EVEN THE FRENCH KNEW BETTER

Picasso in Paris: A Suspect, Never a Citizen (ALAN RIDING, 5/28/03, NY Times)

After his death in 1973, France honored Pablo Picasso with the museum that carries his name in Paris. Yet during his first four decades as a French resident, the Spanish-born Picasso was viewed with suspicion by the French police and intelligence services. When he sought French nationality in 1940, he was turned down on the ground that he was an anarchist with Communist tendencies.

The extent of French misgivings about Picasso's politics have just become known with the discovery of the artist's police files from 1901 to 1940. They were among millions of French documents seized by German occupation forces in 1940 and transferred to Berlin. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, they were taken to Moscow. Only since the collapse of the Soviet Union have they been gradually returned to France. [...]

On April 3, 1940, Picasso wrote to the minister of justice requesting naturalization. He was also required to swear he had no criminal record, to demonstrate he was up to date on his tax payments and to show the lease for his two apartments at 23 rue de la Boetie. He was then summoned for interrogation by the neighborhood's police commissioner, who in a report dated April 30, 1940, concluded: "Good information. Favorable recommendation."

But a separate report by the General Information Directorate, dated May 25, was hostile to Picasso. It recalled that Picasso was "identified as an anarchist" in 1905, and it noted acidly that in 1914 "he offered no service to our country during the war." It called him "a so-called modern artist," accused him of sending his wealth abroad and declared that "Picasso has retained extremist ideas evolving toward Communism." The report noted that Picasso sent money to the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War, that he had recently been heard criticizing French institutions and praising Moscow and that he had told friends that he would bequeath his works to the Soviet Union, not France. The report said little had been learned from Picasso's neighbors. "Because of his arrogant and stuffy character, he is little known in his neighborhood," it added.

The report's conclusion is unsurprising: "As a result of all the information gathered, this foreigner has no qualification to obtain naturalization. Further, in the light of the above, he should be considered suspect from a national point of view." There is no evidence that Picasso was informed of the rejection of his request. Three weeks after the second report was completed, German troops entered Paris.

Mr. Daix and Mr. Israil write, "France lost a celebrated man whom it could have been proud to have included among its citizens." And the absurdity, they point out, is that this ruling was rooted in misinformation about Picasso's anarchic sympathies gathered by a police agent in 1901.

What is not known is whether France opened a fresh police file on Picasso after World War II, but on Oct. 5, 1944, just six weeks after the liberation of Paris, Picasso formally joined the French Communist Party.

"Proud to have included among its citizens"? He was a Stalinist and a particularly vile person. Even the French couldn't be proud of him.

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THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

The Force That Drives the Flower: What is it about fecundity that so appalls? Is it that with nature's bounty goes a crushing waste that threatens our own cheap lives? (Annie Dillard, November 1973, The Atlantic Monthly)

The growth pressure of plants can do an impressive variety of tricks. Bamboo can grow three feet in twenty-four hours, an accomplishment that is capitalized upon, legendarily, in that exquisite Asian torture in which a victim is strapped to a mesh bunk a mere foot above a bed of healthy bamboo plants whose woodlike tips have been sharpened. For the first eight hours he is fine, if jittery; then he starts turning into a colander, by degrees.

Down at the root end of things, blind growth reaches astonishing proportions. So far as I know, only one real experiment has ever been performed to determine the extent and rate of root growth, and when you read the figures, you see why. I have run into various accounts of this experiment, and the only thing they don't reveal is how many lab assistants were blinded for life.

The experimenters studied a single grass plant, winter rye. They let it grow in a greenhouse for four months; then they gingerly spirited away the soil--under microscopes, I imagine--and counted and measured all the roots and root hairs. In four months the plant had set forth 378 miles of roots--that's about three miles a day--in 14 million distinct roots. This is mighty impressive, but when they get down to the root hairs, I boggle completely. In those same four months the rye plant created 14 billion root hairs, and those little things placed end to end just about wouldn't quit. In a single cubic inch of soil, the length of the root hairs totaled 6000 miles.

Other plants use water power to heave the rock earth around as though they were merely shrugging off a silken cape. Rutherford Platt tells about a larch tree whose root had cleft a one-and-a-half-ton boulder and hoisted it a foot into the air. Everyone knows how a sycamore root will buckle a sidewalk, a mushroom will shatter a cement basement floor. But when the first real measurements of this awesome pressure were taken, nobody could believe the figures.

Rutherford Platt tells the story in The Great American Forest, one of the most interesting books ever written:

In 1875, a Massachusetts farmer, curious about the growing power of expanding apples, melons, and squashes, harnessed a squash to a weight-lifting device which had a dial like a grocer's scale to indicate the pressure exerted by the expanding fruit. As the days passed, he kept piling on counterbalancing weight; he could hardly believe his eyes when he saw his vegetables quietly exerting a lifting force of 5 thousand pounds per square inch. When nobody believed him, he set up exhibits of harnessed squashes and invited the public to come and see. The Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, 1875, reported: "Many thousands of men, women, and children of all classes of society visited it. Mr. Penlow watched it day and night, making hourly observations; Professor Parker was moved to write a poem about it; Professor Seelye declared that he positively stood in awe of it."

All this is very jolly. Unless perhaps I were strapped down above a stand of growing, sharpened bamboo, I am unlikely to feel the faintest queasiness either about the growth pressure of plants or their fecundity. Even when the plants get in the way of human "culture," I don't mind. When I read how many thousands of dollars a city like New York has to spend to keep underground water pipes free of ailanthus, ginko, and sycamore roots, I cannot help but give a little cheer. After all, water pipes are almost always an excellent source of water. In a town where resourcefulness and beating the system are highly prized, these primitive trees can fight city hall and win.

Magazines like The Atlantic, the New Yorker, The Nation, New Republic, TIME, and others, that have been publishing for decades and longer, have so much great material in their archives, it's too bad they don't post more of it.

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"WEEPY MOJO"

How do chick flicks make women weep?: University study says it's all about the 'power of emotion' (Chris Lackner, May 30, 2003, National Post)

The common, stereotypical definition of a chick flick is simple: a film that will reduce its female audiences to tears while keeping men away in droves. How and why this exactly happens is the subject of ongoing research at the University of Manitoba.

According to a study by Brenda Austin-Smith, a professor of English and film studies, classic chick flicks act as a psychological release for their female audience, even though women realize they are being manipulated by Hollywood gender stereotypes and emotional cues.

"A lot of research has been done on the patriarchal stereotypes and pop-cultural messages in films that [cater to a female audience], but they never directly talk about the power of emotion," said Austin-Smith. "What makes women weep?"

Her research focused on classic Hollywood weepies produced between 1920 and 1940, such as 1939's Dark Victory featuring Bette Davis as a woman battling blindness, 1937's Stella Dallas starring Barbara Stanwyck as a mother fighting to provide her daughter with a future, and Madame X starring Lana Turner as a scorned wife forced into prostitution and charged with the murder of a crook.

These films always portrayed woman as a tragic heroines, battling issues such as the loss of a child or spouse, raising a child on their own, or terminal illness, she explained.

Austin-Smith has done extensive interviews and film screenings with 37 women whose ages range from 35 to 83. She focused on women who either lived in the era in which classic weepies were released or who may have grown up watching them with their mothers.

These movies had the tendency to be more reality-driven, and often captured the life experience of the women who lived during their era, she noted.

"These films gave women a safe place to cry," she said, adding her study also set out to determine whether such films still have the same emotional impact on modern audiences. "I found these films still have their weepy mojo."

Most women can not afford to be emotional because they need to be strong for their families, partners, children or careers, but weepies offer them a cathartic release from life's burdens, she explained.

Is there a man anywhere who wouldn't build a special room onto his house so his wife could have a "safe place to cry" if she'd just stop making him watch these insipid movies?

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WHAT WMD?

INSIDER INTERVIEW: House Minority Leader Pelosi: 'One District At A Time' (National Journal, May 28, 2003

Q: What would your response be if no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq?

A: People have lost their lives. I would not want to leave the impression that because we have not found weapons of mass destruction, it was not a worthy sacrifice. So, I don't place a high premium on it. I said from day one that the intelligence did not support the threat [from Iraq] that the administration was putting forth, in terms of weapons of mass destruction. As far as chemical and biological weapons, it's a very dangerous neighborhood. A number of countries in the region are developing those programs. It would be likely that Iraq would have them too. They may be found. They may not. But I would not want to diminish in any way the sacrifice of those who went and fought.

Q: Did the president mislead us?

A: I would never characterize the president taking us into war as misleading us, because it's just too serious a decision for him to make. We just have to go beyond this, though other countries will not. But the sacrifice has been made.

The press may not have figured out yet that the presence or absence of WMD in Iraq doesn't much matter, but the Democrats who have to try and win back the Congress certainly have.

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ONE CASUALTY TOO MANY

Jihad's Hidden Victim: The Casablanca bombings destroyed not just life and property, but a tolerant nation's view of itself (BRUCE CRUMLEY, 6/02/03, TIME Europe)

When the smoke had cleared and the wreckage and bodies were being carted away, stunned Moroccans turned their attention to another casualty of the May 16 Casablanca terrorist bombings: the nation's sense of itself. Morocco has long tried to occupy a middle ground between its European and North American allies on one side and the conservative, Islam-dominated societies of fellow Arab countries. Now Moroccans fear they may have the worst of both worlds: the strain of jihadist militancy rooted in the affluent nations of the Middle East, and the vast, economically stricken populations from which al-Qaeda networks have so effectively recruited in the West. [...]

The goals of greater democracy and tolerance of all religions are at the heart of King Mohammed VI's social program. But there is now ample reason for the government to crack down on Islamist groups, and a long-stalled antiterrorism law--decried as authoritarian and repressive--got new life in the wake of the attack, clearing a major legislative hurdle last week. Even before the bombings, expected advances by Morocco's two Islamic parties led the government to postpone nationwide local elections slated for June.

Moroccan democracy might be further undermined if foreign tourists and investors steer clear of the country and deprive it of resources needed to battle poverty. That "would have dire consequences for everyone," warns Andre Azoulay, an adviser to Mohammed VI. "It would demonstrate that Western examples of democracy, plurality and economic modernity couldn't be applied to the world's most progressive Arab state--and indeed aren't compatible with Arab society. The only people who would benefit from that are the Islamist radicals." Moroccans are desperate to prevent that: millions of employees respected a five-minute work stoppage Friday to pray for victims of the attacks, and hundreds of thousands were expected in Sunday's marches denouncing religious extremism and terror. Now Morocco and the world must demonstrate to people like those in Sidi Moumen that they have more to live for than kill for--and then begin to make the same point in Arab and European ghettos where radical Islamists cultivate jihad.

It seems well worth it to pump US aid into the all too few Arab states that are moving in a Westerly direction.

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I PULL THE STRINGS

To believe that we can end tyranny by self-improvement and restraint (Amity Shlaes, Jewish World Review)

This past winter I returned to Berlin to find the locals pessimistic. My friends and I chatted about different things, but our conversations always ended up at a single place: Iraq. At dinners in the new Berlin Mitte (yesterday's news to them, but still amazing to me) one Berliner or another shouted about the "impossibility" of the Iraqi project. My friends seemed to believe that the best thing they could do was to retreat to that 1950s nuclear freeze motto, ohne mich, "without me".

They seemed to assume that the more modest, the smaller Germany made itself, the safer it and the rest of the world would be. On the sixth week of my visit, 500,000 Berliners protested against the war in Iraq, lining streets from Alexanderplatz into the west. If only we can mount a demonstration big enough, they seemed to be saying, we can improve life the globe over. To many of us - British and Americans - this attitude was irritating.

Where was all the good will our governments had earned through aid and restraint? Where was the lesson of Yugoslavia, which showed that blue helmets alone could not prevent massacres, and that regime change was necessary? But the real problem with this view was that it seemed a fallacy. Germany might want to pretend it is Switzerland. But this is as pointless as an elephant hiding behind a slender palm. For there is, alas, no such thing as a big neutral country. As much as Germany wishes not to take sides, it is, in effect, taking sides no matter what it does.

And no matter how much one disapproved of the Bush administration, one could not help but see that Saddam Hussein was emboldened by his discovery that there was a gap to be exploited between the US and its allies. In this context the mid-war discovery that Russian generals had helped Saddam did not come as a complete surprise. But where did this experience leave me and my friends? For the first time in my long relationship with Germany, the differences began to feel serious.

For me and for many American and British people, the second world war seemed a legitimate and powerful argument for the war in Iraq. For Berliners, it was not. The arguments of my friend Karin were, as usual, the clearest. Hardly a a day went by, she said, that she did not think of "it" - "it" being the second world war of her childhood. She had believed the crumbling of the wall to be the end of that war; now we, the Americans and British, were starting just such a war again. Pondering all this, I cycled one morning to Glienicke. There, for the first time, I noticed a plaque commemorating the return of the bridge to everyday life after so many years. "Glienicke Bridge," it read, "open as a result of the peaceable revolution in the GDR." How wonderful it must be, I thought without irony, to believe that by self-improvement and restraint, we can end tyranny. Would that it were so.

We noted earlier in the week that this notion, though it appears to be grounded in powerlessness, is actually a claim of extravagant power over the behavior of others. The idea in this case is that Germans can control the behavior of others towards them by modifying their own behavior. If only they stay out of the rest of the world's business, the world will leave them alone. Not only is this a dangerous form of egomania and a denial of reality, it is also put to the lie by their own recent history, when much of the West tried to convince itself that if the Germans were left alone they'd leave others alone.

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DO NOT GO GENTLE

The Incredible Shrinking People: The fact that there are so few Jews in the world places a great responsibility on the Jews that do exist. (Rabbi Berel Wein, Jewish World Review)

In 1950, according to the census of the Jewish Federations in North America at that time, the Jewish population of North America was approximately six million people. That meant that there were six million people in North America who identified themselves as Jews.

According to the natural increase in population as exhibited in the general population in North America there should now be at least fifteen million people in North America who identify themselves as Jews.

In stark reality, however, there are barely five million people in North America who do so.

That means that there are ten million people--potential Jews--who have disappeared in the last half-century, and their absence is out of personal choice and not external enmity. That statistic is certainly one of the saddest ones for Jews in this doleful past century.

Sixty years ago, there were nineteen million Jews in the world. Today, there are approximately thirteen million Jews in the world. A half-century after the Holocaust, we have not replenished the numbers that the Germans and their cohorts extinguished. This ugly and sad fact only intensifies the tragedy of the Holocaust in the current Jewish world.

It would be a world historical tragedy if all Jews were to take away from these numbers is the lesson that Rabbi Wein seems to be teaching--that the shrinking few realize how special they are. The end point such a teaching is fairly obvious: the fewer there are the more special each is, until the point when the last one left is the most special of all. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter the Jews, who brought us Judaism--the single most important set of ideas in human history--will pass from existence. On that day, in the all too imaginable future, the world will be a colder, darker place and we will all be diminished as a species.

This end should therefore be intolerable to us all, but must obviously be most intolerable to Jews themselves. This is no time to turn inward, to gaze at your navel and say how special you are, but a time to turn outward, to renew the people, to strengthen belief, to be fruitful and multiply, to rage against the dying of the children of the light.

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ALL YOU NEED IS FIVE FINGERS, A FOE, AND A FROSTY BEVERAGE

School Holds Rock-Paper-Scissors Contest (The Associated Press, May 29, 2003)

Thomas Shaffer, who organized a rock-paper-scissors tournament at his high school, says the game is based on patterns, so the odds of winning increase when a player better observes his opponent.

"At first I was one of the believers that it is a game of luck," Shaffer said. "I'll let you in on a little secret: Most people open with scissors. Novice players rarely throw the same thing twice in a row."

Shaffer recruited 75 classmates at Elizabethtown Area High School to compete, got the school to let him hold the contest in the gym and even convinced a sponsor to donate money for trophies. A dairy donated chocolate milk.

Shaffer managed to back up his bluster about the game's intricacies, making the final round by winning 19 matches in a row.

Though inexplicably underappreciated, Rock-Scissors-Paper is the perfect drinking game. It has two great advantages over all others: (1) you always have the required equipment with you; (2) because it's non-verbal it can be played at the loudest party or tavern.

DISCLAIMER: This is for information purposes only and should in no way be taken as a Brothers Judd recommendation that you try such a thing. Alcohol is dangerous when consumed in large amounts and is nothing to be toyed with. In addition, if you drink too much in college and law school, the Red Cross may refuse to accept blood donations because of elevated liver enzymes. Or so we hear...

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TOO BAD "NAACP" IS ALREADY TAKEN.

Socially Acceptable Bigotry (Willy Stern, Metro Pulse Online, 5/29/03)

Because of my background and my appearance--dark curly hair and a fairly sizable proboscis--most of the world reaches similar conclusions as to my political leanings as did Suzi. Scarcely a week has gone by since I hit 7th grade at Edgemont High School during which somebody did not make a derogatory comment about Republicans in my presence. I hear them, well, practically everywhere...at Starbucks, at job interviews, and while picking up my son at Congregation Micah, Nashville's open-minded reform synagogue. I hear them in the hallways of Vanderbilt University (where I teach part-time), around the copy machines at the Nashville Scene (the alternative newspaper which employs me) and in the carpool line at the University School of Nashville, (the progressive private school which my older child attends).

Press me and you'll learn that—to the degree one can be labeled--I reside in the liberal wing of the Republican Party. I believe in free markets and free people. Social issues notwithstanding, that generally lines me up with the Republicans.

When somebody makes a prejudicial comment about Republicans in my presence, I play a private game. I replay the sentence in my mind—only I substitute a word like "black" or "lesbian" or "Mexican" in place of the word "Republican." In performing this verbal sleight-of-hand, it becomes increasingly apparent that the speaker of the sentence may harbor views not generally considered to be tolerant or open-minded.

But are they bigots? Bigot, after all, is a strong and charged word. And how about Suzi? Is she a bigot? . . . There is no group better qualified to answer that question than the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a not-for-profit group respected around the globe for its authoritative work to counteract discrimination and anti-Semitism. So are comments like "All Republicans are assholes," expressions of bigotry? According to Caryl M. Stern, ADL's associate national director (and no relation to the author), the answer is yes.

To be sure, in this era of diversity and sensitivity, a veritable cottage industry has sprung up to stamp out bigotry and intolerance. Many of those who have dedicated themselves to the eradication of bigotry tend to be Left-leaning, self-styled progressives. In researching this essay, I interviewed a number of these tolerance gurus. Interestingly, most had no problem labeling all Republicans "a--holes." One prominent sociologist at a top university explained earnestly that he was no bigot but, of course, wouldn't want his sister to marry a Republican.

This is fundamentally silly. Although these leftists are prejudiced, by the exact definition, they are not bigots, nor are Republicans or conservatives an oppressed minority. Not only should we conservatives be reluctant to expand the scope of minorities to be protected, we should welcome the close-mindedness of our adversaries, which makes them that much weaker, as well has hypocrites.

But I also have to say that Mr. Stern's experience has not been mine, though I'm a Massachusetts Jew living among five of the more leftist colleges and universities in the country. I never hear comments like this. My guess is that other people can't spend any great length of time with me without figuring out where I stand on the issues of the day. This may be because, unlike Mr. Stern, I'm not embarassed by my beliefs. (Let's face it, "I'm Republican because my parents were" is pretty weak.) Nonetheless, this type of reaction -- based as it is on the refusal to even learn about Republicans -- does ring true. Modern liberalism is founded on ignorance and a general desire, where personal knowledge is lacking, to simply accept the "compassionate" view without investigation. Time and again, I have found that, with the exception of politicians, public school teachers and academics, even the most liberal people are conservative when it comes to the issues they know the best, or which personally effect them. They're often glad to find a sympathetic ear in which to confess their apostasy. So, I say to Mr. Stern and others, rightists of the world unite, you have nothing to lose except listening to a lot of mindless blather.

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QUO VADIS?

Clymer to co-workers: Stop feeding this monster (Posted By: Jim Romenesko, 5/30/2003, Poynter.org)

To: xxxxx@nytimes.com
From: Adam Clymer (xxxx@nytimes.com)
Subject: The Times
Colleagues,

I think it's time to take a deep breath and think about the New York Times.

I share your contempt for Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg. And I share your anger at some of the failures of management that enabled them. I agree with a lot of what Times people have told outside reporters, either directly or in internal E-mails that have quickly found their way to the Internet. In particular, Peter Kilborn made the case against Bragg's excuses with telling effect.

But I think by now we have hit back, fairly and convincingly, and Blair and Bragg are gone, belatedly, from our ranks. The time has come to stop feeding this destructive monster. The Times that we are honored to work for will be damaged if we continue to fight with each other in public. And that's more important than our own grievously, justifiably injured pride.

Like any conservative, but especially those who came of age in the 60's and 70's, I've a great deal of contempt for the press and for no press outlet more than the Times. So it has been a tremendous pleasure, not at all guilty, to watch the Gray Lady implode over the last few weeks.

Mr. Clymer's letter captures, almost accidentally, something of the reason why this is so. The "beast" to which he refers is, ironically enough, the very media that the Times is a part of. Like so many institutions before it, but usually at its own hands, the Times has discovered that once there's blood in the water the sharks go into a feeding frenzy and no one really gives a good goddamn about collateral damage, reputations, strict adherence to the facts, etc. [One story in particular that has always infuriated me concerns Oliver "Billy" Sipple, who struck at Sarah Jane Moore as she fired a gun at Gerald Ford, perhaps saving the President from assassination. How was this ex-marine repaid for his heroic act? The SF Chronicle revealed that he was, unknown to friends and family, a homosexual and destroyed his life.] What makes the Times' agony so enjoyable though is that the insufferable mavens of the press have been telling us all for thirty-plus years--ever since they decided they didn't much care for Vietnam or Nixon--that it is their solemn duty to pursue the story no matter where it leads and no matter who gets hurt, because the "truth" must out (so to speak).

Indeed, in one of the most appallingly self-righteous moments in television history, several newmen explained how their precious code of ethics would even prevent them from saving the lives of American soldiers if it might interfere with their story. Here's an account from MediaWatch:

In a future war involving U.S. soldiers what would a TV reporter do if he learned the enemy troops with which he was traveling were about to launch a surprise attack on an American unit? That's just the question Harvard University professor Charles Ogletree Jr, as moderator of PBS' Ethics in America series, posed to ABC anchor PeterJennings and 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace. Both agreed getting ambush footage for the evening news would come before warning the U.S. troops.

For the March 7 installment on battlefield ethics Ogletree set up a theoretical war between the North Kosanese and the U.S.-supported South Kosanese. At first Jennings responded: "If I was with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans."

Wallace countered that other reporters, including himself, "would regard it simply as another story that they are there to cover." Jennings' position bewildered Wallace: "I'm a little bit of a loss to understand why, because you are an American, you would not have covered that story."

"Don't you have a higher duty as an American citizen to do all you can to save the lives of soldiers rather than this journalistic ethic of reporting fact?" Ogletree asked. Without hesitating Wallace responded: "No, you don't have higher duty... you're a reporter." This convinces Jennings, who concedes, "I think he's right too, I chickened out."

Ogletree turns to Brent Scowcroft, now the National Security Adviser, who argues "you're Americans first, and you're journalists second." Wallace is mystified by the concept, wondering "what in the world is wrong with photographing this attack by North Kosanese on American soldiers?" Retired General William Westmoreland then points out that "it would be repugnant to the American listening public to see on film an ambush of an American platoon by our national enemy."

A few minutes later Ogletree notes the "venomous reaction" from George Connell, a Marine Corps Colonel. "I feel utter contempt. Two days later they're both walking off my hilltop, they're two hundred yards away and they get ambushed. And they're lying there wounded. And they're going to expect I'm going to send Marines up there to get them. They're just journalists, they're not Americans."

Wallace and Jennings agree, "it's a fair reaction." The discussion concludes as Connell says: "But I'll do it. And that's what makes me so contemptuous of them. And Marines will die, going to get a couple of journalists."

No one who saw the show--at least no one with a scrap of human decency, an iota of moral sense, and a smidgen of patriotism--will ever forget how this contemptible performance by two of America's most celebrated newsmen made the gorge rise in one's throat.

So as the press now becomes Oroborus, the beast that feeds on itself, you'll pardon us if we crack open a Pabst, open a bag of Cheez-Waffles, and enjoy the spectacle. We feel like Christians getting to watch the Romans be fed to the lions.


MORE:
Fresh embarrassment for New York Times (Ciar Byrne, May 29, 2003, The Guardian)

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UM, THIS REALLY ISN'T HELPING.

Firestorm in the Newsroom (Seth Mnookin, Newsweek Web, 5/28/03).

Infuriated by Rick Bragg's description of the workhabits of New York Times national correspondents, Peter Kilborn defends himself and his fellows as follows:

"I was really offended," Kilborn said in a phone interview on Wednesday. "I bust my ass chasing facts and I go to weird places I've never been and I have to root around to get the story. The whole idea [of using stringers to do the bulk of the reporting] is anathema to decent journalism."

Kilborn goes to "weird places." Kilborn is a national correspondent; the places he goes are all within the country.

Now, it's no surprise that Manhattanites think that the rest of the country (absent maybe Westchester County, the Hamptons, Fire Island and parts of Los Angeles) is weird. But is this really a defense the New York Times wants to promote: The National Paper That Even Sends Famous Reporters To Weird Places. And, by the way, has anyone ever made a stronger case for New York parochialism than Kilborn has made inadvertantly?

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BECAUSE I SAID I WOULD

Bush's Road Map: A post-Iraq journey to mend fences in Europe, Mideast (Ken Fireman, May 31, 2003, Newsday)

One of President George W. Bush's most cherished maxims, according to aides, is that political capital must be used rapidly to promote a leader's goals or it will soon dissipate.

With that in mind, the president began an ambitious trip Friday aimed at applying prestige from the victory in Iraq to the effort to solve one of the world's most intractable problems: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The trip's high point is expected next week when Bush meets with Arab leaders in Egypt, and with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, in Aqaba, Jordan. [...]

Several factors have convinced Bush that it is time for a major commitment of presidential prestige. First, the Palestinian Authority recently met one of his key demands by naming a prime minister, Abbas, who is formally committed to squelching terrorism and overhauling the authority's political and economic structures.

Second, in the runup to the Iraq conflict, Bush made commitments to key allies, Tony Blair of Britain and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, and to Arab leaders, that he would release the long-planned road map at a propitious moment and press a reluctant Sharon to support it. That moment came earlier this month, and Sharon got a divided Israeli cabinet to give provisional backing.

Finally, administration officials believe that the U.S. ouster of Saddam Hussein changed the power balance in the region in Washington's favor - but that this will not last forever.

For all these reasons, Bush said in an interview with foreign journalists shortly before departure, he decided it was time to act.

"I believe in the possibilities of peace," he said. "I trust the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority when he condemns terror. I believe that provides an opening for the United States and others to expend the necessary energies to move the process forward."

Bush added that his trip may help to mitigate what he acknowledged was Arab skepticism about his commitment to pursue the peace process. "I told a lot of the leaders that after the Iraq situation I would work toward peace in the Middle East," he said. "I want them to look me in the eye so they can see that I am determined to work to make this happen."

President Bush continues to use the cunning ploy of saying what he's going to do and then doing it...positively fiendish...

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Today's Senate Confirmation Battles and the Role of the Federal Judiciary (Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, Ninth Circuit Judge)

In short, to contend that the Constitution is an eminently mutable document ... renders the central fact of our nation’s founding -- namely, the promulgation of a written document designed to bind the will of future majorities -- a mere afterthought, if not a nullity. In so doing, it threatens to undermine the long-term health of the unique polity established by that great charter.

Judge O’Scannlain's speech is outstanding -- read the whole thing -- but here is one of the main points. The contention over judicial nominees is merely the natural consequence of the overthrow of the written Constitution and its replacement by judicial fiat. Once the judiciary is a law-making branch, then everyone else must contend to influence it, however they can. Confirmation is simply the most obvious point of influence.

Justice Scalia has clearly explained the link between judicial activism and contentious confirmations. See, for instance, Scalia: Politics play role in judiciary (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 5/10/2003):

The appointment of judges is an increasingly political process in which applicants personal views are becoming more important than their legal expertise, a panel of prominent judges led by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Friday in Fairbanks....

Scalia ... said he's not surprised that judicial applicants' political views have become the major consideration in whether they are confirmed by the Senate.

"I've been predicting the current crisis for 20 years," Scalia said. "I don't think it's extraordinary that members of the Senate want to ask new judges what new rights will they acknowledge."

He added there's little that can be done to change the current situation, considering the checks and balance system for federal courts is the judicial selection process.

"You're not looking for good lawyers anymore; you shouldn't be looking for good lawyers," Scalia said. "You should be looking for people that agree with you."

Yet this contention, I think, will be the fever that breaks the infection. The judicial activists on the left will never change their behavior as long as it continues to work -- that is, as long as judicial fiat is treated as binding law, and leftists allowed to dominate the judiciary. Once those conditions change, they will reconsider their position. And judicial activism is so destructive of the rule of law that, I believe, liberals and moderate Democrats (spurred by Republican political majorities) will soon reverse their support for it.

So, onward! The more conservative the nominees, the sooner the fever breaks.

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WHAT ARE THE OTHER SIGNS OF THE APOCAPLYPSE?

Scott Simon Essay: Weapons of Mass Destruction, (Scott Simon, Weekend Edition Saturday, 5/31/03).

Although you wouldn't guess it by the title, and it doesn't seem to be available online, in this commentary Scott Simon comes perilously close to endorsing the Brothers Judd view of the Iraqi war and weapons of mass destruction: who cares? Now that "human rights groups" have now increased the number of victims they estimate the Iraqi Ba'athists tortured, Mr. Simon concludes that the regime was evil. It was, in his words, the biggest weapon of mass destruction. He even admits that it's unlikely the President Bush and Tony Blair were out and out lying about wmds, though of course he is concered that serious allegations have been raised and believes that an investigation is warranted. He will back away from this sentiment sometime in the next week, but the point remains: if the Democratic refuseniks have lost NPR, do they have any chance of winning over America?

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DON'T THROW ME IN THAT BRIAR PATCH, BR'ER FOX!

Kerry promises Iowans that war on terror will be key issue (Boston Herald, 5/31/2003)

Sen. John F. Kerry accused President Bush yesterday of failing to protect Americans at home and promised to make the war on terror a major issue in the 2004 presidential race.

"I think this administration has not done what's necessary ...," Kerry said.

"So I intend to make it an issue."

Come into my parlor, said the spider ...

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MANUFACTURED EVIDENCE

Lacking Evidence (Valley News, 5/30/03)

A recent report that compared the effectiveness of job-training programs run by faith-based charities with those run by secular organizations is surprising, not so much for what it concludes as for what it is unable to conclude.

The Indiana study, reported in a Washington Post story that appeared in the Valley News earlier this week, looked at government-funded job training programs run by 11 religious and 16 secular organizations in two counties, from 2000-2002. It found no difference between the programs when it came to job-placement rates or starting wages, but clients of the faith-based groups worked fewer hours, on average, and were less likely to receive health insurance.

Now certainly this seems to undercut the premise of President Bush's faith-based initiative, which is that religious charities can provide many social services at lower cost and more effectively than secular organizations. But the university investigators who did the study were appropriately careful to warn against drawing broad conclusions from their research, noting that they dealt with only two urban counties and one type of social service.

With so much ignorant opinion around it's sometimes hard to tell what is genuine and what is willful obfuscation, but givenn how consistently organs of the Left have gotten this story wrong it seems more intentional than not. The editorialist conflates two issues here in order to attack a straw man. What conservatives actually say is that social services can be provided more effectively by non-governmental institutions and that once government starts funding such organizations, religious groups should be eligible. There are some services that it is indeed claimed are best provided by religious groups--including substance abuse and the like--but job training, considered generically, is not among these. This study then seems to seek to disprove something that no one says is true.

A more useful study might be done though--even in the discrete area of job placement--one which would look at three questions: (1) how do non-governmental programs compare to government programs?; (2) do similar clients have significantly different placement experiences depending on which type of program they are placed in?; and (3) is the clientele different for the three? It's is entirely possible, though we doubt it, that government run progtrams do the best job of the three, at the lowest cost, and do so regardless of how difficult a case the client presents. If that is the case, it would be an excellent though not dispositive argument for bigger government even at the expense of the social/religious sphere. The cited study though tells us nothing of the kind.

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AS JEMMY SPINS IN HIS GRAVE

Madison Versus Bush: The United States is at a crossroads. It can either continue in a policy of unilateralism and projection of raw power. Or it can realize that it needs to coexist within a multilateral world framework. Edward Goldberg explains how the origins of the U.S. constitution play into this choice. (Edward Goldberg, May 19, 2003, The Globalist)

Americans like to see their country as earnest, optimistic and youthful, individualistic, idealistic, and a team player. "We give the underdog a chance" and "We play by the rules," Americans tell themselves.

Fortunately for America, a wise group of men came together 214 years ago to establish the rules that would make it safe for these attractive traits to blossom.

The checks and balances in the Constitution which these men created would not only protect the rights of the individual.

But, it would also force conflicting power bases within society toward compromise in order for society as a whole to be able to move forward.

The U.S. Constitution safeguarded the political system from abuse of power and from abuse of dogma. It forced each side's concepts to face the light of pragmatic concerns. James Madison and his friends knew well that, to preserve liberty, power needed to be balanced and checked.

This concept of checks and balances is integral to American political philosophy. But strangely, it is apparently not considered relevant by the Bush Administration in the formation of its foreign policy.

As far as I can tell, this guy's serious, though we'd be easy to convince that this is meant to be a parody.

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CHIDING THE PILOT FISH

'It will take some time' to mend this fence: In interview with Post, Rice lays bare U.S. disappointment with Canada: Divided on war, deficit (Peter Morton, May 31, 2003, National Post)

Washington has not forgotten Canada's refusal to support its campaign against Iraq and will need "some time" to heal the wounds inflicted by Ottawa's repeated criticisms, Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. national security advisor, told the National Post.

"I think there was disappointment in the United States that a friend like Canada was unable to support the United States in what we considered to be an extremely important issue for our security," Ms. Rice said in an interview before joining George W. Bush at this weekend's G8 summit in Evian, France.

"That disappointment will not go of course away easily and it will take some time [to heal].

"When friends are in a position where we say our security's at stake, we would have thought, as we got from any of our friends, that the answer would have been, 'Well, how can we help?' " she said in the most expansive expression yet of U.S. unhappiness over the Canadian position.

She said Mr. Bush is also puzzled by this week's comments by Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister, who criticized the U.S. President's economic policies and suggested he himself has done a better job.

Ms. Rice said the US$330-billion tax-cut package and other stimulus measures taken by the Bush administration will lead to greater economic growth and more jobs. "And one of the great beneficiaries of that, of course, will be Canada because it is an economy that is extremely connected to the American economy and so the President is doing what he can to stimulate economic growth.'' [...]

Ms. Rice said a "disproportionate" share of dealing with international terrorism fell on the shoulders of the United States, which looked for allies in the battle because "these are values we share with our long-time friends."

"So, yes, there was some disappointment that there seemed to be some questioning of American motives and some lack of understanding that we were simply trying to do in support of our own security and support of everyone's else security," she said.

Note the subtlety with which she makes it clear that Mr. Chretien is only in a position to criticize Mr. Bush because Canada gets to ride the gravy train of the U.S. economy without sharing the security burden that it benefits from.

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TORIES--THE LESS LEFT

Tory leadership convention filled with pretty faces lacking vision (Susan Riley, May 31, 2003, The Ottawa Citizen)

All the federal Tories can hope is that Peter MacKay, who is expected to win today's leadership vote at yet another pivotal party convention here, will keep the seat warm for Catherine Clark -- or for some other future leader with a lot more poise and depth than the leading contenders to replace her father have displayed so far.

This convention is supposed to showcase a "new generation of leadership," but what we are seeing is the party's B-team -- public-spirited, intelligent and hard-working candidates whose only virtue appears to be their youth.

The 37-year-old MacKay, a Nova Scotia MP and son of former Mulroney minister Elmer, was the most professional in his delivery, but his speech confirmed the worst fears of his critics -- that the party's caucus star is a pretty face void of vision. Even by the undemanding standards of the genre, MacKay's effort was more worthy of a candidate for student council than of a prime ministerial hopeful.

He would "restore Canada's place in the world," offer "leadership that listens to an engages Canadians" and, quite honestly, it is hard to find any quotes more penetrating than that. [...]

Predictably, it was David Orchard -- a strong and visible second place here, but too uncongenial to diehard Tories to muster enough support to win -- who delivered the most thoughtful, coherent speech (albeit to the wrong convention), replete with quotations and curious historical asides.

If Orchard is looking for work next week he should apply to run the new Canada History Centre. Few contemporary politicians communicate the ideas and personalities of our history as passionately.

Why are Canadian and British Tories members of their respective parties if not to run as conservatives? Take a look at this essay by Mr Orchard--What makes me a Conservative--and try to figure out how he'd be any different than Jacques Chretien? Meanwhile, Mr. MacKay, supposedly writing about social capital, somehow manages to call for its exact opposite, government actions, rather than social networks. And, of course, the single payer health care system is holier than a cow is to a Hindu. These guys are hopeless.

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CUT THOSE SALARIES

Concerns grow over pay gaps between professional-school professors and everyone else (Chronicle of Higher Education, )

The way Marvin Johnson sees it, business professors at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa get up every morning, teach classes, do their research, and advise students -- just as he does in the university's music school.

So when he learned last fall that the average assistant professor in the business school was earning $72,691, while the average full professor in the humanities made $63,531, he was shocked, he says. "It seemed completely out of whack."

As he began poring over salary records that were provided by the university's institutional-research office, he discovered that the spread between some disciplines was even larger. For example, he learned that the highest-paid faculty members -- those in the law school, with an average salary of $102,462 -- were earning nearly three times as much as those in library science, the lowest-paid discipline at $35,991. (The university's medical school, which is on a different campus, was not included in the data.)

He decided that something had to be done. At his urging, the university's Faculty Senate voted last month to endorse a proposal that would put a cap on raises for the most highly paid professors on the campus, many of whom are in law and business.

It is truly shocking that English professors get paid $63,000 a year to read novels, while other English Ph.D.'s, equally talented, wait tables. Universities should reduce these salaries until the supply of would-be professors equals the demand for novel-readers. I expect this would happen at about $5,378 per year. Anything more than that is a gross injustice.

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CONSERVATIVISM IN WOODEN SHOES?

New government in The Netherlands (Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep, 6/1/2003, via PoliticalTheory.info)

Prime Minister Balkenende said, for instance, that we have to discuss norms and values. At first everybody laughed, but then people said: 'He has a point. There is senseless violence in society. And of course the government has to uphold the law, but we have to do something ourselves, too. We have to go back to the ideas of responsibility, social cohesion, social trust.'

We can recognize both the mocking spirit of fashionable liberalism and the good sense of conservatism. Perhaps there is hope for Europe.

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THE LEFT'S NATIONALISM PROJECT

Historians Trace an Unholy Alliance: Religion and Nationalism (ALEXANDER STILLE, 5/31/03, NY Times)

When Shiite Muslims in Iraq took to the streets to protest the presence of American troops as well as Saddam Hussein, was the world witnessing the birth of nationalism? When President Bush used the term crusade to describe the war on terrorism, was he inadvertently revealing religious roots in American patriotism? In short, is religious sentiment, long considered the prime enemy of nationalism, actually one of its founding elements?

This iconoclastic theory has been gaining ground among historians. Until recently, there was a growing scholarly consensus that nationalism was a distinctly modern phenomenon, a product of post-Enlightenment culture. Public celebrations of the Fatherland, the creation of national anthems and devotion to the flag all occurred in the wake of the French and American Revolutions. [...]

[P]eter Sahlins, a historian at the University of California at Berkeley, who is working on a book on the nature of citizenship in early modern France, says the idea that religious intolerance is the "original sin" of nationalism is getting more and more attention. "I think it's a healthy corrective to the modernist consensus," he said.

Mr. Sahlins notes that prevailing theories of nationalism have a way of following the mood of the times. When Serbs, Croats and Muslims were killing one another in the Balkans, many commentators originally pointed to the eternal and atavistic origins of ethnic violence, not recognizing that the different groups had lived in relative harmony under the Ottoman Empire and even under Tito.

"Now the context in which we see nationalism has completely changed," he said. Faced with the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, the West is more open to looking at the role of religion in the formation of nationalism. [...]

Linda Colley, a historian at the London School of Economics and the author of the 1992 book "Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837" (Yale University Press), agrees that religion is central to nationalism.

According to Ms. Colley and Mr. Marx, nationalism begins with an act of demonizing a religious "other" and creating a sense of community by defining an "us" and a "them." Recognizing this, they argue, may help Westerners better understand, for example, the contemporary phenomena of Islamic fundamentalism and Arab nationalism

Suddenly the incomprehensibility of yesterday's patriotism is nationalism essay becomes clearer. Note the oddity here of defining Islamicism/pan-Arabism as "nationalism". What nation?

Religious fundamentalism [or any universalist ideology, from liberalism (in the classic sense) to Marxism] may be problematic, but it is a far different problem than nationalism. It is the peculiar power of ideology that it can unite people across national borders--so, for instance, al Qaeda can see the "struggle" of a Mohammed Farah Aidid in Somalia and of a Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia and of an Abu Sayyaf in the Phillipines as its own, despite obvious national differences.

If you want to criticize religion, that's a reasonably good hook to hang your case on. But nationalism, particularly in its most virulent form, would appear to be a quite different beast, one based on a kind of tribalism, an identification of a given ethnicity as superior to others within and without the nation. Indeed, if we look for the likely wellspring of nationalism we could do worse than seek it in scientific materialism. If Darwin is right and even minor differences in genetic makeup render us significantly different than one another and therefore competitors for survival, then such ethnic hatreds are natural. But even if Darwinism overstates or misstates the case, so long as we accept it as true it can form the the perfect basis of ethnic hostility.

Unfortunately, the idea that the main alternative to religious belief is likewise responsible for violence between peoples hardly advances the Left's cause, so it would appear a sytstematic attempt is being made to simply redefine nationalism in a variety of dubious ways in order to escape its implications.

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HERE'S YOUR RECIPE, IF ONLY YOU HAD THE INGREDIENTS...

Constitutionally, a Risky Business: Drafting a constitution is often the first step in transforming a country to democracy, but the questions seem to be endless. (FELICIA R. LEE, 5/31/03, NY Times)

In the last 35 years, more than 100 countries have tried to accomplish what Iraq is trying to do: create a democratic constitution.

While some countries have succeeded, many others have been stymied by ethnic and religious hatreds, differences over power divisions and deeply rooted corruption or violence.

Drafting a constitution is often the first step in transforming a country to democracy, but the questions seem to be endless.

If you start a democracy with a constitution you've already gone tragically wrong. A functional constitution is necessarily a conservative document--restraining change and providing predictability--so it must be preceded by the development of a series of social and governmental institutions that are worth preserving. Among these are family, neighborhood associations, churches, unions, a military, a precedential legal system (with property rights), a relatively market-oriented economy, etc.. It is the desire to protect these things that gioves the citizenry a vested interest in the success of the constitutional order. In the absence of these things, all a constitution is likely to do is determine who will get to exercise authority over the nation or, in some ways worse, who will hold office but not have the actual authority to govern. Either of these alternatives naturally tends to undermine the people's faith in constitutionalism itself.

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FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE DIXIE CHICKS

Weimar Whiners (JAMES TRAUB, June 1, 2003, NY Times Magazine)

Have you heard that it's 1933 in America? God knows I have. Three times in the last few weeks I have been told -- by a novelist, an art historian and a professor of classics at Harvard, none of them ideologues or cranks -- that the erosion of civil liberties under the Bush administration constitutes an early stage, or at least a precursor, to the kind of fascism Hitler brought to Germany. I first heard the 1933 analogy a few months back, when one of the nation's leading scholars of international law suggested at a meeting of diplomats that Bush's advisers were probably plotting to suspend the election of 2004.

Now, I think I understand the argument that compares the United States with imperial Rome, or with one of the unwitting great powers of 1914. But 1933? Hitler? That's grotesque; and the fact that is has achieved such currency among what the French call the bien pensant is vivid proof that in much of the left, 9/11 and its aftermath have increased the visceral loathing not of terrorism or of Islamist fundamentalism but of President George Bush.

Like all forms of reductio ad Hitler, the 1933 analogy constitutes a gross trivialization of the worst event in modern history. Do we remember what actually happened in 1933? Hitler ascended to the chancellorship, suspended constitutional rights and banned all opposition political parties, sent the Brown Shirts into the streets and issued the first decrees stripping Jews of their rights. To compare the passage of the U.S.A. Patriot Act and the proposed -- but scotched -- program to get ordinary citizens to pass along tips about suspicious dark-skinned strangers, not to mention the cancellation of Tim Robbins's invitation to appear at the Baseball Hall of Fame because he might criticize the war in Iraq -- to compare these and other inroads on our liberties to Hitler's budding terror state is repellent.

But 1933 theorists, at least the more sophisticated ones, look beyond current policy to what they consider the structural similarities between contemporary America and various fascist states. In a recent article in The Nation, Sheldon Wolin, an emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, described the contemporary Republican party as ''a fervently doctrinal party, zealous, ruthless, antidemocratic and boasting a near majority.''

That last bit from Mr. Wolin is particularly delicious: just because the majority is not Democratic does not mean they aren't democratic. Fascist is not the opposite of Leftist.

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BALL OF CONFUSION, THAT'S WHAT THE WORLD IS TODAY, HEY, HEY

-REVIEW: of Hobbes, Locke, and Confusion's Masterpiece: An Examination of Seventeenth Century Philosophy by Ross Harrison (Duncan Ivison, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)

The title of the book is taken from Shakespeare's Macbeth, and Macduff's lament for the murder of King Duncan, the consequence of which is that "Confusion now have made his masterpiece!". For Harrison, Shakespeare's portrayal of the undermining of moral and political order provides a leitmotif for thinking about seventeenth century political philosophy in general. The greatest works of this century--here meaning those of Hobbes and Locke--emerged out of moral and political confusion. Religious disputes over the nature of belief and religious practice generated murderous civil and international conflict. Philosophical disputes, and especially the revival of ancient skepticism and newer forms of modern skepticism, sowed deep philosophical doubts about the possibility of knowledge, natural or otherwise. Older philosophical frameworks, such as Aristotelianism and Thomism, were found wanting, and philosophers struggled to find new arguments to arbitrate between various warring doctrines, or indeed to transcend them.

For Harrison, skepticism is the most pressing moral and political problem faced by seventeenth century philosophy, and especially by Hobbes and Locke. And the problem of skepticism infects "the most fundamental problem in political philosophy" - the problem of political obligation. At times Harrison seems to suggest these are still our problems, and that one way we gain insight into them is by seeing the various options for their resolution as presented by Hobbes, Locke, and Grotius, among others. We gain this kind of insight by taking the history of philosophy seriously, and especially the contexts within which moral and political arguments are formed. Not surprisingly, since these remain our problems, Hobbes emerges as the most clear-headed in this history since he seems most willing to bite the bullet when it comes to the clash between self-interest, politics and morality. We need politics (the commonwealth) to solve the moral problem, given his subjectivist account of what is good and bad and of moral judgment. In a lovely aside, Harrison tells us that at one point he contemplated calling the last chapter "What's the Use?" in order to "reflect more generally on the possibility of political philosophy and on the use for political philosophy of the historical philosophers I have been describing". His answer to this question is rather elusive, but I take it that it is Hobbes? insight about the need for politics to help solve our moral conflicts that Harrison is suggesting is the master stroke of the "new" natural law. This and the various attempts at refuting Hobbes' argument, such as Cumberland's, point to the "beginnings of the contractualist method" of discovering the good by discovering those things into which everyone would contract. Harrison even suggests that Locke gestures at something like it in his 1692 note "Ethica A". But in another much bleaker note written the following year (which Harrison doesn't cite), Locke suggests that without God and his divine law what we get is moral chaos. Harrison admits that Locke is only "waving" at something about which Hobbes is much clearer.

As it stands, the main claims of the book are hardly novel. The central focus on skepticism fits into a pattern of thinking about the history of the seventeenth century that has its roots in Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy, and which has been central to the work of historians of philosophy like Richard Popkin, amongst others. Richard Tuck and Knud Haakonssen have also argued recently at great length and with great skill that the political thought of the seventeenth century--especially that of Hobbes and Grotius--was profoundly shaped by the challenge of skepticism mounted by writers such as Montaigne and Charron. But what is interesting about the book, at least for me, is the way it tries to balance historical and philosophical approaches to these questions in a manner not often attempted in the existing literature. To over-generalize somewhat, historically minded scholars often provide beautiful reconstructions of the context of an argument or period, but avoid asking the kinds of philosophical questions that inevitably emerge as one reflects on the relation between arguments then and now. On the other hand, and much more frequently, contemporary philosophers tend to wrench early modern arguments out of context altogether, and criticize or put them to work in modern guise without any hesitation whatsoever. Harrison tries to strike a balance between these two extremes, and it provides an interesting background for the work as a whole. [...]

Now Harrison argues that political philosophy has essentially three tasks. First, the task of explanation, that is, "promoting understanding of political aspects of our (social) world". Second, the "task of justification . . . we want to know why or whether we should have it, or in what way", and in this sense political philosophy is a normative subject, "a part of applied ethics". Third, it must explain motivation, that is, why people are or could be motivated to "produce" the desired outcomes or institutions. These various aspects can come apart and combine in various ways, as Harrison shows very nicely with regard to both Hobbes and Locke. But the crucial task for political philosophy is justification--in fact, the need for justification is entailed by the confusion caused by skepticism, and the responses by Hobbes and Locke are "masterpieces of justification". The structure of justification that Harrison presupposes goes something like this. Rationally binding norms are either self-grounding, on the basis of some account of self-interest, moral realism, or a conception of man as a rational self-governing being, or they bind in virtue of the superior wisdom and/or power of God.

It is the failure to find a "self-grounding" justification that has left us with only two alternatives: either morality must be grounded in God or else all behavior must be regulated by the State (this is regulation rather than morality precisely because it proceeds from the abandonment of the attempt to find justification). The main differences among the several nations of the West seem to be a function of how far along the path from Godish morality to Statism they find themselves, with America having proceeded the shortest distance and therefore being the most free of State control.

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VICTORY IS ITS OWN JUSTIFICATION

Europe Awaits, With Bated Breath (RICHARD BERNSTEIN, May 31, 2003, NY Times)

Referring to "weapons of mass destruction," the conservative newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote in an editorial today:

"America and Great Britain grounded their military operation on the argument that the dictator in Baghdad was building W.M.D., that no inspections regime could really do anything about it and, given the seriousness of the threat, there was no time to lose. Since the end of the war, much has been unearthed to show the criminal nature of the Hussein regime, and that gives moral justification to a regime change. But up to now there has been no evidence for the W.M.D. that were used as grounds for war."

The newspaper argued that the Bush administration's justification for the war had crumbled, and American "credibility and legitimacy" were therefore weakened.

Mr. Bush arrives in a Europe whose various publics generally opposed the Iraq war, regardless of the position taken by their governments - France and Germany loudly opposed, and Britain, Spain and Italy in support. Still, as time has passed, and as reports of the horrors of life in prewar Iraq have appeared, some of the antiwar passion of ordinary Europeans seems to have dissipated.

There were, for example, no large demonstrations being planned to coincide with Mr. Bush's visit, which would probably not have been the case only a few weeks ago.

The lack of protesters effectively denies the notion that the lack of WMD matters. Even the Left tends to have some trouble turning out the crowds once the killing fields are exposed and the argument that war was justified but on different grounds is unlikely to move the masses. We're right back where we started. The diehards on one side don't care whether there was WMD or not (that's us); those on the other don't care how murderous Saddam was. Folks in the middle are happy to have won so easily but will have forgetten the war and Iraq by the 4th of July. On to North Korea.

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THE REAL SOLZHENITSYN

-REVIEW: of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology By Daniel J. Mahoney (Robert P. Kraynak, First Things)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer and former Soviet dissident, is not yet dead, but he is in danger of fading into oblivion in the West and of being dismissed as a crank in his own country. This is a terrible shame. For Solzhenitsyn is one of the giants of the twentieth century-a heroic witness to truth who resisted Communist tyranny and exposed the horrors of Soviet forced-labor camps in The Gulag Archipelago. He is also a powerful novelist whose works of historical fiction-The First Circle, August 1914, Cancer Ward, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich-depict the enduring struggles between good and evil in the human heart.

If these achievements are not enough to save Solzhenitsyn from premature death, then one can read Daniel Mahoney's inspiring new book Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology to appreciate the philosophical and spiritual reasons for keeping him alive. The most important reason, Mahoney tells us, is Solzhenitsyn's understanding of "the permanent propensities of the modern mind"-namely, the fatal attraction to utopian ideologies and the totalitarian temptation to radically alter human nature. Solzhenitsyn not only dissects these propensities; he also provides a way out-an "ascent from ideology," in Mahoney's words, that aims at healing the human soul by recovering the God-given natural order of things as well as the spiritual basis of political freedom.

In presenting a reasoned defense of Solzhenitsyn, Mahoney joins a distinguished group of scholars, including Edward Ericson and Alexis Klimoff, whose mission is to rehabilitate Solzhenitsyn in Western eyes. Their task is formidable, because most Westerners have accepted the demonized caricature of Solzhenitsyn as a Russian "ayatollah," a Tsarist reactionary, a nationalistic extremist, and, to boot, an anti-Semite.

These scholars must also contend with the bias of modern intellectuals against any attempt to portray Solzhenitsyn as a spokesman for responsible political freedom. As Mahoney points out, "Contemporary intellectuals and journalists will not tolerate any serious challenge to the enlightenment or progressivist assumptions underlying modern liberty." What he means is that Western intellectuals are intolerant because they are hardly aware of decent alternatives to the secular theories of freedom and rights flowing from the Enlightenment. Hence, it is almost inconceivable to them that Solzhenitsyn could hold traditional beliefs about God, Orthodox Christianity, the mystical basis of the Russian nation, and the soul's eternal destiny while also being a spokesman for responsible political freedom (meaning constitutional limits on power, moderate nationalism, private property, and local self-government). And yet this is the real Solzhenitsyn, according to Mahoney, not the demon of Western journalism. [...]

Mahoney begins by arguing that the most reliable statement of Solzhenitsyn's political views is not the sensational Harvard Address of 1978 but rather the largely ignored Liechtenstein Address of 1993. This is a bold and original way to interpret Solzhenitsyn. The Harvard Address created a huge stir because it criticized Western liberal democracies for their loss of courage during the Vietnam War and for their adherence to legalistic rights without moral restraints. The Harvard Address was strident (though also powerful and inspiring, in my view) and seemed to offer no third way between the spiritual exhaustion of Western democracy and the tyranny of Soviet communism.

The later Liechtenstein Address continues the criticism of modern Western life, challenging its notion of progress for diminishing the human soul by glorifying materialism and trivializing death. Yet the address also sounds a new theme by praising the moral strengths of Western democracy-especially Ronald Reagan's inspiring political leadership that enabled the West to win the Cold War, as well as the constitutional restraints on power that protect personal liberty. The mature Solzhenitsyn, Mahoney demonstrates, is a man capable of prudent political judgment who clearly recognizes that political freedom is indispensable for survival as well as for spiritual renewal.

Mahoney locates a crucial element of Solzhenitsyn's political teaching in his analysis of Peter Stolypin, the Prime Minister of Russia from 1906-11. Solzhenitsyn's appreciation of Stolypin has been largely unknown because it appears in the second edition of August 1914: The Red Wheel I (1989), which few have read. What Solzhenitsyn claims in the Stolypin chapters is that a moderate alternative to Tsarist autocracy existed in Russia in the early twentieth century-namely, a peaceful evolution toward a European-style constitutional monarchy under the enlightened statesmanship of Prime Minister Stolypin.

The main features of Stolypin's plan were the preservation of the Romanov dynasty and Orthodox Church, combined with economic and political reforms-reforms that would have given land to peasants and established local self-governing councils. Tragically, Stolypin was assassinated by terrorists who feared the success of his plan (which Solzhenitsyn estimates could have created an independent peasantry in twenty years and prevented Communist revolution). Mahoney's analysis shows Solzhenitsyn to be a Burkean-style admirer of constitutional monarchy that gradually evolves toward ordered liberty while preserving his nation's distinctive traditions.

Had Mr. Solzhenitsyn been content to demolish the legitimacy of the Soviet Union, his contribution to mankind would have been more than sufficient. That he also showed us the rot creeping into the foundations of our own culture makes him one of the most extraordinary men of our time.

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TOFU IS MURDER

The Paradoxes of American Nationalism: As befits a nation of immigrants, American nationalism is defined not by notions of ethnic superiority, but by a belief in the supremacy of U.S. democratic ideals. This disdain for Old World nationalism creates a dual paradox in the American psyche: First, although the United States is highly nationalistic, it doesn't see itself as such. Second, despite this nationalistic fervor, U.S. policymakers generally fail to appreciate the power of nationalism abroad. (Minxin Pei, Foreign Policy)

Nationalism is a dirty word in the United States, viewed with disdain and associated with Old World parochialism and imagined supremacy. Yet those who discount the idea of American nationalism may readily admit that Americans, as a whole, are extremely patriotic. When pushed to explain the difference between patriotism and nationalism, those same skeptics might concede, reluctantly, that there is a distinction, but no real difference. Political scientists have labored to prove such a difference, equating patriotism with allegiance to one's country and defining nationalism as sentiments of ethno-national superiority. In reality, however, the psychological and behavioral manifestations of nationalism and patriotism are indistinguishable, as is the impact of such sentiments on policy. [...]

American nationalism is hidden in plain sight. But even if Americans saw it, they wouldn't recognize it as nationalism. That's because American nationalism is a different breed from its foreign cousins and exhibits three unique characteristics.

First, American nationalism is based on political ideals, not those of cultural or ethnic superiority. That conception is entirely fitting for a society that still sees itself as a cultural and ethnic melting pot. As President George W. Bush said in his Fourth of July speech last year: "There is no American race; there's only an American creed." And in American eyes, the superiority of that creed is self-evident. American political institutions and ideals, coupled with the practical achievements attributed to them, have firmly convinced Americans that their values ought to be universal. Conversely, when Americans are threatened, they see attacks on them as primarily attacks on their values. Consider how American elites and the public interpreted the September 11 terrorist attacks. Most readily embraced the notion that the attacks embodied an assault on U.S. democratic freedoms and institutions.

Second, American nationalism is triumphant rather than aggrieved. In most societies, nationalism is fueled by past grievances caused by external powers. Countries once subjected to colonial rule, such as India and Egypt, are among the most nationalistic societies. But American nationalism is the polar opposite of such aggrieved nationalism. American nationalism derives its meaning from victories in peace and war since the country?s founding. Triumphant nationalists celebrate the positive and have little empathy for the whining of aggrieved nationalists whose formative experience consisted of a succession of national humiliations and defeats.

Finally, American nationalism is forward looking, while nationalism in most other countries is the reverse. Those who believe in the superiority of American values and institutions do not dwell on their historical glories (though such glories constitute the core of American national identity). Instead, they look forward to even better times ahead, not just at home but also abroad. This dynamism imbues American nationalism with a missionary spirit and a short collective memory. Unavoidably, such forward-looking and universalistic perspectives clash with the backward-looking and particularistic perspectives of ethno-nationalism in other countries.

This is a fairly odd essay. It ignores what has always been understood as the difference between Nationalism and American patriotism--that the former is ethnicity-based while the latter is ideology-based--so that the author can then read the differences between the two into a sweeping definition of Nationalism and then castigate Americans for not recognizing that they fit this newly coined definition. Most bizarre of all, she does this even as she notes the signifigance of each difference.

One might just as well redefine vegetables as meat and then chide those who call themselves vegetarians for deluding themselves.

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ORDERED LIBERTY STARTS WITH ORDER

What Palestinians Can Learn From a Turning Point in Zionist History (ETHAN BRONNER, May 30, 2003, NY Times)

In the final years of the British mandate in Palestine, there was not one Jewish militia but several, just as there are competing Palestinian groups today. The main one, the Haganah, was led by Mr. Ben-Gurion. A more violent and radical one, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, often called simply the Irgun, was led by Menachem Begin. The Irgun, along with an even more radical group, the Stern Gang, was responsible for a massacre of more than 200 Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin in April 1948.

A month later, after the British walked out of Palestine and Mr. Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel, Arab armies attacked. On June 1, the Haganah and Irgun agreed to merge into the Israel Defense Forces, headed by Haganah commanders. The accord called on Irgun members to hand over arms and terminate separate activity, including arms purchases abroad.

But there remained the question of an old American Navy landing vessel bought by the Irgun's American supporters and renamed the Altalena. The ship, whose purchase had predated the June 1 agreement, was packed with 850 volunteers, 5,000 rifles, 3,000 bombs, 3 million cartridges and hundreds of tons of explosives.

Mr. Ben-Gurion wanted every soldier and bullet he could get and ordered the ship to dock. But Mr. Begin said the arms should go to Irgun troops. Mr. Ben-Gurion refused; at that point, Irgun men headed to the beach to unload the arms.

Mr. Ben-Gurion realized the challenge he faced. As he put it in his memoir, "I decided this must be the moment of truth. Either the government's authority would prevail and we could then proceed to consolidate our military force or the whole concept of nationhood would fall apart." [...]

The point for the Palestinians is that until their radical militias are put out of action, those groups will always be in the position of spoilers. In 1996, the Palestinian Authority showed itself capable of confrontation, making widespread arrests of extremists in the wake of several suicide bombings. Thousands of militants were arrested. But most were eventually let go. The Palestinians must do it again and in a definitive manner. The Altalena is a symbol of that task because it involved genuine confrontation yet little loss of life.

It is the essence of the State that only it be allowed to mete out death. Sooner or later--hopefully sooner--Mr. Abbas will have to establish the existence of this kind of monopoly power if the idea of a Palestinian nation is to be taken seriously.

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BREAKER WEPT

It'd pay for blokes to have the babies (Richard Glover, May 31 2003, Sydney Morning Herald)

Sydney filmmakers, it has emerged this week, are making a documentary about fathers who pretend to breastfeed their new babies. Apparently, the fathers believe that this aids the bonding process.

At the same time, a Herald report claims men will soon be able to create babies, without the assistance of any female genetic material.

It's great that men want to be women, and women want to be men, but what will it all mean? Here's a list of just some of the ways the world would change if men and women swapped roles: [...]

People would stop publishing baby manuals, since no man has ever started a job by reading the instructions.

Instead of the question "Do I look good in this dress?", there would always be a statement: "You've got to admit I look great in this dress."

The length of the labour would be recorded on the child's birth certificate; rather like the way big-game fishermen record the length of battle for a particularly fine marlin.

Workplace productivity would fall to new lows as men everywhere were distracted by the alluring sight of their own breasts.

Apparently Aussie men don't have the same masculinity problem as Canadian men.

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TRANSPARENCY

Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair (United States Department of Defense, May 9, 2003)

Q: Since you brought that up let me ask you something related to that. I've looked at the remarkable Defense Policy Guidance of 1992 --

Wolfowitz: Wait a minute. Did you look at the guidance or did you look at the draft that was leaked before I saw it?

Q: That's a very good point. Actually all I saw were summaries of it. Is there a big discrepancy as to what was reported and what was in it?

Wolfowitz: Yes. In short. At some point I guess it's acquired such a life of its own I ought to go back and refresh my memory.

But the way I remember it approximately is as follows. I gave a quite substantial briefing to Secretary Cheney and what was then called I guess the Defense Resources Board on a post-Cold War defense strategy, the essence of which was to shift from a strategy for being prepared to fight a global war, to being focused on two possible regional conflicts. And to downsize the U.S. military by some 40 percent.

That was sort of taken to the President, promulgated in a speech in Aspen on August 2, 1990, which you may recall happened also to be the day that Iraq invaded Kuwait. In fact we had, in that briefing that I gave in May I think, it focused on the Iraqi threat to the Arabian peninsula as one of the regional problems we needed to be prepared to deal with. At the time that was considered a revolutionary idea. By the time the President gave the speech it had already happened. [Laughter]

Then that general briefing had to be translated into a guidance document for the department. Some people on my staff wrote a draft. Before I even got to see the draft someone leaked it to the New York Times, apparently because they didn't like it. The New York Times then wrote about the draft.

If you go back, and you can do this with Lexis/Nexis. If you go back, the excerpts from the draft are nowhere near as hysterical as the way the New York Times reported it. So people in the first place were reacting to the New York Times description of the draft as opposed to the actual text of the draft which the Times in fact did publish.

I repeat, it was not a draft that I'd even reviewed yet.

As I recall, one of the pieces of hysteria was the idea that this is a blueprint for a massive increase in U.S. defense spending, when in fact it was a blueprint for a 40 percent reduction in U.S. defense spending. It goes on from there.

When we did a revised draft that in fact I had reviewed carefully, the State Department initially didn't want us to put it out, I think because it was a little too much. Well, I don't know why. They didn't want us to put it out. I don't want to speculate on motives. But in January of 1993 as we were about to leave, I said to Cheney don't you think we should publish it? And he said yes, we should. So it's available in the full text as the Regional Defense Strategy of January, 1993.

I know people say oh well, they just sanded off the corners because the real thing received such an adverse reaction. But the truth of the matter is what the Times was writing about was something that I'd never seen. What is published, while I will admit some of the corners are rounded off on it, reflects my views. [...]

Q: [Y]ou have been skeptical about Clinton's, the sentimental liberalism in his ideas, his approach to foreign policy, right?

Wolfowitz: Well, yes but let's remember that -- I think they made a serious over-reach in Somalia when they went beyond just ending starvation and tried to do nationbuilding. I think Haiti was a waste of American effort. I think, as we've learned, the North Korea Framework Agreement was delusional. But on two of the key things they did, namely Bosnia and Kosovo, Bob Dole supported Clinton quite strongly and I would say courageously on Bosnia and I'm proud to claim some credit in having advised --

Q: You did too.

Wolfowitz: I did too, but I also was there when Dole was being pushed by some of his Republican colleagues to go after Clinton saying this would be a catastrophe. I said no it won't be, and moreover, it's the right thing to do.

If they had dropped the arms embargo on the Bosnians as they promised to do when they came into office it might not have been necessary to still have thousands of foreign troops in Bosnia. But by the time you got to it in 1995 it was the only alternative.

And similarly, on Kosovo, when Bush was deciding whether to support it or not, I was strongly urging him to do so. When some Republicans tried to undercut Clinton on Kosovo, it was Bush and McCain together who told them don't do that. It's wrong.

So it's not that everything they did was wrong, but I think things like Haiti and Somalia were over-reached and generally there was, I think, a difficulty in distinguishing what was American interest from what were sort of vaguely seen as international community preferences. But I'm not a unilateralist by any means. In fact I don't think you can get much done in this world if you do it alone.

Q: Do you think there was a reluctance on their part even to use the threat of force? To make force an option in the way that it's now become -- I think about North Korea, Syria and Iran, and actually --

Wolfowitz: And Iraq.

Q: And Iraq. When I think about it, these other three that have now been brought up, being discussed, have actually been very kind of multinational and diplomatic and yet it's partly the threat of force that seems to strengthen the approach, doesn't it?

Wolfowitz: There's no question that in certain -- First of all, diplomacy that it's just words is rarely going to get you much unless you're dealing with people who basically share your values and your interests. I'm not against, I mean sometimes it does help to just have a better understanding.

But if you're talking about trying to move people to something that they're not inclined to do, then you've got to have leverage and one piece of leverage is the ultimate threat of force. It's something you need to be very careful about because, as Rumsfeld likes to say, don't cock unless you're prepared to throw it.

By the way I think there was a tendency to cock it too often with Kosovo. If you go back and look at the year and a half or so leading up to when we finally did use force there were so many empty threats issued that Milosevic clearly concluded, ultimately wrongly, that we weren't serious.

So I think yeah, I think the threat of force is one of the instruments of diplomacy, but it's one that needs to be used carefully.

It's hard to recall a public official who has ever been portrayed quite so ominously in the media but who comes across so well when the media actually talk to him.

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)

Jesus was gay - $51,000 says so (News.com.au, 5/29/2003)

JESUS was gay – the University of Queensland gave $51,000 of public money to a PhD student to reach that conclusion....

As well as his revelation about Christ, Dr McCleary has also reached the conclusion that three – or possibly four – of Jesus's chosen disciples were also gay....

Dr McCleary also believes that gay people find it easier to be Christian. "You don't have to be gay to be Christian, but it would be easier," he said....

He said Jesus's astrological chart, clues in the scriptures to which the churches had been blind and accurate biblical translations had all played a part in his conclusions. "The starting point is the matter of John, who always referred to himself as Jesus's beloved disciple," Dr McCleary said.

I, frankly, don't want to know Dr. McCleary's interpretation of Jesus's last commandment, the mandamus ("Love one another as I have loved you," John 15:12). But I will say this: he makes a good case for separation of church and state. Also for separation of education and state, and separation of historical research and state.

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VOTE DEMOCRAT IN '04--WE NEED MORE MANSONS

Dem Blues: The left, turning right, was plain wrong to attack pop culture (Robert Wilonsky, 5/29/03, Dallas Observer)

You've been warned: This is a column about politics wherein a popular-culture critic (dunno what that is either, but says so on my tax returns) interviews a former rock journalist-turned-publicist-turned-band-manager-turned-record-label-executive about how the Democratic Party alienated everyone under the age of death. You may take this with a grain of salt; you may take it with an entire salt lick. Wouldn't blame you a bit, as all I know about politics could fit inside the head of the Green Lantern action figure sitting on my desk, and the record-label exec in question did sign Jewel to a major-label deal, which should make you immediately suspicious of anything he has to say, think, write or, for that matter, do.

All that said, Danny Goldberg is probably the perfect guy to talk Democratic politics with when all you know about Democratic politics is that Joe Lieberman's going to get his salami handed to him on a seder plate come Election Day 2004. The 52-year-old Goldberg is not only the quintessential liberal--supports higher taxes to fund national health care and better pay for teachers, has been an officer in the American Civil Liberties Union since the mid-1980s, believes labor unions should be stronger--but he's also a longtime rock-and-roll pusher man. He's worked with Led Zeppelin (as publicist and head of Swan Song, the band's label), Nirvana and Sonic Youth (as manager, when he owned Gold Mountain), Elvis Costello and Lucinda Williams and R.E.M. (as the head of one of several labels for whom he's worked, including Warner Bros., Mercury and Atlantic) and now Warren Zevon and Steve Earle (as owner of his own label, Artemis Records).

Ever since Robert Plant was a golden god, Goldberg has been selling culture to kids. He has been witness to rock's occasional revolutions and a party to its intermittent downward slides (he signed Hootie and the Blowfish); he helped organize the No Nukes concert in 1980 and was on the front line of the Culture Wars long before Tipper Gore ever fired a shot. And from his vantage point, the war's going badly for his side: Used to be it was only right-wingers who hated what he was selling. Now you can't find a Democratic candidate, outside of maybe Al Sharpton, who'll own up to owning music you can move to.

As Goldberg insists in his book Dispatches from the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit, which arrives in stores in two weeks, Democrats can't get kids to vote anymore because they've spent the last decade, if not longer, attacking young voters and those coming of political age--especially Democrat front-runner Lieberman. It was Lieberman who, along with Hillary Clinton, introduced the Media Marketing Accountability Act of 2001, which wanted the Federal Trade Commission to go after record companies selling rock and rap records to kids under 17. Lieberman insisted, hey, he just wanted to put "ratings" on CD covers; what he really wanted was to make it a criminal act to sell Eminem and "the vile, hateful and nihilistic" Marilyn Manson to kids. Lieberman--don't kid yourself, he's Bill Bennett in a yarmulke.

Well, Mr. Wilonsky does start by warning us he knows not whereof he speaks. but by the time he gets to the point where he thinks Joe Lieberman did himself political damage by attacking the likes of Marilyn Manson he might have thought better of handing in the column.

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"PROGRESS"IVES

DNC Proposal Raises Controversy (Brain Faler, May 30, 2003, Washington Post)

The Democratic National Committee backed away yesterday from reports that it plans to lay off nearly a dozen minority staffers -- a proposal criticized by several prominent black politicians -- saying it has not made any decisions on its staffing.

The DNC had proposed laying off 10 African American staffers as its retools the party in preparation for the 2004 campaign. But that plan was roundly condemned by several prominent black leaders, including party strategist Donna Brazile, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.) and DNC executive committee member Minyon Moore.

"I'm just outraged," Brazile had told the Associated Press on Wednesday. "They started reading me the names and I said, 'Oh, oh -- they're all black.' I went through the roof."

DNC communications strategist Jim Mulhall said yesterday that his party has not made any decisions on who it might dismiss and when. He called the number of staffers cited in the reports "inaccurate," but declined to estimate how many might lose their jobs or when the party might make its decisions. "It's a work in progress," he said.

Tell Old Pharoah, let my people go...

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RAVING IDIOCY

When Holding a Party Is a Crime (JACOB SULLUM, May 30, 2003, NY Times)

During Prohibition, the government required that industrial alcohol be poisoned, typically with methanol, to keep it from being converted into cocktails. If bootleggers did not completely remove the adulterant, it could cause blindness, paralysis and death. Thus a measure aimed at discouraging alcohol consumption made it more hazardous for those who continued to drink.

A similar dynamic can be seen in today's war on drugs. The latest example is a law President Bush signed last month. The measure, attached to the Amber Alert bill by Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware, holds club owners responsible for drug use on their property. The main target--reflected in the rider's original name, the Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) bill--is the all-night dance parties, or raves, where the drug MDMA, also called Ecstasy, is popular.

The act prohibits "knowingly opening, maintaining, managing, controlling, renting, leasing, making available for use, or profiting from any place for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing or using any controlled substance." Given this broad language, anyone who organizes or rents space for an event where drug use takes place could face criminal charges. Not only is the law unlikely to keep people from using Ecstasy, it could magnify the drug's dangers by pushing raves further underground and discouraging voluntary efforts to protect users from serious harm.

One of the lynchpins of libertarian orthodoxy is that people are rational actors. This is necessary in order to argue that if I leave you alone you too will leave me alone and that we don't need the state to intervene between us. Of course, the lynchpin gets heaved out the window when it's inconvenient to other libertarian arguments. For example, Mr. Sullum asks us to accept the contradictory notion that this act will make Ecstasy use more dangerous, even lethal, but that this fact won't affect usage. Is he asking us to believe that people do not behave rationally or that Ecstasy is so seductive and addictive that users can't stop? Of course, it hardly matters because either is an argument for more rigorous control of a damaging substance, not less.

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MASCULINITY IS HATRED

Men's groups promoting hatred, federal report says (Michael Higgins, May 30, 2003, National Post)

A federally funded report says "masculinists" are orchestrating a backlash against feminism and blaming women for oppressing and discriminating against men.

The report's authors claim that masculinists portray men as victims and link feminism with boys' poor performance in schools, male suicide, loss of male identity and discriminatory divorce and child custody laws.

"A process of levelling the power relationships of men over women is taking hold, not only to mask continued inequality but also to attack some of the gains made by the women's movement," says the $75,000 report, School Success by Gender: A Catalyst for the Masculinist Discourse.

The report says "masculinist discourse" aims to discredit feminism and challenge the gains made by women in education, at work and in family life.

The feminists may well be right, but if we're having a gender war mightn't they want to think about the imbalance in gender ratios that the abortion of female fetuses is creating? Uniltateral disarmament seems a bad idea in the midst of a war.

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COMITY COMEDY

Bush-GOP ferocity alters American politics (E.J. Dionne, 5/30/03, Washington Post)

President Bush's signature on his big tax cut bill Wednesday marked a watershed in American politics.

The rules of policy-making that have applied since the end of World War II are now irrelevant. A narrow Republican majority will work its partisan will, no matter what. Democrats, at least until 2004, will have the grim satisfaction of being a relatively unified opposition that will suffer just enough defections to fail at the finish line.

Until now, Congress was a forcefully independent branch of government. Presidents as diverse as Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Clinton and even Reagan could not count on automatic support from members of their own party in the House and Senate.

Only President Lyndon B. Johnson had the power to see his programs to passage largely unscathed. And he had that power for only two years, 1965 and 1966, when Democrats enjoyed 2-1 majorities in both houses.

With a very slim congressional majority, Bush would have been expected to seek genuine compromise--under the old rules. But Washington has become so partisan and Bush is so determined to push through a domestic program based almost entirely on tax cuts for the wealthy that a remarkably radical program is winning despite the odds against it and lukewarm public support.

This is a shock to congressional Democrats, most of whom came to political maturity under the old arrangements that placed a heavy emphasis on comity and the search for the political center. In all the years when progressive interest groups and foundations were attacking partisanship as a dismal force in politics, conservatives such as presidential adviser Karl Rove, antitax activist Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay and, yes, Newt Gingrich, were building a great Republican machine. The new tax bill is a monument to their success.

Faced with an administration intent on moving the political center to the right, Democrats are torn between old impulses and a recognition of the new order. This week, Democrats were by turn patting themselves on the back for their own unity and acknowledging the new world Rove, Norquist and Co. have created.

HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa

Oh my stars and garters..that's just hilarious. Don't we all pine for the days of bipartisanship and comity when Democrats ditched the South Vietnamese and the Contras, despite the pleas of Republican presidents and the congressional minority, and all those other non-partisan moments....

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ROUSSEAU, NOT LOCKE; VOLTAIRE, NOT LUTHER; EURIPIDES, NOT JESUS

Draft Preamble of Euro-Constitution Omits Mention of Christianity (Zenit, 5/29/2003)

The draft Preamble of the future European Constitution fails to mention the Christian roots of the Old World.

The draft, published Wednesday, refers to "the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe which ... [was] nourished first by the civilizations of Greece and Rome" and "later by philosophical currents of the Enlightenment."

According to the document, this foundation "has embedded within the life of society its perception of the central role of the human person and his inviolable and inalienable rights, and of respect for law" ...

Giorgio Rumi, professor of contemporary history at the University of Milan, told the Italian newspaper Avvenire: "I feel profoundly offended as a European citizen and as a historian."

"I think that between Athens, Rome and the Enlightenment -- the three mentioned -- there is something decisive in-between," he said. "I am not speaking of confessional pretensions, but of that name in which whole generations have lived and hoped. Is it possible that the mention of Christ causes so much fear still today?"

Professor Rumi offers an insightful suggestion: Europe's secularists fear Christ. The ancient Greeks are safely dead, but Christ lives, and may yet frustrate their project.

But there is happy news in the Constitution's list of philosophical fathers. They left out Marx.

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IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES...

Layton calls caucus deal a Martin coup d'etat (Anne Dawson and Bill Curry, May 29, 2003, National Post)

With Jean Chretien out of the country, the Liberal caucus yesterday hammered out a backroom deal that would delay the Prime Minister's political financing law until 2005, a year after he retires.

Emerging from yesterday's weekly closed-door caucus meeting, Stan Keyes, chairman of the Liberal caucus, announced the ''vast majority'' of Liberal MPs will allow the bill through Parliament by the summer recess providing there are changes to the law that would see their party receive another $2.5-million annually in public funds, or allow it to receive more corporate money.

The proposal was immediately criticized by Jack Layton, the NDP leader, who accused Paul Martin supporters of ''hijacking'' the Liberal caucus while the Prime Minister is away, to ensure ''big money'' remains a fixture in federal politics. Mr. Layton called on the Prime Minister to carry through with his threat to call a snap election on the issue.

''Well, the Prime Minister leaves and Paul Martin takes over. It's a little coup d'etat for big money in politics evidently in the Liberal caucus this morning. It's completely unacceptable. If the Prime Minister was serious about getting money out of politics, he should show up and insist that the caucus vote for his bill and if not, we should have an election. We would support a call for an election,'' Mr. Layton said.

''He's clearly lost control of his caucus. If they can't even pass something as basic as democratic reform to get big money out of politics, then he should go to the public for a vote to determine who's right.''

One would have hoped that when the coup came Mr. Chretien would have been taken to where Madame LaFarge waits, aknitting, but this is a start...

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HOW FRANCIS FUKUYAMA RESEMBLES BILL JAMES

New Europe Old Economy: Poised to join the E.U., Poland is America's new best friend. But the country is also in deep distress. (ANDREW PURVIS, TIME Europe)

The war in Iraq may have raised temperatures in Europe and America and opened a dangerous new rift in the transatlantic alliance, but in Poland there was never much question about which side to be on. President Aleksander Kwasniewski, the man in charge of foreign policy, watched the antiwar movement in Western Europe with a mixture of incomprehension and disgust. When France, Germany and Belgium forced NATO (which Poland recently joined) to reject Turkey's request for antimissile defenses, Kwasniewski wondered what solidarity among allies really meant to them. And when Jacques Chirac suggested that Eastern Europe's leaders "missed a good opportunity to stay quiet" after they failed to back his antiwar policy, Kwasniewski was furious. In the end, it was like choosing a spouse: a gut feeling about who would make a loyal partner for life. "We had a chance to change the brotherhood of words to the brotherhood of blood," says Marek Siwiec, Kwasniewski's National Security Adviser. "And we took it." So Poland cast its lot with the superpower across the sea. It's no coincidence that George W. Bush's first stop on his first foreign trip since the fall of Baghdad, later this week, will be Krakow. The American President doesn't forget people who stand by him in the clutch. The last time Bush came to Poland, in 2001, he arrived after a stony reception in Western Europe. But in Warsaw, the crowds were so rapturous that one diplomat described him emerging, as in The Wizard of Oz, from a black-and-white world into living Technicolor.

For Poland too, the colors are suddenly vivid, and a risky but exhilarating journey lies ahead. This is starting to look like a good century for the Poles. [...]

Poland's other battle is raging closer to home. The country's E.U. advocates got a nasty surprise in April when Hungary, arguably the E.U.'s most enthusiastic candidate, managed a measly 46% turnout in its referendum (pre-vote polls had predicted 70%). In Poland, 50% of voters must cast ballots to validate the result. As a result, the clamor to vote tak (Polish for yes) has reached fever pitch. Kwaysniewski, who remains popular, ski-jumping sensation Adam Malysz and even some Dutch and Greek diplomats are barnstorming the countryside, touting the virtues of E.U. subsidies and the greater European family. In TV ads, children are shown dreaming of playing for Real Madrid, jobs are plentiful and every Pole is vacationing on the French Riviera. "It's their first time!" whispers one spot, showing young lovers on a date. "First time to vote."

The former dissident Adam Michnik, who was jailed for six years under communism and now edits the country's biggest newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, says Poland's accession to the E.U. will seal its transformation from communist satellite to full partner in the Western world. Puffing on a Gitanes cigarette at his top-floor office in a leafy Warsaw suburb, Michnik says a yes vote is his dream, a no his nightmare. "I am not an enthusiast of Chirac or [German Chancellor Gerhard] Schroeder," he says. "But I prefer them to [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko." [...]

Another reason why support for the E.U. may be gaining ground is the sputtering economy. It's shedding so many jobs that the only thing keeping many Poles off the streets is the "gray" or shadow economy, which experts say makes up about 27% of overall GDP, higher than Poland's southern neighbors, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but comparable, roughly, to Italy and Greece. Socialist-era dinosaurs have not modernized fast enough and face more layoffs. The coal sector alone was hemorrhaging $1 billion a year until a few years ago; that figure is down to $130 million now, but analysts say at least 12 more mines must shut, swallowing about 35,000 jobs. [...]

"Sometimes I have the feeling we can't accomplish all we need to do at the same time," muses Jacek Piechota, Secretary of State for the Ministry of Economy, Labor and Social Policy. But critics say the government, which plans to cut corporate income tax from 27% to 19% while abolishing most tax breaks and exemptions, is not doing enough--especially to cut social spending and invest in infrastructure like roads.

Yesterday we mentioned how most baseball management seems unable to learn the rather simple lessons that statisticisns like Bill James have taught--as witness the Arizona Diamondbacks trading the Red Sox a front-line pitcher yesterday for Shea Hillenbrand, who has just 45 walks in about 1300 career at-bats. Perhaps we shouldn't be so hard on these mere sports executives since entire nations--including ours--have put their futures at risk by not learning the fairly simple lessons that theoreticians like Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, Albert Jay Nock, FA Hayek, Milton Friedman, Francis Fukuyama, and the rest, have taught us. What Poland requires--cutting and rationalizing taxes and reducing the welfare state--is similarly required by most (all?) industrialized nations, but instead we keep adding Shea Hillenbrands.

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KENTUCKY REIGN KEEPS POURING DOWN

KEEPING GOP AT BAY WILL REQUIRE FINESSE: For once, Democrats will sweat an election (Charles Wolfe, May 26, 2003, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Kentucky's Democratic ticket enters the fall campaign doing something it hasn't done in a generation. It's running scared.

Republicans have a ticket that seems formidable for the most part. At the top are squeaky clean Ernie Fletcher and Steve Pence, thumping the drum for change after eight consecutive Democratic administrations.

It is not just the governorship that Republicans covet and have been denied for more than 30 years. Not one of the undercard offices (attorney general, auditor, agriculture commissioner, treasurer or secretary of state) has been won by a Republican since 1967.

But now the Republicans are emboldened, and Democrats hear footsteps. Not only do voters feel obvious ambivalence about the Democrats, the Democratic candidates have a message problem as well.

After 32 years in power, persuading voters to keep them in power for 36 years is going to require some finesse. Witness state Treasurer Jonathan Miller, the only constitutional officeholder eligible to run for re-election this year.

Miller said at a Democratic "unity rally" last week that the November election will "decide not only what happens over the next four years but over the next four decades."

Asked to elaborate, Miller said: "If Republicans win the governor's mansion, we're going to see a one-party dominance. Prospects of that would be very bad for Kentucky and very bad for our children's future."

Saying that if the GOP is elected they'll be popular enough to hold power for decades doesn't exactly seem like finesse...

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TAKING LIBERTIES WITH THE FACTS

Maureen Dowd not wanted here (MARC R. MASFERRER, 5/30/03, The Lufkin Daily News)

The New York Times' considerable credibility problem is now our problem, as well.

But unlike the Times, which has been engaged in a torturous exercise of naval gazing and self-flagellation, with its accustomed arrogance, since it was revealed that one of its younger reporters had committed all sorts of journalistic sins, we are doing something about it, and fast.

Until she explains to our satisfaction her own ethical transgression--an apparently deliberate distortion of a comment by President Bush--you will not find the work of Times columnist Maureen Dowd on this page. [...]

Dowd, it seems, may have taken the title of her column--"Liberties"--way too far.

Here's what Dowd wrote in the column in question:

??Al-Qaida is on the run,' President Bush said last week. 'That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated ... they're not a problem anymore.'"

Here's what Bush actually said:

?"Al-Qaida is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al-Qaida operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore."

New York Daily News columnist Zev Chafets offered a perfect criticism of what Dowd did.

"The words in italics were replaced in Dowd's column by three little dots. Those dots say to the reader: Trust me, I'm abbreviating here, but what I'm leaving out doesn't change the meaning.

"But the dots did change the meaning," Chafets wrote. "In fact, they turned it upside down. Far from declaring al-Qaida 'spent,' Bush was warning the country against complacency. The only terrorists the president declared 'no longer a problem' were the ones already jailed or dead."

Dowd quietly "corrected" herself by including the full quote in a subsequent column that appeared in The Lufkin Daily News on Thursday.

That's not good enough, and until Dowd, and her newspaper, fully account for her infraction, her column will not appear on this page.

Such is the legacy of Howell Raines: The Lufkin Daily News, worried about its credibility, doesn't find his product "fit to print".

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PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER

Rumsfeld pushes for regime change in Iran (Guy Dinmore in Washington and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Iran, May 29 2003, Financial Times)

Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, is spearheading efforts to make "regime change" in Iran the official policy goal of the Bush administration, but his campaign is meeting with considerable resistance from other senior figures, according to officials and analysts. [...]

"Rumsfeld sees this opportunity to adopt a formal policy of regime change," said Flynt Leverett, who left his post as senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council in March and joined the Brookings Institution think-tank.

He said the view of hawks in the Pentagon is that the struggle in Iran is not between hardline clerics and elected reformists led by President Mohammed Khatami, but between the people and the system.

"They [in the Pentagon] see the whole superstructure as discredited, a house of cards ready to be pushed over the precipice," Mr Leverett added. The European Union, which has hitherto adopted a softer line than the US towards the regime in Tehran, is also expressing increasing concern over Iran's nuclear programme, adds Judy Dempsey in Brussels.

A senior EU official said: "We now have reason to believe Iran is developing nuclear weapons. We would be fooling ourselves if we thought it was anything else."

The regime may be in for what we used to call a "long, hot summer" in the streets.

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CEASE AND DESIST (via John Resnick)

WD-40 Maker Protests Texas Dems' Nickname (Connie Mabin, May 26, 2003, Associated Press)

Talk about slippery politicians.

The makers of the lubricant WD-40 are objecting to some Texas lawmakers calling themselves "the WD-40s"--a name they say describes them because they're white Democrats over 40.

The group entered the spotlight two weeks ago when they were among 51 Democrats who fled Texas to Ardmore, Okla., in protest of a Republican-pushed congressional redistricting bill. Republicans hold the majority in the state Legislature.

"It is extremely important to WD-40 Company that its trademark not be associated with any political party or political group," attorney Kathleen Pasulka, representing the company, said in a cease-and-desist letter to the leaders of the so-called WD-40s.

In the rest of Red State America white men over 40 already have a name: Republicans.

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<~text text="What is humility? It is that habitual quality whereby we live in the truth of things: the truth that we are creatures and not the Creator; the truth that our life is a composite of good and evil, light and darkness; the truth that

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LUCY MOVES THE FOOTBALL

Hillary Clinton Taking Fire From Left as Well as Right (RAYMOND HERNANDEZ, May 30, 2003, NY Times)

After years of being vilified by conservatives, Hillary Rodham Clinton is suddenly facing mounting criticism from an unlikely quarter: liberals.

Core Democratic constituencies that helped Mrs. Clinton win her Senate seat in New York two and a half years ago are expressing deep disappointment in her, saying she has been unwilling to challenge President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress on issues of importance to them.

Those who have expressed disappointment in Mrs. Clinton include gay rights advocates, antiwar organizers and even advocates for children and the poor, a group with which she has been closely associated for decades.

Political analysts and critics on the left say Mrs. Clinton appears to be modeling herself on her husband, Bill Clinton, who was also criticized for abandoning the Democratic Party's liberal base to win larger political appeal. In Mrs. Clinton's case, they say, she appears to be taking for granted her liberal allies, a strong source of support, in favor of cultivating a broader audience.

Gosh, what are the odds?--a Clinton looking out for themself instead of their "allies". She wants to be president and you don't get there by carrying
water for liberal activists.

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THE VELVET GLOVE...

Bush says "Vive la France" on road to G8 summit (Reuters, 5/29/03)

Declaring "Vive la France", U.S. President George W. Bush said in an interview to be published on Friday he hoped a G8 summit would restore battered relations between Washington and Paris in the wake of the war in Iraq.

Bush, interviewed by the French daily Le Figaro ahead of the June 1-3 Group of Eight summit in Evian, France, also said Paris needed to show it was ready to cooperate with Washington.

"Evian will not be a summit of confrontation. On this trip I am determined to work with France and French leaders," Bush was quoted as saying."It will be a pleasure to talk with Jacques Chirac," he said, adding in French: "Vive la France" (Long Live France). [...]

Bush was asked in the interview whether Washington would take retaliatory action against Paris for an anti-war stand that prevented Washington from getting U.N. approval for the invasion that toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein.

"My citizens did not understand the decision of French leaders to systematically block the efforts of the United States and her allies to secure the liberty and security of Iraq. Yet, this negative behaviour will not influence my policies with regard to France and Europe," he said.

...hides an iron fist.

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AT LAST, VISIBLE EVOLUTION

Two-headed tortoise found in South Africa (Ananova, 29th May 2003)

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THE PRICE OF BLOGGING IN CHINA

4 Chinese sentenced for talking of politics (NY Times, 5/29/2003)

BEIJING - Four young friends who met on university campuses to discuss their progressive politics and posted occasional essays on the Internet have been sentenced to long prison terms, accused of "subverting state power."

The Beijing Intermediate People's Court sentenced Xu Wei, 28, and Jin Haike, 26, to 10 years. Yang Zilin, 32, and Zhang Honghai, 29, were sentenced to eight years ...

This reminds me of a story from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. A man was sentenced to 20 years in the gulag, and a guard asked him what he had done. The man replied, "Nothing at all." The guard then beat him, saying, "You're lying! The punishment for nothing at all is ten years."

How lucky we are to be Americans.

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DIVORCED FROM RED AMERICA

Just Get Married!: Bells will be ringing as a new pro-marriage, anti-poverty plan takes root in Texas (Mark Donald, 5/29/03, Dallas Observer)

Marriage education is the centerpiece of the Bush administration's Healthy Marriage Initiative, a controversial social experiment that
seeks to use federal welfare funds from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program to promote marriage and reduce divorce, particularly among the poor, whose children are five times as likely to live in poverty if raised in mother-only households. But family disintegration knows no economic boundaries, and states such as Oklahoma, which has become a national pro-marriage model, are already preaching a get-married, stay-married agenda to couples of every stripe. Simpson hopes to be at the forefront of a broad-based "marriage promotion program" in the Dallas area, using much of the same material she developed for the Army.

Though at first blush, the pro-marriage movement seems the agenda of the family-values crowd--religious conservatives locked in a cultural war with single moms, cohabitants and Hillary Clinton--a body of research from respected social scientists has given renewed zeal to those whose primary weapon had been a few selected verses of scripture. This research suggests that marriage confers undeniable benefits on children, couples and country. It has also drawn together an odd confluence of conservatives, sociologists, marriage educators, fathers' rights activists and divorce-law reformers who have found enough common ground to consider themselves a movement.

But weaving research into sound public policy is another matter. With the election of President Bush, marriage promotion found its champion and is now being touted as a palliative for poverty, a way for unwed mothers to wean themselves off welfare and for distant dads to reconnect with their kids--and a damn attractive family value for the rest of us.

Cynics might call the Bush agenda brilliant politics, the marriage of liberal social science with a conservative pro-family (anti-gay) agenda. Even less jaundiced critics claim the research results are overstated and filtered through an ideological lens that is unrealistic, simplistic and narrow-minded. Several women's groups fear that promoting marriage will coerce some women into abusive marriages and discourage others from leaving them. Advocates for the poor think the failure to marry is more a consequence of poverty than a cause. Liberals believe that valuing marriage over other family structures denies the reality of millions of children who are being raised by single parents, extended families, gay and lesbian couples or movie stars. Libertarians wonder what the hell the government is doing in the marriage business anyway.

Not content to merely oppose the Boy Scouts, the Left opposes marriage? Is this some kind of weird anti-political politics designed to appeal only to a tiny minority of voters?

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FROG MARCH

Marching orders from Paris (Michel Gurfinkiel, May. 28, 2003, Jerusalem Post)

English-speaking pundits may or may not have noticed, but the road map for an Israeli-Palestinian peace is being rendered into French as a feuille de route "travel warrant." A very awkward translation, indeed.

A road map is just a map. It shows you destinations and distances, but whether you travel, and in what direction, depends on you alone.

A travel warrant, however, is a binding document. When a soldier gets one, he must go no matter how he feels about it, and he must not deviate from the route. Of course, the semantic shift from "road map" to feuille de route is not accidental.

The French use this rather incorrect translation because their media use it. Their media, in turn, are just parrotting the term coined by the state-run news agency, AFP. [...]

The problem is that the feuille de route concept is gaining ground even when Americans use the term "road map."

The original peace plan outlined by George W. Bush last June was a remarkably balanced proposal that provided for an independent Palestinian state but made it conditional on the rule of law, an end to terror, and no-nonsense security guarantees for Israel.

But the June speech was surreptitiously rewritten by the Quartet, comprised of the US State Department, the UN, EU bureaucrats, and the Russian foreign office. It comes as no surprise that most of the Quartet participants are anxious to assert their own transnational or national standing and, like the French, relish imposing a peace settlement.

It is all too predictable that the same UN, EU, and Russia that were lukewarm or hostile toward US policy in Iraq will not care too much about Bush's intentions regarding Israel and Palestine. It is logical that players who were unsympathetic to Israel over many years will continue to be unsympathetic. Nevertheless, the Quartet lumbers on, with US sufferance, and is gradually being seen as the ultimate peace marshall something it is not and can never be.

It is time for America to worry about words, and what words may hide.

There's never a bad reason to bash the French, but it's a mistake to take the specifics of the road map to seriously. All that matters in the end is that it got the process going again and it leads to a Palestinian state.

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MAKING AN ASSAD OF HIMSELF? (via ef brown)

Iran Again (David Warren, May 28, 2003)

It is now emerging from intelligence sources that the reason the U.S. was able to give Saudi Arabia the heads-up it ignored on the terror bombings in Riyadh, is because the CIA had been intercepting communications between Al Qaeda operatives in Arabia and Iran. The hits themselves helped to clarify co-ordinates; and there is thus little doubt remaining in American minds that Iran is sheltering senior Al Qaeda leaders. The ayatollahs are most likely trying to integrate surviving Al Qaeda resources with those of Hizbullah, their own main horse in terror international.

I read some hint of that into the strange remarks made by the Syrian President (Syria is Iran's closest ally), to the effect that Al Qaeda no longer exists. He spoke rhetorically, as if Al Qaeda had been a figment of George Bush's paranoid imagination all along; but Bashir Assad, who is not very intelligent, has a track record for unconsciously spilling beans.

The whole thing is interesting, but that point about Assad's odd comments especially so.

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IT ALWAYS COMES DOWN TO THE G.U.T.

The Blue Pill Choice: about the closest we'll get to Mars anytime soon is in our dreams and at the movies (John Carter McKnight, May 29, 2003, The Spacefaring Web 3.11)

In The Matrix, the hero chooses the red pill, symbolizing awareness and the struggle for human freedom. Most of the space community, along with much of our society as a whole, however, has enthusiastically embraced the blue pill alternative - willful ignorance and life in a fantasyland. Only by consistently "just saying no" to those blue pill choices will we get into space to stay.

The Matrix, and its current sequel, The Matrix Reloaded, portrays the real world as a place of struggle - grubby, unglamorous, dangerous and challenging.

The computer-generated fantasy world of the Matrix, by contrast, is a place where skills can be instantly uploaded rather than slowly mastered, where pesky laws of nature can be circumvented, and where style points definitely matter.

It is, in short, utopia for a people without patience or concern for consequences, who want their cake without the calorie burden of actually eating it. [...]

Anthropology professor John J. Donohue elaborated on America's blue-pill infatuation in "Virtual Enlightenment: The Martial Arts, Cyberspace and American Culture" (Journal of Asian Martial Arts, Volume 11, No. 2, 2002).

He describes "an interesting cultural phenomenon of contemporary America: an enthusiasm for entertainment that focuses around strenuous physical activity in a population grown increasingly sedentary, the allure of imaginative interaction without true personal engagement, and a desire for mastery without effort."

He contrasts Matrix-like cyberspace martial arts with the real thing: "[t]he period of apprenticeship in traditional martial arts systems was not only long, uncomfortable and boring, but was also designed to weed out individuals who lacked the maturity of character necessary to reach a level of mastery." [...]

All the more credit, then, to the few who take the red pill and stay through the lean, unglamorous years.

This was our original understanding of The Matrix, though reviews of the sequel suggest they may, sadly, be headed elsewhere.

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)

The road ahead for Democrats is bumpy (Tony Blankley, May 28, 2003, townhall.com)

To the Democratic Party, I say, look in the mirror: Do you see Robert Taft, Wendell Wilkie or Ronald Reagan? The Democratic Party is at a crossroads, similar to where the Republican Party found itself in 1940: increasingly ineffective as a reactionary, old guard opposition party, flirting with mimicking successful governing party positions, and unconscious of the possibility of applying its abiding principles to the changing world of the near future. In 1940, after eight years of reactionary opposition to FDR's New Deal and internationalism, the GOP rejected the old guard presidential nomination candidacies of Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg, and nominated Wendell Wilkie -- the recently former Democrat who endorsed FDR's internationalism, while criticizing his Tennessee Valley Authority domestic radicalism.

For the next 40 years the Republican Party nominated presidential candidates who endorsed most of the liberal FDR programs and agenda (with the exception of 1964, when they nominated Barry Goldwater), but said they could manage it better and a little cheaper. When the Democrats stumbled (Harry Truman in Korea, Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam), the Republicans would pick up the White House -- but they remained in Congress and in the hearts of the public -- the minority party, until 1980. And even then it took another 14 years before they took back the House of Representatives. Me-tooism, as those 40 years came to be known, permitted Republicans in safe House, Senate and state seats to hold on to their offices -- but at the cost of ever winning the nation's mind and heart to Republican principles.

Today, the Democrats face the same dilemma.

The tragedy of the Republican Party is that it did not run Taft in '48 or '52 when he would have won and restored the two party system. By settling for liberal lite, in the form of Dewey/Ike/Nixon, they put off the reclamation of the Party until 1964 and put off victory until 1980, allowing the Left an extra thirty years to damage the country.

The difficulty for the Democrats is that they squandered their Taft, when Bill Clinton ditched the New Democrat rhetoric he ran on--which represented an opportunity to turn the Party into a basically conservative party, as Tony Blair did with Labour in Britain--and governed instead as a garden variety liberal. Now they face a similar decision to the one the GOP had in '64: they can keep dipping into the same well that has rendered them a minority party or they can seek to restore the Party to first principles, but following the former scenario they might win, while following the latter means a period of years in the wilderness, waiting for the country to move back to the Left. And this latter is a particularly dicey proposition for them because they are not a party of ideas but a coalition of interests groups, and there's no guarantee that they can keep the loyalty of those groups if they are out of power and unable to serve their interests. Will unions, blacks and Hispanics still be voting overwhelmingly Democrat twenty years from now if they've been getting nothing in exchange, especially if the GOP makes some effort to woo them away? When the GOP restored its conservative ideology it hardly stood to lose its conservative base, but what is the ideology that holds the Democrats together? How do the unprincipled return to first principles?

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NUMBERS GAME

Evaluation By Numbers Is Beginning To Add Up (Thomas Boswell, May 29, 2003, The Washington Post)

Guess what: "Revenge of the Nerds" may be playing in a ballpark near you. [...]

* Analyze all hitters through on-base percentage. Getting on base, while making the fewest outs, is the heart of offense. Walks are wonderful. Hitters who know the strike zone drive pitchers crazy. High on-base hitters usually take many pitches, foul off two-strike pitches and, as a result, exhaust the pitch limits of most quality starters. Result: Crummy relievers enter the game and get waxed. Even in a three-game series, the high on-base team wins a war of pitching attrition. The Yankees teams of Joe Torre have used this theory in recent years. The Red Sox do now.

* Slugging percentage is the only other vital offensive statistic. Power matters. Combine on-base and slugging averages, with much more emphasis on the former, and you'll automatically build a high-scoring lineup. Hard as it is to believe, many high on-base average players come cheap. Walks are boring. Nobody comes to see, or pays big salaries to, walkers. (So, Beane grabs 'em easily.) As for batting average, ignore it. Irrelevant. Forget stolen bases, too. Until your success rate is over 70 percent, attempting to steal is, mathematically speaking, a waste of time.

* A superstar, such as Giambi, can be replaced -- at reasonable cost -- in pieces. When the A's lost Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and DH Olmedo Saenz after '01, they added David Justice, Hatteberg and Jeremy Giambi. The combined on-base percentage and slugging percentage of the three new players roughly equaled the comparable statistics of the three lost players. Jason Giambi wasn't missed.

* Any decent pitcher can be turned into a star closer because any solid pitcher should be able to pitch one inning when he always enters with the bases empty. Once you create such an overrated star, you immediately trade him at peak value. Then just develop a new closer since it's so easy to do. Repeat as needed.

* To evaluate pitchers, use the breakthrough DIPS theory of stat man Voros McCracken that's been invented in the last three years. DIPS stands for "defense independent pitching statistic." It's a stunner. Nobody believed it at first, but now most serious stat geeks accept it. Once a batter hits a pitch, it's very close to pure luck whether it gets caught or not. From one season to another, for example, Greg Maddux's ERA may fluctuate by 1.5 runs even though he pitches identically. One season a lot of hits find holes. The next, they don't.

Like most baseball geeks, I've been a huge fan of Bill James and Tom Boswell for twenty years, and have long believed in their numbers, even when they suggest extraordinary things--like that Robbie Alomar, because he gets to so few balls, is a below average second baseman. So, as Mr. Boswell says, it's been a vindication this year to watch the Red Sox, under the insanely courageous young Theo Epstein, put these kinds of statistical analyses to work and have them work.

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)

Memo on abortion and liberal bias by Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll, May 22, 2003 (LA Observed)

To: SectionEds
Subject: Credibility/abortion

I'm concerned about the perception---and the occasional reality---that the Times is a liberal, "politically correct" newspaper. Generally speaking, this is an inaccurate view, but occasionally we prove our critics right. We did so today with the front-page story on the bill in Texas that would require abortion doctors to counsel patients that they may be risking breast cancer....

I wondered as I read it whether somewhere there might exist some credible scientist who believes in [the link between abortion and breast cancer].

Such a person makes no appearance in the story's lengthy passage about the scientific issue. We do quote one of the sponsors of the bill, noting that he "has a professional background in property management." Seldom will you read a cheaper shot than this. Why, if this is germane, wouldn't we point to legislators on the other side who are similarly bereft of scientific credentials?...

Apparently the scientific argument for the anti-abortion side is so absurd that we don't need to waste our readers' time with it.

The reason I'm sending this note to all section editors is that I want everyone to understand how serious I am about purging all political bias from our coverage. We may happen to live in a political atmosphere that is suffused with liberal values (and is unreflective of the nation as a whole), but we are not going to push a liberal agenda in the news pages of the Times.

The offending story is here.

Now a brief perusal of the medical journals could have found studies showing a link. But if that's too hard, the LA Times could have consulted a liberal friend of the BrothersJudd, Charles Murtaugh, who on March 9 wrote:

Gee, I wonder why the abortion-breast cancer studies don't make the front page of the Washington Post?

(Actually, a quick LEXIS-NEXIS search finds that they do, when those studies come to the opposite conclusion. On Jan. 9, 1997, the Post ran a front-page story on a Danish study that "disputes breast cancer, abortion link." However, this finding was only relevant to first trimester abortions, which wouldn't be predicted to lead to increased risk anyway -- the hypothesized risk depends on growth of mammary tissue during pregnancy, which doesn't kick in until after the first trimester. In fact, the Danish study confirmed an increased breast cancer risk associated with second- and third-trimester abortions, but the Post buried this inconvenient fact in the second-to-last paragraph.)

Carroll's memo to his editors is nice, but it would be even nicer if the LA Times did a new front-page story explaining the evidence for a abortion-breast-cancer link.

My question is: what must conservatives do before newspapers actually start publishing news that makes liberals uncomfortable -- and hiring to create a more diverse "political atmosphere" so that their paper will not be "suffused with liberal values"? Complain vigorously? Or start competing news sources, a la Fox News, and steal away customers from the liberals?

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LACK OF INTELLIGENCE

Former British FM calls for parliamentary probe over Iraqi weapons (AFP, May 29, 2003)

Former British foreign secretary Robin Cook called Wednesday for an inquiry after the United States said Iraqi forces may have destroyed the country's alleged weapons of mass destruction before war broke out.

"If (US Defence Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld is now admitting the weapons are not there, the truth is the weapons probably haven't been there for quite a long time," Cook, who resigned from the government over the war, told the BBC.

"I think that has to be investigated. A (parliamentary) select committee is one way of doing it," Cook later told Channel 4 News.

We've always assumed (and still do) that plenty of WMD would be found, but hoped it wouldn't be--thus making the removal of the regime the sole point of the war. However, if no WMD is ever found it counterintuitively serves the hawks rather than the doves in two specific ways. First, it makes the point that, even though Iraq was the number one target of our post-Cold War intelligence gathering, we had absolutely no idea what was going on there. The idea that we do not need to get rid of hostile regimes via military means because we can know what they're up to is simply false. Second, it will reveal once again that our intelligence mistakes are always of the same type: they overestimate the capacity of the enemy. Thus the Soviet Union was always much weaker than our intelligence claimed it was and could likely have been defeated rather easily at every point during the Cold War and we conceded victory to a North Vietnam that we had effectively defeated. Both of these lessons tend to teach that force should be a more ready recourse when confronting hostile regimes.

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THE OPPORTUNITY CLINTON MISSED

Auditors tell Tories that party is no longer viable (Andrew Pierce, May 29, 2003. Times of London)

INDEPENDENT auditors are refusing to sign off the Conservative Party?s accounts because they fear that it is no longer a going concern.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, which must approve the accounts within weeks, has told Tory officials that there is not enough income to guarantee the party?s viability.

A senior Tory source said: ?It is worrying. The auditors have raised with us the fear that we are no longer a going concern because spending outstrips income. We struggled last year, but this year it is much worse. The accounts were signed off last time because we had commitments of loans from benefactors, but they are not forthcoming.?

Thankfully Bill Clinton's only concern was himself, because if he'd governed on the agenda he ran on in 1992, the GOP might be in as bad a shape as the Tories.

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HE'S HIDING IN SYRIA

No Bunker where U.S. Bombs Targeted Saddam-CBS (May 28, 2003, Reuters)

The Baghdad bunker which the United States said it bombed on the opening night of the Iraq war in a bid to kill Saddam Hussein never existed, CBS Evening News reported Wednesday.

The network quoted a U.S. Army colonel in charge of inspecting key sites in Baghdad as saying no trace of a bunker or of bodies had been found at the site on the southern outskirts of the Iraqi capital, known as Dora Farms.

"When we came out here, the primary thing they were looking for was an underground facility, or bodies, forensics, and basically, what they saw was giant holes created. No underground facilities, no bodies," Col. Tim Madere said.

Heck, if they weren't even meeting in a bunker, but above ground, the bombs definitely would have gotten him, right?

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TAX LEGISLATION LIKE SEA MONKEYS

Tax Law Omits Child Credit in Low-Income Brackets (DAVID FIRESTONE, 5/29/03, NY TIMES)

A last-minute revision by House and Senate leaders in the tax bill that President Bush signed today will prevent millions of minimum-wage families from receiving the increased child credit that is in the measure, say Congressional officials and outside groups.

Most taxpayers will receive a $400-a-child check in the mail this summer as a result of the law, which raises the child tax credit, to $1,000 from $600. It had been clear from the beginning that the wealthiest families would not receive the credit, which is intended to phase out at high incomes.

But after studying the bill approved on Friday, liberal and child advocacy groups discovered that a different group of families would also not benefit from the $400 increase — families who make just above the minimum wage.

Because of the formula for calculating the credit, most families with incomes from $10,500 to $26,625 will not benefit. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal group, says those families include 11.9 million children, or one of every six children under 17.

Let's see the Democrats vote against fixing this....

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CONDITION CRITICAL

President Signs Tax Cut Package Into Law (JENNIFER LOVEN, May 28, 2003, Associated Press)

President Bush signed the third-largest tax cuts in U.S. history on Wednesday, saying they already are "adding fuel to an economic recovery." The IRS posted new withholding tables that will add money to paychecks starting next month and began preparing refunds due in parents' mailboxes later this summer.

Democrats said the cuts will greatly increase federal deficits that will in time depress the nation's gross domestic product and drain jobs.

"This bill will give millions to those who don't need it and very little to those who do," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. "It will add a trillion dollars to our national debt; spend the Social SecurityTrust Fund, and ultimately lose more jobs." [...]

Still, as Bush thanked members of Congress Wednesday for sending him even less than that, the key word in his remarks was "quick." It won't be long before millions of Americans feel the law's impact.

The Internal Revenue Service put new tax tables on its Web site so employers can reduce the amount of federal income tax withheld from workers' paychecks as the bill prescribes. Employers were told to use the new tables by July 1, making it possible that some employees will see larger checks starting next month.

Starting in the last week of July, the government will send checks to the 25 million parents who claimed a 2002 child tax credit. The automatic refunds--no phone calls or forms required--will be advance payments on their 2003 credits, in an amount equal to the increase provided by the new law up to $400 per child.

If there's a baseline for the Democrats it has to be this: when the government is handing out money, the checks should have the Party's fingerprints all over them. How inept is their leadership that they are left criticizing the checks instead? They really do resemble the Republicans of the New Deal/Great Society era--out of power and out of touch--but they add a revolutionary new element to the mix: out of sync with their own ideology.

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A METAPHOR TURNED TO RUBBLE

Lieberman Vows 'Productivity Goal' (NEDRA PICKLER, May 27, 2003 , AP)

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman criticized President Bush on Wednesday for a sluggish economy that has kept Americans out of work. [...]

"The administration of George W. Bush has pursued a Flintstones agenda in a Jetsons world," Lieberman said in remarks prepared for delivery at the University of California, San Diego, on Wednesday. "And in so doing, George Bush has let the sparks of innovation fall to the floor. As your president, I will make sure they spread to a much bigger, broader fire."

So, if I followed all that: Wilma's hair is on fire?

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A TRILLION HERE, A TRILLION THERE

US 'faces future of chronic deficits' (Peronet Despeignes, May 28 2003, Financial Times)

The Bush administration has shelved a report commissioned by the Treasury that shows the US currently faces a future of chronic federal budget deficits totalling at least $44,200bn in current US dollars.

But the Bush administration chose to keep the findings out of the annual budget report for fiscal year 2004, published in February, as the White House campaigned for a tax-cut package that critics claim will expand future deficits.

The study asserts that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts or a painful mix of both are unavoidable if the US is to meet benefit promises to future generations. It estimates that closing the gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 per cent across-the-board income tax increase.

The study was being circulated as an independent working paper among Washington think-tanks as President George W. Bush on Wednesday?signed into law a 10-year, $350bn tax-cut package he welcomed as a victory for hard-working Americans and the economy.

$44 Trillion is only four years of GDP--that's chump change. The wife and I, having both been to grad school, have at times owed as much as ten times our annual income. What's the big deal?

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IS THIS A JOKE?

Red Scare: Fifty years after his death, Stalin's crimes are still morally shocking--and politically vexing: a review of Gulag by Anne Applebaum (Bruce Clark, Washington Monthly)

In her new book, Anne Applebaum tells an instructive story about Vice President Henry Wallace's first visit to the Soviet Far East in May 1944. Determined to think the best of America's wartime ally, Wallace took an instant liking to his Russian host, a senior secret policeman called Ivan Nikishov. The visitor was struck by the similarities between America and Russia as pioneering nations with vast natural resources, and he listened sympathetically as Nikishov told him how the town of Magadan, with 40,000 residents, had sprung up over the last 12 years. What Wallace hardly seems to have realized is that he was visiting a giant prison: Magadan was the "capital" of an area several times the size of France, where hundreds of thousands of people were sent to incarceration or exile. Many did not even arrive, because the ships that ferried prisoners to Magadan were notorious death traps. And work in the nearby Kolyma gold fields was so back-breaking that very few survived it for more than a couple of years. The town Wallace so admired had been built by penal labor; the singers and musicians who performed for him were captives (albeit under strict instructions not to reveal the fact); even the local embroidery which he politely praised was the work of prisoners.

What this story reminds us, of course, is that when a nation or coalition has focused all its attention on the defeat of a single enemy, it can easily become blinded to the faults, indeed the downright evil, of other forces in the world--especially if those other forces happen to be helping in the struggle against the main adversary. Winston Churchill, to his credit, was aware of this paradox: He once declared that if Hitler had invaded hell, Her Majesty's government would at least have sent a friendly diplomatic note to the Prince of Darkness. And most people would agree that when a nation is engaged in the heat of a life-and-death struggle with a clearly defined enemy, such as Nazi Germany, it is reasonable to accept help from almost any partner, however unsavory--as long as you do not deceive yourself, as Wallace appears to have done, about that partner's real nature. The wisdom of cultivating dubious allies--on the old "enemy of my enemy" principle--is much less self-evident when the war you are fighting is long, multi-fronted, and has an important moral and psychological dimension as well as a military one. That description applied to the Cold War, and it also applies to the current war against terrorism.

Since 1945, not many observers of the Soviet Union have been as naive as Wallace; but Anne Applebaum believes that Westerners--especially on the political left--have never ceased to underestimate the radically evil nature of the Soviet system, and the degree of suffering it inflicted on its own citizens. [...]

She is right to say that some Westerners underestimate the evil perpetrated under the Soviet flag. But surely, it is going too far to regard Western tactics during the Cold War as beyond reproach. It is true, of course, that any moral assessment of that period must take full account of the horrific nature of the Soviet penal system, and of the fact that whenever it had the chance, the Soviet regime imposed similar horrors on other countries. Western leaders would stand condemned by history if they had not worked tirelessly to avoid the imposition of that system on their own countries--and in the long run, to roll back repression inside the Soviet empire.

But the fact that one party to a con-flict practiced terrible wickedness does not imply that the other behaved with disinterested perfection. With full knowledge of the Soviet Union's crimes against its own subjects, it is still possible to argue that at certain times, America and its allies stoked the fires of superpower competition and put humanity's survival at risk. The expression "military-industrial complex"--meaning an alliance of interests between the Pentagon and the arms industry which had an agenda of its own--was not coined by some soft-minded apologist for communism; it was coined by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican and supreme commander of Allied forces during World War II. As Applebaum herself notes, Stalin's jailers--especially after 1945--shored up their own authority at home by citing the imperative to achieve and maintain parity with the country that had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This does not necessarily imply that the Western side in the Cold War should have slackened its own efforts in the naïve hope that the Soviet regime would have softened as a result. But it is not being treacherous or soft-minded to study the Soviet-American contest as a self-compounding process in which one side's fearful and suspicious behavior fueled the other's.

Nor was the practice of terrible forms of repression, including the widespread use of incarceration, torture, and extrajudicial killing, any monopoly of the communist side in the Cold War. In countries like Chile, Iran, Indonesia, and Greece, precisely those crimes were perpetrated in the name of the "free world"--and they were justified, or actively abetted, by America's keenest Cold Warriors on grounds that "our sons of bitches" should be forgiven almost anything as long they fought the good fight against the Reds.

This does not mean that communism and liberal capitalism are morally equivalent routes to modernity and industrialization. At least in its purer form, the Cold War theory of convergence, which held that American and Soviet societies were becoming almost identical--was utter nonsense. But in any sustained conflict, whether personal or geopolitical, there is an ever-present possibility that the two sides will imitate certain aspects of each other's behavior. It is not only our spouses, or our pets that we grow to resemble, but also, to some extent, our enemies. To put it another way, our adversaries--ideological and geopolitical--do not merely threaten us by preparing to attack and defeat us; in a more subtle way, they also threaten us by making us more like them. It would be absurd to suggest that America itself had any equivalent of the Soviet gulag, but Cold War logic did make the United States more tolerant of its allies' repressive behavior.

The only possible explanation for this is that it was intentionally run in the April issue and is meant to be a joke, right? Mr. Clark has no sooner run through the litany of what made the Gulag radically evil, as Ms Applebaum has argued in her book, than he proves her point about the Left not coming to terms with this fact by comparing it to the Shah's Iran and Pinochet's Chile and by basically accusing either the US of "imitating" the Soviet Union or, possibly even more outrageous, them of imitating us, as if the whole homicidal regime was our idea. One need merely note that Stalin murdered between 17 and 22 million of his own people just in the 1930's, long before America's Cold Warriors made the Soviets more like us.

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The Essence of Conservatism: Adapted from The Intelligent Woman?s Guide to Conservatism (Russell Kirk, The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal)

Modern conservatism took form about the beginning of the French Revolution, when far-seeing men in England and America perceived that if humanity is to conserve the elements in civilization that make life worth living, some coherent body of ideas must resist the leveling and destructive impulse of fanatic revolutionaries. In England, the founder of true conservatism was Edmund Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France turned the tide of British opinion and influenced incalculably the leaders of society in the Continent and in America. In the newly established United States, the fathers of the Republic, conservative by training and by practical experience, were determined to shape constitutions which should guide their posterity in enduring ways of justice and freedom. Our American War of Independence had not been a real revolution, but rather a separation from England; statesmen of Massachusetts and Virginia had no desire to turn society upside down. In their writings, especially in the works of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, we find a sober and tested conservatism founded upon an understanding of history and human nature. The Constitution which the leaders of that generation drew up has proved to be the most successful conservative device in all history.

Conservative leaders, ever since Burke and Adams, have subscribed to certain general ideas that we may set down, briefly, by way of definition. Conservatives distrust what Burke called ?abstractions?--that is, absolute political dogmas divorced from practical experience and particular circumstances. They do believe, nevertheless, in the existence of certain abiding truths which govern the conduct of human society. Perhaps the chief principles which have characterized American conservative thought are these:

(1) Men and nations are governed by moral laws; and those laws have their origin in a wisdom that is more than human--in divine justice. At heart, political problems are moral and religious problems. The wise statesman tries to apprehend the moral law and govern his conduct accordingly. We have a moral debt to our ancestors, who bestowed upon us our civilization, and a moral obligation to the generations who will come after us. This debt is ordained of God. We have no right, therefore, to tamper impudently with human nature or with the delicate fabric of our civil social order.

(2) Variety and diversity are the characteristics of a high civilization. Uniformity and absolute equality are the death of all real vigor and freedom in existence. Conservatives resist with impartial strength the uniformity of a tyrant or an oligarchy, and the uniformity of what Tocqueville called ?democratic despotism.?

(3) Justice means that every man and every woman have the right to what is their own--to the things best suited to their own nature, to the rewards of their ability and integrity, to their property and their personality. Civilized society requires that all men and women have equal rights before the law, but that equality should not extend to equality of condition: that is, society is a great partnership, in which all have equal rights--but not to equal things. The just society requires sound leadership, different rewards for different abilities, and a sense of respect and duty.

(4) Property and freedom are inseparably connected; economic leveling is not economic progress. Conservatives value property for its own sake, of course; but they value it even more because without it all men and women are at the mercy of an omnipotent government.

(5) Power is full of danger; therefore the good state is one in which power is checked and balanced, restricted by sound constitutions and customs. So far as possible, political power ought to be kept in the hands of private persons and local institutions. Centralization is ordinarily a sign of social decadence.

(6) The past is a great storehouse of wisdom; as Burke said, ?the individual is foolish, but the species is wise.? The conservative believes that we need to guide ourselves by the moral traditions, the social experience, and the whole complex body of knowledge bequeathed to us by our ancestors. The conservative appeals beyond the rash opinion of the hour to what Chesterton called ?the democracy of the dead?--that is, the considered opinions of the wise men and women who died before our time, the experience of the race. The conservative, in short, knows he was not born yesterday.

(7) Modern society urgently needs true community: and true community is a world away from collectivism. Real community is governed by love and charity, not by compulsion. Through churches, voluntary associations, local governments, and a variety of institutions, conservatives strive to keep community healthy. Conservatives are not selfish, but public-spirited. They know that collectivism means the end of real community, substituting uniformity for variety and force for willing cooperation.

(8) In the affairs of nations, the American conservative feels that his country ought to set an example to the world, but ought not to try to remake the world in its image. It is a law of politics, as well as of biology, that every living thing loves above all else--even above its own life--its distinct identity, which sets it off from all other things. The conservative does not aspire to domination of the world, nor does he relish the prospect of a world reduced to a single pattern of government and civilization.

(9) Men and women are not perfectible, conservatives know; and neither are political institutions. We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell. We all are creatures of mingled good and evil; and, good institutions neglected and ancient moral principles ignored, the evil in us tends to predominate. Therefore the conservative is suspicious of all utopian schemes. He does not believe that, by power of positive law, we can solve all the problems of humanity. We can hope to make our world tolerable, but we cannot make it perfect. When progress is achieved, it is through prudent recognition of the limitations of human nature.

(10) Change and reform, conservatives are convinced, are not identical: moral and political innovation can be destructive as well as beneficial; and if innovation is undertaken in a spirit of presumption and enthusiasm, probably it will be disastrous. All human institutions alter to some extent from age to age, for slow change is the means of conserving society, just as it is the means for renewing the human body. But American conservatives endeavor to reconcile the growth and alteration essential to our life with the strength of our social and moral traditions. With Lord Falkland, they say, ?When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.? They understand that men and women are best content when they can feel that they live in a stable world of enduring values.

Conservatism, then, is not simply the concern of the people who have much property and influence; it is not simply the defense of privilege and status. Most conservatives are neither rich nor powerful. But they do, even the most humble of them, derive great benefits from our established Republic. They have liberty, security of person and home, equal protection of the laws, the right to the fruits of their industry, and opportunity to do the best that is in them. They have a right to personality in life, and a right to consolation in death. Conservative principles shelter the hopes of everyone in society. And conservatism is a social concept important to everyone who desires equal justice and personal freedom and all the lovable old ways of humanity. Conservatism is not simply a defense of ?capitalism.? (?Capitalism,? indeed, is a word coined by Karl Marx, intended from the beginning to imply that the only thing conservatives defend is vast accumulations of private capital.) But the true conservative does stoutly defend private property and a free economy, both for their own sake and because these are means to great ends.

Those great ends are more than economic and more than political. They involve human dignity, human personality, human happiness. They involve even the relationship between God and man. For the radical collectivism of our age is fiercely hostile to any other authority: modern radicalism detests religious faith, private virtue, traditional personality, and the life of simple satisfactions. Everything worth conserving is menaced in our generation. Mere unthinking negative opposition to the current of events, clutching in despair at what we still retain, will not suffice in this age. A conservatism of instinct must be reinforced by a conservatism of thought and imagination.

One of the concepts that seems hardest to grasp is that: where those who seek to deny the claim of tradition and faith on our behavior believe themselves to be liberators, they in fact end up being allies of the centralizers and collectivizers. Though they may not recognize it as such, their project is to transfer questions of right and wrong and activities like charity from churches to the government. Despite singing from the hymnal of freedom they practice Statism. It is this implicit alliance with the enemies of freedom that must make atheism and libertarianism matters of concern to conservatives.

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THE WORLD'S SMARTEST MORON

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch (DAVID E. SANGER May 28, 2003, The New York Times)

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit last week to President Bush's ranch in Texas was punctuated by an unannounced, last-minute surprise: Mr. Bush invited his house guest to sit in on his highly classified morning intelligence briefing, the daily global review of terrorist threats, loose nukes and brewing hot spots.
?
Just a few weeks before, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia got similar insider treatment at the ranch: he was given a precious seat at the table for Mr. Bush's strategy session with the American negotiators with North Korea.

Last week Mr. Bush pulled out all the stops for the president of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo even enduring a formal news conference in the East Room, one of Mr. Bush's least favorite venues to make clear to her constituents half a world away that they would be rewarded for allowing the American military to pursue terrorists on their territory.

Such efforts to rebuild and reshape alliances and to make clear which foreign leaders are considered members of the Bush inner circle are part of an effort by the White House to compensate for the breaches with the traditional allies that became so visible during the war in Iraq.

While many presidents have used private visits to Camp David and state dinners to impress and honor foreign leaders, Mr. Bush is taking the process a step further: since the fall of Baghdad, he has issued invitations to reward allies who have signed on to his view of the world and are willing to join him in the next steps of his plans to confront both terrorists and so-called rogue states.

David Frum has written about how one of the ways Mr. Bush secures loyalty and demonstrates trust is to share information or a thought with people that could embarrass or harm him if they leaked it. Pretty savvy for a guy who's supposed to be an idiot.

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IT'S PAT

The radicalization of Middle America (Pat Buchanan, May 28, 2003, World Net Daily)

"A well-heeled audience booed the Dixie Chicks plenty during country music's biggest night of the year Wednesday ? proof that patriotism continues to run deep through America."

So writes Jennifer Harper, embedded correspondent of the culture wars for the Washington Times, about the reception given the famous girl group every time their name came up at the Country Music Awards in Las Vegas. [...]

There are other signs that America's patience with what it sees as anti-Americanism, from Hollywood and the Big Media, is running out.

Legendary liberal talk-show host Phil Donahue was booed and hooted at the commencement at North Carolina State. The New York Times' Chris Hedges was shouted down and had the microphone plug pulled on his anti-war tirade to the graduates and their families at the Rockford College commencement in Illinois.

Two decades ago, singer Anita Bryant lost her contract as the voice of Florida orange juice for leading an anti-"gay"-rights campaign in Miami. Liberals said the former Miss Oklahoma had it coming. But now that actor Danny Glover has been cashiered as the public voice of MCI, after signing an ad supporting Fidel Castro, the left is no longer laughing. It is wailing and whining about "a new McCarthyism."

After Gen. Tommy Franks' Centcom put out its deck of cards of Iraqi war criminals, Newsmax.com decided to created its own deck of cards: "The United Nations of Weasels." Featured are Jacques Chirac as ace of spades, Martin Sheen as the ace of hearts, and Dan Rather, Barbra Streisand and Peter Arnett. The deck is one of the hottest sellers on the Internet.

There are other signs Americans are no longer willing to hide their loathing of the left. That egg on the face of editor Howell Raines of the mighty New York Times, after having been bamboozled and snookered by affirmative-action poster boy Jayson Blair, has most of America laughing.

When feminist Martha Burk declared she would break the all-male tradition at Augusta National Golf Club by leading a boycott of sponsors of the Master's tournament, and the New York Times took it up as the civil-rights cause du jour, Middle America rallied behind Augusta president "Hootie" Johnson. Hootie dissed Martha, ignored her boycott and protests, and carried off the Masters in style.

When a Republican governor took down the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina's state capitol and a Democratic governor cut a midnight deal to strip a replica of the battle flag from the Georgia state flag, both pols saw their careers terminated by voters. Children in the South now defy school edicts that forbid them from carrying or wearing replicas of the battle flag. In Pennsylvania, a schoolteacher has risked dismissal rather than take off the Christian cross she was wearing.

In Montgomery, Ala., a 5,600-pound granite stone, with the Ten Commandments chiseled on it, sits still in the rotunda of the state judicial building in defiance of court orders. The chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court, who put it there, refuses to remove it.

There is a spirit of rebellion in Middle America, sustained by voices on talk radio, talk TV and the Internet, where the cultural hegemony of the American elite simply does not extend.

Pat Buchanan has taken a lot of unfair heat for his 1992 Convention Speech...:

The central organizing principle of this republic is freedom. And from the ancient forests of Oregon, to the Inland Empire of California, America's great middle class has got to start standing up to the environmental extremists who put insects, rats and birds ahead of families, workers and jobs.

One year ago, my friends, I could not have dreamt I would be here. I was then still just one of many panelists on what President Bush calls "those crazy Sunday talk shows."

But I disagreed with the president; and so we challenged the president in the Republican primaries and fought as best we could. From February to June, he won 33 primaries. I can't recall exactly how many we won.

But tonight I want to talk to the 3 million Americans who voted for me. I will never forget you, nor the great honor you have done me. But I do believe, deep in my heart, that the right place for us to be now--in this presidential campaign--is right beside George Bush. The party is our home; this party is where we belong. And don't let anyone tell you any different.

Yes, we disagreed with President Bush, but we stand with him for freedom to choice religious schools, and we stand with him against the amoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the same standing in law as married men and women.

We stand with President Bush for right-to-life, and for voluntary prayer in the public schools, and against putting American women in combat. And we stand with President Bush in favor of the right of small towns and communities to control the raw sewage of pornography that pollutes our popular culture.

We stand with President Bush in favor of federal judges who interpret the law as written, and against Supreme Court justices who think they have a mandate to rewrite our Constitution.

My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side. And so, we have to come home, and stand beside him.

...but this summons to "culture war" was the high point of the Bush re-election campaign and offered the only hope Mr. Bush had for winning (overnight polling during the convention had Mr. Bush faring best against Bill Clinton after Mr. Buchanan spoke). This is a well-earned "told ya' so".

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THE WRITER'S DUTY (via Andrew Rhodes)

William Faulkner: Nobel Banquet Speech (City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950)

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

The tragedy of modern art is that so few artists and authors accept this duty, to remind Man of what is best about him and to celebrate the glories of the past. The turning inwards to examine only the artist's self and the given moment has rendered much of modern culture quite worthless. The particularist trend reached its reductio ad absurdum with things like performance art, where we are supposed to consider contemplating the artist to be an artistic experience in itself, and in the use by artists of their own wastes as art objects, suggesting that even their body functions should interest us. Perhaps this fascination with the self is just a reflection of the society-wide focus on the individual, but it seems like art in particular should aim higher and seek to lift our gaze to the universal, not encourage us to rub our noses in the gutter.

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BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

How the US set a course for war with Iraq (Quentin Peel, Robert Graham, James Harding and Judy Dempsey, May 26 2003, Financial Times)

In the first week of January, when most of the Paris elite was still on the ski slopes, a top French diplomat delivered a blunt warning to his boss at the foreign ministry in the Quai d'Orsay. Gerard Araud, director of strategic affairs and security, told Dominique de Villepin that the US administration was absolutely intent on going to war in Iraq.

"We seem to be acting as though we believe the train has not left the station," he told the foreign minister. "In fact, it has already departed. All we are doing is lying down on the tracks in front of it." France, he added, must choose between finding a diplomatic way of supporting the inevitable war and preparing for outright opposition.

Mr Araud, a close observer of Washington politics, sounded his alarm just three days after George W. Bush had addressed US troops preparing to leave for the Gulf from their base at Fort Hood, Texas. "We are ready," the president declared, in the ringing tones of a leader all set for war.

The realisation that war in Iraq was inevitable was not universally shared in Europe. In London that week, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, declared that the odds were 60 to 40 in favour of a peaceful diplomatic solution. In Berlin, the German government was still clinging to the hope that the process of weapons inspections launched by the United Nations Security Council in November would avert any need for military action.

How is it that Americans are always accused of being less sophisticated than Europeans and of not understanding political realities as well as they, yet even in January of this year the Euroipeans hadn't figured out yet that George W. Bush was going to take Saddam out?

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ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST

Do not mourn the end of the west (Mark Mazower, May 27 2003, Financial Times)

What has happened to the idea of the west? The transatlantic community, whose rise and eventual triumph was charted by postwar historians and routinely evoked by cold war politicians, has emerged in tatters from the crisis provoked by the war on Iraq. The rift between Washington and Donald Rumsfeld's "old Europe" has not yet been bridged. But does this mean the west is dead and, if so, does it really matter?

In truth there was always something a little self-righteous about the concept. In the second half of the 20th century it evoked a community of values, a shared inheritance of Judaeo-Christian and Roman traditions that had, supposedly, bred in the peoples of the Atlantic seaboard a special attachment to liberty, democracy and parliamentary institutions. Never mind that this made for some bad history: the ideology provided a justification for American commitment to European affairs and defined the common cause against the threat of Soviet communism. And there were convergent political and strategic interests, as Nato partners concurred in seeing Europe as the chief battleground of the cold war.

But, as the near-paralysis of Nato itself indicates, the geopolitical interests of America and Europe are no longer defined in such similar ways. [...]

If the west turns out to have been an idea that shielded Europeans from the consciousness of their own decline, the disappearance of the west may not be a bad thing.

Peter (in Canada) mentioned recently his grim amusement when he visits our site to see what nation we've consigned to the ash heap of history that day. But we do so not out of any sense of triumphalism, but one of deep regret. The West was worthwile and remains worth saving. How can we not mourn the death of the "special attachment to liberty, democracy and parliamentary institutions" in countries that used to share that attachment with us? Is there not at least a chance that if the non-American West reckons with its decline it may seek to reverse it?

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AGENDA?

After Iraq, The Left Has A New Agenda: Contain America (Jonathan Rauch, May 23, 2003, National Journal)

Unless you live at the bottom of a well, you've probably noticed that 9/11 and Iraq have had a transforming effect on the American Right. The short formulation is that so-called neoconservatism has triumphed. In 1999, Republicans bitterly opposed U.S. action against a rogue state in Central Europe; in 2000, their presidential nominee ran on an inward-looking, reactive, "humble" foreign policy. All of that is history now. It is hard to find a conservative who does not believe, as the neocons do, in robust and pre-emptive American action against tyrants and terrorists.

That change is, I believe, a watershed, akin to Democrats' side-switch on civil rights in the 1960s and Republicans' switch on budget-balance in the 1980s. In the rush to notice neocons, however, another transformation has been overlooked. A new kind of leftist agenda has emerged from 9/11 and Iraq, one that both mirrors and inverts neoconservatism, and one whose implications seem just as profound.

To understand "neoleftism" (as I might as well call it), consider an ostensibly odd fact: Many neoleftists saw not failure for their side in the fight against the Iraq war, but success.

Success? Even though the Left's street demonstrations around the world failed to stop the war? Even though the quick victory and Iraqi celebrations seemed to vindicate neocons' predictions? Well, yes. Here is how The Nation, which is to the neoleftists something like what Commentary once was to the neocons, put it in an April 7 editorial:

"If we are present at the creation of a new American empire, we are also present at the creation of another superpower -- the largest, most broadly based peace and justice movement in history, a movement that has engaged millions of people here and around the globe."

President Bush's arrogance and aggression, in this view, have catalyzed the truly international sort of activist network that the Left has long dreamed of. At last the globalized economy faces a globalized Left, one that can come together at the speed of e-mail to oppose corporate power -- and American power.

Where'd they go? We kept hearing about how the millions of marchers represented a new movement--where are they? What do they want? What's next?

Aren't they in fact just a reactionary force that can be mobilized once in awhile to try and stop something they don't like? In what sense are they a constructive, forward-looking force?

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FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD

EATING THE WORLD: What four-letter word links desertification, landfills, obesity, the WTO, Walmart and the end of the family? 'Food', of course. A scrumptious essay on the philosophies, cultures, and the globalisation of eating. (ROGER SCRUTON, 5/15/03, Open Democracy)

[E]ating, for us, is not what it is for the other animals. A person?s encounter with food may be an occasion of festivity and celebration; it may also be deeply unsettling, compromising and humiliating. It can even be (for the Christian) a petition for divine forgiveness and an avenue to redemption. Eating has in every traditional society been regarded as a social, often religious, act, embellished by ritual and enjoyed as a primary celebration of membership. Food has therefore become part of the self-consciousness of humanity, and differences in diet often reflect far-ranging differences in the rhythm, ethos and expectations of competing lifestyles.

Indeed, the difference between humans and other animals is never more vividly to be witnessed, than in their contrasting attitudes to food. Animals feed, while people eat. This distinction (between fressen and essen) is one on which Leon Kass has meditated at length in his eloquent book, The Hungry Soul.

Kass concludes that rational beings defy their own nature if they regard food purely as fuel for the body and not also as a moral and spiritual challenge. Rational beings are nourished on conversation, taste, manners and hospitality, and to divorce food from these practices is to deprive it of its true social significance.

The special relation of people to their food finds emblematic expression in the face. Human beings have neither claws nor fangs. They do not eat by pressing their mouth to their food, but by raising their food to their mouth, which is the organ of speech and therefore of reason. The mouth is the centre of the face, and it is in the face that the human person is most immediately encountered, in the form of looks and glances, smiles, grimaces and words.

People therefore place their food into their mouths with special care, usually by means of instruments that create a distance between the food and the face, so that the glance, the smile and the self remain visible while eating. The instruments of choice in African society are the fingers, and we will be carrying an interesting account of the way in which this practice shapes not just the meal that is eaten, but the social outlook of those who eat it.

People rejoice less in filling themselves than in the sight of food, table and guests dressed for a ceremonial offering. Their meals are also sacrifices, and anthropologists have occasionally argued that the origin of our carnivorous ways lies in the burnt offerings of ancient ritual. Only rational beings make gifts, and it is the giving of food, usually as the central episode in a ceremony, that is the core of hospitality, and therefore of those actions through which we lay claim to our home and at the same time mutely apologise for owning it.

(Cat lovers may dispute that sentence, believing that their favourites bring gifts of mouse, frog and lizard into the house. But those would be gifts only if the cat, in surrendering them, simultaneously affirms and relinquishes a right of ownership. That is not something that can be accomplished, by a creature that lacks the concept of a right.)

We are unique among the animals, or nearly so, in our omnivorousness. Our eating is motivated occasionally by need, but also by a love of superfluity
that causes us to rearrange our world and to engage in ceaseless experiment. At the same time we bind ourselves in laws--such as the dietary laws of Leviticus--which reinforce the idea of food as a spiritual commodity.

Vegetarianism can be seen as an attempt to recuperate this idea, by reintroducing a conception of dietary sin. We will debate this idea with the publication of an important article by Steve Sapontzis. Omnivorousness, in the human species, is the result of reason; so too is the refusal to be omnivorous.

There is nothing rational about the refusal to eat a hamburger.

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UNSCRAMBLING THE EGGS

W.'s Christian Nation: How Bush promotes religion and erodes the separation of church and state (Chris Mooney, 6.1.03, American Prospect)

In November of 1992, shortly after Bill Clinton was elected president, a telling controversy arose at a meeting of the Republican Governors Association. When a reporter asked the governors how their party could both satisfy the demands of Christian conservatives and also maintain a broad political coalition, Mississippi's Kirk Fordice took the opportunity to pronounce America a "Christian nation." "The less we emphasize the Christian religion," Fordice declared, "the further we fall into the abyss of poor character and chaos in the United States of America." Jewish groups immediately protested Fordice's remarks; on CNN's Crossfire, Michael Kinsley asked whether Fordice would also call America a "white nation" because whites, like Christians, enjoy a popular majority. The incident was widely seen as exposing a rift between the divisive Pat Robertson wing of the GOP and the more moderate camp represented by then-President George Herbert Walker Bush.

Fast-forward a decade. Republicans have solved their internal problems, and the party is united under our most prayerful of presidents, the born-again believer George W. Bush. Though not originally the favored candidate of the religious right -- John Ashcroft was -- Bush has played the part well. Virtually his first presidential act was to proclaim a National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving; soon he appointed Ashcroft to serve as attorney general. Since then the stream of religiosity from the White House has been continuous. With the help of evangelical speechwriter Michael Gerson, Bush lards his speeches with code words directed at Christian conservatives. In this year's State of the Union address, Bush mentioned the "wonder-working power" of the American people, an allusion to an evangelical Christian song whose lyrics cite the "power, wonder-working power, in the blood of the Lamb" -- i.e., Jesus.

Bush also uses his office to promote marriage, charitable choice and school vouchers as conservative Christian policy objectives. Yet he has never endorsed, at least not explicitly, the time-honored religious-right claim that the United States is a Christian nation. Nor has he seconded Pat Robertson's cry that the separation of church and state is "a lie of the left."

Mr. Mooney might prefer that things were otherwise, but the three points here that he seems to find controversial are instead self-evident. America is a nation structured around the ideals of white European Judeo-Christianity and "separation of church and state" is an aconstitutional lie of the Left. There are perfectly legitimate arguments against too direct a mingling of Church and State without resorting to this kind of historical obfuscation. The problem lies in the fundamental unpopularity of such arguments, which leaves secularists no good alternative but to claim to be defending tradition, rather than attacking it.

Yes, government should be essentially secular. No, there should be no established Church and the State should be neutral between various religions or between religious institutions and other types of institutions. But no government can exist in a religious nation without becoming entangled to some degree or another in religious matters, particularly when that government extends its reach into so many areas where it does not belong. If government is to encroach in these realms--marriage, charity, education, etc.--then separation is simply unrealistic. Want separation? Get government out of the social sphere.

MORE:
In Shift, U.S. to Offer Grants to Historic Churches (LAURIE GOODSTEIN and RICHARD W. STEVENSON, May 28, 2003. NY Times)

In a reversal of a longstanding policy, the Bush administration said yesterday that it would allow federal grants to be used to renovate churches and religious sites that are designated historic landmarks.

Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton announced the change in an afternoon news conference at the Old North Church in Boston, where in 1775 Paul Revere spotted two lanterns hung to signal the advance of British troops. Ms. Norton said the church, which still houses a congregation, would receive a federal grant of $317,000 to repair windows and make the building more accessible to the public.

"Today we have a new policy that will bring balance to historic preservation and end the discriminatory double standard that has been applied against religious properties," said Ms. Norton, standing below the church's famed steeple.

The decision was the latest step by the White House to remove barriers to government financing of religious organizations, and it received mixed reviews from constitutional experts.

This is a good example of the problem: if the government is to have such programs then religious buildings must be eligible for them just like non-religious buildings. If you don't want to help restore churches, scrap the program.

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THE PENDULUM OF THE LEFT

What Pendulums Do (David Warsh, Economic Principals, 5/25/2003)

It’s been nearly thirty years since its stirrings reached my little corner of America and swept me up and carried me along — me and half my generation and most of the next....

For some years the term that seemed to describe it adequately was "the Turn to the Right."

But the more my friends and I reflected on our own experience, the more the Left/Right distinction lost its capacity to illuminate what had happened to us. We still felt ourselves to be "of the Left" ...

Yet we were nearly as enthusiastic about the new reforms — stable money, deregulation, corporate restructuring, tax simplification, auctions, emissions-trading and the rest — as were any of our friends on the Right. So the shorthand we came to employ among ourselves was to speak of "the Market Revolution." It is hard to convey now how surprising it was to those of us who became involved....

It wasn’t conservatism that conquered the world in the last quarter of the 20th century — it was capitalism....

Robert Nozick called it "the zig-zag of politics." Henry Adams described a 36-year cycle of governmental expansion and contraction. Arthur Schlesinger Sr. called his similar schema the "tides" of American politics. Albert Hirschman writes of "shifting involvements" between the public and private speres. Or as the newspaper columnist Nancy Nall put it just last week, "It's only a matter of time before the pendulum does what pendulums do."

It seems to me that the left is subject far more than the right to vagaries of fashion. (We conservatives would say that that is because leftists have few principles and little logic to ground their thought, but I am sure leftists would have alternative explanations -- perhaps that their minds are more open.) I would say that there have been few pendulum swings on the right; the right's changes have largely been reactions to swings on the left, as conservatives have searched for new ways to engage and persuade, or rebut, the arguments of the left.

Warsh is a fine economic journalist; he was a long-time columnist for the Boston Globe until the New York Times acquired it and pushed him out, but thankfully he continues on the Web. Here he makes an excellent point about a major pendulum swing on the left. The domestic successes of Ronald Reagan's presidency -- 1981's tax cut and 1986's tax reform -- were achieved with the help of Democrats, and not just conservative Democrats but liberals like Bill Bradley. Socialism and big government had been discredited by the end of the 1970s, and liberal fashion turned toward the free market.

Unfortunately, today the left's pendulum has swung back toward radicalism, and George W. Bush has a less pliable Congress to deal with, though it has Republican majorities.

Let me speculate as to the next pendulum swing: it will be driven by a growing recognition of the importance of cooperative, not coercive, institutions in spheres that the left has traditionally considered "non-market." George Bush's faith-based initiative, for instance, is a small nudge pushing traditional welfare programs in a more cooperative direction, in which the government no longer dictates methods, but supports private-sector parties. Here the left's rhetoric about "choice" will help us make our case. And, though Democratic politicians remain at an extreme, at the grassroots and in academia the pendulum is already swinging our way. I hope the Republican Party is ready to act; for, as history shows, the pendulum may be near the right for only a few years.

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THERE'S PLENTY OF ROOM THERE ANYWAY

Progressive Tacks: The Democrats turn left. (William Saletan, May 27, 2003, Slate)

Last week, seven Democratic presidential candidates addressed a forum convened by EMILY's List, an organization that raises money for pro-choice, Democratic women candidates. Compared to previous debates before Democratic audiences, this event was notable for signs that the candidates are growing increasingly comfortable with liberal themes. Here are a few of those signs. [...]

Dean and the counterculture. It's one thing for Dean to oppose the Iraq war while supporting the use of force against terrorists. It's another thing to convey distrust of the military alongside other icons of American culture. Here's how Dean explained to EMILY's List his objections to Bush's 2001 education bill:

It says that every school has to certify there's constitutionally protected school prayer in your local public school. It says the Boy Scouts have to be able to meet in every school building in this country. It says that the names of rising juniors and seniors go to the higher education establishment and the military. That is law, supported by us as well as the Republicans. If people can't tell the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, why wouldn't they vote for the Republican Party? We have got to stop that kind of thing.

Prayer, the Boy Scouts, and the military. That's way too much to take on at one time, even if you're as clever and confident as Howard Dean. "I don't pay attention to polls, because this campaign is not just about winning; this campaign is about educating and moving America," Dean told the crowd. "If you stand up for the things we believe in, people start to come to you." Maybe so, but a lot of those people will be carrying baseball bats.

It says everything we really need to know about the Democrats that it's good politics within the Party to run against the Boy Scouts.

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THE AVOIDANCE OF A "REALLY DANGEROUS IDEA" (via Andrew Rhodes)

Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction (Richard B. Woodward April 19, 1992, NY Times)

A man's novelist whose apocalyptic vision rarely focuses on women, McCarthy doesn't write about sex, love or domestic issues. "All the Pretty Horses," an adventure story about a Texas boy who rides off to Mexico with his buddy, is unusually sweet-tempered for him -- like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer on horseback. The earnest nature of the young characters and the lean, swift story, reminiscent of early Hemingway, should bring McCarthy a wider audience at the same time it secures his masculine mystique.

But whatever it has lacked in thematic range, McCarthy's prose restores the terror and grandeur of the physical world with a biblical gravity that can shatter a reader. A page from any of his books -- minimally punctuated, without quotation marks, avoiding apostrophes, colons or semicolons -- has a stylized spareness that magnifies the force and precision of his words. Unimaginable cruelty and the simplest things, the sound of a tap on a door, exist side by side, as in this typical passage from "Blood Meridian" on the unmourned death of a pack animal:

"The following evening as they rode up onto the western rim they lost one of the mules. It went skittering off down the canyon wall with the contents of the panniers exploding soundlessly in the hot dry air and it fell through sunlight and through shade, turning in that lonely void until it fell from sight into a sink of cold blue space that absolved it forever of memory in the mind of any living thing that was."

Rightful heir to the Southern Gothic tradition, McCarthy is a radical conservative who still believes that the novel can, in his words, "encompass all the various disciplines and interests of humanity." And with his recent forays into the history of the United States and Mexico, he has cut a solitary path into the violent heart of the Old West. There isn't anyone remotely like him in contemporary American literature. A COMPACT UNIT, SHY OF 6 feet even in cowboy boots, McCarthy walks with a bounce, like someone who is also a good dancer. Clean-cut and handsome as he grays, he has a Celtic's blue-green eyes set deep into a high-domed forehead. "He gives an impression of strength and vitality and poetry," says Bellow, who describes him as "crammed into his own person."

For such an obstinate loner, McCarthy is an engaging figure, a world-class talker, funny, opinionated, quick to laugh. Unlike his illiterate characters, who tend to be terse and crude, he speaks with an amused, ironic manner. His involved syntax has a relaxed elegance, as if he had easy control over the direction and agreement of his thoughts. Once he had agreed to an interview -- after long negotiations with his agent in New York, Amanda Urban of International Creative Management, who promised he wouldn't have to do another for many years -- he seemed happy to entertain company for a few days. [...]

In a long review of the book in The New Yorker, Robert Coles called McCarthy a "novelist of religious feeling," comparing him with the Greek dramatists and medieval moralists. And in a prescient observation he noted the novelist's "stubborn refusal to bend his writing to the literary and intellectual demands of our era," calling him a writer "whose fate is to be relatively unknown and often misinterpreted."

"MOST OF MY FRIENDS FROM those days are dead," McCarthy says. We are sitting in a bar in Juarez, discussing "Suttree," his longest, funniest book, a celebration of the crazies and ne'er-do-wells he knew in Knoxville's dirty bars and poolrooms. McCarthy doesn't drink anymore -- he quit 16 years ago in El Paso, with one of his young girlfriends -- and "Suttree" reads like a farewell to that life. "The friends I do have are simply those who quit drinking," he says. "If there is an occupational hazard to writing, it's drinking."

Written over about 20 years and published in 1979, "Suttree" has a sensitive and mature protagonist, unlike any other in McCarthy's work, who ekes out a living on a houseboat, fishing in the polluted city river, in defiance of his stern, successful father. A literary conceit -- part Stephen Daedalus, part Prince Hal -- he is also McCarthy, the willful outcast. Many of the brawlers and drunkards in the book are his former real-life companions. "I was always attracted to people who enjoyed a perilous life style," he says. Residents of the city are said to compete to find themselves in the text, which has displaced "A Death in the Family" by James Agee as Knoxville's novel.

McCarthy began "Blood Meridian" after he had moved to the Southwest, without DeLisle. "He always thought he would write the great American western," says a still-smarting DeLisle, who typed "Suttree" for him -- "twice, all 800 pages." Against all odds, they remain friends. If "Suttree" strives to be "Ulysses," "Blood Meridian" has distinct echoes of "Moby-Dick," McCarthy's favorite book. A mad hairless giant named Judge Holden makes florid speeches not unlike Captain Ahab's. Based on historical events in the Southwest in 1849-50 (McCarthy learned Spanish to research it), the book follows the life of a mythic character called "the kid" as he rides around with John Glanton, who was the leader of a ferocious gang of scalp hunters. The collision between the inflated prose of the 19th-century novel and nasty reality gives "Blood Meridian" its strange, hellish character. It may be the bloodiest book since "The Iliad."

"I've always been interested in the Southwest," McCarthy says blandly. "There isn't a place in the world you can go where they don't know about cowboys and Indians and the myth of the West."

More profoundly, the book explores the nature of evil and the allure of violence. Page after page, it presents the regular, and often senseless, slaughter that went on among white, Hispanic and Indian groups. There are no heroes in this vision of the American frontier.

"There's no such thing as life without bloodshed," McCarthy says philosophically. "I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous."

This tooth-and-claw view of reality would seem not to accept the largesse of philanthropies. Then again, McCarthy is no typical reactionary. Like Flannery O'Conner, he sides with the misfits and anachronisms of modern life against "progress." His play, "The Stonemason," written a few years ago and scheduled to be performed this fall at the Arena Stage in Washington, is based on a Southern black family he worked with for many months. The breakdown of the family in the play mirrors the recent disappearance of stoneworking as a craft.

"Stacking up stone is the oldest trade there is," he says, sipping a Coke. "Not even prostitution can come close to its antiquity. It's older than anything, older than fire. And in the last 50 years, with hydraulic cement, it's vanishing. I find that rather interesting."

Even if half of it's just schtick, it's hard not to like him.

---

THE EURO VS. REALITY

Euro hits a bump on strength of U.S. data: Currency touches $1.19, a record, before slipping back (Eric Pfanner, May 28, 2003, The International Herald Tribune)

Europe's single currency sailed into uncharted waters Tuesday, trading at its highest level ever against the dollar, but ran into headwinds when new evidence underscored the disparity between a weak European economy and the slightly better-off United States.

The euro, which last weak surged past its initial rate against the dollar, on Tuesday briefly traded above $1.19, a level it had never touched in its four years, before ending lower for the day.

Relatively upbeat reports on the U.S. housing market and consumer confidence, following more weak data from the 12-nation euro zone, gave currency traders pause Tuesday, but analysts said the euro's climb could continue unless policymakers take action to stop it. [...]

Analysts say one reason for the euro's rebound is the higher level of interest rates in the euro zone, which provides greater yields to European bond investors who keep their money at home. While the U.S. Federal Reserve has cut its base interest rate to 1.25 percent, the European Central Bank has been reluctant to lower borrowing costs, keeping the comparable rate at 2.5 percent--a policy that has drawn heavy criticism from analysts.

The Central Bank's stubborness, even if a mistake, shows what you can achieve when you eschew democratic controls. They're helping to drive Europe into a recession and receiving rather little heat over it.

---

LEFT BEHIND

Do the Democrats Have a Prayer?: To win in '04 the next nominee will need to get religion. (Amy Sullivan , June 2003, Washington Monthly)

Democrats stand to gain the most support among two particular religious constituencies--"freestyle evangelicals" and "convertible Catholics." Although some commentators often refer to the "evangelical vote" or the "Catholic vote," more astute political observers understand that both of these religious communities are actually a collection of sub-groups characterized by regional, socio-economic, ethnic, and sometimes theological differences. And their political attitudes and behaviors are far from monolithic. "There are sub-constituencies among the religious of America who are more persuadable," says Shaun Casey, professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary. "What Karl Rove has seen is that if the Bush campaign can go into traditional Democratic constituencies and peel off 5 percent of the vote, that is a huge victory." Democrats could do the same thing if they understood the territory better.

Who are these religious swing voters? Freestyle evangelicals--so named by Beliefnet.com founder Steven Waldman and political scientist John Green--are a growing subset of the largest religious community in the United States. Twenty-five percent of American adults are evangelical Christians, but 40 percent of those (or 10 percent of the adult population) are freestyle evangelicals. This group is tied not to controversial figures such as Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, but to shared cultural touchstones like the Left Behind book series or Michael W. Smith concerts. Sociologist Alan Wolfe refers to the "maturation of American evangelicals" as an indication of the changing demographics of the community. They are just as likely to send their children to public schools as the next person, and many throw back beers on a Saturday night just as happily as they attend church the next morning--often at so-called "megachurches," which have expanded rapidly in the suburbs, reflecting the spread of evangelicalism up the rungs of the socio-economic ladder and into the mainstream.

Although theologically conservative, this group is politically independent; freestyle evangelicals supported Clinton in 1996 and Bush in 2000. They are fairly conservative on social issues--most are pro-life, although they are not single-issue abortion voters--and express particular concern about popular culture. "They worry a lot about their kids, about declining standards, about what they see as 'smut' on television," says Green. "But they have a much broader agenda--they are interested in social welfare issues, they care about the environment." These voters supported Tipper Gore's successful campaign for music warning labels in the 1980s, and like many parents shared Lieberman's worries about the omnipresence of explicit television shows, movies, and Internet sites. Yet in the 2000 campaign, the Gore-Lieberman team inexplicably ignored these touchstone issues.

Free-style evangelicals are not the only "persuadable" religious voters. Conservative older Catholics (read: pre-Vatican II) are a dwindling group, and a potential coalition of "convertible Catholics" is taking their place. On a range of issues, especially economic issues, these Catholics are natural Democrats: They tend to have urban ethnic roots, support unions, and don't automatically hate "big government." But as religiously minded voters, they also feel alienated from the Democratic party over a range of moral and cultural issues, including abortion. In the 1980s, many of them who had once voted Democratic left the ticket to vote for the Gipper, hence the term "Reagan Democrats." But they were never fully at home in the GOP either. Clinton brought many Catholics back into the fold with initiatives like the V-Chip and mandatory school uniforms. But in 2000, Bush campaigned hard for their votes. He pursued a strategy similar to the one used to court evangelicals, granting one-on-one interviews with conservative Catholic publications like Crisis magazine and cultivating key alliances with conservative Catholic intellectuals. His aggressive courtship won back many Catholic voters. In 2000, both Bush and Gore drew 20 percent of their total support from Catholics, a relative gain for the GOP.

Over the long term, though, winning the Catholic vote will depend on winning the Hispanic vote. The vast majority of Hispanics are Catholic, but they tend to be culturally Catholic, not necessarily committed churchgoers. In part because of their loose ties to local churches, this group has been extremely difficult to mobilize. In 2000 and 2002, Hispanic Catholics had the lowest turnout rates of any of the religious voting blocs. But when they do vote, they overwhelmingly support Democrats. Although white Catholics divided their votes between Clinton and Dole, Latino Catholics voted for Clinton by a wide margin. A survey by the Hispanic Churches in American Public Life project found that, in 1996, Hispanic voters supported Clinton at a higher rate (81 percent) than did any other ethnic group, including blacks. As Green observes, "There is a huge potential there, not only because they're growing as a group, but because there is an untapped set of votes there." If Democrats could get Hispanic Catholics excited about the next election, they could pick up a great number of votes.

So, the Democrats, despite being so closely identified with Hollywood, abortion, gay rights, opposition to school choice, etc., can still appeal to "theologically conservative" voters? Either "theologically" or "conservative" must not mean what it used to.

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CRANK UP THE VCRs

'Commanding Heights' PBS series a triumph (Lou Marano, 5/27/2003, UPI)

Can a discipline that's been called the "dismal science" be the subject of a six-hour TV documentary that will glue you to your set and keep you coming back episode after episode? Surprisingly, yes.

The PBS series "Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy" combines historical sweep, narrative flow, and cinematic appeal. The theme is globalization, and the
"battle" is between market forces and government intervention. [...]

The series, based on Yergin's book written with Joseph Stanislaw, is being broadcast for a second time. Episode 3, "The Agony of Reform," will be shown on Thursday, May 29, at 10 p.m. A companion Web cast with in-depth interviews can be found at pbs.org/commandingheights/.

If you've not seen this, it is a terrific series.

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SECURITY VS. FREEDOM FDR-STYLE

FDR's Wise Take on U.S. Security (Cass R. Sunstein, May 27, 2003, LA Times)

It was on Jan. 11, 1944, that Roosevelt delivered his greatest and most reflective State of the Union address. He unified his speech around a single concept, security: "that means not only physical security which provides safety from attacks by aggressors. It means also economic security, social security, moral security." [...]

Roosevelt insisted that Americans "have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all, regardless of station, race or creed."

And then Roosevelt listed the relevant rights: "The right to a useful and remunerative job the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him a decent living; the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies the right of every family to a decent home to adequate medical care the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment; the right to a good education."

Do we get to vote on that 2nd Bill of Rights?

---

TO AN IDIOT EVERYTHING'S A PARADOX

U.S. Rearms While Telling Others To Disarm (Helen Thomas, May 24, 2003, Hearst Newspapers)

While the United States tells other nations to disarm, the Bush administration appears eager to take steps toward expanding our nuclear arsenal.

How much do you have to hate your own country to think that the world would be a worse place if America were the only nation with nuclear weapons?

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BORED TO TEARS

The Reluctant Fan: Professional baseball's lachrymose and soporific spell: a review of May the Best Team Win: Baseball Economics and Public Policy by Andrew Zimbalist (David Kipen, June 2003, Atlantic Monthly)

My wife drew a blank this morning when I asked her what Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, and Ted Williams had in common. Thinking cap firmly in place, she did hazard a guess: "They're all baseball players?" (She meant this as a joke, she says now.) "They all hit home runs? In the World Series?" This was getting us nowhere. It was time to turn over all the cards, as they used to say on What's My Line?, and spill. Unfortunately, I was spilling already-misting up, or starting to, as I sometimes do when the conversation turns to baseball.

Misting up is one of two physiological reactions the game tends to produce in me. The other, a symptom I regularly present in the later innings of most game broadcasts, is unconsciousness. At first, when on the couch with the remote, or in the study with the computer, or in bed with an ear over the pillow speaker, I'm in heaven. Too soon, though, heaven is forsaken for dreamland. Something about a postgame show always wakes me up, but sleep usually makes a comeback before I can hear what the final score was. It's like radio traffic reports: We wait forever to hear one, but when we do, our attention falters before the announcer can get around to the route we want. "Hey, did she mention the 101 yet?"

Tears and snores. One wouldn't think the same stimulus could produce two such divergent responses, but then, baseball has never been an oasis of strict causality. Sneak a bad pitch past a napping hitter and you're a hero. Snap off a wicked curveball and get beat on an excuse-me swing. Logical it's not. How to explain a game (to the uninitiated, or even to initiates) that has us choking up like a pesky bunter one minute, and nodding off the next?

The stock answers are that we weep from nostalgia, and we doze out of boredom. According to this line of thinking, we're tired of greedy owners, and of overpaid ballplayers who change teams so often that we're left rooting for little more than an empty uniform. We pine for the game of our childhoods, when salaries were lower, tickets cheaper, and all the grass-if not greener -was at least real.

Andrew Zimbalist is here to tell you that the stock answers are, like a batting-practice pitcher's aim, all too true-yet inadequate. A professor at Smith, Zimbalist argues persuasively that the biggest problem with baseball today is the monopoly power exercised by the owners running it.

The other leagues don't seem to be run any better and they have no anti-trust exemption.

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STICKS, STONES, & 4 JUMBO JETS

Islam is hardly the only religion with extremists (ANANT RAMBACHAN, May, 16, 2003, Pioneer Press)

In a column published Wednesday, Cal Thomas contended that the call, by the National Association of Evangelicals, to conservative Christian leaders to tone down their condemnation of Islam is misplaced. Such appeals must be directed instead to Muslim clergy since, according to Thomas, Islam is the primary source of "incendiary language."

It is difficult to disagree with Thomas about the need for the moderate voices in Islam to reclaim the tradition from extremists who seek to privilege their own understanding and who are ready to violently silence alternative interpretations.

It is also important, however, to remember that religious extremism is not unique to any single religion, although it becomes prominent in some traditions at specific historical moments. We must be attentive to the plurality, complexity and ambiguity of all religions and take note of the fact that extremism is one strand among many others.

What is glaringly unbalanced and disquieting about Thomas' column is that he nowhere acknowledges that the characterization of Islam by the Revs. Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and others as "wicked" and "violent" is unfair and problematic. [...]

The contentious issues identified by Thomas--such as the Islamic attitude to converts to other religions, the position of the Quran on violence and state-church relationships--ought not to be ignored in the process of seeking to foster constructive relationships between Muslims and people of other faiths. Such issues cannot be glossed over in the interest of a superficial amiability, and a space has to be found in interreligious relationships for mutual critique and questioning.

Constructive dialogue over contentious issues, however, requires cultivating and nurturing a relationship of mutual trust.

Problematic? Doesn't that mean true but with qualifications?

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IT AIN'T EASY BEING GREEN (via ef brown)

Greens Consider Standing Behind Democrats in '04: Party Still Mulling Its Own Ticket (Brian Faler, May 27, 2003, The Washington Post)

The lesser of two evils doesn't seem like such a bad choice these days to some Greens.

As the Green Party hashes out its plans for next year's presidential election, some of its activists are urging the party to forgo the race and, instead, throw its support behind one of the Democratic candidates -- all in the hopes of unseating President Bush.

That'll help the Democrats reconnect to mainstream America, huh?

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SUMMERTIME...AND THE LIVIN' IS EASY

RECIPE: TRENETTE AL PESTO: The King of Pestos with Pasta, Broccoli, and Potatoes (Lynne Rossetto Kasper, May 27, 2003, The Splendid Table)

Serves 6 to 8 as a first course, 3 to 4 as a main dish

1 large clove garlic, any green center removed
1/8 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
2/3 tightly packed cup fresh young basil leaves
2 heaping tablespoons pine nuts
1/4 cup grated Fiore Sardo sheep cheese or domestic Fontinella
Scant 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
6 to 8 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (Ligurian preferred: Roi, Ardoino,
or Rainieri brand)
1 medium red-skinned potato, peeled and thinly sliced
6 quarts boiling salted water
3/4 pound trenette, linguine, or spaghetti
1-1/2 cups broccoli flowerettes
Freshly ground black pepper

1. In a mortar and pestle, crush the garlic with the salt. Gradually add the basil and then the pine nuts, crushing everything into a rough paste. Add the cheeses and then finally enough oil to bring the pesto to the consistency of heavy cream. Turn it into a pasta bowl.

2. Drop the potato into the boiling water and boil 5 minutes. Add the pasta and broccoli and cook until the pasta is tender but still firm to the bite. Take out 1/3 cup pasta water and stir it into the pesto. Drain the pasta in a colander and immediately toss it with the pesto. Taste for seasoning and serve hot.

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THAT'S NOT NARROWING; IT'S WINNOWING

Lost in translation: the narrowing of the American mind (K.A. Dilday, May 1, 2003, Open Democracy)

The indifference of American public culture to the imaginative experience of other peoples is reflected in the dearth of work translated from foreign languages. As the world becomes more complex and its literary voices more varied and challenging, the damage of this complacency is not only to unheard, unread writers, but to the American mind itself. [...]

It is detrimental to deprive our intellectual exchange of the rich and varied stimuli that results from the infusion of different views, but, as Americans learned on 9/11, we need to know what is going on in the rest of the world as a matter of self-preservation. It shouldn?t be that, as an editor at Oxford University Press remarked drily during a seminar on world literature, ?Everything seems to take Americans by surprise.?

Politically, America has become infamous as the beast that feeds only its own appetite, but this isn?t surprising since, given the nature of the US publishing industry, our own appetites are all that we know. And there is much to fear from a global power whose people remain unaware of cultural contradiction, uninterested in the passions of others; contented with mother?s milk from birth to death.

About 3% of the fiction and poetry published in the United States in 1999 was translated (approximately 330 out of the total 11,570 fiction and poetry titles published). America compares unfavourably to almost every other country and most unfavourably to western Europe, the region closest to an ideological sibling.

There, Germany translates the most works - about six times as many as the US each year. Spain is close behind, while the French publishing industry exceeds the US by four times.

Without translations, Americans, who are notoriously monolingual, have access only to the perspectives of those who write and speak in English; thus the ideas of millions are lost to them.

An article from the Index Translationum, the global database of lingual exchange that Unesco has maintained since 1948, reports:

?Several writers writing in languages other than English be it French, Arabic or Hindi complain of the overwhelming influence wielded by the Anglo-Saxon publishing industry. There is a certain arrogance, they claim, on the part of British and American publishing houses. It is as if they consider anything published in another language to be automatically inferior to what appears in English. They are reluctant to translate foreign books. So widespread is the influence of English as a language that publishers in Japan will accept a book for translation only if it has first been translated in English, as if being accepted by the publishing industry there had added intrinsic value to the work. And then the translation is often done from the English version, not from the original.?

When the Nobel Prize for literature is announced each year, most people in the United States have never heard of the winner unless the writer is American or British. As ideas traverse borders with increasing ease, among some American intellectuals it seems to be a point of pride to stay focused solely on the minds at home. [...]

The writer Primo Levi wrote this in an essay about translation (translated by Zaia Alexander):

?Furthermore, there are many people who believe, more or less consciously, that a person who speaks another language is an outsider by definition, a foreigner, strange and, hence, a potential enemy, or at least a barbarian; that is, etymologically, a stutterer, a person who doesn't know how to speak, almost a nonperson. In this way, linguistic friction tends to turn into racial and political friction, another of our maledictions.?

Since 1970, more books have been translated into German than any other language. It may be that Germany?s moral pain has given Germans an active need to humanise the rest of the world. Shame is our bitter literary guide when intellectual rigour has failed. If only intellectual hunger would send us skidding to hinterlands in search of stimuli, we might avoid some corrosive human indecencies.

The peregrine voracity of the American appetite is infamous, the parochial nature of our reading tastes anomalous. As Steve Wasserman says, ?I find it an irony in a land when there is much chest thumping about the merits of globalisation that we are becoming an ever more provincial people.?

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Berlin Wall came down and the US ascended, Francis Fukuyama speculated that it might mean ?the end of history.? The phrase well describes the domesticity that has landlocked the US publishing industry, and the intellectual and moral complacency that has allowed the American public to accept it.

This is an odd essay. The world has at long last accepted that the liberal democratic capitalism established several hundred years ago within the Anglosphere is the only sensible way to structure a society. Humanity is converging on a set of ideas that has a tradition here in America and Britain--a history, a music, an art, a literature, an architecture, a mythos, etc., etc., etc.. Yet K. A. Dilday can't understand why people read our books while we don't much read theirs. Mind you, we do have university departments that specialize in all these literatures, studying them like relics of the lost and/or failed civilizations that they represent. But, take for instance one example from the story: Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Mr. Marquez did indeed win a Nobel Prize. He also, mere months ago, reiterated his support for Fidel Castro. What exactly is it that Marxism still has to say to us that we need to hear? People like Mr.Marquez are not "potential enemies"; they are real enemies and deserve to be treated as no better than "nonpersons". It is not his race that is at issue, but his ideas--and his ideas are not worth reading.

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IT'S STILL A MOUSE

Speedy Evolution Detected in Windy City's Wild Mice (Scientific American, 05/22/2003)

The white-footed mouse isn't much to look at, but a new study suggests it may be a superstar when it comes to evolution. According to a report published today in the journal Nature, a group of the animals in the Chicago area has undergone significant genetic change over the last 150 years. The findings suggest that a mammalian genome can evolve much more rapidly than previously thought.

One might think the headline would cite genetic change instead of evolution, since it isn't clear that the mouse has "evolved" at all.

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DOG BITES MAN ALERT

Seeing Islam as 'Evil' Faith, Evangelicals Seek Converts (LAURIE GOODSTEIN, May 27, 2003, NY Times)

In evangelical churches and seminaries across the country, lectures and books criticizing Islam and promoting strategies for Muslim conversions are gaining currency. More than a dozen recently published critiques of Islam are now available in Christian bookstores.

Arab International Ministry, the Indianapolis group that led the crash course on Islam here, claims to have trained 4,500 American Christians to proselytize Muslims in the last six years, many of those since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The oratorical tone of these authors and lecturers varies, but they share the basic presumption that the world's two largest religions are headed for a confrontation, with Christianity representing what is good, true and peaceful, and Islam what is evil, false and violent.

The criticism is coming predominantly from evangelicals, who belong to many independent churches and Christian denominations, including the Southern Baptist Convention.

Evangelicals have always believed that all other religions are wrong, but what is notable now is the vituperation. [...]

Most of the authors and teachers preach a corollary of the Christian dictum to "love the sinner and hate the sin." They assert that while the vast majority of Muslims are not evil, they have been deceived by a diabolical religion based on a flawed scripture that can never bring them salvation.

I don't personally think that Islam is an "evil" faith, but do think it may be so flawed that it can not form the basis of a modern society and that it has--perhaps because of that--been hijacked by men who can not be reconciled to modernity, despite the fact they have no choice. Given that context, establishing Christianity as a viable alternative in the Islamic world seems a very good thing. Meanwhile, whoever wrote the headline "Evangelicals Seek Converts" is, shall we say, not the brightest bulb in the box.

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WHAT HAVE THEY DONNEZ FOR US LATELY?

Weird political science (Ed Quillen, Denver Post, 5/25/2003)

I am disappointed that I have not read of a French politician delivering a speech that went something like this:

"It brings me sorrow to find fault with one of our oldest allies, but I have no choice but to criticize the American ingratitude.

"If had had not been for French blood and treasure - the four regiments under Comte de Rochambeau in 1779, the millions of livres of financial assistance for arms and food for the army of General Washington, the fleet under Admiral de Grasse in 1781 - then the Americans would never have gained their independence.

"And if we had not in 1803 given them one of the best real-estate deals known to history - three cents an acre for the Louisiana Purchase - then they might still be a minor middling nation, not a superpower.

"Further, we might have advanced our own commercial interests in 1862. We could have formally recognized the Confederacy, whose cotton exports were vital to our textile industry. We could have dispatched our navy to destroy the Union blockade, and their nation might have been permanently divided.

"The Americans would not even have a country without our support, let alone a single nation of continental dimensions, and yet they now toil day and night to denounce our people - what sort of ungrateful wretches are they?"

Mr. Quillen might note that:

* Rochambeau arrived in America in 1780, and spent his first year dancing: "Rochambeau established his headquarters in Newport and settled into the social life with considerable success. The French military bands were a particular success at the many balls which Rochambeau hosted." The only action the French saw in the war was at Yorktown, where little French blood was shed.

* Talleyrand thought he got an excellent deal for Louisiana, which the French could not defend and preferred in American to British hands.

* The fact that France decided not to go to war with us in 1862 is something we should be grateful for -- why? Isn't not going to war what nations are supposed to do? If this kind of argument works, the U.S. deserves French gratitude for not fighting alongside Prussia in 1871.

But, aside from the shortage of causes for gratitude, the biggest defect of Mr. Quillen's argument is that it fails to tote up all items on the other side of the relational balance sheet. Jews might be grateful to Zola and allies for eventually getting Dreyfus freed, but they would not ignore Vichy collaboration in assessing their debt of gratitude to France. So too with the Franco-American balance sheet: France's assets with us are antique and depreciating, her liabilities are growing quickly, and the bottom line is close to insolvency.

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HOW'S AL QAEDA DOIN'?

Moroccans Turn Out Against Terrorism (Reuters, May 26, 2003)

Tens of thousands of demonstrators chanting "no to terrorism" thronged the streets of Casablanca today, nine days after 43 people were killed in coordinated suicide attacks in the city.

"I am here for myself and for them, the next generation," said Abdellatif Ghanam, an unemployed night watchman, gesturing to his 6-year-old son. "The people who did those attacks are not followers of Islam in its true sense."

Morocco's largest opposition party, the Justice and Development Party (PJD), was banned along with other Islamic groups from taking part in the march, which was led by Prime Minister Driss Jettou.

The PJD has condemned the five almost simultaneous bombings that are believed to have been carried out by a small, ultra-conservative Islamic group, Assirat al-Moustaquim (the Righteous Path).

At a similar demonstration a week ago in Rabat, the Moroccan capital, young men threw tomatoes at PJD marchers.

Having lost three favorably disposed heads of state (Taliban, Saddam, Arafat), they now turn the infamous "Arab street" against themselves. Meanwhile, Democrats here claim they're "winning". If this is victory, we wish the Osamists further "success".

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DENIAL RUNS THROUGH ISRAEL

Sharon Defends Peace Plan Against Critics in Likud (GREG MYRE, May 27, 2003, NY Times)

In the face of scathing criticism from his own right-wing party, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today staunchly defended his support for the latest Middle East peace effort. "Ruling three and a half million Palestinians cannot go on indefinitely," he declared.

A lifelong hawk, Mr. Sharon hit back at his critics in the Likud Party with language that sounded as if it were coming straight from Israel's liberal peace camp.

"You may not like the word, but what's happening is occupation," he told Likud members of Parliament. "Holding 3.5 million Palestinians is a bad thing for Israel, for the Palestinians and for the Israeli economy. We have to end this subject without risking our security."

Mr. Sharon's rightist cabinet on Sunday gave conditional approval to the Middle East peace plan, known as the road map. The vote energized diplomatic efforts but also brought a firestorm of criticism from right-wing Israelis, who accused the prime minister of plunging the nation into a process they view as a potential disaster.

While Mr. Sharon battled with his traditional allies, the Israelis and Palestinians pressed ahead with preparations for top-level meetings intended to build on the current diplomatic momentum.

Mr. Sharon and the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, are expected to meet this week, probably on Wednesday, diplomats said. They are expected to join President Bush for a summit meeting in the region, probably next week.

It's been paiful to watch this train approach, as hawks denied the obvious: Ariel Sharon long ago reconciled himself to the inevitability of a Palestinian state, but sees an opportunity to establish it on his own terms.

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BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN

Back in Political Forefront: Iran-Contra Figure Plays Key Role on Mideast (Michael Dobbs, May 27, 2003, Washington Post)

A cycle of disgrace and redemption has brought one of Washington's most accomplished -- and controversial -- bureaucratic infighters back to the center of U.S. foreign policy decision-making.

When Elliott Abrams stood in front of a federal judge in October 1991 and pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress, few imagined he would ever return to government. At age 43, he had become one of the casualties of the Iran-contra scandal, detested by Democrats for his combative political style and mistrusted by human rights activists for playing down the crimes of right-wing dictatorships in Central America.

Twelve years later, Abrams is helping to shape White House policies toward many of the world's trouble spots. Appointed in December as President Bush's senior adviser on the Middle East, his responsibilities extend from Algeria to Iran. But nowhere is his influence more evident than on the Arab-Israeli peace process.

A self-described "neo-conservative and neo-Reaganite" with strong ties to Jews and evangelical Christians, Abrams has become a flash point for the debate on how much pressure the Bush administration is prepared to apply to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. Last week, the White House sought to address Israeli concerns about a U.S.-endorsed "road map" on Israeli-Palestinian peace by saying they would be considered during the implementation phase. [...]

After Harvard, Abrams followed a classic neo-conservative trajectory, taking a job with Sen. Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, a hawkish Washington Democrat. "They hit it off more or less immediately," said Richard N. Perle, a Pentagon official during the Reagan administration who introduced Abrams to Jackson. "He was comfortable with Scoop's combination of a tough foreign policy and a liberal domestic policy."

Abrams joined the neo-conservative aristocracy in March 1980 through his marriage to Rachel Decter, daughter of conservative pundits Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. By the time Ronald Reagan was elected president later that year, Abrams had become a Republican. As an assistant secretary of state, he found himself implementing the Reagan doctrine of "rolling back communism" in Central America.

For Abrams, fighting communism and promoting human rights were one and the same. Although he criticized the right-wing Augusto Pinochet regime in Chile, he played down or ignored human rights violations by pro-American governments in Central America, where the struggle for geopolitical influence with the Soviet Union was most intense. In an exchange with the human rights activist Aryeh Neier on ABC's "Nightline" in 1984, Abrams insisted that widely reported massacres by right-wing death squads in El Salvador "never happened."

"Elliott was willing to distort and misrepresent the truth in order to promote the policy adopted by the administration," Neier said. "His approach was that the ends justified the means." Abrams has replied to past criticism by Neier by describing his human rights work as "garbage" and "completely politicized."

Abrams also had problems with Congress over the Iran-contra scandal. In 1991, he was forced to admit in court that he had not disclosed his knowledge of a secret contra supply network and his solicitation of a $10 million contribution for the contras from the sultan of Brunei. He received a pardon from President George H.W. Bush in December 1992.

An administration official brushed aside questions about the plea bargain, noting that Abrams had received a full pardon. In a 1993 book, "Undue Process," Abrams forcefully defended his actions, describing the legal proceedings against him as "Kafkaesque" and his prosecutors as "filthy bastards."

One can't help but envy heroes like Richard Perle and Elliot Abrams who will have played key roles in the defeat of communism and Islamicism.

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THE RETURN OF REAGANOMICS

Stating the Obvious (PAUL KRUGMAN, 5/27/03, NY Times)

Although you wouldn't know it from the rhetoric, federal taxes are already historically low as a share of G.D.P. Once the new round of cuts takes effect, federal taxes will be lower than their average during the Eisenhower administration. How, then, can the government pay for Medicare and Medicaid--which didn't exist in the 1950's--and Social Security, which will become far more expensive as the population ages? (Defense spending has fallen compared with the economy, but not that much, and it's on the rise again.)

The answer is that it can't. The government can borrow to make up the difference as long as investors remain in denial, unable to believe that the world's only superpower is turning into a banana republic. But at some point bond markets will balk--they won't lend money to a government, even that of the United States, if that government's debt is growing faster than its revenues and there is no plausible story about how the budget will eventually come under control.

At that point, either taxes will go up again, or programs that have become fundamental to the American way of life will be gutted. We can be sure that the right will do whatever it takes to preserve the Bush tax cuts--right now the administration is even skimping on homeland security to save a few dollars here and there. But balancing the books without tax increases will require deep cuts where the money is: that is, in Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

Yes, that was the Left's theory about the Reagan deficits, but unfortunately they unleashed twenty years of economic boom times and made it
impossible to reform anything but welfare, a lower class rather than a middle class entitlement. Likewise, the Reagan defense build-up turned us into the only credible military power--and therefore, when joined with our economy, the only truly safe investment--in the world.

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OF COURSE, JIMMY STEWART FLEW FOR SAC

Hitchens v Hitchens, but not what you'd expect in the battle over Iraq. (Stephen Barton, May 22, 2003, Online Opinion)

Peter Hitchens wrote in The Spectator before the war began, "There is nothing conservative about war. For at least the last century war has been the herald and handmaid of socialism and state control". War, Hitchens seems to say, is the product of grand ideas, and perhaps that includes boastful American liberalism. Hitchens feared the destructive power of the not-so-quiet American, "for the attacker war is no longer terrible enough. Some people have grown too fond of it. They are not conservatives in any serious meaning of the word". [...]

The implicit question was: are British, indeed Western, interests served by such a course of action? Is Iraq worth the bones of one British squaddie? Not surprisingly we find here a similarity with Enoch Powell's arguments against the first Gulf War.

Powell argued that any talk of appeasing Saddam was "nonsense", continuing:

Saddam Hussein may not be nice and his form of government not to our taste. That is no business of ours nor of the United States ? The world is full of men engaged in doing evil things. That does not makes us policemen to round them up nor judges to find them guilt and to sentence them ? we as a nation have no interest in the existence or non-existence of Kuwait. I sometimes wonder if, when we shed our power, we omitted to shed our arrogance.

Powell places the same emphasis on interests rather than ideas, and we also see the conservative's mournful pessimism on the character of man and his
works.

In an interview with the Atlantic Monthly, Stephan Schwartz, author of the Two faces of Islam, typifies the position that Peter Hitchens and Parris react against.

We are going to help the Arab and Muslim nations find their own way to democracy, prosperity and stability on their own terms ? If I'm proven wrong and in the end we do stick by the reactionary wing of the Saudi regime, then I guess I'll have to admit that I was wrong in trusting our leaders, and I have to go back to the left ? I truly and with absolute sincerity believe that Dr Wolfowitz is on the same page with me on this ... He is a supporter of world-wide democracy ? I want America to be the powerful nation that brings democracy and freedom to those oppressed. I want America to be the liberator.

Such a comment would leave some conservatives both in the UK and the US profoundly shaken. What is curious is that people like Schwartz have heard in Republican George W Bush a call to arms. When George W Bush spontaneously called to rescue workers on the rubble of the World Trade Centre on 14 September, "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people ? And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon", he set the scene for this unlikely alliance.

Bush's call that day was no Gettysburg address but it served its purpose. In an era of carefully scripted phrases and considered rhetoric, it was both intensely powerful and moving. For liberals and neo-cons alike, it was firmly in the tradition of Kennedy's "bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the success and survival of liberty". It was an outburst of instinctive American idealism.

Jonathan Holmes' unfairly maligned Four Corners documentary of the neo-cons summed up this mood with the title, American Dreamers. Such idealism instantly arouses the suspicion of some conservatives. Peter Hitchens' opposition, like that of many British conservatives, seems to be the reflex revulsion at the vulgar American.

This idealistic American repels Hitchens. He instead believes in an alternative America with its "generous citizens in their quiet towns and peaceful suburbs which I love so much". One can't help thinking that Hitchens' preferred America is some idyllic New Hampshire village, perhaps the kind of place where a real life Jimmy Stewart character would make his dignified way through life.

Mr. Powell, subconsciously, nails it when he mentions the loss of British power. For the Tory far Right opposition to America is a function of bitterness over British decline, rather than a matter of principle. Meanwhile, as a resident of an idyllic New Hampshire village, though n Jimmy Stewart, let me assure the author that the generous, peaceful citizenry mostly wants to bomb France on the way to bomb Saudi Arabia.

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HEY BIG SPENDER...

Democratic analysts wary of '04 proposals: Fear spending war among candidates, losing an advantage (Ronald Brownstein, 5/26/2003 , Los Angeles Times)

Even with the federal government facing record budget deficits, many of the 2004 Democratic presidential contenders are advancing much larger spending programs than Al Gore was willing to risk as the party's 2000 nominee.

Some Democratic analysts are increasingly concerned that the substantial new proposals may threaten the party's ability to challenge President Bush in next year's election on what could be a major vulnerability: the federal budget's sharp deterioration, from record surplus to massive deficits, under his presidency.

''At some point, the Democrats will be called to task to see if their own programs meet the fiscal test they are holding up for the Bush administration,'' said Elaine Kamarck, senior policy adviser to Gore in 2000. [...]

Health care is only the beginning of the Democrats' spending plans. Without yet providing specifics, Gephardt has also promised a teacher corps, a homeland security trust fund, a new federal effort to rebuild ''crumbling schools,'' and new tax credits to encourage conservation and the use of renewable energy sources.

Kerry has proposed a $50 billion, five-year increase in homeland security spending and a $3-billion-a-year plan to expand Clinton's AmeriCorps national service program. Kerry's website also promises programs to expand access to preschool, reduce class sizes, and subsidize school construction.

Dean hasn't laid out many specific programs beyond his health care plan. But he has promised to increase spending on homeland security, ''provide incentives'' for young people to teach, fund a ''serious investment in our children,'' and increase federal infrastructure spending ''as a last resort'' to stimulate the economy.

Although moving more cautiously on health care, Edwards, Lieberman, and Graham are accumulating other obligations. All have pledged significantly more spending on homeland security.

There's always the Fritz Mondale approach: promise to raise taxes.

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THE INMATES RUNNING THE ASYLUM

U.S. Youths Rebel at Harsh School in Costa Rica (TIM WEINER, May 27, 2003, NY Times)

Dundee Ranch, the latest foreign outpost in a far-flung affiliation of behavior modification programs that promises to convert troubled American teenagers into straight arrows, lasted 19 months before the students rose up in revolt and overthrew their masters.

The rebellion erupted after Costa Rican officials visited the ranch--an old hotel on a rutted red-dirt road--and told the children of their rights after complaints about the program from a former director.

"They told us you have the right to speak, you have the right to speak to your parents, you have the right to leave if you feel you've been mistreated," said Hugh Maxwell, 17, of Rhode Island. "Kids heard that and they started running for the door. There was elation, cheering and clapping and chaos. People were crying."

Adults beat some of the children to quell the uprising, according to six people present. The academy's owner, Narvin Lichfield, was jailed for 30 hours, may face criminal charges and has been ordered by a judge to remain in Costa Rica. Four staff members feared by the children are being deported to Jamaica, government officials said. Most of the children are going home, many to an uncertain future. [...]

"I can't say the program did no good," said Dustin Sanow, 17, of Mississippi, "but it's pretty traumatic. Parents have no idea what's going on. I feel they manipulated my folks."

His mother, Anita Sanow, an Air Force major, did not find out that Dundee Ranch had collapsed until Sunday afternoon. "I feel that people were less than honest with me about the program," she said. "I feel they misrepresented things. I feel like the dollar mattered more than the kids."

Dustin's friend Hugh Maxwell said: "I support the program. It provides you with a chance to change. But it deprives you of so much, too. It's a last resort. It's desperation."

If it weren't traumatic is there any reason to believe it would reach the kids?

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FRANK N SENSE

The End of History and Its Discontents: a review of Latin America at the End of Politics by Forrest D. Colburn (Paul Berman, Spring 03, Dissent)

Francis Fukuyama introduced his notion of "The End of History" in the National Interest in 1989 and added a few lively elaborations in The End of History and the Last Man in 1992; and though people all over the world snickered at the naivete of his idea in 1989, and snickered again in 1992, and have kept on snickering, Fukuyama's marvelous provocation has never entirely faded into the past, as provocations usually do. And there is good reason for this. In presenting his theory about the capital-letter End of History, Fukuyama made three related points. He argued that challenges to liberal democracy from other ideological and social systems had failed, and any new such challenge in the foreseeable future was likewise bound to fail. He argued that liberal democratic societies were therefore destined to dominate the world. And he argued that liberal democracy's triumph was going to be, all in all, a disappointment-a triumph of the gray, the ignoble, and the mediocre. Such was his three-pronged provocation. It was a stimulating idea, if only because it challenged us to tally up the ways in which he was wrong-and right. So let us draw up a tally. How does the End of History look today, fourteen years after Fukuyama first broached his theme?

In Europe today-Fukuyama's End of History was, I think, mostly a theory about Europe-his three points seem to me, in retrospect, all too accurate. Totalitarian movements have pretty much disappeared from the European landscape. Nor does any other kind of social system, something different from liberal democracy, seem to be in the offing, even as a remote possibility. A specter is not haunting Europe. Everyone knows that, in Russia and other Slavic zones far to the east, Europe's transition to liberal democracy has turned out to be, at best, slow and shaky; in Belarus and a few other places, non-existent. Still, Fukuyama's argument never promised liberal democracy for everyone. The argument predicted, instead, liberal democracy's domination over other systems, and that is the case in Europe. Mafias and tyrants may have kept their hold on power, here and there; but mafias and tyrants do not seem to be the wave of the European future.

On the other hand, nobody could argue today that Europe's liberal democracy has turned out to be especially noble or inspiring. The European democrats have shown themselves to be admirably gifted at securing the good life for themselves, and often they have been generous to other people, too. But not when it comes to taking a risk. Europe's democrats have proved to be noticeably reluctant to put up a fight on behalf of anyone else, or even on behalf of their own European civilization. No sooner did Fukuyama's book come out, back in 1992, than the Europeans threw up their hands in helpless despair at the fate of Europe's principal indigenous religious minority, the Muslims of the Balkans. Europe would not defend its Jews, sixty years ago, and Europe would not defend its Muslims ten years ago. It was principally the American military, not the rich and powerful Europeans, who rescued Bosnia and Kosovo. Liberal democracy in Europe turned out to be a gated community, intended to create a perfect society for the fortunate populations within the gates, with alms and best wishes for the rest of the world. Some of the Europeans have lately been showing a little more fight in Afghanistan and even in the Middle East, which is good to see. But, taken in sum, Fukuyama's three-pronged prediction in regard to Europe has turned out to be reasonably accurate, as predictions go.

As is Mr. Berman's wont, the piece gets shakier as it goes alon, but that bit's quite good.

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A PROOF TOO FAR

Decencies for Skeptics: Is religion necessary to make a moral society? No; but reverence is. (Roger Scruton, City Journal)

Religious belief fills our world with an authority that cannot be questioned and from which all our duties flow. No better device has ever occurred to the human race for the quelling of selfish appetites and the transmission of moral ideas.

Human reason, in which the Enlightenment rested all its hopes, has shown itself singularly embarrassed in its attempts to come up with a substitute. Kant attempted to derive all morality from the Categorical Imperative, which tells me to act only on that maxim that I can will as a universal law. But Kant?s magnificent system raises moral duty to such a height of abstraction that it seems to break free from the world of real temptations and float serenely in the intellectual stratosphere. Even if it is true that I must obey the Categorical Imperative, this does not provide me with the daily bread of moral feeling as I pick my way through a crowd of selfish strangers. The Kantian morality is too cool, too reasonable, too?detached from the contending emotions over which it claims to legislate. There may indeed be those who live by it, but they are not the people who are likely to cause the social disorder of which conservatives complain. For the mass of mankind, evil appetites must be blocked by some countervailing fear. And whence comes this fear, if not from a religion?

Yet there is something despondent in the search for a religious solution to the problems of secular society. All too often, the search is conducted in a spirit of despair by people who are as infected by the surrounding nihilism as those whose behavior they wish to rectify. Their message is simple: ?God is dead--but don?t spread it around.? Such words can be whispered among friends but not broadcast to the multitude. It is true that Disraeli, like many nineteenth-century conservatives, combined private skepticism with public endorsement of the established church. But he lived at a time when religion had such vitality that public opinion was still shocked by those, like Nietzsche, who protested against its power. Since that time, too many people have heard of the death of God, and too many people have built an empire of appetite upon this unsubstantiated rumor. The genie of skepticism can?t be re-imprisoned in its bottle.

Besides, as all conservatives know, the religious instinct is too vast and deep a force to be conjured from the depths to which it has retreated without at the same time jeopardizing a host of precious achievements--religious freedom itself being one of them. Those who call for a religious revival are not, as a rule, galvanized by images of the Crusades, the Inquisition, or the burning of heretics. The only religious revival reshaping modern society--Islamic fundamentalism--has about as much appeal for a Western conservative as a visit from Ghengis Khan. In fact, the religion that is esteemed by the conservative conscience is precisely a religion that has lost its vital force and become something quieter, more routinized, less all-embracing in its demands than is typical of a newfound faith. It is a religion typified by Christianity and Judaism in their latter days, tempered by the necessary toleration of urban life and nourished by the ordinary decencies of a law-abiding community.

Like many English conservatives, I look back with nostalgia to the Christian heritage passed on to me through church and school. The religion that I absorbed made little distinction between the law of God and the law of England. It referred to Christ?s passion only in order to remind me that the stiff upper lip has an irreproachable precedent. It filled my thoughts with gospel stories and parables, the standard interpretation of which coincided with the Boy Scout?s code of honor. It taught me that faith was a useful acquisition, but not one to show off about or with which to embarrass your neighbors. Religion is fine in its place but should not be imposed on others. Besides, faith is honest only when freely chosen, and for an Englishman honesty is the best policy. [...]

Whatever the state of their religious convictions, people are unconsciously aware that the customs of society embody more wisdom than could emerge in a single generation. They may struggle against this awareness, as liberals do. But it is far more reasonable, far more congenial, to acquiesce in it. The decencies and hesitations that once surrounded sex, for instance, are not the arbitrary injunctions of a departed ruling class. They are the voice of the collective dead, alerting us to a duty that we could never hope to understand through our own experience alone, and the questioning of which is the height of folly. Modern America has questioned this duty and is now paying a heavy price for its presumption. Even if the genie is out of the bottle and nobody has any clear idea how it might be coaxed back in, it is surely only a naive faith in human ingenuity that would lead anyone to think that sexual liberation has been anything but a disaster.

Those who hope to safeguard ?natural piety? through a return to religious faith jeopardize the thing they treasure. For they make piety as irrational as the beliefs to which they attach it. But piety is not irrational at all. It is the voice that tells us that the goods of society are inherited and could never be rediscovered by the generation that foolishly rejects them. The true conservative should be prepared to acknowledge that his audience lives in modern times. Religious belief is a bonus that we cannot assume. But piety is a social necessity; it speaks of duties that lie above and beyond our desires and contracts. If people cease to recognize such duties, society will crumble into ?the dust and powder of individuality,? as Burke described it.

Conservatives should therefore be gentle with their unbelieving colleagues. It may be right to hope for a religious revival, but not to work for it. The conservative task in the modern world is to scoff at the scoffers, to ridicule the prejudice against all that Burke promised under the rubric of ?prejudice,? and to support the institutions in which piety is born. What, in modern life, carries the spirit of history? To what school or club or college should our children belong, in order to acquire the deep-down awareness that the world was not born with them, and that their happiness depends upon the approval of people who are no longer living?

Mr. Scruton represents that worthwile but tragic strain of British thought that combines skepticism and nostalgia to produce a kind of conservatism by inertia--we can't believe in anything, but Britain was great when we did, so let's not get rid of everything we had then, let's act as if we still believe in something. This is the Right's version of "freeloading atheism".

But rational skepticism has a fatal flaw--one that renders it quite dubious as the basis of a political philosophy--it ultimately disproves itself and reason entirely. Having once denied that we can know anything with certainty about reality through the exercise of pure reason, one has denied the reality, reason, and the self. They can only be recouped by the exercise of faith. So the great response to the skepticism of Hume and Berkley is not an elaborate theory but Samuel Johnson kicking a large stone and exclaiming: "I deny it thus". No matter how taut their theory may be, no one will choose to live their life by it. We all believe certain things to be real, most especially ourselves, and, therefore, accepting their proof as valid, we all proceed from a stance of faith. That genie too is out of the bottle.

When Mr. Scruton then argues, quite accurately, that reason can offer no coherent basis for morality, that only religion can, we must ask: so what? Reason couldn't prove that you and I exist, but that does not truly make us doubt that we do. And when we turn to lokk at all of humanity today and all of human history, if we perceive, as we must, that you and I are rather insignificant, but that morality matters greatly, who is so self-absorbed that they would argue that faith is sufficient to prove our own measly existence but we can have no recourse to it to prove that the morality upon which decent human society depends likewise exists? The claim that I can utilize personal faith in order to know myself to be real but that any faith I disagree with, including (especially) one shared by billions of my fellow men, is necessarily illusion, because mere faith, is nought but egomania.

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UN-AMERICAN

McCarthy's Secret Show (Victor Navasky, May 8, 2003, The Nation)

The other night I went to see Trumbo, an Off Broadway trial run of Christopher Trumbo's play based mostly on his father, Dalton Trumbo's, amazing letters about life under the Hollywood blacklist and other assaults on individual liberty in the name of national safety and security. The evening includes his famous dictum that those too young to remember the McCarthy era should not waste time searching for "villains or heroes or saints or devils because there were none; there were only victims." Survivors are still debating the moral implications of his generous injunction, but as it turns out, those too young to remember that dark time may have only too many opportunities to revisit it.

By coincidence, the showing of Trumbo (it plays only on Mondays) coincided with the release by the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs of five volumes of secret testimony from 160 closed hearings held during Senator Joseph McCarthy's redbaiting rampage through our democracy fifty years ago.

Press commentary has ranged over McCarthy and his chief counsel Roy Cohn's bullying tactics, the fact that while they turned up some Communist smallfry, nobody went to prison and gossipy tidbits about the people called, who ranged from the famous, such as Aaron Copland (not a Communist), Paul Robeson's wife (she denied any personal experience with Communism) and James Reston, Dashiell Hammett and Langston Hughes, to bit players like Annie Lee Moss, the State Department file clerk who didn't know who Karl Marx was. Also starring among the witnesses and attorneys were many old Nation friends (Corliss Lamont, Harvey O'Connor, James Weinstein, Leonard Boudin and his partner, Victor Rabinowitz).

The closed hearings, it turned out, were a sort of dress rehearsal for later public hearings--show trials. Many witnesses who held their own were never called. Trumbo notwithstanding, there are heroes and villains in these pages, especially Roy Cohn at his witness-badgering worst and Democratic senators like Stuart Symington and Henry "Scoop" Jackson in supporting roles, out-McCarthying McCarthy in their efforts to prove the un-Americanism of Fifth Amendment-invoking witnesses.

But what most of the commentators have missed--and the reason Trumbo, the five volumes of declassified testimony and the latest batch of political memoirs are relevant today--is the apparent failure of our political culture to grasp a distinction one would have thought was elementary, the core of our Constitution and its values, the first principle taught in Democracy 101, namely, the difference between dissent and disloyalty.

If we accept the definition of insanity as making the same mistake over and over again but thinking it will work this time, Mr. Navasky may be insane. Whatever you may think of McCarthyism in general, Dalton Trumbo was an unrepentant Stalinist who used his "art" to do the subversive political bidding of our enemies. He was disloyal and deserved to be persecuted and prosecuted.

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THE VIEW THROUGH THE CRYPTONEOCROMICON

The Neocons in Power (Elizabeth Drew, May 14, 2003, NY Review of Books)

The conflict within the Bush administration in recent months over policy for postwar Iraq has caused much confusion and has already damaged the reconstruction effort. The stakes are enormous not just for the US and for the people of Iraq, but for the entire Middle East, and the rest of the world. Almost from the outset of the Bush administration there have been battles between the State Department and the Defense Department, but the controversy over postwar Iraq has brought out bitterness and knife-wielding of a sort that Washington has seldom seen.

To some extent, the tension between the two departments is inherent because of their different missions. This conflict spills over into the White House and the think tanks and the offices of various consultants around town. It is really a conflict between the neoconservatives, who are largely responsible for getting us into the war against Iraq, and those they disparagingly call the "realists," who tend to be more cautious about the United States' efforts to remake the Middle East into a democratic region.

The word "neoconservative" originally referred to former liberals and leftists who were dismayed by the countercultural movements of the 1960s and the Great Society, and adopted conservative views, for example, against government welfare programs, and in favor of interventionist foreign policies. A group of today's "neocons" now hold key positions in the Pentagon and in the White House and they even have a mole in the State Department.

The most important activists are Richard Perle, who until recently headed the Defense Policy Board (he's still a member), a once-obscure committee, ostensibly just an advisory group but now in fact a powerful instrument for pushing neocon policies; James Woolsey, who has served two Democratic and two Republican administrations, was CIA director during the Clinton administration, and now works for the management consult-ing firm Booz Allen Hamilton; Kenneth Adelman, a former official in the Ford and Reagan administrations who trains executives by using Shakespeare's plays as a guide to the use of power (http://www.moversandshakespeares.com); Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense and the principal advocate of the Iraq policy followed by the administration; Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon official in charge of the reconstruction of Iraq; and I. Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. Two principal allies of this core group are John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control (though he opposes arms control) and international security affairs, and Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser. Cheney himself and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld can be counted as subscribing to the neocons' views about Iraq.

A web of connections binds these people in a formidable alliance. Perle, Wolfowitz, and Woolsey have long been close friends and neighbors in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The three have worked with one another in the Pentagon, served on the same committees and commissions, and participated in the same conferences. Feith is a prot?g? of Perle, and worked under him during the Reagan administration. Adelman, a friend of Perle, Wolfowitz, and Woolsey, is very close to Cheney and Rumsfeld. The Cheneys and the Adelmans share a wedding anniversary and celebrate it together each year; Adelman worked for Rumsfeld in three government positions, and the Adelmans have visited the Rumsfelds at their various homes around the country. Woolsey and Adelman are members of Perle's Pentagon advisory group. At the outset of this administration Perle made sure that it was composed of people who share his hawkish views. (Perle recently resigned the chairmanship over allegations of conflicts of interest with his private consulting business, but he remains a member of the advisory board, and his power isn't diminished.) Bolton, over the objections of Colin Powell, was appointed to the State Department at the urging of his neocon allies. (A State Department official said to me recently, referring to the Pentagon, "Why don't we have a mole over there?")

Perle, Woolsey, and Wolfowitz are all disciples of the late Albert Wohlstetter, a University of Chicago professor who had worked for the RAND corporation and later taught at the University of California. Throughout the cold war he argued that nuclear deterrence wasn't sufficient--that the US had to actually plan to fight a nuclear war in order to deter it. He strongly advocated the view that the military power of the USSR?was underrated. Wolfowitz earned his Ph.D. under Wohlstetter; Perle met Wohlstetter when he was a high school student in Los Angeles and was invited by Wohlstetter's daughter to swim in their pool. Later, Wohlstetter invited Perle, then a graduate student at Princeton, to Washington to work with Wolfowitz on a paper about the proposed Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Wohlstetter opposed and which has been abandoned by the Bush administration. Wohlstetter introduced Perle to Democratic Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson of Washington, an aggressive cold warrior and champion of Israel's interests. Woolsey (who calls himself "a Scoop Jackson Democrat") came to know Wohlstetter in 1980, when they both served on a Pentagon panel. Of Wohlstetter Woolsey said in a conversation we had in mid-April, "A key to understanding how Richard and Paul and I think is Albert. He's had a major impact on us."

And through Wohlstetter, Perle met Ahmed Chalabi, then an Iraqi exile who had founded the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization of Iraqi groups, many of its members in exile. [...]

The neocons' assurance that the United States could not only remove Saddam Hussein but also convert Iraq and the rest of the Middle East into democratic nations relies on several false analogies. Wolfowitz, his neo-con allies, and the journalists who circulate their ideas often cite Germany and Japan after the Second World War as examples of countries that were transformed into democracies. But unlike Iraq, Japan had a largely homogeneous culture and a symbol of national unity, the Emperor, who kept his title if not his power. Japan, in any case, has had essentially one-party rule since the end of the war. And Germany, which also had a cohesive society, had a democratic constitution and parliamentary institutions until Hitler was barely elected chancellor in 1933. Moreover, the US occupied Japan for seven years and Germany for four. Rumsfeld has said that no time limit can be set on the US occupation of Iraq, but US officials are aware that the longer it goes on the greater will be the danger to US troops there--and perhaps domestic pressures to bring them home. (The neocons--as well as officials of previous administrations and some academics--also assert that democracies don't make war on each other, but this is a highly debated proposition.)

Because some--but certainly not all--of the neoconservatives are Jewish and virtually all are strong supporters of the Likud Party's policies, the accusation has been made that their aim to "democratize" the region is driven by their desire to surround Israel with more sympathetic neighbors. Such a view would explain the otherwise puzzling statements by Wolfowitz and others before the war that "the road to peace in the Middle East goes through Baghdad." But it is also the case that Bush and his chief political adviser Karl Rove are eager both to win more of the Jewish vote in 2004 than Bush did in 2000 and to maintain the support of the Christian right, whose members are also strong supporters of Israel.

Hard to know what to make fun of first here, but did she just suggest that the pre-conditions for a stable democracy already existed in Germany because of its experience from the end of WWI until 1933? That's rich.

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MILITARY HISTORIAN FIGHTS ACADEMIC WAR

The farmer (Laura Secor, Boston Globe, 5/25/2003)

The Other Greeks (1995) is probably [Victor Davis] Hanson's signature work. In it, he argues that the values of classical civilization originated not among the urban elites of fifth-century Athens but among the communities of middling farmer-soldiers who dominated Greece's pre-classical era....

Had he left it at that, Hanson might today be simply an eminence among classicists. Instead, Hanson "really alienated himself from the field," says Charles Hedrick, a classicist at Santa Cruz.

In the 1998 jeremiad "Who Killed Homer?", Hanson and the Santa Clara University classicist John Heath diagnose the field of classics as terminally afflicted with trendy literary theory, multiculturalism, low standards, and mandarin professors who ought to emulate the Greeks they teach but instead shun the classroom in favor of rarefied research and left-wing political indoctrination.

The tone of the book was stinging and superior. Critics charged that Hanson and Heath's claims were exaggerated and their prescriptions reactionary. Even like-minded classicists felt that Hanson and Heath had unfairly slighted valuable feminist scholarship in their blanket condemnation of new developments in the field.

Of all Hanson's battles, however, the most peculiar was with a University of Maryland Latinist named Judith Hallett. In a 1999 issue of the journal Arion, Hanson published a devastating review of an anthology Hallett had edited. But as Hallett pointed out on a classics listserv and in The Wall Street Journal, Hanson had neglected to make an important disclosure.

Several years earlier, confessed Hallett, when the FBI had released sketches of the Unabomber and suggested he lived in northern California, Hallett had called the tip-line and offered Hanson and Heath's names as possible associates. Their politics fit the description, she claimed, and both men resembled the sketch. Surely Hanson had gotten a call from an investigator and should have recused himself from reviewing Hallett's work.

Hanson and Heath countered that they had received no such call....

"When someone attacks me, I reply with twice that," says Hanson, who has penned many a blistering response to a negative review. It's not unlike the tactic Hanson recommends in war: "You do that a few times, and people stop attacking you."

I love Victor Davis Hanson, but his faith in the efficacy of head-on, aggressive attacks upon enemies seems to me exaggerated. H.L. Mencken, a very successful controversialist, had the opposite prescription: ignore your critics -- "it's best to leave them in uncertainty." Even in military affairs, the recent trend in military strategy -- as we've seen in the two Iraq wars -- has been to look for ways to avoid head-on clashes with enemy strengths, but to fight the enemy when and where he is weak. George Bush has followed the Mencken approach adroitly, ignoring those who oppose him while aggressively pursuing his own positive goals.

On the other hand, academia is a little different than the battlefield: the costs of contention are counted in little more than hurt feelings, and maybe a lost job or two. But to observers, witnessing experts contend can be very educational; to the experts themselves, it can be a spur to improving their work. Thank goodness we still have warriors like Victor Davis Hanson. On this Memorial Day, it's well that we honor their martial spirit.

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HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN

America Goes Backward (Stanley Hoffmann, May 15, 2003, NY Review of Books)

Less than two and a half years after it came to power, the Bush administration, elected by fewer than half of the voters, has an impressive but depressing record. It has, in self-defense, declared one war--the war on terrorism--that has no end in sight. It has started, and won, two other wars. It has drastically changed the strategic doctrine and the diplomatic position of the United States, arguing that the nation's previous positions were obsolete and that the US has enough power to do pretty much as it pleases. At home, as part of the war on terrorism, it has curbed civil liberties, the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, and the access of foreign students to US schools and universities. It holds in custody an unknown number of aliens and some Americans treated as "enemy combatants," suspected but not indicted, whose access to hearings and lawyers has been denied. The Republican majority in both houses of Congress and the courts' acceptance of the notion that the President's war powers override all other concerns have given him effective control of all the branches of government. The administration's nominees to the courts would consolidate its domination of the judiciary.

The Justice Department is also supporting efforts to have the Supreme Court reverse its previous decisions on affirmative action and on women's rights. The social programs that have softened the harshness of capitalism since the New Deal, inferior as they are to those of other liberal democracies, are threatened by the Republicans' relentless war against the state's welfare functions, their preference for voluntary over mandated solutions to health care, and for private over public schools. Large numbers of old, sick, or very young people, mainly among the poor, will be deprived of financial assistance as the result of administration policies. Those policies include the cuts that will result from the huge deficits caused by military expenditures and reduced taxes and revenues, and the gradual transfer of many welfare and educational costs to states that are broke, must balance their budgets, and receive little aid from the federal government.

The political forces that many expected to question policies and express dissent have been remarkably meek and mute. The Democrats are reluctant to attack a popular president. Before the war against Iraq and during the war itself, the press and television gave Bush the benefit of the doubt, with chauvinistic support being offered under the guise of patriotism. Anyone who tunes into BBC radio and television can only be struck by the contrast in style and substance between its news programs and those on the American networks. (In no US newspaper or broadcast that I have seen has the French position on Iraq been accurately presented. ) It sometimes seemed that the press had become "embedded" not only in the fighting forces but in Washington officialdom itself.

The US remains a liberal democracy, but those who have hoped for progressive policies at home and enlightened policies abroad may be forgiven if
they have become deeply discouraged by a not-so-benign soft imperialism, by a fiscal and social policy that takes good care of the rich but shuns the
poor on grounds of a far from "compassionate conservatism," and by the conformism, both dictated by the administration and often spontaneous
among the public, that Tocqueville observed 130 years ago. Some will say that it could have been worse; but a blunter form of domination might have
resulted in sharper and more organized opposition.

Mr. Hoffmann may seek to comfort himself that the Administration's victories come solely because of the war, but that ignores the tax cuts, education bill, abortion rollback, fetal stem cell ruling, judicial appointments, Faith-based rule changes, environmental changes, etc., etc., etc. that came prior to 9-11. Indeed, other than security measures, it's difficult to see any domestic policy where Mr. Bush has won because of the war. Recall that if you go back and look at the columns being written at this time two years ago, the Left was complaining that Mr. Bush was pursuing his radically conservative agenda despite not having a mandate for it. To portray his successes as merely a function of wartime hysteria is dishonest or ignorant.

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IF THE SKATE FITS...

Forces reject logo for 'sissies': DND's latest effort to redo 'bland' design draws harsh reviews (Jack Aubry, May 26, 2003, The Ottawa Citizen)

The latest effort by the Department of National Defence to replace the Canadian Forces' logo has once again rejected by the public and soldiers, with one design proposal panned by military members as being directed toward "sissies," a newly released government report says. [...]

One new proposal, which was designed by an outside firm, removed the word "Canadian" from the logo and drew negative comments that it was "tacky" and "looks like a tie clip." Some in the focus groups also commented that they "see the French flag" in the logo because of its colour blocks.

"In the Canadian Forces (focus) groups, the perceived target audience was ... soft individuals -- perhaps sissies," said the report.

Redesigning the logo, which a military spokesman acknowledged was still a work in progress, is an attempt to simplify and modernize the Canadian Forces' identity.

The recently released report identified a third proposal, which was designed in-house, as the one most preferred by those tested, but it "still requires improvement." Viewed as a complete departure from the current logo, its strength was "the modern and fresh image projected" and its popularity among members of the Canadian Forces.

But others suggested that its arc-like shape gave off a message that was confusing, "too abstract and generic" and "missing something."

Still others said it was too difficult to understand, lacked a focal point and did not "communicate history."

A fourth proposal, which was also designed in-house, received a mostly negative reaction, with some in the public even suggesting that it "implies that we just lost the war" or "death and loss" and that its "colour is drab and weary." The report said the sepia monochrome colour was a major weakness of the logo, along with the accompanying negative theme of sadness and war.

Here's a logo they could use:

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WRONG QUESTION

Syrian president: Does al-Qaida exist? (AP, May 26, 2003)

Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview published Sunday that he doubts the existence of al-Qaida.

''Is there really an entity called al-Qaida? Was it in Afghanistan? Does it exist now?'' Assad asked, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Anba.

Osama bin Laden, the Islamic extremist who heads al-Qaida, ''cannot talk on the phone or use the Internet, but he can direct communications to the four corners of the world?'' Assad said.

''This is illogical.''

Such speculation is popular among some in the Arab world who say Washington has manufactured or exaggerated the threat posed by al-Qaida in order to paint Muslims as dangerous.

The more important question is why does Mr. Assad still exist?

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THE FIRST CASUALTY OF THE PRESS

Vote of No Confidence (Howard Kurtz, May 26, 2003, Washington Post)

One of the lingering mysteries of the Jayson Blair affair is why the people whose quotes were fabricated or plagiarized didn't complain to the New York Times.

The Associated Press managing editors surveyed 3,000 people through its Credibility Roundtables Project, and many people said they don't contact newspapers about mistakes. "What's the point?" said Deborah Hudgins of Manchester, Md. "Do they really care?"

"Why waste the time," said John Martin Meek of Green Valley, Ariz., adding that the local paper has never responded to his calls or e-mails. Newspaper errors, said Karen Johnson of Otis Orchards, Wash., are really "deliberate embellishments or fabrications to make the story more interesting." Pretty depressing stuff.

Obviously it's his profession so he has a sentimental attachment to it, but Mr. Kurtz can't really be surprised that we distrust the press, can he?

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A MATTER OF DEATH AND LIFE

Life: Defining the Beginning by the End (Maureen L. Condic, May 2003, First Things)

The question of when and under precisely what conditions people are viewed as ?dead? has itself been the subject of considerable debate. Traditionally, the medical profession considered a person dead when his heart stopped beating--a condition that rapidly results in the death of the cells of the body due to loss of blood flow. As the life-saving potential of organ transplants became increasingly apparent in the 1960s, the medical community undertook a reexamination of the medical standards for death. Waiting until the heart stops beating results in considerable damage to otherwise transplantable organs. After a long and contentious debate, a new standard of death was proposed in 1968 that defined ?brain death? as the critical difference between living persons and corpses, a standard that is now widely (although not universally) accepted throughout the world.

Brain death occurs when there has been irreversible damage to the brain, resulting in a complete and permanent failure of brain function. Following the death of the brain, the person stops thinking, sensing, moving, breathing, or performing any other function, although many of the cells in the brain remain ?alive? following loss of brain function. The heart can continue to beat spontaneously for some time following death of the brain (even hearts that have been entirely removed from the body will continue to beat for a surprisingly long period), but eventually the heart ceases to function due to loss of oxygen. The advantage of brain death as a legal and medical definition for the end of life is that the quality of organs for transplant can be maintained by maintaining artificial respiration. So long as oxygen is artificially supplied, the heart will continue to beat and the other organs of the body will be maintained in the same state they were prior to death of the brain.

Defining death as the irreversible loss of brain function remains for some a controversial decision. The fact that the cells and organs of the body can be maintained after the death of the individual is a disturbing concept. The feeling that corpses are being kept artificially ?alive? as medical zombies for the convenient culture of transplantable organs can be quite discomforting, especially when the body in question is that of a loved one. Nonetheless, it is important to realize that this state of affairs is essentially no different from what occurs naturally following death by any means. On a cellular and molecular level, nothing changes in the instant of death. Immediately following death, most of the cells in the body are still alive, and for a time at least, they continue to function normally. Maintaining heartbeat and artificial respiration simply extends this period of time. Once the ?plug is pulled,? and the corpse is left to its own devices, the cells and organs of the body undergo the same slow death by oxygen deprivation they would have experienced had medical science not intervened.

What has been lost at death is not merely the activity of the brain or the heart, but more importantly the ability of the body?s parts (organs and cells) to function together as an integrated whole. Failure of a critical organ results in the breakdown of the body?s overall coordinated activity, despite the continued normal function (or ?life?) of other organs. Although cells of the brain are still alive following brain death, they cease to work together in a coordinated manner to function as a brain should. Because the brain is not directing the lungs to contract, the heart is deprived of oxygen and stops beating. Subsequently, all of the organs that are dependent on the heart for blood flow cease to function as well. The order of events can vary considerably (the heart can cease to function, resulting in death of the brain, for example), but the net effect is the same. Death occurs when the body ceases to act in a coordinated manner to support the continued healthy function of all bodily organs. Cellular life may continue for some time following the loss of integrated bodily function, but once the ability to act in a coordinated manner has been lost, ?life? cannot be restored to a corpse--no matter how ?alive? the cells composing the body may yet be.

It is often asserted that the relevant feature of brain death is not the loss of integrated bodily function, but rather the loss of higher-order brain activities, including consciousness. However, this view does not reflect the current legal understanding of death. The inadequacy of equating death with the loss of cognitive function can be seen by considering the difference between brain death and ?persistent vegetative state? or irreversible coma. Individuals who have entered a persistent vegetative state due to injury or disease have lost all higher brain functions and are incapable of consciousness. Nonetheless, integrated bodily function is maintained in these patients due to the continued activity of lower-order brain centers. Although such patients are clearly in a lamentable medical state, they are also clearly alive; converting such patients into corpses requires some form of euthanasia.

Despite considerable pressure from the medical community to define persistent vegetative state as a type of brain death (a definition that would both expand the pool of organ donors and eliminate the high medical costs associated with maintaining people in this condition), the courts have repeatedly refused to support persistent vegetative state as a legal definition of death. People whose bodies continue to function in an integrated manner are legally and medically alive, despite their limited (or absent) mental function. Regardless of how one may view the desirability of maintaining patients in a persistent vegetative state (this being an entirely distinct moral and legal question), there is unanimous agreement that such patients are not yet corpses. Even those who advocate the withdrawal of food and water from patients in persistent vegetative state couch their position in terms of the ?right to die,? fully acknowledging that such patients are indeed ?alive.? While the issues surrounding persistent vegetative state are both myriad and complex, the import of this condition for understanding the relationship between mental function and death is clear: the loss of integrated bodily function, not the loss of higher mental ability, is the defining legal characteristic of death.

What does the nature of death tell us about the nature of human life? The medical and legal definition of death draws a clear distinction between living cells and living organisms. Organisms are living beings composed of parts that have separate but mutually dependent functions. While organisms are made of living cells, living cells themselves do not necessarily constitute an organism. The critical difference between a collection of cells and a living organism is the ability of an organism to act in a coordinated manner for the continued health and maintenance of the body as a whole. It is precisely this ability that breaks down at the moment of death, however death might occur. Dead bodies may have plenty of live cells, but their cells no longer function together in a coordinated manner. We can take living organs and cells from dead people for transplant to patients without a breach of ethics precisely because corpses are no longer living human beings. Human life is defined by the ability to function as an integrated whole—not by the mere presence of living human cells.

What does the nature of death tell us about the beginning of human life? From the earliest stages of development, human embryos clearly function as organisms. Embryos are not merely collections of human cells, but living creatures with all the properties that define any organism as distinct from a group of cells; embryos are capable of growing, maturing, maintaining a physiologic balance between various organ systems, adapting to changing circumstances, and repairing injury. Mere groups of human cells do nothing like this under any circumstances. The embryo generates and organizes distinct tissues that function in a coordinated manner to maintain the continued growth and health of the developing body. Even within the fertilized egg itself there are distinct ?parts? that must work together—specialized regions of cytoplasm that will give rise to unique derivatives once the fertilized egg divides into separate cells. Embryos are in full possession of the very characteristic that distinguishes a living human being from a dead one: the ability of all cells in the body to function together as an organism, with all parts acting in an integrated manner for the continued life and health of the body as a whole.

Linking human status to the nature of developing embryos is neither subjective nor open to personal opinion. Human embryos are living human beings precisely because they possess the single defining feature of human life that is lost in the moment of death--the ability to function as a coordinated organism rather than merely as a group of living human cells. [...]

Postnatal humans run very little risk that embryos will someday organize politically to impose restrictions on the rights of ?the born.? However, once society has accepted a particular justification for denying rights to one class of individuals, the same justification can readily be applied to other classes by appealing to the simple argument: ?Society has already determined that form, ability, or preference defines human life and thereby restricts human rights. Why should the same standard not be applied in this case?? In American society and jurisprudence, arguments from accepted precedent carry great emotional and legal force. Society must determine whether it is willing to accept the current subjective and arbitrary basis for determining the status of prenatal human beings as a legitimate precedent for future legislation on human rights.

Embryos are genetically unique human organisms, fully possessing the integrated biologic function that defines human life at all stages of development, continuing throughout adulthood until death. The ability to act as an integrated whole is the only function that departs from our bodies in the moment of death, and is therefore the defining characteristic of ?human life.? This definition does not depend on religious belief or subjective judgment. From the landmark case of Karen Ann Quinlan (1976) on, the courts have consistently upheld organismal function as the legal definition of human life. Failure to apply the same standard that so clearly defines the end of human life to its beginning is both inconsistent and unwarranted.

The conclusion that human life is defined by integrated (organismal) function has wide-reaching implications, both political and moral. While the public domain has limited authority to promote morality, it does have both the power and the responsibility to prevent harm to individuals. A consistent definition of what constitutes human life, both at its beginning and at its end, requires that current legislation dealing with prenatal human life be considered in light of both biological fact and accepted legal precedent regarding the definition of human life. If current legislation enables and supports the killing of human beings based on a scientifically flawed understanding of human life, laws can and should be revised. Clearly, such a
revision would not be without political cost. Yet allowing life-or-death decisions to be based on arbitrary or capricious definitions is also a course of action that is not without considerable social and moral cost.

That term "postnatal humans" is especially clever, eh?

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THE ONE PARTY STATE

Democrats Seek a Stronger Focus, and Money: More Americans say they are Democrats than Republicans. But Democrats lack unity, a coherent message and money. (ADAM CLYMER, 5/26/03, NY Times)

[T]here is at least some evidence of Democratic revival efforts, though hardly any Democrat who appears to be a quick fix. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, talks of using computers to "find Democratic voters in those red states" (the ones that television showed going Republican in 2000) and to build a base of small donors. For more than 30 years Democratic chairmen have promised to go after small donors, and then have let it slide.

But this time the effort seems real, as the national committee is using various commercial lists to find out more about its existing donors and to identify prospects like them. One early return is that e-mail fund-raising, a very inexpensive method, raised $486,000 in the first four months of this year, compared with $115,000 a year ago--a pittance compared to Republican successes, but still a significant increase.

Other projects include an effort by Governor Richardson to create a political action committee to train Hispanic political operatives and unify Hispanic voters across current divisions of those with Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban or Central-American ancestors. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has set up the Partnership for America's Families, an institution headed by the federation's former political chief, Steve Rosenthal, to do the on-the-ground organizing that political parties used to do (and Republicans have started to do again) including going house to house to get voters registered and discuss issues.

Another project nearing realization is the creation of a foundation like that of the conservative Heritage research group. The Democrats' organization will be led by John D. Podesta, President Clinton's last chief of staff. In September, Mr. Podesta said he expected to open the tentatively named American Majority Institute as "a think tank that both generates new ideas and provides a hard-hitting and consistent critique of the conservatives."

But Democratic efforts to build a new infrastructure pale next to the layers of affiliated political groups, research groups and like-minded media organs that the Republicans have fortified over the decades, especially since the election of Mr. Reagan as president in 1980. And, as Mr. Hart noted, Democrats are not trying to make inroads into Republican constituencies, like white male conservatives (who gave Mr. Gore only 11 percent of their votes in 2000) the way Republicans are going after African-Americans and Hispanics. On the other hand, Hispanic voters are becoming an ever-larger part of the electorate, and still give Democrats a solid majority of their votes.

If there is one thing all kinds of Democrats agree on, it is that they need a better message. Republicans have a very simple agenda of lower taxes, less government and more defense while Democrats have generalities like being for the little guy and attacking more than they propose.

Robert S. Strauss, the former Democratic national chairman who says Democrats seem to win the White House only on Republican mistakes like Watergate or that of the elder Bush in ignoring the faltering economy, calls last fall's performance on issues disgraceful.

"We didn't stand for anything," Mr. Strauss said. "We got what we deserved — nothing."

Will Marshall, an ally of Mr. From and Mr. Reed who leads the Progressive Policy Institute, said the party must "show that we can make progressive government work, not just defend the old New Deal monuments."

Bill Carrick, a more liberal Democratic strategist who is working for the presidential campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, said his party had "run out of gas." Mr. Carrick said Democrats would continue to fail if they chose to be "the party of incremental reforms, whether it's anything from school uniforms to prescription drugs, to patients' bill of rights." He said, "We've got to make the move away from incremental new reforms to big and broad issues."

There are two major elements of the Democrats' message problem. One is defensive--on the issue of security. The public strongly prefers Republicans on national defense, and even though most Democrats in Congress backed the war on Iraq, at least a third of the rank and file was unhappy with it, which makes it difficult for party leaders to get too far out in front.

Democrats have argued that the Bush administration is weaker than they are on the other element of security--domestic defense--but have made no headway despite the fact that Democrats wanted a department created to coordinate the effort before Mr. Bush would accept it and have urged greater spending on domestic security than the Bush administration would accept.

A more general problem was identified by Governor Richardson. In an interview, he said it was "very vague, but I think it's out there, that we're not the party of optimism and opportunity, that we're the party of malaise, and we're the party of class warfare."

One massive problem for the Democrats is that there are no new ideas for them to latch on to because the GOP has co-opted them. If the Democrats are fundamentally the party of government and the welfare net and if the 20th century established beyond argument the efficacy of competition and markets, then it should be they proposing the various free market reforms of social programs: Medical Savings Accounts, school vouchers, privatized retirement accounts, etc. All of these still require the diversion of private monies into government mandated institutions, but by allowing citizens/consumers greater choice about how that money is used, they bring market forces to bear on programs that were previously run from the top down and were insulated from competition. One needn't be a starry-eyed disciple of Milton Friedman to believe that such a system will inevitably function better than its predecessor. Yet Democrats, because they are captives of the unions and interest groups that have a vested interest in the inefficient older system, have proven themselves incapable of embracing reform.

Meanwhile, Republicans, who in their heart of hearts might well oppose even the government mandates, have recognized that they have no choice but to accept that there is going to be a governmental safety net, but have had the sagacity after facing this to push for making it as market-driven as possible. Conservatives, who for many years simply opposed things like welfare and Social Security, are now big supporters of such things and of public education, precisely because they afford a battlefield upon which to test their ideas.

This leaves us with a politics where the Democrat argument--that Republicans oppose social programs in their entirety--is demonstrably wrong, while the Republican argument--that Democrats oppose any kind of reform to a system that is obviously inefficient, sclerotic, and destined for bankruptcy--is exactly right. In this sense at least, Governor Richardson is right: the GOP is optimistic even on issues that Democrats used to own, while the Democrats seem to have given up. George W. Bush believes that if you let parents choose their children's schools, the parents will become more involved, the schools will be forced to respond, and the kids will get better educations. Democrats counter this by saying that, even if education would improve (I've never heard anyone argue it wouldn't), rich families will get money they don't need, public school teachers will be hurt, and religious schools might benefit. Republicans are arguing ideas and saying they'll work. Democrats are doing nothing beyond pitting groups against each other in order to defend the malaise.

We've said many times that conservatism is a minority ideology and can never enjoy long-term success in competition with liberalism, which is more self-consciously selfish. But, in an astoundingly inept feat, the Democrats have handed conservatives even the most selfish issues--redistribution of wealth via social programs--and so we may be in for a Republican epoch.

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IT TAKES AN ECONOMIST . . .

A few posts down, Orrin demolishes a Paul Krugman piece from today's New York Times, in which Krugman writes about what he sees as the real chance of a liquidity trap developing in the US because our situation is so similar to Japan's. As Orrin shows, we are not Japan, most notably in our demographics. This is, in fact, a point to which Krugman should be more open. Before becoming a execrable opinion hack, Krugman was a good economist. One of his best pieces developed a simple and accessible but rigorous model of Japan's liquidity trap. The most notable part of that piece, for our purposes, follows:

Japan's Trap (Paul Krugman, May 1998)

If Japan is in a liquidity trap, however, why?

In the model of sections 1-3, a liquidity trap will arise only if future productive capacity is actually lower than current capacity. Before loosening that constraint, we can ask why one might expect Japan's future capacity to be relatively low compared with today's. And the obvious answer is demography: Japan's combination of declining birth rate and lack of immigration apparently means a shrinking rather than growing labor force over the next several decades. In the absence of productivity growth, potential output, say, 15 or 20 years out - y* in the model - could actually be below current capacity. Moreover, the labor force will drop faster than the population, because of shifting composition, so it is substantially easier to make the case that per capita productive capacity might actually be lower at some future date than it is today.

The case that a negative real interest rate is necessary can be strengthened if we allow for heterogeneity among individuals plus imperfect capital markets. Suppose that at any given time some people expect their future income to be higher than their current income, others expect it to be lower. In a perfect capital market those who expect their income to rise would tend to engage in dissaving. But suppose that this is difficult - that consumption loans are hard to come by. Then those who expect their income to rise will not contribute as much to the demand for funds as those who expect it to fall contribute to the supply, and the equilibrium real interest rate will be lower than it would have been in a more efficient capital market. Notice that we need not argue that Japanese capital markets are especially inefficient: this can be viewed simply as a reason why aggregate capacity need not actually be falling to require a negative real interest rate. But it is also true that at least some Japanese institutional pecularities - the relatively small use of credit cards, the high downpayments required on expensive houses (see Ito 1992) may contribute to the problem.

Moving outside the formal model, the prospects for a liquidity trap also depend on investment demand. Here demography again comes into play: the prospective decline in the labor force reduces the expected return on investments. And institutional problems, such as the troubles of the banking system, may also lead to some credit rationing that deters investment. And to the extent that firms are financially constrained by the debt run up in the past, they may be unable to invest as much as they otherwise would.

On the whole, while it is quite easy to make the case that Japan really is in a liquidity trap, it is much harder to give a convincing explanation of why. Demography seems to be the leading candidate; other "structural" reasons that are widely cited, while they do amount to an impressive litany of sins, do not necessarily explain why demand should be inadequate, as opposed to simply causing garden-variety microeconomic inefficiency. This lack of a clear link between the structural issues and the proximate problem has some important policy implications, as we will soon see.

Another way to think of this, though it boils down to the same analysis, is that in a time of expected deflation, the population will conclude that future yen will be more valuable than current yen. That is, even with near zero interest earned on savings, a yen tomorrow will be worth more (because of lower prices) than a yen today. Obviously, then, the rational response, caterus parebus, is to defer spending as long as possible. Lower spending reinforces the deflationary spiral, thus increasing the incentive to defer savings, etc., etc., etc. Consider that, if deflation is expected, a loan today bears a real interest rate higher than the nominal rate, because it will have to paid back with that more valuable yen. It becomes clear why, if deflation is expected, nobody buys nothin'.

Krugman's solution to this problem is to break the expectation of deflation. He suggests that, although structural reforms and fiscal policy can help, only a credible promise of permanent inflationary policies by the central bank will suffice to conquer deflation in the short term. Of course, all the major central banks have just spend the last thirty years making credible their promises to fight inflation. Even Krugman understands that this promise will have to be false -- the central banks will have to know that, once deflation has been turned around by the promise of inflation, they will have to once again fight inflation. If Krugman knows it, and the central banks know it, then the market will know it, meaning that the market won't believe the promise to reinflate as a permanent policy, which means that the promise won't work. This is part of why it's called a "trap." The only way around this, and this is me, not Krugman, is to convince people that, through increased productivity, GDP will grow faster than the population. If people expect to have more money in the future, they will spend money now, which will help insure that they will have more money in the future.

Now, can anyone name an industrialized economy in which the population is growing, productivity is growing, per capita GDP is growing, this growth is expected to continue and each member of the economy is convinced that he ought to be richer tomorrow than he is today. I can only think of one.

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DON'T DRINK THE WATER

Have we seen you some place before, George?: Bush takes the waters at Evian this week wearing the mantle of Truman (Tim Hames, May 26, 2003 , Times of London)

The second, presently fashionable, idea, which writers such as Martin Wolf in The Financial Times have embraced, is focused more directly on the President personally. It pits two of his predecessors, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, against each other. The argument is that Roosevelt personified a nationalist, assertive foreign policy with little interest in securing the consent of others, while Wilson promoted an internationalist, essentially pacific strategy in which it is possible for the planet as a whole to develop laws, norms and rules not unlike those which apply within a contemporary democracy. Europeans, the contention runs, bought Wilsonianism from the Americans after 1945 but have discovered to their horror that the Bush Administration has, unreasonably, reverted to the Rooseveltian model.

It is a clever contrast, but is it compelling? It is surely open to question. There are, I think, three respectable arguments that can be marshalled against it. The first is that it is debateable whether American foreign policy has actually been consistently and credibly ?Wilsonian?. The second is whether it is really fair to brand Mr Bush?s outlook on the world as ?Rooseveltian?. Finally, if it is necessary to pick any former President as the forerunner of the current one (and it is a dubious practice), then there is a figure who suits this President better than either Wilson or Roosevelt.

American foreign policy has never been wholly Wilsonian. Indeed, it wasn?t that Wilsonian when Wilson was President ? as the Senate?s decision not to endorse his beloved League of Nation testifies. It has had certain Wilsonian moments, such as when the United States negotiated the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928 in which nations formally renounced war as a means of policy (it was no great success, that one) but, unsurprisingly, it proved difficult to sustain a foreign policy on the basis of love, peace and all holding hands in a circle to resolve international disputes.

It would not be unduly cynical to suggest that presidents assume Wilsonian clothing when they are either searching for an excuse for inaction or want others to do something for them that they cannot mobilise a domestic consensus to do alone. To that extent, Bill Clinton did have a Wilsonian foreign policy of sorts. But one based on Harold Wilson, not Woodrow.

Nor can it reasonably be asserted that Mr Bush is a ?Rooseveltian? President. Europeans might like to think that he speaks softly and carries a big stick, but they exaggerate the extent to which the Pentagon dominates foreign policy in Washington. They overstate the numbers and influence of the so-called ?neo-conservatives? in this Administration. There are a number of people who broadly fit that label but to insist that they are running the show is akin to saying that because there are several members of the British Government who are committed Christians, it follows that the final verdict on the euro will be taken only after a prayer meeting.

If Mr Bush should be compared with anyone it is Harry Truman. Truman was a slightly accidental President (he took office on the sudden death of Franklin Roosevelt), widely mocked by American and European elites. He was swiftly confronted with the end of the Second World War, the invention of nuclear weapons and the emergence of the superpower struggle. He had to shape foreign policy on the hoof, invent institutions at home and abroad to match new circumstances, set precedents and draw lines in the sand. Substitute the chads of Florida, religious terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and it is not a bad (if imperfect) fit.

This is in fact an opportune moment to contemplate Trumanism, the Truman Doctrine, as it happens, being 56 years of this week (May 22, 1947). The comparison to President Bush is, needless to say, a laughable fit. Had George W. Bush pursued Truman's disastrous containment policy, this time applied to expansionist Islamicism, we'd be sending aid to decrepit but friendly regimes and building up massive conventional military forces and transnational institutions to hem in the Talibans, Ba'athists, al Qaedas and PLOs of the world. We'd be looking at a debilitating long term commitment of dollars (a military budget averaging at least two and a half times the currrent level) and a system of alliances with powers we otherwise would find reprehensible--from Iraq (an anti-Islamist state) to China.

Instead, Mr. Bush is intent on destroying the axis of terror--having already toppled regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, with Iran and N. Korea next to go--pressuring insufficiently liberalized allies (like the Sauds) and doing it all without regard to the internationalist bodies that Truman and his fellow containers crafted--like the UN & NATO. Had Mr. Truman pursued a Bush Doctrine in 1947 the world would have been spared tens of trillions of pointless military expenditures, tens of millions of lives, the rise of terrorism, etc., etc., etc. Thankfully, Bush is no Truman.

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CAN'T SPELL CONDESCENDING WITHOUT C-O-N-D-I

Rice Quoted Saying U.S. to Ignore Schroeder (Reuters, May 25, 2003)

Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) was quoted in a German magazine Sunday saying the Bush administration was trying to patch up strained relations with Germany but would continue to ostracize Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Focus magazine reported President Bush's national security adviser told a German visitor recently that relations between Bush and Schroeder were ruined because of the German leader's outspoken opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

"We're now doing everything we can to improve relations to Germany at all levels," the unnamed German visitor quoted Rice as saying. "But we're going to work around the chancellor. It's better to leave him out."

"The Bush-Schroeder relationship will never be what it was and what it should be," Rice was quoted as saying in Focus.

She was also quoted as saying that Bush was aware of Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's past as a street-fighter turned politician and doesn't believe he is suited to be a statesman.

Finding the Hun at your feet so often, who could resist the urge to kick them?

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A HAMILTON FOR PALESTINE

The Radical Bean Counter (JAMES BENNET, May 25, 2003, NY Times Magazine)

This is a story about fighting Palestinian chaos and corruption, about seeking to throw off Israeli occupation and build a democratic state of Palestine. It is about these things, because it is about one man's lonely pursuit of direct deposit.

The man is Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian minister of finance, the kind of Palestinian you rarely hear about, an economist trained in Texas who has never fired a gun, sent men into battle or served time in prison or exile. He met recently in Gaza City with half a dozen men who had done these things -- who do some of them still -- the chiefs of Yasir Arafat's Gaza security services, the most hardened of Palestinian warriors. It was Fayyad's intention to intimidate them.

As the chiefs arrived at the Saraya, the military headquarters in Gaza, some of them wore fatigues and were trailed by men carrying guns. Fayyad, as usual, arrived alone, carrying his black satchel and wearing his nice blue jacket, red-and-blue tie and spectacles.

Fayyad did not tell these men everything he thought: that he was horrified by the system, if it could be called that, for paying the 53,000 security officers from the dozen independent security agencies in the West Bank and Gaza; that he thought it was morally wrong to dole out $20 million in cash monthly, in plastic bank bags, to the security chiefs, to be handed out to their men, one by one; that he worried that some of the money, ''paying'' for ghost employees, might be lining the wrong people's pockets, perhaps even financing the kind of violence the security agencies were supposed to stop.

He did not make a point obvious to everyone in the room: that the power of the purse is power, period, and that his reform would help shift control of the officers from these chiefs, and from Yasir Arafat, to the first Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas. In theory, Fayyad now reports to Abbas; in practice, he checks in with both him and Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority, who appointed him last June; in reality, he is choosing his battles for himself.

Fayyad presented his idea as a common-sense change that anyone who favored efficiency and clean government -- as security officers naturally did -- would support. He had already divided the chiefs by previously persuading two of them. Now he, the economist, not any of the military men, began pounding the table. Unless the chiefs switched to direct deposit of paychecks, he said, he could not guarantee that their salaries would be paid. Foreign donors would cut them off. Did they want to be forced by outsiders to change, or to act with a sense of pride? [...]

This is a terrible time to be the average Palestinian, and so it is a golden time to become an exceptional one. The Palestinians are at a historic moment in search of historic leaders -- the Jeffersons, Hamiltons and Washingtons who can wrest a viable, competent state from Israelis (even on the left) who are distrustful and angry; from a Bush administration that is chilly and distracted; and from Islamists who seem bent on endless conflict. [...]

Fayyad, an ally of the prime minister and one who would clearly like to have his job someday, presents a different case study in the use of power. He dismissed the security detail that the Palestinian Authority offered him, in the belief he should never show fear. He travels by car service and taxi, walks alone across checkpoints and fields his own calls nonstop on a cellphone. The father of three children in a Jerusalem private school, he left a much more lucrative job to become finance minister at about $1,200 a month, and Israeli and American officials who study the Palestinian Authority say he is an honest man. He has been praised by Colin Powell, Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat; despite that, he has flourished politically. His suits, hair and skin are all rather gray, like the dense cloud of cigarette smoke in which he moves. At 51, he is fidgety, ambitious, profoundly sure of himself. He is a small, assuming man.

''If you have the authority, use it,'' Fayyad likes to say. ''If you don't have it, create it.''

The challenge to such new leaders is to fight two revolutions at once: against the Israeli occupation and against the aristocracy of revolution that has shaped the Palestinian national dream for 35 years. Arafat got his people very far -- within sight of their state -- but he has not delivered them.

The idea that Palestine's future depends on discovering a generation of leaders similar to our Founders is rather depressing, even if accurate.

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THE SUN WON'T COME OUT TOMORROW (OR THE NEXT DAY...)

Fear of a Quagmire? (PAUL KRUGMAN, May 24, 2003, NY Times)

The particular type of quagmire to worry about has a name: liquidity trap. As the I.M.F. report explains, the most important reason to fear deflation is that it can push an economy into a liquidity trap, or deepen the distress of an economy already caught in the trap.

Here's how it works, in theory. Ordinarily, deflation--a general fall in the level of prices--is easy to fight. All the central bank (in our case, the Federal Reserve) has to do is print more money, and put it in the hands of banks. With more cash in hand, banks make more loans, interest rates fall, the economy perks up and the price level stops falling.

But what if the economy is in such a deep malaise that pushing interest rates all the way to zero isn't enough to get the economy back to full employment? Then you're in a liquidity trap: additional cash pumped into the economy--added liquidity--sits idle, because there's no point in lending money out if you don't receive any reward. And monetary policy loses its effectiveness.

Once an economy is caught in such a trap, it's likely to slide into deflation--and nasty things (what the I.M.F. report calls "adverse dynamics") begin to happen. Falling prices induce people to postpone their purchases in the expectation that prices will fall further, depressing demand today.

Also, deflation usually means falling incomes as well as falling prices. In a deflationary economy, a family that borrows money to buy a house may well find itself having to pay fixed mortgage payments out of a shrinking paycheck; a business that borrows to finance investment may well find itself having to pay a fixed interest bill out of a shrinking cash flow.

In other words, deflation discourages borrowing and spending, the very things a depressed economy needs to get going. And when an economy is in a liquidity trap, the authorities can't offset the depressing effects of deflation by cutting interest rates. So a vicious circle develops. Deflation leads to rising unemployment and falling capacity utilization, which puts more downward pressure on prices and wages, which accelerates deflation, which makes the economy even more depressed. The prospect of such a "deflationary spiral," rather than the mere prospect of deflation, is what scares the I.M.F.--and it should. [...]

Our own situation is strikingly similar in some ways to that of Japan a decade ago. Like Japan circa 1993 or 1994, the United States is now facing the aftermath of a huge stock market bubble--the Nikkei and the Standard and Poor's 500 both tripled in the five years before their respective peaks.

Also like Japan, we face a problem not of sharp downturn but of persistent underperformance--an economy that grows, but too slowly to prevent rising unemployment and falling capacity utilization.

What's different is that we have Japan as a cautionary example. Is forewarned forearmed?

Of course the differences between Japan and America are even greater than the similarities and Mr. Krugman has never demonstrated much understanding of those differences, so that in the late '90s, almost a decade after Bill Emmott's dispositive The Sun Also Sets, Mr. Krugman thought Japan had only short term problems. Even when he began to realize things went deeper, he was rather slow to comprehend how deep. For instance, he's argued innumerable times that Japan needs to inflate its currency, but, to the best of my knowledge, has not called on them to inflate their population. How can you ever create enough new money that fewer people will be paying more and more for less and less?

The Japanese stock market fell and then failed to rise because it was always a bad investment--the long term economic prospects of a country with a declining population; a lack of the kind of creation, innovation, and intiative that leads to new products and breakthroughs; and an economic model based on assembling things better and cheaper than the United States is damned bleak. (The last is important because there are dozens of other countries that can put stuff together as well as but cheaper than the Japanese--thereby driving wages down.) Combine all this with protectionism, over-regulation, the welfare state, and the way that the Japanese "invest" their supposedly wonderful savings--in actual savings accounts in banks that pay negligible interest--and you've got a recipe for a long slide into oblivion.

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EMPIRE OF THE WILLING

Ill-Suited for Empire (Joseph S. Nye, May 25, 2003, The Washington Post)

The military victory in Iraq seems to have confirmed a new world order. Not since Rome has one nation loomed so large above the others. Indeed the word "empire" has come out of the closet. Respected analysts of both left and right are beginning to refer to "American empire" approvingly as the dominant narrative of the 21st century.

But those who openly welcome the idea of an American empire mistake the underlying nature of American public opinion. Neoconservatives such as Max Boot argue that the United States should provide troubled countries with the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets. But as the British historian Niall Ferguson points out, modern America differs from 19th-century Britain in our "chronically short time frame."

Some say the United States is already an empire and it is just a matter of recognizing reality. It's a mistake, however, to confuse the politics of primacy with those of empire. The United States is more powerful compared with other countries than Britain was at its imperial peak, but it has less control over what occurs inside other countries than Britain did when it ruled a quarter of the globe. For example, Kenya's schools, taxes, laws and elections -- not to mention external relations -- were controlled by British officials. The United States has no such control today. We could not even get the votes of Mexico and Chile for a second U.N. Security Council resolution. Devotees of the new imperialism say not to be so literal. "Empire" is
merely a metaphor. But the problem with the metaphor is it implies a control from Washington that is unrealistic and reinforces the prevailing strong temptations toward unilateralism.

Despite its natal ideology of anti-imperialism, the United States has intervened and governed countries in Central America and the Caribbean as well as the Philippines. But imperialism has never been a comfortable experience for Americans, and only a small portion of the cases led directly to the establishment of democracies. American empire is not limited by "imperial overstretch" in the sense of costing an impossible portion of our gross national product. We devoted a much higher percentage of GNP to the military budget during the Cold War than we do today. The overstretch will come from having to police more and more peripheral countries -- more than public opinion will accept. Polls show little popular taste for empire.

In fact, the problem of creating an American empire might better be termed imperial under-stretch. Neither the public nor Congress has proved willing to invest seriously in the instruments of nation-building and governance as opposed to military force.

"Imperial under-stretch" is a clever term and precisely right. There's an excellent case to be made for having a more powerful and advanced nation govern a less advanced and developed one for a period of time to, counterintuitive as it sounds, instill an ethos of liberal democracy--look around the world and note how many of the most democratic or democratizing nations of the developing world were once British or American colonies or where we intervened heavily: from obvious places like India and the Phillipines to more subtle ones like Iran. However, there is no longer any stomach in the Anglo-American leadership or citizenry for the kind of repression of nationalist ambitions, even though it's benign repression, that this kind of colonialism requires.

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BOOKNOTES

Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum (C-SPAN, May 25, 2003, 8 & 11 pm)

The Gulag - the vast array of Soviet concentration camp -was a system of repression and punishment whose rationalized evil and institutionalized inhumanity were rivaled only by the Holocaust.

The Gulag entered the world?s historical consciousness in 1972, with the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn?s epic oral history of the Soviet camps, The Gulag Archipelago. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, dozens of memoirs and new studies covering aspects of that system have been published in Russia and the West. Using these new resources as well as her own original historical research, Anne Applebaum has now undertaken, for the first time, a fully documented history of the Soviet camp system, from its origins in the Russian Revolution to its collapse in the era of glasnost. It is an epic feat of investigation and moral reckoning that places the Gulag where it belongs: at the center of our understanding of the troubled history of the twentieth century.

Anne Applebaum first lays out the chronological history of the camps and the logic behind their creation, enlargement, and maintenance. The Gulag was first put in place in 1918 after the Russian Revolution. In 1929, Stalin personally decided to expand the camp system, both to use forced labor to accelerate Soviet industrialization and to exploit the natural resources of the country?s barely habitable far northern regions. By the end of the 1930s, labor camps could be found in all twelve of the Soviet Union?s time zones. The system continued to expand throughout the war years, reaching its height only in the early 1950s. From 1929 until the death of Stalin in 1953, some 18 million people passed through this massive system. Of these 18 million, it is estimated that 4.5 million never returned.

But the Gulag was not just an economic institution. It also became, over time, a country within a country, almost a separate civilization, with its own laws, customs, literature, folklore, slang, and morality. Topic by topic, Anne Applebaum also examines how life was lived within this shadow country: how prisoners worked, how they ate, where they lived, how they died, how they survived. She examines their guards and their jailers, the horrors of transportation in empty cattle cars, the strange nature of Soviet arrests and trials, the impact of World War II, the relations between different national and religious groups, and the escapes, as well as the extraordinary rebellions that took place in the 1950s. She concludes by examining the disturbing question why the Gulag has remained relatively obscure, in the historical memory of both the former Soviet Union and the West. Gulag: A History will immediately be recognized as a landmark work of historical scholarship and an indelible contribution to the complex, ongoing, necessary quest for truth.

MORE:
BUY IT: Gulag by Anne Applebaum (Amazon.com)
-BOOK SITE: Gulag (Doubleday)
-EXCERPT: Chapter One of Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
-Anne Applebaum (Author Website)
-COLUMN ARCHIVES: Anne Applebaum (Washington Post)
-COLUMN ARCHIVES: Anne Applebaum (Jewish World Review)
-ESSAY: Author Essay: The Almost Forgotten History of the Gulag (Anne Applebaum, Borders)
-ESSAY: Slippery Pole: Poland?s new premier is a repressive ex-communist. Anne Applebaum wonders why Tony Blair is his new best friend (Anne Applebaum, 3/23/03, The Spectator)
-ESSAY: The Gulag Argumento: Martin Amis swings at Stalin and hits his own best friend instead. (Anne Applebaum, August 13, 2002, Slate)
-ESSAY: How the World Has Changed (Anne Applebaum, September 21, 2001, Slate)
-ESSAY: TERRORISM: The New New World Order: If we can't learn better ways of dealing with the outside world even after September 11, then the outside world will once again come to us. (Anne Applebaum, Hoover Digest)
-ESSAY: Gauging Success (Anne Applebaum, October 8, 2001, Slate)
-ESSAY: The great error: the wretched folk who refuse to leave the city built on the bones of Stalin?s victims (Anne Applebaum, 7/28/01, The Spectator)
-ESSAY: Spurning Bush: The US President may make friends in Europe this week but, says Anne Applebaum, his visit will be accompanied by a wave of hatred (Anne Applebaum, 6/16/01, The Spectator)
-REVIEW: of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order by Robert Kagan (Anne Applebaum, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW: of REGIONS OF THE GREAT HERESY: BRUNO SCHULZ, A BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAIT By Jerzy Ficowski (Anne Applebaum, The Spectator)
-REVIEW: of THE LAST EMPIRE By Gore Vidal (Anne Applebaum, The Spectator)
-REVIEW: of The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia by David E. Hoffman (Anne Applebaum, The Spectator)
-REVIEW: of Isadora: The Sensational Life Of Isadora Duncan by Peter Kurth (Anne Applebaum, The Spectator)
-REVIEW: of The Nazi Elite In Allied Hands, 1945 by Richard Overy (Anne Applebaum, The Spectator)
-REVIEW: of The Author Of Himself by Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Anne Applebaum, The Spectator)
-Anne Applebaum (lying in ponds: The absurdity of partisanship)
-ARCHIVES: The New York Review of Books: Anne Applebaum
-ARCHIVES: Anne Applebaum (Slate)
-ARCHIVES: "anne applebaum (The Spectator)
-ARCHIVES: "anne applebaum" (Find Articles)
-REVIEW: of Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum (Steven Merritt Miner, NY Times Book Review)
-Remembering the Gulag: a review of Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum (Hilton Kramer, New Criterion)
-REVIEW: of Gulag (Stefan Wagstyl, Financial Times)
-REVIEW: of Gulag (David Remnick, The New Yorker)
-REVIEW: of Gulag (The Economist)
-REVIEW: of Gulag (Michael Ledeen, National Review)
-REVIEW: of Gulag (Brian Richard Boylan, SF Chronicle)
-REVIEW: of Gulag (Adam Zamoyski, The Spectator)
-REVIEW: of Gulag (David Frum, AEI)
-REVIEW: of Gulag (Vladimir Bukovsky, The Sunday Times)
-REVIEW: of Gulag (Melana Zyla Vickers, Weekly Standard)
-REVIEW: of Gulag (Lesley Chamberlain, LA Times)
-REVIEW: of Gulag (Richard Overy, Daily Telegraph)

GENERAL:
-ESSAY: Inside Stalin's Terror (Stefan Wagstyl, February 4 2003, Financial Times)

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TRIBAL LEADER

A Very Mixed Marriage (HOWARD FINEMAN AND TAMARA LIPPER, NEWSWEEK)

It's a landmark in the history of strange bedfellows: Tom DeLay says kaddish. It happened last February, the day the space shuttle Columbia fell apart. Among the dead astronauts was an Israeli, Ilan Ramon. In Florida, at the Boca Raton Resort, some big machers had gathered to hear a speech by House Republican leader DeLay, an evangelical Christian from Sugar Land, Texas. Mixing Churchill and the Bible, DeLay talked of a destiny shared by America and Israel. He asked for "divine assistance" in protecting both. In closing, to the astonishment of his audience, he recited--in Hebrew--the last lines of the Jewish prayer for the dead. The crowd, many in tears, joined in. (DeLay had been coached by a Jewish former staffer.) "It was quite a moment," said Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist who was there.

QUITE AN UNDERSTATEMENT. Though they welcomed him as an ardent supporter of Israel, many in the audience at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference were wary of DeLay's view on a host of social issues--he's pro-life, anti-gay-rights, pro-voucher, pro-gun, pro-school-prayer. Nor are they fond of his occasional declaration that what America needs most is more Christians in office. "Some would argue that it's a mistake for Jews to get into bed with the religious right," said Jess Hordes of the Anti-Defamation League.

Too late.

There's something inherently strange in a religious group that would be offended that their allies are "pro-life, anti-gay-rights, pro-voucher,...pro-school-prayer".

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ONE WILD & CRAZY GUY

Behind Baghdad's fall : Hussein son's wild orders led to Iraq military collapse (Robert Collier, May 25, 2003, San Francisco Chronicle)

In the final days before Baghdad fell, Saddam Hussein's son Qusai issued a series of military orders that sent thousands of elite Republican Guard troops to their certain death in the open countryside.

According to accounts provided to The Chronicle by more than a dozen Iraqi military officials -- some of them still hiding from American forces -- the orders exposed the core of the Iraqi military to devastating U.S. air attacks and left the capital's defenses markedly weakened. [...]

The Iraqi leaders failed to follow through on prewar plans to mount a comprehensive urban guerrilla defense for Baghdad.

Despite Iraqis' frequent pronouncements before the war that they would fall back into Baghdad and fight house to house, they did nothing of the sort. Instead, they stuck to a largely conventional defense comprised of three concentric rings, extending as far as 30 miles outside of Baghdad.

Gen. Alaa Abdelkadeer, a Republican Guard commander in Baghdad, said that prewar plans had also included such tactics as mining streets and bridges. "There was even a plan to mine the airport, to blow it sky high if the Americans took it," he said. "But none of this was carried out."

When asked why, he shrugged. "Because we thought Baghdad was very safe. We never thought the Americans would be able to enter the city."

An officer in the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, who asked to remain anonymous, said: "(Baghdad) was like a castle. The Americans could never come close -- we were sure of it."

This comports with the idea that Saddam was killed or incapacitated on the first night of the war.

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TOLERANCE AS AN END

When Tolerance Becomes Intolerance: Religion Increasingly Pilloried in the Public Square (Zenit.org, 2003-05-24)

The note by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith points out that Christians and non-Christians alike can contribute to the democratic process. "The life of a democracy could not be productive without the active, responsible and generous involvement of everyone, 'albeit in a diversity and complementarity of forms, levels, tasks and responsibilities'".

Yet, the document notes how, "the value of tolerance is disingenuously invoked when a large number of citizens, Catholics among them, are asked not to base their contribution to society and political life--through the legitimate means available to everyone in a democracy -- on their particular understanding of the human person and the common good". [...]

A commentary on the note by moral theologian Robert Spaemann observed that when tolerance becomes a supreme value "it is transformed into intolerance of what alone, in reality, gives tolerance its value: the sacredness of conscience."

Writing in the English weekly edition of L'Osservatore Romano of March 12, Spaemann explained that firm convictions are important because the dignity of the human person is based on a reference to the truth. If we adopt a purely relativist position we run the risk of falling into either anarchy or tyranny, he said. Arguing in favor of measures that respect an order founded on the nature of the human being is not imposing a religion on anybody, but is rather a defense of human dignity.

Elsewhere, Robert Kraynak in his book "Christian Faith and Modern Democracy" explains that a defects of modern liberal democracy is its tendency to promote a limited conception of the good life, reduced to a one-dimensional materialism of middle-class society. The dominant schools of modern liberalism, Kraynak writes, "have followed a flawed strategy of trying to vindicate human dignity by denying the objective existence of a greatest good, thereby allowing each person or nation to determine its own identity."

What Christianity can offer to remedy this is a concept of dignity based on the creation of human beings made in the image of God and redeemed by Christ. The rich doctrinal resources of Christianity "rescues liberalism from its descent into nihilism and breathes into it moral and spiritual vitality," Kraynak contends. Excluding this valuable Christian contribution from politics would only impoverish democracy.

No one has ever been more forthright about the intentional demoralizing of human society that is the intent of toleration than the British philosopher John Gray:

The first signs of postmodern political institutions are most clearly observable in Europe. The institutions of the European Union are not the institutions of a modern state writ large. The EU is not, and will not become, a modern federal state. It is an association of nation states that have embarked on a common project of shedding much of the sovereignty that distinguished the modern, "Westphalian" state. This project embodies the wager that nineteenth-century balance-of-power relations between the Union's nation-states can be rendered redundant in the context of the EU's common institutions.

The wager this project entails is on the possibility of enduring and stable political institutions that do not presuppose a common political culture and are not legitimated by a unifying ideology. This is the postmodern dimension of the European project. It is the attempt to found political institutions whose cultural identities are not singular, comprehensive, or exclusive (after the fashion of nineteenth-century nationalism and twentieth-century weltanschauung-states), but complex, plural, and overlapping.

This is not the project of privatizing cultural identity in the realm of voluntary association that is advanced in the standard liberalisms of today. That project, in practice, can only entrench the dominant cultural identity of a generation or more ago. This project instead attempts to enable plural identities to find collective expression in overlapping political institutions. The institutions of the European Union constitute the single most convincing exemplar thus far of the postmodern project of founding political legitimacy not on a common national culture or on any universalist ideology, but on a common acceptance of cultural difference. In East Asia, the fascinating experiment that is underway in Singapore may amount to an exercise in postmodern state-building and the conditions of postmodernity may have been present for generations in Japan. There may be a future for postmodernity in East Asia by virtue of the fact that some of its diverse cultures have modernized very successfully without thereby accepting any Enlightenment ideology.

It is in this historical context that an amended Hobbesian liberalism of fear may be salient. The animating interest of European institutions, as they have developed over the past 30 years or so, is an interest in peaceful coexistence without loss of cultural diversity. This points to the first radical revision that is needed in the Hobbesian view-namely, an acknowledgment of the political relevance of the human need for strong and deep forms of common life. Hobbes's thought needs to be fertilized with the insights of Herder. The abridgment of Hobbesian individualism that this entails is plainly considerable and necessitates consideration of how participation in common cultural forms can find political expression.

Mr. Gray, in his book, Two Faces of Liberalism, speaks of the task before us the creation of a modus vivendi. Like Rodney King, his plea is that we all just find a way to "get along". That this means we completely subject ourselves to political institutions, that our nations subject themselves to transnational institutions, that we abandon the idea that life has a purpose and that truth exists, etc., matters not in the least to him. All that matters is that everything be tolerated so that there is no tension in our increasingly diverse society.

Two things about this vision seem especially problematic. The first is that it assumes that men are responsible enough not to take advantage of this kind of complete tolerance, that having once granted that people are entitled to think and do whatever they want in their own lives that they'll not behave in ways which even the most tolerant among us can not stand. Second, it assumes benevolent government, since with no cultural norms and traditional morals to guide behavior there'll be nothing left but government power to restrain men. Though we find nothing attractive about this vision even if it could be realized, we suspect that what would follow would be not a utopia but something closer to the prediction of Os Guinness, The Dust of Death (1973):

With the death of absolutes, the prospects are grim for any lover of justice, freedom, and order. Western culture will lurch drunkenly between chaotic lawlessness and countering authoritarianism, in which some particularly abysmal vacuum of confidence could finally issue in a supreme dictatorship, mocking the Western aspirations for democracy as ineffective and demonstrating the strong alliance between technology and the state. Until then, violence -- blood brother of such a totalitarianism -- will play ts fateful part, naked or disguised, in an inevitable power struggle on all levels.

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RECKONING

The meaning of 'painful concessions' (Yossi Klein Halevi, May 8, 2003, Jerusalem Post)

Most Israelis have decided that withdrawal is both necessary and inevitable. And the man who built the settlements, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, now agrees with them.

Still, as we approach our moment of decision, the language of euphemism with which we speak about withdrawal feels increasingly untenable. As a people, we need to courageously confront the consequences of uprooting - what Sharon calls, with rare understatement, "painful concessions." We need an advance account of the enormity of that pain, not in order to dissuade ourselves from accepting the brutal decree of history, but to do so without illusions. The failure of the Oslo process hasn't released us from the necessity of withdrawal, but it does demand an end to self-deception. And a key element of that self-deception has been our unwillingness to concede the human, social, and historical consequences of withdrawal.

The deception begins with the sterile phrase, "land for peace." "Land" implies a pristine landscape, devoid of human presence. In fact, the formulation means a destruction of worlds - neighborhoods and homes, schools and synagogues, hangouts and hitchhiking stations. It isn't "land" and it probably won't be "peace" - at least not a peace that means recognition of our right to exist and respect for the inviolability of our borders.

The human toll that will result from the destruction of organic communities is incalculable. After the Sinai town of Yamit was destroyed in 1982, many never recovered; for some, the result was depression and divorce. At its peak, Yamit contained perhaps 5,000 residents. Increase Yamit by tens of thousands and you can begin to imagine the implications for Israeli society that will result from a similar uprooting - the real word is "transfer" - in Judea and Samaria.

And Yamit was barely a decade old when it was destroyed. By contrast, some communities in Judea and Samaria are well into their third decade. Unlike Yamit, a native generation has grown up in Judea and Samaria for whom Israel lies across the green line. And a third generation is now being formed there. Think of that next time you read a newspaper account that refers to children killed or wounded in a terrorist attack in Judea and Samaria as "settlers." Beyond the personal is the national trauma. The towns and villages of Judea and Samaria are the legacy and symbol of this generation of religious Zionists. The destruction of dozens of communities that form the emotional core of religious Zionism will be a blow from which it may not fully recover.

The implications for the state are profound. The religious Zionists, after all, aren't a marginal community but the last collective repository of idealistic Zionism. For a state under siege, their invigorating presence has been essential.

Mr. Halevi has hit upon one of the worst effects of the hawks' refusal to take seriously the idea that Ariel Sharon is committed to Palestinian statehood. By fighting a doomed rearguard action, to prevent that statehood, they're failing to prepare themselves and Israel to deal with the soon to be fundamentally altered realities.

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THE DIVINE WIND BLOWS

Long downturn has worn on Japanese (KOJI SASAHARA, May 25, 2003, AP)

People are afraid to spend, too worried about life after retirement--or worse still, life after ''risutora,'' the Japanese for ''restructuring'' and the euphemism here for layoffs. [...]

Japan's unemployment rate is now at a near-record 5.4 percent. Joblessness among the young is peaking at its highest levels in half a century.

The main index for the Tokyo stock market has slid lately to 20-year lows. Some smaller companies are collapsing as banks tighten lending, weighed down by massive bad debts. [...]

''There is a danger that the so-called lost decade of the 1990s could continue for another decade,'' said Masaaki Mizuno, strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Tokyo.

Another decade? Why will it only last another decade? By the end of the 00s Japan will be in the grip of depopulation. If folks are worried about their retirement now, just wait until they have a society that's devoid of young people to pay for those retirements. Japan is the West's canary in a coalmine, and it's dying.

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GIVE US THE CHILD, WE'LL GIVE YOU THE MAN

The Young Hipublicans (JOHN COLAPINTO, May 25, 2003, NY Times Magazine)

The mission of today's college conservatives is, in many respects, no different from what it was in [David] Brock's day, and even [William] Buckley's. But today's movement also differs markedly from ones that came before. Influenced as much by the mood and mores of MTV as it is by the musings of Allan Bloom, today's movement has shaped itself around a new demographic of young right-wingers, one that includes a heavy contingent of women and that draws some of its fiercest ideologues from the middle class. Having spread beyond traditionally conservative hotbeds like Dartmouth, it's a movement that operates in an atmosphere that did not even exist when Buckley and [Dinesh] D'Souza were undergraduates: campuses governed by speech and behavior codes introduced more than a decade ago. A result is a new breed of college conservative, one poised to inherit the responsibility of shaping the Republican Party in the years to come.

The Bucknell University Conservatives Club has its origins in the fall of 1999, when a freshman named Tom Elliott arrived on campus. His father is Bently Elliott, former director of speechwriting for Ronald Reagan. Growing up in Alexandria, Va., and attending Easter-egg hunts on the White House lawn, Tom Elliott absorbed by osmosis the central tenets of conservatism: smaller government, less taxes, more military spending, welfare reform, no abortion on demand. He'd never questioned his right-wing beliefs until he entered Bucknell, where, he says, he found his ideas coming under attack from his professors.

''In my spare time, I started visiting conservative Web sites,'' he says, ''so I could arm myself.'' In his sophomore year, he wrote right-wing columns in the student paper, The Bucknellian. Styling himself after his journalistic heroes, like Hunter S. Thompson, Elliott strove for an in-your-face attitude in his writing and came to enjoy his status as the campus's provocateur. But it was not until the summer after his sophomore year that he called on his contacts with conservative interest groups, like the Leadership Institute, to move on his idea of starting a conservatives club and his own right-wing campus newspaper. Elliott enlisted a fellow Bucknell sophomore, Michael Boland, a square-jawed evangelical Christian from Cooperstown, N.Y., the only other ''out'' conservative on campus at the time.

It was, in many respects, an odd marriage. Elliott, a hard-partying frat boy from a privileged background, fits a common stereotype of the college conservative of the 1980's: affluent, confident, connected (his father is a Bucknell alumnus and trustee). When Elliott offers that he ''doesn't take school too seriously, and my grades reflect it,'' you know he's telling you that he doesn't have to worry too much about a career and money (after graduating this month, he plans to ''travel and maybe write a book in the future''). Mike Boland, by contrast, is like many of today's young right-wingers. Determinedly middle class (his dad is an X-ray technician, his mom a teacher's aide), Boland can afford Bucknell's $35,000 in tuition and fees only with the help of financial aid. Studious and abstemious, he works hard to keep up a 3.9 G.P.A. For Boland, the effort that has taken him from a modest background to the top ranks of an elite university bolsters his conservative beliefs on self-reliance. ''If you don't earn it,'' he says, ''you don't appreciate it.''

Boland agreed to join Elliott in starting Bucknell's conservatives club. The two don't agree on every issue (Elliott is against capital punishment; Boland supports it), and they often clash when it comes to how best to spread their message (Elliott likes to use satire and ridicule to raise hackles; Boland prefers close reasoning), but the two share a mind-set common to virtually every college conservative you meet. They describe themselves as defenders of ''individuality'' and ''freedom'' against a campus, and world, overrun by groupthink liberalism and pious political correctness. They also share a belief that despite the common perception of youth being synonymous with progressive, liberal ideals, the true spirit of their generation is solidly, if quietly, conservative.

The polls bear this out. According to the U.C.L.A. Higher Education Research Institute, which has been tracking the attitudes of incoming freshmen at hundreds of colleges nationwide since 1966, student conservatism is increasing in many areas. Asked their opinion about casual sex, 51 percent of freshmen were for it in 1987; now 42 percent are. In 1989, 66 percent of freshmen believed abortion should be legal; today, only 54 percent do. In 1995, 66 percent of kids agreed that wealthy people should pay a larger share of taxes; now it's down to 50 percent. Even on the issue of firearms, where students have traditionally favored stiffer controls, there has been a weakening in support for gun laws. ''We're at a record low on this item,'' says the U.C.L.A. Institute's associate director, Linda Sax, an associate professor of education at U.C.L.A. ''We've seen a decline over the last four consecutive years.''

Yet according to Sax, this conservative trend on issues does not necessarily mean that students call themselves right-wingers, or even Republicans. ''Students' opinions of particular issues are not always in line with their own self-placement on an ideological spectrum,'' she says.

Still searching for their identities, many of these kids are not yet prepared to declare a particular political affiliation. This is where the conservative campus activists come in. Having recognized the importance of conservativism to their own lives, they have committed themselves to the task of bringing out the unacknowledged conservatism in other students. The mission of today's activists involves less an act of persuading their peers to accept an ideology than in awakening them to the fact that they already embody it.

One of the more interesting effects of this--though I only know of this anecdotally, and statistics may not bear it out--is the flight from the humanities into the sciences on campus. Departments like English and History are so rotten with leftovers 60s types that students find it easier just to not take the courses they teach and instead opt for courses of study that are less politicized and unradicalized.

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F-TROOP BACK TO NORMAL

Buoyed by Resurgence, G.O.P. Strives for an Era of Dominance (ADAM CLYMER, May 25, 2003, NY Times)

The Republican Party's dream of becoming the dominant party was on full display the other day at the Ottawa County Lincoln Day dinner here. Although George W. Bush lost Michigan in 2000 and the state elected a Democratic governor last November, the national and state party officials heaping roast beef and chicken onto their plates at the local fish and game club were buoyantly predicting they would take the state in 2004.

The attorney general of Michigan, Mike Cox, elected in 2002 by 5,200 votes after carrying Ottawa County by 40,712, said President Bush could count on a "grass roots army of the people who got me in office."

Jack Oliver, deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee, said the county exemplified the Republican Party's renewed focus on "putting people back to work in politics, going door to door, friend to friend, neighbor to neighbor."

With the Congress thinly divided along partisan lines, another presidential election taking shape and the rules of campaign finance in legal limbo, the two national political parties are at crucial turning points.

Republicans are the most encouraged. Party officials around the country, convinced that this may be their moment, are raising the prospect of an era of Republican dominance.

Republicans already hold the White House, expect to continue to control the House of Representatives and have a majority in the Senate. For the first time in 50 years, a majority of state legislators are Republicans. Almost as many Americans (30 percent) call themselves Republicans as call themselves Democrats (32 percent), the narrowest gap since pollsters began measuring party identification in the 1940's.

But Republicans are not stopping there. In Michigan, as well as in other large industrial states that Mr. Bush lost, the Republican Party, nationally and at the state level, is making big investments in building new grass roots operations that its leaders contend will pay huge dividends in the next election--and put the party in an even more commanding position.

One of the architects of Republican growth, Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, summed up where his party stands. "We are at parity right now," he said, "with a slight edge and good prospects."

It's easy to loose track of just how good a week President Bush--and therefore the party he leads--had last week. Just suppose that at the end of last year, someone had told you that by Memorial Day 2003: the UN would lift sanctions on a now US-run Iraq; another major tax cut would have passed; Ariel Sharon and America's hand-picked leader of Palestine would have signed on to a Bush peace plan for the Middle East; and, just to ice the cake, Congress would fund the most significant public health effort in Africa's history, a pet project of the President's. You'd have thought they were nuts.

Mr. Bush just keeps rolling the dice and winning and when he falls behind he doubles his bet and rolls again. Streaks like that tend to run out sooner or later, but they must be sweet when you're on them. If this one lasts until November '04--and at this point all it would require is a reasonable economic recovery and no terrorist attacks on US soil--the next election could reshape our politics for a couple generations, returning the country to what is arguably a natural Republican dominance after a long period of Depression-induced liberal experimentation and failure.

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60-40 VISION

Why Tom Daschle may not run again (Albert Eisele, 4/09/03, The Hill)

If what I read in my own newspaper is right, and it usually is, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) better get ready to face a stiff challenge from former Rep. John Thune next year.

Thune, who was the handpicked choice of President Bush--and?Karl Rove--to knock off Daschle?s junior Democratic colleague, Sen. Tim Johnson, last year, but fell 524 votes short, is apparently gearing up to try again, this time against the state?s most popular politician.

It?s a tall order. Beating Daschle is as daunting as rappelling up the face of Mount Rushmore. Even if Bush were to buy a ranch in the Black Hills and spend every weekend there, I wouldn?t bet against Daschle. I?ve traveled around the state with him, and even Republicans are proud that he was their state?s first Senate majority leader and could be that again.

Aye, but that?s the rub. I?m not convinced Daschle is going to run, and I?ll tell you why. There are several reasons, the first of which is that Democrats aren?t likely to recapture control of the Senate next year...

This may all come down to how serious the candidates are that the GOP recruits to run against Charles Schumer, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, & Blanche Lincoln.

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DOMINIQUE THE VILE

European allies refuse to cut ties with Arafat (Nicholas Kralev, May 24, 2003, The Washington Times)

America's European allies yesterday rejected a call from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to sever ties with Yasser Arafat, the beleaguered Palestinian leader, even as U.S. officials accused him of "undercutting" his new prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, who met with Mr. Powell during the annual meeting of top diplomats from the Group of Eight ? the seven most industrialized countries and Russia ? said he would visit Mr. Arafat when he goes to the Middle East early next week.

That strikes us as an opportune moment to launch a missile attack on Mr. Arafat--two birds with one stone so to speak...

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THE GULF BETWEEN PERCEPTION & REALITY

Official: Gulf Syndrome 'is a myth' (Colin Brown, 25/05/2003, Daily Telegraph)

Gulf War Syndrome does not exist, an official scientific report has concluded.

The Medical Research Council study found "little evidence" that multiple vaccinations were the cause of Gulf veterans' illnesses and declared: "There is no unique Gulf War Syndrome."

The report reviewed all scientific research into the condition and found no evidence of a link between the illnesses and the use of depleted uranium shells or nerve agents. [...]

Lewis Moonie, the Armed Forces minister with responsibility for Gulf veterans, said: "This review shows there is no case to justify a separate Gulf War Syndrome." He said it would not save the MoD money as veterans were paid according to their disabilities.

The report by the council - a government group which promotes research into all areas of medical and related science--said that symptoms were similar despite different exposures to vaccination, nerve agents, oil fire smoke and other potential hazards.

It added: "In short, there is no evidence from UK or international research for a single syndrome related specifically to service in the Gulf."

The symptoms - tiredness, headaches, lack of concentration, memory loss and numbness or weakness in the arms and legs - were also seen in other studies of non-Gulf veterans, scientists said.

"The only common Gulf conflict-related experiences seem to involve ill veterans' perception of their health."

Of course much of the problem lies in the way the media and Left politticians, who opposed the war for political reasons, feed the story in order in order to discredit the policy.

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THE HEAVENLY ARCHIVES

Farewell, My Lovely! (Lee Strout White, 1936-05-16, The New Yorker)

I see by the new Sears Roebuck catalogue that it is still possible to buy an axle for a 1909 Model T Ford, but I am not deceived. The great days have faded, the end is in sight. Only one page in the current catalogue is devoted to parts and accessories for the Model T; yet everyone remembers springtimes when the Ford gadget section was larger than men's clothing, almost as large as household furnishings. The last Model T was built in 1927, and the car is fading from what scholars call the American scene-which is an understatement, because to a few million people who grew up with it, the old Ford practically was the American scene.

It was the miracle God had wrought. And it was patently the sort of thing that could only happen once. Mechanically uncanny, it was like nothing that had ever come to the world before. Flourishing industries rose and fell with it. As a vehicle, it was hard-working, commonplace, heroic; and it often seemed to transmit those qualities to the persons who rode in it. My own generation identifies it with Youth, with its gaudy, irretrievable excitements; before it fades into the mist, I would like to pay it the tribute of the sigh that is not a sob, and set down random entries in a shape somewhat less cumbersome than a Sears Roebuck catalogue.

The Model T was distinguished from all other makes of cars by the fact that its transmission was of a type known as planetary-which was half metaphysics, half sheer friction. Engineers accepted the word "planetary" in its epicyclic sense, but I was always conscious that it also meant "wandering," "erratic." Because of the peculiar nature of this planetary element, there was always, in Model T, a certain dull rapport between engine and wheels, and even when the car was in a state known as neutral, it trembled with a deep imperative and tended to inch forward. There was never a moment when the bands were not faintly egging the machine on. In this respect it was like a horse, rolling the bit on its tongue, and country people brought to it the same technique they used with draft animals. Its most remarkable quality was its rate of acceleration. In its palmy days the Model T could take off faster than anything on the road. The reason was simple. To get under way, you simply hooked the third finger of the right hand around a lever on the steering column, pulled down hard, and shoved your left foot forcibly against the low-speed pedal. These were simple, positive motions; the car responded by lunging forward with a roar. After a few seconds of this turmoil, you took your toe off the pedal, eased up a mite on the throttle, and the car, possessed of only two forward speeds, catapulted directly into high with a series of ugly jerks and was off on its glorious errand. The abruptness of this departure was never equalled in other cars of the period. The human leg was (and still is) incapable of letting in a clutch with anything like the forthright abandon that used to send Model T on its way. Letting in a clutch is a negative, hesitant motion, depending on delicate nervous control; pushing down the Ford pedal was a simple, country motion-an expansive act, which came as natural as kicking an old door to make it budge.

The driver of the old Model T was a man enthroned. The car, with top up, stood seven feet high. The driver sat on top of the gas tank, brooding it with his own body. When he wanted gasoline, he alighted, along with everything else in the front seat; the seat was pulled off, the metal cap unscrewed, and a wooden stick thrust down to sound the liquid in the well. There were always a couple of these sounding sticks kicking around in the ratty sub-cushion regions of a flivver. Refuelling was more of a social function then, because the driver had to unbend, whether he wanted to or not. Directly in front of the driver was the windshield-high, uncompromisingly erect. Nobody talked about air resistance, and the four cylinders pushed the car through the atmosphere with a simple disregard of physical law.

There was this about a Model T: the purchaser never regarded his purchase as a complete, finished product. When you bought a Ford, you figured you had a start-a vibrant, spirited framework to which could be screwed an almost limitless assortment of decorative and functional hardware. Driving away from the agency, hugging the new wheel between your knees, you were already full of creative worry. A Ford was born naked as a baby, and a flourishing industry grew up out of correcting its rare deficiencies and combatting its fascinating diseases. Those were the great days of lily-painting. I have been looking at some old Sears Roebuck catalogues, and they bring everything back so clear.

As this semi-pseudonymous essay by the great E. B. White and the one below by his step-son (?) Roger Angell demonstrate, if the New Yorker were to put its archives on-line there would really be no other reason to visit any other website. Here's a nice story about Mr. White by one of the few of our generation who's a worthy heir.

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ARAFAT MUST DIE

Jews are the victims. Abbas is the target (Neill Lochery, May 24, 2003, National Post)

The clear message of the suicide bombers who struck Israel this past week is that there will be no deal on Israeli-Palestinian peace without Yasser Arafat's participation. Israel and the United States have tried to push Mr. Arafat into irrelevance, and prefer to deal directly with newly appointed Palestinian Authority Prime Minister
Mahmoud Abbas. But Arafat, the PA Chairman, has retained control of much of the Palestinian security apparatus. And as the power struggle between Arafat and Abbas develops, there is increasing evidence that the radical Islamic group Hamas and elements of Arafat's own Fatah movement are co-ordinating their attacks on Israel. Indeed, the funding and infrastructure of the radical secular and Islamic groups appears not to be as separate as was previously presumed.

Once sworn enemies, Arafat and Hamas have found common ground as they both struggle to remain relevant in Palestinian society. While Arafat has been weakened by his international isolation, Hamas is threatened both by Israel's assassination of its key leaders, and by George W. Bush's war on terror, which has reduced the flow of funding from wealthy Saudi donors.

As the lines of Palestinian politics are redrawn, both Arafat and Hamas need to remind the world that they still command popular support among key segments of the Palestinian population. Thus, though both groups say they are fighting for a Palestinian state, they will both do everything in their power to prevent Mahmoud Abbas from securing one.

Yasir Arafat should have been killed thirty years ago, when it could have been done in immediate retaliation for one of his own terrorist acts. But there's no statute of limitations and he now stands in the way of a resolution--however unsatisfactory to either side or both--to the Palestinian question. Kill him. Or, if it would make folks feel less queasy, arrest him, bring him here, try him, then kill him.

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HELL IN A VERY SMALL PLACE

Belgium's general election: A model for Europe?: Belgium's peculiar system of national politics is failing to heal ethnic divisions or to stem the rise of the xenophobic far-right (The Economist, May 22nd 2003)

The delegates arguing for the existence of a European demos might be a little less confident if they read the local newspapers in Belgium. Forget about Europe; there is still no Belgian demos. Linguistic divisions have proved too powerful to create a single political culture even in a small country of 10m people-a fact demonstrated once again by the Belgian elections of May 18th. Indeed, the very term "Belgian election" is misleading. Two elections were held on the same day in the country called Belgium, featuring different parties and leaders, depending on whether the vote was taking place in Dutch-speaking Flanders or French-speaking Wallonia.

In the Flemish election the Liberal party led by Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian prime minister, won a narrow victory ahead of the Flemish socialists, Christian Democrats and the far-right Vlaams Blok. In the francophone elections the francophone Socialists emerged as the biggest party, just ahead of the francophone Liberals. The only genuinely common theme was the Greens' collapse-in both Flanders and Wallonia.

Belgian politics now requires the various political parties to form a governing coalition. An unstated requirement is that the prime minister almost certainly has to be Flemish, given that 60% of the population are Dutch-speaking. No Walloon has got the top job since the 1970s. So it is all but certain that Mr Verhofstadt will continue as prime minister, probably at the head of a four-party coalition of Liberals and Socialists.

A second term in office will let the boyish 50-year-old prime minister start working on his image as a European elder statesman, perhaps with a view to landing a top job in the European Union.
But further years of a Verhofstadt government will also underline the extent to which politicians are hamstrung by the consensual coalition-building ways of Belgian politics.

When Mr Verhofstadt first emerged on the national scene, he was a vigorous and unusual proponent of economic liberalism. He was even nicknamed "Baby Thatcher". Yet, though his political origins place him on the centre-right, the need to form a coalition with the Socialists means that he has had to govern from the centre-left. The early Verhofstadt who spoke of privatisation and the need to encourage entrepreneurs has given way to a prime minister who flirts with the anti-globalisation movement and whose liberalism is largely expressed through social legislation, such as the legalisation of gay marriage and euthanasia.

Remind us again about the culture we share with Europe...

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60-40 VISION FILES

Poll: N.C. not enamored of Edwards (JOHN WAGNER, 5/24/03, News & Observer)

If the 2004 election were today, President Bush would prevail over Edwards in his own state, 57 percent to 39 percent, according to a new poll commissioned by The News & Observer. The margin is virtually unchanged since January, when Edwards announced his intention to seek the White House.

Five months into the race, more North Carolinians still disapprove of Edwards' running for president than those who favor his bid. The latest poll, conducted Sunday through Wednesday, found 51 percent disapprove while 45 percent approve.

"He's just not doing anything to make North Carolinians fall in love with him at this point,'' said Del Ali, president of Research 2000 of Rockville, Md., which conducted the poll for The N&O.

The poll also found that support for Edwards' Senate re-election has slipped in recent months. Edwards has not said what he plans to do about his Senate seat, which is on the ballot in 2004. But if he were to run, the poll found that 32 percent would vote to re-elect Edwards, while 33 percent would consider voting for another candidate and 35 percent plan to vote to replace him.

The percentage who would vote to re-elect Edwards has dropped 7 points since January, while the percentage of those who would consider voting for another candidate has jumped 8 points in the same period. The percentage who plan to replace him also has climbed by 3 points.

In a hypothetical matchup with U.S. Rep. Richard Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican seeking the GOP's Senate nomination, Edwards would prevail, however, 47 percent to 36 percent, according to the poll. Seventeen percent remain undecided.

Burr said he was "delighted'' with the numbers, given how much better known Edwards is across North Carolina right now.

"Anytime you see the incumbent below 50 percent, you know there's a vulnerability,'' said Burr, whose candidacy is being pushed by the White House.

It's a new concept: Mr. Edwards is running as a least-favorite son.

MORE:
Hollings plans to run again (RAJU CHEBIUM, May 23, 2003, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE)

Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings said Friday he plans to seek a seventh term in November 2004 but acknowledged that his wife isn't too keen on the idea.

"I'd like to beat the hell out of the Republicans," the South Carolina Democrat said in an interview with Gannett News Service. "Right now, I'm scheduled to (run). But my wife - I've got some personal considerations. After seven races, come on. She doesn't want to go for an eighth time right this minute. We're arguing about it. We'll see what happens."

Hollings, 81, was South Carolina governor from 1958-1962 and has been U.S. Senator since 1967. He also served in the state House.

Earlier this week, he gave the go-ahead to the state Democratic Party to look for other candidates, fueling speculation that he's getting ready to retire. Rep. Jim DeMint, R-Greenville, has said he will seek the Republican nomination for the Senate.

One of the problems for Mr. Hollings is the example of Strom Thurmond, who, no matter how beloved, was an embarrassment by the end of his too-long career in the Senate.

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LEAVING FANTASY ISLAND

New York publishers shift right in a drive for readers (Hillel Italie, 5/21/2003, Associated Press)

The operators of the Book-of-the-Month Club announced yesterday that they are forming a new club, as yet unnamed, devoted to works with a conservative point of view. Within the past month, Penguin Putnam and the Crown Publishing Group have started branches with a conservative bent.

''We don't think we've done enough in this area. We have featured conservative authors like Bill Bennett, but we've never presented them in a coherent way,'' says Mel Parker, senior vice president and editorial director of Bookspan, which runs the Book-of-the-Month Club and several other clubs.

Bookspan is co-owned by Bertelsmann AG and AOL Time Warner Inc., and its new club is scheduled to begin operations by early next year. Brad Miner, a former literary editor with the conservative National Review, will serve as editor.

Miner should have plenty of material. Penguin and Crown (a division of Random House Inc.) plan to publish about 15 books a year, each with conservative readers in mind. Regnery Publishing, a conservative press based in Washington, D.C., puts out 25 to 30 titles a year.

If you want to understand this phenomenon, here's all you have to do: read just about any liberal best-seller from the 50s/60s and a conservative text written around the same time. Even for a conservative it is shocking to see how badly the Left's ideas fared and how timeless the Right's have proven. President Bush could practically run his next campaign on the platform Barry Goldwater enunciated in Conscience of a Conservative while even the Communist Chinese no longer believe in the worldview that John Kenneth Galbraith laid out in The Affluent Society. The literature of the Left has been sideswiped by reality.

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OUR GANG

Osama & gang hit hard times (OWEN MORITZ, May 24th, 2003, New York Daily News)

Terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden, whose personal fortune was once pegged at $300 million, is nearly broke, and his dwindling army of Al Qaeda operatives are strapped for cash, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Bin Laden squandered his fortune years before he masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the magazine said, citing an intelligence windfall.

Instead, Al Qaeda's finances have been built on a foundation of charities, mosques, fund-raisers and businesses, most with Saudi connections, according to the magazine. [...]

The United States' relentless anti-terrorism campaign has turned up a trove of secret Al Qaeda documents, led to the assassination and capture of Bin Laden's key lieutenants and exposed his operation as less than sophisticated.

The organization's computer files are rarely encrypted, the magazine said, and when they, are U.S. officials have broken the codes easily. Phone calls are rarely encrypted.

"They continue to make basic tradecraft mistakes," said one official. "And one of them is you never talk over the phone."

There's an understandable desire, in the wake of 9-11, to believe that these folks are evil geniuses, but in truth they are not now and never were a realistic threat to the United States. They are a lethal annoyance, one we should deal with ruthlessly, but not inflate to the point where we terrorize ourselves.

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AN AXIOMATIC TO GRIND

Character Witness (Peter Beinart, 05.22.03, New Republic)

To conservatives, the Bush administration is everything its predecessor was not: decent, ethical, honest. It doesn't abuse government power or the public trust. As Wall Street Journal columnist and presidential hagiographer Peggy Noonan has put it, "Bush brings character to the table."

That's the claim. Here's the record over the last eight months:

TEXAS
Since at least the 1960s, congressional redistricting has been governed by a simple rule: It occurs once per decade, following the national census. (The exception being when courts invalidate a state's redistricting plan, thus requiring a second one.) Usually, then, states draw the maps. But, when they cannot do so in a timely fashion, the Supreme Court has stated that judges may draw them themselves.

That's what happened in Texas in 2001. The state legislature deadlocked, so a three-judge panel drew new U.S. House districts. In November 2002, voters elected candidates in those new districts, and everyone assumed that would be that.

But those same elections handed the GOP control of both houses of the state legislature. And so Texas GOP boss and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay did something unprecedented: He redrew the map to create four more Republican seats. Republicans rushed the new plan through the state legislature until desperate Democratic legislators fled the state, thus preventing a quorum.

FILIBUSTER
Throughout the Senate's history, its members have been able to block legislation through endless debate, or filibuster. Under Bill Clinton, Republicans filibustered the 1993 economic stimulus plan, campaign finance reform, and higher cigarette taxes. Now the Bush administration is upset that Democrats are filibustering two of its judicial nominees. So Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has called for eliminating the filibuster as we know it. Breaking a filibuster requires 60 votes, but Frist proposes changing that so 60 are required only on the initial filibuster vote; subsequent votes would require 57, then 54, then 51. The filibuster, in other words, could be broken with a simple majority--rendering the device virtually useless. Frist has also threatened to employ a rare parliamentary maneuver to ban filibusters on judicial nominees altogether. Had the Clinton administration tried that during the GOP's (far more frequent) filibustering in the 1990s, I suspect conservatives might have said something about abuse of executive power. Today, they seem unconcerned.

IRAQ
Once upon a time, conservatives thought presidential duplicity was a grave offense. Not anymore. On October 7, 2002, President Bush declared in a nationally televised speech that "Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." That was a functional lie. Iraq's drones, the Bush administration later admitted, had a maximum range of several hundred miles. They could reach the United States only if flown from a warship stationed off America's coast (a virtually impossible scenario given Iraq's almost nonexistent navy). [...]

These stories of Bush administration dishonesty and abuse have not been denied in the conservative press as much as they have been ignored. In researching this column, I could not find a single substantive defense of Bush's UAV claim, or his filibuster plan, or his uranium allegation, in any elite conservative publication. Fred Barnes last week defended the Texas redistricting plan in The Weekly Standard but, incredibly, never acknowledged the key issue: that states traditionally limit themselves to one redistricting per decade. For conservatives, it seems, this administration's decency and honesty are ideological axioms that require no empirical defense. President Bush is not President Clinton. That's all they need to know.

Mr. Beinart seems to believe in the principle of--if you'll excuse the expression---once screwed, screwed for good. If his column cited George W. Bush's signing of the Campaign Finance Reform bill, which the President himself said violates the First Amendment, we'd agree that's an abuse of power. The examples he chooses instead represent not genuine abuses of power but mere politics and despite his implicating Mr. Bush in them, it's not clear what role, if any, he's played in a couple. To begin with, the Texas redistricting of 1991 rather notoriously shortchanged Republicans. Then, as he notes, the two parties deadlocked in 2001 so the courts drew up the new districts. What he fails to mention is that the court used the '91 districts as its starting point, thereby once again giving the Democrats greater representation than the votes of Texans would warrant. Now the GOP has sufficient control of the legislature--despite these anti-democratic Democratic shennanigans--and they're getting a little revenge. Boo hoo! Did the New Republic complain about the "abuse" by the Texas Democrats in '91?

As to the filibuster, this is merely a Senate rule. The majority in the Senate may change the rule because the minority is "abusing" it. It's not clear, nor does Mr. Beinart make any effort to demonstrate, that this is a White House initiative. Even if it is, it will require a Senate vote. How would encouraging people to vote on an issue constitute abuse of power?

We'll almost give him Iraq. President Bush may well have over-stated the threat from Iraq, though on the specific issue of a UAV, why couldn't it be shipped to and assembled here? But he also never rested the case for war solely on the threat that Saddam himself posed, but also on the possibility that he might supply weapons to terrorists. If Mr. Beinart is conceding that the UAV program was real, he would also have to acknowledge at least the possibility that once operational they could have been used by terrorists against targets either in the United States or against Americans in the Middle East, right? Oh dear, has Mr. Beinart abused the public trust by not acknowledging this possibility?

At any rate, if these three are the best examples he can muster of President Bush's indecency, dishonesty, and "abuse" of power, that's pretty pitiful. That he also thinks conservatives should be up in arms about this pifflery is absurd. The first two examples in particular are nothing more than cases of the GOP getting back at Democrats for their own "abuses"--welcome to politics, pally.

Now, if Mr. Bush should mire himself in a Watergate or Iran-Contra scandal, Republicans will be right there helping to investigate, just as they did in those cases, in marked contrast to the way Democrats obfuscated the many Clinton scandals. But until something serious comes along, we'll leave the nit-picking to the Beinarts.

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SOMETHING SMELLS VICHY

Intelligence team finds French passports in Iraq (Bill Gertz, 5/24/03, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

A U.S. military intelligence team in Iraq has uncovered a dozen French passports, and defense officials believe other French passports from the same batch were used by Iraqis to flee the country.

Defense officials are still investigating whether the passports were provided covertly by the French government, or were stolen or forged by Saddam Hussein's regime, said defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A State Department official said the French provision of passports to the Iraqis was like "Raoul Wallenberg in reverse" - a reference to the Swedish diplomat who helped Jews escape Nazi Germany during World War II.

The comparison is even more apt when you consider they acted as reverse-Wallenbergs in WWII also--trading French Jews for chocolate and nylons.

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THE UNKINDEST CUT

Sorenstam misses cut by 4 strokes (JOEL BOYD, May 24, 2003, Chicago Sun-Times)

With her ball-striking not as sharp as it was in a first-round 71, Sorenstam put pressure on her short game, considered her weakness. It came through early, with sand saves on Nos. 1 and 3, but as the day wore on, she repeatedly left chips and putts well short of the hole.

After sticking a 9-iron to seven feet on No. 2 for her lone birdie, Sorenstam bogeyed No. 5 after her drive caught a tree limb, added another at No. 6 after a poor chip and three-putted Nos. 8, 10 and 12. She righted the ship on the last six holes, parring in for a 36-hole total of 5-over 145.

That left her tied for 96th and ahead of only 11 of the 111 players who finished 36 holes. Still, that group included Bob Estes, ranked 16th in the world, and former PGA Championship winner Mark Brooks. [...]

She also won over some of her harshest critics, her fellow competitors.

''Some of the guys who have said less positive things have come up and told me they were proud of me,'' Sorenstam said. ''Most of the guys have been very supportive. I couldn't have asked for a better reception.''

The fallout from Sorenstam's performance might be less positive. Critics are likely to point to her position in the field and say her shortcomings were exposed over 36 holes.

At least one player hopes that doesn't happen. Dan Forsman, tied for the second-round lead with Kenny Perry at 8-under 132, said the top-ranked LPGA player should be allowed to play as many tournaments as she wants.

''I guess some of the guys will say, 'I told you so,' and others will say she had a heck of tournament,'' Forsman said. ''Others will say she's nothing but class, and frankly I'm in that camp.

''It's clear there is a gap. But what I'd hate to see happen is people be so critical of this to where they make these girls feel like it's ridiculous. Because I don't think it is.''

Neither does Pia Nilsson, Sorenstam's former coach and mentor. Nilsson disputed the idea that Sorenstam's score showed women don't belong on the PGA Tour.

''Some may think so,'' Nilsson said. ''But this proves women's golf, when it's the best in the world, is played at a very high level.''

Though we predictably think it's one short step from here to cats and dogs sleeping together, we'd not have a big problem with her playing in Men's Tournaments so long as she goes to Q-School and wins a tour card. What's most objectionable is allowing women athletes to play in events they are not qualified to compete in.

Meanwhile though, the coverage of her effort seems terribly patronizing. She is a more dominant player on her tour than Tiger is on his, winning 11 women's events last year. She hand-picked a tournament she thought she could perform well in and played as well as she's capable of on Thursday, not as well on Friday. Yet she still missed the cut and would have if it had been made on Thursday night. Regardless of what one thinks of the propriety of the event, it demonstrated rather conclusively that the divide between the sexes, at least as regards professional golf, is gaping. As Tom Boswell predicted earlier in the week, it would appear that best female golfer in the world--maybe the best ever--is roughly as good as the 100th best player among the men.

That does not mean we shouldn't admire her courage and the way she handled herself this week--she seemed every inch a lady--but it does mean that all the talk about how she "proved" something is mere hyperbole.

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WHY DON'T WE GET DRUNK AND SUE

Celts claim to be oppressed by Ireland and its alcohol (Steven Edwards, May 24, 2003, National Post)

Indigenous leaders from around the world were left scratching their heads yesterday after the UN included Celts from Ireland in a conference aimed at promoting native rights.

Though Celtic blood flows in the veins of the vast majority of Ireland's citizens, activists from an Irish group called Retrieve Foundation took the podium to say that Celts, as an "oppressed people," should be acknowledged under the UN's Indigenous Charter.

In particular, the group says drugs and alcohol were used to keep the Celts down.

The Indigenous Charter is principally meant to promote the rights of such clearly definable indigenous peoples as Canada's First Nations or Australia's Aborigines.

It is also extended to distinctive groups such as the Pygmies in central Africa, the Saami (formerly Laplanders) in Scandinavia and various indigenous groups throughout Asia.

Speaking for Retrieve Foundation, Margaret Connolly said the Irish government had "neglected" Celts, who, for "2,000 years, had been forced to adapt to a culture that was foreign to them."

She said "drugs and alcohol were the tools of an oppressive society" and that "too many young Celts were on drugs and alcohol." [...]

But despite Ireland's history as a colony of Britain, its people in both the north and the south remain predominantly Celtic.

In the Republic, the first official language is the Celtic tongue of Irish. Even the Prime Minister is called the Taoiseach.

Willie Littlechild, a Cree from Canada who was among 1,800 delegates representing about 500 indigenous groups at the conference, said it was sometimes difficult to know who could be classed as indigenous.

"People from China once told me they were all indigenous, so I welcomed all two billion of them," he quipped.

It's just one big gathering of people we're proud to have oppressed.

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AND WRITES LIKE ONE

The Old Folks Behind Home (Roger Angell, Spring 1962, The New Yorker)

Sarasota, March 21

Watching the White Sox work out this morning at Payne Park reassured me that baseball is, after all, still a young man's sport and a cheerful one. Coach Don Gutteridge broke up the early pepper games with a cry
of "Ever'body 'round!" and after the squad had circled the field once, the ritual-the same one that is practiced on every high-school, college, and professional ballfield in the country-began. Batters in the cage bunted one, hit five or six, and made room for the next man. Pitchers hit fungoes to the outfielders, coaches on the first and third baselines knocked out grounders to the infield, pepper games went on behind the cage, and the bright air was full of baseballs, shouts, whistles, and easy laughter. There was a raucous hoot from the players around second when a grounder hopped over Esposito's glove and hit him in the belly. Two young boys with fielders' gloves had joined the squad in the outfield, and I saw Floyd Robinson gravely shake hands with them both. Anyone can come to watch practice here, and fans from nearby hotels and cottages wandered in after their breakfasts, in twos and threes, and slowly clambered up into the empty bleachers, where they assumed the easy, ceremonial attitude-feet up on the row in front, elbows on knees, chin in hands. There were perhaps two dozen of us in the stands, and what kept us there, what nailed us to our seats for a sweet, boring hour or more, was not just the whop! of bats, the climbing white arcs of outfield flies, and the swift flight of the ball whipped around the infield, but something more painful and just as obvious-the knowledge that we had never made it. We would never know the rich joke that doubled over three young pitchers in front of the dugout; we would never be part of that golden company on the field, which each of us, certainly for one moment of his life, had wanted more than anything else in the world to join.

The Cardinals, who have been having a fine spring, were the visitors this afternoon, and their high spirits infected everyone. Minnie Minoso, grinning extravagantly, exchanged insults with his former White Sox teammates, and Larry Jackson, the big Cardinal right-hander, laughed out loud on the mound when he got Joe Cunningham, who was his teammate last year, to miss badly on a big curve in the first inning. Stan Musial had the day off, and Al Lopez, the Sox' manager, had filled his lineup with rookies. My eye was caught by the Chicago shortstop, a kid named Al Weis, who is not on the team's regular roster but who was having a nifty day in the field. He started double plays in the first and second innings, and in the third he made a good throw from deep short to get Jackson, and then robbed Gotay with a diving spear of a low liner. At the plate, though, he was nervous and uncertain, anxious to succeed in this one short-and, to him, terribly important-afternoon. He struck out in the first inning and again in the second, stranding two base-runners.

At about this time, I began to pick up a dialogue from the seats directly behind me-a flat, murmurous, continuous exchange in Middle Western accents between two elderly men.

"Look at the skin on my hands, how dry it is," said one.

"You do anything for it?" asked the other.

"Yes, I got some stuff the doctor gave me-just a little tube of something. It don't help much."

I stole a look at them. They were both in their seventies, at least. Both were sitting back comfortably, their arms folded across their stomachs.

"Watch that ball," said the first. "Is that fair?"

"No, it's foul. You know, I haven't seen a homer this year."

"Me neither."

"Maybe Musial will hit one here tomorrow."

The White Sox, down one run after the first inning, could do nothing with Jackson. Weis struck out again in the fifth, made a wild throw to first in the sixth, and then immediately redeemed himself with another fast
double play. The voices went on.

"This wind melts your ice cream fast, don't it?"

"Yes, it does. It feels nice, though. Warm wind."

In the top of the eighth, with the bases loaded, Weis grabbed another line drive and doubled up the runner at second base. There were chirps from the stands.

"It don't seem any time at all since spring training last year."

"That's because we're older now. You take my grandson, he's always looking forward to something. Christmas and his birthday and things like that. That makes the time go slow for him. You and me, we just watch each day by itself."

"Yes. You know, I didn't hardly think about life at all until I was sixty-five or seventy."

"I know."

Weis led off the bottom of the eighth, and popped up to left. He started still another double play in the ninth, but his afternoon was ruined. The Cardinals won the game, 2-0.

That evening, I looked up Al Weis's record. He is twenty-two years old and was an All-Scholastic player at Farmingdale High, on Long Island. In his three years in organized baseball, he has played with Holdrege,
in the Nebraska State League; with Lincoln, in the Three-I League; and with Charleston, in the Sally League. His batting averages in those years-.275, .231, .261-tell the story: good field, no hit. Time has run out for him this spring, and it must seem to him that it went too quickly. Next week, he will report to the White Sox farm camp in Hollywood, Florida, for another year in the minors.

Depending on which you read something by last, either he or Red Smith is the best baseball writer ever.

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THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS (DYING)

Review: of Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State by David Satter: Russia's darkness rising (Martin Sieff, 5/23/2003, UPI)

Something -- in fact, a lots of things -- went terribly wrong during the early 1990s transition of Russia from State Communism to a supposed free market economy. Many others detailed the problems of transition in detail as they were happening, but Satter maps the contours of the debris that was left.

Without any stable legal structure governing the owning and trading of property and wealth or the regulation of business transactions in the decade after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russian society became totally criminalized, not merely in its day-to-day dealings but in the widespread existential consciousness of its people. Russia's newly emergent oligarchs have often been nicknamed "Robber Barons" after the Gilded Age plutocrats of late 19th-century industrial America, but the term is a misnomer in all too many ways. Industrial titans like John D. Rockefeller in oil and Andrew Carnegie in steel built huge business empires and acquired enormous power. But they did so within an ordered society, built tremendous industrial infrastructures that generated wealth for generations after them, and felt obligations towards it. Rockefeller and Carnegie, like the Ford family after them donated hundreds of millions of dollars to enormous, organized philanthropies that immeasurably boosted education, health and culture, first across the United States and then across the wider world. The Robber Barons of President Boris Yeltsin's Russia really were that. They created an industrial and socio-economic desolation and called it peace. [...]

Things have stabilized, and somewhat improved since President Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin. But the criminalized, rapacious super-oligarchs, those billionaire modern barons, retain control of the Commanding Heights of the Russian economy.

Beneath them, a society of 145 million people stretching across almost one-seventh of the land surface of the planet remain mired in poverty, despair and a moral squalor even more devastating than their physical one. Russia's population continues to implode with soaring death rates and plummeting birth rates. The underlying reason for this, far more than the collapse of living standards in the 1990s was, Satter concludes, that most of those people had lost all hope. They now despaired of things ever getting better. [...]

There is still time for Russia to stabilize and for those who wish her well to support the constructive forces for good within her. But most of the promise has been squandered, and the Hobbesian nightmare of a society of chaos, red in tooth and claw, remains the dominant reality today.

Western policy-makers, especially in Washington, would do well to study these pages and to ponder the teachings of the great Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev with which Satter closes this important, troubling book: "In the soul of the Russian people there should appear ... a transfiguring and creative beginning." Only then, "the creative instincts will defeat the rapacious ones."

We harbored great hope for Vladimir Putin when he took power, believing that he might be precisely what many feared, an authoritarian. What Russia needs right now is not freedom but order and it is likely the case that only an authoritarian, even a fairly brutal one, can re-establish the order in which a future freedom would flourish. Russell Kirk put the matter typically well: "The good society is marked by a high degree of order, justice, and freedom. Among these, order has primacy: for justice cannot be enforced until a tolerable civil social order is attained, nor can freedom be anything better than violence until order gives us laws."

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FROM LILLY PADS TO KNEE PADS

Irrelevant France: Cheese-eating surrender monkeys? Cowboy jingos? It's time for America and France to cut the sniping (Christopher Dickey and Tracy Mcnicoll, 5/26/03, NEWSWEEK)

Marc Llong feels penitential. Waiting to board his flight to New York, the gray-haired French retiree leafs through Le Parisien, a working-class tabloid that's full of headlines about transatlantic tensions. "We were so bad," he says, shaking his head. The French government opposed the war in Iraq, seeming to side with the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein. The Americans fought anyway, and won. If the United States and France are ever going to get along again, says Lelong, "it's up to us to make the effort."

ROSEMAY MANGIN IS also at Charles de Gaulle airport, flying to Chile where she owns a hotel and cybercafe. She, too, thinks France's behavior was "shameful." What should President Jacques Chirac do now? "Get down on his knees."

Plenty of Americans-including President George W. Bush, no doubt-would be quick to agree. Along with his Defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and other crusaders in the administration, he'd be more than willing to scourge the sinner. While Southern rednecks sport T shirts proclaiming Iraq first, then France, talk-radio revels in frog-bashing. Neocon intellectuals opine on France's impudence-or worse, its irrelevance in a modern world utterly and absolutely dominated by the U.S.A. [...]

Realistically, France's economy may be the fifth largest in the world-but it's not a fifth the size of America's. Its military may be ready and willing to deploy in Africa every so often, but the forces are puny and practically immobile when compared with the juggernaut that swept from Basra to Baghdad in three weeks. In order to even dream of balancing American power, France has to think of itself as Europe, which has a collective GDP rivaling that of the United States. But Europe, despite years of French urging, has no common foreign policy or an army of its own. Nor does it see itself as France.

Three quick thoughts:

(1) "Southern rednecks"? -- is there any other group, than white males, who a major media outlet would characterize in these kinds of terms in this day and age?

(2) Is there a more exquisite irony than the fact that in order to vindicate French nationalism, France has to surrender its sovereignty in an alliance with Germany?

(3) We mentioned earlier in the week that reexamining common knowledge can ofttimes prove fruitful. Here's a case where the authors make no attempt to question the received wisdom and their essay suffers as a result. Are France and Anglo-America really the natural allies the authors assume? Or have they actually been diverging for centuries? And is it important to America and the world that America reconcile itself with France, or might we all be better served by a recognition that French statism is antithetical to the Anglo-American ideal of freedom?

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ALWAYS LOOK FOR THE UNION LABEL

Gephardt & Co. Look to Service Sector for Coveted Union Label (Ronald Brownstein, May 19, 2003, LA Times)

With this year's Democratic field so evenly divided, the unions would play a commanding role if they could back a single candidate. But top union officials, including the president of the federation, John Sweeney, say they don't yet see evidence that any Democrat can reach the two-thirds threshold. Absent such a consensus, the unions will inevitably divide their endorsements among the candidates, diluting their influence.

Many union officials believe only one candidate even has a chance to reach the two-thirds figure: Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.). The game then for the other Democrats isn't so much to win the AFL-CIO's endorsement as it is to deny the prize to Gephardt. And in that quiet but intense struggle, the critical decisions may rest with the presidents of the federation's two largest members: Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, and Gerald McEntee of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME.

The two men are in such a pivotal position because of their potential to either break or solidify the stalemate emerging in the labor federation. The big industrial and building trade unions with protectionist leanings have enough strength to block an endorsement of any Democrat who supports free trade - a camp that includes all of the leading contenders except Gephardt. But those blue-collar unions, which are likely to endorse Gephardt, don't have enough members anymore to lift him on their own to the two-thirds threshold.

To get there, Gephardt will need support from some of the large service-sector unions, such as the SEIU and AFSCME, who together account for one-fifth of the federation's membership. Conversely, both to block Gephardt and to offset the help the industrial unions will provide him even if the AFL-CIO doesn't make a unified endorsement, the other candidates need support from the SEIU, AFSCME, and other service-sector unions, such as the teachers'. [...]

Half of the SEIU's 1.3 million members work in health care, and Stern said that issue has become "an all-pervasive, unifying [concern] in the union." It's not surprising, then, that the three candidates who have released plans to provide near-universal coverage top his list: Gephardt, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. "Gephardt catapulted himself back into people's vision with his health-care plan," Stern says. "And the more Dean and Kerry continue to work the issue, the more they come onto our radar screen." As for Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, he says, "They haven't found their niche." {...]

Like a railbird handicapping ponies, McEntee zips through balance sheets for all of the 2004 contenders. Dean has won some converts in the union, McEntee says, but he appears dubious that the former governor's opposition to the war in Iraq will sell in a general election. He likes Edwards' energy and skill as a campaigner, but he isn't sure such a newcomer "can take off." Lieberman's connections to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council "is not in our ballpark," but he praises the senator's toughness on national security.

McEntee is impressed with Gephardt's support among his House colleagues and believes he's been bold with his health-care plan and his strong support for the war with Iraq. But McEntee seems worried about Gephardt's viability; his early fund-raising "was a bit of a disappointment," he says. Kerry clearly appears to intrigue McEntee most. In the course of an hourlong conversation, McEntee kept returning to the senator, citing his service in Vietnam (and opposition to the war when he returned), his strong record on labor issues, the quality of his campaign staff and his ability to tap the personal fortune of his wife, Teresa Heinz. The AFSCME and SEIU each has said that, after it sounds out its members, it hopes to pick a candidate by early fall.

More than any other unions, these two may decide whether the labor movement places its heaviest bet on ideological compatibility, or electability, in 2004.

This is pretty devastating for the Democrats. The key to getting their nomination is union support. Getting the support of manufacturing unions requires opposition to free trade. Getting the support of service unions requires opposition to most reform of education, government, and health care, particularly any reforms that reduce the size of government itself or that require teachers and schools to meet set standards.

If the twentieth century served any useful purpose it demonstrated the efficacy of open competition and free markets as opposed to top-down government control. Labor effectively requires that Democrats disregard this lesson and fight to maintain the status quo. Thus are Democrats become the reactionary party.

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. Today we received a note from his Dad

AZTEC WARRIOR

Jesus A. Suarez Del Solar Navarro

Jesus was born in the City of Tijuana B.C. Mexico on the 16 of November of 1982. He received his primary education at the public school Cuahutemoc and in the Secondary Federal # 44 of the same city of Tijuana. He emigrated to Escondido, CA in the year of 1997 where he attended San Pascual High School and graduated with honors from Valley High School of Escondido,, Ca.

He joined the Marines in the year of 2001. He left for Iraq on the 5 of February of 2003 and fell in combat the 27 of March, 2003.

FATHER'S MESSAGE

The death of my son, of my Aztec Guerrero, is not in vain, since thanks to his sacrifice, thousands of we Hispanics have been united in the pain and we have been able to unite to honor its memory, as one of so many Hispanics fallen in this war. This war could be illegal, unjust, or without justification, possibly is because the government of Bush needs cheap petrol. But what is true is the immense value and sacrifice that our children did by this cause, that selflessly fought with honor so that, within their ideals, to fight the terrorism that does so much damage to the world in general.

And ironically, this war could unleash more resentment, more hatred and more terrorism in the world, for that reason the sacrifice of my son and others is symbolic to world peace, to that with no need of so many deaths we can arrive at an understanding between the nations by pacifist means, without resorting to the violence, since this only engenders more violence and destruction.

Rest peacefully, my Aztec Warrior and the many other fallen heroes.

Fernando Suarez Del Solar

LETTER TO MY ABSENT SON

Jesus, my son.

I desire that you know how proud I am of you, as a son, brother, husband, father and as a Mexican. I feel so sad to know that no longer will I be able to hug you, kiss you and to listen to your voice, but at the same time I am happy knowing that you are in a place full of light, harmony, flowers, peace, next to El Senor. You always wanted to be a soldier, for that reason you were called Aztec Guerrero, and you died fighting, with valentia [valor?] by your own ideals, your own conviction that this war will serve so that your son and all the children of the world have a place more surely to live. I know that you were convinced that this war was necessary to free us of the terrorism that assassinates thousands every year, to thousands of innocents and you, by your great heart you did not want that this continued, but I ask son of mine. What is to become of us? Of your mother? Of your sisters? Of your wife? Of your son? Of me?. How do you think that we can live without your beautiful presence? Why, son? Why did you have to leave? Forgive me, son, but I cry to know you are absent, I cry for your valentia[?], I cry for the great pain of not having you.., which I am selfish, that my fatherly love makes want to have you by my side. But I cannot help it; there is a great, an immense pain here in my chest, a great emptiness in my heart because of your painful departure, Jesus, my baby.

I want to ask your forgiveness if I was not the best father, if I was hard with you, some times I was unjust, but always I was full of love towards you, everything was so that you were what you were, a great full man of virtues, plenty of nobility.

I know that you will realize from where you are the immense love and respect that you woke up in the world-wide community and especially in Escondido; it was something that touched the heart of your mother, the knowledge that everyone loves you and respects you for the great sacrifice which you did by this world.

Jesus, my Aztec Guerrero, I know of your pride of being Mexican and want to ask your forgiveness, but we had to accept the American nationality through you, to be able to protect to your son in the future; we know that you will understand it and will pardon us for this decision.

Jesus, thanks for being my son, and as I said in your funeral, we never buried to you, we only seeded you, so that you are the seed of a new generation of young lovers of Peace and the love in the world.

God has you at His side and fills us with love my son.

I do not take leave, it is only an "Hasta Luego". [Until Later]

Your father who adores to you.

Fernando Suarez Del Solar

Quedo de ustedes a sus apreciables ordenes.

We believe quite strongly that Mr. Suarez is wrong about the nature of the war that claimed his son's life, and that the cause was indeed worthy. But we mourn his loss and honor his service to our country and hope that his father and family find peace. He lived and died the words of John 15:13: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." That the friends he gave his life for were Iraqi strangers makes his devotion to the ideal all the more extraordinary. The streets of heaven today are guarded by one more U.S. Marine.

MORE:
-Guerrero Azteca
-Base mourns "Aztec Warrior" Marine (Camp Pendleton, 4/25/03)
-Fallen Marine hailed as hero (ERIN MASSEY, 4/12/03, North County Times)
-Fallen Marine honored in Escondido (ERIN MASSEY, 4/12/03, North County Times)
-Marines last seen near Euphrates (RICK McLAUGHLIN, 3/30/03, San Bernardino County Sun-News)
-Family: Marines Keep Quiet About Son's Death: Family Hears About Son's Death From Various News Reports (San Diego Channel, April 2, 2003)
-AUDIO INTERVIEW: FATHER OF FALLEN MARINE: Maria Hinojosa speaks with Fernando Suarez del Solar, father of a Marine killed in action in Iraq. (Latino USA, April 18-24, 2003)

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WOULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN EASIER TO JUST HAVE COMPETENT EDITORS?

Report: Times Suspends Reporter Bragg (Associated Press, May 23, 2003)

The New York Times has suspended Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg for two weeks, the Columbia Journalism Review reported Friday, the same day the newspaper published an editors' note about his handling of a feature story about Florida oystermen.

The note said that while Bragg wrote the June 15 article and visited the Gulf Coast town where it originated, interviewing and other reporting at the scene were done by a freelance journalist working for the newspaper. The note did not make it clear whether Bragg's editors had known the role of the freelancer at the time.

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THE SHRINKING FOOTPRINT (via ef brown)

Where Has Canada Gone?: The second largest country in the world is being swallowed up by its own irrelevance. TIME investigates Canada?s disappearance (Steven Frank, May 26, 2003, TIME)

Some 50 years after Canadian troops helped win World War II and Canadian diplomats helped shape the international institutions that remade a shattered globe, Canada seems to have neither the will nor the wallet to make its mark on the world. Canadians can look back with pride at their past achievements on the world stage: the heroism at Dieppe in 1942 and on D-day in 1944, the brokering of the truce that stanched the 1956 Suez crisis, leadership in dozens of U.N. peacekeeping missions in the 1960s and ?70s. But those glory years are gone. Canada?s influence these days is more like a phantom limb: it feels to Canadians as though it?s still there, but to many observers the reality is different. The nation?s ability to extend power and influence has been hacked back to a shadow of its former self. ?We are now a marginal player in the world,? says Hugh Segal, who heads the Montreal-based think tank Institute for Research on Public Policy. ?We have a series of conceits about how important we are and about how much our views count that is completely unrelated to reality.? Christopher Sands, a senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, agrees. ?Canada?s footprint in foreign affairs is getting smaller,? he says. ?It?s an important, Western, decent country but certainly not a principal player.?

Increasingly, Canada seems to be a child hiding in tangled underbrush. You know it?s there, but you just can?t find it. One Canadian diplomat in Europe feels the country?s place in the world is diminished because Ottawa has subjugated much of its foreign policy to goals involving international trade. Arguably, doing that made some sense in the 1990s, when economic globalization was all the rage. But with the return of big geopolitical questions since Sept. 11, 2001-some of them capable of solution only by the application of military power-Canada has been found wanting. ?Canada really no longer has a force capable of doing all the traditional military tasks,? says the Canadian diplomat. The nation is shrinking even from areas where it has most often been a leader, like aid to poor countries. ?Development ministers in Europe now meet regularly to find ways to deal with growing poverty,? says a senior U.N. official. ?Canada is just no longer connected there.?

Many people don?t believe it. ?Our reputation, our capability to change things, has not diminished at all,? a senior government official tells Time. ?To the contrary, I think we are still seen as a country that people look to for advice and for ideas.? Among those ideas is the basic Canadian goal of ?trying to create a sense of social justice in the world community that involves a pluralistic system where all races and nationalities can come together,? says Foreign Minister Bill Graham. Canada?s loss of stature is relative, says Graham. ?I don?t think we?ve lost our leadership capacity just because other nations are more important than they were 50 years ago.? This, to some extent, is true. Canada?s decline in influence since 1945 is an inevitable part of the way the world has changed. Emerging powers like China and India now speak with a confident voice, while Germany and Japan have the clout that goes with their wealth. But the world?s changing dynamics explain only part of Canada?s retreat. More of it is the result of conscious policy decisions made in Ottawa.

Isn't it most likely that they've chosen to sacrifice all other expenditures and focus on their sacrosanct National Health system, leave the world stage and concentrate on themselves?

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SOMETIMES IT'S HARD TO AVOID CONCLUDING THAT

THE WORLD IS ARRANGED FOR MY AMUSEMENT.
Analysis: Israel weighing EU membership (Martin Walker, UPI, 5/23/03) (via Best of the Web).

The visiting delegation from the European Union was startled this week when Israel Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said his government was weighing an application to join the EU.

"It doesn't mean he is preparing the dossier for applying tomorrow," an Israeli spokesman said. "In principle, the minister thinks a possibility exists for Israel to join the EU, since Israel and Europe share similar economies and democratic values." . . .

But if and when Israel does achieve a peace settlement with Syria and Lebanon and the Palestinians (it already has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan), Israeli membership could make a great deal of sense for Israel and the EU alike.

This could never happen, but if it did -- a hundred years of fun for Americans.

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PLEASE, LET IT BE A TREND...

"I'll Quit," Vows Gallo After Brown Bunny Boos (Catherine Bremer, 5/23/03, Reuters)

U.S. director Vincent Gallo is so hurt by the scathing reaction to his film "The Brown Bunny," that he has vowed to make it his last.

"I'll never make another movie again. I mean it," Gallo told Reuters, after his road movie had a disastrous reception at the Cannes film festival and he was booed at a press conference. [...]

"It is a disaster of a film and it was a waste of time. I apologize to the financiers, but it was never my intention to make a pretentious film, a self-indulgent film, a useless film, an unengaging film," he said.

Critics guffawed openly at the screening of "The Brown Bunny," which Gallo wrote, directed, produced and starred in, and groaned at the highly graphic oral sex scene at the end.

Many found the long driving scenes interminable and monotonous and the symbolic use of a toy rabbit plain just silly.

Many more directors should follow suit.

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)

The tribute that vice pays to virtue (Daniel Davies, 5/21/2003)

[T]he single most sensible thing said in political philosophy in the twentieth century was JK Galbraith's aphorism that the quest of conservative thought throughout the ages has been "the search for a higher moral justification for selfishness". Some rightwingers are not hypocrites because they admit that their basic moral principle is "what I have, I keep". Some rightwingers are hypocrites because they pretend that "what I have, I keep" is always and everywhere the best way to express a general unparticularised love for all sentient things.... [A]t base, the test of someone's politics is simple; if their political aim is to advance all of humanity, they're on our side, while if they have an overriding constraint that the current owners of property must always be satisfied first, they're playing for the opposition.

We don't normally comment on other bloggers, but this got my dander up, and offers a good opportunity to make an observation.

About a week ago I posted on Locke's relevance today, particularly as a counter to modern liberals such as John Rawls. Of Rawls I wrote:

Rawls assumes that people behind this veil of ignorance will choose something resembling contemporary liberalism. (I suspect, BTW, that Rawls's whole construct was motivated by a common 1970s slander of conservatives: Rawls supposes that the only reason people would choose something other than liberalism is selfishness, and if you take away their knowledge of how to be selfish effectively, then they will a fortiori choose liberalism as their politics.)

Mr. Davies regurgitates John Kenneth Galbraith's version of that "1970s slander." Old malice never dies; it only fades away, over the course of generations.

But let's take a serious look at selfishness as a driver of politic views. Mr. Davies's notion that mere respect for private property is proof of selfishness we can reject out of hand: his position would condemn, for instance, all Jews and Christians who hold as their ideal of justice Micah's vision of a time when, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks ... Every man shall sit under his own vine or under his own fig tree, undisturbed." [Micah 4: 3-4] The nerve of those people, wanting to have their own vines and trees!

What is a more reasonable indicator of selfishness? Now, it is impossible to look inside another's heart and observe his motives directly. ("I, the LORD, alone probe the mind and test the heart," Jeremiah 17:10.) But we can look at actions and choices, and judge: do this person's decisions bring benefits to himself and harm to others, or do they benefit others as much as himself? A person whose choices systematically bring material goods to himself at the expense of others is more likely to be selfish than a person whose choices systematically deliver material goods to others.

Now, the American political process is a social bargaining game in which all citizens participate. In deciding which politicians to support, and which legislation, participants have to weigh their own preferences for the good of others and the good of themselves, and decide who will best satisfy their preferences. With the American system of checks and balances, supermajorities are usually required to act, so legislative outcomes will probably incorporate the views of most citizens. Thus, it is natural to assume that actual political outcomes are a rough average over the preferences of all American citizens.

For simplicity, let's model the American two-party system as consisting of only two types of citizen, the representative Democrat and the representative Republican. Suppose that one of these types consists entirely of selfish materialists, whose over-riding political goal is to maximize their own wealth without regard to the wealth of members of the opposite party. And suppose that the other type consists of public-minded people who want the best for everyone, and count others' welfare equally with their own. What would we expect the outcome of the political process to look like?

Well, as legislative outcomes are a simple average over these two types, and bargaining leads to a welfare maximum, we'd expect the outcome to be a redistribution of wealth from the public-minded to the selfish. After all, the public-minded are indifferent to seeing their own wealth redistributed to others, while the selfish are eager to receive.

Now let's look at contemporary America and class the major government disbursements by the predominant party affiliation of the beneficiaries. Outside of national defense, foreign affairs, transportation, and payments for the elderly (Social Security and Medicare) -- which benefit all citizens roughly equally -- the largest buckets of government spending are these:

• Welfare for the poor and disabled: Democrats.
  
• Spending for scientific/medical/academic research and for higher education tuition subsidies: Democrats.
  
• Spending for K-12 public education: Democrats.
  
• Government employee salaries: Democrats.
  
• Farm subsidies: bipartisan, but where subsidies are highest -- e.g. North Dakota, where 85% of farm income comes from government spending -- farmers are strongly Democratic; where subsidies are lowest farmers are strongly Republican.
  

  Looking at the payers, it's hard to know which party's members pay more in taxes, but the wealthier tend to be more Republican, and we know the tax code is progressive. So Republicans may pay more in taxes, or it may be fairly even, but it's unlikely Democrats pay more.
  

  Comparing our result -- Democrats generally benefit materially from politics, Republicans generally lose -- to our model suggests that in America it is the Democrats who are selfish, and the Republicans who are public-spirited and concerned for the welfare of others.
  

  Now I happen to think that this generalization is true. I have often heard Democrats assert a sense of entitlement to profit from government redistribution -- not just poor Democrats either, but wealthy university professors. I have never heard Republicans assert that there ought to be a net flow of money from Democrats to Republicans. Can one imagine the outcry if a Republican politician were to argue that the flow of transfer payments should be reversed, and Democrats should pay roughly $500 billion a year net to Republicans?
  

  What is, in fact, the conservative attitude? Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization." Though this is often quoted by Democrats in favor of higher taxes, it is really the foundation of conservatives' attitude to politics. Conservatives see the social bargain as a trade of taxes for civilization -- civilization meaning basic protection of life, liberty, and property against enemies foreign and domestic. We value civilization so highly that we feel we get a good bargain if we lose 30% or 40% of our income and receive nothing in return except civilization. The chief goods conservatives expect from government are national security, efficient policing, the rule of law, and above all, the preservation of freedom. And though all of these might be had for 10% of our income in a perfect world, we will willingly pay 40% in order to buy the loyalty of the selfish to these goods.
  

  But Democrats no longer seem to understand that this is the conservative attitude. The reason the Clinton administration drew animosity from many conservatives is not because its policies were radical -- they weren't; to conservatives, many of the policies of the Clinton administration, from NAFTA to welfare reform to telecom reform, compare favorably to the domestic policies of the two Bush administrations. But Clinton's willingness to lie under oath after signing the law that made his testimony mandatory, his willingness to launch surprise attacks against Americans suspected of minor crimes leading to the deaths of dozens of women and children from poison gas at Waco, his use of the IRS to conduct repeated audits of conservative groups, his cavalier attitude to national security, and his demonization of opponents, suggested that the Democrats were no longer willing to honor what Republicans understood to be the social contract. Democrats apparently wanted to continue taking 30% of the Republican incomes for themselves, but were no longer willing to give civilization -- the rule of law, civil courtesy, liberty and constrained government power -- in return. Conservatives felt they were no longer equals making a social contract, but serfs being exploited. And thus Clinton was despised.
  

  Conservatives are willing to pay an extravagant price for a good -- civilization and liberty -- that benefits all. To be called "selfish" for this, is to be insulted. Democrats ought to cease making this charge. As I've argued, the objective evidence is against it.
  

  One last bit of friendly advice, particularly relevant in this age of filibusters of judges. Democrats should recognize that we do have a social contract, and that if they do not honor their part of it, they cannot expect to continue receiving transfers of Republican wealth. Greater civility and charity, respect for the equal political rights of conservatives, and respect for conservatives' specific desires for lawfulness and limited government powers, would be in the Democrats' enlightened self-interest. Conservatives are now watching to see if Democrats are wise enough not to fritter away a good deal -- or if they are merely blindly selfish.
  

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NAP TIME

Lajoie brought baseball to life in Cleveland (Bob Dolgan, 04/28/03, Cleveland Plain Dealer)

The city of Cleveland was described as being baseball-mad on the balmy afternoon of April 28, 1903, one hundred years ago today.

The game was memorable because Napoleon Lajoie was playing in his first home opener in Cleveland. The great second baseman was the best player in the American League at the time.

Even though Lajoie went hitless in Cleveland's 6-2 victory over St. Louis, he was the center of attention. He was in three pictures in The Plain Dealer, including one on Page One which had the caption, "Larry at Practice." Another photo showed him discussing the ground rules with umpires.

A record throng of 19,867, mostly men wearing derby hats and suits, was stuffed into League Park at East 66th and Lexington Avenue. A hastily constructed bleacher section in right field crashed, dropping hundreds of fans to the ground. One man's leg was broken. Another was knocked out.

The crowd overflowed onto the outfield, where it was held back by ropes and police. Thousands of fans were turned away at the box office.

The Cleveland Leader said a band played "In the Good Old Summertime," as the Indians strode onto the field, led by Lajoie and teammate Jack McCarthy. McCarthy's bulldog walked jauntily between them.

When Lajoie came to bat in the first inning, batboy Petie Powers doffed his cap, bowed and presented him with a bouquet of flowers. That was the third photo of Lajoie.

The Frenchman from Rhode Island wound up the season hitting .355, winning the league batting championship. In that period the batting title was the most important statistic in baseball.

Only a year earlier, there had been talk that Cleveland might lose its franchise, for attendance was so low. But that all changed when Lajoie was acquired from the Philadelphia Athletics in June 1902.

He immediately became the team savior as fans poured in to watch him perform.

Writers and fans of that era almost always referred to his startling grace around second base. At 6-1 and 195 pounds, he was a big man in a time when most players were about 5-9 and 160. Until Shoeless Joe Jackson came along, he was called the best natural hitter in baseball.

Popular as he was, he might not have attained that status today, when the media is quick to call an athlete a head case for minor transgressions.

Funny how hitting .420 and filling the seats turns one from a headcase to a character...

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SPLITSVILLE (via ef brown)

Bush Approval at 66%: Few blame administration for recent terrorist attacks (David W. Moore, May 23, 2003, GALLUP NEWS SERVICE)

The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted May 19-21, finds 66% of Americans approving of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president, down slightly from the 69% registered earlier this month, and the 70% he averaged in four polls conducted in April, but still above the prewar level of 58%. The poll also finds that few people are willing to assign very much blame to the Bush administration for recent terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, and that most people have confidence in the administration to protect the country from future terrorist attacks. Americans are less likely now than earlier this year to believe that there will be further acts of terrorism in the United States.

Especially interesting, given the divisiveness surrounding everything from FL in '00 to the anti-war movement, is that his disapproval is only 30%. Given that a number closer to 40% was typical for both Reagan and Clinton and seemed to reflect a country that was split 40% to 40% with 20% in play, you have to wonder if the Democratic Left hasn't experienced some slippage. Even if it's just a 42% to 38% nation now (the numbers being relative, of course), that's significant.

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