Republicans don't deserve to be a majority party...

It's impossible to underestimate the ineptitude of the Republican leadership in the Senate.

The "deal" over the Filibuster debate that was just reached is yet another example for why Republicans continually are working to lose my vote in the next election cycle.

From a political/governmental standpoint, there is precisely zero reasons for why the Republicans should have been interested in finding a "compromise" on the issue of Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees in the Senate.

Republicans hold all the cards in the debate. Quite obviously they have the power to control the rules and voting schedule in the Senate. History and precedent are absolutely against the Democratic position, who are acting under a perversion of our Constitutional system (and all but literally rewriting the Constitution). Quite simply, nothing in the Democrats' position is politically tenable under scrutiny.

So why in hell did a group of "Centrist" Republicans choose to deal with the Democrats and grant them concessions that they have no business receiving? It's as if they've chosen to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Much will probably be made of the merit of dealing and being a centrist. This is an intellectually lazy assertion. There is nothing inherently valuable in claiming the middle ground between two positions. As an example, staking out the exact middle between Hitler and Winston Churchill doesn't make you a noble statesman. It makes you Neville Chamberlain and ideological bankrupt.

The assertion that being a centrist is inherently good relies on the assumption that both positions to which you are adapting are of equal footing. But of course all positions are not created equal. In the case of the filibuster, the Republican position is grounded in history, precedent, and factuality. The Democrats, on the other hand, rely on nothing but obfuscation and distortion, both of fact and of our Constitutional system.

I do not hold this position because I am a partisan; in fact, I am not a partisan. I hold no allegiance to the Republican party. Instead, I am merely a Conservative who will vote for whomever I feel advances the cause of Conservatism.

It is because of this I am disgusted with the "deal" that has been reached. Naturally, Democrats can take comfort in it because it allows them to appear to be reasonable, while allowing the pre-emptive blocking of two qualified judges. Furthermore, they've retained their ability to use the filibuster. Is there a more hollow caveat than they will use it "only in extreme circumstances?" As their rhetoric indicates, they will label anyone who isn't a member of MoveOn.org to be an extremist, far removed from the American electorate (Naturally, it's laughable that a party that hasn't won an election on its own platform since the 70's would be making assertions as to what the electorate wants. But that's an argument for another time.) To this end, as I see it, the Democrats have given up nothing. The judges who they have "acquiesced to" were going to be consented to anyway.

As for the Republicans, they have created an environment where once a rules change is required (and make no mistake, it will be), they will be seen as breaking with the agreement. Whether factual or not, the media and the Democrats will play this deal as saying that the Republicans will never adopt the Constitutional option. In short, this small group of Republicans has built a nice little wall on the road that the Party will have no choice but to crash through at a political cost.

Furthermore, the Republicans have lost two Judicial nominees who might have been confirmed. Now we'll never know, for entirely arbitrary reasons.

In short, the enclave of "Centrist" Republicans might try and wrap themselves as heroic negotiators, but in reality they have lived up to the great political stereotype of being calculating and spineless. They have made a calculation that their future political aspirations will benefit from being seen as centrists. All they have done is bolster the fading position of an obstructionist minority that refuses to adhere to the repeated electoral decisions of the public. And they've done it for personal gain at the expense of the party leadership, their country, and our system of government.

I look forward to the opportunity to do everything I can to ensure that their personal political goals are met with failure. This includes people who I used to be tremendous fans of, including John McCain and Lindsay Graham.

Another reason why we don't want the USA to be like Europe...

I love Austria, but if this isn't a sure sign that there is too much regulation and government meddling in the world, then I don't know what is...

Conservative introspection Round II: Conservatives criticizing 'Conservative silence' in the face of fault.

Here's a critique by a conservative in the National Review of the relative silence from the Right about missteps by Americans in the war on terror, from those recent pictures of Saddam Hussein in his underwear, to more serious faults. In short, the message is that 'Cheerleading doesn't win wars'.

Good quote:

"True, it is the first duty of an American patriot to do what he reasonably can to support American soldiers who have put their lives on the line to defend both the liberties of Americans and the liberties of others. But as distinguished conservatives in the past have demonstrated, a patriot may criticize the acts or policies of the executive in war-time without breaking faith either with the troops or with his country."

For me, I agree with a good portion of this. I do take issue with his characterization about human nature. As much as it pains me to say it, at least under this article's definition, I'm more of a Rousseauian than an Augustinian. (Ack! But I hate Rousseau!)

And I disagree with some other definitional things, but I suspect this guy is merely more Conservative than I am in certain senses. All said, it's well worth reading, especially for Conservatives.

A Positive Step to the reformation of the Progressive Movement

Here's the full text of a devout Liberal following in the footsteps of Christopher Hitchens. He writes in the San Francisco Chronicle on why he is leaving the "Big Tent" of the Left. Really fascinating stuff, and hopefully a good sign to getting the other great party of America to return to sanity...

____________________________________
Sunday, May 22, 2005 (SF Chronicle)
Leaving the left: I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity
By Keith Thompson


Nightfall, Jan. 30. - Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid
succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

Like many others who came of age politically in the 1960s, I became adept at not taking the measure of the left's mounting incoherence. To face it directly posed the danger that I would have to describe it accurately, first to myself and then to others. That could only give aid and comfort to Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and all the other Usual Suspects the left so regularly employs to keep from seeing its own reflection in the mirror.

Now, I find myself in a swirling metamorphosis. Think Kafka, without the bug. Think Kuhnian paradigm shift, without the buzz. Every anomaly that didn't fit my perceptual set is suddenly back, all the more glaring for so long ignored. The insistent inner voice I learned to suppress now has my rapt attention. "Something strange -- something approaching pathological -- something entirely of its own making -- has the left in its grip," the voice whispers. "How did this happen?" The Iraqi election is my tipping point. The time has come to walk in a different direction -- just as I did many years before.

I grew up in a northwest Ohio town where conservative was a polite term for reactionary. When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Mississippi "sweltering in the heat of oppression," he could have been describing my community, where blacks knew to keep their heads down, and animosity toward Catholics and Jews was unapologetic. Liberal and conservative, like left and right, wouldn't be part of my lexicon for a while, but when King proclaimed, "I have a dream," I instinctively cast my lot with those I later found out were liberals (then synonymous with "the left" and "progressive thought").

The people on the other side were dedicated to preserving my hometown's backward-looking status quo. This was all that my 10-year-old psyche needed to know. The knowledge carried me for a long time. Mythologies are helpful that way.

I began my activist career championing the 1968 presidential candidacies of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, because both promised to end America's misadventure in Vietnam. I marched for peace and farm worker justice, lobbied for women's right to choose and environmental protections, signed up with George McGovern in 1972 and got elected as the youngest delegate ever to a Democratic convention.

Eventually I joined the staff of U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio. In short, I became a card-carrying liberal, although I never actually got a card. (Bookkeeping has never been the left's strong suit.) All my commitments centered on belief in equal opportunity, due process, respect for the dignity of the individual and solidarity with people in trouble.

To my mind, Americans who had joined the resistance to Franco's fascist dystopia captured the progressive spirit at its finest.

A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan's use of the word "evil" had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert.

When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil'" too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport.

My progressive companions had a point. It was rude to bring a word like "gulag" to the dinner table.

I look back on that experience as the beginning of my departure from a left already well on its way to losing its bearings. Two decades later, I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon- like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations.

Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics.

Susan Sontag cleared her throat for the "courage" of the al Qaeda pilots. Norman Mailer pronounced the dead of Sept. 11 comparable to "automobile statistics." The events of that day were likely premeditated by the White House, Gore Vidal insinuated. Noam Chomsky insisted that al Qaeda at its most atrocious generated no terror greater than American foreign policy on a mediocre day.

All of this came back to me as I watched the left's anemic, smirking response to Iraq's election in January. Didn't many of these same people stand up in the sixties for self-rule for oppressed people and against fascism in any guise? Yes, and to their lasting credit. But many had since made clear that they had also changed their minds about the virtues of King's call for equal of opportunity.

These days the postmodern left demands that government and private institutions guarantee equality of outcomes. Any racial or gender "disparities" are to be considered evidence of culpable bias, regardless of factors such as personal motivation, training, and skill. This goal is neither liberal nor progressive; but it is what the left has chosen. In a very real sense it may be the last card held by a movement increasingly ensnared in resentful questing for group-specific rights and the subordination of citizenship to group identity. There's a word for this: pathetic.

I smile when friends tell me I've "moved right." I laugh out loud at what now passes for progressive on the main lines of the cultural left.

In the name of "diversity," the University of Arizona has forbidden discrimination based on "individual style." The University of Connecticut has banned "inappropriately directed laughter." Brown University, sensing unacceptable gray areas, warns that harassment "may be intentional or unintentional and still constitute harassment." (Yes, we're talking "subconscious harassment" here. We're watching your thoughts ...).

Wait, it gets better. When actor Bill Cosby called on black parents to explain to their kids why they are not likely to get into medical school speaking English like "Why you ain't" and "Where you is," Jesse Jackson countered that the time was not yet right to "level the playing field."
Why not? Because "drunk people can't do that ... illiterate people can't do that."

When self-styled pragmatic feminist Camille Paglia mocked young coeds who believe "I should be able to get drunk at a fraternity party and go upstairs to a guy's room without anything happening," Susan Estrich spoke up for gender- focused feminists who "would argue that so long as women are powerless relative to men, viewing 'yes' as a sign of true consent is misguided."

I'll admit my politics have shifted in recent years, as have America's
political landscape and cultural horizon. Who would have guessed that the U.S. senator with today's best voting record on human rights would be not Ted Kennedy or Barbara Boxer but Kansas Republican Sam Brownback?

He is also by most measures one of the most conservative senators. Brownback speaks openly about how his horror at the genocide in the Sudan is shaped by his Christian faith, as King did when he insisted on justice for "all of God's children."

My larger point is rather simple. Just as a body needs different medicines at different times for different reasons, this also holds for the body politic.

In the sixties, America correctly focused on bringing down walls that prevented equal access and due process. It was time to walk the Founders' talk -- and we did. With barriers to opportunity no longer written into law, today the body politic is crying for different remedies.

America must now focus on creating healthy, self-actualizing individuals committed to taking responsibility for their lives, developing their talents, honing their skills and intellects, fostering emotional and moral intelligence, all in all contributing to the advancement of the human condition.

At the heart of authentic liberalism lies the recognition, in the words of John
Gardner, "that the ever renewing society will be a free society (whose] capacity for renewal depends on the individuals who make it up." A continuously renewing society, Gardner believed, is one that seeks to "foster innovative, versatile, and self-renewing men and women and give them room to breathe."

One aspect of my politics hasn't changed a bit. I became a liberal in the first place to break from the repressive group orthodoxies of my reactionary hometown.

This past January, my liberalism was in full throttle when I bid the cultural left goodbye to escape a new version of that oppressiveness. I departed with new clarity about the brilliance of liberal democracy and the value system it entails; the quest for freedom as an intrinsically human affair; and the dangers of demands for conformity and adherence to any point of view through silence, fear, or coercion.

True, it took a while to see what was right before my eyes. A certain misplaced loyalty kept me from grasping that a view of individuals as morally capable of and responsible for making the principle decisions that shape their lives is decisively at odds with the contemporary left's entrance-level view of people as passive and helpless victims of powerful external forces, hence political wards who require the continuous shepherding of caretaker elites.

Leftists who no longer speak of the duties of citizens, but only of the rights of clients, cannot be expected to grasp the importance (not least to our survival) of fostering in the Middle East the crucial developmental advances that gave rise to our own capacity for pluralism, self-reflection, and equality. A left averse to making common cause with competent, self- determining individuals -- people who guide their lives on the basis of received values, everyday moral understandings,
traditional wisdom, and plain common sense -- is a faction that deserves the marginalization it has pursued with such tenacity for so many years.

All of which is why I have come to believe, and gladly join with others who have discovered for themselves, that the single most important thing a genuinely liberal person can do now is walk away from the house the left has built. The renewal of any tradition that deserves the name "progressive" becomes more likely with each step in a better direction.

Keith Thompson is a Petaluma writer and the author of "Angels and Aliens"
and "To Be a Man." His work is at www.thompsonatlarge.com. Contact us at
insight@sfchronicle.com.----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 SF Chronicle

[Nod to my Mom for sending this to me=) Thanks Mom!]

What polling tells us...

I offer this unapologetically. My liberal friends may or may not like it. But I think it's pretty right on.

Feel free to write and tell me why I'm an idiot...er, why you think I'm an idiot anyway.

Good thing he didn't grow up in the States

Is it immature to make fun of someone's name? Yes. Am I above it? That would be No.

I give you Dr. Woo Suk Hwang.

Talk amongst yourselves. (but imagine his high school experience if he had lived in the U.S.)

[Nod to Jonah at NRO]

Why I hate the Federal Goverment...(And Why I'm not a Liberal)

A prime example of what is wrong with the Federal Government trying to "solve our problems" with money). My fiscally conservative heart is breaking (unlike Taxpayers' wallets, since they're empty)...

Where's our outrage?

One of the under-reported aspects of the whole Newsweek affair of this past week, it seems to me, is the question of the seeming tacit acceptance of the violence it caused.

I don't know whether or not a Koran has ever been flushed down a toilet at Gitmo. Frankly, I don't care either way. It's a book for God's sake (I guess literally and figuratively, as it were). What is insane to me is that more people aren't horrified and disgusted that a person would be so utterly inhuman and devoid of worth as to feel justified to kill someone because a piece of cloth and paper was reportedly flushed down a toilet on the other side of the planet.

I am a devout Catholic and I am extremely reverent towards the Bible. That said, I don't give a hoot what someone else chooses to do with their Bible. The worth of the text is in its message, not in the physical paper and ink that was used to create it. Moreoever, its importance is its message to ME. What someone else chooses to do with their book is their own business. People seem to forget that ultimately religion is merely a personal philosophy that shapes the way we behave and look at the world. Because it is my religion, it doesn't matter what anyone else chooses to believe, inclusive of how much value they find in a given material text or book.

Granted, it is probably true that the individuals involved in the violence were pieces of human refuse anyway, so it isn't worth pointing out to them the illogic and immorality of their behavior. But we as rationale people who would never dream of such behavior should not remain silent in the face of such injustice, lest we become tacitly approving in our silence.

To this end, whether or not the Newsweek story ended up being true, it is entirely contemptable and unnacceptible for groups of people to value bound pieces of paper over human life. It's a part of Islam, perhaps? Well too damn bad. They need to change that aspect of their religion then. Satanist believe in ritual dismemberment and execution. That doesn't mean we view it as acceptible behavior and remain silent if their practices infringe on the life of innocents.

Why then, aren't more people condeming the behavior of those Muslims who were involved in the barbarity that occurred earlier this week?


On a similar note, though more eloquently written, is Jonah Goldberg in the National Review.
Money Quote:

I don’t know how to read the minds of Islamist fanatics, but it seems to me they have all the excuses in the world they’ll ever need to hate us. Osama bin Laden says the Crusades are reason enough. When he blew up that train in Spain, he said it was partly out of a desire to avenge the taking of Andalusia — i.e. Muslim Spain in the 15th century. At some point you need to start saying, “Who cares what makes these people angry?"

Spot on Hitch...

Here's a good piece by Christopher Hitchens on his frustration with the term "Insurgent" being implied to the murderers and terrorists fighting American forces in Iraq.

And I'm back...

Ugh. So it's been quite a couple weeks. Hence the lack of posting. My apologies to all who were frustrated by the static blogpage.

I'll try to make up for it as I can...

Writing to be blasted from all sides...

I think I'm gonna need to read this book. Written by an exceptionally accomplished man (Summa Cum Laude Harvard Grad, Ph.D. M.I.T., Clark Award recipient, etc.).

It's centered on the author's fascinating and unique way of looking at the world. Among many things, it analyzes similaries between the Klu Klux Klan and Real Estate agents, as well as teachers and sumo wrestlers (they both cheat), while arguing that the decline in crime since the 90's is due to Roe v. Wade.

I don't know how much I would agree with offhand, but as the article indicates, his presentation is hard to argue with.

A former staffer on Hillary

One of my pet peeves is when outspoken partisans (or ideologues) latch on to a statement from an member of their opposition who happens to be in agreement with them, and then tries to use it as an example of how "they listen to both sides."

So hopefully this won't seem like that to you guys.

Here's is a column by Joe Klein, a former member of the Clinton administration, talking in TIME magazine about a potential presidential candidacy for Hillary.

I disagree with much of what he writes (I think he is overly dismissive of attacks against Hillary and far too much in the Clinton camp to be objective is his praise). I also am not convinced that her candidacy would be as much of a disaster as he states.

I'd love it if he's right, though. (I would bet he's not invited to the Clinton's holiday get-togethers from now on).

Brilliance of the Chapelle Show

For all you fans of the Chapelle show, here's an interesting (and slightly worrisome) look at the upcoming season.

Hopefully all the issues will be worked out.

Hitch on a modern slave state.

Christopher Hitchens has an eye-opening piece on North Korea. It's a must read.

Are Conservatives anti-Enlightened?

As per John's request, let me offer my thoughts on a post at LegalFiction by "Publius" analyzing the claim that conservatism is akin to Straussian ideology (Publius says it isn't, but that it is anti-Enlightened). This post won't be so much an analysis of Straussian thought (over which I don't claim to be an expert), as an analysis of Publius' argumentation.

Let me begin by offering that I'm surprised that John seemed to enjoy the piece so much. I don't intend this as a personal attack on the author, however I don't feel the writing was overly impressive stylistically. Additionally, I found the number of (il)logical leaps, overly simplistic representation, and off-the-wall claims to be distracting to the general argument of the piece.

In short, as I read it, it reminded me a bit of the kind of conversation a college freshman has his first break home from school, trying to flaunt his mastery of Intro to Political Philosophy 101. In other words, a lot of big-word dropping without much substance or real understanding. 'Publius' isn't exactly the most apt moniker for this writer.

At any rate, I might be coming off as a bit harsh, so let me go through the piece a bit to give a general sense of my dislike for the blogpost.

_____________________

To begin, the author is entirely too flippant with language, painting with an awfully big brush.

Publius early on includes the throw-away phrase "And yes, parts of the American right are Anti-Enlightenment." This is a tremendously loaded statement. Does he provide evidence for it? No. And saying so doesn't simply make it so. And frankly, to make the claim that vast swathes (or any swathes, for that matter) of people with whom you disagree are 'intolerant of reason' usually says more about you than it does about your opposition. Not always, of course. But usually. That such logical disconnects are common throughout the blogpost doesn't speak well to Publius' attempt at convincing anyone other than those who already agree.

But let's get into the nitty-gritty of the work.

Publius lays out his understanding of political history by using convenient definitions that prove his point. The problem is that his definitions aren't accurate.

He states:

”To be grossly general, the last six hundred years or so of Western history has been a battle between three great forces. Let’s call them Traditionalism, Liberalism, and Leftism. Traditionalism is a political system with God (or a god/s) at the center of its universe. Liberalism puts the individual at the center, while Leftism puts the collective mass at the center.”

Ironically, Publius is more accurate using the term "grossly" than he intended. While Publius might try and argue that the need for simplification took away the nuance of his actual thinking, the simple fact is that his definitions don't suffer from oversimplification so much as from simply being wrong.

I would ask Publius to explain where Totalitarianism, Oligarchy, Monarchy, and Dictatorship -- the most prevalent forms of government in human history (or, if prevalence is an indicator, the 'traditional' forms of government) -- would fall in his system?

Certainly they cannot be seen as Leftist given the total disregard that those systems show to majority social need. Similarly, they aren't Liberal forms of government (Unless one wishes to count public voting by the barrel of a gun). Which leaves the Traditional category. As I noted, given that these have been by far the most common forms of social organization, there are literally the Traditional styles of government.

Yet Publius has definitionally excluded them from the Traditional Category. According to the post, "Traditionalism" is:

"...the world of “hierarchy, tradition and religious orthodoxy.” Some good examples of Traditionalist systems are the old Catholic Church and the feudal system it helped maintain. A more modern example would be the Taliban. In this system, God – as opposed to a Constitution or democratic legitimacy – is the basis of the government. (Or to be more precise, the ruling elite’s interpretation of God)."

I suppose you could try and argue that the general masking of "The Leader" (to use Paul Berman's phrase) as a God-like figure in Monarchical, Oligarchal, et al., systems is enough to fall under Publius' definition. But given that all his examples are religious in non-worldly senses, and because he can’t hide an obvious dislike for Christian churches in particular (whom he continually connotates with extremist, violent movements like Al-Qaeda), I find it hard to believe that his painting of all the oppressive, pre-modern governments as theocratic institutions is anything but intentional. But quite simply those early forms of government, even if they had close ties to Churches, were not theocratic governments except in a small handful of instances.

In short then, the first aspect of Publius' defined political history -- Traditionalism -- is laughably inaccurate. His focus on Theocracy as the prototypical form of government throughout pre-modern history is like picking out Devo as the prototypical example of what music is.


But Publius doesn't do any better in his later definitions either.

In the course of his definition of Liberalism, Publius says that it "replaced God with human reason." Well, no, actually it didn't. Take the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson. Surely Publius would agree that American political creation was a product of the Enlightenment. Yet in Jefferson's brilliant explanation for America's revolution to create Liberal government, he utilizes the Enlightenment thinking that men are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...."

Why would Jefferson cite a reference to God in an "Enlightened" document for Liberal government if it was anathema to Enlightened ideology? A quick look at Locke's Second Treatise on Government, one of the most famous Enlightened Documents advocating Liberal government, also illustrates that belief in God as a determinative force in life and Liberal thought were not mutually exclusive. To this end, the amount of examples throughout Enlightened thinking that references God is such that I really don't think I need say more. How Publius somehow thinks then that Liberalism and "Enlightened" thinking exist only with an absence of a belief in a determinative God, whom they "replaced" is inexplicable. My guess is that it's just wishful thinking on Publius' part.

____________________

There are many other aspects of the work that are simply wrong or defamatory, ranging from assertions that the Catholic church doesn't believe in the equality of women, to the idea that the White House proactively lies to American citizens. It's not worth my time trying to counteract those assertions. I suspect Publius is far enough off the reservation that it wouldn't really matter if I could provide evidence that he is wrong.

Overall, Publius seems to base his assertions about Conservatives being anti-Enlightenment based on his own incorrect understanding of both history and the Enlightment. Using big words doesn't hide the fact that he wasn't paying attention in his History of Political Theory classes...

As for me, I think I've run the course for how long I can write about the post. I will say that as long as Liberals focus on arguments that revolve around how Conservatives are stupid and backward, I'm content. It'll guarentee we win every election.