to Israel as a "dirty word").
Why was there a need to sever ties if none really existed? And if Obama is so utterly opposed to dealing with Hamas, as he has stated publicly, then why would he have an adviser, even an "informal" one, who was doing just that?
THROUGHOUT THE CAMPAIGN, Obama and his staffers have dismissed any scrutiny of his views on Israel with a blend of outrage and sarcasm, as if his record of support for Israel is so extensive, so undeniable, that anybody who raises doubts about his actual views is launching an inquisition. But as is the case with most issues, Obama is such a blank slate, and has such a thin public record, that voters are forced to parse his statements, sift through his past, and examine those he chooses to associate with to get a better sense of his underlying philosophy.
Obama has touted his foreign policy approach as a break from "conventional Washington thinking." As part of this approach, Obama has boasted of his willingness to engage in direct talks with our enemies, including Iran, without preconditions.Iran has consistently been deemed the leading state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department, has vowed to annihilate Israel within the context of seeking nuclear weapons, and has helped finance Hamas. Why should it be beyond the pale to question the earnestness of Obama's vow not to negotiate with Hamas, when he has promised, as part of his sweeping program for change, to negotiate with its patron, which shares the same ultimate goal?
It's no secret that within elite liberal foreign policy circles, one of the primary laments is that the United States hinders peace in the Middle East by being too reflexively pro-Israel.So when a liberal politician comes along and assures that same crowd that he is going to do away with "conventional Washington thinking," it is only fair to wonder whether he is sending an unspoken signal that he also plans to tilt the balance of U.S. policy in the Middle East in a direction that is more favorable to the Palestinians and more critical of Israel.
ALI ABUNIMAH, a Palestinian activist from Chicago, insists that at least in the recent past, Obama wanted to see U.S. policy move in that direction."In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor," Abunimah has written. "On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
Abunimah says that as late as 2004, during his tough primary race, Obama praised him for his activism, and apologized, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front."
The Obama campaign has disputed Abunimah's account, and there is no audio to back him up. But Abunimah has released a photo of Obama breaking bread with Edward Said, one of the leading anti-Israel intellectuals of the 20th century, at a 1998 Arab community event in Chicago. Furthermore, Obama has ties with Rashid Khalidi, who currently serves as the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. Khalidi, who once served as a flak for Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, is an active proponent of the view that U.S. policy is too biased in favor of Israel.Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that Obama spoke at a going away party in honor of Khalidi in Chicago in 2003:
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases... It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."
WITH THIS PAST as prologue, many of the statements (or omissions) Obama has made on the campaign trail raise questions about his true stance on Israel.When Obama said, "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people," did he really mean as he later clarified, that nobody was suffering more from the failure of the Palestinian leadership? Or was he trying to start a "conversation" about whether the U.S. is too focused on Israeli suffering, and not enough on the suffering of the Palestinians?
When he was asked by Brian Williams in a debate last year to name the top three allies of the United States, why did he filibuster the question without naming Israel?When he said in February, "I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel," what did he mean by "pro-Likud"?
There is an active strain within the liberal foreign policy community that believes that since Hamas was democratically elected and controls Gaza, any peace process would have to include talks with their leaders.
When Carter met with Hamas last month, Obama was slow to criticize the former president. "I'm not going to comment on former President Carter," Obama said at first. "He is a private citizen, and you know, it's not my place to discuss who or -- who he shouldn't meet with." (Obama, interestingly, didn't employ the private citizen dodge when he called on NBC to fire Don Imus last year in the wake of the controversy over the radio show host's racially insensitive remarks.) While Obama did eventually criticize Carter's trip, it was only after much prodding, and he still didn't consider the question important enough to disrupt his waffle-eating experience.
On a number of other issues, there has been a pattern of Obama saying one thing on the campaign trail that was undercut by his advisers. We saw that when his economic adviser assured the Canadians that Obama wasn't really serious about the anti-NAFTA rhetoric he was spewing in Ohio.We saw that when former adviser Samantha Power, speaking of Obama's plans to withdraw troops out of Iraq, said Obama wouldn't "rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate." And now we have Obama's public opposition to Hamas undercut by the fact that an adviser is meeting with them.
SO IS IT REALLY a stretch to wonder whether Obama would eventually support talks with the terrorist group, despite his public pronouncements to the contrary?This is not a theoretical matter. Ahmed Yousef, the same Hamas adviser who said that the terrorist group supports Obama, wrote a Washington Post op-ed last June arguing for engagement with Hamas.The group is obviously embarking on a strategy, similar to the one Arafat pursued during the Oslo peace process, of making public overtures of peace abroad, duping naive Western leaders into granting them legitimacy and the financial aid that comes along with it, while continuing to support terrorism at home.
Clearly, Hamas views Obama as an easy mark.The interesting thing about Obama's candidacy is that his lack of experience, and the mixed messages he sends, enable close observers to come to drastically different conclusions as to what kind of policies he would support as president.Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing Jewish magazine Tikkun, said, "Based on my conversations with Obama, I have a very strong belief that he shares the Tikkun perspective..." But the staunchly pro-Israel Marty Peretz assured "friends of Israel" that they could trust Obama. Abunimah, the Palestinian activist from Chicago, is disappointed that Obama has sold out to the pro-Israel Lobby, while Hamas adviser Yousef chalked up Obama's pro-Israel statements to election year posturing, and declared that the terrorist group still wants him to win.
Obama is running for the most powerful job in the world without much of a public record of which to speak. Yet those who demand to know a little bit more about the candidate by scrutinizing his statements and relationships are arrogantly dismissed as engaging in "smears" and being divisive for refusing to simply take him at his word.
Welcome to the new kind of politics.
Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
The company Obama has kept
Rod Dreher: The company Obama has kept
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, May 11, 2008
Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. His e-mail address is rdreher @dallasnews.com.
Forty years ago this month, Paris exploded in left-wing student riots that led to a nationwide general strike. The revolutionary fervor of France's soixante-huitards ('68ers) spread widely, including to American campuses. If you're wondering when the Good '60s of peace, love and civil rights gave way to the Bad '60s of anarchy and violence, May 1968 is as good a historical pivot point as any.John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton at the time. Barack Obama was 6 years old. Yet the restless spirit of '68 haunts this year's presidential campaign, especially the White House bid of Mr. Obama, who, having pretty much missed the '60s – "Civil rights, sexual revolution, Vietnam War. Those all sort of passed me by," he told The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan last year – was supposed to take us beyond those divisive traumas.
It's not working out that way. His former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is an unreconstructed '60s radical, a fire-breathing disciple of James Cone's period-piece black liberation theology. Mr. Obama wrote in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, about his attraction to the leftist pastor's church as a vehicle for social change. If black nationalism would uplift the race, he wrote, "then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence."
That's a remarkable admission of a racialized "ends justify the means" morality. It helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to stick with a crackpot like Dr. Wright. It also might explain why an up-and-coming Barack Obama found nothing particularly wrong with rubbing political elbows with Bill Ayers, the Chicago university professor and onetime fugitive member of the revolutionary, communist Weather Underground.
Mr. Ayers, an unrepentant '60s domestic terrorist, is an academician in good standing and an active member of Chicago's progressive community. It is unremarkable that a rising star in Chicago Democratic politics would collaborate with Mr. Ayers, which tells us something about the soixante-huitard generation.
They may have failed at revolution, but they succeeded in changing the culture. (A famous soixante-huitard slogan: "Live without limits, and enjoy without restraint.") They did so in large part by, to use the Marxist Antonio Gramsci's phrase, "marching through the institutions." Pulpits. Professorships. Publishing and media. And in some cases, politics.
It's not "guilt by association" to inquire to what extent Mr. Obama – whose moral and political conscience was shaped by his education at elite universities, his street activism and his tutelage at Dr. Wright's knee – shares the views and assumptions of the soixante-huitards. In terms of style, he's plainly not one of them. But his deeply liberal voting record marks him as at least a fellow traveler. Besides, as Rolling Stone magazine put it last year in a sympathetic profile, Mr. Obama's is "as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from."
This may be of no matter to the left, but Mr. Obama is not running for mayor of Berkeley, president of Harvard or prime minister of The New York Times.
But if the '60s radicals went too far, they had ample cause to protest – especially against the war in Vietnam, which the U.S. government had been lying about and would continue to lie about. The radicals weren't all wrong about American power. Know why the terrorist team of Ayers & Dohrn never went to jail? The FBI broke so many laws trying to catch them that putting them on trial would have been futile.
"By any means necessary" was not just an ethic of the far left (ask Ollie North). Nor is it a thing of the past, as the Bush administration and its allies have so amply demonstrated in relentless pursuit of the president's prerogatives. If it's fair to judge Mr. Obama by the ideological company he keeps, Mr. McCain deserves the same. Meaning well is not exculpatory.
That said, Mr. Obama's radical baggage is more politically damaging because it deflates the hope many voters invested in him. He was once the man to deliver American politics from the storm and stress of the '60s generation – "Goodbye to all that," as The Atlantic headlined Mr. Sullivan's much-read pre-primary encomium to Mr. Obama's transformational potential.
Not yet, alas. Against his own conscience, the ambitious but insecure young Mr. Obama compromised with the malevolent spirit of '68 for the sake of worldly gain. For the consequences are not proving to be as little as he expected.
Said the Devil to Faust: "In the end, you are exactly – what you are." Yes.
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, May 11, 2008
Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. His e-mail address is rdreher @dallasnews.com.
Forty years ago this month, Paris exploded in left-wing student riots that led to a nationwide general strike. The revolutionary fervor of France's soixante-huitards ('68ers) spread widely, including to American campuses. If you're wondering when the Good '60s of peace, love and civil rights gave way to the Bad '60s of anarchy and violence, May 1968 is as good a historical pivot point as any.John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton at the time. Barack Obama was 6 years old. Yet the restless spirit of '68 haunts this year's presidential campaign, especially the White House bid of Mr. Obama, who, having pretty much missed the '60s – "Civil rights, sexual revolution, Vietnam War. Those all sort of passed me by," he told The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan last year – was supposed to take us beyond those divisive traumas.
It's not working out that way. His former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is an unreconstructed '60s radical, a fire-breathing disciple of James Cone's period-piece black liberation theology. Mr. Obama wrote in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, about his attraction to the leftist pastor's church as a vehicle for social change. If black nationalism would uplift the race, he wrote, "then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence."
That's a remarkable admission of a racialized "ends justify the means" morality. It helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to stick with a crackpot like Dr. Wright. It also might explain why an up-and-coming Barack Obama found nothing particularly wrong with rubbing political elbows with Bill Ayers, the Chicago university professor and onetime fugitive member of the revolutionary, communist Weather Underground.
Mr. Ayers, an unrepentant '60s domestic terrorist, is an academician in good standing and an active member of Chicago's progressive community. It is unremarkable that a rising star in Chicago Democratic politics would collaborate with Mr. Ayers, which tells us something about the soixante-huitard generation.
They may have failed at revolution, but they succeeded in changing the culture. (A famous soixante-huitard slogan: "Live without limits, and enjoy without restraint.") They did so in large part by, to use the Marxist Antonio Gramsci's phrase, "marching through the institutions." Pulpits. Professorships. Publishing and media. And in some cases, politics.
It's not "guilt by association" to inquire to what extent Mr. Obama – whose moral and political conscience was shaped by his education at elite universities, his street activism and his tutelage at Dr. Wright's knee – shares the views and assumptions of the soixante-huitards. In terms of style, he's plainly not one of them. But his deeply liberal voting record marks him as at least a fellow traveler. Besides, as Rolling Stone magazine put it last year in a sympathetic profile, Mr. Obama's is "as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from."
This may be of no matter to the left, but Mr. Obama is not running for mayor of Berkeley, president of Harvard or prime minister of The New York Times.
But if the '60s radicals went too far, they had ample cause to protest – especially against the war in Vietnam, which the U.S. government had been lying about and would continue to lie about. The radicals weren't all wrong about American power. Know why the terrorist team of Ayers & Dohrn never went to jail? The FBI broke so many laws trying to catch them that putting them on trial would have been futile.
"By any means necessary" was not just an ethic of the far left (ask Ollie North). Nor is it a thing of the past, as the Bush administration and its allies have so amply demonstrated in relentless pursuit of the president's prerogatives. If it's fair to judge Mr. Obama by the ideological company he keeps, Mr. McCain deserves the same. Meaning well is not exculpatory.
That said, Mr. Obama's radical baggage is more politically damaging because it deflates the hope many voters invested in him. He was once the man to deliver American politics from the storm and stress of the '60s generation – "Goodbye to all that," as The Atlantic headlined Mr. Sullivan's much-read pre-primary encomium to Mr. Obama's transformational potential.
Not yet, alas. Against his own conscience, the ambitious but insecure young Mr. Obama compromised with the malevolent spirit of '68 for the sake of worldly gain. For the consequences are not proving to be as little as he expected.
Said the Devil to Faust: "In the end, you are exactly – what you are." Yes.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals
Individuals with conservative ideologies are happier than liberal-leaners, and new research pinpoints the reason: Conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities.
Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found.
Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.
The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."
To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance.
In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.
If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted both a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.
"Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives," the researchers write in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, "apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light."
The results support and further explain a Pew Research Center survey from 2006, in which 47 percent of conservative Republicans in the U.S. described themselves as "very happy," while only 28 percent of liberal Democrats indicated such cheer.
The same rationalizing phenomena could apply to personal situations as well.
"There is no reason to think that the effects we have identified here are unique to economic forms of inequality," the researchers write. "Research suggests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their marriages compared with their more traditional counterparts, apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labor."
The current study was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Copyright © 2008 Imaginova Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found.
Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.
The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."
To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance.
In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.
If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted both a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.
"Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives," the researchers write in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, "apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light."
The results support and further explain a Pew Research Center survey from 2006, in which 47 percent of conservative Republicans in the U.S. described themselves as "very happy," while only 28 percent of liberal Democrats indicated such cheer.
The same rationalizing phenomena could apply to personal situations as well.
"There is no reason to think that the effects we have identified here are unique to economic forms of inequality," the researchers write. "Research suggests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their marriages compared with their more traditional counterparts, apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labor."
The current study was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Copyright © 2008 Imaginova Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Left Is Wrong
May 07, 2008
The Left Is Wrong
By John Stossel
She was once the darling of conservatives like Newt Gingrich, but now you can't watch a television news-talk program without seeing her calling for more government and showing scorn for those who want less.
She's Arianna Huffington, website impresario and author of "Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made Us All Less Safe".
I interviewed her for "20/20" last week because I was impressed by the success of the website she created. In just three years she made the Huffington Post a hot liberal opinion site.
What happened to Huffington's beliefs? In 1994, she worked to promote the Gingrich Revolution. She appeared at political events with Bob Dole.
"I definitely called myself a conservative," she told me. "I actually believed that the private sector would be able to address a lot of the issues that I believed were very important, like taking care of those in need. And then I saw firsthand how difficult it was. ... One of the problems with the Right is that they don't believe in facts, and they don't believe in evidence. And I was willing to change my mind, confronted with new evidence. And we would all be better off if we were willing to look at new evidence."
So she turned to big government.
"What we need is serious government policies to address poverty."
But they don't work, I said.
"They don't work as well as they should be working, but there's a lot more we can do."
She believes the old AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) program helped the poor and therefore welfare reform was not a good thing.
"[Reform was] not a success. A lot of people have been left without job training and therefore without the ability to really lead productive lives."
I pointed out that since welfare reform, eight million people left the welfare rolls, and many found jobs they like, jobs that pay better than welfare. Although her favorite political candidates say life for the poor has gotten worse, incomes of the poorest Americans are actually higher today.
Confronted with a chart showing that, Huffington acknowledged that lower-income people are generally better off.
"In general. In general ... But you know we have over 30 million Americans living below the poverty line."
But the Census Bureau says the percentage of families living below the poverty line fell from 11 percent in 1996 to 9.8 percent in 2006. The percentage of single mothers below the poverty line fell from 32.6 percent in 1996 to 28.3 in 2006. That looks like progress to me.
But Huffington had this retort: "The fact that we used to live in caves is not a justification for the state of affairs right now."
Like most liberals, she believes America needs more regulation. OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) should be strengthened to protect workers.
I tried to acquaint her with the facts. While it's true that since OSHA started, deadly job accidents have dropped, the truth is, deaths were dropping before OSHA. Between the late 1930s and 1971, job fatalities fell from more than 40 to fewer than 20 per 100,000 workers. After OSHA was passed, fatalities continued to fall, but no faster than before. It's misleading to credit regulation for the improvement. Government gets in front of a parade and pretends to lead it.
Huffington's reply: "If you were the husband of one of the women who died recently because OSHA regulations were not sufficiently implemented, you would not be so cavalier about the speed at which things get better."
As if the government could guarantee zero job deaths.
Huffington has also joined the war on global warming. "We have two Priuses," she says.
I pointed out that she also has a $7-million house that burns more carbon than a hundred people in the Third World. She said:
"There is no question that the fact that I'm living in a big house, I occasionally travel on private planes -- all those things are contradictions. I'm not setting myself up as some paragon who only goes around on a bicycle."
That honesty is a relief. If only she and others would own up to the other contradictions in the Left's call for endlessly intrusive government.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/the_left_is_wrong.html at May 07, 2008 - 06:09:35 PM CDT
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urchinTracker();
The Left Is Wrong
By John Stossel
She was once the darling of conservatives like Newt Gingrich, but now you can't watch a television news-talk program without seeing her calling for more government and showing scorn for those who want less.
She's Arianna Huffington, website impresario and author of "Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made Us All Less Safe".
I interviewed her for "20/20" last week because I was impressed by the success of the website she created. In just three years she made the Huffington Post a hot liberal opinion site.
What happened to Huffington's beliefs? In 1994, she worked to promote the Gingrich Revolution. She appeared at political events with Bob Dole.
"I definitely called myself a conservative," she told me. "I actually believed that the private sector would be able to address a lot of the issues that I believed were very important, like taking care of those in need. And then I saw firsthand how difficult it was. ... One of the problems with the Right is that they don't believe in facts, and they don't believe in evidence. And I was willing to change my mind, confronted with new evidence. And we would all be better off if we were willing to look at new evidence."
So she turned to big government.
"What we need is serious government policies to address poverty."
But they don't work, I said.
"They don't work as well as they should be working, but there's a lot more we can do."
She believes the old AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) program helped the poor and therefore welfare reform was not a good thing.
"[Reform was] not a success. A lot of people have been left without job training and therefore without the ability to really lead productive lives."
I pointed out that since welfare reform, eight million people left the welfare rolls, and many found jobs they like, jobs that pay better than welfare. Although her favorite political candidates say life for the poor has gotten worse, incomes of the poorest Americans are actually higher today.
Confronted with a chart showing that, Huffington acknowledged that lower-income people are generally better off.
"In general. In general ... But you know we have over 30 million Americans living below the poverty line."
But the Census Bureau says the percentage of families living below the poverty line fell from 11 percent in 1996 to 9.8 percent in 2006. The percentage of single mothers below the poverty line fell from 32.6 percent in 1996 to 28.3 in 2006. That looks like progress to me.
But Huffington had this retort: "The fact that we used to live in caves is not a justification for the state of affairs right now."
Like most liberals, she believes America needs more regulation. OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) should be strengthened to protect workers.
I tried to acquaint her with the facts. While it's true that since OSHA started, deadly job accidents have dropped, the truth is, deaths were dropping before OSHA. Between the late 1930s and 1971, job fatalities fell from more than 40 to fewer than 20 per 100,000 workers. After OSHA was passed, fatalities continued to fall, but no faster than before. It's misleading to credit regulation for the improvement. Government gets in front of a parade and pretends to lead it.
Huffington's reply: "If you were the husband of one of the women who died recently because OSHA regulations were not sufficiently implemented, you would not be so cavalier about the speed at which things get better."
As if the government could guarantee zero job deaths.
Huffington has also joined the war on global warming. "We have two Priuses," she says.
I pointed out that she also has a $7-million house that burns more carbon than a hundred people in the Third World. She said:
"There is no question that the fact that I'm living in a big house, I occasionally travel on private planes -- all those things are contradictions. I'm not setting myself up as some paragon who only goes around on a bicycle."
That honesty is a relief. If only she and others would own up to the other contradictions in the Left's call for endlessly intrusive government.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/the_left_is_wrong.html at May 07, 2008 - 06:09:35 PM CDT
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urchinTracker();
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Democrats and the Killing Fields
Democrats and the Killing Fields
By ARTHUR HERMAN
May 1, 2008; Page A17
Most people have never heard of Operation Frequent Wind, which ended on April 30, 1975, 33 years ago. But every American has seen pictures of it: the Marine helicopters evacuating the last U.S. personnel from the embassy in Saigon, hours before communist tanks rolled into the city. Thousands of desperate Vietnamese gathered at the embassy gate and begged to be taken with them. Others committed suicide.
Those scenes are a chilling reminder of what happens when a great power decides to cut and run. Two of the three presidential candidates are proposing to do just that in Iraq. We need to remember what happened the last time we gave up on an unpopular foreign policy, not only in humanitarian terms but in terms of American power and prestige.
Actually, the U.S. had won the war in Vietnam on the battlefield, just as the surge has done today in Iraq. Over Easter 1972, South Vietnamese forces, backed by U.S. airpower, crushed the last communist offensive, killing nearly 100,000 North Vietnamese troops.
The North was forced to sign peace accords in Paris recognizing the Republic of South Vietnam. The last 2,500 U.S. support troops went home. What they left was a fragile but sustainable peace, and an elected government in Saigon that was growing stronger every month.
But with 160,000 North Vietnamese soldiers still in South Vietnam, keeping the South free was going to require continued U.S. help, especially air support and military equipment if the North ever attacked again.
Democrats and American public opinion, however, had had enough. Much like Iraq today, the vast majority of South Vietnam had been pacified. Its government was taking on difficult but essential political changes, including land reform. The Democratic-controlled Congress, however, did not want to hear about success. They assumed failure in Vietnam would complete their rout of the hated Richard Nixon, who was already out of office thanks to Watergate, and position them for victory in the 1976 presidential election.
Meanwhile, the American public had been conditioned by the media to see Vietnam as a failed policy, and taught that America had gotten itself in the middle of a "civil war" which the Vietnamese had to sort out themselves. Once the last American troops left Vietnam, public opinion would never tolerate re-entry into a war widely seen as a blunder and endless quagmire.
In early 1975 the communists launched a massive attack. President Gerald Ford asked for $1 billion in supplemental funds to help the South Vietnamese, and Congress refused. They had already pulled the plug on the U.S.-supported government of Lon Nol in Cambodia. Ford had no choice but to order the evacuation of remaining U.S. personnel.
After nearly two decades of devastating war and 58,000 American combat deaths, the U.S. left Southeast Asia. As the last helicopter lifted off from Saigon, the New York Times's Sydney Schanberg wrote an article with the title, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." And the Times's columnist Anthony Lewis asked, "what future could possibly be more terrible than the reality" of a war that had cost so much in lives and treasure?
With the North Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Rouge taking over, the world was about to find out.
At least 65,000 Vietnamese were murdered or shot after "liberation" – the equivalent in terms of Vietnam's population at the time, of killing three-quarters of a million people in today's U.S. The new communist regime ordered somewhere between one- third to one-half of South Vietnam's population to pass through its "re-education" camps, where perhaps as many as 250,000 died of disease, starvation, or were worked to death (the last inmates were not released until 1986).
That number does not include the thousands of "boat people" who tried to flee the totalitarian nightmare of communist Vietnam, and perished at sea.
Cambodia's fate was even worse. At least one and a half million innocent Cambodians were butchered or starved to death in the Khmer Rouge's killing fields and re-education camps, put to death by a fanatical regime that believed that anyone who wore eyeglasses must have "bourgeois intellectual tendencies" and be shot.
The scale of moral collapse and suffering went beyond Indochina. The pullout had a ripple effect on U.S. power and prestige, just as the proponents of the so-called "domino theory" had warned. American foreign policy, crippled by remorse and self-doubt, stood helplessly as others rushed into the power vacuum.
Marxist-Leninist regimes emerged not only in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but in Ethiopia and Guinea Bissau (1974), Madagascar, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Angola (1975), Afghanistan (1978), and Grenada and Nicaragua (1979). Soviet troops were welcomed in Fidel Castro's Cuba for the first time since the 1962 missile crisis. Cuban troops traveled freely to Africa to prop up Marxist regimes there.
In 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini was able to establish his brutal theocratic rule over Iran, confident that America, having learned "the lessons of Vietnam," would never intervene.
The judgment of history, as Raymond Aron once remarked, is without pity. History will judge how America and its leaders handle global responsibility in Iraq and the Middle East in the next decade.
As Winston Churchill said of the appeasement of Hitler at Munich, in 1975 Americans were "weighed in the balance and found wanting." We have a responsibility to the Iraqis – and to the memory of those we left behind – not to let that happen again.
By ARTHUR HERMAN
May 1, 2008; Page A17
Most people have never heard of Operation Frequent Wind, which ended on April 30, 1975, 33 years ago. But every American has seen pictures of it: the Marine helicopters evacuating the last U.S. personnel from the embassy in Saigon, hours before communist tanks rolled into the city. Thousands of desperate Vietnamese gathered at the embassy gate and begged to be taken with them. Others committed suicide.
Those scenes are a chilling reminder of what happens when a great power decides to cut and run. Two of the three presidential candidates are proposing to do just that in Iraq. We need to remember what happened the last time we gave up on an unpopular foreign policy, not only in humanitarian terms but in terms of American power and prestige.
Actually, the U.S. had won the war in Vietnam on the battlefield, just as the surge has done today in Iraq. Over Easter 1972, South Vietnamese forces, backed by U.S. airpower, crushed the last communist offensive, killing nearly 100,000 North Vietnamese troops.
The North was forced to sign peace accords in Paris recognizing the Republic of South Vietnam. The last 2,500 U.S. support troops went home. What they left was a fragile but sustainable peace, and an elected government in Saigon that was growing stronger every month.
But with 160,000 North Vietnamese soldiers still in South Vietnam, keeping the South free was going to require continued U.S. help, especially air support and military equipment if the North ever attacked again.
Democrats and American public opinion, however, had had enough. Much like Iraq today, the vast majority of South Vietnam had been pacified. Its government was taking on difficult but essential political changes, including land reform. The Democratic-controlled Congress, however, did not want to hear about success. They assumed failure in Vietnam would complete their rout of the hated Richard Nixon, who was already out of office thanks to Watergate, and position them for victory in the 1976 presidential election.
Meanwhile, the American public had been conditioned by the media to see Vietnam as a failed policy, and taught that America had gotten itself in the middle of a "civil war" which the Vietnamese had to sort out themselves. Once the last American troops left Vietnam, public opinion would never tolerate re-entry into a war widely seen as a blunder and endless quagmire.
In early 1975 the communists launched a massive attack. President Gerald Ford asked for $1 billion in supplemental funds to help the South Vietnamese, and Congress refused. They had already pulled the plug on the U.S.-supported government of Lon Nol in Cambodia. Ford had no choice but to order the evacuation of remaining U.S. personnel.
After nearly two decades of devastating war and 58,000 American combat deaths, the U.S. left Southeast Asia. As the last helicopter lifted off from Saigon, the New York Times's Sydney Schanberg wrote an article with the title, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." And the Times's columnist Anthony Lewis asked, "what future could possibly be more terrible than the reality" of a war that had cost so much in lives and treasure?
With the North Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Rouge taking over, the world was about to find out.
At least 65,000 Vietnamese were murdered or shot after "liberation" – the equivalent in terms of Vietnam's population at the time, of killing three-quarters of a million people in today's U.S. The new communist regime ordered somewhere between one- third to one-half of South Vietnam's population to pass through its "re-education" camps, where perhaps as many as 250,000 died of disease, starvation, or were worked to death (the last inmates were not released until 1986).
That number does not include the thousands of "boat people" who tried to flee the totalitarian nightmare of communist Vietnam, and perished at sea.
Cambodia's fate was even worse. At least one and a half million innocent Cambodians were butchered or starved to death in the Khmer Rouge's killing fields and re-education camps, put to death by a fanatical regime that believed that anyone who wore eyeglasses must have "bourgeois intellectual tendencies" and be shot.
The scale of moral collapse and suffering went beyond Indochina. The pullout had a ripple effect on U.S. power and prestige, just as the proponents of the so-called "domino theory" had warned. American foreign policy, crippled by remorse and self-doubt, stood helplessly as others rushed into the power vacuum.
Marxist-Leninist regimes emerged not only in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but in Ethiopia and Guinea Bissau (1974), Madagascar, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Angola (1975), Afghanistan (1978), and Grenada and Nicaragua (1979). Soviet troops were welcomed in Fidel Castro's Cuba for the first time since the 1962 missile crisis. Cuban troops traveled freely to Africa to prop up Marxist regimes there.
In 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini was able to establish his brutal theocratic rule over Iran, confident that America, having learned "the lessons of Vietnam," would never intervene.
The judgment of history, as Raymond Aron once remarked, is without pity. History will judge how America and its leaders handle global responsibility in Iraq and the Middle East in the next decade.
As Winston Churchill said of the appeasement of Hitler at Munich, in 1975 Americans were "weighed in the balance and found wanting." We have a responsibility to the Iraqis – and to the memory of those we left behind – not to let that happen again.
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